AT CANNON THEATRE, THE SHOW MUST GO ON
Performing-arts company tries to hold events despite location closing
Cosmo Hamilton’s “Why Cupid Came to
Earl’s Court” is a quirky one-act play about the tangled web that romance weaves amongst family and friends. “He Said and She Said,” another one-act play written by Alice Gerstenberg, plays out a war of words started by gossip among friends.
Both of those plays, along with most theater productions, usually have a well-dressed stage for actors to stretch their legs and find the vibe of whatever performance the material
requires. So it was certainly a unique challenge to get into the spirit of theater when all the actors had to work with was a laptop webcam and whatever was in their living rooms.
That’s the situation that faced actors of the Cannon Theatre over the summer, though to be fair, they didn’t have a stage to work with for two reasons. For one, the Littleton performing-arts company couldn’t fill a house due to the pandemic rules banning mass gatherings. On top of that, the pandemic forced the company to cancel all of its planned performances and close its doors at 410 Great Road on March 12, the day before the opening of its production of “The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams.
“We were ready to go and had costumes set,” said Matt Foster, president of the company’s board of directors.
“The next day, we realized there was no way we could open. We thought we could still hold the show after a month-and-a-half so we kept postponing it. Still, it was pretty sudden when we realized this would be long term.”
“It’s not the kind of thing we’ve ever faced before,” said Heather Pruiksma, Cannon’s head of publicity. “We really had to make a business choice. It was heartbreaking for us to take such a big step back, but it was also a really obvious choice.”
However, that choice became something of a blessing in disguise. The company, which had been in its Littleton location since its inception in 2010, has been looking to expand its seating space for more people. After realizing it couldn’t reopen its current home, Cannon decided now was the time to start searching for a new home.
“While the space we had was charming and quirky, it was a little space with only 50 seats,” Pruiksma said. “We’re finally able to step back and find something that suited our needs. We’d love to stay in Littleton, but we’ve launched a concerted effort looking for spaces in other towns.”
Shawn Cannon, founder and artistic director of her namesake theater, said her dream has been “to do a black-box theater — one that has no curtain, just the whole stage that goes to black, with between 30 to 100 seats.”
“It would have no more than 100 seats,” she added. “We had a $3,000-permonth overhead so if we don’t do shows, we can’t pay that back. It was a hard decision to leave, but we would’ve been out of money by December.”
Although the search for space is exciting, there’s still the problem of the company’s volunteer actors and stage hands not being able to engage in their passion due to the pandemic. With that in mind, the company has made efforts to adapt.
On June 20, Cannon Theatre put on one performance of the two one-act plays live over Zoom with actors performing from their homes. Cannon herself was one of the players and said the process of relying on internet connections for human connection during line reads went better than she thought.
“There were technical glitches, of course,” she added. “I’d never been more nervous because I thought, ‘What if the internet freezes?’ One girl froze, so I tried making up some lines to fill time.”
In August, the company furthered its remote effort by hosting its annual summer workshop for children. The lessons were also taught over Zoom, culminating in performances on Aug. 15 and 16.
“I discovered that children are very smart online and resilient,” Cannon said. “With the online classes, we had to be more specific about what we were doing. It was really weird and a little bit scary, but the kids were great.”
The company still does not have a home to stage its shows, but it’s still trying to entertain those hungry for performance art in
the time of pandemic.
Cannon said the company is planning to record performances of “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Canterville Ghost” by Oscar Wilde for Halloween in the style of 1930s radio dramas. Still, members of the company continue to face struggles in putting on a show without a stage.
“The hardest part is that we’re all volunteers, so ev
eryone is carving out time in their busy lives to keep the theater going,” Foster said. “In the long run,” Cannon said, “the biggest positive will be finding new space. People are so resilient in this industry. You work where things are constantly going wrong, and you have to think on your feet, which is what actors do. It reiterates to me how resilient people in this industry are.”