Thinking Theater NYC

The Meeting Written by Brian James Polak Directed by Richard Piatt Presented by Theatre Unleashed at Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 4, Manhattan, NYC April 1-6, 2026 Mitch Lerner as Joe. Photo by Matt Kamimura, courtesy of Theatre Unleashed. Since last January, the United States has seen certain words, particularly related to climate science or diversity, effectively banned by the federal government in, for instance, higher education programs, museum displays, and grant applications, including in the arts; the ego-driven renaming and planned shuttering of one of the nation's premiere arts centers; and, this week, governmental threats to jail journalists for doing journalism. So the fascist dystopia in which Brian James Polak's The Meeting immerses audiences, where all forms of art are prohibited and saying a banned word can trigger omnipresent sensors, feels entirely too recognizable. As discomfiting as it is reaffirming, The Meeting is part of the 2026 New York Cit...

Chip on Her Shoulder Written and directed by Jen McAuliffe Presented by Off with their Heads Productions at Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 4, Manhattan, NYC April 5-17, 2026 Victoria Nieves. Courtesy of Off with their Heads Productions  Food, as most of us have experienced, can be a source of comfort and even of control. For Angela (Victoria Nieves) of the one-woman show Chip on Her Shoulder , the go-to catalyst for such feelings is chips, specifically salt and vinegar. When Angela calls salt and vinegar chips "the perfect balance of pain and pleasure," her description also echoes the unerring blend of comedy and trauma that characterizes the play, in which the constant stresses from career, dating, and lingering familial hurts sometimes seem like they can only be countered, always temporarily, by a good, crisp snack. Chip on Her Shoulder , the debut play from Australian screenwriter and playwright Jen McAuliffe, was first seen at the Melbourne Fringe in 2025 and now...

Lipstick Co-written by Edu Díaz and Linda Morales Caballero based on a story by Linda Morales Caballero Directed by Lil Malinich Presented by Edu Díaz at Chain Theatre 312 West 36 Street, Floor 4, Manhattan, NYC April 5-19, 2026 Edu Díaz in Lipstick . Photo by Krystal Pagán. For centuries in Western culture, cosmetics have been discussed as having a transformative power, which has been invoked in ways ranging from a condemnation of their facilitation of falsehood and pride to a selling point for potential consumers. In Lipstick , a solo show based on acclaimed Peruvian author Linda Morales Caballero's short story "Labial," from her book El libro de los enigmas , the titular cosmetic wields just such a power across two generations of one family. Lipstick 's unnamed narrator-protagonist, expressively and affectingly inhabited by Canary Islands-born actor and the show's co-writer Edu Díaz, shuffles through his past experiences and present anxieties in a contemp...

How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants) Created and performed by Lex Alston, Becca Canziani , Brooke Ferris, Lynn Hodeib, and Ania Upstill Presented by Butch Mermaid Productions at wild project 195 E 3rd St, Manhattan, NYC April 1-4, 2026 Lex Alston, Becca Canziani, and Brooke Ferris. Photo by Ruby Goldner. One might not think of excessive weeping as a divinely bestowed gift, but medieval English mystic Margery Kempe claimed her copious crying as a sign of her special relationship to Jesus Christ, arguably repositioning a "feminine" weakness as a strength. Kempe is one of a trio of the saintly who assemble in How to Become a Saint (while wearing pants) for a celebration of one of their own that ends up throwing their perceptions of history and self into question. Written by the cast, the freewheelingly funny How to Become a Saint is part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival , an open lottery-based theater festival in which one hundred percent of box office proceeds...

Desi SNL Written by Azhar Bande-Ali Directed and produced by Azhar-Bande Ali, Shreya Thakur, and Sandalina Sattar, presented with FRIGID New York at wild project 195 E 3rd St, Manhattan, NYC April 3-18, 2026 The cast and crew of Desi SNL .   Photo by Nader Farzan.   While Saturday Night Live , currently in its fifty-first season, has gotten (a bit) more diverse over the decades, it has still never, to our knowledge, had a regular South Asian cast member. Luckily, with an entirely South Asian ensemble cast, Desi SNL is more than ready to remedy this lack. Across a mix of stand-up, sketches, and satire modeled on its television namesake, Desi SNL is consistently hilarious, and a number of its comedic targets, such as pushy parents or group-chat-addicted relatives, work simultaneously in universal and culturally specific dimensions. Desi SNL is currently part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival , an open lottery-based theater festival in which one hundred percent o...

