Thinking Theater NYC

  A Midsummer Night's Dream Written by William Shakespeare Directed by John Gordon and Ruby Rich Presented by  Smoking Mirror Theatre Company at  A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 West 53rd Street, Manhattan, NYC August 27-September 13, 2026 Above (L-R): Catherine Desciak (Mustardseed), Roslind Joyce (Peaseblossom), Caroline Feduccia (Cobweb), Samuel Andrews (Mote). Below: Ruby Rich (Titania). Photo by Jonathan Slaff. At the beginning of act 5 of A Midsummer Night’s Dream , Duke Theseus asks his master of the revels, “Say what abridgment have you for this evening, / What masque, what music? How shall we beguile / The lazy time if not with some delight?” While Theseus’s consideration of the various forms of entertainment for the evening’s recreation leads to the Athenian tradesmen’s comically terrible production of Pyramus and Thisbe , it also encompasses Smoking Mirror’s production of Midsummer itself, with its talented, versatile cast not only able to seamlessly move a...

The Pigs Next Door Written and performed by Rebecca Wolf Presented as part of the first annual NYC Clown Fest at Brooklyn Art Haus 24 Marcy Avenue, Brooklyn, NY September 3, 2026 Rebecca Wolf. Photo by Sean Barry A packed house and a buzzy bar at Brooklyn Art Haus boded well, making an encouraging argument for the inaugural NYC Clown Fest before Rebecca Wolf’s The Pigs Next Door had even begun. Then Peg the Pig (Rebecca Wolf) entered, perfect in pink, pig nose and tail in place, returning home to her husband, Joel. Joel, it should be said, is a stuffed animal. Wolf’s Peg walks the line between Fran Drescher’s Nanny and Miss Piggy: all domestic grievance, sexual confidence, wounded pride, and terrific comic timing. She arrives home flustered from brunch with neighborhood gossip: her friend Denise has been arrested for murder by police chief Old McDonald, who hog-ties her, all while huffing and puffing. The animal puns do not grow more sophisticated from there, nor do they need to. Wol...

In partnership with the New York City Emergency Management and the Waterfront Alliance, Rainy Day Plays presents Please Don’t Flush! , a municipal comedy with music and flood preparedness resources activating public spaces throughout New York City during Climate Week NYC 2026. Performanceswill be staged throughout the five boroughs from September 19-27, 2026. All performances are free to the public. Please Don’t Flush! is a municipal comedy about a community board scheduled to vote on a mysterious waterfront development that neighbors and seagulls and plumbers are worried will increase inland flooding. Instead, the board is derailed by planning their bi-annual gala, celebrating their second-vice-chair’s half birthday, and locking the anti-anti-anti-anti-development coalition in the bathroom. Developed in deep partnership with NYC Emergency Management and the Waterfront Alliance, come find the show in public spaces across the city with music, laughs, and resources about flooding this S...

Jane Arden On Her Shoulders is pleased to present a staged reading Vagina Rex & The Gas Oven , by Jane Arden, on Thursday, September 17th at New Perspectives Studio, 458 West 37 Street at 10th Avenue. Doors open at 6:45pm for a 7:00pm curtain, beginning with The Play in Context introduction by Osimiri Sprowal, who situates the script in its historical time and place, followed by the reading and a post-performance reception and discussion. Admission is $20 for the reading and reception. R.S.V.P. at Eventbrite . Jane Arden (1927-82), like many prolific women writers before and after her, could be described as a mad genius. Born Nora Patrice Morris in Pontypool, Wales, she went on to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began acting in the 1940s, starring in both television and film. Her first two plays, Dear Little Liz and Conscience and Desire (1954), were first performed at the New Lindsay Theater Club, directed by her then-husband Philip Saville. Her next play, T...

Victoria M. Fragnito, Monica Rounds, and Katharine Maness. Our favorite Gothic feminist playwright Patricia Lynn’s new play HYDE (Or Girls Can Kill Goats) will have a workshop production September 24 - 26 at A.R.T./New York Theatres. The play is a bold contemporary reimagining of Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde , by Robert Louis Stevenson. A delightfully dangerous mix of Yellowjackets and John Proctor is a Villain , HYDE transforms the classic tale of good vs evil into a fierce feminist frenzy, featuring heightened language, vivid theatricality, and a vengeful goat goddess named Bernice Hyde. Lynn also serves as director. After a tenacious journalist threatens to expose her vibrant but violent past, Jane Patterson attends her twenty-year college reunion in hopes of confronting him face-to-face. But the night does not go as she expects. Jane drowns herself in drugs, old friends, and the memories of her delicious witchy youth instead. And Jane starts to wonder what she shoul...

Dirty Bird Written and directed by Whit Flint Adapted from Anton Chekhov Presented by Twenty Somethings Productions and Riot Act at ErF Gallery 1 Ingraham St, Brooklyn, NY 11206 September 4-20, 2026 AJ Molder and River Knight. Photo by Matt Street. Anton Chekhov's works may seem to us now as the epitome of canonical, but, Svetlana Evdokimova reminds us, in own time, he "questioned the certainties that sustained traditional modes of social organization and morality as well as traditional ways of conceiving of the human self" and "sought to break out of tradition and convention through experimentation with new literary forms and a new kind of theater" ( Staging Existence , 2023, pg. 239). As Whit Flint more succinctly puts it in the director's note for Dirty Bird , his adaptation of The Seagull , Chekhov was a "rebel." Dirty Bird , a joint presentation of NYC-based Twenty Somethings Productions and UK-based Riot Act, channels that rebellious spirit...