Full transcript: Jon Morgan on London Real
0:48 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Jon Morgan, former director of both the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Federation for Scottish Theatre and the current director of the Theatres Trust in Britain.
1:09 Your mission is to protect and promote Britain’s theater buildings, ensuring their survival and ongoing use as performance spaces, which has been made nearly impossible due to restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. You have called for a quote, “urgent support,” and have been at the forefront of discussions around ways to protect British culture and this crucial industry that brings in 2.7 billion pounds annually to the UK economy. John, welcome to London Real.
1:36 Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Look, it’s great to have you here. You know, I’ve spent the last couple weeks getting out there and trying to talk to people to find out how we can get London back to work. You know, as an entrepreneur, I know it’s a crucial part of the economy and also people’s mental health and physical health, and you know, most of the people out there are complaining of a few things.
1:58 They’re saying there’s a lack of leadership from our government. They feel like there’s a disproportionate response to the virus, and there’s also a lack of science-based decision-making, and so I’d love to talk about some of this stuff with you today. Also, no one seems to be talking about theater, which boggles my mind, especially when I started looking into the numbers. It seems like the sector employs over 290,000 people. Currently over 70 of those jobs are at risk.
2:22 Over 34 million people visit our theaters each year. 24 of all holiday visitors to London go to the theater. The theater generates 133 million pounds in VAT payments, and again 2.7 billion to the UK economy, which trumps the 1.1 billion spent by live sports events. I mean, it’s a massive industry, and more importantly, it’s the culture. It’s the reason people love a city like London.
2:46 And so I’d love to talk about that today. I know the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, just came out with some announcements about what they were going to do with the furlough and the work scheme, but curiously theater again wasn’t mentioned by name. So tell me, what’s it like to be in your shoes? What’s it like on the ground, and what are some of the biggest challenges you face in getting the sector back to work? Well, as you just said, you know, the theater sector in the UK is unrivaled in the world, and it’s one of the most successful parts of our, our kind of export industry as well, and that 34 million people who attend theater that you mentioned, that’s more people than go to live league football matches in the UK, and you know how popular football is in the UK.
3:27 So, contrary to what some people might think, theater is a mass population interest. Lots of people go to the theater. So yeah, this last five, six months since theaters had to close their doors completely in March has just been awful. It’s been, it’s been horrible. Yes, the theater sector has some subsidy from the state, and those theaters that are subsidized have probably been in a better position to kind of survive things, but that’s only about 12, 13 percent of all theaters in the UK.
3:58 Most theaters run on probably no subsidy, and so all their income, whether it’s from ticket sales, whether it’s from bar sales, whether it’s from restaurant sales, all completely gone. And of course, the furlough scheme has been a lifesaver. About 70 percent of all the theaters have used it over the last five or six months, and even though some industries have started to go back and start to return to work, still about 50 odd percent of theater workers are on the furlough scheme.
4:27 That compares with about 12 or 13 in the general, you know, across all industries. So, the idea that the furlough scheme would come to an end at the end of October was essentially a cliff edge for the sector. We’ve already seen six theaters go into administration. About 5,000 redundancies have been announced. They’ve not all gone through yet, but they’re in the process of discussing them, so it was great to hear the chancellor this morning at least talk about something to replace the furlough scheme, although as you rightly point out, it wasn’t, it’s not sector-specific, it’s not specific to culture.
5:04 In my experience, the Treasury are not keen on doing sector-specific interventions. They tend to prefer industry-wide interventions, which I kind of get, but actually doesn’t make sense. So the new scheme, the job, well, now I’ve got, I can’t remember the new name now. I think it’s called the job protection scheme rather than the, yeah, I’m not sure, a job support scheme. That’s what it’s called.
5:29 So the new job support scheme. It was a job protection scheme before. It means that you as an employer need to bring your staff back for at least one third of the working week, and the government will support them or pay their salary for the other two thirds. So that works if you’re running a shop or a restaurant where you’ve got less demand, and so you don’t need to bring in all your staff all the time, but that doesn’t really work for theaters in the same way, because it still costs the same to put on one show in one evening regardless of whether or not you can have a 100 audience in there or whether you can have 30 audience.
6:09 And I think that’s the critical thing. So in the middle of August theaters were able to reopen. So March through to mid-August completely shut, and then in the middle of August the government announced that theaters could open with social distancing in the same way that restaurants can and bars can. The problem for theaters is that’s just not viable, because very few of them are subsidised. They rely on that earned income, and although it’s a successful industry, it works on really narrow margins, so you need a certain number of people to come through the doors to make it even worthwhile opening those doors, and it’s roughly 70 percent, 70 capacity, 70 capacity, to make it even financial sense to kind of break even and pay everybody.
6:50 And be able to do it. That’s right, and that’s probably not compatible with current social distances. No, it’s not. Right now, with the current social distancing rules, at best you could probably manage 30 percent. So what we’ve seen since the middle of August is very few theaters have reopened, though, although technically they can if they want to.
7:10 A handful have, including some in the West End. So Nimax, who run about four or five theaters in the West End, are planning to reopen in October. The Palladium has reopened, but what those guys are doing some other theaters nationally as well. What all those guys are doing are putting on one-man shows. Okay, they’re putting on cheaper shows, not the shows, not big musicals, not big, you know, big theater plays, not Shakespeare, because that’s just too expensive.
