An actor's life for me with...Scott Kyle

Opportunity knocks?

Much has been written and said about the impact of the Coronavirus lockdown on the Arts. Certainly, the sudden slow down has been damaging and unsettling but it has not been without its advantages.

I should have been filming a movie in March, touring in a play last month and preparing for our Highlander Flings in Canada and the USA. However, just having the time to sit back and press the reset button on life has given me time to look to the future - and it’s exciting!

I’ve never been one for following the path of least resistance or accepting the status quo because “that’s how things have always been done”. Sometimes we achieve success because we don’t know its supposed to be impossible.

New technology will mean more live streaming of performances

When I wanted to go to drama college I was told I couldn’t because my family wouldn’t survive without my supermarket wage. I didn’t give up. I stacked shelves by night and studied by day

I quickly saw how difficult it would be to get a job after graduating so I set up a theatre company and, with my friends, took the shows we were performing at college on tour at weekends.

Following graduation, and with no acting job in sight, I went to the library for inspiration. I found a play about two rival soccer fans sharing a police cell after being arrested ahead of the big match and thought it was fantastic. I gathered my friends and put it on in the backroom of a local pub and then took it on tour.

Everywhere the show played we would go out to residential areas and push leaflets through doors to promote it to people who would never usually go to the theatre.

Within five years we were playing to 3,000 people and grossing £50,000 a night. Over time we took £3million at the box office and become one of Scottish theatres’s greatest success stories of recent times - all without any funding or outside financial support.

Almost anyone with a smart phone or mobile device can stream performances

Many performers are finding themselves in similar circumstances now.

Social distancing is here to stay, for a while at least, and even when it stops will audiences rush back to packed theatres?

Many venues have closed, some for ever, and funding for projects is drying up.

However, we live in interesting times where a mixture of creative minds and new technology is building a new stage for us all.

Last month I mentioned the brilliant Reely Jiggered who’ve been performing to a global audience live every Saturday from the driveway of their home in Glasgow.

Musician, broadcaster and entrepreneur Bruce Macgregor has been putting on live shows from MacGregors bar in Inverness to thousands of people and supporting lots of fellow performers.

Live streaming from pubs, like this one before the lockdown at MacGregor's Bar in Inverness, will become more common.

A couple of weeks ago I was a guest on The Ted Show, a daily, live-streamed talk show hosted by Ted Bogart based in Orlando, Florida. I was able to talk to a world-wide audience from my home in Glasgow.

What all these people have in common is that they didn’t sit back and wait for a return to normal - they have created a ‘new normal’.

There are theatres now experimenting with drive-in venues, television shows are being made with new formats, plays are being written for solo artists and socially distanced performers but much more can, and should be, done.

Streaming technologies are not just providing a life-line for story-tellers and performers they are creating a level playing field. Emerging and established talent are being forced to experiment.

Musical Correspondent with Tom Morton on the radio page at www.scotlandcorrespondent.com is showcasing the best of Scottish music

We are on the edge of a new opportunity to change the way the arts is enjoyed by millions of people and to open up new channels for creative minds to flourish.

If we think of what’s happening now as hitting a reset button we can find new ways of opening up theatres, utilising small spaces and outdoor venues to put on performances for even bigger audiences.

We need to encourage the best creative minds and the ‘can do’ people. If that means putting on a two or three handed play in an empty theatre but streaming it live to a global or niche audience then so be it.

How ordinary people relate to the arts, consume information and enjoy entertainment has been changing for years. Covid-19 has just speeded up the process and is forcing the industry to adapt or die.

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