East Side Stories

OBIE Award-winning theater company Metropolitan Playhouse will present its annual East Side Stories, a three-week celebration of the life and lore of the East Village featuring eight new plays and six new solo performances.

These new works delve into such timely topics as immigrant identity, xenophobia, authoritarianism, gentrification, and artistic freedom. Plays feature famous figures of Village history, such as Boss Tweed, Hilly Kristal, Frances Perkins, Pauline Newman, Clara Lemlich, Rose Schneidermann,and Boris Tomashefsky, as well as historical events including Draft Riots, The Great Rent Strike of 1908, and the first New York performance of a play in Yiddish.

The festival is comprised of four programs that run in rotation over the three weeks of performances: