The independent theatre landscape of New York City is bracing for a massive summer renaissance. John Chatterton, a foundational trailblazer of the off-off-Broadway movement, has officially announced the grand return of the Midtown International Theatre Festival (MITF) from June 15 through July 26, 2026. This relaunch marks the return of a true “Festival Giant” after a nearly decade-long hiatus.
To spearhead this historic undertaking, Chatterton has partnered with the promotional firm JMGC to manage brand strategy and press visibility. Operating out of the three-theatre complex at the American Theatre of Actors (ATA)—which is concurrently celebrating its landmark 50th anniversary—MITF 2026 is positioning itself as a sprawling, multi-stage hub of creative innovation.
Among an eclectic array of world-premiere works, festival producers have unveiled a powerful centerpiece for the opening week: The Plans We Made, a gripping, raw drama written, directed, and produced by multi-hyphenate artist Dr. Danielle Bacibianco. Playing a strictly limited three-performance engagement from June 16 through June 22, 2026, the production will anchor the festival’s residency inside the intimate Beckmann Theatre on the second floor of the ATA complex.
An Emotional Pressure Cooker on Stuyvesant Street
Set entirely within the confines of a cramped apartment in Staten Island, The Plans We Made follows Grey (Lillie Schenkel) and Aurora (Jordyn Rubinsky), two women who cross paths in the basement of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. Out of shared recovery, deep vulnerability, and the desperate hope of becoming different people, they build a fragile, passionate relationship.
However, because sobriety is a battle fought strictly one day at a time, their bond begins to fracture when Grey slips into a silent, emotionally distant relapse. As Aurora reaches out for the version of the future they once promised each other, their intimacy bleeds into memory.
Dr. Bacibianco’s script relies heavily on fluid movement, sharp prose, and a haunting sonic landscape to capture the heavy, aching rhythms of queer desire. As Aurora notes during the play’s emotional climax: “Love was never the problem. It’s what you always loved more.”
The specific setting of the play was heavily inspired by a real apartment on Stuyvesant Street in Staten Island, where Bacibianco became obsessed with the way the amber glow of the streetlights glossed over the windows at night, framing the distant Manhattan skyline across the water. For the stage adaptation, the flat transforms into an architectural manifestation of addiction itself.
“I’ve always believed this play needs to feel uncomfortably close,” says Dr. Bacibianco. “The closeness heightens the claustrophobia of addiction itself—the suffocating feeling that your world has narrowed down to four walls, one person, and the choices you keep trying to outrun. There’s literally nowhere for the actors to ‘perform out’ to; everything has to live truthfully in the room.”
By staging the drama inside the Beckmann Theatre, the production deliberately strips away the distance between the stage and the seats. The audience is transformed from passive theatregoers into active, uncomfortable witnesses to the characters’ reality—hearing every catch in their breath, every heavy silence, and the raw physical tension that precedes a relapse.
Rewriting the Future: The Melodic Core
The title and emotional baseline of the play were directly inspired by the indie-pop band Son Lux’s song, “The Plans We Made.” Dr. Bacibianco recalls being completely leveled by a core lyric in the track: “What is permanent remains / Despite the plans we make.”
The song’s overarching themes of grief and the terror of losing someone when a connection feels “forever” served as the primary blueprint for the production. The Plans We Made juxtaposes a grand, idealized future conceived in a church basement against the harsh reality of how addiction disrupts time, layout, and memory. Grey and Aurora constantly try to rewrite their lives into something romantic, sober, and safe, only to find that love alone cannot automatically save people when recovery refuses to follow a linear path.
The repeated refrain from the Son Lux track, “I’m afraid to let you go,” functions as a literary chorus throughout the production—a haunting postscript trailing every scene as Aurora desperately holds onto a relationship that has already slipped away.
A Refusal to Sanitize the Human Condition
For Dr. Bacibianco, choosing the historic return of the Midtown International Theatre Festival as the platform for this world premiere was an easy decision. The festival circuit offers an essential alternative to commercial theatre networks, granting independent artists the absolute freedom to tell messy, uncompromising stories without the pressure of sanitizing them for mass consumption.
The Plans We Made deliberately rejects the traditional, tidy Hollywood arc. It refuses to romanticize the daily grind of alcoholism, just as it refuses to flatten its characters into a neat, moralistic cautionary tale.
“The return of MITF feels important to me because—in my gut—I believe audiences are hungry for stories that are messy, intimate, and simply fucking human,” Bacibianco asserts. “As both playwright and director, that freedom allows me to place my trust into the actors’ hands as they create the stillness, discomfort, contradiction, and silence of Grey’s and Aurora’s love story. This play does not have a happy ending. Recovery is complicated, and so is love. I am grateful that MITF gives artists permission to stay inside those difficult truths.”
Production Profile & Technical Roster
Behind the scenes, Dr. Bacibianco has assembled a tight-knit creative team to construct the play’s specific, localized environment:
- Production Assistant: Krista Luongo
- Sound Designer: Gary Moore
- Lighting Designer & Sound Tech: Tori Sliwinski
- Costume Designer: Nora Shvartsberg
- Graphic Designer: Jordan Luongo
Performance Information
- Tuesday, June 16, 2026 @ 7:15 PM
- Sunday, June 21, 2026 @ 11:30 AM
- Monday, June 22, 2026 @ 6:45 PM
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