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[0:12] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I would say first of all, we're just overjoyed. For the last few months, we have been struggling and struggling hard. And it's been, particularly over the last few weeks, we've been scenario planning in sand. And now to actually hear that this financial package is coming towards us, um, it's a great relief.

[0:34] Adele Thomas: When do you think you might be able to reopen?

[0:38] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Well, that's a really big question. And I think what has come, what we know along with this financial package, is that there is a roadmap, and we don't yet have the dates for when we can reopen. But we think as soon as it's humanly possible, the government will let us know.

[0:57] Adele Thomas: That was Kwame Kwei-Armah, artistic director of the Young Vic. In March last year, the theatre industry had been brought to an involuntary stop as the world locked down and we all went into hiding from the coronavirus pandemic. Four months later, the world was slowly waking up, shaking off the new normal of quarantine, dormancy and hibernation, and returning to something akin to the old normal. The normal normal. But the theatre industry, reliant on people packed closely together in its audiences and on its stages, still seemed a long way off from reopening. We were skimped, we were bold, we were climbing the walls, we were desperate to get back to work, back to the old reality of our true selves.

We were stuck in an endless present. And then, after four months in the wilderness, we were handed something incredibly fragile, but undeniably tantalising. Hope. This is the third episode of a four-part podcast series called Ghost Shows, produced by Freelancers Make Theatre Work and Curtain Call. I'm Adele Thomas, I'm a freelance opera director. So far in this series, I've talked to a range of freelancers about the ghost shows. The shows that were conceived, programmed, even rehearsed last year, but were closed down before they'd got the chance to open. We just took a break for Easter and now we're ready to come back. Hang on. That sounds really familiar. In this episode, I'm talking to freelancers for whom the hope of getting back to work was irresistible, an itch, a compulsion, a craving that compelled a whole industry to override what Kwame called the scenario planning in sand.

In the attempt to resurrect live theatre while navigating constantly shifting terrain, how far can hope get you? How do you make theatre when the world keeps changing, when time keeps collapsing, when the earth beneath your feet keeps sinking into bog? And how do you communicate with a government who seems to be operating on a different frequency somewhere in a far-off universe? Of course, over the last year there have been many extraordinary leaps into online stages and heroic efforts in live performance, but that's not what this episode's going to be about. We're going to focus on three shows. Three shows that, in their own way, did make it to the stage and came laden with their own types of hope.

Hope of social change. Hope that superhuman tenacity would transcend the virus. And finally, a show that promised to be a beacon of hope, of rebirth and renewal. A Christmas show. But first, we're gonna go back. Sunita's gonna take us back to the moment in which everything went dark.

[3:52] Sunita Hinduja: So hi, my name is Sunita Hinduja. I am a freelance company stage manager. I've been doing that for the last 20 years. We've heard from Sunita in previous episodes. She was company stage manager on a show that was determined to defy COVID-19. On a day-to-day, it is your responsibility on a commercial musical, for example, to ensure the smooth running of the production, that you have enough people to do the show every single day, and you get the show from A to B totally safely, and everyone feels super confident in it. Pastoral care is a huge part of your job, ensuring people's well-being, especially when you're doing eight shows, nine shows a week of the same show, and on long-running shows, you are really intertwined into people's lives.

I had only started on the production in January of that year. And safe to say it was a show that she was really happy to be working on. The excitement around the show is really contagious, and you kind of get that when you've got an audience in like their fan base is called The Queendom, which is kind of nuts, but everyone's so passionate about it, and the messaging is really positive and good for women, by now we're familiar with how this story starts. Sort of end of February, we started to get loads of sickness. Just they were dropping like flies, and every week was a bit of a struggle to get enough people on to do the show. And it was a lot, like it just felt it felt worse than any flu season or any anything.

We'd done two shows on a Saturday, two shows on a Sunday, barely got everyone through the weekend, just had enough people to do the shows. And I'd spent my Monday, which was our day off worrying about how we were going to get through the next week. Did we have enough people? Were there going to be enough people to do the show? And I got a phone call from our general manager, and she was just like, Oh, actually, I don't think we'll be able to open. The next thing we knew, we were all on a Zoom call with our producers who were saying that you know they'd taken a collective decision on the West End and most theatres to close. And at that moment, we were we all thought, okay, fine, so we're closing for like two weeks.

Great. And um, because it was our day off, like we didn't actually get to say bye to each other in a real like we just was we just never went back. What we thought was going to be two weeks, and then it rolled into four weeks, and then it rolled into six. Middle of June, we were still at home. And an important part of all of this is to get performances back up and running again.

[6:48] Oliver Dowden: That's Oliver Dowden, Secretary of State for Digital Culture, Media and Sport, or DCMS, speaking in June. However, it is clear from all of this that we do need greater flexibility to overcome some of the very specific and practical obstacles to the return of live performance. Early summer, Britain's horrifyingly high death toll is an international embarrassment. Until the virus is under control, there was no chance that theatres could open. It is going to be very challenging to be able to do that. I think that that in itself will not be enough to overcome the wider challenges around social distancing. That's to say that social distancing plays a very important part in reducing the spread of the disease.

