Examination of Witnesses (Questions 403-419)
ROYAL SHAKESPEARE
COMPANY
22 FEBRUARY 2005
Chairman: Ladies and gentlemen,
I would like very much indeed to welcome you here today. Sir Christopher,
it is a great pleasure to see you! I think you probably come with
a sigh of resignation having felt you had escaped our clutches
in various other personalities before. We are delighted, Sir Christopher,
as always to see you and your associates.
Sir Christopher Bland:
Chairman, when a medal is struck to mark those who have appeared
before you over the last ten years, I wish to be in the queue
because I have several clasps on it and a purple heart!
Q403 Chris Bryant: Things
have changed radically over the last few years at the Royal Shakespeare
Company. When we did a brief report a couple of years ago, demanding
that the building be pulled down, at the time you agreed and now
you are not going to do that and you are going to come up with
some plans, which we will look at later on this afternoon. I understand
the bill is going up from £50 million to £70 million.
At the time we saw you then—not exactly you, but the Royal
Shakespeare Company was then saying that you could not really
provide a decent theatre experience inside that building, and
now you say it is possible. Why is that?
Sir Christopher Bland: I will
ask Michael to explain exactly how the new auditorium will fit
into the existing Memorial Theatre, but, as you say, there has
been a lot of change—new chairman, new Executive Director,
new Artistic Director, new Finance Director, and several new board
members. The first thing that the new grouping did was to look
at the options and review them very carefully. It became very
clear that the alternative of redeveloping within the existing
Memorial Theatre made the most sense. It was the least expensive
of the two options, but more importantly it has a real chance
of getting built. English Heritage made it absolutely clear that
while they were in favour of our proposals for redevelopment within
the Memorial Theatre, they were opposed to the idea of building
an entirely new theatre on the Arden site.
Q404 Chris Bryant: Does
that mean that you had wanted to stick with your original plan
of pulling down the building and building afresh but you think
English Heritage would have forbidden that?
Sir Christopher Bland: They made
it absolutely clear that they opposed it. However, equally important
was the fact that while the new theatre would have produced, if
we had been allowed to do it, a wonderful solution on a greenfield
site—which, incidentally, also involved knocking down a
grade II* building, the hotel which itself was not without its
problems—what we never satisfactorily solved under that
model was what you did with the Memorial Theatre. You still had
it! Within that, the proposal was for a 400-600 seat small seat,
which would have been additional to the spaces we already had.
It was very clearly the unanimous view of Michael and his artistic
team that we did not want and could not support what effectively
would have been an additional theatre in Stratford. Those were
some of the arguments that caused us to come out unanimously both
at the board level and amongst the artistic and administrative
team, in favour of the proposal that is now on the table.
Mr Boyd: I immediately cross-examined
the claim that you could not get a theatre of the necessary size
within the existing bookends if you like of the fly tower and
the front foyer, the major structural elements that you may want
to preserve. It was a mixture of persistence and ingenuity on
the part of the team that enabled us to come up with what I hope
is a thrilling vision of a very intimate theatre. The single most
important achievement of what we are planning is the reduction
of the distance from the furthest seat from the stage from 27
metres to between 14 and 16 metres. That is a massive improvement,
democratisation, of the theatre space. Actually, that has been
achieved partly because of the imposed restrictions of the existing
building. I ran a theatre building in Glasgow for eleven years,
which was within an old church. I knew that the resonances between
the old and the new could be extremely valuable and serve theatre
very well, so I did not have a sort of pathological phobia about
the old. I think that the auditorium that we have come up with
is going to be everything that we dream of. It was always a 100-million
project. There has been no change in the price as a result of
this at all. There has been re-jigging within it, but it was always
going to be a matching 50 million from the Lottery and 50 million
raised from elsewhere. There has been absolutely no change on
that at all.
Q405 Chris Bryant: But
now it is 70 and 30 out of the 100—is that right?
Mr Boyd: No.
Sir Christopher Bland: We hope
to get 20 from the money, but . . .
Q406 Chris Bryant: As
I understand it, the old theatre as it is now is basically two
very large rooms, one with the fly tower above it and the stage,
and the other where it is front of house, where the audience is.
