Helen Shaw

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Rachel Syme |Helen Shaw |Jane Bua |Jillian Steinhauer

New York City and roller-skating go way back. In 1863, a part-time inventor named James Leonard Plimpton, who ran a furniture store in the East Village, filed the first American patent for quad skates. Plimpton, who struggled with weak ankles, loved to skate but hated to wobble; his newfangled creation featured four squat, spread-out wheels, an innovation that allowed even novice skaters to conquer balance.

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Helen Shaw

“The future of writing is the universe within,” the composer and lyricist Adam Guettel told an interviewer, in 2001. It had been five years since the Off Broadway première of “Floyd Collins,” his folk-inflected musical, which recounts the true story of the eponymous Kentucky cave explorer, and Guettel was ready to turn further inward for inspiration.

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Helen Shaw

There was once a time when a performance career in New York progressed with, if not security, at least a path. An emerging playwright, director, or choreographer could hone their craft in a subsidized rehearsal space, apply for a residency somewhere in or near the city, or join a lab devoted to original works. Getting a single peer-reviewed grant, even a tiny one, would lead to others—each award conferring further legitimacy, bringing the artist to the attention of venues and large foundations.

3 weeks ago | link.newyorker.com | Richard Brody |Helen Shaw |Amanda Petrusich

Plus: schmaltzing up Sondheim; Marisa Tomei in a show about Sisyphus as a pregnant artist; and Michael Hersch’s twenty-nine-piece song cycle. View in browser | What we’re watching, listening to, and doing this week. You’re on the free list. New Yorker subscribers get our book picks in their inbox weekly, plus unlimited access to our seasonal culture previews, commentary, and criticism.

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Richard Brody |Michael Schulman |Sheldon Pearce |Helen Shaw

In the nineteen-seventies, U.C.L.A.’s Ethno-Communications program, founded to increase minority enrollment, attracted a critical mass of young Black filmmakers. They quickly began to make a widely varied range of independent films that were unified by their bold and intimate attention to Black lives and history, and by distinctive cinematic forms to match; the group eventually gained the nickname the L.A. Rebellion.