The Stratford Festival is transforming, for this summer, into an outdoor festival offering a season of six plays and five cabarets reflecting on the theme of Metamorphosis, with performances held under beautiful canopies that will hark back to the Festival’s founding under a tent back in 1953.

The 2021 season includes two Shakespeares, Romeo and Juliet – called simply R + J for this production – and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; two plays from the 2020 playbill, Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women and Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters; and two new plays, one about race and royalty, Serving Elizabeth by Marcia Johnson; and one, a musical, about the playwright to whom the Festival is dedicated, I Am William, with text by Rébecca Déraspe, and music by Chloé Lacasse and Benoit Landry.

As large-scale musicals are not possible under COVID restrictions, the Festival will present a series of five cabarets with a blend of musical theatre and other repertoire. These cabarets, presented in the Festival Theatre canopy, are Why We Tell the Story, a celebration of Black musical theatre; You Can't Stop the Beat, a reflection on the enduring power of musical theatre; Play On!, a Shakespeare-inspired mixtape; Freedom, an exploration of the spirit and legacy of Black music; and Finally There's Sun, a cabaret of resilience. Created and presented by some of the country’s most talented musical artists, these cabarets offer an opportunity to experience powerful performances in an incredibly intimate, but safe, space.

Read more details in our full press release.