Shakespeare-on-Sea
In an interview with HIP, John Knowles, Hastings’ actor, director, producer and founder of Fetch Theatre, argues that radical action is urgently needed to revive the idea of theatre in the town.
How can we get more venues available for productions – especially given the closure of St Mary ITC and Opus?
Close the White Rock – bulldoze it and build a ‘for purpose’ theatre/drama space. The White Rock was designed as a touring venue for Big Bands (Orchestral, brass), not for theatre. The secondary space can’t function when a main house show is on (sound bleed) and most theatre touring shows need wing spaces, which the White Rock lacks. Put a bid in to build a purpose-built space!
How can we get more public money available from either the Arts, the Borough or the County Councils?
Do we have a full-time Arts Officer? No. Does this send out a signal to the arts community? Yes. Public money needs backing, and it can’t just be vague words flounced on HBC brochures as a “We love the arts”. If you don’t believe in the arts at the core, it shows.
How can we get more smaller groups like Fetch Theatre, Theatre Nation and Explore the Arch up and running?
I can’t speak for other companies, but Fetch has its sights set on towns with more vision and on getting our work out of here. There are great artists here, actors, musicians and people I really want to work with, but it’s clear that the vision which needs to come from HBC just doesn’t exist. So whilst Fetch will develop work here and continue to work with local artists, it’s unlikely that our future is here. At the moment we are in discussion with venues in Ireland and the Netherlands and building relationships with theatres who genuinely want to support their communities. The only venue with a theatre vision is The Stables, and Neil and his team have been the foundation for much of our development. Without them we would have had no chance of creating four-star, award-winning shows.
How can we get the council to grasp the nettle of its relationship with The White Rock and get some home-grown productions on there?
We can’t. The management of the White Rock has been one of long-term decline, based on a vision of the working class as only capable of liking, ‘adult humour’. The logic goes that crass, sexist acts like Jethro sell. Fine then, sell that and stop taking council support; if you do take tax-payers money, have a vision that says the working class are not just cash fodder for outdated acts and that they can actually understand and appreciate a wider culture.
Couldn’t you help set up and run a local community theatre?
I’ve often been approached with a view to taking over an old church or building in Hastings as ‘the promised venue of hope’. But I know from experience what that means: it means spending your life sorting out leaking roofs, drains and toilets. I used to design theme park rides and attractions and lastly The Work and Learning Zones at the Millennium Dome; what we did was build a ‘shed building’, the sort you find all over the country on trading estates. Watertight cheap to build and a big empty space you fill with your vision – and theme the exterior.
So what’s your vision?
My vision is this: a multi-use theatre space with at least one studio. A space which seeks to entertain, enlighten and yes, God help us, educate. A space which puts on real theatre, doesn’t talk down to its community but, in fact, seeks to raise its community up. Whilst we might be in the gutter as one of the poorest areas in the Southeast, we can choose to look at the stars. Hastings is up and coming, it deserves a theatre space which can bring in quality touring shows and develop homegrown companies. Let’s look to the Citizens Theatre Glasgow, housed in the Gorbals, an area better known for knife crime and gangs, which put on Moliere, Genet, Brecht, Sean O’Casey, Shakespeare. Offering discounted tickets aimed at the working class of the Gorbals.
I’m a working-class kid from Liverpool. Raised beyond my school’s ‘which factory do you want to work in?’ view of possibilities, to a youth who sat in the Everyman Theatre Liverpool watching The Threepenny Opera, and who realised that my dreams were bigger than the narrow confines of my class. Hastings deserves real theatre; it deserves a vision.
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