Individual and corporate support is vital to building on London's leadership in the arts, and I hope others will join me in wanting to build on the National's role at the heart of modern theatre and sustaining it long into the future.
A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time has no relevance.
You know, this isn't theatre like it used to be.
With so many young playwrights, the true craft of writing for living voices is not what it used to be. They write for attention spans of 10 minutes between adverts.
We're so bereft of support of theatre in this day and age.
We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
We need theatre that is contemporary, lively and relevant, and the only way to do that is to take care of our playwrights and produce their plays.
I get fed up with all this nonsense of ringing people up and lighting cigarettes and answering the doorbell that passes for action in so many modern plays.
