Theatrical Fund Research Articles

THE CONTRIBUTING FACTOR THE LACK OF THEATRE FUNDING

This paper explores factors that influence theatre funding in Malaysia. It argues that as an indispensable resource, theatre funding is always inadequate. Financing from private or government initiatives has always been a topical and sensitive issue for government, associations, the corporate sector, donors and the local community. Research has found that funding is a major issue and problem faced by theatre production and activist. This research aimed to identify the factors that contribute to the lack of theatre funding. It is believed that strategic planning, financial management and marketing will contribute to financing based on the production goals. The research uses are qualitative, in nature and use interviews as its main information-gathering tools. Theatres should be directed to other sources of funding with appropriate strategies and approaches to fulfilling their mission.

Path Dependency in Theatre Funding

Estonian contemporary dance emerged in the early 1990s outside established theatre institutions. Since then, it has existed in a project-based format, which means that though dance artists can receive funding for preparing projects, there is no financial support for facilities needed for everyday practice outside or between the projects. The type of venues available for practicing contemporary dance has an impact on choreographic practice presented for the public, even if that dimension often remains invisible.Funding policy, like other policies, is greatly affected by the historical legacy of a particular policy (that is, path dependent), and the same can be claimed about choreographic practice. Therefore, in order to understand why a certain policy or practice prevails and is resistant to change even if it becomes problematic, it is necessary to look at the beginning of the path. In the present article, the history of theatre and dance funding in Estonia is taken as an example to discuss how that history affects the present in terms of choices by dance practitioners. Though Estonia is taken as an example, the situation is far from unique and therefore can serve as a case for analyzing similar situations in other countries.

“Genius Thus Munificently Employed!!!”: Philanthropy and Celebrity in the Theaters of Garrick and Siddons

The essay argues that David Garrick and Sarah Siddons—two of the most financially successful celebrities of their time—cultivated their parental public images in print and portrait culture by capitalizing on the level of their participation in benefits for actors and in the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund. By negotiating what I call the “philanthropic triad,” or the contradictory roles of beggar, miser, and benefactor, Garrick constructed his paternal benefaction along a public axis that promoted him as a “father and guardian” of the English stage and its actors. By contrast, Siddons played the role of maternal benefactress, largely rejecting the concept of supporting the public good and instead aligning herself with the private and domestic. In so doing, Siddons not only countered the sexually charged representations of actresses of the time, but also addressed the related question of what level of compensation actresses deserved to receive. This essay thus suggests that the cultural portrayal of benefit performances reveals the often-paradoxical reception of both philanthropy and celebrity, especially as it was inflected by gender, during the period.

A Bundle of Prologues (1777): The Unpublished Text of Garrick's Last Rehearsal Play

David Garrick's last dramatic composition was a curtain raiser featuring songs performed on 28 April 1777 (the year after his retirement) at the annual Drury Lane benefit for the Theatrical Fund for decayed actors. The piece is not mentioned in the modern edition or the standard biography, but it survives in manuscript in the Folger Shakespeare Library. Folger MS W.b. 461 is a scribal copy emended in at least three hands. Several of the additions and revisions are in Garrick's handwriting. The full text is printed here with textual apparatus, annotation identifying allusions and the performers, and a brief account of Garrick's late-life devotion to the charitable purposes of the Theatrical Fund.

The Arts Council Touring Franchise and English Political Theatre after 1986

The pressures of Thatcherism on theatre funding in the 'eighties were severe, but the early harshness was tempered by several factors. One was the positive influence of the Cork Report, particularly on touring and experimental theatre. Another, the authors believe, was a careful strategy of reallocation of funding to support creativity in English theatre, notably through the touring franchise scheme. Here, they analyze in detail the ways in which the English Arts Council operated the scheme in an attempt to revitalize aspects of English theatre from 1986 onwards, trace the change in the values of ‘political’ theatre over that period, and critically examine some received ideas in the light of the available evidence. Ian Brown is Dean of Arts and Professor of Theatre at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh, Rob Brannen is a Senior Lecturer in Drama at De Montfort University, Bedford. Douglas Brown is Assistant Director, Scottish Centre for Cultural Management and Policy, at Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh.

