Have you noticed, and I’m sure you have,
that film credits are getting longer and longer? There was a time when only
major players both artistic and production-wise were credited, now everyone has
to be named. Greek television doesn’t bother with credits. The moment a film
comes to an end that is it. Who, they seem to ask, wants to sit through five minutes
or more of rolling credits? In the cinema by the time the credits have rolled
to an end there is no one in the house to look at them anyway. The disease seems
to have spread to the theatre. Okay so okay, you say, credit where credit is
due but what is the point if it is for the most part simply ignored? What made
me think about this is that, while they were in London Chris and Douglas
attended two performances, one at Watford Palace and the other at The National
Theatre and, looking at the programmes, it makes me wonder how Ben and I managed
to run a full repertory season with a company of no more than a dozen or so
including stage staff who numbered a magnificent six plus one for publicity.
They were a stage director (now called a production manager I suppose) three
assistants, a designer one design assistant. What about lighting you may ask?
Today it would seem a stage cannot be lit with anything less than a hundred or
more lamps but we lit our stage with a dozen without a team of lighting experts
and, before you sneer and go ‘oh yes,’ I can inform you we maintained the highest
standard of production throughout the whole season. It most definitely was not
a case of tat.
The same applies to the summer season I was
a part of part at The Wayside Theatre in Virginia.
Here the assistant stage managers were called interns. There were four of them
and they worked their arses off for experience and very little else; a roof
over their heads and what amounted to no more than pocket money. One of those
interns is now professor of theatre at a major US university. As far as performers
were concerned both at Buxton and Wayside, for the most part the plays produced
were of necessity small cast and should more be needed, for a musical say, then
the cast was naturally augmented. And both seasons included a musical. At
Buxton it was ‘Salad Days,’ and in Virginia,
‘A funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum.’ This was in 1964 and 1989. Now let’s look at
the two London
theatres in 2012. First the National. Now I know there are three theatres to
run in that vast complex, the upkeep of which must be considerable on its own
even before the production of plays, but is it really necessary to employ a
staff of 450? There are for example 42 personnel managing the ‘Box office.’ The
list under the heading of ‘Commercial Operations/ Bookshop’ contains 12 names, ‘Catering’
150, ‘Hospitality Events’ 25. ‘House Management’ is rather sparse with only 8
names, similarly with ‘Information Tours’ and ‘Stage Door,’ but now we come to
the list of ‘Ushers’ and here the mind really does boggle – there are 73 names!
73 people required for ushering in three theatres? And we haven’t touched on
‘Development,’ ‘Digital Drawing and Design,’ ‘Director’s office,’ (a measly 4
here – you would have thought high-powered busy as bees directors would have at
least 14 if not more.) Nor have we touched on 34 more headings that make up the
remaining hundreds. Why go into detail? ‘Health and Safety,’ and ‘Human
Resources’ had to be included of course. Keeping all those jobs filled and tabs
on them really does require human resources to work flat out, especially as there
are only 6 of them. The weekly wage bill for this lot must be astronomical and
all that even before the first actor is hired. I don’t know what the situation
is at The Royal Shakespeare but I should imagine it’s much of a muchness.
Now let’s turn to Watford,
a minnow of a theatre in comparison to these whales but again it would seem to me
that the number of staff isn’t really necessary. For example there are 13
members of the board, under ‘Operations,’ 29, something called ‘Participation’
has 6, ‘Production’ has 18 and ‘Marketing’ 14.
This startling increase in the inclusion of
credits for all involved must surely have started with Joan Littlewood and her
socialist theatre at Stratford East when even the cleaning ladies were credited
for the first time but her theatre was run on a shoestring and still produced
some historical work, ‘Oh What A Lovely War,’ Brendan Behan’s ‘The Hostage,’
and ‘The Quare Fellow,’ Shelagh Delaney’s ‘A Taste of Honey,’ ‘Mother Courage,’
Lionel Bart’s ‘Fings Ain’t’ What They Used To be,’ ‘Sparrers Can’t Sing,’ and
more.
I
somehow doubt Joan Littlewood would have longed for a company numbering
hundreds.
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