As We Like It: Get Ready For Shakespeare By The Sea’s New Season

UPDATE: Shakespeare By The Sea’s Sneak Peek and Picnic Auction Fundraiser on Thursday June 23rd has been cancelled, but you can still donate here. And read more about their production of King Lear, and the Rainville family, in our follow-up story and interview.

 

For more than twenty years now, winter-weary city dwellers like me have looked forward to one summer ritual more than most: the annual pilgrimage to Shakespeare By The Sea’s first show. We lug our picnic gear with us on the long walk through Point Pleasant Park, set up our blankets as close to the stage as safety allows, and juggle sunscreen and bug spray (sometimes literally) while we wait to be entertained. And without fail, we are.

Although the players shift and change from year to year, there are always familiar faces. And SBTS attracts some impressive talent; it’s a challenge for the actors to manage multiple roles in three very different productions over two months. Every season, the company stages two Shakespearean plays, a comedy and a tragedy, and one family show. The family show, by the way, needs some explanation for those who have avoided it because they think it’s just for kids: DON’T MISS IT. Go now. Kids love it, yes, but much of the humour is aimed over their heads for the adults in the audience, and these shows are always unabashedly ridiculous and silly and just plain fun. They must be a great release for the actors while they’re simultaneously in rehearsals for a bloodbath like Titus Andronicus.

(L-R): Tom Gordon Smith, Catherine Rainville, Hilary Adams in As You Like It

The new season kicks off on July 1st with this year’s crowd-pleaser, a musical adaptation of Pinocchio, followed a week later by As You Like It. King Lear debuts in August, the first time the company has performed the play in seventeen years. It’s worth taking particular note that real-life father and daughter Paul and Catherine Rainville play Lear and Cordelia, another inspired bit of casting. On a recent visit to SBTS headquarters, rehearsals were loud and enthusiastic. The cast and crew seem primed for another great season. “We appreciate so much that we have a really loyal audience”, says Co-Artistic Director Jesse MacLean. “We really do have something for everyone, for the whole family.”

SBTS is a nonprofit repertory theatre company, and although they attract crowds other small independent companies must envy, they have always survived on a shoestring budget based on unpredictable ticket sales as well as private and public funding. The fact that they’ve survived for so long, and continue chugging along, makes them a pillar of the local theatre community. When a suspicious 2014 fire caused enough damage to their black-box theatre (site of their office and rehearsal space as well) to shut it down to the public, their budget took a real hit. Not only did they lose their fall-back space for bad weather, which meant cancelling shows instead of moving them inside, but they were forced to move their fall and Christmas shows to another venue.

(L-R): Catherine Rainville, Paul Rainville in King Lear

Elizabeth Murphy, Co-Artistic Director and a founder of SBTS, remains optimistic about the company’s future. “I could see us going on like this for another twenty-two years”, she says. But two years later, the effects of that fire are still being felt. And, Halifax theatre-lovers, SBTS needs your help. If we want to continue making that summer pilgrimage to the park, they need all the support they can get.

So how can you help? You could send them a one-time or monthly donation. Or just keep going to plays, and take your friends. Keep laughing. Keep crying. They promise to keep entertaining you. And for us, the audience, that’s a pretty great deal.

 

All photos copyright Shakespeare By The Sea. Featured image at top of page (L-R): Dan Gervais, Melissa MacGougan in Pinocchio

About the author

Kate Kirkpatrick

A Nova Scotia native, Kate chased the bright lights of other cities for a while, but eventually found her way home. She's the minder of all things Halifax Bloggers. And has big love for local.