Hartford Stage welcomes back theatergoers with ‘a different experience than any show we’ve done before’
On Sept. 17, Hartford Stage is opening its doors for theater, music, dancing and much more — and the season hasn’t even begun yet.
Saturday’s event is an open house with four hours of events:
Guided backstage tours of the theater will be between noon and 2 p.m., including glimpses of the scene shop, costumes, props, lighting grid and sound booth. The 1 p.m. tour will be in Spanish.
Live music from noon to 2 p.m. — preferably outside the front entrance of the theater, weather permitting — from the Latin American ensemble Grupo Sin Fronteras, which uses authentic instruments such as the quena, zampoña and charango. The band is based in Vernon but its members hail from Peru, Ecuador and Chile. Hartford Stage first connected with Grupo Sin Fronteras through one of the theater’s community partners, Christ Church Cathedral.
Mini Youth Theatre Workshops are from noon to 2 p.m. at half-hour intervals.
Hartford Stage staff are on hand from noon to 2 p.m. to answer questions about their work and about the theater in general.
The teen Breakdancing Shakespeare troupe will perform on the main stage at 2:30 p.m. as part of a communal gathering.
Prizes and a chance to win Hartford Stage memorabilia.
Food and drinks from Scott’s Jamaican Bakery, Banh Mee, Agave, Sunberry, Bloom Bake Shop, Dads Kitchen, ZoJu Food, Urban Lodge Brewing Company, and others.
There will be information booths from organizations that regularly partner with Hartford Stage such as Hartford Public Library, Christ Church Cathedral and Capital Community College.
When Melia Bensussen became the theater’s artistic director in 2019, she held a public open house and “meet and greet” with the cast of “Quixote Nuevo” as that show was beginning rehearsals in the fall of 2019. The event was a statement that Hartford Stage wanted to engage more deeply with Hartford as a whole.
This is the first open house since then, due to COVID, but the theater’s community outreach has continued in other ways, including bilingual and Spanish language productions at the theater.
Andrea Cuevas, Hartford Stage’s director of marketing, says the open house is meant to promote the theater but also let attendees know about its educational programs and the partnerships it has developed with other community organizations.
“Our goal for this year,” she says, “is to have people, including families, come back to the theater.” That means getting reacquainted with some traditions but also seeing what’s changed.
“Our focus has shifted,” Cuervas says. “We’re managing our resources in different ways and trying to set new goals.” She says that the final show of the 2021-22 season, the musical “Kiss My Aztec,” showed how Hartford Stage was developing new audiences.
“It was such a different experience than any show we’ve done before. People were dancing in the lobby before they came into the theater. You felt that energy.”
“When you welcome new audiences,” Cuervas says, “there are always going to be questions. The staff will be milling about the lobby answering those questions.” Cuervas herself will be leading the Spanish-language backstage tour.
Hartford Stage’s 2022-23 season starts in October. It’s a diverse mix of classics and new works, from Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap” to Kate Snodgrass’ “The Art of Burning.” Four of the six shows in the season were written by women, one of the classics (”Trouble in Mind”) is by a Black woman (Alice Childress) and one of the new plays (”Espejos: Clean” by Christine Quintana) is performed in both English and Spanish. Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale” is on the schedule, as is a return of last year’s holiday show “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.
