Thinking Theater NYC

2nd Murderer Written by Kanika Asavari Vaish Directed by Frankie DiCiaccio Presented by SoHo Shakespeare Company  at The Flea Theater 20 Thomas Street, Manhattan, NYC October 9-November 1, 2025 Txai Frota and Ahmad Maher. Photo by Travis Emery Hackett. Questions of morality, performativity, and adaptation are all in play from the moment the audience steps into the theater, welcomed into by Black Sheep’s “The Choice is Yours (Revisited)” and MF Doom’s “Coco Mango.” The lights drop; a body hits the floor; and then, in murky darkness, a shriek – and a man with a knife who decides to rewind the night. This decision to “wind it all back” amidst the darkness sets the tone for Kanika Vaish’s fantastic 2nd Murderer , a play as funny as it is unnerving, where the dramatological dream of “making it real” collides with the ethics of what performers are asked to endure for the sake of ego and entertainment. Directed with precision and aplomb by Frankie DiCiaccio and presented by SoHo Shakespea...

let's talk about anything else Written by Anthony Anello Directed by Dennis Corsi Presented by TOSOS at The Flea 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC September 7-28, 2025 Posie Lewis and Dylan Lesch. Photo by Mikiodo. If genre media is to be believed, the only proper response to an invitation to spend some time with friends at a cabin, vacation home, or rental property in the woods would be to run the other way. The friend group in Anthony Anello's riveting let's talk about anything else , though, are either unaware of or disregard the folk wisdom of decades of thriller and horror films and decide that their first trip together since a sudden trauma should be a week at an isolated Airbnb in the Berkshires. Amidst the simmering stew of the group's secrets, resentments, and jealousies, and with the appearance of an ambiguously intentioned local, more than the planned healing and hedonism will end up on the week's agenda. Originally developed by Murmuration Theater Company ,...

Overlap Written by Erin Proctor Directed by Dante Piro Presented by Rogue Theater Festival  at The Siggy at The Flea Theatre in association with Abingdon Theatre Company 20 Thomas St, Manhattan, NYC August 7, 2025 Julia Fink. Photo courtesy of Alton PR It is all a matter of understanding after a crash in Overlap , the excellent new play by Erin Proctor, directed by Dante Piro. Presented as part of the 2025 Rogue Theatre Festival (August 4–10) at The Flea NYC and streaming on CUR8, the production blends heartbreak and humor, tragedy and rom com in equal measure. It is a romance, a ghost story, and a meditation on both finishing the staging of a play and sustaining a relationship. The play opens in familiar enough territory: Maya (Julia Fink), a twenty-six-year-old playwright/barista, and Daniel (Ryan Pangracs), a twenty-five-year-old dramaturg/shift manager, meet while working the same Starbucks shift. Their banter turns into creative partnership, and their early romance moves ...

Feejee Mermaid Written by Clay McLeod Chapman Directed by Pete Boisvert Presented by Drops in the Vase at  The Flea 20 Thomas St, New York, NY 10007 October 19-November 2, 2024 Morgan Zipf-Meister & Niccolò Walsh. Photo by Kent Meister Under the auspices of the eve of the 19th Annual International Taxidermy Championships, Clay McLeod Chapman's new play, Feejee Mermaid , renders a Milwaukee hotel room a liquor-fueled crucible, taking the audience on an unlikely journey into the dark heart of competition, creativity, violence and taboo. Feejee Mermaid is a rare work, a resounding success: as poignant as it is funny, as heartfelt as it is unflinchingly brutal. The action is centered around one night in this hotel room, with the full weight of the previous year’s competition, and the interpersonal consequences therein, fueling the tension-soaked 75 minutes to come. The play opens in the hotel room, rendered perfectly anodyne and anonymous (emanating the essence of what is means to...

Anne Washburn. Photo courtesy Spin Cycle PR.   The Flea Theater has announced Anne Washburn ( Mr. Burns , a post-electric play ; Shipwreck ) to lead a Pataphysics Playwriting Workshop in June 2020. Pataphysics Playwriting Workshops are an intimate, intensive opportunity for writers to create new work and explore new ways of writing under the guidance of master playwrights. Washburn’s Pataphysics workshop, titled Make Good Politics and Bad Art and Bad Politics and Good Art—a workshop in virtual activism and the civic function of theater, will be offered online on June 13, 14, 20, and 21. Applications are being accepted through May 17, 2020. Named for Alfred Jarry’s science of imaginary solutions, Pataphysics workshops are a gymnasium for the writing brain: curious, particular, and rigorous. Students enter with blank sheets of paper and leave with pages of notes, fragments, scenes, even entire plays unlike anything they would have written on their own. “Pataphysics classes hav...

