As we welcome the new year, it’s the perfect time to embrace fresh opportunities and push the boundaries of what’s possible. This month’s theme, New Frontiers, invites you to explore uncharted territories, challenge the status quo, and unlock exciting possibilities in art, science, and personal growth.
Musicals
Water for Elephants; Music and Lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co., Book by Rick Elice
Photo by Mathew Murphy, 2024 Broadway production
Water for Elephants, based on the bestselling novel by Sara Gruen, is a dazzling, heart-filled musical about Jacob, a young man desperate to escape his past, who jumps aboard a moving train uncertain of the road ahead. Finding himself on the ride of a lifetime, Jacob joins the colorful company of a traveling circus and is hired by the imperious ringmaster, August, as caretaker to the animals. Jacob soon develops an unspoken attraction to the star performer and August’s wife, Marlena. A last-ditch effort to save their struggling show brings an elephant into the troupe, drawing Marlena and Jacob dangerously close, forever changing the circus’s fate. Nominated for 7 Tony Awards®, including Best Musical, Water for Elephants features a book by four-time Tony Award® nominee Rick Elice (Peter and The Starcatcher, Jersey Boys) and a soaring score by the acclaimed PigPen Theatre Co. (The Old Man and The Old Moon). Hailed by The New York Times as a “miracle,” Water for Elephants will fill your heart and make you feel alive.
String; Music and Lyrics by Adam Gwon, Book by Sarah Hammond
Photo by Mark Kitaoka, 2018 Village Theatre production
After angering Zeus, the Fates, the goddess sisters who spin, measure, and snip the strings of life for every human on Earth, find themselves banished to a modern office building in the mortal world, where they continue their work hidden among the mortals whose destinies they weave into one giant, glorious tapestry. When eldest sister Atropos accidentally loses her pair of scissors in the building, she meets Mickey, the building’s overnight security guard. Soon love gets the better of her, and she finds herself falling for him, stealing his string to keep him immortal and defying all of the rules she has to follow as a goddess. This exception to the rules begins to disrupt the natural order—can the tapestry of the Universe and her sisters stand this flaw? Fall for this original, uplifting, and belty musical about fate, love, and the imperfections that make us human.
Winner of the 2015 Richard Rodgers Award!
The Cher Show; Book by Rick Elice
Photo by Joan Marcus, 2018 Broadway production
The Cher Show is based on the life of Cherilyn Sarkisian La Piere Bono Allman or as her friends call her, Cher! The kid on a tricycle, vowing to be famous. The teenage phenom who crashes by twenty. The glam TV star who quits at the top. The would-be actress with an Oscar. The rock goddess with a hundred million records sold. The legend who’s done it all, still scared to walk on stage. The wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. The woman, looking for love. The ultimate survivor, chasing her dream. They’re all here, dressed to kill, belting out all the hits, telling it like it is. And they’re all the star of The Cher Show.
Passing Strange; Book, Music and Lyrics by Stew, Music by Heidi Rodewald
From singer-songwriter and performance artist Stew comes Passing Strange, a daring musical that takes you on a journey across boundaries of place, identity and theatrical convention. Stew brings us the story of a young bohemian who charts a course for “the real” through sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. Loaded with soulful lyrics and overflowing with passion, the show takes us from black middle-class America to Amsterdam, Berlin and beyond on a journey towards personal and artistic authenticity.
Plays
Fly by Trey Ellis and Ricardo Khan
Experience the story of courageous American heroes: the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black military aviators in the United States, who bravely completed almost two hundred missions during World War II. FLY follows fictional members of a Tuskegee squadron from their first days being trained by a bigoted captain to their triumphant victory in a vital mission over Berlin. Through the highs and lows, a griot—a traditional West African storytelling role—unmasks the men’s guarded inner feelings through tap and hip-hop. In this richly told story, the Tuskegee Airmen defy prejudiced expectations and experience a freedom in the air that they rarely find back on the ground.
The White Chip by
Despite spending more time drunk than sober, Steven McAlister has managed to graduate from college, create an extremely successful theater group, get married, and thrive in a dream job at one of the most prestigious regional theaters in the United States. Sure, it’s gratifying to go to an AA meeting where they reward you with a white chip just for showing up, but does he really have a problem? Even with an ailing father, a marriage on the rocks, and his professional life careening out of control, Steven has a carefully constructed balancing act that keeps it all together—until it all falls apart. Told with humor, honesty, and compassion, The White Chip is about living with addiction and coming alive through recovery.
