Thinking Theater NYC

Like an Octopus in a Guitar ( Come un polpo nella chitarra ) Written by Marco Ziello Directed by Licia Amarante and Marco Ziello Presented by ON Teatro Formazione Cultura at NOoSPHERE Arts (520 Kingsland Ave., Brooklyn, NYC), May 17, 2025, and WOW Cafè Theater (59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Floor, Manhattan, NYC), May 18, 2025 Annachiara Castorino and Marco Ziello. Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR To whatever degree one believes continuous identity to be a construction, surely memories are vital underpinnings to any sense of a stable self, no matter how illusory. Failures of memory, then, might proportionally increase the urgency of the question voiced at one point by the protagonist of Marco Ziello's Like an Octopus in a Guitar ( Come un polpo nella chitarra ): Who am I? An inescapable melancholy underlies the absurdist humor and mesmerizing kineticism of this production, winner of Best Drama 2024 at Roma Comic OFF, as it presents to the audience a sick man whose memories are de...

AMARA SAPIENZA . To my mother . Written and directed by Giulia Bocciero Presented at Theaterlab (357 W 36th St., 3rd floor, Manhattan, NYC), May 15, 2025, and BAAD (2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx, NYC), May 16, 2025 AMARA SAPIENZA . Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR. Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) was born the same year that fascist Benito Mussolini's National List won power in Italy in the country’s last multi-party election for two decades, a fact alluded to in an early section of playwright and director Giulia Bocciero's AMARA SAPIENZA. To my mother. Sapienza was raised in a feminist, anarchist household and became, first, a stage and film actor in the postwar period and then, beginning in the 1950s, a poet, memoirist, novelist, and eventually acting teacher. She suffered periods of depression, twice attempting suicide in the early 1960s, for which treatment included electroshock therapy, and her later years were marked by poverty and a five-day imprisonment for theft. Sapienza...

Mater Familias Written by Pier Lorenzo Pisano Translated by Carlotta Brentan Directed by Emma Denson Presented by Kairos Italy Theater in collaboration with The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36th St., Manhattan, NYC May 4-18, 2025 Early in Mater Familias , by Pier Lorenzo Pisano, one character describes the nose of a buried woman as sticking out of the earth like a mushroom on a rainy day. Mushrooms, of course, are linked to one another and to the roots of trees by extensive underground networks of mycelium in relationships that are mostly beneficial but in some cases are parasitic. Roots in Mater Familias act as a symbol for family history and relationships, simultaneously representing connection and entrapment. A visual image of roots even appears, at a pivotal moment, on the set's CRT television, which at other points shows static or a test pattern and on and next to which sit VHS tapes from Blockbuster, all in themselves signs of pastness, and perhaps of a type of archiving. The p...

Six Characters in Search of an Author ( Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore ) Written by Luigi Pirandello Adapted and directed by Nick Gabriel Presented at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 14, 2025, and NOoSPHERE Arts (520 Kingsland Avenue, Brooklyn, NYC), May 17, 2025 Sophia Chacon (center) in a previous production of Nick Gabriel's adaptation of Six Characters in Search of an Author . Photo by Edoardo Novello. Luigi Pirandello's classic of metatheatrical absurdism Six Characters in Search of an Author ( Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore ), first performed in 1921 and revised for a new edition in 1925, can certainly come across as postmodernist avant la lettre. One character, for example, discusses the instability of meaning engendered by a speaker's translation of his individually situated meaning into words that are then retranslated by a listener in the context of her own unique inner world, never with the identical unders...

My Mama Notarizes & Also Makes Risotto ( Mia mamma fa il notaio ma anche il risotto ) Written and performed by Filippo Capobianco Presented by Teatro Pubblico Ligure in collaboration with Dominio Pubblico at Culture Lab LIC (5-25 46th Ave, Queens, NYC), May 11, 2025, and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 12, 2025 Filippo Capobianco. Photo © Roberto Mieli The unexpected juxtaposition in the title of Filippo Capobianco's award-winning solo show My Mama Notarizes & Also Makes Risotto ( Mia mamma fa il notaio ma anche il risotto ) may suggest the complexity of an individual, but it also points to 2023 Poetry Slam world champion Capobianco's artful facility with language, obvious throughout the performance. Words–and the stories that they enable–are in fact a primary focus of Capobianco's show, which incorporates influences from Teatro Canzone –literally, "song theater," which mixes songs and monologues–and performan...

The Perky Theresas ( Le Vispe Terese ) Written and performed by Alessio Piazza Presented at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 12, 2025, and Casa Belvedere (79 Howard Ave, Staten Island, NYC), May 13, 2025 Alessio Pizza. Photo by Giuseppe Farina. Before Alessio Piazza speaks his first line in his warm, funny solo show The Perky Theresas ( Le Vispe Terese ), a recorded voiceover talks about how memories mix in the mind and how those who are gone live in the stories that we tell and are told about them. During this opening, Piazza, center stage, faces away from the audience, turning towards it to begin sharing some of his own memories, a bit of staging that both hints at the process of revealing and anticipates a lovely, almost haunting final image that Piazza again turns away from the spectators to create. In the author's note to The Perky Theresas , Piazza cites Natalia Ginzburg's Family Lexicon ( Lessico Famigliare ; published in 196...

