Multilingualism, diversity, and performing arts. A home for Spanish language theatre in post-Brexit gentrified London

ABSTRACT

In 2016, the Spanish Theatre Company (STC) opened the doors of its Cervantes Theatre (CT), the first British (and European) venue devoted to showcasing productions of Spanish and Latin American plays in a bilingual format. Four years on – and at a critical juncture given Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic – this article reflects on the current state and future prospects of this nascent migrant theatre initiative based in Southwark. This, I hope, will serve as a first step to re-think the Arts Council England's diversity strategies in relation to multilingual initiatives. Drawing on in-depth interviews and critical analysis of archival and online documents, I focus on four interrelated factors crucial for understanding how and why this unique project sprung into life in a London hotspot for real estate speculation just as the UK split from the EU, with the aim of exploring if the STC case could be used as a model for future endeavours.

KEYWORDS:

• Spanish language theatre
• linguistic diversity
• migration
• cultural and urban policies

When in June 2016 Britain decided to leave the EU, the future of many European artists living in the country (especially those who would require to meet work thresholds to remain residents) started to look bleak. It did not come as a surprise that in 2019, and while scholars were debating on the developing concept of postmigration,¹ a movement of non-UK born theatre artists and companies, Migrants in Theatre, started to campaign for more and better representation of first-generation migrants in the British cultural eco-system.² One year later, the performers and creative practitioners’ union Equity decided to launch an official Non-UK Born Artists network.

Counterintuitively, during this period of turmoil and cultural unrest two Spanish artists – the actor and director Jorge de Juan and the former-ballet-dancer and director Paula Paz – manage to materialize De Juan’s long-term dream of launching a Spanish-language theatre in London, the city in which he had studied direction and production in the eighties (De Juan 2020). In 2014, they created the Spanish Theatre Company (STC) – a charitable company limited by guarantee aimed to promote the dramatic art of Spain and Latin America – and in November 2016 (only a few months after the Brexit referendum) the company opened its own space in Southwark: the Cervantes Theatre (CT).³

Whilst according to a survey conducted by Migrants in Theatre, language barriers and accent discrimination are the principal limitation migrant artist faced in the British theatrical industry, from the outset the CT managed to offer productions in both Spanish and English, becoming the first European venue of this kind (there are, of course, precedents in US Latino theatrical movement, e.g. New York’s Teatro Repertorio and Washington’s Teatro Gala), and one of the relatively few bilingual companies with its own venue in England. There is a long tradition of bilingual theatre in Wales, and a more recent trend of bilingual British sign language/English theatre companies all around the UK.⁴ Nevertheless, theatre in foreign languages has predominantly been the domain of migrant cultures (in particular the British South Asian theatre movement, which was very active in the seventies and eighties).⁵ Especially given the decline of language learning in the UK, pedagogical initiatives have been much more limited (see Broady 2020).⁶

Following the crisis of the multiculturalist discourse of race and ethnicity that dominated the cultural and social landscape between the first significant waves of migration in the post-war period (with particular prominence in the eighties and nineties), since the turn of the century, a new broader (and not unproblematic) notion of ‘cultural diversity’ has entered the cultural policy arena.⁷ Currently, diversity is often used to collate four of the 2010 Equality Act protected characteristics (race, disability, sex, and sexual orientation). Nevertheless, linguistic diversity – linked traditionally to race and ethnicity and, paradoxically, much more prominent in the multiculturalist trend than in the current diversity discourse – is still not addressed specifically, with data on the subject (in)conspicuously absent in, for instance, the Art Council England's reports on diversity.⁸

The aim of this article is to open the discussion on this subject by exploring the particular case of the STC. How and why was this company able to settle at a time when other European artists living in the UK joined the ranks of external ‘migrants’, and, even more importantly, what might the case of the CT teach us about contemporary difficulties and opportunities for potential future bilingual endeavours by non-UK born artists? These are the two questions that have guided my research.

As I will show, this young migrant bilingual initiative is in fact the result of interrelated factors, each encompassing complex, and sometimes even contradictory academic debates. Drawing on a mixed-methods evaluation, which comprises in-depth interviews and critical analysis of archival and online documentation,⁹ my aim is to explore the following four factors: the role of culture in the Spanish nation-brand policy; the rising importance of Spanish as a foreign language in British schools and universities; new waves of Spanish-speaking migrants in the UK (specially in London); and last, but by no means least, the promotion of diversity in British urban and cultural policy making. I believe this holistic and multidimensional perspective is important not only to evaluate the STC’s present and future sustainability but also to shed light on some of the specific complexities, opportunities, and problems that other future foreign-language theatre companies could face when seeking to establish themselves in the UK.

Made in Spain. The Cervantes Theatre and the Marca España

Following the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975 and the subsequent return of democracy, Spain attempted to leave behind the negative connotations of its recent past and promote an international image of (post-)modernity. Arguably the best-known example of this in the UK was the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. A subsequent turning point in this foreign perception remodelling strategy was the creation, in 2012, of a new governmental body, the Alto Comisionado del Gobierno para la Marca España (High Commissioner of the Spain Brand). Whilst culture often plays an important role in national branding, this is especially true in Spain where, alongside heritage and tourism, it occupies a privileged place in indexes and studies measuring worldwide perceptions of the country. It is therefore entirely logical that, according to Rius Ulldemolins and Zamorano (2015, 21–22), culture has been a priority for Marca España. Whilst raising state-funding in culture substantially, the new centre-left government re-baptized in 2018 Marca España as España Global (Global Spain). As the name suggests, its remit was expanded with the aim of making the world aware that Spain is ‘much more than gastronomy, tourism and sun’ (‘Marca España … ’ 2018). Marca España brought under its aegis many other pre-existing public bodies and agencies concerned with cultural diplomacy (e.g. the Instituto Cervantes [Cervantes Institute], promoting the study and the teaching of Spanish language and culture; or Acción Cultural Española, the Spanish public agency in charge of the promotion and internationalization of Spanish culture).¹⁰

