Loyola - opera meets the Indigenous

Rafael Montero

I've been directing a new opera production for presentation at the Arcola's Grimeborn Festival, for a company called El Parnaso Hyspano, led by the Indigenous tenor Rafael Montero, who was so impressive in the Celebrating Peru performance we curated at the British Museum last year. The piece, which we're calling Loyola, was originally entitled San Ignacio Loyola, and was written by a Jesuit composer called Domenico Zipoli for the missions in Latin America, where the performers would have been Indigenous singers and musicians. The score suggests that they must have sung and played European baroque to a very high standard, and at the same time hints at the inclusion of musical traditions from the locality itself. The inclusion in our production of Johnny Rodriguez on percussion and Andean pipes follows through on that line of thought, and it sounds wonderful....  

Johnny's presence, like that of Rafael singing the title role, is entirely "authentic", but of course feels strange and radical in the context of a European performance. Zipoli wrote his da capo arias and secco recitatives for Indigenous people to perform, but a European audience associates these sounds with European singers and players. What's more, the title character was none other than the founder of the Jesuit order: a hero of the European Counter-Reformation, determined to evangelise what he regarded as the ignorant pagans of the Americas and Asia. The Jesuits, whose successes included being consulted by the Emperor of China himself, were in many ways a triumphalist and militant prototype for contemporary models of ideological globalisation. 

The conductor Gabriel Garrido, with whom I worked on Xerxes for ENO some years ago, and from whom I learnt a lot about the jazz-like world of the baroque, made a recording of the opera which you can watch on YouTube. I like the musical performance, and the staging is probably as "authentic" as you can be - but it is also, frankly, ludicrous, and feels almost offensive in the 21st century. We really cannot perform a straight, unquestioning glorification of cultural imperialism in the era of #BlackLivesMatter, least of all with an Indigenous person in the title role. But perhaps that Indigenous presence suggests a way in which this music can be re-created for the 21st century, revisiting the cross-cultural dialogue that was, in its own lop-sided way, at the heart of the original creation.

What if our Loyola is not a Jesuit firebrand but an Indigenous teacher? What if the people who live in ignorance are not the Native people of the Americas and Asia but the imperialists themselves and their descendants, who continue to profit from their ancestors' incursions and whose profiteering now threatens the planet itself? How, in that case, might we portray the Angels who tell Loyola to get out of his convalescent bed and become active in the world? Who might be the Demon that tempts him towards a life of ease and complacency? What legacy might he want to pass on to his chosen successor, and how might we portray that missionary figure for today? 

These questions have been the spur to making our production. 

Antigone in the Amazon

Antigone in the Amazon:
Kay Sara on screen, Frederico Arujo on stage

On April 17th 1996, at a place called Eldorado de Carajás, in the state of Pará, Brazilian police opened fire on a group of land-reform activists who were occupying a stretch of the Trans-Amazonian highway. Nineteen people died immediately, and a further two died of their wounds shortly afterwards. Many more were injured. The leadership of the Landless Workers' Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, or MST) continues to commemorate this massacre, with the anniversary marked as the International Day of Peasant Struggles.

This year, as part of their collaboration with NTGent and director Milo Rau, MST re-enacted the massacre in the place where it happened, with as much accuracy as possible. Rau has re-created historical events before, for example in The Last Days of the Ceausescus, but this time the reconstruction was made specifically for film, with the aim of framing it within his new theatre-piece, Antigone in the Amazon. The cast includes a part-Indigenous Brazilian actor, Frederico Araujo, who was told he bore a marked resemblance to the first activist who was shot. In the complex, self-reflexive dramaturgy that was evolving, that young man and Araujo himself melded with the figure of Antigone's dead and unburied brother, Polyneices.

I took the Eurostar, changed trains in Brussels, absorbed the beauty of the city, visited the exhibition about Rau's recent work, and watched the play. 

Regular readers of this blog will know that I am a great admirer of Milo Rau, having watched many of his pieces during the online theatre-fest of lockdown, read the Golden Books and (only a few weeks ago) watched Hate Radio live at BAC. His understanding of the need to make theatre that embraces and exposes global issues is very much in tune with our own work; as is his insistence on real, deep, international, intercultural collaboration. There are even some weird coincidences: we have both made films in Matera, for example! The fact that Antigone in the Amazon was to be a collaboration with Indigenous activists made this one of my most eagerly anticipated theatre experiences. And it was certainly a long time coming...  The first discussions between MST and Rau took place in 2018, and the development of the project began in early 2020, only to be interrupted by Covid. The pandemic was particularly intense in the Amazon, with a neo-fascist government under Bolsanoro that refused to impose lockdowns, while his ministers called it an “opportunity” for illegal logging in the Amazon. The hospital corridors of Manaus were lined with corpses, and people had to be thrown into mass graves. Nevertheless, NTGent continued to remind the world that the project was still bubbling away, particularly when Kay Sara, the Indigenous performer and activist cast as Antigone, delivered online the speech with which she was to have opened the 2020 Wiener Festwochen. 

It is an extraordinary, moving and intense piece of oratory. From the start, Kay Sara is clear that she is personally safe: "Nature surrounds me, it protects me and nourishes us too. I live in the rhythm of birds singing and the rain and perform an ancient ritual for my protection. For the first time in over 500 years, Europe and America are separated again." That last sentence seems particularly resonant, coming from an Indigenous woman at a time when an imported virus was once again coursing through her people, as has happened to Indigenous Americans ever since smallpox arrived with Columbus and Cortés. Colonialism, in all its monstrous, rapacious arrogance, remains the root cause of the agonies besetting the Amazon and its people. If only Europe were separate from America, she seems to be saying, then perhaps we could heal.

And so, she goes on to tell her European audience: "Now it is time for you to be silent. The time has come to listen. You need us, the prisoners of your world, to understand yourselves. Because the thing is so simple: there is no gain in this world, there is only life. And that’s why it’s good that I’m not on the Burgtheater stage. That I’m not talking to you as an actress, because it’s not about art anymore, it’s not about theatre anymore. Our tragedy happens here and now, in the world, before our very eyes."

In the past, Milo Rau has been accused of a lack of equity in some of his international collaborations. Orestes in Mosul, for example, was criticised as having made use of Iraqi performers within a largely self-serving European structure, led by "white saviours". I'm not sure I entirely agree with this assessment: after all the play featured Susana AbdulMajid, whose heritage goes back to Mosul, and led to the establishment of a film school in the city. But it's been striking how, since that production, Rau has deliberately engaged in close dialogues with significant figures from the communities featured in his work, for example casting the Cameroonian activist Yvan Sagnet as Jesus in The New Gospel. Kay Sara's performance as Antigone continues that positive trend.

Except that she wasn't there. 

