SUBMISSIONS ONLY Episode 2 Tonight

Everybody should know by now that I am mad for Submissions Only, the fun and fizzy web series about life upon (and outside) the wicked stage in New York. The title refers to the casting agency at the center of the show, the one that pulls together our heroine, actress Penny Reilly (Kate Wetherhead), who is a reader at the agency between roles, her best friend Tim (Colin Hanlon), who runs the place, and Penny's agent Steven (Stephen Bienskie), who used to have a thing with Tim. Penny also meets her current love interest, an adorable guy named Aaron Miller, played by the adorable Santino Fontana, when he, too, acts as a reader for a casting session. But Aaron gets a really good role, gets a girlfriend, one Serena Maxwell (Donna Vivino) who is fairly high up the food chain, and finds out his big break is a flop, all while he and Penny fail to get it together.

When we left them at the end of Season 2, they had admitted their attraction and even kissed, but he had neglected to break up with Serena AND Penny had been cast in a show with her. So that's awkward. The show is called Jeremy's Fort, which looks a great deal like Jeremy's Fart written on the callboard. Which is also awkward.

Episode 1 of this season didn't really fix any of that, although we did see Aaron and Penny and Serena gave Penny (and everyone else) a bunch of macarons, those popular and colorful little cookies that are all the rage.

But the joy of Submissions Only is not the romance alone. Or the macarons. It's the inside, irreverent look inside show biz, as we see the different pieces of a career spent trying to get roles and then trying to keep them while maintaining some sort of personal life. And there are all kinds of bad, desperate and weird auditions, carried out by Broadway and TV stars we know and love. There are so many fab cameos it's getting tough to list them all, but suffice it to say you must just spot Danny Burstein, Bobby Cannavale, Kristin Chenoweth, Rachel Dratch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Hunter Foster, Joel Grey, Brian d'Arcy James, Kristen Johnston, Nick Jonas, Jeremy Jordan, Linda Lavin, Beth Leavel, Judith Light, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Pascal, Roger Rees, Chita Rivera, Michael Urie, and most of the chorus of Newsies. Plus Anne L. Nathan and Max von Essen are on board as recurring characters. Jared Gertner was also there as a very, very perky reader named Randall, but we saw last time that Randall booked a gig on a cruise ship (to cover Gertner's absence -- he's in the national tour and London productions of Book of Mormon.)

There are also songs, dances and a lot of spoofy pieces of fictional shows.

The good news is that Episode 2 of Season 3 is available tonight between 8 and 9:30 pm Central time, back at BroadwayWorld.com. Submissions Only creators Wetherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger also invite you to tweet, using the hashtag #SubOnly3, after you've seen it. Or before. Or during. Whatever moves you. The Twitter party (which extends to Instagram and Facebook, if those are your social media of choice) is scheduled for 8 to 9 Central. Or, you know, 9 to 10 Eastern time. A show this NYC-centric probably should use Eastern time.

Submissions Only. Like having a career in New York theatre but getting to laugh at all the pain and rejection because it's happening to someone else.

March Marches On

It's no secret that February's weather was terrible, so I suppose it should come as no surprise that I was under it -- under the weather, I mean -- for the last week of February. Or, actually, most of February. That means I am way behind on telling you what's happening in March, talking about the Oscars, bidding adieu to Downton Abbey for another season, or covering the shows that opened and closed during the time I was sick. It's been a rough month!

But now that it's March and I actually started the day without running a temp, let's try to pull ourselves out of February malaise and get on with the show.

"Ameowadeus" with Christoph Waltz (L) and Kevin Spacey (R)

As a side note to last night's Oscars, I do have to direct you to Youtube to see the Jimmy Kimmel parody videos. They mix Hollywood stars and dramatic tropes with favorite video memes, like "Charlie Bit Me" and the Keyboard Cat. I have watched the Keyboard Cat one ("Ameowadeus") with Kevin Spacey and Christoph Waltz at least twelve times already. And there are no words for "David After Dentist Double Rainbow Oh My God! in 3D" as a drug-induced Baz Luhrman hallucination involving Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Catherine Zeta Jones, Samuel L. Jackson and Seth Rogen.

Back in real life, Other Desert Cities continues this week at Heartland Theatre, turning in its last four performances on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The weekday shows begin at 7:30 pm, while the final Sunday matinee begins at 2 on March 9. Theater critic Nancy Steele Brokaw lauded the show's acting and emotional punch in her review for the Pantagraph, and audiences have been reporting they are blown away by director Sandra Zielinski's production of this Jon Robin Baitz drama about a wealthy family's secrets and lies.

