Resetting the Stage

Public Theatre Between the Market and Democracy

Dragan Klaic

• Publisher: Intellect Books
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781783200481
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Tecnologia e ingegneria
• Subtopic: Risorse energetiche

Commercial theater is thriving across Europe and the UK, while public theater has suffered under changing patterns of cultural consumption—as well as sharp reductions in government subsidies for the arts. At a time when the rationale behind these subsidies is being widely reexamined, it has never been more important for public theater to demonstrate its continued merit. In Resetting the Stage, Dragan Klaic argues convincingly that, in an increasingly crowded market of cultural goods, public theater is best served not by imitating its much larger commercial counterpart, but by asserting its artistic distinctiveness and the considerable benefit this confers on the public. A PDF version of this book is available for free in open access via the OAPEN Library platform: Resetting the Stage.It has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License and is part of Knowledge Unlatched.

Part I

A Blurred Role

Chapter 1

Public and Commercial Theatre: Distinct and Enmeshed

Public theatre, as we know it in Europe today, artistic in orientation and subsidised by public authorities, has its roots in the nineteenth-century ideology of nationalism. The concepts of a nation and nation state postulated national theatre as an emblematic institution and as a privileged ideological platform. It was a common argument that, if the nation needs a national theatre for its own elucidation and consciousness of self, the nation state must be capable of paying for it. Hence, public commitment grew to establish and sustain a national theatre as a representative institution and a pillar of the nation state – in some cases paid for by members of the national community in anticipation of a nation state that still had to be created. This was the case with the Poles, Czechs, Serbs, Croats and Hungarians, who all articulated their national theatre projects as a preparatory phase for the emergence of their nation state (Wilmer 2008).

Today’s prevailing models of public theatre could also be linked to the small venues of the Paris avant-garde in the 1880s–1890s, created in penury but with a surplus of passion and conviction, and supported by small coteries of avid followers. André Antoine’s Théâtre Libre (1887) inaugurated naturalism on stage, supported by Zola and a few prominent naturalist authors whose plays were staged there. The short-lived Théâtre d’Art of Paul Fort (1892) and Le Théâtre de l’Oeuvre (1893–1898), led by Aurélien Lugné-Poë, ushered symbolism onto the stage and sought to create a dreamlike poetic reality, elusive and minimalist in its material properties. These pockets of the avant-garde at the edge of Paris, far removed from the official status of the Comédie-Française (established as a court and state theatre company in 1680), and the hustle and bustle of the commercial boulevard theatre and its demi-mondaine and popular audiences, provided a model for an entire movement of independent theatres that sprang up soon afterwards in Berlin, London and other large European cities (Brown 1980). While business-minded managers operated large theatres as commercial enterprises, relying on star actors, a mixture of comedy and melodrama, spiced up by occasional scandal and much well-engineered gossip, independent theatres – small in scale and serious in purpose – articulated a specific aesthetic concept, an intellectual repertoire, often a critical or visionary world-view, and profiled the stage director as a new theatre profession and as the key artistic personality, firmly in charge of the creative process. When W. B.Yeats and Lady Gregory established the Abbey Theatre in Dublin in 1904, they fused the idea of an avant-garde theatre, promoting dramatic symbolism, with the idea of national theatre, preparing the Irish for independence.

The ensemble model

The far-reaching aspirations of the independent theatre movement were most fully realised at the end of the nineteenth century by two Russian innovators: the dramaturg and critic Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko and the amateur actor and director Konstantin Stanislavski. In setting up the Moscow Artistic Academic Theatre (MXAT) in 1898, this tandem drew up a set of norms, mutual agreements and common aspirations, which they successfully implemented in the following years, creating a coherent ensemble with a rich repertoire, backed by some regular in-house authors, such as Chekhov and Maxim Gorky, and a recognisable stage aesthetic. In just a few years they built up a loyal core audience of students and intellectuals, but also of a growing Russian middle class, whose need for serious and critical self-representation they successfully met. MXAT shaped the culture of an ensemble as a coherent and harmonious artistic collective, where mutual learning and respect took precedence over any individual sense of stardom or stage narcissism. The composition of the repertoire and its persistent aesthetic were determined by the stage directors, working with regular artistic collaborators and a devoted administrative and technical staff in a long and careful rehearsal process.

