I know I bang on about Stratford upon Avon and its role as an imposter in the world of artistic content but my walk in the sun yesterday proved it to me.
Ironic really. I was sat on a bench a stone’s throw from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Sat like an ocean liner. Neon lights flashing and nothing going on. Due to leave port that evening but for the moment just selling coffee and pamphlets.
It set me off. I had a dream.
I was gazing across the expansive (expensive) pavement that along with the dry fountain, a field, some very nice trees and of course the swans, and known as the Bancroft, thinking, what a lot of dead space.
Now, I have never been to Paris but have seen the pictures.
You know the ones I mean?
The photographs of Artists selling their wares.
I thought to myself wouldn’t that add some much-needed atmosphere? Wouldn’t that be interesting? If we did that.
You know…Painters selling their Art.
Maybe actually painting, drawing. Portraits on the go. While you wait.
Don’t get me wrong. I mean, if it’s your thing you could still indulge in the cramped and themeless LSD markets. If you like being crammed into tight spaces and coming out smelling of street food, then fine. Carry on tatting.
I’m just thinking that a few artists and easels spread along that spacious and expensive pavement leading up to the Royal Shakespeare…on not-market-days…then why not?
Day time – evening even. Imagine. As the Shakespearians head towards their evening worship?
It has always felt guilt free, in fact almost a duty for me to remind the cocky buggers down on the river that they do not exist out on a gilded limb taking up valuable space that is the greenery of Warwickshire but are in fact, part of a community.Part of thecommunity that is Stratford upon Avon.
The time for that gentle kicking has arrived once again.
The names and the faces of the top bods down at what was once known fondly as ‘The Jam Factory’, have as they always done every few years, changed. Yet for all the enthusiasm generated by their arrival and introduction in the pages of the local press (the Stratford upon Avon Herald), the ‘sins’ after a period of time, reappear and remain the same.
I write of course of the lack of a ‘community feel’, or to put it another way, the missing sense of ‘joining in’. Or, yet another way…the feeling of aloofness that generates from the vast castle down the road.
The Royal Shakespeare theatre appears to forget how much space they take up. Not just in a physical sense but in the average person’s consciousness too.
They are always there. You cannot miss them, and they aren’t to be missed. Situated on the banks of the beautiful River Avon like some giant luxury liner the RST gives off the specialised air of their worst egocentric actors screaming out, ‘I want to be alone’.
Forever cocooned in the protective net that is Shakespeare. They sit Separate and Special. Outsiders allowed only to critic the work that they produce from Shakespeare’s 37 (38?) never-ending loop of plays. The RSC’s actual presence apparently, taken for granted.
It was not always like this.
There was a time when The Royal Shakespeare Theatre made an effort to draw us all in. Shakespeare lovers or not. A time when the Bard represented Theatre as a whole. A time when there was a distinct possibility that we could all become theatregoers and if not that, an awakening, a realisation that theatre was actually an important part of all our lives and everywhere we looked.
I can remember happier and exciting times when The Royal Shakespeare Theatre attempted to wet the whistles of the wider community with competitions, experiments, invitations etc, to ‘come on in’.
I remember RSC spaces (and there are a few) that were usually empty at particular times of year actually being used in conjunction with members of the community, where the end result (certainly in my case) was a new way of ‘looking’ and ‘feeling’, surely the point of all theatre?
And then it all stopped.
The buzzword became ‘education’. The secret password to refilling the coffers. The magic addition to the recipe for a sure-fire increase in the grant. ‘Education’ the feel-good word that made those in charge feel that they were doing the right thing. The Justification that they were looking for. The permission given to spending all our money.
The neighbourhood was forgotten.
The luxury liner remains safely docked (for probably a couple of decades before it moves permanently to London-another story).
What has been forgotten, what has been buried beneath the ‘spectre of specialness’ (or to put it crudely, snobbishness), is the acknowledgement that The Royal Shakespeare Theatre is just another part of the Entertainment Industry.
