How to get children switched on to the drama of theatre

Why do theatre and television keep such an unhealthy distance from each other?

Nicholas Hytner doesn't take over at the National Theatre for a few months yet; but already he is making some promising noises. Clearly a man after my own heart, Hytner is ready to acknowledge that ticket price is a barrier to young people going to the theatre, and hopes to run a whole season at the largest auditorium, the Olivier, with seats priced at £10.

The West End producer Paul Roberts, who is running what he calls the Lister Experiment offering seats for performances at two musicals at cinema prices of £11.50 (the Queen musical We Will Rock You, box office number 0207 413 1713, and the Madness musical Our House, 0870 890 1102) could yet find himself undercut by the National if Hytner has his way. However, the National will only proceed with the Hytner plan if sponsors are forthcoming. So we wait to see.

The other interesting noise that Hytner is making concerns the lack of school visits to theatres, not least the National. This has been a problem for the best part of 20 years, starting when the Thatcher government introduced new rules that made it harder for schools to run such trips. Hytner said in a recent speech that a whole generation of schoolchildren now has no knowledge of the classic works of British theatre: "Teachers of children at private schools can still ask parents for the £8 it costs to come to a subsidised performance at the National Theatre, but state schools cannot do that. There is no money there to help them organise it, so it doesn't happen any more."

It is surely something that Tessa Jowell at the Culture department and Charles Clarke at Education need to put their heads together to rectify. Why not a special budget for cultural trips; and what a pity that lottery money wasn't used for such a potentially life-enhancing exercise.

But there is one other way to get more teenagers interested in theatre: a third way, if it helps Ms Jowell and Mr Clarke to think of it like that. As too few young people are coming individually or on school visits, take the performances to them via television. Plays on the box are, I fully admit, no substitute for the real thing; but they are better than nothing, and actually better than an awful lot of programmes on the box.

The current production of A Streetcar Named Desire, starring Glenn Close, at the National would make enthralling television, as would Sam Mendes's farewell season at the Donmar. But theatre and television keep an unhealthy distance from each other. How often do you see a play by Tom Stoppard or Alan Ayckbourn or Caryl Churchill on the BBC or Channel 4? Who can recall the last televised Chekhov or Ibsen or Shakespeare? It's actually a bigger disgrace than the lack of school visits to theatres, when one considers the influence of television and the public service broadcasting remit.

I would like to see our subsidised National Theatre and our subsidised national television service, if I may refer to the BBC as such, working together. Let the BBC show at least six productions a year, with curriculum guides for schools. Nicholas Hytner has started making the right sort of provocative speeches. His next should be a public challenge to the BBC director-general, Greg Dyke. Put some plays on television. The National Theatre can provide them, as can other theatres around the country. And no, Mr Dyke, not just on BBC 4, on the mainstream channels watched by large mainstream audiences. They like good drama too.

*Mike Leigh's latest film, All Or Nothing, is a moving and poignant piece. When I watched it at the Cannes film festival, it even had journalists sobbing, something that usually only happens when an expenses claim is turned down. Leigh has been holding a number of question-and-answer sessions after selected performances of the film. I would like him or Timothy Spall, the star of the movie, to answer one question. As part of the Mike Leigh method of working, Spall spent weeks mini-cab driving to prepare for his role as a taxi driver in the movie. Yet he is totally convincing as a small businessman from the West Midlands in Auf Wiedersehen, Pet without living the role beforehand. So, here's my question: if Spall had not spent any time at all as a real-life cab driver, if he had just turned up armed with his talent and experience, in what respects would his performance have been any different? Over to you, Mike and Tim.

*A new biography of Mick Jagger by Chris Salewicz is receiving a high- profile serialisation in the Sunday Times. As a premise for his theory that Jagger reinvented himself at the end of the Sixties, the author states that in 1968 [after the Stones had been in the charts for five years] Jagger was "seen by the public back then as just an also-ran in the group's line-up". That must have been when John Lennon was seen as an also-ran in the Beatles, and Harold Wilson was seen as an also-ran in the Labour government.

d.lister@independent.co.uk