Watch Virtual National Theatre With St. Pete's freeFall Theatre

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — The vibrant St. Petersburg theater community that ranges from equity shows, community shows and improv shows has gone almost silent because of the coronavirus pandemic. Patrons of the arts community have experienced theater withdrawals, however arts venues around town such as freeFall Theatre have come up with clever ways for safe community theater interactions while getting to see virtual shows from London.

The artistic staff at freeFall kicked off virtual chat sessions called National Theatre Wednesdays at the beginning of April. The discussions center around the prior week's London National Theatre performance featured on YouTube. Every week, National Theatre selects one of its full-length play performances to feature on their channel. And it's free for anyone to watch.

This past week, local theater patrons saw “Twelfth Night,” and discussed their thoughts on the show with freeFall's artistic director, Eric Davis, and others via the Zoom link that is found on freeFall's Facebook page. The discussions happen every Wednesday at 6 p.m.

"It's been incredible," associate artistic director Chris Crawford told Patch. "The very first week we did it, we had somewhere between 40 and 50 people (on the Zoom discussion) and it's just grown every week since then."

They have grown the virtual attendance to around 70.

Crawford said when they discussed how to move forward during the pandemic, the last thing they wanted was to disappear when they feel they are called to be present for the arts community. After discussing several ideas to give back, they thought this would be the best way to provide high quality camera performances to the local patrons.

"Frankenstein" is coming to the Wednesday, May 6, Zoom chat with the freeFall artistic staff via National Theatre's YouTube page. The following week features a performance of "Antony and Cleopatra."