ENCORE! THE BATTLE TO RAISE THE CURTAIN AGAIN
Samira Ahmed looks at how the theatre industry might bounce back after the pandemic period
Back in March, as Covid-19 was making headlines but before public venues were shut down, award-winning theatre producer Nica Burns noticed something different about audiences watching previews of her new show, City Of Angels. ‘No one was coughing,’ she says. ‘People who weren’t feeling well weren’t coming. That’s a big change. People taking responsibility for not going out if they’re not well. And that’s the key.’
It’s a fact to make anyone who loves theatre smile and it’s at the heart of Burns’s optimism about the long-term return of regular theatre. But in the meantime?
Early autumn is the traditional start of the big theatregoing season, with many of us booking shows even if we rarely go otherwise. But not this year. All the key joys of the experience – sitting in a packed auditorium, laughing and gasping, actors singing and shouting, musicians playing cheek by jowl in the orchestra pit – now feel dangerous. UK theatres generated £1.28bn of revenue in 2018, based on
34m ticket sales. But overnight, that revenue vanished when Boris Johnson announced in mid-march that people shouldn’t go to the theatre, even before formally announcing that theatres had to close.
Everyone is optimistic that theatre will thrive again
The £1.57bn support package announced by Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden at the start of July came only after several theatres had already gone into administration or had to start making mass redundancies. Even though most of the funding is grants and not loans, it will be focused on saving venues (with a skeleton staff for when they can reopen), but not most jobs. And there are fears about how far the money will really go around the country, given the Government’s promise to save so-called ‘crown jewel’ venues, such as the Royal Albert Hall in London.
For all the theatres that do survive comes the issue of handling the lingering uncertainty among the public about how and when it might be safe to return. A survey of 62,000 theatregoers and 232 venues across the UK carried out in April to May by the arts consultancy Indigo found that only 67% of people would consider visiting theatres if they had social distancing in place. At the same time, 81% were very concerned about the future of live performance. The Broadcasting, Entertainment, Communications and Theatre Union (BECTU), which represents more than 40,000 workers in the creative industries, warned that the majority of the theatre workforce, from actors to costumiers and technicians,
are freelance. A survey by UK theatre directors of more than 8,000 participants found a quarter of freelance theatre workers had not been able to access any kind of emergency income, and a third were seriously considering quitting the industry.
NEW MEASURES
This year, while the big Qdos Entertainment production house, which runs dozens of pantomimes around the nation, was waiting as long as possible to decide on cancellations, many big theatres had already opted to stay closed through their most lucrative autumn and Christmas seasons. For regional theatre, that’s especially tough when panto lines the coffers for the rest of the year. ‘It’s terrible,’ says Burns. ‘We don’t want the Government to cancel Christmas. It’s a third of the income for a regional theatre, as it’s always packed out. And it’s a massive social symbol; one of the rituals that we do in this country.’ Director and
producer Kerry Michael expects caution to win, even for venues leaving the panto decision as late as possible. ‘I don’t think mums and dads are going to want to take the risk with little kids,’ he says. ‘All it takes is one incident.’
Some of the obvious big-scale musical draws, Hamilton and Les Misérables among them, won’t reopen before March. Cameron Mackintosh has announced the London and UK touring productions of The Phantom Of The Opera will not reopen for now. And new shows have been postponed. At the start of the pandemic, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cinderella, due to open in September, was pushed back to October and is now set for first previews in March.
Mackintosh warned in a piece he wrote for the Evening Standard that, ‘We will need at least four months to remount our productions, rebuild our advance bookings and public confidence and bring our artists back to performance pitch.’ That means knowing they can open box offices in November.
As chief executive of Nimax Theatres, Burns operates six West End venues, including the Palace Theatre (home of Harry Potter And The Cursed Child), and is ready to open with a raft of measures as soon as she gets the go-ahead. It will start at the moment of booking online with the requirement for each customer to provide contact email addresses for track and trace, and a health questionnaire to return 24 hours before the performance that’s been booked. For anyone who comes down with symptoms on the day, there will be a special email address to use. ‘We guarantee you’ll get an exchange or your money refunded in full,’ she says. ‘It will be the same if you fail the contactless temperature check on arrival.’
SAFETY FIRST
Everything is being done to make the theatres as safe as possible. ‘There will be hand sanitisers everywhere and we will disinfect the entire theatre up to 30 minutes before the first person walks in the building,’ explains Burns. ‘Not just clean, but with disinfecting sprays, like those used on a plane. And all tickets will be contactless.’
