#writing james was so scary but april was so so kind and supportive

[sableflynn]

Felivy - Midnight Tea

Another piece from the felivy au with @whumpopology​ my love! April, thank you so so much for trusting me to write James, and thank you for your help and encouragement in finishing this 🥺

This is the Felicia timeline. She’s trying to gather all the information she remembers to help rescue Ivy, but she needs to talk it out with someone. James is there to listen. Contains vague references to past torture/captivity. Ao3 link here.

---

Felicia jolted awake with a burst of panicked energy, the terror of the nightmare still pounding in her heart. Already the details were slipping away like sand through her fingers, leaving trace memories of ropes digging into her skin, Ivy’s screams, Volkan’s eyes. She loosened fingers that gripped the bedsheets and tried to steady her breathing, eyelids fluttering.

Next to her in bed, Elyse stirred. Felicia rolled over to plant a gentle kiss on her forehead, answering her mumbled question with a soft I’m fine. Untangling herself from the mass of blankets, she rose from the bed and padded from the room, wrapping a thin robe around her as she went.

The house was still in the night, soft moonlight filtering through the window and casting the kitchen in a weak glow. Her bare feet were silent on the hardwood floors as she made herself some tea, settling in to study the mass of papers she had left spread over the table. Scribbled notes, half-illegible, and newspaper clippings, and a map marked and marked again, and she was no closer to figuring out where Volkan was keeping Ivy, where he’d kept the two of them. Felicia had been home almost a week, and every minute she sat here was another minute for Volkan to decide to slit Ivy’s throat and be done with her. They needed to find her now, but all the information and memories were swirling in a jumble in Felicia’s mind, and she couldn’t focus them long enough to write down, she couldn’t do this alone—

Rubbing at her face, she left her mug at the table, and made her way through the house. She hesitated a bare moment outside the spare bedroom before raising her fist and knocking.

The door swung open and James stood there, hair still scruffy from sleep but eyes alert as they met hers. She studied him, tracing the faint freckles on his cheeks, the slight furrow of his dark brows. He had always seemed larger than life whenever Ivy described him, a hero, an inspiration. Looking at him now, Felicia saw a person, exhausted and doing his best. She thought—she hoped—he saw the same when he looked at her.

“Can I talk to you?” She forced a casual lilt to her voice despite the tension twisting through her.

If he was bothered by being woken in the middle of the night, he didn’t show it. She wondered if he was sleeping at all. “Of course,” he said, and followed her back to the table.

He sat across from her, and as she picked up her mug of tea, regret pulled at her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t make enough for you. Do you want—?”

“I’m fine.” James cast an eye over the spread of papers before turning his gaze back on her. “What did you wanna talk about?”

She pushed a blank sheet of paper and a pen across the table at him. “I just need to...talk some things out.” The clinical nature of the pen and paper, the physical barrier of the table between them, they all paradoxically relaxed Felicia. She wasn’t baring her soul to a near-stranger. She was providing important information to someone who needed it.

“It’s things we need to know. Things I learned,” she explained, haltingly, stopping herself from rambling. “I just can’t talk to Elyse about it, because—” It was too much. Too fresh, too painful, too personal. “Because I can’t.”

James nodded. “I understand.” He blew out a shaky breath, but when he spoke again, his voice was steady. “Tell me whatever you need to.”

Felicia looked down at her hands, folded on the tabletop. Whatever I need to. One thumb rubbed against the other, the sensation grounding her. Tell him floorplans and landmarks. Tell him names and locations. Don’t tell him how small Ivy looked, bleeding out from a bullet wound. Don’t tell him how the agony of the healing tore us both apart.

“I might start crying.” The words fell from her mouth before she could catch them, and her fingers fretted the edge of a stray sheet of paper, folding and unfolding. “That’s just a thing that happens. Just ignore it.”

She didn’t look up to see how he felt about that. She pushed on before he could say anything, before her thoughts could catch up with her. “I think he’s somewhere up north.” She pulled the worn map between them, and it gave her something to focus on besides her own nervous energy. “The trees...they’re different than they are here. And any time he had his friends over, they’d always be complaining about the cold.”

“He had friends over?”

