St. Francis Preaches to the Birds Playing on Air. An audio play by David Ives sarring Carson Elrod, Julie Halston, and Matthew Saldivar with cameos by Lois Smith and Ives. In the middle of the desert, two vultures find their lunch interrupted by a man of faith. Now, they have a bone to pick with Saint Francis of Assisi.

8am: The 19th Amendment Project Burning Coal Theatre is pleased to present The 19th Amendment Project, a collection of short plays written by some of the most accomplished women and/or non-binary playwrights working today, writing on the passage of the 19th Amendment 100 years ago and its ongoing impact. 

Each of the 14 plays will be released virtually, one at a time, between August Aug 17 – 30.  Tickets for one viewing of each 10 minute play will be $2 (or buy the whole series for $25) and each will be available from the day each play is released through the end of September, 2020. 

The playwrights expected to participate include Clare Bayley, Hannah Benitez, Susana Cook, Kelly Doyle, Jennifer Natalya Fink, Magdalena Gomez, Tamara Kissane, Carrie Knowles, Deb Margolin, Ruth Margraff, Kate Morris, MJ Perrin, Elaine Romero, Prageeta Sharma and Ariel Zetina.

The producing arts organizations will include Agape Theatre, Bulldog Theatre Ensemble, Burning Coal Theatre, the Gilbert Theatre, the Justice Theatre Project, NC Central University Theatre, the North Carolina Theatre, the North Carolina Opera, Raleigh Little Theatre, Sweet Tea Shakespeare, Theatre in the Park, William Peace University Theatre and the Women’s Theatre Festival.

The League of Women Voters of Wake County serves as production partner. 

10am: State vs. Natasha Banina Discussion By ArtsEmersonCherry Orchard Festival. Directed by Igor Golvak and starring Darya Denisova. State vs. Natasha Banina unfolds as a Russian teenager tells the story of her life in a small-town orphanage, and how her desire to be free led to a crime of passion. From the inside of a “Zoom court room,” she makes unique appeals to the audience/jury, letting them into her world where she dreams of love, family, and her future. Ultimately, the audience will decide whether she is guilty of manslaughter.

The partnership will include a virtual theater talk with Golvak and Chinese theatre director Wang Chong.

12pm: Artist Talk with Battery Dance By Battery Dance. Each week, artists from around the world join BatteryDanceTV for a 30-minute talk.

12pm: Hundreds of Thousands By The Public Theater. Obie Award-winning theatre artist and activist Stevie Walker-Webb (director of Ain’t No Mo’ at The Public) will stage Hundreds of Thousands, a 24-hour public demonstration (which started August 22 at 5 PM ET), relegating himself to a 6ｘ9 foot space on the grounds of the McLennan County (Highway 6) Jail in Waco, Texas, to mark the 122nd day that his brother, Steven Waday Walker-Webb, has spent in solitary confinement.

2pm: Plays in the House Teen Edition: 3 Ways To Screw Up Your College Interview and Variations on a Theme  by Ian McWethy and Variations on a Theme by Ed Monk. Starring Simone Clotile, Lex Garcia, Nicole Goldstein, Donovan Rogers. Directed by Jacob Daniel Smith.

2pm: LimeFest: The Evening Melody 15 minute virtual performance between Iran and the US. New York based Iranian theatre artist, Deniz Khateri has designed and produced it to experiment with the online theatre medium as a means of the first theatrical live collaboration between these two countries.

The piece is a glance at the life of Maryam Shoja, a news reporter in Tehran. Two performances happen at the same time with the audience able to watch both the Iranian version and American version simultaneously while choosing the language they want to hear.

Deniz wants to experiment with audience participation in virtual theatre as well as the role of language and how the aesthetics and choices of these two cultures are similar or different, especially considering that these countries supposedly have no official communication.

Iran’s production is directed by Deniz Khateri and performed by Sarvenaz Nankali. Costume design is by Zohreh Rahmani, with public relations by Sara Haddadi, and poster by Arvin Fouladifar.

2pm: Theater for the New City: Liberty or Just Us: A City Park Story

4pm: Marie’s Crisis Virtual Piano Bar scheduled pianists are Adam Michael Tilford (@Adam-Tilford-1) and Dan Daly (@DanDalyMusic). 

6:30pm: Kinesis Project dance theater: Breathing with Strangers: Along the Water’s Edge Live Summer on the Hudson presents: LiveStream from Riverside Park South with Sumaya Mulla Carrillo and Jiemin Yang perform Breathing with Strangers as a duet.

7pm: Mirror Theatre: Hands of Light a benefit for AWARE Written by Bernard Pomerance (author of last season’s Miranda), Hands of Light, inspired by the tale of Kng Midas, tells the story of a leader whose greed destroys lives, and sets people against each other, with tragic consequences.

