STUDIO/2ND AUDITORIUM STRATFORD 1974

Here follows a brief outline of thinking so far.

There is one significant omission – no mention of budget. Not knowing what money is available I’ve worked on the assumption that there will be very little. What I presume exists is the following:

1) An artistic director
2) An administrative secretary/administrator
3) Actors of RSC already on salary with limited availability
4) Stage management of RSC already on salary with limited availability
5) Directors, assistant directors, designers – ditto
6) A building licensed for public performances with a skeleton lighting and sound equipment i.e. the Studio as it exists.

If there is any money, I believe, it should be spent on one or more of the following:

a) Additional salaries – ie. Separate Stage Management Team, Researcher, extra actors with particular qualifications.
b) Financing of more ambitious projects in terms of numbers of actors, outside directors and writers.
c) Capital investment in equipment
d) Touring outside Stratford with any project at all.

As a point of principle, I believe the projects themselves should be done on a shoe string budget £50 - £150 for sets costumes propos everything.

T.G.R. [Theatregoround] started to go off the rails when as much money was spent on one show as was the annual touring budget of the Freehold.

So we start just with what exists: which is considerable.

But without postmorteming the whole history of outside work at the RSC it is necessary to clear up one recent area.

STUDIO AND UR-STUDIO

Last year, 1971, there existed a confusion as to what the studio theatre was for. Was it:

a) To provide parts for underparted or junior actors.
b) Allow assistant directors to do projects that interested them.
c) Put on new plays as try-out for writers the RSC was interested in.
d) Be more experimental than was possible in the main auditorium.
e) Build up a new audience in the way the old TGR used to.
f) Serve the community.

Of the two projects done, although one was successful and the other not - significantly neither fulfilled criteria c) e) or f). The choice of the two Ghelderode, in my mind, artistically and socially disastrous was inevitable if the Studio was to be run on a 'do your own thing' policy. I suggest we return to a definition of Studio work that existed before.

INTERNAL STUDIO

Projects of any kind initiated by actors, assistant directors, or dressers which are set up internally, put on through the year in any of the Company's performing spaces for Company, directorate and friends. These should not be contractual obligations for anyone - stage management, actors, directors. Under the new half-year scheme, there will presumably be no fallow period at the end of a Stratford season during which a Stratford Studio used to be organized by the Company Director. Consequently there no longer exists any need for this Studio to be formally set up at all. Let everyone do their own private scheme. If and it's a big if something emerges which you think is worth putting on for a public performance - the system for the 2nd Auditorium ought to be flexible enough to allow it to happen.

2ND AUDITORIUM

The crucial distinction between STUDIO AND 2ND AUDITORIUM work is that the first is internal and the second external. So the starting points for the second auditorium are practical as well as ideological. The RSC is financed by the whole of society. We know why we play to an audience largely drawn from the upper and middle classes. We have to broaden that audience [for] artistic as well as social reasons.

We know it'll take years. Unless we make the attempt - classical theatre will become like Glyndenbourne [sic]. What we can do is determined by two factors:

1) What the RSC possesses in terms of experience, interest, character and resources.
2) What could be the audience for a second auditorium in Stratford.

THE COMPANY

We're a classical company first and foremost, although we do new work at the Aldwych and The Place. We have a semi-permanent group of actors many of whom have reached the RSC after a long struggle up the ladder. The availability of all the actors for the 2nd Auditorium is conditioned by their prior commitment to Shakespeare parts. All this defined the work that is possible.

a) RSC actors don't join the Co. at the moment because of their political convictions. The pure proselytising spirit that moves the 7:84 actors to tour the Highlands on £15 a week in appalling conditions is not something we possess.
b) RSC actors don't have the qualifications to play on a regular basis to under 13 year olds. All the new development in Theatre in Education have started from groups of actor/teachers. It would be silly for us to attempt this form of TIE work.
c) RSC actors are not used to working in the way most fringe groups work. Collective work methods, physical expertise a la Artaud are areas of theatre a lot of our actors haven't experienced.

BUT

The Company's strength as actors is:

a) Knowledge of and experience with working on complex classical texts.
b) Attention to plays meaning something as well as entertaining.
c) Interest in various forms of more experimental writing, acting and play presentation if the latter is seen as developing and not destroying their existing skills.
d) A feeling, however inarticulately voiced that as a group of performers they do not have any organic link with their audience.

The Company's strength as organisation is:

a) The amount of expert advice and talent around in Associate group.
b) Experience of earlier schemes in directors, actors, administrators.
c) Existence of property, and costumes of previous shows that far exceeds what any other theatre has it [sic] its disposal.

The Second Auditorium should fulfil the lives of actors in the Company but this must not be its reason for existence, rather a side effect of its primary concern - its development of a wider audience for classical theatre.

AUDIENCE POTENTIAL FOR 2nd AUDITORIUM

An odd situation. We face head-on the contradiction of a sleepy Midlands market-town that has become a shrine for international theatre. What are our possible audiences if one draws a circle round Stratford to include Leamington, Warwick but excludes Birmingham?

a) STRATFORD ITSELF AND ITS IMMEDIATE NEIGHBOURS.