Sincerity Forever Written by Mac Wellman Directed by Dina Vovsi Presented by  The Flea Theater 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC August 24-October 7, 2019 [extended through October 13, 2019] Amber Jaunai (left), Nate DeCook (center), Vince Ryne (right). Photo by Allison Stock. The scene is of a familiar sort: two young people with crushes on one another sit together in a parked vehicle and discuss why God allows terrible things to happen and whether there is a divine purpose for everything. Less expectedly, they are wearing the robes and hoods of the Ku Klux Klan. Almost all of the young people who populate the town of Hillsbottom in Mac Wellman's satiric Sincerity Forever are so appareled, a visual signifier that forces to the surface what American society prefers to keep sublimated and unacknowledged. Sincerity Forever , along with the outstanding Bad Penny ( reviewed by us here ), makes up part of the Flea Theater's Mac Wellman: Perfect Catastrophes, A Festival...

Bad Penny Written by Mac Wellman Directed by Kristan Seemel Presented by The Flea Theater 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC August 24-October 7, 2019 [extended through October 13, 2019] Joseph Huffman (far left), Emma Orme (left), Bailie de Lacy (right), Lambert Tamin (far right). Photo by Allison Stock  A woman ponders the ontology of the sky. Later, she delivers a florid and impassioned oration about a yet-to-be-discovered cheese. A confrontational man with Montana roots carries a whitewall tire. On the margins of other conversations, a trio of women speak quietly in unison. Welcome to the Central Park of Mac Wellman's Bad Penny , a place that one character characterizes as a place of lunacy that provides an escape from the even greater lunacy of city life. The Flea Theater's current production of Bad Penny makes up part of its Mac Wellman: Perfect Catastrophes, A Festival of Plays , a celebration of the work of Wellman, award-winning playwright, novelist, pro...

The Great Novel Written by Amina Henry Directed by Sarah Norris Presented by New Light Theater Project at The Flea Theater 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC June 7-29. 2019 L-R: MaryKathryn Kopp, Tabatha Gayle, Nikki E. Walker. Photo credit: Hunter Canning Anyone who has set out to write just about anything will be familiar with the intimidating whiteness of the blank page or screen. When we meet Bertha (Nikki E. Walker), protagonist of Amina Henry’s play The Great Novel , she is attempting to define her own protagonist, for the as-yet-unwritten eponymous work of literature. Bertha, of Jamaican ancestry, concludes of her potential main character, “Of course, she’s white. White as a ghost.” Her conclusion elegantly establishes from the play’s opening her project’s dual hauntings by a dominantly white literary tradition on one hand and the wealthy white family for whom she has worked as a live-in maid for a decade on the other. At the intersection of these cross-cultural an...

Measure for Measure Written by William Shakespeare Adapted and directed by Phoebe Brooks Presented by Spicy Witch Productions at The Flea Theater 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC May 18-June 1, 2019 Blake Kelton Prentiss and Pearl Shin. Photo credit: Phoebe Brooks In each of its seasons, Spicy Witch Productions pairs contemporary and classical plays in repertory in order to explore gender and identity. The themes of previous seasons have included gender presentation, gendered violence, and the construct of relationships as a form of ownership. This season, Spicy Witch’s seventh, focuses on rebellion and revolution and puts a production of William Shakespeare’s  Measure for Measure  into thought-provoking conversation with new play  The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows . In addition, putting its money where its theme is, Spicy Witch will donate a portion of sales of merchandise, available in the lobby, to Planned Parenthood. We discuss each...

The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows Written by Gina Femia Directed by Blayze Teicher Presented by Spicy Witch Productions at The Flea Theater 20 Thomas St., Manhattan, NYC May 17-June 1, 2019 Shava Clarke, Alia Guidry, Renita Lewis, and Pearl Shin. Photo credit: Phoebe Brooks In each of its seasons, Spicy Witch Productions pairs contemporary and classical plays in repertory in order to explore gender and identity. The themes of previous seasons have included gender presentation, gendered violence, and the construct of relationships as a form of ownership. This season, Spicy Witch’s seventh, focuses on rebellion and revolution and puts a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure into thought-provoking conversation with new play The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows . In addition, putting its money where its theme is, Spicy Witch will donate a portion of sales of merchandise, available in the lobby, to Planned Parenthood. We ...