We received this last night from a full time staff member at Young Vic.
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I am a full time member of staff at the Young Vic, not in the departments affected by these redundancies, but I wanted to have my say.
I am sending this anonymously because, like other posters, we fear drawing attention to ourselves will have adverse effects.
I have worked here through a period of significant attitude change, for several years. I have seen the YV change from a place that nurtured passion and dedication to just another commercialised theatre. I do not deny that sales and audiences are more important to a theatre than ever before. But turning the organisation into a faceless corporation is not the answer. Selling every single ticket and working staff to the ground have been put ahead of people, their needs and their welfare. Staff are disposable. I have seen on numerous occasions the senior management team dispose of staff because it is easier than solving minor disputes or problems, or offering training. The box office issue is the most recent and high profile example. People are desperate for jobs, so staff can be replaced at the drop of a hat, and the senior team know this. And because they know the world loves the YV and see it as being at the top of its game, they think they can get away with it.
I feel sorry for David Lan. His once dedicated and passionate workforce is crumbling and this is hidden from him by a senior team more concerned with raking in cash and building their own reputations than preserving what was once the jewel in the crown of London theatre. In 20 years, this time may well be looked on as the time it all started to crash. When that future Young Vic is full to bursting with people paying top prices for premium seats without a single young face in sight, watching some commercial west end-aimed revival with film stars at the helm, with tickets sold by faceless call centres, I wonder if they will remember what the YV was supposed to be.
I really hope he can save it.
Hear hear.In 2009 a senior member of staff in a meeting with myself and one other described to us how they saw the YV becoming more like the NT or The Old Vic. This person was not David Lan needless to say. But slowly but surely these changes are being brought about and as is said above, there are people in the senior team more concerned with making money, careers and creating barriers between departments than they are about audiences, plays, ideals. Some of the people making all this fuss and causing such a furore are doing so because they care and they see what once was a caring, loving, compassionate exciting place to be being destroyed before their very eyes... helplessly watching it being destroyed. All the unfair dismissals, redundancies etc are merely the results of this change of ethos, the by product if you like.
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