She glanced up to find him looking at her, the pen clutched tight in his hand, something that might have been horrified comprehension dawning in his eyes. Her breath froze in her chest. One comment like that shouldn’t have revealed so much—but James wasn’t an idiot, and he could read between those lines to guess at why those friends had come over.

He’s quiet, Ivy had said about James one night, while they were sharing stories, but he knows his shit. I would trust him with anything.

Looking at the man before her—young, she realized, not much older than she, why had she pictured James as so much older?—Felicia searched beneath the exhaustion and growing horror to find something of the leader Ivy described. Someone she could trust.

She just saw a man. But if Ivy trusted him, maybe that could be enough for her, too.

“He had friends over,” she repeated with more force. She clutched her now-cold mug of tea like a lifeline, breathed in the chamomile to remind herself that it wasn’t a mug of coffee, she wasn’t in his lounge, they weren’t about to touch her. She had lost count of the number of hands that touched her.

She blinked, and a few tears slid down her cheeks. James tilted his gaze back towards the paper, granting her the smallest privacy, and she couldn’t remember the last time her tears had belonged to her, hadn’t been driven from her by cruel hands and words, jeered and crooned over by Volkan and his fucking friends.

“Some of them are in the city.” James flicked a glance up at her as she spoke. This is important, she told herself. Concrete information. Facts. Something they could use. Something that could bring Ivy home.

So she spoke, and James listened, and he wrote. She was hesitant, detached, drawing from memories without truly touching them, because if she had to acknowledge what had happened she would shatter. She listed anything she could remember, names and appearances and occupations, and James took them all down in messy, haphazard print. He rarely looked directly at her, and that made it easier, somehow. She didn’t have to school her expressions, worry about how her anguish affected him. She gave information, and he received.

She allowed herself to look at him, eventually. He was diligent and thorough in his notes, briefly meeting her eyes here and there to ask a gentle guiding question, never letting his gaze linger too long. She could see the tension in him—the way his jaw worked, his grip on the pen, the hard press of his writing into the paper—yet every time he spoke to her, his voice didn’t waver, and it wasn’t cold. She watched him, and she could almost hear Ivy’s choked voice as she talked about him, and then the question left her lips before she could stop herself.

“Why did you choose me?”

James looked up at her, paling, his lips pressed tight before he finally spoke. “It—it was the hardest choice we’d ever had to make.” His eyes were on hers now, dark and conflicted, and she forced herself to hold his gaze. “It wasn’t about who was better. You’re both important. It was just...it was about who made the most sense. We—”

“Actually, I don’t need to know.” Her voice shook slightly as she cut him off. Maybe she’d hoped he’d have some pithy answer ready, some straightforward explanation that put all her doubts to rest. But she couldn’t bear to listen to him justify and explain like he was still half-trying to convince himself. She wasn’t ready to know what that conversation had looked like.

All at once, exhaustion crashed over her. How long had they sat here talking? How many hours? And how could she allow herself to feel exhausted when Ivy was still there, still with him, still in danger?

“She told me you always make the right call.” They had been talking about their teams, finding what solace they could in each other. Sometimes I hate it, Ivy had said, but he’s always right. He’s never led us wrong. And yet Felicia was here, and Ivy wasn’t. “I’m not so sure.”

James’s expression stayed steady, but a flush crept up his neck and across his cheeks. “I—” He swallowed, and a muscle twitched in his jaw. “Excuse me.” He pushed back from the table, and Felicia was silent as he grabbed his coat, stepped out the door to the front stoop. The metal spoon scraped against the ceramic of the mug as she stirred her cold tea, and she stared through the papers scattered across the table, and said nothing.

[ashsblurbs]

Lets dig deeper into the winterwidow kids

*I have more head cannons just let me know which kid you want to know more about* 

Alexander Allen Barnes

·       Born April 24 and is 24

·       Natasha and Bucky loved the idea that all of their children names to be Russian origin. One because that is where Nat is from and because that was where they met. No matter what horrible stuff they went through in that country it still brought them together.

·       He is the oldest of the Barnes bunch. Him and his siblings were raised in a normal household. They didn’t know their parents or extended family were avengers or assassins until their youngest sister was kidnapped by hydra and brainwashed to be the next winter solider like their father was so many years ago.

·       He is gay and still looking for the right one. He struggles to find love when you compare every relationship to your parents. Nothing could ever compare to their love story.

