FEW industries have suffered as catastrophically from the Covid-19 pandemic as the theatre industry. As indoor venues that host large numbers of people, Scotland’s playhouses are classed alongside the likes of nightclubs by our political leaders and their scientific advisers.

Consequently, Scottish theatres face some of the most stringent Covid protocols in the world. In ­particular, current instructions are that audience members should be a very considerable two metres apart (double the distance, for example, required of playhouses in England).

This state of affairs has led to some dismay, not to say consternation, among sections of the theatre community. They watch many of the hospitality and leisure industries returning to something like ­normality, and wonder if the powers that be are ­needlessly holding back the recovery of live drama.

Andy Arnold, the longstanding theatre ­director who is currently at the helm of Glasgow’s Tron ­Theatre, is a vocal critic of the Scottish ­Government’s ­insistence on the two-metre rule for theatre audiences. Two ­metres, he insists, reduces a theatre’s ­capacity so ­radically as to make shows commercially unviable.

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“There’s a big difference between one metre and 67 centimetres,” he says. “If it’s 67 centimetres, you’ve still got empty seats to either side of you, but you can use the rows in front and behind.

“It depends on the theatre, obviously, but for the Tron, a one-metre rule would still mean that we’d lose the rows in front and behind.”

As a theatre critic, I have had the privilege, ­during the pandemic, of being invited to theatres elsewhere in the UK and in Europe when they have been ­allowed to stage productions. My experience ­certainly seems to bear out Arnold’s argument regarding the varying impacts of different physical distancing rules.

Earlier this month I was at Leeds Playhouse for their series of monologues titled Decades. As Arnold suggests, England’s one-metre rule puts considerable space between audience members. I saw no-one in the rows in front of or behind me, and the overall size of the audience in the Playhouse’s Courtyard Theatre was depressingly small.

The venue is following Covid protocols to the letter. Sitting in a ventilated, mainly empty auditorium, hands sanitised, mask on, I have to say I felt very safe.

In Portugal, in July of last year, I attended ­Festival de Almada, the first summer theatre ­festival to ­proceed in Europe since the start of the ­pandemic. There, thanks to the authorities’ successful ­suppression of the virus, hand-sanitised, masked audiences sat, in most venues, with just one empty chair separating them.

Given the success of the vaccination programme in Scotland, my experiences in Leeds and Almada do lead me to ask if the Scottish Government is ­being somewhat over-zealous where theatres are ­concerned.

For Arnold, the current situation is “galling”. Even England’s one-metre rule is commercially ruinous, he says. “English [theatre] promoters are saying it’s a disaster.

“The most frustrating thing is we’re not even given a date,” the director continues. “If, for example, they said, ‘it will be one metre from October 1, and normal seating by January 1’, it would be a long way off, but at least we could start preparing accordingly.”

As things stand, Arnold has felt compelled to ­cancel both the Tron’s autumn programme and its much-loved pastiche winter pantomime. “At the moment,” he says, “we can’t ­prepare anything.

“That’s why we cancelled the panto, that’s why we have nothing in place for the autumn, because we can’t commit to anything.”

Not only is the two-metre rule ­commercially unviable, says Arnold, but it also “restricts things quite a bit” where actors are concerned. It’s not easy for ­Romeo to slay Tybalt if he is 200 ­centimetres away from him. Add to that, as the director points out, “if there’s any singing involved, it’s three metres” ­between performers.

MUCH of Arnold’s frustration comes from his sense that the politicians don’t understand the implications of their own decisions where theatres are concerned. He notes that Nicola Sturgeon has said that, at Tier 2, theatres can open to up to 100 people, up to 200 at Tier 1, and up to 400 at Tier 0. “That is completely ludicrous,” he says, “because you’re still saying two metres, in which case the theatres will still all be shut”.

“The thing that really gets me,” he ­continues, “is that, even at Tier 0, when we can have eight people, with no social distancing, in a household, and one ­metre between people in a bar, it’s still two ­metres in a massive, ventilated theatre space. It’s ludicrous.”

Given the seemingly stringent safety protocols in place under England’s one-metre rule, how does Arnold think the Scottish Government has ended up with its current commitment to two metres?

“I’m convinced that [National Clinical Director to the Scottish Government] Jason Leitch’s only experience of theatre is going to some sweaty little basement venue at the Edinburgh Fringe,” he says.

“When he’s been challenged [on the two-metre rule], he always says that the worst places are enclosed environments, as if theatres are like nightclubs, as if they’re dark, sweaty places. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“You’ve got people sitting, facing one way. They’re not moving, they’re not speaking to each other. They’re in a ­properly ventilated, massive, great space.”

Indeed, as if to underline the ­particular stringency of the protocols faced by ­Scottish theatres, Arnold notes “the ­irony” that the Tron’s show Pride and Prejudice (Sort Of) is scheduled to open in the West End of London in October.

“Which is a great thing for the Tron,” he comments. “But, up here, we’ll still be shut.”

Arnold’s voice has been the loudest in calling out the Scottish Government’s policy on theatres. What led him to the barricades?

