On Monday I wrote about Babel, the huge participatory London-wide project that is a collaboration between Wildworks and four London theatres – BAC, the Young Vic, Lyric Hammersmith and Theatre Royal Stratford East – under the World Stages banner. These four theatres are doing their own distinctive and very different kinds of work in diverse geographical and social locations across the city, but they have come together to create a show in which they all have a stake in a neutral location: Caledonian Park in north London. It's almost as if all four theatres have gone out on tour together.
Each theatre is bringing its skills to bear on the project, but each is also potentially bringing its own distinct audience. There are millions of people in London and there are plenty of theatres, but research suggests that the audience crossover between subsidised theatres in the capital is much lower than you might expect: in the region of 6% was the figure BAC's David Micklem quoted to me.
A project such as Babel not only furthers the co-producing conversation between theatres, but also offers opportunities to develop and encourage audiences to take a chance on something unknown or a bit different but with the involvement of a theatre whose work they already know and like.
World Stages is evidence of shifts away from the old ways of thinking that saw London theatres in competition with each other, rather than allies and potential beneficiaries of each other's success. Fuel's London-wide tour of Will Adamsdale's Jackson's Way proved that you could tour successfully to venues which were only a few miles apart geographically, and by taking work to different dance houses across the capital, Hofesh Shechter has demonstrated that rather than creating a situation where each venue is fighting others for the audience, it actually helps to build a bigger audience for the work.
But if a project such as Babel is built on the idea of theatres sharing on a citywide basis, how might that translate into a longer, potentially global life for the project and others like it? There is something hugely wasteful about spending 18 months on a show and then just throwing it away after a dozen or so performances. Yet there's also something that doesn't seem quite right about just saying: "Let's take Babel around the world." Those old ideas of international touring, with British companies pitching their shows to overseas promoters and lots of people and kit being loaded on to planes to fly across the world to recreate the project in another city in another time zone, begin to look outmoded. After all, the British Council doesn't want to be seen as little more than a glorified international touring agency.
Lead producers on Babel, BAC, are trying very hard to explore with all those theatres involved in the project how it might be possible to tour Babel abroad in ways that are ethical, responsive to the local situation on the ground and not wasteful. That means looking at ways to pack the project up in a suitcase with a detailed set of instructions that could then be taken by one or two people to Mumbai or Rio who could then create their own versions of Babel following the methodology provided.
It's an idea that would only suit particular projects and it certainly won't spell an end to international touring as we currently know it, but any initiative that encourages a more responsible approach to internationalism and one that chimes with the changing times is well worth exploring.
