Thinking Theater NYC

Ultra Left Violence creators Daniel Irizarry and Robert Lyons There are only three days left to see Robert Lyons’s Ultra Left Violence , the final show in The Obie Award-winning New Ohio Theatre's acclaimed 30-year run. Ultra Left Violence , which concludes the last ever Ice Factory Festival, ending on August 12th, reunites playwright and New Ohio Artistic Director Robert Lyons with director/performer Daniel Irizarry, whose fall 2022 hit My Onliness was called “a welcome gust of weird” ( New York Times ) and “the most insane show now playing in New York City” ( TheaterMania ). (You can read our review here .) Their earlier collaboration Yovo has been performed in NYC, Poland, Cuba, and South Korea and has been translated into Spanish, and American Sign Language. Both plays are included in My Onliness and Others , a collection of six plays by Lyons published in fall 2022 by Mercer Street Books. We purchased our copy in the lobby at Ultra Left Violence , which we were lucky enoug...

gerstl took the easy way out Written by Lydia Blaisdell Directed by Ashley Olive Teague Developed and produced with Notch Theatre Company Presented at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan, NYC July 26-29, 2023; and on demand through August 12, 2023 Nikomeh Anderson, Amy Staats, and Marcel A. Mascaro. Photo by Molly Hagan Late in Lydia Blaisdell's gerstl took the easy way out , Mathilde (Amy Staats) points out that historical narratives ignore the people, primarily women, who enable men to be so-called geniuses by, for example, washing their dirty, sweaty underwear–a devaluation of the labor of social reproduction that is integral to heteropatriarchal capitalism. The Austrian Mathilde, atypically, has two men of genius to deal with: she is married to and has children with composer Arnold Schönberg (Marcel A. Mascaro) and has a passionate affair with Expressionist painter Richard Gerstl (Nikomeh Anderson). gerstl took the easy way out constructs its funny, angry, non-l...

The Shylock and the Shakespeareans Written and directed by Edward Einhorn Presented by Untitled Theatre Company No. 61 at New Ohio Theatre  154 Christopher St., Manhattan, NYC (also available on demand) June 1-17, 2023  Jeremy Kareken and Yael Haskal. Photo by Richard Termine With the storied New Ohio Theatre slated for an August close, this summer, Untitled Theatre Company No. 61 (UTC61) takes to its stage to provide us with a pointed and timely look at the influence of theatre and the tropes therein on our own current cultural moment. The Shylock and the Shakespeareans is something like a retelling or reimagining of the Bard’s universally regarded and deeply problematic The Merchant of Venice . Writer and director Edward Einhorn updates the setting, while still keeping us deeply rooted in Shakespeare’s familiar climes. The action of the play undulates familiarly back and forth between the cosmopolitan world of Venice and gentile Belmont. Costumes blend the old and the new:...

George Kaplan Written by Frédéric Sonntag Translated by Samuel Buggeln Directed by Max Hunter Presented by The Bridge Production Group at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher St, Manhattan, NYC November 15-December 3, 2022 George Kaplan , featuring Christina Toth, Elisha Lawson, Max Samuels, Michael DeFilippis, & Campbell Symes. Photo credit: Nancy Fallon Individual identity is arguably more fraught than ever, surveilled and sold, for example, by the same corporations that provide platforms for its curation, some of which in turn have ties to national governments. Frédéric Sonntag's play George Kaplan , written in 2011 and first staged in France in 2013, approaches identity at its intersections with storytelling and mythmaking. George Kaplan 's New York City premiere comes courtesy of an excellent production by The Bridge Production Group, which brings a galvanizing energy to Sonntag's twisty mélange of human drama, satire, and postmodern philosophical provocation. One of ...

Monstress Book and Lyrics by Emily Kitchens Music by Ben Quinn and Titus Tompkins Directed by Hondo Weiss-Richmond Presented by Hunger & Thirst Theatre at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan, NYC October 21-November 5, 2022 The Cump'ny of Monstress. Photo by Al Foote III Hunger & Thirst Theatre’s new production, Monstress , may not be the first to reimagine Greek mythology with a feminist slant, but it must be the first to do so as a bluegrass-fueled Southern gathering. Monstress presents a series of song-studded stories, along with some standalone musical interludes, set in periods ranging from the murky beginnings of creation to the present day but all focused on female monsters. In the production's retellings of these classical stories, cultural traditions separated by continents and millennia harmonize as bewitchingly as do the performers' voices. Philip Estrera as Catch with Allison Kelly, Adam Boggs McDonald, and Rheanna Atendido as The Si...

Complicity Written by Diane Davis Directed by Illana Stein Presented by Eden Theater Company at The New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher St., Manhattan, NYC September 30-October 15, 2022 Nadia Sepsenwol, Katie Broad, and Christian Paxton. Photo credit: Ashley Garrett By end of Complicity , set in a Hollywood colliding with #MeToo and Time's Up, it was hard not to think of Audre Lorde's admonition that the "master's tools will never dismantle the master's house." Diane Davis's play, making its world premiere at The New Ohio, offers neither uncomplicated heroes nor easy fixes in its look at a film and television industry that remains endemically, perhaps irremediably patriarchal–and in this, a reflection of the culture in which it is embedded. What Complicity does offer is an unflinching exploration of accountability, particularly among women, through multidimensional characters who compellingly embody the tensions among models of change, between pragmatism and...

