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In-person shows have been back for over a year now, but sometimes we want to get our theatre fix at home. Thankfully, there are still wonderful stage performances to watch online. Our carefully curated list spotlights the five best performances to stream this weekend, Friday, September 9 to Sunday, September 11, for free or at low cost.
Broadway Comes Home: A Kate Baldwin Concert Film
Streaming until Sunday, September 18 for a suggested donation of $25
In 2021, two-time Tony nominee Kate Baldwin (Hello, Dolly!, Finian's Rainbow) returned to her hometown of Milwaukee to perform an intimate, invite-only evening at the Skylight Music Theatre. Now that special show is available to stream as a concert-documentary hybrid titled Broadway Comes Home, interspersing songs from that performance with footage of Baldwin visiting the places and people who helped raise her. Proceeds benefit the nonprofit Skylight Music Theatre.
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Ensemble Studio Theatre: what you are now
Streaming until Sunday, September 25 for FREE but registration required
After a well-received premiere at Ensemble Studio Theatre last fall, Sam Chanse's what you are now is available to stream. Recorded live on stage and coproduced by docutheatre darlings The Civilians, the drama centers on a young researcher investigating cutting-edge ways to heal the mind from traumatic recollections. But her interest isn't just professional, it's personal as her mother is haunted by surviving the devastating violence of the Khmer Rouge in her native Cambodia. As the action toggles between the past and the present, the piece explores the mutability of memory. The Civilians' artistic director Steve Cosson helms the production.
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TheatreSquared: It Came From Outer Space
Streaming until Sunday, September 25 for $25
The musical comedy duo behind Murder for Two, Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair, are back with a brand-new campy tuner: It Came From Outer Space. Based on the cult 1953 sci-fi flick of the same name, the show centers on a small-town astronomer who spots an alien spaceship in the desert. No one believes him... but then his fellow townsfolk start acting really, really weird. Is a takeover afoot? A coproduction of three acclaimed regional theatres, the out-of-this-world production was recorded live on stage at Arkansas' TheatreSquared.
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Original Theatre Company: Stumped
Streaming Saturday, September 10 at 2 p.m. ET for £20, approximately $23
Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter weren't just groundbreaking absurdist playwrights, they were also very competitive cricket players. Shomit Dutta's darkly comic one-act celebrates their passions as Beckett (Stephen Tompkinson) and Pinter (Andrew Lancel) share a game, a wordplay-filled chat and a pot of tea. Live-streaming from Lord's Cricket Ground in London, the performance is followed by a discussion with theatre critic Michael Billington, former England cricket captain Mike Brearley and cricket journalist Emma John.
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Live from 54 Below: Fifty Key Stage Musicals: The Concert!
Streaming Sunday, September 11 at 9:45 p.m. ET for $25
Robert W. Schneider and Shannon Agnew's invaluable tome Fifty Key Stage Musicals comes to life on stage in a starry, one-night-only concert. Broadway luminaries will talk about and sing from the seminal shows that shaped their careers and the industry, including Tony-winning performer André De Shields on The Wiz, Tony-winning songwriter Rupert Holmes on HMS Pinafore, Tony-nominated performer Lee Roy Reams on Hello, Dolly!, Anita Gillette and Penny Fuller on Cabaret, Michael McElroy on Rent and Heather MacRae on Hair. Book author Schneider will also be on hand to share trivia and anecdotes about these legendary tuners. Live-streaming from 54 Below's swanky stage. If you prefer to attend in person, click here for info.
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Raven Snook is the Editor of TDF Stages. Follow her at @RavenSnook. Follow TDF at @TDFNYC.
Top image: It Came From Outer Space, a new sci-fi musical available to stream this month. Photo by Liz Lauren of the Chicago Shakespeare Theater production.
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