Thinking Theater NYC

Trovata una sega! Livorno, Modigliani, and the Legendary Prank of Summer ’84 ( Trovata una sega! Racconto su Livorno, Modigliani e lo “scherzo del Secolo” dell’Estate ’84 ) Written and performed by Antonello Taurino May 17, 2026, at The Rat NYC , 68-117 Jay St., Brooklyn, NYC May 18, 2026, at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU , 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC   Antonello Taurino in Trovata una Sega! Courtesy Teatro della Cooperativa. Research has shown that people will rate the exact same wine more highly if they believe it to be more expensive. The market, in other words, does not so much reflect as create value and prestige. Trovata una sega! Livorno, Modigliani, and the Legendary Prank of Summer ’84 ( Trovata una sega! Racconto su Livorno, Modigliani e lo “scherzo del Secolo” dell’Estate ’84 ), a solo show from actor, comedian, author, and theater researcher Antonello Taurino, suggests that similar dynamics obtain in the art world. Winner of the Tramedautore Festival Selection...

White Noise: Confessions of an Unsuspected Serial Killer with a Background Hiss ( Rumore Bianco – Confessioni di un insospettabile serial killer con fruscio di sottofondo ) Written by and with Danilo Napoli Directed by Yari Gugliucci Presented by Vitruvio Entertainment May 14, 2026, at WOW Café , 59-61 E 4th St., 4th Fl., Manhattan, NYC May 15, 2026, at BAAD - Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance , 2474 Westchester Ave., Bronx, NYC Danilo Napoli in  White Noise . Photo courtesy of Vitruvio Entertainment. If the pressing relevance of the critique by solo show White Noise: Confessions of an Unsuspected Serial Killer with a Background Hiss ( Rumore Bianco – Confessioni di un insospettabile serial killer con fruscio di sottofondo ) of transphobia and homophobia weren't already obvious, we read about the murder of transwoman Juniper Blessing, a University of Washington student, on our way to the performance. The brutal killing of Blessing belongs to a long and ongoing history of violence...

Patria, The Town of Cain and Abel ( Patria, il Paese di Caino e Abele ) Conceived by Fabio Banfo, Giacomo Ferraù, and Giulia Viana Directed by Giacomo Ferraù Presented by Centro Teatrale MaMiMò and Eco di fondo with the collaboration of the Flamigni Archive May 10, 2026 at Culture Lab LIC , 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, NYC May 13, 2026 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU , 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC May 16, 2026 at The Rat NYC , 68-117 Jay St., Brooklyn, NYC Fabio Banfo in Patria, The Town of Cain and Abel . Photo courtesy of Mamimo Company. Solo show Patria, The Town of Cain and Abel ( Patria, il Paese di Caino e Abele ) brings a narrative of Italian sectarianism and violence in the second half of the twentieth century to NYC at a time when such a story could not seem more relevant to audiences here as U.S. institutions and norms continue to fracture and divisions deepen. As the play's subtitle suggests, Cain and Abel serve as the microcosmic model for the p...

Traviata - A Free Prose Opera ( Traviata - Opera libera in prosa ) Written and directed by Andrea Caldi, Fabio Fassio, and Elena Romano Directing consultant: Cecilia Vecchio Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave Based on La Dame aux Camélias , by Alexandre Dumas fils Presented by Bottega di Cyrano – Teatro degli Acerbi May 7, 2026 at Culture Lab LIC , 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, NYC May 11, 2026 at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU , 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC May 12, 2026 at Casa Belvedere , 79 Howard Avenue, Staten Island, NYC Andrea Caldi, Elena Romano, and Saverio Bari. Photo courtesy of Bottega di Cyrano. Giuseppe Verdi's opera La traviata ( The Fallen Woman ), which debuted in Venice in 1853 with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, adapted the play La Dame aux camélias (1852), by Alexandre Dumas fils , which was itself an adaptation of Dumas's own novel of the same name, published a few years earlier. Traviata - A Free Prose Opera ( Traviata - Opera l...

Tale of a Potato Written and directed by Angelo Trofa Presented by Batisfera Teatro May 5, 2026, at Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU , 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC May 9-10, 2026, at Culture Lab LIC , 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, NYC Protagonist (center) and some coworkers in Tale of a Potato. Photo courtesy of Batisfera Teatro. The potato is often described as humble. Lowly. A staple, but also a side dish. It can even, in the idiom couch potato, serve as an insult. Obviously, then, it's the perfect avatar for a dramatic everyman, or so one would be forced to conclude after Tale of a Potato , a new tabletop play from Valentina Fadda and Angelo Trofa's Batisfera Teatro, a contemporary theater company based in Cagliari, Italy. At the 2023 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival, Batisfera created a sweeping story with tiny candy protagonists in The Gummy Bears' Great War ( La grande guerra degli Orsetti Gommosi ; you can read our review here ), and Tale of a Pota...

