Below is the day-by-day calendar of “theater openings”* in September, 2020, as we enter the sixth month of winging it online — and experimenting back offline. This month will see Brian Cox as George Bernard Shaw, Harriet Harris as Eleanor Roosevelt and Damian Lewis as Oedipus the King, as well as the return of Broadway’s Boys in the Band. The Apple Family cast gets a third go-round, and there are “reunion readings” with the original Off-Broadway casts of “Hamlet in Bed” (including Annette O’Toole and John Glover) and of last year’s “Sugar in Our Wounds.” The Met offers for free its new production of “Porgy and Bess” with such Heavenly tunes as “Summertime,” just as this unsettling summer’s coming to an end, and we can try to settle in for what would normally be the beginning of the new theater season.
September offerings are not just on screens (though they’re not on conventional stages either.). A new company will launch six original plays that we can call epistolary — the audience gets involved in the letter-writing (see September 21). There is a decadent walking tour play of Greenwich Village (see September 30.).
Several ongoing series have been consistent in quality and output, some of them newly created during the pandemic.
Play-PerView (See September 12, 19 and 26)
Livelabs: One Acts from MCC (which will reportedly resume in September, but has yet to make any announcements.)
Viral Monologues from 24 Hour Plays (some 10 short new monologues almost every Tuesday)
Playing on Air, which has offered original audio plays with starry casts since 2012, has announced no new plays this month, but they keep their old ones on their site.
There is a promising new series this month from Urban Stages, which is putting its September Fest online on Wednesdays in plays that deal head-on with a contentious America (See September 2, 9, 16 and 23.) Every Wednesday this month (and on into October), the Chicago-based International Voices Project, will present translated plays from around the world, this year for the first time virtually (which means you don’t have to be in Chicago to “attend.”).
Stars in the House, Seth Rudetsky and James Wesley’s daily variety and talk show since the pandemic began, fairly reliably presents Plays in the House — Zoom readings of well-known plays, often classics — on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons…and a Sunday matinee for teenagers.
And these shows are just what we know about. Since physical theaters were shut down in March, many shows are put together at the last minute, sometimes not even announced until the very day of their launch. (And there have been last-minute cancellations too.) Even the reliable Metropolitan Opera only announces its free online offerings for a week at a time. That’s why I will be updating this preview guide every day, and highlighting the offerings each new day with a new link up top. This calendar as of this moment offers a glimpse of what’s in store. Come back day by day for a better look. (Some of the plays listed do require advance reservation.)
A reminder that this calendar lists when the shows “open.” Some are live and available only for that one performance. Other shows are available for four days, or a week, or longer.
*My definition of theater for the purposes of this calendar generally does not extend to variety shows, cast reunions, concerts, galas, panel discussions, documentaries, classes, or interviews — of which there are plenty, many worth checking out. My focus here is on creative storytelling in performance. (I make an occasional exception for a high-profile Netathon,involving many theater artists, or a novel event.)
September 1
Dear Liar
Bucks County Playhouse
7 p.m. available through September 4
$25-$35
Brian Cox portrays George Bernard Shaw and Marsha Mason the actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, who originated the role of Eliza in Pygmalion in this play by Jerome Kilty in which the characters read the letters they wrote to one another over 40 years.
Macbeth
Bedlam
7 p.m.
Shakespeare’s tragedy directed by Ryan Quinn. Come half an hour early to listen to music.
La Olla
Latino Theater Company
7 p.m. ET
A video of the 2016 adaptation of Plautus’ comedy about greed, “The Pot of Gold” which centers on Leo, a bit player lost amidst the din of a shady 1950s Los Angeles nightclub who finds a pot full of cash.
Britten’s Peter Grimes
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
A fisherman’s persecution and descent into madness.
Tolerance Party: #1 “Ice-Breakers
The Cell
8 p.m.
$5 to $25
The first in a series, each a half-hour long. “Six strangers are brought together in a video chat by an unknown entity and are given a group task, but no one can agree what it is.” Written and directed by Joseph Hendel, but the audience has a say about what happens.
