Tennessee Shakespeare Company’s (TSC) 13th season will get underway next month fully accepting the mandates of the ongoing pandemic while employing as much creativity as possible.
First off is the Dr. Greta McCormick Coger Literary Salon Series, which begins August 30th and will explore more than 40 writers and literary works against a backdrop of seasons, holidays, and events.
The Free Shakespeare Shout-Out Series will visit eight outdoor locations in October with a Romeo and Juliet production. TSC founder and producing artistic director Dan McCleary says it “embraces (and masks) the Elizabethan quarantine Shakespeare refers to in his text.”
Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night takes the Tabor Stage in February, followed by the Elizabethan Feast benefit party, which was cancelled this past season due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Salons and performances will take place on the Owen and Margaret Wellford Tabor Stage with online simulcasts for each performance, filmed by one camera.
TSC will enforce all state and local health safety criteria, including social distancing, family groupings of no more than six, reduced seating capacity to 33 percent, required distance from audience to performers, multiple entry/egress ways, hand-sanitizer stations, and mandatory face-coverings. The Tabor Stage will seat 54 patrons.
“As the world has shut down and our health has been endangered, we have learned how essential classical theatre and education is to our community,” says McCleary. “We thought they were very important. But in fact, they are necessary. What William Shakespeare, great artists and philosophers, daring social protesters, and quarantined inventors have endured and produced before us should serve as lessons. We need each other, our creativity, and our compassion to live together.”
For more information, go here.
