Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Dramatizing the gradual act of disappearing: Jacob Perkins’ THE DINOSAURS and Erica Schmidt’s THE DISAPPEAR

• By drediman
• February 18, 2026
• No Comments

As humans, our lives are largely constructed around the concept of permanence. It’s therefore fascinating that, currently Off-Broadway, we have a pair of fascinating new plays that, in their own way, dramatize the specific act of gradual disappearance. As usual, you can read on below for my further thoughts.

THE DINOSAURS
Playwrights Horizons
Through March 1

Earlier this week, Jacob Perkins’ new drama The Dinosaurs (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) opened Off-Broadway courtesy of Playwrights Horizons. In essence, the play is an artful and time-collapsing meditation on change, letting go, and disappearance — all under the unassuming guise of a women’s AA group meeting. By juxtaposing extreme naturalism with panoramic philosophical musings, the play unfolds with the disorienting sense that the ground beneath us is in a constant state of shifting (the same effect thing was achieved by Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime, which just recently concluded its limited run on Broadway). This also gives the work the ability to examine the cyclicality of the human experience, at large, with clear-eyed curiosity (e.g., there’s one point late in the play when the dialogue almost exactly mirrors an exchange from early in the play). The production has been staged with subtle intensity and surrealism by veteran director Les Waters, who has made a career of helming thought-provoking theater, primarily Off-Broadway. Best of all, The Dinosaurs is being brought to life by an exceptional ensemble of actresses — perhaps the finest I’ve seen since Bess Wohl’s Liberation on the Great White Way — and is comprised of such stalwarts as Kathleen Chalfant, Elizabeth Marvel, April Matthis, Kelly McQuail, Mallory Portnoy, and Maria Elena Ramirez (Chalfant, Marvel, and Matthis are especially compelling in their fiercely idiosyncratic portrayals). Each character is given the chance to share stories from their lives about irrevocable change and loss, which these exquisite actresses imbue with devastating honesty and specificity.

THE DISAPPEAR
Audible Theater at Minetta Lane Theatre
Through February 22

In a less abstract manner than The Dinosaurs, Erica Schmidt also pulls off an Off-Broadway disappearing act in her aptly titled play The Disappear (RECOMMENDED), which is being presented this winter by Audible Theater at the Minetta Lane Theatre in the West Village. In her new work, Schmidt (who also directs) draws liberally from her formidable forebears — namely Chekhov, Coward, and Shakespeare — to tell the tale of a disintegrating marriage between an artistic power couple (he’s a successful but egotistical film director, she’s a widely read author and a quietly exasperated wife). Set in an ideally rustic home in the Hudson Valley, the play puts a spotlight on toxic masculinity, the alchemy of creating art, and our painful capacity for change. Schmidt’s exploration of the notion of disappearance is more practically done within the framework of the aforementioned marriage, which slowly renders the husband’s role in the relationship — and more broadly, in his work and family life — as reducing into complete redundancy. At the conclusion of the play, the crushing realization literally erases him from the stage. If the brew may seem a bit derivative at times, the accomplished cast — which includes the likes of Hamish Linklater, Miriam Silverman, and Dylan Baker — steers the ship brilliantly. Linklater nails the insufferably entitled white male filmmaker stereotype, while Silverman anchors the play as his novelist wife with a steely portrayal that thankfully registers as entirely real. Ever the quietly caustic character actor, Baker gives an expert performance as a movie producer who functions as the steady buffer for the play’s other, more volatile characters.