Thinking Theater NYC

Ectoplasm Written and directed by Sara Fellini Presented by spit&vigor at spit&vigor tiny baby blackbox theatre 115 MacDougal Street - 3C. Manhattan, NYC September 24-October 31, 2026 L to R, facing forward: Jesse Metz, Sara Fellini, Fedrico Mosttert. Photo by Giancarlo Osaben. In his book Haunted Media (Duke UP, 2000), Jeffrey Sconce observes that "the Spiritualist movement provided one of the first and most important forums for women's voices to enter the public sphere," which of course rapidly made it "a target of attack by the male-dominated paradigm of 'scientific rationalism'" (p. 12). Spiritualism's intersections with reformist politics, including women's suffrage, doubtless did little to mitigate such attacks. Sconce also notes that Spiritualism, which took hold in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century and involved contacting the dead at séances led by mediums who were most often women, was from the first bound up wit...

Anonymous Written by Nick Thomas Directed by Sara Fellini Presented by spit&vigor at spit&vigor's tiny baby blackbox theatre 115 Macdougal St, Manhattan, NYC - Studio 3C January 29-February 28, 2026 Sara Fellini and Daliah Bernstein. Photo courtesy of spit&vigor. Despite the massive weight of evidence and ethics against treating addiction as a criminal rather than a public health matter, this approach continues to dominate in United States, one of the nation's seemingly innumerable metaphorical "wars"; and that approach, along with the stigmatization that it both feeds into and feeds upon, were arguably even more pronounced in the 1990s, when Nick Thomas's play Anonymous takes place. Unfolding over the course of a single addiction support group meeting in 1992, the engrossing Anonymous develops a striking snapshot of the paths that brought its characters to the group and the challenges they confront in maintaining sobriety. By seating the audience ...

Ectoplasm Written and directed by Sara Fellini Presented by spit&vigor theatre company at The Players Theatre 115 MacDougal St., Manhattan, NYC January 13-February 6, 2022 Sophia Radix, Adam Belvo, Caitlin Dullahan-Bates, Jillian Cicalese, Kelsey Bentz, Raina Silver, Florence Scagliarini. photo by Federico Mostert Ectoplasm , a new play from Sara Fellini, who also directs, begins with one woman alone on stage and ends with another. The first is Kaye Schultz (Caitlin Dullahan-Bates), who enters to the plaintive music of indie band Lord Huron and a somewhat cheeky admonition to reflect on universal mortality; and the second is her partner in an early twentieth-century Spiritualist business, medium Sara Marshall (Jillian Cicalese). Over the course of one entertainingly eventful soirée featuring the pair, the revelations come not only from the spirit world. Caitlin Dullahan-Bates, Florence Scagliarini, Jillian Cicalese. Photo by Adam Belvo The gathering occurs at the home of Madame Fr...