Skills for Theatre (Communications Committee Report)

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank both the noble Lords, who I would like to call my noble friends although I cannot do so formally, who have chaired the committee during my time on it. They have set out the issues in this report so comprehensively and lucidly that, frankly, there is little left for the rest of us to say—but it ain’t gonna stop us, is it?

I start by declaring my interests. Currently I am deputy chair of the Royal Shakespeare Company. I am a former executive director of the Royal National Theatre, and I have form going back many decades, both as an employee and a board member, of many other theatrical enterprises. I concede that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, is right that I know a thing or two about the theatre. Whether what I know is still relevant will emerge as my remarks go on.

I endorse everything that both the noble Lords, Lord Gilbert and Lord Best, have said. I particularly light upon the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, on access, which I am not going to concentrate on but we have to take special note of. It is becoming more difficult for people to access the kinds of jobs that the theatre offers. As he said, that is partly because not enough is known about them, but also because getting into them requires a kind of determination and, sometimes, some economic support that is not open to everybody. We must try to do something about that.

I want to concentrate on the theatre not just as a place within which certain kinds of skills are needed, but a place or places within which skills are developed. That goes to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, said somebody would raise—and they will—on resources. How we support theatre as an innovator and developer of skills, as well as how much it needs the skills it can usefully take from other areas, is not very much discussed.

I make it clear that I am completely and unashamedly parti pris in this debate, because theatre has been my entire professional life and remains a continuing source of delight to me. This is not something everybody who has spent their professional life in a particular area can always say. Perhaps I do not need to say this in this company, but there is a kind of spit-and-sawdust residue of an old language about the theatre that still hangs about, and suggests that theatre is, as it were, the entertainment equivalent of coracle-making—a bit old-fashioned and not very useful and not very many people are interested in it. Actually, the theatre industry today is highly sophisticated and extremely wide-ranging in the skills that it uses and develops, including some cutting-edge digital technologies that are being developed.

I have to talk quite a lot about the Royal Shakespeare Company, I am afraid, because that is where I currently get most of my experience in the theatre. Noble Lords may have seen a production of “The Tempest” last year, in which Simon Russell Beale played Prospero, which used very sophisticated digital technology to create avatar figures for some of the leading characters. That came about as a result of a collaboration between the RSC and leading technology companies that wanted to work with the theatre, including Imaginarium, the company that developed all the technology for the “Lord of the Rings” films, particularly for the wonderful character of Gollum. Those of you who have seen the films will remember it.

The business of putting on a stage production has always been complicated, and it is very much more complicated now than it used to be. What lies behind the performances that we see as audience members is a network of very highly trained professionals, including the directors, who create the work with the performers, but also the stage managers, who run the shows, technicians operating lights and sound and changing the stage picture in a variety of ways—and, behind them, producers, who know about raising and managing budgets. That is not a glamorous activity, and certainly not one that makes them popular; they also know about ensuring through marketing how to get audiences through the door. It is also true that most theatre companies these days do far more than just present shows. They are involved in education, in community work and sometimes in healthcare. When you put all that together, you have a very rich mix of very diverse skills.

I just want to give noble Lords a couple of examples, mostly from the Royal Shakespeare Company, to point out what I mean. At the moment, the RSC has a project called Stitch in Time to refurbish its costume workshops, which sounds like people sitting and making tiny stitches under awful lighting. Indeed, that is exactly what it has been like at the RSC for quite a long time, because the facilities have not been great. The project is to create much better facilities for these very highly skilled people, who make costumes using the skills of cutting and sewing, which are certainly traditional but are diminishing. Very few people have them any more, but they are highly necessary within the theatre. The noble Lord, Lord Best, mentioned that they are also evolving very sophisticated ways in which to create wigs, and there is make-up and all that stuff. Those are old-fashioned skills being done in new and important ways. The Stitch in Time project is creating within a heritage building new facilities for people to do those old skills even better. To do that, they will need the skills of a highly trained building industry that knows how to work with heritage buildings. In that one little project, you have a range of skills that the theatre requires and draws upon and is developing.

The second thing I want to mention, which also concerns the RSC, is a partnership that it has recently developed with a pioneering technology company called Magic Leap. This partnership, which was announced recently, will explore creative technologies to make theatre—specifically theatre using special computing. I am no expert in this area, but I saw some of what is involved and it is quite extraordinary. For example, you can scan your ticket across your mobile phone, or whatever, and you will get 3D images of the show concerned, or the programme. This is all in development, but it is being developed in an almost SME way within the RSC—it has managed to create a new partnership to take these technologies forward for the benefit of the theatre and more widely.

The last kind of skill that I want to mention is perhaps slightly different; I will not point to the RSC so much as far as it is concerned. This is the evolution within theatres of social skills—the kinds of skills young people need to become effective and rounded citizens. As it happens, the RSC has an education department and does an awful lot of work in that area, including the creation quite recently of a company of young performers drawn mostly from people who would not normally get access to this kind of training. They will present some of their first work quite soon.

I also want to point to the work of a company that I am not formally connected with but am very impressed by—Chickenshed, based in north London, which I have mentioned to your Lordships before. It works with young people of all abilities, from an early age. Some go all the way through their time at Chickenshed and pick up a BTEC, or sometimes a degree-level qualification, as part of their work there. Through the process, they acquire skills that they might find hard to acquire by other means. Many of these people—not, I have to say, including my granddaughter, who also goes to Chickenshed—are people who would not normally find themselves working in the theatre. It is important that this kind of work, which is helping to develop the well-being of a lot of the people involved, is remembered and celebrated.

I am in danger of going on too long and I do not want to do that. I will finish by saying that theatre can, and does, make a very extensive contribution to our social and economic culture, as has already been said by my two chairpeople. This is why theatre needs a workforce of wide-ranging creative and technical ability, and why the current education system, and the policy that lies behind it, is in danger of letting the theatre down. The system does not encourage schools or other educational institutions to see and understand the opportunities available in this kind of environment. In my view, it focuses much too narrowly on examination results and does not see the need to join up various kinds of educational discipline to create people whose education experience equips them for a new world, within which they will be required to be many different kinds of person—all within the same person.

This also applies to apprenticeship schemes, as the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, said. The Magic Leap partnership with the RSC creates fellowships to bring two young people on board to learn these skills. I hope the Government are listening on this subject. They are not hearing it for the first time. I hope that, by the end of this debate, the Minister will be able to give us a little encouragement that they have taken on board how important this is.

I am sorry to go on, but I have one last thing that I want to say to the Minister. He will not be ready for it and I am sorry that I have not had a chance to tell him about it. There is a problem that the theatre industry is now facing and it concerns the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Energy. How boring does that sound? However, it has the potential to have a devastating—I use that word advisedly—impact on one of the most creative aspects of theatre, which is lighting. I see the Minister nodding, so I will not take up the Committee’s time by explaining it. I simply say to him that if he is not able to give the Committee an answer today about how the Government intend to prevent this very damaging initiative going forward—or indeed to tell the noble Lord, Lord Grade, when he asks a Question about it in a couple of weeks’ time—can he please consult his colleagues and write to us?

In the meantime, I thank everybody who has been involved in the committee’s report and I apologise for taking so much time to say what I have said.