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'Theatres save lives – this is where you give blood, vote and cry'

During lockdown, artistic director Tamara Harvey returned to Theatr Clwyd in Mold, north-east Wales, long after it had closed to the public. “There were weeds growing through cracks in the pavement, the grass was really long,” she remembers. “It felt like we’d abandoned it.” Inside it was eerily quiet. “Theatres should never be silent,” Harvey reflects.

Eventually, Harvey heard music and found 16-year-old George Edwards, who has been allowed to use the huge Anthony Hopkins theatre to keep up his dance training. The teenage dancer’s usual ballet practice was curtailed by his school’s closure during the pandemic and he did not have the space at home to train properly. “In that moment, when it felt like we weren’t going to get through this and bring the building back to life, seeing George dancing on that stage was the thing that carried me through the next few weeks,” says Harvey.

The theatre, which Harvey took over from Terry Hands in 2015, has similarly carried not just Edwards – who says he can focus on his artistry by performing solo to empty seats – but also a whole region through lockdown. One appeal, organised by Gwennan Mair, director of creative engagement at the theatre, has asked members of the public to donate “rainbow shoeboxes” to vulnerable children. Each is decorated and filled with a mixture of arts and crafts materials, toys, treats and seedlings. This summer, the theatre will become a creative hub for vulnerable children and the children of NHS workers to explore dance and drama – offering a “space where they can tell stories and find some release”, says Harvey. It’s enabled Clwyd to employ two dozen freelancers, including actors, directors and visual artists, to work with the young people.

Harvey points out that, while the need is “different and greater” during the Covid-19 pandemic, the theatre usually has a summer school offering. There is a misconception, she says, that because theatres have gone dark in the last few months they have suddenly turned their attention to community work. At Clwyd, it has long been at the heart of the organisation. The theatre has initiatives with the NHS (on Arts from the Armchair, a multi-arts intervention for people with cognitive impairment) and with the police and Mold crown court (on Justice in a Day, a school scheme that starts with a play about crime and ends with the children determining a fair sentence).

While they may not be centre-stage in the main house like the ballet-dancing Edwards, plenty of people have continued to take part in the theatre’s classes, workshops and outreach programmes online. “At the moment, we’re not doing anything transactional,” says Clwyd’s executive director, Liam Evans-Ford. “We’re not selling tickets, we can’t do ice-cream, can’t sell beer – all those things that financially underpin our activities. The only thing left to us is how we use our skills to look after people. That is now front and centre.” The theatre has delivered two essential things during this crisis, he says: creativity and food.

Playwright Tim Price, who is on Clwyd’s board, says that as services closed around Mold due to austerity cuts, the theatre has grown in importance for locals. “That building has become almost like a town square,” he says, “its roots and branches reach so many parts of the community.” For those who are isolated or marginalised, being able to go there and participate “with someone knowing who you are and knowing your story” is of huge benefit, says Price, who believes regional theatres provide a vital social infrastructure that has been lost in many towns as libraries and youth centres have been forced to close.

Harvey points to Clwyd’s relationships with dementia patients, which she says have resulted in less strain on the NHS. The Justice in a Day programme is targeted each year to a prevalent crime, so directly responds to immediate social concerns such as the drug gangs operating through “county lines” networks in north Wales. Since the coronavirus outbreak, some of the freelance performers who appear regularly at Clwyd have gone to work in care homes. “They felt confident in that setting after work they’ve done with community groups,” says Evans-Ford.

“Theatres save lives,” insists Price. “If you live in a small town, a theatre is probably where you go and give blood, vote, participate and see your first play. It’s probably the first place where you cry in public.” Arts centres’ participatory work has often been overlooked and during the pandemic that has been particularly the case, as louder arguments have been made about theatre’s economic value to the nation. All those Westminster statements about preserving “crown jewel” venues and getting the shows back on suggest an idea of theatre as a jolly night out at a hot-ticket play rather than recognising how theatres have become a vital part of our social fabric in towns across the UK.

Tamara Harvey, centre, with Hom, I’m Darling’s writer Laura Wade and star Katherine Parkinson.
‘We’re OK as long as we don’t start making shows’ … Tamara Harvey, centre, with Home, I’m Darling’s writer Laura Wade and star Katherine Parkinson in 2018. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

In contrast, a unique piece of legislation in Wales, the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act – praised by Harvey, Evans-Ford and Price – requires public bodies to improve social, cultural, environmental and economic wellbeing by working better with their communities. Its vision is as ambitious, progressive and interconnected as the theatre’s own.

Clwyd has variously furloughed between 85-90% of its staff (roughly 100 people) throughout the pandemic. Many theatres in the UK have entered redundancy consultations; Harvey says Clwyd should be safe until April. “The great irony and the great tragedy is that we’re OK as long as we don’t start making shows, because that’s the danger point.” If they were to mount a new production and then cancel performances, it would put the entire organisation at risk. For that reason they’ve postponed their pantomime, Beauty and the Beast, to 2021. (“You can’t keep a panto company healthy at the best of times,” says Harvey drily.)

Related: Wait for date to fully reopen theatres spells disaster for panto season

Price believes Clwyd has achieved a delicate balance: artistic and participatory excellence. The same place that runs exercise classes for people with dementia also launched an Olivier award-winning West End comedy (Laura Wade’s Home, I’m Darling, directed by Harvey, which transferred to London in 2019). He says it is hard to make a case for how valuable such regional buildings are because it’s difficult to know whether to start with the economic, moral, political or social argument.

Harvey agrees that they haven’t talked “as much as we should” about their community work. “We don’t want to do virtue signalling – that’s not why we do it. But in this moment, when we are fighting for our survival, the whole of our sector across the UK, we of course wish we had talked about it a bit more – to make people understand what could be lost.”