It’s easy to blame the difficulties theatre now faces on the longest shutdown of stages since the mid-seventeenth century. But these problems began some time before a global pandemic. Decades of free market ideas, ten years of austerity, and the slow encroachment of private space have all worked together to create an industry struggling to define its purpose. The virus was a symptom, not the cause.

In Towards A Civic Theatre, director Dan Hutton argues that a theatre which isn’t civic in outlook is not worth fighting for. Full of ideas and provocations from a range of theatre practitioners, and drawing on examples from inside and outside of the performing arts, it makes the case for a new kind of theatre fit for purpose in an already tumultuous twenty-first century. It is a toolkit, a guide, an offer to audiences and a call to arms for artistic leaders of tomorrow.