Scranton Shakespeare Festival fundraiser Saturday scheduled amid financial squeeze
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
The Scranton Shakespeare Festival is holding benefit concerts of Beatles music Saturday and “Help!” is both the title and a plea.
The summer festival stages free professional theater featuring visiting and local talent. Some kind of admission fee and other changes may be in the future, said producing artistic director and co-founder Michael Bradshaw Flynn.
Donations and grants are down, resulting in a budget cut of almost half from a few years ago, Flynn said.
The concerts will be Saturday at 3 p.m. and 6 p.m. at The Shakes Space at the Marketplace at Steamtown. A lineup of about 20 local and out-of-town performers will delve into the Beatles songbook from “Please Please Me” to “Let it Be.” General-admission tickets are $30. Tickets that include priority seating and a reception are $60. Last year’s fundraising concerts sold out.
The financial struggle means less money for things such as costumes, some backstage functions and perhaps the number of instrumentalists accompanying shows, Flynn said. Trimming the budget hurts, but won’t interfere with the audience experience when the 13th season opens June 21 with Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.”
“We are going to pull it off,” he said. “We always pull it off.”
Charging people who make reservations and don’t show up, adopting a pay-what-you-can system or just charging admission for at least some shows in future seasons are all under “heavy consideration,” he said. That would mean changing the nonprofit organization’s mission statement.
The current practice of the cast collecting donations from the audience on the way out the door yields an average of $4 to $6 a person.
This year, “we will be heavily encouraging donations, but there is still no charge,” Flynn said.
The season opens with “The Tempest” on June 21, followed by “Gypsy, The Winter’s Tale,” “Next to Normal,” “Titus Andronicus” and “Into The Woods.” Another fundraiser, a pasta party and performance, is scheduled for July 24. For more information, go to www.scrantonshakes.com.
