Cult of austerity is endangering the future of vital Scottish theatre companies and damaging the fabric of British life – Joyce McMillan

Without Scotland’s producing theatres, there could have been no Men Should Weep, no Slab Boys and no Sunshine On Leith

As the city holds its breath in advance of this weekend’s opening of the 2023 Edinburgh International Festival – with all its accompanying festivals, and mighty Fringe – there is one grim new feature of Edinburgh’s cultural landscape that few Festival-goers will be able to miss. It sits in the heart of Lothian Road, just opposite the Usher Hall and the city’s two main theatres, the Traverse and Lyceum; and it is Edinburgh’s lost Filmhouse, abruptly closed last October when the company which operated it went bust, and now shuttered, derelict-looking, and up for sale to the highest bidder in the cut-throat world of property development.

The reasons for the venue’s closure were complex and efforts continue to save it as a film venue; but the absence of a public space that belonged to and enriched the city in so many deep and important ways is a chilling warning of what may be to come, as a perfect storm of rocketing costs, cash-strapped audiences and dwindling real-terms public funding hits cultural organisations across the country.

Last week, for example, saw the publication of a report commissioned by Scotland’s six leading building-based producing theatres – the Lyceum, the Traverse, the Citizens’, the Tron, Dundee Rep and Pitlochry Festival Theatre – about how they can hope to survive in such difficult times. It was framed as a positive report, not a desperate cry for help; but in the end, it reminded me of nothing so much as that moment last year when the financial expert Martin Lewis declared, in frustration, that he was “out of tools to help people now” because they simply did not have enough money. The report contained some ideas worth discussing, of course – about pooling of resources, more effective commercial exploitation of successful shows, and the development of a joint marketing strategy to raise awareness of theatre made in Scotland, and rebuild audiences post-pandemic.

The truth is, though, that many of these ideas have already been endlessly chewed over and acted upon, during years of relentless downward pressure on public support. The result is that, even at current audience and funding levels, these theatres continue to play hugely important roles in their very different communities, as social hubs, centres for arts education and youth groups, employers of labour, developers of future talent, supporters of local freelance arts workers, and places where the stories of the community can be told in the community’s own voice.

Without Scotland’s producing theatres, after all, there could have been no Men Should Weep, no Slab Boys, no Sunshine On Leith, no chance of a show like the recent Tron smash hit Moorcroft (about a 1990s’ six-a-side football team in Lanarkshire), and no current galaxy of internationally recognised Scottish stars; ask Brian Cox, Bill Paterson, David Tennant or Outlander star Sam Heughan where their careers would be without Scotland’s producing theatres, and you will be left in no doubt about their vital role. It’s because of all of these benefits that most European countries consider it a no-brainer to offer generous support to local theatres, and the arts in general; the city of Berlin, for example, recently announced an annual arts budget of more than 900 million euros for a community of seven million people, more than ten times Creative Scotland’s annual budget for Scotland.

Yet here in the UK, the good and creative people who work in this sector are run ragged, scratching and scheming to assemble tiny pots of money to keep their buildings watertight and their shows on stage, and can often do so only by merging the distinct local character of their work into co-productions with other theatres, in ways that inevitably damage the diversity of our culture, and seriously reduce employment opportunities for the freelance writers, actors, designers, directors who actually create the shows.

And what is infuriating about all of this is that the sums involved in making the difference between a struggling and desperate theatre sector and a thriving and expanding one are so vanishingly small, in relation to overall public spending. So far as I can see, the amount involved in restoring these historic and much-loved theatres to a funding level that would enable them to sustain and expand their work in these difficult times, would be well below £5 million a year – a drop in the ocean in the Scottish Government’s overall budget (less than 0.01 per cent), never mind that of the UK. Yet for this tiny ha’porth of tar, these vital and often historic buildings, and the organisations that bring them to life, are left at constant risk of insolvency, and of closures which would leave the most heartbreaking and diminishing scars on our urban and national fabric.

A scene from a dress rehearsal of Sunshine On Leith at Larbert Musical Theatre (Picture: Michael Gillen)

And in this, finally, theatre and the arts are typical of, and perhaps canaries in the coal-mine for, dozens of other sectors of our public realm driven almost to despair by the needless “austerity” of the last 13 years, suffering damaging under-investment over sums dwarfed by the cash the British government wasted during the pandemic, and constantly bullied by a ruling ideology that frames public spending as a deadweight cost to the economy, rather than – if rightly spent – a vital investment in national well-being and creativity.

Across the whole fabric of British life, it is becoming ever more clear that this age of chronic under-investment in our people and communities now has to stop, if we are to have any future worth the name. And Scotland’s building-based theatre companies, with their fantastic but now endangered record of invention and inspiration, seem like a very good place to start in challenging that cult of austerity – not least because the act of restoring them to secure funding levels is so eminently affordable, and, if history is any guide, so certain, in tough times, to produce a brilliant, joyful and life-enhancing response.