Arthur Miller? Snore! Audiences want new plays – why are theatres scared of them?

A new report suggests playwriting is in crisis after Covid, with producers retreating into safe old classics. Well, not from where I’m standing

Crisis? What crisis? British Theatre Before and After Covid, a report released this week, is like a comedy-tragedy mask rendered in academic form. If you look at it one way, you see smiles. Look at it another, you see only things to cry about. The media coverage of the report, by the British Theatre Consortium, focused on the latter, with industry bible the Stage reporting: “‘Sharp decline’ in new plays since Covid.” Between 2019 and 2023, the number of new plays produced dropped by almost 30%. If vindication was needed for much recent angsting about the condition of new writing in UK theatre, this report seems to provide it.

So is playwriting in crisis? I’m in a decent position to comment, at least insofar as that question applies in Scotland. I run A Play, a Pie and a Pint (PPP), the Glasgow theatre institution producing more new plays than any other theatre in … Europe? The world? The known universe? (We wait in vain for someone to tell us we’ve been trumped.) Based on our experience – fielding hundreds of scripts a year, producing and touring new plays every week, year-round – there is plenty to be concerned about. But there are also reasons for optimism, some evidenced by the report, which was written by director Dan Rebellato and playwright David Edgar.