Jo Caird: Theatre 1-0 Sport

The London 2012 Olympic Games have
been sold to us at least partly on the premise that sport brings
people together and is therefore good for humanity. And although I
can see that major sporting events do bring people together in terms
of their shared passion for a particular event, they also surely
reinforce barriers too, as supporters of one team or nation are
encouraged to differentiate themselves from the opposition’s
supporters. We just need to look at the terrible violence that has
historically taken place at certain international football matches to
witness the ugly side of sport. So much for community relations.

Fortunately, however, London 2012 is not just about sport. It’s
also about culture, which arguably has a much better track record (no
pun intended) at bringing people together. Under the umbrella of the
Cultural Olympiad itself, theatre is well represented, including the
World Shakespeare Festival, which is being produced by the RSC in
collaboration with over 50 arts organisations and 260 amateur groups
(and includes the Globe to Globe Festival, which I wrote about last
week); and Unlimited, the UK’s largest ever programme celebrating
arts, culture and sport by disabled and deaf people.

Then, on top of those official, UK-wide programmes, there are
non-Olympics-affiliated local events such as the capital’s World
Stages Festival, which was announced this week. World Stages sees
eight London theatres working together with 12 UK and international
co-producers to create eight large-scale productions, each taking as
its focus the experience of a different London community.

It’s no coincidence that so many of the exciting and ambitious
theatre projects that will be taking place next year involve
collaboration – whether locally, nationally or internationally –
inter-community discourse, and welcoming foreign companies to the UK
to perform in foreign languages. Whatever differences exist between
people, storytelling is something that we all share, making theatre a
good basis for exchange of ideas and experiences. Even if we don’t
all agree about the topic under discussion, theatre has the power to
get us talking, which is always an excellent start.

Reaching new audiences and widening participation is central to
many of these projects. In terms of Globe to Globe, that means
sending ambassadors into communities; the theatres involved in World
Stages are drawing on the existing relationships they have with the
communities around them to get people involved. It won’t be an easy
process – audience development is painstaking work – but the fact
that international companies are involved, and that some of the work
will be in languages other than English, is a great help. The fact
that these theatres will be putting their money where their mouth is
and offering plenty of tickets for those on low incomes is also very
important.

But it’s not just about audiences – it’s also about theatre
itself. David Micklem, artistic director of BAC, one of the
theatres involved in World Stages, yesterday talked to me very
enthusiastically about the partnerships the festival has been
creating within the London theatre community. The planning for World
Stages began before the recession, the change of government and the
subsequent arts funding cuts – ie. in a moment when collaboration
was a choice rather than a necessity – but it’s a happy coincidence
that the relationships being developed as part of World Stages have
the potential to make survival in the future that little bit more
feasible through sharing resources and expertise.

And in the short-term of course, even if this is the only project
these theatres ever collaborate on, it’s a wonderful opportunity to
do work on a larger scale than would ever be possible alone. Babel,
for instance, the show that BAC is producing with WildWorks (the
team behind the National Theatre Wales’s The Passion, which
took place in April this year) along with the Lyric Hammersmith,
Theatre Royal Stratford East and the Young Vic, will involve a
professional and community cast of 500 and will play to audiences of
1000 per performance. Such a project, needless to say, is far beyond
the reach of any of these theatres working independently.

I’m excited about the Olympics, but I’m also fairly certain that
the three weeks of the Games will be a bit of a nightmare. London
will be gridlocked, most people won’t actually get the chance to see
any of the events and the whole spectacle is costing enormous sums of
money that the UK economy may never see again. The cultural events
taking place, however, both the official and non-official ones, are
another story, and one that I’m far more hopeful about: taking place
over many months throughout the UK (World Stages excepted of course),
they will entertain tens of thousands of people, get communities
talking to each other and enrich the UK’s cultural life through
engaging with new audiences and artists. I know it’s not a
competition, but if it was, culture would clearly win: Theatre 1-0
Sport.