Head of Marketing and Communications, Society of London Theatre & UK Theatre
What has made you want to get into theatre?
Oh my goodness, I’ve been… Well, I knew I didn’t want to act, but I also really wanted to do something that sort of celebrated theatres. I think it’s such a brilliant medium. And so, I’ve sort of got my dream job since I’m paid to tell people how brilliant theatre is. Also, I’m uniquely placed to sort of bring everybody together and celebrate the whole of theatre, not just an individual show or person. So, everything we normally do is about celebrating theatre and it’s been really hard to not have theatres open. So, it’s amazing to work on this project – to bring everybody together and have that sense of community again.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Oh, the people. My team are incredible. And also, being able to sort of create unique opportunities and partnerships. I get paid to tell people about something I really love, that’s a pretty cool job.
So, for you what was the journey from theatres closing to theatres reopening?
Well for me, I’ll never forget the day where we had to decide to close theatres. So, we were all in our, all the senior staff were in our meeting room and I had various different press releases and announcements. And we’d sort of been told that it was really unlikely we’d have to close then and there, but it had been getting worse and worse. Many of the shows, many of the cast were saying they weren’t comfortable, you know, performing and we sort of knew it was coming. But also, the sheer enormity of what that would mean.
And I remember being told we’d get some warning and then we were sitting there watching Boris make his announcement. And it was just clear that he basically said it was unsafe to come into theatres, and so how can we tell audiences, or you know, casts or creatives to keep going? And so, it was absolutely awful. There was lots of sort of very fraught phone calls. And then I remember sending it out and people were just devastated. And then just this awful sort of disbelief really that that was happening. Then in the days afterwards just thinking, what we could have done, we’ve closed, you know. And we were one of the first to close. We closed before the restaurants and everywhere else.
And then it was just sort… for me, it was then like ‘OK, what role do we play during this?’ and I think for us that role was about communicating with people, keeping people connected during a time where people could have got very isolated. And so, for me, pandemic, I think I’ve never worked so hard, but felt like I’ve achieved so little. But we pivoted a lot of our relationships in order to try and support theatres directly, and actors and the shows directly, because it became really clear that they weren’t getting, you know, because so much of our industry is based on freelancers, they weren’t getting payment. You know, it was awful. They weren’t, you know, being able to be on stage just wasn’t going to be allowed. We had to, like many organisations, furlough a lot of our team, so it was quite lonely. I was kind of doing every single job for a while – a very, very small core team.
But we sort of kept going. And for me it was about keeping people… communicating with people. We went into doing daily newsletters and just letting people know what was on, and what they could qualify for. Lobbying the government for support and money and trying to get them to understand the plight of freelancers. And then we ended up actually securing funding from the government, the Culture Recovery Fund, but more importantly, we did a lot with Sam Mendes who had done a piece for us in the Financial Times, which was really calling on the likes of Netflix and Amazon to support the sector, because it’s such a great training ground. And they gave us, well, Netflix gave half a million and that started the Theatre Artists Fund. So, a lot of what I was doing was supporting that and trying to raise money, and we’ve now raised over 7.5 million for freelancers and those were emergency grants. So, we did that.
And then it was just taking all the stuff that we were normally doing, like West End Live and Kid’s Week and doing a virtual version of that. And then also, March the 16th was the anniversary of us closing, and so we really used that. You know, James Greg who has just come in to do the photos, you know, he ended up going on Question Time to really just highlight plight of theatres. So, you know doing a lot of briefing and a lot of, actually just trying to make sure theatres weren’t forgotten throughout this. But it was tough, and there’s been a lot of work that then just didn’t amount to anything. And so, it’s been absolutely incredible in the last sort of few months.
And you know, we’ve done lots of things. We started up protocols like See It Safely protocols. Trying to get everybody to work together to celebrate things. But it’s only in the last two months that actually some of that hard work has really paid off. It’s been amazing to do a big free event in Trafalgar Square. Wonderful to do that again, live – in West End Live. And now this project has been just amazing because everybody is coming together and they feel seen. They feel vindicated. There was so many times where what we did was just seen as not needed and not relevant and that’s really… where people have trained their lives to do something and not being able to do it, so. It’s just being incredible to get people back. I think theatre is something that is… You cannot replicate the live experience online, and I think just from people, socially, for our mental health, people want to be together. And I think it’s just wonderful that we are able to now, you know, we did stay connected but it was very hard. I think it’s wonderful as theatres have come back that we can truly celebrate that sense of togetherness again. That’s what’s so important. Theatre is a very close-knit community. It’s just wonderful to see old friends again, people coming back, and it’s been really wonderful.