Ten years ago, the British Theatre Consortium produced a report, British Theatre Repertoire 2013, based on the most extensive and detailed dataset ever compiled on British theatre’s repertoire. The most striking finding was that, for the first time since records began, new work had overtaken revivals in the British Theatre repertoire.
A year later, BTC produced a further report, British Theatre Repertoire 2014, confirming that 2013 had not been a blip, and new work continued to dominate British theatre.
Now BTC has produced a report on British Theatre Repertoire in 2019, the last full year before the Covid shutdown, and 2023, the first full year after theatres reopened. Based on aggregated and anonymised data from 139 commercial, not-for-profit and subsidised theatres, in London and throughout the country, the report’s Ten Key Findings are:
- Between 2019 and 2023, the number of productions and performances declined but attendances rose.
- Musicals increased and Drama declined.
- New Work declined in the 2010s but formed a larger part ofthe repertoire after Covid than before. By 2023, the majority oftheatre productions consisted of new work once again.
- New Musicals increased considerably after lockdown.
- There were fewer New Plays but those there were had longerruns in fuller theatres.
- Revivals declined. Shakespeare dominated classical revivals,with a surprise winner in both years.
- The share of adaptations in the repertoire increased. After Covid, adaptations did better business in larger theatres.
- The share of plays by women increased substantially.
- The capital’s already overwhelming share of national theatreactivity increased.between 2019 and 2023.
- Contrary to popular perception, real-terms ticket prices fell
Our report concludes: “The UK appears to have survived what could have been a catastrophe for theatre. Our theatres have pulled off a minor miracle in finding ways to bring audiences back to the theatre quickly, and in very large numbers. How they did this is beginning to become clear, as this report has shown, and shows patterns of commercial-mindedness that may be described as simultaneously bold and cautious. It will be vital to continue to track these patterns in subsequent years to see if we are seeing a sustained shift in the pattern of the UK’s theatre repertoire”.
Our Ten Key Findings are outlined in greater detail in the Headlines section of the Report (pp. 10-15). Striking and/or surprising facts and conclusions include:
1) Between 2019 and 2023, the numbers of professional, live theatre productions dropped sharply (by 14.5%) and performances marginally (by 3.6%), but attendances increased noticeably (by 6.8%). Either side of lockdown commercial theatres increased their lead over NPOs in performances, attendances and box office. The number of shows running for more than five years increased substantially, from 19 to 34. (see p26-9 fig 2, p32)
2) In 2019, Musicals accounted for a third of all performances, half of all attendances, and almost three-fifths of all box office income. In 2023, those proportions rose to two-fifths of all performances, over half of all attendances, and approaching two-thirds of all box office income. As a proportion of theatre, drama declined. (see p36 fig 7)
3) Between 2014 and 2019 New Work declined from over half (62%) of all theatre productions but in 2019 it was 49%.
However, New Work rose on all measures between 2019 and 2023. As a proportion of Drama (i.e. not including Musicals), New Work rose from just over 60% to 65.1%, only 2% lower than it was in 2014.
We conclude that the rise between 2019 and 2023 is “a remarkable success story for new work”. But because of the considerable drop during the 2010s, “the rise in new work between 2019 and 2023 is less flourishing than fightback”. (see p67-9 fig 32, p77 fig 41).
4) In the biggest new work story, 37% of musicals were new in 2019, rising to just over 50% in 2023. (see p69-73 figs 34,35)
5) Productions of New Plays declined, but those plays that did get produced had longer runs and made more at the box office. There were fewer original new plays for adults (i.e. not adaptations, translations or children’s plays) but these plays proved more successful in filling seats (77% of capacity) than any other form of new writing, including musicals.
As we argue: “The sharp decline in numbers of new play productions will be grounds for concern”, but the success of original new plays in particular shows that “the new play is, therefore, holding its own”. (see p77-9 fig 42, p83-6 figs 45-6)
6) Revivals declined in terms of productions but outperformed new work in attendances and box office. The proportion of postwar revivals increased at the expense of plays from earlier periods (Arthur Miller leading in 2019 and coming equal first with Agatha Christie in 2023). The substantial narrowing of the range of postwar playwrights produced “shows evidence of retrenchment, with fewer writers being revived, fewer plays by women being given new productions, and a greater reliance on a tiny handful of big-name writers”.
Shakespeare dominates classical revivals (89% in 2023), with Macbeth leading the pack in both years (see Fig. 52, p. 97) for the most popular Shakespeares in both years). As we put it: “After a global pandemic, tragedy overtook history as the most popular Shakespearian genre for producers”. (see p88-99 figs 47-53; for postwar see fig 51, Shakespeare fig 52)
7) Old and new Adaptations rose on all measures, having longer runs in larger theatres and performing better at the box office. Absolute numbers of new adaptations declined, but adaptations almost doubled their attendance and real-terms box office.
By contrast, productions of translations declined sharply, by 60%, though the translations produced proved popular with audiences. As we say in the report, “it would be an alarming sign of parochialism” for theatre to abandon plays from other cultures.
As we conclude, in its programming of revivals, adaptations and translations, “it may be that, in the urge to provide audiences with the known and familiar, the British theatre is turning its back on other cultures and eras”. (see p81-3 fig 44, p99-102)
8) As we put it, our previous surveys (2008-2009, 2013-2014) had found “that –stubbornly, unchangingly – over those 11 years, Plays by Women accounted for only 31% of all new plays”. During the 2010s that changed.
