THE NATIONAL THEATRE OF SCOTLAND
Notes on the governance, management, artistic policy and marketing of Glasgow Repertory Theatre, 1909 to 1914
The National Theatre of Scotland, which was formed in 2004 and began production in 2006, claims to be the country’s ‘first ever National Theatre’. [1] However, there have arguably been at least six earlier Scottish national theatre companies:
- The Theatre Royal, Edinburgh, established by Act of Parliament, from 1769[2] (home of the ‘national drama’, especially from 1817 to 1860)
- Glasgow Repertory Theatre, from 1909 to 1914 (also styled the Scottish Repertory Theatre)
- Scottish National Repertory Theatre, Edinburgh, from 1912 to 1913
- Scottish National Players, from 1921 to 1948
- Scottish Actors Company, from 1969 to 1973
- Scottish Theatre Company, from 1980 to 1982
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the governance, artistic policy, management and marketing characteristics of the first twentieth-century Scottish national theatre.
Although the Glasgow (Scottish) Repertory Theatre as the first ‘citizens’ theatre’ has been described within several enquiries, there has been no single, in-depth book about its achievements and influence, perhaps because of its short life. Several studies discuss this company, along with the Scottish National Players and Unity Theatre, as a foreground to the greater achievements of James Bridie’s Glasgow Citizens’ Theatre, founded in 1943. [3] With the approaching centenary of the founding of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre, this paper describes characteristics of its organisation, many of which, especially community governance and control by a board of volunteer directors, have had a profound influence on the almost continuous activities of the many Scottish national theatres’ management during the ensuing century.
Embedding the theatre in the community: repertory as public-service
To achieve this deeper understanding before public subsidy, a large number of local shareholders would be required. Through the structure of the limited company, a membership and a volunteer board of directors – representing diverse interests and taking an active interest in its activities – the community would support the repertory ‘ideal’ and make critical judgements via regular contact with the artists. They would become the core of an informed audience over a long time. In this scenario, a leadership from London would no longer necessarily determine the choice of plays but, in exchange, professional theatre-makers and a board of directors would be loyal to each other; both sides would gain new respectability in the community, sharing their belief in the ‘civilising’ influence of good theatre. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suppose that this community involvement in professional theatre management was entirely new. By no means were all touring theatres owned and operated by the London actor-managers or the conglomerate chains of business managers, and not all of the others were concentrated in family or private management. During the nineteenth century and outwith the West End, the construction and operation of many touring and stock-company theatres had been financed and often led by locally residing people from other professions. In the North West, for instance, the Macclesfield Theatre had been built and run by textile manufacturers, physicians and brewers from 1811.[4] At the Lancashire cotton town of Rochdale, another ‘theatre for everybody’ was built and inspired by a joint-stock company comprising trades people such as a bookseller, soda water manufacturer, grocer, draper, joiner, confectioner, general dealer, shoemaker, innkeeper, plumber, mechanic and landlady. They were the owners of Rochdale Theatre Company Limited (from 1865), and they worked to make their theatre as ‘demystified’ and socially inclusive as any government funded progeny today.[5]
Notwithstanding these precedents, Glasgow Repertory Theatre demonstrated enormous local initiative for five years and, albeit with a cross-section of middle-class backers, was the stepping-stone towards the form of non-profit theatre governance operating today. Glasgow was an appropriate location, being one of the few British cities that could look London squarely in the face, not only vying with it as a big city, but also offering a metropolitan outlook with strong business, industrial and professional communities.
Innovations in governance
Glasgow Repertory Company was formed in 1909, being incorporated as the Scottish Playgoers Limited, and promoted as ‘Glasgow’s own theatre, financed by Glasgow money, managed by Glasgow men’ and established ‘to make Glasgow independent of London for its Dramatic Supplies’. It was, said the programmes, ‘a Citizens’ Theatre in the fullest sense of the term’.[6] A small board of seven directors comprised business persons, journalists and academics (including the playwright Neil Munro), plus a company secretary, the solicitor James Winning who, before the onset of the non-profit theatre administrator specialist, acted as the business manager. They supplemented each other’s talents and were closely involved, together with other shareholders, in the details of management, as witnessed by a voting system designed to enable the audience to nominate favoured plays for revival.
