Jasmijn Sprangers Specialisation: Arts, Policy and
Master thesis Arts, Culture and Media Marketing
University of Groningen Discipline: Theatre Studies
August 2012 Supervision: Drs. A. Zijlstra
and Prof. Dr. J.J. van Maanen
Bottom Up Bern and
Top Down Groningen –
How theatre systems
influence the
organisation and
functioning of theatre
Preface
The thesis that lies in front of you is a small step in the aim of the STEP-City project to gather more insight into the functioning of theatre on a city level. But to produce and complete this work has been a big step and challenge for me in my academic career. The research and writing process was not always a walk in the park, but it was always interesting. The most difficult thing for me was not juggling three languages at the same time, it was rather to remain concise and structured in the describing of the theatre systems. Researching two theatre systems and its products on a city level provides material that can easily be transformed into a book of several volumes, I discovered in the past months. Fortunately, I had years and years of experience in the researching of theatre systems and policy on my side in the form of my supervisor Hans van Maanen. Our conversations and his enthusiasm about the research subject and my writing carried this thesis forward every time. I thank him and my second supervisor, Antine Zijlstra, for their supervision and constructive criticism. I also thank Marlieke Wilders for her help with the ever challenging statistic software SPSS which I needed to figure out the outcomes of the audience research. I am also very grateful towards the employees and students of the Institute for Theatre Studies in Bern whom have assisted me in the gathering of information about and understanding of the Bernese theatre system and audience. Andreas Kotte, head of the institute, and Miko Hucko have been particularly helpful and kind during my stay in Bern. Finally, I also thank the City Theatre Bern and the Noord Nederlands Toneel for their cooperation in my research.
Index page
Introduction and problem definition 4
Chapter 1: The theatre system in Bern and Groningen 7
Chapter 2: A theory of event analysis 47
Chapter 3: Two Hamlet performances analysed 57
Chapter 4: Audience research at the Hamlet performances 79
Chapter 5: Outcomes of the research related to the theatre system 102
Summary and conclusion 109
Bibliography 115
Introduction and problem definition
Since 2010, theatre researchers and theatre students from the department of Arts, Culture and Media studies have been involved in a project called STEP-City. STEP is short for Project on European Theatre Systems – an international project that tries to determine how theatre as a social phenomenon functions in societies, and especially how this functioning is influenced by a specific country’s organisation of the production, distribution and reception of theatre. ‘Theatre in the City’ is one of its subgroups, and is shortly called STEP-City. The City project studies the functioning of the systems on the level of cities. The five middle-sized European cities of Aarhus, Bern, Debrecén, Groningen and Tartú were selected for this purpose. All of these cities are regional capitals - with the exception of Bern, which is the national capital of Switzerland, but not the theatrical capital - with 150000 to 250000 inhabitants and home to universities. As such, they are considered more representative of the countries’ systems than the actual capitals of the countries. The most important questions that the STEP-City research tries to answer for all of the five participating cities are those:
1. What is supplied to the population in terms of types and numbers of productions and theatrical events?
2. In demographic terms: who is making use of what?
3. Described in quantitative and qualitative ways: what use do various groups of people make of what?
‘How are the theatre systems in Bern and Groningen organised, and what kind of events and experiences do they generate on a city level?’
To answer this question, it is firstly investigated what types of theatrical events are publicly available to the cities’ populations, who supply this and where they supply this. Then, this supply and its organisation are explained within the framework of the national theatre field and cultural policies. The second part is a case study of the City Theatre Bern and the city company of Groningen, the NNT. Part of this case study are an event analysis of two Hamlet productions that premiered in the season of 2011-2012 - for which a theoretical approach of event analysis is developed - and a reception research among critics on the one hand and regular spectators on the other. This case study should offer a better insight into the actual theatrical events and experiences that the most common theatre organisations of a city, the city theatres, supply and facilitate. Finally, the outcomes of the case study are linked back to the organisation of the theatre systems and hypotheses are done as to what systems produce which kinds of events and experiences. Because of the limited scope of the case study (just one theatre organisation and theatrical event are studied), it won’t be possible to draw some hard conclusions about the functioning of theatre in the two cities, but hypotheses about it and recommendations for future research can most certainly be done. The main question will be answered with the help of a set of sub questions:
1. What is available to the population in terms of theatre venues, companies, festivals, education and theatrical events?
2. What is the demographic profile of the theatre audience in the cities?
3. How are the production, distribution and reception organised in the light of the national theatre system?
4. What is the function of a city theatre or city company and what do they provide for the city?
5. What is a useable approach to analyse theatrical events and determine what kind of experiences they provide for the audience?
7. How are the Hamlet performances received by the critics and how do the Dutch and Swiss reviews differ?
8. What is the demographic profile of the Hamlet audiences and how do they judge and experience the performance?
9. How are the outcomes of the case study related to the cities’ theatre systems and which hypotheses about the functioning of theatre in the cities and recommendations for future research can be made?
Chapter 1: The theatre system in Bern and Groningen
In this chapter the theatre systems of Bern and Groningen will be described. The theatre system is understood in this thesis as the way in which the production, distribution and reception of theatre are organised and financed nowadays in a society in the light of the historical and cultural background of a society or nation. Examples of how to describe a theatre system can be found in books like ‘State on Stage’ – a collection of articles on the relation between the state and a country’s performing arts in different European nations edited by the Boekmanstichting – and ‘Theatre Worlds in Motion’, also a collection of contributions from different authors on their national theatre system, edited by Van Maanen and Wilmer. In those books, theatre systems are described on a national level and thus they often start by describing the national funding system and the (development of the) government’s cultural policy or by explaining how the status quo in the performing arts has come to exist, in other words, giving a historical overview of the development of the theatre in the last hundred to two hundred years. But this thesis focuses on the theatre system on a city level instead of on a state level. Whether it is best to start by describing the national cultural policy and historical development of theatre in the Netherlands and Switzerland in order to get a clear understanding of a city’s theatre system, is questionable. Apart from the national theatre history and policy, there are many other factors of interest to the city’s theatre system and of influence on the system. To make sure none of those factors are overlooked, it may be best to simply start by describing what there is in the city in terms of theatre production, distribution , reception and education. Following those four exponents, questions as to how venues and companies are funded and how local and national policy influence the performing arts in the city, will surely arise. Since productions and spectators come together in the venue, it is the distribution area that is central in the creation of the theatrical event. This is why the distribution domain, more concretely: the venues, will be listed and described first.
