Thinking Theater NYC

Freedom’s Last Stand Written by Barry Rowell Directed by Mia Y. Anderson Music by Rob Mitzner and David Ross Musicians: David Ross, Rob Mitzner, and Matthew Milligan Presented by Peculiar Works Project at  Target Margin’s Doxsee Theater 232 52nd St, Brooklyn, NYC May 29-June 14, 2025 Photo by R. Z. Schell Peculiar Works Project’s Freedom’s Last Stand , written by Barry Rowell and directed by Mia Y. Anderson, takes its audience deep into the fractured mind of an emerging domestic terrorist in the final hours of a deadly standoff. Set in a cabin in the Idaho woods, the production reconstructs not just a moment of crisis, but the ideological labyrinth that led there. The story centers on Daniel Frey, a white man radicalized by a toxic mix of online conspiracies, white nationalist rhetoric, and masculine grievance. Trapped in a bunker with a gun, a guitar, and something that looks eerily like a body wrapped in a sheet, Daniel broadcasts his manifesto through social media, trains for a...

Point Loma Written by Tim Mulligan Directed by Ken Wolf Presented by Manhattan Repertory Theatre at the Chain Theatre 312 W. 36th Street, 3rd fl., Manhattan, NYC May 31-June 15, 2025 Parker Jenkins and Jessica Luhmann. Photo by Chris Bentley. In his recent book The Ethics of Horror (Lexington Books, 2024), Michael J. Burke argues for a distinction between traditional haunting films, in which specters seek some kind of restitution and ultimately, thanks to and along with the living protagonist(s), achieve closure, and a more recent strain that he terms phantom persecution films, in which the ethical debt to the spirit(s) can never be paid and closure remains forever out of reach. If we transpose these categories to the stage, Tim Mulligan's haunted-house play Point Loma , making its world premiere at the Chain this month, does not completely fit either–or maybe more precisely, shifts from one of them to the other–much to its advantage. Mulligan, also author of the World of Witchla...