Another innovation, which surprisingly has rarely been repeated in later companies, was an advisory committee of young people, ‘chosen as a healthy counterpoise to any tendency there might be to let the box-office returns influence too much the selection of plays’.[7] In passing, it may be noted that the directors did not, unlike the nascent Scottish National Orchestra and other musical ensembles, enjoy elected employee representation on the board. Furthermore, unlike the Rochdale Theatre precedent, there were no blue-collar workers on the board to represent potential working class audiences. As if to foreshadow local government subsidy – councils being legally forbidden at this time from spending money on drama – productions were conspicuously advertised as being ‘Under the Patronage of the Right Honourable the Lord Provost, the Magistrates, and the Council of the City of Glasgow’. But although the shareholder board members and their youth committee may have been competent judges of a play, good, bad or indifferent, only one of them had worked on the stage and most would have known little of the workings of the theatre industry: the ‘grease paint, glue, canvas, and all that goes into a production’ as the Scottish theatre manager Robert Arthur (1856-1929) pointedly described it.[8] Instead, Alfred Wareing (1876-1942) was the artistic director and driving force and, unlike the genesis of the Abbey and Gaiety companies, was confident enough to recommend that the board begin production without a trial season.
Fundraising
They appealed for working capital by public subscription, an approach used by Glasgow’s performing arts when the Scottish National Orchestra began concerts in 1893. This method sought to sell shares for the theatre company worth £2,000 (approximately £100,000 today), half of which would be called up, but unlike the orchestra – that had a particularly large capital gift of £20,000 (£1,000,000) from the rich ship-owner James Allen[9] – the theatre company struggled to attract any large investments or donations. Perhaps the board were also excited by the possibility of other industrialists who might have followed the philanthropy of Stephen Mitchell, who in 1874 had bequeathed £67,000 (£3,350,000) of his tobacco fortune for the establishment and future endowment of a public library in Glasgow. In any case, their appeal would have been in competition with a larger, concurrent subscription scheme to set up a guarantee fund of £140,000 (£7,150,000) to mount the Scottish Exhibition of National History, Art and Industry in Glasgow in 1911. After realising that the theatre company’s targeted capital would be insufficient, the board of directors appealed for £3,000 (£150,000) in £1 shares, £2,000 being allotted to subscription.[10] But when the first production opened, You Never Can Tell (Bernard Shaw, 1897), only 1,000 shares had been sold and within seven weeks the working capital was practically spent. Of course, the shareholders were protected from having to meet losses beyond the amount of their stake and although they now knew for certain that there was little hope of earning cash dividends, they managed to stage nine plays in this short season. Indeed, ‘so undoubted had been the artistic success achieved that the enthusiastic shareholders more than doubled their holding, and a further season of twelve weeks was entered upon’.[11]
Landlord relations
Unlike Horniman’s company in Manchester, Glasgow’s first citizens’ repertory did not own or control a theatre, and this was, in addition to the shortage of working capital, a significant obstacle. Instead, like the Ulster Literary Theatre, it had to deal with the touring system from which it preferred to be distant. It hired the Royalty Theatre from Howard and Wyndham Limited, the long-term owners and lessees of a profitable chain of Scottish and English theatres. Unlike Charles Frohman’s arrangements in London, at his Duke of York’s repertory season, Howard and Wyndham did not carry any overheads for the Glasgow company – perhaps they were not as confident as Frohman or the Glasgow board of directors that a commercial audience existed for the ‘new drama’, at least not in their large 1,287-seat theatre.
