{"id":7728,"date":"2021-04-11T16:42:39","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T16:42:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/stratford-festival-announces-newly-formatted-outdoor-season\/"},"modified":"2021-04-11T16:42:39","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T16:42:39","slug":"stratford-festival-announces-newly-formatted-outdoor-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uaaglobal.com\/stratford-festival-announces-newly-formatted-outdoor-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratford Festival announces newly formatted outdoor season"},"content":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s understandable that many places around the globe won\u2019t see a return to normal theatre festivals for quite some time. With the presence of the pandemic still strongly felt, the notion of large congregations of people hustling from venue to venue and waiting in cramped lobbies seems like a veritable impossibility. And while plenty of theatres and companies are looking towards technology to adapt to the current reality, the 2021 Stratford Festival is connecting to their past with the announcement of a freshly formatted outdoors season.<\/p>\n
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Ontario\u2019s Stratford Festival is the premiere festival for Shakespeare fans across all of Canada, and like every other theatre festival across North America, they\u2019ve felt the impact of the past year. With the announcement of their latest season, the Stratford Festival states that their plans will \u201cwill hark back to the Festival\u2019s founding under a tent in 1953\u201d, using canopies for audiences this summer. This change of format connects not only to Stratford\u2019s roots but also to the energy of traditional outdoor Shakespeare festivals.<\/a><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis dream of transformation from our isolated lives informed my choice of theme for the 2021 season: Metamorphosis,\u201d states artistic director Antoni Cimolino, and it\u2019s a fitting title for both the change of structure as well as the content of the lineup. \u201cWe are hopeful that the current Ontario lockdown and the vaccination program will enable a successful outdoor summer season\u2026As butterflies shedding their cocoons, we are poised to emerge from this pandemic.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The 2021 Stratford Festival lineup will consist of six plays (including productions of Romeo and Juliet<\/i> and A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/i>, two plays that deal with their own sets of barriers and distance) and five cabarets- a way for audiences to experience solid musical performances without the large number of individuals needed for traditional musicals. Every aspect of how this year\u2019s productions will be presented seems keenly in tune with the safety of the audience members and in keeping with the health protocols in place.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Aside from the Shakespearean pieces, many of the other pieces of the season aim to be a diverse selection of stories featuring resilience and historical significance, orbiting around this year\u2019s theme of Metamorphosis. Serving Elizabeth<\/i> by Marcia Johnson examines Princess Diana\u2019s visit to Kenya and responds to the recent television production The Crown<\/i> from a different perspective; Why We Tell The Story<\/i> and Freedom<\/i>, two of the cabarets, showcase black musical theatre and music at large respectively, the former directed by Thom Allison with musical director Laura Burton and the latter helmed by Beau Dixon. Rounded out by lighter affairs such as\u00a0I Am William<\/em> which plays with the persistent theory of Shakespeare not writing his own plays, the season appears to offer something for everyone.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Stratford Festival\u2019s summer season is clearly keen to breathe a bit of fresh air back into the theatre scene of Canada. Harkening back to their roots and presenting things in a format often synonymous with summer joys is a wonderful way to take a step back into some form of normalcy for the company. It is abundantly clear that all of us as a species are looking for some sort of metamorphosis to let ourselves step out from under the shadow of the past year, and with vaccinations beginning to get underway and artists finding ways to connect with audiences face to face once more, perhaps the cracks in our cocoon are finally showing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s understandable that many places around the globe won\u2019t see a return to normal theatre festivals for quite some time. With the presence of the pandemic still strongly felt, the notion of large congregations of people hustling from venue to venue and waiting in cramped lobbies seems like a veritable impossibility. And while plenty of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-call-for-artists"],"yoast_head":"\n