Thinking Theater NYC

Photo by Ellie Gravitte. Following a celebrated, sold-out run at the Pier 40 Picnic House in 2025, Stairwell Theater’s The Comedy of Errors returns to New York City by popular demand. Transferring this summer to the Battery Park Showbox Stage, Stairwell's production will run September 17-27, bringing its crowd-pleasing story of twins, mistaken identities, and miraculous reunions featuring a 4-part jazz band and an ensemble cast of 15 performers. Stairwell Theater has been awarded a 2026 Manhattan Arts Grant from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) in support of the remount. The grant will fund hundreds of FREE tickets for New York audiences. Directed by Sam Gibbs, Founding Artistic Director of Stairwell Theater, the production continues the company's decade-long commitment to creating immersive classical theater in surprising spaces. "One of the greatest joys of site-specific theater is letting the story feed the setting and the setting feed the story," says ...

La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club will present the world premiere of Allegra & the Cello, in Movements , a new opera with story and libretto by Catherine Filloux and music by Julia Schwartz, directed by Elena Araoz. A High Hard Heat/Dominick Balletta production, this new opera runs December 10-20, 2026, at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in New York City. Tickets are on sale at lamama.org. In a canon spanning more than four centuries, no opera has ever placed a woman doctor at its center until now. Allegra, the opera's protagonist, is believed to be the first female physician to serve as the lead character in the history of the art form, a milestone achieved not through an institutional commission but through an act of artistic will. Filloux, an established playwright and librettist whose career spans three decades of work centered on human rights, women's voices, and the capacity of art to bear witness, conceived and developed the opera entirely on her own initiative, o...

benevolent Written by Sophie McIntosh Directed by Nina Goodheart Presented by Good Apples Collective at IATI Theater 64 East 4th Street, Manhattan, NYC August 14-September 5, 2026 Chani Reese, Rachel Ravel, Livvy Marcus, and Mia Fowler. Photo by Nina Goodheart. Forcing unruly women into the custody of institutions such as jails, asylums, workhouses, and laundries has historically been a popular mechanism of (patriarchal, capitalist) social control, and it remains, albeit in more circumscribed form, an available lever of power today (e.g., the continued criminalization of sex workers). benevolent , a new play from Sophie McIntosh, takes audiences inside one such institution, at a time when there were substantially more avenues to confinement within its walls. Directed by Nina Goodheart, co-founder with McIntosh of Good Apples Collective, the perfectly paced and fittingly claustrophobic benevolent unfolds entirely in the basement of the "Inwood Benevolent Home," a fictional c...

We're happy to share that Thinking Theater NYC has been included on Feedspot's list of  50 Best New York Theatre Blogs to Follow in 2026 , a list which includes a mix of review, news, and artist blogs from and about New York theater, conveniently collated in one location.  Feedspot is an RSS Reader that lets you subscribe to blogs, news sites, and any website you want to keep up with. Its aim is to categorize global media outlets and content creators to make them easy to discover, follow, and contact, so there's plenty to discover in and beyond the theater world as well! 

Amoeba Productions , a new performing arts nonprofit in New York City, is excited to announce  The Tempest - this time RIDICULOUS! The Tempest will take place on Friday, August 28th at 6pm and Saturday, August 29th at 2pm & 6pm at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park’s Mainstage area, featuring an incredible lineup of artists. Amoeba’s The Tempest is a reimagining of Shakespeare's classic play — A magician says goodbye and has one last wacky, zany, shenanigan-filled adventure. BUT, before he goes out with a bang, he learns to forgive others and himself. Inspired by Charles Ludlam’s campy theatre of the ridiculous, this production seeks to fill-in the cultural gaps of the Shakespeare in the Park legacy. This non-union, outdoor developmental production is directed by Steven San Luis. The show's production staff includes: Steven San Luis as Director, Francie Brewster as Assistant Director, Morgan Haney as Dramaturg, Louisa Nickel as Costume Designer & Technical Director, A...

Matthew Sanders in This May Sting Everyone's favorite TV professionals, doctors and lawyers, step onto the live stage, or actually two of them, for This May Sting and Make Them All Pay , set to run simultaneously on the 3rd and 4th floor of The Chain Theatre in midtown beginning September 22nd. As if the doctors and lawyers are forced to share the same office building, audiences can take the elevator trip to see both plays on the same night, or come back at different times over the run. Tickets are available at www.thirdwing.info . This May Sting  (the doctors): Loud snoring is harming an Ohio woman's marriage (okay, so maybe it wasn't so great to begin with). But after she seeks care from her local otolaryngologist, her chronic nosebleeds begin. As they worsen and worsen, no one can figure out what went wrong. Sitting “in the doctor's office” with the characters on stage, can you decide who's to blame? Make Them All Pay  (the lawyers): A broke law firm finally get...

(l to r) David Dowlett, David Michael Kirby, N. Marie Teagno. Photo by Joe Pacifico. Heather Violanti’s Short Noir Play Dark Orchid will make its world premiere as part of Block 8 at the Gene Frankel Theatre Festival, taking place from August 2-15, 2026 In 1944 Hollywood, dead dreams are a dime a dozen. After a famous novelist tries to steal one of her ideas, failed screenwriter Myrtle finally finds the courage to make her dreams come true…on her own terms. The show is directed by Jennifer Sandella and features N. Marie Teagno, David Michael Kirby, David Dowlett, and Mona Bruno. Dark Orchid plays at the Gene Frankel Theatre Festival Block 8 in Manhattan (24 Bond St., New York, NY 10012) on August 2 at 5 pm, August 8 at 7:30 pm, and August 15 at 2:30 pm. Says Violanti, “This play was inspired by the sass and style of film noir, the stream-of-consciousness writing of William Faulkner, and the long-standing discrimination experienced by women within the entertainment industry. It’s a ce...