7:38 So they’re doing it as a kind of a lost leader, as a way of encouraging the public to come back to the theater, and as a way of at least covering some of their costs, because even when a theater is closed, you’ve got to cover whatever percentage of the staff salary that isn’t going to be covered by government. You’ve got to pay that, and you know, even a closed building costs money to maintain, to insure, to rent if you don’t own it. You know, all those things, all those costs haven’t gone away.
8:08 And we know from research that about 70 percent of the theaters in the UK have enough money left to last until Christmas. So this announcement today will push that date back a bit. We’ll make them be out. You know, they’ll enable them to last a bit longer, couple months, a couple of months longer, but we won’t see theater suddenly going, oh great, now we can reopen it. We won’t be able to reopen until one of two things happens.
8:33 Either we can persuade the government, and we’re working on that at the moment, either we can persuade the government that we can put in place enough, what they call mitigation measures, to mean that you can push the capacity up a little bit. I can tell you a little bit more about that if you want me to go into some of the detail on that. Or we get to the stage, and of course, we look, looks like we’re a long way off, that we get to the stage where we can lift social distancing.
8:58 That’s not going to happen this side of Christmas, that’s for sure. So it’s not looking great for the theater sector. Well, let’s talk about the distancing measures, because I was, I was thinking about talking to you this morning, and I, I take the tube. I take the Northern line in every day, and there I am, sitting next to people, so like I would in a theater. You know, everyone’s wearing a mask, but we’re in this compartment.
9:23 It’s maybe 100 people in there, 150 people on there, going on a journey that could be 30 minutes or an hour, hour and a half. A few weeks ago I went to Turkey on holiday, four-hour flight, we’re all in a plane, all with masks on, 200 people for four hours, which probably is a lot like watching something in the West End that’s sanctioned, and yet we can’t do the same for an industry that’s 2.7 billion pounds. So again, does when you look at those comparisons, does it frustrate you, or do you say, the government, how can we try to move to something that makes it, you know, more viable, because again, there’s a real industry at play here, and I want to ask you the question later of what, what does London look like if our cultural venues disappear?
10:09 And I want to get to that later, but assuming we don’t want that to happen How do we move forward there? When you have discussions with government, what do they say to that? Well, they’re, they’re perhaps understandably really, really cautious. Uh, in the, the first, um, uh, uh, uh, barrier was their fear around the interaction between performers on stage and an audience. And so for a while they were saying, if you’re singing, you need to be at least three meters apart from any other performer.
10:37 Well, that’s not going to work, so they’ve calmed down about that, and they’ve accepted our proposals around saying, well, what about putting performers into bubbles so they can actually touch each other and be close to each other on stage? Because you can’t have a love scene you know, or fight scene, without the actors breaching the one-meter, two-meter rule. So they’ve accepted that we can now have actors on stage performing in pretty normal ways. You take out the first row of the audience so that they’re not too close to the stage, so if there’s any spittle coming from the stage, it doesn’t hit the audience.
11:08 All that kind of thing. But yeah, we are frustrated as an industry as to why it is that you can sit in a plane for two, three, four hours with no social distancing and just a mask on. The explanation that’s been given to us is to do with ventilation. So, airplanes have individual ventilation units for each person, so although the air is recirculated and purified, it doesn’t go from one person to another. I’m not entirely sure of the science on that, but, you know, other colleagues of mine who are more knowledgeable at this site are looking into that, so we’re working really hard on ventilation, so looking at the ventilation systems that theaters have, putting in place what are called HEPA filters, which filter out all the viruses.
11:52 Essentially, a whole bunch of technology solutions that could make it more possible. Uh, we’re also looking at exactly how the one-meter-plus rule could be applied in theaters. There’s no agreed arrangement at the moment, so each theater is interpreting it in their own way. Some theaters are being quite cautious, and they’re saying it’s one meter that way, it’s one meter that way, it’s one meter behind me, and it’s one meter diagonal, which means that not only do you have to have gaps between groups of people on a row, you have to have gaps between rows.
12:26 That’s how you get down to such low numbers. Right? What we’re trying to say to government is let’s make it one meter between people in rows, but not, not within a row, but not row to row, because let’s face it, we’re all facing in the same direction. I’m looking at the back of someone else’s head, so, you know, I’m not going to be, you know, they’re not going to be breathing in my air. Uh, if we were able to do that, not, not eliminate each other or every other row, and have people maybe one or two seats apart, then we’d be able to get up to 60, 70 percent, still with a form of social distancing, and we’d have all the other hygiene measures, you know, masks and one-way systems and sanitizer and all the other things that you’ve seen in shops and restaurants already.
13:08 So we’re hoping, a game changer. It would be a game changer. It would turn potentially most of the industry right back on. Yeah, and you’d see all the ancillary economic benefits that go with that, and cultural benefits. Well, the, the ancillary economic benefits you were asking me about, you know, what happens to cities like London or towns like Manchester or Birmingham.