Both classics and contemporary plays were staged with meticulous illusionism, originally seen in the Meiningen Ensemble, the company of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, famous for its scrupulous historical sets and subtly orchestrated mass scenes. Stanislavski, a stickler for detail, took the company to Rome to find inspiration at the Forum for Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and to Cyprus to prepare for Othello. No wonder, then, that MXAT’s first season inevitably ended with a considerable deficit, gallantly covered by some rich Russian merchants. Nemirovich-Danchenko staged some productions in a symbolist key, and the decision to invite Edward Gordon Craig to stage Hamlet in 1908 in Moscow confirms the founders’ willingness to broaden the psychological realism for which MXAT became famous, with some more abstract aesthetics. The company reached a level of professionalism that became first an inspiration, and then the norm for many similar companies elsewhere in Europe. Stanislavski’s written reflections on the creative process became the source of a comprehensive theatre pedagogy and systematic theory of acting, based on self-restraint, respect for the partner and affective memory, demanding that the actor recall his or her own emotional experiences and invest them in the building of the character, endowing it with maximum plausibility and psychological verisimilitude (Slonim 1962).

With the outbreak of World War I, MXAT fell into cultural isolation from the rest of Europe and after the October Revolution it was forced into a difficult accommodation with the Soviet regime and its cultural policies. Before acquiescing to the Soviet authorities’ demand for a revision – under duress – of its aesthetics to fit the proscriptive norms of communist ideologues, the MXAT ensemble spent many months on extensive tours around Europe, extending its influence; some of its members decided not to return to Soviet Russia at all. The stream of theatre émigrés from Russia until 1924 further aided the spreading of MXAT principles and practices, the appreciation of an acting ensemble and the dominant position of the director as the decisive conceptual maker of the production, the creator of its aesthetic universe. Subsequently, a number of German, French, Scandinavian, Polish and Czech directors shaped their own ensembles on the MXAT model between the two world wars and marked them with their own staging style. The theatre director emerged as the dominant figure, an arbiter between the dramatic text and the actors, the invisible inventor of the stage action, derived from the play and offered for the enjoyment of the audience. A following generation of more experimental theatre directors, some of whom were Stanislavski’s students, could profit from the recognised dominance of this profession, even if they rejected the illusionism and psychological realism of their master.

Public subsidies ensure cultural respectability

All the diversity of theatre conditions across Europe notwithstanding, much of the artistic dynamics throughout the twentieth century was created by respected ensembles, led by prominent directors, staging a diverse repertoire in a recognisable stylistic key. They were loyally supported by an audience of regular subscribers, recruited from the culturally ambitious middle classes and later even some segments of the working class. As these ensembles acquired prestige and respectability, they were sooner or later challenged by small groups of experimental bent with pronounced avant-garde programmes, which were led by rebellious directors, many of whom in due course joined the establishment and took over mainstream companies. In this way both the repertoire of plays and its rendering on stage could go through modification and innovations. Any artistically and intellectually ambitious theatre enterprise remained, however, a precarious business proposition as long as it was dependent on subscription sales before the beginning of the season and solid cash flow at the box office, generated by a rotating repertoire of productions in the following months. The income generated in such a way often remained below the level of expenditure, creating debt and opening up the prospect of bankruptcy – unless a wealthy donor intervened as a white knight.

MXAT was relieved of financial risk by the generous patronage of rich Russian merchants and then of the new Soviet state, but it had to pay a high price for state funding by conforming to Soviet ideological doctrines, working under the constant shadow of Stalinist censorship and adjusting its repertoire accordingly. After 1945, wherever Soviet military advances and political influence imposed a socialist order across Eastern and Central Europe, the MXAT model was postulated as an aesthetic ideal and repertory theatre practice was upheld and promulgated by state ownership, funding and control, under a strict ideological regime. In parallel, in Western Europe, the welfare state and the post-World War II belief in the immanent goodness of culture and its emancipatory promise created a growing flow of municipal and state subsidies for the established companies, and directed public investment into the rebuilding of the playhouses destroyed in the war. A steady expansion of companies and venues – a growing infrastructure of subsidised theatre, founded on a diverse repertoire, core ensemble and directors’ dominance, even when originally shaped by the ideology of nationalism and an ideal of a national theatre as the pinnacle of the system – was now deployed in the huge task of democratising culture. Subsidised companies were expected to address a broad potential audience, beyond the traditional middle-class public, sometimes with special subscription schemes, sometimes with the mediation of the unions. Public subsidies were justified by artistic excellence, aesthetic innovation, the intellectual vigour of the repertoire and a playhouse’s contribution to social cohesion and cultural emancipation.

