Thinking Theater NYC

A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend Written by Heather Jeanne Violanti Directed by Jannifer Sandella Presented at The Rat NYC 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NYC August 23-31, 2025 Isabel (N. Marie Teagno), Marie Antoinette (Mary Lane Townsend), and Cockroach (Lisa Whitten). Photo by Joe Pacifico How any particular New Yorker experienced the COVID lockdown depended not only on personality and living situation but also on location, field of labor, and other socioeconomic factors. Set during the spring and summer of 2020, A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend acknowledges the importance of this latter category of differences without minimizing the former and while adeptly evoking the widespread feelings of uncertainty, powerlessness, and isolation that cut across demographic lines. Zooming in (pun absolutely intended) on the experience of one woman in the early months of lockdown, A Pot of Basil , from playwright Heather Jeanne Violanti, employs an absurdist approach to...

  Beginning October 15, Sour Grapes Productions will present You're the Measure of My Dreams: A Pandemic Romance in Two Acts , the first full-length play by Aidan Matthew Turner and Nathan J. Cusson’s second outing as a director in New York City, at The Vino Theater in East Williamsburg. In You're the Measure of My Dreams , new-formed love and potential surrounds Nolen and Eunice after a meeting in the park during quarantine. Their beliefs and values crash down around the couple and his roommates as they try to develop an app that questions free will. They all must decide what they believe and value to bring order to this new found chaos. The performance dates are: October 15th at 7:30pm October 16th at 2pm and 7:30pm October 23rd at 2pm and 7:30pm November 12th at 7:30pm November 13th at 2pm and 7:30pm And The Vino Theater is located at 274 Morgan Ave., Brooklyn, NY. CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS There will also be a filmed version available for a short time in December for those ...

The Jackson C. Frank Listening Party w/ Special Guests Written by Michael Aguirre Directed by Sarah Norris Presented virtually by New Light Theater Project as part of 59E59 Theaters' Plays In Place March 29-April 11, 2021 Michael Aguirre. Courtesy New Light Theater Project. As restrictions for in-person events begin to loosen in New York, the virtual theater scene that has developed over the past year continues to assume intriguing variations. The Jackson C. Frank Listening Party w/ Special Guests anchors its storytelling in, as the title suggests, the communal experience of music. By the end of the play, audiences will have listened to the entirety of Jackson C. Frank's self-titled 1965 folk album, interwoven with narrative threads focused on Frank himself and on the relationship of listening party host Allen (playwright Michael Aguirre) with his brother, Rob. Audience members access the album themselves through their preferred platform (we used a copy on YouTube, which, i...

Letter to My Father Written by Franz Kafka; translated by Hannah Stokes and Richard Stokes Developed by James Rutherford and Michael Guagno Directed by James Rutherford Presented by M-34 via Multistre.am February 19-March 28, 2021 [UPDATE: 30 Mar. 2021: Run extended through April 2, 2021] Michael Guagno. Photo credit: Eileen Meny Photography M-34's Letter to My Father represents a thoughtfully conceived and wonderfully acted example of the innovative forms that virtual theater can take. The production takes Franz Kafka's 1919 nearly 50-page letter to his father, returned to him by his mother rather than delivered to its intended recipient, as the text for a captivating live solo performance that allows audience members to shift at will among multiple views of the performance space. The browser-based livestream presents viewers with a trio of video feeds—one the sort of medium close-up that would be typical of a Zoom play; one a small portable camera that can be moved by actor...

  Sweat Written by Lynn Nottage Directed by Brandon Walker Presented by The Seeing Place Theater Live via Zoom February 27-28, 2021 Streaming via YouTube February 28-March 3, 2021 The cast of Sweat . Image courtesy Kampfire PR NYC playwright Lynn Nottage's 2015 play Sweat vividly captures the kind of economically depressed community that would become the subject of greatly increased national analysis and discussion after November of the following year. The Seeing Place Theater's engrossing, empathetic virtual production of this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama benefits The Fortune Society , an organization that helps formerly incarcerated people to successfully reenter their community and runs Alternative to Incarceration and Education programs. The Seeing Place will host a free panel, "Action Steps - Racism and Economics: The Social Impact of Recession," featuring representatives from The Fortune Society on March 3 at 7pm EST on Zoom ( RSVP here ). The majority of Swea...

