St. Louis theatre calendar for the week of September 28, 2020

Now including both on-line and live events during the pandemic. To get your event listed here, send an email to calendar [at] stageleft.org.

St. Louis playwright Nancy Bell's MUTE: A Play for Zoom, which was performed live via Facebook on April 5, 2020, is available as a live stream at vimeo.com. "In a world much like ours, there exists a video conference call. And in this call, there are academics, confusion, fire and...one hamster. An experimental theatre piece that steals rabidly from Ionesco, Beckett, real life and Chekhov. The play was for performance on Zoom by Nancy Bell and directed by Lucy Cashion."

Denise Thimes

The Black Rep, The Organization for Black Struggle, Better Family Life, and Action STL present performances of Fannie Lou Hamer, Speak On It by Cheryl L. West at different times and locations Friday through Sunday, October 2-4. Fannie Lou Hamer, Speak On It tells us about an activist who spoke out about voter registration and civil rights in African American communities. It showcases songs and speeches that inspire and chronicle the story of Fannie Lou Hamer’s experience. This production will feature Denise Thimes in the role of Fannie Lou Hamer with accompaniment by Dennis Brock on guitar. On October 2nd in The Black Rep parking lot, 6662 Olive. Action St. Louis will provide voter registration tables at 5pm and preshow music will be provided by James Biko. The Summer Performing Arts students will also perform an excerpt from their final performance and the main performance of Speak On It will begin at 6pm. On October 3rd, The Organization for Black Struggle will have a Community Day at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. and Hodiamont.  This event will have COVID testing as well as health and job vendors. The performance of Speak On It will begin at 1pm. The final performance will begin at 2pm, on October 4th at Better Family Life located at 5415 Page Blvd. All three performances will be outdoors with voter registration tables available to the public. For more information: theblackrep.org

The Blue Strawberry presents a Pop-Up Piano Bar with Sir Stryker, "Piano Bar Star of the Holland America Cruise Line," Tuesdays through Sundays from 6 to 10 pm. There is no cover or minimum and sidewalk seating is available. The club is operating under a "COVID careful" arrangement with restricted indoor capacity and other precautions. The Blue Strawberry is at 364 N. Boyle. For more information: bluestrawberrystl.com.

Leslie Craig

The Blue Strawberry presents Standardish with singer Leslie Criag, along with Charlie Brown on piano and Rich Mendoza on basss, on Thursday, October 1, at 8 pm. "Songs made famous by Amy Winehouse, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Frank Sinatra, Adele,  Barbra Streisand, Judy Garland, Liza Minnelli and Cyndi Lauper. A night of standards new and old." The club is operating under a "COVID careful" arrangement with restricted indoor capacity and other precautions. The Blue Strawberry is at 364 N. Boyle. For more information: bluestrawberrystl.com.

The Fabulous Fox Theatre presents the return of its popular Ghost Tours during the month of October.    Fox Ghost tours include both Fox Theatre history provided by Fox tour guides and 'ghost' stories from the St. Louis Paranormal Society following their investigation and analysis of the theatre’s “hot spots” of paranormal activity. Tours begin on Sunday, October 4, and will continue at a variety of dates and times through October 26. Tours and will be limited to 15 people per departure time. In order to provide the best possible safety measures for Fox guests and to comply with the city health department requirements, the following protocols will be in place.  Tours will cover 3 levels of the auditorium and the stage, but will not include the narrow underground tunnels this year.  Tours will move in one direction and not cross paths with other tour groups.  Tour participants will be required to wear a mask and observe social distancing.  Each tour will be accompanied by a Fox tour guide and a monitor to assure adherence to mask-wearing and social distancing.  Hand sanitizer stations will be available throughout the tour. For more information: www.fabulousfox.com.

Fly North Theatricals presents three new free digital series. Their new digital line up includes The Spotlight Series, the Grown-Up Theatre Kids Podcast, and Gin and the Tonic. The Spotlight Series highlights the Fly North family of students and actors performing songs from previous FNT shows. In the Grown-Up Theatre Kids podcast you can join Colin Healy and Bradley Rohlf every other Friday as they explore life after drama club and what it means to make a living in theatre far from the lights of broadway. Gin and the Tonic is a "reckless unpacking of music history’s weirdest stories hosted by Colin Healy.” The Spotlight Series and Gin and the Tonic are available at the Fly North Theatricals YouTube channel and the Grown-Up Theatre Kids podcast can also be found on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Sticher, other podcast platforms. All three are updated on a bi-weekly (every other week) basis.

