Thinking Theater NYC

Freedom’s Last Stand Written by Barry Rowell Directed by Mia Y. Anderson Music by Rob Mitzner and David Ross Musicians: David Ross, Rob Mitzner, and Matthew Milligan Presented by Peculiar Works Project at  Target Margin’s Doxsee Theater 232 52nd St, Brooklyn, NYC May 29-June 14, 2025 Photo by R. Z. Schell Peculiar Works Project’s Freedom’s Last Stand , written by Barry Rowell and directed by Mia Y. Anderson, takes its audience deep into the fractured mind of an emerging domestic terrorist in the final hours of a deadly standoff. Set in a cabin in the Idaho woods, the production reconstructs not just a moment of crisis, but the ideological labyrinth that led there. The story centers on Daniel Frey, a white man radicalized by a toxic mix of online conspiracies, white nationalist rhetoric, and masculine grievance. Trapped in a bunker with a gun, a guitar, and something that looks eerily like a body wrapped in a sheet, Daniel broadcasts his manifesto through social media, trains for a...

On the night of the 10th of May, 1849, the Empire City, the great metropolis of the Union, was the scene of one of those horrors of civilization, which for a time make the great heart of humanity stop in its beatings. In the darkness of night, thousands of citizens were gathered in a central square of the most aristocratic quarter of New York—gathered around one of its most conspicuous and magnificent edifices, the Astor Place Opera House. —The Daily Courier No matter how this week begins for you, it can end in the best way—a happy hour performance this Friday. FRIGID New York and Peculiar Works Project  present a unique remembrance of theater gone-by on Friday, May 10, 2024 at 5:30 pm at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC). Admission is free, and the performance runs 75 minutes. Every theater-lover should know the story of the Astor Place Riots, but it’s about much more than a fight between the two biggest actors of the day. The Riots are a national tragedy unlik...

Image from https://good-jew.com/ Direct from hurricane-ravaged Florida, Peculiar Works Project presents Frank Blocker as Holocaust survivor Henryk Altman in Good Jew , Official Selection of the 2022 United Solo Festival. Written by Murray Scott Changar and Frank Blocker, this verbatim solo play is based on multiple interviews with the late Mr. Changar’s late father, Henryk, and directed by Jamibeth Margolis, granddaughter of Holocaust survivors.  Good Jew  will be performed  one night only  on Wednesday, November 16, 2022, 7:00pm EDT, at Theater Row, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY. The show runs 70 minutes, and extremely limited $42.50 tickets are available at  https://bfany.org/theatre-row/shows/united-solo-theatre-festival-2022/. He escaped the Treblinka death-camps, twice, joined the Resistance, navigated from the ghettos of Warsaw through Germany and onto Norway, but Henryk Altman doesn’t see himself as a Good Jew. No one survives war by being ...

Afterparty: The Rothko Studio Choreographed by Rachel Cohen; composed by Maria Dessena; adapted by Barry Rowell; story by S.M. Dale Directed by Ralph Lewis Presented by Peculiar Works Project at 222 Bowery, NYC June 27-30, 2019 Isabella Schiller, Jason Howard, Nathan Keiller, Caiti Latimer, Glenn Feinstein, Catherine Porter. Photo credit: Peculiar Works Project The raison d’être of Afterparty is the space where it’s staged: 222 Bowery. While it was built in the 1880s to house New York’s first YMCA, the building’s chief claim to fame is that artists like Mark Rothko, Fernand Léger, and the beat writer William S. Burroughs called it home. It was Burroughs who dubbed the building “The Bunker.” Rothko lived and worked in a studio on the 2nd floor in the 1950s, when cheap rent attracted a host of artists to Bowery lofts. The poet and artist John Giorno still lives and works there— The New York Times ran a sketch of him and his Bowery habitat back in 2015. Now Rothko’s stu...