Thinking Theater NYC

 Chaturbox Productions will present The Third Choice written, directed and performedby Tahir “Tai” Chatur as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York at The Rat NYC (68-117 Jay St, Brooklyn, NY 11201), with performances on Thu April 2 at 6:30pm, Fri April 3 at 6:30pm, Mon April 13 at 8:10pm & Sat April 18 at 10:20pm. The Third Choice chronicles therapist-comedian Tahir “Tai” Chatur’s journey through identity and belonging, shaped by a lifelong reluctance to choose. From rural Kenya to even more rural Canada, this solo show blends stand-up, storytelling, and therapy, walking with you through culture, faith, and the exhausting life of a chronic yes-man. The Third Choice is a show that lets you be your complicated and multiple identity selves. From Muslims that celebrate Christmas to the New Yorkers that listen to country music this family-friendly show is a welcome home. From viral therapy-sketch storyteller to the Fringe stage, Tahir “Tai” Chatur mak...

Rachel Lin in Dear John at Brick Aux, 2023. Directed by Nana Dakin. Photo by Marcus Middleton. Dear John , written by and starring Rachel Lin ( Law & Order: Organized Crime , NYTW 2050 Fellow) will run March 6–19, 2026 in the Dorothy B. Williams Theater at HERE Arts Center. Dear John is directed by Tara Elliott, produced by Emily Kleypas and Kelly Letourneau, and co-produced by Ben Natan and AJ Liu with Small Boat Productions. It’s 2011, and a recent college graduate is trying to move out of her mom’s house (with little hope and no prospects) when she receives a message from a mysterious stranger named John on Facebook. Dear John is a solo show based on a true story about what happens when a long-absent father finds his not-quite-adult daughter through a social networking website. Weaving together Facebook DMs, recorded interviews, and anecdotes of growing up undocumented in New York’s Chinatown, Dear John is a coming-of-age story delightfully told by writer and performer Rachel ...

  Loose End Productions, an independent Australian theatre and screen production company founded by playwright and actor Rose Treloar, will present Watch Me Sleep written by Treloar and directed by Talia Benatar as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009), with performances on Tue April 14 at 7pm, Thu April 16 at 6:30pm, Thu April 16 at 9:50pm, Sat April 18 at 5:20pm; and Sun April 19 at 2pm.  Fresh from two sold-out Australian seasons, Watch Me Sleep is a fiercely intimate one-act play bringing a love story from down under to NYC. Ava and Emmett invite the audience into the private anatomy of their relationship – its humor, heat, fractures and scars, beginning and ending in the present day with the belly of the play a series of flashbacks into their relationship’s highs and lows. Using direct address, the audience becomes a silent third character in the play, a mutual friend to the couple acti...

Hope Brannon Slut Liturgy , written and performed by Hope Brannon, and directed by Max Kantor, will be presented as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York at the Chain Theatre Mainstage (312 W 36th St. 4th floor, New York, NY 10018) with performances on Tuesday, April 7th at 9:20 PM, Saturday, April 11th at 12:20 PM, Wednesday April 15th at 7:40 PM, Thursday, April 16th at 9:20 PM, and Sunday, April 19th at 7:00 PM.  Slut Liturgy is a one-hour solo show that follows Hope’s time both in an intensive outpatient program and with religious bipolar mania. Crude and genuine, funny, and chaotic, Slut Liturgy invites you to crash out with the manic Antichrist, smoke cigarettes with she-god, and do whatever else Hope’s delusions want. Playwright and performer Brannon is a writer and comedian based in Chicago and an alum of, has written multiple plays for, and performs regularly at the Annoyance Theatre in Chicago. Yes, she almost became a nun. Yes, she prefers...

Infinite Monkey Theater Company will present did you charge your phone for the end of the world? written and directed by Fletcher Michael.  The year is 2034. A city-demolishing asteroid is heading for Brooklyn. The government refuses to alert the public of the impending catastrophe until a boutique advertising agency can come up with a positive rebrand for the calamitous asteroid. The production will be presented as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York at wild project (195 E. 3rd Street, New York, NY 10009) with performances on Sat April 4 at 8:40pm, Mon April 6 at 6pm, Sat April 18 at 3:40pm & Sun April 19 at 5:20pm. The performance will run approximately 60 minutes, and the cast will feature Fletcher Michael, Lucy Boisvert, and Collin Dennis. Tickets ($15) are available for advance purchase at  www.frigid.nyc .  Fletcher Michael (Playwright/Director) is the founder of Infinite Monkey Theater Co., through which they write, direct, prod...

