The inaugural Equity Award for Services to Theatre

At the 16th Annual WhatsOnStage Awards this year, Sir Kenneth Branagh was honoured with the inaugural Equity Services to Theatre Award.

At the ceremony at the Prince of Wales theatre, in front of a star-studded audience including Nicole Kidman and Sir Cameron Mackintosh, Kenneth Branagh accepted the award that was voted for entirely by readers of WhatsOnStage.

The award has been created to honour and recognise anyone that works in the UK theatre industry in whatever capacity, on-stage, off-stage or behind the scenes to create, promote and help stage the enormous range of productions that are to be found in theatres up and down the country.

An eclectic range of nominees were put forward including wardrobe mistresses, box office gurus and theatre critics but the outright winner for WhatsOnStage readers was Sir Kenneth Branagh.

The reasons given were predominantly three fold. Firstly, audiences are truly appreciative of the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s season currently playing at the Garrick Theatre in London’s West End. The first season promises a year of unmissable theatre. Working in collaboration with artistic associates, director Rob Ashford and designer Christopher Oram, the acclaimed actor-director is presenting an exceptional series of plays that also bring together a remarkable group of actors, led by Rob Brydon, Judi Dench, Derek Jacobi, Zoe Wanamaker, Lily James and Richard Madden.

Despite retaining some of the most high profile names in British Theatre, he has made his season both affordable and accessible

The season opened with a stunning production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale which played in rep with Terence Rattigan’s Harlequinade and All On Her Own. Currently audiences are enjoying Adrian Lester reprising his role as Ira Aldridge in the Tricycle Theatre’s production of Red Velvet and we still have The Painkiller, Romeo and Juliet and The Entertainer to come.

Despite retaining some of the most high profile names in British Theatre, Kenneth Branagh has made his season both affordable and accessible which is very important to our audience in these times of austerity. Tickets for all shows are available from just £15 and in an effort to encourage new audiences to experience his work he has teamed up with ticketing app Todaytix to launch a lottery offering front row seats for productions in the season for the same price.

In addition, three of the productions were scheduled to be screened into more than 1,300 cinemas worldwide (including more than 500 in the UK) ensuring that The Winter’s Tale, Romeo and Juliet and The Entertainer reached as wide an audience as possible. The first of those, The Winter’s Tale was broadcast in November and completely sold out. Branagh has said the cinema screenings were exciting not just because they allowed more people to see the plays, but because they also brought a shared sense of the event.

Finally, and possibly most audience-friendly, when producers Fiery Angel put the Kenneth Branagh season on sale, all ticket agents and re-sellers were barred from adding booking fees in excess of 15 per cent. Given some of the high-profile names that were advertised, it would have been very easy for less scrupulous organisations to profit from those names and rip-off the general public who are often willing to pay whatever it takes to see the likes of Dame Judi Dench on stage. By insisting that no-one was able to hike up the seat prices and tickets had to be kept affordable, Branagh earned a lot of respect within and outside of the industry.

We are delighted that the first Equity Award for Services to Theatre has been given to such a worthy winner – a British actor, producer and director who has already given so much to the UK theatre scene and continues to do so – Sir Kenneth Branagh.

Read all our coverage of the 16th Annual WhatsOnStage Awards here