September 2
Bars and Measures
Urban Stages
7 p.m. available until September 6
The first entry in Urban Stages’ September Play Fest, Idris Goodwin’s play tells the tale of two brothers. One is a classical pianist. The other is a jazz bass player. One a Christian. The other a Muslim. One living in freedom. The other in jail. Separated by bars, can the brothers reconcile their differences through the language they know best: Music? The virtual reading features the same cast as the 2019 production (pictured above): Shabazz Green, Roderick Lawrence,
Abraham Makany and Salma Shaw
John Adams’s Nixon in China
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Jauria/Spain
International Voices Project
8 p.m.
Based on a court trial where the victim is forced to provide more details on her personal intimacy than the defendants.
September 3
The Oedipus Project
Theater of War Productions
2 p.m. Live only
Damian Lewis, Lesley Sharp, Clarke Peters and Kathryn Hunter perform Sophocles’s “Oedipus The King” as a way to consider the current pandemic
Three Kings
Old Vic
2:30 p.m. ET
£10-£40
A solo play by Stephen Beresford about fathers and sons written for Andrew Scott to perform during the lockdown. The play will be streamed live directly from the Old Vic stage with the empty auditorium as a backdrop for five performances only. (This is the rescheduled opening after the initial July run was delayed due to Scott’s “minor surgery”)
F’kd Up Fairytales
Rising Sun
7 p.m. live only
$10-$30
Four Grimm fairy tales get a modern twist. Hansel and Gretel told as a manga tale, The White Snake as a slapstick comedy, Rumpelstiltskin told as a film noir and Little Red Riding Hood as a horror tale. The audience will be encouraged to interact via chat, and to drink.
Berg’s Lulu
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Marlis Petersen stars in William Kentridge’s 2015 production of this opera as a woman who captivates all the men around her.
The Bus Stop
Seacoast Rep
7:30 p.m. live only. repeated 9/4, 9/12
$20 – $60
In a production by this New Hampshire company, playwright Najee A. Brown explores the lives of five Black women with little in common except that a loved one is incarcerated.
Belting for Biden
Broadway Sessions
9 p.m.
A virtual concert celebrating VP Nominee Kamala Harris with an all-female line-up: Judy Kuhn, Hailey Kilgore, Laura Bell Bundy, Saycon Sengbloh, Krystal Joy Brown, Nikki Renée Daniels, Ryann Redmond and singer-songwriter Shaina Taub
September 4
In Love and Warcraft
American Conservatory Theater
3 p.m. ET
In Madhuri Shekar’s play, college senior Evie prefers the online role-playing game World of Warcraft to real life. In the game, she’s a fearless warrior with a boyfriend. In real life, she ghostwrites love letters for people, even though she’s neither been in love. When Evie becomes attracted to her client Raul, she must decide whether or not to let her powerful and sexy warrior character out in the real world. Live performances 9/4, 9/5, 9/11, 9/12, in which you can chat, or on-demand 9/18 – 9/25
Dinner with Friends
Play Reading Fridays
7 p.m.
A benefit reading of Donald Margulies’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play about the ups and downs of two couples over the course and courses of a dozen years.Starring Kenita Miller, Chad Jennings, Jackie Burns and Ben Davis
Broadway Summer Spectacular
Bristol Riverside Theater
7 p.m.
$35
Telly Leung is among the Broadway stars singing from musicals by Stephen Sondheim, Richard Rodgers and George Gershwin
Eleanor
Barrington Stage Company
7:30 p.m. repeated September 5
$15
This new play about Eleanor Roosevelt, by Mark St. Germain stars Harriet Harris (who also portrayed the First Lady, diplomat and activist in the recent Ryan Murphy Netflix series “Hollywood.” as well as in a forthcoming TV series, “Atlantic Crossing.”)
The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for two days
Porgy and Bess returned to the Met stage for the first time in 30 years to open the 2019–20 season, with a cast led by Eric Owens and Angel Blue singing the familiar arias “Summertime,” “It ain’t necessarily so,” and “I got plenty of nothing,
September 5
Porgy and Bess at the Met
Sapience
Latinx New Play Festival
3 p.m.
Diana Burbana’s play about the connection formed between an orangutan named Wookie and an autistic child, who teaches Wookie about death.
Extreme Home Makeover
Latinx New Play Festival
6 p.m.
Makasha Copeland’s comedy, a family goes to extreme measures to get a slot in a reality TV show.
Eleanor
Barrington
7:30 live
Harriet Harris as Eleanor Roosevelt
Spanking Machine
Latinx New Play Festival
9 p.m.
