Station Archive

If 2020 had been normal, my plan was to talk about Frankenstein, which the Davis Shakespeare Festival was going to present this fall until the pandemic killed off in-person performances. Rob Salas, co-artistic director and co-founder of the festival, is my guest today, and we still talk about the play by Nick Dear, which is based on the book by Mary Shelley and presents a creature very different than the “green skin and neckbolts” image of the monster in the 1930s movie. We also talk about how the 10-year-old festival is holding up during the pandemic, how they’ve spent 2020, their thoughts about next year (which might still include Frankenstein), how Black Lives Matter has changed their mission, and why they chose Davis as a place to create a professional Equity theater company.