The ’80s pop icon returned to her acting roots at Asylum NYC, where Spandex mixed neon nostalgia, a deeply personal children’s-hospital fundraiser and a closing-night rendition of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ that sent the room into a frenzy.
by Michele Evans
NYWeeklyRecord.com
9/30/2026
NEW YORK CITY, NY — There are theater endings, and then there are moments when the room suddenly feels bigger than the stage.
That happened Sunday afternoon at Asylum NYC.
As the opening notes of ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ kicked in during the final performance of Spandex The Musical, footage from Tiffany’s original music video filled the large screen behind the cast.
The audience erupted.
People were cheering, singing and moving in their seats. For a few minutes, a cozy Off-Broadway theater on East 24th Street felt like it had been transported directly back into the height of Tiffany mania.
But the woman onstage was no longer the teenager on the screen.
Nearly four decades after becoming one of the defining pop voices of the late 1980s, Tiffany had come to New York to do something she had wanted to do long before the malls, the screaming crowds and the No. 1 records took over her life: act.
Tiffany starred as Linda Gustafson in the limited Off-Broadway run of Spandex The Musical, which played at Asylum NYC from Sept. 17 through Sept. 27. The production followed an overly nice housewife and a former gymnast entering the ruthless, neon-soaked world of a fictional 1988 aerobics championship. Tiffany described the project ahead of its opening as a return to her acting and dance roots.
A Theater That Made the Show Feel Personal
Part of what made the closing performance work was the venue itself.
Asylum NYC, at 123 East 24th Street, is an intimate 150-seat Manhattan theater. The space includes a large LED screen, theatrical equipment, backstage facilities and a bar and reception area.
In person, though, those specifications do not quite capture it.
The space felt cozy and charming, small enough that the audience remained physically close to the performers and could react almost as one unit. That intimacy mattered during Spandex. Expressions could be seen. Comic beats landed quickly. And when the crowd exploded at the finale, there was nowhere for that energy to dissipate.
Asylum describes itself as an intimate venue designed to let audiences feel the energy of the performers, and that description was particularly accurate Sunday.
The setting also gave Tiffany’s finale an almost reunion-like quality instead of the distance of a large concert hall.
Tiffany Returns to Acting
Although audiences principally know Tiffany as a singer, acting was part of her ambitions before her recording career exploded.
Tiffany told me she studied acting in Los Angeles at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, and her early training also included dance and modeling.
Tiffany has previously recalled being driven to those lessons after school before eventually recording demos at producer George Tobin’s North Hollywood studio.
For Spandex, she approached the stage work seriously.
She told me preparation even became a family affair, with relatives helping her work through the show. That included taking some movement inspiration from her niece, who has recently earned dance and ballet accolades of her own.
The musical therefore wasn’t merely a celebrity cameo built around the expectation that Tiffany would eventually sing the song everybody knows.
She was acting.
And she has been doing more of it.
Tiffany has continued taking film roles in recent years, including playing Dr. Janet Evans in the 2024 disaster movie The Twisters. Her screen career also stretches across projects including Mega Piranha, Mega Python vs. Gatoroid, Ted 2, Robot Chicken and the voice of Judy Jetson in Jetsons: The Movie.
The New York theater appearance represented another step in that return to performing beyond the concert stage.
A Standout Performer From Ithaca
Among a strong ensemble, Will Boyajian immediately stood out.
After the performance, I asked Boyajian what acting method he considered his favorite.
His answer was Meisner.
I told him it showed.
His response was memorable: he said that is the best compliment he has ever received.
There was a reason his work felt so grounded.
Boyajian is an Upstate New York native, born in Albany and raised in the Clifton Park area, where he attended Shenendehowa High School. He later earned a BFA in Musical Theatre Performance from Ithaca College before moving to New York City.
And Spandex is not new territory for him.
Boyajian originated the role of Dov Yisrael in an earlier Off-Broadway production of the musical. In the current production, he returned in multiple roles as Dov, Jim and Rob.
His New York work also reaches into one of the city’s most distinctive theatrical worlds.
Boyajian was a performer associated with the immersive phenomenon Sleep No More at the McKittrick Hotel and later performed live music at the venue’s Manderley Bar.
More recently, he co-created IN CLOSURE, a Brooklyn immersive dance-theater work built around memory, loss and live sound.
That combination of musical theater training, immersive performance, live music and Meisner helps explain why his work in Spandex felt unusually present.
The Show Was Also Raising Money for Children
Beneath the leg warmers and ’80s comedy was a serious charitable purpose.
A portion of the Spandex engagement supported Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, the network that raises money for pediatric hospitals and related healthcare needs.
One of the specific fundraising efforts associated with the cause is Given’s Miracles, led by Garret Lauer, a team captain in the 2026 Coast to Coast Challenge for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
For Lauer, the mission is personal.
His son, Given, is a Miracle Kid. Lauer writes that Given and his wife spent almost four months at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where doctors were treating a situation in which the family feared losing one or both of them. Lauer says he lived in the hospital room with them and saw firsthand what pediatric hospitals provide families during medical crises.
That experience intensified what had already become a long commitment. Lauer says he has spent about 20 years fundraising for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, beginning as a DJ and volunteer before making the organization a major part of his life.
His individual 2026 Given’s Miracles fundraising page currently sets a goal of $17,777. As of Sept. 30, the page showed $2,196 raised.
Lauer also describes a broader ambition of collectively raising $100,000 for the local Children’s Miracle Network hospital, with this year’s fundraising benefiting CHOP.
He has also developed Given’s Coffee, which raises money both for Miracle families and the wider Children’s Miracle Network effort.
The campaign says donations can help fund critical treatments, healthcare services, pediatric medical equipment and charitable care.
Readers who want to support Given’s Miracles can donate directly here:
Then the Past Appeared on the Screen
For me, Tiffany’s finale carried another layer entirely.
I had been there during that earlier chapter.
As a teenager, I was at the mall in Tiffany’s video, and I later worked in producer George Tobin’s studio, the same North Hollywood environment connected to the beginning of Tiffany’s recording career.
I asked Tiffany about George.
She acknowledged the complexity of that relationship, the ups and downs, before describing it in a much simpler way:
“He is family.”
At the end of Spandex, those years at Tobin’s studio suddenly appeared overhead.
The old ‘I Think We’re Alone Now’ video imagery filled the screen while Tiffany stood beneath it in 2026.
The crowd went wild.
For some people in the audience, that was nostalgia.
For others, it was simply one of the great pop hooks of the 1980s finally arriving at the moment everyone had been waiting for.
For me, it was surreal.
I was looking at footage tied to places and years I had actually lived through while watching the same performer standing a few feet away in a completely different chapter of her career.
Past and present collapsed into one very loud little theater.
An Unexpected Piece of Personal News
My conversation with Tiffany also produced a moment I hadn’t expected.
She told me that someone I knew had died.
It was the kind of news that changes the emotional temperature of a conversation immediately.
One minute, we were talking about acting, dancing, family and a show built around exaggerated ’80s aerobics culture. The next, the reality of time passing intruded.
In some ways, that made the closing performance resonate even more.
Spandex is funny and bright and deliberately excessive, but its underlying premise is about people discovering that life does not necessarily end when one version of themselves does.
Careers change.
Families change.
People leave.
Old ambitions come back.
And occasionally, nearly 40 years later, you find yourself standing beneath a giant projection of your teenage self while a packed room screams every word to the song that changed your life.
On Sunday at Asylum NYC, Tiffany got that moment.
And judging by the sound of the room, so did everybody else.
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