Elm Shakespeare Looks to Future in Face of Covid-19 Reality

Following Guidelines, Elm Shakespeare Looks to a Future in the Face of Covid-19 Reality

Elm Shakespeare Company announces with great disappointment that there will be no summer production in Edgerton Park this year.  In following state and local guidelines and in close consultation with New Haven leadership and Southern CT State University, we have reached the difficult conclusion that we cannot rehearse, build and perform a production while ensuring the health and safety of our artists and audience.  And while Shakespeare in Edgerton Park has been a beloved New Haven tradition for 25 years, no play is worth the possibility of even one person getting sick.  And so, for this year, we will not gather in the park. 

However, we at Elm Shakespeare Company remain committed to bringing our community together through Shakespeare and refuse to let a little thing like a global pandemic get in the way!  Our teaching artist team has completely re-imagined the camp experience, redesigning our summer programs for kids(and teens) to participate from home in ways that go beyond traditional online-learning zoom instruction… with tech savvy teachers, plenty of “away-from-screen” activities, arts & crafts projects with home delivery of supplies and live ‘zoom’ performances… AND we have made it completely FREE to any child whose family members are essential workers or unemployed.  (For info click here)

Finally, while we cannot invite all of Greater New Haven to join us in Edgerton Park this summer, Elm Shakespeare Company is busy finding innovative ways to come to you!  More information will be available soon, as we develop performance models enabling our professional production to travel and perform for smaller audiences throughout the community.  We even hope it may allow us to make new friends and engage our current audiences more deeply with socially distanced but interactive activities and more in-depth exploration of the play and its resonance in our lives.  Keep your eyes open for announcements about Elm Shakespeare Company coming to your neighborhood once it is safe to do so.   

Live theater may be impossible right now, but it WILL return, and in the meantime, the artists of Elm Shakespeare Company are finding creative solutions to the temporary stumbling block of Covid-19.  Once it is past, we will come back to the park, and once again laugh, cry, break bread and heal together through the generous alchemy of Shakespeare in the park. 

 

 

M
Submitted by Milford, CT

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