Today’s Highlights:
* The Past is the Past filmed production, by Richard Wesley, directed by Oz Scott, featuring Jovan Adepo and Ron Cephas Jones, begins FREE streaming at Manhattan Theatre Club.
* The Manic Mologues, conceived & directed by Elena Araoz, featuring Ato Blankson-Wood, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Maddie Corman, Tessa Albertson, Anna Belknap, Mike Carlsen, Alexis Cruz, Mateo Ferro, Sam Morales, Bi Jean Ngo, Armando Riesco, Jon Norman Schneider, Heather Alicia Simms, C.J. Wilson, and Craig Bierko, begins FREE streaming at NJ’s McArter Theatre Center.
* Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet begins streaming. $10 tix here.
* Art, by Yasmina Reza, directed by caryn desai, featuring Brent Schindele, Michael Uribes, and Brian Stanton, begins streaming (Thursdays – Sundays only) at Long Beach’s International City Theatre.
* Divine Sass: A Tribute to the Music, Life, and Legacy of Sarah Vaughan concert, starring Lillias White, streams for FREE at 7 PM ET here.
* PIAF… Her Story… Her Songs musical event, by Raquel Bitton, in support of The Actors Fund, concludes FREE streaming here.
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Video: Stars in the House, a Melissa Manchester Birthday Celebration, with special guests Claudia Cagan, Rupert Holmes, Dave Koz, Barry Manilow, Keala Settle, and Ann Hampton Callaway. (1:37:20)
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Off-Broadway’s Keen Company has announced the world premiere of Pearl Cleage’s Digging in the Dark, to premiere Fri. Feb. 26 at 7 PM ET, directed by Taylor Reynolds.
Rachel Christopher, Russell G. Jones, and Janelle McDermoth.
The play takes listeners to a moonless night on a wooded estate outside Atlanta, where a woman awaits her scheming brother’s arrival. He’s coming to claim a valuable heirloom, but she is determined to settle an old score before sunrise.
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Chris Bush’s The Band Plays On will stream Mar 15-28 at the Sheffield Theatres, directed by Robert Hastie & Anthony Lau.
Anna-Jane Casey, Maimuna Memon, Sandra Marvin, Jocasta Almgill, and Jodie Prenger.
An Olympic hopeful. A political car crash. The Fallout from a fictional nuclear winter. These are all stories of solidarity and survival from the Steel City, sound tracked by new versions of classics from some of Sheffield’s most celebrated artists.
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Off-Broadway’s MCC Theater presents Susan Soon He Stanton’s The Things Are Against Us, to livestream Feb. 25-28, directed by Ellie Heyman.
Emily Davis, Susannah Flood, Babak Tafti, and Danny Wolohan.
Lorca. One claw-foot bathtub, two sisters, and a young man’s journey to unearth the dark secrets of his grandfather’s past. All roads lead to a mysterious house with a mind of its own. Are there bones in the basement and passive aggressive shadows in the corners? The Spreckle house invites you to spend the night.
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Video: The first trailer for Disney’s “Cruella,” starring Emma Stone and Emma Thompson, directed by Craig Gillespie. The film will be released May 28.
A live action origin story of Cruella de Vil, set in 1970s London amidst the punk rock revolution.
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New York Theatre Barn will present livestream excerpts from Richard Allen & Taran Gray’s Freedom Riders on Wed. Feb. 24 at 7 PM ET, followed by a conversation with the writers, as well as one of the last surviving Freedom Riders: Charles Person.
Jennifer Sun Bell, Kevin “Blax” Burroughs, Anthony Chatmon II, Tyla Collier, Meagan Fling, Deon’te Goodman, Payson Lewis, Eboni Muse, Michael William Nigro, Ebony Pollum, Leonard Patton, Scott Redmond, Nygel Robinson, Clayton Snyder, Erin Vanderhyde, Brynn Williams, and Davon Williams.
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Afrofemononomy, a group of Black, femme theatremakers’ new collective will present a series of digital and in-person events exploring explore Black women, art, health, and balance.
Lileana Blain-Cruz, Eisa Davis, Charlotte Brathwaite, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Ayesha Jordan, Joie Lee, April Matthis, Jennifer Harrison Newman, Okwui Okpokwasili, Stacey Karen Robinson, and Kaneza Schaal.
Work the Roots (begins Mar. 1 at Performance Space New York), illuminates texts by Kathleen Collins and Adrienne Kennedy.
Begin The Beguine (dates TBA), presenting an examination of 1 1984 quartet of unproduced one-acts by Kathleen Collins, via panel discussions and rehearsals.