Notoriously hostile to us. At the moment Stratford is a halfway between being a dormitory area for upper-class commutors [sic] to Coventry, Rugby and Birmingham and a market-town existing as a centre for an agricultural region. No industrial working-class, the small working-class population of Stratford works in the service industries; shops and restaurants. In an[d] outside Stratford there is section of the community who work on the labour-intensive forms of horticulture, particularly towards Evesham. In addition to farmers and landowners, there is a significant section of industrial managerial class. Stratford itself therefore poses an enormous problem - it is not a long-established rich community in the way that Stoke or Newcastle is. It is also TINY.

b) SCHOOLKIDS AND STUDENTS IN THE AREA.

Within 12 miles of Stratford there are fifteen schools. Within 20 there are thirty nine. (I have excluded primary schools). There are Further Education Colleges in Stratford, Warwick, Rugby and Coventry; teacher training colleges, in Worcester and Leaming and the University of Warwick. There is a big poly in Coventry and an art school. The area though has no County Drama Adviser, and apart from around Coventry and what TGR did, has no history of specialised drama work in secondary schools.

c) VISITORS TO STRATFORD.

1 million to see Shakespeare's Birthplace. Because of the iniquitous travel situation many visitors to the theatre have to spend the night. Potentially they are the biggest audience available to any second auditorium in England.

COMMENTS ON AUDIENCE

1) Travel is vital. Coventry car-workers couldn't come to Stratford anyway because of the difficulty of getting back.
2) There is no young well-heeled professional audience that would support a fringe type theatre.
3) There is no rich working class heritage of folk lore etc. It's all 35 miles up the road in Birmingham.
4) Our great link with our local audience and our student audience and our international audience takes us right back to the beginning: Shakespeare.

Here follows a list of possible projects to try to capture the interest of various groupings of the above potential audience in a second auditorium. In additional [sic] to the projects, I suggest that other activities happen which will be listed later.

PROJECTS

1) For audience a) and c)
THE SHAKESPEARE INDUSTRY: A documentary with songs dances jokes about what's happened to one town since the world's most important writer was born here. 4 to 6 actors.

2) For audience a) b) and c)
EDWARD BOND'S BINGO: Should obviously be done at Stratford end rather than Aldwych if you get hold of it.

3) For SCHOOLKIDS of audience b) only
Version of O or A level Shakespeare text. Sections of a play would be worked on by actors and director, presented with linking narrative format used as basis for discussion of play with kids. Essential this work is planned with local teachers and is performed to no more than 30 kids at a time. 6 actors (AT MOST).

4) For SCHOOLKIDS of audience b) only.
Dramatic use of poetry: i.e. presentation of THE WASTE LAND as a play. Again this should be planned with local teachers in terms of their needs as well as our answers.

5) For SCHOOLKIDS of audience b) only.
HISTORY DOCUMENTARY written, researched and performed by small group of actors and director on one aspect of local history.
Topics to be considered could include.
a) THE COMING OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Building of of Canals, development of new cities i.e. Birmingham (Grand Union Canal goes straight through Stratford).
b) THE GROWTH OF TRADE UNIONISM Joseph Arch found the Agricultural Workers Union under an oak tree in Warwickshire.
c) ENGLAND IN CIVIL WAR Worcester explosion, Edgehill etc etc.

6) For STUDENTS of audience b) and c)
One production of an Elizabeth or Jacobean minor classic. 8 to 10 actors only and a really cut price production. Accent on actor audience contact, commnication of that play's meaning could and should lead to redefinitions of how we tackle Shakespeare аnуwау. Suggested plays could include Epicoene, The Old Wives Tale, The Changeling, Perkin Warbeck Should be done in HIGH SEASON.

Of these above projects only a few could probably be done with available resources of time, money and people. I believe though that some attempt to present a programme that covers that range of audience must be done and that the schools and students work must stem from consultation with teachers in the area and not be imposed from above. In addition to the above projects the life of the 2nd Auditorium in one year could include:

REGULAR DISCUSSION/WORKSHOP/SEMINAR LECTURES for Schoolkids and Students. Again the proviso should be that we deal with the over 13 age range and could include some of the following.

1) Fortnightly lectures for schools and colleges on aspects of the RSC work done on a rota syste by actors, directors, designers, composers, associated teachers.
2) Occasional seminars on current Stratford shows with director and some actors and a smallish group of elder kids and students.
3) Regular seminar or Workshop work on Shakespeare done by the director of the 2nd Auditorium in consultation with local teachers.
4) Theatre courses for local teachers in summer holidays.

If the demand existed for local workshop classes on drama in general it should be the responsibility of the artistic director to set these up and run them.

THEATRE FESTIVAL in the HIGH SEASON

During the proposed July/August Company changeover a Festival of Theatre could be organised from the second auditorium to play in the second auditorium, local halls, the gardens, (Council permitting), whatever spaces were available. Various groups could be approached, reps, fringe groups and Universities with a view to them bringing a production to Stratford minimum of a week, maxinim of a fortnight. Again I feel the projects chosen should for the first year not include modern plays - but concentrate on new looks at the classics, e.g. Marowitz's the Shrew, Half Moon's Chase Maid, etc. The above is some random thoughts to kick off with.

If your agreements with the above are more than your disagreements I think the following should happen.

a) Tell me what your disagreements are.
b) Talk about the budget that exists.
c) Let me work on a properly researched set of suggestions which would involve me talking to people in theatres around the area, watching some of their work, digging deeper into the Arts Council reports, maybe having an informal teach-in with yourself and other interested parties on the subject of the second auditorium.