The Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival (GVSF) won’t be held at Camosun College this year. The festival, which was postponed last year due to COVID, has been held annually in the area between Wilna Thomas and the Dunlop House at the college’s Lansdowne campus. However, due to construction at Wilna Thomas as well as COVID-19 restrictions, the fest can’t happen there this year.
GVSF artistic director Karen Lee Pickett says that the GVSF’s relationship with Camosun has been a good one. Pickett is hoping to find a permanent home for the festival, because in theatre, you have to be looking many months ahead of time as rehearsals and set-up can take a long time, she says.
“This was a very abrupt launch into this—‘Okay, now what?’” says Pickett.
Initially, GVSF began to look for facilities similar to Camosun—an area with dressing rooms, washrooms, electricity, and a concession. But Pickett is keeping an open mind moving forward.
“If we were in a place that was very different, okay, what would that look like? Perhaps it would mean that we would have to change some of what we do,” she says.
Pickett looks back fondly on the 16 years GVSF was at Camosun, saying the college grounds offered the reliability that the fest needed behind the scenes.
“We have had so many great opportunities at Camosun; the facility we had at Camosun was great, and knowing that we had that year after year allowed us to plan, allowed us to have some continuity, some stability there,” she says.
Camosun executive director of communications and marketing Rodney Porter says that the two reasons the GVSF could no longer hold the festival at Lansdowne—the construction and the restrictions—are both temporary, and he says that the college simply can’t have crowds right now.
“Right now, only up to 10 people can gather,” says Porter, “and it has to be the same people, as well.”
He also says that the construction at Wilna Thomas would get in the way of the fest’s operations.
“The Greater Victoria Shakespeare Festival has used power outlets [and] washroom facilities in the Wilna Thomas building, so that would render it unavailable to them for this year, and looking ahead to next year, that’s always a possibility,” he says. “We’re always open to future possibilities.”
Pickett says the GVSF is waiting until BC announces what’s happening with the public health orders until they go public with the new location and further details about the festival this year, but she says the new locations are in Esquimalt and Saanich.
“What we’re looking for at the heart is really a partnership,” says Pickett. “Somewhere we can be where, you know… that really wants to have a Shakespeare festival.”
Pickett says that because of COVID, the GVSF is looking at doing one show rather than multiple shows this year, but due to the public health orders on gatherings, she doesn’t know yet if it can even happen at all.
“We really hope that we can do it,” she says.
Porter says the college is hoping to be able to host events for the community when it can. He says that the renovations to Wilna Thomas will hopefully be complete, for the most part, by the end of this fiscal year—March 31, 2022—or sometime next summer. Picket is open to going back to Camosun, should that day come, and says that the college looked at them as good dependable renters.
“They were our landlords, essentially, and that was great,” she says. “If they were to reach out to us and say, ‘Oh, actually, we would value you coming back,’ I would certainly be interested in talking to them about that, for sure, but I can’t wait for that to happen. We have to be proactive.”