We are absolutely delighted to announce that Next Stage Theatre Company has been successful in its bid to the Government's Culture Recovery Fund!
The award of over £50k has thrown a vital lifeline to The Mission Theatre. The money will enable Next Stage to forge ahead with its planned re-opening of the theatre for late-Autumn and Spring seasons, starting with the Next Stage Theatre Company production of The Memory of Water which was about to be performed in March by the company but was unable to go ahead because of the national lockdown. Dates and details of all the shows in our late-Autumn season are available HERE and more information about Next Stage Theatre Company is available HERE.
This grant will pay for the wide range of PPE equipment around the theatre that we have put in place to protect, as far as possible, audience members, cast and crew. This includes custom-made Perspex screens both front of house and backstage, automatic hand sanitiser dispensers at key locations around the theatre, health and safety signage, and state-of-the-art santitiser fogging machines that allow us to fully disinfect auditorium chairs between performances. We have also invested hundreds of pounds in Condencide - an evaporator and condenser cleaner which treats the ventilation, A/C and heating systems in The Mission Theatre to kill 99% of germs, and can be reapplied every few weeks to make sure the air flow in the Main Auditorium is kept as Covid and bug free as possible.
We will also use part of the grant to address the safety of technical crew operating in the tech box at the theatre. This small, enclosed area will now benefit from updated kit enabling lights and sound to be operated by state-of-the-art equipment which necessitates only one or - at the maximum - two people being in the tech cupboard at any one time.
Looking ahead, the funding will also help to pay some of the utility bills, rent and outgoings that are part of The Mission Theatre’s monthly obligations but which have been crippling since March when the theatre had to close and had no way of generating income. Even the planned late-Autumn and Spring seasons will not fully cover outgoings as The Mission Theatre’s auditorium will be configured to allow for social distancing which slightly reduces its audience capacity.
In an industry that has, since March, often seemed to be invisible and overlooked by the Government in favour of more obvious businesses, it is with the greatest relief and gratitude that this financial lifeline from the Government has been provided for theatres and cultural venues not only in Bath but around the country. There is no question that performers and audiences alike wish to see the return of live entertainment as soon as possible in our theatres and this generous gifting of sizeable amounts of money will go some way to helping realise this dream.
Everyone in Next Stage Theatre Company would like to express our immense gratitude to Arts Council England and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) for awarding us this grant, and hope that anyone reading this will join with us in celebrating our good news and, hopefully, come back to see us as soon as we re-open.
