It's time for Street Theater!
Life on the Third Rail, or A Subway Delay to the Future

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company will open its 2023 annual tour Saturday, August 5 with "Life on the Third Rail, or A Subway Delay to the Future," a rip-roaring original musical which tells a story in which a violent hurricane floods the subways, sending a heroic subway crew into a new world. Book, lyrics and direction are by Crystal Field, Artistic Director of Theater for the New City (TNC).  The musical score is composed and arranged by Joseph Vernon Banks.  Free performances will tour parks, playgrounds and closed-off streets throughout the five boroughs through September 17.

The musical is the saga of a Train Operator and a Subway Conductor in an emergency flood situation. A violent hurricane, spurred by global warming, has inundated the subways and so the MTA is moving all its trains out of underground tunnels and stations. The duo have been been driving a car for repair that somehow got left behind.

Will they make it to the train yards?!

Street Theater Schedule

Saturday, Aug 5 @ 2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Outside Theater for the New City at E. 10th Street & 1st Ave.

Sunday, Aug 6 @ 2:00 PM: BRONX -- St. Mary's Park, 350 St. Ann's Ave. 

Saturday. Aug 12 @ 2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Wise Towers (91st Street bet. Columbus & Amsterdam) or Sol Bloom Park (92nd Street bet. Columbus & Amsterdam)

Sunday, Aug 13 @ 5:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Central Park Bandshell, 72nd Street Crosswalk

Friday, Aug 18 @ 6:30 PM: BROOKLYN -- Coney Island Boardwalk @ W. 10th Street

Sat, Aug 19 @ 2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Abe Lebwohl Park @ St. Marks Church, E. 10th St. & 2nd Ave.

Sunday, Aug 20 @2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Jackie Robinson Park, W. 147th St. & Bradhurst Ave.

Saturday, Aug 26 @ 2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Washington Square Park

Sunday, August 27 @ 2:00 PM: QUEENS -- Travers Park, 76-9 34th Avenue (between 77th and 78th Streets), Jackson Heights

Saturday, Sept 9 @ 2:00 PM: BROOKLYN -- Sunset Park, 6th Ave. & 44th Street

Sun, Sept 10 @ 2:00 PM: BROOKLYN -- Ft. Greene Park, Myrtle Ave. bet. N. Portland Ave. & St. Edwards St.

Saturday, September 16 @ 2:00 PM: STATEN ISLAND -- Tappen Park at Canal, Bay and Water Streets

Sunday, September 17 @ 2:00 PM: MANHATTAN -- Tompkins Square Park at E. 7th St. & Ave A

Telephone 

Telephone is a disability arts film project bringing awareness to audio description for dance, an art form that allows blind and visually impaired people to be fully included in the joy of artistic expression. Telephone showcases audio description as an art form in its own right, while also providing an immersive sensory experience for audience members of all sight levels.

The screendance documentary is the first of its kind, featuring diverse disabled and non-disabled artists who have come together to prove that: dance is visceral, not merely visual.

Running Time: 45 minutes

AUGUST 15, 2023 at 7 PM

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Johnson Theater
The Conductor

In Reed’s play, the character Shashi Parmar is the face. But his role as a Recall leader is threatened when the downing of a US spy plane over Indian airspace occurs, coupled with the growing tensions between the nationalist Indian leader, Siraj ud-Daulah, and the United States. As a result, anti-Indian sentiment rises on the West Coast. Indian Americans must hide or leave the country. A new Underground Railroad is established to convey Indian Americans to Canada, from whence they can get passage to rejoin family and friends in India. Unlike the 19th Century when Abolitionists harbored fugitive slaves, “The Conductor” of the 2020s is a Black journalist named Warren Chipp, Shashi’s rival. Some scenes go off like fireworks as the two debate their positions on the Recall. In this play, the women, Kali Parmar, a women’s studies professor and Melody Wells, a journalist, are not innocent bystanders. They have lines too.

Running Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
August 24 – September 10, 2023
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:00PM, Sunday at 3:00 PM

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