Today is the big day -- Monday, March 3 -- when the net series Submissions Only finally returns to tell us what's been happening with unlucky New York actress Penny Reilly (co-creator Kate Wetherhead) as she navigates auditions, shows, the drama created by crazy colleagues and friends, and the hint of a thing with the adorable Aaron Miller (Santino Fontana). Submissions Only is addictive. If you haven't already seen all the episodes from season 1 and 2, you'll watch to catch those before diving into season 3 at BroadwayWorld.com starting at 8 Central time tonight. Once you've watched (or during your viewing experience) you can also chat with the cast on Twitter @submissionsonly between 8 and 9 pm Central/9 and 10 EST.

Jacques Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld takes the stage in the Tryon Festival Theatre at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana from March 6 to 9. This production is a product of the new musical theater/opera program at the University of Illinois called the Lyric Theatre @Illinois. Opera star Nathan Gunn currently holds the position of General Director for the Lyric Theatre, while his wife, pianist Julie Jordan Gunn, acts as the Director of Lyric Theatre Studies. Orpheus, described as "an irreverent romp through a lusty and lively heaven, hell, and earth," is one of three Lyric productions planned for this year, mixing musical theater with opera in an attempt to teach and nurture well-rounded performers who can sing, dance, act and entertain across disciplines.

If you're a baseball fan and you know your Bloomington-Normal history, you know about Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn, the Hall of Fame pitcher buried in Evergreen Cemetery. Radbourn pitched what has been called "the winningest season in big league history," piling up 59 victories in the 1884 season on his way to a career total of 309 wins. He's been dead since 1897, but he has a Twitter account nonetheless, proving you can never truly silence an ornery, cantankerous baseball player. Old Hoss has shown up in the local Discovery Walk at Evergreen Cemetery, he's got a book about that amazing 59-win season, and now he's got a play. Playwright Jared Brown has put together a piece on Old Hoss for Illinois Voices Theatre in conjunction with the McLean County Museum of History. Rhys Lovell, who portrayed Radbourn in the cemetery walk, returns to play the role, accompanied by actors John Bowen and Howard Rogers. They'll play out this new take on Radbourn's colorful life in three performances March 7, 8 and 9 in the Governor Fifer Courtroom at the McLean County Museum. Tickets are priced at $15 for the general public and $12 for members of the Museum. You can purchase tickets in person at the Museum or by phone at 309-827-0428.

Community Players is back in the game starting March 20, when they open 9 to 5 the Musical, the stage (and, yes, musical) version of the 1980 comedy film that starred Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin as three working women trying to make a living in a hostile corporate world. Dolly Parton wrote the title song for the film and the score for the Broadway show and she certainly knows her way around a pop tune. For Players, Brett Cottone directs a cast that includes Kallie Bundy, Wendi Fleming and Aimee Kerber as the three friends who take drastic action against a sexist pig of a boss, with Mark Robinson as the pig in question. Performances of 9 to 5 continue through April 6 at Community Players.

Next up at Illinois State University is the docu-drama The Exonerated, written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and based on real trial transcripts, court documents and interviews with death row inmates who'd been wrongfully convicted. What do you do when you know you're innocent but the justice system has completely failed you? Even after the miracle of exoneration, how do you go back to living a life unscarred by what you've been through? Director Cyndee Brown brings this call to action to the ISU Center for the Performing Arts in a special benefit performance on March 21, followed by a short run in Centennial West 207 from March 27 to April 5. Brown's cast includes Nate Aikens, Mary DeWitt, Levi Ellis, Joe Faifer, Anastasia Ferguson, Gregory D. Hicks, Thomas Howie, Tim Jefferson, Dave Krostal and Cydney Moody as exonerees, witnesses, police, attorneys and other interested parties. CW 207 is a small space, so get your tickets now. You can pretty much bet The Exonerated will sell out fast.

A movie I am very much looking forward to -- Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel -- has been announced for a March 28 opening at the Art Theater Co-op in Champaign. Wes Anderson is an either/or proposition for me. I loved Moonrise Kingdom and Rushmore, but was unimpressed and uninvolved with The Royal Tenenbaums and The Darjeeling Limited. Steve Zissou landed somewhere in the middle, but probably closer to the wrong side. Will The Grand Budapest Hotel be a dream or a dud? Based on the trailer and the amazing cast (Ralph Fiennes, Jeff Goldblum, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Willem Dafoe, Owen Wilson, Tom Wilkinson, Jude Law, and of course Bill Murray and Jason Schwartzman) it looks like it should be right in my wheelhouse.

