“One could spend hours analyzing every detail, but to speculate too earnestly about each object’s meanings and the characters’ feats would feel almost superfluous. More significantly, the machine rarely behaves according to expectation. Its forward momentum relies on constant intervention from the masked characters, who interfere every time entropy poses a threat. Their role is to enforce the rules of the system and keep the machine working as designed, regardless of whether it makes any sense or collides with the messy realities of human life.”

Read the full piece in Autre Magazine

“Voyage Into Infinity is an intermediate iteration of an artwork that will ultimately take the form of a performance video. In every sense, it boldly transforms the stage into a site where bodily actions negotiate, cooperate, resist, and contend with large-scale found materials…Rather than a formal appropriation, the ambition of Narcissister’s work lies in marking a critical distance through a certain displacement—specifically, the displacement effected by the re-presence of the (female) body.”

Read the full piece in White Hot Magazine of Contemporary Art

“a rousing celebration of girls playing with fire and never ever getting burned. Narcissister is the stage name of the anonymous performance artist behind the work, and she’s done much of her work in the nightlife space…In Voyage Into Infinity, three doll-like figures, in 1950s dresses and curls, emerge from a giant birdhouse into an abandoned attic chockful of objects to be set in motion in a proscenium-high Rube Goldberg machine…The specifics of Voyage Into Infinity’s punk-infused feminist messaging are deliberately up for grabs. But when playtime is over, and the trio leaves the world they’ve conquered behind, seemingly to return to docile domesticity, it’s a gut punch.”

Read the full piece in Slant Magazine

“Dance places a frame around what is ephemeral; it shows the mind how bodies can hold onto air — and be held by it. Mario Banushi, a Greek-Albanian artist, showed that piercing ability in his wordless drama, “Mami,” which looks at motherhood, starting with a young woman giving birth. She is alone, nearly glowing in raw anguish, while Banushi makes it seem as if her wiry body were surrounded by sparks of electricity. In his brand of theater, movement is the unwritten text, opening a space for dreaming.”

Read the full piece by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times

“This reflective, almost ideographic director does not care whether the audience ‘gets’ the meaning. What matters is that he himself is satisfied. He creates spontaneously, producing something open, something that flows like dreams: without a clear narrative, without obligation to interpretation, but with the involuntary duty to unsettle…He places the audience in the position of one who witnesses something intensely private, so much so that you almost feel guilty for being present.”

Read the full review by Yanna Katsageorgi in The National Herald

“The dark of night. A dog barks. In a small house on a dirt road, a woman screams as she gives birth. An elderly woman is tenderly undressed, washed and diapered by a young man, then painstakingly fed with a spoon. A song plays dimly, as if from a radio somewhere nearby.

These are the opening moments of Mario Banushi’s “Mami,” a wordless, dreamlike, poetic collage evoking mothers and children, adolescence and old age, the mutable exchange between the nurturer and the nurtured.”

Read the full piece in The New York Times

“The Under the Radar Festival returns this year with more than 25 examples of groundbreaking stage productions from around the world.  The festival’s co-creative directors Meropi Peponides and Kaneza Schaal preview the program, which begins tomorrow.”

Listen to the full story on WNYC

“A scream is the only sound in “Mami,” an adults-only dance-theater piece from the director Mario Banushi. At NYU Skirball from Jan. 7 to 10, it’s among the many out-there works in this year’s Under the Radar festival (Jan. 7-25).”

Read the full piece in The New York Times

“I’ll never forget the moment in Tanz, a beautiful, challenging work by the choreographer Florentina Holzinger, when a naked woman danced in midair, suspended by hooks in her back. I watched all four Ari Aster movies this year, but nothing unsettled me quite like this fearless performance.”

Read the full piece in The New York Times

“It’s that time of year! Over the past 365 days, the team here at Theatrely has traveled far (Brooklyn) and wide (London) to cover hundreds of productions and as always, Editor-in-Chief Kobi Kassal and Chief Critic Juan A. Ramírez sat down to decide their favorites. From Midtown Manhattan to theatres across the country, there have been many incredible productions during 2025. ”

Read the full piece in Theaterly

“Honorable mentions: Ralph Lemon and Darrell Jones’s “Low”; Moriah Evans’s “Harboring” at the Snug Harbor Dance Festival; Florentina Holzinger’s “Tanz” (R.I.P. to the great Beatrice Cordua); Ayodele Casel’s “The Remix”; Jack Ferver’s “My Town”; Alexei Ratmansky for “Paquita”; Kyle Abraham for “When We Fell”; Jamar Roberts for “Foreseeable Future”; and the debuts of Mira Nadon in “Swan Lake”; Indiana Woodward in “Theme and Variations,” Dominika Afanasenkov in “Errante”; Jake Roxander in “Push Comes to Shove” and Zimmi Coker in “Rodeo.””

Read the full piece by Gia Kourlas, Brian Seibert and Roslyn Sulcas in The New York Times

“A commission from NYU Skirball, My Town announces itself as a daring, darkly effervescent entry in Jack Ferver’s increasingly singular body of dance-theater — a work that, in typical Ferver fashion, shreds the gauzy scrim of American nostalgia to expose the twitching, uncanny musculature beneath. With the immersive, shape-shifting multimedia of Jeremy Jacob serving as both atmospheric veil and psychic amplifier, Ferver offers a queer reimagining of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town that treats the mythos of small-town Americana not as sentimental refuge but as a site of exquisite strangeness.”

