People Watching - Social Media style

Since the first lockdown, I've been fascinated by the work of the conspiracy theorists that have worked solidly for nearly two years now to portray themselves as enlightened, whilst nicknaming all the rest of us mere mortals as sheep. As a Welshie I've got no issue with being linked to the Bovidae family - it comes with the territory.

I wrote about my experience at the time here. I enjoyed the sport of chatting and challenging these people. To be clear I don't condone trolling, so my interactions were always respectful as in truth I felt concerned for a lot of the people holding onto the drivel that some of these conspiracists came up with. Then after reading a bit more I became interested in how these people were monetising their hate. A Just Giving account here, a Patreon account there, the monetization of successful youtube channels - it quickly adds up to a healthy income.

What I quickly discovered is that there were known "leaders of thought", people that portrayed themselves as helpful but in reality, were feeding the anxieties of their followers with their various "concerns". As the pandemic continued you could see that some of these people were loving their newfound celebrity status, whilst also professing to have been forced into the limelight as "somebody had to stand up for all the injustice" These people were operating outside the realm of the known right wing media like Toby Young, Allison Pearson, Peter Hitchens et all, but were building followers of thousands.

After the college FB account got attacked by some anti-maskers over our panto "Covidella and the Masked Ball" I took even more interest in these groups. I couldn't understand how a simple stupid online panto was suddenly being accused of being a propaganda tool for the government.  I mean I know that it was a pandemic but we were talking about covid here, not some mind-altering virus, as if I'd be hired as a propanda tool for the Tories. Hell at one point somebody had a go because even the mice in the cartoon postcard were masked! On a FB ad we were getting trolled left, right and centre, with the most used words and phrases being that we "should be ashamed of ourselves", we were part of the government's "propaganda" machine, and the most popular word. . .paedophiles. Literally we were accused of being padophiles for "abusing children". To clarify. . . all because we said 'masked ball' and the cartoon characters on the promo were masked. 

It was then that I discovered that right wing groups consciously looking to divide and rule were deliberately infiltrating alternative medicine groups, spiritualist groups and groups focused on holistic wellbeing. So they were targeting people who already had an issue with "big pharma". Most of the ground work was already done for them. Of course fast forward a couple of years and there is the much held belief that the origin of all this nonsense was just part of the new online war with Russia. Divide and rule. . . whichever way you have to do it. What was also really evident from the people that fell for this nonsense was that these dangerous messages were really hitting their target with people that had known mental health susceptibilities. It was fascinating to watch friends and acquaintances falling down the rabbit hole.

When challenged they would all helpfully tell me that I was being manipulated by MSM (Mainstream Media). They would link me to "facts" that were always so easy to disprove. I learned more about covid and the ONS in a 3 month period than I would have thought possible. Through the joy of social media algorithms I quickly found a group of people like myself that would call out this nonsense. It was a lovely feeling of community at a grim time. 

When the answer to every probing question is "you're being manipulated" it becomes a dangerous narrative. Their followers really were like sheep (ironically), all stating the same "message" like loyal followers. At the time my nephew was working on the NHS front line up in Liverpool. Pre and post pandemic he's a geriatric consultant, but like many in 2020 he suddenly became a 'covid doctor', and like many on the front line would tweet about his experiences. As I read his tweets with pride, I was bemused by how many people would call him a fraud, claim that he wasn't a doctor, accuse him of being "in" on the conspiracy. It's when you see the truth being distorted like that you understand the magnitude of the problem.

One of the people that really fascinated me was the journalist Anna Brees. A few of my friends had sent me clips of hers in a bid to convince me that covid was not real. However that's all I saw was the smoke and mirrors of somebody that had found her niche. I would regularly challenge her narrative, always politely - then one day she sent me a DM stating that "(your) comments on some of my posts recently are very negative" Her message went on to tell me that if I "constantly questioned (her) journalistic abilities" then she'd block me. I wrote back informing her that it was social media ie we could all interact, I mentioned that I was curious as to why she was trying to silence me. She declared me to be toxic and blocked me, not before taking a screenshot of the blocking and posting it to her thousands of followers claiming me to be "dangerous". Cue a social media pile on of her followers, like the gangs from your playground memories, they'd blindly play "follow my leader". Increasingly I noticed that the people shouting the loudest about protecting our "freedom of speech" were only looking to protect their own freedom.

I've continued to follow this group of people as I've been interested to see what they go for next now that the "loss of liberties" created by the pandemic has subsided. One of Anna's mates was the recently convicted stalker Alex Belfield.  They would appear on each other's feed tantalising their followers with the prospect of a joint channel (though I think to be fair that was just Anna angling for that - Belfield was far more successful than her, so she was hoping to nab a few more followers). 

