I used to engage in a certain amount of amateur dramatics, back in the day, and after a while I became sufficiently unwise as to get involved in committees and the like, and become something of a Figure in the Community, thus descending into the traditional pit of tribal politics and mud-slinging that these concerns always seem to involve (1). A lot of people involved in the am dram trade tend to be middle management or retired company types, and the traditions bleed through. Certainly I lost an evening of my life to one monumentally tedious meeting where the luminaries of the theatre met to decide what the theatre’s Mission Statement should be.

To be fair, I have the vague idea this might have been as part of an application for charity status, and that such footling nuisances are somehow part of complying with the Charities Commission. If this is so, then shame on those who regulate charities for inflicting this particular crime of capitalism on those seeking to do good. Shame on the theatre committee, too, for taking it remotely seriously and exploring, with flipcharts and diagrams and lots of earnest debate, precisely what a small amateur theatre’s “mission statement” should be. The end result, reached after a great deal of breast-beating, wailing and gnashing of feet, was “Providing Excellent Theatre”.

 

Providing Excellent Theatre.

 

Three words that, in the context of their use, mean nothing. One can assume the ‘theatre’ part is, surely, a given. “Providing Excellent Hotdogs”, while surprising, would not have been an accurate description. Also “Withholding Excellent Theatre” would have caused comment, I suspect, when proudly displayed on the literature (3). Finally, “Providing Rotten Theatre” would have been a poor selling point (5).

 

We wasted an evening on that. We could have spat that soundbite out in five minutes and knocked off for a pint, frankly. Our sin was in taking it seriously.

 

It is the corporate disease, certainly. A fungus spread by management consultants that grows on the great edifices of business, but is all too easily caught, alas. At least we at the am dram level came to “Providing Excellent Theatre” after wasting only a single evening. We could have spent a week and £20,000 briefing a consultant and achieved a result quite indistinguishable (6). Some time in the sixties, surely, somebody starting torturing the English language in top secret corporate labs, and selling the results to businessmen who still had vague New Age aspirations, and now the disease is everywhere.

 

My last encounter with this professionally introduced me to Key Statements, which are glib little paragraphs saying how great you are. There were five pages of them. How can you have five pages of key statements? Surely at around the page-and-a-half mark they cease to be ‘key’?

 

I was informed, on enquiry, that we had been assured by management consultants that this sort of thing was very beneficial to a company, and that companies with mission statements and the like did better than companies without. This was parroted out with a straight face. I didn’t have the heart to suggest that, if asked, 95% of snake oil salesmen would vouch for the absolute efficacy of snake oil, and the company that makes the Emperor’s New Clothes would be likely to review them favourably in its in-house fashion mag.

 

Mission statements, feh. As noted, people are at least starting to realise that the blandly self-congratulatory waffle trotted out by companies, about how good their products are, about how green they are, how obliging, how trustable even, is nothing except self-serving. After all, it’s a cold day in hell when a company director tells you that he and his cronies are a pack of thieving, lying, polluting purveyors of tat, or even admits responsibility for anything instead of blaming the market, the government (7), the consumers, the EU and/or some supernatural higher authority (8).

 

It doesn’t take much consideration to see that, after all, every corporation, every businessman, has the same mission statement, and it’s nothing to do with excellence or solutions or providing anything.

 

(1)   It is said that once a group reaches a certain size, 20–30 or so, then it will form factions. Frankly, two amateur dramaticians can form factions on their own (2). Whilst I’m sure that the halls of Westminster and the board rooms of multinationals have their backstabbing and rivalries, it’s the little things, the trivial concerns, that seem most prey to pointless politicking. No matter how little is at stake, someone will seek to make their own personal feudal fiefdom of it.

(2)   Probably at least three factions.

(3)   Literature then not distributed to anyone, presumably, so as to be true to the mission statement (4)

(4)   Although there was a sizeable Old Guard at that theatre, as there probably is wherever am dram is perpetrated, who obviously felt that the audience was rather spoiling it for everyone else, and should ideally be done away with so that they could get on with running the show their way in peace.

(5)   Also inaccurate. In all honesty, and despite upsets, we were providing at least Reasonably Good Theatre. A few pieces might have approached the Excellent. The odd bit was decidedly ropey.

(6)   Actually, they would probably have come back with “Providing Excellent Theatre Solutions,” because that seems to be the buzzword. As if, before the theatre opened its doors, there were news reports and mass demonstrations and a top-level police investigation into the problem of what on earth are we going to do with all these terrible theatre problems that are plaguing us?

(7)   The government itself, of course, has a legion of scapegoats to blame: Lord knows, why should we expect an elected parliament to be responsible for what goes on in the country? The sad thing is, it probably isn’t.

(8)   I recommend to connoisseurs of finger-pointing the recent débâcle with Northern Rock: like watching a tennis match played out over several months between weasels.