If in recent years Northern California wildfires brought attention to the difficulty of mounting outdoor theater amid poor air quality, 2024 is already posing challenges to the Bay Area’s open-air theaters for the heat alone.
But as record-breaking temperatures baked the Bay Area on Independence Day, many theaters with performances scheduled over the weekend are practicing one of the art form’s oldest traditions: adapting to the unexpected.
SPARC Theater, which performs in front of rows of grapevines on the grounds of Darcie Kent Vineyards in Livermore, is no stranger to scorching summers. “As I type, our program manager, Audrey, is opening up some new cooling towels that will be distributed to all the actors and crew (color-coordinated so everyone can tell which ones belong to them!),” Managing Director Lindsey Schmeltzer told the Chronicle via email on Wednesday, July 3, three days before the opening for “Twelfth Night,” directed by Lisa A. Tromovitch.
The company is also offering actors the option of costume modifications. Since the show uses just six actors to play a panoply of characters, the original plan was for lots of quick-changes, including by wearing one costume on top of another. “If it is too hot for full costumes altogether, but the actors want something to get them in the vibe, we also have breathable, fluffy Shakespearean-style shirts and sashes for (what Lisa is calling) a pirate takeover show,” Schmeltzer wrote. For audience members, the company offers the option of switching to seats that tend to catch shade earlier from distant hills.
Cassidy Brown, who plays Orsino and Malvolio in the show, said he’s noticed that it’s not high temperature per se that’s most taxing so much as direct exposure to sunlight, which could call into question the viability of outdoor matinees as climate change worsens. He recalled a performance of “Don Quixote” at Marin Shakespeare Company years ago in which the lead’s commedia dell’arte mask started dissolving on his face onstage. “Part of it is knowing to go into your design with heat in mind,” Brown said.
Bridgette Loriaux, an actor with Marin Shakespeare Company the past two years, took an optimistic stance on performing in spicy conditions at the company’s amphitheater at Dominican University in San Rafael. “My muscles feel warm. The body just feels ready in that kind of heat,” she said. She also relishes the way the weather makes her more attuned to what the audience is going through, taking it as a cue to up her own game so it doesn’t upstage her. “I take it as a wonderful little challenge,” she said, noting that she also sees the sun as fuel for her character, Beatrice, the romantic lead in “Much Ado About Nothing.” It’s possible, however, that her rosy attitude stems in part from rigorous conditioning; she prepared for the show by running lines while walking outside in the sun near her Las Vegas home.
Even San Francisco, often protected by Karl the Fog, isn’t immune. San Francisco Shakespeare Festival Executive Director Toby Leavitt recalled a 2022 performance where temperatures climbed above 100 degrees, even in McLaren Park. Rather than ask actors to do all their blocking, she said, “The ‘Much Ado’ company decided to offer a concert reading we retroactively called ‘Shakespeare in the Shade.’ About a quarter of the audience joined cast members under the shade of nearby trees for an unamplified unstaged reading of the play.”
Another solution? Change venues.
San Francisco’s Circus Bella first brought its free summer show to Reno three years ago, and it immediately became clear that performing outdoors, the company’s modus operandi, was not going to be viable in the long-term. Since then, the company’s moved inside for that tour stop, Director Abigail Munn told the Chronicle.
Cancellations for heat are rare in the Bay Area, though Schmeltzer said SPARC Theater offers ticket exchanges to audiences worried about heat. Still, Munn pointed out that she’s noticed a shift in attitude about postponements since the pandemic struck.
“Post-pandemic, there is a flexibility and humanity in everybody. Of course the show goes on, but maybe it goes on in a different way,” she said. It’s not as if she’s going to start canceling performances willy-nilly, she continued, but the pandemic taught performing artists that you can call off for a day, “and the world doesn’t end.”
Reach Lily Janiak: ljaniak@sfchronicle.com