13:26 Um, as, as you know, they’re dead right now, you know, and the restaurants and bars rely on the theater sector as a way of, what, generating revenue and income. So we know from research that outside of the West End, for every pound that someone spends on a theater ticket, they spend about 11 pounds going to the pub, or going to the restaurant, or on transport to get in and out of town. In the West End, it’s 83 pounds for every pound. Every, yeah, because of the number of tourists coming.
13:57 You’ve got hotel stays. You’ve got a whole bunch of other stuff that makes that one to 83 ratio in the West End. So it’s not just important for the theater industry. It’s important for our towns and cities. You know, we know that, you know, notwithstanding what’s been happening with Brexit, retail is dead on its feet, and we’ll continue in that direction with the increase in online retail, out-of-town shopping.
14:18 So what are we going to do to animate our town centers, now city centres, if it’s not culture and leisure? Those have got to be at the heart of the recovery. It’s so strange, though, and yet it’s not the most obvious thing you think of. You know, and I’ve been, I would see Death of a Salesman in Piccadilly Circus, I think, earlier this year. Wendell Pierce, the guy from The Wire, was there.
14:36 It was amazing. So, I think the last performance, they were hugging on stage. I was like, wow, it was the last performance. It was incredible, and it was electric, and we were in Piccadilly, and it was packed, and people are out, and of course you know, you have the dinner before and then the drinks afterwards, like you said, the train tickets, and I, there was definitely people that traveled to see him, even, uh, probably internationally to see that. Um, but you forget somehow that it’s a big draw, and it powers the economy in a way you think sometimes that culture you know, it’s something that would be nice to have.
15:07 You know, oh, it’s nice to have the museum, but it’s not an essential service. But it actually is to a city center. It certainly is. I mean, you know, even before this all happened, we spend a lot of our time at the Theatres Trust helping people, um, not only stay open, but help people reopen theaters that have fallen empty and have fallen into disuse. Um, and it’s, you know, over the last 10, 12 years we’ve managed to reopen 80 theaters, and part of the reason of that is because of that local economic impact.
15:34 So to give you two examples, um, there’s a massive theater called the Bradford Odeon, which the local council have decided to put money into reopening because they know it will reanimate Bradford town centre, and that’s going to reopen as a music venue. The NEC Group, the people who run the exhibition center in Birmingham, are going to run it, uh, similarly, in Stockton in the Northeast, which is, you know, a pretty deprived part of the UK. The local authority are investing in reopening the Stockton Globe also as a music venue, to be run by the Ambassadors Theatre Group, and they, they’ve done it, or they’re doing it, because it will be tens of millions of pounds going into the local economy.
16:13 So you know, one of the things we’re saying to government, quite apart from support the sector needs right now when it comes to the recovery, and the investment that Johnson wants to make into infrastructure and building, that should also go into theater buildings, because for every pound you spend on, uh, reopening a theater building or improving it, making it more attractive, providing more kind of community spaces, for every pound you spend you get about 150 pounds back, uh, in terms of value. So it’s pretty important. How come that’s lost in conversation, though?
16:44 Because I haven’t heard it mentioned once in the past four months. Oh yeah, I suppose I’m in a bit of a bubble, um, as, as people are in when they work in a particular sector. So it feels like we have been talking about it all those times. And in fairness, you know, in fairness to the government, our current culture minister just does get it. He does understand the importance of culture, and, and I think Sunak does as well.
17:05 I’m disappointed that he hasn’t done a culture-specific, uh, uh, um, uh, intervention just now, but we should remember that he did come up with 1.57 billion pounds in extra support for the sector. Um, we don’t know quite how that’s going to land yet, because it’s still being dispersed, right? Um, so ask Council England, who are one of the main bodies that are going to disperse, uh, the vast majority of this money. They’re going to, I think they’ve had about 4,000 applications for funding.
17:35 Um, so what’s going to, what’s clear is that there will be winners and losers, not every single theater or museum or gallery, because it’s across all the arts, not just theaters. Not all of them are going to be able to get the support they want. Um, I reckon probably they’ll have a one-in-four success rate in terms of people getting support. Um, so we’ll know about that in the next week or two, actually. So I think the next couple of weeks or next month is going to be pretty crucial, because a, will start to see whether or not the new jobs support scheme is going to be effective in terms of supporting theaters, and b, we’ll see which ones don’t get the money from the government, from the 1.57 billion.
18:16 So although we’ve only had six closures, so far, I’m anticipating more theaters closing over time, and more redundancies as well. Yeah, let’s just go back to this setup, because it’s everything, and that’s the thing. I mean, you know, it seems that there’s the rule of six, and then there’s the where the mask or don’t wear the mask, and the social distance is two meters, and then it’s one meter, and it just seems that since there’s no clear-cut, science-based protocol that everyone’s left wondering, and I’ve heard that even some theaters have completely redone their sitting plan for social distance, but the truth is a month later that rule could be changed, and then the capital’s gone.
18:53 Same with the filters, same with all that. Sound like big capital expenditures, and then what the proposal you’re talking about could quite literally bring back theater. If we could just agree on the science or test the science, so how do you move that forward to where you can? I don’t know, do a pilot program and test it. You know, I mean, um, I heard some figures this week that came out last week that we’re talking about where is this transmitted, where is the virus being transmitted?
