Celebrity Series of Boston has announced its 83rd season, unveiling plans for a long-awaited return to live performance in venues across Boston and Cambridge starting in September after an all-virtual run in 2020-21.
With the 2021-22 offerings, the series aims to balance familiar comfort and exciting new discoveries, Celebrity Series president and executive director Gary Dunning explained over the phone. “We’ve just had a year plus of canceled artists, so on the one hand there is that sense of obligation to those artists who lost opportunities,” he said. “At the same time, there was a desire to make sure that we weren’t just recycling a previous season … we were trying to stay as current as we could with some new faces, voices, ideas, and content that I think is particularly relevant in this moment.”
Celebrity Series is crossing its fingers that performance venues will be open at full capacity, though it’s prepared to be flexible should further governmental directives come down or individual venues decide to limit seating.