Belfield's persona was clearly to play up to his right wing audience. Like all the rest he claimed that he was simply executing his "freedom of speech", but unlike Anna his venom was very much on display for all to see. How anybody could watch one of his phone ins and not just feel utter contempt at his style is beyond me. 

So this is when my "hobby" of SM people watching finally collided head first with our industry - as Belfield loved a "showbiz story", and he also loved going after people in our industry. For somebody looking for notoriety in a Trump like fashion he's just found the ultimate accolade - the first person in the UK to be sent to prison for online stalking.

It is well known that Belfield went after countless people in our industry, and many of them have spoken out recently. However I was struck yesterday by Ben Hewis' post about the impact Belfield's campaign had had on him and his family. I remember when Belfield turned on Ben, and watched the escalation online. Reading Ben's account though this was clearly just the tip of the iceberg. 

Knowing the connection I nipped across to see what Anna had to say about her "mate's conviction".  True to form she's currently framing it as the "establishment" out to get Belfield. Her follower's are back to talking about paedophiles, but this time in a bizarre whataboutism as they try to compare the perceived severity of Belfield's sentence with the perceived leniency of a paedophile. 

Those seeds planted in 2020 have been watered, nurtured and propagated like a good 'un. Empathy of anything outside of "the fight" doesn't exist. Today I was reading how Right Said Fred like Brees and the rest loving a bit of misinformation, accused Ben of being upset by some "hurty words", implying that somebody should just accept being stalked by somebody who is clearly unwell. Zero empathy.

This court case might make others think twice about selling hate - then maybe we'll all find out if these people are deluded, ill, or merely opportunists looking for their next Patreon subscriber.

Changed For Good

 When covid hit and we were faced with the bizarre reality of being confined to our homes none of us could have guessed quite how long those "strange times" would last. When the theatres went dark in March 2020 it's hard to recall now that there was a belief that they'd be closed for a couple weeks, whereas of course in reality those weeks quickly turned to months. I remember the excitement of taking my children to watch a drive-in Dinosaur show after months of nothing. As my children looked on in amazement and wonderment I distinctly remember sitting in the driving seat shedding a 'happy tear' just to watch a company of actors being able to work again.

Even though this is very much our recent history it already feels like a lifetime ago that I was in my kitchen doing the homeschooling with my eldest prior to rushing online to check in with the college. I remember telling one of my students who was struggling with the lockdown that once it was all over, it would be like returning home from touring - it would be like we'd never been away. Normal life would just trundle on as it always does we'd just be a bit more knowledgeable about ourselves, as anything away from the ordinary is bound to influence our future self.

As I've said before I'm writing a book about The MTA at the moment, and it's fascinating sketching out the pandemic chapter - how quickly we all adapted and changed in a bid to ensure that no time was lost.

Of course, the reality is that covid is still very present, whether it's a random positive test, a reminder to wear your mask in certain settings, or for so many people the debilitating legacy of long covid symptoms lingering on like a bad memory unable to be 'filed' away as finished. Recently I was chatting to someone that was telling me quite how many friends they've lost recently, friends that prior to covid were young and healthy. For many the explosion of sudden deaths fits nicely into the anti-vax rhetoric, it feeds the paranoia that the pandemic left the world with. Of course in reality (and according to multiple peer-reviewed papers now), the reasons for the excess deaths are somewhat complex. A mixture of a global population that was exposed to a deadly virus (it was never a bad cold), leaving more people than we realise with ticking time bombs as the virus goes for one more mutation, plus a global population that stopped routine appointments, meaning that early warning symptoms have been missed.

2 years on our industry is struggling to find its way forward as I wrote about a few months back. Pre-covid the thought of a show being cancelled was just unthinkable. The adage "the show must go on" was our lived reality, post covid though there are no such guarantees. Even at the college level of producing shows it was terrifying how quickly things could change.  All of The MTA's shows since March 2020 were hit in one way or another by a covid outbreak and each time it gave me sleepless nights trying to work out the logistics. . . and that's without the pressure of needing to break even, so hats off to all producers muddling through this strange time.

As the UK lurks from one crisis to another though there's one thing that's struck me recently - how so many people and indeed so many organisations didn't actually "evolve" during the past 2 years, and how right up to the government there appears to have been a naive belief that we would all simply recalibrate back to a pre-pandemic time.  I'm bemused how so many people have missed the evolution and therefore have failed to plan for it.

