Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220-239)
ALMEIDA THEATRE,
DONMAR WAREHOUSE
8 FEBRUARY 2005
Q220 Michael Fabricant: Yes, but theatres
in general actually. Although that £125 million, £250
million in total, is going to go to the West End theatre, really
I suppose I am asking a more broad question. I know of many smaller
theatres, old theatres, which are very uncomfortable yet are successful,
particularly when there are productions on which attract the audience?
Mr Attenborough: Unquestionably,
you are right. A hugely successful show will transcend its environment.
However, not every show is hugely successful, not every show is
hugely disastrous, there is always an equally huge middle ground.
Arthur Miller once said that actually he would be much more thrilled
with, say, 20 Broadway theatres doing 60 or 70% as opposed to
a handful doing 100%. For him, that was a more enriched and exciting
theatre-land. Having spent a certain amount of my time, I am sure
Michael has as well, in New York recently, it is frightening how
perilous the life of a show is and it is either a big hit or it
is a big miss. The risk of spending that amount of money is huge.
If you could find a middle ground where you could house a greater
spread, a larger canvas of a variety of drama, a good, physical
infrastructure would support that infinitely better.
Q221 Michael Fabricant: Tell me, what
proportion of audience, you may not have this information to hand
but a gut response would be useful, are regular theatre-goers
and what are the Japanese or the American tourists who come here
and as part of their experience, or for a one-off experience,
go to see a play?
Mr Attenborough: It varies enormously
from theatre to theatre. I am sure that the West End theatres
will tell you that tourism is a very, very important plank of
their work. Neil and I spent many years at the Royal Shakespeare
Company, and that tourism was a very important element of Stratford,
and interestingly mostly English tourism, not necessarily American
and Japanese, although there was a significant percentage it was
not nearly as huge as people assumed it was. I think, certainly
at the Almeida, it is primarily a local and London-based audience.
Mr Grandage: We have a big Friends
Scheme at the Donmar, who are very, very loyal and come to the
theatre regularly. I do not think there is any such thing as a
totally loyal audience really, because, of course, if something
goes wrong or they read a set of very bad reviews or the word
of mouth is very, very bad, I do not think there is a very, very
large constituency of people who come and say, "Well, in
spite of all of that, we're loyal to this theatre and we will
go anyway," which is why we have such a tough time of it.
Q222 Michael Fabricant: I think, as a
politician, I can identify with the loyalty problem. I think attachment
to either parties or theatres is something which now is far more
volatile than ever it used to be. Do you think that attachment
would be strengthened by having a more comfortable seating arrangement?
Mr Attenborough: Again, if you
are asking about the West End theatre, I do not think audiences
associate that. On the whole, I think most West End audiences
have not the faintest idea of which theatre is where, so you would
not have any identification with those buildings, I think, but
you would have a sense of the raising of a general standard.
Q223 Michael Fabricant: Let me move on,
if I may, to another issue. Last week we had here the Independent
Theatres Council and they were talking about the way Arts Council
money is given to theatres. I can identify with one of the points
they made, because we have got a brand-new theatre in Lichfield,
where Garrick was born, it is called the Lichfield Garrick, rather
appropriately, and certainly it was pointed out by our theatre
in Lichfield. There are a number of people who regularly receive
large sums of money, or even not so large sums of money, from
the Arts Council and it is very difficult for new theatres or
new productions to get a look-in, because all that money has been
allocated and the Arts Council, understandably, is loathe to withdraw
money from either existing successful operations or even not so
successful operations. What is your view of that?
Mr Attenborough: I sat on the
Arts Council Drama Panel for many years, in fact, through
three different incarnations, through a different Chairman.
I did not find that so, I have to say. The amount of provision
that the Arts Council was making for small theatres, for touring
work, for non-building-based work, for project work, was considerable.
Funnily enough, one of the problems that members of ITC had was
breaking into that particular sector; in other words, if you were
Shared Experience or you were Paines Plough, you had an established
relationship, and breaking into that particular fold was tough.
Of course, now it has all shifted onto much more regional-based
funding, and therefore there may well be more opportunities for
companies that are more related to a region. The truth of the
matter is, if the cake gets bigger everybody else gets more and
if the cake gets smaller inevitably those who are already established
will have, to a degree, a first claim on the money.
Q224 Michael Fabricant: This was one
of the criticisms that the ITC made. Is the Arts Council critical
enough, does it audit, if you like, in the true sense of the word
"audit", how the money has been spent and the artistic
return that it is getting for their money?