1.1 Theatrical infrastructure: venues and how to select
because many small villages in the agglomeration of Bern are also included in the count, but also because the offer of theatrical organizations in the city simply is relatively big for a middle-sized European city. The sources that have been investigated are a bachelor paper from ITW-student Pirkko Busin, about the theatre venues in Bern and its surroundings, a report from ITW research employee Frank Gerber about the offer of theatrical events in Bern in the season 2010-2011, theatre website www.theater.ch and the most recent (available) Swiss theatre yearbook, listing all theatre organizations in Switzerland during the season of 2006-2007. In her bachelor paper ‘Spielstätten in Bern und Umgebung’ (‘Venues in Bern and surroundings’) that was written within the framework of STEP, Pirkko Busin counts as many as 150 theatre venues in Bern and its surroundings. This was anno 2010. Busin states that this number cannot be interpreted as a definite answer to the question how many venues Bern and its agglomeration count, since the number was ever changing and during her investigation venues were added to but also deleted from the list right up to the end (Busin 11). In another publication about the season of 2010/2011, called ‘Was läuft in
Bern wirklich?’ (‘What is really on display in Bern?’), Frank Gerber and his students count 172
venues where theatre performances are held. A slightly older list of theatre organizations, and thus also of theatre venues, can be found in ‘Szene Schweiz’ of 2006-2007, the Swiss theatre yearbook. They come up with a number of 26 theatre venues in Bern. The website
www.theater.ch counts 21 theatre venues in the city of Bern. Compared to the first two
sources, the last two numbers seem very deviating, but there is an explanation. The deviance between the counts has got everything to do with the definition of the geographical area and the definition of a venue.
Busin, who was imposed with the task to make a database of all the theatre venues in Bern for her bachelor paper, explains in this paper how she defined a venue. The most important criterion for her is the theatre performance. Not all performances are theatre performances, and in the definition of a theatre performance, the notion “representation” is the key. Only when the performance makes use of representation, and the audience has to decode the signs that are offered by the artist, the performance counts as a theatre performance. Busin bases her definition of representation on the ‘Metzler Lexikon über die
Theatertheorie’. The other criterion she uses is the “openness” or “publicness” of a
5). Next, Busin had to determine the limits of the geographical area that would be included in the database. Although the city of Bern is a defined and clear geographical area on its own, there was a plausible reason to widen the area somewhat. As Busin explains, the regional government of Bern decided in 1996 that not only the city of Bern had to subsidize the most important cultural institutions of the city, but the agglomerating 84 municipalities also had to contribute to this subsidy because they too profited from the benefits of those cultural institutions. The contribution of the municipalities is linked to their nearness to the city of Bern, so the municipalities within the core zone contribute more than those that are further removed from the city. The core zone consists of 21 municipalities, but for the sake of the comparison to the other STEP cities, Busin only includes twelve agglomerating municipalities in her database1 (Busin 6, 7). In his report about the theatre offer in Bern, Frank Gerber uses the same definitions and criteria for a venue to count as a theatre venue, but he includes more municipalities, namely those that are listed under ‘Bern and region’ in the telephone guide.2 He states that most of the villages or towns have very little to no influence on the number of venues or performances because there simply is hardly any offer. They cannot be completely excluded however, because most of the folk theatre, which is quite typical for Switzerland and therefore the more so must be counted, takes place outside of the city in the smaller municipalities or countryside (Gerber 3, 4). Because of his definition of a venue, all buildings or places that sometimes host theatre performances are included in Gerber’s list. This means that many of his venues are actually places that usually do not serve theatrical purposes, or even cultural purposes. Examples are some school halls, hotels, neighbourhood or church centres, and even the historical centre of Bern or a square in the city centre. Also, when venues have multiple halls, every single hall is counted as a separate venue. This way of counting makes the high number of venues very understandable and acceptable. The ‘Szene Schweiz’ and website www.theater.ch go about it quite differently. They only count venues that programme theatre exclusively, or venues where
1
The municipalities that are included are Bolligen, Bremgarten, Frauenkappelen, Ittigen, Kehrsatz, Köniz, Münchenbuchsee, Muri, Moosseedorf, Ostermundigen, Wohlen and Zollikofen.
2 Gerber includes the following municipalities: Allmendingen, Bangerten, Bantigen, Bäriswil, Belp, Bolligen,
theatre has a large share in the programme. Above this, these sources stop counting venues outside of the city and its suburbs. So suburbs like Wabern and Köniz, that border on and almost blend into the city of Bern, are included in their lists, but municipalities that are located further off are excluded. Within the framework of this thesis, it would be impossible to describe all venues that host theatre performances. So the choice was made to only describe the main and best known theatre venues (so venues that only programme theatre, or mostly focus on theatre), most of which are located in the city centre of Bern. Those venues are also the ones that have been included in the questionnaire that was filled out by
Hamlet visitors.
Where STEP-researchers in Bern counted every single stage in the city of Bern and its agglomeration, their colleagues in Groningen had a different approach. First of all, they only described those venues that regularly or exclusively programme theatre productions, because there isn’t much on display outside of these venues. Incidental venues are mentioned as well, but again, there simply aren’t very many incidental venues. Secondly, they have stopped their research at the city limit of Groningen, and have not taken into account venues or performances in agglomerating municipalities. Also, the performing arts festival Noorderzon was left out of the count, and as this festival takes place in different parts of a park for the most part, not including it lowers the number of venues considerably. All venues that are permanent though, and are hence more exemplary of the theatre system than those places in the park that only serve as venues ten days a year, are described. Moreover, the festival Noorderzon is researched and described in another report, it just isn’t included in this preliminary report. With this method, Antine Zijlstra and Hans van Maanen came to the following conclusion in their report about the supply and users of theatre in the city of Groningen during the season 2010-2011:
(Zijlstra and Van Maanen 14)3
There are thus ten accommodations with thirteen venues (floors or halls) in Groningen that present theatre publicly. But the researchers also write about performances taking place in community centres, schools and other ‘non-theatrical venues’. For the season of 2010-2011, there were ten of these other types of venues where performances took place (Zijlstra and Van Maanen 23). And then during each Noorderzon edition, tents, stages and containers are placed in a park in the city for the purpose of theatre and music performances. For ten days a year, this adds about eight temporary spots for theatre performances to the existing venues that are also used during Noorderzon. A number of thirteen theatre venues is much lower than in Bern, but probably partly so because the agglomeration was not considered in Groningen4.The central region of Groningen includes, next to the municipality of Groningen, the municipality of Haren, which has 18454 inhabitants and can almost be seen as a part of the city. Seven villages are situated around the city within a circle of approximately ten kilometres from the border of the municipality of Groningen. These were not included in the count, but don’t have a theatre venue within their borders either5.
