No spontaneity, and bring a straw: six dos and don'ts for restarting cultural life

Finally! After months of lockdown, the cultural world is emerging from hibernation. The road to reopening has been a long and winding one, and a few turning points on the roadmap may have left travellers feeling lost. (Why did commercial galleries reopen a month before other galleries? Does sticking a price tag on a painting make it Covid-proof?)

But since May 17, cinemas, museums, concert halls and theatres reopened their doors to the public once more.

It won’t be quite the same as the old days – expect plenty of hand sanitiser and temperature checks – and it might take audiences a little while to grow used to these small differences.

To that end, here’s a handy guide to the dos and don’ts of enjoying the arts in 2021:

1. DON’T be spontaneous

That show you’re keen to see? It’s been sold out since March. Pent-up demand from culture-starved audiences, plus reduced capacity due to social distancing, mean that you must carefully plan ahead to see anything.

This is particularly tough for disorganised art lovers. In the Before Times, anyone on the South Bank with a Tate card and an hour to kill could waltz into a sold-out exhibition on a whim. Now, they must book weeks ahead like hoi polloi. (I recently cancelled my Tate membership, for this very reason.)

2. DO embrace jazz

You will find that most entertainment venues will require you to remain masked throughout the performance. This is quite sensible. Nobody wants to be sat immediately in front of an unmasked comedy fan, spluttering and guffawing with mirth, or a theatregoer bawling open-mouthed at Desdemona’s death in Act V. The strongest emotional reactions tend also to be the messiest.

This might explain one exception to the general rule, possibly of interest to anyone weary of mask-wearing: jazz. At Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club, where patrons have been urged to keep their mouths shut during the show since 1959, masks need only be worn while walking through the venue. Once seated at your table, you can listen to the band barefaced. Since the usual response to most jazz is benign indifference, the risk of any big, germy emotional outburst is low.

3. DON’T be too keen

Itching to get my culture fix as soon as possible, I booked a pair of tickets for the very first show I could find: a stand-up comedy gig in a north London pub, starting at 12.15am on Monday. Convincing my partner that this will constitute a “romantic evening out” has been an uphill battle. Don’t make my mistake: just because you can suddenly go to see everything doesn’t mean you must. There’s nothing wrong with a quiet evening in.

4. DO bring a straw

Nobody wants to endure highbrow culture sober. Certain venues will sell you drinks to enjoy during the show – while also insisting that, if you take your mask off to drink, you must put it back on immediately after every single sip. (I was told off for failing to do this quickly enough during a burlesque show at The Bridge). It’s an unbearable faff, but there’s a solution: bring a flexible straw, position it under your mask, and you can slurp your merlot in peace without the whole on-again, off-again rigmarole.

5. DON’T be odd...

…be even. Social distancing means that many venues will only sell tickets in pairs (or isolated single seats), which makes life hard for odd-numbered groups. Three-seat sets are like hen’s teeth. I know one London cinema where the largest screening room usually seats around 300 – but in Covid times, there’s only space for two three-seat bubbles at a time. If you are a family of two parents and one child, you’ll have to split up. If you are two parents with three children, and you don’t want to leave any child unattended, you’re stuffed.

6. DO learn the ‘rule of six’

It really couldn’t be easier. From Monday, at an indoor event, you can mingle in a group with up to five other people, who can all come from different households. That’s six people in total, no more. Simple.*

*Unless you wish to mingle in a group formed from only two households, in which case any number of people from both households can attend together. For example, four people sharing a cottage and 12 people living in a bungalow can all hop into a minibus together and head out for a 16-person cinema trip without breaking the rule of six. But they can’t bring anyone else.**

**Unless a single-occupancy household has formed a “bubble” with one of the two households, in which case that occupant can come along too. Imagine an elderly dowager duchess, living alone in her crumbling mansion, who drops by for tea at the overcrowded bungalow once a week but never sees anyone else. As part of the bungalow bubble, she can tag along with them to the cinema, becoming the 17th member of the party without breaking the rule of six. (As most minibuses have only 16 seats, she may have to be strapped to the roof.) And that’s all there is to it.***

***Unless these would-be cinemagoers live in mainland Scotland, where the rule of six means something else: a hard limit of just six people, from up to three households.****

****Unless, of course, they live in the wrong part of mainland Scotland – Moray, currently stuck in “level 3” – where those six people can only come from up to two households, rather than three.

I don’t see how anyone could possibly be confused.