Thinking Theater NYC

Grace Maria Hernandez and Taylor Garlick. Photo: Lily Hilden Adjusted Realists , in association with Weber State University, presents the New York premiere of Red Days from Friday, May 31 through Sunday, June 9, 2024, at the Jeffery & Paula Gural Theatre A.R.T. / New York Theatre, 502 W. 53rd Street, NYC.  Set near Salt Lake City,  Red Days , the searing new play from Utah writer Rachel Bublitz, directed by Jeremiah Maestas and Steve Kaliski, may sound like another entry in a long line of dystopian visions, but the climate forecast here isn't vague or distant. Instead, it's already happening. In a story determined to find hope and perseverance in a precarious status quo,  Red Days  follows high school athlete Dianna and her overbearing coach, who is also her mother, as they attempt life-as-usual. There are gritty practices, first loves, and summer internships, but as conditions worsen and designer masks can do only so much, Dianna must face the reality of her adolescence i

Indie theatre company Laurizarry will present If I Did, You Deserved It , written by Jess Lauricello - an NYC-based playwright, theatre director, indie theatre and film producer, dramaturg, actor, and tree-hugger who believes in you and aliens - and directed by Casey Kelly, as part of the 2024 Queerly Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009) on Friday, June 21 at 7:00pm. Tickets (up to $25 on a sliding scale) are available for advance purchase at www.frigid.nyc . The performance will run approximately 90 minutes. 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  is a new play from award-losing playwright Jess Lauricello that’s probably a comedy. It’s a new take on No Exit that explores morality, shame, redemption, and generally fumbling the b

Vít Hořejš and his marionettes LUNGS  (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens), a grassroots community gardens-based organization uniting the many volunteer-run community gardens in the Lower East Side and the East Village,  FRIGID New York , and nonprofit arts organization GOH Productions present the third annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival, a festival featuring the work of International and LES artists, on Saturday, June 8 and Sunday, June 9 from 2 pm-5:30 pm at the 6B Garden (located at Avenue and East 6th Street in New York City). Admission to the festival is completely FREE. In 1956, Joe Papp began the outdoor theater tradition on the Lower East Side when he introduced “Shakespeare in the Park” in East River Park Amphitheater. From the 1950s to the present, the Park was the site of frequent free Evening-in-the-Park concerts and plays. In 2022, LUNGS launched the first free annual LUNGS Summer Theater Festival and continues to honor the tradition with the third annual festival this

Sea Gull Written by Anton Chekhov Translated by John Christopher Jones Directed by Ryan Czerwonko Presented by Adult Film at Rutgers Presbyterian Church (236 W 73rd St., Manhattan, NYC), May 8-June 1, 2024, and Stone Circle Theatre (59-14 70th Ave., Queens, NYC), June 2, 2024 The cast of Sea Gull . Source: https://www.adultfilm.nyc/ Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull (1895) was unquestionably innovative in its time, becoming a milestone in world drama, and Adult Film's new production of the Chekhov classic, Sea Gull , channels that innovatory spirit in a fleet, engrossing staging. Using a new translation by film and theater veteran John Christopher Jones, Sea Gull opens with a filmed segment that would fit comfortably in an arthouse film and that draws from the work's abortive play-within-a-play, a recontextualization that invites hearing its imagery of the cold emptiness of extinction, the horror of material existence, and the contrast between ever-changing matter and ever

Cauldron MultiMedium will present The Ho Must Go On , written, directed, and performed by Phillipe Andre Coquet. The production will be presented as part of the 2024 Queerly Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009), with performances on Saturday, June 29 at 9:30pm and Monday, July 1 at 7pm.  Phillipe Andre Coquet is a 55-year veteran of stage and screen, and a multi-threat actor/singer/dancer/playwright/director. He was featured in the Broadway musical, Her First Roman which starred Leslie Uggams and Richard Kiley, and appears in the book Broadway’s Greatest Flops , and a revival of T he Time of Your Life at Lincoln Center. He has acted and directed a ton of regional theater in quite a few cities, and his plays have won a few Fringe awards, including ‘Fringe of the Fringe’ and ‘Show that Breaks the Most Rules.’ He is also a co-star of the acclaimed Netflix-produced cult “cult” documentary Holy Hell , now available on Prime.  The Ho Must Go

  Photo courtesy of Kampfire PR The New Place Players ’ The Masque of Night , a cabaret of contemporary and Elizabethan songs intermixed with, as Stephanie Pietros put it, " Romeo and Juliet ’s most iconic set-pieces" returns in June for performances in New Jersey and New York City. (you can read Stephanie's review of an earlier NYC performance here ).  The Masque of Night comes first to ​Princeton, NJ on June 7th and 8th, featuring Actors Studio lifetime member Clara Tristan as Juliet and recent Actors Studio MFA graduate Jorge Carrion Alvarez as Romeo. The performances will take place at the enchanting Hopewell Mountain Christian Church, near Princeton, New Jersey, a beautifully preserved wooden structure dating back to 1844. The Masque of Night  offers a unique and intimate experience for theater enthusiasts. The venue's interior balcony, grand piano, original bell, and seating for forty guests create an enchanting atmosphere that complements the magic of Shakespea

