Thinking Theater NYC

atticwife Written by Laura Clare Browne Directed by Rebecca Wilson Presented by RnL Productions at 59E59 Theaters 59 East 59th Street, Manhattan, NYC July 22-26, 2026 Jen Clark and Laura Clare Browne. Photo by Lutriz Studios. The most famous wife-locked-in-an-attic is probably Jane Eyre 's Bertha Mason, whose fatal leap from the roof after setting her husband's house on fire conveniently clears the way for her successor. Even when given a sympathetic reimagining by Jean Rhys over a century later, it's hard to see her as an aspirational figure. However, in atticwife , the debut play from actor and comedian Laura Clare Browne, the titular wife has not only been locked in an attic by her husband but assures her social media followers that this is what she wants. Currently playing as part of 59E59's 2026 East to Edinburgh Festival , which showcases New York shows headed to Edinburgh Fringe in August, atticwife furnishes a sharply observed, darkly comedic lampoon of the int...

3600 Written by Molly McQuillan Directed by AMT / Anna Marie Tobin (AMT) Presented at Chain Theatre 312 W. 36th St., 4th fl., Manhattan, NYC July 11-30, 2026 Ashley M. Cowles. Photo courtesy of Molly McQuillan. Most of us are familiar with the concept, even if it is usually metaphorical, of locking two antagonistic parties in a room together until they settle their differences. With the tautly gripping two-hander 3600 , Chicago-born, Brooklyn-based theater artist Molly McQuillan both renders such a situation very literal and gives it the highest stakes possible. The play brings us inside a featureless room where its trapped characters will die when a timer reaches zero. As the clock implacably counts down and the contours of the pair's conflict come into focus, questions of right and wrong, guilt and absolution, and responsibility and consequences become as inescapable as the room itself. Currently part of Chain Theatre's Summer One-Act Festival, running from July 9th through...

Laurizarry will present Replaced!, written and directed by Jess Lauricello, as part of the 2026 LimeFest at The Tank (312 W 36th St, New York, NY 10018) on Wednesday, August 12 at 9:30pm. The Tank’s LimeFest invites new works by emerging artists and creative teams who identify as women, nonbinary or gender non-conforming to make way for more gender parity in the performing arts. Tickets are $20-$30 and are available for advance purchase at thetanknyc.org . The performance will run approximately 60 minutes. A surrealist sci-fi tragicomedy following a young woman identified only as a Daughter (played  by Zoe Mintz) who returns to her hometown to find that everyone in it has been replaced by  aliens. Hailed as “ an invigoratingly surreal body-snatching narrative ” by Thinking Theater and  “a smart and earnest piece” with “a lot of fun physical absurdity” by Hi! Drama , Replaced! is  back for one night only at The Tank on August 12th. Come out and join ...

Woyzeck Written by Georg Büchner Translated by John Christopher Jones Directed by Seth Bockley Assistant director: Debbie Saivetz Presented by Adult Film at Modern Sweater 4-78 Onderdonk Ave, Ridgewood, Queens, NYC July 15-August 15, 2026 Front: Madeline Bernhard and Ryan Czerwonko. Photo by Geve Penn.  In the introduction to his 1971 edition of Georg Büchner's (1813-37) surviving plays, Victor Price calls Woyzeck , composed from late 1836 into early 1837 and left incomplete when the playwright died from typhus at age 23, "the first working class tragedy" (xviii). While the extant plays by Büchner– Danton's Death , comedy Leonce and Lena , and Woyzeck , with Pietro Aretino having been lost–share a sort of existentialism avant la lettre among their primary characters, Woyzeck represents an outlier among this small group in terms of its style. If Woyzeck is unfinished (though Price argues, in the Appendix to his edition, that it was quite close to its final form), ...

Syringe Written and directed by Francis Bogan Assistant Directors: Lauren Presley and Gabby Laurendine Producer: Eliza Spinna Presented at Chain Theatre 312 W. 36th St., 4th fl., Manhattan, NYC July 11-30, 2026 Art by Ryan Prehara. IG: @seminalspider  While most horror media ends with the survival–or not–of its protagonist(s), some, such as parts of the Scream franchise or Grady Hendrix's 2021 novel The Final Girl Support Group , considers what happens after that moment of survival. The one-act Syringe , from Brooklyn-based playwright Francis Bogan, joins this less typical strand of horror narrative with its darkly comic look at a group of friends who undergo a Saw -style ordeal. Deftly satirizing our era of true-crime proliferation and internet-driven self-commodification while asking what friendship should look like, Syringe is currently making its premiere at Chain Theatre's Summer One-Act Festival, running from July 9th through August 1st. Syringe is part of Block 18 in ...

What a World! What a World! Written by Eric Marlin Directed by Ilana Khanin Presented by The Tank 312 W 36th St., Manhattan, NYC July 9-August 2, 2026 Queen-Tiye Akamefula and Annie Hoeg. Photo by Maria Baranova. Film studies brought us the concept of the heterosexual male gaze as the default mode of looking in media, implicit in how the camera mediates between the image and audience, and the new play What a World! What a World! , uses an old movie to anchor its thinking about the gaze, both in (the) film and in the world. What a World! What a World! , by Eric Marlin, explores being seen, self-presentation, the inscription and interpretation of texts and bodies and bodies as texts, all in relation to queerness and camp. Making its world premiere at The Tank after previous workshopping at Ars Nova ANT Fest in 2019 and the Prelude Festival in 2023, What a World! What a World! stages a smart, surprising sixty-five minutes of slippery boundaries and contested perspective. Queen-Tiye Akame...