Marga Gomez’s darkly comic memoir about the first boy she ever sloppy kissed and how it made them gay forever. Anybody who has seen Marga Gomez perform knows how hilarious she is, and what a good storyteller. Spanking Machine is her 13th solo show.
September 6
Thomas Adès’s The Tempest
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
September 7
Massenet’s Manon
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
In this first opera of the Met’s French Week, a beautiful ingénue with a taste for the finer things makes her way to Paris, where she becomes irresistible to the men around her—including the passionate Chevalier des Grieux, whose all-consuming love for her leads to ruin.
September 8
Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
The star-crossed lovers at the center are assigned no fewer than four duets
September 9
#Nword
Urban Stages
7 p.m. available until September 13
In this play by Christian Elder, a white girl calls a black boy “the n word” on the school bus. His mother confronts her mother. The event escalates.
Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
Faust’s ruinous bargain with the devil Mephistopheles and his descent to the depths of hell, with a huge orchestra, chorus, and children’s chorus, in addition to highly taxing principal roles. Fully staged, which is rare.
“Take the Rubbish Out, Sasha” | Ukraine
International Voices Project
8 p.m.
Sasha, a colonel in the Ukrainian army, who has died of a heart failure, sees his widow Katia and his step-daughter Oksana prepare his funeral feast. A year later, the country will be engulfed in the events that can make the dead rise. Sasha is ready to be resurrected, but his family is not
September 10
Incidental Moments of the Day
Apple Family Plays
7:30 p.m. Available through November 5
The third and final play in “The Apple Family: Life on Zoom” sub-series, the first of which, in April, I loved, the second of which, in July, I didn’t. Written and directed by Richard Nelson, with the same reliable five-member cast (plus one additional performer), this third installment takes place after six months of self-imposed pandemic isolation. “The Apple siblings again gather on Zoom for an evening of dinner, conversation and performance, while the world continues to sputter more and more out of control, amidst anger, loss, death and a coming election.”
Massenet’s Cendrillon
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
operatic take on the classic Cinderella story
September 11
Qualified Alien
Here Arts
1 p.m.
A puppet and their assistant petition to join the circus. Rosa Douglas and Ben Elling light a candle for the meritocracy in this short puppet play, adapted for screen.
Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs des Perles
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
After Carmen, this is Bizet’s “other” great masterpiece, a passionate romance well stocked with the kind of melting melodies that put the young composer—just 24 years old when the work premiered—on the 19th-century Parisian map. The opera tells of two fisherman friends who lock horns over a demure yet vocally powerful priestess of Brahma—who is herself torn between piety and her own powerful desires.
September 12
Sleep Apnea
Invisible Dog
This is a short, live, in-person performance running through October 17, in time slots starting at 1 p.m., at The Invisible Dog Art Center (51 Bergen Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn).Static apnea is the term for when a person holds their breath (apnea) underwater for as long as possible. Here, one audience member, surrounded by a tunnel of blue light, descends towards a single performer behind a wall of glass. In a 9 minute and 2 second performance – the female record for static apnea – this performative installation explores how far one might be willing to go to save a life. Tickets are free. Reservations for specific entry times can be made at theamericanvicarious.org. Walk ups will be accommodated if entry times are available.
Baby Jessica’s Well-Made Play
Walk Up Arts
By the team behind The End of the World Bar and Bathtub, this is another unorthodox immersive play, this one loosely inspired by the story of Baby Jessica and the collective cultural experience U.S. citizens shared while witnessing Baby Jessica’s 58-hour rescue from a well in midland Texas on October 14-16, 1987. For $25, a single audience member can book what the company is calling “a five-act phone adventure to the bottom of a well and out again.” that includes “an audio-recording, live performances, interaction with an audience member from another performance and a mysterious fifth act that’s months in the future.”
Seneca Falls
Play-PerView
7 p.m. live only
$5-$50
This play by Jean Ann Douglas is “an anachronistic triptych through late nights in the first 72 years of the women’s suffrage movement: 72 years of… mostly a lot of waiting.” The cast includes Susannah Flood, April Matthis, Kelly McAndrew Monique St. Cyr, Erin Wilhelmi and John Zdrojeski
12 Angry Men…and Women: the Weight of the Wait.
Billie Holiday Theater
7:30 p.m.
