Photography, like theatre, has an incredible power to make you feel. It tells stories, it transports us into unseen worlds, it educates us and it helps us reflect.    

Over the course of lockdown I set myself a challenge, to create a photo series that captured this moment in history but that also told a story of its own. 

I mulled over many ideas but what I kept coming back to was our empty theatres. These spaces, which I’ve been going to on a weekly basis since I’ve first moved to London from Derry in 2006, where I’ve met all my best mates, where I had my first paid job in London working in a theatre bar, where I encountered my first ‘famous person’, where I’ve become an artist & freelance photographer. These spaces that were now empty. Without life, without people & without stories. 

22 theatres from London, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool let me through their doors to photograph their buildings as they lay empty.

Shooting this series has been sobering; going back to into these spaces that I know so well and being met with total silence. No background noise, no chitter chatter, no infectious laughs bellowing out of a rehearsal room, just complete silence. The stark opposite of what they should be. 

In the forefront of my mind throughout this entire process has been a question. What are these buildings without all the glorious, wonderful, different kinds of people that make these spaces what they are? From the army of freelancers, to the permanent staff, to the ushers, box office, bookshop, stage door, café & bar staff, volunteers, community & audience members.

I’ve reached out to people who fill these buildings to ask them ‘What do our empty theatres mean to you?’. Because each and every one of us that walk through these doors have our own relationship with these spaces and our own stories to tell. They belong to all of us. As the theatre sector continues to face uncertainty I hope the series serves as a reminder of why we must fight to fill these buildings with the people that make them thrive and not forget those who have been underrepresented in the past. My photos are a love letter to not just the theatres themselves but to the people, artists, staff and communities who give these buildings life.

I invite you to share what #OurEmptyTheatres mean to you.

Theatres shot: The Albany, Almeida Theatre, The Criterion, Battersea Arts Centre, Bush Theatre, Donmar Warehouse, Gate Theatre, Hampstead Theatre, Kiln Theatre, Leeds Playhouse, Liverpool Everyman Theatre, The Lyric Hammersmith Theatre, The Royal Exchange, Roundhouse, Royal Court Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, Soho Theatre, Theatre 503, Theatre Royal Stratford East, Unicorn Theatre, Yard Theatre & Young Vic.

*All shoots were carried out within Govt lockdown guidelines.