Odds and sods: March 2024

Sorry this is late. I had two season launches in the backlog, and then I was spending a lot of time preparing two different shows. But it would be embarrassing if we ran out of April, so let’s get a move on.

Stuff that happened in March

The big news, of course, was the closure of the Vault Festival. This is a really big deal, and so got a whole article to itself.

Other than that, we’ve had quite a lot of news around various censorship issues. So yet again, I wearily weigh in to censorship debates. But we’ll get to that later. First of all.

Another new Theatre space in Sunderland

You may remember back in 2021 I covered news of two new theatres coming to the north east: Laurels in Whitley Bay and The Fire Station in Sunderland. Since then, I’ve given a lot of coverage to the former but little to the latter. This is because – although they are getting plenty of business – The Fire Station’s programming has ended up being heavily dominated by music events. That’s not a complaint: bigger venues in particular have to be mindful over what sells, and if it’s music events, that’s what you get. But in terms of a venue that gives local theatre-makers a chance to get started, there’s no comparison to what Laurels is doing over in Whitley Bay.

But now, we another venue on the way, and this one might be better bet. Theatre Space North East is a Sunderland-based company, but until now they’ve been one of many north east companies. However, they’ve just got a grant which enables them to convert a building currently used as a rehearsal/storage space into an actual theatre. A small one compared to the Fire Station, just 56 seats, but if you’re starting off, a small venue beats a big one hands down. I’m not sure exactly what the funding source is, but my reading of the story is that it was Sunderland City Council’s decision to choose this. If so, that is encouraging, because it suggests at least one local council recognises the value of giving grass roots artists somewhere to go.

Laurel’s 2024 Season Launch

With Live’s year ahead now covered, it’s now time for the other press launch I was invited to. Laurel’s (a subtle rebranding that is now named after one particular Mr. Laurel rather than two) has had an excellent 2022 and 2023, with a transfer of their megahit Gerry and Sewell to Live Theatre last November, and now an upcoming project in partnership with the National Theatre. That particular project is a long-term thing, and is not part of the upcoming season. Instead, there’s a heavy crossover with the Richard Jenkinson commission.

First, a catch-up on the Richard Jenkinson Commission. I was planning to cover this separately from the season launch – Live Theatre might have had its playwriting competition and season launch at the same event, but so far, the two things are running independently of each other. By contrast, in spite of the two things being announced separately, the Richard Jenkinson Commission has become virtually inseparable from Laurel’s artistic programme. And one thing that has influenced this is how this worked.

In theory, both contests worked by the same principle: you could submit a script, but you didn’t have to. In Live’s case, the “detailed treatment” was viewed as an alternative to spending a lot of time writing a script now – it’s not clear how many people took up this offer in how they fared, but the finalist I know of did scripts. The Richard Jenkinson Commission, however, was a lot more geared towards to submitted an “idea”. It was mentioned that a straight script submission was fine, but I am told the ideas generally did a lot better than the scripts.

What the two did have in common, however, was that they both did a much better job of providing opportunities to those who need it than the big national competitions, with most or all of the shortlisted entrants not needing the extensive list of credits that almost all Bruntwood and Verity Bargate finalists how. One small but important clarification: unlike the North East Playwriting award, the Richard Jenkinson Commission wasn’t actually restricted to the north east. Laurel’s is best known to the north east and it was predominantly publicised in the north-east, and most of the names I recognise are north-east names. One notable exception, though, is Dave Bibby of Baby Dinosaur fame. One upcoming dilemma if this is done again – and mood is it will – one would expect work to get round of how good an opportunity it is to get work on stage, which is turn could be more uptake from outside the north-east. There means more good ideas to choose from – but also heavier competition against aspiring north-east artists. Should you stick with open to all, or restrict it to the north-east? That will be an interesting choice.

Anyway, what was originally intended to provide one entry to the 2024 programme has gone on to dominate the season. A second commission was offered during the ceremony, and now we have three. The ideas that have made it to production are: Subterranea, a post-dystopian society where the underlings were forced to shelter in the Metro after a nuclear attack, were never allowed to leave, and now have their own society; Doomgate, a three-writer collaboration of horror stories set on a single street; and most cryptic of all is the commission winner Seagulls & Sad Sad Stories which features three down-on-luck sixteen-year-olds putting their trust in the fortune-telling of an Zoltar in South Shields.

