San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
Return of the Old Globe
Balboa Park theater looks to make a statement with a hybrid season of live productions, online shows, film screenings
After being dark for 14 months, San Diego’s largest and oldest theater, the Old Globe, announced plans Friday for a full reopening of all three of its Balboa Park stages.
The unprecedented hybrid season will gradually roll out with a mix of live, virtual and interactive theatrical projects over the next four months.
On June 4, the outdoor Lowell Davies Festival Theatre will reopen for a summer series of movie nights, cabaret shows and Shakespeare events. Free outdoor events on the Globe’s Copley Plaza will also begin June 4. Fullfledged theatrical productions will return with the musical “Hair” on the outdoor stage beginning Aug. 10, followed by the world premiere of the Michael John Lachiusa musical “The Gardens of Anuncia” inside the main Old Globe Theatre on Sept. 10. The in-the-round Sheryl and Harvey White Theatre will reopen Oct. 7 with the world premiere of Mansa Ra’s “Shutter Sisters.”
During the slow rampup this summer, initial shows will be presented with small onstage casts just three nights a week, growing to full-cast shows six nights a week in August.
The Globe will also present several virtual productions in the coming months, including two short plays on film and an epistolary play where ticket-buyers will receive a series of letters and postcards in the mail that unfold a real-life World War Ii-era love story. There will also be a new interactive self-guided tour experience where Balboa Park visitors can unlock fictional story videos with their cellphone at locations around Balboa Park.
Globe artistic director Barry Edelstein said the return to live programming has been a huge logistical challenge to plan with the constantly changing public health ordinances. But it marks a joyous time as well. So, as the local theater industry’s “biggest outfit in town,” he wanted the Globe to make a statement with a rich nine-month smorgasbord of events that signal the pandemic is finally coming to an end.
“Of course, we want to do a lot of stuff. When we’re closed, we’re not fulfilling our mission to provide theater to the community of San Diego,” he said. “People miss theater. They want to be a community again. My impression of what will happen is what happened when Shakespeare reopened his theater. It will roar back to life.”
The first live performances onstage at the Globe this summer will be a series of outdoor cabaret shows in
June and July by leading ladies from three past world-premiere musicals at the Globe: Solea Pfeiffer from “Almost Famous,” Carmen Cusack from “Bright Star” and Eden Espinosa from “Rain.”
Edelstein said “Hair” seemed the perfect show to bring back full-cast live theater at the Globe. When he was working at the Public Theater in New York, “Hair” was produced at the outdoor Delacorte Theatre in Central Park, and he said it was an “epic experience to watch this play under the stars.”
“It’s a beautiful statement to make for reopening again. It’s about people coming together to dream about an ideal world,” he said, adding that it will have a highly diverse cast.
“Gardens of Anuncia,” about the life of Argentinaborn Broadway legend Graciela Daniele, also honors the company’s commitment to present more stories about the Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) experience.
“It’s a story about Latina brilliance,” he said. “There will be a stage full of Latinas telling the story of their lives and voices and culture.”
Under the latest state health orders, all San Diego County theaters are allowed to reopen at full capacity on June 15. Performances before that date will be presented with socially distanced seating, regardless of vaccination status. For all performances after June 15, the Globe will be posting updates on whatever restrictions the state and county are requiring at that time on its website, theoldglobe.org.
pam.kragen@sduniontribune.com