At the time of writing, Acción Cultural Española has been foremost sponsor of the STC, which has also received support from the Instituto Cervantes as well as local Spanish institutions.¹¹ This significant investment of Spanish taxpayer’s money has not necessarily had a positive impact on the functioning of the STC. As Jorge De Juan (2020) has acknowledged it has distorted the original plan of programming equally Latin American and Spanish plays. And in fact, especially since the theatre’s second year (2017–2018) productions based on the work of Spanish playwrights have vastly outnumbered those by Latin Americans, while musical shows (a hallmark of the company) have almost exclusively employed Spanish musicians and genres (predominantly zarzuela and flamenco). Conversely, and at least not until now, the CT has not opened its programming to the other four co-official languages of Spain – Catalan, Euskera (Basque), Galician and Aranés—, although it did stage authors that write in these languages. Most notably, in 2017 it hosted the world premiere of Guillem Clua’s L’oroneta. Originally written in Catalan, the play was seen in Spanish and English at the Cervantes and has subsequently gone on to have an extensive (Catalan and Spanish) life in Spain.¹²

While financial support is often a necessary condition for the appearance and maintenance of theatrical initiatives of the STC’s nature, it is not sufficient to explain or justify its survival. The STC may be the first theatre company dedicated to staging plays in Spanish in London, but it has not emerged in a vacuum and needs to be understood also as a result of two local phenomena that I will address in the next two sections of the article: the consolidation of Spanish as a foreign language in British schools and universities, and the cultural impact of the growing Spanish-speaking communities in the UK (especially London).

The consolidation of Spanish as a foreign language in British schools and universities

When I asked De Juan (2020) about the composition of the CT’s audience, the director mentioned a recent rise in the number of British spectators (at the time of writing, they represent a 60% of the total audience). This needs to be understood in relation to the increasing success of the STC with schools. De Juan (2020) and Paz (2020) calculate that more than 7000 students and 500 schools have seen at least one of the STC productions, either at the CT or in other spaces. Every year, the company has staged at least one of the authors or texts included in an A-Level syllabus (of various different exam boards) for Spanish. Starting with Blood Wedding, the company has performed the three plays that comprise Federico García Lorca’s so-called rural trilogy. In the 2019–2020 season, the STC also staged Caridad Svich’s theatrical adaptation of Chilean author Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Performed for the first time in 2017, STC’s production of Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba has already been revived four times, and, in 2020, became the first of the STC’s productions to go on tour. That the company rented spaces before having confirmation of the number of students who would be able to attend showcased a confidence in this potential (and largely untapped) audience. Although the tour was interrupted by the pandemic, the experiment seems to have worked at least for the performance I attended. The 308-seat capacity Phoenix Theatre (Castleford, Leeds) was almost full.

Schools undoubtedly constitute one of the most promising markets for the STC, with the added advantage of guaranteeing repeat audiences for certain productions year on year. Spanish, once the ugly sister of modern languages, is fast overtaking French (and the numbers are expected to increase in the years to come), not only in schools but also in universities (see Collen 2022). Linked to this, Hispanists and Spanish theatre have a greater institutional weight in higher education than when Jorge de Juan first came to London in the eighties. Between 2005 and 2008, various prominent figures of British Hispanism, such as Jo Labanyi, Paul Julian Smith, and Trevor Dadson were elected as members of The British Academy.¹³ In 2004, Maria Delgado became the first Hispanist to obtain a Professorship in Theatre and Screen Arts. It did not come as a surprise, then, that in 2008 two different projects on theatre in Spanish, both with educational remits, received grants from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), one of Britain’s most important national research councils.

Brainchild of Catherine Boyle (King’s College, University of London), David Johnston (Queen’s University of Belfast) and Jonathan Thacker (University of Oxford), the project Out of the Wings (2008–2011) was born from their joint collaboration at the season that the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)’s devoted in 2004 to Golden Age Spanish theatre in English.¹⁴ Out of the Wings’ objective was ‘to make the riches of the theatres of Spain and Spanish America accessible to English-speaking researchers and theatre professionals’, ‘creating an environment for the dissemination of Spanish language theatre in English both real and virtual’ (Boyle 2020), through the creation of a database of Spanish-language plays translated into English and contextualized.¹⁵

Led by Michael Thompson (Durham University) and Catherine O’Leary (University of St Andrews), the second project, Theatre Censorship in Spain (2008–2011), on the contrary, had a historiographical remit: ‘to carry out the most comprehensive analysis to date of how censorship functioned in Spain in different political contexts during the 20th century and the impact it had on all forms of theatrical production’ as a case study to understand ‘the relationship between cultural production and the state’.¹⁶

By the time the STC started its life, both Out of the Wings and Theatre Censorship in Spain had completed their initial three-year funded research cycles, although they continue to be active due to the work of Boyle and Thompson, respectively. Both projects have collaborated in different ways with the STC. Boyle formed part of the first trustees board of the STC (although she resigned in 2016), whilst she and many translators linked to Out of the Wings were in charge of some of the translations staged at the CT. The attractions for the STC are clear: institutional validation and brand recognition linked to a pool of potential highly qualified collaborators. In return, the CT hosted the 2017 and 2018 editions of the Out of the Wings annual festival (running since 2016), comprised of readings, workshops, and discussions. In 2019, however, Out of the Wings decided to move its festival to Omnibus Theatre (Clapham), its current base.

In the case of Michael Thompson, the collaboration with the STC was linked to a (frustrated) plan of exploring new ways of generating impact (a word that was beginning to play an increasingly important role in UK research grant applications) through the censorship project. His unsuccessful application for ‘AHRC follow-on funding for impact and engagement’ made mention of collaborations with two theatre company: a season of plays censored during Francoism to be staged at the CT and workshops for schools created alongside Théâtre Sans Frontières (TSF), a multilingual international touring company, specializing in theatre for children and young people (aged 5 to 18). Connected to the potential AHRC project, Thompson also successfully received a Hispanex grant, a matching funding program of the Spanish Ministry of Culture and Sport aimed to help foreign universities to promote Spanish culture. Without AHRC support, the British institution in charge of matching Hispanex grant, became, counter-intuitively, the STC. The money (£12287) was used to fund the successful The House of Bernarda Alba production, as shown in the STC Report and Accounts (2019). Thus, even in this case of ostensibly international collaboration, the STC’s funding came albeit indirectly yet again from the Spanish government.

