Today’s Highlights:
* Rubicon Theatre‘s Forever Plaid: The 30th Anniversary Drive-In Concert, featuring David Engel, Larry Raben, Jason Graae, and Leo Daignault, opens at the Ventura County Fair Grounds.
* Jim Caruso’s Cast Party concert, featuring Megan Hilty, Brian Gallagher, James Delisco Beeks, Rose Colella, Karen Mason, Julie Garnyé, and Danielle Threet, streams at 8 PM ET here.
* The Muny 2020 Summer Variety Show Live concert, with a star-studded cast and eclectic offerings, streams at 8:15 PM CT here.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz: Small Change by Jim Bernhard
Fill in the correct denomination of U. S. money — dollar, quarter, dime, nickel, penny or cent — in these song titles from musicals:
1. “Ten ____s A Dance” –Simple Simon
2. “Yankee ____” –Jamaica
3. “Buffalo ____ Photoplay, Inc.” –Ragtime
4. “All You Need Is A ____” –Do Re Mi
5. “He Tried to Make A ____” –High Button Shoes
6. “____ In My Pocket” –Hello, Dolly!
7. “If I Had A Million ____s” –The Me Nobody Knows
8. “Silver ____” –Starlight Express
9. “Life Turns on a ____” –Ghost the Musical
10. “7½ ____s” –Pajama Game
Scroll down for the answers…
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Video: “Stars in the House” offering #Save the Arts 2, featuring Misty Copeland, Justina Machado, Audra McDonald, Rosie Perez, Ben Stiller, and more. (1:25:40)
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Video: “Stars in the House,” an Avenue Q original cast reunion, with Jennifer Barnhart, Stephanie D’Abruzzo, Jordan Gelber, Ann Harada, Rick Lyon, and John Tartaglia. (1:24:16)
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Video: “Stars in the House,” featuring Theatre Raleigh, with Producing Artistic Director Lauren Kennedy Brady, with Kate McMillan, Yolanda Rabun, and Gerard Williams. (1:00:20)
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Off-Broadway’s New Group, as part of it Reunion Reading Series, presents a virtual reading of Beth Henley’s The Jacksonian on Thurs. Aug. 27 at 7 PM ET. 10% of the proceeds will benefit Race Forward, which catalizes movement building for racial justice.
(original cast) Juliet Brett (Rosy Perch), Ed Harris (Bill Perch), Amy Madigan (Susan Perch), and Bill Pullman (Fred Weber), with Jane Krakowski (Eva White, originally performed by Glenne Headly).
Set in 1964 Jackson, Mississippi, 1964, dentist Bill Perch moves into the Jacksonian Motel when his wife kicks him out. There, his downward spiral is punctuated by encounters with this teenage daughter, a gold-digging motel employee, a treacherous bartender and his estranged wife. Revolving around the night of a murder, the play unearths the eerie tensions and madness in a town poisoned by raciscm.
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RIP: Patti Karr has died at the age of 88.
Karr performed in more than 25 Broadway productions, national tours, Off-Broadway shows, and more, from 1950-2006. She made her Broadway debut in Bells Are Ringing, as a dancer, then went on to dance in Redhead‘s “The Body Beautiful.” In 1959, she played Lady Rowena in Once Upon a Mattress, followed by the musicals Do Re Mi, New Faces of 1962, Come on Strong, and To Broadway With Love. Patti also appeared in the 1972 revival of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, followed by the original Broadway production of Different Times.
Additional Broadway productions include Pippin (Fastrada, Lysistrata, and Theta), Seesaw, Irene, A Broadway Musical, Got Tu Go Disco, Musical Chairs, The Rink, and the 1993 revival of My Fair Lady.
Film: “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995), The Savages (2007), and “The Edge of Night,” TV credits include “All My Children,” Happy Days,” “The Twilight Zone,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Guiding Light,” “Sex and the City,” “Law and Order,” and “The Sopranos.”
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Video: Ann Hampton Callaway performs “For All We Know”
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David Hare’s Beat the Devil will run at the Bridge Theatre for 2 weeks in August (dates & link TBA), directed by Nicholas Hytner.
Ralph Fiennes (David Hare)
A new piece in which David Hare unpacks his experience contracting and healing from Covid-19, as well as exploring his dissatisfaction with the handling of the virus by the government.
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Video: “Plays in the House,” offering a reading of Lydia R. Diamond’s Stick Fly, directed by Dell Howlett, featuring Jelani Alladin, Caroline Innerbichler, Keith Randolph Smith, Tiffay Rachelle Stewart, Daniel J. Watts, and Renika Williams. (3:01:06)
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Theater Breaking Through Barriers has announced its second Virtual Playmakers’ Intensive: Voice from the Great Experiment, to run Aug. 3-10 nightly at 7:30 PM ET.
* The Olympians, by Fareeda Ahmed, directed by Kristin Heckler, and featuring Shravan Amin, Samantha Debicki and Paul Pryce.
