Theater Cooperative Demands Transparency and Equality from the Ministry of Culture

‘We demand and expect the reasons for the negative results of the applications of the theaters that cannot benefit from the support to be explained.’ We talked to Yeşim Özsoy, the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Theater Cooperative, the Founder and General Art Director of GalataPerform, about the problems in the support policies for private theaters by focusing on the questions contained in the report they prepared.

The Theater Cooperative presented the report, which was published on its website and social media accounts on November 5, to the attention of the Directorate General of Fine Arts under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. The report calls for equality and transparency in culture and arts policies by focusing on the support given or not given to private theaters.

There are sixty-four private theaters under your roof. What are the main topics on your agenda? What are the prominent issues of private theaters?

As the Theater Cooperative, we are working to enrich the artistic production of private theaters and to strengthen them economically, socially, and legally and to make them sustainable. Based on the observation that the problems experienced by private theaters are largely economically based, we have found the right structuring in the social cooperative model, where we can cooperate with public institutions and organizations, local governments, non-governmental organizations, academia, and the private sector to solve these problems. With this structuring, we produce projects to create economic and social benefits for our partners, and we move forward by drawing strength from unity and solidarity.

Private theaters are businesses with merchant status under the legislation. We carry out a public activity, but our tax and similar financial obligations are no different from any commercial enterprise. This situation jeopardized the sustainability of many private theaters even before the epidemic. At this point, making radical changes in this area has become vital for our survival. For this reason, our main agenda is our advocacy work for legislative change. We continue our research and negotiations with relevant public institutions and organizations in order to establish a new legal status in which the working conditions and needs of private theaters are observed. In addition, the projects we carry out with the aim of fundraising for cooperative partner theaters and organizing for private theaters across Turkey continue.

Recently, you submitted the report you prepared to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on the support provided to private theaters. What are the main questions in the report you submitted to the Ministry in general?

On November 5, 2021, we published the report we prepared in the light of the data provided by the partners of the Theater Cooperative on the support provided by the Directorate General of Fine Arts for the projects of private theaters for the 2021-2022 art season to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Under the roof of our cooperative, we have 64 partners with small, medium, and large-scale productions in different categories; in this sense, we can present a healthy sample. In the report, we question how the criteria in the support regulation are reflected in the evaluation of the applications of private theaters, based on various data and comparisons. We are also looking for answers to the questions we have directed to the Ministry and included in our announcement in the link. We demand and expect that the way in which the evaluation criteria are processed, and the distribution of the budget to be explained in a transparent manner, the names of the evaluation commission to be shared with the public, the reasons for the decrease in the support budgets and the lack of additional support for the theaters to be stated, and the reasons for the negative results of the applications of the theaters that cannot benefit from the support.

There are many topics that you mentioned in the report. One of them has to do with the reasons for private theaters not applying for support. What do you think the reasons you included in the report tell us about the current situation of private theaters?

Private theaters have an extremely fragile structure and have major problems in terms of sustainability, and the reasons for not applying in the report actually reveal this fact. 59% of the cooperative partners could not apply for support or preferred not to, this is a very striking rate. In order to apply for support, there are prerequisites such as registration with the Chamber of Commerce, the requirement for a tax clearance certificate. Due to financial insufficiencies, many theaters cannot meet these conditions. Theaters face a challenging procedure and heavy paperwork if they benefit from support, but many do not have enough human resources to complete this process. Of course, we are also observing the effects of the epidemic process. We have theaters that interrupt their production and close their halls due to the uncertainty brought about by the circumstances. To give an example, four of the Cooperative partners closed their theater stages during the epidemic. Unfortunately, the current support budgets are not enough to fight for survival. There are also theaters that do not trust that the process will be carried out in a fair and transparent manner, based on their experiences in the past years, and therefore abstain from applying. The data announced by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism shows that the number of theaters applying for support has increased compared to last year (a total of 390 private theaters applied in 2020, while 472 private theaters applied in 2021), but with the budgets presented, we cannot answer ‘How many of these theaters were able to meet the requirements of the support and stage their plays?’ questions because the Ministry does not report on the process either.

