Jonathan Slaff News

Renaissance Now Theatre & Film, a producer of new works, films and innovative interpretations of classics, will present the world premiere of A Final Toast in May. Learn how to purchase tickets.

Deb Margolin's play this is not a time of peace is set to run off-Broadway at Theatre Row beginning next month. Performances will run February 20 - March 16, 2024.

Theater for the New City's Love 'N Courage Gala on Feb. 12 will support its Emerging Playwrights program. The event will honor playwright Penny Arcade and feature performances at The Players.

'SPIES FOR THE POPE' is a picaresque spy story set during the Thirty Years War. Theater for the New City presents this intriguing play by Douglas Lackey, directed by Alexander Harrington. Catch the show from Nov 9-26, 2023, at Theater for the New City.

The Drilling Company will present a two-week run of 'The Comedy of Errors,' directed by Hamilton Clancy, for the 28th season of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot.

Theater for the New City's Emerging Playwrights Program will be beneficiary of the theater's 20th annual Love 'n Courage benefit Monday, February 13, 2022 at The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South. 

An audience participation panel discussion show that tours one-nighters around the country debates how to get dating right.

Theater for the New City's Emerging Playwrights Program will be beneficiary of the theater's 19th annual Love 'n Courage benefit Monday, February 14, 2022 at The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South.  The evening honors Austin Pendleton, Drama Desk and Obie winner, Tony Award nominated actor, playwright, theater director and teacher.

Theater for the New City's Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, which had to be presented virtually last year, returns May 28-30, 2021 as an indoor and outdoor live audience event with an emphasis on safety.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that post-truth politics would seep into 21st century absurdist theater. One sunny example is 'Occasionally Nothing' by Natalie Menna, which takes us to an upsetting time-to-come when something can become a profound, obvious nothing. Life becomes the time in between the sometimes which sometimes happen.

On Saturday, January 16 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM, Theater for the New City (TNC), 155 First Ave., will present the tenth installment of 'Open 'Tho Shut,' its afternoon of 'walk-by theater' that is staged in its set shop and visible from East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues.

On Saturday, January 9 from 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM, Theater for the New City (TNC), 155 First Ave., will present the ninth installment of 'Open 'Tho Shut,' its afternoon of 'walk-by theater' that is staged in its set shop and visible from East Tenth Street between First and Second Avenues.

For the 25th year, a handful of stars and over 100 performing arts organizations, independent artists, poets, puppeteers and film makers will join forces May 22 to 24 in the Lower East Side Festival of the Arts, available virtually on the website (www.theaterforthenewcity.net) of its presenting organization, Theater for the New City (TNC).

With his wide grin, open arms and humble humor, actor-activist-comedian Donald E. Lacy, Jr. takes the stage and builds a rapport with the audience almost immediately. At its core, Color Struck is an 80-minute genre-transcending show that effectively blends comedy, drama, improvisation, dancing, tone poems, hip-hop and commentary. Although relatability is Lacy's jam (we see him, hear him, laugh with him, and trust him), don't let his vim and visage fool you. Just as we get comfortable with his unique brand of dramedy, he shifts from 'what it's like to be Black but pass for white' into fresh-and-fierce takes on colorism and institutional racism.

Join renowned singer/percussionist/scholar Alessandra Belloni and I Giullari di Piazza as they open a portal into the sacred sites of the mysterious Black Madonna in Italy and around the world, December 28 & 29 at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue. Entitled 'God is a Woman and She is Black,' the concert is based on Belloni's recently published, best-selling book Healing Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Great Goddess, with a forward by bestselling author Matthew Fox, published by Inner Traditions.

As creatively ambitious as it is confounding, THE WHITES illuminates a race-inverted space where Black is white, the Whites are 'black' and...vice versa? Visually, narratively and dramatically, this play is far from subtle; familial archetypes and societal stereotypes collide, challenging us to recognize the Other while coming to grips with our self-awareness of implicit bias, privilege, and social injustice.

For the delight of audiences aged 5 to 105, Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., will present Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre (CAMT) in 'A Christmas Carol, Oy! Hanukkah, Merry Kwanzaa' from December 19 to January 5.  The show is an adaptation of Dickens' classic with Old World accents and New World inclusiveness. Adapted, directed and reinvented by Vit Horejs, it features over 30 puppets by Milos Kasal including a quartet of Rockettes in Slovak, Moravian and Ruthenian folk costumes and holiday songs in Czech, English, Hebrew, Slovak, Spanish and Swahili.

James Baldwin wrote in 1962, 'The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it. In the beginninga?'and neither can this be overstateda?'a Negro just cannot believe that white people are treating him as they do; he does not know what he has done to merit it.

'Ludwig and Bertiea?? by Douglas Lackey examines the relationship of two leading twentieth century philosophers, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Bertrand Russell.  Theater for the New City (TNC) will present the play's world premiere run September 26 to October 13, directed by Alexander Harrington.

Sometimes a trip to the Emergency Room is so awful that it's just made for Theater of the Ridiculous.  That's the premise of 'Singin' in the E.R.,' the newest musical by Ruby Lynn Reyner, a star of John Vaccarro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous who has been called a female Jerry Lewis.