Shakespeare trouble

Bristol theatre company "Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory" is in severe financial difficulties following poor ticket sales for its recent production of Titus Andronicus.

According to Andrew Hilton, the company's artistic director, SATTF is facing bankruptcy and will be unable to complete the current run of Love's Labours Lost unless audience numbers improve. In the meantime, the company has launched a public appeal for donations in an attempt to stave off collapse.

In an interview with the BBC, Hilton seemed surprised that the company had failed to attract an audience for Titus Andronicus.

"Theatre is such a fickle business, but it's hard to know what has happened.

I suppose we've become something of a local institution, and so rather than people coming to see both plays in a season as they did when we were a 'novelty', they are picking one or the other.

What we hope to make people understand is that we are not a tap they can turn on and off - either they want us here or they don't, and if they want us here, then they have to attend.

We don't get public funding, so there is no-one else around to pick up the bill - there is no margin for error."

With all due respect to Andrew Hilton, who is a talented and imaginative director, I don't think it's surprising that nobody was really interested in seeing Titus Andronicus. It's not one of Shakespeare's better known plays (this was its first Bristol production since 1978), it's not easily accessible to modern audiences and (compared to Shakespeare's other works) it's just not that good a play. In other words, finding an audience for Titus Andronicus was always going to be a difficult proposition.

So why, when there was "no margin for error", did SATTF decide to bet the company's future on a revival of Titus Andronicus?

I don't know, but I'd guess that Hilton's view of SATTF as a "local institution" might have something to do with it. This idea of theatre as "institution" tends to foster a mentality that derides the need for audience research, marketing and promotion. For the theatre-as-institution crowd, such things are largely unnecessary - "stage it and they will come" they say, adding (sotto voce) "if they know what's good for them".

To my mind, what Andrew Hilton (and others at SATTF) need to understand is that audiences "are not a tap they can turn on and off" - if they want an audience, they need to be prepared to entertain. Titus Andronicus was a turn off.

I hope SATTF can get back on track - they've done some excellent work in the past and I'm looking forward to seeing their production of "Love's Labours Lost". But it sounds like I better hurry.