Covid Forces Olney Theatre To Push Back Press Opening For THE MUSIC MAN

Olney Theatre Center's revolutionary production of Meredith Willson's The Music Man featuring an ensemble and creative team of Deaf, hearing, and hard-of-hearing artists, faces another pandemic delay, and has pushed the official opening to the 8:00 pm performance on Wednesday, June 29. The first public preview performance with be Friday, June 24, a full week later than first planned.

Says Olney Theatre's Artistic Director Jason Loewith, "For the third time in seven months, COVID has forced us to cancel multiple performances of major productions, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars to our institution. Thankfully the affected artists are all recovering, but the cost of these closures is hard to calculate on loss of audience faith. I know that many non-profit regional theatres are facing similar cancelations, added Covid expenses, loss of revenue, and looming deficits. Nonetheless, telling live stories in extraordinary ways is what we exist to do, and we remain passionately committed to sharing this project, which has been in development at Olney Theatre Center for the past four years. We can't wait to experience it with our audiences."

Olney's production of The Music Man, not only casts a Deaf actor, James Caverly (Only Murders in the Building) in the lead role of Harold Hill, but is generated by a company and creative team that consists of half Deaf and half hearing artists. This project has been gestating at Olney Theatre for four years, long before Hugh Jackman's traditional revival on Broadway, and a transforms Willson's utopian vision of River City, into a place where Deaf and hearing people coexist in community. Co-directed by renowned Deaf performer Sandra Mae Frank and Lyric Theatre of Oklahoma's artistic director Michael Baron, was supposed to have begun previews on June 17.

Tickets are available from $42 - $85 and can be purchased at olneytheatre.org or 301-924-3400. All performances of The Music Man are performed in ASL and Spoken English and are open captioned.

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