Memorandum submitted by Mr Bill Bankes-Jones
1. INTRODUCTION
I was delighted to hear of the Committee's investigations
into the area of musical theatre. I feel strongly that government
funding is not only disproportionately sparse for the independent
development of musical theatre work, but also prices this costly
but underfunded work out of the market through its far more generous
attitude to the independent development of the competing fields
of dance, spoken theatre and so on.
I am a freelance theatre director, also working
as Artistic Director of Tête à Tête, "probably
our best purveyors of contemporary opera, certainly the most hip,"
(Anna Picard, Independent on Sunday.) I am also Chair of
the Opera Music Theatre Forum ("OMTF",) for which has
contributed separately a more formal submission. In addition to
that, I wanted to add my own personal, anecdotal response to this
very important investigation. It may also help to add a little
more background.
I've been working in this field for over 15
years, initially working in the spoken and "musical"
theatre (eg Associate Director, Redgrave Theatre, Farnham, 1989-91.)
More recently, I have focused principally on opera, both within
our larger institutions, and by running one of our most successful
smaller innovative companies, while undertaking a considerable
amount of work abroad. This year, I have directed:
— Essential Scottish Opera for Scottish
Opera
— Die Fledermaus for English
Touring Opera
— Otello for the New National
Theatre Tokyo/Royal Opera, Japan
— Die Entführung aus dem Serail
for Läckö Slottsopera, Sweden
— Family Matters for Tête à
Tête
— A Nitro at the Opera Nitro/ROH2 (The
Royal Opera House's experimental wing.)
Between Family Matters and A Nitro at the Opera
these include world premieres of the work of nine composers.
My own work focusing largely on opera nowadays,
I will of course focus on that in this submission. But I think
it's very important indeed that the Committee consider opera as
part of this investigation: opera is, after all slipping through
the same hole in the funding net as musical theatre. Meanwhile
my own company, Te®te a" Te®te, has depended heavily
on the Bridewell Theatre—the only London venue dedicated
to Music Theatre in its broadest sense—as host for the London
Run of our past three new commissions.
2. OPERA VS
MUSICALS
The first thing to say here is that from the
transcript of the hearing, it appears that the Committee was accidentally
misled:
"Q85 John Thurso: Looking more broadly
at what you do in music, you wrote some interesting appendices
and opera was brought out. Can you tell me broadly how much is
spent on what one might call `classic opera' as opposed to how
much you spend on what might be termed `musicals'?
Ms Weir: The figure for music theatre is £41.6
million in the year 2003-04. Within that £41.6 million, £38
million is for large-scale opera houses which would be the Royal
Opera House, ENO, WNO and Opera North.
Q86 John Thurso: Which leaves £3.6 million
for musicals.
Ms Weir: But of course do not forget that some
of those opera houses also do musicals."
In fact all of this £3.6 million is allocated
to the Regularly Funded producers of opera or organisations training
opera singers who aren't "large-scale opera houses,"
set out in detail in the OMTF's submission. And these large-scale
opera houses do musicals so seldom that the Royal Opera's imminent
staging of Sweeny Todd is a major news story.
The vast majority of musicals staged by subsidised
companies are not new, and are nothing to do with this budget
at all, but rather produced by regularly funded theatre companies
at their own discretion. Some do a magnificent job, and there
are very exciting developments, such as the move of Tom Morris
from Artistic Director of BAC to be Associate director of the
National Theatre with a remit for developing music theatre for
larger spaces. At the same time, there are devastating catastrophes,
such as the closure of the Leicester Haymarket Theatre, one of
our richest sources, recently, of new musicals. As long as the
development of music theatre remains at the discrection of ACE
clients, rather than acknowledged in the national funding strategy,
it will remain unstable.
3. OPERA: SCALE,
INNOVATION, TOURING
I'll start here by including a letter published
in The Guardian earlier this year:
"Low note for touring opera"
Saturday March 29, 2003
The Guardian
"I was interested and pleased to hear that
"touring productions of smaller chamber operas is now a possibility"
for the Royal Opera House, thanks to an uplift in its funding
of £3.1 million over the next three years (Covent Garden
puts on its first musical, March 27). Anyone working in the field
of opera, and a great many other people who simply appreciate
it will be delighted with the recently announced uplift in funding
for the hard-pressed opera sector generally.
