The future of theatre debate
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2020
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can our theatrical landscape survive financially, and how might it need to creatively adapt to survive post pandemic? As part of the Lockdown Theatre Festival, Anne McElvoy's panel features: Bertie Carvel - actor and executive producer of Lockdown Theatre Festival, whose roles include Rupert Murdoch in Ink, Miss Trunchbull in Matilda The Musical, and Simon in BBC One drama Doctor Foster. Amit Lahav – founder of Gecko, the internationally-touring physical theatre company based in Ipswich. Eleanor Lloyd – theatre producer, whose West End hits include Emilia, Nell Gwynn, and 1984. Roy Alexander Weise – Joint Artistic Director of Manchester Royal Exchange, awarded an MBE for services to drama. The discussion also include playful, thoughtful contributions from theatre makers including Inua Ellams, Tamara Harvey, Emma Rice, Dominic Cavendish, Bertrand Lesca, Tim Etchells, David Lockwood and Selina Thompson and an interview with Caroline Dinenage MP
Production: Jack Howson and Robyn Read
Lockdown Theatre will feature four plays that had their runs cut short: The Mikvah Project by Josh Azouz and 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 - sadly suspended before its world premiere planned at Manchester’s Royal Exchange, and Shoe Lady by E.V. Crowe - cut short into its run at the Royal Court Theatre - Produced by Jeremy Mortimer, a Reduced Listening production for Radio 3 and Radio 4 and available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08fw06m
In the Free Thinking archives you can find discussions including Dramatising Democracy with James Graham, Paula Milne Michael Dobbs and Trudi-Ann Tierney https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04yb7k6 Meera Syal and Tanika Gupta on dramatising Anita and Me https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06gt257 Is British Culture Getting Weirder? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000346m
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.9 | Hello, I'm Anne McElvoy and this is BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas podcast, bringing together leading artists, writers and thinkers, in discussions which try to answer a range of questions. |
| 0:48.9 | So stay with us for one of those conversations. |
| 0:52.0 | As the lockdown was drawing close, I was writing what turned out |
| 0:55.8 | to be the last theatre column I would pen about a live performance for a very long time. |
| 1:00.5 | It was the first year anniversary of Come From Away, the Canadian musical set in the aftermath |
| 1:05.4 | of 9-11, and it felt doubly poignant. The pre-coronavirus world of ambitious staging and audiences clambering over each other in the interval for drinks now feels very distant indeed. |
| 1:18.5 | On March the 16th, theatres around the country abruptly shut their doors. |
| 1:22.6 | Since then, we've seen them screening back catalogues of hits to our sofa-bound audiences, |
| 1:28.1 | but a blast of James Corden Comedy or Cumberbatches Frankenstein |
| 1:32.1 | doesn't answer the urgent question of what theatre might look like as we hope to emerge from the pandemic. |
| 1:38.6 | What will post-COVID stage look like and what do government in theatre need to do to get us back to the |
| 1:46.0 | stalls? |
| 1:47.0 | It's a question we'll try to answer over the next 45 minutes. |
| 1:51.0 | One of the answers while theatres remained shut has been to use remote technology to record |
| 1:56.0 | actors in their homes. Technology we're using at the moment with a fantastic supply of kitchens and bedrooms on display |
| 2:03.0 | on my screen to connect us to our guests today. And they are Eleanor Lloyd, theatrical producer, |
| 2:10.0 | whose West End hits include 1984, Nelgwin and Emilia. She sits on the board of the Society |
| 2:15.6 | of London Theatre, known as Salt and the Oxford |
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