The Stage

ACE in talks with unnamed party to fund Springer tour

Published Tuesday 16 August 2005 at 16:15

Officials at Arts Council England are in talks with an unnamed third party to help fund a national tour of Jerry Springer - the Opera, after turning down an initial bid from its producer Avalon on the grounds that the application was “too commercial”.

ACE theatre director Nicola Thorold said that she stood by the decision not to fund initial proposals for a tour, because a good enough case had not been made that it would be unable to proceed without financial support. However, she said the council was in the early stages of talks with another party wishing to tour the show and might offer funding for an audience development programme. She also rejected claims that funding had been ‘pulled’ due to pressure from religious groups.

She added: “I’m not clear why all this has blown up. The tour hasn’t been cancelled, at least the venues don’t think it has been cancelled. It’s also unusual for ACE to fund commercial shows. We only do it when the level of risk taken by the producer is exceptional.

“We think it is a very important show, which is why we looked at the application carefully, but we didn’t feel it showed a significant level of risk and so we didn’t think we could subsidise it.”

However, producer Jon Thoday rejected claims that proposals for the tour were too commercial. While he had originally intended a 36-week tour, which would have been able to support itself, protests from pressure group Christian Voice persuaded several venues to pull out and it has now been reduced to 22 weeks.

Thoday believes that because of this, the project is no longer self-sustainable and requires public subsidy. He explained: “That reduction made it uneconomic. We wouldn’t have made the application otherwise. We only went to ACE because of what had happened with Christian Voice.

“To take such a big musical on tour and only play 22 weeks - no-one would say that was commercial. Also, to raise private investment when you have protests from pressure groups is very difficult. We want this to be shown in the regions because it would be a shame to let Christian Voice win and also because it will encourage young people to go to the theatre.”

He added that unless further funding was found by the beginning of September, the tour would almost certainly have to be cancelled.