I love the immediacy of theatre. I think there are few things that match its capacity to inspire communal rapture. And there are very few that can so beguilingly show us the pleasures of togetherness and collaboration, as well as the precarious magic of live art.
It’s just that the theatre is screwed. The industry has been ravaged by the pandemic – or rather, by the measures deemed necessary to control it. But it was in a bad place even before the virus seeped into its threadbare structures. covid’s disruption of theatre’s norms was unexpected and painful, yet also an opportunity to transform them. An opportunity missed.
Social distancing was never going to work in venues that need to be 60 per cent full in order to break even, and most theatres have now been closed for a year. When they were forced to shut last March, many feared that the government would fail to provide any financial support for the sector. After all, the arts aren’t exactly a breeding ground for Toryism, and theatre has a robust record as a forum for political dissent.
A now-infamous government-backed ad compounded this impression, with its bovine suggestion that an out-of-work ballet dancer’s ‘next job could be in cyber’. Even as the prospect of a bailout loomed, the newsletter Popbitch reported that the country’s most famous long-distance driver, Dominic Cummings, had allegedly growled, ‘Tell the fucking dancers that they’re at the back of the queue.’
When an aid package was announced, the money was slow to be distributed, with some strange decisions made about who should get it. For instance, did dormant Birmingham club night Sundissential really merit an award of £223,822? Meanwhile the freelancers crucial to the industry’s creative life experienced what was described as ‘rescue deficit’ – one of the slimiest euphemisms I’ve encountered even in the muculent age of Coronaspeak.
Although the industry makes a lot of noise about its vitality, the truth has long been much less rosy.
A handful of shows earn big money. A few others cover their costs. Most theatre, though, survives on a mixture of goodwill and sponsorship. Ticket prices are high, but many of the most talented artists scrape by in a state of excruciating uncertainty. The industry’s rampant neophilia is bad for anyone mid-career. The words ‘new’ and ‘young’ are used as if they’re synonyms. Older actors and creatives (especially older women) are barely visible. Structural change happens at snail’s pace, yet artists are obliged to work too hastily, while the management side of theatre companies has an in-built tendency to grow bloated and costly.
But British theatre’s most immediate problems are architectural. Though some productions happen in open or liminal spaces, its ecology is mainly an indoor one, and the buildings, regarded even by their owners as unwieldy heirlooms, shrink the vision of their occupants.