Actiomplay in rehearsal for Total Bummer Summer: A Paranormusical You’ve never experienced a summer camp like the one in Actionplay’s new musical Total Bummer Summer: A Paranormusical , which will run for three performances on May 18 – 19, at the Nagelberg Theatre in the Baruch Performing Arts Center. Welcome to Farmer Flood's Fun Camp! It's got canoeing! Obstacle courses! Ghosts! When summer camp is taken over by a fiendish phantom, the campers must work together to unearth the ancient secrets of the campground and save the day. Actionplay is proud to present a truly ghoulish musical, complete with haunted woods, phantasmic possessions, and ghastly dance battles. Bring a brave friend. The script was devised and created by neurodiverse actors in Actionplay's Action Improv Musical Series (AIMS). The show is directed by Kate Trammell, with music direction and composition by Shane Dittmar, and choreography by Kimberly Hale. Actionplay is now in its 11th year of producing new m

La Musica Deuxième Written by Marguerite Duras Translated by Barbara Bray Directed by Helen Banner Presented by A/Park Productions at Torn Page 435 W 22nd St., 2nd Fl., Manhattan, NYC May 16-26, 2024 Jessica Frey and  Gopal Divan.   Ph oto by Diego Quintanar Music can be a trigger for memory, and the two share an essentially subjective and changeable quality. Two people may hear the same music differently, or the same person may hear different things in the same piece of music on a subsequent listen. The same sort of divergences characterize remembrance, as evident in the marital postmortem conducted by the couple in A/Park Productions' fantastic new staging of La Musica Deuxième by Marguerite Duras (1914-1996), a multidisciplinary French writer and filmmaker who was born in what is now Vietnam and settled permanently in France in 1933 after several prior moves between the two nations. Providing us with even more multiple and refracting versions of the relationship in Duras'

Bettye and the Jockettes Spinning Records at the Holiday Inn Written by Christie Perfetti Williams Directed by Sara Thigpen Presented by Retro Productions at the Gene Frankel Theatre 24 Bond St., Manhattan, NYC May 3-18, 2024 The Cast of Bettye and the Jockettes Spinning Records at the Holiday Inn . Photo by Greg Kanysicska. An "All-Girl Radio Station" in the mid-1950s, the setting for Retro Productions' new play, Bettye and the Jockettes Spinning Records at the Holiday Inn , might seem like a fruitful milieu for a comedy, if a bit unrealistic: except that it really existed. While the show's characters are fictional–or in the case of station owner Sam Phillips (Joe Mathers) fictionalized, Memphis, Tennessee's WHER was founded in 1955, operating out of one of the titular hotels, and persisted until 1973 . In the play's imagined WHER, it is 1956, and one departure and one arrival are set to roil the station. WHER's copywriter has just eloped, and her timing

Anabella Lenzu , choreographer, scholar, educator, and author of  Unveiling Motion and Emotion/ Revelando Movimiento y Emoción  (2013), has spent the last two years engaged in research for her new solo show "Listen to Your Mother,"  which will make its world premiere from May 16th-19th, 2024 at La MaMa Moves (66 East 4th Street). What makes a good mother? What makes a good artist? "Listen to Your Mother" is a choreographic research project dedicated to the lives of women-identifying artists who are immigrant mothers living in New York City. The show seeks to capture these underrepresented women's stories in order to inspire dialogue, appreciation, and social support instead of the ongoing prejudice that is historically endured by mothers and women in the arts. Using Lenzu's ongoing movement research and embodied practice exploring spoken word, movement, and media, this work will expose and capture the body histories of mothers who are immigrant artists gra

Adult Film , a Brooklyn-based theatre company, film studio, and actor training center, is currently presenting Sea Gull , a new version of Anton Chekhov's play, at Rutgers Presbyterian Church for a limited run in the Upper West Side. Originally set to end on May 26th, this run has been extended to June 2nd after a sold-out first weekend. AF artistic director Ryan Czerwonko directs and plays Konstantin. The cast features Mia Vallet as Nina, Megan Metrikin as Arkadina, Christian Ryan as Trigorin, Lauren Guglielmello as Masha, Simon Fortin as Sorin, Ira Gamerman as Medvedenko, Christopher Jon Martin as Dorn, Ellie Mae Miller as Paulina, and Peter Rinaldi as Shamrayev, with Rob Riordan understudying. AF is a group of working-class artists who set out in May 2023 with a mission to work on the play for one whole year, seemingly an impossible task in our fragmented hypermodern moment, while recording the process as part of a feature film documentary. With a focus on the show as a laborato

