It’s coming home, it’s coming, Theatre’s coming home
Friday 18th June was a day of two halves. As revellers paraded the streets of Piccadilly in preparation for the England vs Scotland football match, we were in a café working out a way forward for our play reading of Tracy Ryan’s Strike! We started the day with our game mapped out but by half time, over a coffee and a sandwich, we were scratching our heads trying to figure out how things would play out. This is the new arena in which theatre now operates: unpredictable, full of tackles, partial to fouls and, if you’re lucky, a few goals.
Our journey began on 9th January 2020 when the Arts Council England awarded us a grant to produce a public play reading of Strike! as a step towards a full production. Then lockdown struck. We weighed up whether to present it online but decided to hold our nerve until we could be in a room with actors and audience. As restrictions eased over the Summer 2020, we cleaned our boots for the moment when theatres would reopen. That day sadly didn’t happen. We decided instead to film the reading since we were allowed to gather in a rehearsal space. Then the lockdown rematch happened, and the project was rained off.
Fast forward to 2021 and things were beginning to look brighter. Freedom Day on 21st June was shouted from the terraces and theatre readied itself for the season kick off. We played it cautious—or so we thought—and plunged for 28th July to finally hold our public reading of Strike!
But the path to victory is full of obstacles.
If social distancing remains in place, we can only invite 30 guests, without it we can invite 130. We have actors to fly over from Dublin, no problem. Going back, they must quarantine for 10 days and pay £100 for a Covid Test. We had planned to hold a Q&A with some of the Dunnes Store strikers. However, with the slower vaccination programme in Ireland, none can safely travel. Then, when we do finally step out onto the performance pitch, we may have a situation where the actors aren’t allowed to mingle with members of the public, making our celebratory drinks in the bar afterwards feel a little flat. If this wasn’t enough to make us hang up our boots, our solution to livestream the event was kicked into the long grass.
It’s with these thoughts spinning around our heads that we sat in a Piccadilly café looking out on the jubilant fans from both sides of Hadrian’s Wall. We may have been a few players down, but we were not defeated. Theatre is as much about tactics as it is about creativity. The strategic planning that goes into even the smallest event should not be underestimated. Forget half-time changing room debriefs, we’re never off the pitch.
So, we’re thrilled to be able to finally announce our plans for Strike! In a strange way, it’s a much better plan than the original. Our public reading is set to go ahead on 28th July at the Irish Cultural Centre. We’re going to film it, edit it, caption it, and hold a second event online in September that will be open to the public more widely and be followed by an online Q&A with the strikers.
It’s a win-win situation and feels like theatre is finally coming home.