JANUARY 9 TO 26, 2025
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"THE GIGGLING GRANNY"
Marilyn Chris performs the debut run of "The Giggling Granny," a solo play written for her by Marsha Lee Sheiness about the serial killer Nanny Doss, who murdered four husbands in Alabama, North Carolina, Kansas and Oklahoma between 1927 and 1954. A true story about the most mesmerizing, innocent and likable serial killer (looking for true love) that you're ever going to meet. Directed by Jim Semmelman.

Ms. Chris is well known for her 18 years on ABC's “One Life To Live” playing Wanda Webb Wolek, for which she received the best supporting actress Award from The TV Magazine Writers and Editors. Her Broadway appearances include “Brighton Beach Memoirs” (as Aunt Kate), "Lenny" (as Sally) and “The Birthday Party" (directed by Alan Schneider). She played Naomi, the paranoid mother of Allen Ginsberg, in "Kaddish," directed by Robert Kalfin, winning an Obie Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award and Variety Critics Poll for her performance.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/gg.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kffLtzFMsjcHrphi8

JANUARY 10 TO 26
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
STRINDBERG REP IN "MISS JULIE 1925 NEW YEAR'S!"
"Miss Julie" by August Strindberg centers on a proud, neurotic daughter of the degenerate aristocracy who is willing to sink her pride in a frenzied attempt to satisfy her love of sensation. Strindberg originally set the play in a Swedish manor house in 1888. Theater for the New City will present Strindberg Rep in a production, translated from the Swedish, adapted and directed by Robert Greer, that transplants Strindberg's story to a Long Island country estate in 1925. Moving Strindberg's play, with its extreme class consciousness, to an American setting might seem surprising, but it's a peek into our American social hierarchy that cautions us against the 21st century redistribution of wealth which is becoming hardened in our society.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/julie.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KaZm8vXuonvbTjm69

JANUARY 23 TO FEBRUARY 9
EAST VILLAGE BASEMENT, 321 E. 9TH STREET
YARA ARTS GROUP IN "SLAP!"
An hour-long theatre musical-cabaret interrogating the totally true but outrageous life and journey of David Burliuk, the father OF FuturisM, who is performed by Bob Holman, founder of the Bowery Poetry Club and the poet most often connected with the oral tradition, spoken word, hip hop and poetry slams.

The play is composed of poems and historical facts. Singer-songwriter Susan Hwang portrays an accordion-playing Scythian Ice Princess. Julian Kytasty, a traditional epic singer and bandura player, sings their story. Created and performed by Bob Holman, Susan Hwang and Julian Kytasty; directed by Virlana Tkacz, Artistic Director of Yara Arts Group.

What defined David Burliuk’s life was his constant desire to slap the face of public taste, to see the ancient past in the future and to sharpen our perception to break through linear thinking. The show ends on an upbeat with the “Radio Manifesto” which futurist Burliuk proclaimed in New York in 1926.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Yara_Slap.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/UhjdksbCx7zpfaLY7

JANUARY 30 TO FEBRUARY 16
TEATRO CIRCULO, 64 EAST 4TH STREET
"BODAS DE BLOOD," ADAPTED FROM "BLOOD WEDDING" BY FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
First Maria Ensemble, in collaboration with Cambalache Theatre Company, presents "Bodas de Blood," a bilingual adaptation of "Blood Wedding" (Bodas de Sangre) by Federico García Lorca. Adapted and directed by Celeste Moratti. Performed by an international company with actors from Argentina, Italy, Poland, Colombia, Venezuela, Armenia, the Netherlands and the USA. Live music by two Italian musicians, Francesco Santalucia and Papaceccio. This is the third production at Teatro Circulo for First Maria Ensemble, which has hitherto presented all-Shakespeare. The troupe is led by Celeste Moratti, an Italian-born actress who, before founding this company, was best known for both realistic and surrealistic leading roles in the "Pathological Theater" productions of Dario D'Ambrosi. Her vision is informed by her work at La MaMa and The Living Theater. Cambalache Theatre Company was founded this year by two Argentine actresses, Carmen Ezcurra and Cecilia Wisky, who named their troupe after the famous tango "Cambalache."

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/bodas_de_blood.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/QmrNUWQ8sdEGdgcTA

FEBRUARY 6 TO 23
THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
"THE BEST BROTHER"
"The Best Brother" by emerging playwright Victor Vauban Júnior begins in the 1980's. Two pre-teen African-American boys--models of brotherly closeness--are being raised in Harlem by an American mother and a righteous, religious African-born father who violently resists his wife's ambition to become a professional singer. When these parents are forced by their cultural differences to divorce, their boys are separated. The elder son must go with his father to Angola, where the father dies fighting in the Civil War. The younger boy must remain here with his mother, who loses her operatic voice and descends into alcoholism. Twenty-two years later, the older son, now a religious man, finds the means to return to America and reconnect with his long-lost family. To his despair, he finds that his mother has died and his beloved brother is nowhere to be found. Although repatriated, he does not understand the new America and finds himself in another war trying to restore closeness with his long-lost brother. The play asks, "Under what circumstances does brotherly love allow itself to thrive?"

