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

JANUARY 17 TO 26
CYRUS AND ROSE FELDMAN STUDIO THEATER, 315 W. 39TH STREET, 9 FL.
NEW YIDDISH REP PRESENTS "THE LABOR OF LIFE" BY HANOCH LEVIN
This comedy, originally written in Hebrew, will be performed in Yiddish with projected English surtitles. It is a funny and very sad play of the missed opportunities, compromises and disillusionments demanded by the "labor of life." Originally presented at Israel's HaBima in June, 1989, it stands out among contemporary writings for its sardonic resonance to Israelis and Jews worldwide. This absurdist masterpiece is profound in its original Hebrew and very good in English, but it's really funny in Yiddish.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/labor_life.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3ynMyXuXL6Wrb6WG7

JANUARY 23 TO FEBRUARY 2
LA MAMA
"THE TRANSFIGURATION OF BENJAMIN BANNEKER" BY THEODORA SKIPITARES
This multi-disciplinary spectacle celebrates the life of Benjamin Banneker, a free black man living in Maryland from 1731 to 1806, who taught himself mathematics and astronomy, and struggled to achieve recognition for his groundbreaking scientific discoveries. Banneker's successors continue that struggle into the 21st century.  The play features dance, live music, the Soul Tigers Marching Band, puppetry, and a multi-generational cast. Music by LaFrae Sci, choreography by Edisa Weeks.

Theodora Skipitares has created 26 of her puppet epics to-date. Her work includes productions on such subjects as physicists, surgeons, miners, eugenicists, renaissance artists and women in prison, all created with giant and tiny puppets, documentary material and assembled texts. She is a resident director at La MaMa and her work has been exhibited widely in the U.S., Europe and Asia, and recently at the Whitney Museum.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/skipi2020.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KMxnmCpiw55wAH2p6

JANUARY 24 TO FEBRUARY 2
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
THUNDERBIRD AMERICAN INDIAN DANCERS' 44th ANNUAL DANCE CONCERT AND POW-WOW
The 45th annual Thunderbird American Dancers Dance Concert and Pow Wow will offer dances, stories and traditional music from Native Peoples of the Northeast, Southwest and Great Plains regions. The event has become a treasured New York tradition for celebrating our diversity by honoring the culture of our first Americans.

A Pow-Wow is more than just a spectator event: it is a joyous reunion for native peoples nationwide and an opportunity for the non-Indian community to voyage into the philosophy and beauty of Native culture. Highlights will include storytelling, a Hoop Dance, a Grass Dance and Jingle Dress Dance (from the Northern Plains people), a Stomp Dance (from the Southeastern tribes), a Shawl Dance (from the Oklahoma tribes), a Deer Dance (from the Yaqui Tribes of Southern Arizona), a Fancy Dance (from the Oklahoma tribes) and a Robin Dance and Smoke Dance (from the Iroquois). As the audience enters the theater, they will be serenaded by the Heyna Second Son Singers (various tribes). In the final section of the program, the audience will be invited to join in the Round Dance/Friendship Dance (in evening shows) and a Contest Dance (in matinees). After the program, the dancers stay for photographs and to meet the audience.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Pow-Wow.htm
2019 PRODUCTION PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/ebLLGRPPQVHjJsxt8
RECENT YEARS' PHOTOS: https://goo.gl/photos/tcrxbtPYtF2hdvhV6 and https://goo.gl/photos/SLr4PXEHJrsq34j9A
HISTORICAL PHOTOS: https://goo.gl/photos/wUcenp6ZcPDcBCYD7

FEBRUARY 5-26, 2020
RUSTIK TAVERN (BED-STUY) AND THE PLAYERS (GRAMERCY PARK)
BROOKLYN TAVERN THEATER PRESENTS "YBOR CITY"
"Ybor City" by Anita Gonzalez (book) and Dan Furman (music and lyrics) is a musical about the rise of unionism and the healing of racial divides within an American community. In 1918 Tampa Florida, Rafael comes to town to read newspapers for the factory workers. He falls for Teresa, the sister of union organizer Catalino. Romance blossoms, tensions rise, and when Catalino stands up for worker rights, violence erupts. The community struggles to unite against an abusive factory owner and collectively form a multi-racial union. Brooklyn Tavern Theater presents original musicals in taverns and institutions that are open to the public, but only (at this point) on slow days for the drinking crowd--Mondays, Tuesdays and some Wednesdays. Admission is free to these Equity Showcase productions.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Ybor.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/b9B1TFDtPtfaPLkk9

FEBRUARY 5 TO 29
THEATER 80 ST. MARKS
NEGRO ENSEMBLE COMPANY IN "A PHOTOGRAPH: LOVERS IN MOTION" BY NTOZAKE SHANGE, REIMAGINED BY IFA BAYEZA
Ntozake Shange, author of "for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf" (1975), died in 2018. She was revising her 1978 drama, "a photograph: lovers in motion" during and after a 2015 reading that was produced by The Negro Ensemble as part of its Year of the Woman Playreading Series at Signature Theatre. The reading was directed by her sister, Ifa Bayeza. Re-imagining of the play has been continued by Bayeza, who through the years has worked with Shange as dramaturge and writing collaborator. Bayeza will helm her re-imagining of the play February 5 to 29 in a production of The Negro Ensemble at Theatre 80 St. Marks.

