Who: Marisa Tomei, Oscar Isaac, Patrick Breen
What: Livestreamed benefit play reading for MCC Theater
Where: MCC Theater YouTube
When: Tuesday, April 28, $25, 7:30; rebroadcast January 28, $5-$100, 7:30 (available through January 31)
Why: [ed. note: The below originally ran on April 26; MCC is now bringing the reading back for an encore presentation] Theaters in lockdown are coming up with unique ways to engage their audience and raise much-needed funds. MCC Theater, which opened its sparkling new Hell’s Kitchen space last year, has just announced the online initiative MCC Virtual Events, which will feature a weekly play-reading series and other online gatherings as part of its Be Our Light campaign. The program’s centerpiece takes place on April 28 at 7:30, an MCC Virtual TV benefit reading of Alan Bowne’s 1987 Beirut, about a woman quarantined on the Lower East Side with an STD in a dystopian future. The original production kicked off MCC’s one-act play festival; it will be performed live online by Marisa Tomei and Oscar Isaac, with a cameo by Patrick Breen. “A few weeks ago, as our shared experience of the new ‘normal’ sunk in, isolated from loved ones, I couldn’t stop thinking about Alan Bowne’s moving and prescient play,” Tomei said in a statement. “Creating the role of Blue in 1987 for MCC’s one-act festival was an experience that I’ve long treasured at a time that felt like MCC and I were both ‘being born.’ There are obvious parallels between the ‘plague’ in the play and the situation we are experiencing now.” In a later Facebook post, Tomei added, “A response to the AIDS crisis, poetically and hilariously written by the late Alan Bowne . . . it’s the second play I ever appeared in on the New York stage. It’s raunchy and my parents fled the theater when they came to see it lol. . . . Maybe this piece of writing helps us process some feelings.” The early-bird $5 and $15 tickets are sold out, but you can still catch the show for $25. On May 13, MCC Virtual Events will launch Live Labs: One Acts, weekly readings on Wednesdays at 5:00 that will feature works by such playwrights as Robert Askins, Aziza Barnes, Peter Hedges, C. A. Johnson, Matthew Lopez, and Talene Monahon. MCC will also host the free panel discussion “Creative in Quarantine — Finding Inspiration in Isolation” on April 30 at 11:00 and a Let’s Engage open-mic night on May 7 at 8:00.