Off-Off Broadway shows in NYC

A frozen marionette of the blinded Oedipus, wandering in disgrace with his daughter Antigone, gradually melts into nothingness in this evocative string-puppet work, created by Élise Vigneron and Hélène Barreau for France's Théâtre de l’Entrouvert. Inspired by Henry Bauchau's novel Oedipus on the Road, the piece has been adapted for an American production—performed by Mark Blashford and Ashwaty Chennat—that premiered at the 2023 Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival and is making its New York debut under the aegis of HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program. 

Ephraim Birney and Joel Meyers play two gay Jewish men trapped together by inclement weather after an anonymous Grindr hookup—and fumbling to forge a deeper connection—in a new two-hander by Danny Brown. Noah Eisenberg directs for Out of the Box Theatrics (in conjunction with his own Ice Berg Productions). 

Who says they don't make weird downtown shows like they used to? In The Barbarians, playwright Jerry Lieblich takes an influential analytic concept from linguistics—John L. Austin's notion of "performative" statements, in which the act of saying something also makes it happen—and explodes it into a wildly silly satire of politics and war that doubles as a metatheatrical exploration of how plays summon worlds out of language. The show's academic underpinnings are camouflaged by (and/or expressed through) an avalanche of puns, hairpin plot turns, zany DIY trappings and confident comic performances by a cast of alt-theater all-stars—Jess Barbagallo, Jennifer Ikeda, Naren Weiss, Chloe Claudel, Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Anne Gridley—as characters including two mad scientists, a track-suited goofball, a robot-voiced woman, a puppet actor come to life and a peevish, ruthless politico named Madam President Fake President. (The script incorporates several snatches of historical speeches.) The seasoned experimentalist Paul Lazar, of Big Dance Theatre—who directs the production for Lieblich's company, Third Ear Theater—keeps things moving at a rapid clip while the mellifluous Steve Mellor, as our narrator, provides a measure of stability from a desk downstage right. It's batty and unhinged and just what you want from a three-week run at La MaMa. The Barbarians | Photograph: Courtesy Bronwen Sharp

The veteran feminist singer and electric violinist known simply as Bitch (or sometimes Capital B)—who was half of the 1990s queercore duo Bitch and Animal and has opened for artists including Ani DiFranco and Ferron—lays herself out in an autobiographical memoir that tracks her wild ride from Detroit suburbanite through indie celebrity, political controversy and witchy self-realization. The show was co-conceived with director Margie Zohn, who also co-wrote the book.

Writer-director William Electric Black (sometimes known as Ian Ellis James) returns to his frequent stomping grounds at Theater for the New City with an immersive play inspired by William Golding's boys-will-be-boys island adventure tale Lord of the Flies. In this version, the novel's protagonist, Ralph—on the verge of being killed by feral schoolchildren—imagines himself on a different island where teenagers have been sent during wartime. 

The Chain links more than 90 short works into one jam-packed festival, divided into 25 different lineups and presented over 15 days. The keystone, Program 1, is performed five times and includes the NYC premieres of playlets by two big names, David Rabe (Hurlyburly) and Lyle Kessler (Orphans), and well as an A.I.–themed piece by John Arthur Long whose cast includes a robot dog. The other 24 programs are performed three times apiece; they include works by Gus Kaikkonen, Jeryl Brunner, Duncan Pflaster, Delaney Kelly, JP Skocik, Raven Petretti-Stamper and the acid-penned cultural critic Joe Queenan. Programs 1–5 feature Equity actors; the others offer one livestreamed performance each for remote viewers. Visit the festival's website for a full calendar of shows.

A jittery young man named Milo labors to give a eulogy for his late friend, with help from audience volunteers, in an unusual solo-with-assistance show written by Brendan George and conceived by Peter Charney. After a 2023 debut at 59E59, the piece now returns for a more site-specific rotating run at churches and meeting places: the LGBT Community Center on Thursdays, Park Slope's Old First Reformed Church on Fridays, the Lower East Side's Studio Exhibit on Saturday and the West Village's Westbeth Community Center on Sundays. Downtown theater and nightlife publicist Ron Lasko directs this incarnation of the show; Blaize Adler-Ivanbrook, Ryan Boloix and Richard Diamond alternate as Milo. 

Zachary Elkind adapts and directs a literary curiosity: James Joyce's only play, 1918's Exiles, which was first performed in New York in 1925 after a disastrous premiere in Munich and was most recently revived here in 1977. The plot involves a complicated love rectangle among an Irish writer, his common-law wife, his journalist friend and his cousin (who has also been both men's lover). The webs of sexual intrigue are spun by actors Rodd Cyrus, Layla Khoshnoudi, Jeffrey Omura, Violeta Picayo and Mattie Tindall.

In Tom Diriwachter intimate family drama about filial love and responsibility, a man takes a bus to a motel outside Memphis to help his parents after their 1996 road trip to Graceland goes awfully awry. Jonathan Weber directs the cast of three: Steve Gamble, Bob Homeyer and Kate A. McGrath.

Lesbian-feminist playwright Carolyn Gage explores the relationship between the seminal American artist Georgia O'Keeffe and her younger friend Maria Chabot, a rancher and advocate for Native American arts, as expressed through their correspondence in the 1940s. Andrew Coopman directs the play's world premiere at the Tank; the cast comprises Gael Schaefer as O’Keeffe, Ria T. DiLullo as Chabot and Haneen Arafat Murphy as the anthropologist Mary Cabot Wheelwright (whose New Mexico property was managed by Chabot).