In taking the leadership of the Théâtre National Populaire in 1951, Jean Vilar wanted to embrace a large Parisian audience, especially the working class, in the huge auditorium of the Palais de Chaillot (2900 seats), offering a classical French repertoire and well-known actors. Roger Planchon was driven by the same ambition in setting up his company in Villeurbanne, a working-class suburb of Lyon in 1957, acquiring the title of Théâtre National Populaire in 1972. After World War II the Volksbühne, which had traditionally been oriented towards a wider audience, was re-established in communist East Berlin and, in response, the West Berlin authorities set up the Freie Volksbühne as its counterpart. Iceland obtained its independence from Norway in 1944 and crowned it in 1950 with a venue for its National Theatre.

For the first time in history, regular public subsidies made theatre accessible and popular but also brought respectability, stability and continuity to the performing arts, which had previously been a habitually risky show business, dependent on the appeal of extravagant stars, publicity stunts by managers and impresarios, inflated promotion, hired claque and the seductive atmosphere of a morally dubious enterprise, as well as a supposedly permissive professional culture. Commercial theatre remained part of the performing arts in Europe even after the spread of non-commercial theatre, continuing to combine big actor names with well-known titles, popular genres and an easily accessible offer, taking considerable risks, making and losing the money of managers and investors, but lacking the cultural status with which the publicly funded theatre companies and venues were endowed. Gradually, public subsidies also inadvertently created routine, complacency and institutional fatigue among the recipient companies, which in turn fed into the grudge held by small innovative groups on the cultural fringe, who were envious of the established subsidy allocations to themainstream companies and claimed that they were themselves more entitled to some of this public money than the established, regular recipients.

Commercial and non-commercial theatres have coexisted as parallel worlds in many cities,with the occasional transfer of titles, productions and talent, but without any direct clashes. Inthe 1960s, it was rather between the experimental theatre groups and established subsidised companies that animosity grew. In the Netherlands, it culminated in Action Tomato in 1969, when some radical competitors threw tomatoes at the actors of the Nederlandse Comedie, performingThe Tempest in the Amsterdam Municipal Theatre. The system of six subsidised companies, linked to the major Dutch cities, subsequently collapsed and was replaced by small public grants distributed to a growing number of innovative groups that changed the image of public theatre and its prevailing aesthetics (Meyer 1994).

The proliferation of repertory theatre companies from the 1950s progressed in parallel with the small-theatre movement. Intimate spaces were filled with small-scale productions, mounted either as commercial enterprises or, more often, with local support, the aid of associations, universities and other non-profit initiatives, offering the public an intensive stage experience and a sense of belonging to a cultural group, or to the acolytes of a specific artistic vision. Large repertory companies countered the growing popularity of the small theatres by creating their own small performing spaces, often by converting rehearsal halls, stage-set warehouses or set-painting rooms, in the hope that they could better employ their ensemble members and offer a more diversified repertoire in an intimate setting.

Autonomous theatre groups, often without their own performing space, proliferated from the early 1960s, fed by the student theatre movement and various alternative and subcultural streams. These were united in most cases by an experimental drift and sometimes by the artistic vision of a charismatic leader that could ensure continuity – despite their poverty, lack of initial recognition and the aesthetic or moralistic irritation their productions provoked. Many such groups disappeared quite quickly, but quite a few survived numerous crises, reached international recognition on an expanding festival circuit and ultimately secured some form of regular public support; these included Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil in Paris (est. 1964) and Eugenio Barba’s Odin Teatret (est. 1964 in Norway, since 1968 in Holstebro, Denmark). Other groups, formed by several generations of ambitious theatre innovators, survived at least for a while, only thanks to incidental, small project subsidies, offered by the public authorities as some sort of appeasement, or rationalised as a necessary investment in artistic renewal, but amounting to only a small fraction of what the established repertory companies received.

