The Olivier Awards - A Dissident Writes

Sunday evening sees the glitz and glamour of UK theatre's biggest gonging, the Laurence Olivier Awards, our equivalent to the Tonys in the US. There will be plenty of coverage here at Broadway World and plenty more in the media, but I confess to some disappointment in the categories. The likes of Keira Knightley and grandes dames of British theatre such as Maureen Lipman no doubt deserve their nominations and awards should they get them - but they started somewhere, and so did the theatregoers whose cash supports productions through these recessionary times.

So why is there no category for Best Production in Children's Theatre? Family-oriented theatre is a blanket term that can be thrown over fare from musicals to comedy to drama, even to Shakespeare, but children's theatre is different. It speaks directly to the kids in the audience with pacy, simple plotting and actors prepared to be bold and unsubtle in order to establish characters quickly. Within those parameters, there are lots of opportunities for fine writing and directing and wonderfully energetic acting, but children's theatre is too separate from the mainstream be nominated in any of the categories, and so the main avenue into theatre for all those bums that go on the seats in the nominated productions has no home on British theatre's biggest night - and that's a shame.

If children's theatre is the first step for the audiences of tomorrow, student theatre is the first step for the actors, directors and technicians of the future. Again, there is no category, nor chance of nomination for an Olivier, that can be realistically aspired to by anyone involved in student theatre. Yet there is some splendid work on show this year. I particularly enjoyed Rose Bruford College's dazzling production of The Wonderful World of Dissocia recently at The Unicorn Theatre, the production values and acting being easily aligned with anything I have seen at The National. I'll declare an interest in Drama Centre London as I work for its parent university and there's RADA, still turning out the talent 106 years after its founding. Both, along with many drama schools scattered around the UK, produce marvellous work throughout the year. 

That there is no Olivier for Best Student Production is as short-sighted as its ignoring of Children's Theatre. While awards honour the best of the recent past, they should have an eye for the future too.

 

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