The director of the National Theatre will be stepping down in 2025. I’ve written to the chairman offering a new vision for Britain’s leading playhouse.

Dear Sir Damon Buffini, I’m a reviewer of plays and a part-time theatre producer. In the past 20 years I’ve seen more than 2,000 shows, hundreds of them at your venue, and here is my plan to transform the NT.

Britain’s dramatic heritage is the best in the world and our national theatre should meet that standard of excellence. Three simple reforms to start with.

US stars crave the prestige offered by the NT. Each year we will hire half a dozen Oscar-winning actors

One: cancel the annual £16 million subsidy from the Arts Council. Britain’s leading theatre doesn’t need a donation or the advice that accompanies it.

Two: fresh blood. Limit the number of productions offered to a single author. David Hare (sorry to single him out) has had more than a dozen shows staged at the NT since 1978. If Sir David can’t thrive in the commercial sector, that’s tough.

Three: streamline rehearsals. Actors usually prepare a play in three weeks, sometimes in two. The NT allows up to six weeks of rehearsal, which wastes money and fosters laziness.

Seat prices should be adjusted to reflect demand. Establish links with commercial producers and bring in stars at the market rate. Andrew Scott recently sold out his one-man show, Vanya, in the West End where top seats went for £172.50. The National might have staged this show had it dropped its ‘affordable tickets’ fetish. ‘Affordable’ is another word for ‘cheap’.

My programme will offer a mix of classic and modern plays, some produced in the UK, some abroad. An International Director will find excellent new productions overseas (using the internet as a research tool – the international travel budget will be zero). A Vintage Director will recommend neglected British scripts for revival. The NT will stage a ‘Debut Plays Season’ featuring the first dramas written by Bernard Shaw, Bertolt Brecht, Noël Coward, Joe Orton, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, Victoria Wood, Anya Reiss and others.

New-writing programmes will be curbed. New work is thriving on the London fringe and in countless subsidised venues across the country. The NT doesn’t need to replicate this creative output. To meet its obligations as our national theatre it can receive top quality new work from around Britain. The West End’s leading impresarios will send their representatives to see these shows. About 20 or 30 new plays a year will be staged in the smaller auditorium of the Dorfman. Few, if any, new plays will be produced in-house.

The NT will make fuller use of its three venues by staging at least 40 performances per week (rather than 24, as at present). The definition of ‘theatre’ will expand to include stand-up comedy, cabaret and political debates.

The Lyttelton is an ideal debating chamber because it looks like a lecture hall. (By arrangement with a respectable corporate bidder, the venue will be renamed.) Debates will be staged on Sundays, or on weekday afternoons, and will reach a global audience online. The NT will become a leading political forum and its debates will feature prime ministers, presidents, Nobel prize-winners and tech billionaires.

The National will purchase the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from Shakespeare’s Globe. This candlelit venue is one of most beautiful theatres in Britain but the Globe can’t see its potential. Chamber recitals at lunchtime will generate revenue and attract new audiences. The venue will also host children’s shows, variety acts and pantomime. A dynamic, imaginative artistic director will be appointed to run the Playhouse with orders to lay on four performances a day, including Sundays.

The NT will overcome its small-town mentality and invite US stars to London. Money is not the sticking point because actors don’t expect large salaries from the theatre. But American stars undoubtedly crave the prestige offered by the NT. Each year we will hire half a dozen Oscar-winning actors. Would they come? Yes. Has anyone asked them? Obviously not. American actors revere British theatre and yet we fail to cultivate this priceless asset.

Diversity has failed. The box office reveals the uncomfortable truth

To attract first-time visitors, the NT will stage early-evening comedy shows. The aim is to interest comedy fans in the theatrical repertoire. And the first step is to get them across the threshold and into the building. If nothing else, comedy will massively increase takings at the bar.

Diversity has failed. To assume that if you have a particular identity you’ll only be attracted to work that consists of people who share that identity is not only patronising but fundamentally underestimates the capacity of the human imagination. The box office reveals the uncomfortable truth. At the NT, it’s often the case that the only minorities in the building are members of the company on stage or in the security team. Forcing people to embrace pastimes favoured by one section of society is a crass and discourteous endeavour. Everyone can amuse themselves without the NT’s help.

For the same reason, the National will treat younger audiences with caution. A child can easily be deterred for life by one bad play, and parties of schoolkids in discounted seats do not automatically become permanent fans of the art form.

The NT will be configured as a social enterprise like John Lewis. Every employee will receive a portion of the annual profits. This will sharpen the attitude of staff who sometimes give the impression that they’re too good to be working at the world’s greatest theatre.

Finally, the internet will solve the NT’s funding problems. The inflexible and overpriced live-streaming service will become a profit-making amenity. The current annual fee of £100 (or $124) is unaffordable to billions of potential viewers, most of them in the developing world, and many of whom might want to improve their English. A charge of 50 US cents for each show will attract legions of online spectators. In future, any live-streamed NT show that wins fewer than two million international viewers (gross revenue, $1 million) will be deemed a failure.

Properly marketed, the NT will generate a gross income of $10 million a week from live-streaming. That’s half a billion dollars a year. Think it can’t be done? Well let’s find out.

And I don’t need to run the place for a decade. Eighteen months will be enough. Naturally, I shan’t take a salary.