·       He went to University of Maryland and went on to study gamma radiation. His biggest role model was his uncle Bruce.

·       He’s blind as a bat and can’t see without his glasses.

·       His first language is Russian like the rest of the siblings.

·       They grew up in Brooklyn.

·       He’s quiet and analytical. Ivan makes fun of him all the time for having his nose in a book all of the time.

·       His best friend is Theo Thorson. He is secretly in love with him.

link to photos

Katina Elizabeth Barnes

·       She was born December 16th and is 22

·       Her personality can turn most people away. Some would say she was scary and very intimidating, but she would say she knew what she wanted and how to get it.

·       She was popular in school but in away that Kat didn’t realize she was. She did her own thing and change as quickly as the seasons. She would just get bored easily. Maybe that was her mother coming out of her.

·       Her nickname is Kat.

·       She is a skill martial artist and is a black belt.

·       She enjoys writing and even had some of her poems published.

·       After she found out her parents were the Black Widow and Winter solider, she started her training to become the next Black widow. Her parents were skeptical at first since they both knew the horrors could insure through the role.

·       Her and James teamed up together as the new gen Cap and Black widow.

·       She’s stubborn and so is James which leave them to fight a lot but them make a great team.

·       She pierced her own ears at six.

·       She’s single as well and not looking. She likes being independent but that hasn’t stopped the boys from drooling all over her.

·       She also took some courses at NYU but got bored. She was already a published writer what was a college going to teach her.  

Ivan Lewis Barnes

·       Born May 1 and is 20 years old

·       Ivan is the sweetest and sensitive man you will ever meet. He will cry at a hallmark commercial.

·       He loves animals and is studying to be a vet at NYU. Right now, he put his studies on hold until they bring his baby sister home. 

·       He is in love with Brooklyn Rogers-Stark. He really wants to marry her and even has a ring picked out, but he does realize they are still young. He’s going to wait a few years before he does.

·       He adores his Uncle Steve but the day he found out Ivan was dating his little girl he almost killed him, figuratively. Now Steve supports their relationship and loves him like a son.

·       He has no desire to go out into the field like his siblings did. He’s just here to be moral support.

·       Him and his dad is super close. They do everything together. So, does him and his uncle Sam. The three of them will go on all kinds of adventures. They often find themselves at baseball games.

·       He also is a partier. Sometimes he can be kind of like a frat boy but not in the bad way.

·       He’s basically the perfect guy.

·       He is dyslexic. He’s very smart; it just takes him sometime to put all of the pieces together.

Anastasia Maria Barnes

·       Born September 15 and is 14

·       She is the youngest of the Barnes group.

·       She was a wonderful surprise for the group. Natasha and Bucky thought they were done since Ivan was 5, Kat was 7 and Alexander was 9. They were long done with the whole baby thing.

·       She was energetic and loved doing ballet.

·       Kat would do make overs on her all the time. They were each other’s best friend. She was the only one that brought Kat’s loving side out.

·       She loved to build all kinds of things. She would bug her uncle Tony to let her join him in the lab, but Nat and Bucky said no. Didn’t want her seeing the Iron Man suit so instead Tony would come to them. He didn’t mind since most of the time his own daughter was over there too.

·       When she was twelve, she was taken by Hydra agents and brainwashed. They put her through the same training as her dad once was to turn her into the new Winter solider.

·       Her family only came in contact with her once in the last two years. Before they were able to bring her home, she vanished.

·       She was not the same girl that was taken from them, Nat and Bucky knew that, but they didn’t know how much it would hurt. Seeing the blankness in their little girl’s eyes and knowing that no matter what they did, they couldn’t protect her.

·       Her favorite color is blue and often painted her nails that color.

·       She was afraid of heights.