With the thrust that you are proposing, basically a lot of the
action will move from one room into the other room, and that is
why you get closer to those people in the terrible seats at the
back and the top of the gods. Is that going to make a more intimate
theatre, or is it really just that you are closing off one of
the two rooms, so that the stage itself will almost become irrelevant?
Mr Boyd: It is palpably more intimate
by the difference between 27 metres, which is unacceptable, and
14/16. The worst seat in the Almeida Theatre in London is 14.5
metres away from the stage. That is just over 300. We are talking
about a 1,000-seater with just as good a proximity. It is a minor
miracle. The principle of the actors being in the same room as
the audience is really one we inherit from house playwright, but
it is also one that chimes very strongly for me with our reinvestment
in ensemble within the company, and the unique part of the theatrical
experience is the togetherness and connectivity of the experience
between audiences and actors. That has the highest premium on
it of all, for me. It is more important than amazing designs.
Dame Judi Dench: That is true.
I would only say that after a long, long break I was at The Other
Place, the old Other Place with the corrugated roof in Stratford
in the 70s, when I came back recently and went to the Swan. The
atmosphere when playing in the Swan, which when I knew it was
an old rehearsal room, is quite electrifying, and actually very,
very demanding on the actor. In a way, it is not quite so demanding
on the audience. When I was there, I had a night off and went
to see Beauty and the Beast and the main house, which is
where I used to play all the time in the 70s, seemed to be like
looking down the wrong end of a telescope. I was appalled about
how distanced you felt when you actually went there. Although
I adored the show, I thought, "if only it was more accessible
to us sitting here". It is the difference between sitting
at the back here and playing to somebody here, or all of us sitting
here and somebody playing in the middle here. The wonderful thing
about the Swan is that it is so adaptable to Shakespeare, and
I cannot imagine anything not working there. The thing about the
new theatre is that it is an extension in a way of that feeling.
I can only think that that is an advantage to everybody concerned.
I know that if you look at the sight lines—I know exactly
what you are saying about moving it into the other half of the
room, as it were, but from a whole area of the auditorium, that
will be entirely inclusive of the production. It is only if you
are in the main house, part of the main house is cut off. The
actual sight lines will be much better.
Q407 Chairman: Will that
depend on the play and the concept? When the RSC had a permanent
London home, as it were, at the Barbican, The Pit was one room,
and when I saw Dame Judi in All's Well that Ends Well in
Stratford last year, that was in one room. But it can also work
another way with the proscenium arch, can it not? I saw you in
Juno and the Paycock at the Aldwych and that was a proscenium
arch performance and that worked brilliantly too. At Stratford
would the concept there be flexible enough to allow different
approaches, and not as in, say, the Swan or the Old Vic, put you
in one room and that would cover the concept of the production?
Mr Boyd: It is not that confining
a spatial concept to say you will be in one room always. I would
say first of all the world is still your oyster without a 19th
century proscenium arch theatrically. I think increasingly—really
film and other media have taken over the assault of the visual
senses in terms of the amazing effects you can pull off. I think
what is really special about theatre, and particularly about Shakespearian
theatre, is the relationship between actor and audience. If we
are a specialist theatre, to that extent that is what we should
specialise in. I make no apology for that. The most flexible theatres
tend to be the worst theatres. There will be a certain degree
of flexibility within this space. You will be able to do all sorts
of interesting things. You will be able to go into the round,
conceivably. You will probably be able to play the different kinds
of thrusts to a certain extent. You cannot design—and this
was one of the trickiest things about the previous drive on redevelopment
in Stratford—was the attempt to hang on to both proscenium
and thrust ambitions. It does not work spatially; you end up with
a room that has acres of space in it that reduces intimacy, makes
acoustics more difficult, and atmosphere and tension very difficult
to generate in the space. We are being uncompromising to a certain
extent.
Q408 Chris Bryant: I remember
seeing Peggy Ashcroft play the same part at Stratford, and one
of the remarkable things was that most of the set was non-existent;
it was very, very open stage, and she was a very long way away,
and I was up in the gods, and yet she managed to make that seem
a very intimate space. I just wondered whether that sense of enormous
space, which is something that you can also bring to Shakespeare
productions, which you will not see in many other productions,
is something you will lose.
