Thinking Theater NYC

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

  Cabaret in Captivity , an annual cabaret produced by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, will perform both live and livestreamed on Sunday, May 1, at 2pm. This year's production is dedicated to the memory of cast member Barbara Maier Gustern, and there will be a brief tribute to her. The program includes songs and sketches written in Terezin/Theresienstad. Terezin was located an hour away from Prague, and during World War II it served as both an internment camp and a way station for the concentration camps during the Holocaust. Full of satire, bitter humor, and hope, these pieces demonstrate how art became a vital survival technique for the inmates. Most of these pieces were recently recovered through the efforts of scholar Lisa Peschel, who also translated the majority of the work. Conceived and co-directed by Edward Einhorn ( NY Times Critic’s Pick for The Marriage of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein ) and starring co-director Jenny Lee Mitc

Invulnerable Nothings, a US/UK theatre collective committed to intermedial stagings of poetic language as well as the theatrical activation of libraries and archives, presents an immersive production of Matthew Gasda's new play All the Mournful Voices,  opening on Friday, April 15 and coinciding with the 157th anniversary of President Lincoln's assassination, a major subject of the work. Chosen as a "Best Immersive Theatre Experience" by City Guide, NY , the site-responsive World Premiere runs through April 29 and is directed by the company's Facilitating Director C.C. Kellogg. April 17, 1865. Easter Sunday. The weekend of Lincoln's assassination. Three men reel and rage together in a tavern. A stranger's unexpected arrival sparks suspicion, reflection, and something mysteriously cosmic.  All the Mournful Voices  is a purgatorial bar play that focuses on the death of Abraham Lincoln and examines inherited cultural legacies of violence and loss. All the Mou

  New York Live Arts and 92Y present the New York premiere of BLACK HOLE – Trilogy and Triathlon , a multidisciplinary performance choreographed by the award-winning movement artist Shamel Pitts, co-created and performed by his Brooklyn-based arts collective TRIBE. Deeply inspired and infused by the spirit of Afrofuturism, this contemporary Gesamtkunstwerk combines dance, original sound, video projection, and light design in a tale of vitality and tenderness, darkness and light, personal growth and collective empowerment. Black Hole – which constitutes the final installment of Pitts’s  Black Trilogy – will be presented in the New York Live Arts Theater (219 West 19th Street, New York, NY 10011) on Thursday, April 21st, Friday, April 22nd, and Saturday, April 23rd, 2022 at 7:30pm. Tickets start at $25 and can be purchased at NewYorkLiveArts.org or 212-691-6500, and are on sale now.  In BLACK HOLE , a trio of Black performers (all of African heritage) shares the stage in a narrative of

Judy Gold. Courtesy Alton PR Opening with a Jazz brunch at Stand Up NY, Gold Standard Arts Festival features cabaret headlined by Steve Ross, stand-up comedy with a lineup that includes Judy Gold and Greer Barnes, a matinee and evening of short plays that includes Broadway playwrights Marc Acito and Sheldon Harnick, and a weekend long film festival that includes many new indie films like Give or Take from Brooklyn director Paul Riccio plus special event screenings of Academy Award-nominated short Joe’s Violin directed by Kahane Cooperman and The Last Laugh directed by Ferne Pearlstein. One of a kind, the festival showcases both emerging and established older artists "because an artist can emerge at any age and art enhances and extends life” says festival co-director Caytha Jentis. Award-winning actor Richard Kind shared his thoughts on the festival at the kick-off party: “Do not let age stand in the way, and let’s support those who have something to say, or a way to say it, an

The New York theater community will come together for 12 hours on Saturday, April 16, 2022 from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM for 24 online readings and conversations on www.HowlRound.com . Artists will share their outrage at the bombing of the Donetsk Drama Theater Mariupol, where 300 people died while seeking shelter in a space that is sacred to all. Using the words of playwrights, poets, and novelists the artists will express and share their deep sorrow in response to this shocking and devastating tragedy. By showing empathy and compassion, they will let the world know that the New York theater community cares deeply about the victims, survivors, and families of the Mariupol catastrophe and that Ukraine is on our minds. This is not a fundraiser. It is anticipated that listeners from over 20 countries will tune in, and the national Public Broadcasting Station of Ukraine will live-stream the gathering for all Ukrainians. With: Abrons Arts Center; CUNY STAGES; HERE Arts Center; HowlRound; La

