Brave new art: a Guerilla Girls poster.
While all eyes are fixed on the opening of Equus this week, something far more interesting is happening in east London, the long term effects of which will still be apparent in British theatre long after Daniel Radcliffe's stage debut has been forgotten. On Thursday, in a unique one-off site-specific performance, the artist Anne Bean will be unwrapping Arts Admin's £6m development of Toynbee Studios, which forms part of the historic Toynbee Hall on Commercial Road.
If Arts Admin doesn't ring a bell, it should. Founded 27 years ago at Oval House by Judith Knight and Seonaid Stewart, it has gone on to support, administrate, produce and fund some of the most significant artists and projects of the last three decades. If I were ever asked to select my desert island shows they would certainly include Hesitate and Demonstrate's Goodnight Ladies, Impact's The Carrier Frequency, Graeme Miller's A Girl Skipping, and Fiona Templeton's You, The City, all pieces created with the support of Arts Admin.
Several generations of artists and companies owe their early or continued success to Arts Admin, including Mike Figgis, Forced Entertainment, DV8, Moti Roti, Station House Opera, Bobby Baker, Mem Morrison, Robin Deacon, Ursula Martinez, Stacy Makishi, Chris Goode and Lemn Sissay. Arts Admin has provided the support that has allowed artists to create work, tour it both here and abroad, and develop new work in a way that suits their own creative rhythm rather than finding themselves beholden to the timetables of funding bodies.
Thursday night's opening is significant because although bricks and mortar are just bricks and mortar, they can lend clout to an organisation. You only have to look at the way in theatre building-based companies tend to be ranked in greater esteem than those who tour or make work in found spaces. The unveiling of Toynbee Studios, which includes a spectacular rooftop dance studio, four rehearsal spaces, office space and a restored 280-seat theatre, means live art and performance has a home and focus point in London that it hasn't had since the heady days of the ICA in the mid to late eighties, under the inspired leadership of Michael Morris and Lois Keidan. Arts Admin certainly won't be programming its theatre space 52 weeks a year, but it will provide a highly visible platform that begins on Friday with a rare British performance by Guerrilla Girls On Tour and which will also include a major season of new and retrospective work from British artists in June.
Because it works behind the scenes, and doesn't go round blowing its own trumpet, Arts Admin tends to go unsung, but just as the BAC (still, in case you've been wondering, quietly negotiating with Wandsworth Council against proposed budget cuts and exploring imaginative ways to protect its future) has its tentacles everywhere in British theatre, so does Arts Admin. With the hugely exciting and ambitious Spill Festival about to be unleashed at venues all over London and at a time when Bobby Baker can play the main stage at the Barbican, DV8 sell out at the National and a show like Katie Mitchell's The Waves pop up at the National or An Oak Tree at Soho, it is clear that the traditionally icy relationship between the experimental and the mainstream is melting faster than the polar ice cap. This welcome thawing is due in no small measure to the efforts of Judith Knight, Gill Lloyd and their Arts Admin team. We should cherish them, because without them Britain's theatre landscape would be a much duller place.
