Theatre Royal Plymouth announces one hundred jobs at risk with income wiped out

Theatre Royal Plymouth, one of the largest producing houses outside of London with over 1300 seats, has warned that over a hundred staff are at risk of redundancy.

Chief executive Adrian Vinken said that it was a "very painful but unavoidable conclusion" given the lack of support from the government and a significant reduction in box office revenue. Vinken added: "We have done everything we could to protect the jobs and incomes of our loyal workforce for as long as possible".

The issues are not limited to this year, according to the chief executive: "This is compounded by research predicting a reduction in audience numbers when we do reopen, meaning that we'll have to weather a significant drop in revenue even then – a situation that could last for 12 months or more."

Over 300 full-time and part-time staff work at the venue. Olivier Award-winning playwright James Graham said on Twitter that the venue's entire artistic team is being made redundant in three days:

The entire artistic team at the Theatre Royal Plymouth are being made redundant in 3 days. That's one of the largest, most well attended theatres outside London. A theatre that now has no artists, and they won't be coming back. Our world-beating cultural landscape is in collapse pic.twitter.com/SOxzz26sxd