1.2 Theatre venues in Bern
To get an idea of the diversity of venues in Bern, the main theatre venues will be described. It is difficult to make a distinction between fully professional and fully amateur venues in Bern, because many guest venues programme both professional, semi-professional and amateur companies or artists. The largest and best known venues however have a majority of professional programming. Those will be described first. The other, smaller, venues will be described in paragraph 1.2.2. Information about the venues was gathered by visiting the main theatre venues and retrieving current information from the organisations’ websites.
3
Most children and youth theatre performances in schools are closed performances, not available to all of the public.
4 In 2010, the city of Bern had 124400 inhabitants and the agglomeration had 228900 inhabitants, which makes
for an inhabitant number of 353300 in total for the city plus agglomeration.
(http://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/portal/de/index/themen/01/02/blank/key/raeumliche_verteilung/agglomeratio
nen.html).
In the year 2012 the municipality of Groningen has 192985 inhabitants and the agglomerating municipality of Haren counts 18454 inhabitants, together the central region of Groningen has 211439 inhabitants.
(http://www.haren.nl/over-haren/kerngegevens_3745/)
1.2.1 The main theatre venues
The neoclassic and historical theatre venue Das Stadttheater (‘the City Theatre’) can be found in the historical centre of Bern, a ten minute walk from the central train station and from the houses of parliament. It is the oldest and best known theatre venue in the city, and was opened in 1903. The venue hosts three theatre departments: music theatre (opera and operetta), dance (classical and contemporary) and spoken theatre and houses its own theatre company without any guest performances. The building has one theatre hall with a proscenium arch and raised stage. There is a ground level with three balconies and a total of 750 seats (Badilatti 1721-1723). The City Theatre Bern also owns the Vidmarhallen in Köniz Liebefeld, but they are located in the agglomeration of the city, at a 10 minute drive from the centre. Although the building of this venue also began in 1903 (the year the classic City Theatre opened), it has only functioned as a stage for the City Theatre since 2007. Before this, it was a factory and still looks like that in many ways (“Vidmarhallen”). It is a large, ground levelled grey building with high ceilings and cement floors. Within it, there are two theatre halls, a small one with room for a hundred spectators, and a middle-sized hall with 300 seats (“Vermietung Stadttheater”). Both halls are flat floor theatres. The Vidmarhallen is where the City Theatre performs most (but not all) spoken theatre and dance performances. The Theater an der Effingerstrasse is, different from the City Theatre, a venue for guest performances that is located in a multi-purpose building in the centre of Bern, near the train station. It started in 1996, after the previous theatre, the Atelier Theater had closed after 45 years of service. The theatre hall has a raised stage, and there are approximately 200 seats. The auditorium is L-shaped, but all seats offer a reasonable view of the stage. The
Theater an der Effingerstrasse has a high level of own revenues. Although it receives some
theatre are programmed now and then. The Schlachthaus was built in 1768/1769 and functioned, as its name says, as a slaughterhouse until 1914 when it became a storehouse. The building was renovated for cultural use in 1981 and used for two years by the City Theatre when their house was being renovated. The association that presently exploits the building as a theatre has done so since 1997. The flat floor theatre hall of the Schlachthaus can accommodate up to 130 people, and the basement of the building is often used as a stage as well. This is a small room with a flat floor where a number of thirty people can watch a performance. The Schlachthaus is reknown for their professional contemporary theatre programming. (“Schlachthaus Theater Bern”)
Quite different is the Theater am Käfigturm which is located in a short tower, in the middle of one of the shopping streets in Bern, in the historical centre. Their programme is slightly less professional and meant for a broad audience. It exists since 1967 and offers its stage to different theatre groups. They do not make their own theatre productions. The theatre has a raised stage and can hold up to 327 people. The ONO is located near the
Theater am Käfigturm in the historical centre of Bern, next to shops, cafés and other bars. It
is a venue for music, visual arts, literature and theatre. They call themselves Bühne, Galerie
und Bar (‘Stage, Gallery and Bar’) and programme all sorts of cultural activities like readings,
poetry slams and theatre performances. ONO exists since 2004, but is located in a basement that has functioned as a theatre from as early as 1953.There is a bar in the foyer, and next to it lies the narrow but long theatre hall with a small fixed stage and room for 90-100 people (“ONO”).
Sometimes theatre performances are also held in the other rooms of the Reitschule, but these rooms usually serve for different purposes and do not have a fixed stand with a fixed number of seats.
Finally, there are three large theatre venues that are located outside of the city centre. The Dampfzentrale is one of them. It is another former industrial building in the city of Bern. The Dampfzentrale was built in 1904 and has been used as a cultural centre since 1987. The building is located just outside of the city centre, about a twenty minute walk from the train station. The Dampfzentrale has two theatre halls; the Turbinensaal with 200 to 400 seats (a stand can be removed or added) and the Kesselhaus with a capacity of 100 seats. Both halls have a flat floor and can be furnished or constructed in different ways. (Kelleer 1050, 1051) A large part of the programming in the Dampfzentrale is dance, but there is also spoken theatre and cabaret, there are readings at times and it hosts many Bernese culture festivals. There is a restaurant in the building too. In the Breitenrain area, a residential neighbourhood to the north of the city centre, La Capella is located. It is one of Bern’s cabaret and kleinkunst stages. It programmes only those two genres, since November 1998. Before this date, the chapel that the theatre is located in actually functioned as a church, from its construction in 1908 until May of 1998. The venue can be reached by car or bus in five to ten minutes from the train station. Also to the north of the centre of Bern there is a large theatre hall. The Ewigi Liebi Theater6, or Wankdorf City is a recently built theatre hall that was opened in November of 2010 for the musical ‘Ewigi Liebi’ (‘Endless Love’ in Swiss German). It is located on the outskirts of the city of Bern, in the developing
Wankdorf area near a train station and with easy access to the motorway. It’s original
purpose was to be a theatre, but it is now also used for congresses and product presentations among other things. The design is contemporary and quite austere in the colours black and red. The theatre hall has a raised stage and can accommodate 930 people. The foyer is equally big (“Ewigi Liebi”).
