Appointing producers to run theatres is different to getting bureaucrats or accountants to

Appointing producers to run theatres is different to getting bureaucrats or accountants to run theatres.To step into the political arena for a moment: in the theatre, as in so many areas of British society, there is a sense in which everybody is marking time, longing for change. I’ve always thought that running a theatre had to be a partnership with my chief executive. That is the law of gravity.” You cannot say there isn’t a distinct identity to the work of the National Theatre; it’s hard to quantify or describe, but it’s light-years away from the aims of the RSC, which is a classically- based theatre company, even though we may share directors and actors.What is your response to the tendency to appoint administrators rather than artists to run theatres and other artistic institutions?You cannot work in the theatre without thinking about your materials, and that includes large numbers of people, a building and sums of money. And no amount of money or conditions will guarantee that you get good plays; as I have already said, talent is as unpredictable as the sunspots. You can only have a permanent company in a theatre if all the members are willing to accept the parts they are asked to. Actors are restless, they love the possibility of a new life waiting around the corner.

My life would be much easier if they would agree to play the parts I allocate to them The same is true of directors. In today’s climate of opportunity there are many distractions available to them nationally and internationally The best I can hope for is a continuing loyalty. I have four associate directors (Declan Donnellan, Deborah Warner, Nicholas Hytner and Howard Davies) who have regularly returned, and a core of about 30 or 40 actors who, in the past seven years that I have been the director of the National Theatre, have been more permanent than not.It has been suggested that the cross-over of practitioners working for both the National and the RSC erodes the distinct identity of the two institutions.I will not publish a manifesto for the National Theatre, but the policy is the plays produced, it is something you can see in retrospect. I would argue that there’s a discernible taste, albeit an eclectic one, and a very strong desire to exploit the “theatreness” of theatre, both in the style and in the content of the plays that are produced here.

Any actor of that generation, some of whom are now lauded in Hollywood, will inevitably have had this experience – Anthony Hopkins, Kenneth Branagh, Daniel Day- Lewis, Emma Thompson, Tracey Ullman, Ralph Fiennes, Miranda Richardson. Actors and directors short-circuited their apprenticeship in regional theatres by going straight into television, or into the national companies. Television and the national companies in turn got more opportunistic, more voracious and eager to suck up whatever talent was available. The confederacy of regional theatres started to atomise, and that culture started to be eroded. Even if it’s from pure self-interest, the television, film and entertainment industries in this country must invest in that culture to keep it alive.Would it be beneficial to the profession to have a theatre school attached to the National, or a permanent company of actors, or a group of writers- in-residence?A theatre school attached to the National Theatre isn’t the answer.

In the 1980s, the climate of opportunity, coupled with the market philosophy, meant that everybody got restless. You can perform minor surgery but you cannot perform amputations without the whole body suffering.In the 1970s there was a confederation of theatres around the country that had a sense of common purpose and shared experience and that emerged from the repertory movement. There was a sense of de facto apprenticeship served by actors and directors, and even writers and designers. The regional theatre represents a unique body of theatre culture which has been badly damaged.

Some people will always pay for it, but what about the others who can’t?If I won the lottery, I would try to do what the Arts Council has failed to do – owing to insufficient funds, coupled, perhaps, to lack of will: that is, try to restore the regional theatres to something nearer parity with the RSC and the National. You’re able to run a theatre that has a past, a present and a future. Secondly, subsidy ought to provide cheaper seat prices to ensure that it’s accessible to everyone. So you can’t divorce considerations of money from considerations of who your audience is, and how many of them there are.I believe that subsidy’s role is twofold. But if you look at other forms of entertainment, like cinema or CDs, theatre is expensive. This is controversial because the commercial theatre will protest at being undercut in this way, and people will always say that if you’ve got something good, people will pay for it. Sometimes I go into the end of a performance, and if it’s going well, the air is charged; it smells and feels different That is the chemistry of theatre.