These are crazy times and we’ve all taken on a bunch of new projects as we socially isolate in order to help stop the spread of Covid-19.

 

We’re donating where we can, we’re cleaning the pantry, we’re organizing the 2300+ title dvd library. We finished work on the Nominee Interview Series even though the live event for our yearly Critics’ Pick Awards had to be cancelled (we’ve still got trophies to give out, eventually). We started the Corona Movie Club to help curb our boredom and constant need to talk about movies with other human beings. I’m even watching network procedurals and actually writing about them.

 

But what we all really need is comfort. We need our favourite things and our favourite people and right now those are hard to come by so we have to do everything we can to bring them together whenever possible. Our solution was to gather some of our favourite people every Saturday night throughout quarantine to read scripts over Zoom. We read all 38 Shakespeare plays in six months. Then we kept going. We decided to create mini-seasons featuring highlights from the canons of major writers across generations, plus a few bonus episodes thrown in. There’s a lot more to come, so stay tuned.

 

Corona Cold Reads began in March 2020 when our troupe took on the task of reading all 38 plays in Shakespeare’s canon. A year later, we’d long since moved on to other authors but, when our anniversary rolled around, we decided to return to what brought us together with a season of Shakespeare Reboots. We revisited four plays that we’d read very early on in quarantine now that we better knew each other and ourselves and how to use Zoom. For week two, we returned to perennial favourite Much Ado About Nothing (you can check out our original version here).

 

Listen to our Much Ado Reboot in audio form below (or on iTunes) then tune into our YouTube page to check out the video versions of all our live readings.

 

CLICK HERE to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes so you don’t miss an episode. 

 

The Cast of Much Ado Reboot

Benedick- Christopher Prentice

Beatrice- Susan Bond

Don Pedro- Elizabeth Ramirez

Claudio- Nicanor Campos

Hero- Elizabeth Morriss

Verges- Mark Kreder

Ursula- Fabiana Cabral

Leonato- Luis Arrojo

Friar Francis- Miriam B

Antonio- Melissa Wright

Margaret- Nicole Falgoust

Balthasar- Gaby Grice

First Watchman – Saiya Floyd

Second Watchman- Laura Hubbard

Don John- Hilary Wartinger

Sexton- Basel Daoud

Messenger/Conrade- John Taylor Philips

Borachio- Shawn Wilson

Dogberry- Shalyn Bass-McFaul

Lord/Boy – Weldon Goree