One thing that is notable is that in the two years Laurel’s has been running, it’s grown from a two-man operation to a bigger team – and now, a board of trustees with the power to overrule the artistic director. Anyway, we have Steve Robertson and John Hickman, arguably the numbers 2 and 3 at Laurel’s, doing their own play Stake Out at Halloween. Should the people who work in theatres get preferential treatment in their own work being programmed? My view is a strong yes. Running a venue is hard work, most of which goes into enabling other people to put on their shows, and if you get modest pay for your efforts your are very lucky. I firmly believe that giving your hardest workers their turn on the stage is the least you can do in return – and people who watch other productions take the the stage day in day out tend to know what they’re doing. So I’m looking forward to this comedy-horror set in the worst dives of Newcastle nightlife.

And one final thing that grabs my attention in the Christmas Production of Winnie the Pooh. Except this is the treatment all famous literary works get once they’re out of copyright. John Dole plays a take-no-crap the lovable bear vowing vengeance of the bastard property developers who’ve ruined the Hundred Acre Wood. Not clear if this is for children, and definitely not for literary purists. But if you like rewrite everything out of copyright to have ninjas (come on, who doesn’t want to see Peter Rabbit and the Ninjas), this is for you. (Oh, and … pssst, technically Winnie the Pooh doesn’t go out of copyright in the UK until 2027. You might want to call it a parody to be on the safe side.)

And there’s plenty more stuff as well. None of these I’m recommending over any others at the moment – I’ve seen hardly anyone in this programme before, so it’s all to play for. One seemingly unintended side-effect of the programme process is that the Laurel’s season is actually quite sparse until July, and then chocka from August. But the experience of pretty much every start-up arts org is that you always spend the first few years making up the rules as you go along.

But compared to even even twelve months ago, Laurel’s has come on leaps and bounds. Expect to be hearing a lot more of Laurels in the second half of this year.

What about the Exchange?

There is one other thing from last year’s launch that I haven’t forgotten, which is what was going on with The Exchange. This venue in North Shields had been built up in North Shields, and then, out of the blue, the news broke that they’d lost the lease of the building, with it going instead to Stonebanks Investments. Given Jamie Eastlake’s own experience with being ejected from premises, Laurel’s very much took the side of the ejected Exchange team now.

North Tyneside Borough Council, however, argued that The Exchange wasn’t closing – it was part of their “Cultural Quarter” scheme for North Shields. This attracted some suspicion, because until now, this so-called “Cultural Quarter” scheme only really entailed doing up some streets. And, let’s face it, if you’re trying to seek the confidence of the local people that’s you’re an arts-savvy organisation, “Stonebanks investment” is about the least cultured name you could have. It also didn’t instil much confidence that all the new management – including the theatre manager – had zero background in arts organisations. And, I have to say, the new catchphrase “Built in 1856, Reborn in 2023” did sound a bit twattish to me, the insinuation being that everything the old management did prior to 2023 didn’t count.

Coupled with sycophantic news coverage which was obviously a rehash of press releases setting off every marketing bullshit alarm known to man, I could help but speculate that they weren’t really interested in running a theatre space: just the cafe and bar which is where their previous experience lay.

But … let’s give credit where it is due: the theatre is running again, with a reasonable meaningful programme. A lot of it does seem to be last-minute. At the time of writing, there’s roughly one booking every 3-4 day, but later in the year it’s more like once a month. And there’s an awful lot more tribute acts than theatre. There again, that situation’s not unique to Exchange 1856 – Sunderland Old Fire Station is also a very theatre-lite theatre. I don’t the programme is as varied as The Exchange was under the old management, but maybe it will take time to rebuild a list of returning acts.

The reason I have been able to check this out is that Blowin’ a Hooley did their short play night at The Exchange – indeed, this was officially a co-production between themselves, Exchange 1856 and The Gala in Durham. It is not clear whether Exchange 1856’s involvement is wholehearted, or simply done out of obligation to North Tyneside Council, but either way, they do seem to be making progress. And it certainly looks like they know how to run a theatre bar. And, let’s be realistic, that’s how theatre’s make a lot of their money these days. Without a lucrative bar, you can expect a lot less theatre.