Read the full review by Tony Marinelli in Theatre Beyond Broadway

“Jack Ferver knows how to set a scene. They also know how to play a character. In “My Town,” scenic landscapes emerge as characters just as the interior lives of characters reveal the contours of their psychological terrain. Through a synthesis of words and movement (written and performed by Ferver) with sound and visual design (by Jeremy Jacob), the result is a tense and haunting portrait of trauma and repression in small town America. ”

Read the full review by Sarah Cecilia Bukowski in Dance Enthusiast

“This weekend, Jack Ferver presented their gripping one-person show “My Town” at NYU Skirball. Featuring scenic design, music and video by Jeremy Jacob, the piece draws on Ferver’s autobiography, with a brief reference to Thornton Wilder’s play of small-town America, “Our Town.” Stitching together movement, narration and a background projection, the production moves between two towns and a variety of mental geographies.”

Read the full piece by Britt Stigler in All Arts

“Writer, choreographer, and performer Jack Ferver’s genre-defying performances interrogate and indict psychological and socio-political issues, particularly in the realms of gender, sexuality, and power struggles. Weaponizing spectacle and stark naturalism, character and self, humour and horror, their performance practice is rooted in the shattering effects of trauma, and the numerous selves that can arise from that shattering.”

Read the full piece by James Kleinmann in The Queer Review

“My Town which opens at NYU Skirball on Friday, travels through time, between a small town in upstate New York at the turn of the 20th century to a small town in Wisconsin 100 years later. There are ghosts in Ferver’s partly autobiographical tale, which is knitted together by text and movement: Ferver, the show’s writer and star, rarely stops moving.

The show is a feat of constant storytelling and choreography, including a dance that begins the second act, performed along the path of a pentagram.”

Read the full piece by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times

“Norwegian company Susie Wang have concocted a theatrical experience that resists easy categorization — a surrealist horror fable, an exercise in endurance, a meticulous puzzle-box of allusion and discomfort. It is, without question, a very clever piece of theatre: the staging alone allows for an array of ingenious transformations; the sound design hums and crackles with ominous intent; and the script, laced with sly nods to the horror canon, rewards those attuned to its cinematic DNA. It is unquestionably an evening of jaw-dropping technical brilliance and intellectual craft.”

Read the full review by Tony Marinelli in Theater Beyond Broadway

“Is it a hotel? Is it Hell? Why is everyone obsessed and slurping on the complimentary eggnog drink? Burnt Toast…by the Norwegian company Susie Wang, opens inside an all-red hotel lobby that feels like No Exit or The Shining. The receptionist stands behind the counter, typing with hypnotic slowness on an unseen terminal, occasionally pausing to suck a hard candy. Two elevator doors glow on either side of her. Skin-toned beanbags fill the space like discarded organs. The sound design hums at a hyper-amplified register, so that each keystroke and swallow becomes unnervingly intimate, almost ASMR. Something is very wrong.”

Read the full review in Contemporary Performance Network

“The acclaimed Norwegian company Susie Wang finally turns up in New York with a production that should get tongues wagging — we’re talking “David Cronenberg-style body horror, pregnant infants and dismemberment,” as A.J. Goldmann put it in The Times, though he added that it “certainly isn’t a show for everyone, but it left me hungry for more.” (Nov. 5-8, N.Y.U. Skirball)”

Read the full piece by Elisabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times

“Theater in New York has felt spookier than usual this season: Beetlejuice has risen from the afterlife; a bat boy has just arrived to deliver a morality tale; and not one but two phantoms are lurking in the shadows, stalking that poor Christine…And it’s not just for New Yorkers. Through Nov. 3, audiences at home can encounter the menacing title character of “The Phantom of the Opera” via Theater in Quarantine’s livestreamed production…Running about one hour, [Phantom of the Opera] is equal parts chilling, thrilling and incisive, taking jabs at the fictional opera house’s prospective donors and a mandate to keep subscribers happy.”

Read the full piece by Juan A. Ramírez in The New York Times

“A couple of years ago, the maestro of digital live theater Joshua William Gelb staged and livestreamed a creepily effective NOSFERATU: A 3D SYMPHONY OF HORROR from inside his apartment. The show, which you can watch for free on YouTube, put the evocative power of sound design to spooky good use. From Oct. 23 to Nov. 3, Gelb and his Theater in Quarantine company return with another Halloween-appropriate live production, once again in partnership with N.Y.U. Skirball: a retelling of PHANTOM OF THE OPERA created with Normandy Sherwood. Because Theater in Quarantine likes to challenge itself, this production will allow viewers to toggle between the performance and, as Gelb put it, “a phantom’s eye view of how we make digital magic.”

Read the full piece by Elisabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times

“A French novel, several silent horror films, a Broadway musical, a site-specific work of immersive theater: It all has led to….Joshua William Gelb’s closet…Gelb was one of the great digital theater innovators when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down in-person theater in 2020, and he has continued experimenting over the last five years…Commissioned and presented by NYU Skirball, the hour-long work does an impressive job of re-creating the feel of the film, complete with title credits, title cards, and even the bright white specs that are common in old film stock. There are several differences from the century-old movie: Viewers can register their reaction to what’s going on, and can toggle to a screen that shows the “backstage” activity”

Read the full review by Jonathan Mandell in New York Theater

“I think we also saw the emergence of people who were trying to create specifically for live streaming, trying to do live theater and streaming it. And I think we saw the emergence of people like Josh Gelb, who created Theater in Quarantine. He was putting on plays in a closet in his East Village apartment, a really small closet too, not a walk-in closet, a real East Village closet…Incredibly resourceful and he would act live. And he continues to do that. And his projects have become more and more ambitious.”

Listen to the full episode of The Daily

“Beckett believed that Joyce had exhausted human language, and he turned in the opposite direction—toward silence, toward reduction…Perhaps that is the point. Perhaps Featherstone and Rea mean to show that the past has no meaning in the present…Beckett thought Joyce had said everything language could say, so he sought to erase it. Yet his nights at concerts in Paris left him with an always present sense of rhythm and musical phrasing. Even a three-word line carries a cadence. Beckett at the Skirball is a treat.”