Take our industry - the constant cancelling of shows has a profound knock-on effect on our audiences. Even as somebody in the industry I hesitate now to book a ticket too far in advance, I'd rather wait and take my chance on the day that I want to go, yet in making this choice I'm also mindful that there are producers needing to see an advance ticket sale. I'm assuming that time and time alone will restore a much needed equilibrium to this, but I also wonder whether from hereonin the show won't go on? 

Whilst our perceived reality pre-2020 was that things were somewhat fixed eg you'd book a holiday and assume that your flight would happen, we now find ourselves in a world full of uncertainty, and I'm curious how that permeates throughout society. 

Speaking recently to some business owners I was struck by their optimism that things would "soon get back to normal" but they seemed to have missed the point entirely that normal in 2022 has a different complexion from normal 2019. It should be noted that not all the changes are bad, take zoom life for example, the fact that the pandemic normalised video conference calls as opposed to traipsing here, there and everywhere for meetings that often took a fifth of the time to travel to places is revolutionary for personal time management. As a parent of young children the normalisation of hybrid working is a game changer, but I can also recognise that this change has the potential to change the city landscape for good.

We lived online for over a year - that is bound to change us all. I've definitely noticed that my concentration span is much shorter these days. I sense myself metaphorically scrolling through information said in person to me with a sense of undue urgency. With online life comes the pros and cons of social media, the artificial divide that's created when we all unwittingly believe a truth just because somebody wrote it down and posted it.

What will it mean for the training industry this fast-scroll life that now exists as a shop window to dance and drama training. Well I think that we've already seen a shift. It's no coincidence that some of the newer colleges that hit the ground running with their brilliant social media campaigns of commercial videos have done considerably better than the "old guard" colleges over recent years. The rapid growth of quite a few of them has been fascinating to watch. As with all these things only time will tell if they're actually any good. It'll be interesting to see their stats over the next few years to find out the quality of that growth. Alternatively of course there's my other theory that elite training is on its way out, and bulk "life training" is on its way in. When training hundreds at a time there will always be enough clickbait to mute the fact that the majority of students don't do that well. 

As for waiting for things to settle down and go back to "normal" though. . .we all have to accept that "normal" has always been a moveable point.

Who are we lying to? The covid fightback continues

 Our industry's ecosystem is broken - from the ground up it's all gone pear-shaped. There was so much hope (ironically) back in 2020 when everything closed that when we returned, we would fix everything that was wrong. Of course, that was extremely naive and ambitiously optimistic, but it did feel like our best chance to reassemble and re-evaluate how our industry had limped through the last few years prior to the pandemic.

Fast forward two years and so little has changed. There are more angry voices calling out inequality in the industry, but no finance to address how we open up our industry to all. So for sure, there are more opportunities, but very often we don't have the talent coming through to give the opportunities too. We don't have the talent because the funding around training is worse than ever, and the outreach programmes aren't effective enough to create a real change in the landscape.

We spoke about how 'the show must go on' probably wasn't the best practice that we all thought that it was, then the theatres creaked back open and (some) producers desperate to keep the industry alive exploited the motto more than ever. As swings and understudies got lauded, dance captains and associates were buckling under the pressure of yet another cut show and more rehearsals than we'd ever had before (straight off the back of no work for 2 years). The landscape had changed and the unthinkable was now a regular occurrence - shows would cancel a performance, often leaving audiences out of pocket and slightly scared to rebook. . . yet.

The landscape is still so sparse to what we were used to pre-pandemic, and in spite of so many people leaving the industry during the dark times, colleges with their ever-growing populations kept churning out thousands of graduates eager to work and determined to stay the distance, whilst industry stalwarts that usually managed to stay afloat were suddenly left on the sidelines with them waiting for things to really take off again.

Throw in the real impact of Brexit and the lack of opportunities for performers to now work abroad - the cruise ship industry is still buckling under covid, and for the few jobs that there are available, an EU passport is now as valuable as a good turn out or a top-class voice reel.

In the UK we've finally named that the touring model is deeply flawed from digs to pay - but what's the answer? People are tired of things being hard.

2 years of hardship and people's resilience is low. Those 2 years stole more than our work, for many the pandemic stole their identity. As a vocational industry so many of us identify as our jobs - this is a personal choice not endorsed by the industry, but a reality of a lifetime of dreams getting fulfilled.  So many of us made the career choice at a stupidly young age that it somehow became a constant in our lives - until that fateful day in 2020 when our industry closed down.

The successful amongst us saw their life savings dwindling away to nothing. In technical theatre literally hundreds of 'us' realised that their skills were transferable, and more than that, were transferable in industries that naturally treated their staff better. Shorter working hours, larger paycheques, financial security. The talent drain amongst our technical theatre community is staggering.

