Thinking Theater NYC

Packed Written and directed by Elise Wilkes Don't Push the Red Button Written and co-directed by Zachary Mailhot Directed by Chris Cavazza Presented by RJ Theatre Co. in partnership with The Actor Launchpad at AMT Theater 354 W 45th St., Manhattan, NYC August 30-October 19, 2025 Two women in an apartment. Two men in a bunker. Two short plays that peer through a lens of unusual circumstances at relationships, loneliness, and the search for connection, even if it means becoming friends with a potato. Presented as a double bill titled Close Encounters , Packed and Don't Push the Red Button are both part of the 2025 Circle Theatre Festival , which aims to highlight experimentation and urgent storytelling over Broadway-style gloss and is dedicated this year to playwright Edward Allan Barker (1950-2021). Opening the double bill is writer and director Elise Wilkes's Packed , in which two women, Gail (Katie Gilhooley) and Dina ( Wynn McClenahan ), meet for the first time as they...

Retrospective Written by T.J. Elliott Directed by Gifford Elliott Presented by Knowledge Workings Theater at AMT Theater 354 W 45th St., Manhattan, NYC August 13-16, 2025 Clint consoling Rory.  L to R: Jeremiah Alexander, Mark Thomas McKenna, Adara Totino, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner. Photo by Marjorie Phillips Elliott Thinking about the afterlife of art is not so unusual, but Retrospective , written and directed by father and son team T.J. Elliott and Gifford Elliott, respectively, instead focuses on the afterlife of the artist. For the play's Rory McGrory ( Mark Thomas McKenna ), the titular retrospective involves taking a new look at his relationship not only to his work as a painter but also to significant others (in both senses of the term) from his past and to his sense of self–and ultimately, to reconsider what really matters. Retrospective is making its New York debut along with four new musicals and seven other original plays as part of Broadway Bound Theatre Festival's...

 The Broadway Bound Theatre Festival proudly presents the world premiere of Bengal to Berlin , a bold new musical by playwright and scientist Hasan Padamsee, with performances on August 7, 9, and 10 at AMT Theater in Manhattan. The story is poignantly portrayed through the soundscapes of musical theater and Hindustani music in more than 15 songs by Zlaja Miric and choreography in Bengali and Berlin cabaret styles. Directed by Katrin Hilbe, the show weaves together science, identity, and resistance in a way that feels especially resonant today. Bengal to Berlin captures the spirit of Satyen Bose, a brilliant mind forged in the fires of colonial Bengal. Bose is a revolutionary scientist who dares to defy not only British rule but the injustices within his own society. In 1925, against all odds, Bose’s groundbreaking scientific work reaches Albert Einstein in Berlin to form a historic collaboration. In 2025, we mark the 100th anniversary of the fateful meeting. This dynamic ensemble ...

Jacob Storms. Photo courtesy of Spin Cycle  The newly renovated AMT Theater in midtown will host a special LGBTQIA+ Pride return engagement of the Off-Broadway Premiere of Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams , a solo play written and performed by Jacob Storms and originally directed for the stage by Alan Cumming. It will run June 2 – 23 before heading to Edinburgh this summer and Rochester, NY in September. You can read our review of the show's previous run at AMT here . What led Tennessee Williams to become the most groundbreaking and unique playwright of the twentieth century?  Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams  explores the formative six-year period from 1939-1945 in which an unknown writer named Tom metamorphosizes into the acclaimed playwright known as Tennessee. The solo play brings these unknown years center stage as the audience becomes friend and confidant to young Williams as he experiences the unexpected highs and devastating lows o...

Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams Written and performed by Jacob Storms Directed by Alan Cumming Presented at AMT Theater 354 West 45th St., Manhattan, NYC February 19-April 2, 2023 Jacob Storms. Photo by Max Ruby The first thing that Jacob Storms does as the title character in his solo show Tennessee Rising: The Dawn of Tennessee Williams is to pour himself a drink, a gesture that points both to what would increasingly become a coping mechanism over the course of the playwright's lifetime and to the intimate relation to Williams in which the show positions the spectators. Storms, directed by the illustrious Alan Cumming, himself no stranger to solo theater, delivers his performance as though to an audience of confidantes, even as the show skips deftly forward through time. Anchored by no more than a couple of chairs and a table, Storms enthrallingly whisks the audience from coast to coast and year to year, from Williams having recently submitted work to a playwriti...