Thompson (2020) was able to obtain a smaller amount of funding from the impact development budget of the University of Durham to organize a workshop on Lorca and Censorship in collaboration with TSF (the first, and to date the company’s only, A level Spanish workshop). Given the emphasis on an Andalusian dramatist, the collaboration with TSF might seem counter-intuitive but it in fact made sense for both parties. Created in 1991, since the turn of this century, this company – specializing in theatre for primary and secondary school students (mainly in French)⁶ – has included in its touring repertoire several plays from Latin American and Spanish authors performed in the original language. A former National Portfolio Organization (NPO) – the cuts that affected many small touring companies of this Arts Council England’s core programme of funding hit TSF in 2015 – the success of this multilingual company from Northumberland is measured in the prominence of its international connections. For instance, in 2012 they co-produced Lipsynch with Ex-Machina and Robert Lepage (the renowned Canadian director is, in fact, one of its patrons).

University Departments of Modern Languages are clearly a potential source of beneficial (and even profitable) collaborations for the STC in a context where impact has become firmly established in the UK research landscape – forming, for example, part of the criteria for the Research Excellence Framework (REF), the national research quality audit, which the British government takes into account to distribute funding among higher education institutions.¹⁷ Collaborations with the STC have been referenced in a successful application to The Leverhulme Trust for an Early Career Research Fellowship by Sophie Stevens, a long-term member of the Out of the Wings project, and fed into my Marie Curie post-doctoral project (EStages.UK) focused on documenting and promoting Spanish theatre in the UK.¹⁸ My task in this regard has also been facilitated by a growing interest across educational sectors in organising and hosting events related to theatre in Spanish. Since 2013, the North London Collegiate School has organized an annual Hispanic Theatre Festival for secondary schools’ theatre groups from the independent sector. Jury members have included university academics, representatives of different Spanish and Latin American government bodies in the UK and cultural practitioners including Jorge de Juan and Paula Paz.

Spanish speaking migrants and London theatrical life

In November 2019, during one of my visits to the CT to see a rapid production of a contemporary playwright, I bumped into an old acquaintance I had first met in 2013 when I was on a short research trip in London. We had both just arrived from Spain and met in the residency’s canteen. Unlike me, she had a background in business management, and she was planning to stay in the UK, although she remained very attached to Spain and its customs. I was initially taken back by her presence at the CT as she did not strike me as a theatre goer, much less for a play by a contemporary author, and I asked her what she was doing there.¹⁹ She told me she had been watching productions in Spanish at the CT whenever she had the opportunity, because it was a way for her to remain in touch with her language and culture. Although societies are changing fast, it is axiomatic to the point of cliché to describe Spanish (and, in general, Southern European) societies as more familiar oriented and with a stronger sense of community (see, for instance, Jurado Guerrero and Naldini 1996). Similar things can and have been said of Latin American communities, where the need to build quick social bonds is often enhanced by more precarious (at least in a pre-Brexit world) migration status.²⁰ The case of my acquaintance could be indicative of a potential audience for the STC beyond those who already attended theatre in their countries of origin. Unfortunately, at present it is difficult to move beyond such anecdotal reflections of the theatre’s demographics due to the lack of detailed and systematic audience surveys at the CT.

Despite the fact that the actress Sofia Monreal won a 2019 Lukas Awards from the Latino Life magazine for her performance in the STC production of Sanchis Sinisterra’s Ay, Carmela!, the percentage of people with Latin American backgrounds visiting the CT remains low (De Juan 2020). In a survey on Cultural Consumption and the Performing Arts among Latin Americans in London the vast majority (80%) of Latin American participants replied affirmatively when asked about the utility of a cultural space devoted to Latin American culture in the city (and more specifically in Southwark); 68% claimed to be interested in the performing arts, especially theatre (McllWaine et al. 2016b, 19, 55). Admittedly, the question may have been framed in such a way as to encourage a positive reply but, even so, there are clearly largely untapped Latin America audiences for the CT. Foremost amongst them would be those who already attend the CASA Latin American Festival, a point to which I will later return. There are also those who have attended productions of Latin American authors at other London theatres (as the quote below on McLean’s production of Como agua para el chocolate at the Southwark Playhouse shows).

What remains beyond doubt is that cultural production in Spanish in London cannot be divorced from broader patterns of migration. Spain was amongst the European countries worst affected by the 2008 financial crisis. An unemployment rate that almost tripled in the course of a couple of years (and, in a highly regulated labour market, disproportionately affected young people), compelled many to look for new and better professional perspective abroad.²¹ The UK ranked as the top destination of choice (see Stanek and Lafleur 2017, 189). Although there are currently no completely reliable data on migration flows, neither in Spain nor in Britain (see Sumption and Walsh 2022, 4; Stanek and Lafleur 2017, 182), the Migration Observatory of the University of Oxford, which displays data since 2004, show how the curve of progressive migration of Spanish citizens to the UK becomes steeper from 2009, with two big jumps in 2014 and 2016 (Sumption and Walsh 2022, 9). Whilst EU net migration to Britain has fallen since 2016, immigration from Spain has continued its progressive increase into the post-Brexit referendum period. According to the latest (pre-pandemic) statistics and studies, in 2019 an estimated of 188.000 Spanish immigrants were living in the UK (equating to 5,1% of all migrants from EU nationalities). Most were young (under-35), although there has been a major increase in recent years of Spanish migrants aged between 35 and 54. This maps onto a profile of those more likely to be working than studying. Statistic sources do not offer a breakdown of educations and skills, but it is probable that highly educated workers are disproportionately well represented amongst recent migrants (González-Ferrer and Moreno-Fuentes 2017, 458–461). It is important also to notice that a significant percentage of these migrants holding Spanish passport are in fact Latin Americans previously living in Spain or with dual nationality (Spain holds nationality agreements with several Hispano-American countries). In addition, Latin Americans are one of the fastest-growing communities in London and also have high education levels. Theatre remains a marker of cultural distinction and is likely to appeal to the many highly educated Spaniards and Latin Americans currently living in London.²²