The Remains by
It’s just another dinner with the in-laws. Just another lasagna, another bottle of wine, maybe even some whiskey if the mood is right—or wrong. Kevin and Theo have been married for ten years, and they have decided its time to tell their nearest and dearest about their life-changing news. Balancing bitter and sweet with a deep sense of love, honesty, and irony, The Remains is a story of moving forward together yet apart, wherever the heart may take you.
The Apiary by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2024 Off-Broadway production
It’s twenty-two years in the future, and honeybees are nearly extinct except for those kept alive inside of labs. Zora is overqualified for her new job at one of these labs, but she’s there because she loves bees—or what is left of them. Her stressed supervisor, Gwen, has learned to keep her head and budget down so her research doesn’t get discontinued. Zora, however, doesn’t mind spending her own time and money to try to rehabilitate the bee population. When an unfortunate incident leads to a boost in the bees’ numbers, Zora and her coworker Pilar have to decide just how far they’re willing to go to keep the population growing. An unsettling and sharp-witted cautionary tale, The Apiary warns that the key to protecting each other and the planet is right in front of us, if only we would listen.
Hangmen by
It’s 1965, and the death penalty has just been abolished in the United Kingdom. Naturally all of Oldham, northern England, wants to know what Harry, the second-best hangman in the country, has to say about it. As the news breaks, Harry’s pub is overrun with locals and reporters looking for a quote, until a visitor arrives with a darker and more mysterious agenda.
One Giant Leap: The Apollo 11 Moon Landing by
“That’s one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind.” On July 21, 1969, humans for the first time stepped onto another world. Fifty years later, the scope and daring of the Apollo 11 moon landing is still not fully understood. In ONE GIANT LEAP, Tony Award–winner J.T. Rogers tells the gripping, surprising story behind one of the greatest achievements in history. Weaving together the actual transcripts of the Apollo 11 mission, news coverage of the period, and Rogers’s interviews with the men and women who made the mission happen, ONE GIANT LEAP captures the thrills, anxieties, and triumphs of a group of men and women striving to do the impossible.
A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, adapted by Frank McGuinness
Winner of the 1997 Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play
Nora Helmer is a vibrant young housewife who nonetheless suffers from a crippling dependency on her husband of eight years. He, Torvald, has always done the thinking for the both of them. In order to save Torvald from a debt, and to spare his masculine pride, Nora arranges a loan without his knowledge, and does so by forging a signature. The inevitable revelation of the crime results in an unexpected reaction from Torvald: Rather than being grateful to Nora, he is incapable of accepting the pride and self-sufficiency she demonstrated in taking care of him, and he accuses her of damaging his good name. The illusions behind their marriage are exposed, and Nora wakes to feelings of self awareness for the first time in her life. Torvald is not the man she thought she knew. They are husband and wife, yes, but they are strangers as well. And in one of the most famous, and scandalous, climaxes in all of nineteenth-century drama, Nora leaves her husband and children, determined to forge a new identity from the one she has always known.
A Doll’s House, Part 2 by
In the final scene of Ibsen’s 1879 groundbreaking masterwork, Nora Helmer makes the shocking decision to leave her husband and children, and begin a life on her own. This climactic event—when Nora slams the door on everything in her life—instantly propelled world drama into the modern age. In A Doll’s House, Part 2, many years have passed since Nora’s exit. Now, there’s a knock on that same door. Nora has returned. But why? And what will it mean for those she left behind?
Toros by
Photo by Joan Marcus, 2023 Off-Broadway production
Toro is back in Madrid hanging out with his high school friends, Juan and Andrea (and Juan’s dying golden retriever, Tica). They spend their weekends exactly like they used to: chain-smoking pitis in Juan’s garage, listening to Juan’s latest DJ mix, and going out to pijo clubs around Madrid. But something’s not quite right. As sexual tensions emerge and old power dynamics get challenged, these third-culture-kids struggle to grow up, take responsibility, and find a version of reality to believe in.
Silent Sky by
Photo by Mark Kitaoka
When Henrietta Leavitt begins work at the Harvard Observatory in the early 1900s, she isn’t allowed to touch a telescope or express an original idea. Instead, she joins a group of women “computers,” charting the stars for a renowned astronomer who calculates projects in “girl hours” and has no time for the women’s probing theories. As Henrietta, in her free time, attempts to measure the light and distance of stars, she must also take measure of her life on Earth, trying to balance her dedication to science with family obligations and the possibility of love. The true story of 19th-century astronomer Henrietta Leavitt explores a woman’s place in society during a time of immense scientific discoveries, when women’s ideas were dismissed until men claimed credit for them. Social progress, like scientific progress, can be hard to see when one is trapped among earthly complications; Henrietta Leavitt and her female peers believe in both, and their dedication changed the way we understand both the heavens and Earth.
