Memorandum submitted by the National Theatre
1. The National Theatre is pleased to submit
evidence under four of the headings that the Committee has initially
identified for investigation and would be delighted to extend
or deepen it in whichever way the Committee would find useful.
SIGNIFICANCE OF
THEATRE
2. Our aspiration has been to put the theatre
at the heart of public discourse and in particular to explore
subject matter of national concern and to reflect the evolution
of an ever more diverse national canvas. Over the past two years,
the theatre has repeatedly been the catalyst for national debate:
about the Iraq war in Stuff Happens, about public transport
in The Permanent Way, about education in The History
Boys, about organised religion in His Dark Materials.
The communal nature of the theatrical experience and its metaphoric
power make it a unique platform for debate.
3. While the National presents an eclectic
mix of new plays and classics, nothing has engaged our public
more than our contemporary repertoire; the theatre has always
found its biggest audiences for successful new plays. All the
plays mentioned above have played to capacity houses, and like
much of our work have provoked press commentary in sufficient
volume to be catalysts for much wider discussion.
4. More recently, the furores surrounding
Bezhti and Jerry Springer The Opera have demonstrated
the theatre's sometimes disturbing power to engage a community
far wider than the audience physically present at its performances.
Ideas and emotions unlocked in the context of live performance
remain as potentially controversial as they were in Athens 2,500
years ago. It is no accident that the theatre has found itself
on the front line as we face new cultural challenges.
USE OF
SUBSIDY: PRICING
AND SUSTAINABILITY
5. There is no reason why subsidy for the
artist and subsidy for the audience should be mutually exclusive.
Indeed, our belief is that by lowering ticket prices we attract
a more adventurous audience that in its turn demands a more challenging
repertoire. So one consequence of subsidising the audience is
a greater creative freedom for the artist.
6. The urgency of tackling ticket prices
was signalled by the fact that, by 2002, top ticket prices at
NT were in real terms twice those when the South Bank building
opened in 1976.
7. Our Travelex £10 Season has been
the beacon initiative—conceived to address the programming
difficulties of the Olivier (which had been historically hard
to fill during the summer), to promote a muscular and engaged
kind of work and to make a decisive intervention in reversing
long-term audience decline by building a new regular audience.
8. We began the Travelex season in 2003.
For the first production (Nicholas Hytner's modern-dress Henry
V with Adrian Lester), 33% of the audience were first-time
bookers at the National. There were 50,000 first-time bookers
for the season, of which a third returned to the NT during the
year. The 2004 season drew a fresh 50,000 first-time bookers.
Both seasons played to 95% capacity.
9. We have found what seems to be a "halo"
effect. Overall, NT box office capacity has run at 90% for the
past 20 months. 150,000 more people came in the financial year
2003-04 than in the previous year.
10. The effect on catering receipts reflects
the different audiences. Spend-per-head is down, but the much
greater audiences capacities have pushed profits up: more people,
spending less.
11. The Travelex season has brought in new
private money for the National (£800,000 for the start-up
year, 2002-03) and has not needed extra subsidy. At the high box
office levels achieved, and with the Travelex sponsorship, the
NT is slightly better off than in previous years over the same
period. The role of the public subsidy has been to underwrite
the risk, and the effect has been to spread its benefits amongst
more people. 300,000 people have enjoyed £10 tickets over
the two seasons so far.
12. The alternative approach to subsidy—born
of the austerity period beginning in the eighties—was for
arts organisations to focus not on the use of their subsidy, but
solely on balancing their books.
13. We have spearheaded the renewed emphasis
on the intrinsic value of culture, and we fully support the efforts
of various prominent figures and commentators, including the Secretary
of State, to get away from simple "instrumentalism"
by way of justifying subsidy. But in our view this need not preclude
a rigorous and robust assessment of how we use public funds.
14. A second aspect to the NT's use of public
subsidy is addressed in the following point.
THE NEED
FOR INVESTMENT:
NEW WRITING,
NEW FORMS
AND NEW
TALENT
15. The "canon" has never been
sufficient to make up the repertoire of the NT. In the recent
past, it has often been supplemented by an increased reliance
on new productions of classic Broadway musicals. We feared a worst
case scenario: a reliance on a dwindling core of repertoire appealing
to a dwindling and ageing core of audience.
16. There is no alternative therefore to
the development of new work. The biggest risk is not to take risks.
17. We identify a need and an appetite to
go beyond the commissioning and developing of new plays. We have
become enthusiastic about "creative producing"—the
bringing-together of ideas and peoples from different disciplines
to mount projects for our large stages, at the NT and beyond.
18. Two of the National's auditoria are
large, public, even epic spaces. This is as it should be: a national
theatre should gather large audiences to witness ambitious public
events. Our particular challenge is that in recent years new and
experimental work has retreated into small studio spaces. Our
interest, however, cannot be in the coterie audience that favours
the self-referentially experimental. Our responsibility is to
find the artists and the shows that will address the larger public,
as well as the artists who flourish more easily in our 300-seat
mid-scale theatre.
19. Since 1985 we have had a unique facility
for research and development, the NT Studio in The Cut. Of late
it has added a more pro-active aspect to its activities, alongside
the recruitment to the NT of two Associate Directors and a wider
group of unpaid Associates. In the year from April 2003, five
of the nine new plays staged by the National were a direct product
of the Studio, including the notable débuts by Owen McCafferty
and Kwame Kwei-Armah.
20. We have now begun fundraising for a
scheme that will refurbish the Studio and take under one roof
education and Archive functions, embracing past, present and future
on the same site.
21. Between the Studio and the Literary
Department, the NT spends around £1 million per year on commissioning
and the development of new work for the repertoire. This is an
essential spend. The significance of His Dark Materials (developed
over 18 months at Studio), Stuff Happens (which started
as a blank sheet at the Studio) and The History Boys (which
underwent a brief but crucial series of readings at the Studio)
extends beyond their artistic success. They became financial cornerstones,
as productive at the box office as the most popular of the musicals
of the recent past.
22. The notable exception to the rule that
the Studio provides the repertoire was Jerry Springer The Opera.
Its trajectory started at BAC: a good example of the NT's role
in the wider theatre community. We collaborate and co-produce
enthusiastically to bring to wider attention the kind of work
which would otherwise remain relatively hidden.
THE RELATIONSHIP
OF SUBSIDISED
AND COMMERCIAL
THEATRES
21. The conventional model—that the
subsidised theatre transfers to the commercial theatre its box
office successes when it can no longer house them—is in
reasonable working order. There were four transfers from the National
to the West End in the last year.
22. It should be recognised however that
currently West End is a somewhat difficult climate for straight
plays. Apart from musicals (and especially those staged with the
generous collaboration of Cameron Mackintosh) the NT's transfer
earnings are significant but not transformational: typically about
£500,000 a year. The financial rewards of retaining plays
in the repertoire, when appropriate, are much greater for the
NT, though directors and designers, and sometimes actors, are
generally better rewarded under a commercial management.
23. In order to give the NT a bigger share
of commercial profits (when they are available), a group of the
National's loyal supporters have set up National Angels Ltd, an
Enterprise Investment Scheme company, The National has also a
$1.5 million three-year "first look" deal with two American
producers that has resulted in Broadway transfers for the NT productions
of Jumpers, Democracy and Pillowman.
21 January 2005
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