Waiting on government announcements, stuck in limbo, pleading for a rescue package, devoid of information, the theatre industry felt impotent, pointless, unviable. Culture is our calling card. It's respected around the world, and I am determined to work with them and across government to support it and to preserve its world leading position. Across the country, restrictions were relaxing, but the pathway out for theatre was overgrown and impenetrable, confusing and contradictory. Quite simply, social distancing measures needed to stem the disease were in complete collision with the need for us to get back to work. And so I think we may be looking at at some time for theatres to be returning to a state of um where where they can perform extensively, which is why I've been discussing what other support we can provide them with.

So we had a really weird sort of um false start in the middle of the summer. On the 25th of June, the day after the British Medical Journal published a letter warning the government of the real risk of a second wave, DCMS announced a five step roadmap to recovery for the theatre industry. As a roadmap, it was hardly functional. It featured no dates, no financial plan for how it was to be implemented, seemed to suggest the theatres could be open with 24 hours' notice, and DCMS never actually published it officially. But we're talking about contracts, we were talking about how we were going to do it, all of that thing. The team at Six saw an opportunity to reimagine the production for the age of social distancing and started plans for a drive-through version of the show.

The audience were distanced, they were in their cars, they were in their bubbles. We were actually going to move and travel as a bubble, all stay in the same hotel, all be tested regularly, all you know, live together, perform together, and that was going to be 12 weeks of our summer.

[9:30] Sunita Hinduja: I've got a memory of that time. The Six was the show that was going to essentially lead the way on theatre reopening during the summer, right? It was like this beacon of hope. Like the drive-thru felt like something that was completely doable. So everyone had like really got their hopes up and you know had really started to plan. I actually even think I can't, I'm not sure if this is even true, but I distinctly remember the girls starting like online rehearsal. So with that first period of time when we went into lockdown, I was massively impressed at how resilient all these performers were. Like they seem to be able to switch to working online seamlessly. You know, I think it's possibly, and this is going to make me sound like I'm about 90, but I think it's possibly to do with their like TikTok, Instagram, you know, kind of comfort that I don't have because I can barely turn my phone on.

It felt like they were winning at life for a little while, and I was proud of them. I was really proud of them for rising up, like in a way that some of my team wasn't able to, and I wasn't able to for a while because I felt like I'd lost my purpose, which was other people's well-being, and they seemed to be doing okay. So I was like, damn, what am I supposed to do? So we didn't really survive it too well, I don't think.

[10:59] Kwame Kwei-Armah: This is a new very large pot, and we'll be prioritizing it to those institutions that need it most, starting with the crown jewels of our and then on the 5th of July 2020, the government made a surprise announcement of a 1.57 billion pound bailout for the arts. Despite large parts of it existing as loans rather than grants, and despite there being no provision for the freelance workers, there was a temporary moment of relief throughout the industry, and then halfway through July, it was pulled.

[11:45] Sunita Hinduja: So I think it was really hard because it felt like loss again, like it felt like another load of grief, and I think where we were in the world was that we were starting to go into local lockdowns, and I think that was the main anxiety was were we going to be stuck in a city because obviously, if we were performing in a city like Manchester, for example, if they went into local lockdown, would our team then just be stuck there until they were allowed to move on to the next one, which isn't very conducive to weekly touring. I think that was probably when I was at my lowest in terms of how I felt my own relationship with my my own value in the industry because we went through some quite stressful negotiations about going back to work, but essentially going back to work and being paid less, and that felt hard to understand. I did get that you know we all wanted to go back to work, but I just felt like we'd fought so hard for some really good total decent-ish terms on the contracts, and we were just giving way.

[13:00] Sunita Hinduja: Yeah. So after the drive-thru was cancelled, all went quiet again for a while. It's being widely reported that the government is going to pledge 1.57 billion pounds as a lifeline to the struggling arts world. That's theatres, music venues, uh heritage sites, and so on, concert halls. Uh, now uh government says it's the biggest uh injection of cash that's ever been given to the arts, and so it is, but they are in crisis as a result of coronavirus. As for when they're going to reopen, well, the prime minister says that they are uh consulting on that, taking medical advice and so on. But there are fears that this really is to keep uh uh to keep uh arts venues from going bust while they're closed, which may be for some time, perhaps until next year, no panto season.

[14:00] Jessica Hung Han Yun: Um, I was contacted, I think uh end of August, start of September. Jessica Hung Han Yun is a lighting designer. Jessica was contacted by the National Theatre, who are planning to stage a big flashing multicoloured light at the end of the tunnel. A pantomime. It was going to be only the second pantomime ever produced at the National, and as a totemic symbol of theatre's return, then the pantomime couldn't be more perfect. Theatres up and down the country pinned their hopes on the Christmas show, the livest and most financially profitable show of the year. And after the year we'd had, who could resist the raucous glory of a pantomime, the showers of sweets bucketed at its young audiences, the pantomime's proximity, the absolute emmeshment of audience and performers, voices screaming up at the stage.

