If you’re anything like us, you’re missing the crown jewel of Bay Area arts and culture: its vibrant theater scene. You’re searching for a way to rediscover that thrill in life, desperately longing — nay, pining — for something to fill that gaping hole in your heart previously filled by live performance. Or you might be real green to theater in the Bay, to which we say, “Welcome to the dark side. We have fourth-row orchestra seats.”

Either way, lucky for you, many of the area’s companies are finding ways to offer their work digitally, so we’ve put together a guide to enjoying Bay Area theater virtually.

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While this guide doesn’t encompass every option, we’re here to highlight hidden gems and community favorites that are offering online programming, like recorded versions or livestreams of full productions, or other resources. If we missed any of your favorites, please leave them in the comments.

Shotgun Players

Also known as: Shotgun
Location: Berkeley (South Berkeley)
If you’re craving: A mind-boggling surprise — in a great way

From visceral dramas straight from NYC to Shakespeare adaptations, and mind-blowing meta plays, Shotgun Players company produces just about everything — and very well. Fun fact: Out of all the theater companies in the Bay, Shotgun has the most consistently awe-inspiring season-wide design whose graphic styles match across the whole season (including painting the outside of their building to match the production — now that’s dedication!).

The theater company recently completed its limited digital run of Jason Craig’s “SongPlay” Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage as well as a brilliant live Zoom reading of Anna Moench’s Man of God (pictured below).

Shotgun has some of the most robust and accessible socially distanced programming starting with their “Art in the Time of Coronavirus” series, which will give you a taste of the diverse (and often delightfully quirky) productions that Shotgun is known for.

What you can watch virtually:

• The entirety of a devised piece called Kill the Debbie Downers, Kill Them, Kill Them, Kill Them Off! (lovingly “abbreviated” KTDDKTKTKTO). Based on Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters, a Russian epic that follows the drama between the eponymous characters after the death of their father, Kill the Debbie Downers takes the story and combines it with song, dance, and movement, turning it into a brand new show.
• The Shotgun Players podcast, which features scenes from recorded productions, full audio plays, and interviews with Shotgun theater artists in all areas — including propmasters, actors, stage managers, and scenic designers.
• Take a look at their “A Sonnet A Day” series on Youtube, in which past Shotgun actors recite one of Shakespeare’s sonnets — look out for all 154.
• “2 Minutes in 2 Days,” Shotgun’s self-proclaimed “teeny tiny two-minute super site-specific theatre festival,” in which participants were invited to create a video under two minutes that included a representation of time, 10 seconds of movement, some text from a play, and either toilet paper or a mask.
• Shotgun’s magnificent late 2018/early 2019 production of Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. Widely considered one of the greatest contemporary plays, Arcadia is a romantic tale that alternates between the early 1800s and present day that tells a time-transcendent tale of mathematics, attraction, sex, chaos, and the pursuit of knowledge. Shotgun’s Arcadia will be digitally released on June 12.

San Francisco Playhouse

Also known as: SF Playhouse
Location: SF (Union Square)
If you’re craving: Inspiring art that will make you want to get off the couch and make something

San Francisco Playhouse is the home for excellent plays from both established and emerging playwrights — and although they frequently produce musicals, what SF Playhouse consistently does best is straight plays (not “straight” as in hetero, but “straight” as in not a musical). SF Playhouse hosts a mainstage season in their theater just north of Union Square, but actors also put on productions and readings at other venues around the city. From stunning production design to top-tier acting and directing (and fun pre-coronavirus stuff like when they cooked food onstage — you could literally smell the fish), if you’re looking for incredible live theater with all different themes, genres, and stories, SF Playhouse is your place. SF Playhouse is also known for describing their theater as an “Empathy Gym,” and they display this concept prominently in a detailed plaque above the lobby doors.

What you can watch virtually:

The theater company’s current digital offerings veer away from productions and performances. Rather, SF Playhouse has focused its efforts on their Empathy Gym Fireside Chats (both live and recorded for later viewing). In this series, SF Playhouse artistic director Bill English talks with a variety of artists. Those include:

• Chinese American playwright Lauren Yee, whose play-with-music Cambodian Rock Band recently had its NYC premiere as an Off-Broadway run in February–March. You can also listen to the show’s soundtrack on Spotify and Apple Music.
• Lauren Gunderson, one of America’s most frequently produced living playwrights and a playwright-in-residence at Marin Theatre Company.

