Nothing
Spreads Like Fear. This is the tag-line for Contagion, Steven Soderbergh’s 2011
film about a global pandemic and the subsequent loss of social order before scientists
eventually identify and contain the virus with a new vaccine. Given some of the
hysteria in response to the real-life Covid-19 Coronavirus pandemic we’re currently
in the thick of, there are few more apt descriptions of the toilet-roll panic
buyers currently turning supermarkets into Ballardian wastelands. In the
current climate, Soderbergh’s film sounds like both prophecy and warning.
I missed
Contagion when it first came out, though I intend rectifying this oversight utilising
the new breadth of downtime I’ve suddenly acquired since all the theatres
closed this week. It appears I’m not the only one keen to see the film. According
to my colleague Russell Leadbetter, who has seen it, Contagion is currently at
number two in the Amazon Prime chart, with its level of online hires second
only to Harry Potter.
Given
that real time social life in public spaces has been pretty much outlawed,
there are probably worse things you could watch over the next however long it
is we must collectively self-isolate and socially distance. The Andromeda
Strain, the 1971 film based on Michael Crichton’s novel about the devastating effect
of an alien organism, might also appeal.
We are,
after all, effectively living in a 1970s science-fiction film. This was brought
home on Monday afternoon, when I visited Oran Mor in Glasgow to see The Beaches
of St. Valery. Stuart Hepburn’s Second World War set play was this week’s
contribution to the west end venue’s A Play, a Pie and a Pint lunchtime theatre
phenomenon, and is likely to have been my last theatre reviewing gig for some
time.
While
the tabloid headlines proclaimed ‘NO PUBS’ and ‘NO BINGO’ on neglected
news-stands, on a ghostly Glasgow Underground, billboards advertising events at
Tramway, the King’s and the Pavilion now resembled monuments to shows that have
been laid to rest before they could even open. It was the same with the
plethora of posters lining the walls of every café and bar on Great Western
Road.
That
morning, the King’s and Festival Theatres in Edinburgh cancelled their immediate
programmes. Experimental music festival Counterflows pulled the plug entirely,
just as the Aye Write! literary festival in Glasgow had done a couple of days
before. Edinburgh International Festival, meanwhile, postponed this week’s
launch of its 2020 programme, which will hopefully still take place in August.
All of
this followed the Scottish Government’s advice that gatherings of 500 or more
should be curtailed. Creative Scotland’s statement that all existing funding
arrangements would be honoured even if events were cancelled was a sensible response,
which the artistic community needed to hear.
UK Prime
Minister Boris Johnson’s advice on Monday couldn’t have been more different.
Rather than ordering necessary and legally binding blanket closure of all
cultural venues, Johnson merely suggested people keep away from them. With none
of the venues and organisations affected able to claim insurance because of
this, this effectively throws every theatre and arts institution, every
independent grassroots music venue, every community cafe and every freelance
arts worker under Johnson’s ideologically inclined bus. This is the case for box
office, front of house and bar staff as much as performers, technical and
administrative staff and creative teams.
Since
then, arts institutions and venues in Scotland and beyond have closed
voluntarily. Their future survival remains uncertain. Chancellor of the
Exchequer Rishi Sunak’s statement on Tuesday outlining cash support and
interest-based loans for small businesses in hardship won’t prevent venues from
going under. Nor will it prevent freelance workers’ livelihoods from being destroyed.
The
Federation of Scottish Theatre has now stepped up to argue its members’ corner.
While this is good news, the damage has arguably already been done. Pitlochry
Festival Theatre for instance, receive 86% of its revenue from ticket sales.
Their new production of Barefoot in the Park looked set to be able to cover
that and more, but was forced to close after one night.
The
first theatrical casualty of Covid-19 happened two weeks earlier, when the two Italian
dates of The Metamorphosis, Vanishing Point’s brilliantly realised staging of
Franz Kafka’s novella, was cancelled. When Matthew Lenton’s production opened
at the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, Kafka’s existential tale of a young man who
wakes up one morning having turned into a giant bug had itself been transformed
by current events.
Like
Soderbergh’s film, the play had become about contagion and the fear it
provokes. Or, as Vanishing Point themselves said after they were forced to pull
all forthcoming Scottish dates of their tour on Tuesday, ‘It’s the strangest
irony: a show that became about the moment we’re living in, being cancelled
because of the moment we’re living in.’
With
everyone is in isolated limbo, this is the time for hard talk. A substantial emergency package needs to be introduced
as a matter of urgency. This shouldn’t be about propping up commercial
companies able to roll with the punches. It should be about supporting those
who, not just in the arts, walk a financial tightrope every day, knowing that
one wrong move might see them tumble into unemployment, homelessness or worse.
The economic
benefits of the arts have long been spelt out to politicians. The payback needs
to start now. In the wake of Covid-19, this is the perfect time to fast-track a
universal basic income many have spent years arguing for. Rather than create more
debt, this would offer a vital safety net, not just for arts freelancers, but
for all those whose jobs are precarious enough to fall prey to disasters like Covid-19.
As for
theatre, like Vladimir and Estragon in Beckett’s piece of post-apocalyptic
knockabout, Waiting for Godot, it will go on. The Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh
put it best in their temporary closure announcement on Tuesday. ‘One day, this
strange time will become a story which Scotland’s playwrights and theatre-makers
will tell on our stages. And when they do, we hope you will join us to hear it.’
Start spreading
the news. No fear involved.
The Herald, March 19th 2020
ends
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