Wendell Pierce, Lisa Arrindell, and Billy Eugene Jones star in this staged reading of everyday people subjected to racial profiling, based upon the book edited by Gregory S. Parks and Matthew W. Hughey, 12 Angry Men: True Stories of Being a Black Man in America Today
Berlioz’s Les Troyens
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
The aftermath of the Trojan War and Aeneas’s exploits in Carthage, by way of Virgil’s Aeneid, in a five-act magnum opus that stands as one of the most ambitious works in the operatic canon.
Tape
The Shared Screen
8 p.m., available until September 21
After 10 years, three self-absorbed people are forced to reckon with the unresolved trauma of a high school love triangle.
Cocaine
Metropolitan Playhouse
8 p.m. available for four days
Erin Beirnard and James Ross portray a boxer and a hooker, both addicts, in this 1916 one-act tragedy by one Pendleton King, which was produced by the Provincetown Players
September 13
Miscast
MCC
8 p.m.
The annual event, live-streamed this year for free, in which a cavalcade of stars perform (briefly) in roles for which they would never be cast.
Massenet’s Werther
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
A sensuous, charged opera based on Goethe’s 1774 novel about a lovesick poet’s infatuation with a married woman
September 14
The Revenger’s Tragedy
Red Bull Theater
7:30 p.m. available through September 18
Corrupt government, hypocrisy, abuse of power, adultery, murder, the death penalty, acts of vengeance, violence and vigilantism–Jacobean tragedy, or the headlines of The New York Times? This mesmerizing thriller, written a few years after Hamlet, is a searing examination of humankind’s social need for justice and our animal desire for vengeance.
September 15
Watching the Watcher
Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
5 p.m.
Dael Orlandersmith’s work in progress about the people we don’t see who see us.
Viral Monologues
24 Hour Plays
starting at 6 p.m
Playwright son these short monologues this week Round 19! — include Eliza Bent, James Lapine, Kenneth Lonergan, Marsha Norman, Liliana Padilla, Alexis Scheer and Jonathan Marc Sherman.
La Víctima
Latino Theater Company
10 p.m.
a recording of the 2010 production of this play written collectively by Teatro De La Esperanza on history of Mexican-US immigration through the eyes of two families, starring the late Lupe Ontiveros
September 16
Theater of War for front-line medical providers
Theater of War Productions
Launches at noon
Dramatic readings of Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Women of Trachis as a catalyst for a discussion about the impact of Covid-19. Best-known for Antigone in Ferguson, the company founded by Bryan Doerries performs classical plays to prompt community discussions about urgent issues. This edition features performances by Amy Ryan, Marjolaine Goldsmith, Frankie Faison, and David Zayas.
Alls Well That Ends Well
The Show Must Go Online
2 p.m.
A Zoom reading of Shakespeare’s comedy about a one-sided romance, based on a tale from Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and set in Italy and France. It’ll be followed by guest speaker Dathan B. Williams, the Associate Artistic Director and dramaturge of The Harlem Shakespeare Festival.The company has been performing a different Shakespeare play each week, in the order in which they were presumably written, since March 19th, all of them still available on director Rob Myles’ YouTube channel.
Faith Healer
Old Vic
£10-£40
2:30 p.m. ET
Michael Sheen stars in Brian Friel’s play about a man who goes on the road trying to heal people, bringing along his wife Grace (Indira Varma) and manager Teddy (David Threlfall) Faith Healer is the third in the Old Vic: In Camera live streamed performances, and will be streamed live directly from the iconic Old Vic stage with the empty auditorium as a backdrop for five performances only.
Close Encounters
The Moth
6:30 p.m.
$15
Storyteller regulars Dion Flynn, Flash Rosenberg, Devan Sandiford, Angela Derecas Taylor and Devin Elise Wilson tell their tales in Green-Wood Cemetery, livestreamed onto your computer screens.
The Incels
Urban Stages
7 p.m. available until September 20
In this play by Ruth Zamoyta, two depressed, bitter men can’t find girlfriends. Can a third man convince them to put down their guns?
Seven Homeless Mammoths Wander New England
Two River Theater
7 p.m.
