The Guardian Michael Billington's plan to save the National Theatre, which appeared in this paper on October 10, reads like a love letter to a dying relative. Its sensitive perceptions are clouded by its fondness for what has gone before. It resurrects old formulae where it should be inspired by a vision for the future. His third contains a germ that might just be theatre's salvation. If theatre is to have any value at all, it must be about the present.
Theatrical performance is sexy because it involves an instantaneous meeting of minds.
It is a collision between artists and the public. In the switchback play between the stage and auditorium, theatre brings discovery, enlightenment, fury, ecstasy and revolution. But before it can do any of these things, it must engage with its public. Theatre will only recover the vigour it has lost if audiences who are currently alienated by it can feel its relevance to their lives and claim it as their own. In order to establish the right mission for a national theatre, we need to strip the idea of theatre back to the bone.