KLAIC DRAGAN KLAIC Resetting the Stage PUBLIC THEATRE BETWEEN THE MARKET AND DEMOCRACY By Dragan Klaic Resetting the Stage Commercial theatre is thriving across Europe, while public theatre 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 theatre to demonstrate its continued merit. In Resetting the Stage, Dragan Klaic argues convincingly that, in an increasingly crowded market of cultural goods, public theatre 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. Dragan Klaic was a well-respected theatre scholar and cultural analyst. In his versatile career, he was professor and lecturer at universities in Amsterdam, Belgrade, Bologna, Budapest, Istanbul and Leiden, and held various positions in numerous institutions and foundations world-wide – from director to board member or permanent fellow. Intellect is honoured to be publishing his final book. intellect | www.intellectbooks.com PUBLIC THEATRE BETWEEN THE MARKET AND DEMOCRACY Resetting the Stage 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd i 8/29/12 5:25:31 PM 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd ii 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM Resetting the Stage Public Theatre Between the Market and Democracy Dragan Klaic intellect Bristol, UK / Chicago, USA 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd iii 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM First published in the UK in 2012 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK First published in the USA in 2012 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA This ebook is licensed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Cover designer: Holly Rose Copy-editor: MPS Technologies Production manager: Melanie Marshall Typesetting: Planman Technologies ISBN 978-1-84150-547-3 ePDF ISBN 978-1-78320-048-1 An electronic version of this book is freely available thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. KU is a collaborative initiative designed to make high quality books Open Access for the public good. The Open Access ISBN for this book is 978-1-78320-048-1. More information about the initiative and links to the Open Access version can be found at www. knowledgeunlatched.org. 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd 4 11/6/18 10:23 AM Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xv PART I: A Blurred Role 01 Chapter 1: Public and Commercial Theatre: Distinct and Enmeshed 03 The ensemble model 06 Public subsidies ensure cultural respectability 07 Crisis – a permanent condition or a discursive image? 09 A thriving commercial theatre 10 The specifi c merits of public theatre 14 Chapter 2: Public Theatre: Challenges and Responses 19 Rising costs, limited compensation 21 Increasing own income 23 A minority leisure option 26 Altered urban demography 29 Insuffi cient coping solutions 31 Chapter 3: Production Models: Reps, Groups and Production Houses 35 Repertory theatre: Limitations and adjustments 37 Repertory companies outlive communism 40 Groups: An ethos of innovation 44 Transformation dynamics 48 Chapter 4: The Specifi c Off er of Public Theatre 55 Making sense of classical drama 57 Stimulating new playwriting 59 Post-dramatic theatre 62 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd v 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM Resetting the Stage Opera and music theatre: Confronting elitism 63 Varieties of dance 68 Theatre for children and young people 74 Other theatre forms 78 PART II: Asserting Own Distinction 81 Chapter 5: Programming Strategies 83 A disorienting abundance 86 Prompting name recognition 87 Programming in larger templates 89 Chapter 6: A Sense of Place 97 Failed reforms, some accomplishments 99 A matter of context 101 Space markers 104 Big or small? 107 Newly built or recycled? 109 Away from the theatre 113 Chapter 7: Finding the Audience, Making the Audience 119 Audiences: Limited, elusive and unstable 121 Commitment to education 123 Outreach strategies 126 Communication: Creating own media outlets 131 Chapter 8: Theatre in a Globalised World 135 The changing role of festivals 137 International cooperation in the performing arts 140 An emerging European cultural space 143 Trans-European vistas 147 An antidote to complacency 151 Chapter 9: Leadership, Governance and Cultural Policy 155 Leadership: Fantasies of a cultural Superman 159 Governance matters: Boards safeguarding autonomy 162 Minima moralia for a public theatre system 165 Funding: Decision-makers and their criteria 167 Public theatre and public culture 170 vi 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd vi 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM Contents In Place of an Epilogue: The Prospects for Public Theatre in Europe 173 Sources 177 About the Author 187 Afterword 189 vii 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd vii 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd viii 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM Preface A long-standing involvement with theatre has to a great extent shaped my sense of Europe and its fascinating cultural diversity. As a theatre professional and academic, I have been observing the upsurge in commercial theatre and its advanced professionalism with growing concern for the implications for the non-commercial stage. In view of the competition, proximity and even enmeshment of these two realms – one profi t-chasing and the other sustained by public subsidies – I want to plead in this book for their fi rm demarcation. My analysis of the performing arts as an artistic domain sketches a system of interconnected public institutions, created across Europe for public service and for the delivery of the public good. Th e question I am posing is how these companies, venues, festivals, studios and the supporting and intermediary facilities on which they rely can be sustained against the competition of commercial entertainment and the weakened support of public authorities. Globalisation, migration, European integration and the digital revolution are altering the lifestyles of city and country dwellers and putting pressure on public theatre to adjust and modify its role, or risk marginalisation and irrelevance. An early impulse to write this book came from an invitation from the young interns of the Dutch government to speak at their annual seminar on the public fi nances, some time around the start of the new millennium. I recall my surprise at how ignorant these prospective civil servants were about Dutch cultural policy and the cultural infrastructure, maintained as it is by public subsidy. Moreover, they failed to see why the national government was subsidising theatre companies and festivals while Joop van den Ende, the famous commercial producer, was putting on his musicals and other popular productions without subsidy, and even making a profi t on them. A long and complicated argument was involved in explaining on that occasion that there are diff erent sorts of stage products and that only some of them can earn enough to cover their expenses and hopefully generate a profi t, and why others cannot. It was especially diffi cult since I was fl anked on the panel by a cultural economist, who aft er his years in the United States had become a staunch opponent of any government subsidies to culture, and argued that those who have cultural needs and passions should support cultural organisations of their choice with donations, just as religious people support churches. He advocated this without regard to the fact that in the Netherlands, as in most European countries, the government supports religious organisations in many ways and maintains their buildings if they are listed historic monuments. As the economist pitched 05473_FM_pi-xx.indd ix 8/29/12 5:25:32 PM Resetting the Stage the usual arguments, I was thinking how, in 10–15 years, those interns would have risen to positions of power and infl uence in the national civil service without an understanding and appreciation of the values of non-commercial public culture, and in the belief that cultural production and distribution should be left entirely to market forces. Now, several years later, when I have fi nally written this book on the specifi c values and benefi ts of non-commercial theatre in a deliberative democracy, I have no illusion that it will be read by those former interns, now making their careers in the upper echelons of the Dutch civil service. In the past few months they must have been preoccupied with calculations of how to eliminate 18 or more billion euros from the national budget in the next four years, as required by the coalition programme of the new cabinet that emerged from the June 2010 Dutch elections and the subsequent long negotiations. Among the far-reaching cuts of this minority Liberal/Demo-Christian coalition, dependent on the support of the PVV (an anti-immigration, anti-Islamic and anti-cultural party) is the announced reduction of €200 m in the national budget for culture (totalling some €840 m); this is planned mainly to aff ect creative projects, especially the performing arts. Th ese political intentions, coinciding with subsidy cuts for public culture elsewhere in Europe, add some urgency to my topic and argument1. Th e belief that the market should be left to regulate itself was discredited in the banking crisis of autumn 2008, when many governments intervened to rescue major banks and nationalise their losses, thus becoming their majority shareholders. In the ensuing recession, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s and global in its widespread impact, many governments dropped their neo-liberal convictions and embraced Keynesianism for a short while, restoring state capitalism.