Thanks to an abundance of film adaptations of stage productions, theater-centric books and a spate of newly released cast albums, there’s enough theater to go around from the comfort of home.

FILMS TO STREAM

“The Piano Lesson”: The film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play tells of an African American family’s multigenerational trauma through a piano, which was once owned by the man who had enslaved their family members. The strong cast includes John David Washington, Danielle Deadwyler, Samuel L. Jackson and Ray Fisher. (Watch on Netflix.)

“Janet Planet”: Playwright Annie Baker, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her 2013 drama “The Flick,” is known for her use of pauses and silence. “Janet Planet,” her directorial film debut, starring Julianne Nicholson and Zoe Ziegler, is a gently funny coming-of-age story that creates the dreamy world of a misfit mother-daughter duo. (Watch on Max.)

“Ghostlight”: In this tragic drama, whose title comes from the theater tradition of leaving a single light on after all other lights are switched off, a family is roiled by the death of a teenage son, and brought together by a local production of “Romeo and Juliet.” It’s theater as therapy — well-trodden ground for writer Kelly O’Sullivan, who directed the film with Alex Thompson. (Watch on Amazon Prime Video.)

“Mean Girls”: For fans of cliquey drama (and foes of Regina George), the movie musical “Mean Girls” delivers plenty of side eye. The nerds, jocks and villains of the Tina Fey high school universe are back, and theater devotees may recognize the actors in two supporting roles: Jaquel Spivey, a Tony Award nominee for “A Strange Loop,” and Auli’i Cravalho, now starring as Sally Bowles in “Cabaret.” And both the film adaptation and the Broadway musical feature Reneé Rapp as queen bee. (Watch on Paramount+ .)

“Emilia Pérez”: Jacques Audiard’s new movie musical features Karla Sofía Gascón as a trans Mexican drug lord who is seeking gender-affirming surgery and a little help cleaning up some business-related conflicts. It also stars Zoe Saldaña as a singing-and-dancing lawyer. (Watch on Netflix.)

Also … We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention “Wicked,” although you’ll have to go to a movie theater to see it.

Or you could catch up on some of the movies that have inspired stage productions: “Sunset Boulevard,” whose current revival is on Broadway, can be streamed free on Pluto TV; “Death Becomes Her,” now a Broadway musical, is available on demand and on various streaming platforms; and “Good Night, and Good Luck,” whose stage production comes to Broadway this spring, can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video, YouTube and other platforms. “Our Town” is on Broadway now, and various productions are available for streaming free online including on Tubi and on YouTube (which has the 2002 Broadway revival with Paul Newman as the Stage Manager). Lastly, David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” being revived this spring, can be streamed on free platforms (Sling TV and Pluto TV) and a subscription-based one (Amazon Prime Video); and “Smash,” whose stage adaptation is now a reality, can be streamed on BroadwayHD, Peacock and other platforms.

BOOKS

“How Sondheim Can Change Your Life”: Richard Schoch’s essay collection is an incisive examination of the extraordinary career of Stephen Sondheim, the master of the musical. In chapters on “Merrily We Roll Along” and “Sweeney Todd, for example, Schoch delivers a show-by-show analysis that seeks, at least notionally, to extract usable takeaways from the Sondheim canon.

“The Playbook”: James Shapiro, whose previous books include “Shakespeare in a Divided America” (2020), returns with “The Playbook: A Story of Theater, Democracy, and the Making of a Culture War.” Here he lays out the history of the Federal Theater Project, a Depression-era program that gave work to writers and actors until politics took center stage.

“The Hypocrite”: Jo Hamya’s second novel follows a famous English novelist as he watches his daughter’s new play in London. When the lights go down, the novelist soon realizes that the play is about him, and his very bad behavior that his daughter, Sophia, witnessed when they were on vacation a decade earlier.

“Death at the Sign of the Rook”: Kate Atkinson’s sixth entry in her series featuring private investigator Jackson Brodie involves a murder mystery weekend and a ridiculous theater troupe. “It’s a really cozy way to get a dose of theater,” critic Laura Collins-Hughes recently wrote in an email response to a request seeking recommendations for this list.

“Glorious Exploits”: In Ferdia Lennon’s “breezy, winning debut,” Athenian prisoners stage Euripides for their foul-mouthed captors. Although the novel is set in ancient Syracuse, it was written in the language of contemporary Ireland. And a large portion reads like a buddy comedy.

MUSIC

“Warriors’: Lin-Manuel Miranda collaborated with Eisa Davis to make a “Warriors” concept album inspired by the 1979 movie about a group of gang members fighting their way home. The album is brimming with starry names, including Colman Domingo, Lauryn Hill, Busta Rhymes and Billy Porter.

“A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical”: The musical of pioneering trumpeter and singer Louis Armstrong, now on Broadway, tells his story in four chapters across the country, and features almost 30 songs. The show’s creative team gathered in a lounge at Studio 54 to discuss the music at the heart of the show, and Armstrong’s career.

“Suffs”: For fans of politics-embroidered musical theater, this musical about the fight for women’s suffrage has a cast album that lays out a clear sense of the show, even if you haven’t seen it. Our critic called “Let Mother Vote,” the opening number, “a charming tune wittily introducing the nonconfrontational strategy that the early generation of suffragists employed, and that the show’s younger ones are about to explode.”

“Stereophonic”: “Stereophonic,” the most Tony-nominated play in history, is set entirely within the fiery mini-universe of a recording studio as a suddenly famous band tries to make a new album (despite some robust infighting). It makes sense, then, that the show’s cast album — which our critic said resembles “a raw ‘secret tapes’ album released decades later” — would reflect the yearning, the romantic dramas, the angst and the addictions of its band members in a set of very listenable, radio-ready tracks. Fans of California rock will appreciate the 1970s influences and nods to Fleetwood Mac.