Quite early in the show, Frederico Araujo holds up a phone and plays her voice, introducing herself as an Indigenous woman. She is seen in the film, crying over his body as Polyneices, introducing the European actors to people in the Amazon. She was in Ghent for rehearsals. But, as Milo Rau rather cryptically puts it in the programme: "We understood only  during the film shootings in Brazil and during the last weeks of  rehearsals in Europe that Kay Sara’s place is in her home country, as part of the political Brazilian struggle." This is very resonant with her speech for the Festwochen: it seems that Kay Sara has come to feel that she is better off separating herself from European people as far as possible, and working within her own community. I understand that she has stated this will be her last collaboration with Europeans. Of course, I don't know the details, but the departure of this remarkable, insightful and impassioned artist is troubling for any European hoping to open up channels of communication between cultures, and to address global issues through theatre. In order to deal with globalisation, the child of colonialism, we have to address ourselves to European and North American cities, because that is where the colonial project began, and that is where it is still entrenched, at enormous profit (as today's Guardian makes clear). It would be narcissistic to imagine we can or should do this alone: we have to work in dialogue with peoples whose lands and cultures were and are colonised, and we have to recognise the challenges and nuances of such collaborations. But if the dialogue is refused or the collaboration is withdrawn, then we are left to wait in silence for a global revolution that will come from elsewhere. Perhaps that is what we have to do - but it feels absurdly passive at a moment when we are starting to accept responsibility and to understand the necessity of global collaboration as the only way forward.

Antigone in the Amazon deals with these questions very well: it's been forced to do so, and perhaps that's a good thing. As well as presenting the horror of the 1996 massacre and leading the audience to understand its context and the need for activism, there is also a reckoning with the ambiguous position occupied by the European activist and artist. The Flemish actor Arne De Tremerie reflects on the experience of being in the Amazon, the privilege he felt that he could go there while most of the people he met were unable to travel, his sense of “a guilt complex disguised as activism.” As well as his original role as Polyneices, Frederico Araujo plays the onstage Antigone: and there's an extraordinary sense of his reaching towards his Indigenous identity at the same time as being aware of his own form of privilege, encapsulated in his distance from that heritage. I was left wondering whether the play was made poorer or paradoxically richer by Kay Sara's physical absence. But that isn't really the point, of course. The play is an intervention in an ongoing and profoundly complex political process, and so it expresses the current moment in that process, the place where we stand right now, which is (rightly) very uncomfortable. As the first of the rolling titles says: "This is not The End".

I am grateful to the Research Office at Rose Bruford College for funding my visit to Ghent. 

The Coronation - A Theatrical Reading, and why it matters

Penny Mordaunt carries the sword at the coronation

It's not very surprising to find people talking about the coronation as theatre. Great costumes, spectacular setting, a carefully rehearsed rhythmic exchange between spoken text and music, some remarkable characters.... The Guardian has even published a review by Michael Billington, in which he calls it "Shakespearean...  immensely touching", and gives it four stars. However, if you look at what actually happens within the coronation ceremony, it starts to seem a lot less theatrical than it may at first appear. And a lot more significant.

The impression of theatricality comes, I think, from the fact that most of us watched the event on television. That was true of the previous coronation too: a lot of British households bought their first TV in 1953 so they could watch the live broadcast. It was not true of any coronation prior to that, though, and the form of the event is very long established: many parts of it go right back to the crowning of Edgar at Bath Abbey in 973. The televised version is deceptive, in that it shows to the "audience" what is happening in the coronation chair and at the High Altar. Our received image of the ceremony is so ingrained from the endlessly repeated footage of Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher crowning Elizabeth II that I was genuinely quite shocked to discover that the coronation chair did not in fact face the public, but rather formed a barrier between them and the very intimate space occupied by the monarch and the clergy. Add to that the fact that Westminster Abbey has a choir screen, and you realise that the supposedly privileged congregation is very much excluded from what is actually happening.

The anointing screens for Charles III

So these recent televised coronations are very different from any others, in that they invite spectatorship, and hence feel theatrical. There's a very real tension in this: a tension made clear by the insistence of the King that the moment of his anointing should be hidden entirely from public view, behind three screens. This was not what happened in 1953 or before, when the anointing took place under a canopy; but Elizabeth II stipulated that the footage of her anointing should never be shown again. Even this still image of the canopy is a rare find.

The anointing canopy for Elizabeth II

The reason that the monarchs are so wary of the anointing becoming spectacle is very simple: they believe it to be a particularly sacred moment, in which they are consecrated as sovereign. Handel's famous anthem sets a text from 1 Kings 1:38-40 - a text which has been used in every coronation since Edgar's - "Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon King."  In other words, it is in this physically intimate and vulnerable moment that God places the monarch at the head of the nation. The fact that this is  still not permitted to become spectacle makes it clear that what happens here is still regarded as real. Our hereditary Head of State, referred to in one of the few public-facing moments of the ceremony as "your undoubted King", holds his office because God put him there.

If you think about it, what other theoretical justification can there be for an hereditary monarchy? Other "modernised" European monarchies tend not to bother with coronations: their theoretical underpinning seems to be that "it's just the way it is", and a lot of the debate around monarchy in the UK is also couched in those terms, making it much easier to accept and muddle on. But it won't do really, will it? 

Think about what happens in the coronation when the the Sword of State and Sword of Offering has been strapped to the King's side as part of his sovereign regalia.  It is then passed on to the Lord President of the Council, who represents the King's Ministers, the Executive arm of the government. All the fuss made about Penny Mordaunt's sword carrying skills just serves to obscure the very potent symbolism of this: the government receives the power which this sword represents as something delegated from the King, who in turn receives it from God. And where are the people in this? Nowhere to be seen.

Of course, it is often argued that "in reality" the government draws its power from an elected Parliament, and that we actually live in a democracy. I beg to differ. There are many powers exercised by the executive which are in fact the prerogative powers of the King, and which do not require the consent of Parliament. This was how Tony Blair was able to take us to war in Iraq without a vote in Parliament, even in the face of the largest popular protest in British history. There was nothing remotely democratic about it. It's only one example - there are many more - but it makes the point abundantly clear. Parliament may draft, debate and pass legislation, but it is the King who signs it into law, and there are many precedents for changes being made in order for the monarch to feel comfortable doing this. Many laws, including recent ones, include exceptions for the practice in royal households.

On Saturday, the Metropolitan Police arrested 64 anti-monarchy protestors, not for any public disorder, but on suspicion that they might commit disorder. Many activists and commentators have responded with justifiable concern, mentioning the "right" to peaceful protest. But the problem with this argument is that we don't have a proper Bill of Rights in this country, nor can we have unless and until sovereignty is vested in the people. While the Head of State remains an hereditary "undoubted King", consecrated by God, then we simply cannot say that he is "Not My King": he is, whether we like it or not, and we have no say in the matter. So the Police were correct - we cannot protest against the Coronation. 