"What is very disappointing is the Arts
Council of England's commitment to small- to middle-scale touring.
It claims that "the Arts Council is committed to the fast
growing middle-scale opera and music theatre sector". Yet
of all the opera companies it is regularly funding, the dedicated
small- to middle-scale professional companies seem to be allotted
£126,000 of the £170 million funding for opera from
2003-06, or put another way, 0.075% of the opera budget.
"The Opera Music Theatre Forum is the UK's
representative body for professional companies, representing some
150 companies right across the sector, of which the new Arts Council
spending plans fund 13. Our 2001 report, Opera for All—commissioned
by the Arts Council itself—showed that there is a growing
demand for this kind of work, and dwindling funding to provide
it.
"While one can only be pleased for the
new or augmented support for the very specialised work of British
Youth Opera, Birmingham Opera Company, Buxton Festival, Pimlico
Opera's work in prisons and the National Opera Studio, it is puzzling
and extremely disappointing that the Arts Council hasn't funded
a single one of our many highly skilled, experienced, successful,
popular, dedicated small- to middle-scale touring companies, despite
its stated commitment, and that the funding for this kind of work
continues to dwindle despite the increase for the sector overall.
Bill Bankes-Jones
Chairman, Opera Music Theatre Forum"
I think this sums up the situation still pretty
fairly. In her opening statement to the committee, Sarah Weir
on behalf of the Arts Council of England states that "The
most fertile area for the development of new musicals is undoubtedly
the smaller organisations . . . the process of developing the
work is often more appropriate for the smaller developmental organisations."
I couldn't agree more. The OMTF's 2001 report "Opera For
All" and our 2002 major conference "A leap of faith"
both exposed vividly how, alongside the larger-scale work of our
bigger regularly funded organisations there's a powerful and prolific
movement of smaller scale work.
It was a pleasure and a priviledge recently
to direct three short operas by black composers for the Royal
Opera House's experimental wing ROH2. I wholeheartedly applaud
the initiatives in WNO, the Royal Opera and Opera North at the
moment to take on more experimental and smaller scale work, while
lamenting the current morbidity of the ENO studio. These expansions
are a tribute to the success of our smaller companies, and a vital
step towards the future. Without supporting smaller companies
as well, though, introducing hefty competitors like this is also
engineering the destruction of the independent sector—and
as Sarah Weir says above, you need small players to gamble, take
risks, be dangerous, experiment, revolutionise, in an environment
where the stakes are not so high.
Sadly, in terms of regular funding, and despite
the Arts Council's state aim to "work with funded arts organisations
to help them thrive rather than just survive" ("Ambitions
for the Arts," ACE 2003) the value of experimental/developmental
opera and music theatre on the smaller scale is not recognised
financially by the state funding system.
Take my own company, Te®te a" Te®te,
as an example. In relative terms, the company is pretty near the
top of the opera tree, as far as genuinely small-scale companies
go. We've benefited from excellent partnerships with Regularly
Funded Organisations such as Battersea Arts Centre, who really
nursemaided the company into existence, or ENO, our co-producer
for Six-Pack in the days when ENO fostered smaller new work. We've
also benefited from a range of touring, commission, project and
now "for the arts" grants, and more recently an invaluable
relationship with Natalie Steed Productions, itself a Regularly
Funded Organisation providing us with "general administrative
support, general development, strategy and fundraising, and project
development." Nevertheless, as a company at the forefront
of the independent innovative opera sector, after six years of
continued successes, sound financial management and exceptional
ability to raise funds from the private sector, we still have
no regular funding, and consequently no full-time staff. Our future
is constantly insecure, planning limited to the short-term, and
core operation still funded principally by piggy-backing core
costs onto each project.
My experience as chair of the Opera and Music
Theatre Forum tells me that this bleak picture is actually pretty
rosy in comparison to the majority of opera companies in this
country, who receive no direct state funding at all, and yet probably
service the majority of opera-goers, and certainly introduce the
bulk of newcomers to opera.