Magic Theatre

Also known as: The Magic
Location: SF (Fort Mason)
If you’re craving: Everyday, slice-of-life drama

Located a few floors up in the Fort Mason Center, Magic Theatre produces a body of work on par with their mission to produce performances that “ask substantive questions about our place in humanity.” Rooted in the nature of life and living, there’s something grounding about the Magic’s work, which tends to premiere and workshop realistically driven pieces that frequently go on to have productions at a variety of other well-known theaters around the country.

The theater company is frequently associated with renowned playwright Sam Shepard, a Magic playwright-in-residence who passed away in 2017. The Magic is also known for its annual Virgin Play Festival, which showcases new works by a variety of terrific playwrights through play readings.

What you can watch now:

The Magic recently completed its digital run of Ricardo Pérez González’s Don’t Eat the Mangoes, but never fear, beginning on March 30, it is now releasing a Monday through Friday Soundcloud podcast, Far Apart Art. You now have over 40 episodes about theater under 10 minutes to listen to, so get to it!

New Conservatory Theater Center

Also known as: NCTC
Location: SF (Market)
If you’re craving: Theater for the whole family

Located in the beautiful Masonic Temple building at 25 Van Ness, NCTC (founded in 1981) is known for producing queer and allied theatrical work in the Bay. That includes 13 plays from influential queer playwright Terrence McNally, who recently passed away due to Covid-19 complications. Their work ranges from darker, grittier dramas to the raunchy Broadway hit Avenue Q, which the theater has produced multiple years in a row. NCTC also offers classes for youth and teens through their conservatory and runs a youth education program (originally created in response to San Francisco’s AIDS crisis).

You can now support and engage with NCTC with their Offstage to Online content, including programming for the whole week that features both the theater actors and other local artists they support.

What you can enjoy now:

• Tune in at 5 p.m. on Fridays for NCTV: Live at Five, in which artists present and talk about their work. Live at Five events include discussions with theatermakers, drag tutorials, dance workshops, and more.
• Discover videos from NCTC’s conservatory classes on Saturdays, in which youth students demonstrate what they’ve been learning in short videos.
• Watch backstage and behind-the-scenes explorations with theater crew giving snippets of their work, including monologues, performances, and candid discussions.
• NCTC also recommends several projects by local queer artists, including Quaran-Tunis with Katya Smirnoff-Skyy, a popular Bay Area drag queen, and The Del & Emerson Show, a new podcast hosted by frequent NCTC collaborator Del Shores and actor Emerson Collins.

Theatre Rhinoceros

Also known as: The Rhino
Location: SF (The Castro)
If you’re craving: Fun (or campy or cheeky) queer performances

Founded in 1977 (just ahead of NCTC), Theatre Rhinoceros prides itself on being the longest-running queer theater in the world. It showcases a diverse range of shows, from traditional theatrical productions to comedy, musical, and drag performances. The Rhino hosts most of its performances in a very small basement (in theater, we call that an “intimate setting”), which merely adds to its charm. Don’t go in expecting big-budget production design or contemporary classics — The Rhino hasn’t made it as a top Bay Area theater destination for its Broadway-style productions, but more for its heart, and we’re very happy about that.

Currently, The Rhino offers a boatload of digital content and livestreams of new work, which are uploaded and featured on their website.

What you can watch now:

• Nearly a dozen all-new, recorded Facebook Live shows created and performed by John Fisher, Bay Area playwright and artistic director of The Rhino.
• A pay-what-you-wish recording of John Fisher’s Radical, a political comedy following the transformation of a politician running for Supervisor. Radical is available until August 31.
• Free recorded play readings performed via Zoom, including SCOTUS GAY: Lawrence v. Texas, a play about the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that declared sodomy laws unconstitutional; Mind That, ’Tis Me Brother, a comedy about the afterlife journey of a man who died of AIDS; and Zoom Catastrophe, a play about the struggles of a law firm meeting via Zoom.

