August may be the last month to enjoy the summer heat, but the streamers are pulling out all their tricks to keep theatre fans indoors. Netflix helms a new musical movie and a star-studded adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, the highly anticipated Marvel series She-Hulk: Attorney at Law releases on Disney+—led by Mark Ruffalo and Tatiana Maslany—and Vera Farmiga stars in a new Apple TV+ drama.  Here’s a look at what’s streaming this month.

Netflix

The Sandman (August 5)
Based on the DC comics by Neil Gaiman, this Netflix series blends mythology and dark fantasy and follows the Dream King, Morpheus, as he mends his past mistakes. The show stars Tom Sturridge (last seen in Broadway’s Sea Wall/A Life) as Dreams of the Endless, Mason Alexander Park as Desire, and John Cameron Mitchell as Hal, drag queen-slash-bed-and-breakfast owner. 

13: The Musical (August 12)
Netflix’s adaptation of Jason Robert Brown’s 13: The Musical centers on 13-year-old Evan Goldman as he navigates a sudden move from NYC to “the lamest place in the world” Indiana, his parents divorcing, and his impending bar mitzvah. The movie stars Eli Golden as the lead character, alongside the ensemble teen cast comprising Gabriella Uhl, JD McCrary, Frankie McNellis, Lindsey Blackwell, Jonathan Lengel, Broadway The Lion King alum Ramon Reed, Nolen Dubuc, Luke Islam, Shechinah Mpumlwana, Kayleigh Cerezo, Willow Moss, Liam Wignall, and Khiyla Aynne. Debra Messing, Rhea Perlman, Josh Peck, and Peter Hermann star in newly added roles for the film, playing the adults. Watch the trailer here.

Prime Video, Freevee

A League of Their Own (August 12)
The eight-episode Prime Video series is an adaptation of the 1992 cult classic film penned by Mr. Saturday Night co-writers and 2022 Tony nominees Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. The reboot’s stars include Broadway favorites Roberta Colindrez, Chanté Adams, Molly Ephraim, and Rosie O’Donnell. The drama tells the story of a generation of women who dreamed of playing professional baseball and their relationships on and off the field as they battle sexism in the industry. The show is said to look at race and sexuality among its ensemble of characters. Watch the trailer here.

Sprung (August 19)
Created by writer, director, and executive producer Greg Garcia (My Name is Earl, Raising Hope) Amazon Freevee’s Sprung follows a convicted criminal, Jack, who gets an early release from prison due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Due to not having the proper resources to turn his life around, he finds himself living with his former cellmate and his mom (and his prison girlfriend), and they decide to “right some of society’s wrongs.” The series stars Martha Plimpton—who starred in Broadway’s A Delicate Balance and the New York Philharmonic Concert production of Company—along with Garret Dillahunt, Kate Walsh, and Shakira Barrera.

Disney+

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (August 17)
Stage favorites Mark Ruffalo, Tatiana Maslany, Renée Elise Goldsberry, and Josh Segarra star in this Marvel’s Disney+ series about attorney-slash-superpowered-hulk Jennifer Walters as she navigates her busy life.

Hulu

TrollsTopia: The Seventh and Final Season (August 11)
TrollsTopia has boasted Broadway talent throughout its long-lived series with Megan Hilty and Skylar Astin lending their voices in recurring roles. In the show’s seventh and final season: Val’s vacation goes awry, Cloud Guy is accepted to Cloud College, and Branch needs a new buddy.

The Patient (August 30)
The Patient, presented by FX on Hulu, is a psychological thriller about a therapist, Alan Strauss who’s held prisoner by a patient/serial killer, Sam Fortner. The twist is… Sam wants Alan to cure his homicidal urges. The 10-episode limited series stars Broadway vets David Alan Grier—last seen in A Soldier’s Play—and Linda Emond, alongside an all-star cast, including Steve Carrell and Andrew Leeds (Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist).