Commentators state the arrangement as a weekly rental of £80, which had to be paid in advance, with the proprietors retaining ancillary income from catering and programmes, although the company, long-sightedly, ran an interval bookstall ‘where all published plays as well a large selection of relevant works’ were on sale.[12] This weekly agreement confirms that the company was not, formally, a lessee; renting and leasing are not synonymous, because a lease would imply a long tenancy at the theatre, which the company might then operate in its entirety. This delineates another limitation on them: by guaranteeing the proprietors’ weekly rental, they took risk additional to the prevailing touring companies’ arrangements, which performed at the Royalty Theatre (Sauchiehall Street, built 1879, demolished 1960) in between their own seasons on a box-office ‘sharing’ basis.
The rent was equivalent to a weekly £5,000 today, so the theatre could scarcely lose money, and even if Howard and Wyndham were not rapacious landlords, the practice of requiring a company to agree a guaranteed rent for the theatre was exceptional outwith London. The Glasgow rent was approximately 40 per cent of the sum paid by a producing company in London’s West End at this time.[13] Even so, a fixed rent is surprising, because the likelihood of a Glasgow theatre going bankrupt in the absence of a guarantee would have been unlikely in the prosperous sphere of theatre ownership and construction in the 1910s but, on the other side, the arrangement gave the company a degree of artistic independence from Howard and Wyndham who, when box-office receipts were low, might have easily abused them by terminating a sharing contract. Rent was a considerable proportion of the company’s overall expenditure – which averaged £350 (£20,000) annually – on top of which the theatre’s resident stage staff had to be paid, and was, for Glasgow, additional to the similar causes of the Manchester Gaiety’s later closure. Glasgow Repertory had to wind-up in 1914, when Howard and Wyndham refused to renew their agreement, preferring to house middling but profitable tours during the First World War.[14]
Financial results and competition
The company made losses in the first four years and, after Wareing left because of ill health in 1913 (a shortened season during which, because of accumulated but decreasing losses, only one-act plays were staged at the Alhambra Music Hall), it made lucrative gains during the brief artistic directorship of Lewis Casson (1875-1969) in 1914. Even so, the cumulative deficit at the end was 20 per cent of one year’s turnover.[15] These are the year-end results:
|
GLASGOW (SCOTTISH) REPERTORY THEATRE
| ||||
|
|
Surplus/ (Deficit)[16] |
Today’s Value |
Cumulative |
Cumulative Today’s Value |
|
1909–1910 |
£(3,019) |
£(150,950) |
£(3,019) |
£(150,950) |
|
1910–1911 |
£(1,539) |
£(76,950) |
£(4,558) |
£(227,900) |
|
1911–1912 |
£(322) |
£(16,100) |
£(4,880) |
£(244,000) |
|
1912–1913 |
£(125) |
£(6,250) |
£(5,005) |
£(250,250) |
|
1913–1914 |
£790 |
£39,500 |
£(4,215) |
£(210,750) |
Like Manchester Gaiety, the company faced competition from many other theatres, although because it performed in an existing theatre, it did not necessarily have to draw people away from other theatres or increase the total potential theatregoing audience, which would be the case in a company occupying a purpose-built or rehabilitated theatre. Nevertheless, there were nineteen theatres in Glasgow, of which five were music halls, and whose nightly total capacity was 42,775, and probably 65,000 when twice-nightly music hall performances are included. For Glasgow’s population of 776,967, this represented an audience of only twelve potential theatregoers per seat per day. There had been a particular surge in theatre construction, with five new theatres opening the decade preceding the formation of the Glasgow Repertory Theatre. To an observer today, this seems an extraordinarily high level of supply, but in terms of demand in an unsubsidised theatre market, theatregoing was, demonstrably, a majority pastime, not then regarded as a preserve of wealthy, educated or privileged people. There was, unlike today, no controversy of Glasgow being overbuilt with theatres, when there is now a larger market potential of 229 people per seat, for a lower citywide seating capacity of 13,541.[17] From this angle of demography and theatre-supply, it is little wonder that Glasgow Repertory productions had to stagger under the frighteningly rapid and laborious strain of a weekly change of play.