Mr Grandage: Yes. There is a quite
rigorous set of rules which apply to all of us that we have to
fulfil, and I think we have to trust that the level of monitoring
which goes on is substantial to keep us all on our toes, to make
sure that the money we are in receipt of is spent properly, whatever
size that is. I think their job, as Mike says, is governed entirely
by how much money they have to distribute.
Q225 Michael Fabricant: If I may be controversial,
Debra Shipley was talking last week about in-reach, as she called
it, bringing people into the theatre, and I will not tread on
her territory. Sometimes are conditions set by the Arts Council
for in-reach or outreach or peripheral activities which are actually
a bit of a bind and prevent you from using your resources for
putting on better productions than otherwise you might be able
to?
Mr Grandage: We have to acknowledge
in the theatre that what we do goes on our stage. That is what
we are there for. We are built as a theatre to perform for the
public on stage, we put on productions and that is the most important
thing we do. Beyond that there is a mass of things that we can
start to talk about, how we can attract other ideas and other
ways we can work as a body. If we take away the core principle
of why we are there and start to focus on other areas first then
the whole thing starts to unravel, that is the problem. I am always
happy to have a debate about outreach, and indeed I look forward
to in-reach and finding out more about it, but we cannot have
that debate until we address the central principle that we are
theatres putting on plays on our stages.
Mr Attenborough: I have not found
any sense of distraction from the Arts Council's requirements.
When I took over the Almeida I made quite conscious decisions
to try to change, or, shall I say, expand, the range of work that
we were doing and, every bit as importantly, the range of audience
that we were finding, and I do not mean just in numbers, I mean
actually in age, gender and race. If you are going to do that,
you have to make conscious, proactive decisions. In fact, the
use of the building happens to be one of them, so, as I said earlier,
we formed what is called our Projects Department and the Projects
Department use the building a lot during the daytime. Linking
up with what Michael has just said, everything that I have done,
in terms of affecting the nature of the work and the composition
of the audience, is based round the productions themselves. It
is not social work, it is work for the theatre in a social context,
and so everything that our Projects Department does is linked
back to every single one of our productions.
Michael Fabricant: That is very helpful.
Thank you very much.
Q226 Mr Hawkins: One of the issues which
have been raised with us in evidence during the course of this
inquiry is the difference between sport and theatre, and, in particular,
sports like football benefit from having a huge broadcasting deal.
One of the things I wanted to ask you, given that in both your
cases you are producing cutting-edge drama, is, at the end of
the run, do you think the broadcasters would be interested in
broadcasting your work? Have broadcasting deals been explored
by the Almeida or the Donmar, or is there a problem with rights?
What we are exploring is whether there might be more scope for
theatres to do the sorts of deals with broadcasters which sports,
particularly football, do?
Mr Frankfort: The Donmar often
has a problem with the rights. Because we are a small theatre,
we are only ever able to purchase the rights for a limited presentation
at our theatre, and if you want then to go into the West End you
have to get further rights, so rights are a big issue.
Mr Attenborough: Basically, film
and television companies are enormously interested in doing our
work only if it is very, very cheap. If it is not cheaper than
the way they would produce it they have no interest whatsoever.
I am afraid there is a terrible disparity between the cheapness
with which they wish to approach it and the quality which we would
insist was maintained. My experience is that pointing three or
four cameras at the stage and just filming what we have got (a)
is a contradiction of the theatrical experience itself and (b)
results in very poor quality, often as much in sound as in vision.
To do it properly usually is quite expensive and they need to
be sure they are going to get a return on their investment.
Mr Constable: We have tried this
at the RSC with two of Adrian Noble's productions, and we did
it recently with Anthony Sher's play ID that he was appearing
in, which BBC Four filmed and it was shown six times on BBC Four.
If you were a theatre-goer you would understand the limitations
of the capture, but if you were not a theatre-goer I think you
would have been disappointed by the experience.
Q227 Mr Hawkins: The other point I wanted
to raise was something I have always been very keen on, which
is theatre in education links with schools. Can you give us some
details of what special arrangements there are, special deals
for schools attending the Donmar and the Almeida?
Mr Grandage: We do have at the
Donmar, we both have, substantial outreach work.
Mr Frankfort: We do school matinees
with tickets at £5 and then we go up for funding to underwrite
the rest and we go to schools in Westminster, Hackney, Islington,
Camden and Haringey, for instance. We also produce study guides
for each of our shows which are available from our website, so
people who are doing related projects which are on the school
syllabus can download it. We do associated workshops relating
to the specific themes within the show and also we do a "Write
Now" programme where we bring in schools with their teachers
to see the shows then they go away and create writings, plays,
poems, text around the themes they have seen and they come back
and perform it, or they workshop it on the stage, sometimes with
the author. We did that with Patrick Marber recently on After
Miss Julie. So we have a series of things that we run at the
Donmar.
