In February 2020, I made a folder on my desktop - “Henry V (June 2020)”
It would be Boomerang Theatre Company's 20th free outdoor Shakespeare production, coming on the heels of our award-winning production of Twelfth Night just two summers earlier. All the questions began…
Who would direct?
How big would the cast be?
Who would play Prince Hal?
This is the most exciting time for a production, in my opinion…no mistakes have been made, nothing is over budget, and you can do anything!
Except, as it turns out, put on a show. Because, as we all now know, in March of 2020, the whole world stopped. Theatre, indoor and outdoor, stopped.
That production of Henry V never happened.
Boomerang eventually produced one of the first Indie Theatre shows to return safely, and of course, it had to be Shakespeare. But now it had to be a comedy. And believe it or not, we still couldn’t gather outside in the summer of 2021. So our production of The Comedy of Errors in September 20201 performed to a fully vaxxed, fully masked, fully distanced crowd at the Prince George Hotel and brought a little bit of hope to 200 people, and to all of us theatremakers, that maybe we could get back to something like we knew before.
We’re here now, finally. Ready to bring people together again in Central Park, to gather as a community once more, to come full circle back to where we were on that fateful day in February 2020 when I made that folder on my desktop, with all the possibility still in front of us.
But now the dream is bigger. We’ve lost so much, we’ve lost years, and people. Relationships and opportunities to be with one another. We cannot take that for
granted anymore. So we’re not planning only Romeo and Juliet for Summer 2024, but also Richard II for Summer 2025 and The Taming of the
Shrew for Summer 2026 as well. We’re raising money to support this important work, and these artists, and these audiences, and this connection. Because we aren’t losing it
again. And you can help.
Three years of Shakespeare performances. Thousands of audience members. Free Admission. This is our dream.
I know you'll join this cause, because it's that important.
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