Challenges of Pantomine season during Covid

Last Friday at Greenwich Theatre we finally opened The Queen Of Hearts, the pantomime that was due to run last Christmas, and then Easter, and finally this winter.

The show has been a long time in the making.

We haven’t missed a pantomime season in Greenwich for more than 20 years so the decision to postpone last year was tough, but then the subsequent implementation of the tier system and the embargo on any kind of live festive shows proved our decision to be the right one.

The same happened in April, having put everything in place to launch our first ever Easter pantomime.

With the show now finally up and running, and with support from Arts Council England, sales are relatively strong – but they are still falling short of previous years.

Even with our reputation for consistently presenting what the British Theatre Guide called one of the best pantomimes in the country, and our 2019 Off-West End award for Best Pantomime, some audience members are still just not ready to return to live events.

Last week, as we were opening the show, new research was being published into continued non-attendance as we emerge from the pandemic.

With help from venues, Insights Alliance surveyed 11,000 people who had been identified as regular arts attenders before the pandemic and who were yet to return to at least one of their previously chosen theatres.

Of those 11,000, almost half had in fact not been back to any theatre at all.

Seventy per cent said they’d be more likely to attend if masks were required, with over half expressing concern about other theatregoers following the rules.

Meanwhile, around a quarter said they were simply going to wait until they could attend “as normal”, when the need for masks has passed.

For me, the most interesting challenge for venues is therefore balancing the needs or wants of these various audiences.

Theatres have always had to juggle different audience sectors, demarcated by economic status, cultural background, education, age and theatre experience.

Now we have a new set of criteria, around Covid confidence. Unless Government make masks and vaccination or test certification mandatory, it lies with each venue to decide how to proceed.

Just as there are venues who solely programme work for particular age groups, or of a particular style or appeal, there will be venues who implement “mask only” programmes, while others will leave it up to audiences.

Greenwich is different in many ways.

When I took up the position of director in 2007 I gave an interview to The Stage newspaper in which I described the theatre as having a split-personality – but I said then, and I still believe now, that the divisions are something to be celebrated, not cured.

Just as we present work for a range of audiences in a range of styles and at a range of prices, offering something for as wide and diverse a community as possible, so too will we welcome audiences with a range of Covid expectations.

For the pantomime, we strongly encourage mask wearing, and we have consciously kept a number of performances from selling out to allow audiences to spread out.

As we plan our next in-house production for the spring we will open with distanced performances before moving on to full capacity houses. Meanwhile we are soon to be broadcasting a new three-part family musical on Maritime Radio, for those who would still prefer not to attend in person at all.

Audience development has been a key phrase in theatres for years and theatres have become very comfortable with the idea of finding ways to convert non-attenders. Now, if we are to fully recover from the economic damage done by the pandemic, we just need to turn our attentions to a new set of barriers and a new division in our communities, and find new ways to overcome them.