Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport Minutes of Evidence


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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