Good luck, Michael, nobody wins if you fail

In an open letter to Michael Boyd, Thomas Sutcliffe offers four pieces of advice for the company's future

Dear Michael,

As you will soon learn, receiving unsolicited advice from people who know a fraction of what you do about running the RSC is one of the downsides of the position you are shortly to take up. On the other hand if you were to turn everyone away from your doors who thought they knew how to solve the RSC's current problems you would have to close the theatre tomorrow.

Audiences have prejudices and in the case of the RSC they are fairly fierce. What is more those prejudices inform where they decide to spend their evenings and their money. Here, for what it's worth, are four of mine.

Beware of buildings. The RSC used to perform at The Pit, in the Barbican. If you make the wrong decision about your Stratford base they could find themselves putting on plays in The Money Pit. The current building is ungainly and sentiment about it would quickly disappear if you replaced it with something better – which wouldn't be hard. But new buildings can be even more paralysing for institutions than old ones. Castles in the air suck up creativity, money and energy. Think of a new purpose-built home as a reward for success rather than a cure for failure.

Medium is beautiful. One of the reasons people were so anxious about Adrian Noble's plans for the RSC is that they saw that it could easily turn into an Enron of the arts – a permanent expansion and diversification which concealed a great hollow at the centre. Your core business is the perpetuation of the British theatrical canon – bearing in mind that "perpetuation" is a usefully ambiguous term. It means maintaining the classics of the past and doing your bit to create the classics of the future. That is best achieved not by building a theatrical conglomerate with its own Bardic theme park, but by nurturing a tighter community of interests. Re-open The Other Place and concentrate on the main theatres.

You're in London, or you're nowhere. Shockingly incorrect, it is true, in these days of pious devolution, but nobody ever built a great company by deferring to the pieties of the time. Besides, theatres in Manchester, Leeds or Glasgow can build on a distinctive regional identity – a local accent which, at its best, can then be heard nationally. Stratford-upon-Avon cannot deliver this, which is why it is an urgent priority to find a permanent London home, whether it's the Roundhouse, the Barbican or the Old Vic. The RSC is a great metropolitan theatre which just happens, for historical and sentimental reasons, to have a large place in the country.

You should have stars on stage. The presence of a celebrated actor on a stage radiates excitement in every direction. Young actors perform better because they know that acting with greatness is one of the best ways to acquire it; audiences come with a greater sense of occasion and moment and, I would guess, even experienced directors would up their game. Having done so much to nurture stars at the beginning of their careers it is self-defeating not to use their starlight for your own ends – just think of it as the return on your investment. Ignore the critic who said, "You'll never get Nicole Kidman." Maybe you don't want her – there is no virtue in celebrity for celebrity's sake – but you should want a company which she would be thrilled to perform with.

And whatever you choose to do, good luck, because nobody wins if you fail.

Thomas Sutcliffe