Officer Scott , the cult favorite comedy with music, returns to Brooklyn Art Haus for a string of shows confirmed for spring. Created and performed by Sloan Brettholtz and co-written and directed by Bailey Nassetta, the outrageous solo show blends absurd humor, audience participation, and raw vulnerability into a wildly original theatrical experience. Officer Scott follows a deeply committed NYPD officer who is offered the one thing he has always wanted: a sanctioned partner. The catch is that he must successfully deliver a D.A.R.E presentation to an auditorium full of fourth graders. When the presentation spirals out of control and Scott falls for a substitute teacher, his faith in the system begins to fracture. Rejected by his precinct and abandoned by the institution he devoted his life to, Scott is forced to confront who he is beyond the badge. Guided by a giant butterfly conjured from his rage, Scott embarks on a surreal, drug induced Christmas Carol- style journey where Jesus, h...

David Copperfield. Photo by Steve Gregson 59E59 Theaters (Artistic Director Val Day and Managing Director Brian Beirne) has announced the return of Brits Off Broadway, its acclaimed annual festival celebrating the breadth and vitality of independent British theater. The 2026 festival will feature eight productions and run April 14 through June 28, presented across all three of 59E59 Theaters’ stages. This year’s lineup showcases work from a dynamic range of UK writers, performers and producing companies, spanning genres from new musicals and solo storytelling to classic literary adaptations and contemporary dramas. “59E59 Theaters remains a home for artists from across the Atlantic to share bold work with New York audiences,” said Val Day, Artistic Director of 59E59 Theaters. “Every production in Brits Off Broadway reflects the curiosity and creative risk-taking that defines independent UK theater. We are proud to provide a space where artists can collaborate and present work that cha...

The Ladder Written by Isaac Byrne Directed by Haley Rice Presented by Haley Rice in association with Messy Stars Productions at IRT Theater 154 West Christopher St., 3B, Manhattan, NYC January 31-February 15, 2026 James Jelkin and Ken Orman. Photo by Mikhail Lipyanskiy  @lipyanskiy_photo Isaac Byrne's The Ladder begins in darkness, with the voice of Theseus (James Jelkin), as yet unseen, offering a story from somewhere down the theater aisle. If the dark here evokes the Labyrinth in which Theseus describes having been lost, it also recurs throughout the production both as as aesthetic–part of David Aab 's potently atmospheric lighting design, which also at times bathes the stage in color, reveals the play's Minotaur (Ken Orman) in lightning-quick flashes, or denaturalizes the action with strobe lighting–and a thematic motif, pointing to obscured truth(s), the murkiness of life paths and narratives, and the ethical darkness of choices made by presumptive heroes. As a hero, T...

Hold on to Your Butts Created by Recent Cutbacks Directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker Performed by Nick Abeel , Kerry Ipema , and Natalie Rich (cast performing in rotation) Foley by Blair Busbee and Kelly Robinson Presented at  SoHo Playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series 15 Vandam Street, Manhattan, NYC February 7–March 15, 2026 Natalie Rich and Nick Abeel. Photo by JT Anderson. Few contemporary films (or film franchises) are as synonymous with spectacle as 1993’s Jurassic Park , the legacy of which (perhaps ironically) rests on the promise that maximum technology, budget, and scale are how we fill cinemas, VOD streaming queues, and a couple of strategically-located theme parks. This is how we entertain the masses. Hold on to Your Butts , now playing at SoHo Playhouse, takes that premise and promise seriously, only to invert it. What emerges is not a simple skewering of bloated budget blockbuster culture, but something warmer and more revealing, a reminder th...

Theater of the Apes , an East Harlem-based company dedicated to presenting original, affordable, comic work, has announced casting for its remount of Greg Kotis ’ pandemic-clobbered original guitar musical I Am Nobody . Original cast members Emilio Cuesta (“Nathaniel) and Ayun Halliday (“Miriam") will be joined by Greg Kotis (“Mr. Charles”), Madeline Glave (“Naomi), and Eric May Liu (“Lucas”). The creative team includes Avery Rose Pedell (Director), Stephen Anthony Elkins (Music Director), Piatt Pund (Assistant Music Director) and Katie Walenta (Producer). From Tony Award-winner Greg Kotis ( Urinetown , The End of All Flesh ) comes a tuneful 21st-century parable about the myriad technological devices holding us prisoner that feels even timelier now than it did in March of 2020. In I Am Nobody , Lucas’ phone has seized control of his mind. It gives him no peace!!! His only recourse is to abscond with a batch of super-charged microchips, intent on unleashing a powerful cyber vi...