Read the full review by Susan Hall in Berkshire Fine Arts

“Samuel Beckett’s 55-minute contemplation of mortality comes to NYU Skirball in a neat and handsome staging by Vicky Featherstone…Rea — who spent time in the rehearsal room with Beckett in the 1970s, when he played Clov in a Royal Court production of “Endgame” in London — brings a wonderful humanity to Krapp. It is extraordinarily easy to imagine this character out in the world: eccentric, yes, but not wildly so….This lean-in contemplation of it is timed just right for our too-short attention spans: 55 minutes, at the end of which you’ll have added a classic to your day. Do.”

Read the full review by Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times

“Krapp’s Last Tape is less a play than an immersion in an existential night informed by fragmented poetry. Everything in Vicky Featherstone’s production is executed with Euclidean precision, including Jamie Vartan’s set, an island in a sea of blackness, and Paul Keogan’s lighting, including a stab of white that leads to an upstage door. Kevin Gleeson’s sound design is utterly clear, and Katie Davenport’s costume design is suitably ragged…Running less than an hour, Krapp’s Last Tape is as evanescent as a dream yet hard to shake off. ”

Read the full review by David Barbour in Light and Sound America

“Few playwrights get their own adjective. But call a work Beckettian and it’s immediately understood as caustically comic and breathtakingly bleak yet full of wonderful insight about the human condition. Although Samuel Beckett’s quintessential plays were written in the mid-20th century, they continue to be revived and reimagined by innovative artists for new generations. In fact, this fall you can catch three of his most indelible works…celebrated Irish actor Stephen Rea in Krapp’s Last Tape at NYU Skirball…This unplanned Beckett trifecta reaffirms the Nobel Prize-winning Irishman as a poetic and penetrating dramatist whose absurdist outlook resonates strongly in our age of intense anxiety.”

Read the full story by Gerard Raymond in TDF Stages

“Last weekend, while running around to see new October shows, I dropped into the NYU Skirball Center for one of the stranger and more delightful theater pieces I’ve seen this year: asses.masses, an extended video-game-slash-participatory-theater event about unionist donkeys. ”

Read the full story in Vulture‘s Stage Whisperer

“A few days later, I went to “All Right. Good Night.,” a play by the German collective Rimini Protokoll, which ran for only three days in September, at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center. In “All Right” ’s script, the writer Helgard Haug braids together two cases of “ambiguous loss”: the still unsolved mystery of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which disappeared over the Indian Ocean in 2014, and the gradual progression of Haug’s own father’s dementia. Family members of those lost on the plane weren’t sure when to grieve; neither was she.”

Read the full piece by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker

“All Right. Good Night. is one of the most humane meditations on processing a loved one’s disappearance I’ve encountered. I’ve long admired Helgard Haug’s work with Rimini Protokoll, whose paradigm-shifting theater has framed real people like you and me, experts of all kinds, as its protagonists and performers. But in All Right. Good Night., Haug interrogates her own experience of losing her father to dementia. Those eight years of her life overlap with the unresolved disappearance of those aboard the Malaysian Airlines flight MH370. Though palpably absent from the stage, Haug’s voice narrates both stories in oscillation, appearing as projected language read by us.”

Read the full story in BOMB Magazine

“When asked about his guiding principle for programming a season at NYU Skirball, artistic director Jay Wegman is delightfully direct: “I like to do the wacked-out stuff.” How wacked-out? Take these three upcoming events being presented by this hub for boundary-pushing performance, owned by New York University and located next door to Washington Square Park.”

Read the full piece by Joey Sims in TDF Stages

“For innovative theatre that makes you go woah, head over to the Skirball Center…did you know that New York has many premier institutions for those who want to see even more innovative, boundary-breaking work from around the world? NYU Skirball is one of those places. Contrary to its name, Skirball is not just for NYU performances or students. They host productions from notable American artists and international theatre companies.”

Read the full piece by Diep Tran in Playbill

“Whether it’s movie stars in Samuel Beckett or bloody weirdness from Norway, theater shows its range this September and beyond…Norwegian performance group Susie Wang makes its American debut at the Skirball, currently bringing the best international work to NYC. Absurdist and noirish, the piece has gotten raves for bloody intensity and weirdness, as well as comparisons to Kubrick and David Lynch. A plush hotel lobby with functional elevators becomes the primal scene of cannibalism and other horrors.”

Read the full piece by David Cote in Observer

“Skirball’s fall dance lineup has two “what if?” works by artists who wear their deep intelligence lightly. Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener’s “Open Machine,” in its premiere, imagines an A.I. programmed by experimental dance (Sept. 19-20); Jack Ferver’s darkly funny “My Town” remakes Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” from a queer perspective (Nov. 21-22).”

Read the full piece by Margaret Fuhrer in The New York Times

“N.Y.U. Skirball plays a vital role in the New York cultural ecosystem by programming radical theatermakers from around the world, albeit for blink-and-you’ll-miss-them runs. Such is the case with this piece by the experimental German company Rimini Protokoll (“Remote New York”) in which Helgard Haug intertwines the disappearance of a Malaysia Airlines flight in 2014 with her father’s slide into dementia. Bonus: a live score by the exquisite Berlin-based musician Barbara Morgenstern and Zafraan Ensemble.”

Read the full piece by Elisabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times

“Stephen Rea came to the attention of many through his performance in the 1992 film “The Crying Game.” But before and after that attention-getting hit, Rea has had a rich history of theater work, including projects with the Abbey Theatre of Dublin and with playwright Sam Shepard. Krapp’s Last Tape is a rare stateside chance to see him in his element.”

