THE PLAYGROUND Adds Second NYC Performance at Theatre Row

The Playground, the acclaimed one-woman play written and directed by Jim Dalglish and performed by Anna Botsford, has sold out its New York debut at the United Solo Theatre Festival before opening night. In response to demand, the festival has added a second performance on Tuesday, November 10, 2026 at 8:30 PM at Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street.

Produced by Cape Cod's Helltown Players, The Playground arrives in New York after a sold-out world premiere at Cotuit Center for the Arts and a fall 2026 remount anchored by Cape Rep Theatre in Brewster. The production then played to a sold-out house at the Barnstable Comedy Club and returned to Helltown's home in Provincetown for performances at The Art House.

The Playground follows Joan, a former Berkeley ethnography professor and new mother who is uprooted to the Upper East Side when her mathematician husband takes a job at a hedge fund. Trained to observe, she finds herself studying a world of extraordinary wealth from the inside: the mothers, the nannies, and the children who share the benches of a neighborhood playground but live in very different New Yorks.

Woven through Joan's story is the fate of the undocumented people who make that world of privilege run, and the fear spreading through their lives as ICE enforcement intensifies. It is a play about ambition, class, conscience, and who gets to feel safe in America, set a few miles from the theater where it will be performed.

The play was born in New York. While working in the city, Dalglish spent his lunch hours walking through Central Park past the 72nd Street Playground, where he was struck by the clear hierarchy among the mothers, nannies, and children gathered there. Botsford brings her own connection: she once worked as a nanny for a wealthy New York family and took the children in her care to that same playground.

Anna Botsford is the play's only live performer. Around her, the people Joan encounters appear as a company of “voices,” brought to life through projections designed, filmed, and edited by Dalglish, with original music composed and performed by Eli Woods.

The United Solo Theatre Festival is the world's largest solo theatre festival, presenting one-person performances from around the world at Theatre Row in the heart of New York's theater district. The Playground was selected as an official presentation from openly solicited submissions.

Helltown is deeply proud to have been selected for this prestigious festival, and the fall Cape Cod performances offer local audiences a chance to experience The Playground before it takes the stage in New York.

PERFORMANCE DETAILS