Thinking Theater NYC

Director Montgomery Sutton In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, will present The Rule of Thirds , written by 2025 In Scena! Playwright Award-winner Marco De Simone, translated by Caterina Nonis, and directed by Montgomery Sutton at The Tank (312 W 36th St., New York, NY 10018), April 22-May 15. Over the years, In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY has proudly presented the staged production of plays that have won the Mario Fratti Award, now known as the In Scena! Playwright Award. Since 2025, as part of its commitment to fostering artistic growth, In Scena! in collaboration with The Tank, has offered a Mentorship in Directing to an emerging director. This year’s selected director, Montgomery Sutton, will have the opportunity to direct a play chosen from among the winners of the In Scena! Playwright Award, while receiving a mentorship from a seasoned director, Debora Balardini, and an experienced pro...

Titus Andronicus Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jesse Berger Presented by Red Bull Theater at The Pershing Square Signature Center ’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre 480 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, NYC March 18-April 19, 2026 Anthony Michael Lopez, Anthony Michael Martinez, Patrick Page, Zack Lopez Roa. Photo credit: Carol Rosegg. William Shakespeare's early-career revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus (George Peele is a popular candidate for the argument that parts of the play were written by a second playwright) drops the audience immediately into the midst of a dispute over who will succeed the deceased Emperor of Rome, his eldest son, Saturninus ( Matthew Amendt ), or younger brother Bassianus (Howard W. Overshown). The opening stage direction specifies that the two brothers and their followers enter at opposite doors, while Tribune Marcus, shortly to provide a third option–the titular Titus, the people's choice–enters with others "aloft," creating a vi...

Plan C Devised and written by the ensemble of Hook & Eye Theater Conceived and directed by Carrie Heitman Presented by Hook & Eye Theater and The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36 St, Manhattan, NYC March 12-April 12, 2026 The cast of Plan C . Photo by Valerie Terranova. In The Invention of News (Yale University Press, 2014), Andrew Pettegree notes, "Women ... played an active role in the print industry virtually since its beginning, almost certainly a more active role than in any other craft industry," and he supplies as one example of this activity "the achievement of the redoubtable" Alexandrine von Taxis, a German countess who "effectively ran the Taxis postal network for eighteen years after her husband's death, and steered the company through the notably turbulent decades of the latter part of the Thirty Years War" that devastated seventeenth-century Europe (pp. 281, 218, 282). Plan C , the new play from Hook & Eye Theater Company, takes t...

Entangled: 12 Scenes in a Circle K off the I-40 in New Mexico Written by Mona Mansour and Emily Zemba Directed by Scott Ilingworth Conceived by SOCIETY Presented by SOCIETY at HERE Arts Center 145 6th Ave, Manhattan, NYC March 11-29, 2026 Entangled , featuring Joshua David Robinson, Shpend Xani, Hiram Delgado, Caroline Grogan, Meredith Garretson, Christy Escobar. Photo by Ashley Garrett. If everything in the universe (or multiverse) is predetermined, an incalculably immense and complex cascade of cause and effect down to the subatomic level, does that mean not only that there is no free will but also that there is no such thing as true randomness? If humans typically experience being as unidirectional temporal movement, what would it mean to accept the concept that all points in time exist simultaneously? What might prompt someone to make (or "make") an important life decision in the aisles of an interstate-adjacent chain convenience store? These are the sort of questions y...

The Exterminators Written and directed by Maxwell Eberle Presented in association with Center for Theatre Research at Center for Theatre Research 13 West 17th St., Manhattan, NYC March 17-22, 2026 Auryn Rothwell and Yousuf Shah.  Photo credit: Geve. Often what is most disconcerting is not that which is seen, but what transpires out of sight. The unseemly unseen. In The Weird and the Eerie , Mark Fisher describes the eerie as emerging from questions of agency, when something appears where it should not be, or is absent where it should be. Maxwell Eberle’s new play, The Exterminators , locates that specific brand of the uncanny in a subterranean extermination prep chamber where death is a constant, procedural and concealed. The question is not what is being killed, but how one learns how to participate in the killing. Eberle’s staging renders that process with stark visual economy: two lockers, two masks, two jumpsuits, and a single spraypack. From the outset, hierarchy is ...

Tempest Tossed Adapted from William Shakespeare's The Tempest Directed by Janina Picard Music Direction and original music by Flavio Gaete Presented by New Place Players at Casa Duse 16 Prospect Park West, Brooklyn, NYC March 5-26, 2026 L to R (foreground): Clara Tristan, Craig Bacon, Anna Bikales It can be challenging to convey to a contemporary audience the interactive, immersive nature of the early modern theaters where the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries were performed. The notion that the play is something taking place in a different universe from the audience, behind that “fourth wall” as it were, is deeply engrained. However, New Place Players’ chamber adaptation of The Tempest , Tempest Tossed , performed in the intimate townhouse parlor of Casa Duse, brilliantly bodies forth this key feature of the early modern theater in a production that is at once historical restoration and contemporary revision of what has often been regarded as Shakespeare’s farewell to t...