Theater for the New City

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. 

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.

New Stage Theatre Company's Ildiko Nemeth collaborates with Lisa Giobbi Movement Theatre to merge theater with aerial performance in an original collection of vignettes about women's lives in different times and circumstances. Inspired by Merlin Stone's 1976 study of the sacred feminine, When God was a Woman, the piece draws upon historical texts and stories and features original writing by Marie Glancy O’Shea. Nemeth directs a cast of nine; Giobbi oversees the flying.

A newcomer to playwriting in her 70s, Patricia Goodson depicted a group of now-elderly fairies and other fantasy characters in her debut play, 2023's Aging is Not a Fairy Tale. Now she returns to Theater for the New City, and to questions of senescence, with a more realistic drama: a look at the physical and emotional tolls of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's disease, inspired by her own experience with her mother. Joan Kane directs.