While productions of English-speaking authors have been normalised in the Hispanic world, the same does not apply to Hispanic theatre in Britain.²³ Nevertheless, migration movements from Spanish-speaking countries are creating a nascent (and still undefined) Hispanic/Latino community in the UK, which is resulting in some albeit still modest cultural/theatrical movements, especially festivals. This is most perceptible in London, the area of the UK with the highest number of non-British born inhabitants. The aforementioned Latin American CASA festival has been one of the most successful in terms of its integration in a British theatrical ecosystem. Although its reports claim to employ a majority of Latin American staff, CASA is not a migrant initiative. Founded in 2007 by the English theatre director Daniel Goldman, the festival’s original aim was to raise the profile of Latin American theatre in the UK. Initially featuring works in translation performed by UK casts, in 2010 the company moved to Ovalhouse theatre and started bringing productions from Latin American, to be performed with English subtitles, while also helping to develop and support the work of Latin American theatre artists living in Britain. The festival moved later to the Barbican Pit and Rich Mix, and – following the success of Goldman’s English language production of the Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco’s Thebes Land at the Arcola Theatre in 2016 (the play received several reviews in important newspapers, such as The Guardian, see Gardner 2016) – celebrated its 10th anniversary festival in 2017 at the Southwark Playhouse. In terms of revenue and audience number, this was CASA’s best year, allowing them to invest for the first time in a full-time member of the staff, the Yorkshire born, Mexican raised, Festival producer Cordelia Grierson.²⁴ Grierson took over the direction of the Festival in 2019, which became biannual, and expanded its remit to include multiple art forms (art, dance, film, music), although it was not able to maintain the success of its 2017 edition (partially because of the impact of COVID-19).²⁵ Over the last three years, nevertheless, new initiatives supporting Latin American arts have sprung into life in the UK, some of them connected to CASA.²⁶ Since 2021, the LatinX Actors UK website (2021) provides a database of trained actors and performers with a Latin American background living in the UK, and a list of organizations that have a strong Latinx voice.²⁷ The fact that the CT and the STC are not part of this list shows how much they distanced from their original aim to support also Latin American initiatives.

In 2013, the same year the STC made its first tentative steps, Mariví Rodríguez-Quiñones – a Spanish teacher at the Instituto Cervantes and City Lit, and a former tutor of Spanish at King’s College – founded the Festival of Spanish Theatre in London (FesTeLõn), with the stated aim of bringing productions from Spain to London. FesTeLõn emulates in many ways the work of the (much larger) Don Quijote Festival of Hispanic Theatre of Paris, founded in 1992 and up to now ‘the only festival in Europe dedicated exclusively to Hispanic language and drama’ as it is (still) described on the website of Acción Cultural Española.²⁸ Largely because London already has CASA and a flamenco festival,²⁹ FesTeLõn focusses on productions of both classic and contemporary dramatic literature from Spain, although it has not as of yet achieved the visibility and impact in London theatre ecosystem of CASA. After previously been housed in King’s College and Hammersmith’s Riverside Studios, FesTeLõn has since its fourth edition moved to the John Lyon Theatre (City Lit’s theatre). The demographic profile of its audience (which it monitors more closely than the STC) appears to be different to that found in the TC: predominantly Spanish, with an average age between 40 and 50 (and, as it is frequent in this kind of cultural activities, more female than male attendees).

FesTeLõn runs also as a company limited by guarantee, but unlike the STC or CASA it is not a charity. This is largely a personal decision as it allows Mariví Rodríguez-Quiñones (2020) to retain complete creative and organizational control. The festival, in fact, relies heavily on her personal investment (in economic and labour terms) alongside the continued cache amongst Spanish practitioners of appearing in what is widely believed to be the theatrical capital of the world (even if it has remained more dormant than many of its European counterparts since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic). It is nevertheless surprising that the festival has yet to rehearse any form of collaboration with other institutions promoting Spanish theatre, especially, in the case of Out of the Wings, given the common link with King’s College.

More generally, it is regrettable that the flurry of initiatives and research projects devoted to the promotion of theatre in Spanish have only collaborated intermittently, and that the promotion of theatre from Latin America and Spain seems to be going in different directions. There would be clear advantages to a consortium when it comes to accessing funding and a common voice would help to build upon the momentum that has already been achieved in (p)reaching beyond the converted.

Finally, within the broader ecosystem of London’s theatrical landscape, the Arcola Theatre and Southwark Playhouse deserve special mention for their interest in Spanish language theatre. Both have hosted editions of the CASA festival and have collaborated in different ways with the STC: Southwark Playhouse was one of the venues where the company performed its first dramatized readings, and the STC production of Pablo Sorozábal’s zarzuela Black el payaso was premiered at the Arcola Theatre in August 2022, as part of Grimeborn Opera Festival. Both venues had also host other festivals and productions related to Hispanic cultures (sometimes in Spanish). In-keeping with its commitment to presenting a ‘socially-engaged, international programme’ that ‘champions diversity’ (the venue was awarded in 2017 the UK Theatre Award for Promotion of Diversity), in 2006 the Arcola organized, for instance, the Viva Lorca Festival (sponsored by the Instituto Cervantes and the Arts Council England and announced as the ‘the biggest festival of his [Lorca’s] work ever seen in the UK').³⁰ In collaboration with Bath’s Theatre Royal and Coventry’s Belgrade Theatre, the venue also programmed a season dedicated to Spanish classics by Golden Age playwrights in translation in 2014. The brainchild of Laurence Boswell, this was effectively a follow-up to the 2004 RSC Golden Age season from which Out of the Wings first emerged (see Wheeler 2018). In 2005, the theatre also hosted the debut production of Baraka Teatro, a version in Spanish of Lorca’s El amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín (in 2008 the company, that since 2010 is based in Madrid, returned to the Arcola with Lorca Dreams).

