While companies have been known to fail ignominiously due to chronic lack of funding, artistic differences or through sheer exhaustion, Roland Rees’ small scale touring company Foco Novo failed on a grand scale in 1988 when they went into liquidation with debts of over £55,000 and loss of funding by the Arts Council. Yet between 1972-88 Foco Novo were a significant fringe company: with diverse work ranging from the commercial success of Bernard Pomerance’s The Elephant Man, to Howard Brenton’s Bloody Poetry - to pioneering black British drama long before it became fashionable or a condition of arts Council funding, or producing large scale productions of modern European classics, Foco Novo had an impressive pedigree.
Yet despite receiving funding on a par with contemporaries such as 7.84 and Joint Stock Foco Novo in many ways set themselves up for failure: they were the small scale touring company who insisted on average cast sizes of ten for each production; despite modest average audiences of between 50-100 per night they were the company who believed they could fill middle scale venues of between 300-800 seats per night (and tried to do so – with disastrous results); they were also perceived by the Arts Council as the touring company who did not really want to tour, preferring to concentrate their energies on London ; and they were the company who frequently underwent quixotic shifts in artistic policy – from socialist plays Nine Days and Saltley Gates (1976) to grandiose productions such as Brecht’s Edward II (1982).
Using archival sources from the Arts Council of Great Britain and Foco Novo’s own company files, this paper will outline how one of the major small scale touring companies of the 1970s and 1980s failed in such a spectacular way.
1 comment:
First, I have to say that I mentioned you during my PhD viva this Friday and the Arts Council records you found on the Natural Theatre Company as the next exciting step that my project might take. Thank you again to notifying me to those.
As for this paper you have presented here, I am impressed with the narrative you have crafted from the archives about the relationship between Foco Novo and the Arts Council and the consequences on company policy. At points, I could see some potential parallels to moments in the NTC’s history. I also found another interesting connection in John Hoyland who wrote a very strong article about the NTC in the Guardian which I have used in my work. I didn’t realise he was a participant in alternative theatre.
One area that I am interested in learning more about Foco Novo, is why the small scale approach lost its appeal? You mention (similar to Joint Stock) their ambition and growing disenchantment with poor technical facilities and a few other points, but were there other factors about small venues that drove them away? Did you come across any material that expressed political burn out or other areas which how the small scale audiences were changing?
Perhaps you indicate it, but was Foco Novo’s professional aims to increase scale (Elephant Man and after) an intentional and conscious move towards depoliticisation compared to their previously more legible socialist work? If so, how did their aims as a company shift? In what way did they hope to achieve something different in their audiences in a larger scale context?
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