Plague erased social, gender and personal differences. Shakespeare responded by emphasizing people’s unique and inerasable difference. His work is a narrative vaccine.
His low-budget movies, notably the cult favorite “Re-Animator,” combined grisly body horror with a mordant sense of humor.
It’s a tradition this drama critic would highly recommend to those looking for ways to find magic in empty hours.
Mr. Blum, who died of coronavirus complications, was also seen on Broadway; in “Crocodile Dundee” and other movies; and on numerous television shows.
Jennifer Schantz, an executive at the New-York Historical Society, will lead the library, which is home to more than 8 million items relating to music, theater and dance.
As nonprofits around the country cancel all spring programs, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival halts performances through Labor Day, and will lay off 80 percent of its staff.
When theaters closed by the pandemic stream their shuttered plays online, watching sharpens the longing for the real thing.
Audra McDonald, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Joe Mantello on a versatile collaborator who came to know “he didn’t have to repeat himself.”
The recorded performances that theaters in Germany have put online while they are closed don’t live up to the real thing, our critic says.
The 74th annual ceremony and television broadcast won’t happen until Broadway reopens. How shows will be eligible remains to be determined.
“Terrence’s life speaks to what is best and bravest in us all,” says a reader who knew the playwright.
Concerned that female directors and playwrights were underrepresented in New York theaters, she founded Women’s Project in 1978 to cultivate their work.
David Rockwell, the architect and Tony-winning show designer, talks about the stories and history behind his favorite theaters.
The Library of Congress designates 25 recordings for preservation, in what it is billing as “the ultimate ‘stay at home’ playlist.”
He was furious, despairing, yet inescapably entertaining, often in the same show. And he offered memorable roles to Nathan Lane, Zoe Caldwell and more.
Mr. McNally, who died of coronavirus complications, introduced audiences to characters and situations that most mainstream theater had previously shunted into comic asides.
The performer Taylor Mac and the playwright Suzan-Lori Parks have signed on to a video-sharing subscription service to raise money for New York colleagues in crisis.
For over three hours online Sunday night, the Broadway superfan schmoozed, fund-raised and gave stars a chance to share their music.
A critic disguised as an actress who is also a suspect in the death of the Great Merlini. Her team didn’t use “Cats” to break the case, though.
Hundreds of theater workers will receive wages and benefits for a few weeks during the shutdown, which has already led two plays, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Hangmen,” to close before they even opened.
“The Rosie O’Donnell Show” returns for a night with streaming and the Metropolitan Opera will have a week of Wagner starting on Monday. Here is a list of digital content.
Going online is one answer, but it’s not so simple.
Going online is one answer, but it’s not so simple.
Funny, scary and necessary, this series of taped soliloquies contemplate the way we live now, in isolation.
Funny, scary and necessary, this series of taped soliloquies contemplate the way we live now, in isolation.
Over 400 years ago, villagers swore to stage the play every decade, as long as God spared them from the plague.
While the city’s theaters were still open, several plays seemed to have relevant messages for our troubled times.
The Pulitzer Prize winners Lynn Nottage and Annie Baker are among those who said they had been asked to give back advances because of the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the country’s most racially diverse cities struggles, nicely, with representation and inclusion on its many bustling stages.
One of the country’s most racially diverse cities struggles, nicely, with representation and inclusion on its many bustling stages.
As bans on public gatherings have proliferated nationwide in response to coronavirus, shows and special programs are announcing streaming plans daily.
Artists, actors, dancers and authors search for a silver lining as openings are disrupted by the virus outbreak.
The city’s West End theater district, Royal Opera House and other premier venues closed Monday after the prime minister warned patrons to avoid the theater during the outbreak.
From the bubonic plague to the AIDS crisis, theater and public health have a long history of shaping each other, our critic writes.
For many events, it’s not too late to get your money back.
Britain has taken a more relaxed approach to coronavirus prevention than the rest of Europe and the United States.
Some places have decided to remain open: movies and theater for smaller audiences, galleries by appointment, comedy clubs, jazz, zoos and the Statue of Liberty.
What is your favorite Sondheim song and why?
The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera are among other institutions that have suspended their programs. Here’s a list of closures and cancellations.
Previews, openings and some last-chance picks.
Facing restrictions on audience size and concern from actors and audiences about health risks during the coronavirus pandemic, the industry announced that shows will be shuttered through April 12.
The Metropolitan Museum, Whitney Museum, Guggenheim, Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Opera, Carnegie Hall and New York Philharmonic announced temporary closures.
