A stone’s throw from London’s West End, the Groucho Club is exactly the sort of spot you’d expect to find a theatre producer holding court, surrounded by rumpled media types and within earshot of a Netflix exec or three.
But there is a more practical reason why Libby Zietsman-Brodie has suggested this location for our chat today: in a few hours, she has a wine tasting there. When I locate her in the upstairs bar, she is proffering a carafe of pale rosé. “A little something?” she asks, waggling a glass.
Zietsman-Brodie is on the point of becoming a full-time wine consultant and writer. After 15 years in professional theatre – initially at the Old Vic, then founding her own production company – she has decided to depart showbiz for good, at the age of 38. No regrets, she insists: “You have to keep moving. If this business taught me anything, it’s that.”
She is, of course, far from alone in deciding that it’s time to get out. While no sector has been immune from the effects of Covid, the arts have been experiencing an earthquake that has been rumbling on for the best part of two years. Everyone has felt the shockwaves, from laid-off front-of-house staff (some of whom were then rehired for less pay) to musicians thrown out of work and artistic directors scrambling to keep major institutions from imploding.
Early fears that more than 400,000 creatives might see their livelihoods disappear in the UK turned out, mercifully, to be pessimistic (thanks largely to government interventions such as the furlough and self-employed support schemes, and the recently expanded culture recovery fund). And not every part of the creative economy has been the same: once Covid protocols were in place, TV and film swiftly rebounded, in fact boomed – so much so that there is currently a skills shortage.
Still, the overall picture is grim, particularly in visitor-reliant sectors such as theatre, live music, festivals, cultural heritage and museums. The most recent estimate by industry body Creative UK last summer calculated that over 110,000 jobs were likely to go in the UK by the end of 2021. Perhaps 95,000 of those are freelance roles, and the people doing them may never return. Music-specific figures are on a similar scale.
If these estimates are right then, as 2022 begins, fewer people are working in Britain’s creative sector than at any time since 2016. And Omicron has added to the havoc: a nightmarish deja-vu of theatre and gallery closures, festival cancellations and delays. The impact on live events will be felt for months to come.
It’s little wonder that so many culture professionals have considered retraining. But, assuming they’ve found work, where have they actually gone? When the pandemic began, much was written about artists jumping into temporary jobs to make ends meet: have those changes become permanent, with other sectors screaming to hire people?
And, to ask what feels like a tough question amid so much gloom and uncertainty, are there success stories here too – people for whom leaving the arts has actually been a good thing? In October 2020, the UK government was ridiculed for an advert suggesting that a ballet dancer should retrain “in cyber” (even the photographer who took the picture disowned it). But can positive changes come out of being forced to reset and try something else? And what does it feel like to abandon a vocation you’ve invested so much in, and move in a different direction?
Over lunch, Zietsman-Brodie reflects on her own journey. Spring 2020 was meant to mark her star-spangled return to theatre after maternity leave: three separate shows, one in the West End, another on a UK regional tour, one opening in New Zealand before heading across to Asia. “It was meant to be this big thing, saying, ‘here I am!’” she says brightly. “Five years in the planning.” The workload was so intense, she adds, that she was doing emails while about to give birth.
Everyone knows what happened next: British theatres went dark, presaging the first national lockdown. When some of her colleagues banked on a return in Christmas 2020, they ran straight into another lockdown, losing even more money. “I was just so exhausted by the prospect of having to start again, build it all up, you know?”
Zietsman-Brodie’s company was fortunate to receive two Arts Council grants – which helped her keep some creatives in work – but she felt that she herself was yearning to make a bigger change – and that her interest in wine could actually be it. When she was doing her tasting qualifications, a friend asked if she’d help choose wines for a wedding. “The wine company I work with said, ‘You realise this makes you a consultant?’”
In December 2020 she launched her own specialist company, named after Bacchus (“God of both theatre and wine”).
Zietsman-Brodie knows she is supremely lucky to have options: despite being her household’s main breadwinner, she and her partner had savings and could share childcare. But she observes that, in a wider sense, her experience echoes that of so many people during the pandemic. “It stripped everything back, forced you to ask, ‘how happy are you in the present?’ I realised, ‘Not very’.”
Her production company has one show still running but, as soon as it recoups, will go dormant. “In comparison to theatre, wine feels rather lockdown-proof,” she says.
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For Vivienne Clavering, the shift has been more challenging. As a production manager at the Royal Opera House, she’d been wavering even before Covid: long hours and gruelling workload; tight budgets; a sense that, in her late 30s, maybe the career she’d spent so long building wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Over Zoom, she explains that before joining the ROH she’d applied seven times to the National Theatre before finally landing the job, such was her determination. Now, she was doubting whether she was even on the right path.
When the pandemic hit, she was offered furlough, before redundancies began. Her moment of clarity came during lockdown, when she moved from London to be with friends in Morecambe, helping look after their kids. “I found myself talking about teaching,” she remembers.
A quick check revealed that the starting salary of a teacher – up to £32,000 in London – was only just below what she’d been earning in a senior post at one of the world’s leading opera houses. She applied for her PGCE, threw herself into the course, graduated, and when we first speak is doing supply work at a primary school near her home in south London.