We are not citizens, but subjects. In the 21st century, this is surely not tenable.

I had best include a disclaimer on this post, that what is argued here is my personal opinion only and does not represent any political stance by Border Crossings, which is a charity. 

Hate News

Hate Radio

I became very interested in Milo Rau's theatre-making during the lockdowns, when I was able to see several of his pieces online. Lenin, The Last Days of the Ceausescus, La Reprise, Orestes in Mosul, The New Gospel...  all very remarkable.  And I read the text of Compassion - The History of the Machine Gun too.  Wish I'd seen it. But online theatre only goes so far, and the experience of seeing Hate Radio live at BAC last week took my admiration for this extraordinary director to another level. It was terrifying.  

The piece has been described very well in lots of reviews, so I won't go into detail here. For those who want to read more about the show, I particularly recommend this blog by Lily Climenhaga, who like me arrived at the performance from a position of some knowledge, and was perhaps even more stunned by the work as a result.  As Lily explains, the performance is received in a number of distinct ways. You listen to the broadcast from RTLM as the original audience in Rwanda would have done, via your personal radio set with headphones: an experience that is oddly personal and intimate. At the same time, you watch the people who are broadcasting - distanced from you in a perspex box. By contrast with the audio experience, the visual one is cold and detached. You observe the movement of the silent soldier who continually tidies the space and offers snacks and drinks to the presenters. You see the maps and posters with which they surround themselves. You watch them dance along to the pop songs they play, you see the shoulder holster revealed when Kantano Habimana takes off his smart jacket, you suddenly notice the pistol sitting casually on the sound engineer's desk. When Valérie Bemeriki comes close to losing all self-control in one of her diatribes against the "cockroach" Tutsis, you can see her and her fellow presenters "dealing with it" in their various ways during the cheery song that follows - but you can't hear what they're saying. Through this combination of involvement and detachment, the performance at once draws you in to the apparent light entertainment of the radio station, and fills you with horrified fascination at the outpouring of invective that it unleashed. 

The recreation is detailed. The set was made in response to precise accounts given by Valérie Bemeriki herself when interviewed in prison by Milo Rau and designer Anton Lukas. In 2011, the piece was actually performed in the former RTLM studio in Kigali, with the audience listening on their radios in the street outside, watching the actors through the full-length windows. Lukas took a photograph. 

Hate Radio in Kigali

This hyper-realism is framed by accounts of the genocide itself, based closely on fact but spoken by actors presenting fictional characters on video. The play's last line is spoken by one of these survivors: "When there’s been one genocide then there will be many more." Out of context, this sounds clichéd and trite, but at the end of this performance it is incredibly chilling, because Hate Radio has led you to understand just how easily people can become embroiled in and intoxicated by the rhetoric of extreme violence. 

The performance was perhaps even more telling, even more necessary, in the week when 16 year old Ralph Yarl had been shot in the head by Andrew Lester when he accidentally went to the wrong house in Kansas City's Northland, while trying to pick up his younger brothers. Andrew Lester is an older white man: Ralph Yarl is Black. Lester's grandson Klint Ludwig has given a frank and telling account of how his grandfather has become entangled in the invective and deceit of populist media, particularly Trump's adored Fox News. "He’s become staunchly right-wing, further down the right-wing rabbit hole as far as doing the election-denying conspiracy stuff and COVID conspiracies and disinformation, fully buying into the Fox News, OAN kind of line.” Ludwig says his grandfather had been immersed in “a 24-hour news cycle of fear and paranoia.... It’s stock Fox News, conservative American stuff. It’s ‘anybody who gets an abortion is a murderer.’ And ‘fatherless Black families are the reason why crime exists in this country.’ ”

There's very little distance between Rwanda's Hate Radio and America's Fox News.

Hate Radio

Veronica Needa

Veronica Needa in MAPPA MUNDI

Veronica Needa, who died on Wednesday, was a great friend to Border Crossings and a hugely significant figure in both intercultural and community theatre practice. I first met her as long ago as 1999, when I was assembling the cast for MAPPA MUNDI: the first production we did that was fully funded and our first foray into intercultural devising. I was looking for someone from a Chinese background who would be able to improvise and create, and who could also bring some knowledge of traditional forms. I got in touch with David Tse, who was then running Yellow Earth, and he suggested Veronica. 

We met at the ENO's old rehearsal rooms in West Hampstead. Veronica didn't have a stereotypical Chinese "look", and it emerged very quickly that she was an embodiment of cosmopolitanism in her DNA. As well as Chinese, she was of British, Japanese and Syrian descent; usually describing herself as a "Hong Kong Eurasian". The year before we met, she had turned her extraordinary family history into a dazzling one-woman show called FACE, and this re-telling of personal histories from diverse viewpoints (very fashionable now, but highly innovative then) was clearly a passion of hers. As well as making her the professional writer-performer that she was, this passion fed into her leadership role in the Playback Theatre movement, both in the UK and around the world. As the founder of the School of Playback Theatre UK and London Playback Theatre, Veronica brought this very immediate, deeply therapeutic form  into the centre of Applied Theatre practice. This skill and passion meant that she could not only be at the centre of our devising company: she was also ideally placed to lead community workshops alongside our development work.

As we started to develop MAPPA MUNDI, Veronica's influence on the whole company was profound. Without my ever stating it as the through line of the play, we all found ourselves re-telling stories from our family histories. Veronica's Chinese grandmother Lily (whose Chinese name was Wong Seui Gum) became a central figure in one key narrative: a quiet spectator of Hong Kong's turbulent 20th century. Veronica always said that she wasn't political, and sometimes resisted my attempts to place Lily's story in a wider historical framing - but in truth she was deeply political, above all in her burning desire to bring the stories of marginalised or overlooked people onto the stage. It was high politics, soiled by ambition and corruption, that she so mistrusted.

Although she only did that one show with us, it was a landmark one, and we stayed in touch thereafter. Veronica was one of the "21 Faces of Border Crossings" who marked the organisation's birthday with a retrospective publication in 2016. She wrote there about our intercultural work as "such an important, rich and healing creative endeavour", emphasising that it had only grown in importance since the early days. She came to see the work, particularly when we were collaborating with Chinese performers and companies. She was a bit unsure about DIS-ORIENTATIONS - I suspect because of its overtly political elements - but she loved the more intimate CONSUMED in 2013, bringing her friend Anna Chen, who wrote a glowing review in the Morning Star (ironically the most politically aware commentary we received on that play). In 2014 she came to THIS FLESH IS MINE ("it's SO interesting") - and I realised this morning that I had not seen her in person since. Nine years... The Hong Kong actor Indy Lee, to whom she introduced me, had mentioned she was ill. Today Indy sent me a WhatsApp with the words "Sad news" and a link to a website set up for tributes. 

