Thinking Theater NYC

Billie Andersson, Juan Pablo Toro, Evan Olson, Scarlett Strasberg. Photo by Amy Goossens. Lower Manhattan’s Shakespeare Downtown  is celebrating its 10th season of free performances with Geoffrey Horne’s translation of Uncle Vanya - Anton Chekhov’s timeless tragicomedy of longing, frustration, and fading dreams, performed within the open-air stone walls of Castle Clinton National Monument June 11–21, 2026. Free tickets are available at the door beginning at 5:45 p.m. on the day of each performance.   In Uncle Vanya , love, regret, and the quiet ache of unrealized lives simmers beneath the surface of a crumbling 1800s Russian country estate. As a family and their restless visitors collide over long-held frustrations and unexpected passions, this timeless masterwork unfolds with dark humor and piercing heartbreak. Uncle Vanya is directed and translated by Geoffrey Horne, who studied acting and directing with Lee Strasberg, became a member of the Actors Studio, and is influenced ...

Julius Caesar Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jonathan Hopkins Assistant Director: Sundiata Fotso-Chinjé Presented by Smith Street Stage at Carroll Park President St., Brooklyn, NYC May 16-June 7, 2026 Photography by Sam Sulam Summer means Shakespeare in NYC, and of all of the productions to choose from, Smith Street Stage’s annual offerings in Carroll Park, Brooklyn are always a must-see. Even on an unseasonably cool and damp night, this year’s offering, Julius Caesar , has the power to captivate not only those who came to see it intentionally but also dog walkers and other passersby. If Shakespeare’s time seems remote from our own, the Romans who feature in this play were four times as removed from Elizabethan England as Elizabethan England from today. And yet, as Shakespeare made Julius Caesar speak to its contemporaries, so does Smith Street Stage for us today. Featuring both Smith Street Stage veterans and newcomers, the cast is extraordinarily versatile. Save fo...

Tiger Tail Written by Tennessee Williams Directed by Geoffrey Horne Presented by Shakespeare Downtown at Castle Clinton Battery Park, Manhattan, NYC June 12-22, 2025 Billie Andersson. Photo by Amy Goossens. One might associate Tennessee Williams, whose work is full of characters who are trapped–often in inadequate domestic spaces, relationships, or both–with claustrophobic enclosure rather than the openness, even expansiveness, of outdoor theater. However, in bringing Williams's rarely performed Tiger Tail to Battery Park's Castle Clinton, Shakespeare Downtown demonstrates that the work loses none of its sweaty intensity in the move to the open air. The forerunners of Tiger Tail are a pair of Williams one-acts, 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946) and The Long Stay Cut Short (1946), which provided the basis for the Williams-penned and Elia Kazan-directed film Baby Doll (1956), which itself Williams later adapted into Tiger Tail , published in 1978. This textual history introduce...

Henry V  Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Jonathan Hopkins Presented by Smith Street Stage  at Carroll Park Court Street and Smith Street, between Carroll Street and President Street, Brooklyn, NYC Juhe 5-29, 2025 Smith Street Stage’s summer productions in Carroll Park are a beloved neighborhood tradition, and this year’s offering, Henry V , is a stunning way to celebrate their fifteenth anniversary season. While the production’s standout performances, led by McLean Peterson’s brilliant King Henry, are alone noteworthy, the staging, including fight choreography and original music, all contribute to this timely and timeless exploration of leadership and nation. The production features a truly rich range of performances from its entire cast. Oliver Palmer stands out as both the Archbishop of Canterbury and Fluellen, making the former’s long-winded justification of Henry’s claim to the French throne humorous rather than mind-numbingly boring and embodying the latter ...

Shakespeare Sports Theatre Company will open its Shakespeare Summer Tour with a new production of the Comedy of Errors  directed by Michael Hagin and with Adam Sherwin as stage manager.  Shakespeare's hilariously haywire Comedy of Errors is a frolicsome farce so fantastically foolish that it's practically a recipe for roaring laughter. Imagine, if you will, a bustling ancient Ephesus, where not one but TWO sets of identical twins are about to stumble headlong into a hilarious hullabaloo! We're talking Antipholus of Syracuse and his ever-so-loyal (and equally confused) servant, Dromio of Syracuse, who unwittingly wander into the very city inhabited by their spitting images, Antipholus of Ephesus and his own bewildered Dromio! This production of The Comedy of Errors , a play where mistaken identities run riot, features the following cast: Vic Gitre, Charlie Keegan James, Emily Glaser, Jennifer Kim, Melissa Meli, Erica Gerold, Katie Freimann, Lila Ashley Meyers, Kasey C...