We returned saying that we would look after each more carefully, but that hasn't happened, in fact, quite the opposite, we've returned more self-centred than ever, after all . . . all of 'this' could simply be snatched from us again. We have to look out for No 1 now.

As the person that started #time4change, the very first campaign for a better understanding of mental health and mental illness in the industry way back in 2016 the regression is clear. I mean the narrative and social media click baits are more on-message than ever. If you only studied theatre twitter you'd think that we'd had a revolution of understanding - but of course, the reality is different. People STILL can't differentiate between mental health and mental illness, now illness gets celebrated as opposed to people being encouraged to go and seek out help. A couple of schemes and an increase in mental health first aiders was not the revolution that I'd hoped for 6 years ago.

Take mental illness out of the picture and just focus on mental health and we've come back worse than when we left it. Now your resilience is tested because you should be grateful to be in a job - the cruise industry is currently a great example of this dangerous narrative. People on shows are working longer hours than ever (the joy of the covid cut show), for less money than ever. Less money adds to the everyday stress which was already hugely present for most freelancers during their non-funded pandemic. Companies are struggling so those invoices are being paid later than ever. The stress on the individual is huge (it should be noted on both sides of the table - as producing stuff during this time is a heart attack waiting to take hold).

All of the above will eventually sort itself out, but it would be a damn sight more healthy if the struggle was named more openly if people were supported during their wobbles and if companies focused on individuals as much as their accounting software.

There's still time for the revolution that our industry desperately needs, but first, we all have to breathe, take stock and heal. We have to learn to be kind to each other as we all take the next steps in the resuscitation of an industry that really could be world-class again.

Ambition over health

 Back in Feb 2020, a month before shit got real in a pandemic sort of way, my wife was advised to leave work and to 'protect herself', as this virus thing was nasty & given her medical history a colleague felt that she was at risk simply being at work. My wife works in a hospital - that colleague might have saved her life. . . or if an alternative narrative is to be believed - that colleague over reacted. Fast forward 2 years, and after 23 months of shielding (give or take a brief interlude) today covid finally caught up with my wife, only now she's triple vaxed, so 'hopefully' she's going to be OK.  That said, when my 5 year old suddenly started complaining of being hot today my heart sunk, as in truth we've been expecting this to hit the family given that in my son's school newsletter this week we'd been informed that 23 members of staff were currently off with covid, plus 11 out of 16 classes at the school had also recorded cases of covid. We didn't stand a chance - we have two children, and both of their classes were hit. My phone was pinging every day with another notification of a positive result. 

I'd love to think that this school was an anomaly, after all it was just this week that Boris Johnson announced that plan B was over and people should no longer work from home. In just a matter of days everybody can whip off those 'oppressive' masks and live a life of freedom again. Except for many people that freedom potentially comes at a huge cost. 

Since first hearing about the virus I've really done my research on covid. In a way I was desperate to discover that it wasn't such a risk to my wife, that if she caught it, she really would just have a 'bad dose of flu'. The research took me down the various rabbit holes that exist in the suddenly binary world of covid and covid deniers, the masked and unmasked, the vaxed and antivaxed - you get the picture.

Spurred on by a run in with a group of anti-maskers when I announced that I'd co-written a panto called Covidella and the Masked Ball, a run in which saw all adverts for the show getting hit on by people calling us child abusers for attempting to indoctrinate children, I spent most of lockdown one following the main protagonists of the anti-everything movement. I became fascinated by the alternative narrative that so many people were slowly buying into. The lies that were being perpetuated in a bid to make a point, the propaganda posts being put out by the people that were accusing the mainstream media (MSM) of . . . putting out propaganda posts. 

For a while I took to politely questioning their narrative, it was clear that some of the people involved were profiting from their stance, and I was curious how they'd react to an opposing point of view. I've blogged about this before - as all the people I challenged would first ask me privately to stop putting an opposing view on their timeline (let's not forget that these were the people 'fighting for freedom of speech'), and when I challenged the freedom of speech argument they would block me.  For these people a block is like a public flogging - as they tend to post about the block to their followers, knowing that lots of them will come at you to do their dirty work. It's a fascinating game of schoolyard bullying in a worldwide playing ground.

The pandemic has been so hard for everybody hasn't it? The lockdowns were surreal, and we all suddenly lived in some scifi movie with new words and phrases like shielding, furlough, antimasker all becoming an everyday event. 

I hadn't realised how hard the shielding had been for us as a family until my wife got her first vaccine back in early 2021. Both of us sat and cried tears of relief when she got her appointment. It felt, and indeed it was, massive. Finally there was hope of normality again. The collective relief was palpable.

