Times Square Gossip

  THE POPES OF FARRAGUT STREET  Melanie Maria Goodreaux’s new play THE POPES OF FARRAGUT STREET will premiere at Theater for the New City in New York City. Following the success of RITA IS THE GOAT, ENOUGH VO5 FOR THE UNIVERSE, and THE WHITE BLACKS, Goodreaux returns with her latest work for a limited 12-performance engagement, November 6th – 23rd, 2025 (Thursday – Saturday starting at 8:00pm, Sundays at 3:00pm). Blending the mix-ups and crossed affections of Shakespeare’s finest comedies with the soulful storytelling of August Wilson, THE POPES OF FARRAGUT STREET is a lively exploration of regret and romance, family, faith, and identity set against the vibrant backdrop of New Orleans’ cultural and spiritual life. In Conrad Patsy’s “Shade Tree” auto shop, a tight-knit crew of mechanics, dreamers, and spiritual seekers buzz with excitement over news that the newly elected Pope Leo XIV is an American—born in the 7th Ward of New Orleans and, some say, a Black Creole. As gossip, p...

  Rita Is The Goat                                          Danielle Aziza - Valerie Donaldson - Jonathan Duran - Alexandria Thomas - India Stachyra Building on the triumph of her groundbreaking production, "THE WHITE BLACKS," and her fresh rendition of "ENOUGH VO5 FOR THE UNIVERSE” celebrated playwright and director Melanie Maria Goodreaux is poised to enthrall audiences once more with a haunting family drama “Rita is the GOAT” which will premiere at Theater for the New City in New York, NY.  This limited engagement will run for 12 performances from November 7th to 10th, 14th to 17th, and 21st to 24th, 2024.  "RITA IS THE GOAT" is a fantastical reimagining of a last will and testament reading. It detonates a sibling rivalry so intense it literally raises the dead from their caskets.  Written in a magical...

  ENOUGH VO5 FOR THE UNIVERSE Building on the triumph of her groundbreaking production, "THE WHITE BLACKS," celebrated playwright and director Melanie Maria Goodreaux is poised to enthrall audiences once more with a fresh rendition of "ENOUGH VO5 FOR THE UNIVERSE," featuring a special appearance by veteran TV star Malik Yoba and The Walking Dead’s Aixa Kendrick.   This limited engagement of 12 performances will grace the Theater for the New City stage in the East Village from Thursday, November 9th to Sunday, November 26th, 2023.  “I love the bravery of the actors and other creatives I’m working with,” playwright and director Goodreaux says. “I use absurdity to poke fun at the challenges Black women face. It makes some people split their sides laughing, some shed tears, while others get ‘uncomfortable.’ That’s part of where it’s at for me. I think a teeny bit of discomfort that you have to laugh about, gets us somewhere new.”  “ENOUGH VO5 FOR THE UNIVERSE” unfurls w...

    The White Blacks (New York City, NY) Following a highly-successful run that was halted in its final days by the outbreak of COVID in March 2020, The White Blacks triumphantly returns to the stage for a limited time, bringing their Production back to Theater for the New City. Featuring a cast of 18 actors who present a traditional Southern “Creole” family in New Orleans, the play tells the story of playwright Melanie Maria Goodreaux’s aunties who left the city to “pass for white” and the family left behind. Told with humor and heart, the playwright exposes a common but largely untold story of “light-skinned” Black people in the South. While set in the seventies, audiences recognize modern themes of what constitutes “enough” when it comes to color and race, “cancel culture,” the path to authenticity, and the complexities of family. THE PLOT: In 1970s New Orleans, a Black “Creole” family is torn apart by members who ‘pass for white’ while others build Black Power and the mat...

Krystle Adams With Betty Hudson And Curry Whitmire NEW YORK -- Part of our shared experience as Americans today is how we strain under the weight of the tech sector. Millionaires are made overnight and we endure the distortions of social media while gentrification pushes us out of our homes. When that happens, it rips us away from our history as if we never mattered. That's the idea behind "Or Current Resident," a new play by Joan Bigwood, which will be performed by Squeaky Bicycle Productions from February 3 to 25 at Theater for the New City, where it is a resident company. Brandi Varnell, Artistic Director of Squeaky Bicycle, directs. More Info And Tickets Here . ABOUT THE SHOW The play is set in a Silicon Valley bungalow, from which three generations of the Finch family are in constant fear of being uprooted. The family patriarch, an engineer, has passed on, and the resilient matriarch, Mimi, holds the household together in cramped and rambu...

