Redundancies

[Dicky]

Sadly many people I know are currently facing redundancy, as if a company does not want to, or cannot afford to top up the government furlough scheme in August or beyond, those staff will need to be given a redundancy consultation period of at least 30 days. This means that a lot of theatres are going to have to make this decision in the next 2.5 weeks, as the last day for starting the consultation period will be 1st July.

If the company wants to make more than 100 people redundant, you need to give 45 days notice, which the date for this has already passed.

I think there is going to be a lot of bad news coming out in the next couple of weeks unfortunately, so you need to be aware that it is coming, whether you like it or not.

 

It's a dreadful time for our industry, and my thoughts are with everyone that is affected.

[Dicky]

But some great news here from Storyhouse in Chester.... My link

They are re-opening soon, they have looked at what is possible to do given current restrictions and they are changing and evolving and opening their building...

This is the forward thinking that venues across the UK could do with looking at, rather than just shutting their doors until they can put a performance on in their theatre..

Well done Storyhouse.

[gareth]

What you have to consider is that Storyhouse is much more than just a theatre (as they never tire of telling us!), and as such they have a wider potential for generating revenue in different ways. Realistically, though, if they manage to open anything more than the library (which is part of the operation) in a socially-distanced and restricted-access way, the coffee shop and cafe as a take-out operation, and some minimal cinema operation with a vastly-reduced and socially-distanced audience, I'll be very surprised. Edited June 19, 2020 by gareth

[Dicky]

if they manage to open anything more than the library (which is part of the operation) in a socially-distanced and restricted-access way, the coffee shop and cafe as a take-out operation, and some minimal cinema operation with a vastly-reduced and socially-distanced audience, I'll be very surprised.

The point of the post was to hilight the fact that with droves of theatres with their doors shut doing NOTHING, and consultations for redundancies, I know which venue I would rather be working in.... The one that's going to re-open in June...

This shows the difference between venue operators who think outside the box, change the way they do things to keep the wheels turning and to stop redundancies.

Standing still with your doors closed and waiting to see what happens with other venues isn't the way to get your way out of this unfortunately.

[gareth]

I understand that. But the point of my post was to highlight that Storyhouse is in a much better position than most other venues, in that they have not just a theatre, but a whole arts and library complex at their disposal.

 

They have a splendid cafe/bar area on the ground floor which opens out onto one of Chester's busiest streets, and from which they could conceivably run a successful takeaway operation.

 

They have a purpose-built cinema, which - as long as the building is open - could be brought into socially-distanced operation pretty easily.

 

They have cinema projection capabilities in the enormous FOH area, with plenty of space for a modest socially-distanced audience - again, with the building open this could be brought into play very easily.

 

They house the city's library, which I'm sure is something which many people would like to see reopened - and I imagine that, with some control over the number of people admitted to the library areas at any one time, it wouldn't be that difficult to restore that element of the building to some sort of operational state.

 

Most venues don't have any of this, and that's why they remain shut.

Edited June 19, 2020 by gareth

[ImagineerTom]

if they manage to open anything more than the library (which is part of the operation) in a socially-distanced and restricted-access way, the coffee shop and cafe as a take-out operation, and some minimal cinema operation with a vastly-reduced and socially-distanced audience, I'll be very surprised.

The point of the post was to hilight the fact that with droves of theatres with their doors shut doing NOTHING, and consultations for redundancies, I know which venue I would rather be working in.... The one that's going to re-open in June...

This shows the difference between venue operators who think outside the box, change the way they do things to keep the wheels turning and to stop redundancies.

Standing still with your doors closed and waiting to see what happens with other venues isn't the way to get your way out of this unfortunately.

 

Just to remind you that public gatherings of any sort are currently prohibited so even if a venue had a kick ass solution or idea ready to go right now they still can't open because the law expressly prohibits it. There are changes to the regs coming in July which provide some scope for imagination hence why there has been this sudden flurry of announcements.