Fast forward to now though and omicron has whipped up another covid wave, fortunately one that's known to be less aggressive, and that combined with the vaccine means that we've approached today's results with huge optimism. The stats are hugely in our favour, so we just have to sit it out now and hope that we're right. However I'm angry that a government so hell bent on saving a corrupt, inept PM has blindsided a nation on this. My son's school (like so many others up and down the country) have their hands tied. Really speaking with that much covid in the school they should be permitted to have some sort of short, sharp, circuit break in order for the outbreak to pass, yet Boris won't allow that to happen. Or following the controversial GBD route there could have been some leeway for children of vulnerable parents (& vulnerable children of course) to be able to homeschool for. a couple of weeks, just to keep everyone as low key safe as possible. However the law states that children must be in school. Literally lambs to the slaughter, hoping that everybody just gets a mild dose of it, and those that get hit hard are protected by the vaccine.  

Why the inaction? Well it must be clear to everybody that Boris's latest car crash of leadership was to play to the alt-right gallery within his own party, and suddenly give them everything that they've been asking for in order to keep their loyalty. Of course what he actually did was play into the hands of the alternative narrative which has blighted the pandemic, a narrative which was being fed daily with the news of all the parties that he seemed to have whilst the rest of us were in lockdown. Time and time again I've read that the parties were proof (if proof was needed) that covid was never really dangerous - if it was they wouldn't have risked their own health. Strange how people forget how entitled and privileged some other people are isn't it? Some people automatically assume in life that they'll be OK - that they're invincible. Are we really proposing that all the public servants at those parties weighed up the data evidence before accepting the drinks invite? Isn't it more likely that they all just wanted to break the rules and have a party - just like we all wanted to do, but the law would have caught us out. They were 'safe' in No 10 having their shindigs.

The alt-right narrative is so strong right now - the latest being the claim that covid only killed 17,000 people. A claim based on a freedom of information request - a request that was so narrowly worded of course the number was low. We're bombarded with the of covid or from covid questioning, negating entirely the reality of underlying health conditions, because of course nearly all of us have underlying health conditions. I have chronic migraines, that would be me down as somebody dying with an underlying health condition - yet migraines are not life limiting! 

When I argued this point the other day somebody pointed out to me that this viewpoint was akin to eugenics. I disagreed as I know some of the people that believe this stuff - they're not out to create a master race, they've just tumbled down the rabbit hole and can't see daylight anymore. 

Then today happened and I'm reflecting on what Boris's announcement this week really created. I discovered that the 'highly vulnerable' should all have been sent a PCR test to just keep at home from 10th Jan, and with that test comes a fast track to antiviral therapy should they suddenly test positive. Seemingly my wife is not the only person in the category that failed to get that package. In fact at the time of writing I don't know any clinically vulnerable person that received that package (& I've asked around).  Then there's the fact that a reporter discovered that the lifting of the working from home restriction should have included a caveat that the vulnerable should keep working from home. This was never publicised - my wife was due to return to work on Monday. 

I don't think that Boris is some Bond villain out on some perverse eugenic spree, I think that he's an entitled, spoilt, privileged, greedy, corrupt narcissist, who would make a pact with the devil if he thought that he could save himself the embarrassment of losing the job that he's believed was his since Eton.

He's divided a nation and has taken zero accountability for anything outside of his own ego.

A nation where people urging caution are called fear mongers, where paid for stats are bandied around online without any due diligence in order to back up whatever theory you'd like to subscribe to this week. Where influencers are being used as pawns in a game of division that none of us really understand. There's no right or left in politics anymore - it's all one murky swamp right now, where people are desperate to hang their hat on the peg that is most palatable for them.

Meanwhile . . . the clinically vulnerable are being hung out to dry. Oh and before you give me the rundown of what the lockdowns created. . . check those facts as a surprising amount of them are really wrong (regardless of what a friend of a friend told you). I don't want another lockdown, but I do think that there are pragmatic things that could be done to keep communities safer as we hopefully move back to a more normal existence.

The 7 Stages of Grief - Covid style

Over the past few days, my timeline appears to be flooded with people in our industry genuinely struggling and feeling afraid for their future. The human cost of COVID is heartbreaking, the emotional cost of the pandemic though would have changed the lives of millions forever.

In many ways COVID was the great equaliser, regardless of our careers to date in the industry this microscopic germ floored us all from producers to runners, from the established stars to the new graduates, suddenly the playing field was level. However, that in itself has transpired to be unsettling.

