THE BOURGEOISIE AND BRITISH STIFF UPPER LIP STILL CONTROL THE THEATRE, JUST IN A NEW GUISE

The British theatre industry is averse to the imagination or theatre for entertainment’s sake. Producers seem to think that everyone wants to watch the same regurgitated storylines about teenagers’ mental health, failed relationships, and climate change. There is an obsession with portraying “real” stories. Stories that condense the magic of performance; that limit it to a narrow worldview devoid of expression. What this gets you is the same drivel set in a failing public school or a right-wing alcoholic who talks suspiciously like Nigel Farage, all seen over by people who don’t live in the real world but preach about its troubles. And I’m talking about the writers, too: either ancient and trying to stay relevant, or naïve Utopian idealists who think they know everything about the world because they have the time and wealth to “care”. Compassion is a product of leisure. A hobby for the rich to ease their own guilt and masquerade as the self-made man. It’s as though the old white women who run the theatres (as they predominantly are in my experience) think they’re doing society a favour by producing “real” stories by “real” people, so that they can pat themselves on the back for promoting diversity and wokeness. It’s yet another way for those in positions of power to stay relevant – by giving the people what they want. Except they’re not. Nobody asked for yet another tale about melting ice caps or potholes in the local town. I’m sure the audience would much rather watch something written by someone who has an imagination and the daring to think beyond the limitations of their dull life and this grey existence, to help the audience escape their own. It's as if these writers who kowtow to the producers’ “Saviour Act” are parodying their own experiences just to get funding. Do they not realise how limiting it is to always be defined by labels and one’s “real” stories? They do, because their plays spend hours telling us such, whilst paradoxically reinforcing such labels. I’m sure that if these producers got their heads out of their own pretentious backsides and promoted something original and creative against yet another story about Mary’s miscarriage (which can be a good storyline but not when it’s the entire existence of a production), nine out of ten of the audience are going to pick the first one, the one that excites them rather than makes them feel like they’ve gone to a church sermon read by Kier Starmer. But the producers won’t pick the first production because it has more than two characters and doesn’t concern itself with drowning polar bears or a closing laundromat. Look across the pond, however, and they’re fascinated by the bold and daring. I’m in the process of producing a play with a US company, a play that was refused to even have a read-through at a local theatre in England because it had more than two characters and dared to be ambitious – it would be ‘too much effort’ for them. If Shakespeare was writing today, none of his plays would be produced. That’s the reality of it. Too many characters. Too long. All that death, and crossing genres, and what? There’s ghosts now? Sorry, Mr. Shakespeare, this isn’t going to work. Perhaps that’s why Shakespeare’s popularity is indomitable because no-one else has ever been allowed to write plays of such a scale on a consistent basis. Not unless they’re going to write about Tony Blair or the Windrush generation. This crisis isn’t even to do with money as theatres often claim, “woe is me.” Because they are quite happy to waste thousands on some story about a crack addict who could have been a footballer if he done his homework on time. Wasting money on productions as “vanity” projects to prove their own empathy to those from lower backgrounds. I’m from a low socio-economic background. However, because I want to write stories with guts, with ambition, with scale, and an imagination, there is no place for me, or others like me. I am told to write “real” stories about my “hardship”. I don’t want to do that. It’s depressing, lame, and been done a thousand times before. What producers and Arts Council want is for you to stay in your lane; play the victim. Not to rise out and express yourself like a human being. They want a wounded animal. So, they reward the ordinary. It keeps people in check. No, this isn’t about money, it’s about control. Of industries “validating” hardship so that hardship can continue to exist. That’s how true societies survive, after all: they allow the opposition to express itself; for its subjects to acknowledge their repression, thereby proving that the society isn’t repressing, and satisfying the revolutionaries by allowing them to express themselves. As soon as you prevent protest, you give the protestors no place to expel their fury; they will genuinely turn on you. Control is about the illusion of free expression. The British theatre industry – producers, the Arts Council – therefore, allows people to moan and complain because they know that this will lead the fire to fizzling out, expelled; not culminate. This reinforces the stereotypes that people sought to destroy in the first place. It is about producers trying to save the world through the power of theatre. And that’s when theatre dies. No one who ever makes a difference sets out to do so. They write a story, and people read into it what they will. There are too many stories narrowed to the preachy topics of immigration, mental health, global warming, the inevitable rise of AI, teenage relationships, and growing up poor. There is nothing wrong with these topics as by-products of a story, but not as the central thesis. Not as the labels that determine whether your story is worth telling. As I said, the producers produce these plays to justify their own existence. To say: wow, this was a great piece of theatre because… It is another way to commodify those from less privileged backgrounds, and for those in power to make themselves seem caring and intellectual for “allowing” such drivel on the stage. The content might claim revolution, but it is constructed through the stale format of the British stiff upper lip drawing-room theatre, where a handful of characters talk and talk about their victimhood like some kind of shared therapy, and the same stiff upper lip people are in attendance, patting themselves on the back for watching and “enjoying” a story about people less privileged than them. And what’s worse, they buy into their own delusion.