[14:53] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Staging a pantomime had a clear, symbolic meaning. Coronavirus is behind you. It meant a lot because it meant for me, anyways. It really felt like oh, it means that we're coming back as an industry. It means that the whole of this pandemic is starting to subside, and we're gonna come out of this, and we kind of saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Deep in our DNA, before it was Christmas, probably before it was the Roman celebration Saturnalia, the deep winter festive period symbolized a full stop on the old year that had passed. The harvest had been gathered, and the advent of winter solstice meant that the long nights had passed, the days would only now be getting longer and longer. We had endured the darkest point, and now everything would be better.

From evergreen trees to sacred babies, it is a season rich with metaphors of rebirth and renewal. Throughout history, we have always believed that everything would be over by Christmas. It is an intoxicating myth that we can be reborn, we can start again.

[16:11] Jessica Hung Han Yun: Jessica and the team started to plan their work on Dick Whittington. I was so excited. I was really excited. And also it was like summertime, the sun was shining. And I was like, oh great, things are looking up. And I remember when I first read the script, I was in my room. I kept on laughing, but my boyfriend was trying to work, and he was like, Jessica, you just shut up because I'm trying to work. And I was like, no, but you don't, it's so funny. Um, and that also made me really happy because I was like, oh, it means that so many people will laugh at this, and it would just bring a lot of joy and a lot of happiness. Yeah, just generally just to come together was really nice. And because it was also a panto, it was a really fun process of brainstorming.

We had some really crazy ideas. Um game shows, like kids' game shows. Oh, fantastic, and it was like all I did on YouTube was just look up kids like 90s game shows for kids, and it was so much fun. Um Butterfunhouse and Pat Sharp and that kind of thing. Yeah, so much gungeon. Um, so much, and uh I've I felt like I got really lost into the world of Panto Land, and I completely lost all sense of reality. I didn't know what was going on with the outside world. And I think for the team, it felt also amazing and really grateful to be in a room together creating and doing what we all love. And I think over this whole time period we've we've realized how much how much we put into our own work of ourselves and how much it means to us.

[18:03] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Now we're making progress with reopening. So for example, uh we can now have uh live performances indoors as long as social distancing is observed. But we've always said that there's going to be a this storm that has to be weathered. I want as many institutions as possible to survive so they can keep uh enriching the cultural life foundation. We genuinely are a cultural superpower. Uh everyone from uh U2 and the Beatles, everyone started in Britain. I think what sealed the deal for me in terms of us writing this play was um the uh the first night of Death of England. This is playwright Roy Williams. I'm talking to Roy and director Clint Dyer. Cheers, man, thank you, thank you. Together they'd written a play, Death of England Delroy, which was due to open at the National Theatre in November last year.

The history of the play is essentially a kind of Russian doll in which plays and characters and ideas grow and spill out from inside each other. So, in order to track how the play came to be staged, we've got to go back to its origins in another play, Death of England, Michael.

[19:10] Roy Williams: That play had opened on stage on an auspicious day in 2020. The first preview was the 31st of January, which was as you know, the that was the day we officially left the European Union, and it was just something really weird about seeing the play up in lights outside the National Theatre build on the South Bank for everyone to see, and it says Death of England on the 31st of January, and um that helped me put that into focus of thinking, yeah. I feel this is the way we should go with the second play. You know, it's through the eyes of Delroy. So the origins of Delroy the play and Delroy the character are of themselves enough material to make a whole podcast. Yeah, I suppose for us, it's not that unusual because Death of England had started out as a large multi-character play that Clinton Roy workshopped at the National Theatre.

When we first attacked it as a full-length play, actually, all the characters were alive and kicking and would have been on stage. It was only later on during the process that a certain gentleman had a brainwave, and that certain gentleman was Roy Williams, to make it a one-man play.

[20:25] Clint Dyer: So that one-man play was then produced in 2014 as a filmed micro play for The Guardian, and in which Delroy appeared as an off-stage character. He didn't have lines, so to speak, but he undoubtedly played a major part in the film. Following its success online and only gathering more relevance as Britain shambled through Brexit negotiations, the play opened as a live piece of theatre in January 2020 at the national. But for Clinton Roy. We just felt there's there was so much more material we left behind in that in the speed when we filmed it. We just sort of thought there's more. We could we we can easily come up with another play. And because of the success of the first play, we just thought, okay, well, let's let's see if we can do it again.

Um let's see if we can do another one-person play, and then um instinctively, we went with we went with um Delroy. We just felt he had a s he he had something to say as a black British man, and I just thought that that was quite an interesting, you know, what's going on in his head? What is what does he think about all of this? And of course, it also played as the perfect allegory for black people's relationship with England.

[21:28] Roy Williams: So in February 2020, Clinton Roy started to reimagine a new show for Delroy. He was going to walk out of the parallel universe as an off-stage character in one play, and now he was going to live and breathe on stage as the protagonist in a play of his own. However, when lockdown hit, Roy had not found it the most inspiring time to write. And I remember struggling to be creative, even when Clint and I were writing Death of Glindo, I had off days where I just kind of thought I don't know what what what to write. And not to just do this play, but with anything. Why do you think that was? I think to begin with, it took us by surprise. I think I was often being told, Oh, it's gonna suit you because you work from home.

