Belly dancers feed passers-by small pieces of crystallised ginger. Blood gurgles in a bath. Performers move into and out of the darkness as disorientated audience members follow them. Such ingredients are the theatre company Punchdrunk’s stock in trade, and have made it an international success story for British theatre — its latest London hit was a 2010 co-production of The Duchess of Malfi with English National Opera. And Punchdrunk is now applying its particular style to a growing number of corporate events. From beer launches to luxury-goods parties to upmarket hotel openings, the company has provided immersive experiences for celebrities and competition winners, and a PR buzz for the brands in question.
Some might find such corporate work grubby, but everybody acknowledges its necessity, given the current programme of arts cuts. Most local authorities have already reduced their contributions to the arts, some dramatically — Somerset county council by 100%, North Yorkshire by 80%. Many sponsors and donors are tightening their belts, and inflation is eroding incomes, too. On Wednesday, the Arts Council announced that funding for 2012-15 will be cut by 11% for ENO, 15% for the Royal Opera House and the National Theatre, and 39% for the Almeida, in north London. Some smaller companies and regional theatres, such as the Cholmondeleys dance group and Northumberland Theatre, will lose all their funding.
Nobody denies that the cuts will be hard to cope with. “We’re already a slim and efficient operation, and our funding allows us to take risks that unpredictable ticket revenues alone would not permit,” says ENO’s artistic director, John Berry. “It allows us to put on contemporary, challenging work, things that aren’t guaranteed hits. If you take government funding out of the equation, none of what we do is possible.” Yet if pessimists expect cuts to lead to theatre closures and a stodgy diet of reliable crowd-pleasers in those that remain, they may be proved wrong. Punchdrunk’s corporate work is just one example of the entrepreneurial ideas bubbling up in cash-strapped theatres across the country. And some of these approaches are paying artistic, as well as financial, dividends.
At ENO, more than 10% of revenues comes from co-productions. Next up is a new opera by Damon Albarn, developed with the Manchester International Festival. The co-producers share the development costs, then show the finished production in both venues, and others around the world that pay a fee to host the performance. This model, Berry says, depends on unique work, not safe staples: “Our most daring work often travels best. People have an appetite for something really original and surprising.” ENO’s chief executive, Loretta Tomasi, adds: “We didn’t start doing co-productions as a financial expedient.
“It was an artistically driven thing, to enable us to create productions that otherwise wouldn’t be seen in London. We’ve been doing it for four years, before any talk of cuts — but there’s no doubt that we’ll be doing more of it in future.”
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Similar strategies are in place across the country, and are now being stepped up. Liverpool Playhouse regularly co-produces work with other regional theatres, recently developing a version of Roald Dahl’s Twisted Tales with Northern Stage and the Lyric Hammersmith, in west London. Plays will travel to the theatres involved, with the development costs split. Shared Experience, previously a touring company, is set to become resident at Oxford’s Playhouse, cutting back-office costs for both parties.
Working more closely with the private sector also offers hope. Nica Burns, the co-owner of five West End theatres, has begun to co-produce with regional theatres — she developed a production of When We Are Married, by JB Priestley, with the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, in Guildford, where it was staged before transferring to one of her West End stages. Burns hopes to expand such teamwork, which gives regional theatres access to development cash up front, rather than waiting and hoping for a hit that can transfer to a commercial venue. “The commercial sector is good at developing musicals,” Burns says, “but it’s nowhere near as good as the subsidised sector with plays. We don’t have the infrastructure to run commissions, and they don’t have the money.”
The ROH is making parallel efforts to bring in the private sector for lucrative joint projects. It has teamed up with RealD, a film production and technology company, to create a 3-D movie of a production of Carmen that appeared on stage at Covent Garden last year. Last month, it opened on 1,500 screens around the world, including 156 in Britain — a far wider release than most non-studio films receive. “RealD brought us Hollywood clout,” says the ROH’s chief executive, Tony Hall. “We brought our world-class production. We’ll be splitting the profits, and our portion of that will be ploughed back into putting the best possible work on the stage.” Everything from hosting the Baftas to allowing the designer Paul Smith to photograph the Royal Ballet’s dancers for a fee contributes to the pot, and has reduced the proportion of the ROH’s income that comes from grants from 40% to 26% over the past decade.
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Meanwhile, the National Theatre is midway through its second season of broadcasting high-profile productions live to 380 cinemas worldwide, including 110 in Britain. The two showings of the National’s production of Frankenstein sold out in many cinemas, and more screenings were added. “We started doing this to increase access,” says David Sabel, the theatre’s head of digital media. “The purpose is not primarily commercial, but we are running it as a business.”
British companies are having to learn from American ones when it comes to raising more money from donations and extra sales, too.
Anybody booking tickets for a production at Covent Garden is presented with a series of optional extras — a glass of champagne, a programme, a restaurant reservation — worthy of a budget airline’s booking system. The National will rename its Cottesloe theatre the Lloyd Dorfman Auditorium when it is renovated in 2013, after the head of Travelex, a company with which it has a long-standing sponsorship agreement. And smaller organisations are increasingly using online crowd-sourcing websites — another American idea — to attract small donations in return for perks including invitations to opening nights and thanks in programmes.
“There aren’t any magic solutions to solve the budget problems,” says ENO’s Loretta Tomasi. If magic solutions are not forthcoming, however, thrifty, entrepreneurial approaches are in healthy supply. Perhaps civil servants coping with departmental cuts should get down to the theatre and pick up a few tips.