By 2019, the number of new plays written by women had increase to 39.4% and by 2023 to 41.7%. In 2019 women were performed in larger auditoria than men. But the number of performances of plays by women, along with attendances and box office, declined by 3 percentage points between the two years. (see p104-112, figs 55-9)
9) London increasingly dominates the national theatre landscape. After lockdown lifted, London represented 22.6% of drama productions, but 60% of performances, 69% of attendances and 80.1% of all income. Nonetheless, there is clear evidence that “the non-London regions and nations have had some striking success in attracting attendances and income in the post- Covid period”. (see p57-65 figs 26-30, p113-135, particularly p128-131 figs 70-2)
10) Contrary to popular belief, real-term Ticket Prices fell between 2019 and 2023, with the biggest reductions being for operas and musicals. And, again against common perceptions, audiences are not booking later than they used to. (see p30-1 fig 3, p49-56 figs 19-25)
Our last chapter summarises our overall Conclusions (see p136-140).
Background and Methodology
British Theatre Before & After Covid follows British Theatre Repertoire 2014 and British Theatre Repertoire 2013 follow Writ Large, the British Theatre Consortium’s 2009 report for Arts Council England into the amount of new writing presented in the English theatre between 2003 and 2009.
Based on questionnaires completed by 65 of the 89 regularly-funded theatres (including the national companies and the major reps), Writ Large revealed that the proportion of new work in the repertoire had risen from around 20% to over 40% of productions. The Arts Council then financed two reports on British Theatre Repertoire in 2013 and 2014, based on the most comprehensive dataset of British theatre ever compiled. The most striking finding was that, for the first time since records began, new work had overtaken revivals in the British theatre repertoire.
British Theatre Before & After Covid was researched with the same methodology as the previous repertoire reports, developed by BTC with David Brownlee of UK Theatre/SOLT. Provided with publically available data of UK Theatre and SOLT shows in the two years, BTC researchers coded the shows in terms of form (drama, opera, musical, pantomime, dance etc) era (classical, modern, postwar, new), whether new work was new writing (including adaptations, translations, versions and plays for children, tagged for gender), or devised.
The data was aggregated and anonymised in order that sensitive business data was not revealed to the coders or in the report.
The data consisted of all the 65 Society of London Theatres (SOLT) and 74 of the UK Theatre companies (just over half the total). The SOLT list includes the West End commercial sector, “off-west end” theatres and the not-for- profit sector, the National Theatre and the Royal Court. The UK Theatre list includes a wide and representative range of nationally-subsidised theatres in the regions and nations of the UK, including the Royal Shakespeare Company and Chichester Festival Theatre. We were not able to access data from some regional commercial theatres, so our picture of that sector is less comprehensive.
Supported by Arts Council England, British Theatre Before & After Covid is researched and written by Dan Rebellato and David Edgar of The British Theatre Consortium, with a research team led by Catherine Love-Smith.
The British Theatre Consortium is a group of playwrights and academics formed in 2007 to organise conferences and undertake research. Its conferences are How was it for us? Theatre under Blair (2007), All Together Now: British theatre after multiculturalism (2009), 20/20: Playwriting, Pedagogy (2010), Next Act: the past and future of new writing for theatre (2010), From Spectatorship to Engagement (seminar, 2011), The Roar of the Crowd (2014), and Cutting Edge: British theatre in hard times (2015). Its previous publications are Writ Large: new writing on the English stage 2003- 2009 (for Arts Council England, 2009), Critical Mass: Theatre Spectatorship and Value Attribution, for the Arts and Humanities Research Council (2014), British Theatre Repertoire 2013 (2015). and British Theatre Repertoire 2014 (2016).
David Edgar is a founder member of the British Theatre Consortium and is has been a professional playwright since 1971. His original plays for the Royal Shakespeare Company include Destiny (1976), Maydays (1983, revived in 2018), Pentecost and The New Real (2024). His plays for the National Theatre include Entertaining Strangers (1988) The Shape of the Table (1990), Albert Speer (2000) and Playing with Fire (2005). He has written for film and television, and has adapted many of his plays for BBC radio. In 1989 he founded Britain’s first graduate playwriting course, at the University of Birmingham, and was the country’s first Professor of Playwriting Studies. His book about playwriting, How Plays Work, was published by Nick Hern Books in 2009.
Dan Rebellato is a founder member of the British Theatre Consortium, a playwright and Professor of Contemporary Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include 1956 and All That, Theatre & Globalization, Contemporary European Playwrights, Modern British Playwriting 2000-2009, and the Cambridge Companion to British Theatre since 1945. His plays for theatre and radio include Static, Chekhov in Hell, My Life is a Series of People Saying Goodbye, You & Me, Restless Dreams, and he was lead writer on BBC Radio 4’s award-winning 27-episode adaptation of 20 novels by Emile Zola under the title Emile Zola: Blood, Sex & Money. His how-to guide, Playwriting, was published by Methuen Drama & the National Theatre in 2023.
From 26 November 2025, British Theatre Before & After Covid will be publicly available here…
Our previous reports are now available via these links:
Leave a Comment