It made me realise all the things I took for granted are gone. I can't just go out for a walk. I mean, even then at the early stages of the first lockdown, even that was questioned. Couldn't go to a coffee house, can't go to a library, can't have a you know, sneaky pipe with a friend in the pub in the pub and just talk about stuff, talk about life. But most importantly, it was on the news, it was everywhere. It there was nothing else, there was no other story. Those are the things I rely on when I'm trying to find you know, just stories that I want to tell, what's going on in the world, what's pissing people off, you know. And there was nothing, it was just COVID, COVID, COVID, and I found that quite depressing.

But then I had to kind of tell myself, I just felt, okay, you know what, I've got to be patient. Human nature sooner or later is gonna come into play here. We can't help ourselves. We can't just stay pinned in and stay at home, you know, stay you know, protect the NHS, save lives. Which is you know, important statement to make, and it was right to make it. But I felt the inner voice in me was sort of saying, no, just be patient, you know, sooner or later, we as human beings, we can't help ourselves. We're gonna break out of that. From that, you find stories, you find human nature stories. We just can't help ourselves. We have to make up noise, we have to cause trouble.

[23:25] Kwame Kwei-Armah: And they got the opportunity to cause trouble when unexpectedly they got a phone call from Rufus Norris, artistic director of the National Theatre. It was very surprising because Clinton, we we were just writing the play in the hope that you know one day the national will stage it. So I was almost flawed when you know Rufus told us via Zoom that not only were they gonna do it this year, but they're gonna do it in the Olivier. So there was a level of excitement because around about that time that there seemed to be a positiveness in the air, like, oh, things could be coming to an end, or there's gonna be a let up in the first lockdown, and there was a window of opportunity for us to put the play on.

I was really excited, nervous as well, because even then I was thinking, oh no, but please don't, you know, so that made me watch the news even more. Just like the whole you know, the daily rate, the infection rate. I was thinking, oh, please, please, please, just just let us do this. Let us do this, you know, let's get away with this. So there's a nervousness, but also excitement as well, kind of going against the clock almost.

[24:41] Sunita Hinduja: We've kind of grown together a bit over the year. Cinita and the team for six were back on track for an October opening. Cenita felt like the pause that the world had been forced to take might actually have laid the grounds for a positive shift in the industry. Two things happened in this year. Like the pandemic happened, is happening, but also Black Lives Matter in May last year. It did something to our industry. Some producers and some organizations have addressed that head on. And others have chosen to look the other way. I was lucky enough to be working with people who chose to address it head on. That's been a really interesting learning process as well for all of us, I think.

[25:27] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Do you think the pandemic's helped that to some degree?

[25:31] Sunita Hinduja: Well, we were all stopped, weren't we? So we had to listen. We had to address all the injustices and like a sort of balance of power in our industry that is centered around race and gender and privilege, all of those things. Like we have we had to. And we would have been really awful people if we hadn't. We couldn't have ignored it. We were both writing Delroy whilst also all this was going on and it sharpened our pencils with what we were writing about in terms of what we were writing, what we were saying, what we wanted to say about black British experience through the eyes of Delroy. What was going on in America, it's happening here as well. It happened to Delroy in the play. He was wrongly arrested. And the only difference is is that, you know, thank God our police officers don't carry guns around as as as police. Yeah. If they did, well, it there'd be no difference at all.

[26:33] Roy Williams: Just feel particularly when the whole George Floyd thing flooded. I mean, let's be honest, I don't think that would have happened the way the way it did if it wasn't for lockdown. I think there's a basic instinct in this all that we want to we want to be told a story, and also we want to tell a story, but then I would add to that, I think more importantly, I think we as human beings sometimes we need to be the story. We need just to feel alive, we need to feel we're doing something that calls us as human beings. I just felt all roads just seemed to be leading to Delroy. I've I for one was very curious. Okay, you know, what kind of a black British man is he? And the uh there were sort of traits and elements of him that I personally related to, and I think Clint did as well, and I just it it just seemed right.

We follow him, and also for me, particularly, there's a key line in Death of England Michael, where Michael at the funeral, you know, he's completely drunk, high on coke, and he rounds on everybody. I mean, he attacks everyone, even himself. But there's a key thing he says to Delroy in particular when he says, you know, you may act like us, you may sound like us, but you will never be one of us. And I remember moments in my life when I've been made to feel like that by white people, even white people who are supposed to be my friends. That's often come out, and I know how it's made me feel growing up, and how I've um, you know, how I've you know lived my life based on that, you know, in good in good ways and negative ways.

So when Michael said that, I was, you know, that really made me drawn to Delroy. Just kind of, okay, what does he do with that when his best mate who he's known since school since I was 13 says that to him. What does that do to him? And it make it makes him question, okay, how British am I really? I was born here, came to school here, yeah. Yeah, the whole the whole the whole works, the whole shebang. But still, in the eyes of some, even my best friend who I would die for, at least I thought I would, is making me feel that way. And I just thought that was a really interesting and compelling story to tell about you know what it means to be black and British in today's you know, post-Brexit.

