The Stage

Securing our legacy - the future of young people’s theatre

Published Friday 8 October 2010 at 17:39 by Miranda Thain

Miranda Thain, creative producer of Theatre Hullabaloo, says theatre aimed at young audiences must not rest on its laurels, especially in these austere times, but needs to look to restructuring and reinvention

Last week Stuart Mullins, creative director of Theatre Is…, gave his vision of a brighter future in the way we create theatre for young audiences. His call for leadership in the sector is timely, but it is important to turn a critical eye on the achievements made during a long period of relatively high investment.

Theatre for young audiences is at an interesting crossroads. Following more than a decade of higher levels of resources and a political zeitgeist that dared to dally with the idea of “cultural entitlement” for the young, we face a new reality. For those of us who are privileged enough to create theatre for young audiences and see its impact in schools and theatres every day, Philip Pullman’s assertion that it “feeds the heart, nourishes the soul and enlarges the spirit” is undeniable. With a political context preoccupied with austerity and the power of market forces, the vital space in childhood that gives us room to imagine might be considered an expensive luxury we cannot afford.

A number of tenacious and talented artists have always created excellent work for young audiences, but to discuss the best ways to move forward, we must face up to the fact that the experience of theatre for most children and young people remains pedestrian. This is largely owing to a mass of companies seeing commercial opportunities in schools and meeting them with low-rent didacticism or panto. However, companies receiving Arts Council England support must also recognise that our work has often been limited by a lack of ambition and willingness to demand more from our audiences.

To compound the problem, the excellent work that is created often stands in isolation without support to help develop it and enable it to tour. In Scotland, the best work is kept in repertory, supported by structures to develop its artists and given platforms on which to be seen internationally.

We in England don’t have the same opportunities to use our best productions to advocate the value of our work. Unless we address this, we will struggle to dispel what Roger Lang, ex-Independent Theatre Council young people’s officer, describes as “the perception that, TYA consists of a couple of actors turning up in a small van and performing on a sparse set that looks as if it’s been run up by their auntie”. This perception threatens to marginalise a whole movement in a tough funding climate.

Policy shifts mean the publicly-funded sector will soon be reduced and forced to reinvent itself. It is time to look at structural changes within the sector which will protect the legacy of the best work created by increased investment. A new landscape will undoubtedly offer new opportunities. We must position ourselves to seize these opportunities, and defend children and young people’s rights to theatre experiences of quality. Via a coherent dialogue, both with policy makers and the media, we can guard against ghettoisation.

Great art for our youngest audiences means we must continue to drive up the quality and ambition of the work, and distance ourselves from a past often characterised by under-resourcing and didacticism. Our call on the public purse depends greatly on maintaining and improving the quality of the work made and the aesthetic value for its audience.

We must develop a critical dialogue and peer assessment that reaches beyond the TYA sector, in order to measure ourselves against the best. This will create evidence for the good and support tough decisions about the not so good.

From the new Unicorn Theatre to the growth of theatre for early years and some exceptional companies which tour tirelessly and export their best abroad, we have much to be proud of - but we must now build on these successes.

Our main limitation is the lack of strategic overview when it comes to opportunities for artists wanting to develop their practice. Where there are pockets of interesting activity - for example, Half Moon’s Exchange For Change, Takeoff Festival or Rose Bruford’s new TYA masters course - these tend to be developed and promoted by individual organisations rather than situated within a wider strategy.

So a bright new future would include proper investment at a strategic level in beacon organisations that can develop and nurture new talent and share that learning across partner organisations. Brokering of opportunities for work to be seen by international colleagues and a funding imperative for organisations to look outward in terms of artist development and advocacy, will improve the quality of work available to young audiences. A dose of realism about how we continue to extend audience reach on fewer resources needs to be swallowed and funders should recognise that novelty must more often be relegated below quality, supporting artists to redevelop and re-tour ambitious work to maximise return on investment.

Galvanising strategic action based on reduced resources will mean tough choices, but a refusal to adapt will deprive a generation of young people from their entitlement to excellent theatre made for, by and with them. We, who are responsible for providing those opportunities, have everything to play for.

Miranda Thain is creative producer of Theatre Hullabaloo, the north-east’s specialist producer of theatre for young audiences, www.theatrehullabaloo.org.uk