CommonStage

As a part of Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s CommonStage Initiative to bring more free arts programming to Boston Common adjacent to our marquee production each summer, CSC is excited to announce the lineup for our newly reimagined CommonStage Concert Series for July and August 2026 in partnership with the Richard K. Lubin Family Foundation.

Our 2026 CommonStage Concert Series will feature the following performances:

Friday, July 31st at 6pm – An Evening of Joy with Shelter Music Boston

Shelter Music Boston will perform selections from past special projects, as well as favorite pieces that center joy. The program will build on connections to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as the nearby Embrace sculpture, performing selections by Florence Price, who like Coretta Scott King, attending local New England Conservatory.  

Performance by: Adrian Anantawan, Javier Caballero, Jennifer Hsiao, Sergio Leiva Muñoz, Erin Merceruio Nelson

 

Saturday, August 1st at 6pm – Opera Untapped / Circus 617 present Arias Aloft

Opera Untapped and Circus 617 combine two thrilling art forms for a one of a kind performance on the Boston Common. Featuring vocal acrobatics and physical virtuosity courtesy of some of Boston’s leading circus artists and classical singers, Arias Aloft showcases opera, musical theater, and cabaret favorites paired with breathtaking original circus acts. Created as a prelude to Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Arias Aloft invites audiences into a world of whimsy, wonder, romance, and enchantment, capturing the magic of a summer evening on the Boston Common.

Circus Artists: Rachel Barringer, Alex Jackson, Anna Soltys-Morse, Morgan Oldham

Opera Artists: Erin Anderson, Kathryn McKellar, Omar Najmi, and Brendon Shapiro (piano)

Creative Directors: Kathryn McKellar and Ellen Waylonis

 

Friday, August 7th at 6pm – The Skivvies 

A joyfully, quirky concert of genre hopping, comedy-popping mashups featuring Broadway’s Lauren Molina and Nick Cearley on ukulele and cello. With special guest Nick Adams!

 

Saturday, August 8th at 6pm – Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA) Boston, presents Champola Band

Champola Band is a vibrant Boston-based Latin music ensemble led by Ecuadorian musician Wilson Vera and featuring talented artists from Colombia, Cuba, Panama, Venezuela, and beyond. Specializing in salsa, cha-cha-cha, bolero, and Latin jazz, the band delivers high-energy performances that keep audiences dancing and engaged. Inspired by the traditional Latin American fruit drink champola—a blend of flavors—the group embodies a rich fusion of musical styles and cultural influences, creating a unique sound that brings people together through the joy of Latin music.

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About Shelter Music Boston:

Shelter Music Boston presents classical chamber music concerts, of the highest artistic standards, in homeless shelters and other sheltering environments.  Our goal is to promote community, creative interaction, respect, and therapeutic benefit.  We believe all people deserve access to the dignity, creativity, and passion of classical music whether or not they have a home.

Shelter Music Boston provides transformative chamber music concerts that promote community, creative interaction, respect, and therapeutic benefit to those experiencing homelessness and undergoing substance use recovery. Shelter Music Boston was founded in 2010 by violinist Julie Leven, who saw a need for classical music provided as a social service in the Boston area. Since Julie’s first concerts at Shattuck Shelter and Kitty Dukakis Treatment Center in Jamaica Plain, MA, the organization has grown over the last 15 years to now serve 13 program sites, with more than 80 musicians on roster.  

About Opera Untapped and Circus 617:

Opera Untapped is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reimagining what classical music can be and who it’s for. We create approachable performances in unexpected locations. Over the past fifteen years operating as Opera on Tap Boston, the newly reimagined Opera Untapped has created jobs for hundreds of artists while developing programming that is inventive, collaborative, and deeply connected to the spaces and contexts in which it is created. As Opera Untapped, the company enters a new phase—one that builds on this foundation while creating space for growth and expanding artistic scope. In this next chapter, the organization explores how opera can intersect with other disciplines, new environments, and the questions shaping contemporary life. Audience-loved signature programs will continue and expand. Arias Aloft enters its fourth season with the launch of Arias Aloft: Chromatic, a new thematic exploration of color as a lens for sound, emotion, and environment. The season continues in partnership with Circus 617 and returns to venues including deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, and more.

Circus 617 is a collective dedicated to highlighting Boston-based professional circus artists, choreographers, and directors in new works of contemporary circus, created right here in the city we love. Circus 617 productions meld the spectacular, expressive physicality of circus with theatrical and musical methods of storytelling. Founded in 2020, Circus 617 received a LAB grant from the Boston Foundation in 2021 to create their debut ensemble production, Gathering the Threads.

About The Skivvies:

The Skivvies are Lauren Molina and Nick Cearley, singer/actor/musicians performing stripped down arrangements of eclectic covers and eccentric originals. Not only is the music stripped down – cello, ukulele, glockenspiel, melodica – but the Skivvies literally strip down to their underwear to perform.

The Wall Street Journal calls them “smart, sophisticated…ingenious,” and Out Magazine says, “The Skivvies have managed to carve out a niche that we never knew needed to exist: part Weird Al- parody and part sexy burlesque…and unusual explosion of satire and sultry.”  People Magazine named The Skivvies “The Most Playful Performers” in The Most Talked about Bodies issue and Sports Illustrated named them “Favorite New Band”.  The New York Times calls them “a hot musical comedy duo specializing in unexpected arrangements, incongruous mashups, and of course, highly toned displays of skin.” They were also nominated for a MAC award for show of the year.

Molina (Broadway’s Rock of Ages, Sweeney Todd, Mary Zimmerman’s Candide – Helen Hayes Award, Marry Me A Little) and Cearley (Broadway First National All Shook Up, Pageant, Buyer & Cellar) met in 2003 performing in Theatreworks USA’s national tour of the “Just So Stories”. Quickly becoming best friends and musical collaborators, they began performing together in the city, with clothes on. The Skivvies were born in 2012, when they became YouTube sensations with their unique covers of artists like Robyn, Carole King and Rihanna. The videos led to live shows, and now this “musically thrilling”, undie-rock, comedy-pop duo continues to perform to sold-out audiences in New York and beyond.

About Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción (IBA) Boston:

Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción is a nationally recognized Community Development Corporation and non-profit organization that started in the South End neighborhood of Boston, to address displacement of low-income families due to urban development. IBA offers affordable housing and supportive programming to increase social and economic mobility for the families we serve.

One of the most important goals of IBA is providing safe and sustainable affordable housing. For over 50 years, IBA has developed housing that is associated and financed by different supportive programs, while developing leaders who support and encourage themselves, their families and their neighbors.

With housing at its core, IBA also supports individuals and families in breaking out of the cycle of poverty and achieving socio-economic mobility through its high-quality, evidence-based education, arts, and financial empowerment programming and services. By developing real estate projects and bringing together housing, education, and the arts, IBA is a national model of excellence for the integration of affordable housing with comprehensive community programming.