THE STATE AND THE THEATRE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 11 March 1930, Page 5

THE STATE AND THE THEATRE

ASSISTANCE ADVOCATED

Proposals for State assistance in the establishment of a chain of theatres throughout England were advanced by Mr John Drinkwater in a lecture before the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society. Including the term “municipal control” with the general term “State control,” he said that dramatic enterprise ought to be State endowed, and he greatly hoped that the Government now in office would distinguish itself by being the first to accept a responsibility that could bring it nothing but honour. Over the last 20 years he supposed the deepest influence exercised in England by a theatre upon a community was to be found in the work done consistently from season to season since 1913 by Sir Barry Jackson’s repertory theatre at Birmingham, and such a theatre should be established, adequately equipped and endowed, in every town in England. The principal recommendation of the scheme was that it decentralised dramatic enterprise, spread it over the whole country, and took advantage of the many independent ventures that had already struggled, or were struggling, to some achievement. The most hopeful plan would probably be to make London in some way a clearing house for all the provincial productions of the National Theatre All that would be necessary would be a theatre on the same scale as those of the provincial towns. The population standard which had been suggested would mean something like 15 theatres, but let them say >2O. Roughly speaking, no point in the country would then be at a greater distance than 30 miles from one of these theatres. The initial cost of building and equipment should not exceed £250, 000, and the launching of (he whole enterprise might amount to another £250,000. The total inclusive weekly bills of the 20 theatres ought not to exceed £12,000, and within a very short time the theatres, taken,, in the aggregate, would bo self-supporting. A chain of theatres such as this would, witihin a generation, effect an improvement in the social, intellectual and moral tone of the countral far beyond our reckoning.