Face coverings will be compulsory until the health advice changes. It’s already become normal to fashion your own, so wearing one will be an easy new dress code for a night out. Jon Morgan, director of the Theatres Trust charity, which supports the network of UK theatres, expects most theatres will insist on face coverings as an admission requirement. ‘Many operators will ask for it, as they feel it will make people feel safer,’ he says.
Inside theatres, you can probably expect more no-touch taps in the toilets, plus automatic doors. But the more practical issue is traffic management. The challenge is going to be getting to your seat, navigating the bar and going to the loo. In many old theatres with tight spaces, this is likely to be very problematic.
But there are potential welcome upsides in how theatres manage that challenge. Burns says there will be at-seat services for drinks, which will mean an end to the old rush and crush at the bar. Most delightfully, we could see a temporary end to paying for expensive stalls seats in a poorly raked auditorium and finding ourselves right behind a tall person, unable to see the stage. With digital seating plans, box offices may well allocate seating diagonally, keeping visitors with companions but socially distanced from others, with no one directly in front or behind.
The more fundamental challenge of traffic management is simply getting in and out. Many modern theatres have an advantage, with multiple doors and large foyers, and some have totally removable seating. But many of our most cherished and characterful Victorian venues have tiny foyers. Morgan expects a return to a kind of Victorian class system. ‘The small foyers were for those who would be sitting in the stalls,’ he says. ‘For the cheap seats, you’d typically go down a side alley and up some dingy stairs. Well, those stairs are still there and used as emergency exits. I imagine venues will
start to use them again to manage the flow of the building.’ The shows you go to see might be different for a while, with no big musicals and no big casts, but Burns says she has some alternative smaller shows ready to put in her venues until social distancing is removed.
BALANCING THE BOOKS
However, for many local theatres, such as the Kiln Theatre in north-west London, reopening might just have to wait. ‘We can’t balance the books if we’re socially distancing,’ says the Kiln Theatre’s creative director Indhu Rubasingham. Michael explains the maths: ‘Most theatres, like most restaurants, need to be hitting 80% capacity. The last 20% is where you make your money, and everything else is breaking even.’
For actors, the reopening of theatres has never had so many unknowns. Malcolm Sinclair has made his living as an actor for nearly 50 years. He was nominated for an Olivier Award for his 2019 performance as General Eisenhower in Pressure, David Haig’s play about D-day. He was a third of the way through a run of William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield when lockdown happened. He understands why the Government’s emergency package for the arts is focused on keeping places open and solvent, but says it leaves actors especially vulnerable.
‘One London theatre I know is thinking of doing one-man shows with three different actors and putting them on three times a night,’ says Sinclair. Performances will be to one-third capacity with socially distanced audiences. ‘It might be financially viable, but the idea of going out to a big theatre and playing to a third of the house would be demoralising, especially in comedy,’ he says. ‘Already there
The emotional memory of seeing live performance is embedded in most of us
are rumours that they won’t be hiring older actors as they won’t be able to insure them, so careers might end sooner rather than later.’ Sinclair’s biggest worry is the impact of a shutdown that effectively lasts a year. ‘There will always be people who want to get up on stage and perform,’ he says. ‘But there might be a generation of audiences who will never think of going to the theatre.’
Emma Fielding has always acted. She was in A Museum In Baghdad, transferring to the Kiln Theatre from the RSC in Stratford-upon-avon when the lockdown cancelled the London production. It’s the younger generation she fears for: careers that never happen, and a worry that commercial producers will focus even more on famous names to generate immediate ticket sales rather than developing younger talent, who draw audiences with word of mouth as they build their reputation. ‘Risk is a big luxury at the moment,’ she says.
That said, everyone is optimistic that ultimately, theatre will thrive again. ‘The emotional memory of going to see live performance is embedded in most of us,’ says Michael. ‘Thanks to this pandemic, we’ve started to understand the fuller ecology of society and collective responsibility for everyone in a way we never did.’
Burns agrees, adding, ‘There’ll be a period of adjustment as we find the best way to do things, but people really do want to go out.’ It was Burns who, on the day theatres closed in March, came up with the idea of keeping the lights burning on the marquees outside the four closely clustered Shaftesbury Avenue theatres in London most often photographed for news reports. She owns two of them and contacted Cameron Mackintosh, who owns the other two. He immediately agreed. It is, she says, ‘a symbol of looking to the future’.