Towards a Civic Theatre

It’s easy to blame the difficulties theatre now faces on the longest shutdown of stages since the mid-seventeenth century

But these problems began some time before a global pandemic

Decades of free market ideas, years of austerity, and the slow encroachment of private space have all worked together to create an industry struggling to define its purpose.

The virus was a symptom, not the cause

In Towards A Civic Theatre, director Dan Hutton argues that a theatre which isn’t civic in outlook is not worth fighting for

Full of ideas and provocations from a range of theatre practitioners, and drawing on examples from inside and outside of the performing arts, it makes the case for a new kind of theatre fit for purpose in an already tumultuous twenty-first century

It is a toolkit, a guide, an offer to audiences and a call to arms for artistic leaders of tomorrow

REVIEWS

‘Passionately argued, intelligently engaged and extremely well timed. An excellently written and stimulating account of a very pressing issue’ ~ Aleks Sierz