Thinking Theater NYC

Chasing the Tides, or Exposure Written and performed by Matilda Woods Directed by Jessica Burr Presented by Blessed Unrest at Theaterlab 357 W 36 St., 3rd fl., Manhattan, NYC December 9-18, 2022 "Matilda Woods" in Chasing the Tides, or Exposure . Photo © Maria Baranova Photography Both halves of the title of Chasing the Tides, or Exposure , a new, devised show written and performed by the pseudonymous Matilda Woods, point to the multivalent themes and symbols of this exceptional production. Woods's character ranges enthrallingly through her personal history, from childhood shopping trips to relationships with lovers to a revealing dance experience, and the titular exposure is not only of this woman's memories and secrets to the audience but also a constitutive experience of female embodiment and its expectations surrounding bodily display. The tides themselves represent an oscillation between concealment and revelation, but the play's repetitions of high and low ...

On Sunday December 11 at 2pm, there will be a presentation of the winners of the first David A. Einhorn Playwriting Prize The event will be held at the Triad Theater, 158 W. 72nd Street. The event will run 90 minutes and include readings of the 1st and 2nd prize winners, some words about David Einhorn, and a talkback on the topics addressed by the plays. Admission is free, but there is a two-drink minimum for in person attendees. Reservations can be made at untitledtheater.com . Those attending via livestream can do so by visiting triadnyc.live at the time of the event. 1st Prize: Human Resources, by Matthew Minnicino. Directed by Edward Einhorn. Two mid-level employees in a dystopia discuss their day, politics, poetry, and the quality of the sandwiches from Sandwich Vending Kiosk 6B dash 2 (they're pretty good!). 2nd Prize: 等一下 děng yīxià (wait a little), by Kaela Mei-Shing Garvin. Directed by Chongren Fan. Oak and Marbles know how to make things grow, but somehow they keep forg...

  Always Wild Content  presents a staged reading of Maia Nikiphoroff’s new dark comedy, Brace for Impact!  on Saturday, December 10th, 7:00 PM at Culture Lab LIC. Brace for Impact! is a hilariously dark, one-woman show about a flight attendant named Shiva who’s being haunted by a disheveled clown and fights to stay focused on the job while her father’s body is being cremated. Playwright Maia Nikiphoroff is a Paraguayan writer and actor based in Brooklyn, NY, who, before diving into the creative world, was herself a flight attendant, for Emirates Airline, and earned her BA in Marketing. In the play, the flight attendant, Shiva with the help of a disheveled clown only she can see, navigates moments in her life in which she destroys that which she loves. Only after there’s nothing left to wreck will she find the power of forgiveness and regeneration. Grief is at the center of this dark comedy. Between questionable safety demonstrations and vodka-only drink service, Shiva pu...

A Tomato Can’t Grow in the Bronx Written by Gary Morgenstein Directed by Bernice Garfield-Szita Presented by Tomato Players, LLC at the Chain Theatre 312 W 36th St., 4th fl., Manhattan, NYC December 2-17, 2022 Holly O'Brien and Jackie Kusher. Photo by Mateo Del Campo The Bronx of the 1970s is popularly associated with images of poverty and burning buildings, and Gary Morgenstein's play A Tomato Can't Grow in the Bronx , winner of three 2022 Perry Awards from the New Jersey Association of Community Theaters (NJACT), focuses on one extended family of Bronxites on the cusp of this tumultuous decade, following them over several days in June of 1968 that represent a potential turning point for all involved. The characters in Tomato must reckon with their pasts as they attempt to chart their futures, and personal and familial change finds echoes in the social changes taking place around them. This ultimately warm, humorous family drama asks how far love involves letting go–of pl...

Dead + Alive Conceived by Richard Saudek Directed by Richard Saudek and Pher Presented by One Year Lease Theater Company (OYL) at the Connelly Theater 220 East 4th St., Manhattan November 29-December 10, 2022 Richard Saudek. Photo credit: Pher Gleason One might not think of juggling as providing an experience of mournful beauty, but Dead + Alive , which tackles loss by way of vaudeville, will change your mind. Dead + Alive , developed during a fellowship held by co-creator and co-director Richard Saudek at LABA: A Laboratory for Jewish Culture and making its world premiere at the Connelly Theater, focuses on two clowns, Dead (Richard Saudek) and Alive (Dana Dailey), who perform as a duo. While both begin the show alive and clowning, their character names give you a pretty good hint of where things are headed, leaving Alive in a position inspired by the Jewish burial custom of assigning a guardian " to watch the recently deceased to ensure that the soul doesn't escape and run...

