playbill vip

A Note from the Artistic Director

Reaching our fifth season is a meaningful milestone for New Canon Theatre Co. When we launched in 2022, we set out to create daring re-imaginings of classical works alongside bold new voices, and to challenge what theatrical canons old and new could be, and who they could serve. Five seasons in, I'm proud of the artists we've gathered, the audiences we've built, and the productions we've staged: a tavern-set Henry V, a candlelit Macbeth, and bold premieres of new works like Finding Chase. Which brings us to why you are here.

The Romeo and Juliet you're about to see lives in 1968, a year when America was tearing itself apart over war, race, generation, and what kind of country it wanted to become. Young people were in the streets. Families were splitting along lines that felt impossible to cross. Love and grief and rage were running through the culture all at once. Sound familiar? Shakespeare's play has always been about what happens when the adults in the room refuse to put down their grudges long enough to see the cost their children are paying. Staging it in 1968 isn't a costume choice. It's an argument that this story keeps finding us because we keep arriving at the same moment, and it asks us, again, what we're going to do differently this time.

Making that argument, in this moment, is why we exist. And making it costs more than it used to. You'll notice this summer looks a little different from past seasons. Romeo and Juliet, paired with a staged reading of the new work Family Wedding at our season anniversary celebration on June 17, represents an intentional scaling back of our usual programming. It's no secret that the arts and the funding that sustains them are under enormous pressure right now, and like so many of our peer companies, we've made the careful choice to do less this year so we can keep doing this work for years to come.

What I can tell you is that the cost of making theatre, even at the scale you see tonight, has climbed in ways we couldn't have anticipated. Housing, transportation, materials, union fees, the quiet infrastructure that makes a production like this possible, all of it has grown more expensive at exactly the moment when the resources to meet it have grown thinner. We are doing more with less, and we are doing it gladly, but we cannot do it without you.

So this is my honest ask: if the work we make matters to you, if you've ever left one of our productions feeling something you weren't expecting to feel, please consider supporting us. Donate at any level. Become a sustaining member. Sponsor a future season or production. Tell a friend what you saw here tonight and bring them with you next time. Every contribution, financial or otherwise, helps us hold the ground we've built and keeps the next season possible.

The work ahead excites me as much as the work behind us. Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing this work is worth making. We literally cannot do it without you.

— J. Matthew Gordon, Founding Artistic Director