What does the nation’s theatre look like in 2015? The question will be debated on 23 May at Manchester’s new £25m arts centre, Home, in a debate organised by the Guardian and BAC, exploring nationhood and devolution. I’m confident that the discussion will throw up many different answers, some of them fiercely contested, but all reflecting the fact that just as the UK in 2015 is a very different place from what it was 10 years ago, so is its theatre.
The former National Theatre of Scotland artistic director Vicky Featherstone once said that she thought the role of a national theatre was “not to define identity, but undefine it”, and that is perhaps one of the roles of all theatre at a time when devolution and independence, our relationship to each other and our role in Europe and the rest of the world are hot topics for all of us in the UK.
It’s particularly significant that the debate is taking place in Manchester, a city of increasing theatrical vibrancy, which has often defined itself through its culture. It’s a place where the council has understood the role that the arts can play in people’s lives and as a tool for regeneration – hence the opening of Home, the largest arts centre outside London. It is also a devolution guinea pig, with new cash, new powers and an elected mayor coming its way as part of George Osborne’s “northern powerhouse” plans. These include a new £78m arts hub, The Factory, which will be home to the Manchester International festival.
Flagship organisations such as the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company have sometimes been slow to reflect the diversity of the UK, a changing national sense of self, and a swiftly evolving theatre culture. But the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) and National Theatre Wales (NTW), the latter working alongside the already established Welsh-language Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru, have been more ready to highlight and celebrate that diversity. Difference doesn’t have to be a difficulty, it can be a positive thing. Theatre produced by those organisations has been an important part of the debate around issues of national identity, but it has also looked at how those living in one place relate to those living elsewhere.
George Osborne may think the Factory will help him and the Tories to be better “perceived to take the north seriously” as Ben Walmsley has suggested, but in the end it is artists not buildings who make theatre and deliver it into the heart of communities. One of the most fascinating things about NTS and NTW is the way that both have made their homelessness a bonus not a drawback, and have used to it to question how and where a national theatre might operate, and what is this thing we call home.
The NTS’s first offering in 2006 was actually called Home, and it took place simultaneously across Scotland in non-traditional venues, from ferries to disused shops. NTW has similarly created online networks and gone into communities across Wales to make theatre with the people, helping to support local artists, and making work that reflects the landscapes, mindsets and outlooks of those communities. Perhaps it’s no surprise that NTW’s John McGrath, an artistic director with an international outlook, has recently been chosen to succeed founding Manchester International festival director Alex Poots, whose final festival will be delivered this summer. As always, it promises to cross art forms, boundaries and continents.
It is perhaps this internationalism that has become central to the idea of a nation’s theatre, the significant changes that have taken place over the last decade or more, and the urge to look outwards not inwards for inspiration and opportunities. As companies such as Live Theatre in Newcastle or Kneehigh in Cornwall have proved, local stories travel across county boundaries and national borders with ease. Theatre-makers in Scotland and Wales, too, are now far less likely to look to London for affirmation and opportunities and far more likely to look to Europe and beyond. That’s good for them, good for theatre and good for us all, wherever we live in the UK, because it keeps the debate alive about who we are, who we want to be and what home means to us.
