September 01, 2025
Provided Image/Shamus McCarty
The show 'new heaven new earth,' is a modern retelling of 'Anthony and Cleopatra.' It follows a Black woman who tries to understand her namesake. It is playing at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this fall.
Growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, playwright Rayne, 28, said they found a strong sense of Afrocentrism – a worldview centered on the contributions of people of African descent. So, when they decided to look into an adaption of a Shakespeare play, Rayne said they became "obsessed with the idea of a Black Cleopatra."
"When we talk about who Cleopatra was, some of the arguments are that you can't apply modern racial understandings onto this woman from the ancient world, but then those same folks would die on a hill and say that she was racially purely Greek and white identifiably," Rayne said. "So I wanted to understand that contradiction and learn more about Afrocentrism."
Rayne's upcoming show, "new heaven new earth," unpacks some of those ideas in a modern retelling of William Shakespeare's "Anthony and Cleopatra." The play, which opens Sept. 1 at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival, follows a modern-day corporate woman named Cleopatra as she balances her career ambition with her mother's divorce proceedings. In an attempt to better understand her mother, she learns about why she was named after the Egyptian queen and stumbles across the famous play. Audiences follow her as she tries to discover herself through the text and juggles a love connection with her boss, the Marc Anthony character.
The show premiered in April in collaboration with Shakespeare in Clark Park, but Rayne said they spent the summer reworking it. The initial version, they said, felt too close to the original and the Fringe Festival version will be more of a "revisionist history."
Shamus McCarty, the director of "new heaven new earth" and the producing artistic director of Shakespeare in Clark Park, said it's a show that's simultaneously historical and modern, and one that dives deeper into its feminine protagonist.
"We see a lot of Cleopatra's like inner workings and the things that she is dealing with, as opposed to her sort of being this sexualized, mystical other," McCarty said.
The show is among nearly 350 performances coming to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival this year. Below, are six more you won't want to miss (plus, honorable mentions to a ballroom duet based on 1930s Shanghai, a multimedia show inspired by Nina Simone, a performative dough-making experience and an original play that meshes Taylor Swift and the Unabomber).
Sept. 1-4 | 1219 Vine St. | $24
The "Carnival of Feelings" is an interactive performance in which audiences explore their emotions through old-time carnival games. It runs in time slots of 15-30 minutes. Creators Anne Brashier and Brian Grannan say it's both silly and healing, and participants will leave with a reward.
Sept. 4 | 4522 Baltimore Ave. | $30
Since September 2023, a monthly "clown slam" has brought in a rotating cast of performers to experiment, laugh and act goofy in front of an audience. Catch comedy, audience interaction and face offs of funny people.
Sept. 4-14 | 1714 Delancey St. | $20
A group of former University of the Arts students created a new company called Theatre By Development. Their new show, "Urinal," follows three teens who spend their senior year in the bathroom smoking weed and making beats until they're forced to solve the mystery of a missing pair of shoes.
Sept. 6-28 | 302 S. Hicks St. | $25
Selena Rook's non-verbal piece uses physical theater, object manipulation and magic to to evoke landscapes, animals and vehicles and showcase the power of sound. The show was created in France for both children and adults and is accessible to deaf and hard-of-hearing people.
Sept. 11-20 | 320 Chestnut St. | $15
Carpenter Hall and EgoPo are teaming up to produce two historic shows. From Sept. 11-13, they're showing Thomas Godfrey's "Prince of Parthia," which was the first show written by an American and shown to United States audiences. The following weekend includes performances of Robert Montgomery Bird's "The Gladiator," an 1831 abolitionist show about a Roman slave revolt.
Sept. 12-14 | 225 Church St. | $25
Die-Cast theater company pulls together original music with the work of tragicomic playwright Samuel Beckett. The show combines, "What Where," "Cascando," "Ohio Impromptu" and "Catastrophe" with comedy and a live band that features a concertina, toy piano, ukulele bass and music boxes.
