ABSTRACT
It should not be supposed that attempting to define even recent theatrical history is anything other than an approximation to what actually happened. Yet, as another contributor to this series has accurately observed: T heatre historians too often neglect the hand-to-mouth instantaneousness of much theatrical decision-making.’1 Quantifying the ‘instantaneousness’ is, to some extent, impossible. What prompted decisions or determined action is so frequently the product of mood, emotion, cumulative frustration or luck, that an attempt at recording it must be accompanied by a sense of the attendant dangers. For the most part, theatre companies adapt to the current situation, bend with prevailing conditions, occasionally stick out against the odds, but above all live with what they have as best as they are able. The process of making do sometimes produces occasional glories, which tend to be remembered and mask the often tedious nature of a particular struggle. What determines what is later described as a certain hallmark or style is, more often than not, how decisions are reached in a particular context. Very few companies begin, still less continue with, a pre-stated ideal, so proofed against varieties of cold that the ideal is undamaged. Most depend upon a conjunction of personalities placed, if they are fortunate, in a context which allows such a conjunction to work. A director not associated with the Royal Court, Michael Blakemore, offers a definition of policy which seems closer to the truth than an exclusively post-hoc analysis:2
My previous experience suggested that the policy of a theatre is dictated less by statements of intent, no matter how complex or considered, than by those day-to-day crises that arrive on someone’s desk at eleven in the morning demanding a solution by three in the afternoon. The policy of any theatre is most truly the accumulation of these daily decisions - decisions which reveal priorities, create precedents and eventually map out a discernible course. Alas, it is precisely in this area that no committee can possibly participate.
