If movies can be inspired by theme park rides, why not a Broadway play based on a Twitter feed? An Act of God, David Javerbaum's new comedy, emerged from a Twitter persona he created -- @TheTweetOfGod, also available in book form -- which ostensibly...
In 1997 the psychologist Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a member of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, began meeting with Eugene de Kock, an imprisoned former assassin for the apartheid government. In a series of probing interviews, she a...
Watching Cagney, a new musical by Peter Colley, Robert Creighton, and Christopher McGovern about the revered silver-screen hoodlum (and occasional tap-dance man), is a bit like encountering a singing-and-dancing Wikipedia page. It's good-natured, i...
If all art is political, directly or indirectly, then our time is uniquely filled with breezy stuff that effortlessly plumps for the status quo. Still, there are artists who buck the funfair trends. Among these is an intergenerational group of talen...
In New Country, playwright-performer Mark Roberts steals his own show. He plays Uncle Jim, an addled hillbilly with an appetite for intoxicating substances, a rude sense of humor, and a propensity for waxing existential -- think Duck Dynasty with a ...
Robert Askins sets his new play Permission in "nice clean suburban Waco," but the Texas you see here might not look the way you imagined. Sure, the characters go to Bible study groups. They care about their marriages. They're well-intentioned: They ...
We might all rest easier if massive weather events could be "hacked" with the right combination of code, repelling hurricanes from New York's fragile shores. But that security would vanish if we learned those very storms were summoned by cynical bur...
"Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist," said George Carlin. Words to live by when looking at much contemporary art, the phrase is especially useful when considering two concurrent exhibitions at the Met that feature Polish art...
When the Metropolitan Museum's latest Costume Institute show asks, "Do I look fat?" it's not fishing for a compliment. Spread over 30,000 square feet -- that's three times the size of any previous fashion show at the museum -- "China: Through the Lo...
"Everybody leaves home," says Stammy (Seth Clayton), a bewildered and disappointed young man, near the end of Heartbreak, Ariel Stess's new play. He's right, of course. And that's one of the reasons it's so curious -- and frustrating -- to watch th...
Keeping tabs on New York theater is a tricky business, with shows of all stripes appearing at venues of every size. But when the 2015 season drew to a close, one thing was easy to notice: how many women enjoyed notable creative successes this year....
I'm a white male, old enough to collect Social Security if our Republican Congress doesn't abolish it before next month. And this year, when the judges for the Obie awards had finished their last exhausting meeting, I cast my eye down the splendid ...
There's a reason they call it the urban jungle. Count on artist Neil Goldberg to remind us. In a wide-ranging show at Participant Inc., Goldberg pings between the veldt and the Whole Foods, recalling our animal nature even while pointing out our ...
As you approach the Flea Theater to see Antonio Vega's monologue-play The Duchamp Syndrome, you might notice a coverall-clad janitor doing a little spot cleaning on the sidewalk. Or you may not. And that would be the point. The janitor's name is...
You'd think Athol Fugard, legendary chronicler of apartheid-era South Africa, would need new subject matter these days. Distressingly, not so: Apartheid's aftermath offers plenty of dramatic conflict, as Fugard shows in The Painted Rocks at Revolve...
In Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, downtown auteur Sibyl Kempson revisits the fateful encounter between writer James Agee, photographer Walker Evans, and a family of Southern sharecroppers. The results -- published as Let Us Now Praise Famous Men --...
By simultaneously mining and questioning our past, we do not arrive at a comprehensive survey or tidy summation, but rather at a critical new beginning..." Thus does the Whitney Museum of American Art introduce the institution's inaugural outing at ...
We're always searching for authenticity in the theater even though it's a terrible place to look. Historically based in fiction and centered in artifice, drama still extends a promise -- often an illusion -- that the stage is a place for declaring p...
It's one thing to know this country's a rough place for young Muslims -- and another to hear about it from people who speak from experience. This is the best reason to see Ping Chong and Company's thoughtful testimonial piece, Beyond Sacred, now pla...
Crumpled sheets of paper adorn the walls and ceiling of Derek McLane's set for The Two Gentlemen of Verona, a Fiasco Theater production now at the Theatre for a New Audience. These mangled pages suggest the secret letters Shakespeare's lovestruck co...
