If you’re a fan of sing-alongs, costumes, and mic checks, this is the place for you this weekend!  Starting tonight at 6PM tonight, a huge number of NY-based performers will be “Occupying Broadway” in the plaza in front of 1633 Broadway, between 50th and 51st Streets.  We stopped by tonight, and it looked like a huge turnout already — about 300 people or so watching the performances by Ben Shepard (the MC and one of the planners of the event), The Foundry Theater, The Civilians, and Penny Arcade.

Here’s the goal, according to a press release:

In recent weeks, we have seen a push to tramp on our rights to public assembly, public space and by extension democracy itself. In response, we join a global struggle using occupation as a form of creative resistance. Occupations are spreading around the world and around New York City, even UPTOWN! Bloomberg Beware, you take our park, Now Liberty Park is everywhere! In a time when downtown theaters are rapidly losing their spaces, being turned into high-end fashion stores, Occupy Broadway is a symbolic attempt to regain the space of theatre as an accessible, popular art form, bringing it back to where it all started - in a public space, for the common citizen. We are using public space to create a more colorful image of what our streets could look like, with public performances, art, and music. 

Some of the highlights from the schedule on-site here:  

• 9PM Friday: Urban Theatre Research Company
• 2AM: Corporate Scary Ghost Stories (we have a few of those, actually)
• 8AM: Puppet Guilds’ Puppet Show
• 9AM: General Assembly
• 2PM: The Yes Men
• 3PM: “Big Bank: The Musical”
• 5PM: Closing ceremony, The Church of Stop Shopping Choir

Here are a few snaps from early tonight.  The event goes through 6PM tomorrow, and the entire schedule of performances is at the bottom of the post (I couldn’t find it online anywhere, so had to post a pic of the schedule they’re handing out on site. Low/high tech.)

Here’s the whole crowd. Nice turnout!

And of course, no Occupy Wall Street event would be complete without these:

And these:

And the fences.

SCHEDULE OF PERFORMANCES: