Rick Dildine

Theaters (and all live performance) are struggling to get through the pandemic. Most have been closed since March, and artistic directors are kept up at night with a host of questions: when people will be willing to gather indoors to watch a play together? What will that room even look like? How will theaters keep their actors, crew and audiences safe? How can theaters survive until that moment we can all come together again?  And how can theater speak to this moment? And artistic directors—along with many in the theater community—have answered these questions with wit and imagination. The artistic director of Alabama Shakespeare Festival Rick Dildine, for example, moved theater out-of-doors and gave its audience the chance to voice monologues from a diverse set of playwrights. The project is called “Speak the Speech. ” “Speak the Speech” is set along a self-guided trail throughout Blount Cultural Park. As you wander the trail, you’ll find 14 great monologues…one from Shakespeare, the others from American writers like August Wilson, Lorraine Hansberry and Mary Kathryn Nagle (along with short bios of the writers and context for the speeches).  You’re invited to “speak the speech,” to feel the power of those words as you say them.  Rick and I talk about “Speak the Speech,” Alabama Shakes, and the challenges and possibilities this moment offers theater and what theater can give to this moment.