21.
On the whole I haven’t wanted, in considering the future, to pay much attention to the kind of trends that trendspotters spot: but in the light of these thoughts about the structuring of theatre, I’m interested to recall that after Web 2.0, the flowering of user-generated content, we’re promised, by some, the return of expertise, of those who can reliably help us navigate the multiplicities. To minimise the power differential between actor and audience, to rethink the job of the director, to disperse authority, is not to downplay the importance of skill, craft, elegance and rigour in all of those roles; on the contrary, it’s to lean harder on those qualities. To be an actor, to be a maker, should be an extraordinary way of life, one that we shouldn’t be afraid to call a vocation. It’s because I care so much about the experience of the audience and the potential of theatre to incite radical change that I want to say: Fuck your feedback forms; fuck your Twitter reviews; fuck your snarky comments on the Guardian blog. I’m working in theatre pretty much every waking minute, I work hard and I want excellence and we are specialists and this is not trivial.