We will be welcoming you back to the theatre in line with the government roadmap, with our first show poised and ready to go on 17th May! We’ve been working hard during our closure to make everything safe, train up our staff, and making social distancing feel as warm and welcoming as we can. With COVID-19 definitely not defeated, and coming out of our close-knit bubbles being a scary thing for many, we wanted to give you as much information as possible so you know just what to expect.
The beauty of our theatre is we can be flexible with how we lay out our seats, so we have made the most of this to make our social distancing still feel sociable. It may look quite snug but, but we’ve gone from 11 rows to 7 in the stalls, and with our use of seating groups for households and bubbles, and some deceptively large tables, the auditorium is at half capacity.
Your seats in the balcony? While we’ve not removed our beautiful seats, you can see many of them are marked with white stickers. These are the ones available to buy, and we’re having fun coming up with creative ways fill the remaining seats to make sure everyone is appropriately spaced while trying to keep that warm and friendly atmosphere. We’ll keep exactly what that is in our back pocket for now (don’t worry, it’s a good surprise!)
One aspect you might not spot during your visit is our intensive cleaning schedule. Before each performance the building is deep-cleaned, including chairs and tables in the auditorium, the toilets, bar and all touch points (such as doors and hand-rails). Then, while you’re in for the first part of the show, the toilets and touch points are cleaned down before the interval, and again after the interval. If we have two performances in a day, the full deep-clean is done between performances.
We know that part of the fun of going to the theatre includes being able to have a drink, maybe even an ice cream too. Things can get pretty cramped in our bar so to help maintain social distancing, not only have we given our bar a face-lift, we’re introducing at-seat ordering. There will be a QR code for you to scan, you can browse through everything we have, say whether you want it now or at the interval, then our staff will bring your order to you once it is ready.
When you arrive there’ll be no more ticket-tearing – we’ve invested in scanners so that not only can we all remain distanced, we can even go paperless. Just show your ticket on your phone, we’ll scan the barcode, and in you go!
Everyone who attends will also have to sign in with the Track and Trace app so that if the worst were to happen everyone can be contacted. We’ll make sure our venue barcode is available, and if you don’t have a smart phone we’ll have some contact slips to fill in instead.
Our beautiful Victorian theatre does come with a lot of classically narrow and winding corridors which are not the most helpful for social distancing. To help keep you safe we have created a one-way system in and out of the auditorium and down to the toilets. Don’t worry, we’ve got arrows everywhere and plenty of staff on hand to help.
After a year of having them in our lives we are all familiar with mask wearing, and an evening at the theatre is no exception. All customers attending a show will need to wear their mask or a face covering while they are in the building, and they can only be removed when at your seat for eating and drinking. If you are unable to wear a mask for any reason, we have face shields available that are cleaned thoroughly after each use.
