At a press conference on Friday announcing 1,500 free tickets to the Under the Radar Festival, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said: “This is just one example of an agenda and an approach that we are going to take to ensure that arts are not simply thought of as a luxury for the wealthy or a treat for the tourists. Arts have to be something that are infused in the lives of everyday New Yorkers. We know that for too long it has felt as if a world away. There are people just a few blocks away for whom this festival was something they hadn’t heard of until this announcement was made. And so we are going to spend our time, our agenda, and the time that we have in office in doing everything we can to bring arts back to New Yorkers all across the five boroughs.” (See video below.)
The mayor thus addresses, albeit without any specifics, the first of the 10 Questions About Theater in 2026 that I posed on January 1: Will the affordability agenda extend to the theater?
Many of those questions about theater are currently being addressed at the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP.) A few snippets below.
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
“I’m not an ax murderer,” Peter (Namir Smallwood) says to Agnes (Carrie Coon.) It’s his first line in “Bug,” Tracy Letts’ intentionally unsettling 1996 play, now in its Broadway debut. But what Peter does to Agnes turns out to be worse. She buys into his delusional conspiracy theory, that the government has infested them with bugs.
“Bug” was a shot of adrenaline and a delayed-release dose of anxiety when I saw it Off-Broadway. That was decades ago. Much of the effect for me has worn off.
A young man strips an older woman of her clothes, wipes her bottom and changes her diaper: It is an early scene in “Mami,” one of the many startling wordless moments that have the otherworldly imagery and slow, deliberate movement of European puppetry; it even debuted last year at the Avignon Festival, known for its puppetry. But these are six human beings, frequently naked, who move through what’s being billed as a “visual poem about the mother-child relationship” conceived and directed by Mario Banushi, who at 27 years old is being credited for having created “a stage language all his own.”
“Mami” is one of the first shows in this year’s Under the Radar festival, which is supposed to present work by artists pushing boundaries, and encourages us to be open-minded about them; it’s not geared to American theatergoing literalists. So forgive my skepticism about the claims for “Mami.” …
Both Princess Diana and musician Bob Marley died tragically at the age of 36, and both have been the subject of an endless stream of books and films and plays. They each have another such show this week — one silly, one sincere – at the Fringe Encore Series at SoHo Playhouse, both of them imports from the Edinburgh Fringe: “Diana: The Untold and Untrue Story” and “Bob Marley: How Reggae Changed The World,”
Remembering January 6, on Stage: “Running for My Life” and “Fatherland”
“Sweetheart, I’m fine, and I’m running for my life, I cannot talk to you right now,” Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif) recalls telling her son, when he telephoned her while she was scrambling down the Capitol staircase escaping the mob on January 6, 2021.
Exactly a year after the storming of the US Capitol, Torres and 22 other female members of Congress who were endangered on that day became characters in a work of documentary theater called “Running for My Life” at Contra Costa Civic Theater in California, put together by that community theater’s artistic director Marilyn Langbehn.
Two years later, New York City Center produced another work of documentary theater, about a January 6th insurrectionist, entitled “Fatherland,” conceived and directed by Stephen Sachs
Book Review: Never Mind The Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner
Marc Shaiman, one-half the songwriting team behind the Broadway musicals “Hairspray,” “Catch Me If You Can,” “Some Like It Hot,” and “Smash,” doesn’t even start to tell us about any of his musicals until more than halfway through his new memoir, “ Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner” (Regalo Press, 298 pages)
The first half of that title is misleading: It’s what his mother said when wished a Happy New Year. Shaiman repeatedly calls himself an Eeyore (the depressed stuffed donkey in Winnie the Pooh), but in truth the predominant mood that comes through these pages is gleeful, not gloomy, as Shaiman recounts the promised “showbiz” anecdotes from his half century as a successful composer for stage and screen – and as a piano player, performer, lyricist, arranger, orchestrator, musical director, conductor, and, above all, an accompanist. That particular role reflects the two most persistent aspects of his character, both evident from an early age – musical talent and star-struck fan. He was a gay Jewish nerd growing up in Scotch Plains, New Jersey, who put posters of his “idol” Bette Midler on the wall of his room at age 13, and “devoured” her albums; it’s astonishing that just four years later, he started playing piano for her.
The Week in New York Theater News
“Hamnet” wins the Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture Drama, and Jessie Buckley wins best performance by a female actor for her role as Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife. Broadway veterans Jean Smart and Michelle Williams also brought home awards. Complete list of Golden Globe winners and nominees.
The Fantasticks, reimagined as a contemporary gay love story, is now in development for Broadway under the direction and choreography of Tony Award winner Christopher Gattelli (Broadway: Death Becomes Her, Newsies). Featuring a revised book and lyrics by Tom Jones and music by Harvey Schmidt, this new version of the world’s longest-running musical was completed by Jones before his death in 2023
At the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals, I was struck that in the discussions of the challenges facing the arts, in such panels as “The Arts as Civic Strategy,” there was little noticeable expression of anxiety or urgency or outrage. I talked about this with Lisa Richards Toney, APAP’s president since 2020.
“There is a lot of anxiety out there. If you talk to individual members, I’m sure you will sense that. But we can’t just be a ball of anxiety. I believe there are paths forward. Our advocacy page gives people talking points that actually cross sectors and cross disciplines. It doesn’t require the artists or the arts to become something they’re not. What they do is already in service to so many things that we have never been given credit for. A lot of people don’t even realize that we are the answer to bring that humanity together, to solve those health problems, to add to the economic GDP.”
What about outrage? Can these theaters channel the outrage that’s out in the country?
“Outrage is not a strategy. It is an initial emotion, and we have got to get strategic. Outrage will not get us anywhere. In fact, it will just make us feel bad because people won’t listen to the outrage.”
LaChanze on her journey to Broadway producer
LaChanze, a 19-time Broadway veteran. has won five Tony Awards, one of them for her starring role in the original 2005 Broadway production of “The Color Purple,” the other four as a Broadway producer – a career she started in 2022, after four decades as a performer. In an opening-day address yesterday at the annual conference of APAP (the Association of Performing Arts Professionals), she talked about her journey in the arts as a testament to the power of community and to“the abundance mindset.” Below are excerpts, focusing on her early years, and then her recent transition to the role of producer. She ended her talk with a song, “Be a Lion,” from the musical The Wiz (see below)
The War on Culture
The Washington National Opera is leaving the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, its home since 1971. (NPR)
“The Washington National Opera’s departure is the latest and perhaps most significant in a string of artist exits from the cultural institution since Trump took over the institution.” (The NPR article includes a list of those cancellations.)
In Memoriam
Tina Packer, 87, founding artistic director of Shakespeare & Company, professional theater company and training center in Lenox, Massachusetts (the Berkshires.) I saw her New York stage debut in 2013, “Women of Will,” her show about Shakespeare’s female characters — characters she had been studying by then for decades.
The Week’s Theater Video
Mayor Mamdani’s press conference about free theater tickets (only the first five minutes are relevant)
LaChanze sings “Be A Lion” from The Wiz at the conclusion of her talk about her career at the annual conference of the Association of Performing Arts Professionals.
