In theory, all theater is site specific. 

The specifics of the site where a production is performed both literally and figuratively house the show’s story, implicitly altering the dramaturgical setting. 

When I first saw Grace McLean’s Penelope underneath the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival’s outdoor tent, the ground’s real dirt could double as the sand on which Penelope stands at the beach, as she stares into the unknown fate of her future’s horizons, waiting for the husband of her past to sail back home. It’s almost like she’s playing through the musical again and again as she stands on that beach, to help process her existence.

Can you say art therapy?

But nothing about Joe’s Pub suggests that its iteration of Penelope takes place by the ocean. Rather, the venue’s cabaret-club atmosphere made the festivities feel more like a soiree thrown in her mind, to escape the obtrusive revels knocking at her door. This notion of the performance being an act of imagining opens up the possibility that Penelope is one of Penelope’s tapestries, woven nightly to cope with what her life has become.

Can you say art therapy?

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If all theater is technically site specific, then producers should consider how the specifics of their production’s site can similarly interact with the material. 

Which is an approach that’s severely lacking in the programming of New York’s outdoor theaters; staging a show outside obviously affects the material, but how much of this material seems chosen to explicitly take advantage of the natural environment?

Such as Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre’s revival of Brigadoon. 

Obviously the musical was written for a proscenium house, but relocating it inside a human-made park of sculpted nature has the air (literally) of the site-specific; the audience is immersed within the story’s magical nature surrounding them.