The Infinite Wrench

The Infinite Wrench is an experimental play built from about 30 very short plays that the performers try to fit into a single hour. There is no main plot and no fixed script. The line-up changes over time, so a visit a month after your last one may bring entirely new plays and different performers.

The New York Neo-Futurists produce it. The company is an ensemble of writer-performers from several disciplines who make original work out of their own lived experiences, mixing poetry, games and performance art. Each play is meant to be truthful and to be about the here and now, and the hour is run as a race against the clock.

The company calls it its signature ongoing show. Since July 2026 it has played on Fridays and Saturdays at Asylum NYC in an open-ended residency, which the company describes as its first long-term Off-Broadway residency and its return to Manhattan.

There is no story in the usual sense. The evening is a string of unrelated plays, each lasting about two minutes. A piece can be funny, profound, gross, scary or simply beside the point, and some are songs or dances. What holds the hour together is the stage itself: Neo-Futurist plays have no fictional setting, so everything happens in the present moment, with performers playing themselves and nothing pretended.

The plays are written by the ensemble rather than by a single playwright. Each performer writes original short plays drawn from their own life, and new plays enter the show every week. The company's four tenets boil down to honesty about who you are, where you are and what you are doing, in the present moment.

The company names its influences: the Italian Futurists for speed and brevity, Dada and Surrealism for randomness, experimental theater of the sixties for audience interaction, and political theater of the 1980s for a low-tech, socially conscious spirit. Because the pieces are short and new, there is a real chance that something goes wrong on stage, and that risk is part of the form.

The cast tries to get through 30 plays in one hour. At the end of every show an audience member rolls a die on stage. The rolls from a weekend are added up, and the total decides how many of the current 30 plays are cut. During the following week the cast writes, pitches and stages the replacements.

There are themed editions too. The Infinite Pride, a queer edition, comes every June; the 2026 edition played on June 26 and 27 at Brooklyn Art Haus, and the next is planned for June 2027. The Infinite Fright is the Halloween edition: in 2026 it includes a late-night show on October 30 and a family-friendly show on October 31.

Away from the residency, the company takes the show to schools, festivals and other events, with a 30-play menu chosen for each audience. The Infinite Wrench: Family Edition offers 30 stories, games and dances for families, with the audience choosing the order.

The format comes out of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. Greg Allen created it in Chicago, and its opening night, on December 2, 1988, took place at Stage Left Theater. There the audience picked plays from a numbered menu by calling out numbers, and a die roll decided how many plays were swapped out each week.

In spring 1995 three former Chicago Neo-Futurists and two new members brought Too Much Light to Manhattan, first at HERE and then at Todo con Nada on Ludlow Street, for a run of just over two years. Rob Neill, a former artistic director who is still listed in the ensemble as of October 2026, was part of that first New York run. On April 2, 2004, a mostly new ten-person cast restarted the show in Park Slope, at the Brooklyn Lyceum, and six months later it began moving between the Belt Theater, HERE and the Cherry Lane.

In November 2016 Allen withdrew the Chicago company's rights to Too Much Light, and the New York and San Francisco companies ended their runs that December in solidarity. In 2017 the three companies launched The Infinite Wrench together as a new weekly late-night show. The New York opening, at the Kraine Theater, is listed as March 3, 2017. That spring it ran for under an hour on Fridays and Saturdays, the audience called out which play came next, and a die roll cut a number of plays each night.

The Kraine in the East Village was the company's home for about 17 years, until 2024. The show then spent time at 154, the former New Ohio, on Christopher Street in the West Village. From 2025 it moved across the river to Brooklyn, to The Brooklyn Improv and The Second City New York, for nearly two years in all, before arriving at Asylum NYC. Its first performance there was on July 10, 2026.

By 2026 the company counted more than 7,750 world-premiere plays written and staged in New York, and it expects to complete its 1,050th week of performances that year. Jeffrey Cranor and Joseph Fink, who created the podcast Welcome to Night Vale, are former New York Neo-Futurists.