SuperHero began performances the day after a gunman opened fire aboard a rush-hour Brooklyn subway train, giving added resonance to its protagonist’s decision to eschew violence as a response to personal turmoil. The playwriting debut of actor Ian Eaton, SuperHero is an autobiographical coming-of-age story about an awkward, overweight boy growing up in the Harlem projects in the 1980s.
De Novo
Imagine the life of a young lad who was never told that he was a good kid. “From the time [Edgar Chocoy] was born,” says immigration defense lawyer Kimberly Salinas (Emily Joy Weiner) in the documentary-theater piece De Novo, “he was seen as this poor kid from the slums of Guatemala City, then a gang kid from East L.A., then a criminal alien teenager in Immigration Court. I don’t think anyone ever got to see who he really was.” Salinas’s reflection makes clear that a seemingly trivial detail such as this can impose serious implications on a person’s self-esteem and that a life can sustain enormous consequences from it.