Thinking Theater NYC

Climate Fables: The Trash Garden Written and directed by Padraig Bond Presented by Torch Ensemble at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 13-14, 2024 L to R: Kristen Hoffman, Padraig Bond, Luis Feliciano, Penelope Deen As heat records continue to fall and extreme weather proliferates (if only anyone could have predicted this!), the timeliness of Padraig Bond's Climate Fables project seems, one might say, scorchingly obvious. One of these Fables , The Trash Garden , imagines the post-climate-apocalypse world as a kind of anti-Eden populated by what may well be the last two people on Earth, presenting funny, touching snapshots of the pair as they negotiate and contemplate their existence and one another. The Trash Garden was most recently presented as part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival , which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New York City Fringe Festival, 11 shows from this year's Fringe Festival to r...

Too Much of a Good Thing Written, directed, and performed by Rachel Redleaf Presented by RAR Entertainment at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 8-18, 2024 Rachel Redleaf. Photo courtesy of Rachel Redleaf. If the number of slang terms for something is proportional to the space it takes up in the cultural imaginary, then, as the opening of actor, singer, and comedian Rachel Redleaf's coruscating solo show Too Much of a Good Thing suggests, women's breasts boast quite a footprint. That this video introduction is delivered by a puppet named Rachel Too quickly establishes the expert tonal balance that the show strikes, taking an overwhelmingly comedic approach to Redleaf's sometimes traumatic experiences as a woman carrying the weight, literal and otherwise, of very large breasts. Too Much of a Good Thing is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New Y...

A Drag is Born Created and performed by Edu Díaz Directed by Rachel Resnik Presented at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 6-14, 2024 Edu Díaz in A Drag Is Born . Photo by José Botella Films Simone de Beauvoir famously writes in The Second Sex , "One is not born, but rather becomes, woman" (Knopf, 2010, p. 283). While drag itself emphasizes gender as a masquerade, Edu Díaz's delightful solo show A Drag is Born suggests that in the case of a drag artist, perhaps one is both born and made. The show, which has won multiple awards at the Orlando and NYC Fringe Festivals, sees queer theater artist and Fulbright winner Díaz (he/him/él), a New York-based native of the Canary Islands, take a transformative, if at first reluctant, journey of self-acceptance and self-assertion that is simultaneously hilarious and inspiring. A Drag is Born is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration wit...

A Date With My Wild Written and directed by Alexandria Rengifo Presented by Stage Arising at Playhouse 46 at St. Luke's 308 W 46th St., Manhattan, NYC July 7-13, 2024 Photo courtesy of Alexandria Rengifo Would you think that a single performer dancing to the Spice Girls could bring multiple audience members to tears? If you're leaning towards "no," you probably haven't seen Alexandria Rengifo's solo show A Date With My Wild . With engrossingly emotive storytelling and a dancer's sense of movement, Rengifo leads her audience through more than two decades of disconnection from her own body and its potential for pleasure, an experience that can be linked to a much longer history of the surveillance and policing of women's bodies. A Date With My Wild is currently part of Playhouse 46's Turn The Lights On! Festival, which presents, in collaboration with FRIGID New York and the New York City Fringe Festival, 11 shows from this year's Fringe Festiv...

The Creeps Written and performed by Catherine Waller Presented by The Creeps NYC with Kendra Keenan and Gustavo Lutterbach; Carson Gleberman; Claire Wilkes; and Sharon Fallon Productions, Inc. at Playhouse 46 at St. Lukes 308 W 46th St, Manhattan, NYC September 1-November 5, 2023 Catherine Waller. Courtesy of Kampfire PR The Creeps begins to establish an atmosphere even before the show starts, bathing the performance space and the audience seated on its four sides in a shade of yellow light that washes the color out of everything and everyone, a fitting prelude to the uncanniness to come. An equally funny, unsettling, and, perhaps surprisingly, empathetic solo show from Catherine Waller, The Creeps has won awards at the Hollywood Fringe, Amsterdam Fringe, and United Solo Festival, and it now arrives in Hell's Kitchen with its roster of lonely, damaged, and, in one instance, subtly menacing characters ready to meet the spectators who descend below Saint Luke's Church to Playhou...