1) SHOCK AND DISBELIEF

For the first few weeks, we were all in shock and huddled indoors reeling at the fact that our lives had turned into a SciFi movie, suddenly we were all extras in Russell T Davies' Years and Years, a programme that we'd all admired for its exceptional writing and exquisite performances by top-rate performers, yet suddenly like all of the people involved in that show, we too were all suddenly at ground zero.

I don't think that anybody in their wildest dreams could have envisaged a time when every theatre in the world would go dark?  It's no wonder we survived the first month. We were too numb to do anything else

2) DENIAL

Then came the posts where people declared cheerfully that this was almost a good thing as it would allow all of us to stop being defined by our careers after all this was an industry that had been bleeding us dry for years anyway, so we'd been given the opportunity to reboot 'life'.  A few people put out content, but the majority either stayed silent or felt the need to explain to everybody why they weren't able to put out content. Of course, in reality, we were all attempting to deal with the reality in whatever way we could. It was actually called survival, not creation.  Shows started to stream and we all bathed in the reflected glory of our friends in these shows. There were beginning to be some pluses to this mess after all. Free theatre to the masses - it was the socialist dream realised, and as we all know, most of our industry love the idea of a free theatre (even if we've failed to make it a viable concern as we've also all wanted a fair salary for the work that we do too). 

3) GUILT

However as the weeks turned to months and things slowly restarted our industry, the industry that we all believed was so vital to the health of our nation suddenly didn't matter.  Our fans appetite was being sufficiently sated by the online streaming going on, yet as Joe Public sat and enjoyed the performances, the performers and technicians were just stuck at home, not earning and not even hearing the applause that was no doubt going on in various places around the country. That same applause that actually seems to lift us up regardless of our mood, the sound that generally speaking makes us feel worthy. Self-validation is vital but the sound of applause is something different isn't it? The joy of watching our friends had somehow turned hollow and we were simply being reminded of what we had lost. We don't talk about this much but let's face it, the sound of strangers appreciating our work is the greatest drug of all. A drug that lifts us up when we feel like life is hard, that gives us an adrenaline rush so massive that many performers feel the need to artificially recreate its effects long after the curtain has come down. Well, times were certainly hard, and our 'drug of choice' just wasn't available anywhere, more than that it was now against the guidance of the government to partake in it.

4) ANGER AND BARGAINING 

As 1 month turned into 3 months and there was still no real sign of recovery for our sector, and with so many people financially struggling having fallen down the massive cracks that the treasury had created in its DIY fix of the economic crises that was the secondary disease that the country was attempting to fight, you could see people on social media losing themselves more and more.

An appallingly unjust death in the States provided the release that everybody needed.  Finally, there was a worthwhile cause to utilise all the anger and feelings of injustice that we had all been feeling. Of course, we couldn't get that angry for our own issues, as part of the problem with a global pandemic is everybody understands on one level that we actually don't know where to place the blame that we're so desperate to park up. Where do you locate the anger? We were finally able to truly bargain an explanation out of this mess. We might have felt like we were lost, but some much needed social change could grow from this anger.  This was our chance to turn the nightmare into something positive. It was like releasing the steam from a pressure cooker for a cause that most people had no doubt believed in over the years (as that is the white privileged position of choosing when to get involved in the fight for equality)

Suddenly years of niggles about everything rather unfairly in many ways diluted the main fight, relegating it some 4 months on to a well-intentioned occasional social media post again as we all got swept away into a tsunami of what felt like validated pain. 

Now that the anger was being released we got angry about literally everything and we made sure that everybody heard us (all with the hashtag #bekind). We were angry at people putting content out, we got angry at people putting positive messages out, we were angry at people saying that they were struggling, we were angry at the other industries starting back, we turned on each other as we couldn't actually scream at patient zero, the person who unwittingly started off this catastrophic chain reaction. We couldn't sit with the anger of a pandemic as that was too huge, so we turned to the minutiae of life and suddenly shouted about all the little (but important) things that have impacted us during our lives. Things that under normal circumstances we would have brushed off by now, but with nothing else to focus on for months it was time to revisit them and shout about it. We couldn't get positive strokes from an audience, but we could get a social media validation for our feelings online.

5) DEPRESSION

We've shouted and screamed albeit it virtually, in a bid to be seen and remind people that we exist as an industry, yet we've wept when we've seen the outside of the theatres converted into outside dining areas for a hospitality trade that had been suffering every bit as hard as us, but who were already permitted to go back to work. Talk about salt in the wounds.

