Thinking Theater NYC

Image courtesy Boundless Theatre At a time when craft categories are not receiving the dues they deserve in the film and theater world comes a model theater company ahead of its time in giving recognition and a voice to industry players that have long deserved it. Not only is Boundless Theatre (BT) led by female designers and designers of color, but their plays explore themes that challenge our social agreements, elevate humanity and honor the human condition. This is exactly what BT's newest production, Mercado Libre , intends to do when it premieres on June 3rd, 2022 at the Julia de Burgos Performance and Arts Center (1680 Lexington Avenue) in East Harlem, El Barrio, NYC. The award-winning  Mercado Libre  will explore the challenges of human dignity under capitalism, a topic that is vital to our current sociopolitical moment. The play, which runs until June 12th, is written in Spanish by playwright Luis Araújo, and it comes to the NYC stage after receiving accolades throughout it

Occasionally Nothing Written by Natalie Menna Directed by Ivette Dumeng Presented by Theater for the New City 155 1st Ave., Manhattan, NYC April 28-May 15, 2022 L to R: Mike Roche, Sean Hoagland. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. Imagine a group of people trapped inside with one another, sheltering in place from the pandemic and war outside. This is the situation presented in actor and playwright Natalie Menna's Occasionally Nothing , and while the circumstances might sound ripped from today's headlines, Occasionally Nothing was first presented, in a shortened form, at the Planet Connections Festivity in 2016, which reflects well on the play's perspicacity and rather less well on humanity. Loss and despair are shot through with  humor in the new production of Menna's absurdist look at social disintegration. By the time that the play opens, Clay (Sean Hoagland), a British expat punk, and his uncle Harry (Mike Roche) have been holed up in an abandoned church for months (perhaps,

Roe v. Wade 2.0, a collective action troupe of artists and activists, invites the public to participate in a week of theatrical action May 16-23 in defense of abortion rights. The action begins on May 16 at 7 pm ET with an online performance and panel discussion of Roe v. Wade 2.0 , a satire written by Drama League Award nominee Margaret Vandenburg and performed by a star-studded cast including Carrie Preston ( True Blood ), Joel de la Fuente ( The Man in the High Castle ), Florencia Lozano ( One Life to Live ), and more. The week continues with local readings hosted by artists and organizers across the country through May 23. To gain the greatest impact and nationwide spread, there is no barrier to entry: anyone can host and support the initiative. Interested parties are encouraged to sign up to host their own readings. Register for the livestream  here  and learn more at  http://roevwade20.com/kickoff . The play dramatizes the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization oral argume

A Barn Play Written by Lizzie Donahue Directed by Leslie Kincaid Burby Presented by UP Theater Company at Fort Washington Collegiate Church 729 W. 181st St., Manhattan, NYC May 4-21, 2022 L to R: Denisse Estefany Mendoza, Erin Nelson, Ariel Blake, Adam Burby, Mary Albert. Photo by Amy Milstein Other issues with the Chick-fil-A organization aside, its advertising campaign involving cows exhorting people to "Eat Mor Chikin" has always seemed far more disturbing than funny, evoking the cows' awareness of and desperation to avoid industrial murder even as their misspelling obliquely justifies it because they're just dumb animals anyway. Lizzie Donahue's A Barn Play asks that we take seriously the mental and emotional lives of the cows, chickens, and other non-human animals whose reduction to mere commodities is so culturally ingrained (helped, of course, by plenty of costly lobbying and advertising). A program note from the Artistic Director at the time of A Barn Pl

Bloom Written by Marco Antonio Rodriguez Directed by Victoria Pérez Presented by IATI Theater 64 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC April 16-May 8, 2022 Rafael Beato and Monica Steuer. Photo by Andres Bohorquez. The program for Bloom , the new play from Marco Antonio Rodriguez, notes its setting as a "not so distant future," and indeed, the government-sponsored oppression of queer individuals that it depicts, while inspired by conditions in Chechnya, seems increasingly less distant in the United States–the latest example being the governor of Florida, calculating the political capital to be worth the risk of economic damage, punishing (or making a show of attempting to punish) a corporation for reluctantly releasing a statement against the state's "don't say gay" bill. Bloom , which includes "excerpts . . . taken from actual narrations of tortured LGBTQ+ youth," is making its U.S. premiere at IATI Theater, a Latinx company dedicated to showcasing div

Constellations Written by Nick Payne Directed by Kim T. Sharp Presented at the Gene Frankel Theatre 24 Bond Street, Manhattan, NYC April 6-24, 2022 Francesca Ravera and Michael Chinworth. Courtesy Alton PR Would you feel better or worse knowing that, for every choice that you regret making (or not making), there existed other versions of you who chose differently? Playwright and screenwriter Nick Payne's Constellations explores a man and woman's lives through a multiverse-spanning lens that highlights the way in which any individual existence comprises complex webs of causality and chance without detracting one jot from its characters' flirty, funny, contentious, aching humanity. Having made its debut in Payne's native Britain in 2012 and arrived on Broadway in 2015, this award-winning play has now come to Manhattan's intimate Gene Frankel Theatre in a superb revival directed by Kim T. Sharp. Marianne (Francesca Ravera) and Roland (Michael Chinworth) meet (or, one