Guest Blog: Gareth Machin, Artistic Director of Wiltshire Creative, On Reopening Salisbury Playhouse

In the words of Cosmo Brown, "Make 'em laugh" - and how life-affirming to hear waves of laughter ripple through Salisbury Playhouse this week. At times over the past few months, the building has felt like a ghost ship, but now it's awake, buzzing and alive with people having a great night out.

John Godber's beautiful, funny, nostalgic play September in the Rain is big on laughter and humanity, brimming with brilliantly observed and instantly recognisable behaviour. It's also gloriously theatrical, shifting location, time and emotional state in a heartbeat.

All of which makes for terrific entertainment, but what's struck me most over the past few days is how much our audience are embracing the social aspect of theatre-going. Yes, they're here to see a play, but they're really here to be with other people. We went up late on the first three performances because we couldn't prise people out of the bar where they were busy catching up with friends, drinking and enjoying the amazing atmosphere created by our fabulous external relations team.

All of this bodes well for our revival over the coming weeks and months as we seek to recover and rebuild. Not that we're complacent. It's going to be a long haul getting audience figures back to pre-pandemic levels.

So what's the strategy? Firstly, making sure people feel safe. However attractive the work on stage might be, we know if people don't feel comfortable they won't return. We're fortunate to have a generous front of house space in Salisbury, able to accommodate large numbers with relative ease, and our bar operation has been modified to avoid bottlenecks and big congregations. We're encouraging mask wearing, we're offering socially distanced performances, we're taking temperatures as people enter the building, and we clean, and we clean.

Secondly, we're programming with pragmatic ambition. Pragmatic, because we remain one Covid infection away from the risk of cancellations, so the work needs to be light on its feet and on a smaller scale to pre-pandemic work. Ambitious, because we need to excite people again. We need to be bold and varied in our offer and make sure there is, literally, something for everyone.

So after September in the Rain we're delighted to be co-producing The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes, adapted by and starring Ian McDiarmid and directed by Michael Grandage. Bringing artists of that calibre to Salisbury is a core part of our mission: a world-class cultural experience in the heart of Wiltshire.

We then tack in a different direction, with comedy from Shaparak Khorsandi and Phil Wang, music from Nick Harper and the Moscow Drug Club alongside film and spoken word events. In addition, Salisbury Arts Centre, also part of Wiltshire Creative, will be hosting three different visual art exhibitions, including Maker's Tale, presenting new insights into traditional crafts, and Linescapes, exploring the line of the landscape and the visible changes to the natural environment occurring through human and non-human influence.

All of this should set us up for our Christmas season, a crucial time as we seek to rebuild relationships with our varied communities. In a city of just over 40,000, nearly 30,000 people usually visit us over the festive period. This is the all-important moment to get our local audience back into the habit of coming to the theatre.

This year, we're offering Mike Akers' hilarious and innovative retelling of Snow White. Reimagined in a glamorous 1950s fairy tale wonderland, it's full of original songs, live music, great jokes, stunning visuals and freedom-fighting moles.

Of course, all of this programme is vulnerable to future restrictions, but the laughter, chatter and good cheer that's currently swirling around the building will help sustain us through any future disappointment. It's the oxygen we all need at the moment and it feels great!

Find out more about Wiltshire Creative and book for shows here

Photo credit: The Other Richard

To post a comment, you must register and login.