Go here, for the virtual edition of A Little Harmless Fun, on the website of the Mark Twain House & Museum, at 7 p.m. Padrón and Bensussen, the respective Artistic Directors of Long Wharf and Hartford Stage, will be talking with longtime theater critic Frank Rizzo tonight about the current situation and their visions as new ADs at vibrant local theaters in challenging times. The 2020-21 season will then begin in January. Thus the last two shows of the 2019-20 season will run in 2020, followed by the annual production of A Christmas Carol (November 27-December 27). The production of Eugene O’Neill’s Ah, Wilderness!, directed by Artistic Director Maria Bensussen, originally scheduled for May, has been moved to the fall, October 22-November 15, and The Complete History of Comedy (Abridged), written and directed by Reed Martin and Austin Tichenor, originally scheduled for June, will take place October 1-11.
At Hartford Stage, a fine production of Jane Eyre, directed and adapted by Elizabeth Williamson, closed early, and David Seidler’s The King’s Speech, directed by Michael Wilson, was cancelled. Long Wharf cancelled its remaining shows, which included Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap, directed by Madeline Sayet. Over the next few weeks, as stricter and stricter “shelter in place” directives were given, Broadway theaters shuttered, and restaurants in our area went to take-out and delivery only, the possibilities for theater resuming went from passing to past. On that evening, Long Wharf Artistic Director Jacob Padrón was still optimistic that the theater’s next production of the 2019-20 season, Lloyd Suh’s The Chinese Lady, directed by Ralph B. That event, on March 11, was the Long Wharf Theatre’s announcement of its 2020-21 season, covered here by Lucy Gellman at the Arts Paper. It’s been over a month since I was at a public event. And to come? Well, for the moment we’ll just content ourselves with what’s available online and what may arrive, in time. Yeats imagines a golden bird that will sing “to lords and ladies of Byzantium / Of what is past, or passing, or to come.” In these days when the numbers of those contracting the coronavirus and those dying from it are still escalating, there’s a large margin of uncertainty about what is “to come.” And in the midst of so many pronouncements about what is best and what will make things worse, it seems vain, in a sense, to write about the present as anything more than “what is passing.” About “what is past” we can be clear: for theater in CT, any hope of salvaging the remainder of the 2019-20 season is “past.” What’s “passing,” it seems now, are hopes for a return to normality in fall 2020.
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