Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company on its 42nd annual tour with "SHAME or the Doomsday Machine," a rip-roaring musical.
FREE! FREE! FREE! performances will tour city streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs through September 16.
Coming Soon
Theater for the New City’s Dream Up Festival 2018
Tickets Now On Sale www.dreamupfestival.org
The age of sixteen is a delicate one—especially if you’re in trouble with the law. "Sixteen," a new drama by Hama Zaman examines the root causes of criminal activity at the age of sixteen, an age where you could be tried as an adult but are far from it. Incorporating spoken word, poetry and multimedia, the play cracks open each offender's story two ways: from inside the subject’s mind by direct address monologues, and from the outside analyses and judgments of psychiatric and law enforcement "professionals."
My Name Is Not Actually Maria is a multidisciplinary devised ensemble piece of theatre that uses Craigslist ‘missed connections’ ads in conjunction with verbatim storytelling as a structure to investigate missed opportunities and the feelings of longing and regret that often accompany them.
Love and science: in 1740 Paris during the Age of Enlightenment, could a woman have both? When the Marquise du Châtelet and Voltaire take opposing sides in a controversy over Newtonian physics, sparks fly and one of the greatest love affairs of the eighteenth-century takes flight. Ever defiant in the face of disparagement from a society not ready to accept her, the unapologetic scientist Emilie du Châtelet fought for her place as one of the world’s greatest scientists. "Moving Bodies" reclaims her story and tells how she fought for love and science and why as a woman she was never allowed to have both.
"Arizona Justice," written and performed by Katherine Brann Fredricks, is a Michael Moore/Spalding Gray-style documentary exposé of corruption in Arizona, involving Senator Barry Goldwater, land fraud, water rights, the mob, money laundering and murder between the 1960's and the early 2000's.
Possibly set in the present, "#thethirdperson," a new topical satire by Chris Price and directed by Kordell Draper, features a third person-talking, eccentric, orange, offensive, alien-like character who provokes corruption between two best friends. Traces of racism, xenophobia, sexism, and a slew of shenanigans (not dissimilar from the hysterics of our US government) go rampantly unaddressed. Even though these elements are coated in satire, their realness is all too palpable.
An exploration of the physical experience of writing an revising a work, "Sleep F$@cking: Revision delves into a troubled writer’s mind. Wine-addled and in a mire of insomnia, he begins to lose sight of what is real and what is the novel. The world of the play and novel overlap and become one, as John physically enters his book and the stage is overtaken by both realities, making both him and the audience question their interpretation of events.
At the peak of the true crime boom in a world oversaturated in podcasts, "Single Dead Female," a cheeky black comedy by Lana Schwartz reveals an unconventional way in which a true crime podcast host can find her edge. When her intern accidentally kills a hot, young woman, the two conclude they have no choice but to use her as their subject. Will their listeners discover the truth? Find out, right after this ad for Harry’s Razors.
"The Rounds" is an experimental dance-theatre performance about the US War on Drugs, its soldiers, and its battles. From the stories of drug addicts, to people being diagnosed with personality disorders, to that of a marriage falling apart and the extreme self-effacing lengths one husband wants to go to to save it, there is no subject too stigmatized to show the audience observing these rounds.
A woman enters a darkened carnival at night. Only one ride is operational, but the operator is at work and more than willing to let her ride. She tells him that she’s there to face her fears and that riding a carnival ride is one of the most creative ways she can think of to do so. He’s delighted to oblige. However, it begins to come to light that neither the carnival’s timeline nor the operator’s story makes sense. "Glitched" is a dark fantasy horror story in which a woman faces a phobia on a carnival ride but finds more to fear than she’d bargained for.
A seasoned assassin is hired by a mysterious woman to wipe out an obscure fringe playwright. Yet as she moves closer to the kill, she uncovers an inexplicable link between herself and the target. Part detective story, part meta-noir, and part Kafkaesque comedy, "Apes at Play" is a topsy-turvy quest that explores everything from the time continuum to criminal clowns.
August Strindberg Rep will perform Strindberg's "Creditors" in a new translation by Robert Greer. This masterpiece from Strindberg's naturalist period is rarely excelled in its unity of construction, dramatic tension and acute psychological analysis, but it is far less performed and anthologized than "The Father" or "Miss Julie." During an afternoon in a lounge at a seaside resort, a revenge is played out as a credulous artist has his mind poisoned against his wife by her former husband.
Do you believe in ghosts? In "The Ones Upstairs," a new comedy by Jillian Stevens, lost loved ones are not as far away as you might think—perhaps just up a flight of stairs. This heartwarming tale features the playful and wistful relationship between the living and the dead and teaches a difficult but important lesson about letting go.
Who can you turn to when trust is betrayed? In "You Don’t Know How It Feels" a new play by Kelley Blessing, middle-schooler Dena Williams’s relationship with her gym teacher takes a dark turn, resulting in a traumatic case of sexual abuse, emotional manipulation, and dangerously spiraling depression. In an attempt to further the dialogue that will help end the stigma surrounding this crucial issue, "You Don’t Know How It Feels" fits aptly into the MeToo narrative, telling just of the many thousands of young girls’ stories about sexual assault.