$25
A reading of Madeleine George’s sex comedy (which premiered at the theater in 2011): Dean Wreen’s college is in dire financial straits, and a plan to close its on-campus natural history museum is sending unexpected shock waves in every direction—just as the Dean’s ex-girlfriend has come back into her life.Act I is tonight, Act II tomorrow.
Love Rosie and Thunderboy
NY Theatre Barn
7 p.m.
This week’s 45 minute show excerpts a musical in progress by Peter Duchan and Zack Zadek about 18-year-olds Rosie and Alex who are from different worlds but share a passion for music, a the first transgender superhero musical, by Jaime Jarret
Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment
Metropolitan Opera
7:30 p.m. available for 23 hours
A comedy about a headstrong young woman who has been raised among a French army regiment and falls in love with a villager, much to the dismay of the overprotective soldiers.
“All Adventurous Women Do” | Serbia
International Voices Project
8 p.m.
A play about the necessity of going elsewhere to fully realize one’s sexuality,
Jack Was Kind
All for One Theater
8 p.m. Through October 10
Tracy Thorne wrote and performs this “intimate, confessional play examines long-seated issues of privilege and complicity.” The production will be presented live on Zoom, four times a week, Wednesday-Saturday through October 10 for limited audiences.
Unbought and Unbossed: Reclaiming Our Vote
National Black Theatre
Available through October 28
“Micro-commissions from Black women artists including Ngozi Anyanwu, Hope Boykin and Mahogany L. Browne, grounded in the dynamic legacy of Shirley Chisholm. A new commission will be unveiled every Wednesday through October 28 on the National Black Theatre website
September 17
Bulrusher
Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate
7 p.m. Available through September 20
A swoon-worthy cast gives a reading of Eisa Davis’ Bulrusher. Found floating in a basket on the river as an infant, Bulrusher is a multiracial orphan with a gift for clairvoyance that makes her feel like a stranger even amongst the strange residents of the redwood country north of San Francisco in 1955. Then a black girl from Alabama comes to town. Paula Vogel writes of this play: “2006 we voted unanimously for Eisa Davis’ BULRUSHER for the Pulitzer. The Board gave it to Rabbithole. Last night I heard a reading of this play by great actors. I wept. Such grace about race, such an embrace of our humanity.”
DO RE #METOO
9 p.m.
A virtual concert of badass feminists led by Laura Benanti, Peppermint and Margaret Cho covering the most sexist songs ever written!
September 18
Sitting and Talking
Mile Square Theater
$20
This play by Lia Romeo, the first of seven commissioned by this first-rate Hoboken theater specifically, for Zoom stars Dan Lauria (The Wonder Year, Lombardi) and Wendie Malick as singles in their sixties navigating online dating.
Nazis and Me
Queens Theater
7 p.m.
Writer and performer David Lawson’s humorous and bracing one-man show about encountering hate groups. My review of the show in 2018.
Downtown Variety Take 14
La MaMa ETC
8 p.m.
The launch of La MaMa’s 59th season with a virtual afterparty, featuring Belarus Free Theatre, Annie-B Parson, Stacy Stearns, Paul D. Miller aka DJ Spooky, D’Mani Thomas.
Zero Cost House
Pig Iron Theater
8 p.m.
The play commissioned by this Philadelphia company charts playwright Toshiki Okada’s physical and ethical journey through a time when earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster reordered life in Japan.
Cannabis!
Here Arts
Baba Israel, Grace Galu, and their band Soul Inscribed use music and spoken word to explore the history of cannabis in a theatrical concert based on “Smoke Signals: A Social History of Marijuana – Medical, Recreational, and Scientific” by Martin A. Lee
Sleep with the Angels
Latino Theater Company
10 p.m. ET
In this new play by Evelina Fernandez, a mother separated from her husband hires a childcare provider, who seems magical and charming….at first.
September 19
Sugar in Our Wounds
Play-PerView
7 p.m.
A “reunion reading” (with the original Off-Broadway cast) of Donja Love’s play about a romance about a slave on a plantation during the Civil War and a passing stranger.
Eugenically Speaking
Metropolitan Playhouse
8 p.m.
In this 30-minute play written by Edward Goodman in 1915, Una Braithewaite, daughter of a railcar magnate who is convinced of her superiority, independence, and the privileges they afford, has a plan to live up to her ideals by marrying below her station. The plan doesn’t work because the train conductor she plans to marry has a secret.