“What got me going, in terms of ­wanting do something about this, were all the demonstrations and occupations in French theatres,” he explains. “Sixty theatres throughout France were ­occupied and there were massive complaints that culture was being held back and so on.

“That was in the middle of a lockdown. I thought, ‘we’ve now got half the population vaccinated!’”

Given the theatre activism elsewhere, and the massive impact of the two-metre rule on Scotland’s playhouses, why does Arnold think there haven’t been more voices raised from within the Scottish theatre community?

It is, the director says, “endemic” within arts organisations that “they don’t want to complain because they’re worried it might jeopardise their funding… There’s always this worry about complaining, but we’ve got to complain, the future of Scottish theatre is on the line here”.

“Furlough ends in September, there’s no extra money been allocated for ­theatre this year, as far as we know. Freelance ­artists are all starving and getting no work at all, people like actors, musicians, directors, the whole lot of them.

“The theatres themselves are really going to struggle, especially if they have to remain closed in pantomime season, which a major income generator for a lot of them. Some theatres might be put in a position where they can’t open again, I think that’s quite possible.

“And that will mean redundancies. This at a time when we’re talking about getting back to normality. It’s ridiculous.”

Strident and forthright in his opinions he may be, but no-one should consider ­Arnold generally hostile to the SNP administration. “In fairness,” he says, “politics aside, I was more positive about [former Culture Secretary] Fiona Hyslop, who actually went to the theatre, than I was about the Labour culture ministers [in the first two Holyrood administrations], who were complete philistines.”

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Indeed, he was encouraged by a tweet by Hyslop (the, as it transpired, outgoing Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, Fair Work and Culture) during the recent election campaign for the Scottish Parliament. She had suggested that the impact of the two-metre rule on Scotland’s theatres would be re-visited after the election.

Hyslop’s successor, in terms of responsibility for culture at cabinet level, is ­Angus Robertson. On Thursday morning, the new Cabinet Secretary for the ­Constitution, External Affairs and Culture ­convened an online meeting with around 25 leading figures from Scotland’s cultural organisations, including Arnold.

The arts leaders made it clear, says Arnold, that Scotland’s cultural organisations need “a roadmap for the end of social distancing… [and that Scotland’s] major venues will have no touring productions to offer at this rate as most companies are now deciding to just tour to England and forget about Scotland.”

The meeting was constructive, says the Tron director. “The Minister was listening,” he comments, “hopefully something will come of it.”

WHATEVER the outcome of last Thursday’s meeting, it would be inaccurate to suggest that Arnold speaks for everyone in Scottish theatre. Although she shares the Tron director’s desire to see audiences back in Scotland’s playhouses, Elizabeth Newman, artistic director of Pitlochry Festival Theatre (PFT), is more sympathetic to the Scottish Government’s cautious approach.

The two-metre rule is, Newman says, “where we are right now… It feels like we just have to go with the medical advice, and follow that instruction, until we’re told that things are safer”.

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“We’re still in a state of change,” she adds. “What we’re doing in Pitlochry is sticking to guidelines, which we do think are important for health reasons. We obviously don’t want anyone to come to the theatre and get ill. That’s the reason we’ve opted to go outdoors, because we feel that’s the safest thing to do.”

The “going outdoors” Newman talks of is a reference to her theatre’s season of plays in outdoor auditoria and, in some cases, in promenade. Opening with the stage premiere of David Greig’s new play Adventures With the Painted People on June 10, the season of theatrical, musical and storytelling performances will run until September.

PFT has built a new 80-seater amphitheatre in the Explorers’ Garden, which sits adjacent to the theatre building. There will also be performances in a newly constructed riverside bandstand.

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Newman accepts that PFT is ­unusually fortunate among Scottish theatres in being able to construct outdoor performance spaces in its considerable, beautifully located grounds on the banks of the River Tummel. However, she points out, quite reasonably, that this shift to an al fresco programme was no easy matter.

“We have outdoor spaces, but we have had to refashion them for audiences,” she comments. “We’ve had to create the ­infrastructure. It’s not as if we were ­kitted out for outdoor theatre.

“We’re trying to install things that we can keep using after the pandemic… We see this as adding to our programme going forward.”

Where Covid protocols are concerned, Newman cautions against haste. “I’m trusting that, in the next announcement, [the Government] will give us more ­information and more insight, because they’ll know more themselves.

“That’s something we’re really aware of, that they’re constantly getting more information about how the virus works, and how it works with people being ­together. One thing we’ve really felt is that we have to be patient with government guidelines and restrictions…

“When you look at what’s happening in India and in other countries, we are so fortunate to be where we are right now in Scotland.”

It would be easy to categorise the diverging views of Arnold and Newman as representing positions that are, according to one’s taste, too cavalier, in Arnold’s case, or too compliant, on Newman’s part. However, that would be to fail to reckon with the on-going uncertainties and vagaries of the pandemic, and the varying, genuinely held opinions on how best to proceed as the public health crisis recedes.

The difference of emphasis of the two directors highlights the fact there we have yet to reach a social consensus on the safest and most sensible away to exit the pandemic.

For details of Pitlochry Festival Theatre’s outdoor summer season, visit: pitlochryfestivaltheatre.com