Today’s Highlights:
* The Droll {Or, a Stage-Play about the End of Theatre} FREE online reading, by Meg Miroshnik, featuring Zach Appelman, Matt Biagini, Brett Dalton, Ceci Fernandez, Rachel Spencer Hewitt, Matt McGrath, Irene Sofia Lucio, Blake Segal, and Elizabeth Stahlmann, streams at 7 PM ET here.
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GRACE NOTES Quote of the Week: “If the public doesn’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” ~ Sol Hurok
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2020 Obie Award winners:
Click here for the complete list of winners.
Video: Watch the complete ceremony. (1:53:16)
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Video: “Stars in the House.” featuring Broadway Record Breakers (1:09:40)
* Alton Fitzgerald White (played 4,308 performances as Mufasa in The Lion King)
* Marlene Danielle (played the entire 18 year run in Cats)
* Donna Marie Asbury (Guinness World Record holder for playing the same character, June, after 20 years in the cast of Chicago)
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Andrew Barth Feldman has created a virtual murder mystery series in which Broadway stars are the suspects and the audience gets to be the detectives. The games begin on Sat. Aug. 1 at 8 PM ET. 
here.
Andrew Barth Feldman (host Laurence Montomery XI), Samantha Williams (Ernestine Montgomery), Will Roland (Teddy Carmichael), Alex Boniello (Giuseppe Romano), Shereen Pimentel (Senator Dianne Churchill), Gaten Matarazzo (CTO Robert Otto), Reneé Rapp (President Astrid Fox), and Antonio Cipriano (Chef Jean Paul Pepperoni).
The detectives (audience members) will be able to go between different “rooms” on the series’ website to follow the clues, watch the mystery unfold and find the murderer. Participants will not know the ending, and neither will the players.
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The St. Louis Muny has announced The Muny Summer 2020 Variety Hour Live!, available on Mondays, July 20 – Aug. 17 at 8:15 PM CT.
* Archival clips from Muny productions (for the past 7 seasons), including The Little Mermaid, Oklahoma!, South Pacific, Jersey Boys, Spamalot, Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida, Singin’ in the Rain; All Shook Up, The Wiz, Newsies, The Music Man, Annie, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, Paint Your Wagon and many more. 
These exclusive clips will only be available during the live stream.
* Songs and dances created via video by Muny artists from around the country
* Famous musical theatre duets performed by real-life Muny couples.
* Dance pieces created and filmed at The Muny
…and much more…
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NJ’s Two River Theatre presents a reading of On Borrowed Time, by Paul Osborn, directed by Joel Grey, in support of The Actors Fund, to stream Aug. 5 (Act 1) & Aug. 6 (Act 2), both at 7 PM ET.
Blair Brown, Michael Cumpsty, Oakes Fegley, Bill Irwin, Bebe Neuwirth, Phillipa Soo, Steven Skybell, and Sam Waterson.
A magical fantasy about the love between a little boy and his Gramps. When Death himself pays them a visit in the form of a man named Mr. Brink, Gramps outwits him—trapping Brink in a tree and refusing to let him down.
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The Donmar Warehouse will open temporarily from Aug. 3-22 with a socially distanced production of Blindness, adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Walterh Meierjohann.
The hour-long production will have a limited number of visitors 4 times a day, with seating arranged 2m apart in accordance with social distancing guidelines. Visitors will listen on headphones to the presentation.
Juliet Stevenson (voicing the Storyteller/Doctor’s wife).
As the lights change at a major crossroads in a city in the heart of Europe a car grinds to a halt. Its driver can drive no more. Suddenly, without warning or cause, he has gone blind. Within hours it is clear that this is a blindness like no other. This blindness is infectious. Within days an epidemic of blindness has spread through the city. The government tries to quarantine the contagion by herding the newly blind people into an empty asylum. But their attempts are futile. The city is in panic.
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Bernadette Peters: A Special Concert on July 10, raised $252,575 for BC/EFA.
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Off-Broadway’s Red Bull Theater will present 8 world premieres in its 2020 Short New Play Festival: Private Lives on Mon. July 20 at 7:30 PM ET, and will also include interviews with the playwrights.
Jeremy O. Harris, Theresa Rebeck, Ben Beckley, Avery Deutsch, Lean Maddrie, Jessica Moss, Matthew Park, and Mallory Jane Weiss.
Mêlisa Annis, Vivienne Benesch, and Em Weinstein
Ali Ahn, Frankie J. Alvarez, Kathleen Chalfant, Lilli Cooper, Edmund Donovan, William Jackson Harper, Louisa Jacobson, Peter Francis James, and Charlayne Woodard.
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Actors’ Equity Association has released the following statement regarding a new study showing that more than 5 million Americans have already lost their employer-sponsored health care during the pandemic.
“For months, the theatre industry has been shut down, closing the door for too many workers looking to obtain and maintain their health care coverage,” said Mary McColl, Executive Director of Actors’ Equity Association. “The House has already taken action. The Senate should move quickly to pass a COBRA subsidy so that no one in the arts and entertainment industries worries about losing their health care in the middle of a pandemic. The nature of this pandemic and the need for social distancing means that many of us in live arts will also be among the last to return to work, making it critical that Congress acts now.”
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Transport Group will stream Ellen Fitzhugh, Harrison David Rivers & Ted Shen’s Broadbend, Arkansas for free for 4 weeks beginning July 20, directed by Jack Cummings III, and hosted by Chuck Cooper.
Justin Cunningham and Danyel Fulton
Spanning three generations, the musical contemplates the cycle of violence in and the struggle to find hope against a backdrop of hate in America.
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Puzzle: A Little Night Music jigsaw puzzle.
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During this period while stage shows are being developed, Gerard McMahon is “nearly done” creating a musical based on the 1987 movie “The Last Boys,” (directed by Joel Schumacher).
The musical, A Lost Boys Story, is looking at late 2021 or 2022 for a Broadway opening, based on coronavirus health and safety guidelines. Malcolm McDowell is in talkd to star, as well as JD McCrary, who will play Laddie, the youngest member of the blood-sucking group.
This incarnation focuses on David (memorably played by Kiefer Sutherland in the film), who is put in an orphanage run by head vampire Max (played by Edward Herrmann in the movie) and is turned into a member of the living dead. “It’s very much a story of immortality, but it’s also a story about how people in their twenties think they’re immortal, anyway,” McMahon said. “It kind of runs that parallel of pop culture.”
Audio: Listen to the sound track ( or find it on Spotify).
Video: Film trailer (1987)
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The Rubicon Theatre presents its next drive-in concert, 2 AM at the Sands: Samonsky Sings Sinatra, starring Andrew Samonsky, backed by a nine-piece swing band conducted by Kevin Surace. which will run July 20-22 at 8 PM PT in Ventura, CA (10 W. Harbor Blvd.)
Tickets are general admission within row and section, and patrons are encouraged to pack a picnic or pick up a meal from a downtown eatery and come early (the lot opens at 6:30 PM). 
For security reasons, tickets are only available in advance.