* Sing, by Khalil LeSaldo, directed by Ward Nixon, and featuring Martin Lewis and AhDream Smith.
* 3 Stops from Loop Tape Station, by Enrique Huili, directed by Ashley Scott, and featuring Joan Carlos Diaz and Melissa Jennifer Gonzalez.
* M-O-U-S-E, by Christopher Chan Roberson, directed by Kimille Howard, and featuring Scott Barton, Nayab, Ayako Ibaraki, and Sean Phillips.
* Cloudbusting, by Chris Phillips, directed by Stuart Green, and featuring Jen Bradley, Richard Lear, and Dan Teachout.
* What If You Read My Plays, by Jeff Tabnick, directed by Richard M. Rose, and featuring Alyssa M. Chase and David Harrell.
* (Untitled), by Tatiana G. Rivera, directed by Everett Quinton, and featuring Veronica Cruz, Christopher Imbrosiano, Patrick O’Hare, and Estrella Tamez-Penney.
* 3 Gods On a Zoom, by Monet Marshall, directed by Keyanna Alexander, and featuring Kalilah Black, Robin Carmon Marshall, and AhDream Smith.
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Video: Vicki Lewis – The Disney Channel’s “Sage Academy Recruitment Video” PSA.
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Nambi E. Kelley will write the new play with music, Phenomenal Woman: Maya Angelou at the North Carolina Black Repertory Company (link TBA), which will premiere in Spring 2021 (dates TBA)
Casting, additional creative team, and further details TBA.
The play follows the life of the poet, author, civil rights activist, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient, Dr. Maya Angelou.
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Video: Patrick Stewart reads Shakespeare’s Sonnet 100 (scroll down)
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The Metropolitan Opera has announced a series of upcoming concerts:
Aug. 16: Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak, from the Château de la Chèvre d’Or in Èze, France
Aug. 29: Lise Davidsen, from the Oscarshall Palace in Oslo, Norway
Sept. 12: Joyce DiDonato, from the Fundació Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau in Barcelona, Spain
Sept. 26: Sondra Radvanovsky and Piotr Beczała, from Barcelona
Oct. 10: Anna Netrebko, from Liechtenstein Palace in Vienna, Austria
Oct. 24: Diana Damrau and Joseph Calleja, from Malta (castle location TBD)
Nov 7: Pretty Yende and Javier Camarena, from Zurich, Switzerland (location TBD)
Nov 21: Sonya Yoncheva, from Berlin, Germany (location TBD)
Dec. 12: Bryn Terfel, from Wales (church location TBD)
Dec. 19: Angel Blue, from New York City (location TBD)
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Video: Scott Seigel’s Great American Songbook Concert Series, Volume 7, featuring Michael Winther (with Sean Harkness), Kerry O’Malley, Mark Nadler, Dongwoo Kan & Q-Lim, Luanana (with John Fischer), Anais Reno (with Julie Kurtzman), Tony Desare, Karen Ziemba (with Beth Ertz), Ben Jones (with John Fischer), and Emily Skinner. (53:52)
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A 10th anniversary reading of The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, written & directed by Kristoffer Diaz, will take place Sat. Aug. 15 at 7 PM. 
here.
(original cast) Usman Ally, Terence Archie, Desmin Borges, Christian Litke, with more TBA.
Macedonia “The Mace” Guerra is a middle rank wrestler who may have discovered his ticket to the big time: a charismatic, trash-talking Indian kid from Brooklyn who he recruits as the perfect foil to the all-American champion, Chad Deity. But when their rivalry is used to exploit racial stereotypes in the name of ratings, all three men find themselves fighting for much more than the championship title.
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Encores! tick,tick…Boom (2014), starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Karen Olivo.
Video: “Come to Your Senses”
Video: Dress rehearsal clips
Video: “Therapy”
Video: “30/90”
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The Metropolitan Opera‘s (link TBA) adaptation of Kevin Puts & Greg Pierce’s film “The Hours” is currently in development, with an expected 2022 premiere, directed by Phelim McDermott, and conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin.
Renée Fleming (Clarissa), Kelli O’Hara (Laura), and Joyce DiDonato (Virginia Woolf).
The story of three women searching for more potent, meaningful lives. Each is alive a different time and place, and all are linked by their yearnings and their fears. Their stories intertwine, and finally come together in a surprising, transcendent moment of shared recognition.
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GRACE NOTES Quiz answers – Small Change
1. “Ten Cents A Dance” –Simple Simon
2. “Yankee Dollar” –Jamaica
3. “Buffalo Nickel Photoplay, Inc.” –Ragtime
4. “All You Need Is a Quarter” –Do Re Mi
5. “He Tried to Make A Dollar” –High Button Shoes
6. “Penny In My Pocket” –Hello, Dolly!
7. “If I Had A Million Dollars” –The Me Nobody Knows
8. “Silver Dollar” –Starlight Express
9. “Life Turns on a Dime” –Ghost the Musical
10. “7½ Cents” –Pajama Game