TELL ME A STORY AND SING ME A SONG Jeff Herbst, Artistic Director For over fifty years, the park amphitheater has come alive in the summer with stories and songs wafting through the pines into the ether to the stars above. We’ve decided to draw on that core experience of storytelling and singing, like our predecessor the Heritage Ensemble, to craft our 2021 Northern Sky season. Because of Covid safety issues and delays in getting permission to perform, we have chosen and created shows that are designed to be presented within any ongoing constraints governed by forces still beyond our control. All of the shows truly celebrate the characters, their story, and why it is they need to burst into song in order to express themselves. Rather than present shows in repertory as we usually do, we’ll run each show 4-6 weeks at a time, in order to minimize the number of people working together at any given time. This also allows us to hire more people, albeit for shorter periods, giving contracts to over 40 artists, all of whom have been out of regular theater work for over a year now. To ensure Covid safety, the shows in the park have been developed to be performed with minimal staging and without traditional scenery and props. We simply had no way of planning for (finding, hiring, housing) a full crew to handle putting up and taking down sets, managing a dressing room and all of the costume needs, etc. As a result, the shows that we’ve chosen to do in the park aren’t at all compromised, but are customized for our circumstances. That’s the beauty of doing original work. In the Gould, we’ll be able to put up a set and leave it up and the shows being presented indoors are small cast and self-contained. As a result, they will be performed with full production values.
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Northern Sky Theater