[28:56] Clint Dyer: Lockdown had thrown notions of privilege into sharp relief. I found how people handled being told what to do interesting. As a black man, I've been used to not being able to do what I want to do. I grew up not being able to go down that road. You can't go in that; a policeman will make me know what the parameters of my existence in this country are.

[29:22] Clint Dyer: For me, I was fascinated to see that people immediately went into you can't tell me what to do.

[29:32] Kwame Kwei-Armah: This morning, the deputy chief medical officer set out the stark reality of the second wave of this virus. The number of cases has quadrupled in the last three weeks. There are now more people in hospital with COVID than when we went into lockdown on March the 23rd, and deaths are already rising. And of course, there are those who say that on that logic we should go back into a full national lockdown of indefinite duration, closing schools and businesses, telling people again to stay at home as we did in March, once again shattering our lives and our society. I do not believe that would be the right course.

[30:19] Kwame Kwei-Armah: So on the 31st of October, and I remember this because it was Halloween and I hate Halloween. We went to the Jaywidd, we all got tested, we got tested for antibodies as well. So it turns out the people who were sick in February actually did have it and didn't know it. That was interesting to know. I know, right? Interesting, yeah. Um, and then we sort of set up the rehearsal room, got to see everybody who we hadn't seen since March, so that was really exciting. Six were planning two versions of the show, one in the West End, and the second a touring version. They would rehearse together in London before the tour kicked off at the Lowry in Salford, and then that day Boris, our friend Boris made an announcement to say that from Thursday.

[31:14] Kwame Kwei-Armah: You must stay at home. And we were like, oh this is bad times. And um he said something like, I'm afraid non-essential, non-essential shops, leisure and entertainment venues will need to close. And I just remember sitting, we were sitting in the Young Vic actually after we'd finished our markup because we were like, There's no point going home because it's quite depressing. So we went to the Young Vic to provide care. I just remember the sort of like the sadness of being lumped into non-essential shops and entertainment venues being in the same sentence. I was like, oh wow, that's kind of where we sit in this world at the moment. Um so that was it. Britain entered a second national lockdown.

[32:04] Kwame Kwei-Armah: But with the promise of a December opening from the government and raring to go, the six team got back into rehearsal a few weeks later. We had a marvellous two weeks, like absolutely brilliant, just being in a room, getting to do all that stuff, like getting tested twice a week, so you felt pretty comfortable, you know, getting your head around all the COVID stuff was kind of okay. So it felt fine, you know, like it was really it was really it was a really um enjoyable experience. But then I think maybe halfway through our rehearsal process, the government announced which cities were going into what tiers.

[32:43] Kwame Kwei-Armah: We were due to open in London, and the tour were due to open in Manchester, like by now on the same day. And um Boris made his announcement at 11:30, and Manchester was put in tier three, and we were put in tier two. The London cast might have a chance to perform, but for the Manchester team, it wasn't gonna happen. Just a really dark day. You know, everyone had put in so much work and so much hope and dedication. That was it. It was literally a case of the difference between tier two and tier three, whatever politics around Manchester meant that these girls essentially at the end of that week would stop being paid again. That was rough.

[33:33] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I guess the hope was that Manchester would shift into Tier 2 fairly quickly after because it had been in Tier 3 for quite a long time already. So they wanted to be able to hit the ground running and hopefully get it open before Christmas. Uh and that never happens, and it still hasn't happened. So I assume the set is still sitting in the Lowry, having not, yeah. Oh well, I mean, uh to be honest with you Clint and Roy were heading into rehearsal for Death of England. Always, there was always in place, you know. If you looked across the world and looked at the way that COVID moves, we were really hopeful, but it was always present.

[34:21] Kwame Kwei-Armah: The danger was always present. Um yeah, you know, it it became uh more and more apparent as every week went on that it could get us, it just could get us. And also we have to remember that whilst we could have an idea of what we thought might happen, our government was so chasing its tail and behaving in such a bizarre fashion that you know that you could we we could have ran ran and ran and ran and ran. So the real thing was was we thought the real predictable thing that could that should have happened was that when we were in rehearsals, they were gonna do a two-week lockdown, and everybody expected us to do a two-week lockdown during rehearsal and we'd come back and then we'd put be able to put on the show and and and god willing we'd have been able to do the run.

[35:22] Kwame Kwei-Armah: But of course he didn't. I do not believe that would be the right course. And so that is what really was the clincher of oh this could this could go all wrong for us. Clint knew that he was running across quicksand, but the thing that propelled him was how culturally significant Death of England Delroy was going to be, even before the show saw an audience. You know, I must admit, I felt so fortunate and I felt so thrilled to be invited in at that time of British theatre. And and if you take away the pandemic, what an amazing thing that we'd been offered. With I think we're the first black British black writers to be in the Olivier.

[36:10] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I read that and I could not believe I no, I had to kind of um you sure and then I looked it up and I thought, oh my god, I think I think we are so I believe I'm the first black man to have directed in the Olivier, you know, the the the the amount of boundaries we were breaking to actually be there, yeah, as well as the COVID meant that we I I don't know, I I certainly um found it hard to find to really hold on to the negatives because yeah, it was really rubbish. COVID 19 restrictions in the rehearsal room were proving well restrictive. It was a struggle trying to design down Zoom. It brought up its challenges. You know, I couldn't stand on the stage, it had to be wiped off if we could touched the stage, couldn't touch a prop.

