On Sunday, those who don't care about sports or advertising are going to feel like Will Smith in I am Legend with all the zombies huddled en masse in front of 54-inch plasma screens, devouring chicken wings. For those who think football sucks, America's annual Bread & Circus extravaganza presents a perfect opportunity to take advantage of a relatively empty city. To that end, click on the photos for five fun alternatives to the stupid Super Bowl. more ›

East Village Farms on Avenue A, between 6th and 7th streets, is closing its doors in early February, and sadly, according to EV Grieve, the building it's housed in will be demolished. Local photographer Kevin Shea Adams recently got curious about what condition the old theater above the bodega was in, and here's what he found when he was granted permission to explore it after midnight one night. more ›

"Teenagers are unmitigated dickbags," declares Daniel Kitson halfway through his funny and tender solo show It's Always Right Now, Until It's Later, currently running at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO. This uncontroversial fact is established by way of explaining that Caroline Carpenter, one of two fictional Brits at the center of Kitson's exhaustively detailed monologue, is an exception to the rule. Yet that's probably the most exceptional thing about Caroline: As a teenager, she was kinder and more sensible than most adolescents, but she's no hero, and her life story, as told by Kitson, is not distinguished by the extraordinary circumstances we've come to expect from dramatic characters. Kitson, a writer/performer, has instead taken the stage to reveal the extraordinary poetry in the "ordinary" moments. more ›

It's time once again for the Under the Radar Festival, arguably the most electrifying theatrical event of the year. Curated by former P.S. 122 director Mark Russell, the international festival features 12 days and nights of genre-busting productions from across the globe. It starts January 4th at The Public Theater and other downtown venues, continuing through the 15th, with 16 shows from nine countries. Last week we spoke to Russell about what's on his Radar this year, and asked him what some of the common themes he's seen emerging in experimental theater during the past year. more ›

Though Cillian Murphy and his famous blue eyes easily dominate the massive St. Anne's Warehouse stage in his New York stage debut, the real star of Enda Walsh's one-man show Misterman is the remarkable sound design by Gregory Clarke. From Doris Day at the top to the dead silence before the curtain call, Clarke's clever design (along with Donnacha Dennehy's compositions) is almost distractingly good. Which makes sense since as a series of reel-to-reel recordings are a crucial plot point in this tight play that initially appears to cover a day in the life of a troubled, deeply religious Irishman in Innisfree. more ›

Anton Chekhov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, premiered in Moscow just six months before his death, in 1904. It was immediately well-received, but the author was frustrated with the production. Chekhov considered it a comedy, but Moscow Art Theater director Constantin Stanislavski staged it as tragedy, with what the playwright felt was an insufferable amount of "weepiness." Over a hundred years and a hundred thousand boring Chekhov productions later, one imagines the author would have been pleased with Andrei Belgrader's fresh revival of the play at the intimate Classic Stage Company, where an almost sublime balance of absurd humor and poignant wistfulness has been achieved, thanks to a splendid ensemble featuring John Turturro, Dianne Wiest, Josh Hamilton, Alvin Epstein, and Daniel Davis. more ›

Stephen Adly Guirgis's play The Motherf@*ker With The Hat was hands-down the funniest play on Broadway this year, and actors Bobby Cannavale and Elizabeth Rodriguez were unforgettable as the story's two star-crossed Latino lovers. They were both nominated for Tony Awards for their performances, and Big Ben Brantley at the Times wrote that "the broken, jagged heart of this production belongs to Ms. Rodriguez and Mr. Cannavale, who turn their characters’ relationship into a bruising, tragicomic apache dance of love, betrayal and indecision." They're tough enough acts to follow for regional theater actors, but in Hartford the director has made matters worse by inexplicably casting two white actors in the parts. more ›

The Elevator Repair Service's enthralling stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby is returning to the Public Theater in March for a limited seven week run of 28 performances. The production's first award-winning run in 2010 sold out well before opening night, so now there's a chance for the unlucky ones who were shut out the first time to experience this unforgettable show. And the Public will no doubt do brisk repeat business as well: GATZ is eight hours long, and we can't wait to see it again (for the third time). more ›

