A Letter from the Artistic Director
Dearest Treasure Valley Community,
With the coming of the Ides of March and the onset of spring, I am excited to deliver to you new and exciting things with The Boise Bard Players. We’ve missed you since our brief hiatus after Cymbeline, and we have been busy in the meantime! We have been getting ready to bring you all our most ambitious endeavors yet, while providing three stellar productions of poignant classical theatre: The Servant of Two Masters, Love’s Labour’s Lost, and Othello.
In 1599, there was a panic in London. Widespread rumors spread about the oncoming Spanish Armada: the fiercest naval fleet in the world. It was said in the streets around Shakespeare’s newly opened Globe Theater that Catholic Spain was sending their full military force to crush the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I and all her subjects. The people of London had nowhere to go but wait, if they believed it, for the invasion. One place they had to escape to was the theater.
It is thought that the first play to be performed at The Globe was Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. That summer of 1599, the people of London retreated from their fears of the outside world, a world that meant them harm, to see a play. And not just any play, but a play whose theme of liberty over tyranny, questions of right and wrong, and displays of a manipulatable public would have been piercing, satirical, and moving to the Elizabethan crowd. It gave them the experience they needed to face an uncertain, and possibly dangerous future. The “Invisible” Spanish Armada never came, but the fear and uncertainty had real consequences. There is comfort and truth in art, and there is comfort and truth in the community experience of art, of plays.
The comfort and truth afforded to the Elizabethans by Julius Caesar that summer did not expire. It is recreated and reoffered anytime the play is experienced in any number of ways. The truth and comfort live in the Words, faithfully said and honestly heard: the Words left to us by William Shakespeare. The Words, so often scrutinized, and rightly so, continue to bear immeasurable weight, through 400 years of social evolution. It is that truth and comfort in these Words I aspire to bring you all, as widely as our resources and agency allow.
While our name may be “The Boise Bard Players”, we serve the entire Treasure Valley. Originally, “Bare Bones Shakespeare”, we received a cease and desist from a company in Texas that not only forced us to change our name, but also demonstrated how far reaching our efforts could be. If our name meant something in Dallas, TX, we were not so far away from reaching audiences in our own back yard.
And reach we did! We’ve performed in Mountain Home, Caldwell, Nampa, Garden City, and Star, in addition to several Boise venues over our seven years as a nonprofit organization. This year, we are excited to add Meridian, with two performances right in the heart of downtown.
Along with our continuing reach, we are launching educational programming for students of all ages. Dakotah Brown and I have put our decades of theater and Shakespeare education experience together to create after-school Shakespeare programs where students will create and perform a full play in two or three weeks. By working with and going into schools, we promote accessibility through exposure, lower costs, and increased opportunity. It is my ambition that this is the basis for a vast, diverse, and flexible catalogue of educational programming.
We are about building community with BBP. Education inspires community, art inspires community, experiences inspire community. We have created a new way to build long lasting community this year with the Boise Bard Players Passport. Each passport holder will earn stamps for different BBP experiences, eventually completing the passport and becoming a Boise Bard Players Esquire. Esquires receive an enamel pin which is the key to access Esquire Events and an entry in a lifetime lottery to win a private BBP performance. A passport will take as long as a holder wishes it to or as short as two years. It is my hope this passport helps create a rich environment for the budding Boise Bard Players community to flourish and flower.
It is because we have been quietly flourishing in the background that we are able to launch and support so many new initiatives. Our team has expanded with Madeline Keckler managing marketing efforts, Wayne Ross building a network of sponsors and alliances in Meridian, and Kate Tibbits writing grants. Each of these individual’s stellar work has enabled the growth we project for 2025.
And it doesn’t stop there. As we continue to grow, so do our needs for a patron services manager to oversee ticketing and patron relations, and a production manager to handle the logistics of moving a theater around the Treasure Valley. It is my ambition these positions will be filled by the end of 2025 with individuals who are excited and willing to grow with BBP. From there, the possibilities are endless.
The Boise Bard Players has never been conventional. With our logo comes a streak of independence, a spark of mischievousness, and an invitation to take joy in the poetry of the moment. As a maverick classical company, what better way to unorthodoxly raise funds than a Casino Night? The lights and infamy of Vegas are not unlike the London of Shakespeare’s day: gambling, official blind eyes to illicit activity, bribery, red light visits.
And while we will be keeping our celebrations above board, the theater and the casino are kindred spirits. The lust, greed, elation, depression, rejection, success all experienced in the casino are echoed, elevated, and celebrated in the theater. At one time both reviled and needed, feared and revered by society, the theatre and the casino both contain humanity’s brightest highs and darkest lows.
On March 15th, take yourself out of your comfort zone and let yourself go with the tides of our Casino Night, and maybe walk away with one of a number of rich and worthy raffle baskets. And the best part is, there is no losing: Every dollar spent goes toward building the future of classical theatre outreach in the Treasure Valley. Get your tickets now at boisebardplayers.org/casino-night.
Chris Canfield
Artistic Director