In April 1993, a show took place at MOMA that turned the world of pictures inside out. The result of five trips made by New York photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia to L.A.'s rent-boy underbelly--the strip between La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boul...
Last autumn, the fearless folks at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City let Big Dance Theater into their basement to stage Sybil Kempson's Ich, Krbisgeist. Performed in an invented language based on German (with bits, according to the company'...
In his introduction to this superbly illustrated compendium of underground newspapers, editor Geoff Kaplan channels the 1960s' exuberant ad-hoc vibe by referring to his book as "Power of the People," despite the title on the cover--Power to the Peop...
One thing you could say about John Collins: He likes an oral challenge. Under his direction, the New York-based ensemble Elevator Repair Service (ERS) has staged, among other things, three modern American novels--usually recited in their entirety...
Not a lot happens in the Apple Family plays. In each of Richard Nelson's four dramas, the Apples (three sisters, one brother, an uncle, a boyfriend) gather in the same room of the same upstate house. They eat, they sing, they talk. A dog gets loose ...
Royal Ballet September 17-29 Britain's premier ballet troupe arrives at the Joyce with an award-winning dance version of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, choreographed by Arthur Pita and featuring principal dancer Edward Watson as Gregor Samsa, who ...
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks Keith Houston ? September 24, W. W. Norton & Company, 320 pp., $25.95 Pilcrow. Interrobang. Octothorpe. No, not the names of obscure demons from The Less...
Chris Burden: 'Extreme Measures' October 2-January 1, 2014 In 1971, L.A. artist Chris Burden spent five days jammed inside a school locker. Later that year, he got an assistant to shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle. In 1974, he was crucifie...
The Machine Performances begin September 4 You might think that observing a chess match has all the spectatorial thrill of watching paint dry or grass grow. But playwright Matt Charman thinks otherwise. He has crafted a play about chessma...
Essays: Art: The Return of the Real by Christian Viveros-Faun Philip-Lorca diCorcia on turning the ultimate photographic trick Dance: Smashing Pumpkins by Elizabeth Zimmer Big Dance Theater creates a culture that destroys itself Film: Bor...
Ken Urban'sThe Awake begins with a disorienting swirl of scene shifts. Malcolm (Andy Phelan) prepares to visit his mother (Dee Nelson), who later lies comatose in a hospital; Nate (Maulik Pancholy of 30 Rock) faces arrest, captivity, and brutal inte...
Some specifics, of course, have staled since 1935: the idea of Soviet Russia as a society ours should emulate, or that a premarital pregnancy would necessitate a family conspiracy, or that it takes a clean-spirited young man to dare to seize hold of...
Although the Museum of Modern Art garnered prestige (and occasional derision) by bringing such European exemplars as Picasso, Czanne, and van Gogh to the New World, the institution did not forsake homegrown talent, including the 50-plus artists gat...
An Italian guy, a gay guy, a black guy, and a girl show up in Savannah looking for action. If that sounds like the setup for a bad joke, it is--or rather, it's the setup for two and a half hours of bad jokes courtesy of the Amoralists in their new p...
George Orwell inhabited a certain counterfeit Chinese curse like a silk kimono: He lived and wrote in interesting times. Having experienced world wars, ideological smackdowns, intellectual lunacy, and what George Packer (editor of an Orwell collecti...
Rabbis don't usually take center stage in Broadwaymusicals. But nothing could be more natural in Soul Doctor, a new production celebrating the real onstage and offstage life of Shlomo Carlebach, aka the 1960s' "rock star rabbi." Carlebach, who sough...
In the theater, the age-old fantasy of a happy marriage between art and science has given us some truly great plays about the lives of scientists: Brecht's Galileo and Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, to name just two that have set the bar quite high. Un...
First, for the record, Ronald Reagan lied. In late October 1980, candidate Reagan and his campaign sent a letter to Robert E. Poli, then the president of the air traffic controllers' union, pledging staunch support to that union--PATCO--and its f...
Last weekend kicked off the 17th year of the New York International Fringe Festival (aka FringeNYC), which runs through August 25. As with any such festival, when you choose what shows to see, you're really rolling the dice. This two-week-long feast...
Like time spent staring at roof pigeons, the summer doldrums in New York are good for stocktaking. A recent lunch with an uptown museum curator led to some, as we debated a type of show popular with local institutions since 2008: the historical sur...
A sense of humor about the macabre, as well as a love for the underbelly of American society pervades "Zoe Strauss: 10 Years," a survey of Strauss's work currently open… More >>
Many among the crowd that gathered around a patch of graffiti on the corner of a vacant, crumbling building in Tribeca earlier this month had no clue why they stopped… More >>
What do you picture when you hear the word magician? Maybe David Copperfield. Or a birthday party. "Magic suffers from the people who do magic," Derek DelGaudio says. DelGaudio and Helder Guimarães,… More >>
Sometimes, a few well-delivered laugh lines are what makes a production tick. Other times, though, straining for levity strikes a sour note—especially when the subjects at hand are rape, murder,… More >>
Fictional characters are such hapless creatures. Doomed to lives composed of unfortunate choices, secrets, and tragic flaws, their faith supported by mere circumstantial evidence, they flounder in the footlights. These… More >>
Classic Stage Company’s new production of Romeo and Juliet—ably directed by Tea Alagić—has a lot going for it. Unfortunately, some of its virtues are double-edged. It’s admirably uncluttered: The sparse… More >>
When Sean O'Casey put pen to paper for Juno and the Paycock, the 1924 Dubliner domestic drama set against the ghastly Irish Civil War, the playwright's country was in a… More >>
Odd that a play so steeped in loneliness should burst with such life. The Team's RoosevElvis, a stirring, absurd, and grandly human historical-cosplay road-trip fantasia, centers on a depressed North… More >>
The Roundabout's Broadway house specializes in well-upholstered revivals. Few come better carpeted, curtained, and papered than The Winslow Boy, Terence Rattigan's 1946 play about a family seeking justice for a… More >>
As David Adjmi's Marie Antoinette begins at Soho Rep, actors array tiers of delectable pastel macarons. You might be tempted to snatch one. Restrain yourself. Adjmi is a playwright with… More >>