Classic Theatre Closes Season of ‘Theatre in the Rough’ with Our Town
What do we actually need to tell a story?
This is the question Mark Stringham grappled with while directing the Classic Theatre’s recent production of
Our Town. It is also a question that theater leaders around the world have faced over the past 18 months. Can a Zoom performance come close to imitating the allure of live performance? How can theater, an art form that’s based on people gathering, survive a period of time when gatherings were few and far between?
“Regional theatre, really, was founded on being a cornerstone of its community,” says Kelly Roush, artistic and executive director of the Classic. “A place where the public can come together to talk about hard things, or funny things just what it’s like to be human. This has become even more important, I think, in the last five or six years as things have become increasingly partisan.”