Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-145)
NATIONAL THEATRE
1 FEBRUARY 2005
Q140 Ms Shipley: Okay, you now get the
female vote for your theatre.
Mr Hytner: They are 25 years old,
apparently.
Q141 Ms Shipley: I am really trying to
get at your successful model of animating the whole theatre experience
and space and building, and keeping it open for the maximum amount
of time doing stuff, any sort of stuff. Is that replicable without
massive expense? On the smaller scale, I was putting the argument
that perhaps regional theatres could not afford the professionals
that you put on in the foyer space, but they could make it available
to amateurs to put on things really quite cheaply. They could
allow picnics to happen and make it more friendly, they could
put on more exhibitions. More could be done of the model you have
without massive expense.
Mr Hytner: Without massive expense,
I do not know. Different buildings provide different challenges,
but, I agree with you, our experience is that it is something
that is massively worthwhile. We are very fortunate, I completely
agree with you, about the building. It used to be much knocked.
Sometime, mysteriously, over the last 10/15 years the needle swung
the other way and I think it is now a building which is loved.
People like going there. Those who briefed Denys Lasdun were the
great theatre professionals of the sixties, so a hell of a lot
of it is designed to make the theatregoing experience and the
theatre-making experience very easy. We are very lucky in that
respect.
Q142 Ms Shipley: I think so too. I missed
out on visiting your educational department and backstage and
things—so you might like to invite me again, please.
Mr Hytner: We certainly will.
Chairman: The last question.
Q143 Ms Shipley: The other thing you
do very well is marketing, I think. I think you could actually
offer outwards the way the whole place is branded in the first
place, in the way I have just described, which I think is part
of the total branding, and then the overall marketing of what
the total theatre experience is and is about, which I think is
about creativity and thinking in its widest possible sense. I
think that is what you offer and I think that is what you are
marketing in the widest sense. I think that again is something
that the regional theatres, the little theatres and what-have-you
should be able to pick up on. You know, we pay a lot of money
for you to develop that model, right, you have got that model,
and that is the thing I think you should be transferring outwards.
Is there any way that you could actually feasibly do that or is
it really that the theatres themselves have to identify and take
what they have got? Do you see what I am saying?
Mr Hytner: My experience is that
theatre marketers do talk to each other, and that slowly things
change and there are different ways found of identifying the people
who would be most interested in what we are doing and in getting
the message—
Q144 Ms Shipley: No, creating the interest
in people—not identifying but actually creating it in the
first place.
Mr Hytner: I think a lot is to
do with individual talent. We are very fortunate to have an extraordinarily
talented head of marketing.
Ms Shipley: Thank you, Chairman.
Q145 Chairman: One self-indulgent question:
among the many pleasures and satisfactions I have had in my visits
to the National is the Sondheim you do. Is there any chance of
your doing Bounce?
Mr Hytner: It is not currently
on the cards, but our relationship with Stephen Sondheim is excellent.
We talk to him the whole time and his entire oeuvre is
always under consideration.
Chairman: You should be sitting here,
with an answer like that. Thank you very much indeed.
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