It says: "Veronica always loved stories. Feel free to share."

April 1st 2023 - An Open Letter to Barclays Bank

1st April 2023

To the Directors, Barclays Bank PLC

As you will be aware, Border Crossings has been making use of Barclays’ banking services for 28 years now. During that time, we have been very impressed with the way you run your business.  We have never had to charge you interest as you have always retained a healthy level of reserves and balance. Given the very challenging nature of the current environment for banking, the fact that a small organisation like yours has even survived, let alone thrived, is remarkable. We are truly impressed with the way in which you have weathered the last decade, when the government has been undermining your industry so catastrophically, with many banks having to close because of the funding cuts.  

In spite of your having been such good bankers to us for 28 years, we have now decided, for a reason we will not explain to you, that we urgently require information about your board of directors, and the people who would be liable (albeit to a very limited degree) should you become insolvent. We are aware that the details of directors are available on your website and at Companies House with your accounts, because you are very careful about your annual filing duties, but we prefer that you tell us separately because that means more unnecessary work for you. We were surprised to discover that there are no details or accounts available via the Charity Commission: should you ever wish to know anything about us, that is another route that you could decide not to follow.

Because these details are so crucial to us, we have decided to write to you every few days about it. Knowing how crucial the provision of intercultural performance is to the smooth running of your bank, we have also decided to threaten a withdrawal of this service if you do not respond to each of these letters within 10 days of its date. We will not, however, actually post the letter on the day when we purport to write it, and we will use a very slow postal service. This should mean that the threat will already have expired by the time you get the letter, meaning that you will be very worried by it.

The letter will ask you to phone a particular number. After lengthy delays and requests for security information, you will then be privileged to speak to one of our staff. We will take care to ensure that this is never somebody you may have spoken to before, or anybody who has ever heard of Barclays. They will proceed to ask you the same questions that you have already been asked on numerous previous calls. In case you should start to become in any way carefree in relation to the need to do this every few days, we will also send you emails that remind you about the letters.  Your Chief Executive is someone whom we hold personally responsible for not telling us things we already know, and as we are fortunate enough to possess his personal mobile number, we will also be texting him on a regular basis.

One of our key requirements is that you provide us with a list of the names of people with limited liability in the event that you become insolvent. This list needs to follow a particular format, which we will send to you after your fifth phone call. It will be sent by email. However, our email system is not simply to send an email with an attachment. We will send you an email which will direct you to a secure site that you have not previously used, on which you will need a username and password to access the real email with the attachment. Once you have managed to download this attachment, you need to use it as a template to write a letter on your own letterhead, which must then be signed by one of your board, and sent to your branch.  

If the Chair of your board is feeling particularly helpful, he may choose to deliver this to the particular branch of Border Crossings that deals with Barclays. Unlike our Chair, who is a charitable trustee and so unpaid, your Chair may regard this as a good use of his time as he is well paid to undertake meaningless activities. At this point, we will once again send you a letter requiring you to phone us, at which point we will tell you that we have not received the letter. When you explain that it was personally delivered to the appropriate branch of Border Crossings by your Chair in exact accordance with our requirements, we have instructed our operative to sigh audibly and explain that s/he is unable to contact the branch to request the hand-delivered letter, that this process could have been done by email, and that an original signature is not in fact needed, even though we previously told you that it was. We will then send another email giving you a link to a site containing a further email to which you can reply attaching the letter that your Chair had previously delivered in person but which we claim not to have received because nobody who works at Border Crossings is capable of talking to anybody else who works here.  

We hope you are following all of this information with care, because if you do not go through this incredibly important process we will have no choice but to withdraw the provision of intercultural theatre services from Barclays, and that would be crippling for you.

In the event that there are any challenges to you in fulfilling these urgent requirements, do not worry, as there are many ways to contact us. You can go into one of the few remaining branches of Border Crossings, where you will need to wait for an hour before having a conversation with somebody who tells you that they can’t do anything about it. You can sit on a telephone helpline for an hour before being put through to somebody who tells you that they can’t do anything about it. However, our preferred method of communicating with our bank is via the Border Crossings app. This is really intended for your Chief Executive’s personal theatre-going activity, but we are happy to extend the invitation to him to use it for Barclays as well. We particularly like this method of communication, as it does not involve our having to pay any staff at all, even the ones we exploit in Bangalore call centres, but is run by something called Artificial Intelligence. We are letting you into a secret here, because most people would never know that they aren’t accessing real theatre through this app. We are particularly proud of one phrase which it likes to use when our bankers seem upset about the way we treat them: “If I would have face the same issue, I would have felt the same way.” The grammatical inaccuracy is what gives this a real human touch, don’t you agree?

Anyway, we’ve kept you long enough from the important services we’re sure you’re providing to many other small theatre charities. If you could find a moment to send us vast amounts of personal information about your directors, we would be grateful. After all, it’s important to know exactly whom you are trusting with your money.

kind regards

Border Crossings

China re-opens

Ningbo Tianran Stage Theatre

This weekend, I was giving an online class to Rose Bruford students. Because the classes are done remotely, there are students all over the world, including China. One of them, Xuyu Zhang, lives in Ningbo, a city to the South of Shanghai where I used to go quite often to lead work for the University of Nottingham's campus there.

The class was about the effect Covid has had on theatre, using Rustom Bharucha's wonderful lecture series as a start point.  Towards the end of the class, the image of Xuyu went dark.  It turned out that she was in a taxi - although the connectivity remained perfect and she was still able to share a presentation while travelling!  She explained that the Grand Theatre in Ningbo was finally re-opening that evening, with a play called The Face of Chiang Kai-shek, and she simply had to be there.  I hadn't really taken into account the different speeds of re-opening, and the huge amount of pressure people in China must have been under as the rest of the world returned to social activity and performance, while they remained in their apartments, masked and isolated.  

As the class ended, the taxi drew to a halt, and Xuyu turned her phone towards the theatre.  She walked up the imposing staircase, and joined the very long queue at the Box Office.  It was wonderful to be there.  

The Face of Chiang Kai-shek

Reflecting on BOTANY BAY - guest blog by Carolyn Defrin

 

BOTANY BAY celebration - Manchester

BOTANY BAY was a major Participation and Learning project, which we ran as part of ORIGINS 2021-22 with the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund.  Here our External Evaluator, Dr. Carolyn Defrin, reflects on the project's journey and impact.

