67 stories by "Simon Tait"
The shellacking that Quentin Letts received for his Daily Mail review of the Royal Shakespeare Company's The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich,
The So and So Arts Club started by accident. The actor and director Sarah Berger was sharing a desk space in a
Sculptor Lawrence Holofcener is demanding the return of a bronze Laurence Olivier work he created for Chichester Festival Theatre, if the venue
Well, we've made. Culture is in the two major party manifestos. You have to look pretty hard, but it's there. The Tories
One of the phrases that has been associated with the hustings for as long as there have been elections has already been
There's little doubt that when the Royal Shakespeare Company scampered away from its London home at the Barbican 13 years ago, it
If you think that the troubles of managing theatres in difficult financial times have a certain deja vu about them, you're right. We've been here before, we’ve just forgotten. That is …
Home, to paraphrase Robert Frost, is where they have to let you in. Manchester's Home, which opens in April and has just announced its first programming, is going to be the kind of place fro…
Nobody can be unaware by now that 2015 and beyond is going to be bad for subsidised theatre. The arts council is certain to lose funding which will have to be passed on, and beleaguered̷…
2015 will be the worst of times for the arts but it might also be the best of times, and it will be a tale of more than two cities. Core Cities, the pressure group…
Brighton Hippodrome is a glorious confection, grade II* and one of Frank Matcham's wonderful rococo creations. It was built in the 1890s as a circus theatre, one of only three that survive, …
Perhaps we shouldn't have been surprised at the choice of Darren Henley to succeed Alan Davey as head of Arts Council England. We had all been looking forward to getting a female chief execu…
Diversity. It is a synonym for variety, for multiplicity, for mixture, all positive things. So why is it used in a negative sense in terms of culture? The arts council has been adopting 'div…
There were some sweeties for the arts in the autumn statement, like cash for Manchester's new theatre, but not many. The truth is, if you thought the last three years were tough for cultural…
Education secretary Nicky Morgan thinks young people choosing the arts are making a choice that will "hold them back for the rest of their lives". Well, at least it's started a conversation,…
Speaking at last week's State of the Arts event, Michael Heseltine hinted that culture's funding difficulties could all be solved by philanthropists and corporations, declaring that, "the cr…
The real tragedy about English National Opera's withdrawal from the Orfeo project is that it would have been a pioneer for other partnerships that some see as essential for the secure and cr…
The Commons Select Committee has clambered back on the regions-versus-London funding bandwagon and decided to tell Arts Council England how it should apportion its funding, specifically its …
The theatre sector is the most tender of creatures in Arts Council England's care, the one that is being hit most by local authority cuts and will be smacked again and probably again in the&…
Battersea Arts Centre is a beacon of dramatic creativity, a nursery for talent and innovation and arguably the birthplace of modern immersive theatre. BAC invented the 'scratch' methodology …
A year ago a considerable stink was kicked up by a report, Rebalancing Our Cultural Capital, which showed that Londoners are spoiled in terms of arts funding compared the regions. The ROCC r…
The National Theatre's annual report is just out, the last for the stunning partnership of Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr. It records another fantastic year that saw the National celebrate i…
I know the Welsh as essentially warm-hearted people, garrulous but also generous to a fault with a tough national character striated with coal dust and a deep love of the arts, especially mu…
With the Scottish independence referendum behind us there is a sigh of relief from one sector at least. Theatre and touring companies have had to look increasingly at charitable trusts and f…
For years the demand for decent parts for women, particularly those in, as we say, mid-career, has been a cry in the wilderness. Hollywood is only interested in undraped pulchritude at one e…
