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Quick (lol) thoughts on the wHy CaN't bRiTiSh ThEaTrE bE mOrE eUrOpEaN argument we all love: yes, money, time, risk aversion all play a part. But a big immediate factor in the rehearsal room is the thesis of acting most UK theatre operates on...
The highest good of a lot of actor training (big old schools espec) is to 'become' the character & be heard from the back row. Lots of pluses to that! But the idea of âwearingâ a character, that a character is a theatrical device that you show to the audience, is quite alien.
I think itâs that approach that allows multiple readings of the play to take place onstage at once, or for the play to have a sense of wit/inventiveness/fun about *being* a play. So if you want to do something like that, you often have to introduce new practices and psychologies
into the rehearsal room, and then weâre back to time/money/access (and skill: not every director is a great acting coach). None of this is a dig at actors; you're all magic and what Iâm describing *is* seen in e.g. new writing where the form calls for it. But itâs not standard.
The real villain lurking at the bottom of this is (surprise) capitalism: big orgs need to get the schools in, or the RSC does three trad comedies for every Maria Aberg, or a celeb name Shakespeare in the west end is a vehicle for the star and just trying not to alienate anyone.
I donât think the way to help is to tut at directors, espec early/mid career ones, for not being bold enough. Weâre often a bit scared and constantly treading a fine line about what to pitch (âwhat will get them to say yes to this? and THEN I can add the weird bits in the roomâ)*
(*I once had an AD say no to me for proposing what I thought was a fairly gentle gender swap, and I hadnât even gotten on to talking about the really fundamentally weird stuff yet)
and itâs all but impossible to find an audience for experimental Shakespeare on smaller level than big subsidised houses so self/fringe producing is tricky. So how do we cut our teeth? Pray we get to assist on one slightly more experimental show every three years?
If we want UK theatre to make room for more radical/experimental stagings within this current system, you donât just need individual directors to be more bold, you need to change the tastes of the audience so theyâll buy tickets. You need a revolution in criticism
so every production that tries something different doesnât get met with cautious 3 stars across the board, you need a funding structure that allows ADs to swallow the risk, you need - quite frankly - a political climate that isnât hostile to the very idea of âEuropean-nessâ.
Obviously all of that starts somewhere, and the work is being made. Itâs not a desert out there. But breaking UK theatreâs traditional deification of text isnât so much a question of slaying a beast, more like digesting an elephant.
That was not quick. Thanks for staying with me if you made it to the end. 
Happy Thursday!
Happy Thursday!
