Theaters in London’s West End reopened on Aug 15 after a five-month COVID-19-induced hiatus. Each show is bookended by meticulous disinfection drills. Thermal imaging cameras are in place. Only 30 to 40 percent of seats are open for booking, and not all of them get taken.

It’s a loss-making enterprise, materially speaking. However, the need to put the show back in the theaters was strongly felt across Britain’s performing arts community and the United Kingdom government saw the point. 

In Hong Kong, on the other hand, the government approach seems to be to err on the side of caution. The Leisure and Cultural Services Department-run performance venues have remained closed to the public since late January, soon after the city’s first few COVID-19 cases were detected. In between, there was an attempt to reopen the theaters with strict adherence to social distancing in mid-June. But when the city’s third, most severe, wave of coronavirus infections struck in early July, all live performances had to be suspended once again. 

To suggest that we follow the UK model and reopen theaters soon will probably sound absurd, if not inconsiderate, given that the city’s schools are yet to reopen. Online learning has been the norm again, pretty much, since July. And although the city’s daily caseload has reduced significantly in the past two weeks, we still do not have a date when students might be allowed to go back to school.

At a time when school is kept on hold, what hopes do we have for a revival of theater in the traditional space? Surely theater cannot be more important than education?

The sentiment driving such logic is perfectly understandable, except that theater itself is education in a different form. Almost all of Hong Kong’s performance art companies seem to appreciate this idea. Conscious of the roles they play in society, Hong Kong’s theater practitioners try to reach out to the city’s schools in one way or another. A number of them run curated programs that involve the application of theater as a tool to inject life into dry textbook lessons and encourage students to look beyond the written word.

There can be no doubt that theater is as essential to our lives as having a friend in need. It can offer a perspective different from our own. When things seem particularly dire, confusing, or distressful, a piece of theater can enrich our understanding of the world around us by putting another layer of meaning on our experiences. 

If anything, COVID-19 has proved how much theater matters to us. The enormous volume of recorded performances uploaded on online viewing platforms when more than half the world was under lockdown succeeded in turning a whole new demographic into its audience. 

But then, at the end of the day, live art viewed on one’s computer screen is neither theater nor cinema. Theater, in essence, is a collective viewing experience, driven by interaction — between performer and audience and between the audience members themselves. It’s the kind of vibe that a digital screen will never be able to transmit.  

Perhaps it’s time to draw up a comprehensive plan for Hong Kong’s cultural venues to start back up again. The local government has offered to subsidize the city’s temporarily closed cinema halls, using its Anti-epidemic Fund. It might also want to consider helping to offset the losses from running socially distanced theater in more than half-empty halls, for the time being. 

If we wait until there were zero cases covering two incubation periods each time and keep closing down the theaters again as soon as the virus resurfaced, we are pushing a huge number of people who depend on live shows to earn their livelihoods into an abyss of uncertainty and joblessness that some of them may not be able to survive.

The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist.