The Camden New Journal is still flogging the Kiln Theatre rename story. I have remarked before that, at best, I think this is a minor issue compared to getting a rebuilt and substantially improved theatre.
One detail strikes me as particularly strange. They keep on referring to Indhu Rubasingham as a "new" Artistic Director. In fact she was appointed in 2012, and had her first production in that role later that year. I thought that play, Red Velvet, took the whole institution in quite a different and interesting direction, and there been many more since.
During the same period she was working hard to get the funding together to rebuild the theatre to improve the 1980s style disabled access, improve important basics like seating and toilets and theatre lighting and make it a more welcoming venue in general. Her critics seem to just take it for granted that money was coming Brent's way. That really isn't the case. Raising that much money and making sure it gets properly spent is a major job in itself.
At the same time, she had to keep her team going and active, which she did at least partly through what I thought was a very welcome and imaginative outreach programme specifically designed to get to people without traditional theatre backgrounds. Again, there are all kinds of barriers to achieving that sort of thing successfully.
It must have left all the people responsible feeling pretty exhausted.
Do the name change protesters really just not get what a blessing to the area they seem to be trying to drive away?
No comments:
Post a Comment