Experts agree PPE — personal protective equipment — is crucial to reduce the risk of exposure to COVID-19.
The Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, meanwhile, hopes its own version of PPE — Pandemic Playhouse Entertainment — will reduce the risk of no exposure to live theater.
The Madison-based professional theater group this week posted the first in its new series of productions rehearsed and videotaped specifically for online viewing.
“Our Pandemic Playhouse is inspired by the old television shows of the 1950s and ’60s that I remember seeing as a kid, such as Playhouse 90, Masterpiece Playhouse, and Philco Playhouse,” said STNJ artistic director Bonnie J. Monte. “We will bring a number of plays to life on our main stage at the F. M. Kirby Shakespeare Theatre, and then provide an online platform through which our audience can buy those shows.”
Launching the initiative will three George Bernard Shaw one-acts that the company originally produced last fall under the title “Shaw! Shaw! Shaw!” as a live outdoor “Back Yard Stage” show to side-step the pandemic’s public gathering restrictions.
“They were very successful, but sadly, only a small portion of our large audience base was able to view those shows in person,” said Monte, who has directed the “Pandemic Playhouse” versions as well.
Debuting this week is “Overruled,” Shaw’s “stylish, fast-paced discourse about men, women and the allure of marital misbehaving.” The four-character comedy runs approximately 42 minutes. Streaming began Friday, Jan. 15, and will be available for two weeks.
That will be followed by “Passion, Poison and Petrification or the Fatal Gazogene,” a farce poking fun at Victorian melodramas, and “Village Wooing,” a two-actor romantic comedy built around three conversations taking place over a span of a year. Posting dates have yet to be determined.
Tickets are $10 for each show or $25 for all three. For information, call 908-408-5600 or look online.
“This is not only a chance to let the authors’ words, our superb company of actors and the creative team behind them take the spotlight and benefit from being employed again, but it will provide thousands of people with more of the much-needed ‘medicine’ that the arts provide, and hopefully, income from this programming will help the theater survive the pandemic,” said Monte.
“Lastly, the acronym for Pandemic Playhouse Entertainment — PPE, the same acronym for personal protective equipment — is a happy coincidence, for the ability to view superb arts programming that provides comfort, hope, inspiration and joy is almost as vital as the masks that will protect us throughout this global health crisis.”
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Patrick O’Shea may be reached at poshea@njadvancemedia.com.
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