Announcing new seasons… and bidding a too-early farewell to a much-loved director…

This week both the Chichester Festival Theatre and the National Theatre called press conferences to announce their new seasons. But though the artistic directors of both had buoyant messages to impart, there was also a cloud on the horizon – and definitely proves that Nick Hytner doesn’t have his head in one, but is well aware of its encroaching shadows.

But even overshadowing that particular cloud which may or may not be positioning itself over us as we speak, of which more in a moment, there was a darker and more irrevocable one that connected both conferences: Hytner began his address yesterday by paying generous tribute to director Steven Pimlott – his oldest professional friend, since they had attended Manchester Grammar School together (though Pimlott was three years ahead of him), he can still remember his performance in a school production of The Visit – who had passed away the night before. Less than a week earlier, Steven was in rehearsals for a new production of Tennessee Williams’ The Rose Tattoo that he had cast and conceived for the National – but for which it had already been agreed that Nick would take over should he become too ill to continue. (He has been battling lung cancer since last year, when he was forced to withdraw both from directing the winning entry of The Play’s the Thing contest to find and open a new play by a previously unproduced writer in the West End, and from directing Moliere’s The Misanthrope at the National). Hytner revealed that Steven was upbeat to the end, and insisted he’d be back in rehearsals next Monday, “to sort it out”. Alas, it was not to be.

His last artistic appointment, of course, had been as one of the triumvirate of directors who ran Chichester Festival Theatre until 2005. And on Wednesday afternoon, his successor Jonathan Church outlined his plans, alongside Mark Rylance, Philip Franks and David Jones who will all work in the new season, to a very select gathering of arts journalists: there were just four of us there! (The apathy of some of my colleagues is astonishing – yes, you can get the details from the press release, but not the sort of connections you can establish by actually speaking to the directors.) But while Church was pushing forward with an interesting-sounding and varied programme that will include appearances by Patricia Routledge in Alan Bennett (the perfect Chichester fit), Patrick Stewart in a Shakespeare double-bill (who is obviously definitely on a mission now to make up for lost time, as he revealed to me in an interview that appears in this week’s copy of The Stage), and David Suchet in a new play, it was also reassuring to hear that the spiral of decline that Chichester has been suffering has been arrested – for now.

Though he revealed that in its heyday Chichester could count on annual audience figures of 180,000-200,00, these had plummeted to just 106,000 over a seven-year period, and when Church took over the theatre, it was on the brink of insolvency. His first festival last year, however, took the figure back up to 142,000; and this year he is programming even more ambitiously by bringing forward the start date of the season to mid-April.

So things are looking up. And he is cautiously optimistic on the funding front, too, now that the theatre has been recognised by the Arts Council as a core client. But there’s obviously a lot of work to be done still in building the confidence of the audience still further… and building a new audience, too.

Those are perpetual ambitions, of course, for any theatre, and the National more than most puts a lot of effort into audience development. At Hytner’s press conference the next day, he noted that the Travelex £10 season had helped the Olivier – the National’s largest auditorium – achieve the highest percentage attendance over the year of 93%, but also said that after 5 years, the scheme would now have to be reviewed — £10, of course, doesn’t represent the same value to the theatre that it once did, so the price configuration may have to be addressed. (Last week at Shakespeare’s Globe, Dominic Dromgoole committed himself to not tampering with the £5 groundling price, since it had become so iconic. I’d say the same applies to the £10 season, as it is universally known).

But if continuing £10 tickets represent a fall in ticket prices and income for the theatre as a result since that sum in one’s pocket doesn’t have the same value it once did, so Hytner was keen to point out that should standstill funding be imposed by DCMS in the next funding round, that too would represent a potentially disastrous cut to the National and their other clients. Pointing out that the arts had been transformed in the last decade thanks to proper funding so that it had recovered to where it was before the damage that had been inflicted on the arts world in the 80s, he was nervous that a step backwards may be about to be contemplated – and anticipating this possibility, he immediately distributed handouts in which four of this year’s British Oscar nominees (Dench, Mirren, Marber and Stephen Frears) spoke of the invaluable grounding that all of their careers had had in the subsidised sector, and continue to have. All acknowledged they would not be where they are today without it. So while the success of British films is currently very sexy – “and this government likes to have things like that in the papers” – that success is earned partly via the theatrical background that many of its practitioners have sprung from. Cut off that root, and the tree may stop being so healthy.

So the National doesn’t just build audiences – it also builds artists. Talking of which, Hytner also revealed that the Studio is on track to reclaim its home in the Cut after a £6million refurbishment in July or August. And while this is still primarily a safe place for artists to explore new work away from prying public eyes, there is, encouragingly, to be a new public face to it: its where the National’s archive will be held, which the public will have access to.

Another theatre that develops artists is BAC, recently under threat of closure thanks to Wandsworth Council’s desire to both cut its core grant and impose a new rental arrangement on the space it occupies. Nick Starr, executive director of the National and chairman of BAC’s board, revealed that most of the grant has now been saved — £85,000 instead of £100,000 a year has now been pledged; and the board and council are working on a plan to have the building taken over by an independent trust, so that it will no longer fall under the auspices of the council. Meanwhile, the existing rent-free lease ahs been extended to March 2008.

So although the arts community must always be vigilant to threats on its livelihood, it does seem that enough shouting and agitation as has been done over the last few weeks may pay dividends. And Hytner is therefore right to start the campaign for retaining current grant levels as they are before they are reduced.