Helen Shaw

2 months 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 months 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.

2 months 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.

2 months 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.

2 months ago | newyorker.com | Helen Shaw

Hytner’s version of Plantagenet England seems less overtly medieval and rather more like the New York of the HBO series “Succession.” The play’s piano-and-strings compositions, by Grant Olding, closely recall Nicholas Britell’s discordant TV soundtrack; Richard wears sumptuous suits and velvet loafers without socks, then goes to prison in comfy gray sweats, sporting quiet luxury to the end.