In Edward, written, performed, and directed by Ed Schmidt, a small box of 27 mundane artifacts becomes a form of domestic archaeology, each item revealing a fragment of a life once lived. Gathered around a table in independent bookstores across New York City, audiences help reconstruct—night by night—a portrait of the late Edward O’Connell, a former high school English teacher whose faith in literature echoes through the stories and the spaces where they are told.
Michael Walek’s The Bookstore is a cozy, unprepossessing play about the power of literature to change one’s life and the importance of both writing and reading. It is also about the people who do one or the other, and those who try to do both, and it’s peppered with nuggets about writers, readers, and the spectrum of human experience.
The Disappear feels like an incomplete puzzle: Its pieces don’t fit together. This new play, written and directed by Erica Schmidt, is overloaded with undercooked melodramatics and ideas.
A work that has been collaboratively devised by members of the Happenstance Theater troupe, Juxtapose | A Theatrical Shadow Box cites as its influences the artworks of Joseph Cornell and the French films Amélie (2001) and Mon Oncle (1958). The play, directed by Mark Jaster and Sabrina Selma Mandell, explores randomness and dissimilarity and focuses on the lives of tenants in a French apartment house through a series of scenes that can be identified from their artistic influences or simply enjoyed as charming vignettes arranged in visually striking tableaux. Either way, the result is a multilayered and curious work that is both thought-provoking and delightful.
Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed the World is a soulful solo journey that traces reggae’s roots and its global reverberations through the life and legacy of its most iconic figure. Written, performed, and directed by Duane Forrest, the show blends acoustic music, personal storytelling, and audience connection, allowing one to glimpse how Bob Marley’s message reshaped not only a genre, but lives.
That Parenting Musical, written by real-life mom-and-dad team Graham and Kristina Fuller, is a show that whimsically explores the ups and downs of parenting. Breezily directed and choreographed by Jen Wineman, it is two hours of rib-tickling fun.
