Arden Theatre and People’s Light cancel the rest of their seasons
"Unprecedented times" bring the curtains down at two of the Philadelphia region's mainstays. At the Walnut, ticket sales for "The Bodyguard" are on hold temporarily.
The Arden and People’s Light theater companies have canceled the rest of their seasons in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
In a letter to Arden patrons dated Monday, Amy L. Murphy and Terrence J. Nolen, cofounders of the 33-year-old theater in Old City, wrote that “these are clearly unprecedented times and, right now, we need to take a pause.”
Arden productions of A Streetcar Named Desire, No Child …, and Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat will be rescheduled for the 2020-21 season, they said, “with the goal to produce Once on This Island sometime in the future.”
People’s Light in Malvern, where Shakespeare in Love closed early, is losing more than half of its 45th anniversary season. Canceled productions include Hold These Truths, Bayard Rustin: Inside Ashland, Mary Jane, and Songs for Nobodies. SummerBLAST, The theater’s summer education program, is also canceled.
The Walnut Street Theatre, meanwhile, has canceled The Best Man, Popcorn Falls, and Junie B. Jones, and notes on its website that it has temporarily suspended ticket sales for The Bodyguard, The Musical, scheduled to run from May 12-July 12.
The Wilma, which had just one production left in its season, Aleshea Harris’ Is God Is, is “still passionate about bringing [it] to our audiences, and supporting the artists in the creation of this piece,” said Wilma managing director Leigh Goldenberg in a prepared statement.
Is God Is has been scheduled to run from May 26-June 14. “We are exploring a variety of options given the changing day-to-day realities of the pandemic,” Goldenberg said.
One of those options might involve streaming, she said, noting that the theater had already begun connecting with audiences digitally through a virtual fund-raiser, and through Wilma Home Theater and Wilma Home Studio. “The next extension of that work could be on our full productions, a reality the theater community must consider until we can safely gather together again in shared spaces,” she said.