COOKIE JACKSON Brings a Darkly Comic Cabaret to The Tank in April in 'Cookie'!
Performances run April 23–25, 2026.
This April, a crumbling cabaret will become the site of confrontation, confession, and transformation in Cookie, an indie theater work running April 23 to 25 at The Tank. Combining dark comedy, psychological surrealism, and ensemble-based performance, Cookie welcomes audiences into an intimate theatrical world where the act of watching becomes part of the story itself.
Originally debuting at the SoHo Playhouse in 2025, this new production expands the piece's visual and emotional scope through refined storytelling, heightened design elements, and a newly assembled creative team.
Set inside a crumbling cabaret, Cookie follows Cookie Jackson, a performer haunted by a sentient puppet emerging from their own psyche. As this imagined figure pushes Cookie to confront a violent past they believed they had escaped, the cabaret becomes a site of fractured identity, complicity, and uneasy revelation. Blending vaudevillian theatricality with contemporary experimental performance language, the work interrogates what it means to be seen, to perform, and to inherit the narratives that shape us.
Director Anna Keeley describes the production as "a love letter... to coping with intergenerational trauma and to performance," situating the piece at the intersection of queer histories and theatrical tradition. Through fourth-wall-breaking cabaret structures, backstage soliloquies, and layered performance modes, Cookie creates a theatrical realm that is both playful and unsettling, humorous and emotionally resonant.
Developed collaboratively by a team of emerging queer artists, Cookie reflects a downtown, artist-driven NYC theater scene. Drawing from cultural anthropology, performance studies, and camp theatricality, the production examines how humor, spectacle, and embodiment frame our understanding of our identity and belonging.
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