Sara Bareilles, in partnership with Lincoln Center Theater and The Strangers Project, is launching Good Grief: Stories and Song, a three day installation and performance series that is free and open to the public.
Taking place August 28–30 in Lincoln Center Theater’s Christopher Lightfoot Walker Lobby at the Vivian Beaumont, the series will be a celebration of her new album, Good Grief. Bareilles and the Strangers Project are collaborating to fill the Lobby, weaving together story and song, to create an immersive experience highlighting our shared humanity and our collective need for sharing.
The album was inspired by a season of loss and grief for Bareilles, a period that included the tragic and untimely death of her former stage co-star and offstage friend, Tony winner Gavin Creel.
“One of my best friends passed away in 2020. His name is Chad, and he died of stage four lung cancer. He got diagnosed and was gone in eight months, and he’d been a part of my life for decades…” Bareilles told Playbill in a recent interview. “And then a couple years later, I lost another very dear friend, Gavin Creel.” The album’s creation was tracked with a documentary, Sara Bareilles: Good Grief, which recently made its world premiere at Tribeca Festival. Josh Alexander directed, and Daniel J. Chalfen produced.
Bareilles made her Broadway debut writing the music and lyrics to 2016’s Waitress, later also starring in it as well. She was nominated for Best Original Score Tony Awards for Waitress and as part of the group of writers that contributed songs to SpongeBob SquarePants, earning an acting nomination for her 2023 performance as the Baker’s Wife in Into the Woods. Good Grief will be Bareilles’ seventh studio album.
Hundreds of stories from The Strangers Project—an ongoing collection of anonymous, handwritten true stories shared by strangers since 2009—will be on display and intermingled with audio recordings from Bareilles’ fans who have been invited to share stories of grief. The hope is to create an invitation to the general public to interact and receive what is offered, and then gift their own stories to deepen the growing conversation.
Bareilles will join fans in person each day for a live performance on a Steinway Spirio piano installed at the center of the space, and patrons will also have the first opportunity to buy physical copies of Good Grief in a variety of formats.
During all other opening hours, the Steinway Spirio will fill the space with piano performances pre-recorded by Bareilles, her music becoming the soundtrack to this gathering of story and song.