Theatre company head quits in row
with Arts Council
The Independent, 12th
February 1993, David Lister
The Head of the English Shakespeare Company has resigned, accusing the Arts Council of breaking its promises over funding and attempting to exert artistic control.
Michael Pennington, the distinguished actor who was
joint founder and joint artistic director of the pioneering touring company,
announced his decision in an interview with The Independent, and said the
future of the award-winning company was now uncertain.
He also accused the Arts Council of going back on a
promise to give the company £600,000 over three years and now intending to fund
it project by project. He alleges that Arts Council officials demanded to know
casting details in advance of productions, and on one occasion an official
questioned a staging of Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’, saying it was not a very good
play.
The ESC has been one of the biggest stories in the
arts since Mr Pennington formed it with Michael Bogdanov in 1986. It has toured
Shakespeare and the classics around Britain selling out controversial
productions at regional theatres. It has taken Shakespeare to Africa and its
innovative education department recently helped inmates at Maidstone prison
mount a production of ‘The Tempest’.
Last week Compass Theatre, founded by the late Sir
Anthony Quayle, announced it was stopping touring after a dispute with the Arts
Council.
Mr Pennington said: “The Arts Council were against
us changing our programme to include middle scale venues, 800-seat theatres, in
addition to the big venues, even though we have given them 15 months’ notice.
“I am totally disillusioned and have taken myself
off the payroll. I am resigning. To add to their U-turn over money they were
also asking for casting details before confirming the grant. That amounts to
the Arts Council wanting to have casting approval. It’s absolutely outlandish.
We have never had this sort of problem with our private sponsor, IBM, but we
get it from a public body.
“It led me to ask them whether they had an approved
list of actors we can employ. I had a staggering conversation with an Arts
Council official about whether ‘The Seagull’ was a good play. He said it was an
old play and had been done before. The same is true of Shakespeare, of course. I
never dreamt the intrinsic merit of the play would actually be called into
question. They have also started asking for the ‘production concept’ in
advance. Don’t they understand that that develops in rehearsals?”
Ironically, the ESC’s Chairman is Luke Rittner, the
Art’s Council’s former secretary-general. An Arts Council spokeswoman said: “In
1991 we asked the ESC to submit a business plan for funding of £600,000 a year
for three years. However, we never received a satisfactory plan. Their status
as a three-year franchise client was never confirmed.”
She said that the ESC had always been funded as a
large-scale tourer as there were already a number of medium-range companies.
“We have reserved £250,000 for a 10-week tour of ‘Faust’. But we do want to
know who will be adapting it and who will be playing Faust. We want to know the
artistic level before we commit ourselves.”
On the matter of ‘The Seagull’, she said that the
council officers had queried whether a plan for a Chekhov festival “would be
appropriate. We have to take into account what else is on offer.”