Mr Boyd: Shakespeare ain't Wagner
nor should he be forced to try to pretend to be Wagner. He has
got a grand scale of emotion and ideas, and this is not going
to be some diddy space; I hope it will be able to marry the epic
with the intimate, I hope. I listened fondly to stories of good
experiences from the back of our balcony, 27 metres away from
the stage. I have had some fond and sometimes some quite proud
experiences myself in the back row of the balcony, but that is
not an argument. Just because processed cheese can be enjoyable,
it is not an argument for not having even better cheese. I do
not buy that argument. I would buy it, I suppose, if we, as a
company, were on the run from the necessary skill base for classical
acting—if we were simply becoming more intimate because
actors could not cope with anything bigger. If anything, the reverse
is true. We are concentrating in a way now on the building of
actor skills and actor training that we have not done for a very
long time at the RSC and nor has anyone else in British theatre.
I do not feel that we are doing it apologetically in a way.
Q409 Chris Bryant: Many
West End theatres and other theatres were built in an era where
the hoipoloy were not expected to come into contact with the posh
people in the glamorous seats. There were separate entrances—and
you have separate entrances for the gods, do you not? Is that
one of the things that would be changed?
Mr Boyd: Yes. There will be no
servants' entrances.
Q410 Chris Bryant: Not
even for the actors?
Mr Boyd: Oh, yes, always for the
actors.
Q411 Chris Bryant: I have
written a bit about the theatre, and my experience was, from meeting
many actors who have been very substantial figures in the 1960s
and 1970s—very famous theatre and television stars—that
when they come to retirement they live, to be honest, in penury.
I just wondered whether you think that the theatre looks after
its talents well enough and helps them financially and helps them
make good financial decisions for themselves.
Dame Judi Dench: I do not think
that you are advised about making provision for yourself; I think
you have to be canny about that. But I do think that we look after
actors very well. I do think that the whole business of Denville
Hall and the committee that puts everybody in touch with everybody,
works very well indeed. I hope that nobody slips through that
net. It is just the luck of the draw. If you go on working, it
is just luck really. I think that people are provided for, but
not necessarily advised.
Sir Christopher Bland: They are
a bit like MPs. This is a transitory and risky profession, and
it has taken some time for MPs to have what you will be surprised
to hear I regard as entirely appropriate provision for your retirement.
That does not exist in either sport or drama; it is left to individuals
to look after themselves. There is an argument that you should
try to encourage 15-year old actors and actresses to start thinking
about their pension, but this is really tough.
Mr Boyd: Before you get to that
point, there is the issue of what you pay actors when they are
working, which is one that we have to address if we are moving
towards a situation where we are going to be asking actors to
stay with us for two or three years; thus they cannot do their
adds and their telly or whatever. We are going to have to up the
ante of what we are going to pay those people to compensate for
that. In our planning, we are beginning to take that on the chin.
It is a good thing. As you bring the notion of consistency and
permanence and ensembles to the fore, you bump into those issues,
but at its extreme—I trained in Moscow, and a friend of
mine was a member of the Pushkin Theatre there on regular salary,
but he only performed about once a month. They can get to a stage
that if you take ensemble too far it can almost get to a civil
service extent, and they were well pensioned and so on. However,
there was not a lot of job satisfaction.
Q412 Michael Fabricant:
Thinking about being well pensioned, I used to work in the Soviet
Union in the eighties, and they had a pension, but I would not
say it was "well pensioned", but I take your point.
Can I say how delightful it is to see Sir Christopher Bland again.
I thought that he rather stalks us, first of all as Chairman of
the BBC when he used to come before us; and then and now still
Chairman of BT, and now as the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Sir Christopher Bland: Chairman,
the stalking is entirely the other way round.
Q413 Michael Fabricant:
I rather wondered whether your career path was determined solely
on whether you had been interviewed by this Committee!
Sir Christopher Bland: This is
true!
Q414 Michael Fabricant:
I want to follow on a bit from Christopher Bryant's questioning.
I am still a little confused about the genesis of this new idea
of the regeneration of the theatre. I wonder to what extent it
is determined by local opposition, by the opposition of English
Heritage—which, incidentally, I thought was completely mad!
