Amid COVID surge, Pasadena Playhouse moves ‘Teenage Dick’ to digital streaming

Amid a surge of COVID-19 cases and hospitalization in Los Angeles County, the Pasedna Playhouse assessed its upcoming co-production of Mike Lew’s “Teenage Dick,” originally planned to be performed Feb. 1-27, 2022, and decided to move it to digital streaming, which will be made available exclusively at pasadenaplayhouse.org this February. Streaming dates and details have not yet been announced.

The play is a modern retelling of “Richard III.” Richard, a high school student, is bullied because he has cerebral palsy and is running for senior class president. Throughout, Lew analyzes power and what one does to achieve it as a marginalized person.

“We are proud to have joined Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company and Huntington Theatre Company to create this extraordinary and powerful production and are fortunate to have professionally recorded the show a few weeks ago during the in-person run in Boston,” Danny Feldman, producing artistic director at Pasadena Playhouse, said in a statement.

“By streaming the production, we are still honoring our commitments to pay the artists and crew who have worked so hard to make this show happen during these challenging times. We are also thrilled to be able to bring this show to audiences beyond Pasadena, making Teenage Dick more accessible to more people.”

Feldman says Pasadena Playhouse plans to return to in-person performances at the end of March with “Ann,” a show written and performed by Emmy Award-winner Holland Taylor as a tribute to former Texas Governor Ann Richards. Acknowledging the uncertainty of the current COVID-19 case surge, Feldman says the Playhouse will “continue to assess the COVID-19 landscape in our community until then.”

Tickets will be on sale in the coming weeks for “Ann,” “freestyle love supreme” from July 12 to Aug. 7, and one more production to be announced.

“When we moved forward with our 2021 – 2022 Season, we all understood that while getting back to the stage was vitally important for our artists, crew, staff, and audiences, we would need to be flexible in response to the ebb and flow of COVID-19 cases in our community.

“Our approach has been to take each show individually and assess the environment in the weeks prior to opening to see if we could safely proceed. We were fortunate that during the run of “Head Over Heels,” our first Mainstage production in 20-pluse months, we did not have a single case of COVID-19 in our company.”

Pasadena Playhouse Members and those who have already purchased tickets will be contacted in the coming weeks with information regarding access to the streaming production.

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