However, on balance, it still does seem like theatre has taken a step backward against what there would have been had The Exchange remained in charge. The daft thing is that there was no need for it to be this messy. Why oh why was a change of leaseholder left so late that programme acts had to be cancelled? And, more to the point – why didn’t The Exchange and Stonebank Investments just work together. Even in their new-found enthusiasm for performing arts is genuine, Stonebank were never going to be as cut out to run a theatre as their predecessors. Stonebank, however, are well placed to do a better job of the bar. Why not let The Exchange programme and run the theatre, and have Stonebank do the bar, giving both parties a role doing what they do best?

In summary, what’s happened at the Exchange isn’t as bad as we feared – and this pales into insignificance compared to the shenanigans around the Vault Festival. But it was handled badly, and quite needlessly. And it does little to bring back trust in landlords. My position for arts orgs remains unchanged: never trust your landlord. They can turn on you without warning – always be ready for this.

Live Theatre’s 2024 season launch

Firstly apologies for this article being late. I do appreciate being invited to season launches and aim to give coverage as swiftly as possible, but the unfortunate news about the Vault Festival took precedence. But now there is time to catch up.

Just a reminder before we start that this is not a comprehensive guide to everything covered at the launch – I leave that up to other media outlets. My interest is more with what grabs my attention. Much of this comes down to whims; something the doesn’t get my attention can turn out to be a gem – and very occasionally, something I was convinced was a surefire hit is a let-down. My final of what’s worth watching is always after this has come and gone.

That caveat established, let’s go. There are aspects of all three main plays that grab my attention, then I’ll move on to some other highlights. One unusual observation: after a crowded autumn/winter 2023, there’s a big gap in main stage productions until May 2024, with the three main plays scheduled between then and March 2025. I’m a bit surprised they’ve picked May over March, because the conventional wisdom’s always been that the colder months (except January) tend to sell better than warmer months. Not reading anything into that: just a curiosity.

Now, out of the three main plays, my hot bet is Champion by Ishy Din. He is one of the writers I have the most respect for, and in my opinion, his previous Live play Approaching Empty was very under-rated. Although he predominantly writes characters of Asian descent, the themes are almost always universal and could just as easily be anybody’s story. I was particularly impressed with the characterisation. In a story where everybody uses and betrays those closest to them, you always – with the exception of one character who’s a hardened criminal – understand why each of them felt they were doing the right thing. I also credit him with giving some of the best advice to aspiring writers: in particular, he has spoken a lot of sense about the “big breakthrough” myth which far too much of the new writing ecosystem still subscribes do. Anyway, the subject of the new play? The visit of Mohammed Ali in 1977 to South Shields, although there’s hints that the real subject of the play is a mixed-race family living in South Shields at the time.

The end of Vault Festival: what went wrong?

It is never nice to hear a much-loved arts events is closing for good – but it’s less nice still when it comes out of the blue. There was the bombshell news last year that the owners of the space underneath Waterloo station didn’t want them back again, and the immediate worry was over money. Then the concerns of money grew quieter and focus turned to finding the right replacement venue. A replacement was found. The Vault Festival took on new branding, #SaveVault became #BuildVault, and a big relauch gala was supposed to take place at the end of this month. Surely this was proof more than anything that Vault Festival was home and dry?

But Vault Festival was not home and dry after all. It turned out the original issue of money was their final downfall after all. We don’t know the details, but based on their statement, it looks like it came down one particular funding application that they’d assumed they were going to get. Unfortunately, all of the other funding they were counting on was dependent on this one, and without that, the whole plan fell apart. All relaunch activities are cancelled, the newly-secured space isn’t going ahead, and most of all of the year-round staff are being made redundant. Reading between the lines in this article, it seems that they maybe hadn’t exhausted all options, but they’d run out of energy and are giving up. It’s not completely the end of the enterprise – the year-round space The Glitch that they ran next to the main space is still going ahead, but that’s all. If somebody does managed to rebuild the Vault Festival or something like it, it will have to be good as starting from scratch.

