The curtains are closed and the lights are out at New Stage Theatre for the year.
Despite the abrupt end to the previous season and no shows set for the upcoming 2020 season, New Stage Theatre Artistic Director Francine Reynolds said plans are in the works to start fresh in January 2021.
The goal is to have an abbreviated season with three shows starting in January. There is also the possibility of a holiday show to take place sometime in November or December.
However, all of these plans are contingent on the state of the pandemic at that time.
In the meantime, Reynolds said they have had much success with their virtual offerings and plan to continue with a full schedule to keep Northsiders entertained and hold them over through the rest of the year.
In July, the three-week, virtual “More than a Building” youth camp launched.
“It worked out very well,” Reynolds said.
The camp was composed of six tracks, beginning at 9 a.m. and ending at 4 p.m. each day via Zoom.
“We had teachers at the theater, and we would project on a big screen the participants so that the teachers could move around,” Reynolds said. “During that period, we learned a whole lot about how to do things virtually.”
In the meantime, Reynolds began looking into what other theaters were offering virtually to get ideas and inspiration for how to move forward this fall given the current state of the pandemic.
Since the 2020 season is a no-go, Reynolds said they are prepared to kick-off New Stage’s virtual theater programming on Thursday, September 3.
“We’re going to do a reading of a new play every other Thursday, focusing on plays written by Mississippians or about Mississippi, as part of the Eudora Welty new play series,” Reynolds.
On the alternating Thursdays, they will host New Stage dialogues, during which previous New Stage actors and directors will engage in discussions and view videos from past performances from the archives.
“We’re not going to do any live performances in the fall, but we may do a holiday performance. We are exploring that,” Reynolds said. “But right now, we have decided, with the cases in Madison, Hinds and Rankin counties, that we just couldn’t bring in people or a cast.”
However, they do have several safety precautions in place for when they are able to host live performances again, which could be in the late fall depending on if New Stage is able to prepare a holiday show.
In addition to the Thursday readings and dialogues, Reynolds said there are plans in the works for other virtual performances and arts and education shows.
“We hope to be in full production at the start of 2021,” Reynolds said.
Typically, the New Stage Theatre season opens the second week of September and runs through mid-June.
“Right now, we are looking at hopefully doing full performances with audiences starting in January 2021,” Reynolds said. “We are looking at doing an abbreviated season so that we can do our regular season beginning in September.”
