Wow…a wonderful project and resource www.torchesnyc.org

rare overlap between "we watched this guy maybe possibly urinate onto the set in Richard III at BAM" and DCU news www.vulture.com/article/man-...

Much to my regret I only saw Emily Breeze's "Are the Bennet Girls OK" at Bedlam last night--they close on Sunday, and so the tickets are now TIGHT and also, lbr, pricy. But it's gorgeous! I had clocked it was an Austen-in-modern-idiom project and thought, oh, we've seen those already...(1/7)

I was fascinated to read this conversation between playwright Chris Gabo and Stephen Adly Guirgis since I saw Gabo's "The Surgeon and Her Daughters" at Theatre 154 last week and was having trouble placing some of its strategies... (1/7) www.americantheatre.org/2025/12/14/o...

I was just thinking how it was a bummer that the Cherry Lane Mentor Project was no more, and then This! Great! News! playbill.com/article/cher...

One of the things I love most about writing "top ten" lists is the absurdity. 1) you are constantly trying to sneak other shows in, because it's really more of a top 30, and comparison is invidious 2) your group chat thinks you're deranged 3) but you are 100% right www.newyorker.com/culture/2025...

Start spreading the news! I am thrilled to announce the debut of Sitting Ovations, my new YouTube podcast for Time Out. Each week, I will sit down with the creators of current plays and musicals that I've admired to discuss them at greater length and in deeper detail. www.timeout.com/newyork/news...

Today at 2 is the last performance of "Initiative" at the Public....I'm sorry not to have written about it (this has been a odd few weeks), but I so admired its ambition and frequent beauty. Else Went's five hour show about a "coastal podunk" teenage existence had me riveted for long sections (1/5)

In honor of World AIDS Day, I'd like to share a story that breaks my heart whenever I tell it. Please read it. It's the story of David Carroll.

Loss upon loss www.newyorker.com/culture/post...

Torrey Townsend's "Jewish Plot" has two more nights: tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday). It's the rare show where anything I say could undermine it; the tonal and structural switchbacks here are genuinely exhilarating & I don't want to ruin it for anyone who can get to Theatre 154 in time. (1/4)

In Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's "Kyoto" at Lincoln Center Theater, the real-life oil lobbyist Donald H. Pearlman (played by Stephen Kunken) tries to derail the UN's Kyoto Accords by sabotaging a decade of negotiations aimed at preventing the climate disaster. His story's compressed but true. 1/5

NYMag blew up its story about ICE's increased presence at 26 Federal Plaza, and pasted it on a wall a few blocks away on Broadway

Richard Move's bewitching "Martha@BAM—the 1963 Interview" continues Move's long history of "becoming" Martha Graham—what started at a nightclub (Martha@Mother) in 1996 arrives on the BAM Fishman stage at last. Of course the eye makeup is TIGER, the hair is ARCHITECTURE, the torso is CANTILEVERED 🧵

I saw Jeana Scotti's "immersive" show Oh, Honey last season at the restaurant Little Egg; now it's back! A support group for moms of sons who have done regrettable things spirals into disarray...I can 💯 recommend the soup, as well as the up-close, phenomenal performances uglyfacetheatre.com/oh-honey

I've been thinking about Keanu Reeves & double-acts, and I got overwhelmed all over again at the loss of River Phoenix. My Own Private Idaho is so similar to Godot, though there Reeves plays the knowing Didi-type and Phoenix's narcoleptic ingenue is Gogo...I can see their version in my mind's eye

Liba Vaynberg's vividly drawn play "The Matriarchs" (directed by Dina Vovsi) features a rogue's gallery of wonderful downtown actors. Helen Cespedes from Fefu! Rachel Botchan from the Pearl! All doing funny, wise, detailed work in tight quarters @ TheaterLab...(1/4) theaterlabnyc.com/theaterlab-p...

In which Jason Zinoman tells Fallon he is becoming a Kremlin star... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/a...

The tremendous Morgan Bassichis show "Can I Be Frank?" at Soho Playhouse has added a show tomorrow at 9pm! Everything else is sold out out OUT Bassichis is the funniest and most entrancing comic performer out there; if you don't take that last ticket, I'm gonna www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/m...

“I am heartbroken to report that after thirty-five proud years, the program I currently direct at USC, the MFA in Dramatic Writing, is being sunsetted…I feel the acute message being sent here; four of its five professors are people of color.” — @luisalfaro.bsky.social #TheaterSKY

Road Kills by Sophie McIntosh at Paradise Factory is a fierce, nasty little beast...its claws are out. An angry young woman sulks through her mandated community service, picking up roadkill—between scenes, we hear each crash, right before some gnarly blob of fur and blood drops onto the roadway. 1/3

Service announcement! The Segal has created its own curated listings site www.theaterlistingsnyc.com, which is now in beta. If you're looking for complete listings, I use the encyclopedic TDF (www.tdf.org/on-stage/sho...) or the Power Search option on show-score (www.show-score.com/shows/all?op...)

