Margate theatre staff axed in bid to save venue

Published Tuesday 13 March 2007 at 15:55 by Alistair Smith

Margate Theatre Royal is to be relaunched this September as a community-focussed venue with reduced commercial programming, in a move which will see all of its current staff made redundant.

The venue’s funders - Thanet District Council, Kent County Council, Arts Council England and the East Kent Partnership - have supplied the struggling theatre with a rescue package, including increased subsidy of £210,000 in the first year. However, as part of the deal, the current team, including long-standing general manager Michael Wheatley-Ward, will be axed and the venue’s programming will be changed to include more participatory and education work, as well as music, dance and film.

Chairman of the Theatre Royal Trust Alistair Hunter explained that prior to the offer of increased funding, the venue had been heading for insolvency. He added: “We had reached the point that despite rising audiences we couldn’t survive. The funders concluded that they couldn’t justify stepping up their support unless the theatre changed direction. We would have preferred to stick with the commercial box office programme, but it was made clear that they would only give us the money if changes were made and our priority was to safeguard the theatre.

“The money coming in is tied to a definite programme and we have no choice in that. It’s alright if the programme works. For us, we’ve had to balance a lot of considerations.”

Hunter explained that the building itself, which dates back to 1787 and was remodelled in 1874 by JT Robinson, who designed London’s Old Vic Theatre, needed millions of pounds of work and that the new direction might prove the best way to secure support for that from other funding bodies.

He added that he and the rest of the board “hugely regretted” that Wheatley-Ward and his team had been made redundant but that it was part of the overall deal that had been offered to them.

Wheatley-Ward, however, said that he felt he could have continued to run the venue with its current commercial programme and a lower level of subsidy, rather than going down what he called “the arts council route”. “They seem to want to make all these seasonal theatres into arts centres,” he said. “I’ve put in 16 years of hard work to turn around a derelict theatre and then they tell you ‘thank you, but goodbye’. We’re going to be made redundant and we’ve been advised that the new jobs won’t be offered to us.”

It is understood that when the Theatre Royal reopens in September after a five-month closure period, it will be run by a reduced team of just two full-time and two part-time staff and that theatre programming for the venue will be handled by the nearby Marlowe Theatre in Canterbury. In the meantime, Robert Sanderson, former director of Cambridge Corn Exchange, has been brought in to oversee the planned changes during the closure period, which begins in April.