Dear Friends, 

Today is a day that will be filled with complicated emotions. Some of us will be compulsively tuned in to the news, while others will be studiously avoiding it. Whatever your tactic is, we hope you’ll keep your chin up and your heart open. Today will surely influence the future, but it will not be the future’s sole determinant. We, too, have the potential to influence the future. 

From our Faust research, a quote from Rebecca Solnit’s Hope in the Dark: “Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When we recognize that you may be able to influence the outcomes—you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists take the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It’s the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can known beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterward either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.” 

Stay strong. Say no to Mephistopheles and yes to your neighbors. 

We’ve got work to do. 

— Theater in Asylum

Ps. Huge thanks to everyone who came out to our holiday party earlier this month (yes, in January)! We had a great time catching up with our friends in the TIA community, chatting about life updates and upcoming projects, and looking ahead to the new year.

Spring Happy Hour
Thursday, May 2, 2024
6 - 10 PM
Tile Bar
115 1st Ave.
New York, NY
RSVP

Spring is here, the sun is up past 7pm and we want to see you! Join us this Thursday, May 2nd for our Spring Happy Hour at Tile Bar in the East Village. Drop by for drinks and conversations with TIA’s community of artists and theater lovers! RSVP to join!

Book Club Discussion
Doppelgänger by Naomi Klein
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
7pm ET on Zoom

Whether you’re already part of our book club or new to the group, join us on May 15th for our next discussion. The next book club pick will be Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, an exploration of the misinformation and conspiracies that thrive online in our increasingly polarized world. RSVP here to join us on Zoom. If you'd like to purchase a copy of the book, we encourage you to do so through our Bookshop.org shop, which will help support the company (as well as independent bookstores!). Happy reading!

Announcing Our Next Book Club Pick:
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
Wednesday, May 15, 2024
7pm ET on Zoom

The 2024 edition of the Theater in Asylum Book Club is off to a strong start! On January 31st, we hosted an excellent discussion of Rebecca Solnit's Hope in the Dark with friends of TIA from all across the country. Huge thanks to everyone who joined us!

The next book club pick will be Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, an exploration of the misinformation and conspiracies that thrive online in our increasingly polarized world. RSVP here to join our discussion on May 15th. If you'd like to purchase a copy of the book, we encourage you to do so through our Bookshop.org shop, which will help support the company (as well as independent bookstores!). Happy reading!

Several friends of TIA are premiering new works in NYC and we cannot wait to see these talented folks hit the stage! Check out the following shows over the next few weeks:

axes, herbs and satchels
Created by The Anthropologists
February 25th - 27th
Episcopal Actors’ Guild Hall
1 East 29th Street
New York, NY 10016
Get Tickets

Rooted in the history and embodied wisdom of doulas and midwives, axes, herbs and satchels is a celebration of traditional knowledge held in the Black birth worker community and a potent examination of maternal mortality.

The United States has a maternal mortality rate that is three times higher than any other high-income country. Black and Indigenous birthing people are particularly at risk, with death rates up to three times more likely than their white counterparts. Modern medicine may be at our fingertips, but did it come at the cost of losing the ancient practices of doulas and midwives?

The play is being devised from an array of research materials; first hand accounts, medical textbooks, ethnological research, and primary sources documenting granny midwives and the history of midwifery.

Need a show buddy? The TIA team will be attending the show on Sunday, February 25th!

Three Scenes in The Life of a Trotskyist
by Andy Boyd
Directed by Jake Beckhard
February 22nd - March 17th
The Tank
312 W. 36th Street
New York, NY 10018
Get Tickets

Told in three scenes over the course of forty years, Three Scenes in the Life of a Trotskyist traces the story of Lev Trachtenberg from idealist youth to contrarian middle age to hard-core reactionary old age. Lev is a prototypical New York intellectual: educated at City College and in left-wing movements, he makes his reputation writing for small magazines and teaching modernist literature. He falls out of step with the Left during the culture wars of the 1960s, and by the election of Reagan he has embraced the Right with a convert's zeal. Three Scenes is a play about politics, literature, and the corrosive power of success in America.

We'll be attending the 7pm performance on March 9th. Join us to cheer on friends of TIA Andy Boyd, Jake Beckhard and Charlotte Dow!

Rager
Written by and Directed by Willie Johnson
Presented as part of the Chain Theatre's Winter One Act Festival
February 15th @ 8:30PM (also livestreamed) & February 20th @ 6:30PM
Chain Theatre
4th Floor
312 W 36 St 4th Floor
New York, NY 10018
Get Tickets

Friend of TIA Willie Johnson's latest one act play Rager runs at the Chain Theatre this February as part of their Winter One Act Festival! Rager is a short play examining sibling relationships and the miseries of adolescence and runs alongside I Am Here by Lindsay Ross in Program #20. The performance will also be livestreamed on February 15th for folks who can't make it to NYC.

We'll be cheering Willie on at the February 20th performance — feel free to join!