Carlsbad’s New Village Arts theater plans 6-month residency at Flower Fields

Carlsbad's New Village Arts staff photographed at The Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch.

Because its indoor stage is closed due to the pandemic and a renovation, NVA will do outdoor concerts and theater at the 55-acre farm property

San Diego Union-Tribune

April 4, 2021 3:06 PM PT

CARLSBAD —

With its indoor stage closed due to the pandemic and a building renovation, Carlsbad’s New Village Arts is taking its act on the road with a six-month outdoor residency at the Flower Fields at Carlsbad Ranch.

The residency — which will begin with small socially distant concerts and will expand to full theatrical performances as the COVID conditions ease — will kick off April 8 with a trio of small-scale cabaret concerts at the 55-acre floral attraction.

Kristianne Kurner, executive artistic director of 20-year-old New Village Arts, said she’s thrilled to be able to get her artists back to work again after a yearlong shutdown. If all goes well, the theater hopes to make a Flower Fields residency an annual tradition.

Joni Miringoff, special events director at the Flower Fields, said she’s been a longtime fan of the work New Village Arts does, so she’s excited bring live entertainment to the property.

The Flower Fields is one month into its nine-week spring season, which concludes on May 9. Under newly released state guidelines, live outdoor concerts are allowed under the red tier restriction with social distancing onstage. It has seven bands booked for free afternoon concerts during the month of April.

The New Village Arts shows will be different. They will be performed in the evenings after the fields have closed to the public and tickets will be sold on the New Village Arts website. The first weekend of concerts will be held at 6:30 p.m. April 8 though 11 and tickets will include admission to the Flower Fields.

The first weekend of concerts will be preview performances for an audience of 50 people per night and a reduced ticket price of $30. Four more weekends of concerts will follow with a different lineup each week and different ticket prices. Seating capacity will change as the county moves into the orange and yellow tiers, and those changes will be posted on the theater’s website.

For the initial weekend, three veteran New Village Arts performers will be featured. They are Jasmine January (from “Around the World in 80 Days,” “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” and “Avenue Q”), Zackary Scot Wolfe (“Avenue Q,” “Oklahoma!” and “The 1940s Radio Hour”) and JD Dumas (“Murder for Two,” “Little Women” and “Holly Jolly Cabaret”).

The New Village Arts season will expand after the Flower Fields closes its gates for the year on May 9. The outdoor season will include extended-run musical theatrical productions and Shakespeare in the Park plays. The full schedule will be announced in April.

For details, visit newvillagearts.org.

— Pam Kragen is a reporter for The San Diego Union-Tribune

Pam Kragen

Pam Kragen is the arts and entertainment editor, as well as the chief theater, dining and opera critic, for the San Diego Union-Tribune. She joined the Union-Tribune staff in October 2012 after 27 years at the North County Times, where she served as the Arts & Features Editor, as well as the paper’s longtime arts writer and theater and opera critic. She is the co-founder of the San Diego Theatre Critics Circle. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from San Diego State University and completed fellowships in theater criticism at the University of Southern California and opera-classical music criticism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And in 2022, she was chosen as one of the fellows in the prestigious National Critics Institute, run by the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Waterf, Conn.