Thinking Theater NYC

The Maenads Written by Stephen Foglia Directed by Phillip Christian Smith Presented by Harborcoat Productions and The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36th St., 1st Fl., Manhattan, NYC September 18-October 12, 2025 L to R: Alex Stene, Keith Michael Pinault, DJ Davis, Charles Manning, and Thaddeus Daniels. Photo by Lyle Dickie. In their book Why Does Patriarchy Persist? (Polity, 2018), Carol Gilligan and Naomi Snider observe that patriarchy associates "masculinity with pseudo-independence (and the shielding of relational desires and sensitivities)," leading to "a loss of relationship: a loss of intimacy and connection" (22). It is in response to just such lack that the quintet of men in Phillip Christian Smith's hilarious and incisive play The Maenads find themselves on a mountain together, experimenting with an ancient–and female–identity. As they try to model themselves on the eponymous maenads, female followers of Dionysus in ancient Greek cultural narratives, audien...

The Glitch Written by Kipp Koenig Directed by Mark Koenig Presented by AEI Theatricals at The Jerry Orbach Theater at The Theater Center 210 W 50th St., Manhattan, NYC September 24-November 2, 2025 L to R: Danielle Augustine, Hannah Doherty (front), Jacquie Bonnet, Sunny Makwana. Photo by Shawn Salley What if you could preview your potential child the same way that you can use AR to preview how a piece of furniture would fit in your space before you click buy? That's the service offered by the startup in Kipp Koenig's sci-fi play The Glitch : the chance for prospective parents to meet a holographic AI version of the child they might have. Set in the near future, The Glitch engagingly blends humor and poignancy in its exploration of the rippling ramifications of one client's use of the service, touching on secrecy, guilt, generational trauma, and even metaphysical boundaries.  Jacquie Bonnet and Sunny Makwana. Photo by Shawn Salley The client in question, d...

HAVEN Boxing and local dance company Danse Theatre Surreality will present October performances of Shadowboxing in Blue  on Saturday, October 4, 11, 18, and 25th, 2025 at HAVEN Boxing (65 Scholes Street, Brooklyn, NY, 11206). The performance on the 18th will be a Spanish-English bilingual show. Tickets are $10 and are available at https://bit.ly/shadowboxing_october . Lauren Hlubny and Kyra Hauck, Artistic Directors of Danse Theatre Surreality (DTS), active in NYC and Paris, invite audiences to experience the world premiere of Shadowboxing in Blue . This innovative, multidimensional work, conceived and directed by Hlubny, takes place in a boxing gym and merges dance, theater, poetry, and live music with the intensity of combat training to examine the inner struggles we all face, including confronting deep depression and what it takes to keep going and exploring resilience, identity, and emotional growth. Paired with a boxing therapy workshop, Shadowboxing is more than ...

The Goo Written by K. Rose Dallimore Presented by New Relic Theatre at The Chain Theatre 312 W 36th St. 4th floor, Manhattan, NYC September 18-28, 2025 The cast of The Goo . Photo by Noah Simon Jampol Friendships fray and ontology is implicated under the innocuous enough auspices of six friends meeting for an annual Prospect Park picnic-cum-reunion in in K. Rose Dallimore’s brilliant original work The Goo . Inspired by The Importance of Being Earnest , Dallimore’s 90-minute, 2-act play is as much Rod Serling as Oscar Wilde. The Goo is fearless, unrelenting, disquieting, and damn funny. No ideology or identity is given quarter as Dallimore deftly skewers even our most sacred social conventions. There is mastery here, almost a sleight of hand: just when thematics and narrative stability feel most secure, and the audience most self-satisfied, the ground (or the picnic blanket in this case) gives way. No narratological or ideological creature comforts sustain once things get surreal, onc...

The Cherry Orchard Written by Anton Chekhov Adapted/translated by John Christopher Jones Directed by Ryan Czerwonko Presented by Adult Film in association with BKE Productions at Rutgers Presbyterian Church 236 W 73 St., Manhattan, NYC September 18-October 12, 2025 Ryan Czerwonko and Megan Metrikin in The Cherry Orchard . Photo by Joey Damore. Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard is replete with hauntings: the owner of the estate on which the titular orchard sits is reminded of the drowning death of her young son by the return of his tutor and mistakes a white shape in the orchard for her dead mother; the estate, and indeed the nation, are haunted by the memories of their exploited serfs (the play was written just two years before the First Russian Revolution in 1905); and the ghosts of indiscretions and lost youth dog multiple characters. Adult Film+Theatre's fantastic new production of The Cherry Orchard , which makes its debut after a yearlong development process, embraces a...

Blood Orange Written by Abigail Duclos Directed by Vernice Miller Associate directed and choreographed by Amelia Rose Estrada Presented by Et Alia Theater at A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 W 53rd St, Manhattan, NYC September 11-27, 2025 Ana Moioli and Maria Müller. Photo by Delia Dumont.  Adolescence is an arduous time on its own, without its struggles and stresses being compounded by loss, abuse, or poverty, all among the additional pressures faced by the young women in Abigail Duclos's darkly intense new play Blood Orange . In a potent production from Et Alia Theater, a company which " uplifts multicultural, women+ centered storytelling ," Blood Orange examines the sometimes desperate lengths to which its characters will go to in pursuit of the love and agency lacking in their lives. On roughly (though not strictly) alternating days, one of the play's four roles is played by a different actor, and the actor who plays that role in one version of the cast moves to a ...