This situation is very much aggravated by the
fact that not only is opera the most costly performing art form,
involving so many disciplines, but it's also the least well subsidised
on the small scale. This means that the many companies like Te®te
a" Te®te that would like to perform our work in the mixed
programmes of local arts centres around the country are priced
out of the market either by far cheaper performances (eg stand-up
comedians) or the plethora of regularly funded small-scale dance
and theatre companies, such as Improbable, Told by an Idiot, Theatre
de Complicite, Union Dance, Yellow Earth, Forma, Lawnmowers, Monster
Productions, NTC, Theatre sans Frontieres, Action Transport, Ashton
Group, Chapter 4, Horse & Bamboo Theatre Company, Lip Service,
Rejects Revenge Theatre Company, Fecund Theatre, OTTC, Sankalpam,
Theatre Melange, Attik Dance, Common Players, Kneehigh Theatre,
Miracle Theatre, Natural Theatre, Sixth Sense, Theatre Alibi,
Eastern Angles Theatre Company, etc etc etc etc etc . . .
Salt is only rubbed into the wound but the fact
that whereas all these companies have regularly funded umbrella
bodies—dance umbrella, ITC—neither the OMTF nor any
other umbrella body for this sector receives regular funding.
4. THE FUNDING
SYSTEM
The situation is very simple, though obviously
far from clear to the Committee. In the new structure of the arts
council, there are two principal ways to be funded—either
as a "regularly funded organization" or through "grants
for the arts."
A. Regular Funding
The "regularly funded organisations"
for opera are set out clearly and in detail in the OMTF submission.
There are no regularly funded organisations dedicated to fostering
new musical theatre as defined by the Bridewell and the NYMT.
Amongst all the RFO's, only a small minority of theatre companies
contribute to this work. They are funded by the Drama Department
of the Arts Council. This is in no way a formal part of their
remit, but simply their own choice of how to deploy their funds.
And since the 2001 Theatre Review, funding for theatre companies
appears to have shifted away from regional theatres, which at
the start of my career produced new musicals fairly frequently,
towards smaller independent companies. Probably the majority of
regional repertory theatres (like Farnham) that existed when I
began my career have now ceased trading. And those that survive
appear to have been discouraged from producing popular/populist
work including new musicals towards more "art house"
type of programming.
There is no transparency at all in the process
of becoming a Regularly Funded Organisation. You are not allowed
to apply, you are just awarded funds. There is no formal publicly
announced process of how these funds are allocated. The bulk of
regularly funded organisations announced in the last batch, for
April 2003-06, appear to be funded not on merit or innovation
so much as on historical precedent. Other than Base Chorus, with
a meagre £15,000 per year, there are no small independent
companies at all regularly funded specifically to produce experimental
opera or music theatre on the small-scale.
B. Grants for the Arts
This replaces numerous different funding schemes,
such as Regional Arts Lottery Programme, National Touring Programme,
and many others. It's a visionary idea, that the funding system
is massively simplified, that you can apply for whatever you want
within the one scheme, and your application is considered on its
own merits rather than by arcane criteria. In practice, this is
certainly not yet working in the area of smaller opera and music
theatre—there's no noticeable improvement in this neglected
field. The Arts Council representatives gave the impression, judging
from the transcript, that this represents a potential bonanza
for producers of musical theatre and opera. There's not any discernable
change yet, though it is early do judge.
5. COMPARISONS
WITH ABROAD
Last year, I directed Verdi's Otello for
the Seoul Arts Centre. This is an enormous national arts complex,
including equivalent facilities to the entire South Bank Centre
(Theatres, concert halls, museums) plus calligraphy hall, outdoor
Korean traditional performance venues, national library etc etc.
This is one of two comparable centres in Seoul. The Seoul Arts
centre theatre has 3 auditoriums, all of which are used for an
equal spread of spoken theatre, opera, musicals, traditional Korean
Theatre, dance, and experimental work. While I was there I saw
the off-broadway hit Urinetown which has yet to make it
to the UK, as well as a small-scale production of Figaro.