Mr Attenborough: Ours is, as I
am sure it is at the Donmar, more theatre and education rather
than theatre in education, and TIE, of course, is a very specific
skill which is taken up in schools. Ours has developed really
in two directions. There had never been a schools' matinee at
the Almeida until I took over so it was a whole new experience.
As at the Donmar, we charge low prices and to the best of our
ability we attempt to persuade every single school which comes
to our theatre to have a workshop on the play before they arrive.
If you are producing, as we are currently, Macbeth, there
is a huge young people interest, but virtually every single school
which comes to the Almeida will already have had a workshop, and
our actors tell us they cannot distinguish between an audience
which has got a high percentage of kids in it and not, which is
a wonderful thing. In terms of the relationship with schools,
more specifically, the projects work that I set in motion when
I arrived, rather than what I might describe as a scattergun technique
of a large marketing exercise, of getting as many coaches outside
the building as possible to come to our shows and our workshops,
what I asked the Projects Director to do was forge relationships
with six secondary schools in the Islington area, sustaining a
commitment over a minimum of three years and hopefully twice that,
which would allow us to develop a relationship with the teachers,
with the heads and, I believe, most importantly, with the kids
themselves, which we have done. As much of the work as possible
is happening in the building during the daytime as opposed to
in the schools, so that the building itself is not intimidating
any more, it is somewhere they have got used to. They perform
in it themselves, they create, they are doing writing projects,
musical projects, all kinds of work, but they are focused on very
specific relationships rather than trying to do too much rather
thinly, if you understand what I mean.
Q228 Mr Doran: Can I start with a comment,
that when the Chairman was talking to Michael Attenborough earlier
he talked about the Almeida being on the margins geographically.
Representing a constituency in Aberdeen, a trek to Islington seems
to me a doddle, and if you see the difficulties some of the people
out in the rural areas have to get to the theatre I think you
will understand my point. I want to ask you a fairly basic question.
You are both very successful in what you are doing, you are both
risk-takers, you are delivering a product which has a niche in
the market and is very distinctive. My basic question is what
is the public interest in subsidised theatre, and yours in particular?
Mr Attenborough: What they gain
out of it is simply an affordable ticket price.
Q229 Mr Doran: There must be more than
that surely?
Mr Attenborough: Again, a product,
but, at the end of the day, a subsidy is money and, frankly, I
do not think we would exist without subsidy, I think we would
charge ourselves out of the market. It is because we can provide
top-quality work at a price that a large cross-section of people
can afford, which after all is the whole point of subsidy, it
is a subsidy which fundamentally should be there for people who
would not necessarily be able to afford it, we would have to virtually
double the seat prices and that would put us in a completely different
area, in relation to our audience. I would say unashamedly, fundamentally,
it is the access.
Q230 Mr Doran: I think Michael Grandage
said earlier that two out of your six or seven productions a year
are subsidised?
Mr Grandage: Yes. Effectively,
our subsidy equals being able to fund two productions a year.
Q231 Mr Doran: Spread over the six or
seven productions?
Mr Grandage: It is however we
use it, but it is a good example of the cost of a production that
the subsidy we receive will cover about two and a half, roughly,
I think. The better the subsidy for a theatre the better all of
the work is. Everything could be subsidised. Here I can talk very
clearly about the way subsidy has helped to find younger audiences
in Sheffield without coming on here with a Donmar hat on today.
The subsidy that we have been given in Sheffield has enabled us
to start a programme of work where, effectively, 51% of our audience
is between 16 and 26. That is a massive turnout and it is due
entirely to the fact that we can do exactly what Mike says, which
is subsidise our ticket prices accordingly to be able to get people
in and target them as well. Proper subsidy also allows us to be
able to continue to fund our work so that we can deliver what
you are all generously saying we do, which is deliver to a very
high quality and a very high standard. It is in the public interest
to make sure that we are able to do that, and this is not so much
in the public interest but of course subsidy gives us stability,
sustainability, it means that we know that we will be open in
12 months' time to do that work. We cannot earn anything out of
our box office revenue, we have only 250 seats at the Donmar,
so unless we place our ticket prices at an absurd level and start
to get revenue that way we are very heavily reliant on subsidy
and money from anywhere that will keep us open.