  Image courtesy of Nichole Mottershead Chaos Theory begins as a lecture about chaos theory that quickly devolves into a series of interactive games inspired by the science of chaos theory, reality dating shows, middle school crushes, and the butterfly effect to end all butterfly effects: COVID-19. The audience is guided by mathematical scientist, Dr. Genevieve Saoch, whose personal life hilariously interferes with her ability to be objective about her research as a Chaologist. Through a series of participatory experiments, audience members are invited to embrace their inner chaos agent. Chaos Theory  is a NY Times recommended comedy show and winner of the Immersion Nation Best Social Immersion Award 2019. After a robust run as a live show pre-COVID-19 at Caveat, Here Arts and others, the digital adaptation premiered May 1st, 2020, in partnership with Caveat, NYC and now comes from NYC to Curious for a special two-week digital run Feb. 25th through March 7. Writer and perfor...

  Hotel Good Luck Written by Alejandro Ricaño Translated by Jacqueline Bixler Directed by Samuel Buggeln Co-presented by The Cherry Artists' Collective and New Ohio Theatre via YouTube February 12-20, 2021 Seth Soulstein and Desmond Bratton (background). Courtesy Emily Owens PR It's never a bad time, exactly, to reckon with mortality, but perhaps now is a better time than some, as suggested by the remarkable final image of The Cherry Artists' Collective and New Ohio Theatre's co-production of Hotel Good Luck , from award-winning Mexican playwright Alejandro Ricaño (translated by Jacqueline Bixler). This silent concluding shot movingly uses the space of Ithaca's State Theatre itself to reflect simultaneously the profound sense of loss and absence endemic to the past year and the themes of this play's wry, intermittently absurdist, melancholic journey towards existential consolation. Hotel Good Luck tells its dimension-hopping story using only two actors. We b...

The Kitchen Plays Passion Project Written by Cassandra Paras Directed by Byron Anthony Ginger Bug Written by Jake Brasch Directed by Amber Calderon For the Family Written by Madison Harrison Directed by Diane Davie Presented by Eden Theater Company via Zoom February 5-20, 2021 Larry Fleischman and Cassandra Paras. Image courtesy Emily Owens PR Beginning last summer, Eden Theater Company's virtual short-play series The Room Plays has brought us into characters'--and actors'--bedrooms, bathrooms, and living rooms. The series now concludes, appropriately enough, in a place of creation with The Kitchen Plays , a final trio of short works that return to the first installment's focus on people negotiating their lives under the current conditions of the pandemic. Sharply drawn and crisply acted, The Kitchen Plays furnishes a strong finish to the series. The strong start to this strong finish arrives in the form of Cassandra Paras's Passion Project . Larry (Larry Fleis...

  Dog Act Written by Liz Duffy Adams Directed by Erin Cronican Presented by The Seeing Place Theater Live via Zoom Saturday, January 30th and Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021 (7pm EST) Streaming via YouTube Tuesday to Saturday after each live performance, February 2-12, 2021 The ensemble. Image courtesy Kampfire PR The Seeing Place Theater (TSP) continues its 10th season, themed around "The Body Politic," with Liz Duffy Adams's Dog Act . This linguistically virtuosic post-apocalyptic mix of humor and pathos debuted in 2004, but its radically destabilized climate and murderously tribalized world maps flawlessly onto our current anxieties. TSP is presenting Dog Act as a benefit for the Food Pantry at St Clement's NYC and is also hosting a free talkback, "Action Steps for Surviving Hardship in an Uncertain World," via Zoom on Thursday, February 4 at 7pm with both the playwright and licensed therapist Tracy Sidesinger (register for the talkback using this link )....