  Photo by Michael Cole Satan and God come back to earth in William Andrew Jones's new play Satan and God , which opened April 7th for its world-premiere run at Theatre Row. The limited engagement runs April 7 – 24 and features Zach Wegner as Satan and Jonathan Wong Frye as God. Jones also serves as director, and the show is produced by No Budget Productions. In Satan and God , Satan comes back to earth as a studio executive from L.A. who is now in a remote corner of Manitoba, where he's arranging to completely level fifteen square miles of untouched woodlands in order to shoot a battle scene. God comes back as a Canadian environmentalist. Jones’s play The Most Famous Woman In The World was produced Off-Broadway at the Workhouse Theatre. He was also one of the writers for the Off-Broadway Revue: What’s New , which ran for four months on the Upper West Side and The Day After Yesterday , which was performed for the White House staff in the US Senate Rotunda. Performances take p

The United Nations: The Border and the Coast Written and directed by Cameron Darwin Bossert Presented by Thirdwing at the wild project 195 E 3rd St., Manhattan, NYC April 5-17, 2022 Imagine petty office politics and stultifying bureaucracy, but blown up to an international scale: this is the world that writer and director Cameron Darwin Bossert explores in hybrid theater company Thirdwing's superb new live production The United Nations: The Border and the Coast . With The Border and the Coast , on the heels of the equally excellent multi-part A Venomous Color , Bossert continues to impress, with a look at the United Nations as a place in which banality and intrigue and the personal and global collide, to enthralling effect. Thirdwing's hybrid digital and live-on-stage model presents The Border and the Coast in conjunction with a digital series, The United Nations: Pale Cast of Thought , featuring one of the live production's characters, German diplomat Rudolph Schmid (Ma

Take Shape Created and performed by Nick Abeel, Becky Baumwoll, Ismael Castillo, Julia Cavagna, Géraldine Dulex, Blake Habermann, David Jenkins, Marissa Molnar, Kristin McCarthy Parker, Tasha Milkman, Regan Sims, Jae Woo, with collaboration from Josh Wynter Presented by Broken Box Mime Theater at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 West 53rd St. Manhattan, NYC April 1-May 1, 2022 BKBX Take Shape featuring David Jenkins, Jae Woo, Marissa Molnar, Tasha Milkman. Photo by Bjorn Bolinder Need a break from theater that's all about words, words, words? If so, Broken Box Mime Theater (BKBX) has the non-verbal answer with its new show, Take Shape . If not, see it anyway–it's pretty terrific. Take Shape comprises segments varying in subject and length and ranging in mood from from cheeky to energizing to meditative, all of which coalesce into a beguiling whole. The production will include affinity nights for groups including "neurodiverse communiti

#SoSadSoSexy Written and created by Emily Cordes, Alison Leaf, and Kendra Augustin With additional contributions by Simha Toledano and Jes Davis Directed by Simha Toledano Presented by  Tapestry Collective in Association with The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36th St., Manhattan, NYC and via livestream March 24 and 26, 2022 Front: Lucy Prescott (Uma Paranjpe) is treated by Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot (Charles Kennedy IV). Photo by Ezra Goh. The title of #SoSadSoSexy , a new devised play staged by Tapestry Collective, points to a process of voyeuristic objectification: in a patriarchal culture such as ours, women's suffering, especially in connection with mental health, is aestheticized as tragically beautiful, but a woman's meeting the dominant standards of beauty is a precondition both for that sense of tragedy and for its commodification. That commodification allows our heteropatriarchal culture to distance itself from culpability by consuming in a repackaged form the very suffering t

  Image courtesy Break A Leg Productions A staged reading of The Half-Life of Marie Curie , written by Lauren Gunderson and directed by Kim T. Sharp, will be presented on Sunday April 10th, 2022 at 7pm at the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, 45th and Broadway, in Salon 2 on the 5th Floor. Admission is free to the performance, starring Susan Richard and Teri Black, and the post-performance talkback.  In 1911, Marie Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the elements radium and polonium. By 1912, she was the object of ruthless gossip over an alleged affair with the married Frenchman Paul Langevin, all but erasing her achievements from public memory. Weakened and demoralized by the press lambasting her as a “foreign” Jewish temptress and a home-wrecking traitor, Marie agrees to join her friend and colleague Hertha Ayrton, an electromechanical engineer and suffragette.  The Half-Life of Marie Curie  revels in the power of female friendship as it explores the relation