One of my favourite stories about the uneasy relationship between regional towns and their local theatre is of a friend who arrived by train to direct a play at Derby and asked the first person he met outside the station for directions to the venue. “Straight up the high street, turn left at the lights and f*** off,” was the reply.

Well, it seems that the Arts Council may have taken the pedestrian at his word. I’d known for some time that last week’s funding announcement was going to be brutal. Indeed, an acquaintance in a senior administrative role in one of our leading theatres had warned me bleakly of the rocky road ahead during a preChristmas drink. “It’s all about excellence now,” she’d said. “Getting by, serving the community and turning in respectable work is apparently no longer good enough.”

In fact the phrase used to justify the cull of nearly 200 ventures is “penalising the average”. The Northcott Theatre, Exeter, was told it would lose its grant a day after reopening following a £2 million refurbishment (partly funded by the Arts Council); Derby Playhouse, already suffering at the hands of some murky local politics despite £200,000 in advance bookings for its Christmas show, has suffered a similar fate. No matter that the sums involved would barely pay the weekly wages of a Premiership footballer.

Nobody, least of all me, is suggesting that things should be preserved in aspic. I happen to believe that we are living in a golden age of television, with a dizzying array of terrific drama and audacious new writing available each night at the touch of a button. So punters will no longer turn out week after week to see watery new plays, polemic diatribes and stolid revivals in uncomfortable venues, particularly given the cost of car parking and theatre tickets.

The review into public arts funding published simultaneously by Sir Brian McMaster, detailing the way ahead for arts funding, contains some bold and imaginative thinking, and only a theatrical Luddite would take issue with his assertion that a clearing-out of dead wood is both inevitable and ultimately energising.

But the Bush? The Orange Tree? They too have suffered swingeing cuts, yet are stunning examples of theatre at its best, not only ticking all the Arts Council boxes by turning out provocative and dazzling productions, but in doing so encouraging new generations of writers, actors and directors, many of whom are now household names. There has to be a better way than this bloody farce. But what?

I’ve been around for too long to kid myself that there are easy answers. But the first thing I’d do is to insist that the commissioned officers of the Arts Council got down with us poor bloody troops in the trenches, and by us I include both actors and audiences. I’m one of the lucky ten per cent who work most of the time, in both fringe and main-stream, yet I have never encountered a single representative, not even in the bar, certainly not back-stage.

If they’re our guardians and keepers then where are they? Holding meetings I’m sure, attending press nights, penalising mediocrity. But live theatre is a visceral experience, occurring in the most out-of-the-way places and often not just on first nights. It can’t be experienced from behind the safety of a flip chart.

Here’s another thought. Recycling, I think they call it. I recently saw a dizzying and moving piece of writing at a regional rep (with a cast of only four) that would stand up alongside anything currently on show in London. Yet it closed after a dolefully short run, the mechanism for extending its life beyond its initial venue too cumbersome to allow it to be remounted elsewhere in time.

Off West End productions already have an opportunity to transfer to more central venues, for which much thanks, but surely it’s not beyond our collective wit to arrange our industry so that outstanding regional productions can enjoy a similar opportunity and - here’s the rub - with any profits ploughed back to its theatre of origin. So that everyone benefits.

And if there has to be periodic realignment of resources, there has to be a more value-creating way to achieve it than this current miserable meltdown. Cutting funding overnight is no way to run the arts. God knows how some of these latest casualties will survive, but giving them a mere seven days to argue their case for clemency, as appears to be the case here, is an insult to their years of hard work. An 18-month time frame for proposed cuts may be cumbersome, but at least it would allow threatened projects a chance to regroup or to seek alternative income elsewhere.

A final thought. The suggestion has been made that all theatre boards should now include at least two “artists”. I happen to think it’s a good idea (as long as you coopt the right individuals). Informed members of the public should be present too. I can’t speak for other branches of the arts, but what I do know is that people who are not up to the job run too many theatre companies. We – I mean we actors – know the ones who give great interview but who can’t direct traffic. We know. And we avoid them.

But it’s not just the theatre boards that need the change in composition; it’s surely the Arts Council itself. Of course we need proven administrators to regulate the successful dispensing of government funding, but good art is not produced just by administrators, and it should not be solely judged by them either.

If a fraction of the wonderful array of ability and talent on display at last week’s actors protest meeting at the Young Vic theatre against the cuts was coopted onto the council itself, I believe the result would be a better informed and altogether more coherent and compassionate organisation.

Then we might all get the balance we want – eyes on stalks and bums on seats.

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