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COVID delays Shaw preview openings

The much-anticipated musical Damn Yankees previews were delayed, but opened Saturday . (Pictured: Shane Carty.
The much-anticipated musical Damn Yankees previews were delayed, but opened Saturday. (Pictured: Shane Carty. Photo by Peter Andrew Lusztyk)

The Shaw Festival was forced to cancel two previews of Damn Yankees due to COVID cases delaying rehearsals, with its opening going ahead on its rescheduled opening date Saturday.

Too True To Be Good previews for May 12 and 15 have also been cancelled, with the Bernard Shaw play rescheduled to begin May 18.

Executive director Tim Jennings says COVID among staff, not just cast members but in all areas of production, meant rehearsals could not proceed “in a timely manner,” to be ready to open as expected.

Since the spring of 2021, the Shaw has been working with McMaster HealthLabs, a private, not-for-profit team of scientists, doctors and others from McMaster University and the Research Institute of St. Joseph’s Hamilton, on workplace testing, to keep staff safe during COVID. They are tested regularly, with PCR and rapid tests, and apart from actors when they’re rehearsing on stage, staff wear masks as they move around the theatre.

Testing is mandatory for anybody working unmasked onstage, Jennings says, and as soon as a cast member steps off the stage, the mask goes back on.

“The province has decided we have to learn to live normally, so other people have choices. For a performing actor, there is no choice. That’s what they sign up for,” he says. “And everyone is fully vaccinated and boostered.”

Some of the staff members who contracted COVID have been quite sick, but none so seriously they have needed to be hospitalized.

The Shaw did well to get through the pandemic right through to last fall’s holiday shows before seeing any positive COVID tests, and this season, in some cases COVID-like symptoms have ended up being flu, which also impacts not only rehearsals for cast members, but the technicians that have to be on stage, moving things around, and ensuring the safety of the actors as they do so.

“It’s tricky. We have a real sense of COVID being a super spreader, but we’re seeing other flus, and other issues,” says Jennings.

Even with more understudies than would be normal for other seasons, the show hasn’t always gone on, although last year, the Shaw recorded a great year, despite the pandemic crippling theatre productions. The festival not only reported gross revenues of $26,632 million last season, but once restrictions eased in early July, presented the largest North American theatre season of 2021. They delivered over 445 performances of 17 separate productions and concert series on six stages (three outdoor and three indoor), to an audience of 48,750.

Jennings said at the festival’s annual general meeting for 2021, looking back on last season, that his most profound satisfaction came from the festival’s ability to maintain employment and contracts for almost every one of its 550-plus staff and artists throughout the last two years. 

And heading into the 2022 season, he says, “we’ll do everything we can to keep shows happening.”




About the Author: Penny Coles

Penny Coles is editor of Niagara-on-the-Lake Local
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