The staff of the centre were astonished when I told them the Royal
Opera never (at that time) staged musicals.
At the New National Theatre in Tokyo, there's
again a small auditorium for small scale work, where I saw Andre
Previn's A Streetcar named desire (I think again, yet to
be performed in this country.) Though both opera and musical theatre
are relatively new to the far East, especially Korea, they seemed
to have recognized both the validity of musicals alongside opera,
and at the same time, are way ahead of us in accepting small-scale
opera as an important part of the work of their National companies.
In Sweden, meanwhile, I was working for a project
jointly promoted by a local company and Musik I Vast,
a kind of equivalent of the Arts Council for the west of Sweden.
Sweden, like most other European countries, has many more state
funded opera companies than the UK. In addition, all the regional
agencies also act as promoters, so Musik I Vast was
working on all scales to promote both music and opera in local
arts centers, schools, ancient monuments, wherever possible. Quite
different to the megalithic system in this country. I had no direct
experience of Musicals in Sweden, though was aware of a flourishing
musicals "scene" in Gothenberg and Stockholm.
6. COMPARISONS
BETWEEN THE
SUPPORT AVAILABLE
IN THE
UK FOR THE
DEVELOPMENT OF
NEW MUSICAL
THEATRE WRITING
AND THE
SUPPORT ON
OFFER FOR
NEW DRAMATIC
THEATRE WRITING
Very simply, while there are many regularly
funded organisations in this country dedicated exclusively to
the development of new dramatic theatre writing—The Royal
Court Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Soho Theatre, Bush Theatre,
Live Theatre, Ashton Group, LLT New Writing Theatre, North West
Playwritghts, Quondam, etc etc etc etc, there isn't a single one
dedicated to the new musical, nor to new opera, on any scale.
7. THE SIGNIFICANCE
OF THE
BRIDEWELL THEATRE
IN THE
DEVELOPMENT OF
NEW MUSICAL
THEATRE WRITING
AND PRODUCTIONS
WITHIN THE
UK; THE CONTRIBUTION
OF OTHER
VENUES AND
ORGANISATIONS
With the possible exception of Greenwich Theatre,
the Bridewell is the only theatre in London dedicated to the presentation
of musical theatre, and without doubt, stages more new musicals
than any other venue. All this is accomplished on a woefully inadequate
level of irregular subsidy.
This of course makes the Bridewell enormously
significant in the development of new musical theatre writing;
and were the company in a more stable financial state, I am sure
it could pursue this objective far further.
For Te®te a" Te®te, the Bridewell
has been absolutely crucial as a performing venue, placing huge
confidence in our productions at an early stage, and allowing
us to tap into their musical theatre audience to bring a whole
new tranche of audience into the usually more recherché
form of new opera. There are relatively very few theatres in London
prepared to chance their arm on contemporary opera in the way
the Bridewell has.
8. THE PERFORMANCE
OF THE
BRIDEWELL THEATRE
IN CONTRIBUTING
TO THE
WIDER PUBLIC
POLICY OBJECTIVES
OF THE
ARTS COUNCIL
AND DCMS AND
AS A
STEWARD OF
THE PUBLIC
FUNDS IT
RECEIVES
Given the level and nature of the public funds
the Bridewell receives—relatively small intermittent grants—the
Bridewell delivers extraordinary value for money, certainly spends
it responsibly, and from time to time, as much as it can afford,
certainly meets the arts council objectives of innovation and
excellence. Were it stably funded, I'm sure it could also meet
the objective of organizational stability.
9. CONCLUSIONS
The whole area of Musicals, small-scale opera
and musical theatre is not adequately supported by the current
state funding system. My own personal view is that:
1. There should be a review of musical theatre
and opera, much like the 2001 theatre review cited by Sarah Weir
in her submission to the Committee.
2. Opera should no longer be considered as
a subset of "music" by the funding system, and Musicals
should no longer be a part of "Drama"—rather,
both should be re-grouped in a separate department.
3. Thanks to this lacuna in the system, and
alongside many other companies, the Bridewell has been woefully
underfunded and should be properly subsidized to recognise its
achievements and maximize its potential.
25 November 2003
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