Thinking Theater NYC

The First Line of Dante's Inferno Written by Kirk Lynn Directed by Christian Parker Presented by La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club at La MaMa's The Downstairs Theatre 66 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC February 5-22, 2026 The First Line of Dante’s Inferno,  featuring Kelli Overbey and Evan Sibley. Photo by Marina Levitskaya Inferno , the first of the three parts that make up Dante Alighieri's narrative poem The Divine Comedy (c. 1321), famously begins with its narrator's declaration that he has, in midlife, departed from "the straight road" to awaken lost in "a dark wood," in the words of the translation employed in the exceptional new experimental play The First Line of Dante's Inferno . The First Line of Dante's Inferno , written by Kirk Lynn, a playwright, novelist, screenwriter, educator, and one of the artistic directors of Austin, Texas, theater collective the Rude Mechs , finds multiple people, one specifically at that midpoint in l...

A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend Written by Heather Jeanne Violanti Directed by Jannifer Sandella Presented at The Rat NYC 68 Jay Street, Brooklyn, NYC August 23-31, 2025 Isabel (N. Marie Teagno), Marie Antoinette (Mary Lane Townsend), and Cockroach (Lisa Whitten). Photo by Joe Pacifico How any particular New Yorker experienced the COVID lockdown depended not only on personality and living situation but also on location, field of labor, and other socioeconomic factors. Set during the spring and summer of 2020, A Pot of Basil, or, Thank You for Being a Friend acknowledges the importance of this latter category of differences without minimizing the former and while adeptly evoking the widespread feelings of uncertainty, powerlessness, and isolation that cut across demographic lines. Zooming in (pun absolutely intended) on the experience of one woman in the early months of lockdown, A Pot of Basil , from playwright Heather Jeanne Violanti, employs an absurdist approach to...

We Do the Same Thing Every Week Written by Robert Leverett Directed by Liza Couser Presented by Attractive Nuisance at A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 W 53rd St., Manhattan, NYC May 2-17, 2025 Kate Budney, Jessica Nesi, Justin Choi, Robert Leverett. Photo by HanJie Chow. How often, as we move through adult life, can we say that we encounter genuinely new and interesting experiences? And if something that meets (or seemed to meet) those criteria did happen–perhaps, say, one was visited by a magical man-sized anthropomorphic cat–how many repetitions would it take before that too felt mundane? Robert Leverett's play We Do the Same Thing Every Week might make audiences question whether that number would even reach one. We Do the Same Thing Every Week mixes inspiration from Dr. Seuss and existentialism and adds a dash of physics and a soupçon of the cosmic horror of existence for a dark, delightful absurdist comedy capacious enough to encompass both the boredom of a rainy afternoon and t...

Photo by Morgan McDowell Drawing on their own upbringings in military families and being taught that the USA was the greatest country in the world, New York City-based writer/performer company of two Xhloe and Natasha are off-Broadway bound, delving into the idealized American childhood and the boys it left behind. A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First  sees them playing two boy scouts in the 1960s, idolizing their president, soldiers and war. Xhloe and Natasha have become firm favorites of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the biggest arts festival in the world, and A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson won them their third consecutive Fringe First, the prestigious award from national newspaper The Scotsman . They have been selected to perform at SoHo Playhouse as part of the International Fringe Encore Series, which showcases some of the best plays presented at Fringe festivals internationally. A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson is an absurdist two-hander influenced ...

Scissors Written by Cornelius Boeder Directed by Luísa Galatti; Associate Director: Stella Rae Presented by Luísa Galatti at Teatro LATEA 107 Suffolk St., 2nd fl. November 21-27, 2022 Hannah Abdoh, Aedan Jayce, and Cornelius Boeder. Photo courtesy Luísa Galatti Albert Camus identifies whether to commit suicide as "the one truly serious philosophical problem," and it is one that hangs over Cornelius Boeder's new play, Scissors , currently part of the New York Theater Festival . Suicide is not the only avenue open to the characters of Scissors as a response to life's absurdity, and these options range from human connection to more dubious impulses, with the line separating them sometimes blurred at best. Darkly funny, Scissors takes a keenly absorbing look at one existential question that can never be satisfactorily answered: What now? Casper (playwright Boeder) and Cleo (Hannah Abdoh) are already seated at a table, making quiet but animated first-date conversation wh...

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...

Occasionally Nothing Written by Natalie Menna Directed by Ivette Dumeng Presented by Theater for the New City 155 1st Ave., Manhattan, NYC April 28-May 15, 2022 L to R: Mike Roche, Sean Hoagland. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. Imagine a group of people trapped inside with one another, sheltering in place from the pandemic and war outside. This is the situation presented in actor and playwright Natalie Menna's Occasionally Nothing , and while the circumstances might sound ripped from today's headlines, Occasionally Nothing was first presented, in a shortened form, at the Planet Connections Festivity in 2016, which reflects well on the play's perspicacity and rather less well on humanity. Loss and despair are shot through with  humor in the new production of Menna's absurdist look at social disintegration. By the time that the play opens, Clay (Sean Hoagland), a British expat punk, and his uncle Harry (Mike Roche) have been holed up in an abandoned church for months (perhaps, ...

Alma Baya Written and directed by Edward Einhorn Presented by Untitled Theater Company No. 61 at A.R.T./New York Theatres 502 W. 53rd Street (at 10th Ave), Manhattan, NYC In-person: August 13 - 28, 2021 (masks and proof of vaccination required) Streaming on-demand: August 18 - September 19, 2021 Alma Baya Cast B - JaneAnne Halter, Maggie Cino, Nina Mann. Photo credit: Arthur Cornelius In Edward Einhorn's absurdist sci-fi drama Alma Baya , two's company; three's an ontological earthquake. Alma (Maggie Cino) inhabits a pod on a hostile alien planet with her assistant Baya (JaneAnne Halter), confined within due to the failure of their space suits, their lives measured by the alarms and bells of machines. Then a third woman (Nina Mann)* materializes outside, pounding on the airlock to be let in. Even before she emerges, naked, from the enclosed space of the airlock as if in a (re)birth, the Stranger's arrival, as she correctly observes later, has irreversibly changed ever...

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...

Numbness: Chapter 2 Conceived by Daniel Irizarry and Laura Butler Rivera Text by Sylvia Bofill and Robert Lyons Directed and choreographed by Daniel Irizarry Presented by One-Eighth Theater at New Ohio Theatre 154 Christopher Street, Manhattan, NYC April 26-May 18, 2019 Laura Butler Rivera and Michael Leonard. Photo credit: Matthew Dunivan One-Eighth Theater’s world premiere of Numbness: Chapter 2 throws into sharp relief the heights that experimental theater can achieve. Part of a planned trilogy that began with the company’s Mouthgasm: Chapter 1 , which was developed in Ankara, Turkey, and explored the theme of empathy, Numbness: Chapter 2 explores its titular conceit in a mode that One-Eighth styles The New Absurd. The result is simultaneously challenging and riveting, a triumph of elliptical storytelling, intense physicality, and exhilarating unpredictability. Numbness comprises the main play, Black Water , written by Sylvia Bofill, and an entremés (tra...