Dominic Cooke: ACE cut to Hampstead Theatre is scandalous

Director Dominic Cooke has labelled Arts Council England’s 100% cut to Hampstead Theatre an act of “cultural vandalism”, calling on the industry to demand the decision is reversed.

The former artistic director of the Royal Court in London was responding to a letter sent to ACE at the end of last week, in which a group of campaigners highlighted the impact it would have on new writing in the UK. It warned the venue was at risk of becoming an “overtly commercial enterprise” after it emerged the theatre had made its literary director redundant and closed its literary department.

Cooke told The Stage ACE’s decision was “scandalous”. 

“When you think about the number of writers who have gone on to international success having learned their craft at Hampstead, it beggars belief that its funding was cut,” he said, labelling it an act of “cultural vandalism”. 

“Hampstead is a national resource, which for decades has produced emerging playwrights from all over the country at the highest level. As Dennis Kelly testified [in The Stage article], writers have been creatively and professionally transformed by working there. The removal of subsidy is rooted in the incorrect assumption that the theatre’s affluent postcode would give it access to private funding, when it is actually surrounded by social housing,” he said.

He added: “It is also notoriously hard for organisations to attract donors to support risky new plays. As an industry we need to demand that the removal of funding is reversed and the company’s position as a hub of new writing is reinstated.”

Cooke joins a growing number of people hitting out at ACE and Hampstead’s subsequent decision to scrap its literary director role, with writers including James Graham and Tanika Gupta among more than 70 signing an open letter to both organisations.

Playwright David Edgar was also one of the signatories.

He told The Stage: "Hampstead was an increasingly rare phenomenon: a new-writing theatre with a functioning studio and a literary department. As a result of the Arts Council cut, we have lost most of that, which is a huge sadness. The increase in the quantity and quality of new writing is one of the big success stories of this century – did ACE really mean to throw that into reverse?"