Mr Attenborough: With great respect
to my commercial colleagues, if you are sitting down at the beginning
of a production or project, inevitably they would say "How
short a time could you rehearse this in?" We ask the opposite
question, we say "How long do you need?" I understand
why a commercial producer asks that because they are desperately
trying to peg back costs. What subsidy allows you is that freedom,
limited though it may be, to try to put quality at the top of
the agenda.
Q232 Mr Doran: Where does risk-taking
come into this? You both make a point of that in your written
submissions, that you take risks.
Mr Grandage: I think neither of
us probably would stop taking risks, but of course the more support
there is financially the more one is able to take risks. The definition
of taking risks is the higher the risk the bigger the chance of
failure, I suppose. I think in the theatre we need always to set
our level of failure very high, if you see what I mean, deliberately,
because we cannot go below a certain level. Nonetheless, the bigger
the risk the greater the potential to fail, and if there is a
potential failure in there and it results in box office revenue
dropping off considerably then we start to get into that spiral
where we end up, I guess, in closure.
Q233 Mr Doran: I was intrigued in the
Donmar submission by the references that were made to a Donmar
brand and I presume that means quality and certainty and it is
not just about mugs and tee-shirts. I suppose, if we were looking
at the way in which the theatre functions, and I do not mean just
your end of the theatre market, the commercial end and areas like
the National Theatre, one of the areas that theatre does not seem
to be very good at is cashing in commercially. The Cameron Mackintoshs
and Lloyd Webbers of this world do very well but the sort of market
that you are in we do not seem to be very good at. I know that
there are transfers into the West End and you both mentioned,
certainly Donmar has mentioned in its submission, the royalties
and money which comes back to the theatre, but there does seem
to be a gap there, where the whole focus is on the theatre and
what may be necessary to get your grants, like the outreach work,
or whatever. Some colleagues have mentioned the idea of TV, but
no film-maker now makes a film without taking into account the
income that will come from marketing the products, and which may
be the mugs and tee-shirts but the DVDs and the sound-tracks,
and many of them get more income from the spin-offs than they
do from the actual product. Is there any thinking like that in
the theatre, that you should be going in the same direction? I
understand that simply televising and putting static cameras in
front of a stage is not the way forward, but there must be other
ways to increase your income?
Mr Attenborough: We are constantly
looking at ways to increase our income. There is one huge
difference, of course, between Cameron Mackintosh's and Andrew
Lloyd Webber's work and ours, which is that they are open-ended
so they can run and run and run. The whole point of our subsidy
is that we present a range of work, so if Grand Hotel or
Macbeth is packing the theatre we know that on date X it
has got to stop because the next one is already in rehearsal from
then on, and so there is a limit, there would be a very short
shelf-life to a lot of the marketable products that we produce.
Also, of course, we are small, and the Donmar is even smaller
than us, we are 330, you are 250, so again the number of people
who are moving through, in terms of individuals, is very mall.
Again, compared with Andrew's and Cameron's work, it is maybe
2,000 per performance. It is more problematic at our end of things.
In a way, I would say, the huge benefit deriving from the Donmar
and the Almeida brands is actually private support, it is endorsement,
it is the sense of association with our brand which a Coutts will
want, and that is where it derives from really, I would say, that
is the major benefit to us. If we are trying to raise £1.2
million every year to support our work, you could argue that is
a huge benefit, from who we are, and if we let that slip they
will be off to somebody else in a flash.
Mr Constable: That is where our
mixed economies are very similar because, unusual for most arts
organisations, our box office income is nearly at the same level
as our private fund-raising, be it through private finance or
corporate support.
Mr Grandage: The brand, you are
right, it is not about tee-shirts and mugs at all, it is about
trying to make sure the brand name stands for excellence and then
going out and using it wherever we can.
Q234 Mr Flook: I appreciate that people
like Coutts are very supportive of the Almeida. In sport, someone
like Manchester United or Chelsea will flog off the season tickets.
Is that ever thought of? Is that impossible?
Mr Attenborough: It is not impossible
but it is not to our advantage.
Q235 Mr Flook: What are the constraints
to it?
Mr Attenborough: The nearest comparison
I can think of theatrically, which is done a lot in America, is
subscription. By and large, subscription works if you are not
doing terribly well, because what you do is get your audience
to commit across a broad range of plays. If we achieve, which
we have to, hugely high box office targets, in a sense we put
that expectation upon ourselves, subscription does not pay because
we are giving a discount because people will book three or four
at a time at obviously a reduced rate. It is the maximising of
income which would not benefit from the equivalent of something
which I possess, which is a season ticket at Stamford Bridge.