Another important topic in the report is about the support made at 24% on average, despite the statement that ‘It can cover 70% of the estimated cost’. How much do the supports contribute to the creativity and production of private theaters? Or is it just an eyewash?

In line with the data provided by the cooperative partner theaters, we observe that the support provided by the Directorate General of Fine Arts for the projects of private theaters for the 2021-2022 art season is 30,000 TL on average. This amount is also lower than the average amounts provided in the 2020-2021 and 2019-2020 art seasons. Considering our losses during the epidemic and the current economic conditions in our country, we can say that these supports are extremely insufficient to produce new projects and bring these projects together with the audience.

You point out that private theaters that perform children’s and youth plays are less able to benefit from support. What does this say about the importance given by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to the art environment for children and youth? What would you say about negative discrimination here?

First of all, as we mentioned in the report, we do not have enough data to evaluate the support made by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism for children’s and youth theater, it would not be right to make any comments on this issue. However, when we look at various public supports and projects created by local governments in the past, we see that the budget allocated to children’s and youth theater is generally much lower compared to adult theater. For this reason, many theaters that produce both children’s and adult plays prefer to progress with adult plays in their support applications. As the Theater Cooperative, we attach great importance to the increase and development of productions in the field of children’s and youth theater, and we even have a working group that focuses on this issue. In order to enrich this field, it is important to encourage theaters and to be supported by the public and private sectors.

It is seen that there is no increase in the support offered to private theaters with the pandemic, but on the contrary, there has been a decrease compared to other years. How do you evaluate the decrease in the amount of support offered to the theaters that are closed and that can open the curtain with the mandatory capacity limitation?

As we mentioned above, the decrease in the support budget allocated per theater puts private theaters planning to produce and stage new projects in a difficult situation. Stages began to reopen after a long time, and with the last circular, the capacity limitation that prevented private theaters from continuing their activities was lifted, but we have to work hard to compensate for our losses during the epidemic process, our struggle to survive continues. At this point, all cash supports are of vital importance to us, and we are concerned about the decrease in the budget.

There are tables in which you examine the support given in the report with detailed comparisons. Is it clear enough which criteria the Ministry of Culture and Tourism observes in determining the amount of support? What are your suggestions to the Ministry for a more equal and open distribution in this regard?

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism explains the evaluation criteria in Article 8 of the ‘Regulation on Aid to Projects of Private Theaters’. However, as a result of the comparisons we have made in line with the data we have, we have questions about how these criteria are reflected in the evaluation and the budgets presented. At this point, subjective criteria such as ‘contribution of the applied project to the art of theater’, ‘level of art’, ‘level of success in staging’ also come into play. How these criteria are evaluated by the evaluation commission and which names are included in the commission are not explained in a transparent way. At this point, we think it is essential to establish a scoring system with concrete criteria for an equal and open distribution.

One of the points you pointed out as a problem is the subjective items in the evaluation criteria. What are your suggestions for this part?

As we conveyed in the report, we are of the opinion that in the ideal scenario, there should be no subjective criteria in the evaluation in order for the process to be carried out fairly. We think that the implementation of the score sheet system, which is included in the proposals for amendments to the regulation we forwarded to the Ministry in November 2020, and whose examples are seen in the support mechanisms in the international arena, will eliminate many question marks. By preparing a score sheet with objective criteria, we believe that announcing this schedule together with the call for applications and communicating the results to the theaters after the evaluation process will be an important step in establishing trust. In the current situation, we think it is a necessity to convey the subjective comments and improvement suggestions made by the evaluation commission to the theaters in order to ensure transparency.

While 92 percent of the applied theaters received a positive response, 8 percent received a rejection. However, the reasons for the refusal were not disclosed. In this regard, you emphasize that the Ministry should explain the reasons for the negative returns. Has there been a response from the Ministry of Culture regarding this request and other questions and requests? How do you plan to move forward in your quest for transparency from now on?

The Ministry of Culture and Tourism has not yet responded to our requests regarding this issue. As the Theater Cooperative, we will continue to follow the process and stand behind our demands.

You can read the report, which we sent to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism and mentioned during the interview, on our website. We expect the support and sharing of all components and theater audiences working in our field to strengthen our voice.