Theater For The New City NEW YORK -- When the chips are down, are we men or beasts? That's the question of a new tragicomedy by W.M. Akers, "Dead Man's Dinner," which Theater for the New City will present March 23 to April 9 in a production by resident company Squeaky Bicycle Productions, directed by Kathryn McConnell. The piece is an absurdist adventure story set in a dystopian future. New York has been under siege for ten years and three women are struggling to survive in a frigid, rent-stabilized apartment on the Upper West Side. Olympia and her daughter Petra have spent years surviving any way they can. When Petra falls in love with Jackie, an injured soldier, their food supplies are stretched to the limit. Death creeps closer and each woman is torn between love and hunger. Hunger always wins. The play is realistic at its base, but dialed up a bit with a gossamer level of giddiness. There are reverberations of the experiments of ethologist ...

Wilmar Saldarriaga With Cesar Morales And Victor Grajales NEW YORK – From May 28 to June 14, Theater for the New City will present the U.S. premiere of "Maximum Security," a new play by Piedad Bonnett, the internationally acclaimed Colombian writer, performed in English translation (world premiere) by Lucia della Paolera and acted by a cast of Latino actors. The play is a brutally realist account of life behind bars for three inmates and a guard, offering a rare look at the prison culture surrounding political prisoners and the unlikely friendships they adapt to when surrounded by a violent and sociopathic population. It is directed by Nelson Celis of Bogata, Colombia's La Compania Nacional de las Artes ( www.lacna.co ) and co-produced by ID Studio Theater, a NYC theater company that works with a mix of theater professionals and undocumented Latino immigrant communities to create works of artistic and social impact. Set in a penitentiary in Colombia, a ...

**** OFF BROADWAY **** Michael Henchard And Ayanna Williams NEW YORK – "Casterbridge," based on Thomas Hardy's classic Victorian novel, "The Mayor of Casterbridge," is a new musical theater work with book and lyrics by David Willinger and music by Christopher Beste. The 20-character, two-act musical is fairly faithful to Hardy's parable of the spiritual ups and downs of man and features a score inspired by English country music of the period. Theater for the New City will present the piece's world premiere run June 4 to 19, directed by Willinger. In Hardy's famous Victorian novel, ne'er-do-well Michael Henchard, when drunk, organizes an auction to sell off his wife. After taking a vow never to drink again, he pulls himself up by his bootstraps to be a pillar of society -- Mayor of the town and a business owner. He reunites with his wife and starts over, only to get pulled back down by his own nature. It is a work ful...

**** Yiddish Theater **** Kafka's Quest NEW YORK -- "Kafka's Quest, a.k.a. Kafka/Samsa" is a quasi-realistic play by the late playwright Lu Hauser that imagines the family life of Gregor Samsa, the tragic victim of Kafka's "Metamorphosis ," and his friendship with an historic Yiddish Theater actor and actress in Prague, prior to the events of the famed novella. Set in Prague in 1912, it portrays Gregor Samsa (the name Kafka personified himself with in the book) as torn between his father, who wants to keep him on the straight and narrow with a full time job, and his friendship with artists of the Yiddish Theater, who want him to join and write for them. His father’s bankruptcy forces Gregor to become the breadwinner of the family, which has been forced to take in two mysterious lodgers to make ends meet. The back and forth between the two poles of Gregor's life will culminate in "The Metamorphosis." Theater for the New ...

**** OFF BROADWAY AT IT'S BEST **** Celeste Hastings "Charlotte's Song" by Nancy Ferragallo is a performance-based experimental work that explores a daughter's reality of growing up with her schizophrenic mother and how that impacted her life and healing process. It is a poetic collective of monologues, dialogue scenes and movement theater in the style of the Tanz Theater of Pina Bausch. The work is co-directed by Andreas Robertz and Mario Golden and co-choreographed by Nancy Ferragallo and Celeste Hastings. A Cocteauvian story is told through the lens of fragmented narratives and movement sequences. A mother (Carol Beaugard) and her daughter (Yvette Quintero) are so alienated from one another that they communicate primarily by letters. A dancer (Celeste Hastings) dances the mother's inner life. As the play progresses, the daughter explores issues of betrayal and abandonment and comes to an ultimate understanding of her mother...