Harlequin to resume season with radio-theater versions of the shows COVID-19 canceled

Although there’s no telling when theaters will be able to reopen — or when audiences will be willing to come back — Harlequin Productions will resume its season Sept. 20.

The shows won’t be in person, but they won’t be on Zoom, either. Rather, the company will produce radio-theater versions of most of the shows that had been canceled because of the pandemic, beginning with “The Highest Tide,” which ended its run early due to concerns about the coronavirus.

Though the online shows will be performed live six evenings a week for six weeks, Harlequin remains in what artistic director Aaron Lamb calls “hibernation.” Previously announced plans to stage “A Christmas Carol” with physical distancing and an option to watch from home are on hold.

“I think we’ll be able to announce something in the late fall about what our season will look like for 2021,” Lamb said Thursday at one of the theater’s online State of the Stage meetings. “The question is, ‘What kind of work will we be able to do?’”

The idea of the radio-style plays is to preserve the theatrical experience, Lamb said. He sees work on a screen as fundamentally different than the “Real. Live. Theater” touted in the company’s slogan.

“If you’re planning to go to the museum to see a sculpture exhibit, but when you get there all you can see are photographs of the sculpture, your expectation changes,” he told The Olympian. “You’re now looking at the photographs instead of the intended work.

“Once you place a screen in front of someone, the expectation unconsciously shifts,” he said. “It’s a different medium. My idea here was to remove the visual aspect from the work, forcing a suspension of disbelief and imaginative engagement from the audience. … I think this is as close as we can get to live theater during a pandemic.”

The six-week season of radio shows — with directors including Desdemona Chiang, who’s worked at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and other major companies — includes all of the non-musicals that would have been on stage from March through October, plus a new show to be announced. (One clue for the new show: Lamb pointed out that it coincides with Halloween.)

“This has really been a time for us to reinvent what we do and I think I speak for most of all of us in the industry when I say that,” Lamb said. “We have to reinvent the way we produce work, the way we rehearse work, the way we ask for money — all of that is being reinvented.”

The company’s 2021 season might include more audio plays, live-streamed solo work, solo or small ensemble pieces done with a small physically distanced audience and more people watching via live stream, and traditional live and in-person theater — or some mix of all of these.

To reopen successfully, Lamb pointed out, Harlequin will need more than the approval of the governor and the Actors’ Equity Association: It will need an audience that is ready to return to public spaces.

At Thursday’s meeting, the company took an in-the-moment Zoom poll of the 60 or so people present, asking when they imagined they’d be willing to return, and 37 percent of respondents said “not until there’s a vaccine.” The most popular guess for when that might be was spring 2021 (31 percent).

But though it doesn’t expect to open its doors anytime soon, the company is making plans for the future, including continuing a capital campaign aimed at funding a restoration and historic preservation of the State Theater, which opened in 1949.

Lamb finds reason for optimism in theater history.

“In the 1918 flu pandemic, theaters across the country closed just like they are closed now, some of them for many months,” he said at the State of the Stage meeting. “But theater came back.

“And in 1593, Shakespeare’s Globe closed down for 14 months due to an outbreak of the bubonic plague, and this was not the only time the Globe closed. This has happened many times throughout our history, and we know that theater can come back.”

Radio theater by Harlequin Productions

• What: The company will present live-streamed audio-only versions of the non-musical shows that had to be canceled due to coronavirus. Tickets are available beginning Monday, Sept. 7.
• When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday, with a new show opening each Sunday
• Tickets: Free, with donations appreciated. (To donate, text RADIOQ to 44-321.) Advance reservations (one per household) are necessary, as the capacity for each performance is limited to the size of the house (212 seats).
• More information: http://harlequinproductions.org

THE SHOWS

• “The Highest Tide” (Sept. 20-26), an adaptation of Olympia author Jim Lynch’s best-seller about a boy and his relationship with the world beneath the waters of the Puget Sound
• “For Peter Pan on Her 70th Birthday” (Sept. 27-Oct. 3), Sarah Ruhl’s 2017 dramatic comedy about growing up and growing old
• “A Bright Room Called Day” (Oct. 4-10), a dramatic parable by Tony Kushner, who won a Pulitzer for “Angels in America”
• “This Flat Earth” (Oct. 11-17), Lindsey Ferrentino’s lyrical 2018 drama about two 12-year-olds dealing with the life after a school shooting
• “Snow in Midsummer” (Oct. 18-24), Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s contemporary take on a classical Chinese drama about a town cursed by an angry ghost
• And a Halloween Surprise to be announced later that will run Oct. 25-31

This story was originally published September 7, 2020 at 5:45 AM.