At 10 a.m. today, the city's tourism arm, NYC & Company, is offering 2-for-1 tickets to various Broadway and Off-Broadway shows, as part of its Broadway Week, which runs September 18 to 30, and Off-Broadway week (September 26 to October 9). The Broadway shows include long-running stalwarts like Chicago, The Lion King, Wicked, Jersey Boys and Billy Elliot, plus newcomers like Memphis and the upcoming The Mountaintop, starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett. On the Off-Broadway side, the participating shows include Avenue Q, Stomp, Love, Loss and What I Wore, and Naked Boys Singing! A list of shows is below: more ›

Off-Broadway, what will they think of next? First there was an Evil Dead musical spoof, and now, fava-bean-and-human-flesh-loving Hannibal Lector is getting thrown into the spotlight in a new show called Silence! The Musical. more ›

In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes (all figures approximate), Rent—the musical about a group of '90s-era "new bohemians" living, loving, and dying of AIDS in the East Village—will be revived Off-Broadway. There's no escaping the past! more ›

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, author of 17 plays, has passed beyond the final curtain. Wilson, a longtime resident of Sag Harbor, Long Island, died yesterday due to complications from pneumonia at a long term acute care facility in Wayne, New Jersey; according to the Steppenwolf Theatre he passed on the eve of the Chicago company's first preview production of a new staging of his Hot l Baltimore, which was a hit Off Broadway in the '70s and later a short-lived TV sitcom. His Broadway plays include Angels Fall (1983), Redwood Curtain (1993), and Burn This (1987), which starred performer John Malkovich. more ›

When the lights go up on a stage bedecked with various S&M-dungeon fixtures, one assumes impending comedy. When a fidgeting, tie-wearing Zach Braff is the one in the dungeon, imminent Freud-garnished psychological prodding becomes an equally safe assumption. Such is the case with Trust at 2econd Stage Theater, in which the four-person cast each grapple with the need to be both controlled and controlling, and the sexual parallels are drawn in fluorescent pen. more ›

Okay, for those theater aesthetes who wouldn't be caught dead attending one of those big-money, lowbrow Broadway spectacles, be advised that as of 2 p.m., there were no known cancellations of Off Broadway shows tonight, either. So go see Circumcise Me or something! (Still waiting on word about Off Off Broadway, but we'd be mighty disillusioned if stalwart companies like The Debate Society let a little blizzard stop them tomorrow night.) more ›

Click on the photos for Gothamist's top ten favorite theatrical productions of 2009. Last year, of course, we couldn't stop talking about Passing Strange, but this year's highly subjective list is notably devoid of musicals. (Unfortunately, we haven't seen Fela!) Two of these ten were unforgettable, site-specific odysseys—one on a bus through the Bronx, the other on a boat that went nowhere. Just two happened on Broadway—one with A-list stars, the other with brilliant yet relatively unknown downtown actors. (Both narrowly edged out the excellent revival of Waiting for Godot starring John Goodman, Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin.) more ›

The first New York revival of Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning two-part epic work, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes, will be staged by Signature Theatre Company as part of their 20th anniversary season in 2010-2011. Signature, which devotes an entire season to a single playwright's work, announced that part one, Millennium Approaches and part two, Perestroika, will run in repertory; the theater also plans to have performance days where the plays (each three and a half hours) are presented back to back. As usual with Signature, all tickets for the initial run will be sold for $20, thanks to a grant from Time Warner. more ›

If you're going through the hassle of living in overpriced New York City and not bothering to check out Richard Foreman's annual phantasmagoria, you're really missing out. Stepping into the little theater at St. Mark's Church every February is like taking a mental vacation to another dimension. And this year's Gothic baroque extravaganza is more dynamic than the past few years, in which Foreman experimented with film and a more subdued stagecraft. For now at least, he's dropped the film and picked up avant-garde composer John Zorn, who's composed a feral, heavy metal score for the show, with occasional bursts of Tasmanian Devil vocalization. more ›

If Joseph Campbell ever got really baked and told his grandchildren a meandering bedtime story, it might have sounded something like The Granduncle Quadrilogy, a whimsical four part fairytale "from the Land of Ice," presented by Piper McKenzie at the Brick Theater in Williamsburg. Playwright Jeff Lewoncyzk's idiosyncratic fable centers on a bungling hero, the titular Granduncle, and his kooky misadventures in an imaginary arctic land where war is everlasting and it's so damn cold everyone looks forward to death, when they can finally join their messiah in heaven. (Which is under the ice.) more ›

Playwright Michael Weller, who made his big theatrical debut in 1972 with a play about America's convulsions during Vietnam, is again dramatizing our deeply dysfunctional national psyche during yet another catastrophic war. His new play Beast is described by Weller as "a fever dream in six parts." And while some of those parts are definitely less compelling than others, Weller's "fever dream" is staged vividly here by director Jo Bonney. It's also brutally funny, in the tradition of other dark, absurd war stories like Full Metal Jacket. (If you're going to see it and hate spoilers, here's where you'll want to stop reading.) more ›

After twelve years, 5,124 performances and a haul of $280 million, Rent's Broadway run has come to an end. The musical closed yesterday after a final sold-out performance packed with diehard fans (the "Rentheads") and a smattering of celebrities (a couple Gossip Girl cast members). Just before the curtain came down for the final time, members of the show's original company joined the current cast on stage to "Seasons of Love," one of the show's most famous songs, the Associated Press reports. more ›

The Fringe, the Summer Play Festival, the Ice Factory—all that's behind us. With summer all but over, it's time for the big dogs of Broadway take center stage once again. Today the Times arts section is packed with ads and articles about the upcoming theater season, which critic Charles Isherwood has dubbed A Season of Men. That's mainly because there are two David Mamet plays set to open, Arthur Miller's All My Sons (with its gender-specific title) is being revived, and a naked Daniel Radcliffe can now be seen onstage at the Broadhurst Theatre. All that and a few other highlights from Broadway and Off Broadway below. more ›

