THE LOFT Theatre in Leamington has cancelled all forthcoming productions.
It comes less than a week after the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford cancelled all
its productions for the rest of the year.
Following Government advice The Loft closed its doors on March 16, alongside other theatres up and down the country.
In a joint statement chairman David Fletcher and artistic director Sue Moore said: “Since then we have been closely following Government instructions together with the advice and guidance about how to keep ourselves and our audience safe and we have postponed all our planned productions for the foreseeable future.
“This has been a tough, but important, decision to take and we know how disappointed our artistic and operational teams are. The directors, casts and creative teams had all been preparing, designing and rehearsing for forthcoming productions and it has been hard to postpone the planned programme.
“Our priority, however, is always to protect our company and our audience.
“During lockdown our production manager has been busy with a programme of work and the casts who were most production ready have been taking advantage of virtual connection to keep in touch. Our stage managers, our technical teams and our artistic teams have all been having virtual meetings and finding new ways to work together.
“We have released, onto our website, free studio audio recordings from previous Loft Studio productions. More are planned. We are also planning a first read through of David Fletcher’s new play.
They added the the trustees had met virtually to assess the theatre’s financial and artistic position.
“We receive no funding and rely on our own enterprise and box office revenue to keep our theatre open. We have been extremely heartened by the supreme kindness of so many of our loyal audience members who have willingly gifted to us the price of tickets which they had already booked at the time of the lockdown.
“Many have said that they consider this as their way of supporting the arts and keeping theatres such as ours able to continue. We have also received donations from those who have listened to our online recordings and sent us heartfelt messages about how much they have missed us.
“We are keeping everything under close review. This is a fast moving situation for us all and we shall be watching how things play out over the forthcoming weeks and months. As soon as we can see a timetable for re-opening safely, we shall be announcing our programme of work which is, as you know, ‘waiting in the wings’.”
Visit lofttheatrecompany.com for updates.