19:20 It was like 43% still in care homes, 26% in schools and universities, 15% in offices, less than 5% in the hospitality space. And so if the numbers are that low then it’s worth taking some calculated risks, especially when you’re talking about an economy which can lead to mental health and even physical health and even death. Right? So how do we push that forward? I guess how do you get those answers to find out if you can open these theaters?
19:48 And also, I feel like if you could take one and do it, it would open up everyone’s eyes, just like getting people to eat out was partially getting the fear, um, out of people’s systems, not just the customers, the workers, the entrepreneurs. So how could we move forward? I think there is an appetite to go back to the theater. Absolutely. Um, not us, but other organizations have been doing sort of public surveys to kind of find out what the appetite has been, and it has slowly been increasing over the last few months.
20:16 I mean, I’m not sure what’s going to happen now with the kind of reversal of things, whether people’s appetite will start to decrease, but there is an appetite, I think, absolutely. If we were able to increase capacity to 60 or 70, we would be able to sell those tickets as well. I think, I think, on the science question, Public Health England are on some of the meetings that I, that I, I take part in. Their study that I just quoted. Yeah, so, so we’re part of, uh, a thing the government sent up called the set-up called the Events and Entertainment Working Group.
20:42 So us and a bunch of other people running theaters and outdoor venues and all sorts of things are trying our best to kind of come up with, um, the, these mitigating measures, as I say, and we are running some pilot schemes and some pilot testing things to find out, which Public Health England are also taking part in. So I’m hopeful that we will get to a stage where, um, Public Health England are satisfied that, um, this is, that this is covered, safe. And you’re right about the expense.
21:10 You know, uh, you might be aware that Andrew Lloyd Webber, um, uh, he owns a number of theaters in the West End, including the Palladium, and he ran a pilot scheme, a pilot event, with the fantastic Beverley Knight, uh, West End performer, and, um, he, uh, he’s thrown everything at it. I mean, absolutely everything, and because he has the money to do so. So what we’re keen to do, because there are, working to make sure that the smaller theaters are also able to take part in this, and no one is left out, because there are about 100 theaters across the UK, and about 60 of them are under 400 seats.
21:45 So yes, you’ve got the juggernauts like the National Theater and the Palladium, and so on and so forth, but, but actually, the vast majority, people see theater in little studios and rooms above pubs, and we want to make sure that those guys can come back as well, because that’s actually where your emerging talent comes from as well. You know, people don’t start off at the Palladium or the National Theater. They start off in a pub around the corner, you know, doing an amateur show or whatever.
22:09 So that’s kind of really important, as part, as part of the sector, uh, as part of how we reopen. So we’re hopeful that these experiments would demonstrate that it’s, um, that it’s feasible to be open safely, and we’ll, we’ll just have to see what happened with Lloyd Webber. He, he found that it wasn’t, well, what he wanted to do was, um, he actually wanted to do a non-socially distant show to demonstrate to Public Health England and to the Department of Culture, Media and Sport that it could be done safely, but they wouldn’t let him, because it’s, it’s not, it’s not allowed.
22:41 So he did a socially distant show, um, to show, um, to demonstrate all the things that you could use, you could throw at it. So I mean, he’s thrown everything at it, replacing all the door handles with a, I can’t remember what it is now, it’s a kind of, uh, covering or metal that, that doesn’t, uh, that, which, which, which, the, the bugs can’t survive on. Uh, he has fogging machines that you have to walk through, that, that basically just got to zap everything as you’re walking through them.
23:09 I mean, that’s all really expensive kit. Um, and what we’re trying to make sure we do as the Theatres Trust is to make sure that whatever standard we agree with government isn’t so ridiculously high that those small, those important little theaters in villages and towns across the country, that they aren’t excluded from that. So again, I won’t get into too much boring technical detail, but we are pushing really hard to say if you have a free-standing air conditioning unit with all the white filters in it, that should also be sufficient.
23:39 I mean, we need to test all that to make sure we can prove that’s true, but, but yeah, we’re hoping that that will come through. It’s interesting because there’s a parallel with small businesses. You know, I mean, I think it’s 98% of the GDP in London is from small and medium-sized enterprises, and it’s also where the big, the bigger, more successful businesses they start off there, right? So it’s in the same way. If you don’t support them, then the chunk of the economy dies, and also you don’t see the people that go on for the greater talent or the greater shows.
24:08 I’m sure you know, Hamilton in New York was, uh, didn’t it? It didn’t open big, although he did have some press around him, but it started small and then went big. Yeah, um, so yeah, it’s important to get this protocol to everyone. How does 2021 look? I know you even said with the 1.57 billion that might only take us to March.
24:25 Um, I, I heard that the Metropolitan Opera in New York City has just canceled the 2021 season. Wow. Um, which is obviously doesn’t bode well necessarily for American productions in London. Now they might choose different rules if there’s different protocols, but you know, how does 2021 look for you? Um, what are some of your concerns?
24:45 Yeah, I think we, we certainly won’t be seeing most theaters reopening until, I would imagine, the spring at the earliest. I mean, it’s interesting to see how some West End theaters have responded. So Nimax are planning to open, as I say, albeit with very small-scale shows. The Palladium has reopened, but with one, one-person shows, comedians, singers, that kind of thing. Uh, the Ambassadors Theatre Group and, uh, Cameron Mackintosh with his theaters, they’ve decided they’re just not going to reopen until the spring.
