"In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY," New York City’s premiere festival of Italian theater, is back. Held in all five boroughs of NYC now through Monday, May 13, the festival features full—and free!—productions that have already toured around their native Italy, as well as readings of Italian plays in translation, lectures, and exchanges between Italian and International artists. (Yes, the bulk of events are in Italian, but with English subtitles.)
Among the calendar of shows, you’ll find SCIARA – PRIMA C’AGGHIORNA (the story of Francesca Serio, the first woman to denounce the mafia); THE GREAT MAGIC (a three-actor adaptation of the Eduardo De Filippo play); and THE VISIT (a tragicomic show inspired by the admission system for weekly meetings with inmates at the Poggioreale prison in Naples.)
The 11th anniversary season of the festival is hosted by The New York City-based Kairos Italy Theater along with Italy’s KIT Italia and Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at NYU.
Broadway and Off Broadway productions get most of the attention, but to get a true sense of the range and diversity of New York theater, you need to look to the smaller productions collectively known as Off-Off Broadway. There are about 200 Off-Off Broadway spaces in New York, mostly with fewer than 99 seats. Experimental plays thrive in New York's best Off-Off Broadway venues; that's where you'll find many of the city's most challenging and original works. But Off-Off is more than just the weird stuff: It also includes everything from magic shows to revivals of rarely seen classics, and it's a good place to get early looks at major rising talents. What's more, it tends to be affordable; while cheap Broadway tickets can be hard to find, most Off-Off Broadway shows are in the $15–$25 range. Here are some of the current shows that hold the most promise.
RECOMMENDED: Full guide to Off Broadway shows in NYC