I wrote about the Edinburgh Fringe here, but I've also been mainlining Fergus Morgan (thecrushbar.substack.com) and Natasha Tripney (natashatripney.substack.com) et al... I clearly missed so much! What a thrill to be in a city given over to culture (10/10, 5 stars) www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Thank you to everyone who spoke to me for this www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Crystal Skillman's monologue "Open," starring the great Megan Hill, is a magic act with no magic in it--a woman, the Magician, boasts about the illusions she's doing in front of us (bird, rings, flowers, PRESTO!) but nothing actually appears on the empty stage (1/4)

Gospel at Colonus on Little Island is sold out except for standing room, but you can always shore up your disappointed spirit with this, Bob Telson's stunning setting of the finest of all Sophocles' choruses. Numberless are the world's wonders/but none more wonderful than man youtu.be/TiTc8O__9Mw

Such an odd series of season announcements—one alone wouldn't have raised eyebrows, but it certainly looks like a trend when taken together (CSC, Roundabout, Williamstown, Playwrights Horizons) www.broadwayworld.com/article/Wher...

Diana Oh: Rest in peace, rest in power, rest in song, rest in flow youtu.be/RZmV6_1j1xk

Yooooo I just won a James Beard Award for my profile of Padma Lakshmi from last year! www.newyorker.com/culture/prof...

Mission Impossible borrowed from so many older better, movies—e.g., Fail-Safe, which led me to By Dawn's Early Light, which...is amazing? Rebecca DeMornay, James Earl Jones and Martin Landau try to stop an ongoing hot war, never flagging even when a braggadocious fool gets the nuclear codes

A really wonderful play by Ariel Stess—Kara & Emma & Barbara & Miranda—just won the Yale prize, chosen by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Absolutely super and appropriate choice: there’s a deep link btw Purpose’s monologues and Stess’s storytelling, a return to literary gorgeousness and patience

Seagull: True Story by Eli Rarey, dir. by Alexander Molochnikov, produced by En Garde Arts @ La Mama, is a grotesque carnival, exploring parallels between Russia's murderous repressiveness & U.S. anti-art callousness. Both expect artists to dance, while the Big Boys laugh & throw pocket change 1/5

The list of San Francisco theatres lost at the end of this article is awful to read…

Agree 💯 with Sara's rec of Lobster, Kallan Dana's A+ highschool comedy-turned-drama.... young Nora (Cricket Brown!!) stages Patti Smith & Sam Shepard's Cowboy Mouth with fellow students who struggle to channel the original's chthonic ambition. The Tank 'til 5/17... www.vulture.com/article/what...

A(U)NTS! at The Brick, written by Zoe Geltman and directed by Julia Sirna-Frest, is a dropped icecream cone of a play: sweet & sticky & a lil bit...infested. It starts as a workplace comedy about 3 single aunts (Jehan O. Young, Geltman, and cannonball Megan Hill), working in a medical office...1/5

Richard Foreman alert! Andrew Lampert has curated a series at Anthology Film Archives...rarities onscreen from May 21-28. (NB: On May 24, the "lost" doc by Berenice Reynaud, Pavane for a Missing Play, about a piece RF canceled late in its development...) www.anthologyfilmarchives.org/film_screeni...

My gift to mothers today is a long chat with Richard Kind. We met, naturally, at Fairway, and talked about Harold Hill, Studio 54, his skin condition, his love of Don Quixote, the time that George Clooney threw pies at him, and more. www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

A painful, sudden loss www.nytimes.com/2025/05/03/a...

What to do if your NEA grant was rescinded docs.google.com/document/d/1...

My many thanks to the many people who talked to me about this issue… www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...

David Cote on "John Proctor is the Villain": "They’re reciting the sweet, green times, clutching the slim volume of their short lives, before starting a new chapter no longer written in their hand." observer.com/2025/04/revi...

Mark Seliger's portfolio, from our Yesteryear issue, is just staggering. 29 theater legends, re-enacting their biggest roles. If you are even remotely interested in Broadway theater, this will blow you away. www.vulture.com/article/bigg...

@helenshaw.bsky.social reviews a new Broadway production of David Mamet’s masterpiece “Glengarry Glen Ross,” starring Kieran Culkin and Bob Odenkirk, and George Clooney’s stage adaptation of his superb film “Good Night, and Good Luck.”

Invisible Dog has been turfed out so the building can be developed--another re-used storefront/warehouse performance venue (like Soho Rep's WalkerSpace) gone. Today is the last day of their flea market-style sell-off of all their goods; it's New York, so everything must go www.theinvisibledog.org

I know we talk about the money a lot, but money is in every minute of these super-priced shows; you can hear the faint swipes of credit cards whenever anyone takes a breath www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

treasuring this glimpse behind the scenes at New York mag from Jackson McHenry: "I keep repeating that 'ambitious girls must be vicious girls' to my editors and they’ve gotten annoyed to the point of making me write a blog post." www.vulture.com/article/gal-...

A huge amount to be delighted by in Eve Bromberg's interview with Jerry Lieblich and Paul Lazar, as there was in "The Barbarians," which was at La Mama and may (may? please?) return. www.culturebot.org/2025/01/9966...

Streetcar (with Paul Mescal and Patsy Ferran) and Ghosts (with Lily Rabe and Billy Crudup) www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Rhoda Feng at Art Forum on Bess Wohl's Liberation... beautiful writing that both describes and embodies "Orphic" energy...https://www.artforum.com/columns/bess-wohl-liberation-review-1234727855/