Artistic policy and mission
The formidable task was to attract an ‘intelligent’ but mainstream audience to support penetrating drama in a big theatre. In its choice of plays there were clear parallels with the Manchester Gaiety programme, including nine plays by Shaw, and several by Ibsen, Granville Barker, Brighouse, and Galsworthy.[18] One third of all productions were of new plays, a remarkable accomplishment when compared with mainstream Scottish repertory theatres today. In its first season, it had the accolade of presenting the first play by Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) in Britain: The Seagull. The company aspired, ultimately, to be a national theatre like the Abbey and had, like the Gaiety, ambitions to establish a ‘school’ of playwrights – attested by its name change to The Scottish Repertory Theatre in 1913. However, there was, with the exception of J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) – who had one new play staged, The Twelve Pound Look (1910) and a revival of The Admirable Chrichton (1902) – no new wave comparable to the Irish surge in this period. Few of the company’s new Scottish plays matched the masterworks of the Court Theatre in London or foreign playwrights and, despite their efforts and encouragement of other dramatists, most new plays perished after a first production.
Glasgow Repertory Theatre was, like the Manchester Gaiety Theatre, great in vision. Though sometimes outrunning their achievements, the two companies’ mission statements state the multiple reasons for their existence publicly, helping their organisers to emphasise policy with a certain singularity or distinctiveness, which was important at this time because play choices were largely unrelated to other theatres in these cities. Neither statement, though challenging and similar to the other, is especially explicit. For instance, in view of the number of tours undertaken, it is notable that this prolific aspect of their work was excluded. Nevertheless, the statements offered a sense of direction for formulating the companies’ plans, and would have given theatregoers, critics, journalists, artistic directors, artists and staff an understanding of the nature and structural coherence of the company. This was especially important in Glasgow that was, unlike Manchester Gaiety, founded on new democratic principles of local ownership with citizen shareholders. Of course, success for any company is really dependent on the brilliance and synergy of its playwrights, directors and actors. It can only be realised by an intricate infusion of mission with day-to-day decisions and response to crises, for, however carefully prepared a business plan may be, success can never be preordained. Even so, each statement realistically reflects and confirms adherence to the repertory ‘ideal’, without itemising the aims as an impossible dream, except that in Glasgow, which was additionally motivated towards being a Scottish national theatre, realising ‘a purely Scottish drama’ proved, in the main, elusive.
|
PERSPICUOUS MISSION STATEMENTS
| |
|
GLASGOW (SCOTTISH) REPERTORY THEATRE (1909-1914)[19]
|
GAIETY THEATRE, MANCHESTER (1908-1917)[20] |
|
|
Neither company went on to detail its aims in today’s unattractive and platitudinous terminology of rigid ‘targets’, ‘best value’ or money-related ‘performance indicators’, when monitoring success in the era of arts administration and companies’ accountabilities to external stakeholders are a necessary ingredient of achieving that success. Nevertheless, the statements enabled the Glasgow board, like Horniman in Manchester, to declare that they pursued communitarian and educational goals. These became increasingly critical to repertory theatres. Since the objectives were generalised enough to accommodate a range of contrasting purposes and oblique ends, they have often been repeated, expanded and redefined by later companies, confirming them as admirable yardsticks by which the whole repertory movement, including the twenty-first-century successor National Theatre of Scotland, can be judged today.
