Emma Bailey, Set Designer, Six, Vaudeville Theatre
What has the journey been like getting to the point of theatres reopening, for you personally?
So, it was a bit of a wild ride because we were just opening the Broadway production of Six in New York the day that Broadway went into lockdown, essentially. And I was there with my little daughter who was only 17 months old and it was a bit of a panic. We just got on the first flight out of there so it felt quite dramatic. And then there was stillness, wasn’t there. There was nothing. And you sort of couldn’t quite believe what had happened after the whirlwind of the previous year or whatever.
In terms of reopening, it’s almost doesn’t feel real. It sort of feels like ‘is the carpet going to be pulled out from underneath us But having been back in the theatre, along with all the audiences and the way that they cheered on our first opening night, was just amazing. So yeah, it’s great to be back in that space again with everyone else. It just really affirms what we’re all doing.
What did you miss the most about live performance and the theatre?
Yeah, I guess the element of surprise and the element of sharing everything with everyone else in the room and going through those emotions as a group. It just doesn’t quite have the same feel when you’re watching it alone on a screen at home. So yeah, the comradery, I guess.
What is it that drew you to theatre in the first place?
I love the mix of all the creative disciplines and the collaboration of it all. So, you’re always working as a massive team. You’re never really on your own. And that unity when you’re backstage, is just amazing. And the things that you can create all together is, yeah, something really special. So once you taste it, you can’t go back to like doing things on your own or… I used to be an architect, so yeah, it’s quite different. And just something really addictive about that all.
Kenny Wax, Producer
I have three shows in the West End at the moment including Six the musical which in fact is in London, on a UK tour and just opened on Broadway. We do all of the Goes Wrong shows; so Play That Goes Wrong, Magic Goes Wrong, Peter Pan Goes Wrong in the West End and in the U.S. And we do quite a lot of children’s shows – What The Ladybird Heard, Oi Frog And Friends, Worst Witch and coming soon, Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World.
What led you to pursue this as a career?
Oh gosh, I saw a show in the 1980s called Me And My Girl which I fell in love with – a really good, highly entertaining musical romantic comedy and I just thought, oh I’d love to put on shows like that and it was kind of as simple as that. But I started off as an usher in 1989 on Miss Saigon. Kind of worked my work through the industry as a foot messenger, like advertising assistant in the theatre, then started producing some small shows, bigger shows and now I’ve got to a show on Broadway, three shows in the West End, about eight or nine shows in the U.K.
What’s the best thing about your job?
Oh being my own boss – choosing what I do myself and working with my fantastic staff. Seeing a project come together in the middle and final stages and then seeing those audience reactions when you really feel like you might have changed some lives for the better.
What has the journey been like up to theatres reopening after such a long time?
So we closed a lot of shows, in fact our very opening night on Broadway was march 12th which was also the night the Broadway shut down so we were three hours away from opening. I had 20 of my staff from London all out in New York to celebrate the opening and they never got to see the show. So over the past year and a half we’ve really been trying to reopen those shows as soon as we could so my productions were probably at the forefront of the reopening attempt. We tried to do a drive-in tour for Six The Musical last summer which didn’t come through but then come last December we tried to get the UK tour and the West End production open. The West End opened for about a week before it shut down and the UK tour never opened so then we tried again this May and June to reopen again being amongst the first to open along with our other comedy The Play That Goes Wrong and we have in fact managed to get all of our shows open and now running since May and you know actually doing really nicely.
How does it feel to be back in theatres?
Yeah great, it’s what we do. In terms of keeping our staff busy and entertaining our staff, not just in the office but also the production staff, we often think of actors and musicians but there are so many technicians, prop makers, lighting operators, model makers, designers of all sorts, all who’ve had the most horrendous year and a half many who’ve actually left the business. It’s been really hard to re-recruit actually in the last couple of months getting our shows back open. There’s definitely a skills deficit in the industry.
What was the thing you missed the most about live performance?
Kind of everything because it’s just what we do. It is what I’ve done for 35 years since I went into the industry so you know this has been the most extraordinary time and I think people have often thought that we’ve sat around during the lockdown kind of yeah I mean there’s a bit of work to close shows down but actually with my involvement with the Society of London Theatre and the number of shows that we had both in the UK and the US it was it was as busy as ever. A lot of my staff were on furlough so I was actually taking on the roles that perhaps some of them would have taken over those months but we have come back strong and it’s really fantastic to have reopened and the audience seem to be very engaged once again.
Tell us about your production company?
Yes I have my own production company have about 30 members of staff. It’s just on the other side of Covent Garden, quite a young workforce we have generally four accountants a graphic designer, two tour bookers a receptionist and then everybody else is mostly kind of production assistants, production coordinators, general managers there’s a structure of how we run our shows.