Renaissance Theatre Company’s From Here is an impactful musical tribute to the resilience of the Orlando, Fla., community in the wake of the Pulse nightclub shooting in June of 2016. This production features some of the original Orlando cast, which brings a deeply personal touch to this Off-Broadway premiere.
Shayok Misha Chowdhury's semi-autobiographical Public Obscenities returns to the stage this season at Theatre for a New Audience as part of The Under the Radar Festival. The production explores themes of returning home and complex relationships as a queer Indian man tries to come to terms with his family’s secrets while breaking away from learned behavior.
Export Quality, a play centered on the mail-order bride system in the Philippines—a practice that usually leads to the trafficking, rape, abuse and death of many women by American men. Although the mail-order bride industry has existed for decades, Export Quality is a reminder to the public that this issue persists. The four main characters who introduce themselves at the outset are commodified and stripped of their fundamental human rights—sentenced to a life of indentured servitude.
Sports, friendship and Lebron James are central to Rajiv Joseph’s play King James. The renowned basketball player, known by the epithet of the title, brings two unlikely sports fanatics together to form a long-term bond that surpasses a ball game.
Romantic relationships can be a bushel of complex emotions. In her new play, Bees & Honey, Guadalís Del Carmen explores the intricacies of a Dominican American couple living in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. The play begins with a segment in which its two principals talk about Juan Luis Guerra’s bachata song, “Como Abeja al Panal” (i.e., “like a bee to its honeycomb”), which inspired the title Bees & Honey. The composer Guerra, as described in the play, “is and will always be the Beethoven of Latin America.”
Ron Lasko’s new immersive theater experience, A Gaga Guide to the Lower East Side, takes audiences on a walking tour of the Lower East Side to visit locations and venues that were frequented by pop star Lady Gaga during the start of her singing career.
Día y Noche is a dynamic, energy-filled new play by David Anzuelo that chronicles the lives of two teenage boys, Danny Guerrero and Martin Leonard Brown, growing up in El Paso, Texas, during the 1980s. Danny (Freddy Acevedo) and Martin (Neil Tyrone Pritchard) are polar opposites, yet their friendship is one of the best relationships they could have imagined.
Liliana Padilla’s new play How to Defend Yourself tells the story of college students attempting to make sense of relationships, sexuality, and consent. Co-directed by Padilla, Rachel Chavkin, and Steph Paul, the drama unfolds in a college gym where a group of women are meeting for a self-defense class. The class is the brainchild of Brandi (Talia Ryder) and Kara (Sarah Marie Rodriguez) after the violent sexual assault of a fellow classmate, Susannah, on campus. Brandi and Kara are in Susannah’s sorority, and they’ve decided to do more than just talk about the incident. “It’s so easy to do nothing. Right?” Brandi says. “We wanted to do something.”
André & Dorine, a masked drama and physical theater show from the Spanish company Kulunka Teatro, presents the life of a family as they confront a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s for the matriarch, Dorine. This heartfelt play captures the frustration and roller-coaster of emotions that families undergo when caring for a family member with the disease.
Water is an essential part of life. It helps maintain bodily function and provides nutrients and sustenance for plants and animals. It seems unfathomable that life can exist without water, yet that is the reality for the citizens of Flint, Mich. Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s new play, Cullud Wattah, addresses the pollution of the city’s water system and how it has affected the citizens. Cullud Wattah also focuses on the disparity and inequities that prevail in cities with a majority population of minorities.
Comedian Faith Salie’s new solo show Approval Junkie, based on her book of the same title, is funny, insightful and heartfelt. Salie is an Emmy Award–winning journalist best known for her roles on NPR's Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! and CBS Sunday Morning. In her one-woman show, Salie begins with the adolescent need to seek approval. Her play explores the concept of the human need to be accepted and even revered.
Blues for an Alabama Sky, by Pearl Michelle Cleage, has been around for 25 years, but only now has the Keen Company given it a New York debut. Still, Cleage’s work, about black artists struggling in 1930, during the Harlem Renaissance, is as relevant today as it was a quarter-century ago. Poverty, discrimination, abortion rights, violence, and the everyday hustle to make it are still real issues in 2020.
Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes) is a lively new play by Andrea Thome that presents stories of immigration and fear from Latino immigrants in New York City. Filled with music and dance, Fandango lightens the darkness of its topic without soft-pedaling it.
Buzz McLaughlin’s 1996 play, Sister Calling My Name, tells a familial story of loss, love and forgiveness. At the center is Michael (John Marshall) an English literature professor whose life has not gone according to his expectations. He has recently undergone a divorce and been denied tenure, and the last thing he wants to do is visit his mentally disabled sister Lindsey (Gillian Todd), who made his life extremely difficult growing up.
Assemble is an immersive theater experience that includes secret locations, apps, audio tours and choosing various paths for each member of its audience to pursue a unique adventure. The journey begins when the rendezvous point is sent to ticket buyers the day before the performance. Some technological know-how is required, too, since audience members must download a custom-made app to their cell phones, listen through earbuds, and record actions they have performed during the show. At the check-in, a code is given to participants to enter into their phones. From there, the performance begins, and viewers are off to the clandestine space—a box store big enough to accommodate shifting locales—in Brooklyn.
