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Young audiences

The National gets younger every day
by Josh Spero

September 2007

With every day that passes, the National Theatre is getting younger. Defying the laws of time and logic, the National finds itself more youthful on all frontiers. As a key destination along the rejuvenated South Bank, the National is eagerly enticing and embracing new generations of visitors by growing beyond nationality and theatre.

The building itself is more accessible than ever for young visitors – front and back. While the foyer has always been a vital part of the National – more than just a space people pass through, to and from plays – now more than ever it has become socialised, with cafés, restaurants, exhibitions, the famous bookstore and live music from across the globe.

When there is music in the foyer – Saturday lunchtimes and every evening – it has become common to find students and young professionals wandering into the National for a sandwich and taking up position in front of the foyer's stage. The brown leather sofas and frighteningly orange chairs are just as likely to hold someone meeting their friends as waiting for a matinee. The Espresso Bar too has begun to attract a younger, more vibrant crowd, letting them spill out onto the courtyard with an espresso or mocha.

If the building can be intimidating from the outside, stepping behind the scenes on the backstage tour sets it to scale. You are taken through all three theatres – the cavernous Olivier, the proscenium Lyttelton and the free-form Cottesloe – and to their rears too, passing through hidden corridors and coming upon the National from unexpected angles. The tour is not just about the building, though; you can see 40ft-high backdrops being painted and cages full of props, including a gruesome puppy pie from 2005's Theatre of Blood. The tour demystifies the National but does nothing to decrease the wonder of its shows.

The National's core is still the production of world-class plays by old and new writers, canonical or controversial, and as ever, everyone is welcome into its auditoriums. The problem, however, is that while it has an extremely loyal, broad audience – last year it sold over 700,000 tickets – it needs to attract its future audience, and with the iGeneration suffering an over-examined curriculum which puts the ache into Shakespeare, this requires new methods and innovations as well as a broad selection of material.

Plays accessible and interesting to older children are regularly put on, such as this winter's War Horse, an epic based on Michael Morpurgo's book, in the tradition of the National's tremendously popular His Dark Materials and Coram Boy. The History Boys has become a firm favourite, touring the country to packed houses, while the Connections series features specially commissioned new plays about teenagers, performed by teenagers. The current NT productions which arose out of this series – Mark Ravenhill's Citizenship and Enda Walsh's Chatroom – are touring the UK from September to November.

Building on its plays, the National is drawing in state schools with play-related workshops. “We're doing Much Ado and it's on the national curriculum,” says Jenny Harris, until recently the National's Head of Education, so there is “a huge programme with London schools. They get two workshops, they see the show, then another two workshops.” Pupils from over 100 schools will take backstage tours, meet the actors and explore special websites. For The Life of Galileo last year, there were classes to explain the science that so infuriated Galileo's opponents.

Harris sees this outreach – which also includes sending people into local classrooms to spread the National word – as an indispensable part of the National's work, and this work also involves dispelling any images of Victorian formality the National might have: “You don't feel out of place, you don't feel there's a dress code or you have to behave like this.” It isn't a free-for-all but a free-to-all – no-one is excluded, whether they are in t-shirts or tuxedos.

The Travelex £10 ticket initiative has also opened the National further, standing against the West End's credit-card-crunching prices. This year – the fifth since its introduction – there have been 170,000 £10 tickets in the promotion, covering shows from Attempts on her Life to The Emperor Jones.

Step outside the auditoriums and you see manifold ways in which the National is stimulating its renewed salad days. These range from Watch This Space, the programme of summer events in the courtyard, and club night Late Lounge, to City Ambassadors, a summer scheme for refugee children.

Watch This Space is the most visible and vibrant of these, showcasing theatrical companies and musical acts in the courtyard, from flamenco guitarists to post-modern Tempests. The crowd surrounding these acts never stops growing, as thousands of people pass by every hour, walking along the riverside, and decide to join the spectacle. All these events are free and form part of the cultural kaleidoscope of the South Bank, and even in the down hours the courtyard is strewn with deckchairs, making it an extension of the foyer's welcome.

Once the moon has chased away the sun, the National still beats a youthful rhythm at weekends with Bring&Share in the Late Lounge. If anything reveals the National's entry into the 21st century, it is this interactive iPod-evening, where people can bring their small white boxes and let the DJ plug them in, encouraging a global musical eclecticism. It's a world away from any image of the National as a library-quiet, furrowed-brow palace of seriousness.

The level of noise something makes may be deceptive, for one of the National's most valuable projects for youths is one of its least trumpeted. City Ambassadors brings 25 refugee or asylum-seeking teenagers, in Britain without their parents, to the National for a week of acting and speech classes; this year they came from Eritrea, Afghanistan, Angola and elsewhere.

At the end of their week, they are invited to give feedback on Post-Its, and their notes reveal the course's importance to them: “Helped my skills and confidence” “Help to practise my English” “I made new friends”. Since so many of these teenagers are effectively alone in Britain, City Ambassadors provides a vital social gateway to them while entertaining and educating them. Sarah Lowry, City Ambassador's project manager, says that as well as boosting their confidence it introduces them to the National: “They don't know it exists, or they don't think it's for them. Just getting them here is a good start.”

There is plenty of evidence in cyberspace for the National's popularity with the young. Facebook, a social networking site populated by those of school and university age (and those who wish they were still of this age), has a thousand-strong group dedicated to appreciating the National, and its members shared their thoughts.

Aimée Moorhead, 25, is drawn in by the National's events: “Because it's the summer, if I'm on the South Bank I'll always have a look at what's on Watch This Space.” Hugh De La Bedoyere, 22, meets his friends at the National: “I often use it as a meeting point if I'm seeing friends in town – it's a great place to start an evening off.”

If Facebook is for the collegiate, the National itself is no slouch when it comes to technology. As well as a dedicated channel on YouTube, with trailers (surely an innovation for plays) and cast interviews, the National is behind the award-winning stagework.org, which lets students explore all facets of the theatre. And on the NT's own website, as well as its podcasts, blogs, e-trailers and e-flyers, there are interviews, essays on the National's productions and even explanations of everyone's jobs (what is a flyman?).

Even beyond this, the digital wizardry continues: 60% of the National's tickets are now sold online, with the choose-your-own-seat function allowing all who like to stretch their legs the choice of aisle seats. And last year the first phase of the Big Wall project brought touch-screen exploration of the themes and background to Coram Boy to the NT foyer; produced in-house, using Accenture technology, it will return this year for War Horse. The National has learnt that technology is one of the best ways to engage with young people (and indeed everyone), since it is at the heart – or at least fingertips – of modern life.

As I sat outside the National late on a summer's evening among a few hundred tourists, teenagers and post-teenagers, watching a Polish company perform an avant-garde version of Heart of Darkness while pedestrians hooted their approval from Waterloo Bridge, it became clear how far the National is succeeding in rejuvenating itself, making itself appealing and welcoming to new generations. The National Theatre is 45 years young, and getting younger as we speak.

© Josh Spero, September 2007
Josh Spero writes on the arts for The Guardian,
The Times and The Sunday Times