With a long tradition of performing plays from an international repertory, Southwark Playhouse has also consistently programmed titles linked to Hispanic cultures. To mention just two examples, it hosted the TSF production (in Spanish) of Lorca: Amor en el jardín (2015) (an adaptation of García Lorca’s El amor de Don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín); and Linda McLean’s stage adaptation (again in Spanish) of Laura Esquivel’s Como agua para el chocolate. This latter production toured the UK between 2006 and 2008 and was flagged by the Artistic Director of the Southwark Playhouse (Chris Smyrnios) as evidence of how rooted the theatre was amongst the Southwark Spanish-speaking community: ‘We have one of the biggest Latin American communities in the country here and we played to packed audiences of Spanish-speaking locals. I remember thinking, “we’re doing something really good here!”’ (quoted in Sinclair 2011).³¹ This was something of call to arms: the Southwark Playhouse was forced to leave its home in London Bridge in 2011 because the station was going through a process of re-development. Network Rail appeared to have no intention of re-incorporating the theatre into the new plan. After a public campaign (supported among other by the actor and comedian Stephen Fry), Network Rail agreed to offer Southwark Playhouse a space in the new London Bridge station once the redevelopment was completed. As will be explored in the next section, a similar act of resistance against the closure of a theatre unwittingly gave birth to the CT.

¿Nurturing diversity? The space of the Cervantes Theatre

If the existence of a STC is strongly linked to education and migration phenomena, the opening of a space at the core of one of London most theatrical areas (as it proudly boasts on its website, the CT is literally only a few minutes’ walk from the Old and Young Vic, National Theatre or Shakespeare’s Globe) owes much to a series of urban development and policy making factors in and around Southwark’s Old Union Yard Arches

Traditionally an industrial area, since the end of the II World War the South Bank (and surrounding areas) has been subject(ed) to several ‘regeneration’ plans. Such activity intensified in the 1970s, and have often faced opposition from local residents’ community interests: because of its location (near Westminster and the City) the increasingly post-industrial area became more and more attractive for office buildings in a rapidly expanding service-oriented economy.³² With more or less impact, culture acted many times as a driving force in the successive waves of regeneration/gentrification, as the often cited case of the Tate Modern (an authentic gold mine for the flourishing tourist and leisure businesses across the river) shows.³³ Theatre has also had a part to play in such processes: the building of the National Theatre (1976) and, to an even greater extent, Shakespeare’s Globe (1997) – according to Bennett (2008), the latter played a major role in the transformation of South Bank into a ‘tourist stage’ – were linked to broader urban development plans (see Murray 2019; McKinnie 2021, 56–89).

CT is a curious product of the complex dynamics (and tensions) involved in (opposition to) regeneration. In April 2013 Network Rail, the public body in charge of the infrastructural management of the UK’s train infrastructure, announced a refurbishment project for the Old Union Yard Arches. In its original formulation, the project wanted to transform the area (once again, and not surprisingly) into office spaces, bringing down forever the curtain of the Union Theatre, a fringe theatre that specializes in musicals (and, with cruel irony, the child of an earlier 1998 development plan [see Elsmore 2020, 398]).³⁴ A campaign to save the theatre and other small business in the area (including a change.org petition with 10.000 signatories)³⁵ forced Network Rail to change its original plan for a restaurant-led scheme, and for them to find a new home in the same area for the Union Theatre. Network Rail also accepted the proposal for creating a performance ‘companion’ to the Union: ‘London’s first venue dedicated to showcasing Spanish and Latin American plays, performed both in Spanish and in English’, as the CT defines itself.³⁶ Apart from its cultural value, the creation of the CT contributed to the positive image of Network Rail in another important way. It was (and still is) invoked as an example of the public company’s commitment to diversity (one of its cultural ‘success stories’), helping to make more visible the raising and culturally unrepresented Spanish and Latino-American population living in the UK (the latter, paradoxically, facing ‘extinction’ in the also increasingly gentrified neighbouring area of Elephant and Castle).³⁷

Although diversity has been a matter of concern since the beginning of urban sociology (Foster, Grodach, and Murdoch 2016, 624), the concept has acquired since the nineties a prominent place in urban planning and policymaking, with developers exhorted to pay more than lip service to mitigating the social and environmental costs of their development plans (Elsmore 2020). At the same time, the notion of expressing the diversity of communities was also gaining traction in cultural policy, as aforementioned, and the making of art, spur by the post-modern questioning of absolute cultural values (see Mirza 2009)

Potentially positive consequences may entail, but the profits of developers and landowners often have the last work. As Fainstein (2005) points out, too often an ostensible commitment to diversity equates to ‘staged authenticity’, a simulacrum that increases market share (exploiting the appeal of ‘exotic’ shops, bars, restaurants, and general atmosphere [e.g. through an ‘ethnic’ cultural centre such as a theatre]), without necessarily contributing to social equity. When this happens, venues and shops are often exchangeable and expendable: Spanish ham or tapas’ bars ticking the box of social diversity as effectively as a theatre, especially if they better serve the occupants of the luxury hotels and office buildings that have increasingly sprung up.

Such statements can justifiably stand accused of being glib summations of the contemporary complex dynamics of public-private and not-for-profit associations involved in urban governance of South Bank, but the recent selling (in 2018) of The Old Union Yard Arches to the Arch-Co (a joint venture between British private developers Telereal Trillium and the American private equity company Blackstone) cast an ominous shadow on the future of its current tenants. The operation, that effectively created a private monopoly, was hotly contested by the Guardians of the Archs’ successful campaign.³⁸ Thanks to the intervention of this network of owners of small businesses based in the railway arches, Arch-Co promised a ‘tenants first’ approach. But, although in March 2020, it offered to tenants severely affected by the pandemic three-month rent-free, it has subsequently hiked rents (the surging demand for space jeopardizes the arches ecosystem).³⁹ Furthermore, Blackstone, one of the companies behind Arch-Co and one of the largest property owners in the world, is renowned in Spain for the speculative purchase of public housing during the last global financial crisis. One could reasonably suspect that Hispanic theatre is unlikely to be the priority of ‘the biggest landlord of Spain’ (as it is often referred to by the national press).

