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Theatre Without Theater brings great performances to you during the coronavirus shut down.

| Off-Broadway |

March 16, 2020

Erik Lochtefeld and Margo Seibert starred in the New York premiere of Unknown Soldier, directed by Trip Cullman, at Playwrights Horizons. — Erik Lochtefeld and Margo Seibert starred in the New York premiere of *Unknown Soldier*, directed by Trip Cullman, at Playwrights Horizons.
(© Joan Marcus)

Starting Tuesday, March 17, all theaters in New York City will be shut down, including the few that managed to carry on through this first weekend of coronavirus closures. While Broadway plans to reopen the week of April 13, that timeline has been thrown into doubt by new CDC guidelines recommending the postponement or cancellation of events of 50 or more people scheduled for the next eight weeks. This could last a lot longer than any of us anticipate.

So how is a theatermaniac to cope with such an indefinite pause in live performances? A trio of artists have offered a creative solution: Lily Houghton, Ali Stoner, and Matthew Minnicino have created the new Instagram account Theatre Without Theater to ensure that the art of stagecraft will go on, even though the physical spaces in which it is typically practiced are now shuttered.

Here's Margo Seibert singing "I Give Away Children" from Michael Friedman and Daniel Goldstein's new musical Unknown Soldier. In his review, TheaterMania's David Gordon called the song "[one] of the best musical-theater ballads of our young decade."

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A post shared by Theatre Without Theater (@theatrewithouttheater) on Mar 14, 2020 at 4:32pm PDT

While Unknown Soldier had to prematurely end its run at Playwrights Horizons, at least part of it will play on at Theatre Without Theater. The feed typically updates at 7:30pm (showtime for a lot of New York theaters). Last night's performance was the first part of Westerville South High School's production of Jocelyn Bioh's School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play:

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A post shared by Theatre Without Theater (@theatrewithouttheater) on Mar 15, 2020 at 4:38pm PDT

We hope that the rest of this excellent comedy will follow in subsequent broadcasts. We'll be checking back at 7:30 tonight, provided Mondays are not dark in the virtual theater.