My Onliness Text and lyrics by Robert Lyons (from Witkacy) Directed by Daniel Irizarry Composer: Kamala Sankaram Presented by One-Eighth Theater , New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater at New Ohio Theatre September 6-24, 2022 Daniel Irizarry. Photo by Suzanne Fiore Photography Late in My Onliness , a character known only as the Writer (Rhys Tivey) asserts, "The absurdity of life in-and-of-itself" is "something you won't see / on the stage of any theater." What we have seen to that point doesn't much support that claim, but then, the Writer himself observes that people require that their truths be wrapped in fiction or ceremony. The Writer is no favorite of the king (Daniel Irizarry)–the royal Onliness of the play's title–but artists and intellectuals are seldom beloved of authoritarians, and the king claims to both rule over and suffer for his subjects entirely on his own. If the Writer comes into conflict with the king merely by virtue of being "liter...

Petunia's Playhouse Live!: Petunia's Big Day Book by Laura Kay Clark Directed by Christina Rose Ashby Music and lyrics by Billy Recce Presented on demand by New Ohio Theatre for Young Minds and Party Claw Productions January 17-February 6, 2022 Photo courtesy Party Claw Productions No doubt there are those for whom a new school term has only ever been an occasion of self-confident excitement. For most of us, though, students and teachers alike, back-to-school involves some degree of fretfulness. Petunia's Playhouse Live!: Petunia's Big Day , based on the web series written and performed by Laura Kay Clark, tackles these first-day jitters with a spirited family-friendly musical. The 2020 web series Petunia’s Playhouse aimed to help equip its young viewers with tools and tactics to address the mental health-related challenges of living in a pandemic. Petunia's Playhouse Live!: Petunia's Big Day faced its own pandemic challenges: it was set to bring Petunia and c...

Candlelight Written by John Patrick Shanley Directed by Lori Kee Presented by Nylon Fusion at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher St., Manhattan, NYC November 27-December 19, 2021 Ivette Dumeng And Christina Toth. Photo by Al Foote III Candlelight, from which the new play by Pulitzer Prize winner and Bronx native John Patrick Shanley takes its name, can create a flickering, twilight liminality, and, indeed, dreams, reality, and imagination bleed fluidly into one another in this world-premiere production at the New Ohio Theatre. Such illumination also, in Candlelight , is associated with love, which in the play is, if not many-splendored, then certainly multifarious—transformative love; parental love; lost love; unrequited love; dangerous love; a link, or in some cases a tether, to the past and a hope, however well-founded, for the future. Centering the perspectives of two ten-year-old Nuyoricans from Brooklyn, Candlelight entangles whimsy with melancholy, hilarity with heartache, and won...

  Herstory Co-created by Gisela Cardenas, Laura Butler-Levitt, and Heather Hollingsworth Written for the stage by Javier Antonio González Directed by Gisela Cardenas Presented by In Tandem Lab and New Ohio Theatre at the New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan, NYC August 4-7, 2021 Laura Butler-Levitt & Heather Hollingsworth. Photo courtesy InTandem Lab Perhaps one reason that Shakespeare's late play The Tempest has consistently inspired responses and reimaginings is that its concern with who controls the narrative is more text than subtext, from Prospero's rehearsal to his daughter Miranda of her own past to his paternalistic perspective on his expropriation of Caliban's land and labor to his stage managing of more or less everything that occurs during the play. Herstory uses The Tempest , specifically Miranda, to initialize an exploration not only of (gendered) control over narrative and expression, including the narratives that we construct for ourselve...

  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...

  Journey Around My Bedroom Written by Dianne Nora Directed by Jaclyn Biskup Presented by New Ohio Theatre for Young Minds December 26, 2020-January 10, 2021 live via Zoom and January 11-February 11, 2021 on demand Photo by New Ohio Theatre In 1790, French military and government official Xavier de Maistre penned the parodic travel narrative Voyage Autour de ma Chambre ( Voyage Around My Room ; published 1794) while under house arrest for dueling. A sequel, Expédition Nocturne Autour de ma Chambre ( Night Voyage Around My Room ), followed in 1825. While this might seem like an unlikely point of departure for a play aimed at children, many children's lives must feel like a form of house arrest right now, and Dianne Nora takes inspiration from de Maistre's works for Journey Around My Bedroom , a charming, whimsical puppet play about a girl, the power of her imagination, and her embracing of her own courage.   That girl is Xavi (Ashley Kristeen Vega), and when we first meet her...

ray gun say0nara Written by Steven Mark Tenney Directed by Janet Bentley Presented by Nylon Fusion Theatre Company at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan, NYC December 4-22, 2019 Alexa Elmy. Photo by Al Foote III ray gun say0nara , Steven Mark Tenney's new "sci-fi play with songs" has evil twins, interstellar portals, immortal beings, and alien princesses, as well as rampant in-universe cosplay, cosmically significant proms, and, yes, ray guns. What we're saying is, ray gun is a lot of fun. But its pulp sci-fi adventure trappings are also a conduit for themes about storytelling, mythologizing, and existential duality. Playing in repertory with The Listening Room (reviewed by us here ) at New Ohio Theatre, ray gun say0nara takes audiences on a retro-futurist journey to the stars in which dreams are as important as spacecraft and connection as important as conflict. In the universe (or Metaverse) of ray gun say0nara , aliens called ...