Photograph 51 by
A humorous and moving portrait of Rosalind Franklin, one of the great female scientists of the twentieth century, and her fervid drive to map the contours of the DNA molecule. A chorus of physicists relives the chase, revealing the unsung achievements of this trail-blazing, fiercely independent woman. A play about ambition, isolation, and the race for greatness.
All-American by
All-American is the story of a modern American family: suburban dad and former NFL star Mike Slattery works hard to make his daughter, Katie, the star quarterback at her new school while ignoring her brainy twin brother, Aaron. But Katie isn’t sure she wants to keep playing, and Mike’s wife, Beth, isn’t sure she wants to keep playing along.
Ann by
Ann is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of Ann Richards, the legendary late Governor of Texas. This inspiring and hilarious play brings us face to face with a complex, colorful, and captivating character bigger than the state from which she hailed. Written and originally performed by Emmy Award-winner Holland Taylor, ANN takes a revealing look at the impassioned woman who enriched the lives of her followers, friends, and family.
Artemisia by
Artemisia Gentileschi was one of the most celebrated female painters of the seventeenth century, yet her name was all but lost for centuries. Assaulted and publicly shamed at just seventeen, Gentileschi lived her life on her own terms as an artist, a mother, and a lover. Artemisia was a modern woman before her time; ARTEMISIA is a play that celebrates her artistry, courage, and humanity.
Bella Bella by Harvey Fierstein, from the Words and Works of Bella Abzug
On one historical night in September 1976, Bella Abzug hides out in the bathroom of Manhattan’s Summit Hotel as she awaits the results of her bid to become New York’s first ever woman senator. Known for her fearless career as a lawyer, protester, and champion of gay rights, one of New York’s fiercest feminists must collect herself as her friends, family, and constituents (including the likes of Gloria Steinem, Shirley MacLaine, and others) hold their breaths just outside the door. The clock is ticking and the world is ready—just as soon as Bella is.
Ben Butler by
When an escaped slave shows up at Fort Monroe demanding sanctuary, General Benjamin Butler is faced with an impossible moral dilemma—follow the letter of the law or make a game-changing move that could alter the course of U.S. history?
Brooklyn Laundry by
Fran is a pessimist who’s terrified of making decisions. Owen is a guy who sees life for what it is and finds ways to make the best of it. Both of them are lonely, and find in each other what could be a meaningful connection. But when Fran’s sisters need her more than ever, she is faced with the most difficult choice she’s ever had to make. Brooklyn Laundry is about romance, family, joy, and responsibility. Most of all, it’s a play about choosing to love and be loved.
Buzzer by
Jackson, an upwardly-mobile black attorney, has just bought an apartment in a transitioning neighborhood in Brooklyn. He sees the potential of his old neighborhood, as does his white girlfriend Suzy…at first. When Jackson’s childhood friend Don leaves rehab to crash with them, the trio quickly becomes trapped between the tensions inside their own home and the dangers that may lurk outside.
By the Way, Meet Vera Stark by
In a new comedy from the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Ruined, Lynn Nottage draws upon the screwball films of the 1930s to take a funny and irreverent look at racial stereotypes in Hollywood. By the Way, Meet Vera Stark is a seventy-year journey through the life of Vera Stark, a headstrong African-American maid and budding actress, and her tangled relationship with her boss, a white Hollywood star desperately grasping to hold on to her career. When circumstances collide and both women land roles in the same Southern epic, the story behind the cameras leaves Vera with a surprising and controversial legacy scholars will debate for years to come.
Chinglish by
Chinglish is a hilarious comedy about the challenges of doing business in a country whose language—and underlying cultural assumptions—can be worlds apart from those of the West. The play tells the adventures of Daniel, an American business-everyman from the Midwest, who hopes to establish his family’s sign-making business in China, only to learn what is lost and found in translation.
Clybourne Park by
Photo by Mark Douet, 2022 Park Theatre production
Recipient of the Tony Award® for Best Play and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Clybourne Park explodes in two outrageous acts set fifty years apart. Act One takes place in 1959, as white community leaders anxiously try to stop the sale of a home to a black family. Act Two is set in the same house in the present day, as the now predominantly African-American neighborhood battles to hold its ground in the face of gentrification.
