National Theatre at Home

I thank you. I have enjoyed many productions from your world in mine. It began with A Midsummer Night’s Dream and I am watching The Little Big Things a second time. I also enjoyed a children’s show centering around a red hat. That was a great deal of fun. Angels In America was breath taking, I had taught the play in Authors of the Theater and shared with them the HBO version. Your Angels was as if I knew nothing of the play and was off on an adventure. I watched one of the versions of Conversations. I am a retired Theater professor and this is a present for myself and for those I am lucky to share it with. The Little Big Things is very moving. I grew up with a mother who had had polio when she was young and spent most of her life on crutches until she needed a wheelchair for movement. One of the things about The Little Big Things that I love is how many people are a part of the production who might not be in a production. Thank you for sharing your world. There is applause and tears and laughter on a different continent because you share your theater. When you do, your theater becomes everyone’s theater. I may not be sitting in your theater but my heart is there - figuratively. I am thankful and blessed. I wish you all the best, Ed Heaberlin

I’ve had the service for almost a year now and it has been a blessing in these dark times. I live in Georgia, USA and we don’t get to see theater of this standard often. When the National put their shows online during the start of the pandemic it felt like going back to the theater again. It game me hope. Now when I’m at a loss creatively or just need a little pick me up, I open the app and find a show that I’d have never been able to see before. I wish the selection was wider and deeper— but I understand the difficulties that entails— furthermore I think they’re releasing a bunch of new shows this year! This isn’t standard theater, or a “stand in” for theater and it certainly isn’t film— it’s far more alive than film can ever be— but it is exactly what the world needs right now: a series of living breathing moments that ask us to breathe with them and listen. Thank you to all the artists and production staffers! You did it!

“I want more!” More content: Gorgeous production of unparalleled theater. Is it any wonder I want more? understand that the theater releases must make money, but I want them at home, too. It won’t put a penny of NT money at risk because when I can go to a theater I will still buy tickets because the big screen is an even more amazing experience. Am I the only one who wants to watch a play more than one time? When Patrick Stewart’s Macbeth was on Broadway my wife and I had such a great time we bought tix for the next night and had even more fun. More insight: I’m in my 60’s and quietly geeking out over Shakespeare (many thankis BTW to Ehrin Ziegler’s Chop Bard podcast). Could we get a few thousand hours of behind-the-scenes with the dramaturgs, designers, producers, etc? I’d love to see the raw confusion of a cast’s first reading, pre-rehearsal - and for as many shows as possible. How do the initial themes that the director has in mind when prepping for rehearsal evolve or wither away? How do directing styles differ from show to show? And if we could have a compare/contrast of NT’s many Hamlets over the years!!!! Or Midsummer, or… SO grateful NT has begun this effort. If only there were something I could do to make this site nearly as iconic as the theater itself.