Odds and sods: February 2024

Blimey. It’s a news-heavy month this Feburary. Better get right to it because I run out of March to write this up in.

Stuff that happened in February

Oh, my aching hands. Here’s what you’ve kept me busy writing up:

More woes at Brighton Fringe

It turns out I wasn’t connected to all the Brighton Fringe rumour mills. I’d known for some time Caravanserai wasn’t coming back, probably because Brighton Fringe couldn’t run a venue without letting costs go out of control. Now it’s gone public that Spiegeltent and Sweet aren’t being part of Brighton Fringe either. They are still running at the same time in May and June, but they are not registering with Brighton Fringe. (I admit, I did hear rumours of Spiegeltent doing this, but I’ve heard things like this touted so many times I didn’t pay much attention. I’d assumed that with Caravanserai being the focus of so many grievances, the main source of aggro was now resolved. But apparently not.)

This means that Brighton Fringe 2024 is going to be very messy. At close of registrations for programme launch, we have 556 Brighton Fringe registrations. That’s low. This could be an artificially low number, because with no paper programme to meet a deadline for, it’s not such a big deal to register late, but it would have to a big last-moment surge to turn things round. At the time of writing, Spiegeltent have launched their own not-Fringe programme, but I haven’t had time to analyse this yet. I will be analysing this a lot more as Brighton Fringe coverage ramps up, because the implications are too complex to go ito here.

A lot of this is going to ride on how the fringe media chooses to cover a fragmented Brighton Fringe. Will Sweet and Spiegeltent still get the coverage, or will they be sidelined? For my part, my own decision is that, for now, I will treat Spiegeltent and Sweet the same way as if they’d been part of Brighton Fringe proper (a bit like I did with Warren Outdoors in 2020, albeit under different circumstances). However, after this, I expect all parties to make reasonable efforts to resolve their differences. I’m not interested in blaming the other side as an excuse to not make a reason effort yourself – I want to know what you are doing. But we can start having that debate in July onwards. For now, I expect a truce. Get through this, don’t get in each other’s way, and any blame games can wait.

Odds and sods: January 2024

Right, it was really embarassing how late the last one was, so I’m going to get a move on with this. This time, it’s one of the slowest news months around, so I should be able to do this quickly.

Stuff that happened in January

Unfortunately, most of the news I have is bad news. There is some news coming from Edinburgh that might be better, but that news has only just broken, so I’m going to leave that till the next odds and sods when we might know more about how this went.

Apart from that, here’s what’s been happening, and it’s not great.

Caravanserai not come to Brighton

This isn’t actually January news as such. Nothing has been announced in public yet. I’ve known about this unofficially for some time – however, it is also possible to work this out from publicly accessible information. So anyone who has an active event on Eventotron will notice one notable omission: Caravanserai is not available as a venue. Caravanserai was also not mentioned at the registration launch in spite of it getting lots of coverage last year. It therefore seem very likely that the rumour mill is correct and Caravanserai is not coming to Brighton Fringe 2024.

Oh dear, what went wrong there? Caravanserai was supposed to be the answer to Brighton Fringe’s cash flow worries. We are increasingly moving to a situation where the major fringe venues make most of their money not from performances but from ancilliary income on the bars and food outlets. This is why I didn’t join in the complaints of food/drink prices there – I’d rather they made the money from something you didn’t have to buy from something that you did. Anyway, they did a lot of business and it seemed that it’s money-making objective was working. But it seems I spoke too soon. Even if you have excellent income, you can still make a loss if you lose control of expenses. That was part of the reason for The Warren’s downfall, it’s happened elsewhere, and now it seems it’s happened here. Ouch.

The most obvious effect for fringe performances is that they won’t have Caravanserai to flyer at. Luckily, Brighton City Council has been persuaded to relax rules on city centre flyering, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue as long as you’re organised (although I have my doubts on the value of flyering outside of fringe venues). As of yet, it’s not clear what’s happening to Fringe City. Hopefully this could move back to New Road or Jubilee Street, but I’d be a lot happier if this was confirmed as sorted. What I’m concerned about more is money. Was the income from Caravanserai needed or not? Because if it is, we’re going to have to find a different plan very quickly. Last year there was grumblings that Caravanserai was going to take over Brighton Fringe. I hope I’m wrong, but that could turn out to be the least of the problems.