Read the full piece by Lou Harry in Crain’s New York Business

“Now the Irish film and stage star Stephen Rea (The Crying Game) gives another Krapp in a two-week run at the Skirball Center…In recent years, the Skirball Center has become New York’s top landing zone for Europe’s most outré avant garde theater and dance…Among the attractions [of Burnt Toast] are blood, dismemberment, cannibalism and a briefcase stuffed with a mother’s remains. Susie Wong is only here for a week, so you have just five chances to see this—if you dare.”

Read the full preview by Adam Feldman in Time Out

“Stephen Rea stars in this bleakly comic Samuel Beckett short about a man listening back on audiotapes he made of his life. Vicky Featherstone, the former head of the Royal Court Theater in London, directs…The Norwegian company Susie Wang makes its U.S. debut with this splatter-horror comic chamber piece that a critic for The New York Times described as “unclassifiable” and “unsettling,” but in a good way.”

Read the full preview by Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times

“Screen stars abound Off Broadway…Stephen Rea performs Beckett’s “Krapp’s Last Tape” (N.Y.U. Skirball; Oct. 8-19). (There are precious few classics this season: also Off Broadway is Ibsen’s “The Wild Duck,” at Theatre for a New Audience, beginning Sept. 2.)”

Read the full piece by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker

“The season at the downtown theatre will also feature a queer reimagining of Our Town…NYU Skirball has revealed its 2025 season, which will include works by Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener, Rimini Protokoll, Samuel Beckett, Theater in Quarantine, Susie Wang, and more.”

Read the full piece by Meg Masseron in Playbill

“NYU Skirball will present Irish actor Stephen Rea in a new production of Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape, directed by Vicky Featherstone…The New York run, presented by Landmark Productions, takes place October 8-19.”

Read the full story by David Gordon in Theatermania

“The Employees, originally produced at Studio Teatrgaleria in Warsaw, is a visionary performance and installation work by Polish-born artist, writer and director Łukasz Twarkowski, who masterfully blends theater, visual art, and cinema. Tonight’s North American premiere, playing through Saturday at NYU Skirball—unfolds across the vast expanse of the stage, in a scale rarely witnessed at this venue.”

Read the full review by Gregory Fletcher in Stage & Cinema

“Danish writer Olga Ravn‘s book The Employees is the launching point for director Łukasz Twarkowski‘s explosive theatrical production of the same name. I say explosive as it goes beyond theater, beyond film, and from beginning to end, it is a moving installation piece that takes over the whole of the Skirball Theatre where the audience has the complete freedom to move between the actors and the action, sitting right next to, peeking over their shoulders, and sticking their nose in whichever corner they choose.”

Read the full piece by David Walters in The Front Row Center

“In Amour, Acide et Noix, Canadian choreographer Daniel Léveillé presents a stark and unflinching meditation on the human form—one that reduces dance to its most essential components. ”

Read the full review in Stage & Cinema

“In this charged and challenging world, Reggie Wilson, a choreographer one can depend on for dance artistry no matter the political climate, can get to the essence of feeling — the good, the bad and everything in between.”

Read the full review by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times

“Why It’s Worth a Look: Founded in 1989, Fist and Heel is a fascinating Brooklyn-based dance company that describes its mission as to use “the spiritual and mundane traditions of Africa and its Diaspora.” This new work from artistic director Reggie Wilson both reclaims and redefines his own earlier work—and sees him taking center stage at his alma mater.”

Read the full piece by Esther Zuckerman in Cultured Magazine

“Masterclass is closing out its world-wide victory-lap, having won the hearts, minds and patriarchy bashing distortions of the current world order…I want to also send a shoutout to NYU Skirball and the programing that they consistently put together. Everything, and yes I mean everything, that they present is challenging, surprising, thought provoking, and well worth experiencing. In this day and age where theater tickets can now be in the four figures, it’s nice to know you will be transported, entertained, and challenged at an affordable price.”

Read the full review in Front Row Center

“NYU Skirball adheres closely to James Baldwin’s dictum: “Artists are here to disturb the peace.” With the U.S. premiere of Masterclass, Skirball’s mission has been resoundingly fulfilled. Presented by Brokentalkers & Adrienne Truscott, this provocative, 60-minute two-hander, written by Feidlim Cannon, Gary Keegan, and Truscott, is performed by two of its authors—Cannon and Truscott”

Read the full review in Stage & Cinema

“International Contemporary Ensemble will perform works by and with four composer-performers from the New York Chapter of the renowned experimental music collective, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), in Composing While Black: ICE collaborates with AACM members Thurman Barker, Adegoke Steve Colson, Iqua Colson and Reggie Nicholson”

Read the full story in Broadwayworld

“When the matchless French actress Isabelle Huppert (Elle) does theater, she likes to do it weird. She has worked twice before with the leading lion of the avant-garde theater establishment, director Robert Wilson (Einstein on the Beach): in Orlando (1993) and Quartet (2006).”

Read the full piece by Adam Feldman in TimeOUT

“Isabelle Huppert takes center stage in the U.S. premiere of this one-woman show, written by novelist and playwright Darryl Pinckney and directed by Robert Wilson, about Mary Queen of Scots. ”

Read the full piece in The Wall Street Journal

“A monologue in three parts, the stark theatrical piece stars Isabelle Huppert as Mary, Queen of Scots on the eve of her execution. Huppert originated the role in 2019 at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Since, she and Wilson have transferred it from Espace Cardin to Stockholm’s Royal Dramatic Theatre, London’s Barbican, and the Seongnam Arts Center in South Korea.”

Read the full piece by David Graver in SURFACE

“In this Robert Wilson production, Isabelle Huppert is everywhere onstage, all at once, reciting a nonstop script that may well touch on everything.”

