Examination of Witness (Questions 52-59)
MR TOM
WILLIAMS, MR
MARK PEMBERTON,
MR NIALL
MONAGHAN AND
MR ALED
RHYS JONES
25 JANUARY 2005
Chairman: Gentlemen, we would like to
welcome you here this morning to this final section of this first
session and ask Chris Bryant to start.
Q52 Chris Bryant: I had not intended
to ask any questions but now I have been told that I will. We
have an extremely vibrant amateur dramatic sector in many South
Wales Valley constituencies, certainly in mine where I could go
to a new production every week. How strong do you think the connection
is between theatre in schools and local amateur dramatic societies
and do you think that we should improve on that?
Mr Williams: I think there is
a very strong connection through theatres which run youth groups
because they connect very closely with the schools in their constituent
areas and they develop the drama which is going on in the schools.
Obviously a lot more could be done. The amateur theatre tends
to work in the evenings because amateur theatre practitioners
are doing other jobs during the day. Children used to finish school
when I was at school at four o'clock; they now seem to finish
earlier and earlier, sometimes at three o'clock, and to get that
link between what they are doing during the day and what they
do during the evening is more difficult. It does work and I think
Niall Monaghan could say where we have dedicated buildings owned
by amateurs there is certainly a greater connection than just
dependent upon casual interest.
Q53 Chris Bryant: But do you think we
are spending enough on theatre in schools? My own perception is
that practising theatre and seeing theatre in schools is not only
important in terms of the English curriculum (it is much easier
to understand Shakespeare if you have acted some of it) but also
it is a good way in particular for some youngsters who are not
necessarily particularly academic to find a means of self-expression
which otherwise they might not?
Mr Williams: That is so.
Mr Pemberton: The key thing to
remember is that amateur theatre is essentially extra curricular.
We can supplement work that may be done by the professional sector
in schools. What we do is provide opportunities for young people
to then perform using the skills that they might have gained through
working with a professional artiste in a school context.
Q54 Chris Bryant: That sounds sort of,
"No, it is nothing to do with us". That sounds like
you are too apart.
Mr Pemberton: I think also of
course there are links between amateur groups and schools in finding
the children who can play children's parts within plays or musicals.
I do not think that there is as yet much formal linkage between
the amateur sector and the schools, but that may be because there
is not the infrastructure in place that enables that to happen.
Q55 Chris Bryant: I should declare an
interest, that I am an associate of the National Youth Theatre.
I just wonder whether youth theatre in general, rather than that
specific organisation, has been funded enough over the years.
Mr Pemberton: The National Association
of Youth Theatre is a funded organisation and you should probably
direct your questions on youth theatre to the dedicated body that
deals with that sector.
Q56 Chris Bryant: Tell me about getting
permission to do plays because I remember historically one of
the great difficulties is if you wanted to do, and you might not
want to, but if you wanted to do a Brecht, it was almost impossible
because the family made life misery for anybody who wanted to
do it. Sweeney Todd, a production which quite a lot of
people wanted to do, Stephen Sondheim refused to allow that to
be shown as a movie when they made it for television. Sometimes
owners of copyright can be very difficult.
Mr Williams: They can, yes. We
find that very often they are open to negotiation. The biggest
difficulty of course is that the right-holder obviously wants
to see professional productions rather than amateur productions,
so if there is to be a professional production of something which
is in copyright in London, there is a bar on any amateur production
within 100 miles even if it is a small village hall with an audience
of 30. There are difficulties. The Beckett family, the Beckett
right-holders are sometimes a bit difficult. They do like to see
Beckett done as Beckett wrote it and not as somebody thinks it
ought to be done.
Q57 Chris Bryant: I think it is terribly
difficult with Waiting for Godot not to get caught in that
cycle of, "Let's go!", "We can't", "Why
not?", "We're waiting for Godot".
Mr Pemberton: That is a very special
issue, but I think there are certain problems occasioned by the
fact that, for example, there are restrictions placed on amateurs
as to how they may perform a piece of theatre or a musical. It
may be, "You must do it as written and as we dictate in how
it will be presented". Now, that could be perceived as fettering
the artistic creativity of an amateur group because professionals,
after all, are able to do productions which they can set in modern
times and they can completely transform the way in which they
are presented, whereas the amateurs are told, "You must do
it this way", and we would certainly like to see more leeway
in creativity. There will inevitably be occasions, as someone
said, where works will be withdrawn because they are perceived
as competing with professionals. We take that as rather flattering,
"Gosh! They're scared of us because we might actually infringe
on their box office potential". It does seem ludicrous that
a small group working in the Outer Hebrides is forbidden from
doing a show because it is on in the West End.