The play was first produced by NY Shakespeare Festival in 1977. It is more conventional in its structure that Shange's choreopoem, "for colored girls...," in that there are five discreet characters who interact in a plot, rather than being storytellers like in the earlier play. It is set in a San Francisco flat during the waning years of the Black Arts Movement. A photographer named Sean David fights for his creative chops while navigating his relationships with a female dancer, a female model, a female lawyer and a male lawyer. The production will use music and movement to underscore Shange's transcendent language.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/a_photo.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kLsWv6QwhUion6Ls6

FEBRUARY 7 TO 22
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
AUGUST STRINDBERG REP PERFORMS STRINDBERG'S "THE PELICAN" AND "ISLE OF THE DEAD"
Sweden's greatest modernist playwright, August Strindberg, returned from the Continent to Stockholm in 1906, where he lived out his last seven years. There he wrote "The Pelican" for his Intimate Theater in 1907 and penned "Isle of the Dead" (Toten-Insel) immediately after as a prologue. The latter was unpublished until 1918 and rediscovered in the early 60s, when it was found and promptly dismissed as an incomplete fragment. The two plays were finally reunited by Ingmar Bergman as a radio play in 2003. It was his last dramatic production. Now, Theater for the New City will present August Strindberg Rep in the world premiere staging of the two plays together, as they were written and intended by their author. The plays are translated and directed by Robert Greer, Artistic Director of Strindberg Rep.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/pelican-isle.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/m5F9UY13VagS4WwJ9

FEBRUARY 19 TO 23
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
NEW YIDDISH REP PRESENTS A YIDDISH VERSION OF "THE WHORE FROM OHIO" BY HANOCH LEVIN
This black comedy, which deals memorably with ultimate questions of fantasy, lust and mortality, is one Levin's most famous plays. An old beggar, running from death, goes to a whore and spends all his savings, to the horror of his grasping beggar of a son. The play is packed with sharp humor on the ultimate absurdity of life and its desires. Translated from the original Hebrew into Yiddish by Eli Rosen. With David Mandelbaum as the old beggar, Eli Rosen as the son and Malky Goldman as the eponymous hooker. Performed in Yiddish with projected surtitles.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/whore_from_ohio.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/2i2HBmet5thaof4DA

FEBRUARY 24
PLAYERS CLUB
"LOVE AND COURAGE" BENEFIT FOR THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
A Benefit For Theater For The New City’s Emerging Playwrights Program, honoring James Rado (co-author of "Hair"), hosted by Phoebe Legere and Matt Morillo, with performances by stars from the Downtown theater scene. Betsy Von Furstenberg called the event "A Valentine Gala, especially for the young writers that make Theater For The New City one of the most important theaters in the country."

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/love&courage.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/iFZw9TF8ztn7McMBA

FEBRURAY 27 TO MARCH 15
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"COLORSTRUCK"
Comedian/actor/broadcaster Donald E. Lacy Jr. updated his one man show, "ColorStruck," a bittersweet examination of how cultural assumptions drive American society. Since national politics provide a never-ending supply of new material, the piece is continually reshaped. The velocity of change since TNC presented the show's New York debut last year (Feb-March, 2019) has inspired Lacy to initiate a new version that reflects pressing current events.

Lacy's gift is in using humor as an icebreaker to bring all races to the racial colloquy. Paul Berss (NY Theatre Wire) characterized last year's production as "a seamless ride from hate and injustice to funny and heartwarming, all artfully blended and delivered by a master entertainer who is at once an actor, a comedian, a thinker and an activist."

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/colorstruck.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/esuTokvNnYydJ5hS9

MARCH TBA
THEATER 80 ST. MARKS
NEGRO ENSEMBLE IN " GRANDMA'S QUILT," WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY KAREN BROWN
A one-character play set against the challenging political/social milieu of African American women from the 1930’s to present day. Three generations of a specific family are all portrayed by one actor.

APRIL 23 TO MAY 10
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"AUNT SUSAN AND HER TENNESSEE WALTZ" BY TOBY ARMOUR, DIRECTED BY GEORGE FERENCZ
Susan B. Anthony spent a lifetime fighting for a woman’s right to vote. She never saw the end of the struggle, dying in 1906, but she never doubted. "Failure is impossible" were her famous words. The struggle continued under her successor, Carrie Chapman Catt. In 1920, the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote came before the Tennessee legislature. The vote was crucial. If Tennessee, the 36th state, ratified it would become law of the land. Campaigning took place during the hot days of summer in Nashville. The opposition, Southern belles and corporate lobbyists, was powerful. Double dealing, threats, bribery and slander were all part of the action. Carrie Chapman Catt, exhausted by the heat, beset by migraines, doubts and bad news, was fighting the battle of her life. It all came down to one vote. This is Susan and Carrie’s story.

EXTENDED THROUGH JUNE 20, 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 Lyrics 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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