Absolutely nailed it, Fergus. The theatre is the soil so much screen gold grows from — and yet the studios seem happy to mine it without watering the roots. The point about Jack Thorne’s path from the Bush to Netflix is such a good case study: there’s a straight line from underfunded black-box stages to billion-dollar IP.
Feels like the screen industry needs a “give back to grow forward” fund — not as charity, but as investment in the talent pipeline they rely on. Imagine if Netflix, Disney, et al. each allocated just 0.1% of earnings to support the venues that made their biggest writers, directors, and actors. Would pay itself back tenfold.
I did this as a kid when I realized that Christopher Hewitt who played the title character in the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, played Captain Hook/Mr. Darling in Peter Pan, which meant I saw him live long before he was on tv. I also saw Sarah Jessica Parker in Annie, probably the first actor whose career I followed from the stage to the screen from her role in Square Pegs to A Year in the Life all the way through to now.
Mind you, don't forget the important career-launching role also performed down the years by the UK's biggest producer of new drama (as well as comedy)—BBC Radio 4.
It could be worse for your family; you could be a Doctor Who fan, ready to point out each and every production and cast connection to that particular show and its wider "Whoniverse"—that Stephen Greenhorn, for example, wrote 2008 episode "The Doctor's Daughter" and so is partly responsible for David Tennant meeting his now-wife, Georgia Moffat. That he also wrote the previous season's "The Lazarus Experiment", and an online comic for the BBC Website... Etc.
Mind you, did you not mention that he also created "River City" for BBC Scotland?
Absolutely nailed it, Fergus. The theatre is the soil so much screen gold grows from — and yet the studios seem happy to mine it without watering the roots. The point about Jack Thorne’s path from the Bush to Netflix is such a good case study: there’s a straight line from underfunded black-box stages to billion-dollar IP.
Feels like the screen industry needs a “give back to grow forward” fund — not as charity, but as investment in the talent pipeline they rely on. Imagine if Netflix, Disney, et al. each allocated just 0.1% of earnings to support the venues that made their biggest writers, directors, and actors. Would pay itself back tenfold.
I did this as a kid when I realized that Christopher Hewitt who played the title character in the sitcom Mr. Belvedere, played Captain Hook/Mr. Darling in Peter Pan, which meant I saw him live long before he was on tv. I also saw Sarah Jessica Parker in Annie, probably the first actor whose career I followed from the stage to the screen from her role in Square Pegs to A Year in the Life all the way through to now.
Mind you, don't forget the important career-launching role also performed down the years by the UK's biggest producer of new drama (as well as comedy)—BBC Radio 4.
It could be worse for your family; you could be a Doctor Who fan, ready to point out each and every production and cast connection to that particular show and its wider "Whoniverse"—that Stephen Greenhorn, for example, wrote 2008 episode "The Doctor's Daughter" and so is partly responsible for David Tennant meeting his now-wife, Georgia Moffat. That he also wrote the previous season's "The Lazarus Experiment", and an online comic for the BBC Website... Etc.
Mind you, did you not mention that he also created "River City" for BBC Scotland?