Marketing innovations
An equivocal objective in the Manchester aims is that of ‘Popular prices’. At the Gaiety these were, in 1912, 5s, 4s, 3s, 2s, 1s 6d, 1s and 6d.[21] Although pricing policy is excluded from the Glasgow mission statement, admissions at the Royalty Theatre were, in practice, also advertised as being at ‘Popular prices’ – a customary Edwardian marketing soubriquet – and in this sample year they were an identical range to those charged at the Manchester Gaiety Theatre, with the exception of a small number of boxes on sale for 25s and 16s.[22] Moreover, these prices were the same as those charged by commercial touring companies at the large commercial theatres in Glasgow and Manchester.[23] This would seem surprising to modern theatre management. Repertory theatres, which went on to use welfare arguments about the social accessibility of theatre through pricing, invariably apply lower-price ticket policies than do commercial theatres, in the hope of shaping a new audience for adventurous and little-known plays. Because pricing is a vital element of marketing, it warrants discussion on its own. An explanation may lie in setting prices to reflect the costs of the production – without subsidy, they might have been unable to do otherwise – although costs are often a poor guide to what theatregoers will pay. In Glasgow, the theatre management Howard and Wyndham may have determined the Repertory Theatre’s prices as part of its hiring contract, although because the Royalty Theatre was utilised at a fixed rental the proprietors’ income was, as noted, guaranteed. This explanation would not apply in Manchester, because the Horniman’s company controlled the theatre. Socially, of course, the theatre as a whole did not have so many effective competitors and there was not such a wide choice of entertainment as today. Freedom of choice was less, but the plays and styles offered by these two companies were more radical, enquiring and venturesome than most on offer in the commercial theatre.
In order to grapple with their minority interest, Glasgow Repertory Theatre remoulded the membership schemes of the London stage societies’ into a theatre subscription, which was described by P.P. Howe as:
An essential part of any vigorous experiment in repertory, providing as it does the best of all tests of the steady existence of public demand, and of the strength of its conviction.[24]
Subscription originated in German theatres, where it was known as ‘abonnement’. Theatregoers bought a certain seat for a fixed sequence of performances. In Glasgow, coupons in books of six tickets were designed to enable the company to drawback a regular, committed audience by offering an innovative discounting scheme, based on the principle of a reduction for buying a quantity, as demonstrated here:
|
GLASGOW (SCOTTISH) REPERTORY THEATRE | |||||
|
For ease of interpretation, prices have been converted from shillings and pence as a rounded decimal of £ |
Cost of 6 plays to subscribers |
(Casual Full Price per play) |
Subscriber Price per play |
Subscriber Discount per play |
% Discount |
|
6 Stalls Coupons |
£1.25 |
£0.25 |
£0.21 |
£0.04 |
16% |
|
6 Dress Circle Coupons |
£1.00 |
£0.20 |
£0.17 |
£0.03 |
15% |
|
6 Back Stalls Coupons |
£0.75 |
£0.15 |
£0.13 |
£0.02 |
13% |
|
6 Family Circle Coupons |
£0.75 |
£0.15 |
£0.13 |
£0.02 |
13% |
|
6 Reserved Pit Coupons |
£0.38 |
£0.08 |
£0.06 |
£0.02 |
25% |
|
6 Ordinary Pit Coupons |
£0.25 |
£0.05 |
£0.04 |
£0.01 |
25% |
|
6 Amphitheatre Coupons |
£0.25 |
£0.05 |
£0.04 |
£0.01 |
25% |
|
6 Gallery Coupons |
£0.13 |
£0.03 |
£0.02 |
£0.01 |
33% |
Subscription had to be an ‘open’ scheme, because play selection was not made far in advance, at best scheduled in rapid cycles of up to fourteen productions in only three months, as confirmed by this programme editorial:
Many requests are received at the Theatre for information as to future arrangements – the Plays selected for production and the dates on which they will be produced. It is not desirable however to define particulars of the programme for more than three weeks or a month in advance. A number of new and interesting plays have been selected provisionally for production, but the possibility of securing other attractive work has not yet been exhausted. Indeed since the opening of the Season, several most promising plays have been submitted, including one or two striking examples of work in the modern school of playwrights.[25]
