Politics & Power Quote by Peter Hall

Running Britain’s National Theatre, Hall suggests, is less a coronation than a public sanitation job. The image of Nelson’s Column is doing double duty: it’s a monument to national pride and a literal perch for birds with terrible aim. Hall’s gag lands because it yokes prestige to indignity. You don’t get dumped on for what you did wrong; you get dumped on because you’re tall, visible, and immovable. That’s the point. Leadership at a flagship cultural institution isn’t just about taste or vision, it’s about becoming the country’s most convenient target.

The subtext is a warning to anyone who thinks the job is purely artistic. The head of the National Theatre is expected to be a symbol: of public funding, of London culture, of “serious” art, of class politics, of whatever yesterday’s newspaper decided is wrong with the nation. Like Nelson’s Column, you’re not allowed to be merely functional; you’re drafted into representing something larger, then blamed when the public’s mood turns. Criticism becomes ambient, almost meteorological.

Hall came up in an era when British theatre was being remade in public view, with the National Theatre itself a lightning rod for arguments about elitism, access, modernism, and state subsidy. His line is a director’s version of institutional realism: acclaim is temporary, but visibility is constant. The joke is brittle because it’s true; the pigeons never run out.