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Best_Brother.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/nM6J5Soc7zhwXjdr9

FEBRUARY 7 TO MARCH 1
THEATRE ROW (THEATRE 1), PRESENTED BY NEW LIGHT THEATER PROJECT
"NIGHT SINGS ITS SONGS" BY JON FOSSE
Amidst the renewed interest in Norwegian playwright Jon Fosse's plays since his Nobel Prize for Literature in 2023, New Light Theater Project presents his "Night Sings Its Songs," translated by Sarah Cameron Sunde and directed by Jerry Heymann. A haunting exploration of the unraveling relationships within a claustrophobic household. The play centers on a young couple trapped in an unspoken cycle of discontent. The Man, an unemployed writer, languishes in apathy while The Woman, overwhelmed by the demands of caring for their infant son, struggles to bridge the emotional void between them. The stark, poetic play examines the ways we fail to connect with those closest to us. Fosse’s mastery of language and mood turns a seemingly mundane situation into a poignant study of existential dread and human fragility.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/night-songs.htm
PHOTOS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/LaEDRtAJFS21qg5y5

FEBRUARY 18
THE PLAYERS, 16 GRAMERCY PARK SOUTH
"LOVE 'N COURAGE" GALA
Theater for the New City's Emerging Playwrights Program will be beneficiary of the theater's 22nd annual "Love 'n Courage" benefit Tuesday, February 18, 2025 at The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South. The evening honors Peter Schumann, Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Bread & Puppet Theater, and celebrates the theater's long relationship with that company.

COMPLETE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/love-n-courage.htm
PHOTOS OF PETER SCHUMANN: https://photos.app.goo.gl/H9m2S42jKRaYqsuA8

MARCH 7 TO 16
LA MAMA E.T.C. (ELLEN STEWART THEATRE, 66 E. 4TH STREET)
YARA ARTS GROUP IN "THE MAGIC OF LIGHT"
Yara Arts Group creates visually stunning original theatre pieces that explore overlooked cultures of the East, especially Ukraine, through our diverse perspectives. This one is a devised piece on how projections brought Ukrainian epics to life 150 years ago, interweaving puppetry, language, music and poetry to illustrate the cultural and spiritual awakening of an artist in the 1870s in Ukraine. Performed with an intimate, transforming puppet stage by bandura master Julian Kytasty and puppeteer Tom Lee. Directed by Virlana Tkacz.

VIDEO ON DEMAND

"USED AND BORROWED TIME" BY SOPHIA ROMMA
"Used and Borrowed Time," written and directed by Sophia Romma, is now available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Roku and the Vyre Network. This experimental avant-garde film, a psychological drama phantasma, has amassed over 45 festival awards and 26 festival film selections. An interracial couple's idyllic love rises above the hatred of a vengeful white supremacist family in segregationist Alabama during the 1960s. The film pays homage to the French New Wave films of Goddard, Truffaut and Agnès Varda. It has been translated from its original English into Greek, Spanish and Italian.

COMPLETE INFO: www.usedandborrowedtime.com

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY & NEW YIDDISH REP PRODUCTION OF "THE DYBBUK"
"The Dybbuk" is arguably the most well-known play in the Yiddish theater lexicon. It was premiered on December 9, 1920 by the Vilna Troupe at the Eizeum theater in Warsaw. Its success catapulted that company onto the International stage. It has since been translated into 27 languages and performed worldwide. From December 9-13, New Yiddish Rep celebrated the play's 100th birthday with a live performance streamed from Theater For The New City. A recording of the production has now been released for the general public to view on Vimeo.

MORE INFO: www.jsnyc.com/season/Dybbuk.htm

"Feathers of Fire" is the most elaborate shadow theater experience ever created, and this recording, captured on an actual theater stage, transforms it into a video-on-demand production for all ages. The story is adapted from Shahnameh (the Persian Book of Kings) and tells the action-packed tale of two star-crossed lovers of old Persia. Zaul, an outcast albino boy, is brought up by a bird-goddess and grows up into a wise ruler. He enters into a forbidden love with Rudabeh, a princess who is the granddaughter of the dreaded Serpent King. Their young, impetuous romance survives many precarious adventures before they finally receive blessings for their union. When they ultimately have a child, it is Rostam, "the Hercules of Iran." Aspects of the story are reminiscent of "Romeo and Juliet," "Rapunzel," "The Firebird" and "Jungle Book."

The piece is created and directed by Hamid Rahmanian, a 2014 Guggenheim fellowship-winning filmmaker/visual artist living in Brooklyn. It is endorsed by Francis Ford Coppola, who called the production "Fantastic! One of the greatest epics of all time and my favorite Shahnameh brought to life in a spectacular fashion by Hamid Rahmanian with shadow puppets design and cinematic wizardry."

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