From Nataki Garrett and David Schmitz
July 19, 2022
Dear OSF friends,
This week, OSF’s Safety Team alerted us to an unprecedented number of COVID cases amongst our casts and crew, attributed to the BA.5 Omicron variant. Our priority is, as always, to keep our artists, crews, and audiences safe. We immediately moved into action to ensure their health and safety through planning, replanning, testing and retesting for our artists and staff. The amazing OSF team has been prepared for this moment, but it doesn’t make it any less difficult as we rush to take care of so many amongst our amazing artists and crews who are sick.
Even with these actions and safety measures in place, including multiple layers of talented and ready understudies for all our productions, we have made the difficult, but necessary, decision to cancel the following performances due to the high number of positive COVID cases (about 15% of our performing and understudy company) and high-level exposures:
- All performances this week: THE TEMPEST
- All performances this week: REVENGE SONG
- All performances this week: UNSEEN
- All performances this week: DR. G’S BINGO EXTRAVAGANZA
- All performances this week: THE GREEN SHOW
- All CAMPUS TOURS and EDUCATION EVENTS this week are also canceled.
- All planned ASL INTERPRETATION this week is also canceled.
ONCE ON THIS ISLAND and HOW I LEARNlED WHAT I LEARNED continue performances as planned.
If the above cancellations impact your plans, you should have received an email with options for how you’d like us to handle your ticket purchases. If you have not received an email, please call the Box Office at 800-219-8161.
We want you to know that we take this decision very seriously and understand the impact it has, both within our theatre community, audiences, and our larger community, including the businesses that we rely on to feed and house our community. When we cancel, we impact everyone.
We always knew coming back from the pandemic that we had to stay nimble — that anything, including closures, was possible. We have worked to create a model that is responsive to this reality and adaptable to future realities. Part of this expansive approach included finding alternate and exciting ways to share our live shows with our current and new audiences — including one of our newest projects: Theatre on Film. We launch this exciting new initiative this Saturday with a Watch Party, featuring a cinematically captured film of Mona Mansour’s unseen, a favorite among our audiences this year.
We have proven these past 2.5 years that OSF is resilient — we are committed and we are ready to bring you life-changing and mind-expanding performances in a variety of formats to ensure access, comfort and safety. We’re working hard to welcome you back to our full repertory line-up once again, while centering the safety and well-being of our company, community, and audiences. As the situation evolves, the Performance Status page will be updated with the latest information.
Your ongoing support has made this possible. We appreciate your grace and understanding.
Nataki Garrett,
Artistic Director
David Schmitz,
Executive Director
