I am going to turn this into a daily inspiration calendar.
12.02.2026 17:59
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🔁 25
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I am going to turn this into a daily inspiration calendar.
For the New York Times, I trekked across town in a squall and asked Christiani Pitts to compare her Broadway costars—Sam Tutty and King King.
I've decided that "The Best of Times" from La Cage Aux Folles is the perfect New Year’s Eve song because it makes you focus not on the past or future but the present (and if it builds correctly, everybody claps along)
For World AIDS Day, which is Dec. 1 and which is being ignored by the Trump administration because they dislike the World Health Organization, other countries, science, and queer people, I'm reposting a piece I wrote earlier this year. (They also hate history.) www.vulture.com/article/hiv-...
GUIL: No, no, no … you’ve got it all wrong … you can’t act death. The fact of it is nothing to do with seeing it happen—it’s not gasps and blood and falling about—that isn’t what makes it death. It’s just a man failing to reappear, that’s all—now you see him, now you don’t, that’s the only thing that’s real: here one minute and gone the next and never coming back—an exit, unobtrusive and unannounced, a disappearance gathering weight as it goes on, until, finally, it is heavy with death.
This holiday season I think you should purchase binoculars for a friend or family member. Someone in my OWN family will be getting binoculars, though I will not reveal who. And I wrote about why in here: www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...
I wrote about Else Went’s high school epic “Initiative,” now running at the Public Theater—and why the theater’s director of new work development calls it “the definitive play of a generation.”
The new play Prince Faggot officially reopened Off-Broadway last night. I recently wrote about how the play fits into a broader trend of speculative royal narratives for Town and Country: www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts...
Woolly Mammoth continues to program ambitious new plays with “The Great Privation,” a bold, funny show that uses magical realism to explore the echoes of generational trauma. Read my review: washingtoncitypaper.com/article/7717...
Emma Sarappo sits to the left of Patricia Lockwood in front of a Politics and Prose sign
! @emmasarappo.bsky.social talked to @tricialockwood.bsky.social about WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER YOU tonight and it absolutely ruled !
It’s a hard time to celebrate art, even if we all understand its importance & value. Perhaps that’s why this year’s Fall Arts Guide theme, How To Make a Scene, struck a chord.
This is about coming together, it’s about making our feelings known, it’s about taking a stand for what’s important.
It was great to talk to the textile artist (and Tennessean) Tabitha Arnold for Interview. Read our conversation for an overview of her work and her first New York exhibition!
www.interviewmagazine.com/art/tabitha-...
The wonderful, whimsical Julio Torres’ first theater project opens tonight. I interviewed him about the project for the Brooklyn Rail. brooklynrail.org/2025/09/thea...
The analysis that’s missing from most (practically all) podcast aggregation.
#REAL
NYC Is Having a Clownaissance
A new generation of clowns wants you to embrace the liberatory possibilities of acting very stupid.
hellgatenyc.com/everyone-is-...
sat shotgun on Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang's winding roadtrip to tonight's Culture Awards. Readers, Kayteighs, Publicists, I promise you are in for a treat even though Miss Piggy had to cancel
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/st...
The tiny, intrepid Bushwick Starr announcing Keanu Reeves as their gala honoree this fall, in an e-blast that notes he’s a longtime board member of theirs, is going to get people scanning board lists for who else they might’ve missed.
A thoughtful piece about casting and representation — with a delicate note about how casting has set precedents in other musicals.
Wow!! This is unbelievable
The more I research the history of the NEA and how it survived many attempts to drastically reduce (or totally eliminate) its funding, the more convinced I become that the Obama admin’s (public) vision of political compromise was totally naive and ahistorical.
Today is the 50th anniversary of the Broadway opening of A Chorus Line. To celebrate, about 173 of us who danced in that show gathered outside in the Lincoln Center Library of Performing Arts plaza, performed The Opening Away From the Mirror, One, and What I Did For Love. 💙
50 years on, A Chorus Line still asks what artists are willing to do for the chance to perform—and, perhaps more urgently, what producers are willing to take.
It sounds like a great celebration—but would the rightsholders have pulled the plug so fast if the show didn’t have this history? And how does the ECF tie-in burnish the show’s legacy?
Meanwhile, Concord announced its own big event: a one-night concert at the Shubert Theatre (taking place on Sunday night). The event, featuring several original cast members, will benefit the Entertainment Community Fund, which helps artists in need.
A June 5, 2025 article by Logan Culwell-Block about the cancelled recital. Headline: “Update: Site-Specific, Non-Union New York Revival of A Chorus Line Cancelled.” Dek: “The show, which was supposed to premiere this fall at a real Manhattan dance studio, will no longer go on.”
Concord Theatrical, which controls the rights, quickly pulled the production’s license.
Official reports noted a conflict with other anniversary plans, but the plan to stage such physical show without union protections also recalled the show’s history of underserving the dancers at its heart.
Last month, a young producer announced a site-specific revival of the show in a Chinatown dance studio. The announcement tied the production to the show’s 50th anniversary, saying it would honor “the musical’s spirit and sense of discovery.” The catch? It was non-union.
Hamlisch did arrange to give the dancers limited royalties when the show moved to Broadway—but only for the original production, and without any formal credit as writers or contributors.
Director/choreographer Michael Bennett working with dancers.
The show became a record-setting phenomenon, with 9 Tonys, a Pulitzer, and a 15-year Broadway run. But the rewards flowed mainly to Michael Bennett, Marvin Hamlisch, Ed Kleban, James Kirkwood Jr., Nicholas Dante, and the Public Theater—not to the dancers whose stories gave it life.