Closed for the Holiday . Photo by Azzurra Primavera The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU and the Italy-based KIT Italia will present the 13th season of the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater, taking place in all five boroughs of NYC, from May 5-19, 2026. Admission to all shows and events in the festival is completely FREE. All shows will be performed in Italian with English supertitles, unless otherwise noted. Participating venues and the full schedule of performances will be announced at a later date. Each year In Scena! showcases some of the best Italian theater from Italy, in New York City. The festival features productions that have already toured in Italy as well as readings of Italian plays in translation, mentorships, and exchanges between Italian and International artists. The goal is to promote greater awareness of Italian theater and Italian artists among New York C...

Betterfly Productions, Leviathan Lab, and JACK, in association with The Hearth Supported Productions and The Sống Collective, will present ExtraO1dinary Aliens!,  by playwright Carolina Đỗ, directed by Vas Eli, at JACK (20 Putnam Ave, Brooklyn) from March 7- 14, 2026. Tickets ($45) are available for purchase at https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/extrao1dinary-aliens . ExtraO1dinary Aliens! features an immigrant/first-generation cast and creative team. Corneliu is an immigrant from Romania who is in love with Kay, a U.S. Citizen. Linh is Kay's best friend who might have let her student visa lapse?! David has dreams of opening his restaurant with his cousin Enoc. This play is a love story centered on immigrants and the ones who love them. How can love defy the dehumanizing machinations of the US Immigration system? What makes someone leave everything they've ever known to journey to a foreign land? What makes someone stay despite the hostile env...

The First Line of Dante's Inferno Written by Kirk Lynn Directed by Christian Parker Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club at La MaMa's The Downstairs Theatre 66 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC February 5-22, 2026 The First Line of Dante’s Inferno,  featuring Kelli Overbey and Evan Sibley. Photo by Marina Levitskaya Inferno , the first of the three parts that make up Dante Alighieri's narrative poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1321), famously begins with its narrator's declaration that he has, in midlife, departed from "the straight road" to awaken lost in "a dark wood," in the words of the translation employed in the exceptional new experimental play The First Line of Dante's Inferno . The First Line of Dante's Inferno , written by Kirk Lynn, a playwright, novelist, screenwriter, educator, and one of the artistic directors of Austin, Texas, theater collective the Rude Mechs , finds multiple people, one specifically at that midpoint in l...

The Song of Lip and Tarantula Written by Aviva Pearl Ocean Creation Directed by Sasha Gheesling Presented by FRIGID New York NY, Big Beef Productions, and Kelley-Marie Van Dilla at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC February 4-8, 2026 Raising a child is a hefty responsibility, especially within the attenuated care networks of heteropatriarchal capitalism. So just imagine what it would be like to raise 26 of them. That is the number mothered by the title characters of The Song of Lip and Tarantula , a new play from writer, comedienne, and educator Aviva Pearl Ocean Creation. While this number may sound like something from Greek mythology (or Titus Andronicus ), the more dreamlike elements of The Song of Lip and Tarantula are imbricated with verisimilar details rooting the play in the current political landscape, lived queer experience, and a granular, unsentimental evocation of New York City. When the play opens, Tarantula ( Airen Guevara ) is sitting, eyes closed, in ...

Jesse Bradley-Amore will present 2025 Philly Fringies Frontrunner Pick How I Learned (NOT) To Drive , written and performed by Jesse Bradley-Amore and directed by Padraic Lillis. The production will be presented as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York  at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place. New York, NY 10009) with performances on Fri April 10 at 8:10pm, Sat April 11 at 2pm, Sun April 12 at 3:40pm, Fri April 17 at 9:50pm & Sat April 18 at 8:40pm. New York City Fringe Festival is an open lottery-based theatre festival presented by FRIGID New York that gives artists an opportunity to let their ingenuity thrive in a venue that values freedom of expression and artistic determination and gives 100% of box office proceeds go directly to the artists whose work is being presented. How I Learned (NOT) To Drive , directed by Indie Theatre Hall of Fame director Padraic Lillis, deals with the very true story of a 40-year-old Florida man overcoming his lifelo...