Since “all the world’s a stage” (as Jacques declared in As You Like It) why need we perform only in the indoor part of it? During COVID19, concert halls and theatres have been locked and play-goers are suffering from performance-withdrawal. Online productions simply don’t quell our cravings. No one knows when theatres will re-open, and even when they do it might take the public some time to overcome the fear of crowds – a COVID legacy. In this time when gatherings must include fewer than 50 people, government support, like that given to retailers and restaurants, for performers who cater to small audiences in outdoor venues would be a job-creator.

“All the world” includes the outdoors, and live performance needs to migrate there. This is not new, we’ve always had outdoor summer performances in Victoria, and in centuries past players in England and Europe habitually travelled from town to town to perform on the village green. Indeed, one theory about the origin of the term “the green room” is that it refers to the village green and/or its surroundings where actors perhaps waited to come onstage from behind a bush.

We still have the busker in the square, but a more ambitious reclaiming of outdoor venues could be possible as we wait for theatre re-openings. Online performance isn’t enough; “live” and “virtual” are vastly different. Even if the crowd is small we need the physical dimension, and must search out venues on hill-tops, beaches, farm fields and wherever else the breezes blow the germs away. We should befriend the Four Winds: Eurus, Notos, Zephyrus and especially, in Canada’s case, the North one: Boreas.

An adhoc group called the Alexandria Players (named for the Museum of Alexandria, ancient seat of the muses) used the rock-stage in Fairfield’s Porter Park for readings, dialogue and music over several summers. This they called the “Rock of Pages”, and it’s still there, ready for Thalia, Melpomene and Terpsichore to come back and entertain us.

Victoria is better suited than most of Canada for a migration of performance to outdoor venues, given our mild year-round climate. We already have theatrical ghost walks in late October and outdoor nativity pageants in December. We’re now in a time when, as far as audience size is concerned, small is beautiful, and government programs are needed to support groups that fill the small-show niche. The ability to purchase open-sided tents would help considerably. Audience members could bring their own folding seats, which they could place as far from others as makes them feel safe. A whole new specialist-audience might arise, a garden-chair-gang who keep a couple of light-weight folding chairs in the trunks of their cars ready for outdoor theatre whether pop-up or planned. A blanket for chilly evenings would be part of their arts-emergency preparedness kit.

You can’t beat southern Vancouver Island’s scenery as a stage set. Who could forget the Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival’s production of The Tempest in 2018, when Alonso’s ship was wrecked against the rocky shoreline of Esquimalt? And who could forget the visitations by live deer during the Shakespeare Festival’s performances on the grounds of Camosun College? In this time of small gatherings we can mount only small shorter productions, but we should still be exploiting our natural setting and welcoming our outdoors-y local audience, remembering that whatever the performance halls may be doing, “nature is open”.