Closed for the Holiday ( Chiuso per Festa ) Written and performed by Matteo Porru Stage advisor: Marleen Scholten Presented by 369gradi   May 6, 2026, at Casa Italian a Zerilli-Marimò at NYU , 24 W 12 St., Manhattan, NYC May 8, 2026, at Culture Lab LIC , 5-25 46th Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, NYC  Matteo Porru. Photo by  Azzurra Primavera. Typically, storytelling involves channeling other voices, and that becomes not more true but certainly more literal when theater is the mode of storytelling. In Closed for the Holiday ( Chiuso per Festa ), a solo show from Matteo Porru – a novelist, playwright, and winner of the prestigious Campiello Giovani Award – a writer puts on and off various identities, creating for the audience simultaneously a series of short character-driven narratives and an image of the creative process. Closed for the Holiday , presented in Italian with English supertitles by Francesca Triolo and Arianna Intra, represents Porru's (extremely imp...

Dario Fo © Archivio Fondazione Fo Rame Kairos Italy Theater along with Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU and the Italy-based KIT Italia will present the United States premiere of the documentary Dario Fo: The Last Mistero Buffo (90 minutes, Clipper Media, 2022) as part of their In Scena! Italian Theater Festival with exclusive screenings at Casa Italiana Zerilli Marimo’ at NYU (24 W 12th St, New York, NY 10011) on Tuesday, May 5th at 6:30pm and Wednesday, May 13th at 8pm. The film will be presented in Italian with English Subtitles. The film centers on the final staging of Mistero Buffo in Rome—the farewell to the stage of its author and performer, Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, who passed away just two months later. It tells the story of a journey that begins in Dario Fo’s dressing room, with his most famous show, and unfolds into a kaleidoscopic voyage that takes us from Turkey to Argentina—places where his works, with their powerful and critical dramaturgy, still challenge the stat...

Playwright Marco Di Stefano In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, has announced Via Crucis by playwright Marco Di Stefano as the winner of their 2026 In Scena! Playwright Award (formally the Mario Fratti Award). The play, translated by Caterina Nonis, will receive a reading as part of the closing ceremony of the 2026 In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY on Tuesday, May 19 at 6pm at the Italian Cultural Institute of NY (686 Park Ave, New York, NY 10065). Admission to the awards ceremony and reading is FREE.   Via Crucis is a solo show in free verse structured in 14 scenes. The speaking character is a 30-year-old man living on the margins. Arrested for drug possession, he is subjected to torture and violence by the police until he dies from it. The text unfolds over the course of a single day—from 5am until midnight—and is set in various locations: the street where the young man is taken, the pol...

Playwright Francesca Becchetti In Scena! Italian Theater Festival, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater happening in all five boroughs, and Hystrio-Scritture di Scena, one of the most prestigious theater awards in Italy, will present their 6th Annual Translation and Adaption Mentorship, a program which mentors an Italian playwright on the English translation and adaptation of their play. The Hystrio Scritture di Scena Award is a prestigious Italian dramaturgy competition for playwrights under 35, organized by the Milano-based Hystrio – Associazione per la diffusione della cultura teatrale. It promotes original Italian theater pieces, offering winning scripts, mentorship, staging at Hystrio Festival, and publication.   Playwright Francesca Becchetti, whose play Tekken Dram a was selected by In Scena! from the finalists of the 2025 Hystrio Scritture di Scena, will be mentored by Dave Johnson, an American playwright and poet, who was one of the authors selected fo...

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...

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...

Like an Octopus in a Guitar ( Come un polpo nella chitarra ) Written by Marco Ziello Directed by Licia Amarante and Marco Ziello Presented by ON Teatro Formazione Cultura at NOoSPHERE Arts (520 Kingsland Ave., Brooklyn, NYC), May 17, 2025, and WOW Cafè Theater (59-61 East 4th Street, 4th Floor, Manhattan, NYC), May 18, 2025 Annachiara Castorino and Marco Ziello. Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR To whatever degree one believes continuous identity to be a construction, surely memories are vital underpinnings to any sense of a stable self, no matter how illusory. Failures of memory, then, might proportionally increase the urgency of the question voiced at one point by the protagonist of Marco Ziello's Like an Octopus in a Guitar ( Come un polpo nella chitarra ): Who am I? An inescapable melancholy underlies the absurdist humor and mesmerizing kineticism of this production, winner of Best Drama 2024 at Roma Comic OFF, as it presents to the audience a sick man whose memories are de...

AMARA SAPIENZA . To my mother . Written and directed by Giulia Bocciero Presented at Theaterlab (357 W 36th St., 3rd floor, Manhattan, NYC), May 15, 2025, and BAAD (2474 Westchester Ave, Bronx, NYC), May 16, 2025 AMARA SAPIENZA . Photo courtesy of Emily Owens PR. Goliarda Sapienza (1924-1996) was born the same year that fascist Benito Mussolini's National List won power in Italy in the country’s last multi-party election for two decades, a fact alluded to in an early section of playwright and director Giulia Bocciero's AMARA SAPIENZA. To my mother. Sapienza was raised in a feminist, anarchist household and became, first, a stage and film actor in the postwar period and then, beginning in the 1950s, a poet, memoirist, novelist, and eventually acting teacher. She suffered periods of depression, twice attempting suicide in the early 1960s, for which treatment included electroshock therapy, and her later years were marked by poverty and a five-day imprisonment for theft. Sapienza...