Ars Nova
511 West 54th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
January 30 – February 9, $15, 8:00
212-352-3101
www.arsnovanyc.com
Since 2007, Ars Nova’s Play Group has been putting together festivals of short works and live music dedicated to pop-culture themes and internet memes, beginning with “The Wikipedia Plays” and continuing with “Playlist,” “Missed Connections NYC,” “The Wii Plays,” and “The Urban Dictionary Plays.” This year the Play Group turns its attention to online movie streaming with “The Netflix Plays,” twelve works inspired by Netflix’s recommendation categories and people’s guilty pleasures. The queue consists of Josh Koenigsberg’s Because You Watched Weekend at Bernie’s 2: A Kantian Morality Tale directed by Wes Grantom, Rachel Bonds’s Because You Watched Sherlock: Jack of Hearts directed by Portia Krieger, Sarah Gancher’s Understated Foreign Coming of Age: December 2011, Budapest directed by Jess Chayes, Sarah Burgess’s Inscrutable European-Set Thrillers: Bolzano directed by Jesse Jou, Dipika Guha’s Because You Watched Downton Abbey: Violently Overstated British Period Drama for Ages 19-100 directed by Jou, Bess Wohl’s Watch It Again: Happy New Year directed by Chayes, Sharyn Rothstein’s Heartfelt Noncontroversial Political Tearjerkers: October Surprise! directed by Chayes, A. Zell Williams’s Emotional Foreign Father-Daughter Films: The Foreign Affair, directed by Jou, Nick Gandiello’s Hip-Hop Documentaries: How I Feel directed by Krieger, Stephen Karam’s Watch It Again! directed by Grantom, Michael Mitnick’s Because You Watched Frasier: BECAUSE YOU WATCHED FRASIER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! directed by Krieger, and Jon Kern’s Inspiring Fight-the-System Movies Based on Real Life: The Cable Bill directed by Grantom. But you need not worry too much about the bill, as the evening, in which all the plays are performed, is a mere fifteen bucks. The cast, which, based on the plays’ titles, should be having a lot of fun themselves, includes Kyle Beltran, Deonna Bouye, Nadia Bowers, Megan Byrne, Ben Graney, Drew McVety, Sarah Steele, and Eddie Kaye Thomas.