[37:00] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Everybody was distanced and trying to get everybody to engage with what me and Roy were trying to say and what the piece is trying to do was made really difficult because everybody had to be a meeting and a half apart. In the rehearsal room, you didn't have to wear a mask. Yeah. Oh god, I've forgotten about those. Yeah, the two-meter beeper. Two meter beeper, yeah. We were all the beepers. Wow. Too close, you got beeped. Um yeah, I'd forgotten how crazy that bit was. There's lots of elements you'd go, this is just rubbish. How can we work like this? You know, in normal circumstances, you know, everybody would be having a hissy fit, you know, at the conditions, but um I just felt so um wow, I suppose just fortunate.

[38:06] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Yeah, it's fortunate, you know. Um and so I I had to keep holding on to that as the the main feature. Yeah, everything was underwritten with I'm really lucky to be here. Eyes firmly on the horizon. Death of England makes it through rehearsal and into technical rehearsal, and then even to the dress rehearsal. During the tech rehearsals, I sat way at the back in the dress in Olivier's space, and then I remembered wow, I'm almost sitting in the same seat when I first saw a play at the national when I was 17. And I remember, wow, this could very well very well be the same seat I was sitting in. Because I remember we sat far at the back. So it just brings into focus kind of what Clint said just been how fortunate I was.

[38:57] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I just thought back then it would never occur to me that you know certain years later I would be back there with a play on. These are difficult times. And uh while it pains me to have to ask once again, please for the next four weeks, stay at home, protect the NHS, and save lives. Death of England had one live performance in front of an audience and then it closed.

[39:46] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Was it better to have had that one performance, or was it more heartbreaking to have only had one performance? Oh, way better, way better, way better, way better. We got to open, we got to get reviews, and we got to get it filmed. Yeah. The the the national were um, you know, Rufus and and Emily and everybody there, and and Paul majorly Paul Handy and and the production staff and NT Live absolutely dived in to save this production. And they were just uh heroes. Absolute heroes, brilliant, yeah.

[40:20] Adele Thomas: Do you remember what you did the next day?

[40:22] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Oh you know what I can't remember. And I live in Greenwich near near the river, so I I think I took a quick stroll along there. Not particularly going anywhere in particular. And that was that was sort of cathartic way of me just sort of letting things go. So I did that. But no, I can't remember remember because um because I think it was also it was just again, it was it was a confusing time because then you just thought, okay, what is this? Is this another lock is this another lockdown? Then the whole tear nonsense came into play, and then um things reopened again, which pissed me off because I just kind of thought, oh, you know. Then we got lockdown again.

[40:59] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I felt I felt for everybody working in the industry because it was a fucker, and it continues to be a fucker, and I felt for and I felt for my fellow writers and fellow directors and fellow tech and and and everybody else. I just think oh yeah. I I actually um I don't know if you know this, Roy. Um the more the morning after the show, uh, I got up early. And my daughter was in the kitchen, and I ended up passing out.

[41:33] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Yeah. I ended up passing out in the in the bathroom, waking up with with my partner slapping my face, kind of clink, clink, clink, clink, cling. Yeah, I mean, you know, 2020 was vicious. Inside of all the you know, the gratefulness and the excitement and all that. Um vicious yeah. I've never passed that in my whole life. The first time. And uh I I you know, letting go of all all the the uh adrenaline and and uh yeah, you know, trying to get that show up uh in in those conditions what you're saying about the adrenaline clean because I hadn't thought about of course the kind of chemical and physical stuff that you carry when you're making a show.

[42:25] Kwame Kwei-Armah: And then with all that responsibility, because it's the only show out, because of what we're trying to say and do with the piece, you know, um, because of what it means to us generally. That was a thing. That was a lot to to have to hold. Because you you know, when you're directing something, you have to hold everybody's moods and everybody's um wishes and desires and hopes and dreams, and you have to hold them all and and lead and uh and you know and make people want to still uh stay on track because everything was trying to push us off track. Everything, everything, everything was trying to push us off track.

[43:11] Kwame Kwei-Armah: So yeah, the the the day after was I was very much bedbound, to be honest with you. If we follow this package of measures uh in the way that we can, uh and as we have done before, uh Romney, uh I've no doubt that uh people will be able to have as normal a Christmas as possible, and that we'll be able to get things open uh before Christmas as well. I think it was really important to make an audience laugh, especially for the year that we've been through. While Death of England was being boxed up and put into storage, plans for the panther were in full force.

[43:53] Kwame Kwei-Armah: It's probably kind of what an audience needs at the moment. They need laughter. It was really exciting. Um it was really exciting to know that like a like an audience was going to be in the room watching something that you have to be interactive with. I didn't really put that much thought into it, I guess, until we first uh kind of had an audience in, but there was just so much going on that I kind of just didn't stop to think about it until I remember sitting there in first previews and looking around and being like, Whoa, this is crazy.

[44:25] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Dick Whittington had gotten to the end of rehearsal, the show had gotten through technical rehearsal, and now the team were heading into previews.

