Thinking Theater NYC

Femme in Yellow Tombola: mystical queer italian bingo Written and performed by Summer Minerva Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 12 and 28, 2025 Numerous cultures have traditionally included–and often celebrated–third gender categories: a person might be, for instance, a bakla in the Philippines, two spirit or equivalent designations among various North American Indigenous peoples, or a femminiello in Naples, Italy. It is the femminiello  who is a central, structuring figure in Summer Minerva's punningly titled solo show Femme in Yellow Tombola: mystical queer italian bingo . Feminielli , while socially excluded in some ways—prompting them to queer certain traditions—are also considered lucky and, relatedly, have often called the numbers in the titular tombola, a traditional game comparable to bingo but in which the numbered squares have names and meanings attached to them (number 66, for example, is le due zitelle , the two spinsters, associated...

Tiger Tail Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Geoffrey Horne Presented by Shakespeare Downtown at Castle Clinton Battery Park, Manhattan, NYC June 12-22, 2025 Billie Andersson. Photo by Amy Goossens. One might associate Tennessee Williams, whose work is full of characters who are trapped–often in inadequate domestic spaces, relationships, or both–with claustrophobic enclosure rather than the openness, even expansiveness, of outdoor theater. However, in bringing Williams's rarely performed Tiger Tail to Battery Park's Castle Clinton, Shakespeare Downtown demonstrates that the work loses none of its sweaty intensity in the move to the open air. The forerunners of Tiger Tail are a pair of Williams one-acts, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and The Long Stay Cut Short (1946), which provided the basis for the Williams-penned and Elia Kazan-directed film Baby Doll (1956), which itself Williams later adapted into Tiger Tail , published in 1978. This textual history introduce...

The Gay Social Network - A One Woman Show Written and performed by Seerat Jhajj Directed by Pearl Emerson With Maya O'Day Presented at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 18, 2025 Seerat Jhajj (front) and Maya O'Day (rear). Photo by Marissa Moorhead Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, never a paragon of ethics, has really leaned into the role of insecure technocapitalist supervillain in recent years, joining peers such as Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai, and Jeff Bezos as a prominent living reminder of why billionaires should not exist. In The Gay Social Network - A One Woman Show , Seerat Jhajj takes the 2010 film about the founding of Facebook, The Social Network , written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, as a jumping-off point for a thoroughly hilarious, inventive, and queer skewering of Zuckerberg and the mindset that he represents. This week's performance of The Gay Social Network , headed to Edinburgh Fringe Fest later this summer, was part of FRIGI...

Henry V  Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jonathan Hopkins Presented by Smith Street Stage  at Carroll Park Court Street and Smith Street, between Carroll Street and President Street, Brooklyn, NYC Juhe 5-29, 2025 Smith Street Stage’s summer productions in Carroll Park are a beloved neighborhood tradition, and this year’s offering, Henry V , is a stunning way to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary season. While the production’s standout performances, led by McLean Peterson’s brilliant King Henry, are alone noteworthy, the staging, including fight choreography and original music, all contribute to this timely and timeless exploration of leadership and nation. The production features a truly rich range of performances from its entire cast. Oliver Palmer stands out as both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Fluellen, making the former’s long-winded justification of Henry’s claim to the French throne humorous rather than mind-numbingly boring and embodying the latter ...

At the Barricades Written by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain Directed by Federica Borlenghi Presented by What Will the Neighbors Say? at MITU580 580 Sackett St., Brooklyn, NYC June 12-29, 2025 The company. Photo by Pablo Calderón-Santiago It's not hard to see the timeliness of the exploration of antifascist struggle in 1930s Spain presented by James Clements and Sam Hood Adrain's world premiere play At the Barricades when the day we saw the show was also marked in the United States by political assassinations and by nationwide protests against our own openly corrupt, increasingly fascist government. That government, in fact, rescinded an NEA grant for At the Barricades (as it did for many other productions and arts organizations) for "not 'aligning with the president's priorities,'" forcing theater company What Will the Neighbors Say? to work with IndieSpace to secure a community loan so that the production could be mounted as scheduled. (L-R) Step...

