Live Theater Outdoors Summer 2021
Gloucester Stage Company at Windhover Performing Arts Center
Windhover (header) Photograph © David Watts, Jr., 2020
Hahn (top, right) in rehearsal in Gloucester, 1970
The Dusan Tynek Dance Theater (bottom) performs Quarry Dance, 2014
“Dance is my life-line, literally. It has enabled me to survive unbelievable loss and given me the will to go on.”
– Ina Hahn, 1999
Theater, Dance, and Music will provide the place to regather as a community and find meaningful human connection again. Our art is even more essential. Ina Hahn, post-modern dance icon and founder of Windhover, spoke to the healing power of performing art two decades ago and her words ring ever true today.
Gloucester Stage Company and Windhover Performing Arts Center were both founded in 1979 as nonprofit organizations, though the creative forces behind them each begin working over 50 year ago. Reaching beyond Cape Ann in artistic notoriety, the two institutions have collaborated in the past, but now in 2021 they are advancing their partnership and shared mission to a new level.
Ina and her husband Herbert purchased the last farm in Pigeon Cove, and quickly transformed the cow barn and hayloft into a dance studio, stable into a music room and library, outbuildings into dormitories, and renovated the main barn into a gathering and dining space. The historic grounds are lined with these veritably cape-style buildings, seasoned with years of use and each with unique flourishes that reflect Herb & Ina’s labor of love.
Gloucester Stage was one of the first theaters in the United States to produce a full season online when the pandemic hit last year. Supported by dedicated donors and audience members, the Company was able to adapt and endure. That same combination of grit and innovation are paving the way for the first return to safe socially-distanced live theatrical productions in the Greater Boston area.
This collaboration is more than just asking our audience to put a different address in their GPS. A dedicated team of experts have been assembled to create and operate a unique outdoor theater space, designed to keep all who enter safe and entertained.
- Dynamic staging will provide new seating and performance space for each production
- Professional lighting riggers will be installing a light and sound grid
- Architects and engineers are developing a canopy over the stage using recycled ship sails
- A renovated shipping crate will serve as the cornerstone for a socially-distanced biergarten on the central grounds
The Season of plays remains the lineup shifted from last year, and continues Gloucester Stage’s mission to present socially relevant and intellectually stimulating theater. Since the inception, Windhover has been a place of reflection, development, and creation. Two organizations steeped in the rich culture of Cape Ann, coming together in hopes of shining the light at the end of this past year’s dark tunnel.
More Information About Summer 2021 at Windhover: