Company XIV's Petite Rouge transforms the classic tale of Little Red Riding Hood into a lush spectacle of temptation, transformation, and theatrical excess. Equal parts sensual, humorous, and immersive, the production invites audiences into a world of sparkling cocktails, Versailles-inspired glamour, and unforgettable performances that linger long after the curtain falls

Sick of Broadway cash grabs and soulless revivals, Gregory Garofalo headed to Long Island City’s “In Scena!” Theater Festival in search of something real. What he found were exploding potatoes, experimental performances, and the kind of passion New York theater has been missing.

Years after the culture decided who Lena Dunham was, Fame Sick arrives as something far more uncomfortable: a brutally self-aware account of illness, exploitation, ambition, humiliation, and what it meant to become the face of millennial womanhood at twenty-three.

Created by immersive theater veterans Ingrid Kapteyn and Tony Bordonaro, Chalk Outline Portal turns Theaterlab into a sensory-heavy dystopian game room where dance, gaming, intimacy, and audience participation blur together in chaotic and thrilling ways.

Set against the gray heaviness of Rochester winters, Lake Effect explores adultery, family fallout, and emotional stagnation with sharp observations about suburban life. Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney captures Upstate New York beautifully, even if the novel’s emotional complexity doesn’t always hit as hard as it wants to.

At a warm queer gathering in Brooklyn Heights, conversations about astrology, messy lesbians, and coming-of-age relationships revealed something deeper beneath the tarot cards and cosmic language: the difficult work of building chosen family.

Canciones is less like attending immersive theater and more like accidentally being folded into someone’s loud, loving, emotionally complicated family party. With soulful live mariachi music, fresh tamales, porch chisme, and performances so intimate they feel overheard rather than staged, it’s one of the most restorative and memorable theater experiences I’ve had in years.

Xochitl Gonzalez’s Last Night in Brooklyn captures an early-2000s Brooklyn that felt communal, ambitious, and alive. Moving between artists, finance types, parties, and Fort Greene apartments, the novel remembers a version of New York that increasingly feels difficult to hold onto.

A visually striking, tightly directed production, Beauty Freak examines the rise of a filmmaker whose success is inseparable from Nazi power. It is a smart, unsettling play about ambition, denial, and the cost of looking away.

A quiet, slow-burning novel about a woman who feels like an outsider in her own life. Nothing neatly resolves—and that’s exactly why it lingers.

Winning the Booker Prize sounds glamorous. According to David Szalay, it’s mostly unbearable. In a packed room at the 92nd Street Y, he spoke with Sam Lipsyte about Flesh, the tension between desire and disgust, and why he refuses to let his protagonist explain himself.

A dramedy about friendship and longing, a scrappy cultural sketch show, and a heartfelt solo musical. Three Fringe picks, three completely different outcomes, and a reminder that the risk is the point.

A deeply immersive novel about NYC in your 20s and the quiet, disorienting shift into adulthood. So Old, So Young captures the friendships, choices, and creeping realization that life does not unfold the same way for everyone, and that you may not even notice it happening.

A one-woman show about shopping addiction and spiraling debt promises a redemption arc but delivers uneven pacing, forgotten lines, and a performance that never quite finds its footing. A few celebrity impressions land, but they’re not enough to save a production that feels more forced than fully realized.

At the Frigid New York Fringe Festival, one play turns a wine-soaked girls’ night into simmering chaos, while another follows a single good deed that spirals wildly out of control. Two very different shows, one shared strength: raw, unpredictable storytelling that reminds you why Fringe still matters.

A revival of Spider Rabbit at La MaMa turns a playful, childlike rhythm into something far more unsettling, tracing how violence is absorbed, normalized, and made into something you can live with.

Frigid’s New York City Fringe Festival is one of the best parts of the year for discovering new theater in New York. It’s where artists take big swings, follow their instincts, and put work on stage that feels fresh, specific, and alive. This is your greatest chance to see the type of theater that we’re all worried about disappearing. We’ve pulled together a few shows we’re especially excited to see and spoke with the creatives behind them.

Two NHL rivals turn a locker room moment into a years-long secret relationship that slowly becomes something more. Heated Rivalry flips the script on romance, trading meet-cutes for hookups and delivering a story that’s as comforting as it is hot, with two men who feel real, not like a stereotype.

A first encounter with Soviet cinema leads to a packed screening of Secret Agent at Metrograph, where stunning visuals, quiet paranoia, and a room full of regulars remind one writer why movie theaters still matter.

Part two of our NYC Fringe Festival coverage leans into the personal. From a solo show about learning to drive at 40 to save a marriage, to a darkly funny spiral through alcohol and memory, to a glittering, high-energy love letter to New York and the artists who survive it—these are stories about risk, reinvention, and what it costs to keep going. Meet the creators bringing it all to the stage.

Frigid’s NYC Fringe Festival is where new theater still feels risky, alive, and worth showing up for. We’ve rounded up a few shows we can’t wait to see, and talked to the artists behind them. This is Part One.