Thinking Theater NYC

Much Ado About Nothing , written by William Shakespeare and directed by Megan Lummus, will be presented as part of the 2024 Little Shakespeare Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009) with performances on Fri August 9 at 9pm, Sat August 10 at 7pm & Sun August 11 at 2pm. Tickets ($25 in person, $20 streaming) are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc. The performance will run approximately 90 minutes. The Little Shakespeare Festival is FRIGID New York’s annual celebration of independent theatre and performance that takes inspiration from the immortal bard, William Shakespeare. Each year, companies are offered a different theme or idea to help guide their work. This year the festival’s theme is Camaraderie and Community. Much Ado About Nothing is a classic Shakespeare tale of love, trust, and deceit. Claudio  is madly in love with Hero but is tricked into believing she is unchaste, and that is nearly their undoing. Meanwhil

Justy Kosek and Cherrye J. Davis. Photo by Hannah Sgambellone. Alexander Perez’s new two hander, The Bad in Each Other , is slated to have its New York City Premiere at The Tank in midtown Manhattan this summer. The limited engagement runs for 7 performances between July 24 and August 3. The play previously received a workshop production at Playwrights Horizons during the 2023 Downtown Urban Arts Festival, where it was named runner-up for Best Play. The Bad in Each Other is directed by Paula Ali ( The Jason Williams Experience /Alvin Ailey).  In the play, what begins as a hot fling between Karma, the ultimate artist badass we all wish we could be, and Felix, the soft, privileged soyboy most of us are, evolves into a years-long passionate tug-of-war that consumes both parties as they struggle to reconcile their ideologies, lust, and exhaustion. What is creative success but a means to betray your ideals? What is activism if not a means to apologize for privilege? Can’t we just stay home

A Hundred Circling Camps Written by Sam Collier Directed by Rebecca Wear Presented by Dogteam Theatre Project , in association with Middlebury College , at The Atlantic Stage 2 330 West 16th St., Manhattan, NYC July 12-August 3, 2024 Ensemble. Photo by Clinton Brandhagen. How is sociopolitical change made? How (and how much) does protest fit into that change? Why do protest movements tend to fracture over time? And how does popular and schoolroom history, with its fondness for individual figures and big moments in combination with its reproduction of ruling-class values–consider, for instance, how Martin Luther King, Jr., is today both reduced to a few lines from a single speech and stripped of any class activism–contribute to our short cultural memories when it comes to protest, as well as to the systemic oppressions which protest challenges? Such are the difficult questions confronted by Sam Collier's ambitious new play, A Hundred Circling Camps , which establishes its base camp

Coney Island Nursery Rhyme Written and directed by Lubomir Rzepka Presented at the NuBox Theatre 754 9th Ave, 4th floor, Manhattan, NYC July 12-20th, 2024   Judge Boothby, Mike Timoney, Jessica Noboa, & Phyllis Lindy. Photo by Valerie Terranova A close relation belonging to one of these reviewers had to be placed in an incubator as a premature infant in the 1950s. How many of us realize that we could draw a straight line between that relative being alive today and a Coney Island sideshow? Inspired in part by reading Dawn Raffel's book The Strange Case of Dr. Couney , playwright and director Lubomir Rzepka created Coney Island Nursery Rhyme , which spotlights a fascinating, lesser-known story from medical history. The directorial debut from Rzepka–who also fronts the band Bleak March –and his first written work to be produced on the stage, the compelling Coney Island Nursery Rhyme takes audiences to a time when preemies were written off by many, including in the medical establ

Climate Fables: The Trash Garden Written and directed by Padraig Bond Presented by Torch Ensemble at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 13-14, 2024 L to R: Kristen Hoffman, Padraig Bond, Luis Feliciano, Penelope Deen As heat records continue to fall and extreme weather proliferates (if only anyone could have predicted this!), the timeliness of Padraig Bond's Climate Fables project seems, one might say, scorchingly obvious. One of these Fables , The Trash Garden , imagines the post-climate-apocalypse world as a kind of anti-Eden populated by what may well be the last two people on Earth, presenting funny, touching snapshots of the pair as they negotiate and contemplate their existence and one another. The Trash Garden was most recently presented as part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival , which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New York City Fringe Festival, 11 shows from this year's Fringe Festival to r