Father of the Bride by
From the novel by Edward Streeter, illustrated by Gluyas Williams
Mr. Banks learns that one of the young men he has seen occasionally about the house is about to become his son-in-law. Daughter Kay announces the engagement out of nowhere. Mrs. Banks and her sons are happy, but Mr. Banks is in a dither. The groom-to-be, Buckley Dunstan, appears on the scene and Mr. Banks realizes that the engagement is serious. Buckley and Kay don’t want a “big” wedding — just a simple affair with a few friends! We soon learn, however, that the “few” friends’ idea is out. Then trouble really begins. The guest list grows larger each day, a caterer is called in, florists, furniture movers and dressmakers take over, and the Banks household is soon caught in turmoil — not to mention growing debt. When Kay, in a fit of temper, calls off the wedding, everyone’s patience snaps. But all is set right, and the wedding (despite more last-minute crises) comes off beautifully. In the end, the father of the bride is a happy, proud man, glad that the wedding is over, but knowing too that it was worth all the money and aggravation to start his daughter off so handsomely on the road to married life.
Sojourners by
Photo by Chasi Annexy, 2015 The Playwrights Realm production
Sojourners is Part One of the Ufot Cycle, Udofia’s sweeping, nine-part saga which chronicles the triumphs and losses of Abasiama Ufot, a Nigerian immigrant, and her family. Abasiama came to America with high hopes for her arranged marriage and her future, intent on earning a degree and returning to Nigeria. But when her husband is seduced by America, she must choose between the Nigerian or American Dream.
K2 by
The setting is an icy ledge high up on K2, the world’s second highest mountain. Two climbers, Taylor and Harold, are stranded at 27,000 feet, and Harold has suffered a broken leg in their precipitous descent. They have also lost one of their ropes, and the remaining one is neither long or strong enough to serve as a sling to lower Harold to the next ledge. As Taylor climbs back up the mountain in an attempt to recover the other rope the two men keep up a running conversation which begins in a lighthearted vein but gradually shades into an absorbing discussion of the meaning and value of life. Taylor, an arch-conservative, womanizing assistant district attorney, sees personal gratification as the focus of existence, while Harold, a physicist, has found an almost mystic satisfaction in his selfless love for his wife and young son. When Taylor’s attempts to rescue the second rope fail, and the desperation of their situation can no longer be denied, it is, finally, the bond between the two men which is put to the test as Harold, in a scene of shattering emotional impact, calmly but firmly orders Taylor to save himself—to salvage the one life which can be saved, and to live on for both of them. (NOTE: While the Broadway production of K2 employed a realistic set, the play can be produced with equal effectiveness using a simplified, abstract setting).
King Charles III by
Winner of the 2015 Olivier Award for Best New Play
The Queen is dead: After a lifetime of waiting, the prince ascends the throne. A future of power. But how to rule? Mike Bartlett’s controversial play explores the people beneath the crowns, the unwritten rules of our democracy, and the conscience of Britain’s most famous family.
Kit Marlowe by
Hungry for adventure and a way to make his mark, poet and playwright Christopher Marlowe becomes a spy for a dark wing of the British government and seals his hero Sir Walter Raleigh’s fate and his own. Set in the seedy underworld of Elizabethan England, this story of the meteoric rise and fall of Kit Marlowe—playwright, poet, spy and sexual outlaw—charts the ambitions of youth in a cold and unforgiving world.
Miss Witherspoon by
Veronica, already scarred by too many failed relationships, finds the world a frightening place. Skylab, an American space station that came crashing down to earth, in particular, haunts and enrages her. So she has committed suicide, and is now in what she expected to be heaven but is instead something called the Bardo (the netherworld in Tibetan Buddhism), and the forces there keep trying to make her reincarnate. So far she’s thwarted these return visits to earth with a sort of “spiritual otherworldly emergency brake system” she seems to have. She doesn’t like being alive, and post-9/11 finds the world even scarier than when she was there. A lovely if strong-willed Indian spirit guide named Maryamma, however, is intent on getting Veronica back to earth so she can learn the lessons her soul is supposed to learn. Veronica—nicknamed “Miss Witherspoon” by Maryamma—didn’t expect there to be any afterlife, but if there has to be one, she demands St. Peter and the pearly gates. Or even the Jewish afterlife, described by Maryamma as being like “prolonged general anesthesia,” would be nice. But seemingly Veronica is stuck with Maryamma and reincarnation, and also later on with Gandalf and Jesus (who on a playful whim appears in the form of a black woman in a big “going to church” hat). Several times in the play Miss W’s brake system fails, and she’s forced to return to earth, but each time she keeps killing herself (even as an infant at two weeks, which especially irks Maryamma). By the end of the play, however, Maryamma, Gandalf and Jesus convince Miss W that the world is in such a mess that souls “must move through their spiritual evolution faster than they’ve been doing…they cannot go live through eighty and ninety years and only learn tiny, tiny lessons. We need things to move faster!” In the end, Miss W finds her own personal way to make sense of that entreaty, and she finally agrees to return to earth to help…well, save the planet basically.