*

The timeline of BOTANY BAY, from its launch in the peak of Omicron to its completion in what now feels like a post-pandemic landscape, speaks to its imperative value. In the last three years the entire globe has been visibly impacted by a health crisis. But Covid’s necessary slowing down of society has created space and time to more clearly witness and experience the long interconnected crises between people and the planet. The entanglement of Covid, the Climate Crisis and Colonialism is deep and complex and a project like BOTANY BAY enters the conversation by creating numerous pathways into understanding our inter-relationships with people and land, illuminating how we might start tending to both with more care, awareness and deliberate action.

With attention on Indigenous practices and principles, BOTANY BAY aimed to address the critical need to look after our world differently. Indigenous inspired growing and gardening practices have a lot to teach us about how interconnected we are and how much care is needed to keep those interconnections alive and thriving. By shining a light on the values and cultural traditions of a range of Indigenous communities across the map, BOTANY BAY platformed looking back as a means to look forward. Drawing out more complete histories of plant origins and the ways in which politics have complicated those stories invited understanding and acknowledgement as a means to grasp at large concepts of Colonialism and Climate Change through a series of experiential activities.

Through museum visits, treasure hunts in heritage gardens, special visits from heritage experts and performances from artists with direct links to Indigenous backgrounds, BOTANY BAY offered a wide set of access points for children to encounter new knowledge. Children became more inquisitive about the environmental repercussions of deforestation in the Amazon as they watched intricate puppet animals created and performed by José Navarro lose critical access to their food and homes. As students acted out a game with the Manchester Museum, where they had to follow butterflies to find specific medicinal plants and flowers, they embodied not only the inter-relationships between humans and animals, and the mutual care needed to sustain such ecologies, but also learned of the detrimental impact of certain types of farming, land ownership and extraction on those relationships as the game began to introduce obstacles for the students to find the butterflies.

BOTANY BAY is not encapsulated through a box ticking exercise of finite learnings and rote memorisations. Rather it is a programme of multi-sensory, embodied learning activities that built skills in attention, care and individual thinking and adaptation. As Manchester Museum's Curator of Indigenous Perspectives Alexandra P Alberda, an institution can be a conversation starter, and BOTANY BAY feels very much about starting conversations, activating ideas, getting one’s hands literally and metaphorically dirty with some messy problems in our current world.

As students created their own gardens- planting, tending, growing and cooking their own food inspired by Indigenous practices and principles- they witnessed acts of visible growth and change. They paid attention to what fruits, flowers and vegetables need to survive, learning how to adjust the plan when survival wasn’t at its optimum. In the final months of the project they considered how to invite others in to appreciate and enjoy their harvest and their learnings.

These essential observations and actions manifest the literal attention and awareness needed in our current climate emergency and the metaphoric care and iteration needed across our inter-personal relationships where social inequities continue to divide us.

Inquiry begets further inquiry. Several questions arose from the partnering schools, museums and heritage experts as BOTANY BAY drew to a close. How do we learn from Indigenous principles? How do we adapt them to a UK context? How do we embed the learning more deeply and continue to grasp large and sprawling concepts like Colonialism and Climate Change that need our attention urgently?

These big ideas underpinning BOTANY BAY are not only conceptual (and in need of translation depending on the audience), they are also in an early phase of becoming more mainstream. Between the pandemic, the building attention around socio-economic disparity deriving from far-reaching impacts of colonialism, and the climate crisis becoming ever more visible, institutions and communities are growing an awareness around the need for systemic change. But this is slow, long-term work. BOTANY BAY and its numerous impacts on several stakeholders, including Border Crossings, offers a huge opportunity to develop and build the kinds of relationships that can contribute significantly to such systemic change.

There are many immediate and long-term positive impacts that have emanated from BOTANY BAY. The practical skills built in gardening, growing, cooking and ceremony making, the strengthening of critical soft skills like confidence, team work, communication, planning and adapting are valuable outcomes– especially coming out of numerous pandemic lockdowns that hampered such skill development. Theses skills will have life-long residual impacts for young people resonant with the Indigenous principle to create sustainability by thinking 7 generations in the future.

Carolyn Defrin

Acting in Ireland - guest blog by Ninni Rönkönharju

Ninni Rönkönharju (seated) and her Finnish team-mates at the Glencree workshop

Today marks the publication of a new e-book on X-EUROPEAN: a project about the 'Third Space', on which Border Crossings (Ireland) was a partner.  During December, we led a workshop at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation, exploring how theatre can enable dialogues between people from very different backgrounds. 

This post from Finnish participant Ninni Rönkönharju was written in response to her experience, both in Ireland and at the earlier visual art workshop in Finland.  The project was supported by the Erasmus + programme of the European Union.

*

The project was, in a few words, a tremendously eye-opening experience.  Although at the beginning I felt that joining was a leap into the unknown, I decided to join with an open mind, and I did not regret my decision at any point during the project in Finland or Ireland.

The project helped me experience and discover things that I would never experience and discover in my everyday life.  I strongly felt that art exists for each of us, no matter what form it takes.  It was an inspiration to all of us.  We were a really mixed bunch, some were stranger to each other than others, but you didn't notice that in Finland when making art or in various activities in Ireland.  Everyone was enthusiastically involved in each one, as speakers, the change of thoughts and ideas flew rapidly from culture and language to another. The atmosphere was liberated in both countries.  In my opinion, this is what art is at its best, a factor that unites people and brings about changes.

At the same time, this project was a really great way to get to know other people and their cultures.  Getting to know their way of thinking and acting and getting to know their different mother tongues, a real language bath.  It felt as if with the help of the project I had been able to peer into cultures and people's minds in a completely different way, more deeply than in ordinary communication or everyday life. While getting to know others, you were also able to mirror your own culture and the way how it works. I was also able to mirror my own feelings and thoughts as well as my prejudices and fears (I have enough of them as a perfectionist 😉). At the same time, I broadened my own worldview and thinking.  The activities in both countries brought a new perspective to my thinking, my values ​​and my attitude.  They developed me as a person and because of that I got a lot to process far into the future.

Even though I don't consider myself narrow-minded, I felt that through the exercises I created space for myself to look, reflect and interpret things in a new way.  They released something in me that I didn't even know I had.  I don't feel like I'm a spontaneous person, but with the activities and the encouraging atmosphere, I freed myself from my formulaic activities.  Throughout the project, I felt that I could safely throw myself into art creation, activities or discussions without fear of failure or being judged by anyone.  I was able to bring out my own personality, my own values ​​and perceptions.

I felt that I was also an opener of views, thinking and values ​​during the trip.  People from other cultures saw, heard and experienced that a person with a limitation, in my case mobility impairment, is able to participate in activities both inside and outside in nature as a full member.  Maybe this is how I made their minds open to the unknown and the possibilities it brings in their everyday life as well.  Maybe they too are now more open-minded to see what is the normal, real everyday life of a person living with limitations and at the same time saw a little of everything that a person living with limitations has to face in their everyday life.  Prejudices towards assistive devices perhaps also decreased a little, after all, a normal person sits in a wheelchair just like them.