A synchronized world premiere of live outdoor offerings (weekends of May 15 & 22) taking play in the 122CC courtyard of NYC’s Performance Space…. on a lower Manhattan loading dock (as part of Downtown Live)….. in various outdoor venues in Brooklyn and Harlem….. at a parking lot drive-in performance spearheaded by Oakland Theater Project…. and in Norway and Senegal with Afrofemononomy artists overseas.
An in-person, pay-what-you-can, audiovisual installation with the occasional surprise live sound interaction at Performan Space (May 22-27) with Covid-19 safety protocols in place.
Click here for more information.
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Off-Broadway’s LABrynth Theatre as announced its Barn Series 2021, to stream Feb. 22-28.
Wave Head (Feb. 22), by Joey Palestina. directed by Alfredo Narciso. A tale of faulty intimacy from faulty humans moving through a world of faulty connection.
The War I Know (Feb. 23), written & directed by Dominic Colon. The story of the relationship between Eggie, a flamboyant 12-year-old obsessed with television and musical theater, and his ten year old neighbor, who was perinatally infected with HIV and recently sent to live with their teenage half siblings after losing both parents to AIDS.
Intensive Ensemble Night (Feb. 24), featuring readings from The Zookeepers, by Julia Rae Maldonado, directed by Yair Koas… Giving Into the Bit, written & directed by Khalif J. Gillett… The Basement, by Yhá Mourhia Wright, directed by Anita Sibony de Adelsberg… Hail Elisha, by Jake Brasch, directed by David Zayas Jr…. The Rave, by Juan Cortes, directed by Deb Linehan… Lies We Tell Ourselves in the Dark, by Isabella Gonzales, directed by Enemy Jones.
Wherever You Go (Feb. 25), by Elizabeth Canavan, directed by Chris McGarry. The unimaginable has happened to Daisy and she thinks she is losing her mind. She joins a support group and embarks on a radical journey risking everything to find her son.
Rayne (Feb. 26), by David Deblinger & Ben Snyder, directed by Snyder. A suspenseful journey through love, lust, and loss.
Dani & Joe: A Gen X Love Story (Feb. 27), by Kristina Poe, directed by Elizabeth Rodriguez. Four empty walls, two ex-lovers, one bed. A secret affair spanning decades, built on a desire for the ugliness in each other, finally facing itself in truth…and consequences.
The Undertaking (Feb. 28), written & directed by Chris McGarry. Every year Tom buries a few hundred of his fellow townspeople. Love, loss, living – life studies from the dismal trade.
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John Patrick Shanley will write & direct his new film, “The Twinkle Brothers,” with filming to begin this Fall in NYC.
Casting TBA
A story told by avuncular café owner Moredcai, who, when tasked with the responsibility of looking after his precocious six-year-old granddaughter Rita for an afternoon, spins her a yarn about Freddie and Miguel, two insanely competitive brothers from Puerto Rico. They move to New York and end up with rival restaurants directly across the street from one another. The brothers stop at nothing to be the best on the block, ratcheting up the competition to the delight of their neighbors, who are treated to bizarrely spectacular light shows, dueling Santas, and seemingly endless plates of delicious and comforting food.
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Off-Broadway’s York Theatre presents a reunion the theatre’s 1999 Musicals in Mufti presentation of Duke Ellington, John Latouce & Dale Wasserman’s Beggar’s Holiday (1946) on Mon. Feb. 22 at 7 PM ET, directed by Kent Gash, with music direction by J. Leonard Oxley.
Ken Gash (director), Erik Haagensen (consultant), and Joe McConnell (casting director), special guest Mercedes Ellington, and cast members Jerry Dixon, Joe Langworth, Amy Jo Phillips, Ken Prymus, Tami Swartz, and more.
The raffish denizens of the New York underworld, both black and white, are the subject of the musical update of The Beggar’s Opera. The musical’s locale has been changed to a modern American city and turned Macheath into “a pin-stripe-suited mobster, a singing, dancing Bugsy Siegel.
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L.A. Theater Works presents an audio recording of Chiara Atik’s new comedy, Bump, directed by Rosalind Ayres.
Ana Ortiz, HerbertSigüenza, Alma Martinez, Lucy DeVito, Anna Lyse Erikson, Anna Mathias, André Sogliuzzo, Devon Sorvari, Inger Tudor, and Moira Quirk.
Based on the true story of Jorge Odón and the birthing device he invented in his garage, the play spans time and space in an effort to grapple with the mystery and miracle of maternity. When Claudia gets pregnant, she has a very clear plan for how she wants to give birth. Her pre-natal anxieties inspire her father to create a device for safer deliveries, and Claudia realizes that nothing ever goes quite as expected.