Hands of Light’s cast is composed of Vermont actors our community knows well, having seen them many times: Abigail Demers, who has been in our plays since she was Brigitta (she stole all the reviews!) at age 7 in our acclaimed Sound of Music, Krissie Ohlrogge, Jim Hogue (also running for Lt Governor) Mariana Considine and GAAR company members Marla Schaffel, our Tony-nominated Artist in Residence, with Nicole Ansari, Queen Gertrude in GAAR’s 2015 Hamlet, and Michael Tomlinson, who will play King Midas.

7pm: 48Hours in…Harlem By Harlem9. The festival brings together six playwrights, six directors, and 18 actors, including A Strange Loop star Larry Owens and choreographer Raja Feather Kelly. Penning the pieces are playwrights are Keith Josef Adkins, Brittany K. Allen, Tracey Conyer Lee, Nadine Mozon, jeremy o’brian, and L. Trey Wilson. Kelly directs one piece, as do Marjuan Canady, nicHi douglas, Malika Oyetimein, Logan Pitts, and Dominique Rider.

The roster of performers includes Owens, Mikayla LaShae Bartholomew, Eric Berryman, Kaaron Briscoe, Ashley Bufkin, Brandon E. Burton, Shavanna Calder, Broderick Clavery, Rasheda Crockett, Patricia R. Floyd, Freddie Fulton, Ashley N. Hildreth, Manu Kumasi, April Matthis, Javon Q. Minter, AK Murthadha, David Ryan Smith, and D. Woods.

The new plays were written in 48 hours July 17–19, then rehearsed and recorded during an additional 48-hour period July 24–25.

For this year’s festival, playwrights were inspired by the same six Black plays from 48 Hours in..’s. inaugural year.

7:30: Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel Originally conceived as a small-scale vocal entertainment for children, Hansel and Gretel resonates with audiences of all ages and has become one of the most successful fairy-tale operas ever created. Humperdinck’s adaptation of the Brothers Grimm acknowledges the darker features present in the source material yet presents them within a frame of grace and humor. The composer was a protégé of Richard Wagner, and the score is flavored with the sophisticated musical lessons that he learned from his idol while maintaining a charm and a light touch that were entirely Humperdinck’s own—resulting in a work that has garnered approval from such diverse and demanding critics as children and musicologists.

8pm: The Seth Concert Series: Rachel Bay Jones Rachel Bay Jones is best known for originating the role of ‘Heidi Hansen’ in the Original Broadway Cast of Dear Evan Hansen, and received a Tony Award®, Emmy Award, Grammy Award, Lucille Lortel Award, and Drama League Nomination for her performance. She can currently be seen on the hit ABC series “Modern Family,” CBS’ “God Friended Me,” and in the feature film Ben Is Back, opposite Julia Roberts. She stars in the upcoming feature film Critical Thinking, directed by and opposite John Leguizamo. Additional Broadway credits include Pippin, Hair, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown. Off-Broadway & Regional/National Tour include Dear Evan Hansen (Drama Desk Nomination) at Second Stage, First Daughter Suite at The Public Theater, Hello Again, A Christmas Story, Pippin, Sylvia, and The King and I. On television, Rachel recently appeared on NBC’s “Law & Order: SVU,” ABC’s “The Family,” and the FX series “Louie.” She is currently touring her new solo concert series Something Beautiful, and her debut solo album ShowFolk can be purchased on iTunes and Amazon.

8pm: Porchlight Music Theatre: PorchlightPalooza Celebrate Porchlight’s 25th Anniversary Season with a FREE three-episode fundraising festival featuring new performances and surprise appearances by your favorite music theatre artists, dreamy raffle prizes and more! Join us at 7pm nightly for an hour of amazing entertainment, culminating in Sunday night’s intimate conversation with Broadway icon Joel Grey and broadcast legend Bill Kurtis. All proceeds ensure that Porchlight remains Chicago’s vibrant home for music theatre for the next 25 years! Featuring greetings by Kristin Chenoweth, Raúl Esparza, Josh Gad, Mandy Patinkin, Bernadette Peters, Tonya Pinkins and Chita Rivera

8pm: Plays for the People: Buttafly Precinct By Black Lives Black Words International Project. Written and directed by Sha Cage. Two young girls struggle to survive on the streets carrying a dark secret and a jar of butterflies across the city of Minneapolis on the eve of George Perry Floyd’s murder. With the backdrop of the historic Uprising and in the blink of an eye, they discover truth, betrayal, and magic while coming of age on the streets that refuse to call them by their true names.

8pm: Virtual Rule of 7×7: LimeFest Edition an ongoing series that premieres 7 new short plays by 7 different writers. For each round of 7×7, every playwright devises one rule & then each playwright creates a new piece incorporating ALL 7 rules…. And 7×7 is now a NEW YORK TIMES and TIME OUT NEW YORK pick for quality virtual content!