On November 19, new COVID-19 lockdown procedures, which severely limit interpersonal contact, were announced in BC. Similar restrictions, which capped the amount of people permitted in public venues to a maximum of 50, have been in effect since March; however, the newer restrictions mandate that all public gatherings are now suspended. Among the casualties of this prohibition are arts and entertainment organizations such as theatres and cinemas.
Victoria’s Blue Bridge Repertory Theatre has been providing live performances to Victoria residents since 2008, when it was established by its artistic director Brian Richmond. The initial government mandate made a distinction between live theatres and movie cinemas, stating that cinemas were permitted to continue their operation while theatres were to shut down. On November 23, Richmond wrote a letter to the BC government challenging this double standard by requesting a revision which would either allow theatres to continue to operate or provide them with emergency funding. It was then announced on that same day that the mandate was revised, but rather than permit theatres to function alongside cinemas, the revision now states that cinemas are also prohibited to function.
Richmond is frustrated with the abruptness of the announcement. He says his team had worked hard for the last eight months to comply and update their business model, and he says that the new restrictions were passed with no warning.
“We were in the middle of a performance and we got the order that we had to shut the theatre down,” he says. “We’d created a financial plan and a programming plan and we’d been doing it since March 16, when we suspended our original season, so there is no way for us not to lose money because of that.”
He says that while not ideal, the previous restrictions were at least sustainable.
“It wasn’t that we were going to do gangbuster numbers even if we sold out at 50 people per night, but it was going to make us sustainable. That was the point; it was possible,” he says. “Even that’s been taken away from us now.”
In his letter, Richmond suggested emergency funding as an alternative to reduced restrictions.
“We’re a pretty vulnerable society on a financial level and we’ve received not a penny, quite literally, in terms of extraordinary funding,” he says. “This is pretty serious for us.”
He says that $20,000 to $25,000 in one-time funding would really make a difference to the future of the theatre, because they get less in government subsidies than larger professional theatres do.
“We only get around 8 percent of our funding from government sources, compared to 30 percent or 35 percent for other groups,” he says. “When our earned revenue capacity is eliminated, that’s what causes an existential threat.”
Blue Bridge is currently trying out a livestream model, but Richmond says that public response isn’t as strong.
“I’ll be perfectly honest—people are not really responding to that,” he says. “I mean, live theatre is live theatre, and the streamed version of that is not really something that is appealing to people.”
Richmond believes that storytelling is a core principle of the human cultural experience and that there’s an active synergy between storyteller and listener that is strongest in person.
“It’s difficult to describe, but it’s very real and very palpable when you’re in the presence of live [theatre],” he says. “There can be a hundred of us in the presence of a storyteller, and each of us will take away a slightly different version of what the story is. I think that’s quite magical, and it’s something to be treasured, and I think that’s what the live theatre provides us.”
See our review of Blue Bridge’s A Christmas Carol, which runs until Sunday, December 20, here.