Today’s Highlights:
* Sleepless: A Musical Romance, by Michael Burdette, Robert Scott & Brendan Cu, directed by Morgan Young, featuring Kimberly Walsh (Annie), Jay McGuiness (Sam), Daniel Casey (Walter), Harriet Thorpe (Eleanor), Tania Mathurin (Becky), and Cory English (Rob), with Charlie Bull, Colin Burnicle, Christie-Lee Crosson, Laura Darton, Leanne Garretty, Matt Holland, Ross McLaren, Gary Murphy, Dominique Planter, Annie Wensak, Benjamin Wong, and Theo Collis, Mikey Colville, Jobe Hart & Jack Reynolds (sharing the role of Sam’s son, Jonah), opens at London’s Troubadour Wembley Park Theatre.
* Dear Liar virtual benefit reading, by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Mark Brokaw, featuring Marsha Mason and Brian Cox, streams at 8 PM ET at Bucks County Playhouse.
* Ken Davenport’s “The Producer’s Perspectives LIVE!” podcast, with special guest Raul Esparza, streams at 8 PM ET here.
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Video: “Stars in the House,” with guest host Andréa Burns and special guest Katie Finneran. (58:28)
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“Defying Gravity: From Godspell to Wicked, A Musical Journey,” a new documentary about Stephen Schwartz, will begin production in 2021, written & produced by John Scheinfeld.
Timeline and additional information TBA.
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Video: Erich Bergen performs David Javerbaum’s “Don’t Shoot the Messengers,” a song about the US Postal Service and its recent woes. Scroll down…
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Podcast: “DRAMA,” by Connor & Dylan MacDowell, featuring Alice Ripley, Sarah Stiles, and Nick Adams. Scroll down…
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Videos: Some of Gustavo Dudamel‘s favorite orchestral performances over the years. 
Videos only available within CA’s KCET and PBS SoCal service areas.
* American Ballet Theatre principal dancer Misty Copeland joins Dudamel and the LA Phil for selections from Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake”
* The LA Phil performing Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man”
* Spanish cellist Pablo Ferrández in a selection from Dvořák’s “Cello Concerto” and the finale from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
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Actors’ Equity has approved a handful of indoor productions at three New England non-profit theatres — the first to take place inside )after performing arts venues have been shuttered for nearly six months due to the coronavirus pandemic).
* Little Shop of Horrors and Miracle on South Division Street and The World Goes Round, in rep (Sept. 9 – Oct. 11) at NH’s Weathervane Theatre.
* Fully Committed (Sept. 11-27) at Music Theater of Connecticut, starring Matt Densky.
* It’s Fine, I’m Fine (dates & link TBA) at Vermont’s Northern Stage, written by & starring Stephanie Everett.
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Video: Marianne Challis performs “Something in Red” (2008)
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A filmed version of Mark St. Germain’s solo play, Eleanor, will stream Fri. Sept. 4 at 7:30 PM ET at MA’s Barrington Stage, starring Harriet Harris as First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. (also available Sept. 5).
The play brings to life the most influential First Lady the world has ever soon. From her “Ugly Duckling” upbringing to her unorthodox marriage to Franklin, Eleanor puts her controversial life, loves, and passions on the stage.
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Video: Jim Caruso’s Pajama Cast Party, with special guests Corinna Sowers Adler, Mikaela Secada, Danny Bacher, Janis Siegel, Debra Barsha, Sheila Rae, and Darian Sanders. (1:49:50)
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NYC’s Guggenheim‘s Works & Process brings a twist to its season format this year due to the pandemic, with seven “Creative Bubble Residencies” taking part in Hudson Valley.
Joshua Bergasse, Justin Vivian Bond, Sera Earns, Jamar Roberts, Omari Wiles, and many more.
Some products from the residencies will premiere at the ongoing Kaatsbaan Summer Festival in Tivoli, New York, with others being performed outdoors at Lincoln Center and streamed online. Additionally, WNET’s ALL ARTS will present a four-part documentary series in early 2021 capturing the artists’ journeys and processes.
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Video: The typewriter tap dance sequence from 1937’2 “Too Marvelous For Words,” with Ruby Keeler and Fred Astairs. Just because….
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Lileana Blain-Cruz has joined Lincoln Center Theater as Resident Director.
As part of LCT’s artistic staff, Blain-Cruz will direct at least one production a year in either Broadway’s Vivian Beaumont Theater or Off-Broadway’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater. She will also work with fellow Resident Director Bartlett Sher and Producing Artistic Director André Bishop in developing and choosing LCT’s programming.
Her directing credits at LCT include Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Marys Seacole, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ War, and Dominique Morisseau’s Pipeline.
Up next, she’ll direct Somi Kakoma’s Dreaming Zenzille at St. Louis Repertory Theater, Iphigenia with Esperanza Spalding and Wayne Shorter, and The Listeners, a new opera by Missy Mazzoli which will premiere at Opera Norway and Opera Philadelphia.
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Video: Chadwick Boseman in rehearsal for a workshop production of Holler If You Hear Me, with Christopher Jackson. Scroll down for the video.
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A local group is attempting to build a new a Shakespeare theatre in Stratford, CT, where the Shakespeare Festival Theatre building burned down last year after decades of sitting dormant.
The theater building had not hosted an indoor performance in decades, though the surrounding lawn has continued to be sacred ground for Shakespeare fans, with performances by a summertime Shakespeare Academy and local outdoor Shakespeare troupes as well as community festivals.
Now a local Stratford group led by Tom Evans — a professional actor, director and writer who also works as a “manager for large-scale financial services” — is hoping to bring Shakespeare back to Stratford on a large scale. The effort has only recently been made public, and has already received national attention. The project would like to restore the theater’s best-known name, the American Shakespeare Festival Theatre, assuming the rights to it are available
Plans are in the works for a 900-seat open-air theater building based on the 1614 version of the Globe, which would distinguish it from all the other Globe theater recreations in the world; a separate performing arts center with its own performance spaces plus classrooms; programming includes not just Shakespeare productions but “recent Broadway hits and classic treasures” plus new works as well as music, dance and comedy shows; educational programs including Shakespeare performances for the thousands of schools within a few hours drives from the theater; a versatile corps of actors who could shift between the Shakespearean and modern venues as well as teach; rental opportunities for weddings and receptions; and a racially and stylistically diverse Artistic Advisory Group, slated to include such celebrities as Javier Colon and Syndee Winter.
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Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz’s new rom-com film, “The Making Of,” has announced initial casting. No word yet on a production schedule or release date.
A pair of married filmmakers (Richard Gere and Diane Keaton), cast younger actors (Blake Lively and Lin-Manuel Miranda) to play younger versions of themselves while their own marriage is falling apart.
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Video: Sierra Boggess performs “How Could I Ever Know” from The Secret Garden.
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Non-theater plea: No matter what type of mask you wear, when you’re ready to discard it, please cut the ear straps. They are strangling all sorts of wildlife, in and out of the ocean. Thanks so much. And please pass this on…