I think the exterior of the theatre is ugly; it does not make
use of the lovely river frontage; and I think English Heritage
were completely wrong in saying the theatre shell had to be maintained,
but there you go! If English Heritage and local people had not
objected to a change in the building, would you have stuck to
the original plan that we heard about and got so enthusiastic
about three years ago?
Sir Christopher Bland: No.
Q415 Michael Fabricant:
Why not?
Sir Christopher Bland: I think
it is because of the second part of my answer to Chris Bryant's
question, that if we had gone down that route it would have wound
up with this very small theatre that we did not really want inside
a building that we had not been able to pull down, and indeed
has some wonderful listed interiors that are well preserved—and
we can do something about the river and the front. The answer
is that we would not.
Q416 Michael Fabricant:
When we went round the theatre three years ago, it was clear that
not only was the performance space not really adequate for its
purpose, and that both actors and audiences felt uncomfortable
with it, but behind stage the resources were terrible. I remember
we went underneath the stage or behind the stage and there was
an entire area where there were blocks and tackle doing God knows
what! If my memory serves me well, English Heritage had preserved
some amazing structure which nobody ever sees. Have you been able
to resolve that problem? Has English Heritage said that at least
you can move that structure and cart it off to a museum?
Ms Heywood: We have not got into
the detail of that discussion yet but I have no doubt that that
will be the case. What is now accepted on all sides is that we
have to come up quite dramatic solutions to real problems now.
In relation to the budget as well, this piece of work is not simply
transforming the auditorium; it will transform the way the company
operates in Stratford. I am sure that there are offices in cottages
and there is very, very difficult provision made for production
and wardrobe. We have no dedicated space for learning, and yet
we have an extremely productive learning and education department,
and we need to resolve these issues as part of the master plan
of the whole redevelopment. It will be looking at the organisation
as well as the auditorium. What we thought was very important
in drawing a line and starting with a new team was to start with
the auditorium. That was the bit that we have resolved as part
of the process of the board deciding which option to pursue. I
think that is fundamental in terms of the long term. The heart
of any redevelopment has to be the problem you are trying to solve,
and you hold on to that through all the ups and downs along the
way. It was universally agreed that there was a problem with the
RST.
Q417 Michael Fabricant:
It was not just the auditorium, was it, because when we spoke
to both the actors and the technicians, they spoke about backstage?
Ms Heywood: Yes, and that will
be part of this scheme.
Q418 Michael Fabricant:
It worries me a little because you say that some questions have
not yet been resolved, particularly with regard to various structures
which have no actual function nowadays and do not work, and yet
were occupying huge areas behind the stage.
Ms Heywood: It is worth remembering
where we are, which is that we are in the process of finalising
our architect. We have got the centre of the scheme, in terms
of the auditorium but the "what will it look like and how
will it work?" is the next part of the job we will be doing.
That will have to be in negotiation with English Heritage, and
indeed all interested parties. Our plan is that that should be
a very consultative process. I would feel from every conversation
we have had to date with English Heritage that they would look
very sympathetically on absolutely all areas that you are talking
about where the old has got to be made way for the new.
Q419 Michael Fabricant:
Michael Boyd made very clear earlier on that we are not talking
about extra funding, that it is still 100 million; but that does
need to be clarified. In your own submission under Securing
Resources and indeed Sir Christopher made this point, you
are not only looking now for public money from the Arts Council
but also from Advantage West Midlands, and it is going to be now
a total of 70 million public funding, an extra 20 million. What
would that extra 20 million be used for, or have I misunderstood
what you have said and what is down here?
Sir Christopher Bland: I think
you have misunderstood. The global figure—but you would
have to go back and look at the previous plan—was always
in round figures £100 million. That, then, had something
of a Roman battle casualty feel about it. It was a very, very
large number. In our application to the Arts Council we have broken
down in very considerable detail exactly where the 97 million
plus VAT is to be spent, and also where it is to be obtained from.
Roughly speaking, the crude figures are that 30 million we expect
to be able to raise from private sources, from individuals, from
charities, from foundations, and of course from America.
Chairman: I do not want to cramp any
questions, but on the other hand, while the redevelopment at Stratford
obviously is a very important aspect of a national institution,
we are also very keen to learn from our witnesses their views
of the role of the RSC and the role of theatre and wider aspects
of our inquiry.
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