SARASOTA – The Bazaar on Apricot & Lime is helping bring theater back to the Suncoast.
“Just the fact that we’re able to have actors on a stage, telling a story…is a blessing,” said Producing Artistic Director of ‘Souvenir’, Jeffery Kin.
The show goes on, for the Players Centre. With venues closed throughout the country, the Bazaar on Apricot & Lime has opened their courtyard to help bring back live theater in a socially distanced way.
“In a theater you have walls, there are no walls you can send out all the love you want and it will reach everyone this way,” said Ellie Patterson, who portrays, Florence Foster Jenkins in ‘Souvenir’
The story follows Jenkins an American socialite and amateur soprano, who became known, and mocked, for her notably poor singing ability.
“She was a soprano, in her mind but she had no tonal equality at all,” said Patterson.
Producing Artistic Director of ‘Souvenir’, Jeffery Kin says sometimes less is more.
“I love to be the director that’s takes a piece and says you know what, we don’t need that, we don’t need that, I can tell it with two chairs, a piano and two great actors,” said Kin.
Kin says that most of the time, outdoor venues are perfect for live theater.
“There are a lot of shows that actually are set outside, and we cram them indoors. Well now we are doing just the opposite, so to be able to have a position of bringing people together and creating some theatrical magic it is an absolute blessing,” said Kin.
Pattison says more theater production companies should challenge themselves in a post COVID world
“Theaters started out in a stone place outside, why not go back to that, that is what its meant to be, its meant to entertain, a building doesn’t entertain it’s the people in it.”
For more information, on show dates and ticket sales, you can visit the Player Centre website.
