A LETTER TO LYNDON B. JOHNSON OR GOD: WHOEVER READS THIS FIRST Comes to SoHo Playhouse

SoHo Playhouse will present a return engagement of A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First, written, directed and performed by Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland. The winner of the 2025 SoHo Playhouse International Fringe Encore Theater Series Overall Excellence Award, LBJ runs Off-Broadway June 4 - 29, 2025 for 23 performances in a limited engagement at SoHo Playhouse, located at 15 Vandam Street in New York City. Previews begin June 4 for a June 11 opening.

SoHo Playhouse’s Artistic Director Darren Lee Cole says, “LBJ is Xhloe and Natasha’s third performance piece and set a unique record at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival; it won another Fringe First for them. This represents the highest award given at Edinburgh and the third consecutive win for them. I don’t know of any other artists to win three “Fringe First” with their first three shows, in their first 3 years! We at SoHo Playhouse find Xhloe and Natasha’s work brave, innovative, form bending and exciting. For these reasons we are committing to their development and future by naming them this year’s Overall Excellence winner of our International Fringe Encore Series. This prize comes with a full Off-Broadway production of LBJ at our Mainstage theatre and a year as our artists in residence. As resident artists they will receive mentorship, workshop space and funding towards their next production. A theatre home where they will be free to create. We can’t wait to see what these two brilliant artists come up with next!”

Xhloe and Natasha return to SoHo Playhouse after being announced as the Overall Excellence Award winners of the 2025 International Fringe Encore Series, delving into the idealized American childhood and the boys it left behind by drawing on their experience growing up in military families. Xhloe and Natasha have become firm favourites of Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the biggest arts festival in the world, and A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson won them their third consecutive Fringe First Award, the prestigious award from national newspaper The Scotsman. LBJ has also won them a Broadway Baby “Bobby” Award for Excellence and an “Offie” Off-West End Award for Best Performance, as well as being a Fringe 2024 Sell-Out show and a Playbill Pick of Edinburgh Fringe.

“A lean show with a sweeping reach, breezily funny yet darkly upsetting” ★★★★ The Guardian

A Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson is an absurdist two-hander that blurs the line between 1960s boy scouts and drafted US soldiers in Vietnam. Two scouts tell stories directly to the audience, muddy-kneed and full of naivete, they embody everyone from their camp-mates to their fellow soldiers, all with the goal of making their hero, current president Lyndon B. Johnson, proud. Johnson was known for his involvement in sending young unwilling men to fight for their country in Vietnam, just as the origins of scouting come from preparing young people for military service. Xhloe and Natasha explore children’s relationship with war, innocence and nostalgia using their signature style of clowning, physical theatre and fast pace. Fitting with Xhloe and Natasha’s company ethos centered around queerness and gender identity, A Letter To Lyndon B. Johnson or God: Whoever Reads This First reflects on the androgyny allowed to young boys and the volatility of the transition into masculine manhood.

“We’re so excited to be returning to SoHo Playhouse,” say co-writers and performers Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland. “We’ve just completed a run of this show in Seoul, Korea and are excited to bring it back to an American audience. Especially with the conversation happening around the role of the president, the show is ever-changing and we’re excited to see how people in our home city respond.”

Lighting Designer and Technical Manager is Angelo Sagnelli.

Performances are Wednesdays - Saturdays at 7pm and Sundays at 5pm with additional shows on Sat 6/14 at 4pm and Sat 6/28 at 4pm. Run time is 60 minutes. Tickets are $45.50 (includes fees). To purchase tickets and for more info go to https://www.sohoplayhouse.com.

Xhloe and Natasha are a New York City based, multi-disciplinary devising/writing/performing duo that have been in collaboration for over a decade, creating absurdist clown physical theatre inspired by archetypes of Americana. They are known for creating work that is highly physical, fast paced, historically influenced, and genre defying. Xhloe and Natasha are three-time consecutive recipients of the prestigious Edinburgh Fringe Festival Fringe First Award for Outstanding New Writing. Recently, they were awarded an “Offie” Off-West End Award for Best Performance for their run at London’s historic King’s Head Theatre and have been called “the most promising young theatre-makers to emerge from Edinburgh Fringe in recent years” by Everything Theatre and “The Buzziest Fringe Theatre-makers of the 2020s” by The Telegraph. https://www.xhloeandnatasha.com