The National Theatre has held a day’s stakeholders meeting to discuss how best to restructure theatre to achieve its mandate of developing and promoting the performing arts.

The meeting was also to examine what has been done so far over the past 25 years since its establishment and what needs to be done over the next 25 years to promote the performing arts in Ghana.

Mrs Amy Appiah Frimpong, Executive Director, National Theatre said the theatre was currently going through a strategic planning sessions to hear from the field, and people who matter when it comes to performing arts.

She said they would want to hear from the broader community, including people who had been in the industry for a very long time served as Directors, past board members, friends of theatre, sponsors to talk in-depth into the future of the national theatre.

“After this, we intend to also have a two day strategic planning with the board and staff to come up with the three year strategic plan to give us the road map for at least the next three years.”

“As an institution, we have been around for 25 years, and within this period we have gone through various stages of life and now we are basically adults so we need to look back and see what kind of future we want, all with our mandate in mind.”

Mrs Appiah Frimpong said in recent years, what they had done was to do a renovation and uplift for the national theatre building, and noticed that it was important for them to engage the people.

She said their mandate was to develop and promote the performing arts, but there were certain expectations from the national theatre, and that is evidence in the way the theatre was created.

“There are three residential groups at the national theatre which were not just set up to perform in Accra, but as part of our functions we are to establish theatre across the nation, and regardless of the economic social, geographic, and religious background one must experience a content from the national theatre wherever they find themselves.”

She noted that over the 25 years they may have lost sight of what a national theatre was supposed to do because a visit to any country’s national theatre must leave an experience that one must carry everywhere, so that anytime they think about performing arts they think about that particular country.

The Executive Director noted that it was high time people changed in what they perceived the national theatre to be.

“Most people see the national theatre as an event space, but that is not what the law established it to be, so we would want to take steps to change that perception that it is not just a building but it is meant to promote performing arts.”