With these thoughts, I feel that I am braver and more ready for new projects.  Participating in this project brought a lot of new things to my life in many different areas.  This really empowered me and I want to experience all those feelings again.  I don't want to participate in projects because it would just be fun, but I feel that projects have a greater multidimensional meaning for me.  Through experiences that expand my new views, I feel that I can also be a "word as an escort" for other barriers to action.  I can share my experiences with them and encourage them all to participate in activities outside of their comfort zone.  It is surprisingly easy to let fear and prejudice take over one's mind, but overcoming them gives an otherwise limited life the so-called  "salt of life".  This project really gave and taught me a lot and I cherish the memories even for my bad days, when I might be diving in deep waters.  Thanks for letting me be a part and experience all this ❤.

A letter from Turkey

Guest Post by İlke Şanlıer Yüksel

Over the last few years, Border Crossings has been working with partners in Southern Turkey, and particularly the city of Adana.  Only last week, we were in Germany with colleagues from Adana's Çukurova University. Today we received this letter from one of them. With her blessing, we reproduce it in full.

*

February 10, 2023

Dear friends, colleagues and comrades,

Thank you all very much for your messages of support. My name is İlke Şanlıer Yüksel. I am an associate professor at the Department of Radio, Cinema and Television at Çukurova University, Adana, Turkey. I haven't slept for days, so forgive me if my English is not perfect. I don't need to tell you the gravity of the situation here, you will already have seen the news images, and I know are already doing all that you can: but believe me, the experience of actually being here is unimaginable. Maraş and Hatay - these two cities have been levelled to the ground. The destruction is so immense that I am not sure if there is even the slightest possibility of reconstruction. 

Adana, the city where I live, was the least affected, but even here one third of the multi-storey buildings in the Çukurova district (population 360 thousand) were heavily damaged. It is impossible to enter the houses. This area is known as North Adana. The ex-mayor Aytaç Durak, who served for more than 20 years, opened this area for rapid construction at high profit. Almost all of the buildings date from after the 1999 earthquake and the resulting regulations, but they were clearly not built in accordance with those regulations. Sarıçam district, which also grew in the last 7-8 years under MHP ex-mayor Hüseyin Sözlü, has high-rise buildings and is in a similar situation. There are brand new buildings, still with PVC coatings on the windows and no people living in them, and they are cracked down the middle. This is the direct result of systemic corruption on an immense scale. Everyone in Adana is on the streets as there are warnings of another earthquake. An incredible number of buildings are damaged. There is no end to this dishonesty. 

In the face of institutional incompetence, our students and graduates are trying to organise their own ways to bring aid. For example, Samandağ, Hatay’s district, still cannot be reached by land. There is no electricity, no fuel. Supplies are exhausted, and there is no drinkable water. They carry water, supplies, and power banks to Samandağ by boat from Adana Karataş. Yesterday, we tired to get permission from the Coast Guard; luckily we got permission, they will also deliver diesel oil by boat so that people can find a way to get out with vehicles. Isn't this extraordinary and awful? The state should be able to evacuate people by ship, but here it falls to a small group of young people. My student Ümit from Samandağ has been digging up dead bodies by hand for days. He is not allowed to bury them, because the prosecutor is supposed to come and identify the bodies, and so far has not made it there. 

We've been giving everything we have in aid for days. The suppliers we know in Adana are distributing the goods in their warehouses. A group of my friends from the faculty are trying to supply baby nappies and formula milk to Adana City Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine. This is one of the less damaged cities, where we are told the health system is functioning perfectly. My sister has not slept for days, she cooks for people who have not been able to go home for days. My brother-in-law is a civilian search and rescue worker, working in the rubble in İskenderun and Hatay.

One of our colleagues in the department went into her damaged house to collect some belongings, and the house collapsed on her in the second earthquake. Fortunately, she was rescued, but now she has no home. Today, we got the news that one of our student’s and his family’s bodies were removed from that collapsed building on the fifth day. Almost all of our students are working class people from poorer families in Adana and the neighbouring provinces. Dozens of them have lost their homes and families: some have lost their lives. We don't know yet if the dormitories are in a condition to provide shelter. We don’t know whether we’ll be able to start the semester at some point. 

Yesterday, two of my students called from Hatay. They don't have even a lira in their pockets: there are no ATMs, no banks, not even the municipality building, which has collapsed. Pervin, another student, is blind, and her mother has a severe chronic heart disease. Her father used to bring Pervin to school every day and pick her up in the evening. For 4 days, we have repeatedly contacted search and rescue, we have found solutions, we have been to the wreckage many times, but the rescuers could not enter the wreckage because they did not have working machines. Last night Pervin’s father's body was found. 

Today I am writing to you in response to Pervin's cry: "I beg you, teacher, I beg you, bring my father to me". Pervin is just one of the young ones who are affected. There are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of children and young people in this situation. 

I don't know how to bear this pain.

I wanted to tell you why I wrote this, both to pour my heart out in a safe place and to tell you that this road will be so long and that help will be needed for years to come. That's why your messages of support are very valuable to us. I am not asking for anything today, but there will be times when we, personally, can’t keep up anymore, and so then I will ask. I am very, very sad, angry, and enraged. Most of all, I am sorry for the remorse I feel because I am worried about the future of my own child and my nephew, while all this is happening.

In solidarity,

İlke

If you would like to support grassroots initiatives to help with the earthquake, then click here for one. We can vouch for this fundraiser being entirely transparent and free from corruption.

Review of '22

REMEMBRANCES
Photo: Avatâra Ayuso

As we come to the end of 2022, I feel as if we're at a watershed moment. Not only for Border Crossings, but for theatre, the arts, and the world. It's been a year lived in the shadow of an apparently receding pandemic, a murderous war in Europe, and the ever-growing threat of climate change. In the UK, it's been the warmest year on record. While the resilience displayed by many arts organisations in their comeback from Covid has been impressive, it's not an adequate response to the current moment simply to revert to "business as usual". There is no "usual" any more. That's why 2022 was the year in which we published THE SLIGO MANIFESTO: and I want to use this review of our activities to explore some of what that statement of intent has come (and is coming) to mean for us.

• This manifesto is our response to an increasingly uncertain world, characterised by pandemic, climate change and warfare. Planning has become hugely challenging, and risk is high. However, this has always been the state in our collaborative, intercultural devising spaces. We embrace uncertainty as a catalyst to creative practice.