Last night, while protesters were marching over the Brooklyn Bridge, John Malkovich was marching over dead prostitutes at BAM at its premiere of The Infernal Comedy: Confessions Of A Serial Killer. If the idea of Malkovich Malkovich playing real-life Austrian Hannibal Lecter Jack Unterweger as he gives a book tour in hell accompanied by a trio of opera sopranos sounds up your alley—well, the show runs through tomorrow. And you won't be disappointed. The show is a beautifully sung jukebox opera—but in English ("The international language of love," Malkovich as Unterweger explains) and with ladies being strangled to death with their bras. more ›

Puppetry is often associated with the cuddly, but let's get one thing straight: the puppets in 69ºS are not cute. In Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff's new production, now playing as part of BAM's Next Wave festival, ghostly marionettes are used to silently reenact the harrowing Antarctic voyage of Ernest Shackleton in 1914. We took a look at Sanko's fantastically creepy studio over the summer, but the finished result is finally here. And it's one stunner of a show. more ›

Few worlds are as ripe for the mockery as the New York food world. From the ridiculously image-obsessed chefs to the extreme overabundance of local/sustainable restaurants to the gossipy websites that track their every trivial move, there's plenty to trash. But it takes someone who truly knows the scene to be able to properly rip it apart, which is where the Upright Citizen's Brigade's Pig: A Restaurant steps in. more ›

Typically seated at a desk with just a microphone, the gifted monologist Mike Daisey speaks to his audiences extemporaneously, leading them on surprisingly engrossing journeys across a wide range of topics—all filtered through the lens of his own personal experiences. His latest monologue is The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which opens at The Public Theater on Tuesday. The show is described as a "harrowing tale of pride, beauty, lust, and industrial design" in which Daisey "illuminates how the CEO of Apple and his obsessions shape our lives, while sharing stories of his own travels to China to investigate the factories where millions toil to make iPhones and iPods." Days after Jobs's death, we spoke with Daisey about his latest project more ›

Catch enough downtown theater and performance art, and sooner or later you'll get desensitized to ribald, transgressive on-stage behavior. A fully naked burlesque performer urinating in a plastic cup and then balancing it on her head before (seemingly?) drinking it won't make you bat an eye; a courtly man in an expensive suit unscrewing a light bulb and eating it is just another Tuesday night in the Village. But in his newly updated extravaganza Arias with a Twist, drag queen extraordinaire Joey Arias makes even the most jaded experimental theatergoer's jaw drop. I've seen a lot of crazy stuff, but I never expected to witness a six-foot-tall drag queen get sodomized by a couple of giant anatomically-correct demon puppets. more ›

There are so many potentially terrific shows on the horizon that narrowing them down to ten seems absurd. But our insatiable media beast lusts for lists, so list we must! Here are ten shows we have our eye on in the coming theatrical "season" (which extends through spring, but we're homing in on the next few months here). Many of these will sell out fast, so don't wait forever—we don't want a repeat of Book of Mormon, now do we? more ›

As you settle into your seat before the start of The Select (The Sun Also Rises), you may find yourself wondering if Elevator Repair Service has developed Attention Deficit Disorder. After all, the performance you're about to see is only three and a half hours long—less than half the length of their last production, a word-for-word adaptation of The Great Gatsby. But have faith, lovers of long-form theatrical epics: what The Select lacks in length it makes up for in depth, and unless you're an authority on Ernest Hemingway's classic novel, you probably won't notice what's been excised from this otherwise faithful interpretation. more ›

The Seebühne is a floating stage on Lake Constance in Austria, and the epic centerpiece of the annual Bregenz Festival there. Performances are running through August 21st, but a lot of good that does us... unless it comes to the East River next. Seriously, there is nothing cool in the East River, and since we never drained it, can't we just put something cool in it? C'mon New York, get creative with those Kickstarters. [See more photos here, via Laughing Squid] more ›