 

As others have pointed out; most theatres are restricted by their physical structure. Storyhouse has loads of secondary spaces, is light & open plan and is designed with modularity and flexibility. Oxford Playhouse (to pick the latest venue to announce redundancy consultations) despite being a relatively new build venue is more like a Matcham structure - 99% of the building is the auditorium (it's about 6ft walk from the pavement to being inside the rear stalls) and the terrace and slopes of the auditorium mean that the seating layout can't be tweaked. Roll in to this the fact that the guidance about what regs and requirements apply are changed almost weekly (and apparently on a whim to distract from bad news stories) which makes it impossible for most venues to commit to the huge financial costs of re-opening.

 

We are in talks with a couple of producers about getting Theatre Tent tours up and running for the back half of this year because we (literally) rebuild the auditorium in every location and so they can commit to a tour now knowing that when the regs and recommendations keep changing we can modify the venue to comply; something that is impossible in a fixed venue.

 

Also, and I can't stress this enough, the complete lack of informed guidance / understanding / support / wisdom from the government (and in particular the DCMS) is causing huge problems. There's a draft report due out next week that we had a tiny bit of input in which included recommendations that seating layouts be physically changed (impossible in 95% of venues), that non descript "technology" was going to provide solutions, orchestras would have to be socially distanced from each-other and that musicals could re-open but without any singing in them.

[GridGirl]

orchestras would have to be socially distanced from each-other

 

We’re wrestling with this at the moment. We can fit 26 people (including the conductor) in our pit with social distancing. No good even for a Mozart opera. We’re looking at whether we can put the orchestra in the Studio at SOH (Tom, I can’t remember if I took you guys in there or not!) which we did some years ago for an opera which had an orchestra too big for our pit - despite all the possibilities of it going badly wrong, it didn’t. As well as a good sized floor space it also has a mezzanine level so we could distance vertically as well as horizontally. Of course this depends on whether the venue is available, be that no one else in there, or actually usable as it’s under the Concert Hall which is undergoing major renos - at one point apparently it was going to be possible to see from the floor of the studio, which is basement level, through to the roof of the Concert Hall (the CH stage is at level 2, and it’s a long way up from there!).

[J Pearce]

Well put Tom. It's very hard to commit to planning anything when things change so rapidly with no forewarning.

 

My work at the conservatoire is pretty safe, but I'll be financially down when furlough contributions kick in as the company I do casual work for won't be able to contribute (being legally prevented from trading...) so will just stop paying us. I can't blame them really, if they keep paying us they'll go bust then stop paying us. There's no good route forwards.

 

No redundancy either for a large part of the crew at that company, an average show is probably 50-75% casuals on zero hour contracts, not rare to have a show that is just casual crew. I can survive, but very worried for some of my colleagues and friends who will have zero income once the furlough stops.

Edited June 20, 2020 by J Pearce

[indyld]

While the news is currently using 'theatres' as a particular hook, the much broader entertainment and similar industries, both for employed and the freelancers, is obviously in a huge hole that it seems hard to get out of by simply 'thinking creatively' and opening the cafe for takeaway.

Just as the inforgraphic going around that shows how the 'performer' is small part of a production, so too are the actual theatre and direct employment contracts within it a small part of the economic iceberg. It's not like there is any comfort in the summer festivals this year, nor as if the corporate event industry is coming back strong in the autumn. Manufacturers, hire suppliers, trucking, the list goes on. No one is in a good spot. When you hear about a specific theatre not able to open a show, or even a particular person unable to scrap their cello, it doesn't really indicate the sheer scale when it comes to the numbers of jobs.

 

I suspect that there are also a large number of zombie jobs around. I know of several people (neither employed in an actual theatre, nor a cello-scraper) that know full well that they should 'enjoy furlough while they can' because once the support systems start to be removed, there is a high likelihood that their employer in our sector is unable to find meaningful work for them. These are not isolated situations either.

Edited June 20, 2020 by indyld

[Jivemaster]

My full time wage now comes from the NHS so I'm fully and stably (and boringly!) employed.

BUT IMO anyone who hasn't had a rolling recovery plan made and ready to implement will suffer, and will have second pickings of the freelance talent available.

