Participation is very much the buzzword in theatre at the moment - indeed, for many people, it is their route into theatre, whether as practitioners or as enthusiastic and adventurous audiences. The number of funded projects involving the community is on the rise. But what happens if the community decide that they don't actually want to take part?
The people of Brighton appear to have voted with their feet when it comes to Happy Together, a collaboration between The Shout and Protein Dance Theatre, which was one of the flagship projects of this year's Brighton Festival, and due to open on May 15. The project has now been postponed (with no new proposed dates) after it proved impossible to recruit the 200-strong community choir needed to act as the chorus of hens and stags on a night out in Brighton. Following rehearsals over the four weekends in the run up to the opening, it became apparent last weekend that there were just not sufficient numbers necessary to sustain the project. Men in particular were reluctant to take part.
The cancellation at such a late stage is an embarrassment for the Brighton festival, which commissioned the project and provided funding to the tune of £30,000, as well as producers the Shout and the south-east branch of Arts Council England (who provided £74,303 of funding to the Shout via grants for the arts). If the project does eventually get off the ground, some of this money may yet be retrieved.
But while it is clear that funding bodies and organisations often see participatory projects as a feather in their cap, the collapse of Happy Together is a reminder not only that such projects need to be carefully managed, but that it's short-sighted, even arrogant, to believe that people will be queuing up to take part. Indeed one of the questions that perhaps needs to be asked of all projects that put non-artists at their heart is who gets the greatest benefit. Is it the artists (who may be able to work on a scale that would be impossible without community involvement), or the community (who are giving up their precious time for rehearsals and performances when they could be watching Dr Who)?
Happy Together sounded fantastic. I understand that both the Shout and Protein Dance remain committed to the project and I do hope that it does eventually get staged, but its cancellation is a reminder that the rush to conceive and fund participatory projects needs to be tempered by realism. They also need to be led by those who have real experience of such projects, and who make sure from the outset that the community are being offered something they genuinely want to participate in.
• The Guardian is a media partner of the Brighton festival