September 20
Macbeth
Gorilla Rep
2 p.m.
A Marvelous Party
Noel Coward Foundation
2 p.m.
A starry British cast (Judi Dench, Stephen Fry, Cush Jumbo, Emma Thompson et al) read from the works of Noel Coward
September 21
Artistic Stamp
This new company, with scripts by six playwrights, takes “audiences” on an unusual journey, through handwritten correspondence. For each play, the actors exchange seven letters over several months with audience members becoming a character in the story, replying to the letters and playing a role in deciding the outcome. All six plays launch today.
Shout
7 p.m.
$10
A recording of a 2008 production at Chicago’s Drury Lane of this musical set in the swinging’ Sixties that features such as hits “Don’t Sleep in the Subway”, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin'”, “To Sir, With Love”, and “Downtown”, and a nominal plot about five women writing letters to an advice columnist from the magazine Shout!
Black Words Matter
New Federal Theatre
7 p.m.
A virtual poetry jam
Othello
Harlem Shakespeare Festival
8 p.m.
An all-female adaptation
September 22
Romantics Anonymous
Bristol Old Vic
2:30 p.m. ET live performances through September 26
£15
A musical composed by Michael Kooman that tells the fragile love story of Angélique is a gifted chocolate maker crippled by social anxiety and Jean-René, the awkward boss of a failing chocolate factory. Livestreamed from the stage by a cast that has quarantined together
Viral Musicals
24 Hour Plays
6 p.m.
Round 20 are mini-musicals featuring a stellar cast — Christopher Fitzgerald, Noah Galvin, Lora Lee Gayer, L Morgan Lee and Kate Rockwell — and well-known composers and playwrights –James Lapine, Kirsten Childs, Eli Bolin, Kristoffer Diaz, Gordon Greenberg, Tasha Gordon-Solmon, Christopher Oscar Peña, Jonathan Marc Sherman, William Finn, Aimee Mann and Jonathan Coulton.
Belfast Blues
Irish Rep
7 p.m.
Writer and performer Geraldine Hughes offers a tapestry of autobiographical stories of coming of age in the war-torn Belfast of the 1980s. Filmed at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre.
What The Hell is a Republic Anyway? Episode 1
New York Theatre Workshop
7 p.m.
$10
The first of four episodes comparing the fall of the Roman Republic and… Fall 2020 in America. This episode is entitled “Rome and America: Separated at Birth”
September 23
King Lear
The Show Must Go Online
2 p.m. ET
Karen, I Said
6 p.m.
A 45-minute Zoom play
written and performed by Eliza Bent about what happens when a woke white lady tries to out-woke another.
The Silverfish
Urban Stages
7 p.m. available until September 27
Meghan Loughran’s play starring Holly Davis, Nikki M. James, George Salazar and Kate Wetherhead tells the story of a young, broke couple in love thrown a curveball, who come up with a plan. “It might not be a plan that “good people” would go for, but when you’re young and in love and desperate and poor, the word “good” can mean a lot of things.”
“Testosterone” | Germany
International Voices Project
8 p.m.
This comedy offers a parable about toxic masculinities and the limits of liberal do-goodery in extreme times.
September 24
To Protect, Serve and Understand
Irondale Theater
A series of monologues that are the outgrowth of a workshop involving police an civilians. Before the show, a police offer and a civilian will be paired up with one another and taken through a guided interview. From that, they will each write a monologue of the others perspective and perform it, stepping into the others shoes to begin the process of understanding the other
September 25
Analyze Zoom and Mom and Me
Mile Square Theater
$15
This double feature lasts a total of 30 minutes. In the play by Nandita Shenoy, a therapist tells Priyanka ways to get out of her funk. In the play by Cary Gitter, Cam shares big news with his mother via Zoom from their respective quarantines.
Fame The Musical
The Shows Must Go On
2 p.m. ET Available for 48 hours
Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s YouTube channel resumes sharing musical productions every week, starting with this video capture of a 2018 West End performance of the 1988 musical, adapted by José Fernandez from the 1980 movie about students at New York’s High School for Performing Arts
The Best of Hoop
Cirque du Soleil
3 p.m.
From hoop diving to hoop dancing
Completeness
Horizon Theater
7:30 p.m.
