Where the Yetis Will Be – 25 July 2026

As a transgender man, it’s rare to see depictions in theatre that feel representative of my gender, let alone the diversity of my gender. So to see a show with multiple transmasculine characters and an entirely transgender cast– well that happens about as often as seeing a yeti (fact check for Jack: this is an opinion not based on statistical data from a verifiable source). Ethan Katz’s new play Where the Yetis Will Be asks bold questions about different planes of existence through a cast of characters who are searching for connection to the world and to each other.

The story is primarily told through roommates Annie (Carson Jane Robles) and Jack (Parker Wingate), with a somewhat real, somewhat poetic presence of Annie’s new boyfriend Mace (Valentino Petrillo), and completely ethereal contributions from others (Murphy Coons, Camille Sejud). The story unfolds as Annie, a cisgender lesbian falls in love with a transgender man for the first time. Annie is anxious, and Mace’s easygoing nature confuses her at times– sometimes to the point where she doesn’t know if he likes her. Annie’s confusion makes sense to me because Robles and Petrillo don’t really have much stage chemistry. This falls on director Noah Latty a little too, but it’s difficult to feel the love between Annie and Mace when the actors lean so far into uncertainty. Their relationship comes in ephemeral episodes that don’t feel like they are building to something bigger. The audience finds out that they are through Annie’s conversations with her roommate, Jack, but the words she is saying about loving Mace don’t cut through the inhibitions depicted in scenes with him.

On the other hand, Annie’s needling relationship with Jack sports a lot of love. There is affection oozing out of their teasing and it is clear from the way they talk about each other to Mace that Jack and Annie have a strong bond– the word “love” comes up a fair amount. Because this capacity to love is seen on stage in Where the Yetis Will Be, why is it withheld from the seminal relationship? Even in the sex scene, tastefully done in almost darkness, it was hard to feel a connection between Mace and Annie. When Annie said it was good for her in a later scene, whether or not this was true felt really ambiguous.

And then the show has this ethereal, unreal dimension where Mace’s stories about dancing yetis at the end of the world come in. Mace’s long story/short book describes how he feels about Annie in a beautiful, deeply vulnerable way. His writing opens a door of possibility that is different from the tangible reality that Jack is so obsessed with. The characters dubbed “others” come in and out of the space with conviction, offering facts, voices in the characters’ heads, the otherworldly presence of yetis, bar exam questions, trivia, personifications of Mace’s story– basically every other presence in the show that comes from within and beyond the characters. These others represent a spectrum of possibility to reality, and it works due to the palpable commitment of actors Murphy Coons and Camille Sejud.

Tech elements at The Tank are tough, and as someone who has worked there, it doesn’t feel fair to critique or evaluate them. As an incubator space that sees hundreds of unique performances a year, technical elements must be loaded in and out each time a production uses the space, lighting is on a rep plot (and you sometimes lose your show file), sound has limited possibilities, and costumes can’t safely be stored. So I am just going to applaud lighting designer Wendy Zhang, sound designer Ari Cleveland, and costume designer Sam DeBell for making it work. Despite the bleed of sound from The Tank’s other space, all of these designs maximized the capabilities of what they had to work with. The changing color temperatures, mystical Tibetan sounds, and versatile yet comfortable costume choices meaningfully enhanced the production.

Where the Yetis Will Be is full to the brim with possibility, and I’m excited for what the next iteration might hold. It’s well-written and shows a window into a world where being transgender is normal– something harder to imagine than yetis (again, for Jack’s peace of mind, not a fact). The characters are individually lovable and collectively irresistible. There are many magical moments that provoke thought and feeling, and the different planes that the play inhabits are naturally cohesive and intertwined. Getting a play produced in NYC is a huge accomplishment, and I wish the members of this team all the best going forward.

I attended this performance on a press pass from the producers.