Lately I have been entering into correspondence with a writer who took South African born actress Janet Suzman to task for complaining that theatre audiences were insufficiently diverse. Ms Suzman’s point, as I understand second hand, was that theatre was subject to some racial boycott by members of ‘ethnic minorities’ (not a term I embrace). Ms Suzman’s argument is that ‘they’ ought to go to the theatre and ‘they’ will be the better for it. Now my understanding is that we in Britain have a very active, fully participatory theatrical tradition in which members of ‘minorities’ dress up for and it is called church. To each, as I say, their own. I should have thought that Ms Suzman and those in her profession should make a better effort to tempt those like myself who have not been in a British theatre for a number of years back into these temples of rarefied entertainment.
My last theatre trip was in New York City in February 2013 to see Vanessa Redgrave appear opposite Jesse Eisenberg in Mr Eisenberg’s play, ‘The Revisionist’. It was an entertaining three hander in a small off-Broadway theatre with a tradition of staging new plays. The ticket price, over $80, was undoubtedly steep but if it is a one-off, like going to a concert to see one’s favourite band, the price is broadly acceptable, though if you want me to come back, I’d like a discount next time. Theatre institutionally does a spectacularly great job of warding off the casual theatregoer.
A trip to the theatre has to be planned, like mounting a campaign of attack. You have to book in advance not knowing if the production will be any good and then there is no guarantee of getting the best seat. Theatre is damned by what I call the institutionalised restricted view.
I can’t think of a single other art form where the experience is varied and impeded by the venue. ‘We have seats’, I discovered when enquiring about a performance of ‘Here Lies Love’ at the National Theatre, ‘but they are restricted view’. There will be people in the theatre who will have paid less than me (by taking advantage of early bird discounts or similar) for what would ultimately be a more immersive experience. That cannot be right.
Theatre at its best asks us to pay attention and rewards us for it. If the writer, director, actors, lighting and set designers do their job we are continually engaged, in a heightened state of receptiveness. People laugh more in a theatre than they do in a cinema. They cry more too. The actors play to the responses they get and when they bow to the audience they also acknowledge the audience’s part in making the performance a success. In London theatres, audiences discuss the play; they explain their own emotional responses. In New York, on the two most recent occasions that I’ve been, I found that this isn’t the case. The audience want to be seen at the play by their friends. It is a status symbol; theatre experience as anecdotal selfie. Leaving ‘The Revisionist’, I never heard one person talking about the play as they departed the theatre. It was as if their emotional response ended with the final curtain call (‘I’m all drained – let’s eat!’)
Back to London: I live very close to a new theatre, The Park, a few hundred yards from Finsbury Park Tube Station. I have never yet been tempted through its doors. The plays put on there seem neither new nor relevant. The venue has yet to establish an identity; if you ask me who the artistic director is, I’d have to use google to find out. When theatres do have interesting plays, revealed after first night reviews, it is difficult to get tickets. You have to queue for returns, a frequently uncomfortable experience for all except the young, and then the seats – well, take it or leave it. I went to the theatre at least once a month from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s in my city, the home of theatre. Now theatregoing is something other people do. I have learned to live without it; too expensive, too risky, it neither rewards patronage, nor does it offer great seats, and is best consumed by those with an ingrained theatregoing habit. Moreover, theatre does not need me.
So if I feel like this, why should it appeal to those with a different ethnic background?
Let me tell you what would drive me to the theatre: if someone just sent me an invitation. Come to my show, we’ll give you the best seats in the house for £10 a head. As a financial risk, it would cost as much as going to the cinema, plus it might encourage me to book for the next production paying a more equitable price. Also, put on new plays that appear to have some sort of cultural relevance and that stretches the audience a little but doesn’t alienate them. I want to have an experience in a theatre that I can’t have in a cinema or reading a book but doesn’t seem like a museum piece. Finally, I don’t just want to like the performances, I want to respond to the ideas too.
I want to be sure that the venue is comfortable and designed for late 20th Century humankind, six foot plus and fourteen stone (I am neither of those but think they should be catered for). Sometimes I think that theatres are designed for those who have a body mass index in minus figures. And please don’t stiff me on the refreshments. I know theatres have overheads, but costly ice creams and programmes are a real turn off. (One of the pluses of Broadway theatre is that everybody gets the programme, ‘Playbill’, with their ticket.)
I’d be lying if I said that I haven’t received at least one invitation to the theatre in the last 12 months, but this was from the Secret Theatre. No details of either the play or the venue. This is an exciting proposition, but also could be a spectacular waste of time. The theatre is also the playground of the enthusiastic but not terribly talented amateur, as my experience of the musical ‘Bernadette’ told me.
Outside her (reportedly) clumsy and racially insensitive way of expressing it, I suspect Ms Suzman had a point about theatres needing new audiences. But it is the role of those who give theatre companies grants to encourage theatres to graduate from them by creating vital, accessible, affordable theatrical art that reaches the audience for whom it is intended.
