Theatre must dismantle barriers that exclude certain audiences

Then there is the fact that being a regular theatregoer is a matter of habit. I must confess I haven’t missed going to the theatre as much as I thought I would, but that is largely because there hasn’t been any on. For me, the habit isn’t broken. But for lots of people it will have been, just as the habit of buying a daily latte has been broken. Psychologists say that it takes about 10 weeks to make or break a habit. We have now hit 20 weeks of theatre shutdown.

Then there are personal levels of risk. A report by the Audience Agency published in 2016 found that the average age of theatre audiences was 52, and on the rise. In the absence of a vaccine or a cure, it will have to be something very special indeed to tempt an older audience back into the theatre. Clearly that is Sonia Friedman’s thinking with the cryptic Mark Rylance/Jerusalem announcement. But will it be special enough?

Much of the data about audiences is likely to be rendered irrelevant in the wake of lockdown

In the new world that theatre finds itself in, there is a more urgent need than ever to dismantle the barriers that make much of the population think theatre is not for them. There must be as much emphasis on thinking about the vast audience theatres do not yet serve, as in welcoming back the theatregoers of yesteryear who may prove resistant to enticement.

One of the things that the shutdown has demonstrated is that there is an appetite for theatre across more than one platform, and blended digital and physical models are likely to be the future. But unlike previous crises faced by the industry, which have led theatres to give their existing audience what they think they want, the way out of the current situation may require much more – rather than less – risk-taking.

This means more risk with form, including about how and where theatre might happen within and outside buildings, and about who makes it and why. More experimentation with content including different stories told by different people. Different income models that don’t turn every individual’s encounter with a theatre into a transaction.

It’s hard to be radical when facing financial meltdown, but maybe this is the moment to be honest as a sector and admit that the only real barriers to access are the ones we choose to keep in place. Dismantle those barriers and maybe people would be as excited about what their local theatre offers as their local takeaway.