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2 days ago
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Crisis? What crisis? British Theatre Before and After Covid, a report released this week, is like a comedy-tragedy mask rendered in academic form. If you look at it one way, you see smiles. Look at it another, you see only things to cry about. The media coverage of the report, by the British Theatre Consortium, focused on the latter, with industry bible the Stage reporting: “‘Sharp decline’ in new plays since Covid.” Between 2019 and 2023, the number of new plays produced dropped by almost 30%. If vindication was needed for much recent angsting about the condition of new writing in UK theatre, this report seems to provide it.
So is playwriting in crisis? I’m in a decent position to comment, at least insofar as that question applies in Scotland. I run A Play, a Pie and a Pint (PPP), the Glasgow theatre institution producing more new plays than any other theatre in … Europe? The world? The known universe? (We wait in vain for someone to tell us we’ve been trumped.) Based on our experience – fielding hundreds of scripts a year, producing and touring new plays every week, year-round – there is plenty to be concerned about. But there are also reasons for optimism, some evidenced by the report, which was written by director Dan Rebellato and playwright David Edgar.
The undeniable bad news is the steep drop in the number of new plays being produced (proportionally higher than the overall decline in theatre production). That corroborates a widespread grassroots sense that opportunities are diminishing for playwrights to get their work staged, and chances shrinking that one might ever make a living as a playwright alone. The report also documents the closure of many smaller theatre spaces, where new plays used to be offered a soft landing. At PPP, we are inundated with plays, and the frustration – particularly among the younger generation – is palpable that beyond Òran Mór, where our work is presented, options for new writers to be staged, or playwrights to develop their craft, are sparse.
Why then this tailing off of new play production? It seems likely to be commercial conservatism post-Covid – that notorious idea that audiences are scared of new drama. And here’s where Rebellato and Edgar get more interesting, and substantiate what my daily experience lays bare. Because while there are fewer new plays, “[the] new plays that did get on had longer runs, bigger audiences in bigger houses, and attracted bigger box office income than in 2019”.
More and more people are coming to see new plays. And if we widen our lens to consider new work (including new musicals, devised shows, and original Christmas shows), we see that audiences certainly do not fear novelty. As the report states, new-work attendance accounted for just over 40% of all productions in 2023 – an increase of almost 50% compared to 2019.
Isn’t the story then that the demand for new work is soaring – if only we could get it to market? To see the production of new plays slump over that 2019-23 period isn’t just shameful, it’s shortsighted. A healthy culture is one that doesn’t just regurgitate old stories, but tells itself new ones, lots of them – and makes space for new storytellers too. But as this report demonstrates, we shouldn’t be staging new plays for some abstract common good – we should (contrary to received wisdom) be doing it for our bottom lines, too.
If you’re a theatre producer heaving yet another Arthur snore Miller or Anton zzzzz Chekhov (just kidding!) on to the stage, because that’s all your audience will accept – well, you’re not doing your job properly. Where is the buzz in theatre? What gets audiences out of their seats? This season, it’s Sophia Chetin-Leuner’s Porn Play at the Royal Court, or Uma Nada-Rajah’s NHS fantasia Black Hole Sign, or James Graham’s smash hit Punch on the West End. Or (dare I say) Éimi Quinn’s Hauns Aff Ma Haunted Bin! at PPP – by some measures the biggest-selling show in our 21-year history – or Dancing Shoes by Stephen Christopher and Graeme Smith, a feelgood hit so adored by our audiences in the spring it’s being revived for Christmas at the Traverse.
At PPP, we stage only world premieres – no old plays allowed – and we get audiences of 150-200 pretty much every lunchtime, six days a week. They come as a habit, for the pies and the craic as well as the plays. And so for thousands of people in the West End of Glasgow, watching new plays is a cheerful part of their everyday life – like reading a book, or switching on the radio, or going to a food market.
Cheer is a part of it. Note that the British Theatre Consortium classified all new plays as “drama” – overlooking that some may be comedies. (And don’t get me started on classifying Scotland as a “region”). Maybe if we stopped talking about new plays as if they were a penance, the wholefood of the entertainment world, we might attract more people to engage with them. But – judging by these latest findings, and all those millions of people happily flocking to new plays – we’re doing an OK job of that already.
Now we just need bolder programming, more confident promotion, and more – lots more – opportunities for writers to present their work on stages big and small, commercial and subsidised, London and beyond. Give them those opportunities and the audiences will follow. The data doesn’t lie!