Conclusions

After exploring these four interrelated factors behind the appearance of the STC and CT, it is possible to advance some conclusions about the resilience, sustainability, and capacity to grow of these and other similar future bilingual initiatives by non-UK born artists living in Britain. External funding and aid from the country of origin can play a major role in the creation and maintenance of these endeavours and, with measures in place to prevent unwanted interferences in the companies’ repertoire choices, should not be disregarded by British cultural policymakers seeking to promote cultural and linguistic diversity.⁴⁰ In this sense, the countries with different backgrounds that speak the same language can help and complement each other in the promotion of their culture abroad. For instance, the increase in the numbers of students who want to study Spanish in British universities is due to the raising popularity of Latin American culture among them. Funding initiatives in Spanish from more disadvantaged countries, Spain would ultimately also benefit itself.⁴¹ This relates to a third point; theatre companies, like the STC, specialized in languages commonly studied in schools and universities have a clear advantage over those operating with less popular languages.

Nevertheless, in the current context of decline in language learning, bilingual companies would not be best advised to (overly) rely on such volatile market.⁴² The support of a community, in this sense, is essential for the long-term sustainability of a theatre company and its venue, especially if the latter is located in a hotspot for property speculation, as the cases of the Union Theatre and the Southwark Playhouse have demonstrated. The CT owes its existence to such stories of resistance and should work to increase the support of London Hispanic communities, in particular those in the neighboring areas.

Up to now the failure of the CT to be recognized as an institution that represents and promotes Latin American culture is one of the most concerning problems the company is facing. Although unfortunately the promotion of theatre from Latin America and Spain in Britain seems to be going currently in very different directions, there is no reason to think they cannot be reconciled. The repertoire of US latino theatre companies offer a good example of this. Thus, since its foundation in the seventies by two exiled figures of the Cuban theatre (the director René Buch and the producer Gilberto Zaldivar), Teatro Repertorio of New York has always included a fair amount of classics from Spain in its repertoire. Despite the cultural tensions between the colonial nation and its former colonies, classics from Spain are still perceived as part of a shared Hispanic heritage since they are still included in many Hispano-American schools’ curricula.⁴³

The current squeeze in public funding complicates the possibilities of support of theatre in the language which are not the official ones of the UK, whilst the current Arts Council England’s levelling up agenda is prioritizing investment in places outside London.⁴⁴ Nevertheless, achieving its originally aim of promoting (in a bilingual format) Spanish and Latin American cultures, two growing (particularly in the city where the CT is based, London) and largely under-served communities in the UK would place the company in a competitive position to apply to become a NPO, one of the future funding plans of the STC.⁴⁵ The company has in its favour other features that resonate with Let’s Create (2021), the new ten-year strategy behind this key investment programme of the Arts Council England: increasing success with schools and international connection (and with a member of the EU, a matter of concern in times of Brexit). Following the requirements of the Inclusivity and Relevance Investment Principle of Let’s Create, the company has also taken some steps towards being inclusive in relation to sex, race, and disability (three of the protected characteristics of the 2010 Equality Act),⁴⁶ although it needs to put in place measures to tap inequalities related socio-economic background (an additional cornerstone of the Arts Council England’s diversity strategy).

Finally, another major challenge that the STC needs to overcome soon, in order to be competitive in future NPO calls, is its integration in the wider theatre quarter of the South Bank and in general in London’s theatrical and cultural ecosystem. It is concerning that the shows performed at the CT, for instance, have not received yet reviews from the main national press. More links with other ongoing initiatives devoted to the promotion of theatre in Spanish could certainly enhance the chances of obtaining grants and donations, but in the process of entering London’s cultural life it is also essential that the STC builds connections with different emblematic British and possibly international organization. The recent inclusion of the STC’s production of Black el payaso inside the programme of Grimeborn Opera Festival 2022 at the Arcola Theatre (currently an NPO) is a cautious first step in this direction, but collaborations between STC and other Arts Council England’s funded companies, remain slim (the company should especially look towards co-productions). This will not only raise the quality and prestige profile of the STC and its venue, but also prevent them from being labelled as ‘ethnic’ or seen as delivering exclusively pedagogical endeavours. Although the CT is the house of the STC and, thus, it is expected than most of the shows would be created by its artistic directors, one strategy to bring attention to the CT could be inviting emerging or consolidated directors (as the case of the TSF and Lepage has shown). It is worth noting, nevertheless, that as the survey on the audience of CASA Festival shows, combining the aim of serving to Spanish-speaking communities and, at the same time, reaching out to a wider English-speaking audience can create tensions (particularly in relation to the price of the tickets) (see McllWaine et al. 2016b, 16–18).

In any case, achieving the status of NPO not only would represent a major step for the STC and Hispanic theatre in London in general, but would also undoubtedly signify a new milestone in the current British diversity agenda, which does not in its current guise provide scope for strategies to promote the inclusion of other non-official languages. Although it is beyond the remit of this study to predict how the future of the STC or other foreign-language theatre companies in what appears to be a hostile post-Brexit, post-Covid landscape, I hope that the information and suggestions made in this article could at least provide necessary background context for conversations to hopefully develop over the coming years about the viability and desirability of non-monolingual initiatives in twenty-first century London for both individual initiatives and public bodies charged with the remit of developing diversity strategies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the projects ‘EStages.UK. Teatro español en Reino Unido (1982-2019)’ under Marie Skłodowska Curie Grant agreement number 797942; ‘Cartografía digital, conservación y difusión del patrimonio teatral del Madrid contemporáneo’ under Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid Grant number H2019/HUM-5722; and by ‘PERFORMA2. Metamorfosis del espectador en el teatro español actual’ under the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación of Spain (Plan Estatal de Investigación Científica y Técnica y de Innovación 2017-2020) Grant number PID2019-104402RB-I00 (2020–2023).

