Thinking Theater NYC

David Copperfield. Photo by Steve Gregson 59E59 Theaters (Artistic Director Val Day and Managing Director Brian Beirne) has announced the return of Brits Off Broadway, its acclaimed annual festival celebrating the breadth and vitality of independent British theater. The 2026 festival will feature eight productions and run April 14 through June 28, presented across all three of 59E59 Theaters’ stages. This year’s lineup showcases work from a dynamic range of UK writers, performers and producing companies, spanning genres from new musicals and solo storytelling to classic literary adaptations and contemporary dramas. “59E59 Theaters remains a home for artists from across the Atlantic to share bold work with New York audiences,” said Val Day, Artistic Director of 59E59 Theaters. “Every production in Brits Off Broadway reflects the curiosity and creative risk-taking that defines independent UK theater. We are proud to provide a space where artists can collaborate and present work that cha...

Closed for the Holiday . Photo by Azzurra Primavera The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU and the Italy-based KIT Italia will present the 13th season of the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater, taking place in all five boroughs of NYC, from May 5-19, 2026. Admission to all shows and events in the festival is completely FREE. All shows will be performed in Italian with English supertitles, unless otherwise noted. Participating venues and the full schedule of performances will be announced at a later date. Each year In Scena! showcases some of the best Italian theater from Italy, in New York City. The festival features productions that have already toured in Italy as well as readings of Italian plays in translation, mentorships, and exchanges between Italian and International artists. The goal is to promote greater awareness of Italian theater and Italian artists among New York C...

Jesse Bradley-Amore will present 2025 Philly Fringies Frontrunner Pick How I Learned (NOT) To Drive , written and performed by Jesse Bradley-Amore and directed by Padraic Lillis. The production will be presented as part of the 2026 New York City Fringe Festival with FRIGID New York  at UNDER St. Marks (94 St. Marks Place. New York, NY 10009) with performances on Fri April 10 at 8:10pm, Sat April 11 at 2pm, Sun April 12 at 3:40pm, Fri April 17 at 9:50pm & Sat April 18 at 8:40pm. New York City Fringe Festival is an open lottery-based theatre festival presented by FRIGID New York that gives artists an opportunity to let their ingenuity thrive in a venue that values freedom of expression and artistic determination and gives 100% of box office proceeds go directly to the artists whose work is being presented. How I Learned (NOT) To Drive , directed by Indie Theatre Hall of Fame director Padraic Lillis, deals with the very true story of a 40-year-old Florida man overcoming his lifelo...

The Fire This Time Festival With plays by Preston Crowder , Donathan Walters, Teniia Micazia Brown, Mo Holmes, Naomi Lorrain , and DeLane McDuffie Directed by Ken-Matt Martin Presented by FRIGID New York and The Apollo at the Jonelle Procope Theater at The Apollo Stages at The Victoria 233 West 125th Street, Manhattan, NYC January 23-31, 2026 Malik Childs (foreground), Naomi Lorrain, and Victor Musoni in Goose . Photo by Maya Jackson. The Fire This Time Producing Artistic Director Cezar Williams ended his preface to the performance of the festival's annual 10-Minute Play Program that we attended with James Baldwin's assertion, "There is something terribly radical about believing that one's own experience and images are important enough to speak about, much less to write about and to perform." As the current federal government openly suppresses and attempts to disappear certain types of representation, Baldwin's words hold as true as ever, and work like that ...

Señor Babyhead Written and performed by Analisa Raya-Flores Presented by FRIGID New York at UNDER St. Marks 94 St Marks Pl, Manhattan. NYC October 24 and November 1, 2025 The history of immigration in the United States boasts no shortage of governmental racism and inhumanity, with our current moment, however extraordinary in certain aspects, part of a recurring pattern. The solo show Señor Babyhead , written and performed by Analisa Raya-Flores, who is also responsible for its make-up, costumes, and props, including a full-head papier-mâché mask for one memorable sequence, approaches this dark topic with a clowning sensibility, a sharply honed sense of absurdity, and a refusal to cede to the audience the comfortable distance of passivity. With its recent performances part of FRIGID New York's fourth annual Days of the Dead Festival, a celebration of life and death inspired by the Día de Muertos, Señor Babyhead expertly embeds trenchant critiques in hilarious set pieces that showc...

