3Views' New Digital Archive Launches Today, Featuring INTIMATE APPAREL, UNKNOWN SOLDIER, and GNIT

The Lillys - in partnership with a broad coalition of theater artists - announced today that 3Views is shifting its mission: it will now serve as a digital archive, highlighting cancelled and waylaid productions, gathering reflections from theater makers, and spotlighting urgent and helpful initiatives. 3Views is now live, on www.3viewstheater.com.

3Views was originally conceived as an online journal aimed to expand and deepen writing about theater. Its aim was to provide three perspectives on one piece of theater at a time, written by a diverse group-diverse in terms of gender, race and ethnicity, genre and aesthetic, in the hopes that theater productions could be seen through multiple lenses.

3Views had recruited writers from a wide array of genres to write for the journal including Alison Bechdel, Cassie da Costa, Alexander Chee, Eve Ensler, Roxane Gay, John Guare, Jessica Hagedorn, John Lahr, Paul Muldoon, Cynthia Nixon, Mary Louise Parker, Claudia Rankine, James Shapiro, Kathryn Schulz, Zadie Smith, Wally Shawn, Alisa Solomon, Gloria Steinem and Monique Truong; and was preparing to launch this spring when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and theaters across the country were forced to close their doors.

With no theater to review, 3Views was stopped in its tracks. So instead of waiting for theaters to re-open, 3Views decided to take care of the theater community in a different way. In the absence of physical gathering, 3Views will now serve as a virtual space where cancelled productions can re-emerge.

Each week, 3Views will feature three cancelled productions a week in the hopes that plays with foreshortened lives can be produced in the near future: read an excerpt from the script, view video, look through photos, read through the production's history, explore its design and more.

"Theater has always been ephemeral, of the moment, and a practice for loss. But never has our community felt that as keenly as we do now," said 3Views co-founder Sarah Ruhl. "We wanted to shine light on the theatrical-almosts across our country, and the theatrical moments cut short, to celebrate them, in the hopes that they can be resurrected after Covid. I think of it as a kind of collective practice to mark this time.

I'm grateful to all the writers who shared reflections of this moment, and hope we can connect as best we can through the ether right now through language. While there will still be a need for diverse criticism when theaters reopen, there are more urgent needs right now, and we wanted to respond to those needs, hoping to create a model that we could pass on to the next generation when the time is right."

The first three productions featured on 3Views are: TFANA's production of Gnit, by Will Eno; LCT's production of Intimate Apparel, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon and libretto by Lynn Nottage; and Playwright Horizon's production of Unknown Soldier, with book and lyrics by Daniel Goldstein and music and lyrics by Michael Friedman.

Productions from across the country will be highlighted in coming weeks, including Victory Gardens Theater's production of Dhaba on Devon Avenue by Madhuri Shekar, the Magic Theater's production of Don't Eat the Mangos by Ricardo Perez Gonzalez, and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company's production of There's Always the Hudson by Paola Lazaro, with more to be announced shortly.

And in keeping to their original mission, 3Views has gathered voices in the theater to speak to the current moment in the form of reflections, elegies, secular prayers, meditations and rants. Wallace Stevens wrote in Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, "I was of three minds/Like a tree/In which there are three blackbirds," so to honor that kind of fractal multiplicity, 3Views has published 13 reflections of the moment, ranging from Julia Cho's urgent prayer, to Paula Vogel's thoughts on aging in the time of Covid, to C.A. Johnson's reflection on a canceled play. 3Views will continue to publish reflections from theater makers every week.

3Views will also spotlight urgent and helpful initiatives within the theater community. The first organization 3Views is highlighting is The Bret Adams and Paul Reisch Foundation and this year's 2020 grant recipients: 80 playwrights, composers, lyricists and librettists who have had a full professional production cancelled, closed, or indefinitely postponed due to the COVID-19 closures. 3Views will feature Q&As with the recipients, as well as excerpts from their work.

All content is offered to readers freely and will create a digital record of an unprecedented time-a tapestry of what the American theater looked like in this moment. If viewers are so inclined to make a donation, funds will be used for The Lillys Direct Covid Grants, which are helping individual theater artists survive during this time.

In partnership with Signature Theatre's SigSpace, 3Views will celebrate its launch with a virtual toast on Wednesday, May 27 at 6pm EST. Join 3Views Founding Members Julia Jordan and Sarah Ruhl as they lead a toast in Signature's virtual lobby, followed by a live moderated conversation by 3Views Editor Melissa Crespo, with Signature Resident Playwright Katori Hall, director Steve H. Broadnax III, and the cast of The Hot Wing King. RSVPs will open up soon via Signature Theatre's SigSpace website.