Theatres are tortoises in encouraging collaboration from consumers on the what, how and where.

Not everyone wants to be a Spect-actor, collaborating in making Forum Theatre and other wholly democratic formats where participation is more important than art.

Most of us want to be activity engaged in great theatrical art through being an active audience willingly manipulated by maestros directing actors in plays.

So how would the theatrical experience best benefit from our increasing enthusiasm for, and ability to, collaborate?

We can already fully interact with theatres in terms of the sales experience of course, with some of yesterday’s, and all of today’s  web technology and systems comfortably enabling select a seat, ticketless sales, and advance sales of programmes, meals, drinks, merchandising, membership and donations.

The fact that many theatres have been slow to individually or collectively adopt this technology is simply a symptom of the prevalent attritionist  management style.

We blog and twitter and increasingly collaborate on reviewing productions.

So what is beyond this baseline and before collaboration in the theatre-making?

Like almost everything in theatre, the Greeks were on to this.  The first dramas by Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles were staged competitively, with the audience voting for the winner.

Our television producers are well ahead of theatre and arts organisations in this, with audiences enthusiastically voting for talent,  in Britain’s Got Talent.  And Channel 4’s Big Art project took this concept and mashed it up with commissioning public art.

Theatres should collaborate with audiences on what, how and where theatre is produced.

The very best theatrical regimes are run by maestros who lead taste by taking risks, whose choice of programme is spot on and who work with playwrights who spookily write about the great issues of the day before we have even identified them.

But these theatrical regimes are few and far between and may be outdated.  Our national theatres must lead the national conversation and must lead taste.  But what about our building based producing and coproducing theatres, playing an essential role in presenting theatre for a city/region?  The programme is crafted from the repertoire of classics, contemporary classics, Shakespeare, international classics, new plays, pantomimes, family shows etc. These rich seams include plays about almost every thing in life, love and politics, about morality, corruption, infidelity, aging, being a woman, being a man, war etc etc.

So why not collaborate with the audiences on the choice of repertoire? What about passionately pitching the ideas to the audience for them to chose.  Does the story of Solness in Ibsen’s The Master Builder, in its indictment of a community’s hypocrisy resonate more than that of Mother Courage?  The debates which go in a an Artistic Director’s head or round the senior management table can be held publicly.

Being a tortoise isn’t always bad of course. Aesop’s Tortoise was the winner in the fable with the Hare.  Theatres can have the advantage of the last-mover, picking up successful ideas from others and avoiding pitfalls.

As long as we avoid the fate of Aeschylus who was killed by a  tortoise being dropped on his head by an eagle mistaking the bald pate of the playwright for a rock.

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