Why British Teen-Agers Reject The Theatre

Press, Volume C, Issue 29508, 9 May 1961, Page 8

Why British Teen-Agers Reject The Theatre

[N.Z.P.A. Special Corresvnndent in london)

“The Theatre is only for the upper classes." “Only snobs and cissies go to the theatre.” “I don’t like going to the theatre because other people there have got more money than I’ve got.” “They come from better than I do.” . "I don’t like going to the theatre because the older people turn round when I laugh.” “You wouldn’t notice it. but old people don’t like us sitting next to them.” “I don’t like going to the theatre because I don’t like people looking at me in the intervals.”

These are the sort of comments which came from scores of teen-agers all over Brit ahi when they were asked what they thought about the theatre, and why they did not go to it more than they did. They are reaactions taken from a report carried out for the Gulbenkian Trust by Mr Derek Newton, one of the directors of the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Mr Newton admits that there is often quite a lot of truth in what the young people say. Audiences, he implies, are often elderly and stuffy and the plays are often too long. Mr Newton armed himself with a tape-recorder and went off to talk to teen-agers on street comers, in pubs, dance-halls and coffee-bars. His research took him 15 months. He said, in his final analysis, that there was one basic reason for people not wishing to go to the theatre: it was not exciting enough. “Theatre fails to excite.” said Mr Newton. “Though there have been exciting developments as far as

writing and presentation are concerned, they have not. as yet. reached the ordinary man in the street. As things are at the moment he is not likely to receive them.” In one section of the report, Mr Newton says he had not peviously realised how strong were some of the social barriers to theatre in the minds of many people. "It will be true to say. however, that many who make voluble comments might well be the type who would tend to decry any accepted practice of people they might consider ‘ultrarespectable’. This does not appear to be true in many countries overseas. Their dramatic heritage is not any greater than Britain’s yet observations are frequently made that their audiences are far more broadly based from different sections of the community,” he says. Mr Newton suggests that in order to attract the teenagers, plays should be much shorter, and that the experiment should be tried of having all-in-one tickets for a play followed by a dance, with a drink, coffee, or a meal thrown in. “Our young people are being brought up in terms of half-hour episodes on television and not much more than an hour for straight plays.” “We still cling firmly in the commercial theatre to our idea of three-act plays, purely for its rewards in terms of interval sales,” he says. Mr Newton said that the biggest shock was to find that such a high proportion of young people from all walks of life had considerable prejudice and antagonism to the theatre, and were very ill-informed on what went on in the theatre.