Arifa Akbar writes of the National Theatre, in her article about the appointment of its next artistic director (Indhu Rubasingham is the perfect choice for the National Theatre, 13 December), that it “feels like a theatre for the nation, not for one privileged echelon of it alone”. Given the cost and unreliability of travel to London and the cost of staying in the capital overnight, any theatre that does not tour or collaborate constantly with regional theatres is a theatre “for one privileged echelon”.
A truly national theatre can only be one that tours all its major productions, with its stars, and mounts joint productions with regional companies, around 60% of the time. Anything else is for the privileged echelon: Londoners, who have been the beneficiaries of almost all of Rubasingham’s work to date. Apart from one production in Edinburgh, her Wikipedia entry lists four productions in Birmingham and two in Liverpool. Her work has been seen more widely in the United States than in northern England. One can only hope that she will make a greater attempt to lead a theatre for the nation as a whole.
Ian Wood
Leeds
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