25:12 They’ve just said, we’re not doing it. Um, so I think spring is the earliest possible date for things to reopen. I think it, you know, the, the, the, the thing that we can’t control is what happens with the wider virus, and that, that in the end is going to determine, determine matters. The two things that would save our skin, as it would most other industries, is either the test and trace system being super, super effective, and Johnson spoke a few weeks ago about the idea of same-day testing, and that that would give you a pass to go into the theater.
25:44 Well, if we could get to that, that would be absolutely amazing. It would be revolutionary, but it feels like now, like we’re quite a long way off that. So that, and then obviously beyond that, a vaccine, like everyone would like. They’re just there to be, but you know, so vaccine. If a vaccine is until, say, the autumn next year, then we need a test and trace system that really is effective as soon as we possibly can, otherwise, yeah, I don’t know what happens beyond March, realistically.
26:12 I think, you know, we may see, yeah, I think pretty likely we’ll see more closures, and that’s where we, we step in as an organization, because we will be lobbying around what you do with those empty buildings from our perspective. And I know this is not an, this is not an easy thing to say. It’s much better for people to make stuff redundant and scale down their business but keep their business afloat than it is for the whole business to go bust. Now I’m not belittling or kind of underestimating the human impact of loads of people being made redundant, but if there’s no business, to even core business, to run that theater, then it just sits there empty, um, and, you know, will deteriorate, or developers will come along and say, well, that’s, I can turn that into a hotel, or I can turn that into whatever.
26:56 You know, we spend a lot of time uh, fighting with developers to say, actually, you know, you could turn this in back into a theater. This could be a theater again, and we’ve been very successful with that, and that’s that mothball concept, where they shut it down and wait, but you’re saying even though that might work economically, the longer it stays there, the less chance it has of a reopening, the more chance it has to be developed or something else. Yeah, you lose those theaters forever.
27:21 Yeah, and you know, and again, you know, all credit to the government for listening to us around that as well, because quite apart from the 1.57 billion, we spoke to the housing minister to say, um, can you change the planning laws, can you make some temporary changes to planning to help protect theaters where the operator goes bust and the theater goes empty, because that’s when they’re most vulnerable. So they’ve essentially raised the bar in terms of the kinds of permissions you would need to change that theater into something else. Um, and there’s also a thing called permitted development, which means a developer can demolish a building if it’s not listed or in a conservation area without planning permission.
28:03 They’ve reversed that for theaters, so now you can’t demolish a theater even if it isn’t listed, or even if it isn’t in a conservation area, just because it’s empty, there’s not a reason why you can demolish it. You have to go through full planning, and as part of planning you have to demonstrate that the theater wouldn’t be viable longer term. And so that’s the other thing we’ve got them to change. The viability test shouldn’t be based on the current conditions, because that would be crazy.
28:27 Okay, they should be based on normal conditions when we’re post-COVID. So you know, the government has listened. They have made, you know, moves in the right direction. Our concern is what happens beyond March. I think in terms of, you know, viability for most theaters.
28:40 Yeah, let me ask you a bigger-picture question. I mean, I’ve lived in London now for 20 years, and I love the city, and I left, I left San Diego, California, the beach, the sun, to live in a beautiful city. It’s a beautiful city, but I’ll take this any day, and twice on Sundays. I love this city, and I love it for so many reasons, but it’s it’s the way I feel when I’m here. It’s the people, it’s the culture, it’s everything.
29:04 And when you look at the office buildings, they’re at like 13% capacity right now, much lower than Germany and France, where they think they’ve got back to 50 or even 60% of the office workers back, and there just seems like it hasn’t been a real push to get people back into London. And I think people wrongly are believing that, you know, what, we can work from home, this is the new reality. But I actually don’t think that’s true. I think that the longer London stops becoming a viable cultural center, innovation center, center for people to work, that after a while businesses will ask themselves, well, then why are we even in England?
29:41 Maybe we’ll just move all of those jobs offshore. And so I think we’re making a, a big mistake by not understanding that. What London brings to the table in the UK is this, this great, you know, this, this proximity, you know, this critical mass of people, of ideas, of culture, which is why a theater is amazing, because it’s real people in the room having real emotions, that they’ll pay five times more than a movie theater ticket, even though you got all the CGI and you got Tom Cruise.
30:08 You still want to see the realness. And that’s what makes this city great. It doesn’t make it great because we’ve got Big Ben and we’ve got a couple landmarks and everyone’s at home on Zoom. And so I worry that in some way, the struggle you’re having culturally is just a lagging indicator that means the whole city is going to fail, and I worry that unless we get people motivated to come back into the offices and get the city back doing all the things that we love doing, um, it’s, it’s gonna actually disintegrate.
30:37 I don’t know. What do you think, because you, you know this city well? Yeah, uh, well, I’m in London even though I’ve worked in Scotland for a long time. Okay, uh, um, so I do my first experience of theater was when I was 12, and my school teacher used to take us to the National Theatre on the South Bank, and I saw amazing, you know, I saw Paul Scofield and Othello. I saw amazing productions.
