United Solo Theatre Fall Festival Opens This Month

Currently in its fifteenth season, United Solo Theatre’s fall festival opens on September 25 and runs through November 19, 2023. The world’s largest solo theater festival offers an experience like no other: performers bring their plays to Theatre Row on 42nd Street in New York City, and audiences can see more than 60 shows in an intimate black box theater and meet the artists afterward.

The fall season celebrates persistence in many forms, a fitting theme after the pandemic, and looks at how art can help us understand where we came from, how we got here, and what we might dream of doing next. This season’s works include portraits of famous and historic figures, as well as stories about mothers, fathers, and other people you would otherwise never know but whose stories have a universal impact.

One of the most fascinating parts of the United Solo Festival is seeing whose stories artists choose to tell. “Solo theatre offers a place for those who are often unheard to raise their voices to the world. Stories created and told by performers of color, immigrants, and International Artists about personal, political, and cultural identity” – says Festival Founder Omar Sangare.

“1953 Race For The Summit” is a show by Nepalese actor and writer Om Raj Raut about Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, who with Sir Edmund Hillary was one of the first two mountaineers to successfully conquer Everest – on his seventh attempt.

“After I'm Dead, You'll Have to Feed Everyone,” by Vivien Straus, is the true story of Ellen Straus, a refugee from Nazi Europe who married a California dairy farmer and later emerged as an environmental pioneer and matriarch of the organic food movement.

In “Anna,” written by Nick Freedson and performed by Laura Walker, Walker plays a mother struggling with epilepsy and unresolved trauma. “Anna” seeks to answer the questions, "How can we move on? And how should we?"

"GUAC - The One-Man Show” by Manuel Oliver is a social justice theatre piece that tells the true story of Manuel Oliver in the year following the murder of his son Joaquin in the Parkland shooting. Joaquin, affectionately nicknamed Guac, was one of seventeen people murdered on February 14, 2018, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

In “Einstein's Violin: A Play in Three Movements,” Tom Schuch uses Einstein’s words and favorite classical music to reveal music’s influence on his life and work.

The festival will end on November 19, 2023 at 7:00 PM with its traditional Closing Night Gala featuring awards for outstanding productions, The United Solo Special Award, which honors a trailblazing solo artist from outside the festival, and a performance created by Artistic Director Omar Sangare and Festival Assistant Artistic Director Wendy-Lane Bailey and performed by Bailey.

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