Online Theater Offerings - August
Categories of Events
Please click on a category below to be taken directly to that section:
Streaming Events
'Hamilton' on Disney+
Streaming Starts Friday, July 3
The filmed version of the original Broadway smash hit Hamilton streams on Disney+ starting
on July 3rd, 2020. An unforgettable cinematic stage performance, the filmed version of the original Broadway production of Hamilton combines the best elements of live theater, film and streaming to bring the cultural phenomenon to homes around the world.
Streaming On:
'We Are Freestyle Love Supreme' Documentary
Streaming Starts Friday, July 17
The new documentary We Are Freestyle Love Supreme is a 15-year retrospective
of Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail and Anthony Veneziale's hip-hop improv show.
Directed by Andrew Fried, the film chronicles Freestyle Love Supreme's journey from a game played by Miranda and his collaborators in the basement of the Drama Book Shop to its Broadway run at the Booth Theater.
Fried began filming when the group first toured the show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2005, and the documentary shows footage of Miranda, Kail, Veneziale, Christopher Jackson, James Monroe Iglehart, Utkarsh Ambudkar, Chris Sullivan, Bill Sherman and
Andrew Bancroft. We Are Freestyle Love Supreme reveals why this show
still means so much to these accomplished performers.
Streaming On:
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Daily varied offerings
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts now offers Programs, Series, On Demand
and a daily schedule of several Events per day on its website.
Available on:
'The Tempest'
Supporting Commonwealth Shakespeare Company
Thursday, August 6 at 7:00 PM - Monday, August 10 at 7:00 PM
CSC will present an online, script-in-hand, performance on Thursday, August 6 at 7:00PM,
as a benefit to support CSC’s 2021 production on the Boston Common, with the previously announced cast led by John Douglas Thompson in the role of Prospero.
Free with a suggested donation of $20 to support the Company. Learn more...
There will be separate recordings that will include captioning, audio descriptions,
and ASL interpretation of the performance, made available on the CSC website by
Saturday, August 8 at 7:00 PM. Both the recording of the live performance and the ASL interpreted performance will be available on the CSC YouTube channel
until Monday, August 10 at 7:00 PM.
Available via:
Podcasts & Audio Plays
'Playing on Air' - A Theater Podcast
Sundays in August, beginning August 2
Hear short, contemporary stage plays with first-rate casts. Playing on Air brings together
award winners and emerging young talent, and each play is followed by a conversation
with the playwrights and cast. Tune in for great American plays with great American actors, hosted and produced by Claudia Catania.
The August min-series podcast series of audio dramas will feature four short plays by
Alan Zweibel, Rachel Bonds, Cassandra Medley, and David Ives, each to be followed
by a conversation with the artists.
Additionally, 100 past episodes of the podcast are available HERE.
More Information: HERE
Works By Idris
Available Now
Five short plays to spark conversation and serve as a catalyst for action.
Each of these short works, written to be read across the multi-generational spectrum,
offer different insights about disconnects in racial conversation and the
Black experience in America. Idris Goodwin hopes that this release also provides
a model for open-source theater and storytelling, in which the
connection between playwright and community is direct.
Available HERE. Scroll to the section below digital content.
'Dream Boston'
Available Now
Welcome to “Dream Boston,” a future vision of our city, brought to you by the Huntington Theater Company, that is somewhere between dream and reality. Through short audio
plays, Dream Boston asked local playwrights to imagine their favorite locations, landmarks,
and friends in a future Boston, when we can once again meet and thrive in our city.
These micro-plays take place at locations such as the MIT Great Dome on the 4th of July while the sounds of the 1812 Overture float in the background, at the Boston Public Library during a minor dust-up between two bookworms, and a not-so-perfect first date on
the edge of the Boston Common.
Listen HERE
'Closing the Distance' Podcast
Available Now
Closing the Distance, a new scripted podcast, will look at social-distancing, quarantine, and isolation in a series of ten short audio dramas. Among those starring in the project are Broadway alums Jason Alexander, Tony Danza, William Hurt, Kelli O'Hara, and Kathleen Turner. Co-written by authors Tawni O’Dell and Lou Aronica, and directed by Tony-winning producer and director Mitchell Maxwell, episodes of Closing the Distance are now available on Apple Podcasts. Created in response to the public health crisis, the show explores the sudden distance between people as a result of the pandemic.
In ‘Working From Home’, O’Hara portrays the mother a four-year-old with a husband overseas, trying to resolve her feelings of anger at the world with the love she feels for her daughter.
In ‘The Man Who Couldn't Google’, Alexander plays a writer who lives alone and prides himself on his independence — until he finds himself helpless when he loses his glasses.
More episodes will be released, with further casting to be announced. The series will also feature an original song written and composed by Sam Tsui and Casey Breves,
performed by Tsui and Breves with Alex Blue.
Available On:
Audio Presentation of Aaron Mark's 'Squeamish'
Available Now
Two-time Tony nominee Alison Fraser (The Secret Garden, Romance/Romance)
can be heard in a free audio presentation of writer-director Aaron Mark's play Squeamish,
which premiered Off-Broadway in 2017.
The horror monologue play was seen at Theatre Row, presented by All For One Theatre.