1.2.2 Other Bernese venues
Many of the smaller Bernese venues are located in basements in the historical city centre. Those basement theatres are the Zytglogge Theater, Narrenpack Theater, Kellertheater
Katakömbli, Theater Vis à Vis and the Berner Puppentheater. The first two both have an
ensemble, and the Zytglogge also hires their venue to guest groups. The Zytglogge is the oldest basement theatre venue in Bern and exists since 1949. The performances by the house company ‘Chäller Kumedi’ are spoken in dialect (Keller, Thomas Band 3 2167, 2168). The Kellertheater Katakömbli hosts kleinkunst performances, whilst Theater Vis à Vis and the
Berner Puppentheater are puppetry and object theatre venues. The latter two venues are
both owned by the company that is also called the Berner Puppentheater and they host national and international puppetry groups as well. The basement theatres typically have small theatre halls and the capacity of the five mentioned venues varies between 46 and 90 seats.
Two of the smaller venues serve the younger theatre enthusiasts in Bern. The Theater
Szene is a theatre for children, located to the south of the city of Bern, near the village of
Wabern in the Weissenbühl area. The company that plays in this theatre has made theatre for children since 1973, and used to play their productions at other locations like the Casino
Bern and Zytglogge Theater until they settled at the Theater Szene in 1984. Nowadays, they
perform two to five productions a year, and they also offer theatre workshops for children and facilitate children’s birthday parties. The venue has a flat floor hall with a movable stand and around eighty seats.7 The Theater Remise also has a small flat floor hall with 60 seats. This venue is not played by a company, but is the home of the Studio Bühne Bern which is a theatre school for amateurs that offers courses in theatre, dance and musical. The venue can be rented by theatre groups, and can be found right behind the central train station of Bern. Another venue serves the interests of the Bernese youth since 1971 as a cultural centre for the youth of the city. It is the Gaskessel: a former gas bunker that is located at the banks of the river Aare, just outside of the city centre, near the earlier mentioned Dampfzentrale. Cultural activities have always been organised there, and nowadays the programme consists mainly of concerts, readings, theatre performances and club nights. Apart from the theatre hall with 250 seats there is also a restaurant.
Two venues that are run by the same theatre company are the Theater Matte and the Theater Gurten. The company makes productions for both children and adults and the themes of the production are usually connected to the history, famous citizens (like Albert
7
Einstein) or tales of Bern. The Theater Matte exists since 2010 and is located in the historical centre of Bern, on the banks of the Aare river. The actors that the company works with are hired per production, and the theatre hall has a raised stage with 100 seats. But before the company owned the venue, they already played in their open air theatre every summer since 2002 on the Gurten: Bern’s city mountain with recreational facilities such as restaurants and a cable-railway. This is not a permanent venue and since it is open air theatre, there is no fixed playing floor. There is a stand for the public where 500 people can watch the performance. Per summer there are about fifty performances in the open air. The
Gurten mountain lies in the agglomeration of Bern, in the village of Wabern. The mountain
itself is 864 meters high and can be climbed by foot or with the cable-train.
Finally, there is the National Bern which is not small at all, but does not programme a lot of theatre any more. It was built in 1912 and is a hotel and restaurant with a theatre hall and Latin dance club. It is located in the historical centre of Bern, close to the central train station. Historically, the theatre hall was used for variety theatre performances and operetta. Later, all kinds of theatre and dance groups could hire the theatre hall, and even the City Theatre performed at the National Bern for some time during the 1950s and again in the beginnings of the 1980s. Nowadays, mostly concerts can be seen in the theatre, and there are still theatre and dance performances, though less than before (Gfeller 1878, 1879). There are approximately 700 seats in the theatre hall, which has a proscenium arch and raised stage.
1.4 Main theatre venues in Groningen
The theatre venues in Groningen can be divided clearly into professional venues and amateur venues. Sometimes it happens that an amateur group performs a production in a professional venue, but this is really an exception. Because of this clear division, the professional venues are grouped and described firstly and secondly the total supply of amateur venues is discussed. In Groningen, too, information about the venues was gathered by visiting them and by retrieving information from their websites.
The oldest and best-known theatre venue in the city of Groningen is the Stadsschouwburg (‘City Theatre Hall’). It was built in 1883 just at the outside of the canal that circles the old city centre. The style of the building is neo-Renaissance and the theatre is a typical proscenium theatre with a proscenium arch and raised stage, separating the public from the performance area. In total there are 737 seats, spread over the ground floor and three balconies. Additional facilities such as a foyer, café and bar, are all available. The
Stadsschouwburg has a house company, the NNT, but the largest part of the programme is
guest programming. In the 1980s, some hundred years after the construction of the
Stadsschouwburg, an additional small venue was opened at the back of the Stadsschouwburg. This venue is called the Kruithuis and it houses a small flat-floor theatre
with 104 seats. Upon entering the venue, one immediately enters the foyer which has a bar and is bordered on the unguarded cloakroom and toilets. There are only guest productions programmed in this venue. Part of the same municipal organization as the two theatres mentioned above, is the Oosterpoort. This venue is also located just outside a canal, but is a bit further removed from the city centre. It was built in the 1970s and is a cultural centre that serves mainly to host musical performances, including classical as well as popular music. The building has two separate halls: one for big and one for smaller performances. The big hall has a raised stage and can seat 1125 people. However, standing up, there is room for 1850. The smaller hall can be constructed to have a raised stage, as well as a flat floor. It can fit 750 people standing up, or 450 persons if they are seated. Theatre performances (of the genre cabaret and kleinkunst) usually take place in the smaller hall. Besides these two theatre or music halls, the Oosterpoort also includes three large foyers with a bar, a paid cloakroom, toilets and a restaurant called Muze (‘Muse’). The programme consists exclusively of guest productions.
times a year guest theatre makers or companies are invited to play at this venue, but otherwise the company plays its own venue. Just like the NNT, children and youth theatre company the Citadel has its own venue just outside of the city centre. It is located in the building that also houses their offices and workshop and the theatre has seventy seats.
In the heart of the city, on the central square, there is another theatre venue. It is called the Grand Theatre and was originally built as a cinema in 1929. It served as such until 1977, when the cinema was closed because of financial bankruptcy. After some years of vacancy the building was squatted by the action group Ruimte voor Kultuur (‘Room for Culture’) that reopened the Grand Theatre in 1980 as an actual performing arts theatre, instead of a movie theatre. The building has two theatre halls. The downstairs hall has a flat floor with room for 170 spectators and the upstairs hall has a semi-flat floor with room for 125 people. Downstairs there are the ticket counter and a foyer and upstairs is another foyer with a bar. The Grand Theatre functions as a production house for young and talented theatre makers. The theatre makers can use the theatre as a laboratory to develop their productions, and show the ‘end product’ on its stages. The theatre also co-produces international productions for the performing arts festival Noorderzon. But the bulk of the programme are guest performances.