[44:33] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I remember watching the first preview, and the thing that made me smile the most is hearing kids laugh. It was the most, I don't know, because it's so joyful and it's completely honest, and just hearing that was that really made me smile.

[44:48] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Preview performances are the very last stage of rehearsal in which the creative and technical teams hone and finesse the show in front of their first audiences. I also find that even though throughout previews, even though I've seen a run through so many times, I've read the script that you know so many times. Even through previews, the show is always developing and everyone is always learning from it. And it's heading to the state in which the show is ready for the final hurdle, in which the creative team let go and hand the show over completely to the performers. Press night.

[45:21] Kwame Kwei-Armah: So by the time you get to preview five, you're like, oh my god, I'd never seen that before. Wow, what the hell is going on? Um, and you all discover that together. That's what's amazing about creating a show, is also the process of that is when you find stuff together, it's like a little treasure hunt.

[45:40] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Yeah. Um you go, I didn't even know I was looking for that. We don't want to, as I say, to ban Christmas, to cancel it, and I think that would be frankly inhuman. I think we all preview three or four. We've decided that the overall situation is alas worse, more challenging than we'd hoped when we first set the rules.

[46:06] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Yeah, and that yeah, that was really first. We will introduce new restrictions in the most affected areas, specifically those parts of London. Maybe we'd known this was coming, but hope kept us from knowing it. It is with a very heavy heart. I must tell you, we cannot continue with Christmas as planned.

[46:28] Adele Thomas: Do you remember the moment when you found out that the show wasn't gonna get to press night?

[46:34] Sunita Hinduja: Yeah, I think the moment was they'd called for a meeting for everyone to come to a meeting with Rufus. Again, that's Rufus Norris, the artistic director of the National Theatre. Yeah, and also because of things that had happened on the news, I had a feeling that it could become in. Um, but I think also from the very beginning, it was also kind of a thing to like I had in the back of my mind of like we could get halfway through the rehearsals and it could get shut down or the day before tech, but then the further you got into it, the more confidence he kind of grew with it, and you kind of started to forget about the outside world because you're just all consumed with Panto world.

[47:20] Sunita Hinduja: It was really hard, but kind of stepping away from something and knowing that it's not complete, or there's still so much. I had so much on my list of notes I don't think it sunk in until like two weeks later because it was kind of such a shock and then we went into filming so it was all kind of like, oh okay we need to kind of get this done so it still felt like we still had work to do and then I don't think until I actually had quite a difficult kind of Christmas New Year's period because I would, I yeah, I think not having closure was really difficult and I yeah, yeah it was it was really hard not to, yeah, not to fully have um, god I guess like given birth. Oh yeah, it's such a difficult metaphor isn't it but I can't find a better one.

[47:27] Sunita Hinduja: Yeah, I think to let go of it was really difficult and um, it's yeah even till now it's really hard to kind of comprehend that it wasn't able to quite see the, you know, light of day. I didn't quite realize what press night did I was like oh yeah press night is just where everyone parties and like gets a bit drunk. Yeah but then that's that's a really big thing that's a really big thing about like celebrating together as a team something that you've all been through a process that you've all been through together because the relationships that you make and the bonds that you make are quite amazing over a show period and to kind of drop all of that and walk away from these people who you spent the last like two months with was hard for me.

[49:10] Sunita Hinduja: And of course also not finishing the show, but knowing that there was more that we wanted to do together and that's what's really fun about creating theatre is the process of it and the collaboration. So it was sad to think that you know I had more days with all of these awesome collaborators and now I just have to drop it and and go.

[49:32] Sunita Hinduja: Dick Whittington was filmed and streamed so it could go out to audiences across the country. One of the other things that made me really sad about it was this show was so funny. Yeah.

[49:43] Sunita Hinduja: That I was like I know that they filmed it and there was VNT Live, um which was brilliant to have because that like you know, things like that means that it reaches a wider audience and it makes it way more accessible, which is really important. But then also it's, you know, it's not quite the same as being in the room. A piece doesn't feel done until it's in front of an audience. So it's great to have that platform, but also to still have it live so that people can experience that, you know, would have been amazing because the script was amazing and the performers are amazing, um, and it was so funny. Like every night I still laughed at it. Um and to know that we weren't able to do that, uh, you know, live was quite, was really sad.

[50:34] Sunita Hinduja: Just as we thought that we'd all be back in time for Christmas, we were back at the start again. You know, they'd kind of said, oh, you know, if there's a possibility we'll come back, you know, it could be in January. So there was still like a glimmer of hope in a way. So I think everyone was kind of like, let's be really um positive and let's say goodbye, but this isn't the end. I'll see you again soon but it's not gonna be the end we'll come back again in January.

[50:56] Sunita Hinduja: Does your show still exist? Yeah, I think it exists in the memories of others but it, it yeah it can come to life if you know if certain people are in place to make that happen. But yeah I think um but yeah it does but yeah as you said you know it needs yeah it needs an audience it needs you know it it needs a space and an audience to to view it but I was you know that's for me that's um that's what every single play production that's ever existed and it can go button if people choose it to be it's there it's there it's like iCloud everything's there and you can uh instead of drawing down you just gotta you know you go just yeah remember your password and just and just pluck it pluck it out it still exists.