Photo courtesy of Barefoot Shakespeare Company Popularly referred to as “Shakespeare for Sports Fans,” the UNREHEARSED! series is a great opportunity for actors to go toe-to-toe with the Bard while simultaneously stretching their improv muscles. Cast members are given just 30 days to learn their lines and get off book. At NO TIME are they permitted to rehearse with each other or coordinate performances. Audiences will be delighted to see referees standing by, ready to call “foul” and flag actors for missed cues, flubbed lines, and ad-libbing. Audience members can also get in on the action by placing bets on who they think will make the most mistakes! A two-hour extravaganza of live-theatre magic mixed with the hilarious hijinks of hoping actors will mess up! UNREHEARSED! The Comedy of Errors and UNREHEARSED! A Midsummer Night’s Dream will take place at Summit Rock in Central Park on Saturday, May 31 and Saturday, June 7, respectively, at 5:30pm. Admission is free. Photo courtesy of...

UNREHEARSED: R&J! , will be presented by Barefoot Shakespeare Company and Needs More Work Productions, at Summit Rock in Central Park. Popularly referred to as “Shakespeare for Sports Fans,” the UNREHEARSED! series is a great opportunity for actors to go toe-to-toe with the bard, while simultaneously stretching their improv muscles. Cast members are given just 30 days to learn their lines and get off book. At NO TIME are they permitted to rehearse with each other or coordinate performances. Audiences will be delighted to see referees standing by, ready to call “foul” and flag actors for missed cues, flubbed lines, and ad-libbing. Audience members can also get in on the action by placing bets on who they think will make the most mistakes, and for the first time ever, tip their favorite cast members to encourage them on towards the finish line! A two-hour extravaganza of live-theatre magic mixed with the hilarious hijinks of hoping ac...

Twelfth Night Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Hamilton Clancy Presented by The Drilling Company Theatre  at the Parking Lot adjoining 145 Stanton Street, between Norfolk and Suffolk on Rivington St., Manhattan, NYC July 25-August 3, 2024 Guido Gatmaytan as Sebastian, Ivory Aquino as Olivia. Photo by Jonathan Slaff. If Twelfth Night explores the fluid relationship between gender and desire—and indeed the fluidity of gender and desire themselves—then Drilling Company Theatre’s latest production in their free Shakespeare in the Parking Lot series showcases just how appealing this play is for a contemporary audience. The production shines most brilliantly in moments of heightened comedy, but nonetheless also succeeds in delivering a poignant ending in the reunion of siblings Viola (Mary Linehan) and Sebastian (Guido Gatmaytan). While Sir Toby Belch (Hamilton Clancy) often cheekily reminds the audience of their very specific location in place and time by peppering the p...

A Midsummer Night’s Dream , by William Shakespeare and directed by Patrick O’Connell will be presented by the Clementine Players in the Tuscan Garden at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens in Staten Island with performance dates on August 15th-17th at 7pm and 18th at 2pm. Tickets are $25 and concessions will be available at the venue. The performance will run approximately 2 hours with a short intermission. Clementine Players is a collective of creatives making bold, inclusive work that aims to remind us of what unites us. Driven by empathy, the Clementine Players tell unknown stories and shed light on well-known stories in exciting new ways with the hope of finding a space where comedy meets drama, classic meets contemporary, and humans meet humans. In summer 2023, they produced Macbeth set in the cutthroat world of billionaire politics. That extremely successful production was directed by Vicky Leigh Gitre and starred Justin Gordon and Georgia Gabrielle in the title ...