·       Her nickname is Ana

[shmosnet2]

Top 10 Mysterious Monsters Around The World

Top 10 Mysterious Monsters Around The World

From the far off snowy mountains of Tibet to the grey and gloomy lochs of Scotland, many different cultures from around the world have reported seeing strange creatures that science just can’t explain. Although evidence is typically scarce and mostly based on hearsay, many hold on to the hope that some of the following mysterious creatures really do exist. 10. The Ropen Papua New Guinea, renowned for its unexplored forests and undiscovered species of both flora and fauna, is home to this mysterious monster. Stories arose from the Umboi Island of a featherless, giant flying creature with a long tail that ends in a flange and a diamond shaped head. Known to the locals as Indava, the Ropen is believed to be a nocturnal Pterosaur, very similar to a Pterodactyl, that glows against the night sky when it flies. The Ropen has become the flying hobby horse of creationists who seek to find living dinosaurs as proof that the earth is far younger than evolutionary scientists would have you believe. Five expeditions between 1994 and 2004 were conducted by said creationists, resulting in only three sightings – but even those were distant, brief views of what has been dubbed the “ropen light”. According to recent investigators over 90% of the sightings on Umboi Island are of this featureless, bright white light. Jonathan Whitcomb went on to write the book ‘Searching for Ropens’ which suggests that most sightings were of one giant creature which sleeps in the island interior during the day and at night it feeds by the reef. The locals interviewed reported that the bright glow of the Ropen lasts for anywhere up to five or six seconds. Even with all this knowledge, no real hard evidence has ever been found. The locals continue to tell stories of the glowing bird and maybe one day scientists will be seeing the same light. 9. The Bunyip

The Bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology which is said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds and waterholes. The word bunyip is usually translated by Aboriginal Australians today as “devil” or “evil spirit”. Aboriginal stories tell of a creature about 11 paces long and 4 paces in breadth. Most people who witness the monster claim to have been in such dread that they were unable to take note of its characteristics, but those that did told of a dog-like face, a crocodile like head, dark fur, a horse-like tail, flippers and walrus-like tusks or horns. Such a creature has never been recorded by European colonists but there has been multiple sightings of mysterious evidence to support such claims. The first sighting of such evidence was by Hamilton Hume and James Meehan in 1818 when they found some large bones of what looked like a hippopotamus or manatee at Lake Bathurst in New South Wales. After this, reports of more fossils came in of “some quadruped much larger than an ox or buffalo” and in 1847 a display at the Australian Museum, Sydney claimed to exhibit a Bunyip skull. Although no real sightings have been documented, the natives still tell stories of the beast screams which can be heard at night. 8. The Dover Demon

Seventeen year old William Bartlett claimed that while driving on April 21, 1977 he saw a large-eyed creature “with tendril-like fingers” and glowing eyes on top of a broken stone wall on Farm Street in Dover, Massachusetts. This was the start of the Dover Demon. Though it was only sighted by a few people in a short period of time, it is considered one of the most mysterious creatures of modern times. The second sighting came just 2 hours after the first when John Baxter swore that he saw the same creature while walking home from his girlfriend’s house. The 15-year-old boy saw it with its arms wrapped around the trunk of a tree, and his description of the thing matched Bartlett’s exactly. The final sighting was reported the next day by 15-year-old Abby Brabham who said it appeared briefly in the car’s headlights while she and her friend were driving. Again, the description was consistent with that of Bartlett. Each claimed they saw a four foot tall, hairless creature with rough-textured skin, long spindly peach-coloured limbs and large glowing orange eyes upon a large watermelon-shaped head which was nearly as big as its body. Though investigations into this unusual case turned up no hard evidence for the reality of the creature, there was also no evidence of a hoax nor a motive for perpetrating one. So was the Dover Demon just a story these kids made up, or is it still out there waiting for the right moment to strike? 7. Mongolian Death Worm

painting: Pieter Dirkx In August 2009, two New Zealanders carrying a video camera and a sack of explosives set off to a remote southern corner of Mongolia’s Gobi desert in search of a creature that few believe exist. The Mongolian Death Worm is known locally as the Allghoi Khorkhoi, or the “intestine worm,” because it is believed to resemble the internal tract of a cow. The Kiwi duo intend to lure the monster to the surface with tremors set off by detonating their explosives. Once emerged, they planned to capture it on film. Unfortunately the men came up empty handed like many expeditions before them. The worm is subject of a number of claims by Mongolian locals and according to legend it is described as bright red with a wide body that is 2 to 5 feet (0.6 to 1.5 m) long. It lurks beneath the sand of the desert, pouncing on unsuspecting victims with such abilities as spewing acid (which on contact will corrode anything it touches) and being able to kill at a distance with electric discharge. The Mongolians also believe that touching any part of the worm will cause instant death or tremendous pain. It has been told that the worm frequently preyed on camels and laid eggs in its intestines, eventually acquiring the trait of its red-like skin. They say that the worm lives underground, hibernating most of the year except for when it becomes active in June and July. It is reported that this animal is mostly seen on the surface when it rains and the ground is wet. All in all just another reason to stay out of the desert. 6. The Spring-Heeled Jack

