By J. Kelly Nestruck

“Preview performances were set to begin in April of last year, but the first wave of COVID-19 shut down stages just weeks before that.

Though the Festival acted quickly to reduce costs and payroll, it had already spent $13-million – rehearsing actors, building sets, selling tickets – by that point in the year.

The way out of the current situation for Stratford begins by going further into the red with a relatively small 2021 season that is viewed as an investment in maintaining ties with its artists, its audiences and the local community, but will lose money.

Cimolino plans to produce six plays and a series of cabarets performed by eight-actor casts in two open-sided tents to audiences capped at 100 this summer. These shows will also be filmed for the $10-a-month streaming service Stratfest at Home, which launched late in 2020 and currently has just under 3,500 subscribers.

The budget for this 2021 season, tickets for which are expected to go on sale next month, is just under $37-million, with a planned deficit of $4-million.

The theatre company is then hoping to return to something resembling normal activities in 2022. But it’s hard to see that far into the future and gauge the willingness of audiences to return, even if the pandemic is under control at that point.”

Source: The Globe and Mail – Opinion