Hampstead Theatre’s cut is a cut to us all – this week in Your Views

Hampstead’s cut is a cut to us all

I am in complete agreement with Dominic Cooke’s assessment of the damage to the entire theatre ecology if Arts Council England persists in its decision to withdraw Hampstead Theatre’s funding.

No organisation is entitled to continuous public funding. However, Hampstead’s 60-year history in the vanguard of new writing should argue for ACE to maintain a level of funding sufficient to assure its viability unless either the reason for its existence is no longer deemed to be vital to that theatre ecology, or a worthy alternative can be found. Clearly, ACE has not made any nod toward an alternative, either in London or in the regions: the mirage of ‘levelling up’ has been dispensed with. What remains, underlined by the cuts suffered by other new-writing venues, is the clear message that new writing is not valued, that it is not considered necessary to the theatre landscape.

We now have the most simplistic of views from government and from ACE (no arms-length principle here!): if it is happening in London it must be elitist. Yet the entire country has, down the years, benefited directly and indirectly from the further life of work put on in new-writing theatres. (A snapshot: of the 126 plays produced during my time at Hampstead, 41 transferred to the West End and/or toured the country and 34 had further lives in television, film and numerous productions around the world.)

These times, following the pandemic and its repercussions, are brutal for theatres. Hampstead Theatre is no exception, but, almost uniquely, the funding body asserts that its audience can make up the funding shortfall. This is not new – this is an argument that I have heard for decades and has consistently been used by ACE to limit Hampstead Theatre’s funding. But it will not survive as a new-writing venue in any guise without its subsidy.

The statements being floated by ACE, by the theatre’s board and by its executive as to its future and funding are illusory, attempting to kick the issue down the road until its demise as a new-writing theatre is fait accompli. But the apparatus supporting new work has already been dismantled, so even now it cannot possibly do what a new-writing theatre, with its labour-intensive structure and expertise, does year in, year out: reading and assessing at least 1,000 plays, nurturing dozens of young writers, developing and challenging more established writers, providing a home for writers.

Yet Hampstead Theatre deserves to retain its public subsidy. The theatre has attributes that are replicated nowhere else for producing new work. The main auditorium, one of the most flexible in England, can accommodate any work in any configuration; the downstairs space was initially conceived as a venue where established writers such as Tanika Gupta and Roy Williams wrote plays for younger audiences as the focal point of Hampstead Theatre’s education programme, and in recent years has introduced many writers and new plays to its audiences.

And for the interest of the wider public: Hampstead Theatre is set on an imminent course to be a receiving house, home for commercial producers. But the current theatre was built both with millions of pounds of public funds and additional millions in private donations, all made for the purpose of building a home for new writing: nothing else. Those who are entrusted with the stewardship of the theatre and fail to honour this betray that trust.

Public subsidy is not a handout. New-writing outcomes alone generate substantial income for the Treasury, repaying that subsidy many times over. Few politicians – certainly none in the present government – have ever grasped three potent and interrelated facts: that British theatre and its writers are hugely admired across the world, thus giving voice to Britain’s place in that world; that theatre has been one of the most valuable and economically successful industries we have; and that subsidy has been an essential under­pinning for the first two.

It is more than time that we consider renaming subsidy for what it is: the ‘Theatre Investment Fund’. Only then might the Arts Council be reminded that its responsibility lies with the art form and its practitioners – and not to wilful and short-sighted government.

In conclusion: it is bewildering that ACE believes that cutting Hampstead Theatre’s subsidy is a thing of small consequence, somehow capable of being dealt with by appeal to its richer supporters. But even more bewildering is the theatre’s absence of response to that ill-advised cut.

One final point: in times past, when ACE threatened to cut or reduce funding, the entire theatre community would meet, irrespective of whether they were affected by the decisions, to give voice to the dismay and fury felt by everyone. On occasion, that collective voice was so loud that it was actually heard by ACE. However, while the writers’ voice has been loud and eloquent, our collective voice has been muted. This is a crying shame because a cut to one is, alas, a cut to us all.
Jenny Topper
Artistic director, Hampstead Theatre (1988-2003)
Via email

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