During the 19th Century, inhabitants of London became victim to this curious beast. In October 1837 the first sighting of The Spring-Heeled Jack was reported, appearing out of the shadows of night and attacking his victims with dreadful scratches before bounding away with superhuman ability. The first sighting was reported by Mary Stevens when she was walking to work after visiting her parents. A strange figure leapt at her from a dark alley. After immobilising her with a tight grip of his arms, he began to kiss her face while ripping her clothes and touching her flesh with his claws which were, according to her deposition, “cold and clammy as those of a corpse”. In panic, the girl screamed, making the attacker quickly flee from the scene. The commotion brought several residents who immediately launched a search for the aggressor, who could not be found. Polly Adams, a pub worker, was another of three women accosted by Spring-Heeled Jack in September of that year. He allegedly tore her blouse off and scratched at her stomach with iron-like fingernails or claws. Several witnesses claimed to have seen Jack escape the scene of the crime by jumping over a 9 ft (2.7 m) high wall while babbling with a high-pitched, ringing laughter. Through numerous accounts they were able to get a description of the monster which included a man-like hideous face, sharp iron-like claws and glowing eyes all beneath a black cloak. Spring-Heeled Jack is one of the most baffling tales to come out of Victorian England. 5. Giant Anaconda https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo0z3Dyd1J0 The vast, teeming Amazon rain forest can kill you in all sorts of ways, from encounters with ravenous piranhas to suspicious native tribes. But the most lethal terror reported to be lurking in these parts is the giant anaconda; a lightning-quick snake more than 30 ft. (9 m) long which is capable of capsizing and crushing wooden boats floating down the Amazon. Reports of giant anacondas date back as far as the European colonization of South America when sightings of snakes upwards of 50 metres (164 feet) began to circulate amongst colonists. The topic has been a subject of debate among cryptozoologists and zoologists ever since. Scientists believe that such a monstrous version of the anaconda, which in real life rarely grows beyond an already scary 17 ft. (about 5 m), no longer exists. In 2009, the discovery of Titanoboa fossils found in South America revealed that snakes in the past did in fact reach sizes of over 40ft. The Wildlife Conservation Society has, since the early 20th century, offered a large cash reward (currently $50,000) for live delivery of any snake of 9 metres (29.5 ft) or more in length, but the prize has never been claimed – despite numerous sightings of giant anacondas. Regular size snakes are enough to set anyone’s nerves on edge, but something this big is the stuff of nightmares. 4. The El Chupacabra

This impish monster – whose name means “goat sucker” in Spanish – allegedly looks like a giant rodent with palsy. A kind of half-reptile, half-kangaroo mutant. It first drew the world’s attention in 1995 when residents of the Puerto Rican town of Canovanas claimed that chupacabras were behind a spate of attacks that killed more than 150 of their livestock, each drained of its blood. Similar killings were report in Moca a few months later. Sightings have since been reported as far north as Maine and as far south as Chile. They have even been spotted outside the Americas in countries like Russia and The Philippines. The most common description of the chupacabra is that of a reptile-like creature said to have leathery or scaly greenish-grey skin and sharp spines or quills running down its back. It is said to be approximately 3 to 4 feet (1 to 1.2 m) high, and stands and hops in a fashion similar to that of a kangaroo. Some reports have even stated chupacabras were winged like gargoyles and blinked glowing-red eyes in the dark, heightening the sense of supernatural menace surrounding the creatures. 3. The Yeti

