FRIGID NEW YORK PRESENTS…
Gotham Storytelling Festival
November 3-16, 2025
Now in its 15th year, the Gotham Storytelling Festival brings together a variety storytellers with a variety of storytelling styles to do what they do best. Whether you’re looking to escape into someone else’s story, revisit a familiar tale, cry a little or just laugh out loud because It’s always the best medicine, Gotham has something for you. Join legendary hitters and new friends for an event that’s sure to alleviate some of the year’s aches, or at least help to distract, transform, transport or give you some sense of hope, if only for just an hour.
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The NY Neo-Futurists bring their signature storytelling chaos to the Gotham Storytelling Festival with The Infinite Wrench! Two weekends only, we’re taking our weekly late-night experiment and blowing it wide open. The Infinite Wrench is our theatrical mechanism for unleashing a rapid-fire barrage of two-minute plays. Each play offers something different—funny, profound, elegant, disgusting, topical, irrelevant, terrifying, or even a song. Together, they create a kaleidoscope of stories that all tackle the here-and-now, drawn directly from the lived experiences of the performers. In just sixty minutes, the ensemble races to share thirty original plays, colliding comedy with honesty, playfulness with sincerity, and spectacle with truth. It’s the NY Neos ongoing and ever-changing attempt to shift the conventions of live performance, now part of New York’s biggest celebration of live storytelling.
After the pandemic, Brad and his wife decide to venture out into the world with a trip to Paris, This is a gift to themselves for the 13th wedding anniversary and (in Brad’s mind) for how well they handled the global catastrophe of Covid 19. The only problem being that when Brad is forced to confront the actual definition of global and he has a total melt down in the most beautiful city in the world. Turns out, he’s not the only one to do that. They have a name for the phenomenon, it’s called Paris Syndrome.
Penis Envy is the culmination of more than three years of study under New York City’s master monologist Mike Daisey who has described Becky as “a cross between Sylvia Plath and Mary Katherine Gallagher.” Informed by her experiences as a parent, a teacher, a queer, a student of literature, and a former Catholic, Becky’s stories unravel extemporaneously to undress taboo topics like sex, age, weight, othering, power, ritual, and death in a style that is raunchy, irreverent, and sharply philosophical.
Michael Hagins may be the only African-American artist to ever take part in every play of William Shakespeare’s complete Canon.
He tells the story of his work, going through the plays and the people that changed his life and guided him to this amazing feat; but as he recounts it all, he learns that with every great achievement and life changing moment, comes a great loss. Come and listen as Michael proceeds to tell his story… Shakespeare style!
On the eve of marriage—an institution Jamie resisted for 30 years—he replays his sex life, which gives new meaning to the term parks and recreation. “Pearl Necklace is funny, sharp, and a hysterical romp” through Jamie’s amorous adventures in bathrooms, beaches, bookstores, and appallingly decorated apartments “delivered with a bawdy panache and a naughty sense of the comic.” Called “a natural raconteur” by the Washington Post, this 6-time Moth champion’s darkly comic stories of his sybaritic journey reveal his struggle to shed shame and guilt and reach self-acceptance before finally tying the knot.
Book Spines Broken By My Purring Cat gathers monologue-stories, some soulful, some naughty. They are stand alone golden nuggets from the many writings accrued by Vermillion along her graphomaniac years. You’ll hear the voices of real Transylvanian people and their rich history they entrusted to Vermillion to tell. You’ll also hear of sticky situations that Vermillion and her friends have been through and the spunky solutions they came up with.
Created and Performed by Mike Daisey “The master storyteller” (The New York Times) returns with a story that must be told. As he did a decade ago in The Trump Card, which predicted the world we live in now, Daisey tells a searing story of resistance: political, personal, and spiritual.
With dark humor he digs deeply into who we are becoming, in both fear and hope, within this unbearable moment. What price will we pay to survive, and what will it mean to live through this if we do?
Comedian Gabe Mollica (This American Life, “Solo” Off-Broadway) is panicked about the trajectory of his life. No house, no kids, and he hasn’t been on a third date in 5 years. (He’ll explain!) But as it stands, he’s freaked out! Has he fallen behind? Is it too late? Instead of future tripping, Gabe attempts to zoom out, look back, and hopefully find…The Big Picture.
After a sold out run at NYC Fringe in April, EMOJI is back! Part love letter, part stand-up set, and part iPhone commercial (jk), EMOJI takes us on a road trip through space and time to explore whether emoji are a uniquely universal form of communication—or a crutch in a fractured society clinging to digital crumbs of human connection. It’ll have you like 😀 but also like :`(
In this hilarious, ADHD-friendly, and “unexpectedly moving” show, Aarushi Agni—known for her work across comedy, storytelling, and music—blends her passions to share a philosophical and emotional understanding of the world, love, friendship, community, and the supermoon through a chaotic TED Talk-meets-cabaret format.