Crowded Fire Theater

Also known as: CFT
Location: SF (Potrero)
If you’re craving: Work from theatrically underrepresented communities.

Crowded Fire Theater definitely wins the award for Best Wordplay-Based Name of a Theater Company. As one of the resident theater companies at the Potrero Stage, the majority of CFT performances take place in a cozy 99-seat theater with no bad seat in the house. CFT produces a variety of work, including more experimental or performance-art-based work rather than conventional narrative work. But its bread and butter are powerful, provocative, and frequently intersectional new works by artists from marginalized and underrepresented communities, including artists of color and LGBTQIA+/queer artists.

What you can watch now:

• CFT artistic director Mina Morita’s TEDx talk on building a new landscape of American theater.
• Beautiful production photos from the theater’s wide selection of boundary-pushing works, including recent favorites like Mia Chung’s You for Me for You (2017), a play about two sisters who attempt to escape North Korea and their subsequent lives as one succeeds and one does not.

Berkeley Repertory Theatre

Also known as: Berkeley Rep
Location: Berkeley (Downtown)
If you’re craving: The latest and greatest in American theater

Berkeley Rep is situated in the heart of downtown Berkeley, just outside the Cal campus. In a perfect world, we’d recommend that you indulge in a Berkeley restaurant around the theater, but perhaps you can get takeout from one of them to simulate the full experience at home. Basically, if you see anything at Berkeley Rep, you’ll undoubtedly be on top of the American theater scene; the theater company often produces shows that become the Next Big Thing (or were once the Next Big Thing), including those having their world premieres, American premieres, and/or West Coast premieres. Berkeley Rep’s rich theatrical offerings range from musicals to plays, reaching back to 1968.

Right now, you can become that hip theater geek you never wished you were in high school.

What you can watch now:

• Read any number of fun short plays from professional playwrights as part of Play At Home, a project collecting plays written and acted at home in quarantine.
• Browse the production archives, which include photos as well as trailers, behind-the-scenes videos, and more. Some shows to check out that were or became the Next Big Thing include:Jackie Sibblies Drury’s Fairview (2018), which won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Fairview tackles race and being watched as a Black person in America.

City Lights Theater Company

Also known as: City Lights
Location: San Jose (Downtown)
If you’re craving: Something you can enjoy with friends on a Friday night

Located in downtown San Jose, City Lights Theater Company is one of the South Bay’s top theaters showcasing work guaranteed to delight even the most difficult-to-please theatergoers. Although occasionally featuring plays by local playwrights, City Lights tends to produce classics and popular new shows — recent productions include Tony Award for Best Musical In the Heights, Pulitzer finalist The Wolves, Tony Award for Best Play God of Carnage, and Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice.

You can now watch:

• A recorded performance of Truce: A Christmas Wish from the Great War (2014), a production commemorating the Christmas Truce of World War I that features scenes, songs, and readings of actual letters from the time.
• Because the show had to close before its full run, the theater is presenting a preview performance version of Coded (2020), a play about female game designers navigating the male-dominated industry. Get access here.
• The Next Stage series, which includes performances and short shows from a variety of artists affiliated with City Lights, including actors, singers, directors, and dancers.

Even more theater

If you’re hungry for even more socially distant theater, check out:

• The Bay Area Playwrights Festival, July 17–26, which is going virtual and featuring a diverse set of five new plays by Tyler English-Beckwith, Stefani Kuo, Jordan Ramirez Puckett, Deneen Reynolds-Knott, and Noelle Viñas.
• Cal Shakes’ online platform, where you can join a live watch party of Shakespearian theater, á la Mystery Science Theater 3000.
• The Ubuntu Theater Project’s “Zoomed In” series, a live broadcasted reading of a play every Friday at 5:30 p.m.
• Through June 14, Town Hall Theatre is offering a pay-what-you-can stream for their production of Twelfth Night.
• Through June 14, PlayGround’s annual New Works Festival is going digital with their Playground Zoom Fest, featuring over 25 livestreamed events for their 25th anniversary, most of them free.