‘I mourned my theatre career but found my calling’

Former theatre professionals and actors who stepped away from the stage after lockdown have been reflecting on how their lives have changed five years on.

Theatres in the West End and around the UK closed down shows on 16 March 2020, a week before the first national lockdown – a day that has since become known as Dark Monday.

Lily Cooper, 32, from Hackney, was an actor who also worked front of house at London’s Almeida Theatre, and was waiting to hear back from a “dream” theatre audition.

Ms Cooper, who now works in a children’s hospital, said she had had an “out of body experience” because of the “horrifying realisation” she might never act again, adding: “It was really, really terrible.”

Acting had been so “intrinsic” to her identity since she was about 11 years old she struggled when the industry shut down, she said.

“We didn’t know at that point if theatres would ever return,” she said. “I asked myself ‘Who am I without this?'”

Though she “mourned” acting, Ms Cooper said she was “really lucky” to be furloughed despite being on a zero-hours contract.

Although she still does occasional acting roles, the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland graduate said she had since found her calling working with sick children as a health play specialist.

She now uses play-based therapy – such as role-plays with puppets – to help children in hospital process what is happening to them.

Ms Cooper said moving from “plays in theatres” to “operating theatres and playing” had given her a “second passion”.

“It’s so hard to imagine not being where I am now,” she said.

After years spent building his fringe theatre credits, Denholm Spurr’s acting career was in the “ascendency” in early 2020.

He had 14 months of work booked and had recently starred in a biographical play about his time being homeless.

Mr Spurr, from Croydon, said he was “backstage at the Cockpit Theatre” waiting for the first performance of a “wonderful farce” when the producer told the cast “we can’t go ahead”.

“I just went home – it was such an anti-climax,” he said.

As a freelancer, Mr Spurr “fell through the gaps” of the government’s financial support as he was not eligible for either furlough or the self-employed grant scheme.

Mr Spurr said the first lockdown was a “really lonely” time, with an ex-partner and several friends taking their own lives.

Without an income and facing being homeless again as the first lockdown lifted, Mr Spurr turned to sex work.

He said: “Lockdown happened and I had no money, so I was prepared to do that, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to eat.

“I was determined not to be homeless again.”

Mr Spurr also used the time to retrain, becoming a board game designer and computer programmer.

Around the same time he started working for Off West End, which supports emerging artists and runs the world’s largest fringe theatre awards, the Offies.

Now managing director, Mr Spurr said having an arts leadership role allowed him to “feel I’m making a difference in the world”.

Actor Anna Scutt, from Truro in Cornwall, said she was often cast in final-year films by Cornish film students – usually shot in spring – so the timing of lockdown was “really bad”.

Ms Scutt, who has cerebral palsy and is a wheelchair user, applied for a Zoom reading of a new play with Bristol-based Theatre West, which she had found out about through a newsletter for disabled creatives.

She said she was “lucky” the reading was on Zoom as “they’d probably have wanted a Bristol actor” otherwise, she said.

The two-hander play, called Rose, was about a disabled woman’s friendship with a convicted criminal.

Ms Scutt said she was “really impressed” the writers insisted on casting a wheelchair user “even though the readings were on Zoom”.

After several more workshops, Ms Scutt was asked to play the lead in a south-west England tour.

“Something good came out of the fact everything was on Zoom, ” Ms Scutt said.

Kate-Lois Elliott, from north London, had spent five years as a freelance workshop leader and actor in a prestigious London theatre’s education department when the venues closed.

“The work disappeared within about three days – it was all gone.”

The theatre’s management did not communicate until several weeks later.

“No-one knew what was going on. I felt like I’d been abandoned. I felt so disposable.”

After a few weeks of “shutdown mode” in lockdown, Kate-Lois had a “burst of energy”.

She a web series, wrote an award-nominated book and – as venues “slowly opened back up” – started pursuing stand-up comedy.

“I see that as a gift in a way – having that time as an artist just for the love of it. I made the most of a terrible situation.”

And her comedy career is going “pretty well”.

Last year, her Edinburgh Fringe debut was featured in The Times’ Best Jokes of the Fringe and won the Phoebe Waller Bridge Keep it Fringe Award.

While Kate-Lois said she still enjoyed shows that were “far removed” from her previous theatre role, such as musicals, her lockdown experience left scars.

“I don’t think I could go back to that theatre and see a show there.”

Sharon Wattis was on the Birmingham leg of the world tour of hit musical The Book of Mormon when the show’s producers announced its closure.

She had given up her London flat to go on tour, so moved in with her younger brother in her home town of Leeds.

“I was sleeping in my seven-year-old niece’s bunk bed,” she said.

After several “difficult” months without “any structure” she started working at a Covid-19 testing facility.

She said it was “quite difficult doing the test on people, it was not very nice”.

Ms Wattis left the testing facility in summer 2021 when The Book of Mormon went back into rehearsals.

She said she was “grateful to be back at work” but “a little apprehensive” as some of the cast had chosen not to come back.

Ms Wattis’ Book of Mormon cast-mate Johnathan Tweedie, 42, was one of those who never returned.

“We came into the theatre that Monday morning and were called on stage,” Mr Tweedie said. “I think we all knew.”

Mr Tweedie started acting at six and had already toyed with leaving performing because of the demands.

However, the chronic pain he suffered during lockdown shaped the direction he took next.

He caught Covid-19 “really severely” so lockdown was “awful” psychologically, he said, but he discovered he “really didn’t miss” having to “keep his body and voice ready for a show all the time”.

Mr Tweedie now offers movement therapy to people with chronic pain, as well as performers dealing with injuries.

“Even though it was an incredibly dark time in my life – and many other people’s lives – what I learned from it has undoubtedly changed the course of my life.”