Our Price to Pay Written by Frances Smith Directed by Emmie D'Amico Presented by Deepti Aravapalli and Frances Smith with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC April 2-15, 2026 L to R: Nikki Cannon (Mrs. Jones), Louis Dean (Uncle Marcus), Avaana Harvey (Ellie), James Miller (Uncle Carl), Gail Tierney (Sylvia), Corinne Kaleta (Sophia), Margo Hera (Aunt Meghan). Photo by Rainer DeLalio. The zombie, from its Afro-Caribbean incarnation as a corpse enslaved by a zombie master, through its reinvention as a cannibalistic ghoul, to its increasingly common contemporary representation as a victim of viral infection, has long served as a figure of political critique; so the intersection of the zombies and queerness should come as little surprise. Some zombie narratives feature explicitly queer zombies; some scholars see all zombies as queer, due to, for example, their nonnormative reproduction and loss of gender markers as they decay; and some zombie narrative...

Director Montgomery Sutton In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, will present The Rule of Thirds , written by 2025 In Scena! Playwright Award-winner Marco De Simone, translated by Caterina Nonis, and directed by Montgomery Sutton at The Tank (312 W 36th St., New York, NY 10018), April 22-May 15. Over the years, In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY has proudly presented the staged production of plays that have won the Mario Fratti Award, now known as the In Scena! Playwright Award. Since 2025, as part of its commitment to fostering artistic growth, In Scena! in collaboration with The Tank, has offered a Mentorship in Directing to an emerging director. This year’s selected director, Montgomery Sutton, will have the opportunity to direct a play chosen from among the winners of the In Scena! Playwright Award, while receiving a mentorship from a seasoned director, Debora Balardini, and an experienced pro...

Titus Andronicus Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jesse Berger Presented by Red Bull Theater at The Pershing Square Signature Center ’s Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre 480 West 42nd Street, Manhattan, NYC March 18-April 19, 2026 [extended through May 3, 2026] Anthony Michael Lopez, Anthony Michael Martinez, Patrick Page, Zack Lopez Roa. Photo credit: Carol Rosegg. William Shakespeare's early-career revenge tragedy Titus Andronicus (George Peele is a popular candidate for the argument that parts of the play were written by a second playwright) drops the audience immediately into the midst of a dispute over who will succeed the deceased Emperor of Rome, his eldest son, Saturninus ( Matthew Amendt ), or younger brother Bassianus (Howard W. Overshown). The opening stage direction specifies that the two brothers and their followers enter at opposite doors, while Tribune Marcus, shortly to provide a third option–the titular Titus, the people's choice–enters with others ...

Plan C Devised and written by the ensemble of Hook & Eye Theater Conceived and directed by Carrie Heitman Presented by Hook & Eye Theater and The Tank at The Tank 312 W 36 St, Manhattan, NYC March 12-April 12, 2026 The cast of Plan C . Photo by Valerie Terranova. In The Invention of News (Yale University Press, 2014), Andrew Pettegree notes, "Women ... played an active role in the print industry virtually since its beginning, almost certainly a more active role than in any other craft industry," and he supplies as one example of this activity "the achievement of the redoubtable" Alexandrine von Taxis, a German countess who "effectively ran the Taxis postal network for eighteen years after her husband's death, and steered the company through the notably turbulent decades of the latter part of the Thirty Years War" that devastated seventeenth-century Europe (pp. 281, 218, 282). Plan C , the new play from Hook & Eye Theater Company, takes t...

Entangled: 12 Scenes in a Circle K off the I-40 in New Mexico Written by Mona Mansour and Emily Zemba Directed by Scott Ilingworth Conceived by SOCIETY Presented by SOCIETY at HERE Arts Center 145 6th Ave, Manhattan, NYC March 11-29, 2026 Entangled , featuring Joshua David Robinson, Shpend Xani, Hiram Delgado, Caroline Grogan, Meredith Garretson, Christy Escobar. Photo by Ashley Garrett. If everything in the universe (or multiverse) is predetermined, an incalculably immense and complex cascade of cause and effect down to the subatomic level, does that mean not only that there is no free will but also that there is no such thing as true randomness? If humans typically experience being as unidirectional temporal movement, what would it mean to accept the concept that all points in time exist simultaneously? What might prompt someone to make (or "make") an important life decision in the aisles of an interstate-adjacent chain convenience store? These are the sort of questions y...

The Exterminators Written and directed by Maxwell Eberle Presented in association with Center for Theatre Research at Center for Theatre Research 13 West 17th St., Manhattan, NYC March 17-22, 2026 Auryn Rothwell and Yousuf Shah.  Photo credit: Geve. Often what is most disconcerting is not that which is seen, but what transpires out of sight. The unseemly unseen. In The Weird and the Eerie , Mark Fisher describes the eerie as emerging from questions of agency, when something appears where it should not be, or is absent where it should be. Maxwell Eberle’s new play, The Exterminators , locates that specific brand of the uncanny in a subterranean extermination prep chamber where death is a constant, procedural and concealed. The question is not what is being killed, but how one learns how to participate in the killing. Eberle’s staging renders that process with stark visual economy: two lockers, two masks, two jumpsuits, and a single spraypack. From the outset, hierarchy is ...