The inevitable loss of jobs has been hard-hitting, literally every day an announcement about a theatre or a company that has had no choice but to make sweeping redundancies in the hope that this will save their business from going under. We've wept for the buildings and our memories in them, and we've wept for the people that are left stranded out in the street, weaponised with an enviable skill set but for an industry that doesn't exist.

We hear a lot about people thinking that they should retrain and move onto something else. I mean the industry has never been easy anyway, you could be waiting years for a job (literally). However, that was manageable (just) when there were clearly jobs happening. You could see the 'dream' happening for others every single day, and for many, that's enough to keep going for. If it could happen for 'them' it could happen for 'you', you've just got to hold tight and survive until it was your turn. Now though it was nobody's turn. We weren't even seeing 'what we could have won'. 

We hit the depression stage with a thud. This is different to clinical depression, it's a feeling of abject loneliness looking into an abyss, even when you're surrounded by your loved ones.  Suddenly this all feels far too big, and we are all left feeling so small and insignificant. The public are getting on with things and we've turned into Mr Cellophane. 

There are very few people in our industry that have not been told by somebody in their lives that what we do is just a hobby. I've been a professional musician for 36 years and my father still wants me to get a proper job. Suddenly the government's response to our sector has felt like every bad taxi ride conversation we've ever had.

6) RECONSTRUCTION AND WORKING THROUGH

Some 4 months later we were permitted to do outside performances. Producers and performers alike were quick to seize on this glimmer of hope. Would people want to come back to the theatre again? Had they missed us? Shows were slowly emerging, filming had restarted, jobs were appearing. Finally, theatres could open again, of course not like before, but open to try and work out how to survive this mid pandemic limbo that we find ourselves in. 

So I guess that's where lots of people are right now, which is why it's particularly tough. In order to work through this period, we're all going to have to adjust what our plans were. A temporary career to financially see us through this period? Possibly retraining in something to build up a skillset in another area. Of course, lots of us have said for years that this would have been a good idea, suddenly though it's the only idea. That's rather scary when you know that you're only really good at the one thing. . . our industry.

We are a vocational industry, our work defines us just like we define our work. That's not to say that the industry is driving us to early graves and abusing us along the way, for so many of us this is our hobby as well as our career. I don't know much about civvy street, maybe bankers feel the same about their job - though I suspect not.

We've always been the outsiders that somehow found our 'tribes'. This alone made us feel safe and contained even without putting a show into the mix. It's hard to feel the benefit of that tribe when everyone is struggling at the same time. You see it online - who's going to pick who up today?

7) ACCEPTANCE 

Well right now this is the aim I guess. We get on with doing whatever we need to do to survive, breathe and just know that in time theatre will return. Fast forward a few years and we might be able to look back on this disaster as a catalyst for real meaningful change in the world, and if we can't then I guess we just have to accept the fact that we tried, and we tried whilst surviving the most bizarre thing imaginable.

It's important to go through a process to survive this period as best that we can. We were right to be numb, sad, angry, bitter, remorseful, optimistic . . . just 'being' right now is enough. Suddenly we are all survivors

Shouting into an echo chamber

When discussing the current unrest in the world somebody said to me the other week that things would definitely change this time because we now have social media raising awareness. It was said with utter belief and optimism that our timelines could change the world.  

If the current crises in our industry has taught me anything it's reaffirmed my long-held belief that we're all happy shouting about things in our own echo chambers. We don't actually want to be challenged on our beliefs and ideologies, do we? We want to put our thoughts out into the ether and have our 'followers' agree with us. What would a controversial posting be without people liking it and reposting it? The feeling of self-righteousness when we're reposted with a comment that supports our original idea can't be beaten. At that moment we've won the internet . . . well for an hour at least. 

It's not real though is it? We've been lulled into a false sense of security by choosing to follow like-minded people. My political views easily lean more towards the left than the right, and therefore my timeline is littered with like-minded people. Is that skewing my view of the world though, as I'm left thinking that everybody thinks the same as me, which is clearly incorrect, as Trump got elected and Brexit happened, both of which looked impossible given my timelines? 

The day that the results from the Brexit referendum came out my Facebook timeline was saturated with angry, sad people all reeling in disbelief. We (virtually) consoled each other and questioned how such a thing could have happened. Yet step outside your own timeline for a moment and you'll quickly discover that a parallel world has been running alongside it the whole time.

When the unthinkable happens and these two worlds cross paths (I've let go of the geometry analogy for a moment - don't judge me) we tend not to debate with the 'other side'. We shoot from the hip and attempt to shut them down adamant that we're right and they're wrong. They do exactly the same. We've lost the art of gentle persuasion and instead opted for shaming the difference. Then to compound this our mates all pile on thereby suffocating the argument whilst not actually changing their minds.

