Rowson, James (2025) British Theatre in Crisis Mode: Recording Covid, Resilience and Rebirth. Contemporary Theatre Review, 35 (2-3). ISSN 1048-6801 (In Press)

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic affected all levels of the UK theatre industry, creating a series of wide-ranging impacts on the theatre workforce, affecting livelihoods, work and employment structures, aesthetic trends, and funding and income generation. More than four years after the start of the first national lockdown in the UK, it remains clear that substantive long-term shifts in both theatre practice and the institutional fabric of the performing arts have occurred in fundamental ways that are still being understood. In addition, audience behaviour has continued to fluctuate in response to unpredictable external influences, and theatre organisations are faced with crucial choices relating to their creative and community practices. This article builds on the results of the UK strand of Theatre after Covid, a collaborative, transnational research project between The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. By combining a mixed methods approach that blends online surveys, structured interviews, and discourse analysis, I examine the long-term institutional effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on UK theatre and explore how the industry has adapted and transformed in response to the crisis. In doing so, I suggest that despite the ways in which the uncertainty of the pandemic has destabilised the theatre ecology, Covid-19 has brought opportunities to reimagine the potential of what theatre practice is, who it engages with, and how it is understood.

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Official URL:	https://www.contemporarytheatrereview.org/
Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Covid-19, crisis, cultural institutions, institutional change, cultural policy, labour, freelancers, audiences
Subjects:	European Theatre, Dance and Performance Performance Drama
Depositing User:	Dr James Rowson
Date Deposited:	11 Aug 2025 11:43
Last Modified:	11 Aug 2025 11:43
URI:	https://crco.cssd.ac.uk/id/eprint/1827