Thinking Theater NYC

WHAT:  Handsome Brad and Cherry Pitz Present:  Hotsy Totsy Burlesque's Return Tribute to Star Trek WHERE:  The Slipper Room 167 Orchard Street, NYC WHEN:  Thursday August 12th, 2021 Doors 7:00 PM / Show at 8:00 PM TICKETS:  Admission: $25 pre-sold reserved seating Tickets available at  www.slipperroom.com Shows are reserved seating, $20 drink minimum The Slipper Room is 21+ The mysterious Q has come back in time to find out who has framed him for the planetary garbage fire on earth that was 2020. Meanwhile, Captain Kirk has been stranded at The Home for Wayward Girls and Fallen Women for almost a year after a time travel excursion to whale watch landed him accidentally in the midst of the Covid Pandemic. Can Cherry Pitz help these intergalactic space guys, and can they help her in return to book Lwaxana Troi as the closing act of this, the first back-to-live-shows performance of Hotsy Totsy Burlesque? As live shows return to New York City, Hotsy Totsy Burlesque, in its 15th year

Give Me Away Written by Mac Rogers Directed by Jordana Williams Presented by  Gideon Media , with distribution from PRX Episodic, beginning July 16, 2021 Cover art by Kate Kosma Think about all that sharing your life with others--spouses, children, friends, lovers—entails. Now think about sharing it—you—with another consciousness—one that is literally alien. This is the resonant juxtaposition at the center of Give Me Away , an engrossing new, multi-season science fiction audio play written by prolific podcaster, playwright, and author of audio fiction Mac Rogers . The first season of Give Me Away is being presented in two parts, with Part One's episodes (discussed here) premiering on July 16, July 23, July 30, and August 6 and Part Two premiering episodes on September 17, September 24, October 1, October 8, and October 15. All episodes are free, and audiences can visit the show's page on Gideon Media to listen or to subscribe across all podcast platforms At the opening of Gi

Judgment Day Written by Rob Ulin Directed by Matthew Penn Presented via Stellar to benefit Barrington Stage Company July 26-August 1, 2021 Jason Alexander and Patti LuPone. Image courtesy Kampfire PR Rob Ulin's two-act play Judgment Da y introduces us to successful lawyer Sammy Campo (Jason Alexander) as he closes what sounds like a pretty shady deal—if you find things like child labor questionable. But Sammy has not gotten where he is by being particularly ethical. When, however, he comes away from a briefly fatal medical episode convinced that where he is headed in (or, really, after) the end hangs in the balance, he seeks to tip the scales in his favor, and enlists doubting priest Father Michael (Santino Fontana) along the way. Receiving an encore presentation to benefit the Massachusetts-based Barrington Stage Company, the virtual reading of this modern-day comedy of morals itself benefits from a high-powered cast and a willingness to take a few unexpected turns. Santino Font

Supernova Written by Elizabeth Hawes Directed by Bernadette Armstrong Presented by the Open-Door Playhouse Podcast at www.opendoorplayhouse.org ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Claude Cornen. Used under Creative Commons 4.0 Elizabeth Hawes writes in multiple genres and has won multiple PEN America Prison Writing Awards, including for her new audio play, Supernova . Incarcerated in the Shakopee correctional facility in Minnesota, Hawes has described her purpose in writing as " to bear witness, to advocate, to entertain ," and Supernova achieves all three. Presented in two parts (debuting July 14 and July 21, 2021 and totaling about two hours and fifteen minutes) on the Open-Door Playhouse's website as part of its Prison Plays series, Supernova gives intimate expression to the experiences of women incarcerated by America's Prison Industrial Complex (PIC). This and Open-Door's other plays are available for free, but donations are welcomed. Part 1 of the pla

East to Edinburgh Goes Virtual Presented by 59E59 Theaters via  https://59e59.org/ July 15-25, 2021 Cori Hundt, Jessica Giannone, Desireé Rodriguez, Doron JéPaul Mitchell, & Biko Eisen-Martin in Testament . Photo credit: Jessica Bennett The East to Edinburgh festival comes to 59E59 Theaters this summer in virtual form, as East to Edinburgh Goes Virtual. The lineup of nine shows has been curated by 59E59 Associate Curator Jessica Hart to celebrate the diversity of the Edinburgh Fringe, even if this year's productions won't be physically performed there. The festival's limited run extends from July 15 through July 25, with one $20 festival pass ($18 for 59E59 Members) giving access to all nine shows for on-demand streaming through the 59E59 website. Yesterday, we discussed #Charlottesville and Black Women Dating White Men , a pair of plays constructed verbatim from interviews. Today, in our second of two pieces on the festival, we look at two plays that take a more tra

East to Edinburgh Goes Virtual Presented by 59E59 Theaters via  https://59e59.org/ July 15-25, 2021 (top, l-r) Christelle Belinga, Clara Emanuel, Risha Silvera, (bottom, l-r) Arianne Carless, and Merryl Ansah in BLACK WOMEN DATING WHITE MEN The East to Edinburgh festival comes to 59E59 Theaters this summer in virtual form, as East to Edinburgh Goes Virtual. The lineup of nine shows has been curated by 59E59 Associate Curator Jessica Hart to celebrate the diversity of the Edinburgh Fringe, even if this year's productions won't be physically performed there. The festival's limited run extends from July 15 through July 25, with one $20 festival pass ($18 for 59E59 Members) giving access to all nine shows for on-demand streaming through the 59E59 website . In the first of two pieces on the festival, we look at #Charlottesville and Black Women Dating White Men , a pair of plays constructed verbatim from interviews. While the focus of the latter might seem in some ways much bro

  Peppermint. Photo courtesy Emily Owens PR Activist and international star Peppermint (she/her) will host an online conversation on Tuesday, October 19th at 6pm ET (5pm CT, 4pm MT, 3pm PT) with the recipients of the 2021-22 New Visions Fellowship, Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan (they/them) and Nick Hadikwa Mwaluko (he/they), along with New Visions Lead Mentor, Roger Q. Mason (they/them) on the importance of transgender and gender non-conforming (TGNC) representation in the American Theatre. The conversation, originally scheduled for July 8th, will take place on Zoom and will be FREE and open for all to attend.  New Visions Fellowship is an innovative new artistic program established by National Queer Theater and The Dramatists Guild of America. The Fellowship is a rigorous year-long professional development initiative aimed at celebrating the brilliance of and uplifting Black TGNC writers in the face of the systemic exclusion that they have endured within American theater. The 2021 New Visio

  Audience Written by Vaclav Havel Translated and directed by Vít Hořejš Presented by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre at Bohemian National Hall , Manhattan, NYC June 23 and 29, 2021 L to R: Theresa Linnihan as The Brewmaster, Vít Hořejš as Vanek. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. There is an irony to the title of Vaclav Havel's 1975 one-act play Audience —one tends to think of being granted or summoned to an audience with some elite personage rather than a brewery worker—just as there is some irony to staging with marionettes a play in which one character is being puppeteered, as it were, to try to gain a form of control over another. There is also, though it might sound strange for a play about omnipresent surveillance under an oppressive Communist regime, a tremendous amount of fun in this production by the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT), presented as part of the 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival honoring Vaclav Havel. The comedic Audience —preceded