My timeline screams Black Lives Matter at the moment. I'm bombarded with graphic images of a world that I don't recognise, but a world that I'm determined to understand and attempt to change.  I read the threads of stories of personal experiences that leave me incredulous that friends and colleagues have had to experience such bias all because of their skin pigmentation (with centuries of oppression thrown in too of course), whilst I attempt to educate myself about their lives and their life experiences, lives very different to the world that I've inhabited. Yet I don't stop to think that for every one of 'us' there's one of 'them'. Somebody who is also reading those threads but seeing no wrong in them. I've attempted to chat to some of them online, but their side like ours simply shut down the debate with insults and hyperbole.

Currently, my timeline is also screaming with the cries of an industry going under. COVID didn't only target the vulnerable it targetted a number of industries - the arts being one of those. Shows closed, theatres went dark (except for the fabled Ghostlight), and an entire industry went into hibernation overnight. Nearly 4 months later there is no indication of that hibernation ending. Worse than that nobody except us seems to be talking about it. Yesterday the culture secretary made the first real public statement to mention us in passing. Rather alarmingly he was noting that he'd start to look at how he could help as he wouldn't let our culture just disappear, missing the fact that with each day we were slowly shedding our culture like a goose sheds its feathers, both of us grounded in time. Today a theatre goes dark, tomorrow a company folds, with each passing hour another person decides to leave the industry as their previously unsustainable world suddenly passes the threshold which renders it impossible. We're seeing major companies declaring that they've been forced into streamlining their operations in order to survive. 

I'm old enough to remember Thatcher's Britain. I lived through the coal strikes, the pit closures, the end of the steelworks, communities left in tatters by their hubs being dismantled seemingly before their very eyes. I'm the proud daughter of a steelworker. I saw first hand what those decisions did to families and communities. Fast forward a couple of decades and suddenly there's another cull. It might not have been politics that started it this time, rather a random global pandemic, however, it's politics that could save it, and right now it's not really being discussed.

We scream into our echo chambers that we're dying, that the arts are being dismantled and we hear the cries of our peers shouting straight back at us in agreement. We're not really weeping for the producers allegedly forced into these decisions, we're weeping for us. For the actors and stagehands, the wardrobe departments and casting directors, the agencies and creatives, and entire infrastructure from FOH to partner businesses that nobody but us really understands.

Then I nip across to that parallel universe and nobody cares. They don't think that it's 'their world'. They have no interest in the posh person's theatre world. They haven't made the correlation that 'this world' is also their world. It's the films that they're streaming, the music that they're listening to, the jokes that they're laughing at, the TV programmes that they religiously follow. To 'them' we've always been an elitist institution. 'They' have never stepped foot in the theatre and perceive it to be 'high art', 'hoity toity' if you like. 

Nobody has really joined the two worlds. The basic infrastructure and history of the UK theatre scene has unwittingly nurtured this divide. The government subsidises organisations like the National, the RSC, major ballet and opera companies, but what of the grassroots theatre scene? How much money really goes out to the provinces and the villages in order to create cultural hubs there? To build a sense of community, hell to contribute to communities.  For sure there's ACE money getting distributed but there's a certain language needed to fill out those forms, and the people and organisations that could really do with some of that money don't speak that language - they don't teach form filling in local comps.

When we speak about our industry we only talk in terms of the establishment. There's lots of talk around opening up our industry to a greater diversity, both of ethnicity and different social classes, yet when you check the various schemes that have started up to support this worthy cause, we're still telling people that the establishment should be the aim of the game - we the worthy can help you the needy reach the end goal . . . the heart of the establishment?  The monied give donations to the already heavily subsidised organisations. If the government does decide to support us who'll get first dibs at the recovery fund? I can tell you who won't be getting it, the small scale touring companies that truly do attempt to reach the masses and expand our audience base, the TIE companies who visit the schools in an attempt to squeeze theatre and theatre arts into the curriculum somehow, the youth groups that are transforming lives with their work. 

This could be the perfect opportunity for our industry to regroup and truthfully look at what's working and what's not. We won't though. We're crying into our echo chambers for the government to maintain the status quo, so that we can pick up where we left off. The brutal truth though is that we didn't leave it in a good place. The recent disclosures around institutionalised racism have really hit that point home over the past few weeks. Will we look at different companies and organisations to make the change? Not a chance, we'll spend our energy attempting to change the dinosaurs, grateful that the pandemic didn't wipe them out.

Our echo chambers facilitated Trump and Brexit, maybe it's time to open up the conversations to find out how we truly make our industry come back stronger and more diverse than ever?