Announcement: change of priority for Edinburgh Fringe reviewing

I try to keep news about me or this blog to a minimum. I’ve never wanted to make this about me, I want it to be about the theatre I see. However, this is a rare occasion where I need to write about what I’m doing. The main reason I have persisted with the reviewing for so long as that I do get a lot of appreciation for this, and consider myself as doing a service. But I must never lose sight of whether I am really doing people a favour, and one question that must be addressed in Edinburgh Fringe.

Before you get too excited about any earth-shattering bombshells: I intend to carry on reviewing at Edinburgh Fringe. Although Brighton is a close second, Edinburgh Fringe offers by far the great variety of theatre in one place, made possible to a large part by the culture that all are welcome. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the crisis of expense. It’s always been a problem, 2022 and 2023 were particularly bad, but the ban on short term lets now in place could well push up costs even more. However, I will defend to the death the rights of individual artists to decide for themselves what’s best for them. For many artists, my advice is that Edinburgh Fringe is not the right festival for you and you’re better off doing something else – but it must be your own choice. I am streadfastly opposed to imposing this choice on people, nor will I penalise people for making a different choice to what I recommend.

However, what concerns me about Edinburgh Fringe is that people are taking part not by choice. As I have said before, we have a big problem with many arts organisations going talent scouting at Edinburgh Fringe and nowhere else. This means – and I have observed this myself – many artists who cannot comfortably afford Edinburgh and are gambling with more money they can afford to lose still do this Fringe because the think they have no option but to go there if they want a hope of making it. Until now, I have been challenging the arts industry on this, and especially challenging those who complain about the unfairness and expense of Edinburgh whilst refusing to gives artists a fair chance by any other route. But I’m wondering whether we are reaching the point where even the availability of reviews in Edinburgh – compared to a perceived dearth of reviews at other fringes – is doing more harm than good.

The other issue I’m facing is that I am increasingly struggling to accommodate all the review requests I get. I’ve been fully accredited press since 2021 – and I am grateful to Edinburgh Fringe for this, I could not be sustaining this coverage without – but the volume of review requests I’ve been getting is going up and up and up. And I’m honestly not sure how to filter this. I give priority to acts I’ve seen before and liked, but should I prioritise other acts on how good other reviews are? Probably not, I want to give a break to acts without reviews, not just big up already successful ones. Make choices on how good the press release sounds? I could, but I like to be go into most productions not knowing what to expect. But I can’t say yes to everything. I’m reaching the point where I’m missing stuff I want to see (not on review request lists) because I’m squeezing in too many reviews.

So here’s a new rule I’m introducing to both make it easier for me to choose what to review and (in my opinion) be a bit more responsible with what I encourage:

From 2024, priority for Edinburgh Fringe reviews will go to acts that have already performed at smaller festivals (for acts based in England and Wales).

Odds and sods: November 2023 (and a bit of December)

Yes, this is the most behind schedule Odds and Sods I’ve done. December, as you might recall, we chocka full of catching up on reviews. As such, I considered just skipping this. But there were a couple of bit of big news from November, which need a recap. So tuck yourself in, for …

Stuff that happened in November (and a bit of December)

Luckily for me, December was the usual slow news month, which means that nothing I have reported has gone particularly out of date. Some of the things here had minor further developments after November passed, but nothing fundamentally changed.

So, two bits of big news, and two things probably nobody else cares about but I’m raising them anyway as they’re my two bugbears.

Vault festival home and dry?

So we begin with the big news – and for once, the big news is also the good news. Since February, the Vault Festival has been on tenterhooks following the shock news that the Vaults Theatre – who actually hold the lease for the space – decided they didn’t want the Vault Festival back. Unexpectedly losing your premises is very bad news for any business: if failure to find new premises doesn’t bring you down, the financial outlay of an unplanned move might. As 2023 moved on, fears of bankruptcy slowly receded as they continued recruiting for senior positions (something you wouldn’t do unless you were reasonably confident of being able to pay the salary). However, they couldn’t get a new location confirmed in time and conceded that the next Vault Festival couldn’t take place before autumn 2024.