Apple TV+

Five Days at Memorial (August 9)
Based on actual events and adapted from the book by Sheri Fink, Five Days at Memorial takes place in a local hospital amid the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The series stars stage favorites Vera Farmiga, Cherry Jones, Cornelius Smith Jr., and Molly Hager.

David Shopland and Shereen Roushbaiani’s Saving Britney closes July 30 after kickstarting its Off-Broadway run July 6 at SoHo Playhouse, transferring from London’s Old Red Lion Theatre. 

The solo show is inspired by the #FreeBritney movement and follows millennial Jean and her journey of self-discovery through her love of Britney Spears. The nostalgia-filled play tackles celebrity obsession and sexuality.

Saving Britney features performances by Shereen Roushbaiani, a script by Shopland and Roushbaiani, and direction by David Shopland. It is produced by Fake Escape.

Additional works inspired by the Princess of Pop include the jukebox musical Once Upon a One More Time, which had its world premiere in D.C. last year, and & Juliet, which arrives on Broadway October 28 following its North American premiere at Toronto’s Princess of Wales Theatre and previous West End bow. The Broadway-bound musical features multiple songs by Spears, including “…Baby One More Time,” “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet A Woman,” “Stronger,” and more.

Visit SoHoPlayhouse.com.

Since 1947, theatre artists and aficionados alike have traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The Fringe is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and in commemoration, Playbill is looking back on how a handful of independent theatre companies inspired the largest arts festival in the world.

In the years after World War II, Austrian opera impresario Sir Rudolf Bing created the Edinburgh International Festival with the intention of healing the cultural wounds in the U.K. following the devastation of the war. With a focus on classical music, opera, ballet, and Renaissance drama, the International Festival was, at least initially, designed to appeal to the highbrow tastes of the aristocracy to which Bing himself belonged. The Fringe began, quite literally, ‘on the fringes’ of the International Festival, when eight community and amateur theatre companies from Scotland and England came to Edinburgh without having received the formal invitation. With all of the cities major venues occupied, they took over smaller and more unusual venues on the outskirts of the city, capturing the attention of the assembled audiences with their offbeat and unusual offerings. As the years went on, the idea spread, and soon there were more theatre companies coming uninvited than there were companies that had received an invite!

The Fringe developed into an official organization in 1951, when University of Edinburgh students began to provide food and lodging to the traveling artists. Late night revues and one person productions quickly gained prominence, with many barriers between audience and artist lowered in favor of person-to-person entertainment. As more theatre companies began to show up for the Fringe, both space and time became hot commodities, and venues were soon hosting six or seven different shows per day, from dawn to long after dusk.

The variety of options at the Fringe became one of its calling cards; there was nowhere else in the world where you could take in a one-man show, an improv comedy, a Shakespearean epic, a Victorian melodrama, an original musical, and a modern romantic comedy in the same day, live and in person. International audiences, and artists, began to show up in droves, looking to be a part of the melting pot.

READ: 10 Actors Who Performed at Edinburgh Fringe Before They Were Famous

With many shows offering free tickets, the Fringe was also a gateway for a new generation to fall in love with new forms of theatre. As the Fringe grew, so did the investment of the people of Edinburgh; just about every arts-inclined individual from the area has worked the Fringe at some point in their life, from running box office and back of house to busking on the streets of the capital city.

The Fringe has since grown to overshadow the International Festival with which it originally competed. Edinburgh now recognizes a series of festivals that descend upon the city in August, inspired by the intrepid artistry of the original Fringe companies, and thousands of shows are presented to an ever eager audience. Some, like Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss’s SIX, or Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, have gone on to international acclaim. Others instead exist only in the heady mixture of inspiration and aspiration that the Fringe fosters, to be seen once, and remembered for all time.

The festival’s history is one of the many exciting aspects that Playbill writers Margaret Hall and Leah Putnam will be writing about as part of Playbill Goes Fringe, Playbill’s extensive on-the-ground coverage of the festival. Excited to learn more? Check out Playbill Goes Fringe: Meet the Correspondents Who Will Cover the Good, the Bad, and the Weird at Edinburgh Fringe to find out more about how to follow along and “live” the experience with them.

