The National Theatre in London is a wonderful, vital means of gathering people together. But the building is an anachronism

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to give a talk on what the future of
the arts might be. I suggested that one of the things I'd like to see would be the National Theatre going bankrupt and being squatted by people who don't have any idea what they're doing.

I've changed my mind. It's a fine thing that we have a National Theatre. It is a means of gathering people together – of communally exploring and articulating what it means for all of us to exist together. Like the United Nations or Milton Keynes, it's one of those ideas so naively hopeful and optimistic it makes you wish things had turned out as planned.

But here, too, is the problem. The National as an organisation is a wonderful, vital idea. The national theatre as a building is an anachronism: a brutal(ist) articulation of one narrow and archaic vision of theatre that, if not obsolete, is certainly one-dimensional.

Let's start with its location. The most exciting performance work in England is made for festivals such as Manchester's International festival, Mayfest in Bristol or Fierce in Birmingham, or
at regional spaces such as the Royal and Derngate or the Drum in Plymouth. Or it's created by companies such as Artangel, Artichoke,
Paines Plough and Headlong who roam across the country. In Scotland and Wales, their new National Theatres are agile, light on their feet and generously expansive in their scope. In England, we are chained to a million tonnes of concrete.

And what about that building? There are those bourgeois grazing-areas
of the lobby, designed for highbrow people-watching. Then there is the strict division between public product and the private process of supporting and creating theatre. Incredible work goes on at the NT Studio, but you'd never know about it. More people should do, and be invited to contribute. Most importantly, there are those three theatres, beautiful cathedrals to performance but prohibitive of so much that is exciting in theatre across the country. The National can, of course, support Shunt and sell tickets for BAC and Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death, but while those auditoriums remain, like three well-lit albatrosses round its neck, they will continue to be its priority, to the detriment of so many companies and artists deserving of being a part of it.

In Sunday school, I was always taught that a church is not the building but the community that inhabits it, and I think the same should be true of a theatre. At the moment, though, the community around the National Theatre is created by the building, not the other way around. Which is not to say that there shouldn't be a building: more and more, I feel that a sense of home, of locatedness, is important. As is the opportunity for artists and audiences to feel as though they can explore, inhabit and take ownership of a space. But all of this should come out of need, not necessity.

I love the National Theatre as an organisation. I love much of what it does, and the effort that it puts into encouraging a passion for and interest in theatre. And I don't want it to go bankrupt. But perhaps I'd like it to be homeless for a little while – to borrow spaces up and down the country, to make do, to adapt, to create something new. And, in doing so, perhaps discover what kind of home is right for it, rather than all of us having to conform to the proscriptions of that prison on the South Bank.

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The National Theatre in London is a wonderful, vital means of gathering people together. But the building is an anachronism

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to give a talk on what the future of
the arts might be. I suggested that one of the things I'd like to see would be the National Theatre going bankrupt and being squatted by people who don't have any idea what they're doing.

I've changed my mind. It's a fine thing that we have a National Theatre. It is a means of gathering people together – of communally exploring and articulating what it means for all of us to exist together. Like the United Nations or Milton Keynes, it's one of those ideas so naively hopeful and optimistic it makes you wish things had turned out as planned.

But here, too, is the problem. The National as an organisation is a wonderful, vital idea. The national theatre as a building is an anachronism: a brutal(ist) articulation of one narrow and archaic vision of theatre that, if not obsolete, is certainly one-dimensional.

Let's start with its location. The most exciting performance work in England is made for festivals such as Manchester's International festival, Mayfest in Bristol or Fierce in Birmingham, or
at regional spaces such as the Royal and Derngate or the Drum in Plymouth. Or it's created by companies such as Artangel, Artichoke,
Paines Plough and Headlong who roam across the country. In Scotland and Wales, their new National Theatres are agile, light on their feet and generously expansive in their scope. In England, we are chained to a million tonnes of concrete.

And what about that building? There are those bourgeois grazing-areas
of the lobby, designed for highbrow people-watching. Then there is the strict division between public product and the private process of supporting and creating theatre. Incredible work goes on at the NT Studio, but you'd never know about it. More people should do, and be invited to contribute. Most importantly, there are those three theatres, beautiful cathedrals to performance but prohibitive of so much that is exciting in theatre across the country. The National can, of course, support Shunt and sell tickets for BAC and Punchdrunk's The Masque of the Red Death, but while those auditoriums remain, like three well-lit albatrosses round its neck, they will continue to be its priority, to the detriment of so many companies and artists deserving of being a part of it.

In Sunday school, I was always taught that a church is not the building but the community that inhabits it, and I think the same should be true of a theatre. At the moment, though, the community around the National Theatre is created by the building, not the other way around. Which is not to say that there shouldn't be a building: more and more, I feel that a sense of home, of locatedness, is important. As is the opportunity for artists and audiences to feel as though they can explore, inhabit and take ownership of a space. But all of this should come out of need, not necessity.

I love the National Theatre as an organisation. I love much of what it does, and the effort that it puts into encouraging a passion for and interest in theatre. And I don't want it to go bankrupt. But perhaps I'd like it to be homeless for a little while – to borrow spaces up and down the country, to make do, to adapt, to create something new. And, in doing so, perhaps discover what kind of home is right for it, rather than all of us having to conform to the proscriptions of that prison on the South Bank.

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