The British government on Saturday announced an envelope of 75 million pounds sterling (128 million dollars) to save 35 monuments of culture endangered by the coronavirus, including the Globe Theater.
This aid, amounting to one to three million pounds for each of these establishments or organizations, comes from the Culture Protection Fund, which amounts to a total of 1.57 billion pounds (2, $ 7 billion).
Among the 35 places or organizations are the Old Vic theater in London, founded in 1818, or that of the Globe, a life-size replica of the one dating from 1599 where Shakespeare officiated, built in 1997 on the south bank of the Thames, near from its original site.
Over a million people visit it each year. It also includes a library, archives and a replica of a 17th-century Jacobean theater, lit by candle.
But 70% of the funds are intended for cultural places that are outside the British capital, such as the Crucible in Sheffield or the Royal Exchange Theater in Manchester, the Ministry of Culture said in a statement.
“These places and organizations are irreplaceable in our heritage and what makes us the cultural superpower that we are,” Minister Oliver Dowden said in a statement.
The Globe’s general manager, Neil Constable, and its artistic director, Michelle Terry, welcomed the announcement in a press release, and expressed their relief to benefit from this “lifeline”.
The theater, which will benefit from nearly three million pounds, plans to reopen in spring 2021.
In full containment during the first wave of the new coronavirus – which in total killed more than 44,000 in the United Kingdom, the heaviest toll in Europe – the Globe warned in May that it risked not surviving.
At the end of July, a parliamentary report highlighted the “existential threat” hanging over the cultural sector, which supports 700,000 people in the United Kingdom.
In 2018, Britain’s 1,100 theaters employed 290,000 people, with ticket revenues of 1.28 billion pounds ($ 2.2 billion) and 34 million spectators – more than all league football matches.