Thinking Theater NYC

Tia Talk Created and performed by Amelia Bethel and Karen Loewy Movilla Presented by The Tank 312 W 36th St., Manhattan, NYC August 5-27, 2023 Amelia Bethel and Karen Loewy Movilla The set of Tia Talk evokes any number of chat show sets, with its chairs and mugs paired around a small table and thrown into relief against a shimmering backdrop; but that show that transpires there is far from your typical daytime TV fare. Tia Talk the play presents us with Amelia (Amelia Bethel) and Karen (Karen Loewy Movilla) as the presenters of Tia Talk their new talk show, which they intend as a bit of gossipy fun but which keeps taking unanticipated detours related to Latiné identity, history, and culture (so far as those are separable categories to any degree). The inevitability of the irruption of these topics into whatever Amelia and Karen discuss seems in itself meaningful, but it certainly does not make Tia Talk any less funny and convivial. The play begins with Amelia and Karen centering a ver...

Bloom Written by Marco Antonio Rodriguez Directed by Victoria Pérez Presented by IATI Theater 64 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC April 16-May 8, 2022 Rafael Beato and Monica Steuer. Photo by Andres Bohorquez. The program for Bloom , the new play from Marco Antonio Rodriguez, notes its setting as a "not so distant future," and indeed, the government-sponsored oppression of queer individuals that it depicts, while inspired by conditions in Chechnya, seems increasingly less distant in the United States–the latest example being the governor of Florida, calculating the political capital to be worth the risk of economic damage, punishing (or making a show of attempting to punish) a corporation for reluctantly releasing a statement against the state's "don't say gay" bill. Bloom , which includes "excerpts . . . taken from actual narrations of tortured LGBTQ+ youth," is making its U.S. premiere at IATI Theater, a Latinx company dedicated to showcasing div...