Laura Benanti invites theater kids to share performances canceled due to coronavirus

Hoping to lift our spirits amid Coronavirus anxiety, Broadway legend Laura Benanti asked kids to post rehearsal video of their canceled High School musicals – and her hashtag #SunshineSongs has since gone viral with a deluge of delightful responses.

As Broadway went dark amid virus fears, “Gypsy” star Benanti tweeted, “Dark times for all. Trying to find some bright spots. If you were meant to perform in your High School musical and it was cancelled please post yourself singing and tag me. I want to be your audience!!” She added, “Sending all my love and black market toilet paper.”

The Tony Award-winning actress and star of “The Sound of Music Live!” and “Nashville” added in an Instagram video, “I know that a lot of high schools were going to have their musicals and those musicals got cancelled. That is a bummer because I know for so many of us I know for me my high school musical was a lifesaver.





“So if you would like to sing a song that you are not going to get to sing now and tag me, I want to see you. I want to hear it.”

Her post was met by a wave of responses from across the country, including video of a show-stopping staging of “The Wedding Singer” in a dark street, lit by car headlights to performances from school productions of “Shrek , “Mary Poppins” and “Newsies”

Plus, there are moving choir practices, candid solos from home and even a monologue from Shakespeare’s “King Lear”.

Views of many of the videos retweeted by Benanti topped 20,000 in just a few hours , while a rendition of “Waiting For Life” at Union High School, New Jersey, posted by @khadija_sankoh soared past 115,000 views.





The #SunshineSongs hashtag even caught the attention of “Hamilton” legend Lin-Manuel Miranda who write on Twitter, “Thank you, @LauraBenanti thank you kids, I’m watching too. #SunshineSongs.”

California dad and music lover Adam McIntyre also posted in response, “If anyone needs to spend a few minutes being uplifted and inspired by other humans, checkout the hashtag #SunshineSongs and get lost in a bunch of dress rehearsal performances from school shows that were cancelled this week.”

Amid nationwide school closures and bans on large gatherings nationwide, it was just announced that all Broadway shows in New York City would be suspended to safeguard the health of the public and performers. The shows are expected to resume the week of April 13.





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