We begin with Aleks Sierz, who is mulling over the cuts. And he's impressed with this Guardian piece by the playwright Fin Kennedy, who explores the diverse and unusual ways artists can fund their work – such as by taking up a residency in a school or hospital. Sierz suggests that "there is still room for more of this lateral thinking: after all, a resident playwright could fulfil a similar function to that of a resident poet, and don't big corporations have plenty of those? The most delicious irony of all would be to become a resident playwright in a major bank."
The idea of a playwright-saboteur wearing a sharp suit and carrying a briefcase full of subversive ideas into the heart of the square mile is fun. Though one would have to hope that they could resist the lure of cash and a shiny office.
Elsewhere on the blogs, the Playgoer is engaging in a touch of schadenfruede in response to this article about an off-Broadway production of Dracula. The producers' failure to pay the costume designer meant some of the costumes where confiscated just before the show went up, forcing the actors to perform in their "street clothes".
On top of this, an unpaid fight director asked those same actors not to perform any of the fights he had choreographed – including, erm, the bit where Dracula gets staked at the end. If you want to know what happens when funding runs out, take this as a cautionary tale.
Finally, if you're in any doubt about the importance theatre can have in a culture, just take a look at the situation in Egypt. Tahrir Square has been filled with protestors for days, and a friend of mine who is out there, the actor Khalid Abdalla, says they are using drama as a way of communicating.
He tweets: "Forum theatre in the square is spilling into debate w/ soldiers, poetry & song. Surreal. Brecht makes sense." Theatre may not be able to change the world, perhaps, but sometimes it seems to help.