Love Alone - Workshop 2020. Photo by Zaire Baptiste The Tank NYC, a home for emerging artists, will present the first full production of Love Alone: Elegies For Rog at its theater at 312 West 36th Street in New York on Saturday December 3rd at 3 pm, and Sunday and Monday, December 4th and 5th at 7 pm. These performances will coincide with the observance of World AIDS Day. All performances are available for in-person viewing, while December 4th and 5th include the option for livestream viewing. Love Alone: Elegies for Rog tells the story of Paul Monette and Roger Horwitz, partners for 12 years until Roger died of AIDS in 1986. In the five months that followed, Monette wrote an exquisite cycle of poems that traces an epic journey from grief back to the land of living, full of rage, humor, and a love that transcends death. Paul Monette was a noted memoirist, poet, novelist, and gay rights activist. In addition to his acclaimed books of poetry, he wrote the memoirs Borrowed Time: An AIDS...

Scissors Written by Cornelius Boeder Directed by Luísa Galatti; Associate Director: Stella Rae Presented by Luísa Galatti at Teatro LATEA 107 Suffolk St., 2nd fl. November 21-27, 2022 Hannah Abdoh, Aedan Jayce, and Cornelius Boeder. Photo courtesy Luísa Galatti Albert Camus identifies whether to commit suicide as "the one truly serious philosophical problem," and it is one that hangs over Cornelius Boeder's new play, Scissors , currently part of the New York Theater Festival . Suicide is not the only avenue open to the characters of Scissors as a response to life's absurdity, and these options range from human connection to more dubious impulses, with the line separating them sometimes blurred at best. Darkly funny, Scissors takes a keenly absorbing look at one existential question that can never be satisfactorily answered: What now? Casper (playwright Boeder) and Cleo (Hannah Abdoh) are already seated at a table, making quiet but animated first-date conversation wh...

George Kaplan Written by Frédéric Sonntag Translated by Samuel Buggeln Directed by Max Hunter Presented by The Bridge Production Group at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher St, Manhattan, NYC November 15-December 3, 2022 George Kaplan , featuring Christina Toth, Elisha Lawson, Max Samuels, Michael DeFilippis, & Campbell Symes. Photo credit: Nancy Fallon Individual identity is arguably more fraught than ever, surveilled and sold, for example, by the same corporations that provide platforms for its curation, some of which in turn have ties to national governments. Frédéric Sonntag's play George Kaplan , written in 2011 and first staged in France in 2013, approaches identity at its intersections with storytelling and mythmaking. George Kaplan 's New York City premiere comes courtesy of an excellent production by The Bridge Production Group, which brings a galvanizing energy to Sonntag's twisty mélange of human drama, satire, and postmodern philosophical provocation. One of ...

Image from Broken Box Mime Theater Broken Box Mime Theater (BKBX) is a New York City-based collaborative theater company that performs original, contemporary short plays entirely through movement. Founded in 2011 and winners of New York Innovative Theatre Awards for Outstanding Movement/Choreography, Performance Art, and Ensemble, BKBX reimagines French pantomime through the lens of contemporary U.S. American theater. This week, Broken Box Mime will present special pop-up performances of BKBXKids! Asks Why running in rep with A BKBX Frankenstein . Performances will take place at the Theatre at the 14th Street Y (344 East 14th Street) from November 17-20, and tickets are available for advance purchase at www.brokenboxmime.com (with free admission to BKBXKids! Asks Why for anyone under 5 years old). BKBXKids! is a division of Broken Box Mime Theater that aims to inspire unplugged creativity and shared imaginative experiences in children and families by way of joyful, movement-based...