Read the full review by Elisabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times

“In a redoubtable performance by French actress Isabelle Huppert, the tragic queen posthumously defends her reputation, her mouth agitated as she recalls episodes from her tumultuous life. Thanks to director Robert Wilson, the mastermind of this exquisite production, which made its US debut at the NYU Skirball Center, on February 27, Huppert’s scarlet mouth becomes a character in its own right, desperate to testify before its breath runs out.”

Read the full piece by Robert Johnson in Dance Enthusiast

“In Robert Wilson’s production of Mary Said What She Said at NYU Skirball, Isabelle Huppert commands the stage with a 90-minute monologue in French, spoken so rapidly at times that I could barely read the projected English titles. The text (by Darryl Pinckney) recounts Mary Queen of Scots’ life’s musings on betrothal, marriage, arrest, imprisonment and exile, and her relationships to the other Marys and men in general. Huppert’s stamina and focus are superhuman and essential to draw us in and hold tight, no simple task in this minimalistic production.
”

Read the full piece by Susan Yung in Ephemeralist

“An almost indescribably rich experience, not least of which because I’m hard pressed to describe what actually happens in it, a weekend run of Mary Said What She Said in New York instantly became one of the had-to-be-there theatrical events of the year….it is a 90-minute vehicle for Isabelle Huppert to once again prove what a force of nature she is.”

Read the full piece by Juan A. Ramirez in Theatrely

“For Austrian choreographer and dancer Florentina Holzinger, ballet is the ultimate magic trick…Organized around the conceit of a dance lesson, TANZ is Suspiria by way of John Waters, a dynamic work that blends classical ballet technique, witchcraft, and sideshow tricks that require Holzinger and her fellow performers to push their bodies to the absolute limits of what’s possible.”

Read the full Interview with Madeleine Seidel in Interview Magazine

“TANZ opens on a ballet class like none I’ve ever attended. Onstage are two portable barres and four dancers in rehearsal clothes stretching and warming up. Eighty-three-year-old ballerina Beatrice Cordua teaches from a wheelchair, naked…Soon the stage is filled with curvy, tattooed female flesh. A series of grand tendus reveals glimpses of vulva that challenge my sense of modesty. A familiar floor stretch leaves nothing to the imagination.”

Read the full story by Karen Hildebrand in Fjord Review

“At the show’s North American premiere, the performance artist and choreographer invites audiences to a bacchanalian circus en pointe–with trust at its core”

Read the full review by Dylan Sherman in Document Journal

“By contrast, TANZ’s most visceral moment is when the body modification artist Lucifire is hoisted naked into the air by hooks that have been painstakingly pierced through the skin of her back, only to perform a farcical witch dance with a utility broom between her legs, set to the ubiquitous Eurodance hit “Axel F” by Crazy Frog. ”

Read the full story by Kerosene Jones in Document

“The Austrian choreographer Florentina Holzinger brought her bold, feminist, witchy TANZ to N.Y.U. Skirball — and along with it, a star: the veteran ballet dancer Beatrice Cordua. At 83, Cordua and the rest of the all-female cast took an audacious and humorous look at ballet’s ephemeral sylph.”

Read the full story in The New York Times

“Several festivals, including Under the Radar, are bringing a tantalizing breadth of new work to stages across New York.”

Read the full story by Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times

“There’s another kind of resilience, too: transgressive theatre-makers who just do not give up the game. I’m most excited for a new take, by David Herskovits, the longtime artistic director of Target Margin Theatre, on the great musical “Show/Boat: A River” (N.Y.U. Skirball)”

Read the full story by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker

“A revival called “Show/Boat: A River” joins a history of reimagining the musical that goes back nearly a century, to its first performances.”

Read the full story by Joshua Barone in The New York Times

“Oscar Hammerstein II and Jerome Kern’s Show Boat made its Broadway debut in 1927, making it one of the earliest American musicals still performed today. It introduced standards like “Ol’ Man River” and “Can’t Help Lovin’ Dat Man,” and its depiction of Black life in America has generated debate for almost a century. Now, Show Boat is receiving its first New York production since it entered the public domain.”

Read the full story by Douglas Corzine in Interview Magazine

“When Show Boat opened on Broadway in 1927, it was an instant hit. Now, as co-music director and orchestrator of Show/Boat: A River Dan Schlosberg said, People don’t want to touch it.”

Read the full story by Rebecca Salzhauer in Forward

“Show Boat, the Oscar Hammerstein III and Jerome Kern musical, is nearing its 100th anniversary, but directors and performers often struggle with how to tell its story and acknowledge that the piece is highly problematic with a history of racist stereotypes and portrayals. Director David Herskovits, the artistic director of Target Margin Theater, has decided to reimagine the piece and face the controversy head on.”

Read the full interview with John Soltes in Hollywood Soapbox

“December brings with it a plethora of Nutcracker productions, but that’s not the only show on offer. Whether you’re looking for a memorable trip to the Land of the Sweets or would prefer something Sugarplum-free, here are 10 shows on our radar.”

Read the full story by Courtney Escoyne in Dance Magazine

“In No President Nature Theater of Oklahoma creates its version of a story ballet, one burpee at a time.”

Read the full story by Gia Kourlas in The New York Times

“Sex Variants of 1941 was full of emboldening and empowering moments that were reassuring to the queer community in our post election haze. It was the perfect time to remind the target audience that queer people have always been part of the fabric of society and have survived intense scrutiny at junctures where mere existence has been illegal. ”

“The Civilians theater group has adapted a study of homosexuality into a work that explores the lives of lesbians and gay men in the early 20th century.”

“A new play by NYC-based theater company The Civilians takes scientific studies from the 1930s that looked at queer life with a pathological gaze and creates a ‘kaleidoscopic fantasia’ that celebrates it. EDGE spoke with artistic director Steve Cosson.”

