The Stratford Festival: Emerging from global lockdown

While the Covid-19 pandemic is far from over – at the time of this writing, Ontario is entering its seventh wave of the disease, fuelled by the Omicron BA.5 subvariant – the impetus to return to a sense of normalcy and ‘life pre-Covid’ is prevalent. Government-issued public health restrictions have loosened and masking is only required in particular settings, usually those pertaining to health care, though businesses do retain a degree of autonomy regarding their own requirements.

 Theatre has been drastically affected by the pandemic and public health guidelines since the global emergence of Covid-19 in early 2020. The Stratford Festival is no exception. Its 2020 season was cancelled entirely, and its 2021 season was staged predominantly outdoors under purpose-built tents. This 2022 season marks a return to indoor performances and further easing of the previous season's restrictions. Nonetheless, innovative digital viewing options born of necessity during the pandemic's first ravages continue to be offered, expanding the viewing demographic and possibilities available to patrons.

Actors and audiences alike are delighted to see most of the previously cancelled 2020 offerings return to the 2022 Stratford Festival's roster, including Hamlet, Richard III, All's Well that Ends Well, Hamlet-911, Chicago, and The Miser. Regrettably, Wolf Hall, Mike Poulton's reimagining of Hilary Mantel's novel, is not to return this season. Chris Abraham's Much Ado About Nothing starring Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty is also not experiencing a 2022 revival. Instead, the Festival has added Sunny Drake's salacious Every Little Nookie in its world premiere, directed by Ted Witzel; Little Women, adapted for the stage by Jordi Mand and directed by Esther Jun with Schulich Children's Plays; and Death and the King's Horsemen, by Wole Soyinka and directed by Tawiah M’Carthy.

In 2021, 90-minute productions featured casts of eight socially distanced performers to outdoor audiences. There were some limited capacities, socially distanced productions in the indoor Studio Theatre, but others were offered thrice daily in two purpose-built performance tent spaces: the Festival Theatre and Tom Patterson Theatre Canopies. Performances were subject to the weather and a mask mandate was in effect.

This year, the Canopies have vanished, and productions are running out of four indoor theatrical venues: the Festival, the recently refurbished Tom Patterson, the Avon, and the Studio Theatres, with three full-capacity, full-length productions held at each – apart from the Avon, which is hosting Little Women exclusively. Audiences are no longer socially distanced nor, as of 21 June, required to wear masks, following a patron survey indicating that the majority of respondents preferred to be unmasked. The Festival does recommend mask usage, however, to protect audience and actors alike, as performers are unmasked and masks prevent Covid-related performance cancellations. Disposable masks are available, and food and drink consumption is prohibited in the auditoriums. Beginning 1 May 2022, the Festival is no longer checking proof of vaccination at door: according to the Festival's research, in line with that of the Ontario Arts Council, 96 per cent of theatregoers are fully vaccinated and have received one booster, while 98 per cent received at least one dose. All staff are fully vaccinated and continue to wear masks.

To accommodate those patrons who feel vulnerable or trepidatious regarding the loosening of public health guidelines and subsequent performance protocol changes, the Festival is offering select reduced-capacity, physically distanced performances. Such screenings require all guests to be masked and to demonstrate proof of vaccination, which entails government-issued proof of a full series of vaccinations received at least 14 days prior to visit. International visitors attending such a performance would provide the same information as that required to enter Canada.

Stratfest@Home, the paid subscription streaming service, continues to be available for those patrons wishing to avoid all in-person contact. For $10 a month, members can view Festival and original content, most of which is available globally. Some content is available for free using a guest account. Features include selected archived productions; audio plays; podcasts; work from across Canada; Indigenous stories; QSA (Queer-Straight Alliance at the Festival); Backstage Pass; original series such as The Early Modern Cooking Show: Tastes of Shakespeare's Time, Undiscovered Sonnets, and Leer Estates; Stratford Festival Ghost Tours; documentaries; and panels from the Meighen Forum. This wealth of content enriches the opportunities available to patrons and researchers alike, expanding the Festival's reach and clientele.

Thematically, the pandemic does not feature overtly into the Festival's offerings: there are no productions centred on physical illness specifically, though All's Well involves a female healer (Helen), and Little Women does feature a death due to scarlet fever. Instead, the pandemic emerges in more tangential ways, through nods at significant issues that arose during the pandemic. For instance, calls for greater equality following George Floyd's 2020 murder seem to be addressed in the Festival's Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) initiative, featured on the website homepage and in increasingly robust casting practices. Soyinka's Death and the King's Horsemen is a 2022 addition that highlights a Nigerian community's efforts to affirm its identity while under British rule, and seems to be part of the EDI dialogue.

Furthermore, the addition of Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan's 1939, a play directed by Lauzon in which a Northern Ontario residential school English teacher arranges a performance of All's Well for the visit of King George VI, is timely, considering the recent horrific discoveries made on Canada's former residential school sites, and continued revisionism of the role colonialism has played (and continues to play) in the lives of FNMI (First Nation, Métis, and Inuit) people. The Festival asserts that for each ticket sold, $5 will go to the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association and the Atlohsa Family Healing Centre. There is also space for reflection available adjacent to theatre, featuring Fading Memories of Home, an installation by artist Tom Wilson that details the erasure of FNMI culture in residential schools. In a more nuanced allusion to current events, one cannot hear Elizabeth's line about the ‘poor infants, in their graves’ (4.4.294) in Richard III without envisioning the likely thousands of unmarked graves of FNMI children at Canada's former residential school sites. ¹

With all of its 2022 innovations, including the return of school groups, the Stratford Festival seems to be striding towards the ‘normality’ of pre-pandemic life. Nevertheless, its emphasis on the importance of equality, inclusion, and reconciliation – on account of lessons gleaned during the pandemic – strives to improve that pre-pandemic world.