Everybody wants to be a rock star, perhaps none more ardently than theater folk, some of whom have been prodding the form toward rock since the sixties. Sam Shepard famously insisted that he wanted to be a rock and roll star, not a playwright; recently the likes of theater company Les Freres Corbusier and playwright Adam Rapp (who moonlights in a band) have expressed a sensible desire to tap into the Bowery Ballroom demographic.......

READING: Mira Jacob and Alison Hart host yet another of Pete's Reading Series. Tonight they welcome Nell Freudenberger, author of "The Dissident" - which sounds almost like a Tom Robbins novel, with a Chinese performance artist and former political prisoner accepting teaching fellowships at a girls school. Also reading tonight will be Dana Spiotta, author of "Eat the Document", which focuses on lives in the aftermath of 1970s radicalism. 7:30pm // Pete's Candy Store [709......

When the young Georg Buchner died in 1837, he left behind his unfinished working class tragedy Woyzeck, which was inspired by the real-life story of convicted criminal J.C. Woyzeck, a soldier who had become unemployed, homeless and hallucinatory. Before being sentenced to death for the murder of his lover, the medical examiner dismissed Woyzeck's mental illness as mere social deviancy. Buchner’s play was revolutionary in that it sympathized with the miserable life of a common......

By now you’ve probably heard about the hellacious goings-on at Saint Ann’s Warehouse in DUMBO. (If not here’s an in-depth Gothamist interview with the producer of Hell House, Aaron Lemon-Strauss.) A brief summary for the uninitiated: The script for Hell House comes from Pastor Keenan Roberts, a Colorado evangelist who has sold thousands of Hell House how-to kits to church groups around the world. Hell House visitors are escorted through a series of vignettes......

Starting yesterday at the cavernous St. Ann’s Warehouse, New York City is getting its first chance to experience “Hell House”, an interactive spectacle that is fast becoming a Halloween tradition in churches across America. Nearly all productions of “Hell House” are based on a single script sold by Pastor Keenan Roberts, co-founder of The New Destiny Christian Center in Colorado. “Hell House” visitors are escorted through a series of graphic scenes which illustrate the......

Far more than most presidential scandals/screw-ups, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair seems perfect for dramatization as a musical (though Les Freres Corbusier did do a good job with Warren Harding a while back, we have to admit). Especially in retrospect, the whole thing was too much of a farce even as it happened to merit the serious treatment an opera or straight play would be liable to give it now – it seems it was almost......

With the massive arts listings in last Sunday’s Times, the new season officially got underway, although theatre fans have for some time been able to get at least some idea about the next year on stage, and not only the brand-name productions, via the estimable nytheatre.com. Still, poring over those inky pages and getting overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of what’s about to come our way has no real substitute, and we’re now particularly......

It seems like every few months or so there’s a story in the news about how hard it is to produce a show on stage these days – hard to make it profitable, hard to get the audiences. From Broadway to off-off Broadway, it's the same story. Thankfully a few recent shows have done well enough that they’ve returned, or will be, for extended runs. The lucky recipients of this popular demand? -- All Wear......