The Stage Awards shows how theatre has responded to trying times with hope
Alistair SmithThe Stage Awards 2024 showcased theatremakers embracing risk and delivering to their communities despite huge challenges. Imagine what they could do with increased support
Strikes, redundancies, funding cuts: it’s not a particularly cheery time to work in theatre, or report on it.
The sector is facing severe – in some cases, existential – challenges. But, as Tamara Harvey and Daniel Evans, the new artistic directors of the Royal Shakespeare Company, observe in our Big Interview this week, we have a choice of how we respond to those challenges. “We are choosing to bring hope,” says Evans. “Because otherwise, despair is not far away.”
This was also the driving message behind The Stage Awards 2024 in association with Tysers Live, which were given out at a ceremony at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London earlier this week.
Despite trying times, our winners have accomplished extraordinary things across the past 12 months.
Take the Watermill Theatre, for example. In 2022, it suffered a complete removal of its Arts Council England funding. Many would have buckled under such a cut, but the Watermill went on to stage its biggest ever show last summer: a semi-immersive staging of The Lord of the Rings Musical that made use of the theatre’s beautiful rural setting to recreate the book’s setting in the Shire. It was a huge success.
Or, look at the National Theatre, named alongside the Watermill as Theatre of the Year. It has warned of the significant impact being had on its operations by the cost-of-living crisis, coupled with both a 5% funding cut and the albatross of a government Covid loan it must repay. And yet, in 2023, it delivered one of its most ambitious years of programming ever, producing 31 plays and musicals, including seven West End transfers and two shows in New York.
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Everywhere you looked, here were individuals and organisations who had chosen to embrace risk, to take chances, to make the difficult choice: whether that was Battersea Arts Centre embracing international work, the architects of Roundhouse Works focusing on environmentally friendly practices, producer Ellie Keel finding and developing new work through the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, or the creators of With Fire and Rage, working with Ukrainian creatives on the front line of the country’s war with Russia, one of several winners to use their speeches to highlight the threats to artists’ freedom in an increasingly distressing political climate globally.
The successes of all our winning theatremakers – and their fellow nominees – underline just what continues to be achieved across the country’s theatres, despite the circumstances.
Politicians from across parties were invited to attend The Stage Awards ceremony and several did, including culture secretary Lucy Frazer. They will have seen what theatre can deliver to communities, despite dwindling funding. Now, I’d ask them to imagine what it could do with more generous support.
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