Q58 Chris Bryant: Tell me about theatre
buildings that people use because quite often the local theatre
to me that everybody uses is the Park and Dare, but sometimes
people might use schools because quite a lot of schools have well-equipped
halls which can be used by the amateur groups. Is it easy enough
for people to find venues to put things on or is it too expensive?
Mr Monaghan: My organisation represents
96 actual theatre-owning organisations, so we have our own buildings
which we have either adapted from other purposes, factories, et
cetera, or we have taken on old theatres and reconstructed them
ourselves, so from my point of view we find that we already have
a venue and our problems are actually keeping that venue going,
managing it and running it. We also allow other organisations
to come in and use our venues and there is actually a shortage.
Where you are performing, say, in a community centre or a village
hall, it gives the perception to the public, the am-dram sort
of perception that it is a draughty, cold, damp place to go and
watch a third-rate production, whereas in reality in some of our
theatres in our membership, you actually enter into a modern,
warm, air-conditioned theatre with good equipment with an amateur
production which is of a very high standard. It is difficult in
some respects to find the venues, but where we have the venues,
it is actually convincing the audience that the venues are of
a good enough standard that they should come and see us.
Mr Pemberton: I represent the
organisation that effectively represents producing companies and
they are hiring venues. These can be some number-one regional
venues of 1,500 seats down to the village hall circuit and each
poses its own challenges. There are some regional theatres, and
I think Aled can comment on this in Wales, which occasionally
expel amateurs from use of their venues because they frankly feel,
"We don't need amateurs. We are a professional venue and
we don't like them". Others take a highly enlightened attitude
which is that these are weeks in which they can hand over to the
amateurs, it pushes that community button which is part of their
Arts Council funding and it means they can sit back and let the
amateurs fill those weeks almost to capacity because amateur theatre
is hugely popular, has loyalty and there is a nice rental which
comes in without bothering the management too much. On the village
hall side, that is a vibrant part of our community activity and
it is absolutely vital that those village halls have a multi-purpose
which includes theatre. With school halls, what is interesting
is that we are concerned about the threat posed by the Licensing
Act which is that community and village halls are exempt from
fees, but not school halls, whereas in various cases it is the
school hall that is the community hall and we do not understand
why they will be subject to paying a fee, but in another village
next door which has a community hall, that will not be.
Mr Rhys Jones: In your own constituency,
in the Rhondda, I think that perhaps they are setting the standard,
if you like. It does vary from local authority to local authority
what relationship that amateur theatre company has with the hiring
of a venue. The work which has been done by Polly Hamilton in
Rhondda in bringing together a holistic view to how the venues
on her patch work with whatever community project is coming in
is something that we are looking to spread around to other local
authorities.
Q59 Chris Bryant: Would you say that
there is a trend towards doing more war horses, you know, lots
more productions of An Inspector Calls or Carousel
or is there more of a trend towards experimenting towards big
community projects where you might get 250 local people involved
in creating a play and building it and part of it might be out
on the streets and part of it is in the theatre?
Mr Williams: I think there is
a very wide range of theatre done. Obviously the old war horses
are produced. Stoppard and Ayckbourn are very near the top always
and Shakespeare is always very near the top, but you do get new
work produced and what I would call "cutting-edge work"
is also produced in our theatres. In the musical scene—
Mr Pemberton: Well, in the musical
scene, yes, there are the bread-and-butter G and S and Rodgers
and Hammerstein, but amateur musical groups are actually desperate
for new musicals and the hit shows in the West End take years
to be available for amateurs and they are itching to do all kinds
of work which they simply cannot get their hands on. Equally,
you have to remember that they are essentially commercial operations
and they are not subsidised, so they have to look at the bottom
line very carefully and do works that have clear box office potential
because you could have an amateur group founded 100 years ago,
a vital part of the community, which in one show could be destroyed
through poor box office.
Mr Rhys Jones: To come back to
the relationship between schools and amateur theatre, again in
Pontypridd recently the only way that they could get access to
the set text for a drama, which I think was either When We
Were Married or An Inspector Calls, one of the Priestley
plays, was the amateur theatre company which packed out the uni
in Ponti and they had to put on two extra matinées to get
the schools in and that was the only access they had to see the
set text that they were being examined on, so there is a very
strong demonstration of the relationship there.
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