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Dic Edwards responds to Michael Bogdanov's letter to the Western Mail |
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Michael Bogdanov, in his open letter to Jenny Randerson which you published in yesterday's Western Mail, makes a plea for elitism in the Theatre and uses an argument about excellence in sport to justify it. In sport, you obviously want the people with the greatest skills and ability to compete for you. The elitism in sport applies to the practitioner - the people doing it. In theatre, a company like Spectacle Theatre, which I write for, based in the valleys, takes theatre to the people in its community. The audiences for the play we are currently touring, Antigone Now!, have said that it's excellent. The practitioners in this case - the actors are producing work of the highest quality. (See Western Mail Review, Saturday 18th November). But it's not elitist because in Theatre, elitism applies to the audience. The people who watch it. This is the case with Clwyd Theatre Cymru which produces work like Private Lives - a 1930's play written by an Englishman - which is totally irrelevant to a Welsh audience. This is because Clwyd Theare Cymru has produced it for an elite, mainly English audience, which lives beyond the border, and with little regard for its own community. I feel that Bogdanov has deliberately encouraged this confusion in order to make more palatable what he's really saying which is that he considers himself to be excellent while most of what goes on in the theatre in Wales is not. Indeed, by inference he seems to be arguing that it's not even professional and that's the real insult to professionalism. To prove his point he employs another piece of specious analysis which goes like this: I am excellent because I have productions running in Vienna, Sydney, Munich and New York, I can't work in Wales even though I'm excellent therefore Welsh theatre lacks excellence. Well I can brag a bit too: my work has been produced throughout the UK. I've recently had a book of two plays published in London by leading play publishers Oberon Books and a play of mine, Utah Blue has been translated into French as a result of a commission from the National Theatre de la Colline in Paris and they expect to produce it in the Spring. But unlike him I am happy to work for a company that brings theatre of excellence to the deprived communities we serve; a theatre that is totally relevant to their lives. Why does Bogdanov thinks he knows better than the Post 16 Education Committee which sat for months and took submissions from all the practitioners who offered them, what's best for Theatre in Wales? Surely it's a kind of megalomania that could only be satisfied by giving him a big building to run, call it a National theatre and let him use it to show of his own excellence at the expense of everyone else's. |
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Monday, November 27, 2000 |
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