illustration: Philippe Semeria This beast is said to be found deep in the Himalayan regions of Nepal and Tibet. The Yeti, or Abominable Snowman, was first reported in 1832 by James Prinsep, one of colonial India’s most venerable scholars. He kept an account of his trip through Nepal where he reportedly saw a tall, hairy, bipedal creature that fled upon being detected. Since then many mountaineers, including Everest conquerors Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, reported footprints far larger than human feet dotting snowy trails. A 1954 expedition commissioned by the British Daily Mail retrieved dark brown hairs from a supposed yeti scalp kept in a secluded Buddhist monastery. It is believed that the Yeti was a part of the pre-Buddhist beliefs of several Himalayan people; the Lepcha people are said to have worshipped a “Glacier Being” as a God of the Hunt. A photographer and member of the Royal Geographical Society, N.A Tombazi wrote that he saw a creature at about 15,000 ft for about a minute, “Unquestionably, the figure in outline was exactly like a human being, walking upright and stopping occasionally to pull at some dwarf rhododendron bushes. It showed up dark against the snow, and as far as I could make out, wore no clothes.” Two hours later Tombazi and his companions descended and reported seeing the creature’s large footprints in the snow. One of the most renowned mysterious monsters, the yeti seems to be a docile creature with no reported attacks. One can only hope it stays this way. 2. Bigfoot

Bigfoot (also known as Sasquatch) is the name given to a cryptid ape or hominid-like creature that is said to inhabit forests in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. Indigenous folklore of the Pacific Northwest told of cannibalistic hairy men and giants who roamed the great forests and mountains of the region, abducting children in the dead of night and sabotaging the salmon-catching nets of local fishermen. In 1951, Eric Shipton photographed what he described as a Bigfoot’s footprint – named so because of its size (24 inches long and 8 inches wide). This generated considerable attention and led to the story of the creature entering popular consciousness. The craze went into overdrive in 1967 when two Californians screened a short documentary of footage that allegedly filmed the Yeti’s cousin and, in 2001, the first still picture was captured using an automatically triggered camera attached to a tree. Many tried to pass the images off as “a bear with a severe case of mange”. In 2008, two men claimed they had uncovered the body of a Sasquatch. Most of major US news networks sought images of the beast’s corpse – only to find that its head was hollow and its feet were made of rubber. Still, a cult following of researchers have dedicated their life to proving that this monster does exist. 1. The Loch Ness Monster Reports of a large, long-necked serpent loping around the waterways of the Scottish highlands date back as far as the 7th century, but modern interest in the monster was sparked by a sighting on 22 July 1933. George Spicer and his wife claimed to have saw “a most extraordinary form of animal” cross the road in front of their car. They described the creature as having a large body about 1.2 metres high and 7.6 metres long. It also had a long narrow neck slightly thicker than an elephant’s trunk and as long as the 3-4 m width of the road. It lurched across the road towards the loch, leaving only a trail of broken undergrowth in its wake. In August 1933, a motorcyclist named Arthur Grant claimed to have nearly hit the creature on the north-eastern shore. Grant claimed that he saw a small head attached to a long neck and that the creature saw him and crossed the road back into the loch. He dismounted and followed it but only saw ripples. Sightings of the monster increased following the building of a road along the loch in early 1933, bringing both workmen and tourists to the formerly isolated area. In the past century, dozens of scientists have conducted sonar scans and plunged inside submersibles into the lake’s depths, sometimes picking up tantalizing, albeit inconclusive, readings of some mysterious, unusually sized object. However, a 2003 study commissioned by the BBC employed satellite tracking and took sonar readings from around 600 different locations in the lake and yielded nothing. Despite all this, the legend of ‘Nessie’ lives on.

https://ift.tt/2ObWAuq . Foreign Articles November 23, 2019 at 06:43PM

[newyorktheater]

Patti LuPone sings in her basement for her Twitter followers

A singer from the “Couch Choir” of the Rotterdam Philharmonic sings Burt Bacharach’s (They Long to Be) Close To You — one of the many virtual performances by orchestras and choirs that have sprung up worldwide since the stay-at-home orders

Alvin Ailey’s magnificent 60-year-old “Revelations,” with its inspiring Negro spirituals and spirited modern dancing, (pictured) streamed for free as part of the new online series Ailey All Access , added to the growing list of online offerings

Faith Prince and Richard Kind perform in The Tale of the Allergists Wife on Stars in the House, which is branching out from variety talk show to live readings of full-length plays.