It's a Date: SUBMISSIONS ONLY Comes Back March 3

Not only do we FINALLY have a start date for season 3 of the web series Submissions Only, but we also got a nifty trailer to tease what's coming!

If you want to see the new trailer, you can see it on Youtube here. Excitement!

So what is Submissions Only and why am I so anxious for it to start again? It's billed as an "online sitcom about auditioning in New York City. Submissions Only follows a group of friends as they navigate the trips and falls, callbacks and train-wrecks experienced while working in this glorious business we call show."

It was created by Kate Wetherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger, and Weaherhead writes and stars as Penny Reilly, an actress who also works as a reader for auditions. Her pal Tim (Colin Hanlon) runs a casting agency, so Penny works for him, reading scripts opposite people trying out for whatever show they've been hired to cast. And Penny's agent, Steven (Stephen Bienskie), tries to get her roles so she won't be a reader her whole life. Steven is also Tim's ex, which can make things sticky, but Steven has a new boyfriend, the impossibly gorgeous Cameron (Max von Essen). We also see director Linda Avery (Anne Nathan) fairly often, as she hankers after male characters who are invariably gay, annoying Broadway star Serena Maxwell (Donna Vivino), Randall Moody (Jared Gertner), the most cheerful and fizzy Broadway boy ever who also works as a reader for Tim, a woman we know only as Adorable Girl (Annaleigh Ashford) and a snotty casting assistant named Donny, played by Andrew Keenan-Bolger, the co-creator who also serves as the show's director, editor and director of photography.

And that brings us to Aaron Miller, played by the adorable and wonderful Santino Fontana, who made a splash in shows like Sons of the Prophet and the current Cinderella on Broadway. Aaron shows up initially as a reader, a self-effacing sort of regular guy, but it soon becomes clear he is a very good actor, and he gets a major gig and a major girlfriend -- Serena Maxwell -- before Penny can really move on the fact that she likes him. As in likes him likes him. At the end of season 2, his big show had flopped and Serena was getting tired of him, moving him closer to Penny. Maybe.

Kate Wetherhead and Santino Fontana are two of the things that are very right about Submissions Only. It's also fun to see the star-studded cameos that pop up all over the place, most frequently as bad auditions. Danny Burstein, Kerry Butler, Bobby Cannavale, Kristin Chenoweth, Lea DeLaria, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Joel Grey, Cady Huffman, Brian d'Arcy James, Kristen Johnson, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Marc Kudisch, Linda Lavin, Beth Leavel, Judith Light, Rebecca Luker, Audra McDonald, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Pascal, Mary Beth Peil, Condola Rashad, Roger Rees, Chita Rivera, Michael Urie, and a whole bunch of Newsies including Evan Kasprzak... They're all there somewhere!

If you need to catch up on the previous seasons or just refresh your recollection, including what went down with Aaron and Penny when last we saw them, all the episodes are available here. You can also check out who's who, read their press clippings, or tell them you like them on Facebook.

When March 3 finally rolls around and we get to see Season 3, it will once again be available at BroadwayWorld.com. Thank you, BroadwayWorld.com!

Coming Soon: More SUBMISSIONS ONLY Episodes!

There are a lot of web series out there about show biz, probably because actors are so often out of work, so they're looking for something to do. Creating a series for the web means they can play whatever they want and build their career frustrations right into the story. That means there's a sameness to the storylines -- terrible auditions, vain and crazy theater folk, terrible luck getting a break -- but also some funny, talented people who really do deserve that break.

Submissions Only is the cream of the backstage web series crop, or the cream of the ones I've found, anyway. It involves a hapless actress named Penny Reilly, whose best friend is a casting director. That means Penny, who is played by Submissions Only co-creator Kate Wetherhead, frequently sits in on auditions as a reader when she's in need of a buck between gigs. That means we run into all sorts of Broadway stars who are supposedly auditioning for thing, and there are running gags about the insanity of the audition process in general. Penny has romantic problems, too, as does her friend the casting director, whose ex is Penny's agent, as both the casting guy and his ex match up with new boyrfriends. The adorable Santino Fontana, the new "It" boy of the American stage, plays Aaron, also an aspiring actor and a romantic interest for Penny, although they have never really been in the same place at the same time to make the connection.

