Northern Stage Builds Open-Air Theater for New Season
Northern Stage’s upcoming season will include a newly constructed outdoor theater and a bifurcated main stage schedule that starts in June, runs through the summer, and resumes in February at the Byrne Theater.
That necessity is the mother of invention has never been more in evidence. Northern Stage pivoted heroically this past year, offering plays on Zoom, staging a radio play of It’s a Wonderful Life, socially-distancing its audience for one of the first-in-the-country live performances during the pandemic. It’s not done with the pivoting nor, more importantly, with bringing live theater to the Upper Valley.
The 2021-22 season of fully-staged productions begins on June 9, 2021, with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), London’s longest running comedy. 37 of Shakespeare’s plays in just 97 minutes (June 9–July 4). It will be followed by Million Dollar Quartet (August 11—September 12), described as a “roof-raising musical” (although no actual roof to raise in this outdoor performance). Northern Stage advises that you:
“. . . put on your Blue Suede Shoes and get ready to Walk the Line, because there’s FINALLY going to be a Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On! Northern Stage is bringing you MILLION DOLLAR QUARTET, the musical that drops you into December 4, 1956, when icons Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Carl Perkins gathered for the first and only time at Sun Records in Memphis for what would be one of the greatest jam sessions ever.”
Both Complete Works and Million Dollar Quartet will take place in the new open-air Courtyard Theater (artist’s rendering by Michael Ganio, top), which is being built just behind the Barrette Center for the Arts in White River Junction.
In February, a third production, Heisenberg (February 16—March 6, 2022), will bring audiences back indoors to the main stage in the Byrne Theater. The fourth, Monty Python’s Spamalot (April 13—May 15, 2022), will round out the season.
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And in case you are wondering . . . Susan B. Apel shuttered a lifelong career as a law professor to continue an interest (since kindergarten) in writing. Her freelance business, The Next Word, includes literary and feature writing; her work has appeared in a variety of lit mags and other publications including Art New England, The Woven Tale Press, The Arts Fuse, and Persimmon Tree. She connects with her neighbors through Artful, her blog about arts and culture in the Upper Valley. She’s in love with the written word.