BY SCOTT STIFFLER | What good is sitting, alone—in your room—when there’s so much to do beyond the street where you live? Pry yourself from that one enormous chair, and enjoy some of Manhattan’s many loverly arts offerings. We searched high and Loewe and came up with the following promising possibilities. We’ll wager, they’re more than just fair, dear lady. 

Emerging Artists Theatre’s Spark Theatre Festival (Through October 25)

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Spark Musical Theatre Festival (Nov. 2-25)

At The 28th Street Theatre

15 W. 28th St. btw. Broadway/5th Ave. 

For Tickets & Info, Click Here

This year’s 25th anniversary edition finds the firmly rooted festival mission-focused on its everlasting mandate to showcase and support the in-development projects of early career artists. The 60 cabaret, dance, drag, sketch storytelling, and solo performances include Max Sharam’s solo piece Mezzo Cuckoo: Diva Gone Dada, in which an unemployed opera diva wanders the world while haunted by a song. Among the 23 dance pieces is The Other Side of Hate, choreographer Sharon Simmons-Wright’s exploration of hatred, prejudice, and injustice. There’s also Leslie Bramm’s Lady Macbeth and Her Therapist, which finds a medieval madness-whisperer taking on a new client with problems of Shakespearian proportions.

Order tickets ($20-$40) and see the full lineup here. Then, November 2-22 at the same venue, the first annual Spark Musical Theatre Festival NYC sees Emerging Artists Theatre presenting 21 new short and full-length musical theatre works in development. Click here for more info.

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Hell’s Kitchen Culture Crawl: October 19-25

At Various Hell’s Kitchen Venues

For Tickets & Info, Click Here

Presented by the Hudson Yards Hell’s Kitchen Alliance Arts Committee, this week-long Culture Crawl is a soul-enriching sprint through Hell’s Kitchen arts and culture institutions for theatre, music, dance performances, open studios, and interactive art activities—many of them free, or offering exclusive discount codes. Venues include Baryshnikov Arts, Signature Theatre, Playwrights Horizons, Theatre Row, and The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Also, after feasting on food for the heart and soul, redeem ticket stubs for deals and discounts at participating restaurants located along the crawl. Click here for the full schedule and more information–and see directly below for three of the 60+ offerings.

Suffragists From The Stage at New Perspectives Theatre Company (Free) | Monday, October 19, 7pm | Journey through a 75-year exploration of the Women’s Suffrage Movement—and the part “theatre women played in winning the vote.”

King of the Yees at Signature Theatre (Discounted tickets) | Prompted by her father’s disappearance, Lauren goes on a surreal quest through San Francisco’s Chinatown to find him. | Thurs. Oct. 22 & Fri. Oct. 23 at 7pm; Sat. Oct. 24 at 2pm & 7pm; Sun. Oct. 25 at 2pm | Use code “HYHK26” for 20% off tickets for Oct. 22-25 performances.

GREEF at Baryshnikov Arts Center (Discounted tickets) | A powerful, inventive, and, yes, funny theatrical work reflecting on an artist’s loss of her husband and performing partner to a debilitating illness. October 22-24 at 7pm | 25% off, using code CULTURECRAWL26. 

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Ben Holbrook’s User Agreement

Debut Production Directed by Dante Green

At The Makers’ Space / 281 N. 7th St. Brooklyn

(Near the Metro-Lorimer L/G, Bedford L, and Marcy Avenue J/M/Z)

At 7:30pm for October 23, 25, 26 Preview Performances; October 26’s Opening Night; then on October 28/29, November 1, 2, 5, 6, and 7

Final Performance, November 8 at 2:30pm

80 Minutes, No Intermission

For Tickets ($25), click here 

With whistleblowers making headlines by warning it’s just a matter of time before AI decides an extinction-level event is the shortest path toward creating a better world, the timing could not be better for the latest play from self-described “budding futurist” Ben Holbrook.                  

Set in that cautionary tale time period known as the “near future,” User Agreement gets its tone of dystopian dread from the dicey dynamic of lead characters Sy (Vann Dukes) and Theo (Marvelyn Ramirez). Despite their shared love of good music, knack for deep conversation, and mutual respect for boundaries, their potential for “soulmates” status is iffy, at best. Blame the times they’re living in. It’s a world dominated by technology–but as imagined by Holbrook, man-made machinery has no interest in wiping us out. Instead, it’s created a society that values material things above all else. User Agreement, the playwright hopes, will prompt us to contemplate if “in an age of technological wonders often fueled by greed, can something as fundamentally human as true love survive hand-in-hand with late stage capitalism?” 

Joining Holbrook on this production is director Dante Green, whom we recently interviewed here, regarding his work as co-founder of Prism: A Festival of New Queer Musicals. They are also Founding Artistic Director of The Makers’ Ensemble and a Co-Director of The Brick Theater.   

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