L’Alliance New York Announces By Heart in association with BAM 2025 Crossing The Line Festival at L'Alliance New York

L’Alliance New York is proud to announce the upcoming production of By Heart in association with BAM as part of the 2025 Crossing The Line Festival on Monday, November 3 and Tuesday, November 4, 2025 at 7:30 PM. The performance takes place at the Florence Gould Theater, L'Alliance New York, 55 East 59th Street, New York, NY, 10022. Tickets start at $15. For more information and to reserve tickets, click here.

Returning to Crossing The Line after his directorial work on last year’s Catarina and the Beauty of Killing Fascists, Tiago Rodrigues presents another internationally acclaimed performance—only this time, he’s directing his audience. Ten audience members come together onstage for an act of collective memorization, learning a Shakespearean sonnet by heart. The results are, according to a New York Times Critic’s Pick review, “miraculous … [a] communal act of translation,” performed while Rodrigues offers direction and commentary on the transformative personal and political dimensions of memorization.

Tiago Rodrigues is a Portuguese actor, director, playwright and producer. He is the current Director of Festival d’Avignon, in France. Since he started as an actor 25 years ago, Tiago Rodrigues has always looked at the theatre as a human assembly: a place where people meet, like in a café, to confront their thoughts and share their time. Rodrigues’ work has been recognized for his ability to break borders between the theatre and different realities, challenging our perception of social and historical phenomena. Throughout his career, Rodrigues has become a builder of bridges between cities and countries, at once host and advocate of a living theatre.

Billing credits:

Written, directed and performed by Tiago Rodrigues

English translation: Tiago Rodrigues, revised by Joana Frazão

Extracts and quotations from: William Shakespeare, Ray Bradbury, George Steiner and Joseph Brodsky

Scenography, costumes and props: Magda Bizarro

Production credits:

Executive production: Festival d’Avignon

Based on an original creation by the company Mundo Perfeito

Co-production: O Espaço do Tempo, Maria Matos Teatro Municipal

With the support of: Camões Centre culturel portugais à Paris for the 77theditionof theFestivald’Avignon

Support for creation: Governo de Portugal – DGArtes

Executive production of the original creation: Magda Bizarro, Rita Mendes

Support for Crossing The Line Festival

Howard Gilman Foundation, Air France, and The Wescustogo Foundation. L'Alliance New York's programs are made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the Support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Additional Support for By Heart

Supported by Theater & New Forms, a program of Villa Albertine and the Albertine Foundation

About BAM

For more than 160 years, BAM has been a thriving, urban multi-arts complex renowned for presenting an unparalleled roster of visionary and cutting-edge dance, theater, music, opera, visual arts, literature, and film engagements. Attracting more than 750,000 people annually to its home in Brooklyn, BAM provides a welcoming cultural stage and meeting place for global and local communities of all backgrounds. BAM’s distinctive multi-theater campus is alive year-round with inspired new engagements and signature programs alike including the renowned Next Wave (one of the world’s most influential festivals of contemporary performing arts, founded in 1983), the iconic DanceAfrica, an acclaimed repertory film program, and literary, archival, educational and humanities programs. For more information visit BAM.org.