CURRENT & UPCOMING PRODUCTIONS
A Seasonal Press Calendar

Publicity photos for most shows are available for free download.

Closed productions have been removed from this list.
If you need info or photos for a production which has closed, please email us.

LIMITED RUNS

SEPTEMBER 19 TO 29
LA MAMA E.T.C.
"THIS IS WHY WE LIVE"
"This Is Why We Live" by Open Heart Surgery, a Lecoq-bred performance troupe from Toronto, brings poetry of Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska to the stage using devised movement, poetry-theatre, live music and collage. Two actors and a musician journey through fragmented and visceral encounters with Szymborska's verse, which is used in the original Polish plus French and English. Projected English translations will be provided for the Polish and French language texts.

Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Her body of work (only 325 pieces) often employs the literary devices of ironic precision, paradox, contradiction and understatement to illuminate philosophical themes and obsessions. She explored humanity’s relationship with nature, the irony of existence and the existential questioning of our place within the universe. This theater piece uses her poetry to relight the aura of routine, day-to-day life for our self-obsessed times. In Szymborska’s view, no matter how horrific the world may be we can still stand in awe, be amazed and remember what came before us.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/open_heart.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/7sPVkMntUXiJTAT77

SEPTEMBER 23 AT 4:30 PM
MARY RODGERS ROOM OF THE DRAMATISTS GUILD, 1501 BROADWAY
INDUSTRY READING OF "DELIKATESSEN" BY RICHARD ATKINS, DIRECTED BY MATTHEW PENN WITH DRAMATURGY BY MARK MEDOFF
"DeliKateSSen" by Richard Atkins is set in a Manhattan deli on the eve of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. David and Yossi are orphaned brothers and survivors of Auschwitz-Monowitz who own Shapiro's, a struggling landmark delicatessen. Their delivery man has been attacked and severely hurt in an anti-semitic hate crime. Across the street from their deli, a new German delicatessen and biergarten is preparing to open its doors. Suppressed traumas from the death camps reawaken, causing David, the older brother, to call on a Nazi hunter to investigate the restaurateur across the street. David has allowed the Holocaust to define his existence and yields to an "eye for an eye" vendetta. We watch as an explosion of friction (possibly justified) and paranoia affects everyone involved.

Directed by Matthew Penn; dramaturgy by Mark Medoff. The play was a finalist for Abingdon Theatre's Christopher Brian Wolk playwriting award and has been produced in Albuquerque, NM, Greenville, SC and Rhinebeck, NY. This reading is being held to introduce "DeliKateSSen" to the NYC producing community at a time when the play's themes seem especially urgent and timely.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/DeliKateSSen.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/mxh33nMaY39Qtijw8

SEPTEMBER 26 TO OCTOBER 13
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"SINGIN' IN THE ER" BY RUBY LYNN REYNER
Ruby Lynn Reyner directs and appears in her musical satire, "Singin' in the ER," a bad trip to the hospital that's performed in Playhouse of the Ridiculous style. Cast of eight. The piece is inspired by ordeals in a New York City hospital suffered by the author and her husband. Now she believes that the only way to deal with such life changing experiences is through unrestrained, exorbitant laughter. The score includes the song, "Biggest Balls in Town," written by Reyner and Jackie Curtiss. Ms. Reyner was a star of Vaccarro's Playhouse of the Ridiculous, appearing in "Conquest of the Universe," "Heaven Grand In Amber Orbit" and "Trilby in La Bohemia" (Drama Desk Award for Acting), among others and starting her well-known band, Ruby and the Rednecks, with musicians she worked with in the Playhouse.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Reyner.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ZR6a7PtT6g3Hx9E26

SEPTEMBER 26 TO OCTOBER 13
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"LUDWIG AND BERTIE"
Is it possible that an act of child abuse perpetrated by an Austrian schoolteacher in 1926 could have created the 21st century's demolition of factuality and the post-truth world of Donald Trump? The answer is “yes” if the teacher was Ludwig Wittgenstein, a man otherwise recognized as one of the great philosophers of the twentieth century. That is the premise of this wildly plausible new play, "Ludwig and Bertie" by Douglas Lackey, which charts the forty-year love/hate relationship between the philosopher Bertrand Russell (“Bertie” to his friends) and his most famous student, Wittgenstein. Alexander Harrington directs.

