Outdoors for creativity

Good to see people are allowed to use the great outdoors at last for more than jogging and muscle-flexing, despite the predictable cretinous Tory shambles in giving braindead indoor boozers, eateries and cinemas the green light 16 days earlier. The pre-pandemic pictures though speak for themselves: big crowds are to be avoided, and that means big-budget productions need to be off the agenda for now.

So why not turn crisis to opportunity, strip everything down to the bare bones and overdose on the minimalism and (sutably distanced) intimacy successive generations of dramatists and performers have assured us they'd really like to be doing? That's hard to pull off when your trade involves spectacle and there are overheads in preparation alone, but if theatre wants to broaden its appeal this seems an occasion to do it with other creative diversions few and far between and epidemiologically unappealing.

Better more low-key productions with less outlay and fewer punters than the nightmare of controlling large numbers: the returns will be scant, but the health risk lower, and it'll show that there's more to theatre than the traditional fare or megabucks spectaculars. It's supposed to be about creativity, so let's get creative and return performance to its roots while there's an opportunity.