Chichester Festival Theatre remains confident something might be possible this year

Having originally hoped for a July start to the summer season, last week Daniel and CFT executive director Kathy Bourne sadly took the decision to pull all the remaining shows – the first time in its history that the venue won’t have a summer festival.

“We are devastated, but at the same time we had no option. The safety of our audiences and staff and performers comes first, and all the indications are the social distancing is going to be with us for a little while yet.

“But the minute we are allowed to reopen, we will. We will be thinking outside the box and we will be doing something, whether it be concerts or cabaret or comedy. But for now we just felt that we had to.”

The resilience of the whole CFT was a factor: “Some of our productions are very expensive, and we were just about to have to push the button on them without the certainly that they would be able to happen. We had to cancel it, and our supporters online and in person have been very, very kind.”

When permission to open comes, as Daniel says, the permission will come with guidelines around safety. His hope is that those guidelines will be crystal clear: “But the moment we can open and know that we are safe, we will.”

It is possible that those guidelines will include social distancing within the theatre: “It is something that we are considering, what that would look like. But that would mean taking a massive hit at the box office (as clearly fewer people would be allowed in), and so we would have to balance that income with the kind of show that we might be able to offer.

“And that’s where the idea of the Spiegeltent (a temporary third venue on the site last year) could come into its own. It is something that is very light on its feet.”