Thinking Theater NYC

Poster design by Arlen Schumer As New York Comic-Con 2022 approaches, so too does the perfect complement:  Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat . Coming to the Chain Theatre  (312 West 36th Street, Fourth Floor) on October 3, 4, 5 2022 at 8 pm, Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat takes a deep dive into the life of Bill Finger, the co-creator of Batman (with Bob Kane), who never received due credit until 2015. The play, written and directed by Lenny Schwartz, with a story by Athena Finger, Alethia Bess Mariotta, and Lenny Schwartz, takes audiences on a journey with Bill from the inception of Batman to his passing away nearly penniless in 1974, to finally receiving his posthumous co-creator credit in 2015. You can read more about the play in  this Popverse article . Bill Finger: Rise of the Bat is presented by Daydream Theatre Company , RISE Playhouse , and producer Aaron Andrade. Tickets available for $15 online and $20 at the door. Tickets may be purchased here .  Additional performances will run in

Fastened to the Moon Written by Linda Kampley Directed by Kathleen Swan Presented by American Renaissance Theater Company at the Chain Theatre 312 W. 36th St., 4th floor, Manhattan, NYC September 15-October 1, 2022 (L) Nick W. (Astronaut #2), Pёtra Denison (Katherine), (R) Ryan Clardy (Astronaut 1). Photo by Michele Becker Fastened to the Moon , for which playwright Linda Kampley won the 2019 Jerry Kaufman Award for excellence in playwriting, wastes no time in laying a firm grasp on the audience's attention, dropping spectators immediately into the midst of some clearly untoward goings on. Twenty-three-year-old Katherine (Pёtra Denison) is still in a hazy state of medicated half-sleep when her husband, Robert (Ryan Wesen) tells her that he is leaving–in the dark of night–for a multi-day fishing charter. Days later, Katherine hasn't seen any sign of Robert, but she has seen a pair of astronauts, and she is about to meet a pair of law enforcement officers who would like to see R

Teatro Círculo, one of the main bilingual Latino theatre companies in New York City, has announced its 2022-2023 season, to take place at the Chain Theatre (312 W 36th St, 3rd floor) in Manhattan while the company's East Village homebase façade is being renovated to better accommodate its growing audience. Given the rise in autocracies around the world and voter suppression bills pending in different states in the United States, Teatro Círculo has chosen projects to underscore the real threats that oppressive authoritarian rule presents to any government system that honors community participation. The new season begins in October, during Hispanic Heritage Month, with the staging of  Fuente Ovejuna by Lope de Vega, a Spanish playwright, poet, and novelist and one of the key figures in the Spanish Golden Age of Baroque literature. Fuente Ovejuna , a classic tale known for its stirring depiction and critique of the abuse of power, will be presented from October 7th to the 23rd in a p

A Venomous Color: Burbank Written by Cameron Darwin Bossert Directed by Thirdwing Presented by Thirdwing at the wild project 195 E. 3rd Street, Manhattan, NYC September 6-18, 2022 L to R: Kelley Lord, Ryan Blackwell, and Cameron Darwin Bossert. Photo by Valerie Terranova Burbank , making its world premiere at the wild project, marks the fourth onstage production from Thirdwing, founded by Artistic Director and Burbank playwright Cameron Darwin Bossert. As a hybrid streaming theater company, Thirdwing creates both streaming and in-person offerings, and Burbank , revised and expanded from an earlier streaming version, is the second full-length in-person play in the series A Venomous Color , which focuses on Walt Disney Studios from 1935 through 1941. The first onstage show in A Venomous Color was the outstanding The Fairest , adapted for streaming as Disney Girls , which examined Disney's "Nunnery," a department made up exclusively of women painters and inkers, as they

  Celine Dirkes as Jane Gibson. Photo by Jordan Cohen Thinkery & Verse ’s  Thou Shalt Not,  a site-specific play about the Hall-Mills double homicide, will begin a return engagement on September 14th, recognizing the 100th anniversary of the crime. Thou Shalt Not , written by J. M. Meyer, Karen Alvarado, and Tommi Byrne, and directed by Karen Alvarado and J. M. Meyer, will play a limited engagement in the Assembly Hall at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist (189 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901), the church most closely associated with the crime 100 years ago, as the home of the religious community that enabled and then covered up the homicides. Performances will continue through Saturday, October 8, and tickets are already selling out quickly.  For those not versed in early 20th-century true crime, what is the Hall-Mills double homicide? In 1922, near the banks of the Raritan River, a small-city priest and a choir singer were slaughtered in the most infamous unsolved dou

My Onliness Text and lyrics by Robert Lyons (from Witkacy) Directed by Daniel Irizarry Composer: Kamala Sankaram Presented by One-Eighth Theater , New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater at New Ohio Theatre September 6-24, 2022 Daniel Irizarry. Photo by Suzanne Fiore Photography Late in My Onliness , a character known only as the Writer (Rhys Tivey) asserts, "The absurdity of life in-and-of-itself" is "something you won't see / on the stage of any theater." What we have seen to that point doesn't much support that claim, but then, the Writer himself observes that people require that their truths be wrapped in fiction or ceremony. The Writer is no favorite of the king (Daniel Irizarry)–the royal Onliness of the play's title–but artists and intellectuals are seldom beloved of authoritarians, and the king claims to both rule over and suffer for his subjects entirely on his own. If the Writer comes into conflict with the king merely by virtue of being "liter

Sara Pizzi (top) and Aika Takeshima (bottom) in  L Train . Photo by BECCAVISION. Seventy (not a typo!) diverse new works, including musicals, short and full-length plays, dance, cabaret, and solo shows will be showcased at  Emerging Artists Theatre’s bi-annual New Work Series (NWS). For the first time since the festival's inception in 2006, NWS will run for four weeks instead of three to better meet the growing needs of artists. The festival runs September 26th to October 23rd at TADA! Theater in Manhattan. All of the productions are in various stages of development, with many shows being performed in front of a live audience for the first time. Most productions will receive one performance, with shorter pieces being grouped together. Artistic Director Paul Adams shared his thoughts on the expanded festival: “Emerging Artists is celebrating our 29th season and it’s always been our mission to be a champion of new works. We understand how hard it is for artists after so many of ou