Packed Written and directed by Elise Wilkes Don't Push the Red Button Written and co-directed by Zachary Mailhot Directed by Chris Cavazza Presented by RJ Theatre Co. in partnership with The Actor Launchpad at AMT Theater 354 W 45th St., Manhattan, NYC August 30-October 19, 2025 Two women in an apartment. Two men in a bunker. Two short plays that peer through a lens of unusual circumstances at relationships, loneliness, and the search for connection, even if it means becoming friends with a potato. Presented as a double bill titled Close Encounters , Packed and Don't Push the Red Button are both part of the 2025 Circle Theatre Festival , which aims to highlight experimentation and urgent storytelling over Broadway-style gloss and is dedicated this year to playwright Edward Allan Barker (1950-2021). Opening the double bill is writer and director Elise Wilkes's Packed , in which two women, Gail (Katie Gilhooley) and Dina ( Wynn McClenahan ), meet for the first time as they...

Breaking the Trust Written by Bill Rogers Directed by Gerald vanHeerden Presented by Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival, Crystal Field, Executive Director, at  Theater for the New City 155 First Avenue, Manhattan, NYC September 2-7, 2025 Jane Seaman, Wynne Anders, Shauna Bloom It’s a truism that death can bring out the worst in people, but it is no less true that death can bring out the worst about people as well. While Breaking the Trust , a play by Bill Rogers having its NYC premiere as part of the Dream Up Festival 2025 at Theater for the New City, initially seems to be an illustration of the former, by the end of this very funny play, the family has moved beyond their anger over inheritance to anger over and then reconciliation with their pasts. Siblings Norah (Wynne Anders), the eldest; Martha (Jane Seaman), the wealthiest; and Lorna (Shauna Bloom), the youngest; and their sister Donna (Deborah Unger), who stayed nearer to their childhood home than her sisters, are t...

Archive of My Own Written by Annabel McConnachie Directed by Zoé Zifer Presented at the Hudson Guild Theatre 441 W 26th St., Manhattan, NYC July 24-27, 2025 L to R: Isabel Vann, Isabel Criado, Nicole Lado, and  Annabel McConnachie. Photo courtesy of  Eloise Martin-Jones Philosopher and cultural critic Michel Foucault posited that the "archive" is a distinctly modern concept, a claim that aligns well, if perhaps unexpectedly, with Annabel McConnachie's fan-fiction-focused play Archive of My Own . Archive of My Own 's title alludes to the online fan-fiction repository Archive of Our Own ( AO3 for short), and while fan-fiction (fan-written narratives that center on characters and worlds from commercial works in any variety of media) certainly existed before the internet did, digital connectivity has supercharged what might otherwise have remained a niche practice. This amplification correspondingly magnifies fan-fiction's effects, which occupy a spectrum from posi...

Anti-Gone Created by Sivan Raz Presented by Needs More Work Productions at FRIGID New York 's 5th Annual Little Shakespeare Festival at UNDER St Marks 94 St Marks Pl, Manhattan, NYC August 14-17, 2025 L to R: Elizabeth Fox, Emily Phelps, and Penelope Rose Deen, and Photo by Noah Simon Jampol Anti-Gone , created by Needs More Work Productions, is something like a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone , one of the most enduring tragedies of the Greek stage. Rather than retell the story in straightforward fashion, the company makes the audience a collaborator, placing us inside the questions of justice, memory, and communal responsibility that have haunted this text for centuries. Staged in the intimate confines of UNDER St. Marks as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival, the production opens with a bag at center stage, the body of Polynices within; players come and go; there is a bit of very fine crowd work, and the sound of a cello plucking and bowing. From the first moment, we are ...

Retrospective Written by T.J. Elliott Directed by Gifford Elliott Presented by Knowledge Workings Theater at AMT Theater 354 W 45th St., Manhattan, NYC August 13-16, 2025 Clint consoling Rory.  L to R: Jeremiah Alexander, Mark Thomas McKenna, Adara Totino, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner. Photo by Marjorie Phillips Elliott Thinking about the afterlife of art is not so unusual, but Retrospective , written and directed by father and son team T.J. Elliott and Gifford Elliott, respectively, instead focuses on the afterlife of the artist. For the play's Rory McGrory ( Mark Thomas McKenna ), the titular retrospective involves taking a new look at his relationship not only to his work as a painter but also to significant others (in both senses of the term) from his past and to his sense of self–and ultimately, to reconsider what really matters. Retrospective is making its New York debut along with four new musicals and seven other original plays as part of Broadway Bound Theatre Festival's...