In "Hedda" a new adaptation by Kelly Lamanna, one performer and one stage manager, armed with puppets, dolls, gizmos, and gadgets will attempt to perform the lamentable tale of Hedda Gabler as first written by Henrik Ibsen. First performed in 1891, "Hedda Gabler" is about a woman who, having recently married an unimaginably bland man, is bored and resentful. When an old lover is re-introduced into her life, she spirals down a destructive path to leach from others what she cannot obtain herself: courage and passion. Despite her misguided attempts to seize some power, she is out-manipulated.
Have you ever wanted something from someone to your own detriment? Or struggled to keep your cool after being told the same thing over and over and over again? These are the questions Indian-born playwright Ajinkya Desai asks in his new drama, "A Case Study of People With Labels: Meeks and Minorities."
A 'tontine' is a bizarre investment scheme wherein a group of young men invests money in a fund, and the last man living takes it all. Morris, a 40-year old orphan who was robbed by his uncle of seven thousand eight hundred pounds when he was only a boy at school, is desperate to recoup his losses and thus right the wrongs that have been done to him, and since his uncle Joseph is one of the last two members of his family’s tontine, Morris is willing to go to any lengths to keep his uncle alive long enough for him to win. When they are both involved in a train wreck and he finds a dead body which he believes to be that of his uncle, Morris does whatever it takes to keep up the charade that Uncle Joseph is still alive long enough to win. This musical features tunes with a dash of the Victorian and a touch of Kander and Ebb.
Two lives steeped in sex, drugs, and grifting collide in "Pretty Babies," a new play written and directed by Antony Raymond when two long-lost siblings meet for the first time. Manipulation, abuse, and perversion cause the relationship and ones around it to quickly devolve into animalism, throwing the characters into a downward spiraling whirlwind that crashes in a fit of jealousy.
An aerial dance show personifies the stages of grief and the personal demons of mental instabilities and coping mechanisms with the aim of showing that we are not alone in our suffering. Through fluid movement using aerial silks and other circus arts, Circus Solaris brings its audience down an emotional road not often traversed by air.
Masseur by Christian Ávila examines the power dynamics between gender, race, and class when the MeToo movement uncovers wounds of a Latinx massage therapist in New York City.
In a dark, disorienting immersive movement theater piece, "Girl Inside the Mirror" by Peruvian-Italian director Nicoletta Mandriotti, psychological and physical forces bear down on a Latina girl who travels to a parallel world through a mirror. In this place, her past trauma and current mentality are reflected through the tormenting voices and shadows of her submergesubconscious, leading her nearer and nearer to her doom.
The Humans have damaged Earth beyond repair and fled with the animals to a new planet they named EarthAgain. But they forgot one creature – the ancient dragon Griswynd, left behind to ponder his lonely fate. Suddenly, a research android, sent by the Humans, enters Griswynd’s lair! And then another! Desperately lonely on Earth, Griswynd begins hatching a plan to hitch a ride with the androids and join humanity on its new home planet. His machinations show both the loneliness of old age and the indomitable power and inherent optimism of the spirit.
When talented 20-something Danica moves to New York City to pursue a career as a musician, she assumes things will get off without a hitch. However, on top of her best friend, Mary’s sudden turn towards all things mature, including such adult activities as grocery shopping, trips to the dentist, and entire afternoons spent not stoned out of her mind, Danica’s own overwhelming unemployment and lingering teenage bad habits take a toll. Soon, she begins finding mannequin body parts inexplicably hidden around her new apartment.
It was inevitable, perhaps, that our post-truth politics would inseminate 21st-century absurdist theater. On sunny example is "Occasionally Nothing" by Natalie Menna, which takes us to a dismal time-to-come when something can become a profound, obvious nothing. Life becomes the time in between the sometimes which sometimes happen. The piece won awards in Planet Connections Festivity for developmental stagings, with critics cheering the playwright for her mastery of Theater of the Absurd.
This Southern Gothic comic mystery by Monica Bauer is a story of two brothers divided by property, life choices and morality in the middle of the Iraq war. Billy goes to war while step-brother Franklin stays home and inherits Jerry’s Place, the family-owned bar. However, Billy doesn’t think the passing of the torch should have been so simple. On leave for their Mama Sue's funeral, Billy finds his meth-addicted wife dead at the bottom of the stairs, or so he says. Will Franklin back up his alibi? When the dead wife's Mama Jean comes for revenge, will justice be served at Jerry's Place?
"Wild Orchids" and "Rosary Hill" make up a double bill of two short plays. "Wild Orchids" is a film noir-esque, feminist, and fictionalized take on 1940’s Hollywood, where a secretary has a chance encounter with William Faulkner that may change both their lives. In "Rosary Hill," two gentle nuns tend to their garden in upstate New York, but a closer look reveals they may not be all that they seem. These two one-act plays are tied together by their thoughtful and nuanced depictions of canny female characters with much more going on under the surface than meets the eye.
Even after the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015, there is no shortage of hate surrounding the gay community. We are powerfully reminded of this in "Adam & Brian," a drama by Craig Donnelly that tells the story of a New York City gay couple who are viciously attacked after leaving the movies one night. As they cope with the physical and emotional damage in the aftermath of their assault, their relationship begins to unravel, revealing the devastating potential of a few hateful individuals on the lives of others.
As the “featured speaker” for an addiction/recovery group, Lucinda weaves her fractured fairytale of love and loss, addiction & internet stripping, and a traveling bow and arrow act. Along the way she shares lessons, she’s learned about wild wolf behavior that can be applied to the wolves in your life.