Red Ladder Theatre Company

 Beck Rogers and Peter Hinton in 'Ugly'. Photo by Tim Smith

I couldn’t sleep last night – I suppose everything that was racing round my head will seem pretty mundane and pointless in the cold light of day – but I got to sleep finally by promising I would write about all my anxieties in the blog. Therapy and public baring of the soul – not sure if that is the purpose of the Red Ladder blog. Tough. If pouring all this out onto the website helps me feel better then so be it. You don’t have to read it – nobody’s twisting your arm.

What’s troubling my pretty little self? I’ve realised as I write the ‘business plan’ for our Arts Council Funding  Agreement (my body retches every time I say the words ‘business plan’ – sort of involuntary response a bit like vomiting) – that there is a massive dilemma for us as artists when we plan things. Having to plan for the next three years to 2014/15 is very weird. I find myself justifying ideas that are not really ideas; they aren’t even seeds. The really difficult balance is between satisfying prospective audience’s needs and satisfying an artistic urge. An artistic itch. The sperm of an artistic idea that is struggling to find an artistic egg to fertilise. I think I’d better stop there – the metaphors are getting messy.

It goes back to essential questions about why I make theatre; why I work for Red Ladder; what Red Ladder  is as a company… all questions I raised with the Red Ladder board of directors last week. The Red Ladder board are a wonderfully eclectic bunch. I don’t think any of them really share my world view – I can’t speak for them so they might do – but I’m pretty certain they are uncomfortable when I state that I am an anarchist. I am an anarchist – if you read Boff’s wonderfully erudite article in The Independent earlier this month you will know what ‘I am an anarchist’ means – it certainly has nothing to do with the way that word had been appropriated by the establishment and misused by the media in recent weeks. On a simple level – anarchy rejects government and suggests we share a lot more – state controlled governments have never worked in my opinion. As Emma Goldman said ‘If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal’. Governments that ‘represent’ the people will only ever look after themselves – and they always have. Shoot down my simple arguments – but those in power are the same rich and privileged Eton educated bullies as have been at the reins for several hundred years – and they do not care about anyone or anything outside of that club. Only today I read that the leader of the Conservative group on Hull City Council recently branded cuts protesters as ‘retards’. The Tweet actually read "15 hours in council today very hard hitting day and the usual collection of retards in the public gallery spoiling it for real people." In other words, Mr  John Fareham doesn’t even believe people who will suffer the knock-on effect of £65 million of cuts are ‘real’. If that’s democracy – give me anarchy. Fareham has since apologised, so that’s ok then.

But let’s go back to the dilemma of either making work for audiences or making work to satisfy an artistic response to the world. I should be in a very privileged position. I am Artistic Director of a theatre company with a long history of making high quality theatre. That should allow me to make anything I want. But public subsidy pays for what we do. I have a huge responsibility to the tax payers whose money eventually comes through the Arts Council filter. But if I just make work which I think ticks boxes it will be moribund. I was proud of ‘Forgotten Things’ by Emma Adams and equally pleased with our second Adams production, ‘Ugly’.  Both plays had an  other-worldly quality which hit the bulls eye with 18 – 30 year olds in our audiences – our target punters. ‘Ugly’ was difficult to make and difficult to watch – but I would have enjoyed it if I had seen if for the first time. Plenty of people hated it (let’s generalise and say that most of them were over 45) but there was no doubting that they would agree that they had witnessed a very memorable piece of theatre. I think they hated the play’s brutal presentation of a future world – a world after the resources have run out.

Possibly they believe theatre should only present answers and so we can leave the theatre comfortable and safe. Who knows? The problem is that although the vast majority of feedback forms for the show gave it five stars and included positive comments, my obsession is still with people like the Arts Council assessor who hated it.

What about ‘Sex and Docks and Rock & Roll’ – the winter show that followed on the heels of ‘Ugly’? Another massive success if we are to believe the positive comments and good reviews. So – it satisfied audiences and the artistic itch was scratched. For me the problem with this show was that on one level, it was just ‘fun’. What a misery I am. Yes but I want Red Ladder’s work to provoke people into standing up and taking action. God that’s noble of me. Listen. We are facing a tsunami of change – I keep banging on about this in every blog. All I feel I can do in the face of cataclysmic disaster is make theatre which tries to wake people up to the awfulness. So should we just be entertaining people to sing jolly anti-government songs? Here’s another dilemma. The clash between ‘theatre’ and ‘entertainment’. I don’t think there is a clash myself but I’m sure there are academics who have written dissertations about this. I  think Brecht struggled with the success of ‘Threepenny Opera’ because it was commercial and didn’t really provoke riots in the streets. But did any of his plays provide a catalyst for dissent and unrest?

Back to our plans for the future then. Does any of the stuff we have in our pipeline have the potential to make people think that they can walk out of the theatre and make a change in the way we live? Does it suggest to audiences that the system we live in is stupid and suicidal and wrong and… and… and… and?

I’ve just read the latest draft of Boff’s new music hall play ‘Big Society!’ in which the role of George Lightfeather will be played by Phill Jupitus. The script is very funny and the lyrics for the new songs are extremely witty  and satirical. The play is set in Edwardian times but directly attacks the exploits of Boris, David, Nick, Rupert et al. I am really looking forward to making the piece and I am confident that audiences will love it. Will it make people want to look again at who they vote for? Will it provoke serious debate in the bar afterwards, or will audiences just say they had a bloody good night out? Does it matter? The great John McGrath of 7:84 (in his book ‘A Good Night Out’) would argue that it doesn’t matter – as long as people see it. If only we could give away the tickets – all of them!

We plan to work with the successful novelist and screenwriter David Peace. David wants to work with us and write his first play. He doesn’t necessarily want to write plays but I am flattered that he wants to write for Red Ladder. At the moment we are in early discussions about what it is David wants to write  – his artistic itch. I then have to convince bookers that whatever David writes for us will be of such high quality that it will satisfy their audiences. If I was really arrogant I would say (like Howard Barker claims to say) “I don’t care what audiences think. Whatever David writes we will produce”.  I can’t.

I am second-guessing then – will audiences want to see this piece of work – not just because David Peace is the writer – but because it interests them, it satisfies them?

All this wittering goes back to what it is that Red Ladder Theatre Company have as a mission. I am struggling to write this at the moment. It has been pointed out that the mission statement is for the stakeholders. It is nothing to do with what my artistic itch/urge is. The truth is though that my aspiration is to make theatre of dissent without it becoming theatre just for dissenters. Members of the board would want me to temper this kind of language for fear of alienating our masters - our Tory masters. So I'm throwing this question out to other theatre-makers. How do you articulate anti-establishment political theatre without alienating sections of your potential audience? In other words, can you scratch the artistic itch and ignore the audience?