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Theatre Is Bigger Than FootballDateline: 6th June, 1999 According to the TMA, over 30 million people went to the theatre in 1998, far more than attended football league matches. Do you find that comparison incredible? I do. Unless.... A-ha! Got it! If the figure for theatre visits includes the West End and the football figure excludes the Premiere League and the FA Cup (and all the other cup matches, and international matches, and friendlies, and the Vauxhall Conference, and the Scottish leagues, and all the other matches you can think of, including all the local Sunday League games), then, yes, I can see it. Reduce it to a local level. I live in Sunderland: we have one professional (the Empire) and one amateur (the Royalty) theatre. If they were open six nights a week, between them they couldn't hold the equivalent of attendance at one Sunderland AFC match. In fact, if we add the four theatres in Newcastle (Theatre Royal, New Tyne, Playhouse and People's), the combined audiences still could not reach the attendance at one game. But if we added in Newcastle theatres, then surely we must add in attendance at Newcastle United matches? If we do, we're back to where we started! As an eye-catching headline Theatre is bigger than football is great, but it doesn't stand up to a moment's thought, let alone close examination. So what's the point? What on earth was the TMA thinking of releasing that bit of puffery on the world? It doesn't do theatre a blind bit of good and simply makes the TMA - which should be one of the most repected bodies in theatre - look like a bunch of prats. Yes, we need to promote theatre. Yes, we need to get it a higher profile in the public mind. But no, we don't need to do it with silly gimmicks. Apart from its inherent silliness, a claim such as this one has another adverse effect: it stops us from recognising hard reality, the hard reality that theatre is never going to be a popular (in its true sense - of the people) art form. It was in the time of the Greeks; it was in Shakespeare's time; but not now, and not in any foreseeable future, because the competition is far too strong. If we are going to market theatre effectively, then we have to do it from a more secure base than the manipulation of a few statistics, and that means starting to view theatre from the non-theatregoer's perspective. We need, in fact, to find out how the population at large thinks about theatre. That isn't too difficult. They think it's middle class (even a bit "posh"), intellectual, expensive, unrealistic. And they think it's not for them. And they are right. Yes, they are. Really. Think about it. Next time you're at the theatre, have a good look at the audience. Listen to them, to their accents, to the things they talk about. Look at how they dress. What proportion are not middle class/managerial/professional? And intellectual? Look at the best plays: they challenge accepted ideas; they make you think and question; they make you look at yourself, your life, the society of which you are a part, and often they find everything wanting. If that isn't intellectual, I don't know what is. Expensive? Kenneth Branagh has just said that he thinks it is, which is why he won't be doing any theatre for the foreseeable future. Look at the prices at your local theatre. Compare them to cinema prices. Compare them to the cost of an evening's TV. Even the majority of amateur companies' prices are little cheaper (if at all) than cinema. Unrealistic? Even that bloody helicopter in Miss Saigon, the cause of so much anti-British-Musical vituperation, is clearly nowhere near as realistic as any in a film or TV show. And you can argue all you like that there's a higher realism, but it's not going to convince any non-theatregoer who can see the flats wobble and that the windows have no glass. Theatrical realism is a sophisticated thing, requiring a willing suspension of disblief that doesn't come easily. So our marketing of theatre has to start with accepting that we have four major strikes against us before we even begin. Can we overcome them? Or do we have to accept that theatre is and always will be a minority interest? Articles Indices: |
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