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Theater

History, Love, & Strife at the 2024 1st Irish Festival


Embodying the tradition of Irish theatrical performance, the Origin Theatre 1st Irish Festival returns March 23 to April 28, 2024. Held at performance spaces across NYC, the 1st Irish Festival features fifteen new plays, ten of which are in competition, with productions from NYC and Ireland.1st Irish embodies the pain, the passion, and the hope of Irish and Irish American history.

The festival opens with The Informer by Larry Kirwan, a reimagining of the Liam O’Flaherty classic - set on the last day of the Irish Civil War. Peace and Love in Brooklyn is a new musical by Eamon O'Tuama that charts the journey of a young musician who searches for his "colorful rock n' roll roadie" father. Last Call For Babe Reilly by Marianne Driscoll presents a kind barfly with a precarious situation; how to get through the Pearly Gates after being struck by a bus, and it’s going to take a young girl with a Ouija to get through. King, by Pat Kinevane produced by Fishamble, is about Luther, a troubled lonely man living in Cork. While he prepares for a big night out as an Elvis impersonator he reflects on his past and dares to dream of the future, as the ups and downs of his life mirrors Ireland’s own history. 

The NY Irish Center in Long Island City features the New York premiere of Bumbled, a new play by the Boston-based Bernard McMullan and Colin Hamell, and starring Colin Hamell, which tells the story of a loveable (and busy) bee named Pascal.

To learn more, go to: https://www.origintheatre.org/1st-irish-festival

1st Irish Festival
March 23 - April 28, 2024

Various Venues in NYC

The International Fringe Encore Series Brings Back the Best of Off-Broadway

 

Running at the Soho Playhouse (15 Vandam Street), The International Fringe Encore Series showcases extraordinary off-Broadway shows in NYC. Many of the previous productions featured in the series have gone on to extensive Off-Broadway runs and international success.

The slate of shows includes the new play Bacon, written by Sophie Swithinbank and directed by Matthew Iliffe. Bacon is an unflinching and unexpectedly humorous look at masculinity, sexuality and power, through the dizzying lens of youth. Following a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the multi-award-winning play comes to New York for 24 performances only.

It’s a Motherf**king Pleasure, from the disability led theater company FlawBored, is a look at assumptions and questions around disabilities. Usually disabled people just want to do the right thing. But what if they don’t?  What if they were out to make as much money as possible from the guilt of non-disabled, anxious people (like you)?

Jekyll & Hyde reinvents Stevenson's classic science-horror story, with award-winning performer Heather-Rose Andrews in the titular role. Class, terror, and hypocrisy in Victorian London, as the search for self collides with the lure of the sensuous, taking its toll on all around Jekyll & Hyde. A new vision of terror from award-winning writer/director JD Henshaw.

Esther’s Revenge, produced by Tope Sanni, is an experiential play inspired by true life events of Esther who was reported to have murdered her white lover in 1953. The sentence is death by hanging. This very participatory play as devised, explores themes around race, colonization, sexual abuse, violence against women, and political and social injustice. Esther takes us on a journey through time into the events leading up to the death of Mark. The Jury is given the responsibility to vote in favor or against a stay of execution.

This is just a sampling of the performances taking place during The International Fringe Encore Series

To learn more, go to: https://fringeencoreseries.com/ & https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/

The International Fringe Encore Series
January 4 - February 11, 2024

Soho Playhouse
15 Vandam Street
New York, NY 10013

International Puppet Fringe Festival Brings Halloween to August

 

A strange festival is coming to NYC with strings attached. The 3rd Annual International Puppet Fringe Festival runs from August 9 – 13, 2023, in the Lower East Side. A truly idiosyncratic festival, the IPFF is the only international festival dedicated to puppetry, and features performances by leading puppet makers and troupes from around the world. The theme for this year’s festival is "Halloween in August", honoring New York City’s most renowned puppet master and founder of the Village Halloween Parade, the late Ralph Lee

puppet posterA truly international festival, participating troupes include:

  • Teatro SEA (USA)
  • Yael Rasooly (Israel)
  • Puppet Beings Theater (Taiwan)
  • Maskhunt/Deborah Hunt (Puerto Rico/New Zealand)
  • Scapegoat Carnivale (Canada)
  • Lumiato Teatro de Formas Animades (Brazil)
  • Treasure Chest Theatre (Hong Kong/USA)
  • Fernán Cardama (Argentina)
  • Tholpavakoothu & Puppet Centre (India)
  • Junktown Duende (Puerto Rico/USA)
  • Boxcutter Collective (USA)
  • Wonderspark Puppets (USA)
  • Swedish Cottage Theatre Mobile (USA)
  • Nappy’s Puppets (Jim Napolitano) (USA)

There will also be presentations from Cuba, Colombia, Chile among others.