Notes on contributors

María Bastianes

María Bastianes is a Research Lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid. She is an expert on 20th century European history of theatre and Spanish classical drama in performance. She is the author of Vida escénica de ‘La Celestina’ en España (Peter Lang 2020), a book on the performance and reception of La Celestina in Spain.

Notes

1. On the post migrant condition and the arts see Schramm, Moslund, and Petersen (2019).

2. The movement has recently launched an online report (Migrants in Theatre 2020). For more information on how the ‘hostile environment’ official policy impacted the cultural sector see Migrants in Culture Research Report (2019). For migration and theatre in the UK, see Schramm, Moslund, and Petersen (2019, 27–33) and Sharifi (2017, 352–355).

3. The funding to build a 75-seat capacity atmospheric venue (as in the neighbouring Union Theatre, the sound of the trains can be heard overhead intermittently) in Network Rail’s Old Union Yard Arches came from individual and corporate donations, crowdfunding, and a loan that the company is still paying off. Builders were brought from Spain to reduce the considerable expenses of a project that is risky and audacious in equal measure given the ‘paradise’ of property speculation that South London has become in recent decades, a point to which I will later return.

4. Founded in 2002, Deafinitely Theatre (currently a National Portfolio Organization, NPO) is the first deaf launched and deaf led professional theatre company in the UK.

5. See Ley and Dadswell collection of essays on British South Asian Theatre, especially Croft (2012) chapter, and the website on the topic provided by the Department of Drama, at the University of Exeter: https://britishsouthasiantheatre.com/.

6. Up to now most of these have related to French (traditionally, the most studied of modern European languages in schools [see Collen 2022]). Some examples are Théâtre Sans Frontières (TSF), a company based in Tynedale (Northumberland) and the recently closed, Edinburgh based, Théâtre Sans Accent. In London the Act’in school and the Exchange theatre company offer workshops in English and French, for adults and children. Specialized in French speaking plays, the later has collaborated with the Institut Français (French Institute) and the French Lycée.

7. For the incremental depoliticization of race with the turn first to the cultural diversity and, during later years, to the creative diversity discourses in public service broadcasting contexts see Malik (2013). For Nwonka (2015, 77) this turn, which the researcher connects to New Labour, shifts the focus away from social inequality.

8. See, for instance, the Equality, Diversity and the Creative Case 2020 –2021 data report (2022). In an email exchange, held on the 6th of July 2021, the current Director of Policy Research of the Audience Agency, Oliver Mantell, told me that the agency has started to elaborate a report on companies performing plays in other languages than English. Unfortunately, the collection of data was interrupted by the pandemic.

9. For this article I have performed eight personal interviews with the directors of the STC, their academic collaborators, the director of FesTeLõn, and part of the executive staff of Teatro Repertorio. I have also studied institutional data, reports and surveys from the Arts Council England, the Register of Charities, the Companies House, the British Council, the British Academy, the Audience Agency, the Trust for London, the Centre for the Study of Migration (Queen Mary), the Migration Observatory (University of Oxford), the Register of Spaniards Resident Abroad (PERE). I have worked with articles and reviews in press and the information available at the webpages and media of the companies, festivals and research projects mentioned in the article. Rafael Sánchez, the Executive Artistic Director of Teatro Repertorio has kindly agreed to send me by email the two last annual accounts of the theatre.

10. According to the data provided in a recent study on cultural diplomacy in Europe commissioned by the European Parliament (KEA European Affairs 2016), the Instituto Cervantes is currently among the seven largest cultural institutes – understood as ‘national bodies with a public mission to showcase and promote the national culture and/or language of their Member State outside their national borders’(14)— in Europe, and the fourth as regards total budget, only behind the British Council, the Portuguese Instituto Camões, and the German Goethe-Institut. The study does not include, unfortunately, data on Acción Cultural. Nevertheless, the great variety of size, governance, functioning, and management models among these institutions makes direct comparison of, say, efficiency, difficult to carry out. There is clearly a research topic to be developed here.

11. Madrid Destino (the public company of the City Council of Madrid responsible of the management of culture, tourism, and different venues), for example, sponsored ‘Madrid is a Female Name’, a season devoted to showcasing Madrid’s female theatrical talent.

12. The regional institutes that promote this other co-official languages have not thus far collaborated with the CT. This is particularly surprising in the case of the Catalan Institut Ramon Llull, which has been supporting many performing arts events related to Catalan culture in the UK (for instance, the Spotlight on Catalan Culture initiative). The complex dynamics between these national and regional Spanish institutions promoting the diverse culture of Spain abroad have not yet been studied.

13. Since then other names have joined the list, such as the one of Professor Torres (2020), although the number of Modern Language fellows specialized in French, German or even Italian Studies still greatly outpace those coming from Hispanic studies. See https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/fellows/?order=last_nam.

14. The driving force behind the season was the former RSC director Laurence Boswell, an admirer of Spanish comedia since his years at Manchester University. In 1992 he had won Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement for his Spanish Golden Age project at the Gate Theatre, an important precedent for the season with the RSC. But if the presentation of the later in Madrid was announced in The Telegraph with the triumphal (and not very cultural exchange friendly, one could argue) title of ‘How the RSC gave Spain a lesson in teatro’ (Cavendish 2004) the season only received a mild response in Britain. For an insider’s view of the season, and the ground-breaking collaboration between academics and theatre practitioners, see Jeff (2018). For a more cautiously optimistic view of the work of British academics and practitioners working with the Spanish comedia, see Wheeler (2012, 189–197).

15. See https://www.outofthewings.org/.

16. The results of the project are published in O’Leary and Thompson (2022).

17. As Belfiore (2013, 35) explains, Humanities in universities are following the same path that the arts took from the eighties, defending its relevance through an instrumentalist rhetoric, ‘aimed at addressing the still unresolved issues and the unanswered questions around the value of the humanities’. On the increasing prioritisation of impact measurement in humanities research assessment criteria (thus, quantifiable or commercial results) see also Bulaitis (2017).