A lot farther removed from the city centre than the other theatres, the venue
Martiniplaza is located on the outskirts of the city of Groningen. The actual Martiniplaza was
opened in 2002 and functions as a large commercial event complex. The complex houses the Martiniplaza Theater (‘Martiniplaza Theatre’) that has 1600 seats and mainly hosts musical performances. But there is also a sports hall that can host top sport events, and the complex is mainly used for congresses and other meetings. There is also a restaurant located in the complex, and the Martiniplaza Theater has a large foyer to match the size of its auditorium.
1.4.2 Amateur venues
central park. It is the Prinsentheater, which was founded in 1987. Apart from being a workshop that organizes theatre classes for amateur performers (both for children, youth and adults), the Prinsentheater has two small flat floors that can accommodate respectively 85 and 60 spectators. This theatre has a little café where spectators can gather before and after the performance. Performances that result from the theatre classes are shown on its stages and the rest of the programme are guest performances. The last amateur venues are both student venues, housed by the University of Groningen: the Intheater and the
Outtheater. Both theatres are managed by the Cultureel Studentencentrum USVA (‘Cultural
Student Centre USVA’) that is run by students of the university. The Intheater is located in the building of the cultural student centre and is a flat floor theatre with 73 seats. Both theatre and music performances are held in this hall and it is also available for meetings. The cultural centre has a bar and exposition area as well. The Outtheater on the other hand is located outside of the cultural student centre (hence the name ‘Out’theater), in the building of the Faculty of Law and Arts, that is also in the very centre of Groningen. It is a black box flat floor theatre with room for ninety spectators. The Outtheater was built in the beginnings of the 1990s as a theatre laboratory for students from the Theatre Studies department, but wasn’t used much for that purpose. Amateur theatre groups (both for students and amateurs from outside of the university) held performances in the venue, but the university had less and less money to spend on the theatre. Due to further cutbacks the Outtheater has closed its doors as of 1 January 2012.
1.5 Companies
correspond completely. An explanation for this is that the Szene Schweiz dates from 2007, whereas the website was updated much more recently. Groups that still existed in 2007 might have been discontinued by the year 2012 and new groups might have been started; free groups are usually characterised by less continuity than companies with their own venue, as will appear from paragraph 1.11. That these companies are located in Bern does not mean however that they perform solely in this city or canton. As companies that are not bound to one venue, these groups are free to travel the whole canton, country and abroad. Theoretically, a Bern-based group might even perform all of their productions in other regions with not one single performance being staged in Bern. Likewise, a fair share of the programming of Bernese venues without an own ensemble might be constituted by performances from groups that are based elsewhere in Switzerland or abroad. Data or numbers as to the origin of the free groups that performed in the city of Bern in the season 2010-2011 are not available unfortunately. It is known that in order to receive a subsidy from the city of Bern as a free group, your group or production has to have some link with the city of Bern (but this link can be the residence of the company as well as the use of Bernese myths or topical issues in a production for example).
It was also already mentioned that one company, the NNT (Noord Nederlands Toneel, or ‘Northern Dutch Theatre’) has its own venue, Theater de Machinefabriek. The same holds true for children and youth theatre company the Citadel and amateur company the
Grunniger Sproak that performs in the Der Aatheater. These venues however, are also used
by other theatre companies to perform their productions. The NNT and the Citadel belong to the four professional theatre companies in the city. They received a four year structural subsidy from the state for the past four years and are as such part of the Basic
Infrastructure. The other two professional companies are dance companies, the Noord Nederlandse Dans (Northern Dutch Dance) which is also subsidized by the state, and Club Guy and Roni, that received a four year subsidy from the Fonds Podiumkunsten (Fund for the
also perform at the Groningen venues. This means that only a small part of the supply is provided by companies from Groningen. Zijlstra and Van Maanen give the exact numbers:
These four Groningen companies provide the city with about 100 performances, which is a bit less than 15% of the total presented (700) and a bit more than 20% of the professional supply (470). The NNT takes the lion’s share with about 75 performances, most of which are small scale performances in the own venue of the company.8 The other 370 professional performances in the Groningen venues are presented by a bit more than 200 different companies from elsewhere.
(Zijlstra and Van Maanen 14)
There are six semi-professional groups or companies in Groningen, mostly playing for kids and often in closed performances. If they travel at all, they usually travel to other municipalities within the province of Groningen. And whereas the number of professional companies in Groningen is very limited, and they travel throughout the country, the number of amateur companies is much higher and they rarely travel. In total there are seventy amateur groups, some more or less permanent and others on a project base, that altogether played 225 times in the city in 2010-2011. (Zijlstra and Van Maanen 14)
1.6 Festivals
In Bern as well as in Groningen five to ten theatre festivals are organised yearly. During these festivals, performances are mostly held at existing venues, but sometimes there are special location theatre performances. The main festivals will be described. The AUAWIRLEBEN (which literally translates to ‘Ouch we’re living’) is a festival for contemporary theatre that is socially engaged. The first edition was in 1982 and back then performers from German speaking areas were invited to Bern. Nowadays international performances also form part of the programme and the festival is held yearly during ten days at the end of April and beginning of May in existing venues (“AUAWIRLEBEN”). There are also two contemporary dance festivals held in Bern yearly. Tanz In. Bern (‘International Dance Series Bern’) is a
festival for international choreographers and dancers that lasts three weeks in the months October and November. The festival is organised by and takes place at the Dampfzentrale. This venue also hosts the contemporary dance festival Heimspiel (‘Home match’) that takes place during the month of February. This festival programmes dance performances that are made by choreographers that have their roots or residence in Bern (“Tanzfestivals Dampfzentrale”). There is one festival for youth theatre called Theaterfrühling (‘Theatre spring’). It is actually a festival for high school classes from the canton of Bern and they show each other their performances during four days in June. The festival is not exclusively for spectators from the schools, ‘outsiders’ are welcome too (“Theaterfrühling”). There are two other German Swiss theatre festival for children or youth, Spiilplätz and SPOT, but those are held in a different Swiss city each year and they are hence not typical Bernese festivals. Finally, Bern has two multidisciplinary art festivals. The first is Buskers which calls itself a street music festival, but also programmes street theatre, circus and installations. The second is Biennale Bern, that includes installations, dance, music, theatre and lectures. Performances are held at existing venues and the festival takes place during ten days in September (“Die Biennale Bern”).
