TrashFest 2025

July 21st - July 27th, 2025

Born in 2020 during the pandemic shutdown, TrashFest extends The Tank’s commitment to sustainability by focusing on theatrical waste. While DarkFest considers energy consumption, TrashFest turns attention to the physical materials of production: the sets, costumes, and props that so often end up in landfills. This festival celebrates artists who create work from what others throw away—repurposing trash, salvaging scraps, and transforming discarded materials into something vital, intentional, and new. TrashFest asks: What stories can we tell with what’s left behind?

EVENTS

Featured

Agoraphobic/Claustrophobic

Agoraphobic/Claustrophobic is a retelling of the myth of Icarus through the "non-man" body exploring how to grow into oneself

The End of The World Radio Hour

Two theater geeks and a mad scientist bunker down in an abandoned Chuck E. Cheese for the apocalypse.

Jul 23

Wailsong

The crew of a whaling ship hurtling through a polluted ocean finds themselves hunted by an immense and incomprehensible beast in this short eco-horror play.

Jul 23

Chuck and Tronk in: Open to Work!

Join two puppet roommates in a sitcom-style romp through the New York job market!

Jul 24

The Garbage Patch Dolls

If the tides were rising, where would you go? This family escapes to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch where they learn to survive off of humanity’s most abundant creation: trash.

TWIG

TWIG is a tale about boyfriends, betrothals, and being the best at sucking off the people we love - or, wait… Do we really love them? How can we ever know?

Jul 26

Cardboard: A Musical Fable

Cardboard is every surprisingly scary kids’ movie you watched growing up injected with real issues today, where three brave boxes stand against a recycling bin society built on a lie.

Jul 27

Watch Party

In this darkly comedic farce set on Hollywood’s Biggest Night in 2018, irreverent and deranged hosts Talia and Erin will stop at nothing to execute the perfect Oscars watch party.

The Mushroom God of Leafcutter Ants

A solo show with voices on the seductions of climate nihilism and how we should live in the end times.