Text, text, text. I bet nobody told Nye Bevan that he had to dance his speeches in Welsh. Simply because we are a communitarian nation with a passion for education does not mean that we should ignore the need for excellence at a professional level. Theatre is the most performed, attended, practiced and studied Art form in these islands. For Theatre is the means by which a nation can take its pulse, listen to its heart-beat.
Theatre matters, it has a voice and people listen.
Not just here, all over the world. Without centres where this can take place the national conscience is dissipated, fragmented, for political and social exploration in Art need a focus and national institutions often serve to provide a platform for the necessary investigatory, innovative and coalescing process. It is none of these things, it is merely suffering from years of under-investment and neglect. The projected increase over the next three years will only return Arts funding to the pre 1995 level and much of this will be taken up by the extraordinary idea, copied from the English model, of Regional Arts Associations. And anyway a dose of elitism is sometimes necessary to ensure that the minority is catered for as well as the majority.