“I’ve loved watching other people’s videos — it just spreads positivity and takes your mind off the craziness of the world,” she said. “So I thought I’ll post ours and tag the people, and within half an hour it blew up. Surreal is the best word for it — we’re a small-town college in Nebraska, doing what we love, and I wanted to share some joy, and although not everybody has nice things to say, it’s nice to see the people that are enjoying it — that’s why I do it.”

The participants are taking a very broad view of the exercise — one shared video of a young stagehand moving a chair in a living room, while another triumphantly shared a rendition of a key speech from “King Lear.”

Edith Salvatore of San Francisco posted video of her 9-year-old triplets running through their songs for what was to have been a 200-child elementary school production of “Crazy for You.” Salvatore, a high school Spanish teacher, is a big Benanti fan — she has an alert set up to notify her when Benanti tweets — and had been following her effort.

“I saw it, and thought it was a great idea, and then I was in the backyard with my kids bouncing on the trampoline, and they were saying they were sad rehearsals had been canceled,” she said. “So I said, ‘We should record it, so we can hear it once’.”