William Archer and Harley Granville Barker’s plan for a National Theatre (in London) had assumed that two-thirds of all seats would be sold to subscribers.[26] This would enhance the stability of the theatre by making it easier to plan full seasons and to maintain a constant cash flow. In Glasgow, the scheme succeeded only partially, selling 300 subscription-series in the company’s final season, which would guarantee an average of only 43 patrons at each performance during a one-week run. It is intriguing to speculate what impact, if the Glasgow scheme had ever reached Granville Barker’s sizeable target, subscription would have had on the choice of plays. It has latterly been the case that, after two or three years, subscribers often tire of a theatre and a challenging repertoire, making it harder to reach new members unless popular plays are substituted for difficult new ones. In this quandary, a theatre dedicated to new plays often finds it hard to survive without forsaking its original purposes – and most of its original staff and theatregoers. In fact, the National Theatre of Great Britain (from 1963) has never adopted subscription selling but the Glasgow scheme is evidence of the first signal of an attempt to consolidate a loyal audience for repertory by marketing. Subscription became a mainstay of promotion from the 1980s and today, for example, the Royal Lyceum Theatre Company at Edinburgh has the second best-supported season-ticket scheme in British repertory, fluctuating between 3,000 and 4,000 annual subscribers: an achievement representing approximately one third of attendees for each play production. Meanwhile, it may be noted that in the commercial theatre, whose prices the early repertory companies imitated, productions were already accessible to everybody: the difference between top and bottom prices was twelve-fold, whereas today’s differential has reduced to approximately three-fold because the bottom price has increased at a higher rate than the top. In comparison with other pastimes, commercial theatre was already an affordable entertainment.[27] Moreover, because the theatres drew a large part of their receipts from the cheapest seats, in the large galleries and pit, it could be inferred that the problem of audience support for repertory was not to do with the public’s ability to pay for it, at this time. Rather, it was whether they were inclined to make conscious decisions to attend at all: tensions between ‘education’ and ‘access’ being nonexistent in the pre-subsidy era.
Summary
In this paper, I have explained the organisation for Scottish Repertory Theatre as the first ‘public service’ theatre in Britain, including community relations, constitution, fundraising, theatre renting, financial results, competition with existing theatres, artistic policy and mission statements, and marketing through subscriptions selling. Many of these issues are familiar in theatre management today.
This model of a ‘citizens’ theatre’ was then developed in Liverpool, where theatregoers who had seen productions at the Gaiety Theatre in Manchester formed the Liverpool Playgoers’ Society, inviting Alfred Wareing from Glasgow to address a public meeting. He acted as management consultant to the Liverpool Playhouse, which became the first community-owned company to avoid the razor-edged problems of dealing with a landlord, through mortgage-purchase of its theatre freehold from 1911. In contrast, the seventh National Theatre of Scotland has no theatre building of its own, preferring instead to tour to big theatres, small theatres and other spaces and places across the whole of Scotland, even though this might mean a dilution of continuous community and theatregoer involvement.
[1] See the masthead at www.nationaltheatreofscotland.com
[2] See, for instance, Barbara Bell, ‘Revisiting the National Theatre debate: Once More, With Feeling’, Edinburgh Review 105, Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh, 2000, pp. 5-13, and her chapter: ‘The Nineteenth Century’, in Bill Findlay, (ed.), A History of Scottish Theatre, Edinburgh, Polygon, 1998, pp. 137-205.
[3] Its formation, policy and programme is described within six enquiries: its first four seasons by P.P. Howe, The Repertory Theatre, London, Martin Secker, 1910, pp. 64-69, by Anna Miller, ‘The Dramatic Awakening of Scotland and Wales’, The Independent Theatre in Europe, New York, Ray Long and Richard R. Smith, 1931, New York and London, Benjamin Blom, 1966, pp. 311-318, Winifred F. E. C. Isaac, Alfred Wareing, A Biography, London, Green Bank Press , pp. 34-45, by David Hutchinson, The Modern Scottish Theatre, Glasgow, Moleindar Press, 1977, pp. 12-26, by Jan McDonald, What is a Citizens Theatre? [Proceedings of the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, New Series, Number One], Dundee, Lochee Publications, November 1984, pp. 3-7, and again by David Hutchinson, ‘The Glasgow Repertory Theatre’ in ‘1900-1950’, Bill Findlay, (ed.), A History of Scottish Theatre, Edinburgh, Polygon, 1998, pp. 208-214.
