Covid-19 had many impacts, some of them profound, lots of them already forgotten. Amnesia seems to be an after-symptom of pandemics, an ailment brought on by recovery. When our 21st Century coronavirus took hold, accounts of the effect on London of Spanish Flu which, 100 years before, had killed millions around the world, were hard to find.
This time, we should augment the first drafts of history that gushed daily from the media from March 2020 rather than consign them to a vault of online bad memories. The virus revealed a London taken for granted, drawing large, hidden realities into the light. It changed London, too. More working from home and fewer people on the Underground is just part of that story. Much else would never be the quite same again. For example, the world of theatre.
Back in September, I attended the official launch of Scrum, a collective of performers, writers, teachers and directors whose purpose is, in its words, “to safeguard theatre-making for the next generation of artists and audiences”. Stories were told, songs were sung and early tastes of a forthcoming performance of Twelfth Night were served up in a performance space that will hold 250 people. Actor Adrian Lester, a patron, did the ribbon-cutting.
Scrum’s base is a building that stands on the snarling A4 Talgarth Road a short walk from Hammersmith Broadway. It used to be home to Hammersmith & Fulham Council’s archive, but now holds workshops, provides low-cost rehearsal studios and a facility for self-tape auditions – many of the, sometimes scarce, resources and facilities required for developing and delivering theatre all gathered in one place.
All of this emerged from the grimness of lockdown. Cast your mind back to when London’s live performance venues of every kind went dark and its entire workforce, from actors to set-designers, hair and make-up artists, writers, directors and producers, were plunged into an extended state of limbo. What did they do all day? What lessons could be learned for the future?
Lucie Dawkins (main picture), one of Scrum’s co-leads, recalls watching “an absolute exodus of artists out of the theatre” which shocked her and her collaborators into a fuller recognition of the fragility of the industry and the need to think afresh about how to sustain it in the future.
The Scrum project has pre-Covid roots. “We originally met, a huge group of 40 or 50 from lots of disciplines, who’d get together on a Saturday in whatever empty space we could find and help each other with whatever we were working on,” Dawkins says.
A core of around 10 stuck together through the virus, keeping going as best they could, writing and performing material under lockdown conditions: “We were running play readings, we were running script readings online, all sorts of things just to keep ourselves going. That was a very transformative time for us.”
They emerged committed to setting up a new kind of structure for theatre creativity: “We needed to set up an organisation that would be fit for purpose, because the old systems were not working.” It was a very particular pledge to “build back better“.
Scrum were accustomed to pitching camp anywhere that would have them: an old church; downstairs in “an abandoned bar in Dalston”; an empty accountancy firm’s office next to the Gherkin that was “the size of a football pitch”.
After the pandemic ended, they convened for a week in “an enormous empty house in the middle of nowhere” near Wisbech, and there settled on Twelfth Night as a first major production, relishing its comic physically and its “exploration of sexuality and gender and desire” apt for “a largely queer collective”. Dawkins will direct.
Thanks to property solicitors Hammond Associates, which helps charities and arts groups find unused properties, they eventually moved into the former Lilla Huset Professional Centre and spend weeks setting up before getting going in June.
Scrum became a charity two years ago. Its overarching purpose is “to nurture a new generation of audiences and theatre-makers”. Dawkins says it is blessed with “a five-strand funding stream” sustained by private donors and foundations, and also derives some income from activities in building, though tailoring charges to ability to pay. The group is acutely aware of the need to keep involvement in theatre work, famously precarious, accessible to people of all incomes.
“Over 75% of the industry is made up of freelancers,” Dawkins says. “The mean income of all creative freelancers in the theatre last year was £10,000. People literally cannot afford to get into the room to make work. If we lose this generation now, in ten years’ time there are not going to be people with the skills to put on plays at the Olivier.”
Rehearsals for Scrum’s Twelfth Night production are due to begin in the spring. It will initially be performed at the Scrum studios before going on a national tour to areas that receive low levels of arts funding, providing workshops and tickets for school at each location. Details of Scrum’s autumn/winter workshop season are here.