She loves it, she says: “When you’re in a classroom with a bunch of kids who are learning to count from one to 10, it’s amazing.”
Like Zietsman-Brodie, Clavering admits it was a wrench to leave behind a career that had always been her dream. But it was easier than she imagined it would be. “I worked my butt off for 15 years, and the appreciation wasn’t always there, you know? You see people breaking around you.”
When I suggest that teaching is hardly known for its work-life balance, she laughs. “Sure, it’s intense. You’re there 7am until 5pm, and of course there’s lesson planning and the rest. But, honestly, it doesn’t compare to what I was doing in opera. If you’re doing tech [technical rehearsals], you’re there until 11pm. One video designer I worked with used to call me constantly from 7am to midnight, for a full year. However hard teaching gets, no parent is going to have my phone number.”
She pauses. “And if you’ve handled an opera director, you can handle a five-year-old.”
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How unusual are case studies such as these? While some creatives have been fortunate enough to have found a new path, hasn’t the reality for many been far more tortured?
In search of answers, I call Caroline Norbury, chief executive of Creative UK. She and her colleagues have been keeping an eye on how the pandemic has reshaped the cultural sector. She says finding precise data and analysing the trends is hard, because the arts are the very definition of a gig economy. So many roles are freelance; contracts are agreed on a handshake; people do multiple jobs. And the effect has been uneven. “As with so much of the pandemic, it’s not been the same everywhere,” she says. “Some people have seen their livelihoods evaporate. Other people have never been so busy.”
But, she says, even though many institutions have worked hard to help protect freelancers in particular, others were left high and dry. “If you look at the music sector, for instance, freelance musicians often supplement their income through teaching or other pieces of work, and of course a lot of that fell away and never recovered. People had no other choice but to look elsewhere.”
In Norbury’s view, those worst affected have been early-career creatives, who didn’t get a chance to develop networks that could carry them through. “I think what the pandemic has uncovered is an ecosystem that is terribly fragile. It often relies on passion and goodwill – and if the chain breaks down, the system isn’t always there to support you.”
What does she think about people who have experienced the transition as positive? “For many people, the pandemic has been extremely interesting in focusing their minds on what’s important. That’s great. But the people making those decisions often have a safety net. Not everyone is so lucky.”
Covid should teach us a lesson, she says. Too often, the cultural sector treats its workforce as if their jobs are somehow hobbies, as if the creative reward is enough in and of itself. “These are rigorous, highly skilled, highly qualified professions. Sure, people are here because they’re passionate. But that’s not enough.”
What’s needed is structural change, she adds. “We need to bring in more stability and security so that people can feel like they’re progressing. Otherwise we’ll waste all that talent.”
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Hard though the pandemic has been for those in British culture, at least there has been targeted help (albeit not on the scale of many mainland European countries). Artists in the US have had things far, far tougher: orchestral players and opera singers lost contracts or were thrown on unpaid furlough; unemployment rates among dancers and choreographers jumped fivefold; actors ended up on food stamps. One established performer I talk to has seen their Broadway career essentially evaporate; another has abandoned a career in cabaret to retrain in carpentry and construction.
When I get hold of the American actor–puppeteer Jonathan MacMillan, a veteran of shows such as War Horse and King Kong, he turns out to be on the other side of the world, having relocated for the Australian premiere of the Disney musical Frozen. Opening night in Sydney was delayed and delayed, then the production closed; a transfer to Melbourne finally went ahead, but, like so much Australian theatre, is currently battling rising Covid rates and cancellations.
When the Covid hurricane first hit, many of his US colleagues were in similarly fragile boats. “Everyone had a side gig – we call them ‘survival jobs’,” he says. “But all the survival jobs, the catering or waitering gigs, the events stuff, went away too.”
As the son of a Hollywood actor who battled long periods of unemployment, the idea of transitioning had been on MacMillan’s mind for a while (he’s now 36). Suddenly, the need was urgent. Then he heard about a volunteer-run group called Artists Who Code, which supports creatives keen to learn software engineering.
“I needed something future-proof, with a high salary, where I could work from home,” he explains. He enrolled on a coding bootcamp, and has been working with an Australian company for the last year.
When I ask how he’s finding it, he practically radiates contentment. “I get my evenings and weekends back, and I can go on vacation and still get my wage,” he says with wonder. “Paid vacations! They’re still amazing to me.”
How do people react to his change in profession? “Sure, no one gets excited when you say you’re a software engineer. The highs aren’t quite as high as in theatre. But the lows are nowhere near as low.”
Has he left puppeteering behind for good? He’s still mulling the future, he replies; the fact that Frozen has finally opened means he’s suddenly busy performing again, and is considering auditioning for other shows. But he’s also interviewing at software firms too. “Doing both jobs has worked out pretty well so far,” he says.
We talk about failure, the shadow of which has stalked so many of my conversations on this topic. To many people, the idea of a ballerina abandoning her artform for a job in tech sounds like an appalling waste. If MacMillan did eventually leave theatre, would it feel like failing?
Absolutely not, he says: “Staying in a job that isn’t working for you, working for free, working for credits on your résumé, not standing up for your rights, not having the guts to turn a job down, for fear you’ll never work again? That’s failure, right there.”
