How Culture In Quarantine is ensuring theatre is accessible to everyone in the UK

When we finally emerge from this enforced disruption will we re-evaluate the need for culture? It was a question posed in last week's Front Row Late, temporarily rebranded as Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard.

Our presenter provocatively asked her guests Kwame Kwei-Armah, Sir Antonio Pappano and Juliet Stevenson whether there would still be a need for theatres in particular. If their doors remained shut would we miss them? You can see their answers in full on BBC iPlayer but needless to say they mounted a swift and robust defence. 

Theatre can change our minds, help us form opinions, open up new cultures and experiences and lay bare all facets of the human soul. It's hard to think of a topic that hasn’t been tackled on stage.

“Theatre has the capacity to put words to human experience which most human beings can not express, even define for ourselves, can’t even sometimes know, and theatre will say ‘I think this is what you’ve experienced, this is who you are, others have experienced it too, you are not alone.' That is what theatre is for,” actress Juliet Stevenson told Mary.

And we don’t just make theatre in this country - we make the world’s BEST theatre. “It’s part of a ritual isn’t it? We get together, we create a community of people, we watch and listen to something that nourishes us - our brains, our souls and you have to think about what the UK is known for? It’s known for its incredible institutions, the Royal Opera House, the museums, the West End, the theatres,” said ROH’s Music Director Sir Antonio Pappano.

Unsurprising then that one of the things that has figuratively brought us together while being apart is the world-class theatre brought to our living rooms. BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine continues to play its part sharing these with audiences.

This week on BBC Four saw the start of Headlong theatre and Century Film’s superb series exploring lockdown life, with a cast including Alison Steadman, Katherine Parkinson, Lennie James and Gemma Arterton, amongst others.

Unprecedented is an intimate response to the radical way our world changed when lockdown was announced on 23 March 2020. Written by our nation’s most celebrated playwrights, including April De Angelis, Josh Azouz, Deborah Bruce, John Donnelly, Clint Dyer, Jennifer Haley, Sami Ibrahim, Charlene James, Nathaniel Martello-White, Prasanna Puwanarajah, James Graham and Tim Price, each episode gives insight into this unprecedented communal experience and the unimaginable ways in which society has changed. The stories meditate on community and connection, zooming into the lives of couples, NHS workers, families and teenagers - stories of love, triumph, uncertainty and humour. They ask the question of how education, work, relationships, culture and capitalism have been changed, and are changing on an hourly basis.

Theatres are facing what surely must be the biggest challenge in their history, peacetime or otherwise. There are gargantuan challenges of staging a production with social distancing - imagine watching Romeo having to stay a sensible two metres from Juliet. As well as the conundrum on stage for actors, backstage areas can be cramped, how do you group musicians together and that’s saying nothing for how to seat an audience.

Our theatre heritage is lovingly shaped by often ancient buildings, challenging seating, interval queues for toilets and ice creams. For now we can only wistfully look back at those things which only add to the experience of going to the theatre rather than detract from it. Theatregoers know that only too well. 

For the time being the theatre curtains remain down but the talent, whether on stage or behind the scenes, are no less creative. That is why BBC Arts is working with a host of theatre companies in all four nations of the UK, commissioning new and thought-provoking work to keep audiences thinking. 

Splendid Isolation

BBC Arts and Arts Council of Northern Ireland has teamed up with the award-winning Lyric Theatre which makes a unique and vital contribution to the community as the only full-time producing theatre in Northern Ireland, to produce a series of six short films reflecting lockdown life. Splendid Isolation is being written and directed by some of Northern Ireland’s premier theatre talent including David Ireland, Abbie Spallen, Stacey Gregg, Lisa Magee, Owen McCafferty, Sarah Gordon and directors Cathy Brady, Emma Jordan, Des Kennedy, Conleth Hill, Damien McCann and the theatre’s Executive Producer Jimmy Fay. The shorts will feature in a programme on BBC Northern Ireland next month and will also be seen nationwide on BBC iPlayer. We are also supporting Tinderbox Theatre’s ‘Solo Art’ project in Northern Ireland.

BBC Scotland and BBC Arts are supporting Scenes For Survival, a new season of short artworks from National Theatre of Scotland, featuring short pieces of theatre created remotely by leading Scottish actors, writers and directors. And National Theatre Wales with BBC Cymru Wales & BBC Arts along with Arts Council of Wales are working in partnership on Networkinviting theatre artists of Wales to come up with innovative, exciting and human responses during the ongoing lockdown.

As well as creating new work, Culture in Quarantine is also giving access to gems from the archive.

From Sunday 7th June BBC Four will broadcast first-rate productions from the Royal Shakespeare Company, bringing premium stagings from the boards to the screen. The love affair starts with Romeo and Juliet but buckle up for Hamlet with Paapa Essiedu, Macbeth with Christopher Eccleston, Much Ado About Nothing, The Merchant of Venice and Othello - all stellar productions from the last five years. They’re joined on BBC iPlayer by productions from Shakespeare’s Globe - Emma Rice’s Bollywood infused A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest with Roger Allam and Merlin’s Colin Morgan giving magical performances as Prospero and Ariel. It’s unmissable content.

Pitlochry

As previously announced, BBC Arts’ Culture in Quarantine, Radio 3 and Radio 4 join forces with actor Bertie Carvel across the weekend of Saturday 13 and Sunday 14 July for Lockdown Theatre Festival. The project, created by Carvel, sees broadcasts of four great plays that had runs cut short by the pandemic. The plays are: The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz, originally showing at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, Love Love Love by Mike Bartlett recently revived for Lyric, Hammersmith Theatre, Rockets And Blue Lights by Winsome Pinnock - suspended before its world premiere at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, and Shoe Lady by E.V. Crowe, originally on stage at the Royal Court Theatre.

And Lockdown Culture with Mary Beard continues to look at performance challenges, talking to statistician Professor David Spiegelhalter and comedian and “Guilty Feminist” Deborah Frances-White about what they imagine the risks will be when they go back on stage post-lockdown.

The future is daunting but there is also humour. BBC One has announced a brand new lockdown comedy, Staged, from Infinity Hill and GCB Films. Starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen, Staged (6x15) features the cast of a play - the cream of the crop of British acting talent - who are furloughed when their upcoming West End production is suddenly brought to a halt. The series follows the cast as they try their best to keep the rehearsals on track in lockdown.

And of course, the productions mentioned are following the latest government guidelines on Covid-19 to ensure that all the new content is made safely and responsibly, using a combination of self-shooting and video conferencing technology, all in accordance with the latest protocols.

It feels like act two of lockdown is about to begin. The lights are dimming on the current state of isolation but it’s also clear that for some parts of our cultural society normality is going to be a lot longer coming, and sadly some treasured institutions may not survive. While the custodians of our stage culture are grappling with what lies ahead, Culture in Quarantine continues to provide precious access to our theatre talent until such time that audiences can once again hear the ringing of the theatre bells.

As Artistic Director of the Young Vic Kwame Kwei-Armah told Mary Beard: “Without theatre we are soulless, and a soulless nation is not a nation you want to be part of”.