The Public Theater & more to launch Play at Home free service

Play at Home is a series of micro-commissioned short plays made available to the general public to download, read and perform at home for free.

Are you a leading player in your own house? New York City's Public Theater has joined forces with other theatres across the country to launch a new and entirely free service for the general public, who currently find themselves in quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Entitled Play at Home, the digital service offers a series of micro-commissioned short plays that can be downloaded for free, read and ultimately performed at home by members of the general public. Each play will have a running time of ten minutes or less and is released on the provisal that it is never professionally produced.

Other theatres joining the Public in the venture include Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Theatre (in New Haven, Connecticut), The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (in Washington, D.C.).

A joint statement from the respective Artistic Directors reads: "Even as theatres have closed to protect the public, the community that makes theatre possible remains open for storytelling. We're proud to have found a way to support our storytellers during this time of great uncertainty clouding the future of theatre, and we're excited for audiences to read and perform these plays as they bring them to life with their families—in their own homes. We hope that theatres across the country will be inspired to join with us to continue to expand this list and bring more voices to the table."

The Public Theater has commissioned a number of its playwriting alumni for the new project, including Jordan E. Cooper (Ain't No Mo'), Ty Defoe (CRANE: On Earth, in Sky), Ryan J. Haddad (Hi, Are You Single?), Daniella de Jesús (Mambo Sauce), Daniel Alexander Jones (Black Light), Hansol Jung (Wild Goose Dreams), Ethan Lipton (Tumacho), Patricia Ione Lloyd (Eve's Song) and Mona Mansour (The Vagrant Trilogy).

For more information and to download the short plays, visit www.playathome.org.