Smash hit

Other companies currently cobbling for next week’s deadline include the National Student Drama Festival, Pop-Up children’s theatre, Tara Arts, London Bubble, the Bush, the Orange Tree in Richmond, the Drill Hall and the Komedia in Brighton. All face radical cuts to their funding. Meanwhile, the Arts Council has indicated that flagship institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House are expecting above-inflation increases, while the Roundhouse, in Camden, is the biggest surprise winner, its £600,000 grant having increased to £1 million.

So what are the criteria? The Bush and the Orange Tree, say, regularly do challenging, popular work. The 360-seat Northcott notched up 80 per cent attendance figures from 2002 to 2006. Barbara Matthews, the newly appointed director of theatre strategy at the Arts Council, is adamant that all recommendations from the council’s 47 regional officers will have gone through a rigorous local and national assessment process.

“It’s a question,” she says, “of artistic exellence, reach, and whether the money could be better spent elsewhere. What the Arts Council is doing now is precisely what it ought to do every three years, when it has a review. We can’t fund people just because we always have. Right now, it’s very difficult for everybody to see the bigger picture.”

Until the end of January, the Arts Council has its hands tied by client confidentiality. At that time, too, the Government-commissioned report into “artistic excellence” by Brian McMaster is due for publication.

“But when you see the full lists of our funding proposals,” Matthews says, “including the 80 new organisations that the Arts Council will be supporting, you’ll see that this isn’t some grand sea-change in policy away from small companies, away from rural touring, away from narrative theatre. These recommendations are based on our assessment of the performance of each organisation, regardless of size or location.”

The West End producer Nica Burns, who tours productions to regional houses affected by the recommendations, is “outraged” by the cuts. “They seem entirely illogical,” she says. “How can you justify cutting such small amounts of money to vital community theatres?” The independent arts consulant Jodi Myers, who worked for 13 years at the Arts Council, calls the scale and speed of the cuts “irresponsible. Remove established companies in one go and you put regional theatre’s infrastructure in particular at risk. The effect is immediate.”

From where will the Northcott unearth half a million quid of extra funding after April 2009? European grants? Private sponsors? Commercial partnerships? Nobody at the Arts Council will say.

Colin Granger, founder of the Komedia in Brighton, is equally perplexed. The Arts Council contributed £54,000 to the £1.25 million refurbishment of its theatre space last year, only to inform the company that it intends to cut the £160,000 grant from April. “They’re saying we don’t do enough theatre,” says Granger. “Well, without subsidy we won’t be able to do any.”

The Arts Council counters that the Exeter Northcott has not expanded its static audience base enough, and that the Komedia’s programming is too commercial. But even if the Arts Council has a plan for Brighton and Exeter’s future that it hasn’t yet revealed, cutting so many organisations at such short notice is having immediate repercussions.

The Sheffield-based Compass Theatre Company is likely to have its grant cut and has cancelled a tour of Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser. A similar story echoes throughout the regional receiving theatres well into the summer.

Matthews is fully prepared to accept the consequences of the shake-up. “Change is always difficult,” she admits, “but, especially in the arts, it’s vital. We exist to make bold decisions and that’s what we’re doing. And I truly believe, come February, the whole sector will agree that what we’re witnessing is the start of very, very exciting times in theatre.”

Perhaps so. First, though, 194 companies will spend the next week preparing to argue why they should be a part of those times. They will insist on their artistic excellence and their reach. In the end, though, if the Arts Council decides the money is better spent elsewhere, they will have to find new ways to survive.

Give us the money! How to get funding

1 The play’s not the thing
The Arts Council has dropped new writing from its list of priorities, but will promote “circus and street arts”. Ditch the pen and pick up a set of juggling balls.

2 Interaction stations
“Technology,” says the Arts Council, “is creating new opportunities to develop the artform.” So get online. For every show, a blog. Better still, a vlog, for increased interactivity and inclusivity.

3 Be homeless
The new theatre policy says: “Years of underfunding led to a concentration of resources on buildings and institutions rather than on people and art.” No longer! “Yep, they’re disinvesting in buildings,” says Clarie Middleton of the Northcott. “What they think we’ll do I don’t know.”

4 Do the business
Get a loan and invest in a ritzy new restaurant, bar and/or conference suite. Venues with commercial nous (aka “sustainable business models”) are, ironically, more likely to win subsidy.

5 Just do the job
The only prerequisite for public funding, argues the Arts Council’s Barbara Matthews, is good work: “We support companies doing great theatre, in all its forms. It isn’t any more complicated or dastardly than that.”

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