Theatre Market

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope that I may begin by giving my attention to the Lib Dem Benches: first, to thank the noble Earl for giving us this debate; and, secondly—I hope that this is permissible—to offer an apology to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, as I was in error in referring in an earlier debate today to an initiative in terms of the BBC that was due to him, as he will see from Hansard. I apologise for that.

When we come to the debate in hand, there are some very important things to say. I asked members of my staff to give me bullet points—I have 18 of them. I have put circles around all the subjects that have already been referred to, so I shall not repeat them—I think that that is a good discipline. But there are others that have not been mentioned and I hope to refer to those.

Perhaps I may begin on a personal note. I began my working career as a lecturer in medieval English at the University of Wales. One course that I loved teaching was the origins of English drama, from the Latin Mass of the Roman Catholic Church to street theatre in Chester and York, and the mystery plays right up to Shakespeare himself. As a consequence of that experience, I was imbued with the sense that the theatre originated with ordinary people in ordinary situations—in the streets, in church or in public places—and that is where I will focus my attention. Shakespeare himself—bawdy, rowdy Shakespeare—welcomed the groundlings as much as the aristocracy of his day. Indeed, he used the audience to whip up feelings about the aristocracy of the day. I would love that to happen in theatre.

In preparing for this debate, I thought not of theatres but of theatre. Aristotle was clear that catharsis and mimesis were the two strands that theatre allowed people to explore and enjoy. He believed that theatre could touch the feelings and inspire the following of an example, and that remains pretty much a noble ambition for drama today. It was in “Hamlet”, after all, that we got to the heart of the mystery—or at least Hamlet himself thought that he was getting to the heart of the mystery—by putting on a play. The play is the thing—“wherein to catch the conscience of the king”. Of course, in our day it is not the conscience of the king but what is happening on the streets: what people are thinking; how the population of this land votes to leave Europe; what is in the minds of the people; and how drama touches those themes and elicits responses to the concerns being expressed.

I have had a lot to do with young people who have begun careers in acting schools. Incidentally, one might just note how expensive it is to be trained in an acting school. It costs much more than other parts of higher education and it would be good if we could do something about that. But the actors that I am thinking about do not come out to have glamorous careers on the stage; they come out in order to go back into the communities that bred them, which are often very cosmopolitan, inner-city communities. They go back to listen to the concerns of young people and bring them back to a properly trained playwright, to turn those concerns into drama, and to reflect the concerns back to the children who voiced them in the first place. I have seen remarkable pieces of community development happen through theatre, and I wish that the briefing that I had had and the concerns that we have expressed recognised the level at which theatre plays its part in the shaping of a national consciousness and the bringing to bear of noble qualities, sometimes in very disadvantaged places.

I am chair of the board of the Central Foundation Schools of London: a boys’ school in Islington and a girls’ school in Tower Hamlets. Some 85% of our girls wear the hijab to school. Both schools happened to put on “Macbeth” at the same time. To see a Muslim girl acting Macbeth in Tower Hamlets and a very shy African boy playing Lady Macbeth in Islington was itself wondrous in these transgendered days, as we think about sexual identity and the rest of it—most interesting. Because of our foundation’s endowment, we can give money to the school budget to put the performing arts and music into the curriculum, so that the wretched STEM business that excludes the creative arts can be challenged. We can hear those children play the piano or saxophone, or put on plays they have often written—and why not? It does not have to be James Graham or David Hare alone who can explore the themes of the day.

Looking at this subject in its entirety, my regret is that we are in danger of starving our schoolchildren of an exposure through the creative arts to ways of understanding truth, themselves, and the societies in which they live. Only through success in that area can we hope to have people going into theatres, which are so underrepresented by ordinary people from ordinary communities these days. What can we do—please—to address that serious question?

I went to see “Hamilton”. I have another confession: hip-hop is not my métier. I had read the 818 pages of Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton before I went in, because reading is my métier. Armed with that, I saw this extraordinarily diverse cast put on a wonderfully choreographed piece of work—and an audience with not more than two black faces in it, which was extraordinary. When the tickets are priced as they are, incidentally, I can recommend having older sons who save money to take their parents to see “Hamilton”. Soon I shall go to see “Small Island”. And what about Nottingham, Scarborough, Stoke-on-Trent and Bath as places that have fostered theatre in areas outside London, with some most inventive programmes?

In all these ways, my hope would be that a debate of this kind would direct our attention to how we deal not only with the overpriced good seats in the West End of London but with the engendering of enthusiasm among young people who, through the performing arts, can discover more about themselves and the society in which they live.