Crisis – a permanent condition or a discursive image?

Parallel to the stabilising impact of public subsidies and in spite of it, across Europe throughout the entire twentieth century, theatre was often declared an artistic realm in crisis, in the first instance by intellectual observers, critics and cultural analysts (Delgado and Svich 2002). Such a diagnosis related at different times to the organisational model and aesthetic impasse, competition with new media and leisure alternatives, the audience’s stubborn refusal to grow in accordance with expectations, and especially to the insufficient public funding of an increasing number of ensembles claiming such support, as against rising artistic ambitions and rising costs, especially in the maintenance of large playhouses. In time, theatre professionals got used to this crisis discourse and even internalised it. The more comfortable among them usually claimed that everything would be fine if the public subsidies were a little more generous and the production and touring system left as it was. Those theatre professionals who felt short-changed by the existing distribution system of public subsidy kept calling for sweeping reforms and overall change. Politicians and civil servants usually sought to stay out of these discussions, find excuses in budgetary restraints and postpone or avoid in-depth change by commissioning more committee reports and research studies, scheduling another public debate or more professional conferences. Especially in times of budgetary restrictions, politicians are reluctant to consider any systemic reforms that require additional resources.

Despite a crisis discourse and a widely shared feeling of structural vulnerability among the practitioners, the performing arts thrive in Europe in a dizzying multitude of arrangements, production and distribution models, public funding schemes and sources, playhouses, festivals, studios, professional associations, sector institutes and voicing organisations. At the same time, unemployment remains pervasive among performing arts professionals, a great majority doomed to modest earnings and chequered, discontinuous career patterns. Despite dim employment prospects, professional training programmes for theatre and dance on the higher education level experience no shortage of talented applicants – even if their vision of success and stardom is most probably nowadays shaped more by television and film than by theatre alone. Theatre and dance studies have become a recognised academic discipline, with their own departments, degree programmes, institutes, archives, specialised libraries and museums, as well as international organisations with their gatherings and publications. But they also entail a gloomy sense that non-commercial theatre has become a minority niche in comparison with the expanding entertainment industry.

A thriving commercial theatre

The line running through the performing arts landscape of Europe, delineating the division between commercial and non-commercial theatre, is not always clearly visible. This book is about the purpose and sustainability of public, that is, non-commercial theatre, but the strengths of commercial theatre need to be duly addressed since they shape the cultural context and consumers’ preferences.

Commercial theatre exists in order to make money, which it sometimes does. It is a risky enterprise, where losses are common, but profitability can be achieved with a strong product, finely tuned marketing and a long run of the same production, followed eventually by a long tour and subsequent productions elsewhere. Various spin-offs – a television version, a film, a DVD, a CD with popular songs from the production – and merchandising can increase the profit. A successful product can be multiplied and exploited simultaneously in several places, with the original authors and producers contractually obliging local producers and casts to reproduce in utmost detail the same staging, lighting and choreography, even precisely-set communication tools (posters and playbills with a fixed logo and letter-type). The Lion King and Chicago are staged in the same way everywhere, as copies of the original Broadway productions. Auditions are held to find a cast that will be the best approximation of the original. Buying the rights, mounting the show in a large and well-known venue, as well as launching the publicity campaign, require considerable upfront investment, but offer the high probability of profit-making if a sufficient volume of ticket sales is generated quickly enough on the strength of name-recognition, since The Lion King and Chicago function as global brands. If the ticket sales sustain a long run, the initial investment will be recovered and the local staging will become profitable. The owners of the original rights will also earn money. A product that has proven its profitability in one place will in all probability be profitable elsewhere, if competently copied, barring some sensitive cultural issues that might not transfer well from the original environment to another, culturally different market.

Even though commercial theatre in Europe has a long history dating from the emergence in the sixteenth century of the first itinerant companies that had to earn their own meagre living, it is New York’s Broadway district that today constitutes the epicentre of contemporary show business, run as a large, successful cultural industry. In Europe, commercial theatre has become much more than a mere reproduction of successful Broadway musicals. Of course, these are commonly and successfully produced in the big cities of Europe, repeating the original Broadway formula, but European commercial theatre churns out a wide range of its own original products: new musical...