18. See www.estages.uk.

19. It would be difficult to describe her attitude towards culture following the Audience Agency’s Audience Spectrum profiles. Unfortunately, this very useful tool for mapping audiences does not consider currently how the experience of migration can alter a person’s cultural consumption.

20. In fact, tighter social connections are one of the main resilience hypotheses to explain the so call Hispanic health paradox in the US (see Ruiz et al. 2016).

21. For a recent study analysing the complexity of the migration flows affecting Spain over the last decade see González-Ferrer and Moreno-Fuentes (2017).

22. To understand the characteristics of the Latin American population in London (the majority of Latin Americans living in UK are in this city) see the two reports carried out by Queen Mary and Latin American Women Rights Services, and funded by the Trust for London (Mcllwaine, Cock, and Linneker 2011; Mcllwaine and Bunge 2016a).

23. To cite just one example, until 2019 Shakespeare held the far from unproblematic title of being one of the most performed authors at the annual Almagro International Classica Theatre Festival, Spain’s most important festival devoted to the preservation and promotion of classical theatre (see Guerrero 2022, 37–43).

24. See CASA Festival trustees’ reports and financial statements (2017–2021): https://register-of-charities.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-search/-/charity-details/5038717/full-print.

25. According to the recent survey of its audience ‘Women, young people and those with tertiary education were more likely to attend’ (McllWaine et al. 2016b, 4).

26. One example is Papaya, an annual Anglo-Latinx theatre, music, film and discussion fusion festival, which shows the important role played by this predecessor. The festival was launched in 2019 by Bristol based Popelei theatre company (founded by British Venezuelan actress Tamsin Hurtado Clarke, winner of 2013 Nuestra Casa competition and one of the artists supported by CASA).

27. See https://latinxactors.co.uk/. Apart from Out of the Wings, CASA, and PAPAYA, the website also lists new endeavours such as Latin Americans in Performing Arts (LAIPA) (a group created in 2018 and devoted to amplifying the Latin American presence of its members in the arts), and the Festival of Latin American Women in the Art (running since 2019, FLAWA aim is to show the perceptions of women from Latin America in film, music, literature and arts).

28. See https://www.accioncultural.es/en/don_quijote_festival_22nd_edition.

29. An initiative of the flamenco producer Miguel Marín, Flamenco Festival London was founded in 2003 as a continuation of the New York Flamenco Festival and runs annually at Saddler’s Wells Theatre. In 2019, the CT hosted some of the festival’s shows.

30. See https://www.arcolatheatre.com/whats-on/vivalorcafestival/F2D&T=application%2Fpdf;%20name=%22VivaLorca%20e-flyer2.pdf%22&N=VivaLorca%20e-flyer2.pdf&XSS=3.

31. Since 2021 the venue has been hosting The Latinx Youth Theatre. Organized by the Working Party (a theatre company focused on community work) and supported by Arts Council England, this performing arts programme of workshops has the aim of helping young performers with Latin American backgrounds to develop their passion for theatre and performance to a professional level.

32. See Baeten (2009).

33. See Mathews (2010) for a useful review of the academic literature exploring the changing relationship between art and gentrification.

34. See https://www.london-se1.co.uk/news/view/6762).

35. See https://www.change.org/p/save-small-business-in-union-street.

36. See https://www.cervantestheatre.com/home/thecervantestheatre/.

37. See https://www.thearchco.com/about-us/case-studies/case-study-union-yard-arches-southwark/. For more information on the ongoing changes in the area of Southwark see the Southwark notes website, and specially in relation to the arches sell (and the problems with rents) Clarick (2019) essay on the Railwork arches and the plans for ‘regeneration’ of the area of Elephant and Castle.

38. The Guardians have been recently recognized with The Sheila McKechnie Foundation, National Campaigner Awards 2019 and have plans to become a national organization aiming ‘to protect the interests of small businesses occupying railway property irrespective of who the landlord is’). See the online site: https://www.guardiansofthearches.org.uk/our-story/.

39. See the online site of the firm: https://www.thearchco.com/existing-tenants/, and Bullock’s (2020) and Sheffield’s (2021) recent articles in The Times.

40. The current Arts Council England’s 2020–2030 strategy (Let’s Create 2021, 13) seems to focus exclusively on tours when talking about creating ‘new international partnerships […] to bring the very best of world culture here’.

41. On the increasing presence of Latin American authors in UK Higher Education institutions see Davis (2018, 34).

42. In the case of Spanish, and according to the data provided by the Instituto Cervantes (Peyró Jiménez 2021), the fluctuations per year in the number of people following their courses make language learning outside the British educational system an unlikely fallback.

43. According to Buch’s testimony: ‘We started with the classics to aim at the widest possible audiences. If you have Cuban plays, you get Cubans. If you have Calderón and García Lorca, you get everyone’ (quoted in La Roche 1995, 107).

44. See https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/your-area/priority-places-and-levelling-culture-places As the recent debate on the funding cuts for the English National Opera and the suggestions of moving it to Manchester have shown (see, for instance, Higgins 2022), there are complex dynamics at stake. It is worth noting, in this sense, that, as Paula Paz told me in an informal talk, the STC took a last-minute decision not to apply for the 2022 NPO call discouraged precisely by this levelling up agenda. If London is one of the more diverse areas of England, in the current state of affairs, there is certainly a contradiction between the Arts Council England’s Levelling Up and its Creative Case for Diversity agendas (see https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/diversity/creative-case-diversity).

45. The fact that the Arts Council describes its funding programme as an ‘investment’ shows the shift towards an instrumental view of the arts that has been progressively instilled in British cultural policy discourse since the eighties. For the historical explanations behind this shift see Belfiore (2002, 2009).

46. For instance, it has organized a themed season devoted completely to female creators (Women Take the Stage) and some its productions were performed by actors from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, and abilities (supported by the Arts Council National Lottery Project Grants the 2019 production of Paloma Pedrero’s Los ojos de la noche starred a blind actor).