30:56 So yeah, I, I had a lot of theater as a Londoner since, since, since, since the teenage but yeah, what you said about critical mass is absolutely right. When I was working in Scotland, you know, which is a large bit of land mass, but only five million people, I used to say to colleagues working in the theater sector in London, is, you’ve got critical mass, and that’s important, because artists, whether they’re theater artists or visual artists or writers, filmmakers, thrive on proximity. You know, great creativity comes from people encountering one another.
31:27 I used to run a theater in Manchester, in Northwest England, and we used to say that the conversation in the bar after the show is just as important as the show. You know, in fact, even if the show’s been [expletive], it doesn’t matter. You can, if you can have a great conversation in the bar afterwards about why the show was [expletive], then that’s a creative encounter of some kind. So you’re right that critical mass is important to the theater. We can’t survive without it.
31:50 As to what people working from home means for that, I’m, I’m a bit, I’m sure I think the jury’s out. My personal jury’s out on that at the moment, because for a lot of people, theater is an event, and I still think people will make the effort to travel into London for that event. Um, you know, although 34 million people go to the theater every year, the average is once a year for most people. So for, for most people they go to one big thing a year, and they splash out, and it often is a West End show, because that’s why they end up spending 83 quid, because it’s like this is our one big night out.
32:22 We’re gonna go and see, I don’t know, Mamma Mia, and we’re gonna have a fantastic meal. We’ll stay in a nice hotel. You know, so, so I think people will still come to the theater, even, even if they’re not living and working in the, in the city. In fact, that’s kind of backed up by some research. The Greater London Authority did, we partnered with them, uh, a couple of years ago now, research about who goes to the theater in London, and, um, the, uh, the most central London theater is visitors.
32:52 People coming in. And it’s not even workers. It’s not, it’s not really the workers staying on and going to shows. It’s people just coming in to see shows, and then outside of central London, it tends to be more localized, and people who live locally. So I think a, people will come in to London anyway to see shows, and b, outer London theatres, and maybe more regional theaters, will maybe benefit um, because, uh, people will work from home and maybe go to their local theater as well.
33:20 So you know, there are there are strings of roundabouts. I think it’s too early to say, but I’m, I’m not absolutely convinced that working from home means the death of, death of theater. Yeah, we’ll have to see. His interesting point: one of the great things about theater is that it can still thrive on national tourism, you know, because let’s, let’s face it, I mean, the Yanks aren’t coming over for a while. A lot of Heathrow is dead, but your industry can still survive and maybe even thrive if we can just figure out, you know, some of these intelligent social distancing measures just on the UK alone.
33:51 Again, people are clamoring for events, right? I mean, if you can’t go to Spain or you can’t go skiing, why not go to the West End or maybe even a local theater, but something that gives you that, you know, that feel of a break or a holiday. So that is a good thing about your industry, is that you can pull in from Britain, not just the tourists. Yeah, no, absolutely. I think, um, I don’t know the percentages that are UK audience and and tourist audience.
34:18 Certainly outside of the West End, it’s vast majority is local audience, um, uh, and you mustn’t forget sort of centers like Edinburgh, Manchester, and Bristol, you know, that have two or three major producing theaters that are a big draw for their whole region, not just for their city. So I think you’re right. I think, um, we can survive, you know, we’d like tourists to come as well, but we can survive in the meanwhile with, with just kind of UK folk coming.
34:46 Yeah. If I were to elect you Mayor of London today, or, uh, put you on the cultural, you know, ministers’ front lines, what would you do? What were the three things you would do right now, you know, to save your industry, you know, in an intelligent way, besides just cutting the massive checks? But what would you do that you think would really be the smartest decision to make? Okay, so I would work with the industry to agree these mitigating measures that mean that even short of lifting social distancing, we can, we can open our theaters to get a capacity of around about 70 percent.
35:21 I think we might be nearly there with that, but anyway, that would be my first thing, uh, because actually, as a sector, we’d much rather be back at work than taking government money. We’re, you know, as I said earlier, the vast majority of theaters don’t rely on government money normally, and we don’t like having to rely on it now. We’d much rather be working. So get us back to work by agreeing these mitigating measures. Critically, one of the, one of the issues we haven’t talked about yet is insurance.
35:47 Now, we, along with a whole bunch of other people in the industry, are currently in dispute with our insurers about business interruption. It’s not very exciting, but kind of important. And of course, perhaps understandably, the insurance industry will not insure theater shows right now. So the other thing is, um, you know, taking, it’s a big risk as a producer to put on a big show, only for there to be a local lockdown or national lockdown, which means you then have to, all the money you’ve invested in that show is lost.
36:16 So, um, we would like the government, and I would, if I was in a position to do so, to put in place an insurance guarantee scheme. There already is one for film production, so the government has stepped in with regards to film production. So we’re saying, do the same for theater production, so that theater producers can take that risk, you know. As Andrew Lloyd Webber said in his evidence recently to the DCMS committee, um, for every successful West End show, there are 10 or 20 unsuccessful ones.
36:44 So producers already are used to taking risks, but this is a risk too far without, without some kind of insurance guarantee. So those are the two things I would do immediately. The two things I would do medium term You’ve only allowed me three, but I’m going to take four. Um, is, I would put in place a safe haven scheme, so this is the mothballing thing. So, uh, a way of putting those theaters into the custody of a body, maybe us or somebody else, who would look after those buildings while they’re mothballed.