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They’ll deny it, but most college students who write plays harbor some secret fantastic hope that their new opus will be hailed as the arrival of a fresh new voice and open on Broadway to triumphant acclaim. It obviously never happens, except when it does: 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, originally from Washington Heights, conceived the musical In the Heights as a sophomore at Wesleyan. After graduating, the show, a hip hop and salsa-inflected homage to his old ‘hood, caught the eye of the producers behind RENT and Avenue Q. It opened Off Broadway last year to rave reviews, packed houses and far too many awards to schlep home on the A train. Now the Broadway incarnation is bounding through previews, having kept most of the original Off Broadway cast, which includes Miranda himself in one of the starring roles. The official opening night is March 9th; ticket prices vary. more ›

RENT, the surprise smash hit musical that premiered in 1996 and went on to become the seventh-longest-running Broadway show in history, will close June 1st, producers have announced. Over the years the show cultivated a fanatical army of young repeat viewers (“Rentheads”) whose ardor has translated into profits of $280 million on Broadway, four Tony awards and a Pulitzer. Productions have been mounted on six continents, while an ill-conceived movie version of the show, filmed in San Francisco, opened in 2005 to widespread derision. And the musical was also famously parodied by the South Park creators in their film Team America, which depicts the faux-hip cast of the Broadway show LEASE belting the show’s climactic chorus, “Everyone has AIDS!” more ›

In The Brothers Size, three shirtless black men struggle for scraps of peace and prosperity under the blazing sun of some unnamed, dirt poor southern town. Ogun and Oshoosi Size are two recently reunited brothers – the older, more responsible Ogun has taken Oshoosi in after he’s released from prison. Oshoosi makes a halfhearted go at rehabilitation working at Ogun’s auto-body shop, at least until the appearance of his old jailbird buddy Elegba, who surfaces... more ›

Having already seen one of this season’s most anticipated Broadway plays, Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll, we haven’t been yet been personally disappointed by the Local One stagehands’ strike. While we sympathize with the union and the theatrical community that’s now out of work, we’re not exactly losing sleep over tourist tweens missing out on Legally Blonde for a few days. Now, however, we’re really starting to sweat it: though talks will resume this weekend,... more ›

Back before the turn of the century, and concurrent with the spread of air conditioning in Off-Off Broadway theaters, theater buffs John Clancy and Elena K. Holy seized a golden opportunity to exploit the only brief lull in New York’s raging theater scene – when conventional wisdom held that no slob stuck in town during mid-August would want to get stickier in a stuffy theater up two flights of stairs. And so The New York International Fringe Festival slouched toward downtown to be born. Now in its 11th year, and with smash hits like Urinetown under its belt, FringeNYC has swelled to Category 4 proportions – featuring 188 productions in some 20 theaters, it’s expected to make landfall as early as tomorrow! [Disclosure: We participated in the festival in ‘02 and ’04.] more ›

MUSIC: Tickets are still available for Daniel Johnston tonight. If you aren't familiar with the music of this Austinite, check out a little of what he has to offer from a recent appearance on the Henry Rollins Show (video here), or in the documentary "The Devil and Daniel Johnston," trailer below: more ›

The Receipt, a charmingly subversive play by a pair of brilliant blokes in town for the Brits Off Broadway festival, is framed by a future archeologist’s analysis of one Alan Wiley, a contemporary Londoner – though colleagues believe the city may have been called something like Glondon – and his strange, quixotic quest to find the “owner” of a receipt that he picks up on the street. The story is the right-brain child of Will Adamsdale, who pours sweat as he embodies the Kafkaesque life of Wiley, racing to complete menial tasks for his boss while his mind is elsewhere, on that customer 24182 who purchased a couple of glasses of Chardonnay at Space Bar. His obsession ultimately costs him his job, but Wiley doesn’t seem to mind, for the receipt is calling him to a higher purpose. more ›

American counterculture and literary idol, Kurt Vonnegut, died yesterday at the age of 84. He was in Manhattan, and his death was the result of brain injuries from a fall several weeks ago. more ›

based on the 1981 cult classic horror flick by Sam Raimi. It'll be directed by Bond and Hinton Battle, who also choreographed the show. Tying in with the Midnight Movie plot of a group of friends visiting a wooded cabin and unleashing untold evil, they'll be offering performances starting at 11 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Also if you're really into the guts and gore aspect of hack 'em up horror, be sure to ask to sit in the first few rows identified as the "Splatter Zone." No news yet whether the evil book will get a tap dance solo. Previews begin October 1 with the opening November 1 at New World Stages. more ›

The weather outside might be just starting to feel like spring, but in the theater world there’s already a summery vibe going on. Last night the Lortel Awards kicked off the trophy-giving season; this Friday the Drama League awards go out. Then there’s the festivals; not that there aren’t festivals at other times of the year, but as the weather heats up they start crowding in thick and fast. Currently you can get a square meal of offerings from around the world, all via some well-curated festivals. To begin with, there’s Pan Asian Repertory’s Spring Festival of New Works, which has four very different plays to choose from: Lan Tran’s Elevator Sex, Kendra Ware’s Recollections: Butoh-Inspired Movement, John Quincy Lee’s ABC (American Born Chinese), and Terry Park’s 38th Parallels. more ›

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Tic and Tac, Street Performers more ›

Sara Dobbs, Actress/Singing Waitress more ›

Gothamist can always get a sense of what shows are crash & burning and which are just plain sizzling by an occasional perusal of the theater tickets for sale/wanted listings on the oh mighty list o Craig. A browse today tells us the following: more ›