A home for theatre

Angus MacKechnie’s piece, Walls, doors and thresholds, (AP, 2 March 2016) ended on an optimistic note, and I am in complete agreement with his point that to protect the future of our theatres we must share our buildings with the communities that surround them, and reach out even further.

The Theatres Trust celebrates its 40th Anniversary this year and we’re engaging in a national conversation about the kinds of theatre buildings we need to ensure live theatre flourishes for the next 40 years. We applaud the work that those former repertory theatres are doing to their buildings – with the help of Lottery funds, our producing theatres are making physical changes that will open them up to new audiences and new opportunities.

Coincidently, Angus’s article came out the same week that David Jubb published a piece on Battersea Arts Centre’s (BAC’s) work to its Grand Hall following last year’s fire and how this unfortunate event helped him to think about the role BAC plays going forward. Many other theatres are also reinventing their relationships with communities – as we found out at our Community Theatres conference in 2014. Leatherhead’s Thorndike Theatre, far from being abandoned, is open for business because its local community took on its ownership and are giving it a new lease of life.

The vision of the ‘Housing the Arts’ report in the 1960s may not have quite turned out the way everyone intended, but in the main the ‘old’ new theatres of the ‘60s and ‘70s are now part of a very valuable stock of theatres across the country, which many communities are fighting to keep open as local authority cuts start to bite. It’s now up to us all to think about what happens next to these buildings, the role they’ll play, and the new buildings we need to create. And it’s important to do this if we’re to ensure live theatre continues to have a home it can call its own and has a fighting chance of thriving over the next 40 years.

Ms Mhora Samuel, Director, Theatres Trust.