Thinking Theater NYC

The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds Written by Paul Zindel Directed by Michelle Macau Presented by The Open Eye Theater 960 Main Street, Margaretville, NY 12455 July 18-28, 2024 L to R:  Lisa Ruth Mays,  Caroline Colvin (rear),  Patricia Van Tassel,  Gianna Vasquez Bartolini (rear),  Taylor Nicole Hadsell   Paul Zindel’s autobiographical play The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds  was first mounted at Houston’s Alley Theatre in 1965 under the illustrious leadership of Artistic Director Nina Vance. The piece is based on Zindel’s own rocky childhood, complete with troubled mother and a father who abandoned the family. He cites Edward Albee, teacher of creative writing at Wagner College on Staten Island, as his inspiration and path to becoming a playwright. Marigolds was his first staged play, completing 819 performances at Mercer Arts Center before making it uptown to the Biltmore. It would go on to become a much-herald...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream , by William Shakespeare and directed by Patrick O’Connell will be presented by the Clementine Players in the Tuscan Garden at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens in Staten Island with performance dates on August 15th-17th at 7pm and 18th at 2pm. Tickets are $25 and concessions will be available at the venue. The performance will run approximately 2 hours with a short intermission. Clementine Players is a collective of creatives making bold, inclusive work that aims to remind us of what unites us. Driven by empathy, the Clementine Players tell unknown stories and shed light on well-known stories in exciting new ways with the hope of finding a space where comedy meets drama, classic meets contemporary, and humans meet humans. In summer 2023, they produced Macbeth set in the cutthroat world of billionaire politics. That extremely successful production was directed by Vicky Leigh Gitre and starred Justin Gordon and Georgia Gabrielle in the title ...

It's Not What It Looks Like Written by John Collins Directed by Vincent DeGeorge Collaborator: Chesney Mitchell Presented at  SoHo Playhouse 15 Vandam Street, Manhattan, NYC July 24-August 10, 2024 Chesney Mitchell and John Collins. Photo by Russ Rowland To open It's Not What It Looks Like , a new play from John Collins , in collaboration with Chesney Mitchell , a man (John Collins) enters, trying to clean his hands and talks about how one knows a storm is coming before he is joined by a woman (Chesney Mitchell) with blood on her (new, Lululemon) shirt. Shortly, they become aware of the audience, and their explanation of why, well, this is not what it looks like, structures the rest of this fantastic production. The 2023 winner of SoHo Playhouse's Lighthouse Series, an event showcasing the best new talent and writers across the New York City area, It's Not What It Looks Like fluidly unspools a deftly funny and poignantly affecting exploration of how trauma and loss inte...

SEGREGATION BANNED AT RYDELL! American teens Dorothy and Lenny navigate friendship, romance, and the shift from crinolines to pencil skirts in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education and the integration of Rydell High. Sheen ,  The Musical brings all new music and a new luster to a classic tale of teen turmoil at the dawn of the 1960s. Sheen is the answer to Grease you never knew you needed but are damn sure glad you have! In-the-know theater fans have been falling in love with Sheen, The Musical since an early collection of scenes and songs were presented at A.R.T./NY’s 50th Anniversary Celebration in June of 2023. Later iterations were presented as part of Brooklyn Comedy Collective’s WOOF! Residency in the fall of 2023. As fall turned to winter, Playful Substance offered Sheen space to workshop new scenes to complete the script. Sheen has since grown from a 30-minute show to a full 90-minute musical that is now preparing for a weeklong residency at the venerated HB Studio...

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...

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 ...

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 minute...

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...