Kate Denby is Executive Director and Joint Chief Executive of Northern Stage, one of the top producing theatres in the UK and the largest producing theatre company in the North East.
Theatres in Newcastle, like the rest of the UK, were among the first businesses to close due to Covid and will be among the last to reopen. Before lockdown was officially announced, the theatre industry was plunged into its own shut down. The Prime Minister’s announcement on Monday 16 March recommended that people avoid theatres and other social venues, which effectively closed the doors on theatres without our industry, or the country, officially being in lockdown. A manic week followed in which we wound down the building in Newcastle and quickly organised for everyone to work from home, and by the Friday the UK was officially in full lockdown. In that first week we were due to open a new show, as well as having a whole season of other work programmed for the rest of the year, in what would have been our 50th anniversary season. In a matter of days this all collapsed and a new word entered our lexicon, ‘Unproducing’.
For a theatre and team so used to producing work we had to start the strange process of unpicking the programme, undoing all the work we had spent months, sometimes years putting together. In our industry we have some experience of this when a show has to be cancelled but we had never had to do it at such scale. Our work relies on us investing at the front end with income coming in when the show opens. But no show equals no income! We estimate that we lost £1.4 million over the course of lockdown. As we started the complex task of unproducing, not knowing how long we were going to have to postpone or cancel the schedule exacerbated the problem. Theatrical productions cannot be turned on and off like a tap, ordinarily it takes between nine to 18 months to plan a show. We worked with regional and national bodies across our sector to convey all these issues to the Government to inform discussions on the support needed for the industry. s Thankfully during the crisis we were able to secure funding to allow us to continue our community work in Byker. Our focus shifted to the practical and for 12 weeks our team helped deliver food parcels with community workers on the Byker estate. This then moved into an outdoor activity programme, called Best Summer Ever, which supported holiday activities and aimed to tackle summer hunger. We worked as part of a network to deliver this programme. From a business perspective, we realised that it was almost impossible and futile to scenario plan, when it was all based on what-ifs. Without the Government’s roadmap for reopening we couldn’t plan. When the spring programme went, it became clear we wouldn’t have enough lead time to make the autumn one, so we decided to commit to doing the Christmas production. And, to gain some measure of control we chose to go straight to digital delivery. This was a massive shift for us, it is not what we wanted to do. We are a live medium and rely on people sharing a common space and experience, but it was the only way we could have some degree of certainty. We knew that if we couldn’t come together in person, we needed other ways to connect with our community. Our digital programme has helped us maintain this audience connection and has continued through lockdown, albeit digitally. And, because we know that it will take some of our audience longer to return, we are exploring how we can expand this digital provision so if people can’t get back to the theatre when we reopen, they won’t miss out. As we move through the roadmap for reopening, we are now starting to transition our work. We will soon launch ‘Out on the Toon’, a series of outdoor works to connect with people as the city reopens and remind them of the joy of live theatre. This will form part of our gradual return to the theatre until we can welcome people back in person. We are conscious of the need to build confidence about coming back. Getting back to life and back to live is our goal, but we are working hard to make the experience as safe and considered as possible. We know the desire is there and we are planning to reopen in August but in a measured way. We have been incredibly lucky to secure funding through the Government’s Cultural Recovery Fund to allow us to work with health and safety experts to make the customer experience as safe as possible from the moment a ticket is purchased to the time people take their seats. Now that we have the roadmap and the vaccine programme is continuing apace, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
We’ve watched everything on Netflix and have been starved of collective experiences for over a year, we are now so ready to welcome back our regular audiences and introduce new people to live theatre.