T.R. Knight in “Transition” by David Lindsay-Abaire, one of the plays from 24 Hour Plays’ Viral Monologues, Round 3

Pirates pitcher Steven Brault sings Broadway

Max von Essen sings “What More Can I Do” from Falsettos for Intermission Mission, one of the new online series, this one from Today Tix

J Harrison Ghee from Mrs Doubtfire

In the first week of April, as the news remained scary and theaters remained closed, theater – and especially theater music – became a balm.

Mrs. Doubtfire didn’t open on Sunday, the first of the 10 Broadway openings originally scheduled for April, but they celebrated in song, with a virtual performance of the show’s song “As long as there is love”

The New York Philharmonic canceled its season a couple of weeks ago, but its musicians offered a ravishing Bolero by Ravel, remotely

  For those who’ve enjoyed @nyphil‘s digital “Bolero,” check out earlier virtual orchestra/choir videos — the “couch choir” of @rdamphil (pictured), @CamdenVoices , @BerkleeCollege , @CO_Symphony, @dycireland https://t.co/ijv1Z0wbOK pic.twitter.com/d4s8U3podm

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) April 4, 2020

Bette Midler offered a song for New Yorkers

From some dear New York friends of mine: Sung by Zora Rasmussen Piano by @marcshaiman pic.twitter.com/nAGbOSt9bR

— bettemidler (@BetteMidler) April 2, 2020

Patti LuPone offered us a singing tour of her basement

Ya bored yet? pic.twitter.com/kDZR1jYWyG

— Patti LuPone (@PattiLuPone) April 1, 2020

Even Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Steven Brault was singing this week, releasing a showtunes album with the almost-punning title A Pitch at Broadway A Pitch at Broadway

Oscar winner Parasite debuts on Hulu

Jodie Foster and Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver, on Netflix

James Corden at National Live at Home

She Loves Me on PBS

April 2020 Calendar of “Openings”: What’s Streaming on Netflix, National Theatre, Hulu, PBS Great Performances, Amazon Prime, HBO Etc

New York Theater Quiz for March 2020

Theater Book Reviews

Death By Shakespeare  “Plague shaped Shakespeare’s life,” Kathryn Harkup writes in her new book. Death By Shakespeare: Snakebites, Stabbings and Broken Hearts (Bloomsbury Sigma, 368 pages, May 2020 publication date.) The first outbreak of the Plague during Shakespeare’s lifetime occurred three months after his birth in 1564, and he was among only one-third of the children in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon to survive. He was just starting to make his name as a playwright in London in 1592, when there was a severe outbreak that resulted in the shuttering of the theaters – drying up opportunity for playwriting and thus pushing the Bard to become a poet, which arguably enhanced his writing when he returned to drama. Plague was so common at the time that authorities decreed that theaters could reopen if the weekly death rate from the epidemic sunk below 50 for three consecutive weeks. And so, Harkup says, it’s no surprise that the Plague pervades Shakespeare’s plays “Death by Shakespeare” doesn’t just fact-check the playwright’s scripts. The author uses death as the lens by which to describe life in Elizabethan England – the conditions, the attitudes, the practices surrounding death. Full review

Terrence McNally Selected Works: A Memoir in Plays Terrence McNally considered Shakespeare and Chekhov his gods, and Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera his goddesses; he learned a lot from all four. That’s what he tells us within the first few pages of Selected Works: A Memoir in Plays (Grove Press, 659 pages) a book published in 2015 that presents the scripts of eight of his plays*, written from 1987 to 2013, interspersed with a few pages of introduction, recollection and digression. full review

Note: Monday night April 6 at 8 p.m., McNally’s Lips Together, Teeth Apart live online reading performed by Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Zachary Quinto and Ari Graynor , in support of the BC/EFA COVID-19 Emergency Assistance Fund

Online Theater Gets Seriously Comic

Stars in the House, which has been a twice-daily online variety hour and talk show, has now added a twice weekly “matinee” – a live reading every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon of popular play performed by a starry cast. They’re calling in Plays in the House. The first up last week were Wendy Wasserstein’s The Heidi Chronicles, performed by the original cast, and Charles Busch’s The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife starring Busch himself (as Marjorie herself) and Richard Kind, Faith Prince,

The hosts promise that future plays will star Harvey Fierstein, Tony Shaloub, and Brooke Adams, among others.

