DON'T PUSH THE RED BUTTON To Premiere At Circle Theater Festival
Award-winning team returns with absurd dark comedy set at the end of the world.
Chris Cavazza and Shaun Memmel reunite with playwright Zachary Mailhot for Don't Push the Red Button, an absurd dark comedy premiering August 30 at the Circle Theater Festival. The production follows two men trapped in a bunker, wrestling with fear, friendship, and the apocalypse.
Following their sweep at last year’s Circle Theater Festival, Chris Cavazza and Shaun Memmel return with a bold new project—and this time, they’re bringing the end of the world with them.
The duo first teamed up in PVT. Wars, a production that claimed all four of the festival's major honors: Best Actor, Best Director, Best Ensemble, and Best Production. Now, they reunite with playwright Zachary Mailhot—who also performed in PVT. Wars—for Don't Push the Red Button, a surreal and sharply comic descent into survival, suspicion, and human connection on the brink.
Mailhot’s new play traps two men in an underground bunker, starving and on edge, with one critical choice left: to press the distress beacon and confront whatever might remain aboveground. What follows is a claustrophobic and darkly hilarious exploration of friendship, fear, and the existential absurdity of waiting for the world to end.
Presented as part of Close Encounters at the 2025 Circle Theater Festival, Don't Push the Red Button will run from August 30 through October 19 at AMT Theater, located at 354 W 45th Street in New York City. Tickets range from $20 to $53 and are available now.
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