Now, an update on how the American theater world is creatively adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to keep its theaters and community stages dark. Theater critic J. Wynn Rousuck has been watching a steady stream of innovative online "virtual" productions by local and national companies, and she joins Tom via Skype to share a few recommendations...
Those include The Howard Ashman Celebration, an online documentary by Rainbow Sun Productions. Their YouTube video pays tribute to the late Baltimore-born lyricist, director and producer, whose work with songwriter Alan Menken on Disney animated feature films such as The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and posthumously, Aladdin, won Ashman a bevy of honors before his death from HIV/AIDS in 1991; from The Public Theater in New York City, What Do We Need to Talk About?, a new, hour-long installment of playwright Richard Nelson's popular series of The Apple Family Plays, in which the characters commune -- about art in the pandemic and other things -- not at a dinner table set, but in an online Zoom chat.
A heads-up that on July 3, a stage-captured video production of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda's mega-hit Broadway musical, begins streaming exclusively on the Disney-Plus channel.
And here are links to the two new local theater companies and another stream Judy mentioned today:
Wyrd Sisters Shakespeare Society
The Scattered Players
The Shows Must Go On!