“Movement (2022)  is a groundbreaking synthesis of a multiplicity of cultures and genres. The piece features over one hundred dance citations woven together into a radical quilt, challenging their boundaries until their pluralistic vision nearly bursts.”

Read the full story in The Dance Enthusiast

“Netta Yerushalmy’s “Movement” at N.Y.U. Skirball comes from a patchwork of sources: TikTok, television, marching band practice and more.”

Read the full story by Siobhan Burke in The New York Times

As the acclaimed Counting and Cracking makes its North American debut, the playwright describes the work as “my soul on a plate.”

Read the full story by Laura Collins-Hughes in The New York Times.

“No theatrical wizardry is needed for this compelling drama.”

Read the full review by Elizabeth Vincentelli in The New York Times.

“The most joyful moment in Counting and Cracking involves a homemade Slip ’N Slide.”

Read the full review by Sara Holdren in Vulture.

“Loaded with powerhouse performers, Counting and Cracking is a thriller of moving parts.”

Read the full review by Caroline Cao in New York Theater Guide

“Every so often, a playwright writes an epic multigenerational play about a family that is also a history of his country.”

Read the full review by Victor Gluck in Theaterscene.net

“An ambitious epic that never loses sight of the power of its familial ties.”

Read the full review by Lorin Wertheimer in Exeunt.

Women are center stage this fall in shows that highlight reproductive rights, consent and motherhood or showcase a powerful female lead. It can’t possibly have anything to do with a certain November election, could it?

Read the full story by David Cote, The Observer.

“This is a season brimming with shows by well-regarded avant-garde companies, among others  a revival of Gatz by Elevator Repair Service,  and new works by Nature Theater of Oklahoma (“No President” at NYU Skirball) and Richard Foreman (“Suppose Beautiful Madeleine Harvey,” also at La MaMa)”

Read the full story by Jonathan Mandell in New York Theater.

Catching the fleeting international theatre offerings in New York can be like chasing after fireflies—the minute someone points out some wonderful work, the brief engagement is already dark and gone. These are the shows most worth the hunt, though; some of the world’s most adventurous, exhilarating, and galvanizing work will be in town for only a couple of days.

Read the full story by Helen Shaw, The New Yorker.

“The season opens with the world premiere of Show/Boat: A River, a daring reconsideration of the seminal musical Show Boat, directed by David Herskovits.”

Read the full story by Chloe Rabinowitz in Broadwayworld

Peter Marks talked to Jay Wegman, the Executive Director of New York University’s Skirball Performing Arts Center.

Tune to hear what Jay has to say about the state of presenting edgy work in New York.

“What’s happening this season in art, music, theatre, dance, movies, and television…Off Broadway, the experimental director David Herskovits reimagines and reexamines the racial currents in Hammerstein and Kern’s masterpiece “Show/Boat: A River” (Skirball; Jan. 9), now that the musical has sailed into the public domain…Isabelle Huppert plays Mary Stuart in Darryl Pinckney’s “Mary Said What She Said” (Skirball; Feb. 27), directed by the great visual-theatre maestro Robert Wilson”

Read the full story by Helen Shaw in The New Yorker

“Jay Wegman runs from rehearsals to lunches to shows for his job at NYU Skirball”

Read Jay’s full Culture Diary in The New York Times

In the back room of a hotel cafe in Lower Manhattan, the Irish director Garry Hynes was talking about Sean O’Casey, the laborer turned playwright whose frequently funny, sometimes blood-chilling, canonical 1920s tragicomedies are set amid the tenements of Dublin….

Read the full story by Laura Collins-Hughes, The New York Times.

“At the end of every play in the Dublin Trilogy, the stage has pushed beyond the real into a dense and resonant space of metaphor. O’Casey is too smart, and too funny, to succumb to nihilism, but he’s also too smart, and too full of grief, not to acknowledge the darkness on all sides…” – Sara Holdren, Vulture

“An eerier kind of togetherness emerged in John Jasperse’s ‘Visitation,’ for Doug LeCours, Tim Bendernagel and Cynthia Koppe. Invoking ghosts and ghostliness, this spacious yet intricate work managed to fill NYU Skirball’s expansive stage, building to a climax in which the three dancers, uncannily, appeared enmeshed as one. […] It was hard to look away from Koppe, who gave a quietly magnificent performance: so rigorously present in her body, she seemed to have broken through to a different realm.”

Based mainly in Europe, this American choreographer returned to New York with “Maggie the Cat,” a heady mix of runway, voguing and an energizing point of departure: “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” With his “Maggie” — a play, a character, a force? — Harrell created a bold, joyful show that elevated the notion of runway movement as dance and any old household objects, like pillows and towels, as couture. It was a sonic and visual delight.

“Eiko Otake and Margaret Leng Tan Reflect on Art, Friendship, and Life”

New York Magazine rates “The Duet Project” “Highbrow, Brilliant” in their Approval Matrix.

“New York fans of Daniel Fish’s Tony-nominated production of “Oklahoma!” will soon have the opportunity to experience another remix of an American classic by the director.”

“It’s about how bad news — the giving and the receiving of it — constitutes us as a community who now know just how wrong things can go.”

“Of course, the messenger is also a storyteller—one charged with passing on not only the facts, but their affective impact. In doing this they must relive the horror, embody it, share it, and evoke the audiences’ emotional responses.”

“Taylor Mac isn’t the only one doing 24-hour shows. A group of marathon performances will arrive at N.Y.U.’s Skirball Center next season that will test the endurance of both the performers and the audience.”

New York Times recommends a panel featuring Donna Brazile, Yolanda Caraway, Leah Daughtry, and Minyon Moore who will discuss their book “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Politics”

“For about a year beginning in 2013, Brian Rogers, a film director and video and sound artist, found himself living — half a week, every week — in a former Catholic church in upstate New York.”

