Richard Hester released his new book, Hold Please: Stage Managing A Pandemic, earlier this year.‍

Other World is now in performance at Delaware Theatre Company by Hunter Bell, Jeff Bowen, and Ann McNamee.

The second anniversary of the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic is fast approaching. Many facets of society have returned to a sort of “new normal,” but the arts and culture sector of the economy still needs help as the economic effects of the pandemic still loom. So, members of the creative economy banded together to ask for that help. Advocates for arts and culture testified before the Small Business Committee in a Congressional House Hearing titled “The Power, Peril, and Promise of the Creative Economy” on Jan. 19. In the first hearing in history to draw attention to the arts and culture economic sector, advocates provided recommendations for bringing arts and culture to the center of long-term recovery. Among the witnesses that testified before the committee was Carson Elrod, co-founder of the Be An #ArtsHero initiative and Arts Workers United. The Be An #ArtsHero initiative was founded by Elrod as well as Brooke Ishibashi, Jenny Grace Makholm and Matthew-Lee Erlbach with the goal of campaigning Congress for relief for arts workers who were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. From there, Arts Workers United was created to urge legislators to “make arts workers and the creative economy a legislative priority commensurate with their socioeconomic value” in a more official lobbying capacity, Elrod said.

Almost every theatre fan has their own “underground” favorite: a show that they fell in love with through things like cast recordings, but have never had the opportunity to see in person; a show that makes a fan wish they had a time machine, just so they could go back and see their favorite show on stage. J2 Spotlight Musical Theater Company is looking to turn some of those dreams into reality. Every season, J2 presents short revivals of classic Broadway shows, most of which did not receive lengthy original runs in New York. The company gives audience members the opportunity to revisit these shows or, in some cases, see them for the first time while also utilizing emerging artists in New York City. Artistic director Robert Schneider said the idea to start J2 was born out of a conversation between him and executive producer Jim Jimirro, centered on their shared love of obscure musicals. 

Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is a holiday season staple for many. But for Mark Shanahan, it’s much more than that—Shanahan headed five different Christmas Carol-inspired adaptations this holiday season. One of those shows is A Sherlock Carol, a new play written and directed by Shanahan, which will be playing at the New World Stages through Jan. 2. A sort of sequel to Dickens’s original story, A Sherlock Carol centers on Sherlock Holmes, who is called in to investigate the death of Ebenezer Scrooge by a grown-up Tiny Tim. “Along the way, as we mash up the world of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters, we meet lots of different characters from the original Sherlock Holmes story and the original tale of A Christmas Carol,” Shanahan said. “It’s a fun mash-up.”

Two years after his Tony-nominated performance in the revival of My Fair Lady, Harry Hadden-Paton returns to Broadway in Flying Over Sunset, which opens on Broadway tonight.On a surface level, Flying Over Sunset is about a fictional meeting between Aldous Huxley (who Hadden-Paton portrays), Clare Boothe Luce and Cary Grant, who all used the drug LSD in the 1950s. But Flying Over Sunset at its core is a story about human connection. “What it deals with is loss and connection and communication and friendship, which are all very relevant after the pandemic,” Hadden-Paton said. “That’s really what it’s about: focusing on what’s important and being made to focus on the now and what our priorities are in life and connecting with other people.”

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, many people suffered with feeling isolated. In response to this loneliness, lots of people looked for new ways to build communities as a way to adapt to this new normal. For some, this meant finding online spaces bound by common interests. For others, it looked like connecting with family and neighbors.For Kristina Wong, it meant starting up a network of hundreds of volunteers, the Auntie Sewing Squad, to make facemasks for vulnerable groups. Playing at the New York Theatre Workshop, Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord tells a story of finding community in a time of isolation while revisiting and reflecting on the social and political landscape in the United States over the past 18 months. Director Chay Yew described Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord as a sort of “docutestimonial” about Wong’s own experience, starting in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic back in March 2020.

At a first glance, it may not seem like the worker at your local Sweetgreen has much in common with the Vice President of the United States. But a theatrical installation with New York Theatre Workshop is looking to challenge that idea. Written and directed by Whitney White, “Semblance” explores how Black women are perceived in society and challenges audiences to think about how they encounter Black women in everyday life. Nikiya Mathis, who stars in “Semblance,” says the show is a portrait of Black women, examining how Black women are perceived by others and how these perceptions line up with who these women really are. 

Broadway productions are reopening for the first time in almost a year and a half, but the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the theatre community are still present. Places, Please, a film written and directed by Reed Luplau (who can currently be seen in Moulin Rouge! on Broadway), follows a group of theatre artists reflecting on the shutdown of the theatre industry and sharing their experiences about how it has affected them individually. 

After over three decades of producing thought-provoking and politically aware theatre that delves into topical and timely issues, Potomac Theatre Project continues its work with three virtual productions as part of its 34th year. Founded in Washington, D.C., in 1987, PTP was created with the primary goal of creating a theatre company that focused on politically charged pieces and allowed theatre to be used as a place to have deeper conversations about the human condition. Jim Petosa, PTP’s co-founder and co-artistic director, said that PTP’s early productions focused on issues such as Social Darwinism, the AIDS epidemic and corporate greed, all of which were hot-button issues around the time of PTP’s founding. While the themes and focuses of PTP productions have changed over time, PTP’s dedication to exploring timely issues has remained the same.

A response to Shakespeare’s King Lear, Marina Carr’s The Cordelia Dream, making its North American debut with the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York City, a woman revisits her strained relationship with a man after experiencing a chilling dream about King Lear and his daughter, Cordelia. 

The New York City-based organization dedicated to providing individuals with developmental disabilities a space in the theatre arts celebrated its 10th anniversary with a virtual festival and benefit. The 10th anniversary celebrations focused on honoring CO/LAB’s past and present accomplishments as well as looking into the future.

“TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever” from SpeakEasy Stage Company in Boston is now running digitally through May 13, 2021.

Laura Heywood, who created a name for herself in the Broadway community as the “first professional Broadway fan”, founded the online marketplace Applause Shop to help support theatre artists during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Wad, written by Keiko Green, follows the development of a pen pal relationship between Jim, a prisoner on death row, and teenage Nyce, a high schooler. The Ameenah Kaplan-directed virtual world premiere presented by A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle stands out through its handling of timely topics and unique production among the ever-growing landscape of pandemic theatre.

New Repertory Theatre in Watertown is finding new ways to showcase innovative productions during unprecedented times.

“The show must go on” is an often-repeated phrase in the world of show business, and this is the attitude many theatre programs at Boston-area universities are adopting going into the upcoming Fall 2020 semester.

The Cape Playhouse is hosting a virtual event called Leap Year Tonight on June 10 to honor what was originally supposed to be the opening night of their 2020 season.

At its core The Stone is a story about how we as human beings recount history and how history changes as it’s retold to protect people. It explores what happens when parts of history get buried and what happens when the truth comes to the surface.