Chichester Festival Theatre chairman Mark Foster
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00:00Good afternoon, my name is Phil Hewitt, Group Arts Editor at Sussex Newspapers. Always lovely
00:06to speak to Mark Foster, Chairman of Church's Festival Theatre. Mark, you were saying a
00:11fascinating thing just now. The fact is that we are in a very anxious, slightly broken
00:16society in so many ways, and really that puts the focus on the arts, doesn't it? Because
00:20in a way, the arts have never been needed more, because in your view, the arts can provide
00:26so many answers as we try to reformulate a social cohesion.
00:34Exactly, Phil. Well, I think there's just an absolutely enormous opportunity for us to
00:40take advantage of things like live theatre, live music, other aspects of the arts,
00:48to truly engage those people who are maybe feeling a bit lost, maybe don't have the social
00:53networks they want, are not able to engage with the ideas that they want to engage with.
00:59And we've seen through our work at Chichester, the power of things like our youth theatre,
01:06more than 900 young people engaging in theatre on a regular basis. We've seen the impact that has
01:12on their happiness and their well-being. Indeed, a survey we did last year, 93% of them said that
01:19they had emerged from that experience more confident, with more friends, and just happier.
01:25And I think that if you take that idea, and you take also the work that we do with adults
01:30at the theatre, and with other groups from all parts of society around where we work, we can see
01:36that people are, by engaging in the theatre in different ways, they are dealing with some of
01:43the issues they're dealing with. Absolutely. And the point, at the risk of stating the opposite,
01:47is that you can't get this kind of happiness, this kind of engagement, simply by staring at
01:52Facebook or staring at a screen, can you? It's a proper live engagement, which is
01:57qualitatively something else, isn't it? Absolutely. And indeed, there is some research now that says
02:03that, you know, interacting with either live music or live performance touches a different part of
02:08the brain than simply looking at something on a screen or listening to something that's pre-recorded.
02:14And it's that ability to then truly, I think, engage an audience, both an individual audience
02:20and perhaps also, importantly, collectively, because you have a collective experience as an
02:25audience, as well as an individual experience. I think that's something that can cut through.
02:30And we've seen with school groups, other groups that are coming to see the theatre, people who've
02:35seen our fabulous Oliver recently, have really found that people who've never experienced theatre
02:42being totally engrossed over a two, three hour period in a thing that's rich with ideas, that's
02:49so different than most of the experiences people are getting on social media at the moment.
02:54And you were talking particularly with Oliver, youngsters who perhaps have struggled with
02:59concentration, struggled a little bit in class, sat absolutely rapt for the duration of Oliver.
03:06Absolutely. And it's because the storytelling is so vibrant, they're seeing different aspects,
03:15the movement, the engagement, they see skills, and they suddenly realise they'll not look at this
03:20through a screen. This is real. It's in front of me. It's live. It has the jeopardy of being live
03:26in front of me. And I think that also just, again, engages people in a different way. And I think that
03:31it does spark different synapses in the brain. And I think that's an opportunity for people to
03:37also to lose themselves a bit more, like you lose yourself in a good book. Losing yourself in great
03:42theatre is, I think, a great way for people also to maybe let go of some of the things that are
03:47worrying them. Effectively, you're dragging people away from the rather fake unreal world of the
03:55screen into the real world, aren't you? Absolutely. And it's an irony that, of course, you know,
04:01the world of theatre was at one level a pretend world, but it is actually more real, in many
04:06respects, than many other things. It's talking about ideas that often people are not necessarily
04:11hearing, if they're in the kind of the echo chamber of the people who talk about the same
04:15things they talk about all the time. And I think that's another area that we have an opportunity
04:19to do is stretch people, maybe show the other side of an argument, maybe bring people together.
04:24Because again, as we look at a society that has so many divisions in it, I think the chance that
04:29we have the arts bring people together around ideas is another big opportunity, which again,
04:35should increase happiness and maybe make us all make it all a better place.
04:39And absolutely, if anybody isn't thinking of investing in the arts,
04:42then they're not just investing in art for our sake. It's those wider ramifications, isn't it?
04:48Absolutely. And I think there's an opportunity, frankly, for a broader case to be made,
04:52whether to government, to philanthropists, to anybody in society that says that, you know,
04:57putting money into the arts is a genuine investment, not simply in the art itself,
05:02which is important. And we have a great leadership role in the UK. We love how
05:06fantastic Chichester is as a theatre, but also the fact that these other impacts that can be had
05:12are very real, could be more lasting. And if we start to seek around for levers to make
05:18society happier, make the UK and England grow again, all the things we're trying to do,
05:24maybe we need to look at the role that arts can play as a catalyst for that,
05:28as part of a series of interventions that need to be taken forward.
05:31Absolutely. And if you want the proof, just think of the buzz that you walk away with
05:35after seeing something like Oliver, that stays with you, doesn't it?
05:39It does indeed. I think of some of the stories we got of some of the groups of teenagers and
05:45their buses going back to their school, you know, all singing, Consider Yourself,
05:49at the top of their voices on the bus all the way home. That's the kind of thing that,
05:54you know, it's just so different, so different than so many other kinds of ways that we try to
05:59break through and cut through and engage with young people.
06:05Brilliant. Well, lovely to speak to you, Mark. Thank you very much indeed.
06:09Always a pleasure, Bill. Great.