Mr Grandage: I think that has
covered it really. We are all in exactly the same position, from
that point of view. A subscription would not be the answer to
any of our problems at all at the Donmar, it would actually not
help us very much.
Mr Frankfort: Although, to a certain
extent, we provide that already, because both theatres, I think,
put on sale a series of maybe half the season, or a third of the
season, at one go and our audiences might buy tickets to it, not
really knowing anything about the production other than the name
and the author. Because there is a brand loyalty to both the Almeida
and the Donmar they will buy a ticket even if they do not know
much about it.
Mr Attenborough: Because we are
greedy, in fact, the only season ticket element, picking up what
Nick is saying, is that we ask people to pay more to have the
right to be able to book in advance before anybody else, so I
am afraid it is more expensive, not less.
Mr Constable: But being in the
fortunate position that we are not selling out purely to a private
membership, which is, for us, 30% of our audience who are people
who are part of our supporter scheme, so there are still a lot
of tickets available for the public.
Q236 Mr Flook: Mr Attenborough, you mentioned
a phrase "subsidy is money" and when it goes into the
bank it is all the same colour, but do you ever differentiate,
both from the executive side and the artistic side, if you were
building, that the money might come from the Arts Council but
it has been Lottery money which has been given voluntarily against
tax money which is given involuntarily? Do you differentiate in
your minds that this is money for building which has come from
people playing the Lottery, by and large, and they have given
the money willingly, whereas the other money is given involuntarily,
as taxes are?
Mr Grandage: No.
Mr Attenborough: At the Almeida,
we have been in receipt of only what you are describing as voluntary
money for the building, so that, by and large, our everyday lives
involve subsidy in the same way that education or health, or anything
else, is subsidised.
Q237 Mr Flook: Do you think they equate?
I assume it is necessary, but you referenced them with health
and education; theatre ranks equally alongside that?
Mr Attenborough: That is a really,
really tricky question. I can only speak personally. If you asked
me to choose between a kidney machine and a theatre, I would reply
"That's an obscene question." I think a civilised society
should be doing everything it can to have both. Finally, if there
were not enough for both, of course I would say the kidney machine.
Mr Grandage: Although there was
a nice report recently from the NHS I noticed, suggesting that
going to the theatre increases longevity of life, so somewhere
in there there is a link.
Q238 Chris Bryant: That might be more
circular though, might it not? It might be that people who go
to the theatre are already healthier and live longer?
Mr Grandage: Yes.
Q239 Ms Shipley: In-reach; here we go.
Outreach you are familiar with. In-reach was something I was suggesting
to the West End theatres that they need to avail themselves of,
and, yes, I did invent it on the spot. They appear to want lots
of public money without having any extra burden put upon them
at all and the money is to refurbish their buildings, which need
refurbishing but then why should not those buildings be used more
widely during the times when they are not absolutely necessary
for the production in the evening or the rehearsals? It would
seem to me that the Almeida is doing it already with its daytime
activities, and I take your point about being linked to the productions.
I cannot see, for the life of me, why creatively the West End
theatres cannot do the same, although of a different nature because
the spaces that the buildings offer are of different natures,
but why they cannot have comedians, or actors, or somebody, sitting
on the edge of the particular sort of stage they have, with a
different audience, in the morning, I cannot see. I think really
they need to think creatively around it. Hence the idea of in-reach,
in their bars, having small spaces in which amateurs might be
able to put on something, amateurs who have built a relationship
with the particular theatres, not just amateurs from anywhere,
but that there is the creative possibility there. It was not something
they could countenance, they thought of a million reasons why
not and not one single reason why they could do it and I found
that just hugely unacceptable and I think in-reach needs to be
imposed on them if they get £125 million, something of that
nature. What I would like to take up with you, Mr Grandage, I
think it was you, is the idea of on stage, put on production,
those are the core activities. Well, actually, is it not about
performance and communication, therefore it does not have to be
actually on stage, therefore you have the whole of the building?
There is much more to a theatre than just its stage and just its
production. I would suggest that the theatre is about creativity
and about communication and if you start defining it in those
terms then, again going back to my West End discussion, you have
a different proposition?
Mr Grandage: If you visit the
Donmar, you will know that we have only the stage. You come in
through the door and we have the smallest space imaginable to
get from the coming in through the entrance into our auditorium,
and so there is nowhere else that we could do any in-reach or
outreach activity physically within our building, just to address
that point straightaway.
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