[51:21] Sunita Hinduja: Well you know there's a recording of it so so it still exists does the show exist in real terms as a theatre thing? Um no I guess it doesn't and that is the beauty of it the show can't exist unless you have an audience the audience make the show so no it it it it doesn't because there's there's no audience but we have to allow ourselves one Christmas miracle due to incredible luck in its timing.

[52:31] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Once lockdown was lifted on the 2nd of December, 6 managed to open three days later. It was the 5th of December. We had our first audience. And it was incredible. Like it was absolutely amazing. Socially distanced audience. First time like we'd heard that noise in what, seven months.

[52:54] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Like properly, like in a inner space. And it was heartbreaking. Like it was absolutely heartbreaking. By the end of that week, we were pretty tired because we'd tech and we had to tech quite hard. I just stood in the wings and cried like a baby because I was like, I don't, I can't, I can't even put my finger on what made me so emotional. Like I was so thrilled for those women standing on stage and then being able to do what they love doing.

[53:19] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I was thrilled for all the people standing around me, like all the production staff who'd been out of work unpaid for the last seven months and had hung on, you know, they hadn't gone off and got other jobs because you know, six was gonna be that show that came back, and so they never wanted to make themselves unavailable, and that was really tough, so they were pretty broken, and I was also just like crying for my friends and colleagues that couldn't be in their own venues doing exactly the same thing. It was just like a lot, it was a lot.

[53:53] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I think and I think we just underestimated how much we'd missed it, it being, I don't know, the actual physical act of performing, maybe, but I actually think it's the community, like we've we just haven't had it, and like suddenly we were in a position that we were allowed to be a community again, and it was so nice. Like it was so nice to be so not surrounded by people because we couldn't stand more than two meters away from each other. Just to be, I don't know, just to have a shared experience was so joyful.

[54:30] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I was like, this is too much. The band are already in position and the girls position themselves at the top of the steps and they have a little moment and then at the start of the show the music starts the curtains open. It just felt really really really emotional. You take for granted that like noise. You take for granted the bustle of an audience and you take for granted the heat off of them and just the energy that they bring to the work you're doing. Even standing backstage you still feed off of it like subconsciously I guess we all do it was just delightful like absolutely delightful.

[55:19] Kwame Kwei-Armah: And then the girls went out onto stage because there was just so much screaming and excitement and yeah it's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. It's that ferocious connection you get in the theatre that we're all missing so badly at the moment right I was really jealous of the audience getting to sit out there and watch it like so we weren't we weren't allowed to go we were trying very hard to not contaminate each other by going from front of house to back of house all the time so I was really jealous of our sound operator who got to sort of stand amongst it and feel it in a way that when you're behind a cross and in the wing you can't really quite you don't get it as much but yeah, I was very, very jealous of that moment.

[56:04] Kwame Kwei-Armah: And I can't wait. Certainly because now I don't work on it anymore, so as soon as that show gets to open again, I'll get to sit in the audience like a normal person and I'll watch it and get that feel that excitement. You get to be part of the Queen.

[56:18] Sunita Hinduja: Calm down.

[56:21] Kwame Kwei-Armah: Six was due to run from the 5th of December to April 2021. It closed on the 15th of December. The adrenaline and the high of live performance, it's a drug. And usually that would be the drug on which we focus all of our hopes. But there was a new drug on the horizon that meant that 2021 was going to be a glorious new dawn of packed houses and sweaty dressing rooms, dance calls, fight calls, rolling into bars and restaurants, hugging our friends and kissing old comrades. The whole intimate embrace of the visceral art of live theatre.

[57:00] Kwame Kwei-Armah: It was 90% effective. And it was known as AZD 1222, or CHAD OX1 NCOV hyphen 19. The Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. This was going to be our ticket out of lockdown. Also we hoped. And if there's one thing we learned this year, it's that you can't fuel an industry on hope.

[57:27] Kwame Kwei-Armah: I just hope that everyone has like really got their hopes. Hopefully, makes hope. Does give me hope. Hopefully, I'd help really hopefully. And I'd hope and I hopeful. The hope was hopefully. It feels really hopeful. Very much hope. Very much hope and dedication. I hope.

[57:48] Adele Thomas: Join us next week for the final episode of Ghost Shows.

[57:57] Adele Thomas: Freelancers Make is a curtain call, and freelancers Make Theatre Work co-production. Today's episode is part of a series, Ghost Shows. Produced by Curtain Call and presented by Adele Thomas. Written by Adele Thomas and Freddie Crossley. Sound engineered by John Schwab. Music by Freddie Crossley. Support for this episode and original concept for the Freelancers Make podcast from Sally Beck Whitman. Special thanks for this episode goes out to Athena Stevens and Alistair Cope. Transcription by Kelsie Acton. Freelancers Make Theatre Work is a community for the 200,000 self-employed theatre makers in the UK. It is currently run by a team of incredible volunteers from around the industry. Follow us @freelancersmaketheatrework. And follow the Curtain Call Podcast for more episodes in the series of Ghost Shows. Thank you for listening.