No bugs this summer as Shakespeare moves indoors
You can leave the Deep Woods Off at home, along with your travel rug and umbrella.
For the first time ever, the 26-year-old Freewill Shakespeare Festival, famous for its annual camp-outs with the Bard in Hawrelak Park, is heading indoors. And it’s with one show, not two, and for three weeks instead of their usual four.
The Taming of the Shrew, a riotous and perennially popular early comedy, trumped the rarely produced late tragedy Coriolanus for the 17th annual edition of festivities, which have become a veritable Edmonton summer institution. It opens Wednesday in the 700-seat Myer Horowitz Theatre at the University of Alberta, instead of the 1,100-seat Heritage Amphitheatre in the great outdoors, where another 900 patrons can flop on the grassy slope.
The Heritage Amphitheatre’s 25-year-old canopy was being replaced at the city-owned facility in late January when the new one, custom-made in the U.S. and worth about $400,000, was ripped in a wind storm. The city couldn’t guarantee exactly when the replacement canopy (paid for by insurance, according to city spokesman Mark Torjusen) would be ready so the Freewill organizers had to look for another venue for this summer.
As it happens, the new canopy has already been raised at the site and will be ready for the Interstellar Rodeo in late July. But it was too late for the Shakespeareans.
“We don’t know the financial implications yet,” says Free Will’s manager Cadence Konopaki. “The venue is more expensive than Hawrelak Park, but we have fewer tickets to sell. And 40 per cent of our revenue (in a $500,000 budget) comes from box office. Our biggest question is how many people will follow us indoors ... And we’re basically offering a very different experience.” Can they break even, with 20 performances, seven of which are pay-what-youcan? Konopaki isn’t sure. “We’d have to be two-thirds full at every performance.”
There are no Sunday evening performances this year. Ticket prices, frozen for the last four years, are up by $5, to $30. The production of Coriolanus got cut, which saved director Jim Guedo’s salary, along with a sound designer and other contractors, and a chunk of the costume budget. But the acting company, used to playing two shows, is still large.
Konopaki says they hunted down relocation possibilities everywhere, indoors and out, but with no sponsor in place, the Myer Horowitz was the best bet, for price, size, timing and location. “Outdoor tents, à la Cavalia, are hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she sighs. The Folk Fest location, outdoors, was a thought but potential weather issues were a concern. “In rainy years, traditionally, our audience has dropped by half, and that’s when the audience is covered (by the canopy).” Rehearsal warehouses, the Citadel’s Maclab — all too expensive.
As for the production itself, directed by the festival’s artistic director Marianne Copithorne, Konopaki reports that it tries to recapture indoors the bold physical style that characterizes Freewill productions. “There’s lots of running around in the theatre, entries and exits through the house. But there’s only so much we can do.”
If you’re nostalgic for the distinctive distractions that have always been Mother Nature’s assignment as “ambience director,” you can buy a stuffed squirrel at the merchandise table: they’re awfully cute in their Freewill T-shirts.”
Says Konopaki: “It’s been a crazy year, but we’re trying to have fun!”