Mary & the Shelleys Created and written by L.X Moon Presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC June 13 and 28, 2025 In the celebratory new single "Wearing Black," from Laura Jane Grace in the Trauma Tropes, trans punk musician Grace sings that her "pride's a riot" and that she will be "[w]earin' black to the Pride parade." If more than one element of that sentence resonates with you, then Mary & the Shelleys , which tells the story of its titular, reanimated Mary through original punk and postpunk songs, should be at the top of your to-see list. Of course, non-punk/horror/horrorpunk fans should also check it out; monstrosity in Mary & the Shelleys is, after all, tied to inclusivity. Mary & the Shelleys is part of FRIGID New York's 2025 Queerly Festival, " FRIGID’s annual celebration of all things artistic and LGBTQIA2S+ ," which is currently curated by co-artistic director Jim...

Shakespeare Sports Theatre Company will open its Shakespeare Summer Tour with a new production of the Comedy of Errors  directed by Michael Hagin and with Adam Sherwin as stage manager.  Shakespeare's hilariously haywire Comedy of Errors is a frolicsome farce so fantastically foolish that it's practically a recipe for roaring laughter. Imagine, if you will, a bustling ancient Ephesus, where not one but TWO sets of identical twins are about to stumble headlong into a hilarious hullabaloo! We're talking Antipholus of Syracuse and his ever-so-loyal (and equally confused) servant, Dromio of Syracuse, who unwittingly wander into the very city inhabited by their spitting images, Antipholus of Ephesus and his own bewildered Dromio! This production of The Comedy of Errors , a play where mistaken identities run riot, features the following cast: Vic Gitre, Charlie Keegan James, Emily Glaser, Jennifer Kim, Melissa Meli, Erica Gerold, Katie Freimann, Lila Ashley Meyers, Kasey C...

  The Leg Conceived by Sophie Amieva and Katerina Marcelja Directed by Sophie Amieva Presented by notAmuse Theater at MITU580 May 23-June 7, 2025 Photo by Rebecca Marcela Oviatt (BECCAVISION)  The Leg , the latest performance work by notAmuse Theater, is a captivating experience of an off-kilter world which may in fact be our own. The well-balanced ensemble of performers not only play off one another but contend with their costumes–some with exaggerated straitjacket sleeves or yards of tulle–and a space continually reshaped by the inflation/deflation of impressive fabric set pieces amongst and above them. Photo by Rebecca Marcela Oviatt (BECCAVISION)   notAmuse Theater (under the direction of Sophie Amieva and production designer Katerina Marcelja) integrates a range of theatrical traditions from Butoh to Buffon to create works which address structures of social and political power. The Leg (choreography by Mark Bankin, with lighting by Jacqueline Scaletta and sound de...

Love You More Written by Nikhil Mahapatra Directed by N // Nicky Maggio Presented by The Tank at The Tank 312 West 36th Street, 1st Floor May 29-June 19, 2025 Jasmine Sharma, Omar Rahim, and Mahima Saigal. Photo by Ahron R. Foster Even before Love You More begins, the set, by visual designer Aoshuang Zhang and featuring the family table sliced cleanly, right through the fruit in the fruit bowl, into two unequal sections, one of which has been shifted ninety degrees up the wall, not only makes an immediate impression but also suggests some of the themes to come. Love You More , by multi-disciplinary writer Nikhil Mahapatra, is loosely inspired by both the playwright's own experiences of family and King Lear ; and while we don't see the literal division of a father's assets that drives Shakespeare's play (although it is alluded to at one point as a responsibility that a father should make plans for), Love You More centers temporal, spatial, perceptual, emotional, and ev...

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...