The Hawthorne Players present an online version of Echoes of Valhalla, a theatrical edition of the annual Voices of  Valhalla hayride event presented in the Florissant Civic Center Theatre in 2018, on Friday, October 2, and Saturday, October 3.   There will be no charge to view the show, but viewers will have the option to donate to Hawthorne’s scholarship program.  For more information or to request an email link for the presentation, visit www.hawthorneplayers.info.

The Lemp Mansion Murder Mystery Dinner Theatre presents Death of a Blackheart through November 7th. "Ahoy Matey! Join us for an exciting evening of murder, mystery and pirates at the best comedy dinner theater show in town. Don your favorite pirate gear and join us on a high seas adventure fraught with peril! What part will you play in this hilarious show full of fair maidens, lost boys, rival pirates and wenches? Whichever character you acquire, beware of that famous pirate Captain Jack Blackheart! Aye, he's a scurvy seadog if my eye ever seed one! Gee, I hope no one kills him off!" The Lemp Mansion is at 3322 DeMenil Place in south city. For more information: www.lempmansion.com

Opera Theatre of St. Louis presents its 2020 Digital Festival with a variety of streaming content, including Opening Night Spotlights and the Spring Artists in Training Recital, available at www.opera-stl.org/season-and-events/thisisotsl-digital-festival as well as on its YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/user/OperaTheatreSTL.

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, in collaboration with Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre, The Public Theater and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, present Play at Home, a series of micro-commissioned short plays from some of the American theatre's most exciting and prominent playwrights. These new plays – which all run 10 minutes or less – are available for the public to download, read and perform at home for free at playathome.org.

Adena Varner and family

The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis presents a live video stream of the WiseWrite Digital Play Festival beginning on Saturday, October 2, at 6:00 pm and running until the end of the Rep's 2020-2021 season. “Step into the imagination of three young playwrights as The Rep presents professional readings of their new plays.” The production is directed by Adena Varner, the Rep's Director of Learning and Community Engagement. For more information: repstl.org.

Come Together

The St. Louis Shakespeare Festival presents streaming videos from the SHAKE20 festival, including re-imagined, condensed versions of classic Shakespeare plays and new takes on old favorites like Joe Hanrahan's Come Together, at the Shakespeare Festival Facebook page at www.facebook.com/pg/STLShakesFest/videos

St. Louis University Theatre presents a video adaptation of Diary of a Madman, based on the short story by Nikolai Gogol, beginning at 8 pm on Monday, October 5. "The diary entries are reimagined by different groups of theatre-artists, filmed, and then curated into a final, single photodrama, creating a collage of insanity in isolation." Adapted and directed by Lucy Cashion, the production will remain available on demand through Thursday, October 8. For more information www.metrotix.com.

The St. Louis Writers Group streams live recordings of previous play reading sessions at their Facebook page. For more information: facebook.com.

SATE, in collaboration with COCA and Prison Performing Arts, presents Project Verse: Creativity in the Time of Quarantine. Project Verse presents two new plays: Quatrains in Quarantine by e.k. doolin and Dream On, Black Girl: Reflections in Quarantine by Maxine du Maine. The performances are streamed free of charge on SATE’s website and Facebook page. For more information: slightlyoff.org.

The Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis presents Something Spoken: Tennessee Williams On the Air alternating Saturdays at 5 pm on Classic 107.3 FM. Each episode will air live and then be available for streaming at classic1073.org until the day before the next episode is broadcast. Episodes include a production of a Williams one-act play, followed by commentary from Williams scholar Thomas Mitchell.  Mister Paradise is available for streaming at the Classic 107.3 web site until October 2. For more information: www.twstl.org/something-spoken

Union Avenue Opera offers Sneak Peeks of its 2021 season operas Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), Les Contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) and The Cradle Will Rock on its YouTube channel.

Looking for auditions and other artistic opportunities? Check out the St. Louis Auditions site.

For information on events beyond this week, check out the searchable database at the Regional Arts Commission's Events Calendar.

Would you like to be on the radio? KDHX, 88.1 FM needs theatre reviewers. If you're 18 years or older, knowledgeable in this area, have practical theatre experience (acting, directing, writing, technical design, etc.), have good oral and written communications skills and would like to become one of our volunteer reviewers, send an email describing your experience and interests to chuck at kdhx.org. Please include a sample review of something you've seen recently.