The audio version, recorded in 2018, is now available for free streaming at PandemicPlayhouse.com. Fraser was nominated for both Outer Critics Circle and
Off-Broadway Alliance awards for her work in the production.
Squeamish is the tale of an Upper West Side shrink, a longtime recovering alcoholic,
and a world-class hemophobe (fear of blood), who finds herself in her native
South Plains of Texas, off her psychotropic drugs, off caffeine,
and off anything else “unnatural” after her nephew's sudden death.
Streaming On:
Weekly Online Offerings
Play Discussion Club - from SpeakEasy Stage
Thursdays, 5:30-6:30 PM
Join us for our SpeakEasy Play Discussion Club, a weekly discussion surrounding some of today’s most exciting scripts! Participation is free, but you may need to purchase
some of the scripts. Sign up for as many sessions as you’d like, read the play on your own time, and then join SpeakEasy staff and artists for an online conversation about the play’s
major themes and impact on the American theater canon.
Thursday, August 6, 5:30–6:30 PM
Mlima’s Tale by Lynn Nottage
Mlima is a magnificent elephant trapped by the underground international ivory market. As he follows a trail littered by a history of greed, Mlima takes us on a journey through memory, fear, tradition, and the penumbra between want and need.
Sign Up: HERE
'Macbeth'
Available Now
Follow the Cambridge-based theater company Liars & Believers as they re-imagine this Shakespeare classic in our age of pandemic. Shortened and serialized; each episode is 5-10 minutes long. Scenes are released weekly. Free.
See all scenes HERE (scroll to the bottom, then scroll up)
'Chelsea People'
Original Operettas from the Apollinaire Theater
Saturday August 1 and 8; 7:30 PM gather, 8:00 PM curtain
Moved by the heroic ways Chelsea has come together in the face of the pandemic
to provide for its residents, Apollinaire Theatre has set out to create an exciting work of art
that celebrates the heart of Chelsea: its people.
Apollinaire asked three Chelsea organizations, GreenRoots, The Neighborhood Developers,
and the Chelsea Collaborative, to each nominate a Chelsea resident to be the subject of an original play with music, which will be created over the course of one week.
Four Chelsea residents— Grace Muwina, Terry & Joe Englen, and Jessica Armijo will each
have their life stories developed into original operettas and presented live over Zoom
by a large Apollinaire Theater creative team!
Learn More: HERE
Register for Free Tickets: HERE
The Boston Globe – ArtsAlive
Updated Weekly on Thursdays
Get inspired while staying inside with ArtsAlive, a new initiative from The Boston Globe celebrating the arts with exclusive content provided by local theaters, musicians
and museums. New videos added every Thursday.
Available On:
The Shows Must Go On
Weekly - Fridays at 2:00 PM
Stream the works of Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber on YouTube — for free. “The Shows Must Go On!” streams weekly and plans to air some of his most celebrated shows. Free to stream with options for viewers to donate to organizations that support theater workers during the pandemic,
such as Acting For Others, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS and the Actors Benevolent Fund. Each stream stays available for 48 hours.
Streaming On:
Daily Online Offerings
'Broadway World: Living Room Concerts
Daily
Broadway World partnered with some incredible singers to launch a series of daily
Living Room Concerts on their website. These performances come direct to you
from the living rooms of Broadway performers.
Past concerts can be viewed on their website and new concerts are posted daily.
Streaming On:
Metropolitan Opera Nightly Opera Streams
Daily - 7:30 PM
Each day, a different encore presentation from the Met's Live in HD series is being made available for free streaming on the Met website, with each performance available
for a period of 23 hours, from 7:30 PM until 6:30 PM the following day.
The schedule will include outstanding complete performances from the past 14 years
of cinema transmissions, starring all of opera’s greatest singers.
Streaming On:
Stars in the House
Daily – 2:00 PM and 8:00 PM
In the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic and theaters across the world closing
their curtains indefinitely, SiriusXM host Seth Rudetsky and his husband, producer James Wesley, created Stars in the House, a daily live streamed series to support
The Actors Fund and its services.
New shows air daily and are a combination of music, community, and education .
With musical performances by stars remotely from their home and conversations with
Seth and James between each tune, viewers can also donate to the charity and interact with the guests in real time. Guests include Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Lithgow, Jason Alexander, Kristen Chenoweth, Frozen composers Bobby Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez,
writers Tina Fey and Jeff Richmond, and many more.
All Shows from the past 10 days are available online, and Stars in the House plans to
stream daily until Broadway re-opens.
Streaming On:
Other Theater Offerings
A.R.T. Archives
Available Now
Archival scenes, musical numbers, videos, photography, articles, reviews, podcasts
and more from American Repertory Theater., including: Midsummer Night's Dream,
Moby Dick, Othello, Pippin, Waitress and more, all free on their website.
Available HERE
'Unfinished Work'
Tuesday, August 18, 7:00 PM
They were tireless organizers. Tenacious fighters. Political geniuses.
They were Black and Latinx. Indigenous and immigrant. Together, they won women
the right to vote and laid the cornerstone for gender equality in the United States.
Yet their stories have rarely been told. Until now.
This August, we give voice to these heroes of the suffrage movement. Join us for the
premiere of this innovative new performance. Learn why their fight is far from over.
Free from the New York Times
Register HERE