From the main theatre festivals in Groningen, two are held at special locations. The
NS Try Out Festival is a festival with music performances, installations and theatre
performances that is organised by the Dutch Railways at three Dutch train stations. Platforms and waiting halls are among the temporary venues, and the performances are free of charge (“NS Try Out Festival”). The biggest and best known theatre festival in Groningen is the Noorderzon (‘Northern sun’) performing arts festival. It is held yearly during the last two weeks of August and includes theatre, dance and music performances. The heart of the festival is a park near the city centre where performances take place in tents, containers and a floating stage. Part of the programme also takes place in existing theatre venues throughout the city. The programme exists of a mix of Dutch and international performances and the music performances are free of charge (“Noorderzon”). Once every two years the festival Hel van het Noorden (‘Hell of the North’) is organised by the Stadsschouwburg and
Grand Theatre during four days in March. It is a festival that exclusively programmes Flemish
school classes from the province of Groningen. School pupils perform for each other and they can take part in workshops by professional theatre makers from Groningen. This festival, however, is not open to everyone but is exclusively meant for school pupils from the participating schools. The Toffe Kastanjes (‘Cool Chestnuts’) is a theatre festival for children of five years and older. The festival is organised by and held in the Stadsschouwburg and
Oosterpoort during the autumn holidays in October. A festival for the same target group,
children from five to twelve years old, is organised by the SKSG (the foundation for nurseries Groningen) and Grand Theatre and it takes place in this last venue. It is called the
Kinderwinterfestival (‘Children’s Winter Festival) and takes place during the two weeks of
Christmas holidays. The Jonge Harten festival has a slightly older target group than the two festivals mentioned before. It programmes mostly national, but also some international performances for youngsters and students in the main theatre venues in the city. The festival takes place each year during the last week of November and offers theatre, dance, cabaret and multimedia performances. Finally, there are two theatre festivals that are aimed specifically at students. The Groningen Studenten Cabaret Festival (GSCF) is a festival for students that are also comedians. It is a competition for young talents that audition before a professional jury after which six talents are selected to go on to the semi-finals. The try outs are held in five different student cities in the Netherlands, and the semi-finals and finals take place in the Stadsschouwburg in Groningen in the last week of November. The GSCF is publicly accessible and not just students are permitted in the audience (“GSCF”). The other student theatre festival is STUKAFEST (‘Student Room Festival’), that is organised by students each year. Professional theatre makers, writers and musicians play small performances for a very limited number of people in student’s rooms. The students put their rooms at the disposal of the festival for one evening and everyone that has a ticket can see three performances during this evening. Until 2010 there also used to be a regular theatre festival for students that programmed performances by student theatre groups from throughout the Netherlands and other countries.
1.7 Theatre training
theatre, dance and musical for amateurs. Secondly there are two higher education institutes that educate students to become theatre professionals. At the Hochschule der Künste, students are trained in the performing arts at bachelor and master level in the theatre department. The university also offers an education in Theatre Studies. At the Institut für
Theaterwissenschaft (Institute for Theatre Studies) students are educated at bachelor and
master level to become theatre researchers, historians or dramaturges for example. A similar education is provided by the university of Groningen at the department for Arts, Culture and Media studies on the bachelor and master level. There are also two institutions that offer theatre courses for (young) amateurs; an arts centre that offers courses and a youth theatre school and a group called the Noorderlingen (Northerners). This last group prepares young people (who are in the senior years of high school) that want to apply for professional drama schools in other Dutch cities for their entrance examinations (Zijlstra and Van Maanen 15).
1.8 A characterisation of the offer
During the theatre season 2010-2011 students from the theatre studies department at the university of Bern and their professor, Frank Gerber, have made an inventory of the theatre offer in Bern for the period of a year. They counted all performances for 29 weeks of the year, and then converted this number to 52 weeks. This method produced a total number of 3075 performances a year, meaning an average of 59 performances a week or 8 performances a day (Gerber 4). Other than counting all performances, the students also characterized the offer according to genre and their form of organization. Unfortunately, there was no categorization available as to the target audience or (level of) subsidization of the performances. This would have given more insight into the amount of performances for children and young people in Bern, and into the dominant form of financing of the theatre performances in Switzerland.
September 2010 till the 31st of August 2011. The only performances that were not yet counted at that time were the performances that were on show during the performing arts festival Noorderzon, held in the last two weeks of August each year. At the time of the count, it was not yet clear how many performances would be programmed during the festival. Without this festival, the count came to 735 performances of 425 different productions9 (Zijlstra and Van Maanen 22). In the weeks leading up to the Noorderzon festival, some of the students investigated the festival programme and counted a number of 63 performances of 16 different productions. This brings the theatre offer for the season 2010-2011 in Groningen to an amount of 798 theatre performances. In other words, this is an average of fifteen performances a week or two a day. Apart from counting all performances, the students made a database for the season of 2010-2011 in which they registered for each performance the following data:
- the company that produced the performance; - the venue in which it was performed;
- on what level the performance was subsidized10; - the level of institutionalization11;
- the relation between the venue and company12;
- whether it was made by professionals, semi-professionals or amateurs; - the target audience13;
- genre of the performance.
With this database, Antine Zijlstra and Hans van Maanen could characterize the offer of theatre performances in Groningen for their preliminary report about the supply and users in the city of Groningen. The following diagrams will give some insight into the supply in the cities of Bern and Groningen.
9
Most figures were rounded off for readability purposes.
10
The most important and common forms of subsidization are: 1. A four years subsidy from the state via the BIS (Basic Infra Structure); 2. A subsidy from the NFPK (Netherlands Funds for the Stage Arts), which can be for four years, for two years or for a project.
11
The options here were: free group, institutionalized in the Basic Infrastructure, or a collaboration of groups.
12
Companies could perform as an incidental guest, regular guest, house company or within the framework of a festival.
Diagram 1.1: the division of the theatre offer in Bern in 2010-2011 according to genre
Diagram 1.2: the division of the theatre offer in Groningen in 2010-2011 according to
genre
The largest segment during the theatre season of 2010-2011 in Bern was the spoken theatre genre. More than half of the performances belonged in the category Sprechtheater, as the
51%
15% 11%
13%
5% 5%
Share of genres in the offer
Spoken theatre Music theatre Dance Kleinkunst
Puppet and object theatre Other genres 52% 15% 9% 18% 2% 1% 3%
Share of genres in the offer
Spoken theatre Music theatre Dance
Kleinkunst (including cabaret) Puppet and object theatre Mix of styles
Swiss call it. Second biggest is the music theatre genre (including opera, operetta, musicals and music theatre) with 15%, and not much smaller are the dance and kleinkunst14 categories making up respectively 11% and 13% of the total offer. A smaller category is the puppet and object theatre that has a share of five per cent in the offer, and another five per cent is constituted of other theatre genres. (Gerber 5) Diagram 1.2 shows that the division of the performances over the different genres in Groningen is very similar to that in Bern. In Groningen too, spoken theatre takes up a good half of the supply, and the percentages for music theatre and dance resemble those of Bern as well. The kleinkunst sector in Groningen is somewhat bigger, and the puppet and object theatre genre is a little smaller. If we count ‘new circus and show’ and a ‘mix of styles’ as other genres, the accumulated percentages also correspond to the category ‘other’ in Bern.