The Second Coming of Joan of Arc ( Giovanna d'Arco – La rivolta ) Written by Carolyn Gage Translated by Edy Quaggio Directed by Ester Tatangelo and Luchino Giordana Presented by Hermit Crab Production at NOoSPHERE Arts on May 11, 2024, at 8:30 pm and Theaterlab on May 12, 2024, at 8 pm Valentina Valsania. Photo by Angelo Maggio The Second Coming of Joan of Arc ( Giovanna d'Arco – La rivolta ) is not the first play to center on the so-called Maid of Orléans, but it does mark a first for the In Scena! Festival, which runs from April 29th to May 13th at multiple venues throughout the five boroughs. The award-winning Second Coming of Joan of Arc , penned by American feminist lesbian writer, actor, and director Carolyn Gage , debuted in 2008, and with this production, In Scena! presents for the first time as part of the festival an English-language play translated into Italian. The play takes the form of an extended monologue by Joan (Valentina Valsania, in a blazing performance

Persona Metropolitana Written by Annachiara Vispi and Giulia Macrì Music and Composition by Lorenzo Saini Presented in collaboration with Dominio Pubblico at NOoSPHERE Arts on May 11, 2024, at 6 pm and at Playwrights Downtown on May 12, 2024, at 3 pm Giulia Macrì. Photo by Elena Costa. Some moments in Persona Metropolitana when dancer Giulia Macrì performs within inches of the audience put one briefly in mind of the “It's Showtime” performers on the NYC subway, who similarly combine impressive athleticism and exquisite physical control–and who similarly embody how denizens of cities share and repurpose tight space, shaping them to their needs, including to make art. Of course, these spaces also shape the people who inhabit and endlessly traverse them, and it is this multi-directional dynamic that Persona Metropolitana explores through a captivating combination of sound, video, dance, and narration. Persona Metropolitana is appearing in NYC as part of the 2024 In Scena! Itali

The Genesis of Regeneration ( Genesi del rigenero ) Written and performed by Beppe Allocca Directed by Beppe Allocca and Roberta Provenzani Presented at Casa Belvedere on April 30, 2024, at 7 pm; at Culture Lab LIC on May 5, 2024, at 7:30 pm; and at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU on May 10, 2024, at 8 pm Beppe Allocca. Photo by Caterina Ciabatti. A number of theatrical productions might teach you something while still making you laugh, but far fewer of them will also leave you wanting to buy a piece of convertible knitwear. Beppe Allocca's solo show The Genesis of Regeneration ( Genesi del rigenero ) proves a triple threat in this regard. Allocca introduces himself as a theatrist artisan , the first term marking his theatrical endeavors and the second his production of knitwear using "regenerated" yarn. As it delves into and contextualizes the process of that production, the fantastically entertaining Genesis of Regeneration –part of the 2024 In Scena! Italian

Like a Little Grain of Sand ( Come un granello di sabbia ) Written and directed by Salvatore Arena and Massimo Barilla Historical Consultants: Giuseppe Gulotta and Nicola Biondo Presented by Mana Chuma Teatro at Theaterlab , Manhattan, NYC on May 6, 2024, at 8 pm and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU , Manhattan, NYC on May 10, 2024, at 6 pm Salvatore Arena. Photo by Marco Costantino Under the best of circumstances, when everything functions as it should, it is questionable how far any justice system lives up to its name. When corruption and misconduct steer the process, even the innocent can find it almost impossible to extricate themselves from the system's crushing gears. Such was the case for Sicily's Giuseppe Gulotta, whose decades of injustice suffered at the hands of the Italian legal system is grippingly dramatized in Like a Little Grain of Sand ( Come un granello di sabbia ), written by Salvatore Arena and Massimo Barilla in consultation with Gulotta himself, whom

The Visit (Il colloquio) Written and directed by Eduardo Di Pietro Presented by Collettivo lunAzione at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU , Manhattan, NYC on May 8, 2024, at 8 pm and BAAD! Bronx Academy of Art and Dance , Bronx, NYC, on May 9, 2024, at 7:30 pm Alessandro Errico, Marco Montecatino, and Renato Bisogni. Photo by Malì Erotico The harm caused by the prison-industrial complex is not limited to those whom it incarcerates. Family and loved ones also suffer from a system that leaves, for instance, shattered families and parentless children as its byproducts. It is some of these individuals, caged in their own way by the sentences of loved ones, that The Visit ( Il colloquio ) brings to the stage. Eduardo Di Pietro, who conceived and directs the play, trained as a director, playwright, and anthropologist, and, drawing on all of those roles, the show's creation involved both substantial collaboration with the actors and a series of interviews with women deeply impacted

Opera Buffa! Written and performed by Maria Cassi and Leonardo Brizzi Presented by Compagnia Maria Cassi at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU May 7, 2024 Maria Cassi and Leonardo Brizzi. Photo by James O'Mara One might meet with skepticism a claim that art and performance transcend language. While there are ways other than words to get a point across or even to tell a story–that is, they do not require language–if there is language that one does not understand, one must miss something, right? Maria Cassi and Leonardo Brizzi's multilingual, multigenre Opera Buffa! –a single performance of which is part of the 2024 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival, which runs from April 29th to May 13th at multiple venues throughout the five boroughs and offers free admission to all events–is described as "an almost mimed performance" of a sequence of songs; as both music and miming convey meaning non-verbally, one might presume a show that is light on the spoken word, a presumptio