Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   HebrideanHecate (hebrideanhecate@spinster.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 26-Oct-2025 01:18:38 JST HebrideanHecate

   https://thecritic.co.uk/no-one-needs-privilege-to-enjoy-the-theatre/

   Some of his complaints are fair enough. West End ticket prices have risen exponentially. Carl Woodward has highlighted how audiences are being priced out. Yet what truly struck me were Day-Lewis’s comments about theatre and elitism. He rails against the assumption that the stage is superior to the screen. He recalls that during his training (1975–78), the emphasis was almost entirely on live performance. He then makes an irritating claim. Theatre, he states, is an exclusive cultural institution which “essentially relies on people having had the privilege of an education that allows them to believe that they’re entitled to go to the theatre … It’s a relatively small group of people that is available to, and that is just quite wrong.” Full disclosure: I have considerable skin in this game. I hail from a working-class family in Romford, growing up there in the 1970s on a council estate. At no point can I ever recall thinking that I was not “entitled” to go to the theatre. Probably because, from a very early age, my parents — both of whom worked on the production line in Ford car factories — took me to theatres. At five, I was treated to pantomime at the London Palladium. A couple of years later, I saw Carry On London (I still can’t quite believe I saw Sid James live). By the mid-70s, I was being taken to our local, the Queen’s in Hornchurch, to see the likes of Goldsmith’s She Stoops to Conquer and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None (back in the day it bore a now-unpublishable title). Theatre-going was as natural to us as cinema-going, albeit a little less often as it was further away than the local Odeon and somewhat more expensive.

   The culture of low expectations for “underprivileged” kids runs riot through the public-school custodians of our arts and media. Soon after my play Fat Souls won a competition at the lamentably lost Warehouse Theatre in Croydon, I attended a panel discussion there on new writing. The representative from the BBC told of his fight to produce “quality drama” and announced, “of course, we have to produce EastEnders for the tower blocks.” Ladies and gentlemen, I longed for quality drama, loathed EastEnders, and was living in a council tower block at the time. I will leave the reader to imagine what went through my mind on hearing that gross generalisation — similarly unprintable thoughts strike me on reading Day-Lewis’s cant.

   • KeepTakingTheSoma likes this.
   • Embed this notice
     KeepTakingTheSoma (keeptakingthesoma@spinster.xyz)'s status on Sunday, 26-Oct-2025 01:27:13 JST KeepTakingTheSoma

     in reply to
     @HebrideanHecate The divide isn't so much theatre/films/tv as much as London theatre and provincial theatre or professional theatre and amateur theatre.
     
     I've been in amateur theatre for years and some of the best performances I've seen have been there, but it can be a mixed bag (and that' putting it politely!). That's not to denigrate professional theatre in London or a touring/rep production which can also be fantastic, but these come with a price tag which is often what is off-putting.
     
     There's a lot of snobbery about theatre, usually from people who carry the bigotry of low expectations about their fellow man. A chat with anyone involved in amateur theatre or with members of the audience of an amateur show will quickly disabuse anyone of that attitude.