The Stage

Venues face political pressure from funders, says Behzti team

Published Tuesday 24 May 2005 at 14:15 by Jeremy Austin

Venues are facing increasing political pressure from their funders to pull work likely to be controversial from their programmes, delegates to Theatre 2005 revealed at a breakout session entitled How to Preserve Freedom of Speech.

The panel of Janet Steel from Kali Theatre and Stuart Rogers and Jonathan Church from Birmingham Rep all presented controversial play Behzti, which sparked violent religious protest in Birmingham. Church referred to “sinister” party politics that saw some council representatives condemning the protests publicly, but privately encouraging the Sikh community to picket the theatre. He felt pressure continued even after the play was pulled.

“The Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition announced it wasn’t to give any inflationary rise to the arts organisation and it was hard to feel that there wasn’t a degree of punishment. It has been overturned,” he added.

One representative of the arts council in the Midlands said that she had received a call from a nearby local authority asking whether Arts Council England had any requirement in its funding agreements that work should not be undertaken which causes religious offence. She replied that the organisation imposed no such rule.

Panellist Peter Ireson from Derby Assembly Rooms said that his decision to pull Jerry Springer - the Opera from his schedules was a pragmatic, political decision. He did not want to cause controversy close to an election and perhaps see his funding agreement affected. Giles Croft, from nearby Nottingham Playhouse, said that while this was not an issue that affected his venue, some authorities were moving in a worrying direction.

“Almost the most dangerous things that seem to be coming up is the degree of political involvement in the programming of our theatres,” he said.

While it was agreed that arts organisations are facing censorship issues from both religious and political communities, there was a rallying cry to carry on with risk-taking and controversial work as a way of preserving freedom of speech.

Said Church: “We would encourage everyone in the community to keep taking these risks and use this as a way to keep discussing these issues and of pushing work forward.”

But there was also a feeling that while audience development schemes were bringing new communities to the theatre, these new communities did not always understand the nature of theatre and the nature of fiction. An increased volume of work, many delegates argued, would prevent communities from being disenfranchised as they would see a more complete picture of their cultures on stage.

Rogers added: “The way to stop this is to do more of it. Muslims won’t react the same way because they see themselves better, more widely represented on stage.”