Looking to bring some more singing and dancing into your home?
BROADWAYHD is offering a free trial week with extra special additions to watch.
From TravelAndLeisure.com:
To honor Women’s History Month, BroadwayHD curated a playlist featuring the works of female theater-makers and show-stopping performances including an all-female Shakespeare Trilogy, along with Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill, A Night with Janis Joplin, Ann, Driving Ms. Daisy and more.
Additionally, BroadwayHD is celebrating theater legend Stephen Sondheim for his 90th birthday and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s 72nd with a special tribute playlist including some of their most beloved productions. The playlist includes Gypsy, Putting It Together, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Cats, Phantom Of The Opera, Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, and more.
The platform is currently offering a free seven-day trial, along with a wildly affordable $8.99 monthly plan. So go ahead and watch as many times as you want.
In other theater news, did you not get to do your high school musical or college senior performance project that was supposed to be your audition for casting agents and producers?
From PLAYBILL.com:
Be More Chill producer and theatre historian Jennifer Tepper has launched a Twitter campaign to give graduating college seniors in musical theatre programs a place to showcase their talents online.The initiative comes as many college showcases—an important entry point into the industry for many graduating students that gives them the opportunity to perform for New York casting and talent agents—have been canceled in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.
Tepper tweeted out the call for video submissions tagged with #MTShowcase2020 and performers’ contact info so that she and other industry professionals could still see what the newest crop of musical theatre college graduates have to offer.
Many theatrical license companies are extending and changing online restrictions to assist small budget productions that had to cancel or restrict their runs to only a show or two. Read more about how you might be able to broadcast your performances with permission HERE. And don’t forget to email [email protected] for inclusion into our FREE PLUG FRIDAY list so we can announce any planned streaming performances.
I got this letter from a theater parent of a Central Catholic student. Having grown up in school theater programs that led to me majoring in theater, this local story broke my heart and me smile at the same time.
From Kathy:
Central Catholic Music Department had planned to put on the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on Friday & Saturday nights (13th and 14th). Since before auditions in mid-November, members of this production have been working hard to prepare for this challenging musical (with almost no spoken parts — all singing). Anticipation and excitement was high on Friday leading up to the first of the only two public shows. However, because of COVID-19, it was announced mid-day Friday that adjustments had to be made to Friday’s performance in the hopes of being able to still have Friday’s performance. The show would no longer be open to the public, and each family who had a student who was part of the performance (even if they had multiple children who were part of the performance) would be limited to two tickets for Friday’s show. In addition, it was unknown whether or not they’d even be able to have a Saturday performance.
As a mother of one of the performers, I can confirm that many tears were shed by families, many of whom had extended family traveling to see the performance. How would our children who worked tireless hours to prepare for these performances handle this news — especially the seniors, who would not have a chance to ‘do this again next year’? How would we choose who got to attend and who was left at home? Would there be another performance on Saturday so a few more people could see it then? How big was the chance that they might still be forced to cancel Friday’s performance?
Many more tears were shed when the students learned of this change of events. But I know for a fact that the students in this tight-knit group supported each other through the tears — all trying to stay strong for each other. and all prayed that they would in fact, still be able to perform that night.
Thankfully, the students were able to perform Friday night (although Saturday’s show was cancelled). The audience was greatly reduced in size because of the two ticket per family limit (an effort to keep the number of people under the 250 person limit). The performance itself was spectacular, but there were other things that were equally stunning. One was the generosity of families. Before the performance, there was a flurry of ticket swapping as families gave up their own two tickets so other families could have more people attend the performance. And the students whole-heartedly joined in on this swapping to help ensure that the families they felt most needed to be there to see their sons and daughters perform were able to attend. The second stunning occurrence was joy of the performers, and the love they obviously had for each other: during the performance; during the extended (and wonderful) curtain call; and at the end of the performance, as they recognized the Seniors, and all of the people who helped in any way with the production. This cast/crew/pit and everyone involved was a family — a family that had endured long hours preparing, a family that had endured the hardship of nearly not being able to perform at all, and a family that had just had the performance of their lives. Even at this moment on Monday morning, thinking of it brings tears to my eyes.
And if that were the end of it, that would be enough. But it extended even further with cast mates doing extra on Saturday night to make each other feel better despite not being able to perform as planned that night.
A big congratulations and a big thank you to everyone involved.
I’m giving you all a standing O, all by myself, from our studios!
Susan Saunders 3/18/20
