Are we watching the death of English language theatre in Wales?

Here's an idea... why not have the Wales Millennium Centre take over National Theatre Wales? That might help turn things around.

Here lands the BRG afternoon edition…

Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review, Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review, wherefore art thou, Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review?

I don’t mean this as a rhetorical question. When the Arts Council of Wales announced it was cutting 100% of the funding to the English Language national theatre of Wales (NTW) it rather meekly proposed that the horse we could see behind the cart was in fact an Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review. That was in September 2023. This proposed Review has been less a steady steed and more a rolling tumbleweed. Nothing has happened. Not even a rumour. English language Welsh theatre, if we are to continue throwing metaphors around like a drunk poet, is Juliet, only Romeo isn’t lurking anywhere beneath the veranda, and Juliet returns to bed alone and lies there and dies. Alone.

The suspicion always was that the proposed Review was invented to head off criticisms that the Arts Council was just pulling the plug on NTW and not replacing it with anything. Nothing is forthcoming to quell those suspicions. Since the announcement, the executive at NTW has depleted significantly, with Artistic Director Lorne Campbell leaving in March, the captain most definitely not going down with the ship. The Arts Council has been very quiet on the whole affair.

That esteemed organisation has itself, of course, been under the cosh. Voluntary redundancies have been followed by non-voluntary ones, and the ghost ship down Cardiff Bay has just lost a lot of its ghosts. You have to wonder what exactly the Arts Council is capable of providing for a reeling arts sector that needs support, not just in financial terms but in pastoral terms. Stories of companies seeing their first flush of cash courtesy of the Investment Review, seeing their grants diminished before they’ve even been handed out, and being asked to sign contracts they don’t understand, are very real. There is no staff at the Arts Council to guide companies and artists through the labyrinthine funding agreements and applications processes. I have never seen so many established and respected theatre producers taking to social media to vocalise their frustrations at rejected funding applications. They are not moaning about the rejections, they are curious as to the feeling there is a culture of rejections. The job of the Arts Council was always to support and guide, not accept or reject. Now it seems all they do is reject.

There is a familiar story here. When, as executive editor of Wales Arts Review, I attempted to engage with our core funders, the Books Council of Wales, to discuss our grave reservations about the funding system and what it would mean for WAR as an organisation, I was ignored. And so WAR has now closed. Somewhere - somewhere important - is a gross misunderstanding of what a cultural funding body is, what it is supposed to provide. At the moment salaries are being paid out to humans whose job could be done by AI. If funding orgs are just checking grant applications next to a list of criteria then let machines do it.

So, what of this Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review? If it was a PR sticking plaster meant to quieten the critics in the wake of NTW’s defunding, it was only to kick the issues into the medium-length grass. They must have known at some point they would have to actually do it.

One problem for ACW is that with NTW a lame duck institution, the disenchantment and anger of Wales’s English language theatre-makers who for a decade had channelled all of their ire toward the arrogant and inert NTW, now have no shield. The ire of the angry and disenchanted is coming for you, ACW, in an exercise that will look increasingly like the down-and-out kicking a man when he’s down.

So, what can we do?

I’m not sure what an Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review would look like. I fear it might look like some retired arts exec travelling the country talking to people and then writing up a report that gets published on the ACW website for people to read (or not) and that will be that. That will take years, and all the while the English language theatre sector in Wales dies. Alone.

But here’s a thought. In an attempt to get some public conversation going, and by way of putting an idea on the table…

Why not give NTW to the Wales Millennium Centre? WMC has been a major production house, and is currently massively cutting back on its productions due to budgetary constraints. Refund NTW at a fraction of the cost and allow WMC to house it and run it. It could possible absorb some massive expenditures. Marketing. Real estate. Beyond that, I have little idea what the logistics might be, and what it would mean to the ethos of NTW. Maybe they might have to rethink that. Maybe it means the name of NTW lives on in an utterly new incarnation. My god, maybe even we might see some plays on a stage. But I think WMC would be a great parent.

So, let’s have that conversation. Because we may be waiting a long time if we’re waiting for the Arts Council-led English Language Theatre Review.

Gary Raymond is a novelist, author, playwright, critic, and broadcaster. In 2012, he co-founded Wales Arts Review, was its editor for ten years. His latest book, Abandon All Hope: A Personal Journey Through the History of Welsh Literature is available for pre-order and is out in May 2024 with Calon Books.