Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – At New York Theatre Workshop’s IN THE BRICKS 2026, mortality and aging were front of mind for the festival’s participating solo theater artists

• By drediman
• June 19, 2026
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At New York Theatre Workshop’s 2026 edition of its In the Bricks Festival — which concluded this past weekend — the notions of mortality and aging were front of mind for the festival’s participating solo theater artists (note that I wasn’t able to catch Liza Jessie Peterson’s The Peculiar Patriot, but you can read my review of an earlier incarnation of that show here). As always, you can read on below for my further thoughts.

THE UNEXPECTED 3RD
New York Theatre Workshop (primary theater)

Perhaps the most fully realized of the three shows I caught at the festival — and the only one I saw staged at New York Theatre Workshop’s primary stage, complete with an actual set and a more than rudimentary lighting design — was Kathryn Grody’s The Unexpected 3rd (RECOMMENDED), an empowering and entertaining monologue that takes on the topic of growing older. Although the monologue meanders a bit, that’s part of its charm, as was the gregarious Grody herself. I couldn’t help but be taken by her enthusiasm, optimism, and boundless energy as she traversed the stage over the course of the show’s 90-minute running time. Indeed, at 80, she exhibited astonishing physical and mental capacity, emphatically demonstrating for the audience that age is indeed just a number. Suffice to say, her graceful and vigorous embrace of elderhood was an inspiring sight to behold. Throughout, Grody portrayed herself in a constant state of discovery (occasionally quite literally, as cleverly directed by Timothy Near) — and at times amusing bewilderment — as she reinvented herself at numerous stages of her life, which she recounted for us in a number of haphazard flashbacks (her current unexpected incarnation is as a social media influencer, hence the title of the piece).

MENTION MY BEAUTY
New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW’s Fourth Street Theatre)

Playwright and actress Leslie Ayvazian continued on vein of aging and reminiscing in her autobiographical one-woman show Mention My Beauty (RECOMMENDED). Like Grody’s aforementioned piece, the work was made up of flashbacks that collectively endeavored to make sense of a life from the point of view of a woman of a certain age. At 77 years young, Ayvazian is still a gorgeous and beautiful woman, blessed with elegance, self-possession, and effortless femininity. Performed with script in hand, the show vividly recounted her quietly radical life, particularly her coming-of-age in the midst of — although crucially not a part of — the whirlwind of the sexual revolution, anti-war moment, and the rise of women’s rights. Despite the similarities in topic to Grody’s show, Ayvazian brought an altogether different sort of energy to her meditation on beauty and womanhood. Instead of Grody’s manic, hyper-active behavior, she was a grounded (yet charismatic) stage presence and performer, patiently taking her time as she recalled the past with clarity, poignancy and honesty. Indeed, as directed by David Warren, Mention My Beauty was compelling in an unassumingly lowkey kind of way. Ayvazian also brought the unique perspective of being a first generation woman of Armenian decent, coming from a family that was traumatized by the Genocide of 1915. As such, she also processed her story from an intergenerational lens, thereby paying moving homage to the complex women in her family that have come before her.

SARDINES (A COMEDY ABOUT DEATH)
New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW’s Fourth Street Theatre)

In the natural order of things, actor/comedian Chris Grace’s solo show Sardines (a comedy about death) (RECOMMENDED) concerned itself, pointedly, with exactly what it’s title spells out — that is, death and mortality. The most compact and focused of the three offerings I caught at this year’s edition of NYTW’s In the Bricks Festival (the show arrived in New York having established itself a hit at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival) — with a running time of just about an hour — the piece chronicled Grace’s ongoing unlucky relationship with death, having survived a seemingly outsized number of departures, including the passing of a number of his siblings, his parents, and a former partner. Grace’s storytelling is heavily influenced by his background as a stand-up comic, namely manifesting itself via often very funny one-liners and the set-up of his jokes, which were juxtaposed with harrowing yet clear-eyed accounts of each progressive death that he has had to work through in his life. These eye-opening episodes were invariably delivered with insight, devastating vulnerability and ultimately, with pun intended, grace. Smartly directed by Eric Michaud (Grace’s current partner, who himself has had to contend with some serious health issues), Sardines was very much a show about taking the time to cherish and nurture family, friendships and romantic relationships — while we still have them in our lives — as it was about our looming mortality.