  RIIIchard Written by Norman Briski Filmmaking by Frank Fantini; stage lighting by Miguel Ángel Valderrama Presented by Teatro Latea via live streaming December 17-19, 2020 In the popular imagination, Richard III has become synonymous with villainy, a hunchbacked, scheming child murderer. The Richard of Argentine actor, director, and playwright Norman Briski, however, is not the monster of Sir Thomas More and later, and most influentially, William Shakespeare. Briski's stripped-down short play RIIIchard offers a Richard who diverges from these traditional portrayals and whose ambition is not merely self-directed. Richard (Bruno Giraldi), holding a drink, begins the play with some of the familiar lines about the winter and discontent but quickly departs from his Bardic forbear, holding forth in a liberal admixture of Spanish and English dialogue that continues throughout the performance. Eventually, the camera pulls out to frame Richard between two women (Josefina Lausirica and V...

  pen/man/ship Written by Christina Anderson Directed by Lucie Tiberghien Presented by Molière in the Park and French Institute Alliance Française December 12, 2020 (live) and December 12-January 4, 2020 (recorded) via YouTube UPDATE [27 March 2021]: 7 live performances added  April 16-24, 2021 Jared McNeill. Photo courtesy DARR Publicity. If nothing else, Christina Anderson's play pen/man/ship certainly throws into relief that our continuing state of semi-confinement in homes with Netflix and streaming theater is pretty cushy compared to confinement aboard a sail-driven former whaling ship traversing the Atlantic. pen/man/ship continues Molière in the Park's virtual season and marks its compelling first foray into contemporary drama. Dedicated to free theater, Molière in the Park brings this trenchant, engaging production to audiences for the low price of pulling up YouTube (but you can donate here !). Beginning with some of animator Emily Rawson's silhouette-centered wo...

Inside the Wild Heart Conceived by Andressa Furletti and Debora Balardini, based on the works of Claire Lispector Directed by Linda Wise Presented by Group .BR via gather.town November 27-December 20, 2020 [UPDATE 27 Jan. 2021: Performances continue Friday, February 12 through Sunday, March 28, 2021] Photo by Erika Morillo As we have settled into pandemic life, we have gotten used to theater, with a very limited number of exceptions, being something that takes place on YouTube or Zoom. And while some productions have made very inventive use of the features of these platforms, the current offering from Group .BR, New York's sole Brazilian theater company, takes virtual theater very literally somewhere new. Inside the Wild Heart , a celebration of the work of lauded Brazilian fiction writer Clarice Lispector (1920-1977), through gather.town, a browser-based service which allows for the creation of custom virtual spaces. Inside the Wild Heart , the title of which alludes to Lispector...

  A Day Written by Gabrielle Chapdelaine Translated by Josephine George Directed by Sameul Buggeln and Wendy Dann Presented by The Cherry Artists' Collective via YouTube Live November 13-21, 2020 Sylvie Yntema, Karl Gregory, Jahmar Ortiz, Erica Steinhagen. Courtesy Emily Owens PR Each twenty-four-hour period simultaneously brings a fresh start and another installment of a seemingly endless repetition, one aspect of our lived experience among many poignantly captured by Montreal-based playwright Gabrielle Chapdelaine's A Day . Presented by The Cherry Artists' Collective in a translation by Josephine George, A Day follows two men and two women from one midnight to the next, demonstrating along the way that mundane does not mean unimportant. The actors playing these central characters livestream their performances from partitioned spaces on the stage of Ithaca's State Theater, and the live portion is seamlessly blended with pre-recorded elements, including interactions w...

  Keely and Du Written by Jane Martin Directed by Brandon Walker and Erin Cronican Presented by The Seeing Place Theater October 31-November 1, 2020 via Zoom and November 3-7, 2020 via YouTube Audrey Heffernan Meyer (Du) and Erin Cronican (Keely). Credit: The Seeing Place Beginning on the last day of Domestic Violence Awareness Month and extending through an election week that may have significant ramifications for women's health and reproductive rights (as well as the continued existence of the nation as a democracy) and that arrives hard on the heels of the installation of a Supreme Court justice hostile to these rights comes The Seeing Place Theater (TSP)'s reading of Keely and Du , a work that is deeply rooted in issues of women's bodily autonomy. This reading of (the pseudonymous) Jane Martin's Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1994 play about a pregnant woman kidnapped by a radical Christian anti-choice group continues TSP's its excellent "Body Politic" seas...