The piece is a successor to TNC's production last season of "Arendt-Heidegger: A Love Story" by Lackey, which dramatized the troubling, lifelong affair between Zionist Hannah Arendt and Nazi sympathizing philosopher Martin Heidegger, which was also directed by Harrington.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Ludwig_Bertie.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/tncEpoznKEoBzHt28

OCTOBER 31
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
VILLAGE HALLOWEEN COSTUME BALL
Nonstop theater, a costume competition and ballroom dancing will bewitch the East Village in Theater for the New City's 43rd annual Village Halloween Costume Ball on Thursday, October 31 at TNC, 155 First Avenue. This unique festival continues as a grand coming-together for real witches, everyday New Yorkers and artists alike. An explosive fall tradition, the event is held annually on the actual night of Halloween and celebrates artistic creation and fertilization.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/halloween.htm
HISTORIC PHOTOS: https://goo.gl/photos/RaQKK8C5mjqE3wsx5

NOVEMBER 7 TO 24
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"THE WHITES (A STORY ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE/PLAYED BY WHITE PEOPLE)"
The cast is all White - the characters are Black. In William Electric Black's timely story, we are hurled into a society that has turned upside down. Imagine if Blacks had enslaved White people. If prisons were filled with White people. If White communities were plagued by gun violence, overt police brutality and an abundance of health issues. What if White people had to sit in the back of the bus, face numerous lynchings and job discrimination? What if the United States were run by Black people and Whites were considered the minority? A daring, haunting, powerful play about race in America. NOTE: This show replaces "Betty and the Belrays: A Girl Group Story."

NOVEMBER 17
SYMPHONY SPACE
THE CAPITOL STEPS IN "THE LYIN' KINGS"
The Capitol Steps, America's premiere political-musical-satire troupe, returns to New York November 17 with their all new show, “The Lyin’ Kings,” for two performances, at 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM. This is the group that puts the "MOCK" in Democracy! Originally made up of congressional staffers, the past decade has seen the "Steps" harvest the talents of finely-tuned musical theater professionals from around the country. "The Lyin’ Kings," drawing its humor from today’s headlines and twitter feeds, will include the latest songs about the Democratic primary candidates (“76 Unknowns”) and the newest late-night thoughts from President Trump (“Tweet It”).

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/capitolsteps.htm

FEBRUARY, 2020 TBA
LA MAMA E.T.C.
DARIO D'AMBROSI IN "TUTTI NON CI SONO - ALL MAD FREE"
First presented at La MaMa in 1980, this seminal play about a psychiatric inmate victimized by neglect in the outside world was written as a reaction to the Italian Mental Health Act of 1978, which was the first law to reform the psychiatric system. It is a call for help and understanding instead of indifference and fear. Dario D’Ambrosi, founder of the Pathological Theater of Rome is one of the major Italian avanguard artists. Author, director and actor, he has been working for over thirty years on his personal research on madness, developing some among the most interesting theater shows on the Italian and International scene.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/dario_tutti_non.htm
For an online photo album with a selection of historical photos of Dario D'Ambrosi's New York shows, go to: https://picasaweb.google.com/118006855954301553089/Dario_DAmbrosi

ONGOING SHOWS

EXTENDED THROUGH JANUARY 11, 2020
HARLEM REPERTORY THEATRE
TATO LAVIERA THEATRE, 240 E. 123RD STREET
"THE WIZARD OF OZ: A JAZZ MUSICAL FOR ALL AGES "
Harlem Repertory Theatre stages "The Wizard of Oz: a Jazz Musical for All Ages," co-produced by the Yip Harburg Lyrics Foundation, for young (and young-at-heart) audiences. This production of the classic musical has a multi-racial cast, a jazzy underscore and authoritative dramaturgy by representatives of the Yip Harburg Foundation. Director/choreographer is Keith Lee Grant, Artistic Director of Harlem Rep, who is in the midst of a four-year project of presenting four classic musicals that have lyrics by E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, who was known in his lifetime as the "social conscience of Broadway."

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/oz.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QADVS1UAiFScxsME6

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