The context, of course, is crucial, but it hasn't meant that everything is new. One key project during 2022 has been CRE-ACTORS, led by Border Crossings (Ireland) in partnership with the Théâtre du Soleil, Teatro dell'Argine and The Fence; and this represented an exploration and consolidation of a hundred years' worth of combined organisational experience in cross-cultural devised performance. The resulting e-book, which was launched in November and has already been viewed more than 10,000 times, at once documents and questions the partners' practices, enabling us all to develop the ways in which we make theatre in a changing world. We've all been delighted with the process, and are working towards further, deeper collaboration in the coming years.

CRE-ACTORS in Bologna
Photo: Jessica Bruni

• Our work - in theatre, in other art forms, in education, in community cultural development and online - is not an attempt to represent the world, but to change it.

As the year ends, we're also finishing our biggest community project yet: BOTANY BAY. Throughout the year, we've worked with five schools in London and Manchester to create beautiful new gardens, inspired by Indigenous principles of reciprocity and gratitude, complemented by Indigenous artworks and opened through performances inspired by Indigenous practices. This is not just a learning project, but an active intervention that re-configures and re-calibrates the social and environmental space which it inhabits. The way in which we work must, of course, reflect the ideals behind that work, so it's important that for the second year running we've been certified as a Carbon Neutral business.

In the BOTANY BAY booklet (printed just before Christmas, and due to be distributed in January), the Raramuri ethnobotanist Enrique Salmon says: "We are so inundated constantly through social media, television, movies, with one idea after the other that we don’t have time to stop. We don’t have time to sit with a chilli plant, or with a tomato plant or underneath an elm tree or a pine. Of just being with the tree or the plant. Of breathing and just being." 

BOTANY BAY: Kawa Huni Kuin with the Tree of Life at Cavendish School  
Photo: John Cobb

• Our predominantly white artistic leadership and management team will engage honestly and self-critically in evolving, creative, intercultural dialogues with marginalised artists, communities and stories.

BOTANY BAY was part of the 2021-22 ORIGINS Festival, which saw a further full year of participatory and dialogic work, bringing Indigenous ideas and practices into our communities. More than ever, we've been made critically aware of our own position as a non-Indigenous organisation, led mainly by white artists. In the last project of the Festival, SONGSTREETS, we brought together an Indigenous Australian musician, Jessie Lloyd, with the black community of Brixton, so as to generate a musical, cultural and historical exchange. The resulting installation will be released in January, and promises to be extraordinary.  

Recording SONGSTREETS

• We reject the commercial model of theatre as “production”. For us, theatre is a participatory process, all aspects of which need to engage with the communities we serve. Performance is a public ritual, a ceremony that brings our communities together.

We've been thinking a lot about performance as ceremony this year, because humanity is so much in need of renewal, and there are so few spaces and systems within which this can occur. It was very important for us to receive a commission from Birmingham 2022 to create REMEMBRANCES as an alternative welcoming ceremony for the Commonwealth Games. Collaborating with AVA Dance Company, b.solomon//ELECTRIC MOOSE and Matthew James Weigel, we were able to create a performance that asked the crucial questions around post-colonial relationships, and offered genuine potential for healing.

REMEMBRANCES
Photo: Avatâra Ayuso

• Our work going forward will therefore focus on “events” rather than “productions”; channelling energies towards generating real impact in terms of social and environmental justice, cultural and spiritual renewal.

I don't know if this distinction between "productions" and "events" is clear or even necessary for a wider public, but it's crucial for us, because it's about what our work is doing in the world. It asks whether it is there for our own satisfaction and profit, or to make a real difference. In the beautiful ceremonies that opened the BOTANY BAY gardens, in the sharing of space around a fire that ended REMEMBRANCES, in the deeply spiritual music we presented at the British Museum for our joint event CELEBRATING PERU, and in the potent exchanges around CRE-ACTORS, we felt this shift occur. As I wrote in the CRE-ACTORS e-book: "To conceive of a theatre that is multiform and various, a shared space that yields innovation through the clash of distinct viewpoints and approaches, rooted in ongoing dialogues between artists from different backgrounds, and informed by potent overlaps between friendship and disagreement: this is to propose not only a theatrical and artistic but also a cultural and democratic vision. It is about space that is profoundly shared, whether that be the stage, the auditorium, the street or the parliament house. It is about equity and justice."

CELEBRATING PERU
Photo: Benedict Johnson © The British Museum

• We now work through two charitable companies, one in the Republic of Ireland and one in the UK: both dedicated to intercultural dialogue through the arts. In furtherance of this international mission, we will engage more substantially with European partnerships and develop a range of key funding relationships, including core funding.

The development of Border Crossings (Ireland) has been a major theme during 2022, both through CRE-ACTORS and a second Erasmus + project on which we are partners: X-EUROPEAN. This project, exploring the Third Space as a way to generate positive cross-cultural interaction, has taken us to Germany and Finland, and culminated in an invigorating theatre workshop which Lucy Dunkerley and I led at the Glencree Centre for Peace and Reconciliation in Wicklow a few weeks ago. 

Our relationships with funders are, of course, crucial: we've been fortunate this year to benefit from working with the Erasmus + programme of the European Union, Arts Council England, the National Lottery Heritage Fund, the UK-Australia Season, the High Commission of Canada in the UK, and Beyond the Spectacle.  

X-EUROPEAN
Photo: Aydin Cam

• We will deepen the relationship between our live and digital work, recognising the complementary nature of live and virtual experiences, and the different ways in which these inter-related approaches can generate reach and impact. We believe that any art form is regenerated and developed by its interaction with other forms, and so we will enhance our theatre through digital practice and our digital work through our theatre.

2022 began with the release of our film about the 2021 journey of TOTEM LATAMAT: and an enhanced digital presence has characterised our work throughout the year.  REMEMBRANCES had a streamed as well as a live version, which meant that it could be seen far more widely, including by First Nations communities in Canada and beyond. SONGSTREETS will be realised as an app. The plaque which we commissioned for DOVER BEACH by Wiradjuri-British artist Jasmine Coe was hugely enhanced by the accompanying film. Similarly, BOTANY BAY included a wide range of digital learning materials, particularly a series of short films, each of which concentrated on a specific aspect of the project as it developed through the seasons. The SPRING film, presented by Karuk actor Nathan Woodworth, has proved a great success with his tribe, and has also become part of the permanent display at the American Museum in Bath. Our online presence has also enabled us to partner with like-minded international organisations in innovative ways, for example the digital partnership between ORIGINS and Canada's imagineNATIVE Festival, which brought this film festival's online programme to UK audiences. CRE-ACTORS, which could have been a very inward-looking project, benefiting the partners only, has become known to the global theatre community through the e-book. This digital emphasis has also meant that our marketing and communications are no longer just a means to "sell" our work, but have become an integral part of it - a much healthier approach, which we've recognised structurally by bringing Emma Townsend, who had proved herself indispensable on ORIGINS, into the core team. 