Pelle / Skin Written by Chiara Arrigoni Translated by Giulia Cowie Mentored by Antoinette La Vecchia Presented in collaboration with Hystrio Scritture di Scena at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU 24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC May 9, 2025 Antoinette LaVecchia, Alice Lussiana Parente, Giacoma Bonello, Giulia Cowie, Max Katz. Photo courtesy of In Scena! There exists a rich tradition of women writers such as Angela Carter, Anne Sexton, Mohale Mashigo, and A. A. Balaskovits, to name a very few, reworking or reimagining fairy tales in a feminist vein. Chiara Arrigoni's play Pelle , translated as Skin in English, joins this tradition, drawing on the fairy tale trope of shapeshifting by donning a skin while avoiding reduction of the potential meanings of this "skin" to any single signification. Rather, it in fact multiplies the "skins" which the play's women must or choose to wear. Focusing on three sisters and their mother during a time of important change in...

The Popess: Instructions for Freedom Written and performed by Elena Mazzon Directed by Colin Watkeys Presented at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 9, 2025, and Culture Lab LIC (5-25 46th Ave, Queens, NYC), May 10, 2025 Elena Mazzon. Photo by Luigi Russo As everyone debates what the ideological leanings of newly selected Pope Leo XIV may be, the serendipitously timed New York performances of Elena Mazzon's solo show The Popess: Instructions for Freedom , remind us that however progressive the new Pope may turn out to be, the institution of the Catholic Church remains (like many others) staunchly patriarchal. The Popess , which debuted in London in 2024 and has since been performed across the United Kingdom, including at Edinburgh Fringe, as well as in Italy, is based on a true story from more than 700 years ago that highlights both the importance of telling the stories of revolutionary women and the ways in which we are still fighting many ...

Lampedusa Beach Written by Lina Prosa Directed by Nadia Kibout Presented at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 7, 2025, and the Calandra Institute (25 W 43rd St Suite 1700, Manhattan, NYC), May 7, 2025 Nadia Kibout in Lampedusa Beach . Courtesy of Emily Owens PR Nadia Kibout and Daniele Onorati begin Lina Prosa's play Lampedusa Beach standing back to back, a pose that suggests solidarity but also, after experiencing the performance as a whole, might also subtly evoke the inhumane crowding imposed on migrants seeking to reach the eponymous shores. Kibout plays one such migrant, a young African woman named Shauba, who sets out for Lampedusa, an Italian island which one article describes as " the gateway to Europe for the thousands of migrants who cross the Mediterranean every year ," and Onorati provides atmospheric onstage musical accompaniment for her tragic and timely tale. Presented in Italian with English supertitles, the poeti...

In the Name of Mary ( Nel Nome di Maria ) Written and directed by Chiara Gambino Original music by Domenico Gargano Presented by BABEL at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 6, 2025, and Culture Lab LIC (5-25 46th Ave, Queens, NYC), May 11, 2025 Alba Sofia Vella and Chiara Gambino. Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR In the opening of playwright, director, and actor Chiara Gambino's play In the Name of Mary ( Nel Nome di Maria ), a man is heard in voiceover speaking over music as if at a bar, club, or party and telling a woman named Maria that she is beautiful and that they are destined to be married. While these sound like typical pick-up lines, the pair do in fact become engaged; and the tragedy in this multi-award-winning play becomes that they love one another. The play is based on real-life couple Maria Lo Bello and Calogero Zucchetto, Lillo to those close to him, who was a police officer working with the Palermo Mobile Squad to investiga...

Alfredino, Italy in a Deep Well ( Alfredino, l'Italia in fondo a un pozzo ) Written and performed by Fabio Banfo Directed by Serena Piazza Presented by Centro Teatrale MaMiMò at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St., Manhattan, NYC), May 6, 2025, and The Rat NYC (68-117 Jay St, Brooklyn, NYC), May 8, 2025 Fabio Banfo. Photo courtesy of MaMiMò With today's decentralized media landscape, it is harder to imagine an entire nation watching a live television broadcast together. It is less difficult to imagine the cultural impact that such moments have had. For Italy, the 1981 coverage of the attempted rescue of a boy named Alfredo Rampi, who had fallen into a deep, narrow well in the village of Vermicino, was the first such shared televisual experience, with millions watching concurrently. Fabio Banfo's multi-award-winning Alfredino, Italy in a Deep Well ( Alfredino, l'Italia in fondo a un pozzo ) transforms these events into a tense, reflective, and affect...

We Do the Same Thing Every Week Written by Robert Leverett Directed by Liza Couser Presented by Attractive Nuisance at A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 W 53rd St., Manhattan, NYC May 2-17, 2025 Kate Budney, Jessica Nesi, Justin Choi, Robert Leverett. Photo by HanJie Chow. How often, as we move through adult life, can we say that we encounter genuinely new and interesting experiences? And if something that meets (or seemed to meet) those criteria did happen–perhaps, say, one was visited by a magical man-sized anthropomorphic cat–how many repetitions would it take before that too felt mundane? Robert Leverett's play We Do the Same Thing Every Week might make audiences question whether that number would even reach one. We Do the Same Thing Every Week mixes inspiration from Dr. Seuss and existentialism and adds a dash of physics and a soupçon of the cosmic horror of existence for a dark, delightful absurdist comedy capacious enough to encompass both the boredom of a rainy afternoon and t...