PRESS
BRUISER THEATRE DISPATCH - OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVESBruiser Mag - May 11, 2025
A couple days later, I was once again swiping through Instagram stories and saw Adult Film had posted some photos from what had turned out to be an entirely sold-out run of Other People’s Lives. The photos made me nostalgic for only two days prior, when, for an hour and forty-five minutes, in an unmarked warehouse on the edge of Bushwick, it felt like anything could happen—and everything that did happen was magic. The last slide of their story was a reshare from Katrin Nugent: a photo taken from the second floor of Unit J, looking down on the entire cast in the middle of the “stage.” The caption read, “Something very special happened here.” Indeed it did, and I was honored to have been a part of it, even if I was just a fly on the wall.
Critic Roundup: SLAMDANCE GARAGE, 300 PAINTINGS, WHERE WE'RE BORN, NINA, THE BARBARIANS — ReviewJOEY SIMS - February 20, 2025
The work of Lucy Thurber proves an ideal fit for young company Adult Film, a scrappy new outfit operating out of a private space in Ridgewood, Queens. Adult Film is presenting a barebones, intensely atmospheric revival of Thurber’s 2003 play Where We’re Born through February 9th, under David Garelik’s effective direction.
The production is a heavier lift for Adult Film than past work, and a notable step forward. There’s no distance or irony to Thurber’s text, no remove to hide behind. If this staging at times feels like poverty cosplay, that’s perhaps inevitable with indie theatermakers doing a play of this nature in a Ridgewood basement.
Yet a game cast keeps it grounded—most especially the women. Moriarty’s Lilly is brutally open-hearted; Jamie Coffey is movingly bone-weary as Franky. And Garelik ultimately uses the space to his advantage. Thurber’s plays live in America’s most suffocating corners, and in this production’s more convincing moments, it can truly feel like the walls are closing in.
Review: Adult Film's "Where We're Born" Is a Fantastic Rebirth for a Timely PlayThinking Theatre NYC - January 17, 2025
Lucy Thurber's play Where We're Born was published in 2008, the period of financialized capitalism's most recent national and global meltdown, but the resentments expressed by some of its white working-class characters about being looked down upon by people who think they're better and about racialized Others having it easier than "real Americans" have if anything intensified–or at least been amplified–in the intervening years. Adult Film's fabulous new production of Where We're Born, one of five works that make up Thurber's award-winning cycle The Hill Town Plays, fittingly comes at a historical juncture in which such grievances have helped to usher in what promises to be a period of further intensified income inequality, deregulation, and rule by a billionaire oligarchy…
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH: THE RISE OF HYPER-INTIMATE THEATREJOEY SIMS - July 5, 2024
Adult Film, a burgeoning company and artistic training center based out of a Bushwick basement, welcomes no more than 30 people per performance. Every inch of the subterranean space, including the makeshift kitchen, becomes part of the play. That blurred line between performers and audience helps the venue feel less formal, according to artistic director Ryan Czerwonko—more akin to a gathering spot than a theatre.
"It eliminates the need many artists feel for as many people as possible to see their work—actually, it's pretty amazing that 30 people crammed into a room to see it," says Czerwonko. "It's a real communal feeling."
Review: Adult Film hatches a splendid new "sea gull"JOHN R ZIEGLER AND LEAH RICHARDS - May 24, 2024
Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull (1895) was unquestionably innovative in its time, becoming a milestone in world drama, and Adult Film's new production of the Chekhov classic, Sea Gull, channels that innovatory spirit in a fleet, engrossing staging. Using a new translation by film and theater veteran John Christopher Jones, Sea Gull…
Where did NYC’s indie theatre go? Backyards, basements, and rooftops.KENNEAL PATTERSON - March 5, 2024
Several dozen people crowded into a tiny Bushwick apartment basement on a cold February night for a live performance of Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.” Ryan Czerwonko, 34, who lives upstairs and runs the space, set the scene with his very own furniture: bookshelves dragged downstairs, an old black futon, and a rickety table topped with his morning coffee mug. The basement isn’t just home to Czerwonko and his worn and torn furniture. It’s also an independent theater and artistic training center called Adult Film…
Cracks in Postmodernity - The Chekhovian Renaissance: Adult Film's post-pandemic theatre revivalJOSH FEYE - Jan. 5, 2024
Through revival, plays and their playwrights produce new meanings and understanding, becoming portals for the soul and contemporary culture. Since the pandemic, Anton Chekhov’s plays are everywhere. At the turn of the twentieth century, before the Russian Revolution, Chekhov, a decadent Russian playwright, explored feelings of nostalgia and the inner world. He has made his grand return to New York stages…
The Sheila Variations 2.0 - Creating Space, Symbolically and LiterallySHEILA O'MALLEY - Mar. 27, 2023
A couple years ago, through a mutual friend, I became aware of Ryan Czerwonko. We “became friends” on Instagram, and his posts revealed a kindred spirit. He would post on John Cassavetes, Lee Strasberg, Marlon Brando. He is an actor, a director, and seemed - from what I could tell on Instagram - to be working constantly in a close group of actors on films and different projects. We started talking. I learned more about what he was doing. He and some friends had formed Adult Film, a theatre company with a broad scope, operating out of his apartment in Bushwick…
The Sheila Variations - Re-cap: June 18-19 Adult Film’s Film + Theatre FestivalSHEILA O'MALLEY - Jun. 27, 2023
Ryan Czerwonko is a go-getter, a thoughtful subversive, a committed artist, immersed in theatre history and the precedents set by the giants who came before, he knows his shit, he’s an actor and writer and filmmaker committed to creating a space where good work can flourish, work that doesn’t fit into the little ideological boxes so prevalent in theatre right now (and everywhere else, I suppose), where the Message is more important than the Story…