Donja R. Love’s new play, One in Two, captures the truth, humor, pain, love and realism of being a full-fledged human: specifically a black, gay or bisexual man living with HIV. It’s a beautiful, albeit graphic, story of Donté, a community, a life—many lives.
Dog Man the Musical is a children’s show based on the bestselling books by Dav Pilkey, whose Dog Man series has sold more than 23 million copies. Dog Man the book has translations available in 30 languages, and the musical, with book and lyrics by Kevin Del Aguila and music by Brad Alexander, is faithful to the books. It focuses on the same witty protagonists, Harold (Dan Rosales) and George (Forest Vandyke), who are now now in the fifth grade at Jerome Horwitz Elementary and “way more mature and cultured.”
Posting Letters to The Moon brings a heartfelt performance to the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters. Compiled by Lucy Fleming, the daughter of British actress Celia Johnson and an actress herself, Posting Letters to The Moon is a reading of letters between her parents during World War II. Johnson, best known for the 1945 David Lean film Brief Encounter, for which she was nominated for an Oscar, was married to Peter Fleming, an accomplished writer and explorer; he was also the brother of Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Lucy Fleming and her husband, Simon Williams, an actor best known as Mr. Bellamy in Upstairs, Downstairs, read the parts of her parents.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), familial conflict, crucifixions and redemption are at the forefront of family conflict in Master of the Crossroads. Paul Calderon’s play starts off on an elevated note when Yolanda, played by Sarah Kate Jackson, storms into the home of her ex-brother-in-law, Jim-Bo (Obi Abili), to plead with him for help with her husband Cornbread (Nixon Cesar), an aggressive veteran who was deployed to Afghanistan. Cornbread has taken a man hostage whom he has mistakenly thinks is an Arab.
Cornbread (Nixon Cesar, left) with Jim-Bo (Obi Abili) in Paul Calderon’s Master of the Crossroads. Top: Jim-Bo (Abili) having an intense moment with Yolanda (Sarah Kate Jackson).
Cornbread exhibits severe symptoms of PTSD, and Cesar (despite a tendency to excessive loudness) captures a range of emotions that one can only imagine a person suffering from this disorder could feel. Cornbread has turned to alcohol and drugs to escape the hauntings in his mind and sees redemption or sacrifice as the only way to move forward. His deterioration is displayed when he explains to his brother that he firmly believes that he has captured an actual Arab:
You tell me he a Spanish Man but no Spanish done spill outta his mouth! Sand Nigga jibber’s what spilling out. Sand nigga jibber! And I know sand nigga jibber when I hear it! Heard it often ‘nuff when I was over widdim and they jibbered and jabbered it till it done near drove me insane, even when some of them jibbering and jabbering were “friendly,” pretended to be on our side. Like this little bugger fucker, couldn’t have been more than twelve if a day. One sec we showing him how to use a broom stick for a baseball bat and the next BOOM!! Done blew hisself and about half dozen of us away with an IED.
The theme of redemption through sacrifice is woven tightly throughout play. The characters have sacrificed their minds and well-being for the sake of their country. Cornbread’s condition is getting worse, and it’s obvious as he plans to “sacrifice” his prisoner. A plot twist occurs with the revelation that Jim-Bo is also suffering from PTSD, and the savior becomes more dangerous. He uses his faith as a source of comfort and a grounding mechanism. As a churchgoing man, Jim-Bo tells Yolanda that Cornbread is “Unwillin’ to understand, that he our Christ!” Abili brings enthusiasm and intensity to Jim-Bo, portraying a scary darkness that has lingered inside his character for who knows how long until he snaps.
Jim-Bo (Abili) holding his brother Cornbread (Cesar). Photographs by David Zayas Jr.
His efforts to save the man his brother is holding captive are sidelined as he decides to cleanse the sins of his family through a sacrificial ceremony. Jim-Bo prepares by sawing wood, gathering nails, taking off his clothes, and locking up Cornbread, leading to a climactic, horrific scene as he tries to redeem his family from the demons inside their minds.
The set design by Calderon, who has also directed, is minimalistic, with key symbols displayed on the stage: the American flag, a statue resembling Jesus, and a wooden cross. The props are appropriately violent and intimidating. The lighting by Evan Louison works well with the encompassing theme of the play. It mimics the fog and anxiety associated with PTSD. The music and sounds, also by Louison, are at times terrifying and creepy while at other times meditative and ecclesiastical. With these components working harmoniously, the audience gets a glimpse of what the characters are struggling with day-to-day. Master of the Crossroads is harsh, dark and eerie to make a point about the poor mental health care that American veterans experience.
The Primitive Grace production of Master of the Crossroads plays through Feb. 9 at the Bridge Theater (at Shetler Studios, 244 West 54th St., between Seventh and Eighth Avenues) in Manhattan. Performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. Tickets are available at primitivegrace.org. Note that this production contains nudity, racist language and graphic violence in an intimate setting.
Exquisita Agonía (Exquisite Agony) is a thought-provoking and entertaining new work by Nilo Cruz, the Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright of Anna in the Tropics. The unusual premise of Exquisita Agonía centers on the unsaid, the unfinished and what is known as cellular memory.