A play by Itamar Moses (The Band’s Visit.) What happens when brain and heart collide? Two grad students might have the answer, if they can look up from their research long enough to find out
September 26
Strange Fruit Part 2
L.A. Writers Center via HowlRound
A play by Jon Bastian that revolves around Matthew Shepard as he’s brought to the fence where he meets other historical figures, such as James Baldwin, Oscar Wilde, Billie Holiday, Walter White, Anne and Abel Meeropol, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and Mary and Hayes Turner.
Hamlet in Bed
Play-PerView
7 p.m.
A “reunion reading” of Michael Laurences Off-Broadway play featuring Annette O’Toole and John Glover
Seven Minutes in Heaven
Colt Coeur
8 p.m.
A reading of this ten-year-old play by Steven Levenson (Dear Evan Hansen) set in 1995 that follows six high school freshman on a splintered night of dysfunctional party games, fumbling first kisses, ruined reputations, broken promises.
Insulted. Belarus(sia)
Wilma Theater
8 p.m.
A reading of the play by Belarus writer and dissident Andrei Kureichik
in solidarity with the people and theater community of Belarus. Inspired by the real-life figures involved, with some dialogue taken verbatim from the public record, the play tells the story of the first month of the current Belarusian revolution, where the people are protesting after President Alexander Lukashenko – known as Europe’s last dictator – claimed victory in a contested election.
American Dreams
ASU Gammage/Working Theater etc.
9 p.m.
In Leila Buck’s play, a TV game show vote has the audience vote on who gets to be a citizen. (The audience actually gets to vote.) This show is being presented live around the country through November 15, starting tonight at the website of Arizona State University’s theater, ASU Gammage. It’s at NYC’s Working Theater October 20-25.
September 27
Caesar and Cleopatra
Plays in the House
2 p.m.
A reading of the play by George Bernard Shaw starring Brenda Braxton, Robert Cuccioli, Mirirai Sithole, Jeff Applegate, Jonathan Hadley, Dan Domingues and Rajesh Bose. Directed and adapted by David Staller, it will be presented at the Stars in the House YouTube channel.
September 28
Transmissions in Advance of the Second Great Dying
Echo Theater
10:30 p.m.
An epic tale of grief and global warming through the intersecting lives of Earth’s human and non-human inhabitants in 2045 by playwright Jessica Huang
September 29
Commercial Break and Come On
Food for Thought Productions
2 p.m.
The company presents its monthly theater that’s both live, in-person at 80 Theater and also via Zoom. (Live is free and a limited audience; Zoom is $25.) Jodie Markel, Rex Reed and Stephen Schnetzer star in Commercial Break by Peter Stone and Come On by Susan Charlotte. Tony Roberts will also read excerpts from his memoir “Do You Know Me?”
September 30
Broadway & The Bard: An Evening of Shakespeare & Song,
The Actors Fund
7:30 p.m. Available through October 4
Len Cariou, a Broadway star as adept in musicals (Tony winner for Sweeney Todd) as in Shakespeare, put together a solo show Off-Broadway in 2016 (and toured with it last year), offering both Broadway songs and Shakespeare soliloquys and sonnets. It will be presented for free on the Actors Fund’s YouTube channel,
“Decomposed Theatre” | Romania
International Voices Project
8 p.m.
Imagine the fragments of a shattered mirror. The challenge before us is to reconstruct the original
Voyeur: The Windows of Toulouse Lautrec
Bated Breath Theater Company
In this open air, intimate theatrical experience, you and five other masked audience members will be guided through the dreams of iconic artist Toulouse-Lautrec as he recalls his final absinthe-laced years living and working in Montmartre. The sidewalks, doorways and windows of Greenwich Village become the setting as live accompaniment collides with the city’s soundscape, transporting you into the bohemian world of 1899 Paris.
The Tribute Artist
Primary Stages
8 p.m. live, through October 4
$35
A virtual reading of the play written by and starring Charles Busch as an out-of-work female impersonator who, when his elderly landlady dies in her sleep, takes on her identity in order to hang on to her valuable Greenwich Village townhouse. There will be six more live virtual readings through October 4. My review from 2014.
Boys in the Band
Netflix
A video capture of the 2018 starry Broadway production of Mart Crowley’s landmark gay play. (Subscription required.)