T.R. Knight in “Transition” by David Lindsay-Abaire, one of the plays from 24 Hour Plays’ Viral Monologues, Round 3

Playwright @lindsayabaire on writing plays, successively, for @TheRealDratch (a comedy), Marylouise Burke (a haunting mystery), & @TR_Knight (a fantasy) in @24HourPlays‘ #ViralMonologues. My interview w/ him in @DC_theatrescene: https://t.co/8Zutj6eLda pic.twitter.com/YZc8W1qabf

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) April 3, 2020

Methuen Drama will publish the Viral Monologues as a book, edited by Howard Sherman, who inspired the solo series.

  Added since last week to my roundup Where to Get Your Theater Fix Online: Old Favorites and New Experiments

Ailey All Access

Humana Festival of New Plays offering two of the plays from the season that it had to cancelon stage

Intermission Mission from TodayTix “At home performances from the Broadway community” — basically a single song each day by a different Broadway star

Joe’s Pub Live

L.A. Theatreworks

Play at Home — new original short plays available to read for free commissioned by five great theaters, including the Public Theater and Woolly Mammoth. This echoes what were called “closet plays” during earlier eras when theaters where shut down either because of Plague or political repression. The playwrights then never expected them to be produced, so went wild. Presumably, the 21st century playwrights are just as wild, but expect eventually to see them on stage.

The Shows Must Go On A different Andrew Lloyd Webber musical launches for free every Friday for 48 hours on this new YouTube page. First up: Donny Osmond stars in the 1999 film of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat”

News

Arts industry unemployment claims in New York rise 3,880 percent.

Broadway is still selling tickets for April performances. But why?

The Off-Broadway League has announced that its 2020 Lortel Awards, honoring Off-Broadway will go on as scheduled — nominations April 14, winners at May 3 ceremony — but all now online. This is the only New York theater award so far to keep to its original schedule.

The Bret Adams & Paul Reisch Foundation is offering 40 emergency grants of $2,500 each to playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists who have had a full professional production cancelled, closed, or indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 closures

An inspiring story: Director @JeffWhitingNYC is leading some 900 theater professionals, mostly wardrobe & costume people from Broadway shows, to create protective gear. And that’s just in NYC! Theater pros are helping throughout the country.https://t.co/EnQbRWYpLl

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) April 1, 2020

Pandemic theater is already here examples in this L.A Times article: Skylight Theatre of Los Angeles and the 24 Hour Plays’ Viral Monologues. “Pandemic-set plays were bound to happen sooner or later, and it’s so close to home. Numerous members of the theater community have tested positive for the coronavirus, including Tom Hanks, Aaron Tveit, Daniel Dae Kim, Laura Bell Bundy and Brian Stokes Mitchell. The disease took the lives of Terrence McNally and Adam Schlesinger.”

American Theatre Magazine editor Rob Weiner-Kendt offers a scattershot overview of what’s happening in a piece entitled No Show.: If we can’t have theatre until we can gather again safely, what are U.S. theatres and artists going to do in the meantime, and after? One paragraph:

“Theatre has survived worse, even in its cradle. The plague of Athens killed some 25 percent of its population in 430 B.C.E., and inspired the Theban plague in Sophocles’s Oedipus Rex. Shakespeare’s career was famously interrupted by the Black Plague, during which time, as [San Diego’s Old Globe artistic director Barry] Edelstein pointed out, the Bard and his colleagues did three things: “They made plans for what they were going to do when theatres reopened. They toured the provinces, sold props, costumes, bundled plays and sold them—that’s how the First Folio got made. And they went to the King and said, ‘Help.’”

Rest in Peace

Adam Schlesinger, 52, from COVID-19. Known for his work with his band Fountains of Wayne and on the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” he was also a 2-time Broadway veteran (comical co-songwriter of Cry Baby and Act of God)

a sweet “egobituary” about Adam Schlesinger https://t.co/IdQB1YiS8Q

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) April 2, 2020

William Wolf, 94, theater critic who wrote reviews and columns for Cue and New York magazines and taught at NYU.He was a past president of the Drama Desk. He too died from complications from the coronavirus.

The NYC health workers who have died of COVID-19

#AloneTogether, singing! Online theater gets seriously comic. #Stageworthy News of the Week In the first week of April, as the news remained scary and theaters remained closed, theater – and especially theater music – became a balm.