37:14 It’d be a much more cost-effective way than trying to get individual managements to do that. And then finally, when we do come out of the other side of this, um, invest in those buildings in the way that I described to you earlier, because they should be part of the recovery. That big build, build, build push should also include not building more theaters, but improving the ones we’ve got, making them more environmentally friendly, making them more accessible, making them more inclusive, making them up to date.
37:40 You know, if you’ve been to a West End theater, some of them are beautiful and have had lots of money invested in them, some of them still need a lot of work doing on them, as do some of our theaters nationally as well. So those are the four things I would do. Yeah, those are powerful. You know, I was speaking to some entrepreneurs recently out in London, and I asked them what they would ask the public for, and, um, you know, one of them was kind of a local, uh, coffee shop.
37:59 We’d been in Fitzrovia, in Soho, for about 11 years, and he just said, he said, you know, when you go to buy a coffee, he said, if you could think about supporting the local businesses, not necessarily the chain stores, with the venture capital finance. And I used to work in the City, so usually those guys are okay. But do you have anything you would want to ask the British public, or the public in London, of what they can do to help? You know, the culture, this crucial cultural institution that, again, might might not come back.
38:28 I mean, there’s businesses in London that have closed that will never come back, and we’re going to feel that. So what would be your request for the public? Well, I think if your theater has managed to reopen, and some, some have, then, then, then go, go along. You know, there are very strict regulations already in place about what we need to make to make theatre safe, and theaters are as, at least as safe as going to a bar or restaurant, arguably more safe, because the way that an audience behaves in the theater isn’t, is more controlled.
38:55 So it’s, it’s as safe as it can be to go back to the theaters that are open. So if your one is open, one near you, then I would urge you to go along. If it’s not open, then I would urge you to think about buying tickets in advance, just to help them with their cash flow. Most theaters now have put in place a very generous refund scheme, you know, in recognition of the fact that people might not want to risk buying a ticket unless they know they can get the money back should the show not go on.
39:19 So buy tickets in advance for the show. We’ve also set up a crowdfunder called Save Our Theater, so go on to that. You’ll see loads of local theaters who are doing their own crowdfunding, so we’re not fundraising for them, we’re helping them with their fundraising. So if your local theater is on there, go on there and make a donation. They’re all giving out prizes in exchange for donations, you know, whether it’s signed programs or tickets to shows, all that kind of things.
39:45 So those are the various ways that the public, if they, if they were minded to, could, could support their local theater. Super important stuff. So I completely agree. You know, if people are listening to this, you know, book in advance, spend some money, support your local theaters. They’re a crucial part of the economy and the culture.
40:02 You know, I’m trying to go out there and spend as much money as I can with my local businesses, and my tailors, and you know, my restaurants and my coffee shops, and just show them that we want you to be around. We’re gonna just stretch a little bit and go the extra mile, because when they’re gone, you know, they’re gone forever. Um, and the, the other alternatives aren’t gonna be as rich, I don’t think. And again, maybe to recognize how important this industry is to so many other industries in the city.
40:28 And I’ll be honest, it’s not the first thing I thought of, you know, when I started going, when I finally started getting a little frustrated and angry, because I knew friends with wine bars and coffee shops and personal trainers and gyms that we’re all saying, Brian, like, why are you talking about this stuff? I, I just thought cultural would be nice to have, but that’s, it’s not true. It’s a major part of the economy. It’s the reason we’re in London, because it has world-class things.
40:53 I’m taking my sons this Sunday to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur bones, which they’ve been saying, dinosaur bones, for three weeks. Um, and it’s, it’s, it’s one of the reasons I live in London, because we have access to these tremendous things. We went to the Space Museum two weeks ago. We’re trying to get out there. I also think it’s important to retrain the public, um, that it’s okay to go to these venues.
41:14 So I love the fact that you guys open, if you can, even at 60 or 70 capacity, just to get everybody seen, that it works. And I think when people watch other industries back to business, then they get more positive about it, and it has this knock-on, almost critical mass effect, to where people are like, oh, I went to the theater, I went to the restaurant, this worked, that worked, I went to the store, I didn’t die. Okay, I can go tomorrow. And I went to London, I went on a train.
41:37 And then we just get people warm back up, because I think even the government admits that the campaign of fear was a bit overdone, and now we’re going to have to try to, of course, get people back, and now there’s the new lockdown. So, unfortunately, mixed messages. I’m hoping that Christmas isn’t cancelled at this point, but, um, but look, I really appreciate you talking about these issues. I really hope that we can find this science-based solution that works for all theaters, like you said, not just the big ones in London, and I really think we can, you know, I really think we could spend a little more time on the science and convince everybody.
42:12 Again, I think there’s a halfway point between making sure the economy is strong and the science are satisfied. I think if we tried to do all of one, it’s the wrong mistake. If you put economy first, it’s a wrong mistake. If you said everyone is going to be a completely 100% safe, but everyone in a bubble, that’s the mistake too, and I think we need to get comfortable with the solution in the middle. Yeah, I think you’re right.
