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Review: She Wore Red Velvet: “Crushed Velvet” and the Hagiography of Sandra Lee

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Crushed Velvet Written by Andrew Trimmer Directed by Sam Perwin Presented at wild project April 5-18, 2026 Kate Delacruz. Photo courtesy of Austin Ruffer. Tonight at wild project, everything is semi-homemade. The food gleams under studio lights, pristine and untouchable; the kitchen is immaculate but weightless; the life on display is both carefully constructed and rather unraveling. In Andrew Trimmer’s Crushed Velvet , presented as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival , the question is not simply how to stage Sandra Lee, but how to stage the system that made, sustained, and ultimately consumed her. What emerges is less a biography than a kind of hagiography, Aunt Sandy rendered with ambition and real relish. The production’s central instinct is a deeply compelling one. Rather than settling into a single mode, Crushed Velvet effortlessly moves across genres, backstage naturalism, media parody, documentary reconstruction, and sketch-inflected interludes, as if no one form can...
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Review: "Hamlet/the Furies" Opens New Perspectives on Two Classic Tragedies

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  Hamlet/The Furies Adapted from William Shakespeare and Aeschylus Directed by Jim Niesen Presented by  Irondale Ensemble Project  at The Space at Irondale 85 S. Oxford Street, Brooklyn, NYC April 10-May 16, 2026 As is well-attested, the problem with seeking revenge is that, no matter how justified it might be, it almost always perpetuates seemingly never-ending cycles of violence. In pairing two classic plays centered on revenge, Shakespeare’s  Hamlet  and the final play of Aeschylus’s trilogy  The Oresteia ,  The Eumenides  or  The Furies , the Irondale Ensemble presents a fresh take on the bleakness and tragedy of revenge and the promise of renewal that may follow. Staged in the unique Space at Irondale, formerly the Sunday school for the adjacent Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, this production brings the audience into their creative process, underscoring that breaking generational cycles involves all of us. The somewhat slimmed-down...
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Review: Buckle in for "How I Learned (NOT) to Drive"

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How I Learned (NOT) to Drive Written and performed by Jesse Bradley-Amore Directed by Padraic Lillis Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC April 10-18, 2026 Jesse Bradley-Amore. Courtesy of Emily Owens PR Living in most parts of New York City makes it easy to forget how difficult it is to live in the vast majority of places in the United States without a car. In solo show How I Learned (NOT) to Drive , playwright and performer Jesse Bradley-Amore not only lacks his own car at 40 years old but could not drive it if he had one, since he never got his driver's license during the nearly quarter century after he got his learner's permit. This lack, as he discusses, caused him various problems, some quite a bit larger than others. But this particular lack also indexically signals other lacks, other issues, stretching back to childhood. Bradley-Amore's autobiographical storytelling play, his first solo show, steers into self-examination with humor and hon...
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News: In Scena! Italian Theater Festival Awards Playwright Marco Di Stefano with 2026 In Scena! Playwright Award

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Playwright Marco Di Stefano In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, has announced Via Crucis by playwright Marco Di Stefano as the winner of their 2026 In Scena! Playwright Award (formally the Mario Fratti Award). The play, translated by Caterina Nonis, will receive a reading as part of the closing ceremony of the 2026 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY on Tuesday, May 19 at 6pm at the Italian Cultural Institute of NY (686 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065). Admission to the awards ceremony and reading is FREE.   Via Crucis is a solo show in free verse structured in 14 scenes. The speaking character is a 30-year-old man living on the margins. Arrested for drug possession, he is subjected to torture and violence by the police until he dies from it. The text unfolds over the course of a single day—from 5am until midnight—and is set in various locations: the street where the young man is taken, the pol...
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Review: Hoping a Woman Will Bring Wonders in "Waiting for Gadot"

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Waiting for Gadot Written by Annabel McConnachie Directed by Hannah Marie Pederson Presented at Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 3, Manhattan, NYC February 6-21, 2026 L to R: Ellie Lauther, Gabi Schwartz, Nicole Lado, Kaia Parnell, Spencer Hazen, Isabel Criado. Photo by Callee Egan. Most of us have at some point in our lives done something in imitation of a celebrity whom we admire. Maybe that was taking up an instrument. Maybe it was purchasing something (makeup? clothing? cryptocurrency?) because of an endorsement. Maybe, as in Waiting for Gadot , it was eating oily muffins out of a trash bag. Who can say? The characters in Waiting for Gadot , which made its debut at the Chain Theatre's Winter One-Act Festival this February, are focused on the anticipated arrival not of the ambiguous figure of the Samuel Beckett play on which it riffs but the quite specific, real-life actor Gal Gadot. With Waiting for Gadot , playwright Annabel McConnachie–whose Archive of My Own and...
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Review: Worry, Worry, Super-Scurry to Fletcher Michael’s “did you charge your phone for the end of the world?”

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did you charge your phone for the end of the world? Written and directed by Fletcher Michael Presented by Infinite Monkey Theater Company  at wild project 195 E. 3rd Street, Manhattan, NYC April 4-19, 2026 L to R: Collin Dennis, Fletcher Michael, Lucy Boisvert. Photo by Nicholas Barris & editing by Lucy Boisvert. Tonight at wild project, the phone rings long before it connects. In Fletcher Michael’s did you charge your phone for the end of the world? , presented by Infinite Monkey Theater Company as part of the 2026  New York City Fringe Festival , catastrophe is a matter not of if or when, but of messaging. An asteroid is on its way to Brooklyn, and the public will not be told until a boutique advertising agency can find the right tone; the end of the world, here, must be properly branded before it can be properly known. Give me schtick or give me death. Three creatives, Del Morgan (Fletcher Michael), Nico Deluca-Graham (Lucy Boisvert), and Lorimer Clancy (Collin De...
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News: In Scena! Italian Theater Festival and Hystrio-Scritture di Scena present 6th Annual Translation and Adaption Mentorship

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Playwright Francesca Becchetti In Scena! Italian Theater Festival, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, and Hystrio-Scritture di Scena, one of the most prestigious theater awards in Italy, will present their 6th Annual Translation and Adaption Mentorship, a program which mentors an Italian playwright on the English translation and adaptation of their play. The Hystrio Scritture di Scena Award is a prestigious Italian dramaturgy competition for playwrights under 35, organized by the Milano-based Hystrio – Associazione per la diffusione della cultura teatrale. It promotes original Italian theater pieces, offering winning scripts, mentorship, staging at Hystrio Festival, and publication.   Playwright Francesca Becchetti, whose play Tekken Dram a was selected by In Scena! from the finalists of the 2025 Hystrio Scritture di Scena, will be mentored by Dave Johnson, an American playwright and poet, who was one of the authors selected fo...
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