Let’s not underrate Stephen Sondheim any longer: Theater’s greatest songwriter is also one of theater’s greatest playwrights. Here’s why.
Why did it take so long for the composer to be unambivalently embraced? Maybe because ambivalence is what he’s embraced most of all.
The sophisticated composer and his snappy songs have migrated from stage to screens. Give us more to see? Here’s how.
What’s a birthday celebration without tribute concerts, new commissions and revivals of three classics? Here’s how to join the party, live.
An opinionated take on the songwriter’s major works, from a delayed debut to a Pulitzer Prize-winning classic.
We asked Stephen Sondheim’s admirers, some of them also his collaborators, to reflect on the songs that have stayed in their hearts.
The employee worked in recent days at “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and “Six,” prompting a scramble to inform the public and clean the theaters.
The hero of Joe DiPietro’s new comic drama is Margaret Chase Smith, a U.S. senator who had the rare courage to stand up to McCarthyism.
Despite charming performances, a Culture Project production works too hard bringing a delicate novella to the stage.
Actors are being asked to suspend the tradition of greeting fans at stage doors, one of several steps that theaters are taking to limit the coronavirus threat.
In Hilary Bettis’s play, a family separated by deportation wants to live regular American lives but discovers how mercilessly difficult that is.
This thoughtful, history-spanning portrait of elusive identities testifies to the versatility of its composer, Michael Friedman.
What do Korean divers and Manhattan playwrights have in common? A new play looks for the connection.
The Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov is free from house arrest but isn’t allowed to leave Moscow. So actors from a Berlin theater went there to create his latest work.
When it opened in 1968, the play broke new ground in its depiction of gay characters.
A fictitious Kevin Bacon (played by Kevin Bacon), an improvised space opera and a Midwestern gothic horror story are audio dramas you might want to add to your queue.
“Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes),” an En Garde Arts production, invites audiences to experience a musical gathering popular among immigrants, this one under the threat of a raid.
On a set that transforms the Bushwick Starr into a cave beneath a tree, Jillian Walker tells a story of her family, and of blackness in America, that aches with hope.
The Canadian director’s “The Seven Streams of the River Ota” is set for a world tour, after his most recent productions were embroiled in debates about cultural appropriation.
Museums, theaters and concert halls in the United States are steeling themselves for fearful patrons, lighter crowds and possible government shutdowns.
This ravishing and singular musical, written and directed by Conor McPherson, hears America singing — Dylan — during the Great Depression.
Vivian Neuwirth’s play is a fictionalized recollection of the life of the novelist John Kennedy Toole, who died before his Pulitzer-Prize winning classic “A Confederacy of Dunces” was published.
France’s movie business is consumed by debates about gender inequality. Onstage, female theatermakers are bringing women’s stories to the fore.
Yes, his new Broadway play is called “Hangmen.” Sure, he writes about violent people doing violent things. But at heart, he said, he likes a good laugh.
The stage adaptation of Rex Pickett’s novel about two friends on a last-hurrah wine tour preserves the white male wish fulfillment of the original.
Richard Greenberg’s overstuffed new play about family feuds and ethical choices turns a wedding comedy into a crisis.
Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s show at the Public Theater, with live music by Steve Earle, is based on a real-life West Virginia mining tragedy.
The postmodern take on the classic, directed by Jamie Lloyd, will have a limited run in May.
A solo stage adaptation of Paul Muldoon’s poem considers whether making art can offer solace in the wake of grief.
Though panned by critics, a show based on the songs of the pop producer Max Martin is up for nine awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.
The playwright Richard Greenberg has dedicated himself to chronicling urban elites. With his two new shows, he’s re-entering the theater in a heightened cultural moment.
Prebble won the annual prize for female playwrights, for her work about a Russian assassination on British soil.
In Neil Simon’s “Plaza Suite,” they are playing three different couples — and are seeing more of one another than ever.
Ethan Lipton’s delirious Western comedy features a pigtailed gunslinger, a soul-sucking demon and singing puppet cactuses, among other inspired flights of fancy.
Tweaks to dialogue, costumes and lighting cues came daily, as the cast and crew of Richard Greenberg’s new play prepared for opening night.
“There are grand gestures out there to be had, and no one is going for them. We’re drowning in timidity.”
Katori Hall’s genial play, built around a cooking contest in Memphis, uses a sitcom structure to explore black masculinity.
He provided the administrative know-how that got the theater troupe off the ground in 1967. That he was white drew some criticism.