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My blog has quite a lot of posts about Samuel West (Julius Caesar, On Chesil Beach and Darkest Hour) and Charles Edwards (My Fair Lady Australian tour and Henry IX).

Sunday, 27 March 2011

Samuel West - anti-cuts march and Observer letter

Sam took part in yesterday's anti-cuts march in London with Equity and UK Uncut (the Guardian, Sam's Twitter @exitthelemming). In Hyde Park, he made a speech about the detrimental consequences of cuts to the arts (@exitthelemming 1|2, the Guardian, Tom Roper, video by Claire Wyatt). He also performed an excerpt from The Voysey Inheritance by Harley Granville Barker with his father Timothy West, on Oxford Street (@exitthelemming, a picture of Sam and Timothy by Michael Dennis).
The Guardian has a quote from Sam about the social effects of theatre:
"Theatre is not just for the rich and subsidy keeps tickets cheap. Quite aside from the huge financial return the country gets for any money invested, the arts are what make us civilised.  Sitting alongside people in a theatre who may be poor or may be rich is a great democratic institution."

Two weeks ago, Peter Capaldi, Michael Sheen, David Tennant and Sam, among many others, signed a letter to the Observer about cuts to arts funding (via the Guardian). A press release from Equity has statements from several of the letter's signatories, and details about cuts to national and local funding.

3 comments:

claire wyatt said...

Hi there. Does anyone know where I can find a copy of Sams speech?

Lesley said...

Sam West's speech was awesome.
When he was introduced my first thought was "Who?".
He had sufficient statistics to make very good points, kept it succinct but inspiring.

Jennifer said...

Sorry for the delay in approving your comments - time differences!

@Claire
I've linked to the text of Sam's speech in this post but you've probably read it by now because the link has been RT'd a lot! @ferdosnandos has filmed the speech but I don't know if he'll be sharing it publicly. Thanks for your video - great to see a positive response to Sam's speech.

@Lesley
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about Sam's speech. He definitely knows about the impact of cuts to the arts - he's been on Equity council for several years, and he used to be the artistic director of the Sheffield Theatres.
and a shameless plug - if you'd like to find out more about his work, my blog has the label/tag Samuel West; alternatively, I've listed most of his credits here.