Brighton's BOAT sets sail with condensed summer theatre season

Brighton Open Air Theatre (BOAT) were remarkably quick off the mark to announce a condensed two-month summer season – just as soon as it was clear they could go ahead with it.

For BOAT general manager Will Mytum, it all comes with a huge sense of relief after months of closure and frustration.

“Fortunately we had a lot of stuff ticking along in the background while we were locked down. We never wanted to cancel our whole season before we had to. We were always hopeful that we were going to be able to open at some point.

“We should have opened on May 1. We usually run May to September. It soon became clear that we were not going to be able to have anything in May or June and for the programme for July, things started to pull out. There wouldn’t have been time to rehearse or for anyone to book accommodation for touring, so basically we had to cancel for May, June and July.

“But I was keeping all the companies in the loop as much as I could. Everyone understood the situation. It is not as if I had any more information than anybody else, but we really didn’t want to cancel the whole season unless we had to. But some of the productions had to drop out because they were not going to tour this year. Several shows moved forward from earlier in the summer to later, so all along we had a fairly full programme for August and September just hoping to be able to go ahead.”

Will was pinning his hopes on the July 4 announcement which then became frustrating when outdoor performances were still not to be given the green light, but then just a week later, the green light finally came… and Will was able to unveil an excellent season ahead.

“There is a good variety of things. I think there is something there for everyone. There are still a few things that we are not yet able to announce because we haven’t dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, but I think that is good, to be able to announce things as we go along. It has all worked out quite well. A lot of the time we were planning on the worst-case scenario, but we are quite fortunate in that our model means that even if we had been closed for the rest of the year, we would have been fine. We have got very low outgoings compared to other theatres.