The World Trade Center and The Oculus (photo: Nicole Freezer Rubens) are testaments to New York City strong!  Movie theaters and live theater are gradually starting to open! Valerie Smaldone reports that Theatre 80 St Mark’s is offering limited tickets for live performances of two one-act plays. There two fabulous virtual theater performances from other theater groups happening this weekend. The Orchids are back at NY Botanical Gardens. Be on the lookout for PopsUp performances all around the city. Our Broadway Babe has her YouTube picks today. And below are more highlights of wonderful things to do including our 3T Event in honor of Women’s History Month.

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PopsUp Festival

NY PopsUp, which launched in February and will run through Labor Day, is an expansive festival consisting of hundreds of pop-up performances that will regularly permeate the daily lives of New Yorkers. There will be a lot of exciting well know performers who will participate. Learn more here.

NYC Theater This Weekend

While our theaters are still closed, so much incredible innovation has happened online from our theatrical community. Here are two fabulous performances happening this weekend.

The first is the encore production of Group.BR’s Inside the Wild Heart, which takes place on the virtual platform gather.town eliciting a similar experience to when it was performed live in an Upper East Side brownstone. Performances are this weekend (and through March 28), Friday at 7pm and Sunday at 5pm.  Inside the Wild Heart is an immersive theatrical experience based on the works of Clarice Lispector, Brazil’s most acclaimed female writer. Get details and tickets here.

The second is The Seeing Place Theater’s version of Lynn Nottage’s Sweat, directed by Brandon Walker, which will have two live performances on zoom, Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 3pm.  Sweat is a Pulitzer Prize winning play which gets at the heart racial inequality and the need to belong. Get details and tickets.

Now-April 4. Spotlight on Orchids

Due to limited visitors, The New York Botanical Gardens is not doing their traditional orchid exhibition, but we are excited that they are doing a Spotlight on Orchids. A visit to select galleries of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory reveals intimate displays of orchids in brilliant white and striking colors set against the foliage of aroids, ferns, and bromeliads—planted as they might be found in nature and blending gracefully with their surroundings. Get the details.

Awesome Dames and Special Guys

If you need cheering up you will love this week’s suggestions from Randie Levine-Miller, our Broadway Babe. She’s got Sondheim and Hal Prince, Carol Channing and Pearl Bailey, and three fabulous “Dames at Sea”. And we love her sidebars about her encounters with some of these greats. Watch now.

New York City Strong

Our roving photographer, Nicole Freezer Rubens is the author of “The Long P:ause and the Short Breath,” photos and poetry from NYC’s pandemic.

Lower Manhattan’s World Trade Center and The Oculus are a testament to rebuilding and coming back stronger. Seeing them in person reminds me that we will overcome and rebound from the past year to find that renewal lies ahead. 

Stories and Songs

Broadway, film, and television singer/actress Barbara Minkus has been creative during the pandemic. She started a Youtube STORY-AND-A-SONG series.  They are fun and very entertaining. Check them out on YouTube.