A panel reflects on the legacy of the Stonewall rebellion and the L.G.B.T. rights movement at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in Manhattan.

“…get to know the British theater company that cast a bottle of vinegar bottle as … Hamlet.”

“In “And on the Thousandth Night …” a handful of actors will greet the dawn with a bedtime story that never quite ends. And on subsequent nights those same performers will act out the complete works of Shakespeare in 36 solo performances with an assist from common household objects.”

“…inanimate objects, epic performances and why most Forced Entertainment shows — the Skirball ones, too — are built to fail.”

“There is something of the nursery in the show’s insistence on unfettered imagination, and something of the bedtime story in the way the best of these tales unfold. They’re not soporific but soothingly mesmeric, even the tragic ones. They’re at close range, too, with the audience seated onstage.”

“This fall’s dance calendar will feature inventive takes on old favorites and intriguing new works.”

“For one thing, he has removed the word “dance” from his company’s name. ‘We’re a contemporary performance ensemble,’”

“Bill T. Jones is one of the few choreographers who can weave together social consciousness with choreographic inventiveness.”

“For the past four years, Mr. Jones has found inspiration in transforming oral histories into dance-theater productions.”

“In his new piece, 10000 Gestures, each action is different—no repeats. This week, a horde of more than 20 dancers invades New York City’s NYU Skirball Center, each of them cramming a thousand gestures into one hour.”

“Each of its titular motions for a cast of twenty-five may be as small as a blink or as big as a leap, but, once executed, it does not recur. In place of conventional choreographic patterns, there’s a dense, bewildering rush, and Mozart’s “Requiem,” to make you think of death.”

“Some choreographers live for repetition, while others, like the French choreographer Boris Charmatz, at least in his 2017 work “10000 Gestures,” deliberately fights against it.”

“Tere related his choreographic processes to the nature of the mind itself, which remains in and out of a constant episodic flow of consciousness.”

“As tangential in sequence and unfixed in meaning as free-associative poetry, Tere O’Connor’s masterful works resist capsule description.”

“When a choreographer is in the middle of creating a new dance, there’s an inevitable freak-out moment. “

“He doesn’t, however, show us different things happening irrespective of one another. Everything seems connected, part of the same intricate organism.”

“…challenging his eight dancers to find calm despite negotiating numerous physical tasks involving polyrhythms, velocity and duration.”

“Eight dancers perform the New York premiere of O’Connor’s 2017 work, for which he composed his own musical score. The piece explores tensions between formality and emotion.”

“In keeping with this idea, drawn from Marx’s writings, the festival will be entirely pay-what-you-wish. Guests will be presented with an itemized budget before each event, detailing how much it cost to put the event together.”

“Her new piece “Brujx” is part of Marx Festival: On Your Marx, and its socialist theme is the oppression of the proletariat: whether the idea of dance as labor can be transcended through a kind of primal magic.”

“‘I wanted my setting of Choral Marx to be a complicatedly multiple work that asks how Marx might reverberate now, at this political moment when we’re asking some very basic questions about world capitalism and how it is propelled by racism and nationalism.’”

“The power of Marx and his writings is the revolutionary way of seeing, giving individuals an alternate lens through which to view and dissect the seemingly inevitable progression of capitalism.  His ideology became a tool—a weapon—and as with all such items, its usage depends on the hand that wields it.”

“This Brooklyn-based choreographer, originally from Uruguay, presents the premiere of “Brujx,” in which she continues her investigation of dance as a healing art by ritualizing the labor of her dancers.”

“The crazed alacrity of the young audience was morbidly fascinating. I suspected that many were students in NYU’s various performance programs, and that many had found online videos of other presentations of P Project…”

““On Your Marx”– a two week long jubilee hosted by NYU to celebrate 200 years of Marx commenced. VICE News took a look at Marxist performance art, academic panels, and whatever Slavoj Zizek was thinking four minutes ago.”

“Theatergoers of New York, unite! You have nothing to lose but your time. NYU Skirball presents a two-week festival to commemorate the bicentennial of beard-stroking communist forefather Karl Marx.”

“While the allegations against Mr. Fabre are specific, they have also raised larger questions: whether dancers, trained from an early age to obey teachers, directors and choreographers, in an environment where physical proximity is a given, find it difficult to refuse inappropriate or excessive demands.”

“How do you encompass the stories and myriad characters of Greek tragedies in a single evening of theater? You don’t. You need a full day, or so proposes the avant-garde Belgian director and choreographer Jan Fabre.”

“Belgian activists, including some who once worked with the acclaimed multidisciplinary artist Jan Fabre, have demanded New York University do more to address allegations of sexual harassment against Mr. Fabre as his company prepares to perform at N.Y.U. on Saturday.”

“The choreographer John Heginbotham and the puppeteer Amy Trompetter create a world of large and tiny puppets alongside dancers to explore issues of morality. Fantastic characters, including giant babies, blue angels and heroic rats, come to life in a series of vignettes.”

“Set in motion by a suite of piano pieces by Rossini and Respighi, Heginbotham’s dancers and Trompetter’s homemade-looking puppets enact a kind of dance fable about the clash between good and evil, darkness and light.”

“The joyful finale of John Heginbotham’s “Fantasque,” set to music by Respighi, reminds the dancer Lindsey Jones of the “flowy freedom” of Isadora Duncan.”

“The word “fantasque,” originally French, is both noun (meaning fancy, fantasy) and adjective (meaning fanciful, fantastic).”

“Many have attempted the genre of burlesque revue, but Briefs, I’m happy to report, is among the best — smart, irreverent, and funny, with sex appeal to spare. The company’s ability to couple awe-inspiring physical feats with comedy and choreographic panache is where it finds its success.”

