Helen Shaw

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Rachel Syme |Hilton Als |Helen Shaw |Sheldon Pearce |Taran Dugal |Jia Tolentino

Summer is a season ripe for scandal; people tend to be overheated and understimulated, looking to mist their crisping minds with idle gossip. Minor controversies can boil over, given the right temperature, into full-on imbroglios; such was the case in Paris in 1884, when the twenty-eight-year-old painter John Singer Sargent débuted a new large-scale portrait at the Salon, then the world’s most influential summer art show.

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Helen Shaw

“The new wine has burst the old bottles,” the playwright August Strindberg wrote, in a bullish preface to his 1888 play “Miss Julie,” setting out a catalogue of revolutionary theatrical principles. Outdated conventions needed to be cleared away, Strindberg said. To make modern, naturalistic plays, there could be no more immense proscenium spaces, painted backdrops, or intermissions.

1 month 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.

1 month 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.

1 month 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.