Paul Gordon‘s new musical The Gospel According to Heather holds its first of two performances July 28 at 2:30 PM. Presented by Amas Musical Theatre, in association with Jim Kierstead and Broadway Factor, the workshop will hold a second performance July 29 at 1 PM, with both performances taking that stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre.

Following a two-week developmental lab, Rachel Klein directs and choreographs the show which stars Travis Artz (Awesome ’80s Prom), Bradley Dean (Dear Evan Hansen), Badia Farha (School of Rock), Gabriella Green (Fiddler on the Roof national tour), Darron Hayes (Notes From Now), Bryson Jacobi Jackson, Nancy Opel (Into the Woods), Marissa Rosen (Bedbugs The Musical), Adi Roy (Jagged Little Pill), Chloe Gabriella McSwain, and Brittany Nicole Williams (The Prom). 

In The Gospel According to Heather, Heather Krebs wants a boyfriend, but how can she navigate her way through high school if she might be the new Messiah? A small town in Ohio grapples with politics, religion, and teenage romance in the pop musical featuring a book, music, and lyrics by Tony nominee Gordon (Jane Eyre).

The stage manager is Morgan Holbrook. Casting is by Stephanie Klapper Casting.

“I’m delighted to be working with Paul Gordon whose work I have admired for so long,” says Amas Artistic Producer Donna Trinkoff. “The Gospel According to Heather is an offbeat pop musical that raises questions about feelings of ‘otherness’ and the dogma of religion. These are good questions for our time.”

For additional information visit AmasMusical.org.

Off-Broadway’s Playwrights Horizons will launch the second season of its scripted fiction podcast August 2. Featuring audio plays written for audio specifically for episodes 15-40 minutes in length, the podcast will be available on all major platforms.

The weekly released episodes will kick off with Program B: Rapid Immersion by Sheila Callaghan (Shameless), directed and designed by Alex Barron (nightnight). Premiering August 9 will be Last Words of Uncle Dirt by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig (Snow in Midsummer), directed and composed by Michael Roth (The Web Opera).

David Greenspan (She Stoops to Comedy) has written two plays for the season, both directed by Ken Rus Schmoll, (There’s) No Time for Comedy and Loops which will both drop August 16. Sarah Hughes (A Woman Among Women) will direct His Chest Is Only Skeleton by Julia Izumi (Regretfully, So the Birds Are) for the August 23 episode.

Rounding out the season will be The Marriage of Earth and Sky by Agnes Borinsky (A Song of Songs) August 30, directed by Brooke O’Harra (Drum of the Waves of Horikawa), followed by Dave Harris’ Freedom Freedom Freedom Et Cetera under the direction of Taylor Reynolds. Harris and Reynolds previously collaborated at Playwrights Horizons on Harris’ play Tambo & Bones.

READ: Behind Tambo & Bones and Man Cave with Director Taylor Reynolds

Also announced is a collaboration between the Off-Broadway theatre and The Parsnip Ship, a play development company, which will result in two commissioned site-specific audio journeys in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of New York City. Kathleen Capdesuñer will direct West Side Quest, written by Opalanietet, and The Mayor of Hell’s Kitchen Presents: A Time Traveling Journey Through NYC’s Wild West by Christin Eve Cato. The audio journeys, which lead audiences to specific locations, will be available August 29–September 18 via mobile devices for free.

“Playwrights Horizons’ Soundstage program asserts our driving, deeply held belief that playwrights are the great storytellers of our time,” says Artistic Director Adam Greenfield in a statement. “As we seek to expand ways to experience theatre as a live event, I’m astonished by the innovation and daring that playwrights have brought to audio, a medium that, in its inherent limitations, offers infinite possibilities. Each episode in our line-up is a singular world, realizing each writer’s voice with striking clarity. Together as a series, they underline the potency of the written word, and prove the power of the theatrical imagination.”

Listen to the introduction to season 2 of Soundstage here.