THEATRE

Sharing secrets makes us intimates, but building a life around them sets us apart. In the Broken Watch Theater Company’s new play, Two Thirds Home, Michael and Paul return to their childhood home following their mother’s funeral. The brothers’ confrontation with Sue, their mother’s lover, eventually reveals truths that will strain not only their relationships, but the identity they’ve built for themselves. Check out this emotional familial drama at the Michael Weller Theater, now through Aug 12.

The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), the largest multi-arts festival in North America, hits New York Aug 10–26 in various venues across the city. Each year, the festival presents programming by 190 of the world’s best emerging theatre troupes and dance companies, covering a wide range of disciplines including theatre, performance art, dance, children’s theatre, spoken word, puppetry and multimedia. This year, the festival boasts a large number of LGBT and women’s interest performances, including Diving in December, a new play about the demise of a relationship between a bisexual woman and a lesbian; The Education of Rebecca, a drama that exposes the forces that push one lesbian to conform at all costs; Kelly Kinsella Live! Under Broadway, a comedy solo about what lurks beneath the glamour of Broadway; and PB&J, a play about two Vermont peanut butter and jelly experts whose secret ingredient is…?

Now through Aug 26, head down to the S-P-A-C-E Gallery and Performance Space at the South Street Seaport to check out the first-ever Seaport Summer Theater Festival. The festival features a production of Twelfth Night, Shakespeare’s comedy of love and longing that begins with a tragic shipwreck off the coast of the seaport town of Illyria; plus Snapshots ’07, an evening of one-act plays featuring world premieres by Patrick Blake, Clay Mcleod Chapman and Jeff Cohen. Also, check out special Late Night Comedy performances every Saturday night!

Don’t miss the American Living Room Festival, now through Sept 2 at HERE Arts Center. The festival continues its support of the development of new multi-disciplinary works and artists in a setting that strives to make theatre as much an everyday part of life as watching TV. Highlights of this year’s American Living Room include Floating Brothel, a play about a prison ship full of female con-artists, thieves and prostitutes sailing to the New World; and Salt Lake: A New Ballet in 3 Acts, a dance theatre piece tracking the emergence of Fleur de Sel, an odd character with an irrational craving for salt.