Love Labor’s Lost Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Raquel Chavez Assistant Directed by Mahayla Laurence Presented by Smith Street Stage at Carroll Park  Court Street and Smith Street, Brooklyn, NYC June 5-23, 2024 Photo courtesy of The PR Social Deftly highlighting for a modern audience Shakespeare’s satire of lovers and especially bad love poetry, Smith Street Stage’s free production of  Love’s Labor’s Lost presents a contemporary adaptation of Shakespeare’s early comedy in the vein of a Love Island / Bachelor -inspired, campy reality show. Reconfiguring the Princess of France’s attendant Boyet as the orchestrator of both the ladies’ games and the men’s wooing attempts and the attendant Moth as a stage manager who assists Boyet, the production eliminates the original play’s side plots in order to focus solely on the lovers. The reality-show concept ultimately heightens not only the comedy in the play but also, through contrast, the somber turn at the play’s end wh...

As You Like It Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Katie Willmorth; assistant directed by Toni Kwadzogah Presented by Smith Street Stage at Carroll Park 245 Carroll St., Brooklyn, NYC June 7-25, 2023 L to R: Theo McKenna, Jonathan Minton, Mary Cavett, Jeffrey Brabant, Ben Horner, & Zoe Dongas. Courtesy of The PR Social If you've been looking to mix a little Elizabethan drama with your Pride month festivities, then Brooklyn's Smith Street Stage has you covered. In its twelfth year of free summer performances in Carroll Park, Smith Street brings audiences William Shakespeare's As You Like It (?1599) — with a few tweaks. These tweaks play satisfyingly with the play's dynamics around gender and sexuality (seventeenth century performances, it seems obligatory to note, would have had an undercurrent of queerness, with a female protagonist who would have been played by a boy and is just as attractive to women when presenting as a male youth as she is to men when p...

It’s William Shakespeare’s birthday next month, and Brooklyn’s Irondale Ensemble Project is planning a free birthday celebration fit for a (literary) king! An open mic sonnet marathon will take place on Saturday, April 1st at Cuyler Gore Park, one of the city’s oldest parks, inviting passersby to stop and read one of his 154 sonnets live from 2pm-5pm. Joined by members of the Irondale Ensemble, now celebrating forty years of artistically ambitious, cutting-edge theater, and members of the Irondale Young Company, this free event will continue through the evening, inviting the community into the ensemble’s Fort Greene theater for Shakespeare trivia, games, and improv from 6:00-9:00pm. The company held its first Shakespeare Sonnet Marathon over zoom on April 23, 2020. The 8-hour event welcomed over 100 participants from ages 9 to 90, including Academy Award nominee Ralph Fiennes; Grammy nominee Rufus Wainwright; comedian, actress and jazz singer Lea DeLaria; Tony winner Cady Huffman; Ton...

Saint Joan Written by George Bernard Shaw Directed by Geoffrey Horne Presented by Shakespeare Downtown at Castle Clinton 26 Wall St., Manhattan, NYC June 16-26, 2022 Billie Andersson as Joan. Photo by Amy Goossens George Bernard Shaw's 1923 drama Saint Joan , chronicling the exploits of the fifteenth-century Jeanne d'Arc during the Hundred Years' War, premiered (in New York City, as it happens) a few years after the eponymous Joan's canonization by the Catholic Church. Just shy of the play's 100th anniversary, NYC's Shakespeare Downtown theater company brings a revival to Battery Park's Castle Clinton. The production is presented free to the public, and tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at 5:45 pm on the day of each performance, which begins at 6:30 pm.   Saint Joan begins in 1429 with an argument between Captain Robert de Baudricourt (George Eve) and his steward (Davide di Cagno-Hagen) over a lack of eggs. The latter blames a curse...

  Photo courtesy Spin Cycle PR A handful of intrepid solo performers are presenting live, outdoor pop-up performances of their acclaimed solo shows this fall. These intimate storytelling events are presented using the LiveTours app and performed for an audience of 14 or less. Ticket buyers must have a smartphone and headphones or earbuds. By downloading the app in advance, patrons will be able to clearly hear the performer while being able to maintain a safe social distance. The exact meetup location (as well as instructions and safety protocols) will be emailed to ticket buyers in advance of the performance. It is suggested that patrons bring their own pillow/blanket/portable chair for seating and wear comfortable shoes. Face masks must be worn at all times -- no eating or drinking during the course of the event. In case of rain, refunds will be issued. Tickets are $20 each, available at SpinCycleNYC.com . Currently scheduled performances include: BETTE DAVIS AIN’T FOR SISSIES Wri...