In response to the Jennie Lee lecture, given on 26 February 2026 by National Theatre Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham, WGGB issued the following response:
There are troubling new figures in this year’s Jennie Lee lecture on the crisis in new writing for theatre and we agree that we need a renewed national commitment to backing creative risk and new playwriting.
While it is true that arts funding is a vital part of the solution, that funding must offer a targeted investment in writers themselves.
There must also be a better understanding of and support for the unique needs of creative freelancers at Governmental level and structural change to remove blocks to entry and progression so that, as Indhu Rubasingham says, we protect and nurture the volume and range of voices on our stages.
WGGB’s New Play Commission Scheme has showed that it can be done, while our national agreements in theatre continue to protect the pay and terms that playwrights are contracted under across the UK.
We work tirelessly in our negotiations to improve these long-fought for rights, particularly in the digital arena, and we will continue this and our lobbying and campaigning work.
WGGB Theatre Co-Chairs Sonali Bhattacharyya and Morgan Lloyd Malcolm said:
“We welcome Indhu Rubasingham’s commitment to new writing at the National Theatre, and hope this will embolden Artistic Directors across the country to take greater risks, and to commission and develop new work from playwrights. It’s vital that theatres nurture new work for the stage from a multiplicity of voices. This work is an essential part of our cultural ecosystem.”
Former WGGB President David Edgar, who spearheaded our New Play Commission Scheme, said:
“Dan Rebellato and my British Theatre Consortium research into the repertoire in 2019 and 2023 showed that there had been a significant decline in drama productions either side of Covid, while the proportion of musicals had increased. Within drama, there was an increase in adaptations. Writers write the words for musicals, and adapting novels and other existing works is a particular skill. But original new plays written not from existing material but from the imagination and invention of dramatists has always been the lifeblood of theatre and it is those works which significantly declined. Funders and theatres must seek to preserve and protect original new plays if the significance and vibrancy of British theatre is to survive.”
About the Jennie Lee Lecture
The Jennie Lee Lecture was established in 2025 by Arts Council England and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to commemorate the legacy of Jennie Lee, Britain’s first Minister for the Arts. The inaugural lecture was delivered by Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy MP in February 2025 to mark the 60th anniversary of the first ever arts white paper.
In the second Jennie Lee Lecture, National Theatre Artistic Director Indhu Rubasingham highlighted research from the theatre’s new work department, which showed that between 2014 and 2024 there was a 70% decline in theatres receiving open-to-all submissions throughout the year. There were also declines of 76% in new writing festivals, 44% in playwriting courses, as well as a 44% decline in new work on stages outside London and 30% in the capital.
You can read the lecture in full via The Stage and a report in The Guardian.