A STATEMENT BY JONATHAN POWERS FROM THE CONSORTIUM ATTEMPTING TO RESCUE DERBY PLAYHOUSE:  On 29th November 2007, at 3.15 in the afternoon, just before the opening night of the Christmas show, Treasure Island, the staff and the cast were summoned to the Auditorium and told that the theatre had been put into liquidation and was therefore closed with immediate effect. At that moment, three and a half weeks before Christmas, over 60 people suddenly lost their jobs.
The staff and cast refused to accept that closure: they stayed put, and the audience poured into the theatre for an emotional First and Last Night: an act of defiance and belief captured on BBC television. Those who were there will never forget the occasion. The entire staff and all the volunteers joined the cast on the stage for what seemed to be “the final curtain”. 
It has been put to me that the event was “irresponsible”. But, on the contrary, I say this was an instance of people taking personal responsibility to fight injustice.
But for the “Glorious Rebellion” that night I think Derby Playhouse would have closed for ever. The extraordinary response gave people the courage and determination to fight. A day later the process of liquidation was halted and the Playhouse was taken into administration, for though the theatre’s liabilities exceeded its assets, it had not actually run out of cash. The Administrators, I should point out, are “the good guys” -  their first duty is to see whether the company can be rescued as a going concern. If they cannot do that they will try to get the best price they can for the parts of the business. Only as a last resort will they liquidate everything and sell off the furniture to repay the creditors. But, be warned, few companies in administration ever recover.
When the story of the theatre which refused to die comes to be written, there will be much to say about events in the following week – about the three independent demonstrations which converged simultaneously on the Council House, while a distinguished guest speaker was berating the people inside, and all the other things in the public eye. But I would like to pay tribute to some of the special heroes of that week without whom we would not be here today. They had all been sacked and they appeared to have no prospects but a Christmas on thin gruel.
First of all there are Glyn and Ben and Maurice and Gregory and James and Genevieve and Christopher and Conrad and Jay – and of course Daniel whose first professional performance on stage this had been. If they had abandoned ship, if any of them had abandoned ship, the show would have been over – but they hung together, while complex negotiations were being hammered out and money was poured into an emergency fund.
And the same is true of the musicians and the stage staff and the technical crew, and those who work behind the scenes, and those at front of house, in marketing and on the box office. And we have all been uplifted by the commitment and enthusiasm of the members of the Youth and Community Theatre and our stalwart band of Volunteers. 
But there are two people without whom Derby Playhouse would now just be a memory. They still aren’t being paid, but they cancelled their holidays and have been working non-stop ever since to keep our Playhouse alive. One is Karen Hebden, our former Chief Executive, and the writer and director of our fantastic Christmas Show. The other is Stephen Edwards, our former Creative Producer/Co-Artistic Director, who personally paid the November salaries of all the staff – and the rent – and the liquidators fees, - £70k -  to make liquidation unnecessary. Without the seemingly reckless courage of this White Knight, we would not be here this evening.After a week of complex negotiations, the Administrators let our Consortium with its strolling company of players into the theatre to help them improve the position of the creditors. Everyone who had been fired poured back, even though we can only afford to employ a skeleton staff. But they got everything ready for the Matinee on the Saturday – carrying out bags of rotting food, cleaning the place from top to bottom, getting the computer systems back on line, checking the lighting rig, rehearsing the show, and so on. Meanwhile we had to spend £80k up front to get the show back. The key suppliers had to be paid – the armourer had gone off with the swords. I  rushed back from the bank with thousands of pounds stuffed into my pockets so that people would be able to eat, and then worked flat out with the staff at the bank to pay all the fees for the rights. We managed it on that Friday afternoon with seconds to spare. The following afternoon Treasure Island reopened. Over a thousand tickets were sold for the two shows that day. A 5* review in the Guardian called it “a production too good to miss, in a theatre too valuable to lose”.
It is important to understand the national as well as the local context of these events. Live professional theatre in the United Kingdom has come to depend increasingly on support from public bodies, which began historically in the spirit of a true partnership to provide the benefits that the performing arts bring to the economic and social and human fabric of communities.
But the live arts are caught in the jaws of an inexorable economic vice.  On the one hand, the costs of live performance inevitably increase faster than the costs of goods or services where productivity can be increased by reducing labour costs (such as exporting them to China). You do not make theatre more efficient by using fewer and fewer actors – although that is what many theatres have done over recent years.
On the other hand, public bodies are under constant pressure to hold down or even to reduce expenditure. Furthermore, in recent years the pressure both for additional initiatives and for evermore detailed control and accountability has grown. The result is that core activities become unsustainable while increasing amounts of time and money are spent on ancillary activities, and on systems to monitor the effectiveness of the use of public money.  In these circumstances, all partnerships come under strain.  
The crisis that has threatened the survival of Derby Playhouse makes it imperative to establish a new model for the support of regional producing theatre. We believe that the only way the live arts in the regions can flourish is if the practitioners themselves have the freedom to be creative, and if those who support the live arts are able to use their own judgement in backing them. This will then make the live arts responsive to audiences, enthusiasts, and patrons. The way forward is to relieve local council tax-payers of the burden of supporting mature live arts organisations. Shifting the responsibility may even free up public money to help prime new initiatives.
These events mark a Coming of Age for Derby Playhouse. The Consortium has proposals for a new organisational structure, we have a new three year business plan, with shows mapped out to 2011, and we have a fund-raising strategy for part of our plan is to build an Endowment for Derby Playhouse which will ensure that this kind of thing will never happen again. 
Until this meeting the Consortium has just been a small group who got together to support the fantastic people who are the real heart of this theatre. But now, thanks to you, we have a new Board to plan for taking back control from the Administrators, when the time comes.
The Playhouse has to start again from its beginnings. Precious things have been lost, and it will require money as well as commitment to get them on their feet again.  The way back will be hard and it may be long, but make no mistake, we will prevail.