[4] See Philip A. Talbot, ‘The Macclesfield Theatre Company and Nineteenth Century Silk Manufacturers’, Theatre Notebook, London, Society for Theatre Research, 2000, Vol. 54, No.1, pp.24-42.
[5] See Tracy C. Davis, The Economics of the British Stage 1800–1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 238-240. Davis’ perception is that, by contributing what must have been
a substantial part of their savings, if not all, it [also] seems highly likely that investing in this way was a civic act designed to enrich the community per se. In this sense, it anticipates the civic repertory theatre concept by decades, except that private investors take their own initiative to create a professional entertainment venue rather than leaving it to the state to do so on taxation revenue.
Through her research in the share registers of Victorian theatre companies, Davis points out that other locally organised theatres in the North West, such as those in Birkenhead and Liverpool, were owned by middle-class professionals, suggesting that their theatres’ objectives would be mismatched to the interests of the working-classes.
[6] This outline appeared on the front page of programmes, where the company was also billed as ‘The Scottish Repertory Theatre’.
[7] Winifred F.E.C. Isaac, Alfred Wareing, A Biography op.cit., 1946, p. 40.
[8] Anon., The Arthurian Theatre Magazine, London, Robert Arthur Theatres, April 1911, p.4. Arthur ran a chain of touring theatres in Scotland and England.
[9] See Conrad Wilson, Playing for Scotland, The History of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Glasgow, Harper Collins, 1993, p. 2.
[10] Although the company’s projections for working capital fell short of a fundamental reserve, the scale and context of the company’s business can be contrasted with that of their Royalty Theatre landlords, Howard and Wyndham Limited. With an approximate capital of £45,000 (£2,750,000), they were a Goliath worth nearly thirty times the intended capitalisation of Glasgow Repertory Theatre. In 1907, Howard and Wyndham paid a dividend to investors worth £260,000 today. I make this estimate from their entry in ‘Particulars of Capital and Dividends of Leading Joint Stock Companies Engaged in Theatrical and Kindred Business’, John Parker, (ed.), The Green Room Book or Who’s Who on The Stage, London, T. Sealey Clark, 1908, p.630.
[11] P.P. Howe, The Repertory Theatre, A Record and a Criticism, op.cit, p.67.
[12] See advertisement in the Programme, The Threshold, Glasgow, The Scottish Playgoers Ltd, Royalty Theatre, 9 March 1914, p.3.
[13] Had Glasgow Repertory Theatre rented the Royalty year round, the rent would have been £4,160 (£242,028). It is interesting to compare this with London West End theatre rents at this time. The novelist and playwright, Arnold (Enoch) Bennett (1867-1931) observes the average Shaftesbury Avenue theatre to be £10,000 (£581,800) and the Savoy Theatre in the Strand at £7,000 (£407,260). Irving paid £5,000 (£290,900) per annum for the Lyceum Theatre. See Arnold Bennett, ‘The Crisis in the Theatre’, preface to Cupid and Commonsense, London, New Age Press, 1909, p.8-9.
[14] Commentators state that the assets of the Scottish Playgoers’ Limited were donated to The St Andrew’s Society, which nurtured the separate Scottish National Players, founded in 1921. In view of the substantial accumulated losses at closure, it is hard to imagine that the transfer amounted to more than remnants of sets, costumes and office equipment. Nevertheless, the next company presented three Scottish plays staged at the Royal Institute, Glasgow, and was in turn was re-incorporated as the Scottish National Theatre Society in 1922. This was a touring repertory company and 1,942 performances were given; 61 out of 121 productions were of new plays, toured throughout Scotland until 1947. The full story is told by its first artistic director, Tyrone Guthrie, et.al., in The Scottish National Theatre Venture: its Birth, History, Work and Influence 1921-1948, Glasgow, Scottish National Players, 1953 and by Karen Anne Marshalsay, The Scottish National Players: in the nature of an experiment 1913-1934, Ph.D thesis, Glasgow, University of Glasgow, 1991. An attempt to replicate the example of Glasgow Repertory Theatre was made in Edinburgh when the grandly styled Scottish National Repertory Theatre was formed in 1912 by the poet James Macgillivray and his dramatist daughter, Ina Macgillivray, but made no headway because of the First World War.
