This Weekend’s Highlights:
Friday, October 2
* “The Theatre Channel,” a new London web series offering a mix of popular music and theatre songs set in a café, directed by Bill Deamer, featuring Carrie Hope Fletcher, Jenna Russell, Oliver Ormson, Tarinn Callender, Lucie Jones, and Jodie Steele, premieres here.
* “Stars in the House,” a Mean Girls Day Eve, with Erika Henningsen, Kate Rockwell, Grey Henson and Taylor Louderman, streams at 8 PM ET here.
* Michael Ball: Past & Present Tour Live concert, streams at 2 PM ET here (and will remain available for 48 hours).
* “The Boys in the Band” (Netflix) FREE conversation, with Jim Parsons, Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer, and director Joe Mantello, streams at 7 PM ET here.
Saturday, October 3
* The Fabulous Chickies in Concert – A Benefit for the Actors Fund, featuring Eileen Barnett, Michele Brourman, Nancy Dussault, Julie Garnyé, Shelly Goldstein, Ilene Graff, Dana Meller, Karen Morrow, Valerie Perri, Joan Ryan, and Lisa Vroman, streams at 8 PM ET/ 5 PM PT here.
* “Stars in the House,” a “Fraser” cast reunion, Part 2, with special guests Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, Janes Leeves, Peri Gilpin, Bebe Neuwirth, and Dan Butler, streams at 8 PM ET here.
Sunday, October 4
* Musical Theatre Guild‘s Finding the Silver Linings FREE benefit concert, featuring Jill Marie Burke, Tal Fox, James Gleason, Joe Hart, Ron Christopher Jones, Michael Kostroff, Dino Nicandros, Helen Jane Planchet, Monica Quizz, Alyssa M. Simmons, and Paul Wong, streams at 5:30 PM PT/8:30 PM ET.
* Broadway & The Bard: An Evening of Shakespeare & Song, starring Len Cariou, concludes here.
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Video: “Stars in the House,” a Sweeney Todd cast reunion, with Len Cariou, Victor Garber, Sarah Rice, and Ken Jennings. (1:23:30)
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Broadway On Demand has announced “ShowShare,” a new, one of a kind interface, that allows middle school, high school, college, community and professional theatre productions to use the platform to stream their productions to their audiences.
Currently there are over 500 productions scheduled on the new platform between now and the end of the year. Organizations can utilize the ShowShare on-platform box office or interface with their own in-house ticketing solution, add on enhanced digital marketing packages, and work with the ShowShare team to organize streaming co-productions with other arts organizations.
For more information and to apply for your production to be featured on ShowShare, please email info@broadwayondemand.com
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The premiere of John McDaniel & Scott Logsdon’s Sticks & Bones, in support of BC/EFA and the Born This Way Foundation, will take place Fri. Oct. 16 at 8 PM ET here (and will remain available through Oct. 20).
Joshua Colley (David), Audra McDonald (Nizevet), Javier Muñoz (Jesse), George Salazar (King Saul), Mykal Kilgore (The Prophet Samuel), Gabriella Gonzalez (Zeruiah), Cassie Donegan (Abigail), Jackson Hurt (Eliab), Dylan Bivings (Abinadab), Drew Elhamalawy (Shimea), James Ignacio (Nethanel), Marcus M. Martin (Raddai), Chase Tucker (Ozem), and Delaney Horton (The Traveler), along with actors from 34 states.
The piece adapts the Biblical story of David and his triumph over Goliath to address the issue of teen bullying.
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Article: How ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” will tackle the new season, by “re-inventing the wheel.”
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Video: The cast of Broadway’s Diana shares some of their audition songs. Scroll down…
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Apple TV+ has announced its new, as yet untitled, Brigadoon-inspired musical comedy series. The release date is TBA.
Kristin Cenoweth, Cecily Strong, Alan Cumming, Jane Krakowski, Ariana DeBose, Aaron Tveit, Keegan-Michael Key, Dove Cameron, Ann Harada, Jaime Camil, and Fred Armisen.
A parody of Brigadoon, the series will follow a traveling couple (Strong and Key) who happen upon a magical town, Schmigadoon, where the eccentricity of 1940s Hollywood musicals is the norm. The rest of the cast play denizens of this land, including Cumming and Harada as the mayor and his wife, Tveit as the town rebel, DeBose as a progressive teacher, and Krakowski as a countess.
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The Al Hirschfeld Foundation (a not-for-profit organization) has successfully regained complete control of all of Al Hirschfeld’s work and announced today that any and all relationships between it and Margo Feiden/The Margo Feiden Galleries (the Feiden Parties) are 100% terminated.
The United States District Court, Southern District of New York has awarded The Al Hirschfeld Foundation a total of $452,767.62 in damages because the Feiden Parties breached the parties’ 2000 settlement agreement and purloined a number of Hirschfeld original works.
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Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel, “Like Water for Chocolate” is being developed into a new musical by Lisa Loomer, Quiara Algria Hudes & La Santa Cecelia, directed by Michael Mayer.
The story centers around an epic battle between familial obligation and romantic desire in turn of the century Mexico, while celebrating the rich land’s culture and cuisine like no novel before or since. A feminist fable of tradition, rebellion, and uncontrollable passions.
Dates, creative team, casting and additional information TBA.
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Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS announced Oct. 1 that $18.1 million was provided in grants in the fiscal year, ending Sept. 30. This marks the most ever awarded in the 32-year history of the organization,
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Schedule of Upcoming Free Live Streams:
* Julius Caesar (Oct. 9-15), Donmar Warehouse’s 2016 production, with an all-female cast featuring Harriet Walter, Jackie Clune, and Jade Anouka, livestreams here.
