CUNY's performing arts network has a new borough-wide festival this October, and its theater strand runs from a hip-hop musical in the Bronx to two plays by María Irene Fornés and a free new-work lab in Queens.
The CUNY Stages Festival is new this year. It pulls the October programming of the performing arts centers on City University of New York campuses into one calendar. CUNY Stages counts 51 venues on 14 campuses, spread across all five boroughs, and many of the events are free.
Here is the theater on the schedule, in date order.
PRELUDE, October 7–10
The 23rd PRELUDE festival opens the month at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, 365 Fifth Avenue. Admission is free, with RSVP required. Our full preview of this year's lineup is here.
Quarter Rican, Hostos Center, October 11, 14 and 15
Quarter Rican, billed as a hip-hop musical, plays three dates at the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture, 450 Grand Concourse in the Bronx: Sunday, October 11, Wednesday, October 14, and Thursday, October 15. Tickets are $19.55. Performance times are on the venue's listing.
The central character is a father in his thirties trying to raise a child with a link to their Latinx heritage while working through his own doubts. His alter ego, MC Plátano, pushes him on parenthood, identity, gentrification and what gets handed down. The score has a dozen original songs.
Tango Palace, Baruch Performing Arts Center, October 19
The Acting Company reads Tango Palace on Monday, October 19, at 7:30 PM in the Engelman Recital Hall at Baruch Performing Arts Center, One Bernard Baruch Way. The evening is part of the company's Louanna O. Carlin and John McDonald reading series, presented in association with Expand the Canon. Tickets run from $10 to $75.
The one-act from 1963 was Fornés's first play in English. Two characters, the imperious, androgynous Isidore and the younger Leopold, are shut in Isidore's shrine room for a three-scene contest of wills. The company calls it "a sapphic clown pas de deux."
Fefu and Her Friends, Brooklyn College, October 23–28
Four days later Fornés is back, this time in a full staging. Fefu and Her Friends, her Obie-winning play, runs at the Don Buchwald Theater at Brooklyn College, 2900 Bedford Avenue, with Ran Xia as guest director. Performances are October 23, 24, 26, 27 and 28 at 7:30 PM, plus a 2:00 PM matinee on October 24. Tickets are $25.
Fefu has invited seven women to her house to plan a charity event. As the day moves from room to room, their conversations show how far social expectations limit each of them.
Rough Draft Festival, LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, October 27–30
LaGuardia Performing Arts Center in Long Island City, Queens, closes the month with its Rough Draft Festival, Tuesday, October 27, through Friday, October 30. Three new pieces are on the bill, Skin to Skin, Mama Run and Furball, in a mix of staged readings, works in progress and audience conversations. Admission is free, with an optional $25 contribution toward new-work development. Times vary by event.
The wider festival also takes in dance, concerts, circus and family shows. The full calendar is on the CUNY Stages website.