42:33 I mean, the chancellor today in his statement said, I can’t save all businesses, and, and we, you know, we get that. I think everyone gets that, but similarly, um, you can’t expect to be completely protected from COVID. You know, we’re, we’re, we’re a long way off of a, a vaccine. In the meantime, we’ve got to get on with our lives. So it is finding that midpoint where it’s safe enough.
42:56 And you know, I mean, I suppose my only worry about the safe-enough approach is, is, um, it means a lot of people with disabilities or existing conditions are probably still going to stay away, which is a shame. You know, you know, they’ve got to do what they’ve got to do. Um, but yeah, nevertheless, we’ve still got to get people back in. You can’t get a ticket to go to the Bridge, um, on the South Bank, uh, they’ve opened with all their, um, uh, Alan Bennett talking head shows.
43:22 You can’t get a ticket, because, or a, because they’re selling 30, but also because people want to go back. Right? Yeah, and that’s a good point, and also maybe by getting the healthy people back, you get the studies, and you paved the way for the people that you know are a little hesitant or have those sicknesses. But it does, it’s a really emotional issue. I think we’re all riding on a lot of emotions.
43:42 We’re riding on a lot of strange statistics and numbers. We’re riding on this concept of people dying, and it gets magnified, and I think sometimes it’s hard to make the most intelligent decisions. It’s really difficult for us lay people, non-scientists, to make intelligent decisions, especially when scientists don’t all agree with each other. I’m sure you’re aware, just a couple of days ago there were two open letters published by two sets of scientists saying almost diametrically opposite things about how we should deal with this.
44:08 So I kind of get, I mean, I you know, I don’t suppose I don’t think the government’s paid a perfect hand, but I also get why it’s challenging for them to get it right, because it’s all very well saying rely on the science, but when the science isn’t comprehensive or isn’t, um, uh, not comprehensive, what’s what I’m looking for isn’t, uh, absolutely certain. Yeah, then then then there’s, there’s you know, in these meetings with Public Health England, on many occasions I didn’t say, well, we just don’t know. Yeah, we just don’t know.
44:36 I know, and you had both those scientific reports, and then the common sense approach might be completely different. Yeah, you’d be like, I just don’t think that’s true. And yeah, I mean, if I see another computer model on what happens when you sneeze, but that’s another reason why so many people, whether it’s going to the theater or any other kind of COVID measures, are kind of going their own way. People are kind of interpreting the rules and saying, I don’t think that rule is important, or I think that one is, you know, and my sister, for instance, who is very cautious, is, you know, she’s, she’s not, not going.
45:07 Well, she’s going to work, but she’s insisting on all sorts of safety measures. Um, won’t travel, all that kind of thing. And then I know other people who are kind of, you know, whatever. Just it doesn’t matter. The rules don’t really apply, right, to me.
45:19 So, and I can sort of understand why people are interpreting the rules in their own way, because they seem to be so contradictory from day to day. It’s hard to know what to do. It’s a problem, and it’s going to see how this plays out, you know, and see if there’s some innovation there. So yeah, I think we just have to keep having these conversations and try to make the science-based decisions. Um, again, I really, I really believe we’ve got to get London back to work and get all these things open and give people these options, so they can choose whether to enjoy these things, you know, and give them another choice, then they can do it and they can do it in the safest way possible.
45:53 Like you said, if you’re really concerned, stay home. If you, you know, you want to stay away from your grandkids for six months, totally get it. That’s your call. But again, don’t penalize the entire rest of the economy for that. Yeah, yeah, so, and it’s not just an economic thing.
46:06 I mean, you’re right to talk about the economic side of it, because theatre is a massive contributor to the economy, but it’s also just a basic human need. We are social animals, and, um, congregating together to see a show, whether it’s a music show or theater show, is, is kind of second nature to us. It’s why, notwithstanding the kind of bumpy ride that we’re in right now and that we may be in for some time to come, I’m ultimately optimistic that at some point we will return to a vibrant theater sector, because people, well, people just crave it.
46:40 They just need that kind of experience of watching a terrible tragedy or a comedy and, and, and responding as one, and that sense that, you know, for all the kind of, um, live streaming and streaming of plays that we’ve seen over the last few months, which has been a great way of kind of people engaging with theater who may not otherwise normally do so. But it’s just not the same, watching something on a screen as it is watching it, you know, with 200 people around you all gasping at the same time when something happens. It’s just, it’s just, uh, uh, you know, you can’t replicate that.
47:12 Yeah, we all need these experiences for our mental health. We really do. Um, and I was even speaking with an entrepreneur recently, and he said he’s in the hospitality industry, and he said we also can’t stand having nothing to do. You know, even if you’re furloughed, you’re sitting around with nothing to do, that grinds at you as well. And I mean, the statistics recently were, it’s twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts if you’re unemployed.
47:35 You know, there’s a lot of issues here. So yeah, that’s important as well, and we do like to get together, so let’s find some solutions. So John, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I appreciate everybody for listening.
47:45 Go out there, let’s have these conversations, tell your local governments, let’s find a way to support theater, support these great cultural arts, and get London back leading the world in, uh, in great theater, great culture, great art, and that’s gonna make me happy, so I can get out to the West End and go to a show. Me too. So good stuff. All right, thanks so much, John, and, uh, thanks to everybody for watching. My pleasure.