Diagram 1.3: the division of the theatre performances in Bern in 2010-2011 according to organisation form of the producing organisation
14The Kleinkunst-category includes cabaret and comedy performances.
11%
50% 25%
14%
Share of organisation forms in the offer
City theatre Free groups
Diagram 1.4: the division of the theatre performances in Groningen in 2010-2011 according to subsidisation level of the producing organisation
Seeing diagram 1.3 and diagram 1.4 it is obvious that the organisation forms of the companies or theatre makers that produce the performances in Bern are different from the organisation forms of the producing organisations in Groningen. There is no such thing as a city theatre that only plays in their own house in Groningen. Almost all companies in the Netherlands travel with their productions and are in that sense free groups. But some of those free groups are more institutionalised than others: for the professional companies it can be deducted from the level of subsidisation what kind of company produced a performance. In the database, it has been distinguished whether a performance was made by (semi-)professionals or amateurs. For professionals, if the company receives subsidy directly from the state, this means it is part of the Cultural Basic Infrastructure15 and as such has a high level of institutionalisation because this is a structural subsidy for four years. Next to this subsidy, groups can receive subsidy from the Fund for the Stage Arts for a project, for two or for four years. Even when a company receives a four year subsidy from the fund, the institutionalisation grade is lower because the subsidies are divided by the fund without government interference. There is also a non-subsidised category, an international category that is not subsidized by the Dutch state or fund, and a rest group of performances for which
15 More about the levels of subsidisation in the Netherlands can be read in paragraph 1.11.
23% 7% 31% 26% 4% 9%
Share of organisation forms in the offer
Basic infrastructure Fund for the Stage Arts Amateur
it was unknown whether they received subsidy or not. The non-subsidised category consists of commercial theatre, but also of groups that neither receive subsidy, nor are commercial producers. Those groups finance the production costs from another job or income. In Bern, the city theatre is subsidised structurally by the city and canton, and free groups can apply for subsidy per project.16 With this in mind, diagrams 1.3 and 1.4 can be interpreted.
Whereas some people may think that the city theatre is responsible for the largest share of all theatre performances in Bern, this is not the case. With 11%, the city theatre is actually the smallest category when it comes to organization forms of the performances. Half of the offer in the city of Bern is produced by the free groups and a quarter is made by the amateur and folk theatre organizations. The commercial sector is responsible for 14% of the performances. In terms of organisation forms in Groningen it is more difficult to draw parallels with the city of Bern, because the organization forms are so different. What is remarkable is that the share of the amateur category in the total supply is bigger in Groningen than in Bern although Switzerland has a more historical tradition of folk theatre (part of the amateur category) than the Netherlands. Diagram 1.4 also shows that one third of the performances in the city of Groningen was made by companies that were subsidised nationally: 23% in the Basic Infrastructure and 7% through the Fund for the Stage Arts.
Another diagram that we won’t be able to compare, but is interesting nonetheless is the one that shows the target audiences of the theatre supply in Groningen.
Diagram 1.5: the division of the theatre supply in Groningen according to target audience
The diagram shows us that almost three quarters of the publicly offered performances are aimed at a general public17, and that the other quarter is spread quite evenly over the more specific target groups ‘children’, ‘youth’ and ‘students’. It has to be remarked however that many performances for children and youth are performed at primary and secondary schools, but those are not included in the count because only the pupils from the schools can visit them, and they are not open to the public.
1.9 Theatre audience research in the cities
Up until now, no audience research has been done for the STEP-City project in Bern. This means that there are no data available as to the experiences and the theatre visit frequency of different genres of the theatre audience in Bern. Another source does offer some useful information about the profile, visit frequency and motivations of the audience of two theatre venues in the city of Bern, and one open air theatre in the canton (Schwarzenburg).
17 The term ‘general’ is actually used for all those performances that are not aimed at a specific target group or
age, and thus means that is usually meant for adults. It does not mean however that younger people or students are excluded or that none of these performances are suitable for younger audiences. For instance, parents may bring their children to a cabaret performance or opera, but the performance is not specifically aimed at younger people.
8%
9%
9%
74%
Target audiences of the theatre supply
This source is Pia Strickler’s dissertation ‘Theaterberichtstattung in der deutschsprachigen
Schweiz am Beispiel Bern. Eine Studie zu Inhalt und Nutzung.’, in which there is a chapter
about the profile of visitors from the City Theatre, the Schlachthaus Theater Bern and the
Freilichtbühne Schwarzenburg. Information about the visitors was gathered by means of
digital and physical questionnaires that were distributed among visitors of plays in these venues during one to two months per venue in the year 2008. Additionally, subscribers from the City Theatre were also sent a questionnaire. In the case of the City Theatre, 370 visitors and 343 subscribers filled out a questionnaire. At the Schlachthaus there was a response of 308 filled out questionnaires, and at the Freilichtbühne Schwarzenberg 290 visitors responded18 (Strickler 95-97). Because Schwarzenberg belongs neither to the city of Bern, nor to its agglomeration, results from the audience research at the Freilichtbühne
Schwarzenberg will not be considered in this thesis.
In Groningen, STEP-researchers and their students did a quantitative audience research and analysed theatre performances during the season of 2010-2011. In total a number of 55 performances was selected. The four main genres (spoken theatre, dance, cabaret/kleinkunst and music theatre) and the main theatre venues were all represented in the selection, according to their share in the total supply. Visitors to the selected performances were asked to fill out their e-mail address and were sent a questionnaire about the performance and their theatre visit frequency the next day. This yielded 2835 filled out questionnaires in total (Zijlstra and Van Maanen 21, 22).
For the purpose of this thesis that compares the theatre systems of Bern and Groningen, it is interesting to see what kind of audience the existing theatre systems attract. This is why results from the above mentioned audience researches that give some insight into the profile of theatre visitors, are published in this thesis19. The results, that constitute a profile of the general theatre audience (in the case of Groningen more so than in the case of Bern, because in Bern not all main genres and venues were represented in the research) , will also be used as a frame of reference for the results of the audience research carried out at the two Hamlet performances which is described in chapters three and four of this thesis.