[15] In this paper, ‘turnover’ means sales (or sales revenue), including cash and credit sales, but does not include the sale of fixed assets. For a non-profit repertory theatre company, the term means income from box-office receipts, hires, fees, programmes and the net catering profits. In this study – as is also customary in theatre accounts – subsidy income will be isolated from turnover, with which it will often be compared, the latter being known as ‘earned income’.
[16] Losses quoted in David Hutchison, The Modern Scottish Theatre, Glasgow, Molendinar Press, 1977, p.18 and also entries in “The Stage” Year Book, for instance 1914, p.133. According to J. James Hewson, ‘some of the large shareholders pressed the company to go into liquidation’ in 1912, but ‘a meeting was held in March, which happily resulted in the shareholders authorising the directors to carry on’ with fewer productions. This may have resulted in the greatly reduced loss but, more probably, the improvement was because Wareing staged several of the plays as ‘an independent venture’, avoiding the ‘trouble to contend with their varying opinions’. See ‘The Repertory Movement: A Review of the Past Year’, Lionel Carson, (ed.), “The Stage” Year Book, 1914, London, Carson and Comerford, 1914, pp.40-41.
[17] Statistics are calculated from individual theatres’ holding capacities, and the population quoted in Lionel Carson, (ed.), The Stage Guide, op.cit, pp.150-151, together with Scottish Arts Council patron data reports. By 1945, the approximate mid-point of this comparison, the ratio of theatre seats to population in Glasgow was approximately 1:60.
[18] The play-list for 1909-1913 is reproduced in Winifred F.E.C. Isaac, Alfred Wareing, op.cit, pp. 150-152. It excludes the final months, from January to July 1914, under the artistic direction of Lewis Casson.
[19] P.P.Howe, The Repertory Theatre, op.cit, pp. 65-66.
[20] Edwin T. Hays, ‘The Manchester Repertory Theatre’, in “The Stage” Year Book, 1912, London, Carson and Comerford, 1912, p. 21.
[21] Lionel Carson, (ed.), The Stage Guide, op.cit, p.235.
[22] Programme, Cupid and Commonsense, Glasgow, The Scottish Playgoers Ltd., Royalty Theatre, Glasgow, 13 May 1912, p.1. Prices are also quoted in Winifred F.E.C. Isaac, Alfred Wareing, op.cit., p.37, who, without comparison to Glasgow commercial theatres, describes them as ‘very moderate’.
[23] See, for instance, programmes for the King’s Theatre and Theatre Royal, Glasgow that were, with the Royalty Theatre, owned and managed by Howard and Wyndham Limited.
[24] P.P. Howe, The Repertory Theatre, op.cit, p.68.
[25] ‘A Word About The Future’, Programme, The Devil’s Disciple, Glasgow, The Scottish Playgoers’ Ltd, Royalty Theatre, 16 February, 1914, p.4.
[26] William Archer and Harley Granville Barker, A National Theatre, Scheme & Estimates, London, Duckworth & Co., p.87 and Appendix C, pp. 140-147, offer detailed rules and booking systems for subscription. It was never adopted at the National Theatre, and only took hold in repertory in the 1980s, when companies such as Bristol Old Vic engaged a United States’ specialist, Danny Newman, to implement what Archer and Barker had hitherto recommended. See also Danny Newman, Subscribe Now! Building Arts Audiences Through Dynamic Subscription Promotion, New York, Theatre Communications Group, 1977.
[27] J.B. Priestley, Theatre Outlook, London, Nicholson & Watson, 1947, p.84 compares the cost of a theatre stall with a novel, a bottle of whisky and cartons of cigarettes, using the years 1910, 1925 and 1947. In 1910, the stalls seat was twice that of a hardback novel, one and half times that of a bottle of whisky and equal to the price of 100 cigarettes.