If central government gives you two weeks notice that you may open -even in a restricted form- could you get something together in the time and get some tickets sold?

Maybe it's not going to be a goldmine show, it may not even make a profit! But those that don't open may well never open and get redeveloped into apartments.

 

NO-ONE is ever going to declare the virus permanently and completely gone, it's just going to subside in reality and the public's opinion, steadily. The pandemic will end but the virus may never go away completely.

 

For performance licensed premises, who is keeping the licence valid? I knew a venue that forgot to renew their music singing and dancing (then) licence and the reapplication for this cost them a total rewire of everything a total rebuild of the kitchen/bar areas and total new toilets. Only the building listing let them escape adding lifts for disabled access. The cost was massive.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Jivemaster

[kerry davies]

A question for you guys, if a government minister stood up there on Monday and said it was safe to go to the theatre again, would you? Any minister flanked by any number of scientists, would you trust them not to be lying to you? That is the key element here, public trust.

 

Yesterday a poll showed that over 60% asked were keen to get back to live events but the same poll confirmed that over 60% had no intention of going near crowds for many moons yet. Yesterday was also the day it was revealed that every single government minister had lied every single day for 22 days in April. Think long term, this is going nowhere yet.

[ImagineerTom]

It’s not about demanding that venues can open; it’s about the fact we cannot open and that (despite multiple government statements to the contrary) there’s NO support provided (less that half of companies in the leisure sector actually qualified for the hospitality and leisure grants & support schemes) plus there isn’t any meaningful dialogue coming from the government. They are talking to major retailers, airlines, holiday companies, broadcasters - all those guys have timelines and information and projections. The theatre / events / circus sector haven’t got any of that and it’s literally only this week that the government have announced intentions to begin dialogues to outline possible future procedures to consider producing a roadmap to begin a route to maybe thinking about possibly putting a plan together.

 

It’s really telling that every single person in the events and theatre world who has had (very limited) interaction with the government / politicians are now going public and saying things are really really bad...

[themadhippy]

if a government minister stood up there on Monday and said it was safe to go to the theatre again, would you?

Only if every mp and ever lord is back in westminster

[Brian]

A question for you guys, if a government minister stood up there on Monday and said it was safe to go to the theatre again, would you?

 

As I regularly go to the theatre as a punter I was invited to take part in the Indigo survey. I found the questions they asked very thought provoking.

 

If you haven't seen it, the results are here, it's well worth everyone having a read...

 

After-The-Interval-Wave-1-Report.pdf

 

...have a careful look at the questions asked before you study the results.

[Ynot]

Back at this point...

But some great news here from Storyhouse in Chester.... My link

The solution at Storybook seems to revolve mainly around cinema. Which means rather than allowing all of the staff to return, it would likely be just ONE technician (to run the films then put their feet up for a couple of hours maybe) and the consumables sales staff - who would be occupied for maybe 30 mins before screen time and again thumb-twiddling til the punters leave.

 

I don't know what it's like in Chester, but the majority of times I've been to the cinema (admittedly not a regular) the only time I've seen more than a handful of bums on seats is at the start of a run for a big name movie. Yes, they can - unlike theatre - run the film multiple times in a day/week with minimal costs, but that's not going to attract the numbers that a show would, even if it were a covid-free zone.

 

It's all very well saying clap for the venue, but as others have said it's not as easy as that.

 

My venue is fortunately volunteer run, with just one PT admin who's furloughed atm and contract cleaners etc. Even the bar staff are vols. But that does mean that with the govt support we've had thus far we are in a much better position than many other theatres. But even then we are having to look ahead to what measure we might be able to implement before opening, and we can't see many at all that will reduce the risks of 1 person sitting with at least 8 bodies around him that he doesn't know and may be a risk. Add to that the fact that with a volunteer workforce, many of whom are not the youngest spring chickens from techs to bar to FoH, it's going to be tricky asking them to work in those conditions too.

 

I personally share the grim pessimistic but realistic opinion that it's going to be early 2021 to even Spring before we'll have anything viable to offer that enough punters CAN attend or will WANT to attend to make it viable - be that pro theatre or am-dram.