18
For detailed information about the background and execution of Strickler’s audience research, read chapter 8 “Theaterbesucherinnen und Theaterbesucher – Kritikleserinnen und Kritikleser?” of her dissertation.
Table 1.1: Age of the theatre audiences in Bern and Groningen Aspects City Theatre Bern
(visitors)
City Theatre Bern (subscribers) Schlachthaus Theater Bern Groningen theatres Average age
46 years 62 years 37 years 42,84 years
Age segments <16: - 16-25: 17% 26-35: 14% 36-45: 14% 46-55: 19% 56-65: 23% 66+: 13% <16: - 16-25: - 26-35: 1% 36-45: 5% 46-55: 20% 56-65: 35% 66+: 38% <16: - 16-25: 25% 26-35: 26% 36-45: 22% 46-55: 16% 56-65: 8% 66+: 2% <16: 2,3% 16-25: 20,5% 26-35: 15,0% 36-45: 14,4% 46-55: 23,4% 56-65: 19,1% 66+: 4,9%
The age categories between the three audience groups in Bern vary quite a lot. The
Schlachthaus Theater Bern obviously attracts a young audience, because the average age is
Groningen. A significant difference between the cities is that in Bern, 30-40% of the respondents live in the canton of Bern and only 6-11% of the respondents come from outside of the canton of Bern, whereas in Groningen, only 23,88% live in the province of Groningen and almost 20% live in the other Northern provinces of Friesland and Drenthe. Another 5,26% live in other parts of the Netherlands.
Table 1.2: Education level of the theatre audiences in Bern and Groningen Aspec
ts
City Theatre Bern (visitors)
City Theatre Bern (subscribers) Schlachthaus Theater Bern Groningen theatres Level of educa tion Not specified: 3% Primary school: 3% Secondary school: 13% Middle school/baccalau reate: 22% High vocational education: 20% University: 40% Not specified: - Primary school: 2% Secondary school: 15% Middle school/baccalaur eate: 15% High vocational education: 30% University: 30% Not specified: 4% Primary school: 2% Secondary school: 13% Middle school/baccalaurea te: 29% High vocational education: 19% University: 33%c Not specified: 11,6% Lower level secondary school: 2,1%
Middle level secondary school: 7,7%
Higher level secondary school: 9,2%
High vocational
education: 32,5% University: 37,0%
Strickler researched at the Schlachthaus Theater Bern were meant for the target groups children and youth, so this might be a plausible explanation. Another aspect that is unfortunately even less comparable because of the different approach to the question is the profession of the respondents. In Bern, respondents were asked whether they were employed, in education, retired or unemployed whereas in Groningen people were asked in which sector they are or were (in case of unemployment or retirement) employed20.
Perhaps the most remarkable result of the audience researches is the average theatre visit frequency of the respondents. The respondents in Groningen have an average of going to the theatre 2,25 times a year. Compared to this, the average in Bern seems very high. That City Theatre subscribers visit the theatre more than 6-11 times a year is not that surprising, since they have to visit a lot of performances to make purchase of a subscription worthwhile. But also the regular City Theatre visitors go to the theatre 6-11 times a year. This means they go once every two months or even once a month in an average year. The venues or theatre forms that the respondents in Bern mostly visit are the City Theatre Bern, open air theatre, Das Theater an der Effingerstrasse, the Schlachthaus Theater Bern,
Laientheater (which is amateur and folk theatre) and the free scene21. In Groningen, the most frequent visited theatres within the city of Groningen are respectively the
Stadsschouwburg, the Oosterpoort and other venues (these can be venues outside of the
city of Groningen).
1.10 The theatre world in Bern framed by the Swiss theatre system
In the previous paragraphs it has become clear that Bern has an infrastructure of venues, companies, and festivals that supply the inhabitants of Bern with diverse performances. The City Theatre Bern is just one of the many organisations, but it is one of the oldest institutions of the theatre system in Bern and it is exemplary of the Swiss cultural policy. Every large city in Switzerland has a city theatre that is traditionally a multidisciplinary venue (music theatre, ballet and spoken theatre) with a permanent ensemble and is financed by the government. The government subsidises it because they see it as their duty to foster the accessibility of
20
The outcomes of the question are included in appendix 1 for those who are nonetheless interested in the professional life of the respondents.
culture for all layers of the population and they want to ensure the cultural diversity of the canton (“Verfassung des Kantons Bern”). Subsidisation of theatre organisations is not a matter of the central government, the Bund, however. The municipal and cantonal governments are the ones that formulate a cultural policy and support the cultural organisations in their region, because the regions want to remain culturally autonomous. In the past, attempts have been made to enable subsidisation nationally, but legislation to subsidise culture nationally (with 1% of the state budget going to culture) was rejected by the Swiss inhabitants (Van Maanen and Wilmer 19). The desire to remain culturally autonomous has got everything to do with the division of the country in four language areas. The largest area is the German speaking area that includes 74% of the population. 20% of the population speaks French, 4% speaks Italian and a minority of 1% speaks Rhaeto-Romanic. The total population amounts to 6,9 million inhabitants. The different areas are very focused on their own language. This means that they have more attention for cultural events in other countries with the same language, than for cultural events and developments in cultural centres in the other Swiss language areas. The same holds for the press that only publish about culture in the own (language) region. This obstructs interlingual (different language areas cooperating) and international cooperation and initiatives (Kotte 621). Because of this focus on the own language area, Switzerland does not have a national theatre, but rather has city theatres that supply the own city and canton with theatre performances that have to be accessible both financially and artistically for all layers of the population. The canton and city of Bern finance the City Theatre Bern with 24 million Swiss Francs, roughly 20 million euros22, yearly. The city of Bern contributes 36%, the canton contributes 49% and the rest is financed by the region, the Bürgergemeinde (an association of citizens), and the state (which only contributes 1%) (Reichenau 50). This subsidy constitutes 75% of the total financial means of the City Theatre Bern. In exchange for the subsidy, the City Theatre Bern has to programme a certain amount of music theatre, dance and spoken theatre. Otherwise, they are completely free in their artistic choices. In total, the city of Bern spends approximately 28 million euros and the canton of Bern spends some 34 million euros on cultural organisations yearly. How is it possible that a local government can afford to have such a large budget for cultural subsidisation? The answer lies in the Swiss tax system. In the first instance, the state only retains 15% of a person’s
