NYC-based artist Andrew Norlen’s new book, When The Lights Are Bright Again, published by Applause Theatre & Cinema Books and spotlighting the 2020-21 theater shutdown, is available today in hardcover and digital formats. To celebrate its release, a launch party will be livestreamed tonight, Monday, November 1, from 7-11 pm, exclusively on Broadway On Demand.
The free event will feature performance by Eden Espinosa, James Harkness, Shereen Pimentel, Robert Hartwell, Eleri Ward, MiMi Scardulla, Nattalyee Randall, Courtney Daniels, Davon Williams, Heather Parcells, and many more luminaries from the stage. If you miss the livestream, you can still read the illuminating book and add it to your library.
What began as one artist’s desperate desire to express himself within a global pandemic has grown into a theater-community outlet for healing, grief, justice, and hope, immortalizing the stories, struggles, and successes of an industry that was the first to be shut down and one of the last to return, when COVID-19 made us examine what a world without live performance looks like and feels like. In the pages of the book, Norlen weaves more than 200 letters from such Broadway notables as Jerry Mitchell, Keala Settle, Ali Stroker, Sergio Trujillo, Eden Espinosa, Rob McClure, Robyn Hurder, Clint Ramos, Arian Moayed, Amber Iman, Andrew Barth Feldman, and others, expressing their personal insights from the past year, together with the thoughts of devout theatergoers, teenage dreamers, long-time ushers, designers, creatives, and arts workers, presented in tandem with a brand-new breathtaking photo series by acclaimed Broadway photographer Matthew Murphy.
Dedicated to the loving memory of Tony-nominated actor Nick Cordero, who was lost to COVID-19, a portion of the proceeds from the sale of each book will be donated to The Actors Fund, the national human services organization for everyone in the performing arts and entertainment.
Andrew Norlen, When The Lights Are Bright Again (Applause Theater & Cinema Books, November 1, 2021, hardcover, 240 pages, ISBN 978-1493066599) is available for $38.39 on Amazon and from other popular booksellers.
