Coming to The Tank (NYC) is "Cookie", a five-act tragicomedy set in a timeless cabaret. We follow a fading vaudevillian named Cookie Jackson, surviving on applause, performing manic routines for an audience even as their private world fills with pills, paranoia, and a sentient puppet determined to expose a buried crime.

As a professional collaboration of young NYC-based artists, we are raising $2,100 to bring Cookie to life! Any donation, large or small, is greatly appreciated, as every dollar goes toward the performers and an element of our production.

​​MISSION STATEMENT

The ultimate goal of Cookie is to create a stage play that tells a story of intergenerational trauma in the style of a Vaudeville performance. Cookie contains several acts within herself, both the performer and the surveilled. While we continue our journey, we discover that something more sinister is creeping its way through Cookie’s cracks. But we would never leave a poor cookie to crumble on its own; the audience is encouraged to engage with the performance, just like any other call-and-response comedy. Cookie’s comedy and her emotional versatility are what allow the conversations after the show to thrive, leaving audiences with a memorable performance that is sure to leave several biscuits buttered, hunger satiated and, no doubt, cookies crumbled.

Besides, when did you ever meet a Cookie that you didn’t like?

THE STORY

Cookie is a one-person, five-act tragicomedy set in a timeless cabaret where vaudevillian Cookie Jackson survives on applause, performing increasingly unstable routines for an adoring audience while unraveling in private dressing-room interludes that expose the cost of being seen. Onstage, Cookie is magnetic, vulgar, and fully alive; backstage, they drink, take pills, and attempt to outrun an encroaching end signaled by a recurring red light as time seems to compress and acts grow shorter.

Through grotesque and comic stories of birth, family, religion, and desire, Cookie oscillates between confession and deflection, revealing a lineage marked by cruelty, addiction, and performance as survival. The dressing room becomes haunted by the reappearance of a puppet once wielded by Cookie’s ventriloquist father, which comes to life as a prophetic antagonist warning of a buried crime and a repeating cycle of violence.

As the boundary between stage and backstage collapses, Cookie exposes spectacle as both refuge and execution, trapping its protagonist in a loop where survival depends on the gaze that is slowly disappearing.

Cookie was previously debuted at the Soho Playhouse in 2025. This run at The Tank deepens the work with expanded design, refined storytelling, and a new creative team.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:

As a director, I find myself relating every piece of work to my personal life in one way or another, something emotional that I can grab hold of to drive the story further and deeper into its message. My life right now is constantly filled with remembrance and love, which is the path we’re taking the story of Cookie down for this run of performances. Cookie is a love letter, it may not seem like it on the surface, but the deeper you get into Cookie Jackson’s psyche, the more you realize the product of love that exists. It’s a love letter to coping with intergenerational trauma and to performance. It calls upon the support of niche references to classic performers and performances to guide its story.

In a way, it’s an anthropological study of both Queer Histories and Theatre, taking the niches that brought Frankie Lehr and me together and putting them on full display as collaborators. The play sets itself in a fourth-wall-breaking cabaret with our lead, Cookie, taking center stage, stage left, and stage right. We learn the depth of this character through their performances, backstage soliloquies, and scene changes. This story is put together by a team that understands and upholds the same love in their hearts, waiting for it to reach audience members and evoke the same feelings. Cookie isn’t just a page or the rehearsals, it’s a collective love brought together by artists and collaborators. We would like to thank any Cookie team members, past, present, and future, for all the love they’ve brought to bake our Cookie from scratch.

BUDGET

TOTAL GOAL: $2,100

Here’s how your contributions will be used to achieve our fundraising goals:

HOW YOU CAN HELP:

ABOUT US:

PLAYWRIGHT/ACTOR:

Frankie Lehr (he/they) is an interdisciplinary theater artist based in New York City. They hold a BA in Cultural Anthropology, Archaeology, and Dramatic Arts from New York University, where they examined the intersections of performance, identity, and history. Trained at Interlochen Arts Academy and furthering their craft through programs at Carnegie Mellon University, Rose Bruford College, and The New School, Frankie’s work merges rigorous research with theatrical imagination.

As a playwright and performer, Frankie creates work that interrogates how humor, spectacle, and embodiment shape cultural understanding. Their original play, Cookie, which debuted at the SoHo Playhouse, exemplifies this approach, melding vaudevillian performance with deeper questions of identity, inheritance, and the cost of being seen. In addition to writing and performing, Frankie is a choreographer and arts critic whose practice is driven by an anthropological curiosity about what it means to “act human,” fostering spaces where empathy, laughter, and critical thought coexist.

DIRECTOR:

Anna Keeley (she/her) is a director and artist based in Brooklyn. She’s directed projects with theatre companies and indie producers (like this one!) A recent graduate from Marymount Manhattan College, she’s excited to kick off her post-grad life with a piece that encapsulates what her art entails. A campy, dark, love letter to both queerness and theatre.

She’s recently directed Collective Rage: A Play In 5 Bettie’s at Marymount Manhattan College, as well as Idiot Savant by Richard Foreman with Ghost Light Theatre Company. She’d like to thank her family and friends for constantly supporting her, and her forever muse for inspiring every love letter she’s ever written.

PRODUCER:

Stéphanie Stowers (she/her) is a Jersey-born, New York City-based producer, actress, and director. Growing up singing, dancing, and more, Stowers strives in her artistic career to contribute to and provide a platform for diverse art to be appreciated and more accessible. She has produced many stage productions and in film and tv, her credits include The Rhino (dr. Petunia Hu), Blood Honey (dr. Asare Nyamekye), If Words Could Talk (dr. Stephanie Stowers). Working at companies such as Warner Bros. U, NEON, and Bleecker Street, Stowers has extensive experience in publicity, event production, social media strategy, and audience engagement, which she integrates into her creative practices. Stowers is a senior at New York University, pursuing a BFA in Drama at the Experimental Theatre Wing (ETW) with a double minor in Producing and Business in Entertainment, Media, and Technology at New York University. IG: @stvphanies | LinkedIn