“The bit was full of bone-juggling fun and the performers diving through hula hoops, escalating until it ended with one of the humans getting a mouthful of faux dog poop. Disgusting? Sure. But it was a clear sign that their talk of pushing boundaries wasn’t just for show.”

“Opening with a full ensemble number of pulsating burlesque fans and breakaway costumes, Fa’anana declared the night was going to be “a bit of butch with a f*ckload of camp.” What was promised was delivered.”

“An aesthete who elevated recitation over print, Wilde would have been quite flummoxed by Gatz, the jaw-dropping literary installation by Elevator Repair Service. This eight-hour-plus immersion—in which 13 actors read aloud every blessed word of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby—is thoroughly aural, even musical.”

“Here was a show that improbably transformed the intimate relationship between a reader and a book into a joyously collective act of literary seduction, performed by a chameleon cast of 13, and it became the season’s most coveted ticket.”

“‘There is a recitation of The Great Gatsby embedded in what we do, but that is not the totality of what we do,’ said Collins. ‘In Scott as Nick, this is the story of someone becoming completely lost in a great novel. And it is a slowly emerging hallucination of the novel against a very unlikely backdrop.’”

“Mr. Rau’s taboo-challenging productions over the last decade led one publication to call him “the world’s most controversial director.” Born in Bern, Switzerland, he broke out in 2009 with “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” about the trial and execution of Romania’s Communist leader and his wife; he was sued afterward by Ceausescu’s son for using the family name.”

“For Milo Rau, making his American stage directing debut, the perversity is the point. Commissioned to create a work of children’s theater, he set out to redefine what that genre could mean — and also, it seems, to live up to his reputation as ‘the world’s most controversial director.’”

“He broke out in 2009 with “The Last Days of the Ceausescus,” about the trial and execution of Romania’s Communist leader and his wife, while “La Reprise” — in which he re-enacts the murder of a gay man in Belgium — was the talk of this year’s Avignon Festival.”

“Greek tragedies may go back 2,500 years, but theater directors continue to find them extraordinarily resonant, sometimes staging them in contemporary settings or finding other ways to emphasize how pride and passion, ancient or modern, can bleed out and leave a society in ruins.”

“Pinocchio always wanted to be a real boy, and the choreographer Kyle Abraham is wondering what that even means today. In “Live! The Realest M.C.,” Abraham uses the children’s tale as a starting point to dissect gender roles and black masculinity in the context of hip-hop culture.”

“But if you’re a black American, nothing has changed. People were spitting on us and making us feel inferior for a very long time, so I don’t feel any different with the current president in office– if that’s where people try to perceive in this work.”

“’For me, it was definitely in some ways an abstracted look back at my high school experience, but more than that because identity is a big part of the work and in some ways a buzz word that people are using today for whatever reason…’”

“In it, Abraham, wearing a long skirt, played with conventions of toughness and urban attitude. Now, more than a decade later, his ideas about identity and self-presentation have deepened, unfolding in a wider spectrum of colors.”

“Petronio presents the fifth edition of “Bloodlines,” an autobiographical project that pays homage to the creators of postmodern dance and traces the choreographer’s own influences.”

“…the Judson founders Steve Paxton and Trisha Brown —“it was not about emotion. It was about motion and the rules of motion. So that separated him in a certain way, and I was very curious.””

“In the foreground, dancers, sleekly costumed by H. Petal, etch geometric patterns onto the stage in front of numerous scenes: a barren forest, an exploding bomb, a soldier walking down a street, a torn flag.”

“Later in the month, the Joyce Theater will host three different companies presenting different Cunningham works, while the Skirball Center presents In Conversation with Merce, featuring different dancers’ responses to the choreographer’s legacy.”

“Part of “In Conversation With Merce” at @nyuskirball on Friday and Saturday — Mina is one of 3 dance artists exploring their relationship to the choreographer — “Hi, Merce!” combines text with Mina’s effervescent take on Butoh, a dance form that emerged in post-World War II Japan.”

“Netta Yerushalmy explores Cunningham’s dance vocabulary. Mina Nishimura, who hails from Japan, seeks a nexus between Cunningham’s abstraction and the expressionist dance style Butoh. The wild card is Moriah Evans…”

“Just because his 100th birthday has passed — observed with the breathtaking multicity event “Night of 100 Solos” — doesn’t mean we are done celebrating Merce Cunningham or contemplating his vast legacy.”

“This presentation, curated by Rashaun Mitchell, a former company member and a trustee with the Merce Cunningham Trust, explores the theoretical, practical and experiential approaches to Cunningham’s work. Three respected choreographers take part: Moriah Evans, Mina Nishimura and Netta Yerushalmy.”

“It’s about how do you continue rather than simply stopping . . . I think one thing that in the theater you have to learn: That when you go off, you are exiting. Don’t finish what you’re doing before you’re really off.”

“At Skirball, Mr. Wegman said, he plans to build out the theater’s international programming by taking advantage of connections N.Y.U. faculty members may have. He also wanted to see what he could do to “embrace Broadway.” “It’s this great-sized theater,” he said. “Physically, and even programmatically, it’s where uptown meets downtown.””

“This is the first season organized by the Skirball’s new director, Jay Wegman, The official start comes on Sept. 15 with a free immersive dance party masterminded by the collective AUNTS.”

“Skirball’s new season, which the center announced Friday, is accordingly ambitious, as if the Brooklyn Academy of Music had opened an outpost in Manhattan: adventurous productions of classics like “The Pirates of Penzance” and concerts with music by the downtown composers David Lang and John Zorn.”

“’We held focus groups and discovered students weren’t coming because they thought the programming was for their parents or grandparents,’ he said.”