I wrote several versions of this story. First, it should be an account of the ambitious stage project of a small theater company, then a story about the interrupted project and the company’s plan to regroup because of the pandemic. Now it is an elegy to a small theater that the coronavirus has closed.
On a clear but cold Saturday afternoon in February, I took a train to Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington. I was visiting Brave Spirits Theater, which presented the first part of a daring undertaking: staging eight pieces of Shakespeare’s story (the two tetralogies, from “Ricardo II” to “Ricardo III”) in repertoire, over 18 months, culminating in a marathon of all eight works.
I was there to see the first two pieces of the series, starting with a matinee presentation by “Ricardo II”. In the train station car, I peered into the peaceful suburbs of Alexandria – brick houses with surrounding balconies, American flags near the door – until I reached the theater, which channeled the whims of a small town from a theater house into a storybook . The space, a converted church, had light yellow columns at the front and bright turquoise accents around the windows, with red accents throughout.
Charlene V. Smith, co-founder of Brave Spirits in 2011, told me that the idea for the project came to her in 2008, when she saw London’s Royal Shakespeare Company run a story marathon. Brave Spirits claimed to be making history by being “the first professional American theater company to assemble complete productions of Shakespeare’s two plays of history, tetralogies, and present them in the repertoire.”
A few meters from where we were sitting, in a corner of the lobby, there was a blackboard. Four months of the calendar were designed neatly in perfectly symmetrical boxes – January, February, March, April – with a color-coded program of presentations from the first tetralogy, which the company called “The King’s Shadow”: Ricardo in bright red, the first Henrique in clover green, the second Henrique in yellow and the last Henrique in royal purple.
In a humble but well-made production, Brave Spirits had Richard II crowned and killed, and his successor, Henry Bolingbroke, also known as Henry IV, was named the new king. After the audience left, the cast circled the space, chatting in the kitchen, which also served as a ticket booth. “Is your bag of heads up there?” I heard someone calling from the hall. Some wore t-shirts that were being sold by the company, black t-shirts with gray block letters that read “Richard & Henry & Henry & Henry & Richard”. (Always the Shakespeare nerd, I bought one.)
That night, I saw “Henrique IV, Parte I” and all the seats were occupied. Older couples and families and some teenagers chattered and waved at each other; everyone was a local. I left on the train the next morning, still dizzy with the energy of that tiny converted church.
I wrote the article, but before it was published, the pandemic closed the performing arts across the country, and the story of Brave Spirits changed. Like many other theaters, he was forced to shorten the story project, which the DC Metro Theater Arts predicted would be “one of the must-sees of the 2021 season”. The 19th and 20th of April should have been a great weekend for the company, when all the pieces of the first tetralogy would be staged in repertoire, ending at the height of the first half, “Henry V.”
On March 12, Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia declared a state of emergency and, shortly thereafter, the White House issued a proclamation declaring Covid-19 a national emergency. Brave Spirits decided to cancel the weekend marathon, but it still came out with one last performance – the opening show for “Henry V.”
“At that time,” said Smith when I spoke to her in late April, “people put so much into it that everyone thought, ‘We need to open“ Henry V. ”We need that performance on opening night tomorrow. We just need it ‘”. Brendan Edward Kennedy reported that after the show, in his dressing room, he started singing the wartime ballad “Let’s meet again”. (“We will meet again / I don’t know where / I don’t know when.”) He sang briefly for me on the phone.
After that “Henrique V”, the theater froze: costumes still on shelves and props in cans, stored under the public elevators. As for the tools of war – swords, spears – Smith kept them in custody at his home in McLean, Va.
The theater endured during spring and summer; an annual fundraiser raised more than $ 7,000, compared to the usual $ 3,000, giving the cast and crew some hope. (Smith told me that the company’s annual budget was around $ 50,000, but for the first season of historical projects it was tripled to about $ 150,000.)
For several weeks, the cast followed the script’s readings online and planned an autumn with more virtual rehearsals until, they hoped, would return with the second half of the project in January 2021.
This should be my new story: one about a small theater that persists despite the consequences – something that captured what was at stake and the scope of the difficulties, but which ultimately turned out to be about hope and resilience.
By now, you know that this is not the story I’m telling you now, ten months after my first visit to Virginia and nine months since the blockade began. On November 21, Brave Spirits announced its closure: “Without the ability to plan future performances, Brave Spirits is unable to recover financially from the loss of Shakespeare’s Stories,” said a press release, the last two words in bold, as if spoken through a megaphone.
Brave Spirits produced more than 20 pieces and employed more than 300 artists, and was known for his discreetly subversive interpretations of the classics, usually through feminist lenses. But the company announced that it had a farewell gift: audio recordings of the parts of the story project, which they hope will come out in late 2021. It’s hard not to think of it as yet another reminder of all the things that the coronavirus destroyed in just a few months.
The fact that Brave Spirits lost this battle would have been sad enough had it not been so completely and ironically Shakespearean. This spring, during a follow-up call with Kennedy, I asked the actor how he attacked King Henry V’s famous St. Crispim Day speech.
The speech is usually made with fanfare and fireworks. King Henry V, no longer the childish and mischievous Prince Hal, became the brilliant leader, inspiring his men to accomplish a feat of greatness. Kennedy said their approach to this scene was a little different – a glorious moment that is nevertheless fatalistic, with the soldiers fully understanding the cost of the war.
Kennedy told me that he and Smith had imagined the soldiers ‘dark logic: “’ We are going to go out in a flash of glory and hit them so hard that people will talk about it for centuries. They will remember all of our names, and that feat will make us heroes in the annals of history. ‘”Kennedy was aware of the parallels – that, like the soldiers on St. Crispin’s Day, he and his fellow actors were going to the presentation aware of the“ possibility that this will be the last time we do this ”.
The end of Brave Spirits is not the story I wanted to end. And yet, this small theater in Virginia, which has endured until it can no longer, is just one of many that will not make it out of 2020. It is a pity, not only the closure itself, but the fact that the circumstances that led they were preventable: the government’s weak response to the pandemic and our country’s general refusal to value and subsidize the arts as it should have ensured that some theaters would not survive.
I remembered that February day, when, after interviewing the cast, they celebrated a colleague’s birthday with pizza and cake and a round of “Congratulations to you” in the theater lobby.
I packed my bags as fast as I could, without wanting to interrupt, but they happily forgot me. Their conversations and laughter filled the space, a separate world and a safe haven for a community of artists. Although briefly, I felt it. But that’s all I can offer: the image of kings on stage, a church that became a theater in Virginia, a post-show pizza party. With Brave Spirits now closed, that’s all I have, and I wish it was enough.