Blindness will be presented on the stage of the Princess of Wales Theatre beginning August 4, 2021 and will be the first indoor theatre presentation in Toronto since the pandemic shut down all theatres.

Audiences will be limited to 50 people per performance and will be seated in pods of one or two. Everyone in attendance, including all staff, will be masked. Tickets to Blindness will go on sale to the public on June 23, 2021.  Details about the performance schedule and prices will be announced soon.

 AT THE THEATRE:
• The show runs 75 minutes without an intermission. 
• Each performance will be limited to 50 people. 
• Every precaution will be taken to ensure that each audience member is safe and comfortable during this very special event. 
• All audience members must wear a mask for the duration of their visit for this event. 
• All audience members will be seated (socially distanced, in pairs and singles) on the immense stage of the Princess of Wales Theatre. 
• Each person will be given sanitized headphones through which they will be told the story by the illustrious stage, screen, TV and audiobook star Juliet Stevenson.

The sound is designed to be binaural, making the work sound as if it were physically happening around you, putting you in the centre of the action. 

ABOUT Blindness:

Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, for which he won both the Tony and Olivier awards for best play) has adapted Nobel Prize-winner José Saramago’s dystopian novel Blindness as a sound installation directed by Walter Meierjohann with immersive binaural sound design by Ben and Max Ringham. Juliet Stevenson voices the Storyteller/Doctor’s wife in this gripping story of the rise and, ultimately, profoundly hopeful end of an unimaginable global pandemic. 

As the lights change at a major crossroads in a city in the heart of Europe a car grinds to a halt. Its driver can drive no more. Suddenly, without warning or cause, he has gone blind. Within hours it is clear that this is a blindness like no other. This blindness is infectious. Within days an epidemic of blindness has spread through the city. The government tries to quarantine the contagion by herding the newly blind people into an empty asylum. But their attempts are futile. The city is in panic. 

Blindness had its world premiere at London’s Donmar Warehouse in August 2020, where it received rave reviews and re-opened the theatre for audiences for the first time in over five months. 

Blindness, a socially distanced sound installation with the voice of Juliet Stevenson, based on the novel by José Saramago, adapted by Simon Stephens, directed by Walter Meierjohann is a Donmar Warehouse Production. 

The creative team includes: Sound Designers Ben and Max Ringham, Designer Lizzie Clachan, Lighting Designer Jessica Hung Han Yun, Production Consultant Professor Hannah Thompson and Resident Assistant Director Sara Aniqah Malik.

Start times have not yet been announced.