The festival kicks off on August 9th at the Clemente Soto Vélez Center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan (107 Suffolk Street, NYC) as puppeteers create their own mini version of the famous Halloween Parade. Also included are art exhibitions, films, cabaret nights, and Guerilla-style micro-theater performances in unorthodox venues.

The festival is organized by Teatro SEA, Grupo Morán (The Morán Group) and The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Education Center.

To learn more, go to: https://puppetfringenyc.com/

International Puppet Fringe Festival
August 9 - 13, 2023

Various Venues in the Lower East Side

 

EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER Is Performance Art With a Mission


Running for 22 years, vis one of the longest running festivals for femme, trans, female and non-binary performing arts. The 2023 festival,  2023 EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER, looks to take a stand against the legislative and cultural wave of hate towards women and trans people. The festival runs from March 18th to April 2, with performances being held at The Kraine Theater (85 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003), UNDER St. Marks (94 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10009), Arts On Site (12 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003) and the Decatur Street Community Garden in Bushwick (1052 Decatur St, Brooklyn, NY 11207). For those that can’t attend live, most of the performances will also be streamed.

“We do all of this through a gorgeous variety of dance, music, theatre and comedic artists crossing our stages, building community, performing their hearts and stories out to our fab audiences,” said Melissa Riker, Executive Producer of EstroGenius Festival. “We are so grateful to our producing partners at FRIGID New York, Arts on Site and 721 Decatur Community Garden, for co-creating Estro 2023! ”

EstroGenius exists to present the voices of dance-makers, playwrights, experimental performers, teens, musicians, burlesque performers, noise artists, filmmakers, dj’s and anyone else looking to break molds and crack gender codes to the stage, street and forefront of public attention.

Performances include:

  • PROPHECY FOR 22ND CENTURY INSTEAD OF MANIFESTOCreated & Performed by Petra Zanki
    Sat March 18 & 25 at 1pm @ 721 Decatur Community Garden, Brooklyn
    Find and play with something that is common to us all, that we do not know the meaning of quite well, a mystery, a ritual, a game, as simple and intricate as friendship, a cat’s cradle, an ancient game, that does not colonize, a vessel, a starting point, and a basis, thought the sense of ecofeminism, and use alternative theories (rather than white androtheories) that include BIPOC+ and LGBTQIA stand points towards adductive and alternative epistemologies that always include various contexts, towards the ecology of mind and denouement of double bind, to heal and enjoy. A dance piece for six humans, in a community garden, for the future.
  • A.K.A. Ka Inoa (excerpt) by Pele Bauch
    A.K.A. Ka Inoa weaves together supple movement, vivid characters, and personal story with 300 ft of rope. This dance-theater work mines Bauch’s experience as a multiracial New Yorker and Native Hawaiian who carries the weight of being named after Hawaii’s most significant and beloved deity, the goddess of volcanoes, Pele.
  • The Tale Of An-NoorWritten and performed by Marina Celander
    Sun March 19 & 26 at 11am @ The Kraine Theater
    The Tale of An-Noor is the tale of a magic bird who flies great distances to visit her friends the Old Tree and the Old River. An-Noor listens to her friends and they share tales of epic migrations, sorrows and loss, of overcoming huge odds, and feeling joy in everyday life at the edge of the river. Told through dance, puppetry and light An-Noor lets children know that there is magic all around us as long as we keep on dreaming and following the stars.
  • Solo Voce | Ban(ned): Together
    March 23-26 @ UNDER St Marks
    A stellar line up of solo artists breaking boundaries, telling stories and bursting assumptions.
    Full line up to be announced later this month.
  • all in between|a 3rd space to beby sj swilley
    March 25 & 26 at 5pm @ the Kraine Theater
    all in between|a 3rd spaceto be is a storytelling and abstract narration of the space in between wholeness and withdrawal, humanity and spirit. It is a reckoning with an ever shifting gender performance, and a spiritual investigation of queerness as a portal to existing as something "other". The artist invites audiences to be in conversation after the show.

To learn more, go to: https://www.frigid.nyc/festivals/estrogenius/

2023 EstroGenius Festival: BAN(NED) TOGETHER
March 18 - April 2, 2023

Various venues in New York

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