VIEWPOINT: A Tale Of Two Towns
John Knowles visits the brand-new Shakespeare North Playhouse and decries Hastings’ lack of both theatres and vision.
Fetch Theatre has just returned from a mini tour taking in Tunbridge Wells and Prescot, Merseyside. Two more polar opposite places you couldn’t hope to find. One contains, supposedly, the angriest people in the UK and one the poorest. For the record, Tunbridge Wells is the angriest while Prescot has some of the most deprived areas in the UK. But for Fetch Theatre the contrast didn’t stop there. We hail from Hastings with a population of around 92,000, while Prescot has just under 12,000. One, though, has a brand-new theatre with a replica of the Globe at its heart, plus a studio theatre and an outdoor performance area (with obligatory café and gallery space). Sadly it isn’t Hastings.
As I write this, St Mary in The Castle has closed its doors seeking a buyer for a giveaway price. The pier seems closed again and, given the lack of any maintenance for years, is likely to be shut for good before long; the Opus Theatre has announced its closure and The White Rock Theatre continues to lack any ‘vision’ programming. In short, if you want to see Theatre in Hastings you have The Stables, and that is that.
As I stood in the foyer of The Shakespeare North Playhouse, Prescot, on a Saturday night, the place was buzzing with ordinary families who’d come to support this new venture. Our show, The Twelfth Night Trilogy was awaiting curtains-up so I had time to soak up the atmosphere and ponder: how come Prescot, one of the poorest places in the UK, had this multi-million pound arts venue, newly created under the leadership of Siobhan Noble while we, professional theatre makers, had no space of our own in Hastings? And then it hit me, VISION. You have to start with a vision that says the working classes deserve better than adult pantos and mildly racist comedians; you have to start with a vision that says theatre and Shakespeare was, and is, for the masses and not for an elite few. You have to believe that culture is worth fighting for. In Prescot they have done just that. Like Shakespeare’s original Globe, it is in the heart of a poor community – theatre serving both the middle class and the common man.
We had two sell out nights, great reviews and comments, but what excited me more was talking to people who came ‘just to see’, or even attended because, ‘it was the wife’s idea’. They were queuing up on the way out to buy tickets for future shows – Shakespeare no less.
Hastings is full of creative talent: writers, actors, directors, designers and costumiers; what it lacks is a space for professional theatre makers. And what it risks is watching that talent drift away. We need – no, we demand – an Arts Theatre space built for the people of Hastings; one that puts culture at its heart.
• John Knowles is a local playwright, producer, performer and theatre-maker.
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