* Henry IV (Oct. 16-22), Donmar Warehouse’s 2016 production directed by Phillida Loyd, with an all-female cast starring Harriet Walter, livestreams here.
* The War of the Worlds (Oct. 16-18), London’s O2 Arena 2012 production, a musical version by Jeff Wayne, featuring Jason Donovan, Ricky Wilson, Marti Pellow, Will Stapleton, and Kerry Ellis, livestreams here.
* The Tempest (Oct. 23-29), the Donmar Wareshouse 2016 production, starring Harriet Walter, livestreams here.
* My Beautiful Launderette (available until the Curve Theatre opens), by Hanif Kureishi, livestreams here.
* Romeo and Juliet (available until February – exact date TBA), a 90-min. adaptation, starring Nathan Welsh and Charlotte Beaumont, livestreams here.
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LA: A Virtual Stage Festival, which includes many LA Theatre companies, continues through Oct. 17, offering new 10-minute works.
Click here for the complete schedule of events.
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Sag Harbor’s Bay Street Theater has announced the premiere of Awake at Night, adapted by Will Pomerantz, to take place Wed. Oct. 21 at 8 PM ET, followed by a talkback on Zoom. Following the premiere, the entire evening will be available on-demand through the end of the year for $10.
Ari Brand, Daniel Gerroll, Loren Lester, Michael Levi Harris, Kevin Orton, and Teal Wicks.
The reading reimagines three iconic thrillers by Edgar Allan Poe, placing them in a modern settings. In A Case of Romanee Conti, we follow a young programmer who runs into an old boss while visiting a vineyard; in Through My Flesh …, a soon-to-be-retired professor elucidates a mysterious and tragic experience in Istanbul many years ago; and in 812 East 9th Street, a young man records his shocking visit with an old friend.
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New York Theatre Barn has announced it October lineup, which streams every Wednesday evening at 7 PM ET, hosted by Jen Sandler and Joe Barros. Each evening will feature excerpts from new musicals.
Oct. 7: Salem, by Kira Stone, directed by Sarna Lapine, featuring Antonio Cipriano and Kira Stone. Susannah, Bridget, Miriam, Martha, Rebecca, and Mary are held hostage in a modern day courtroom for their collective trial by judge and jury. We marvel at the mass hysteria, we deliberate, and we ultimately are a part of deciding the fate of these six women.
Oct. 7: Shapeshifters: A Queer Comin Book Musical, by Truth Bachman, directed by Zhailon Levingston, featuring Truth Bachman and Basit Shittu. High school bully and comic book genius, Mel, discovers a hidden plane of existence called Queer Time, simply by drawing scenarios with pen and paper. In Queer Time, Mel joins the ranks of an underground network of Queer and Trans superheroes called The Shapeshifters. As Mel and the Shapeshifters sprint toward uncertain futures, this tribe of queer heroes must rely on community to persist, resist, and survive their living nightmares.
Oct. 14: Love and Southern D!scomfort, by Bobby Daye & Monica L. Patton, directed by Tamara Tunie, featuring Nikki M. James, Ramona Keller, and Anthony Wayne. When dowager Mrs. Catheine Dejoie, of polite Louisiana society, dies, she leaves the entire estate to her estranged granddaughter Milla, but only if Milla comes home from her self-imposed, decade-long exile to bury Catherine. Milla reluctantly leaves her life in France and returns to her ancestral home, a sprawling postbellum Southern mansion, and to her mother, a faded alcoholic debutante undone by the burden of bearing the family’s legacy.
Oct. 14: Present Perfect, by Nancy Nachama Cheser, featuring Mauricio Martínez and Stephanie Lynne Mason. A young woman steps outside the confines of her insular ultra-Orthodox community in Brooklyn and finds herself as much an immigrant in a new land as the recently arrived students she teaches in her New York Adult English class. Lives intertwine as each in their own way struggles to belong, find love, and succeed in a new country.
Oct. 21: The King’s Wife, by Jamie Floyd & Mêlisa Annis, featuring Jamie Floyd. A new musical that uniquely re-tells the relationship between Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, the first two wives of King Henry VIII of England. While historical accounts paint these women as bitter enemies, The King’s Wife (using historic clues) flips the script to tell their tale differently—the story begins with them as like-minded good friends—plotting and executing ideas for the people and the future before they are stripped of choice, options and each other in a devastating game of politics and power.
Oct. 21: Metropolis, by AriDy Nox & Brandon Webster, featuring Cory Barrow, Taylor Harris, Tyler McKenzie, Max Morter, Caleb Spainhour, Marthaluz Velez, and HK Wall. An epic tale that follows the Harmonizer-android-unit turned space-time-continuum anarchist Fari as she is wrenched across space and time.
Oct. 28: The Clearwaters, by Sara Wordsworth Russ Kaplan & Daniel John Kelley, featuring Arielle Jacobs and Zoe Manarel. Minnesota. March, 1999. Young mother Bethany Clearwater has just inherited a house in the dilapidated factory town of Oak Pines, where she moves with her troubled teenage daughter Belinda. Bethany plans to finally escape their nomadic past and make a fresh start. But when Belinda, just two months away from graduating high school, runs away on her first day of school, Bethany turns to desperate and ridiculous measures to ensure a bright future for her daughter…and maybe a second chance for herself.
Oct. 28: Little Duende, by Robi Hager & Georgina Escobar, featuring Daniele Hager and Brianna Lopez. In the land of Elflán, life and beauty flourishes. We meet Adelita, an adventurous and curious young elf eager to find what lies beyond the horizon. When the evil spirit of La Mancha kidnaps her mother and destroys her home, Adelita is forced to travel north to the land of the Hadaseñas in hopes of being reunited with her again.