Harsh cuts? We can work it out

Thank you for highlighting the grotesque, humiliating and immediate funding cut that we and Rose Bruford are experiencing (News, May 12). Speaking for ourselves, the inevitable awkwardness we now face is that your readers – often our prospective students – may now be thinking: “Oh dear, they are in a rocky state. Perhaps we’d better apply elsewhere.”

The Stage has loyally given us coverage over the years, so I want to reassure your readers that, in the short term, there’s no change. We’ll be supplying our usual quality learning, using our uniquely integrated curriculum (helped more by spending £10 million of our own money on sparkling new facilities), so that we maintain what Paul McCartney describes as “one of the best performing arts schools in the world”.

At the same time, we are cracking on with various plans to mitigate what, by common consent, has been a flawed process, which we can’t reveal right now.

All I can share at the moment is that the final chapter has yet to be written. I hope The Stage will follow our story, so you can find out what happened next.

Mark Featherstone-Witty OBE
Founding principal and CEO
Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts

Pitlochry knows rep rewards

The news that Liverpool Everyman is to return to its rep roots (‘Rep returns to Everyman after 25 years’, April 21) resonated strongly here at Pitlochry Festival Theatre. Having worked with a resident seasonal ensemble, using a repertoire production system, each and every year since the company was founded in 1951, Scotland’s ‘Theatre in the Hills’ knows all too well the benefits that such an approach to in-house production can bring to audiences, performers and producers alike.

The seasonal ensemble at PFT is recruited on an eight-month contract and delivers six or seven mid- to large-scale productions (including a musical) in repertoire between May and October. This ensemble model not only provides what can often be a very diverse programme with a distinct identity – and offers audiences the kind of special engagement with a body of work that is hard to otherwise achieve – but also demands that performers expand their horizons, growing, learning and developing their work in a safe company environment over a much longer period of time than is usually possible.

The need to play roles that may lie well beyond an individual performer’s usual casting profile adds a further challenge, albeit a highly rewarding one.

Our 2016 ensemble, which has been in rehearsal for five weeks already, draws together 18 performers (with a 50:50 gender split) from across the UK and beyond, with a very broad range of age and experience: from a young Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduate making her professional debut to those who have been in the business for 35 years or more.

As Alan Ayckbourn recently commented, the “great learning curve” that this approach provides offers a rich and rewarding experience for those at every stage of their career. We’ve been enjoying the benefits of this model for decades here at Pitlochry; it’s good to know that the Everyman will soon be doing so once again.

John Durnin
Chief executive and artistic director
Pitlochry Festival Theatre

NT Connections

Twenty-one years ago, teachers and directors told the National Theatre they wanted relevant and challenging new plays for young actors. We responded by launching Connections, our flagship youth theatre festival. Since then, the NT has commissioned more than 150 plays for Connections, giving young people aged 13-19 across the UK and Ireland access to the very best new writing for theatre.

We want you to join us to celebrate Connections in our anniversary year. We hope to hear from people who have taken part in Connections plays over the last 21 years. Whether you’re Roy Alexander Weise, a trainee theatre director at the Royal Court who performed in Chatroom by Enda Walsh in 2004, or Hollywood actor John Boyega (Six Parties by William Boyd in 2009), we’d love to hear about your Connections experience.

Get in touch at and share your memories of the biggest youth theatre festival in the world at yourconnections.nationaltheatre.org.uk

Rufus Norris
Director
National Theatre