TOTEM LATAMAT
Photo: John Cobb

• We will be more risk aware in our financial management, more conscious of the evolution of projects through their processes, and more sensitive to the need to keep cultural work free of charge or very affordable. We will therefore ensure that contingencies form a larger element in our budgeting.

This sounds like the most mundane clause in the Manifesto, but in a way I think it's the most significant of all. Since the start of the pandemic, we have not sold a single ticket.  And I can't say I've missed it. I'm not saying that everything we do in the future will always be free: theatre remains an industry as well as an art form and sometimes it will be necessary to work with a venue that necessitates a paid Box Office.  What I am saying is that commercial and financial considerations of this kind can no longer be allowed to determine the value of artistic work. I recently wrote on this blog about the way in which an MBA-style approach to running arts organisations has fatally undermined the sector: and for us it's a key lesson of the current moment that we have to put our artistic priorities and their cultural significance before the administrative structures which support them.

The year has been rich.  In the deepest sense of the term.  And I am far from certain what happens next.... Let's embrace that. 

Wishing you all the best for 2023.

The ENO tragedy

My production of Die Valkyrie at ENO - 2002

The latest NPO announcements were, to say the least, drastic, and there's inevitably been a lot of very vocal reaction.  It's perhaps unfortunate that so much attention has been paid to the ENO being cut, given that so many other decisions were also very impactful. However, I'm not going to apologise for yet another blog post about the ENO, because 1) it's one of the national companies and so it absolutely deserves to be debated and 2) I have skin it this game.  

I first worked with ENO back in 1998, as Assistant Director on Nicholas Hytner's famous Xerxes: a production that I've since been able to revive both at the Coliseum and in the USA. The next year, I assisted Peter Sellars on Nixon in China: and so began a friendship which has been immensely beneficial to Border Crossings. Peter has been our Patron for years, and a very active one, giving talks both in person and online, as well as offering me an artistic sounding board.  I also worked with Deborah Warner, Phyllida Lloyd (a lot!), Calixto Bieito, Atom Egoyan....  I worked with conductors who taught me how to work with music, and singers whose ability to act through the voice made me understand a whole new layer of performance.  A lot of the protest about ENO's de-funding has focused on this aspect of the company - that it develops younger artists who go on to "make wonderful international careers" - but that surely isn't the point of public subsidy. The point of public subsidy is that the work is good in and of itself - and much of what we did in the first years of the 21st century was, I believe, exceptional. I remain incredibly proud of having directed the entire Ring cycle for the company, in a staging that made sense of the text's complexity and nuance, while acknowledging its elemental power and its simultaneously mythic and human scales. 

I know that's a subjective judgement, all the more so because it's a judgement on something I directed myself. But this actually goes to the heart of the problem, which is that it's very difficult to assess the quality of art, and theatrical art perhaps most of all. Because theatre is ephemeral, you can't be wise after the event. If you produce the theatrical equivalent of Van Gogh's Sunflowers, and get the same response he did, there will be no future critics able to re-assess your genius after you've lopped your ear off. There was a time when "artistic quality" was the main measure by which the Arts Council evaluated organisations, but it proved too slippery for government, too subjective, too unquantifiable. As a result, the main criteria by which the arts are assessed, and therefore financed, have become politically volatile - with results the ENO and others are now experiencing.  

Under New Labour, the arts were instrumentalised as a catalyst for social change. Long before #BlackLivesMatter, there was a strong emphasis on supporting artists from minority backgrounds, particularly if their work was also seen to be reaching audiences from those same backgrounds. This funding priority is still significant in cultural policy, although it now sits alongside other criteria, added during the period of Tory rule that began in 2010. Encouraging arts organisations to develop as businesses is a really significant aspect of this. Think, for example, of the Catalyst programme (which we went through): a politically motivated initiative encouraging artistic companies to learn from the American model of private philanthropy, with little understanding of the very different cultural context in the US.  Think also of the consultancy firms who have been moving in on larger organisations, restructuring, prioritising and measuring the deliverables. Rishi Sunak feels like the obvious person to emerge as Prime Minister in response to recent cultural history - but it's not because he's the first Asian to lead a UK government, so much as the first person with an MBA. 

Before his arrival Boris Johnson and Nadine Dorries had thrown one more policy consideration at the Arts Council in the form of the "levelling up" agenda, and that has been of huge importance to the most recent NPO round. It sounds laudable enough in theory - the idea was presumably that deprived areas (also known as former "Red Wall" seats) should be offered cultural opportunities to match wealthier parts of the country. The problem is that this self-evidently requires more funding for culture, not less. The only way the beleaguered Arts Council could allocate more money to some localities was to offer less to others. London was particularly targeted. A cynic might point out that London, with its exceptional theatre and opera, voted overwhelmingly Remain and is almost entirely Labour. And that the cultural provision and the politics of empathy are deeply connected.

The irony of all this in relation to the ENO is that the company had actually been very good at responding to the winds of political change. There are far more Black artists and staff there. They have exceptional access schemes and educational provision for young people. Their NPO bid actually included a proposal for a new arm of the company, called NEO, to tour outside London. And they got the consultants in...  of course they did.

One aspect of the NPO decisions that has not received the attention it should is how few of the organisations now funded are actually led by artists. It used to be a given that any arts organisation existed to follow an artistic vision, and that vision was provided by an artistic leader. Not any more. Most major organisations are now led by Executive Directors, who may not have the public profile of the Artistic Director, but are in fact senior to them, and make the key decisions. Art is now subordinate to "business sense".  

So here's another irony in relation to the ENO. As Mark Wigglesworth (a former artistic leader at the company) pointed out in his excellent piece for the Guardian, ENO did what it was told and asked the consultants McKinsey to help solve the financial challenges posed by an earlier cut. The logic of the response made sound business sense - do less opera so your costs go down. As Mark says: "The idea that you could expect the same amount of taxpayers’ money for doing less of the kind of work that required it was clearly problematic." There are other possible solutions, of course. There could be more productions like my Ring: done on a smaller budget, focussing on the acting and the music. The bizarre idea that a "successful" production is one that survives for thirty years could be jettisoned in favour of a theatrical approach which responds quickly to the historical moment of performance: and this would also serve to distinguish ENO more clearly from the Royal Opera, to which it has come to seem a sad second best, rather than a genuine alternative. But these are artistic decisions, and they need artists to make them.  Sound business sense will not make art.

I hope the ENO may somehow survive - of course I do. But if it doesn't, and that seems likely, then the crucial lesson for the sector is NOT that we need to become more business savvy, but that we need to become more imaginative, and to recognise that our organisations exist to support artistic visions - not the other way round.