Koepfinger's New Play Opens in Greenwich Village

Coni Koepfinger's new play The Unusual Chauncey Faust opens on Off-Off-Broadway's Gene Frankel Theatre in Greenwich Village this March 19, 2026.

Koepfinger's outstanding new play has already garnered some rave reviews. "When I first read Coni Koepfinger’s The Unusual Chauncey Faust, I felt an immediate recognition. Beneath its surreal humor and theatrical absurdity lives a profound question about our time: who authors the dream we are living? Chauncey stands at the edge of ambition, longing for success, visibility, financial freedom — and he is offered something seductive. A system. A shortcut. A promise of transcendence without inner awakening. A manufactured elevation of the self. The “potion” in the play may be imaginary, yet what it represents is very real: the temptation to outsource our becoming," wrote Maria Olon-Tsaroucha, the Founder and CEO of Superconscious You.

Koepfinger brilliantly exposes the fragility of identity when it is built on external validation. Chauncey is not unstable; he is unanchored. He is searching for a role large enough to contain his hunger, without realizing that the deeper question is not “How do I rise?” but “From where am I rising?” The play will run at the Frankel Theatre from March 19th through March 29th.

The Unusual Chauncey Faust will be directed by Aviva Katz.

A review of Koepfinger's new play follows:

Glenora Blackshire review of The Unusual Chauncey Faust b

The eponymous character in The Unusual Chauncey Faust isn’t unusual at all. He’s just

confused. And that makes sense. Thrust by fate into slip-sliding circumstances that are immediate yet eternal and imaginary yet

real, Chauncey does what any good improviser would do on stage or in life. He accepts what is

happening and goes with it.

The straitjacket that is binding Chauncey? It's really just his shirt.

That promising job interview? He got it from a doctor in the psych ward.

That potion mixed into Chauncey’s coffee? It's just imaginary.

“Metatheatre” can heal the world? Maybe it can.

Though Chauncey takes these experiences and concepts at face value, they are gateways to a

life of deeper meaning. In fact, the other characters' laconic responses to Chauncey's existential

predicament attempt to prod him toward this realization.

Addressing Chauncey's apparent suicide attempt, psychiatrist Dr. Stanley Morgan tells him,

"Chauncey, there are no accidents." Dr. Morgan, assessing Chauncey for a

groundbreaking position acting out people's fantasies in their own dreams, announces that

"Time is irrelevant right now." And Avery, Chauncey's competition for a dream role in an

international theater production, says, "Don't be afraid of success, Mr. Chance. After all, fate is

fate."

But it isn't until Chauncey encounters his former mentor, Maria Olon, that he steps into these so-

called "supra-conscious" realizations and begins his new life consciously co-creating his destiny.

Written by Coni Koepfinger and directed by Aviva Katz, with original music by Joe Izen, The

Unusual Chauncey Faust plays at the Gene Frankel theater through March 29.