CARLSBAD, CALIF.: New Village Arts Center (NVA) has announced an adjustment to its 2020-21 season. The company’s artistic leadership and the board of directors have decided to postpone the 20th anniversary season because of the ongoing pandemic. Programming will resume in July 2021.
This postponement includes previously scheduled live events, cabarets, and concerts. The Final Draft New Play Festival, originally slated for January 2021, will now be held in 2022. All playwrights who have already submitted work will have that submission automatically placed for consideration in the 2022 Festival. NVA is planning to produce online events.
“The arts are crucial to a healthy society,” the company released in a statement. “Once it is safe to gather again, we will need to hear each other’s stories and have the shared experience of laughter, discussion, and deeper thinking that NVA is known for. NVA recognizes the incredible challenges that face our artists, patrons, and community during this time, and will continue to work tirelessly to ensure a healthy future for all members of the community.”
During the shutdown, the company will continue to develop two world premieres. They include Home, a musical created by Frankie Alicea-Ford, Kevin “Blax” Burroughs, Dea Hurston, and Milena (Sellers) Phillips, about a Black matriarch hosting her family for a Christmas Eve party. An online workshop of the play will be presented in December 2020. In addition, the company is working on Roy Sekigahama’s Desert Rock Garden, a play about a young orphan and an older gardener and their experiences in the Topaz Relocation Center during World War II. The play will be staged in 2021.
NVA’s education and outreach programs will continue online during the period of closure. The company will expand its offerings to include more neurodiverse programming, a new Online Academy training program, and the continued presence of established programs like Kids Act, Monday Night Live, and Playwrights Project, most of which will function as online classes until it is safe to gather in small groups. NVA is also reestablishing and reinvigorating Teatro Pueblo Nuevo, its Latinx outreach initiative, now led by Frankie Alicea-Ford.
The Foundry Artist Studios at New Village Arts are open to the public three days a week. Following established health and safety guidelines, visitors are welcome to the Foundry to purchase original art.
Lastly, NVA is introducing the “Play Your Part with New Village Arts” fundraising campaign to raise $150,000 by the end of November 2020. This fundraising campaign will support basic operations, help pay reduced salaries for staff and artists, and fund planning and programming initiatives through June 2021, in order to ensure that NVA is able to reopen when the time is right.
