URI Theatre to open 2021-22 season with live audiences

URI Theatre looks to make a return to in-person productions. PHOTO CREDIT: URI Communications

Last week, the University of Rhode Island’s theatre department announced the casts for this fall semester’s productions, “Silent Sky” and “Clue.” 

The department plans for these performances, starting in October, to have a live in-person audience for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic almost two years ago. 

“Silent Sky” tells the true story of Henrietta Leavitt, a famous American astronomer, and her fight for women’s rights in both STEM and society while working at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s. 

“Clue” is an onstage adaptation of the 1985 movie, based on the beloved board-game created by Rhode Island’s very own Hasbro Toy Company. 

“We usually start working on our next season the January or February of the year before, so we started this selection in January 2020,” David T. Howard, professor and theatre department chair, said. “Our entire permanent faculty, any students who want to work with us and two student representatives will pick the plays and we have to read them all.” 

Howard said normally 20 to 30 plays are selected and read before they vote on the final four plays for the season. The royalties for each production must also be available and purchased before the play selection can be finalised. 

“The bulk of the plays the students want are usually the ones that become our plays, but we’re also looking for as diverse a group of authors as possible,” Howard said. “We want every play we put together to represent our community.” 

One major fact about the productions this year is that the majority are written by female playwrights. 

“After some research we found out that ‘Clue,’ our second play, was actually written by a group of people, but we were really excited [that] from the beginning that we were representing female playwrights,” Howard said. 

Howard and Omar Laguerre-Lewis, a senior theatre major and the president of the student play selection committee, both said that “Silent Sky” was a candidate pre-pandemic, but was tabled until this year due to the stipulations of the pandemic. 

While it was proposed by a faculty member, it was also a student favorite.

“Everyone has missed doing live theatre,” Laguerre-Lewis said. “We’re all excited by the prospect of having an audience, and we’re doing our best to stay safe to make sure it can actually happen.” 

As of right now, URI Theatre plans on having audiences for these shows at full capacity with all people inside the theatre wearing masks except for the actors that are on stage. 

“We have very important protocols for anyone entering our spaces,” Howard said. “We’re shooting for full capacity to enter the space and anyone coming to our productions at this point will have to be masked and show proof of vaccination or a current negative [COVID-19] test. There will be temperature checks as well.” 

“Silent Sky” will be the first play of the semester, running the weekends of Oct. 14 and 21, while “Clue” will run the weekends of Dec. 2 and 9. Tickets can be purchased through URI Theatre on their website and at the box office located in the Fine Arts Center.