After a year of outdoor performances, The Cincinnati Shakespeare Company returns to in-person performances

On March 12, 2020, in the middle of its run of Kate Hamill’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company was forced to close due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In the 19 months that followed the shutdown, the theater had to find new ways to bring its performances to the public while keeping both the actors and the guests safe. In lieu of its typical performances at its venue near Washington Park, the actors took to radio to perform Shakespearean classics with their “Second Sunday with Shakespeare” series and traveled around the Greater Cincinnati area, putting on free performances of plays like Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer’s Night Dream through the Shakespeare in the Park program. 

For the 2021-2022 season, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company will return to the stage, starting in October with Romeo and Juliet. Guests will be required to be masked and show proof of vaccination or a negative test upon entry. 

“I think that our comeback is well worth the wait,” Brian Isaac Phillips, the producing artistic director at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, says. “A lot of the programming that we’re delivering this upcoming season are productions that we had planned, either right before or right after the pandemic shut us down. So we’re finally able to kind of deliver some of these promises that we made.” 

Although the season-opening play, Romeo and Juliet, which features Courtney Lucien as Juliet and Crystian Wiltshire as Romeo, was written over 400 years ago, Phillips believes that the show is a timely production given the state of our world.

“With the fact that the Capulets and the Montagues are so divided, that it is causing obstacles for their children and for the next generation,” Phillips says. “As we look at the division that we’re facing right now in our world, this is a really great play for this moment, so it’s going to be a beautiful way to reopen the space.” 

In November, the company’s production of Every Christmas Story Ever Told (And Then Some!) will return for its 15th holiday season. Although the production couldn’t go forth last holiday season in person, the company released a digital version, available for a limited run at the Esquire Theater in Clifton. The digital version of the play allowed the company to continue its beloved tradition of the play while also staying creative. 

Along with the digital version of Every Christmas Story Ever Told, Shakespeare in the Park and the “Second Sunday with Shakespeare” series, the company also opened up its workshop to commissions from the public, allowing the production teams to work on everything from furniture for a client’s home to masks for a Halloween costume. 

In 2022, the company will begin the New Year with August Wilson’s 1982 play, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom with Torie Wiggins playing Ma Rainey. The company had originally planned to have the production before the 2020 movie version starring Chadwick Boseman and Viola Davis, but, due to the pandemic, this will be its debut run at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company. 

“It’s going to be wonderful to see it live [after seeing the movie version],” Phillips says. “It’s going to be an evening full of fantastic drama and fantastic music.” 

In Late February, the company will put on what was supposed to be the “signature piece” of the 2019-2020 season before it was cancelled, Hamlet. This updated take on the Shakespeare classic will see the title character as a woman, played by Sarah Clark, in a contemporary setting. This will mark the company’s second collaboration with Brave Berlin, the minds behind Cincinnati’s BLINK festival and Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra’s Lumenocity. The artists previously worked on the company’s 2018 production of 1984.

After Hamlet wraps, the company will follow with another modern take on one of Shakespeare’s plays, The Comedy of Errors. Discussing the production, Phillips says, “It’s very funny, it’s very fast, and will feature a sort of Rat Pack Las Vegas setting. It’s going to be a lot of fun and probably very musical as well.”

The final production of the season will pick up where the 2019-2020 season left off with the return of Kate Campbell’s adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, which is the company’s best-selling play.

During the summer, the Cincinnati Shakespeare Company will continue with its Shakespeare in the Park program and will also bring back its education programs in both in-person and digital formats—depending on the needs of the students and the health situation of the area at that time. 

“I think that this is a very unique season that we’ve just announced because so many of the titles were things we did not get to finish in our 2019-2020 season, and half of the titles we had just announced for our canceled 2020-2021 season. So, for this season, there’s a lot of ‘Well, we’ve said we were going to do these things and it’s still appropriate to do them because the messages of the stories are still important,’” Phillips says. “The audience’s desire to see these stories is still there. So that made this one a very unique announcement.

“I am most excited about opening night,” Phillips says. “I cannot wait to be there with a full house, celebrating live theater and being back in the back of the theater, and listening to the laughter, the gasping, the tears, the cymbals, seeing the fights on stage, the dancing, the beautiful Shakespeare poetry. I can’t wait for that night. I’ve been waiting for 18 months, and I can’t wait to share that with the community here at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company and our city of Cincinnati.”