I Like to Be Here: Jackson Heights Revisited, or, This Is a Mango

Theatre 167’s Jackson Heights Trilogy — collaboratively written by 18 playwrights — featured 37 actors in 93 roles speaking 14 languages. I Like To Be Here is the newest, edgiest piece from this multilingual, multicultural company. In the span of one very late night, new faces encounter existing characters and re-imagined scenes from the Trilogy. An elderly Irish woman fights to keep her home. A Bangaladeshi cab driver working the night shift yearns for a woman who rises at dawn to bake bread but does not speak her language. A closeted Long Island cop comes into town for a date, and a dosa chef inadvertently heals a customer’s heart. Drag queens, car dispatchers, under-slept parents, gamblers, insomniacs, and dreamers find one another on the streets of Jackson Heights.

I Like To Be Here is part of the 2nd annual Theater:Village Festival, an annual theatrical event of plays centered around one playwright or theme running simultaneously in different West Village venues.