GREATER VICTORIA SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL
Where: Horticulture Centre of the Pacific (505 Quayle Rd.) and Esquimalt Gorge Park (1070 Tillicum Rd.)
When: Thursday, June 29 through Saturday, July 15
Tickets: $25 from vicshakespeare.com (children 12 and under are free)
It has been an adventurous few years for the Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival, which has battled everything from the pandemic to venue changes during that time.
Now, it is facing a future without longtime artistic director Karen Lee Pickett. Pickett is remaining with the company through the summer, but the upcoming edition will be her last overseeing the festival’s programming. She announced in May that she would be stepping aside following her 11th and final season “to make room for other things to happen” with the festival, which opens today and runs through July 15.
“It needs to develop in new directions, and that needs to come from other people, not me,” she said.
Pickett, who lives in Cobble Hill and teaches high school students in the Cowichan Valley, won’t exit the post until after the summer, however, and is looking forward to the upcoming productions. “I’m not moving on to another organization, or something like that.”
The festival is offering 15 outdoor performances of William Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well at the Horticulture Centre of the Pacific and Esquimalt Gorge Park. Both are relatively new sites for the festival — Horticulture Centre of the Pacific debuted in 2021, while Esquimalt Gorge Park, in partnership with the Township Community Arts Council of Esquimalt, was used for the first time last year — but have much to offer COVID-vulnerable audience members during its 32nd edition.
“We’re still providing a distance-seating option for people, and we’ve had some uptake on that. People appreciate having a little space. We’re in a different phase of COVID, but it’s still out there. It’s still a significant health risk.”
Though the outdoor festival was among the best-suited to navigate the pandemic, it faced trouble like any other performing arts company. The 2020 edition was cancelled and a smaller version was presented in 2021, with reduced seating. The festival was scaled back from two productions to one in 2022, where it remains in 2023.
All’s Well That Ends Well is directed by Jemma Alix Levy, an associate professor of theatre at a small liberal arts college in Virginia. Pickett said she wanted someone with the requisite touch to tackle Shakespeare’s dark comedy: All’s Well That Ends Well is one of his so-named “problem plays,” a grouping of unpopular work at the time, which today poses complex ethical dilemmas.
Of the 38 plays William Shakespeare wrote, Pickett said less than 10 are part of his classic canon; more than two dozen are somewhat obscure. All’s Well That Ends Well falls into the latter camp, which is where the experience of the Julliard-trained Levy (who has her master’s degree in Shakespeare from The American Shakespeare Center) was of great value.
“As a director, I wasn’t sure how to approach it,” Pickett said. “But Jema said that play was on her list of plays she always wanted to direct. It’s exciting when a director is really interested.”
The subject matter, which includes romance, redemption and gender role reversals, has been branded difficult, which Pickett acknowledged. That is an apt example of why she’s decided to hand over the reins to a new artistic director.
“How the festival continues to move forward or change needs to be someone else’s call. It’s likely that next year things will be different.” The search for her replacement is underway, Pickett added.
In a statement issued at the time her departure was made public, the non-profit Victoria Shakespeare Society company said it was hoping to receive applications from those who self-identify and belong to communities that have historically been marginalized and underrepresented, with a move toward “furthering the work of equality, inclusion and dismantling of systemic barriers of racism.”
Underrepresented voices need to be a bigger part of the organization in the future, Pickett said.
“[The festival] still has a lot to learn and a lot of work to do in that area. But we’re moving a good direction.”