She Remembers her Amnesia Written and performed by Janis Brenner Presented at Arts on Site 12 St. Mark's Place, Manhattan, NYC November 9-10, 2022 Janis Brenner. Photo by Julie Lemberger. Lighting by Mitchell Bogard. Cypress Hill’s “Insane in the Membrane” accosts the audience in the opening number of Janis Brenner’s solo show She Remembers her Amnesia , and we know we are in for a ride. Sashaying playfully around the stage, Brenner strums a cardboard guitar with avid skill and sings about the time that, as a member of a panel of artists in 2017, she experienced prolonged amnesia, even as she continued speaking with others. As she describes how she began to wake up from her disorientation, she breaks playfully into a Talking Heads voice: “How did I get here!?” Indeed, how did she get here? The immediate aftermath of this dramatic episode of extended memory loss in 2017 saw Brenner wading through her own whirling existential questions as well as inscrutable medical-speak offered by ...

Photo credit: Mari Eimas-Dietrich The world premiere of Mrs. Loman , a play by Barbara Cassidy and presented by More Loud, imagines what Linda Loman from Death of a Salesman does after her husband commits suicide. This satirical critique of misogyny in Miller’s world runs through November 20 at The Tank and is directed by Meghan Finn, the theater's the Artistic Director. “ Death of a Salesman is such an important play of the American canon,” notes playwright Barbara Cassidy. “While having great admiration for it, I have always had immense trouble with the female characters and the misogyny. I decided I wanted to make a play about a Linda Loman who becomes a very different person after Willy’s death.  Mrs. Loman  is a play which, in Juvenalian satirical fashion, struggles with the world - first, Miller’s fictional world, then, our historical past, and ultimately, the here and now." Barbara Cassidy’s plays have been performed at The Flea Theater, Margo Jones Theatre, Playwrigh...

What Passes for Comedy Written by G.D. Kimble Directed by Rick Hamilton Presented by the Chain Theatre 312 W. 36th Street, 3rd Floor, Manhattan, NYC October 28-November 19, 2022 Andrew O'Shanick, Alain Pierre, Jordan Elman, and Rory Lance. Photo by Reiko Yoo Before ensconcing us in the pressure-filled writers' room of a popular late-night television show, the Chain Theatre's excellent world-premiere production of G.D. Kimble's What Passes for Comedy positions theatergoers as part of the live studio audience for that program, The Jackie Harrod Show . The year is 1963, and the faces of The Jackie Harrod Show , a successful enterprise that pulls big-name guests, are White host Jack Harrod (Michael Filisky) and Black bandleader Bunny Brown (Ryan Brooke Taylor). But it is an insult to another group during the show's live broadcast that precipitates a catalyzing crisis for the play's nuanced and powerful exploration of race, representation, and, of course, comedy. Mi...

Image from https://good-jew.com/ Direct from hurricane-ravaged Florida, Peculiar Works Project presents Frank Blocker as Holocaust survivor Henryk Altman in Good Jew , Official Selection of the 2022 United Solo Festival. Written by Murray Scott Changar and Frank Blocker, this verbatim solo play is based on multiple interviews with the late Mr. Changar’s late father, Henryk, and directed by Jamibeth Margolis, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.  Good Jew  will be performed  one night only  on Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7:00pm EDT, at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY. The show runs 70 minutes, and extremely limited $42.50 tickets are available at  https://bfany.org/theatre-row/shows/united-solo-theatre-festival-2022/. He escaped the Treblinka death-camps, twice, joined the Resistance, navigated from the ghettos of Warsaw through Germany and onto Norway, but Henryk Altman doesn’t see himself as a Good Jew. No one survives war by being ...

Metra: A Climate Revolution Play with Songs Written by Emily and Ned Hartford Directed by Emily Hartford Songs by Ned Hartford Presented by Flux Theatre Ensemble at Abrons Arts Center 466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street), Manhattan, NYC October 28 - November 12, 2022 Metra featuring Rebecca Ana Peña. Photo credit: Isaiah Tanenbaum Anecdotes are not data, etc., etc., but having seen the climate apocalypse play Metra on a humid 75-degree November day certainly did nothing to contradict the urgency of its message. Metra , subtitled A Climate Revolution Play with Songs , looks back in order to look forward, drawing on Greek myth (via Ovid) to imagine paths to revolutionary action in a not-at-all-too-distant and all too plausible future dramatically shaped by climate-related factors such as severe heat, famine, water scarcity, and mass migration. While both that mythic past and imagined future are pretty grim, Metra ultimately advocates against despair, and it deploys an enlivening blend o...