Lynne Taylor-Corbett, ‘Footloose’ Choreographer, Dies at 78

Lynne Taylor-Corbett, ‘Footloose’ Choreographer, Dies at 78

Lynne Taylor-Corbett, a Tony Award-nominated choreographer and director whose colorfully varied career included commissions for New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater as well as Broadway musicals including “Swing!” and films including “Footloose,” died on Jan. 12 in Rockville Centre, N.Y., on Long Island. She was 78. The cause …

Read more

What to Do in New York City in January

What to Do in New York City in January

Sarah Silverman Jan. 17-18 at 7:30 p.m. at the Beacon Theater, 2124 Broadway, Manhattan; msg.com/beacon-theatre. Since the early 1990s, Sarah Silverman has fearlessly pushed boundaries, finding laughs no matter the subject. Her incisive wit and dead-on deadpan helped her break through with the concert film “Jesus Is Magic” in 2005, …

Read more

For These Teenagers in Ukraine, Hope Arrived at the Stage Door

For These Teenagers in Ukraine, Hope Arrived at the Stage Door

The teacher needed teenagers for her summer acting class in Kyiv, which would end with the performance of an original play. “This is a course for happy children, free in their thoughts and dreams,” the instructor, Olesia Korzhenevska, wrote on Facebook last spring. It was hard to find happy teenagers …

Read more

The Mothers on Broadway Are Finally More Than Monsters

The Mothers on Broadway Are Finally More Than Monsters

The dramatic canon has always adored a nice, juicy perversion of motherhood — think the filicidal Medea; the incestuous Jocasta; even the ruthless Lady Macbeth, with her enduringly jarring mention of having “given suck.” It makes ample space, too, for mothers who must be escaped by their sons, like the …

Read more

Otto Schenk, Opera Director and Bulwark of Tradition, Dies at 94

Otto Schenk, Opera Director and Bulwark of Tradition, Dies at 94

Otto Schenk, the prolific Austrian director whose lavishly traditional productions for the Metropolitan Opera and the Vienna State Opera thrilled generations of music lovers, died on Thursday at his home on Lake Irrsee in Austria. He was 94. His death was announced by his son, the conductor Konstantin Schenk. In …

Read more

Fun Things to Do in NYC in January 2025

Fun Things to Do in NYC in January 2025

‘Grandiloquent’ Through Feb. 8 at Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, Manhattan; lortel.org. Wordplay can be fun, funny, even punny. But Gary Gulman takes it to another level with an acuity that few other stand-ups can match. Anyone who saw his 2016 performance on “Conan” in which he imagined a …

Read more

Mel Shapiro, Director Whose Specialty Was John Guare, Dies at 89

Mel Shapiro, Director Whose Specialty Was John Guare, Dies at 89

Mel Shapiro, an award-winning theater director whose collaborations with the playwright John Guare included their critically acclaimed musical version of Shakespeare’s comedy “The Two Gentlemen of Verona” and the Off Broadway premiere of “The House of Blue Leaves,” died on Dec. 23 at his home in Los Angeles. He was …

Read more

Richard Foreman, Iconoclastic Playwright and Impresario, Dies at 87

Richard Foreman, Iconoclastic Playwright and Impresario, Dies at 87

Richard Foreman, the relentlessly teasing, deliberately mysterious avant-garde playwright and impresario who founded the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, won a bookshelf full of Obie Awards and received a MacArthur fellowship in his late 50s, died on Saturday in Manhattan. He was 87. David Herskovits, the artistic director of Target Margin Theater in …

Read more