New York Theatre Workshop Will Distribute 1500 Free Tickets To IN THE BRICKS Festival
The East 4th Street Cultural District giveaway is part of NYTW's May Day arts crawl
New York Theatre Workshop has announced that in celebration of arts workers and tomorrow's May Day Labor Crawl, NYTW will distribute 1500 free tickets to the IN THE BRICKS Festival via an onsite giveaway on Friday May 1 from 12:30–2pm during the “Walk the Block” event East 4th Street.
The citywide May Day arts crawl spotlights NYTW's rich, diverse block and champions artists as essential workers. While festivities will be taking place across the city, NYTW invites New Yorkers to join them on their block (between Bowery & 2nd Avenue) to activate the East 4th Street Cultural District from 12:30–2PM. Rain or shine, come experience performances, open studios, artist activations, food, and community artmaking. More information about “Walk the Block” can be found at nytw.org/show/creative-labor-creative-conditions.
Free tickets to the IN THE BRICKS Festival will be first-come, first-served for all performances from Tuesday May 5–Thursday May 14, 2026 and are valid for any of the four staged productions onsite at NYTW—The Peculiar Patriot; The Unexpected 3rd: A Radical, Rollicking Rumination on the Optimism of Staying Alive;Mention My Beauty; Sardines (a comedy about death)—and the exclusive screenings of The Horse of Jenin at Cinema Village. In addition to the onsite giveaway at NYTW on Friday May 1, tickets will also be distributed through NYTW's partner organizations.
On Friday May 1, the International Day of the Worker, the Doris Duke Foundation in partnership with New York Theatre Workshop, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC), Lincoln Center Theater, The Apollo and The Moth, will host a multi-site Labor Crawl to uplift the essential role of artistic labor and the conditions needed for artists to thrive. The event launches the second year of Creative Labor, Creative Conditions, a national coalition and campaign championing artists as creative laborers and the need to provide them with proper resources, compensation and support to live and work.
"We're thrilled to launch our new IN THE BRICKS Festival with a major ticket giveaway!” said NYTW Artistic Director Patricia McGregor. “We believe deeply in the value of radical access to the art we produce. Beginning at our MAY DAY celebration, alongside Commissioners Diya Vij and Raphael Espinal, we'll be giving away more than 1,500 tickets across all five shows in the festival. Each show contains a hilarious and vivid probing of what it is to be alive today. By removing cost as a barrier of entry, we hope to welcome new audiences in to enjoy the rich offerings of these singular artists."
The first ever IN THE BRICKS Festival—a curated festival of intimate work that explores the elemental connection between performer, audience and our times, presented in the bricks of New York Theatre Workshop—will run May 5 through June 14, 2026, with a Festival Celebration held on May 13.
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