'This is hard on your soul': the coronavirus's threat to new theatres

‘The set is still sitting there like the Mary Celeste,” says Rachel Edwards, artistic director of the new Boulevard theatre in Soho. Last month, she was forced to abandon a revival of Lucy Prebble’s The Effect after the coronavirus outbreak led theatres to close. Edwards had just begun technical rehearsals when Boris Johnson warned the public not to visit theatres.

“I’d said to the company we’d have to close at some point,” she says. “I was hoping to get through the tech. So if we had to down tools, we could return and hit the ground running. I was being optimistic that we’d be shut down for a couple of weeks.” The Effect was due to have its first preview on 19 March but the Boulevard announced its temporary closure shortly after Johnson’s 16 March briefing; the technical rehearsal was never completed. That was just over two weeks ago, “but it feels like a lifetime”, says Edwards. “The longest two weeks in everyone’s lives.”

The Boulevard is part of a £40m redevelopment in Walker’s Court, at the end of Berwick Street market in Soho, central London. Edwards says the theatre’s owner, Soho Estates, was swift to reassure everyone that no one would lose their job and they are in the process of seeing if some staff will be furloughed. The Effect was to be the third production of the Boulevard’s inaugural season. As no one knows when theatres will be able to reopen, Edwards says that planning has become impossible. “We can’t make any real decisions around existing projects until we know when we are allowed back in. You can only do hypothetical schedules.”

The Effect has been postponed, as has a revival of Athol Fugard’s Hello and Goodbye. The Boulevard’s production of Billy Roche’s The Cavalcaders, directed by Kathy Burke, is still in the schedule.

Edwards says her team have risen to the challenges but she highlights two difficulties of facing an unprecedented crisis as a newly established company. As a small, fledgling team, “you’re establishing yourselves internally. We’ve been together 15 months not 15 years.” There is also the theatre’s relationship with its new audience to consider. “It’s a very delicate thing, cultivating audiences from a standing start. You don’t have any data, any audience at all at the start. For us, as a new venue, that’s been the most depressing thing. That journey is suspended now. We’ve only been open since the end of October, and there was a lot of momentum and positivity.”

The Boulevard’s first production was an intimate and rousingly atmospheric staging of a song cycle, Ghost Quartet, whose performers invited some of the audience to have a nip of whisky and even play musical instruments on stage. Many venues have been quick to release online streams of past productions as a means of maintaining profile, satisfying audience demand and in some cases appealing for donations. There is a soundtrack of Ghost Quartet, and films of that production and its successor, The Sunset Limited. Edwards is considering the logistics of releasing them.

Alex Clifton, the artistic director of Storyhouse in Chester, which opened in 2017, tells me that his theatre has focused on sharing new original content online. More established theatres have huge archives of work they can release, he says. Instead, Storyhouse has invited actors to do twice-a-day storytelling online, at 11am and 6pm. Storyhouse’s function, he says, has always included asking the most vulnerable in their community what they need. Traditionally, that has been offering a space for events. Now, without a physical space to share, they are focusing on other resources. There are creative workshops and arts-and-crafts sessions online, plus a karaoke choir. After the theatre closed, its cafe remained open on a pay-what-you-can basis. It essentially became a soup kitchen, says Clifton. “The only people out in the city, the vast majority, were homeless people. So we were giving away hot food and free drinks to up to 100 people a day.”

On 6 March, Storyhouse announced it was postponing two home-produced shows, Brewster’s Millions and Antigone, “due to economic uncertainty resulting from the coronavirus development”. It was one of the first of a flood of similar announcements from UK theatres. The shows were a big investment for Storyhouse. “The season was due to cost us £190,000 of invested money, and a total of half a million,” says Clifton. “It was a painful decision, but looking at the scale of the problem internationally it felt clear to us. The risk was too great.” A director and designer were the only people assigned to the production; they were just about to hold the first auditions and did not want to take on actors without being able to fulfil their contracts.

Clifton says Storyhouse is now in “significant jeopardy” as 83% of its income is earned income. But, as a relatively new organisation, “we have been able to create a business model that’s reasonably nimble. We don’t have an enormous pool of practitioners who are employed by our theatre.”

He has established a hardship fund for freelance creatives who work with Storyhouse regularly. Despite the supporting measures announced by the government, some practitioners are “falling between the gaps”, he says. The hardship fund was enabled by the furloughing of more than 80% of staff, leaving a team of 15. “As a new organisation, we haven’t had time to build up the huge reserves of a bigger organisation,” he says. “We are exposed, but the priority has to be taking care of staff. Government support was critical.”

Three per cent of Storyhouse’s income is from Arts Council England, which was quick to announce a £160m emergency response package for cultural organisations and freelancers to survive the crisis. Looking to the future, Clifton hopes ACE’s support for organisations will be “proportionate to the jeopardy that organisations are facing across the sector rather than proportionate to the subsidy that they receive. Three per cent of our income comes from the Arts Council, that’s all, but we are a £7m-turnover organisation and a relatively new one, facing significant jeopardy. This needs to be about the ability of the overall sector – making sure the smaller newer organisations, that operate on different models that aren’t as reliant on the Arts Council as others, continue to strive in the future.”

Many theatres operate as charities, such as Hope Mill in Manchester, which opened in 2015 and usually receives no arts or government funding. Joseph Houston, its artistic director, says they are now in “a very vulnerable position”. Until the end of last year, Hope Mill had operated as a limited company, but Houston and his husband, William Whelton, with whom he co-founded the theatre, decided that becoming a charitable organisation would open up more funding possibilities. “If we had stayed as an independent limited company, I fear we’d be in an even more uncertain situation,” says Houston. However, certain pots of funding and grants will only be open to them once they have operated as a charity for two years.

ACE has pledged £50m support for organisations not in its national portfolio, and Hope Mill will be applying for assistance. Otherwise, it is relying on donations from audience members and supporters. Like the Boulevard and Storyhouse, Hope Mill found that many customers chose to donate the cost of tickets to postponed productions. “The amazing thing has been seeing the amount of love and support for the venue.” There are plans for an online fundraising concert featuring singers from past Hope Mill shows to “keep people aware that we’re still here and we plan on reopening whenever we can”.

Hope Mill’s biggest forthcoming production is Houston’s production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella, with choreography by Whelton. It was set to begin previews on 9 May. “We know now that we won’t be opening until the end of June if not July at the earliest.”

Houston and Whelton set up Hope Mill with a £10,000 loan. “Back then we used to say we had nothing to lose. Now, there is so much to lose. That’s the hardest thing. It keeps a roof over our heads, but we’re also supporting other people’s mortgages.” You have to blank out the worst-case scenarios, Houston says. “The hardest thing is the unknown.”

Like Edwards and Clifton, he has found programming to be a puzzle. But he is making the most of having more time to develop ideas for Hope Mill. “When you’re in the thick of it, going from production to production, you have ideas but can’t really see them through. Now we’re able to look at those ideas, such as supporting new writers in the north-west.”

Houston and Whelton’s theatre is one of the tenants of a grade II-listed former cotton mill. “We’ve been there pretty much 24/7 over the past four and a half years.” Being shut out is “the strangest feeling”. All artistic directors are desperate to return to their theatres. But, as Edwards says, “it will be terribly moving to go back to any theatre. Now, we’re crossing the road to avoid our neighbours. The idea of going back into a theatre and sitting next to someone makes me feel emotional. It’s the beauty of a congregation of people watching the same thing. To be denied that is terribly hard on your soul.”