Nice Girl by
In suburban Massachusetts in 1984, thirty-seven-year-old Josephine Rosen has a dead-end job, still lives with her mother, and has settled into the uncomfortable comfort of an unintended spinsterhood. But when a chance flirtation with an old classmate and a new friendship at work give her hope for the possibility of change, she dusts off the Jane Fonda tapes and begins to take tentative steps towards a new life. A play about the tragedy and joy of figuring out who you are and letting go of who you were supposed to be.
Nollywood Dreams by
It’s the nineties and in Lagos, Nigeria, the “Nollywood” film industry is exploding. Ayamma dreams of leaving her job at her parents’ travel agency and becoming a star. When she auditions for a new film by Nigeria’s hottest director, tension flares with his former leading lady—as sparks fly with Nollywood’s biggest heartthrob.
Sons of the Prophet by
Winner of the 2012 Drama Critics’ Circle for Best Play, Outer Critics Circle for Outstanding Play, Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play, and a 2012 Pulitzer Prize Finalist
If to live is to suffer, then Joseph Douaihy is more alive than most. With unexplained chronic pain and the fate of his reeling family on his shoulders, Joseph’s health, sanity, and insurance premium are on the line. In an age when modern medicine has a cure for just about everything, Sons of the Prophet is the funniest play about human suffering you’re likely to see.
Susie Sits Shiva by
A high school student deals with the death of her biology class lab partner through a religious ritual about which she knows nothing. Family, friends, and social media collide and connect in Susie’s living room as she learns to mourn (and to sit) while honoring the memory of her friend and his culture. Commissioned by the Educational Theatre Association, Susie Sits Shiva is a heartfelt reflection on life after unthinkable loss.
Take Me Out by
Photo by Sara Krulwich, 2022 Broadway production
Recipient of the 2003 Tony Award® for Best Play
Darren Lemming, the star center fielder of the world champion New York Empires, is young, rich, famous, talented, handsome and so convinced of his popularity that when he casually announces he’s gay, he assumes the news will be readily accepted by everyone. It isn’t. Friends, fans and teammates react with ambivalence, and when the slipping Empires call up the young phenom Shane Mungitt to close their games, the ambivalence turns to violence. Angry, lonely, guilt-ridden and confused, Darren finds some unlikely solace in the form of friendship with his new business manager, Mason Marzac—a brilliant but repressed guy, who, as everyone around him copes with disenchantment, blooms in the ecstatic discovery of baseball.
Included in Broadway Book Club’s Tony Award® Winners Pack
TRAYF by
Photo by Teresa Wood, 2018 Theater J Production
Zalmy lives a double life. By day, he drives a Chabad “Mitzvah Tank” through 1990s New York City with his best friend Shmuel. By night, he sneaks out of his orthodox community to roller skate and listen to rock and roll. But when a curious outsider offers him unfettered access to the secular world, is it worth jeopardizing everything he’s ever known? This road trip bromance is a funny and heartwarming ode to the turbulence of youth, the universal suspicion that we don’t quite fit in, and the faith and friends that see us through.
Usual Girls by
Photo by Joan Marcus, 2018 Roundtable Theatre production
Kyeoung has spent her entire life negotiating the double standards imposed on her as an Asian American woman. Bullied by boys in childhood, ostracized by girls as a teen, and gas-lit by men as an adult, her experiences with sexuality grow more and more challenging. As we trace Kyeoung from the insecurity of puberty to the disenchantment of her adult life, USUAL GIRLS chronicles the wonder, pain, and complexity of growing up female.
O. Henry’s Guide to the Present by Stephen Gregg
The romance, betrayal, longing, and joy of six of O. Henry’s best short stories intertwine at the Vallambrosa rooming house, where Della Leeson lands after she’s abandoned by her new husband. Della slowly builds a life for herself in New York City: finding a community, overcoming tragedy, and falling in love. O. Henry’s twists take Della in unexpected directions, pulling her into the lives of the Vallambrosa’s other quirky residents. Full of whimsy and eccentric characters, O. Henry’s Guide to the Present showcases the beloved writer’s work at its most human.
