Theatre 2011

Theatre 2011

06 December, 2010
by: Naima Khan

Naima Khan asks some of the most influential figures in the London Theatre scene about their predictions for the year ahead.

Launching us into the new decade are a spate of funding cuts and a renewed spirit of optimism. We've asked London Theatre makers what they think 2011 will hold for their fied. Here's what they said:

Nadia Latif
Artistic Director at Theatre 503



I think the work new writing theatres do will be really important. When Neil McPherson of The Finborough won the Peter Brooks Space Award he said something really true; that when we talk about arts cuts and grants cuts, please remember that some of us never had any in the first place. Some of us would love to have that faith from financing bodies.

Fascinatingly, Mountaintop which was achieved on a Theatre 503 budget – a good budget – will be performed on Broadway by Samuel L Jackson and Halle Berry who will be paid around $50,000 a week, each!

I think that this government has really screwed up over arts funding and the way that it works. But I have absolute faith that as ever, the arts industry will spring out of it. I think we'll survive because we have to. Though I think there's a question of practicality, people should be able to afford families and mortgages. It's the same with tuition fees; if you are pricing people out of choice, then you have a real problem.

Adam Spreadbury-Maher
Artistic Director at King's Head Theatre


If you avoid public subsidy altogether, you open the doors to other avenues of investment and you can spread your artistic wings in ways that many subsidised companies can't. With the cuts, this is the year, in an ironic way, where public subsidy comes of age. We will be challenged to understand how much we need, if indeed we really need any at all, and plucky producers will be motivated (by necessity) not to let their ambitions be limited by the imposed requirement for subsidy, but to get out there and make great work out of an overdraft, guts and gaffer tape.

Director Polly Findlay
Currently working on Roald Dahl’s’ Twisted Tales at Lyric Hammersmith



Despite the cuts, 2011 looks set to be a very exciting year for theatre in London. Highlights to come include Simon Stephens’ Wastwater at the Royal Court, A Delicate Balance at the Almeida, the revival of the incredible Vernon God Little at the Young Vic and the opening of the new Bush Library space, giving one of our best and most innovative new writing theatres the bigger home it so very much deserves. I can’t wait…

The Lyric Hammersmith will soon become the city’s only fully-equipped teaching theatre. A huge number of young people will be given the opportunity to take up on-site vocational courses, from IT to wardrobe to script writing…. It’s a fantastic, genuinely out-of-the box idea that will see the Lyric cement its position as one of the best community integrated theatres in the country.

Alistair Spalding
Artistic Director and Chief Executive at Sadler’s Wells



My prediction for 2011 is that dance will prove to be the most surprising of all the art forms. Its boundaries have become very wide indeed, and this is something that I am celebrating in the Sadler’s Wells programme for 2011.
 
In March, we have real horses performing on stage with French equestrian theatre artist Bartabas, who dances with the horses as if they were one entity. In June the 20 dancers of Canada’s Dave St-Pierre Company perform naked in a piece which gets very close to the audience at times, making us question ideas about tenderness. In July Alain Platel brings transvestites to Sadler’s Wells with a piece based on their turbulent life stories.
 
These are a snapshot of the groundbreaking work happening in dance right now. 2011 will be a very exciting year for the art form that is attracting mass audiences through its sheer diversity and the calibre of the artists at its forefront.

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Naima Khan