Rewind to March 2020 and Bettina Muchmore and her sister Philippa Cassar (now Naudi) of The New Victorians were working on their latest theatre production Publico, with a cast of local and foreign actors and musicians at the Manoel Theatre.
“Two weeks before the show opened, at the peak of rehearsals, we received a call telling us, ‘You have to go home. The show is cancelled’,” Bettina recalled.
This was to be a more exclusive, experiential show in which the audience were being put on the Manoel stage.
“The week before they had cancelled shows of 1,000-people capacity but, since we only had an audience of 200, we thought we might get away with it,” she continued.