But finally, Vault Festival has done it. They have announced they’ve secured a new venue. No announcement yet as to where it is, but it’s still in Zone 1 and, so they claim, of a comparable size to their old venue. There is, however, one crucial difference: they have rights to the space all year. The Vault Theatre did host a number events outside the Vault Festival – in this new space, however, the Vault Festival will be in charge all year. And, of course, the Vault Festival aren’t going to kick themselves out. I’m not sure how long they have the new venue for; lease renewal is a perilous business in itself and some theatres found to their cost. But we can cross that bridge when we get to it, probably at least ten years away.

Odds and sods: October 2023

This is a really late odds and sods, but i do have an excuse. Since the end of October, I genuinely have been chock-a-block busy. But I’m now finally is a position to catch up. Let’s not waste any more time, here we go.

Stuff that happened in October:

I’ve been rush off my feet, but elsewhere it’s been a quite month. But a few notable things happened.

The Rialto reincarnated

Brighton Fringe has been through lot of ups and downs in the pandemic and the aftermath, but the thing that surely left the most sour taste in the mouth was the closure of the Rialto Theatre. I don’t know the details of this; as far as I can tell it came down to the lease running out and the landlord deciding to make more money by converting the place into flats. This is a problem endemic through the world of small venues, and it’s by no means unique to Brighton Fringe. But both the Pebble Trust and the Arts Council threw hundreds of thousands of pounds to rescue other venues, most notably The Warren. Nobody could have known at the time that The Warren was a doomed cause. But had a fraction of the money gone The Rialto’s way, who knows, it might still be here now.

But wait … it seems that Rialto is down but not out. Roger Kay, who ran the venue, has been brought in by The Ironworks to programme their new studio-sized space. And this seems like an excellent idea to me. The Rialto lives on as a community of artists it built up over the years, but has no space to perform in. The Ironworks, on the other hand, has spaces to form in, but does not have a community of artists that The Rialto has built up. So joining forces is a great idea. In retrospect, there had been signs things were going that way – some of the regulars who’d previously made The Rialto their venue of choice were choosing The Ironworks as their alternative. It makes a lot of sense to formalise and strengthen this arrangement.

Odds and sods: September 2023

So fringe season over and we’re back to doing updates this way.

The big subject, which I’ve been banging on about on Twitter in righteous fury mode, is the allegations against Russell Brand. Even if the criminal allegations are not proven, this really should serve as a wake-up all to the whole arts industry. There again, there have been a lot of scandals that should have been a wake-up call to the arts industry, and they did bugger all about it. If you want to know what I think should be done, read The questions we should be asking about Russell Brand.

But other stuff has been going on too.

Stuff that happened in September

I’m not going to repeat all the Russell Brand stuff here, save that there has been a development in the last few days on a related matter – which is positive, for one. But we’ll save that for last.

Vault festival 2024 is off – or is it?

Let’s start with the disappointing news. Vault Festival have been in a crisis since their landlord Vault Theatre – previously viewed as synonymous with the Vault Theatre – told the Vault Festival they wanted them out. The original panic was money – not so much a threat of bankruptcy, but the prospect of having to lay off its year-round staff – but that seems to have abated. Where Vault is stumbling is finding a suitable new venue. To some extend, this is a quandary of the Vault Festival’s own choosing. They could have struggled on with the five satellite venues they have near the Vaults itself, but the focus seems to have been on finding the right thing for the long term. And, so far, this has not coincided with securing a place suited for them.

However, the Vault Festival has already been blighted by two cancellations, and they’ve proven themselves to be resourceful in this situation, arranging “Fringe Futures” in 2021 and a very hastily arranged “Vault Transfer” in 2022. This time, their substitute festival is “A Pinch of Vault”, a work in progress festival which they’ve done before, but this time they’re upscaling it and moving it winter as their flagship festival. You remember I said they could do a festival with their satellite venues if they wanted to? That’s not too far what they’ve done. Not the exact same venues (Vaulty Towers, for example, seems to be run by Vault Theatre and is loyal to them), but something on a similar scale. And if all goes well, the next Vault proper will happen in autumn 2024 (although still probably on a reduced scale).