A Theatre of the Everyday: the Plays of Michel Vinaver

It has only been in the last few years that the plays of Michel Vinaver have begun to be discovered and produced in Britain. Yet he has been working as a playwright in his native France since 1955, and has become increasingly respected and widely produced there since overcoming a seven-year ‘writer's block’ in 1967. Here, David Bradby's introduction to Vinaver's dramaturgy is followed by a detailed analysis of one of his most recent plays, L'Emission de télévision, and this critical material is complemented by a chronology of Vinaver's career, excerpted statements by and about the writer – including an ‘auto-interview’ of Vinaver by Vinaver – and a bibliography. David Bradby is Professor of Drama and Head of the Department of Drama and Theatre Studies at Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London: he has published widely, especially on the French theatre, and his major study, Modern French Drama, 1940–1990, has recently appeared in a revised edition from Cambridge University Press. He is currently working on a study of Vinaver for the University of Michigan Press. Michel Vinaver's own assessment of the present state of French theatre funding was included in NTQ25 (1991).

Art Form or Platform? On Women and Playwriting

This is the second in a series of interviews with women who are involved, in various capacities, in feminist theatre today, whose career paths intersect and connect with the feminist movement and the feminist theatre movement, tracing developments and shifts in the feminist theory and practice of the past fifteen years. The first interview, in NTQ21, was with Gillian Hanna of Monstrous Regiment, and provided an update of a previously published interview as well as a discussion of contemporary work: its aim was to keep alive and accurate the current debate about British feminist theatre groups. This interview carries on the discourse between feminist theatres and their intended audiences by making available the views and opinions of one of Britain's leading young women playwrights, Charlotte Keatley, along with a detailed account of the origins of her 1989 Royal Court success, My Mother Said I Never Should. Charlotte Keatley was born in London in 1960, but has lived in Leeds and Manchester since she was nineteen. Her many plays include Underneath the Arndale (1982). Dressing for Dinner (1983–84), Citizens (BBC 4, 1987–88), and My Mother Said I Never Should (Contact Theatre, Manchester, 1987, and Royal Court Theatre, London, February 1989; Gaieté Theatre, Paris, September 1989, and European tour). She has been directing playwriting workshops for students while in Cambridge on a Junior Judish E. Wilson Fellowship, 1988–89, and is currently at work on her next plays. The interviewer, and compiler of this series, Lizbeth Goodman, is a New Yorker who is now a Scholar of St John's College, Cambridge, where she is preparing her doctoral thesis on feminist theatre since 1968, and completing a book on the politics of theatre funding.

Waiting for Spring to Come Again: Feminist Theatre, 1978 and 1989

Most of the heavily-quoted interviews available on feminist theatre are in serious need of updating. A current account is needed of ‘feminism and theatre’ as experienced by feminist theatre practitioners, and as perceived by feminist theatre students, critics, players and their audiences. To meet this need, NTQ plans a series of interviews with women involved in the British feminist theatre movement today, whose career paths trace developments and shifts in the feminist theory and practice of the past fifteen years. The first interview is with Gillian Hanna, who worked with the 7:84 Theatre Company and with Belt and Braces from 1971 to 1975, before co-founding the Monstrous Regiment feminist theatre group in 1975. Hanna worked exclusively within the Regiment from 1975 until 1981–82. and is one of the three original members who still actively participate in Regimental management, production, and performance, though she now works extensively outside the group as well, having acted in repertory at the Liverpool Everyman and in Newcastle, Sheffield and Derby. Recently, Hanna spent the best part of a year playing in The House of Bernardo Alba. which opened at the Lyric. Hammersmith, and ran in the West End, and in the Spring of 1989 she played in Caryl Churchill's Ice Cream at the Royal Court. Her acting credits include work in TV and film, and her interests extend to translation of playtexts from French and Italian: she translated Dario Fo's Elizabeth, and is currently on a commission to translate (and re-translate) the complete oeuvre of the one-woman plays of Franca Rame and Dario Fo. Three of the Rame/Fo plays – under the joint title A Common Woman – were recently produced at the Sheffield Crucible and at the Half Moon in London, for which performance Hanna won the 1989 Time Out ‘01 for London’ Award. Projects currently under way within the Regiment include an adaptation of a Marivaux play (The Colony), and possible plans to tour both A Common Woman and Beatrice. She is interviewed by Lizbeth Goodman, originally a New Yorker, and currently a junior member and scholar of St. John's College and a graduate researcher in the English Faculty of Cambridge University, where she is working on a doctoral thesis on feminist theatre since 1968, and a book on the politics of theatre funding.