How coronavirus is killing off the theatre

The performing arts have been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis and recovery is nowhere in sight. Yet the creative industries are an essential part of the UK’s economy. Help is needed, says Simon Wilson

Actors "acting". © Napa Valley Register/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News
Creative types are responding creatively to the crisis © Alamy
(Image credit: Actors "acting". © Napa Valley Register/ZUMA Wire/Alamy Live News)

What has happened?

Britain’s theatres have been dark since mid-March and no one knows when they will be able to open. Even as museums and pubs, say, reopen over the summer and we embrace the pleasures of everyday life again, few will relish sitting in the dark in a packed theatre, cheek by jowl with their neighbours and flinching at every cough. Theatre’s very purpose is that of a live shared experience and its business model depends on crowds of people sitting closely together for long periods of time. As a rule of thumb, commercial theatre shows need to play to at least 55%-60% capacity to cover costs. But with current social-distancing measures in place, theatre owners reckon they can admit only 10%-15%. Cinemas might be able to cope a bit better by packing in more showings each day for fewer people. But for live shows – with much longer turnaround times and labour costs – that’s a non-starter.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.