Others in the regular cast include Colin Hanlon as Tim, Penny's best friend; Stephen Bienskie as her agent Steven; Asmeret Ghebremichael as her supportive roommate Raina; Randall Moody as a cheerful newcomer to the audition business; Max Von Essen as Steven's gorgeous new boyfriend, and Donna Vivino as Serena, a self-absorbed actress who has been Aaron's girlfriend and is now starring in a new show with Penny.

We've seen two "seasons" of Submissions Only so far, with six episodes in the first bunch, and eight in the second. Guest stars have included people like Kerry Butler, Bobby Cannavale, Rachel Dratch, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Harvey Fierstein, Joanna Gleason, Joel Grey, Nick Jonas, Jeremy Jordan, Linda Lavin, Judith Light, Audra McDonald, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Laura Osnes, Adam Pascal, Roger Rees, Chita Rivera, Tony Roberts and Michael Urie.

And now it's time for Season 3. Well, almost. A trailer has been released, with the tease that new episodes will be coming soon, but no exact timetable. Come on, Submissions Only! Get those new episodes here now!

In the meantime, you can watch the trailer here or catch up on the other 14 episodes if you haven't seen them yet.

Here's how Kate Wetherhead and her partner in the series, Andrew Keenan-Bolger, describe their show:

Created in 2010 by New York actors Kate Wetherhead and Andrew Keenan-Bolger, "Submissions Only" is a grassroots web sitcom that shows viewers what really goes on off stage. Following the friendship of two theater professionals, an actress (Kate Wetherhead as Penny Reilly) and a casting director (Colin Hanlon as Tim Trull), as they try to build careers in the notoriously tricky and often absurd world of Broadway theatrics, "Submissions Only" proves there's a whole lot of comedy in all the drama.

Submissions Only is far and away the best of the web series devoted to theater, but there are others. If you want to try some out, or if you're desperate for something to see while you wait for Submissions Only to get back, you might try:

It Could Be Worse. A scatalogical look at the seamy underside of going for a career in theater in New York, It Could Be Worse stars Wesley Taylor, who played Bobby on the TV show Smash and also appeared as the nice boyfriend in The Addams Family musical. I hated it. Its focus on bathrooms and bad behavior is just not me.

City of Dreams. Come on, kids, let's put on a show! Three plucky kids hit NYC but never get cast, so they fake a musical called The Ballad of Ovagina. "Oh, vagina, oh, won't you cry for me, cause I've come from Alabama with my banjo on my knee..." No, that's not what they perform. Instead, they get Laura Osnes to sing a song (something about windows) and shed a single tear perfectly on cue. Osnes is lovely, but the rest of the show... The three main children are annoying with no redeeming qualities that I can see, and, as the friend who told me about this series said, it's about "Young kids trying to make it, and I'm thinking, maybe not everybody SHOULD make it."

Theater People. Set in the theater-crazy world of Minneapolis-St. Paul, Theater People uses all kinds of talented Twin Cities actors to fill out plots that seem like it was inspired by the Canadian series Slings and Arrow, with its messy romances and insane directors. There's no ghost, however, and most of the characters are really, really annoying. Especially serial cheater David, whose ex-wife is directing him as Romeo (a really old Romeo) in a misguided production of Romeo and Juliet. There's an awesome cat video if you get all the way to the end, however.

The Reel Housewives of Theatre West. Did you know there's also theater in LA? I mean, not just movies, but also theater? The Reel Housewives of Theatre West takes you there, looking at actresses who've gotten too old to get roles but are still working at a mediocre theater. There's a ventriloquist character who always carries a puppet and talks to and through it, which I almost always hate. But if you can't get enough of Nunsense and Menopause the Musical, this just may be the show for you.

Backstage Drama. This one involves a framing device of a cute New Jersey guy who gets put in witness protection as a janitor at a small regional theater in "Grand River, Michigan" with a boatload of crazy people working in their version of show business. This series was created to benefit regional theaters, and only the first few episodes are available for free. I'm sorry because its heart is in the right place, but it's terrible. The acting is awful, the editing is amateurish and confused, and the writing is just beyond sad.

If you've found a backstage web series I should see, let me know. Otherwise I'll just bide my time and wait for Submissions Only.