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Origin Theatre Company

Misterman

June 28, 2026

Walsh has long been fascinated by characters imprisoned within the architecture of their own memories, people condemned to relive the past not because they have forgotten it, but because they remember it with unbearable precision. "Misterman" may be his most devastating examination of that obsession. Thomas Magill, a profoundly isolated young man living alone in the Irish village of Inishfree, believes himself chosen to shepherd his neighbors toward God's grace. Every morning he ventures into town with his pen and pad noting what his flock must work on to improve their paths to heaven, determined to save their souls, convinced that he alone sees their hidden sins and their capacity for redemption. Yet beneath this evangelical certainty lies a psyche splintering under the weight of grief, abuse, loneliness, and delusion. Walsh transforms what could have been a familiar portrait of mental illness into something metaphysical: an inquiry into the terrible cost of constructing a reality so complete that it ultimately devours its creator. [more]

A Kid Like Rishi

June 4, 2022

Origin Theatre Company’s stark production of Kees Roorda’s A Kid Like Rishi is a totally involving Rashomon-like take on a real-life tragedy:  In November of 2012, 17-year-old Rishi Chandrikasing, a young man of Indian descent, was shot and killed at a train station in the Hague by a policeman. Was it a case of racial profiling? A justified shooting? Accidental? In the English translation by Tom Johnston, Roorda thoroughly examines the event through the testimony of twenty or so witnesses all played by three disparate, but complementary actors:  Sung Yun Cho, Atandwa Kani and Kaili Vernoff, all three quietly intense. The cell theatre’s well-known flexibility was put to good use by the scenic designer Guy de Lancey who placed the audience on four sides of a long wooden table around and upon which the actors performed Koorda’s sad docudrama. [more]

Beautiful Day Without You

November 10, 2018

Did Blaze, a Doberman Pinscher, cause the death of Pippi, a German Shepherd-Chihuahua mix? That is the crux of Italian playwright Marco Calvani’s three-character, way-out, occasionally hilarious and absorbing drama "Beautiful Day Without You." This realistic premise’s off-beat treatment is reminiscent of Yasmina Reza’s provocative comic manner and the dialogue has the profane snappiness of David Mamet. It’s a dense 90-minutes that are often confounding but ultimately rewarding. The minimalist presentation serves the material well. [more]

The Hundred We Are

March 29, 2016

Swedish novelist and playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s new play, "The Hundred We Are," presents an emotionally compelling view on the different stages of one’s self encountered over a lifetime. From the time we are born, until the time of our passing, we learn to adapt to our surroundings and transition from life phase to life phase, with our evolution as a human being marked as life’s most important journey. Audiences are in for a treat as this provocative and progressive new play examines many of the important social issues occurring throughout the world in a fresh and truly thought-provoking way. [more]

Stoopdreamer

September 14, 2015

"Stoopdreamer," a new play by Pat Fenton, is an intimate commentary on the gentrification process in Brooklyn, specifically applying to the small neighborhood of Windsor Terrace. Located between Prospect Park and Greenwood Cemetery, Windsor Terrace is a nine-block wide residential neighborhood which for years was home to many immigrant families, a majority of which were Irish. Though the gentrification of Brooklyn continues today, for Windsor Terrace this has been an event 70 years in the making: in 1946, Robert Moses announced a brand new road building program that consequently destroyed an enormous amount of residences in the community, and as a result over 1,200 Windsor Terrace residents were left homeless. [more]