Laurizarry will present once again If I Did, You Deserved It , written by Jess Lauricello and directed by Casey Kelly, as an encore performance from the 2024 Queerly Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009) on Saturday, June 27 at 10:30pm.  A party seemingly thrown by no one that you definitely wouldn’t have been invited to full of people that you hate, followed by eternal damnation! Come judge other people for fun. Don’t worry, you totally have every right to. If I Did, You Deserved It , produced by new Gen Z theatre company Laurizarry and directed by Casey Kelly, is a new play from award-losing playwright Jess Lauricello that’s probably a comedy. It was FRIGID New York’s Show of the Month of June 2024 and was described as “snappy and vibrant” and “quick-witted” by Theatre Beyond Broadway . Tickets (up to $25 on a sliding scale) are available for advance purchase at  www.frigid.nyc . The performance will run approximately 60 minutes. The ca

Too Much of a Good Thing Written, directed, and performed by Rachel Redleaf Presented by RAR Entertainment at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 8-18, 2024 Rachel Redleaf. Photo courtesy of Rachel Redleaf. If the number of slang terms for something is proportional to the space it takes up in the cultural imaginary, then, as the opening of actor, singer, and comedian Rachel Redleaf's coruscating solo show Too Much of a Good Thing suggests, women's breasts boast quite a footprint. That this video introduction is delivered by a puppet named Rachel Too quickly establishes the expert tonal balance that the show strikes, taking an overwhelmingly comedic approach to Redleaf's sometimes traumatic experiences as a woman carrying the weight, literal and otherwise, of very large breasts. Too Much of a Good Thing is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New Y

A Drag is Born Created and performed by Edu Díaz Directed by Rachel Resnik Presented at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 6-14, 2024 Edu Díaz in A Drag Is Born . Photo by José Botella Films Simone de Beauvoir famously writes in The Second Sex , "One is not born, but rather becomes, woman" (Knopf, 2010, p. 283). While drag itself emphasizes gender as a masquerade, Edu Díaz's delightful solo show A Drag is Born suggests that in the case of a drag artist, perhaps one is both born and made. The show, which has won multiple awards at the Orlando and NYC Fringe Festivals, sees queer theater artist and Fulbright winner Díaz (he/him/él), a New York-based native of the Canary Islands, take a transformative, if at first reluctant, journey of self-acceptance and self-assertion that is simultaneously hilarious and inspiring. A Drag is Born is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration wit

A Date With My Wild Written and directed by Alexandria Rengifo Presented by Stage Arising at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 7-13, 2024 Photo courtesy of Alexandria Rengifo Would you think that a single performer dancing to the Spice Girls could bring multiple audience members to tears? If you're leaning towards "no," you probably haven't seen Alexandria Rengifo's solo show A Date With My Wild . With engrossingly emotive storytelling and a dancer's sense of movement, Rengifo leads her audience through more than two decades of disconnection from her own body and its potential for pleasure, an experience that can be linked to a much longer history of the surveillance and policing of women's bodies. A Date With My Wild is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New York City Fringe Festival, 11 shows from this year's Fringe Festiv

Photo by Sivan Raz. Editing by Hila Shats. This July, Needs More Work Productions, one of New York City’s leading immersive theater companies, presents Anti-Gone , a one-of-a-kind adaptation of Sophocles’ Greek tragedy Antigone . Join them this summer in Queens to have your say in deciding the famous play’s ending: Should Antigone be pardoned? Ismene crowned Queen Regent of Thebes? Maybe Creon was right all along? This summer, the choice is completely yours. Led by Artistic Director Sivan Raz, Anti-Gone presents an innovative approach to the well-known classic. In the show, a modern acting troupe battles with the strict societal values presented in Antigone . The only way to solve the puzzle is through a complete dismantling of the theatrical form and an honest discussion with you, the audience. Is a happy ending for Antigone’s story possible? Will we be able to find that which has not been found in the 2,500 years since the play’s premiere - a solution? “Antigone was always a play ab

cunnicularii Written by Sophie McIntosh Directed by Nina Goodheart Presented by Good Apples Collective and Esmé Maria Ng at Alchemical Studios 50 West 17th Street, Manhattan, NYC June 28-July 13, 2024 Camille Umoff. Photo credit: Nina Goodheart Photography In 1726, an English laborer named Mary Toft who lived in Godalming, Surrey, convinced doctors (male, of course), both local and called in from London, that she was giving birth to (dead) rabbits (and some other assorted non-human animal parts). Although this unusual reproductivity was eventually determined to be a deception, Toft's story throws into relief not only the apparatuses of power and knowledge surrounding women's bodies but men's ignorance of those bodies, compounded by patriarchal moralism, joined with their ignoring evidence that maybe these bunnies originated elsewhere than Toft's womb in favor of their own self-advancement. With her fantastic–and fantastical–new play, cunnicularii , Sophie McIntosh, a

Ladies at a Gay Girls' Bar, 1938-1969 Choreographed, written, and performed by Maggie Cee Presented by In the Streets Productions at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 24 and 29, 2024 Maggie Cee in Ladies at a Gay Girls' Bar. Photo by Olivia Blaidsell. Communal gathering spaces can shape identity while fostering community, and, for queer people, one of those spaces has long been the gay bar. Just how long can be seen in the subtitle of Maggie Cee's solo show Ladies at a Gay Girls' Bar, 1938-1969 (and one can doubtless point to even earlier analogues, such as Eve Adams' Tearoom in 1920s Greenwich Village). With music and dance providing both connective tissue and additional layers of signification, Cee incisively and entertainingly knits voices from these spaces together with the narrative of a quest for self-definition and a call for further excavation of the stories of a certain, underrepresented segment of the lesbian community. Ladies at a

The Tempest Written by William Shakespeare Adapted by David Fuller Directed by Judith Jarosz Presented by Theater 2020  at  The Great Room at ART NY (138 South Oxford Street, Brooklyn), June 14-28, 2024, and at Pier One – Brooklyn Bridge Park, June 29-30, 2024* *Note: Pier One dates cancelled due to COVID and weather Center front: David Fuller as Prospero. From left: David Arthur Bachrach, Eileen Glenn, Corey Barron, Kodee Martin, Emma Noelani, Linda Elizabeth, Robert Dyckman, Caryn Hartglass, Lynn Marie Macy, Michael Gnat. Photo by John Hoffman Theater 2020’s delightful 75-minute adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Tempest serves as a timely and powerful reminder that art has the potential not only to mirror reality but even more poignantly to reimagine a better future. Certainly, the future The Tempest proffers is not utopian; the colonized Caliban remains “a thing of darkness” under the control of an only somewhat humbled Prospero. However, the reconciliation of its other characters

 Macbeth Written by William Shakespeare Co-directed by Geoffrey Horne and Alec Baldwin Presented by Shakespeare Downtown at Castle Clinton National Monument The Battery (Battery Park), Manhattan, NYC June 13-23, 2024 Tickets are free and available at the door of Castle Clinton National Monument at the Battery at 5:45 p.m. on the day of the performance. Billie Andersson & Alfredo Diaz. Photo by Amy Goossens While Shakespeare’s tragedies generally encourage focus around one (or two) tragic figures, Shakespeare Downtown’s Macbeth , directed by Geoffrey Horne and Alec Baldwin, cogently reminds that, like the comedies, they are truly ensemble pieces necessitating a large and adept cast to effectively tell their stories. In a production such as this (indeed, with Shakespeare in general), with very minimal set and other effects at its disposal, the actors must do the lion’s share of work to make it a success. Alfredo Diaz’s Macbeth and Billie Andersson’s Lady Macbeth certainly shone in k

Before the Dru gs Kick In , which takes the form of a stand-up set by a woman named Lynn T. Walsh ( Maria DeCotis ), is returning to NYC for a limited run at The Lynn F. Angelson Theater (136 E 13th Street, New York, NY 10003). You can read our review of an earlier run here .  Tickets are available here , and showtimes are as follows: Wednesday, 6/19, 7pm (preview) Friday, 6/21, 7pm Saturday, 6/22, 7pm Sunday, 6/23, 4pm Thursday, 6/27, 7pm Friday, 6/28, 7pm Saturday, 6/29, 7pm Sunday, 6/30, 4pm

The Employees By Olga Ravn Translated by Martin Aitken Adapted by Jaclyn Biskup and Lauren Holmes Directed by Jaclyn Biskup Presented by The Mill and Theaterlab at Theaterlab 357 W 36th St, 3rd Floor, Manhattan, NYC June 13-30, 2024 Aurea Tomeski. Photo by Pelenguino Photo Some strains of science fiction have long used their imagined worlds, beings, and objects to explore social and metaphysical questions. The Employees: A workplace novel of the 22nd century , The Mill's world premiere stage adaptation of Danish writer Olga Ravn's 2020 novel, makes one of its primary concerns clear in its title. Here, interstellar exploration is not a romantic adventure but a job, and one which permits even less of a "private" self than globalized neoliberalism allows for us current-day, Earth-bound laborers. But rather than an endpoint, this fascinating, formidable production's critique of the dehumanizations of the workplace acts more like a hub, the center of a web of compell