Hilton Als: Rachel Dratch’s “Celebrity Autobiography,” at the Triad. by Hilton Als

Rachel Dratch, one of the finest comedic talents going, has the eyes of a woman who can’t believe what just happened really happened, and it might happen again, so she prepares for it …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on January 30, 2012☆⚑

Hilton Als: Lady Bunny in “That Ain’t No Lady!,” at Escuelita. by Hilton Als

In 1985, a performer named Lady Bunny founded Wigstock, in New York’s Tompkins Square Park, and the dream was this: drag artists like Bunny and RuPaul (then relatively unknown) would s…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on January 16, 2012☆⚑

Hilton Als: Joe Cino honored at the N.Y.P.L. for the Performing Arts. by Hilton Als

The theatrical pioneer Joe Cino wasn’t interested in the mundane. The operatic highs and lows of his life weren’t separate from his great creation: a café that’s large…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on January 9, 2012☆⚑

Hilton Als: Zoe Caldwell in David Adjmi’s “Elective Affinities.” by Hilton Als

After Mrs. Alice Hauptmann (Zoe Caldwell) held my right hand in her small, scarlet-nailed fingers and looked at me spiritlessly while smiling a perfunctory little smile for what felt like a …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on December 12, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Diane Keaton’s “Then Again.” by Hilton Als

Part of what makes Diane Keaton’s memoir, “Then Again,” truly amazing is that she does away with the star’s “me” and replaces it with a daughter’s &…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on November 28, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Nellie McKay in “I Want to Live!” at the Hiro Ballroom. by Hilton Als

Nellie McKay has the sort of considerable talent—basically she’s an actress who sings, which is to say a monologuist with her own distinct sound—that makes us all feel we h…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on November 21, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Thomas Bradshaw’s “Burning.” by Hilton Als

At first I didn’t get it. But soon after I started seeing Thomas Bradshaw’s plays, in 2008, Rochelle Owens’s voice began to insinuate its way into my thoughts as well. It …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on November 14, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Richard Move’s “Martha@ . . . the 1963 Interview” review. by Hilton Als

Long ago, before Manhattan’s meatpacking district was a cavernous, stress-inducing playground, a number of clubs there were home to a different kind of noise. At Jackie 60, run by the …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on November 7, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als:  David Henry Hwang’s “Chinglish” review. by Hilton Als

First-generation American writers often have two stories to tell. There’s the story of their inspiration and the quest for a discipline to give form to their imaginings. Then thereR…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 31, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: “Charlotte Rampling: The Look,” at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. by Hilton Als

Charlotte Rampling is a living paradox: an actress whose allure depends less on the passion she ignites than on her efforts to stamp out—or to avoid—admiration. It seems as if sh…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 31, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Toni Morrison’s “Desdemona,” at Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival. by Hilton Als

Historically speaking, the stage is a notoriously difficult space for novelists to fill. Henry James is a famous example of a brilliant writer whose dreams of footlight glory were not meant …

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 24, 2011☆⚑

50 years of La Mama at the free World Block Party. by Hilton Als

When I went to Ellen Stewart’s memorial last winter—she died at the age of ninety-one—I met several people who had not only worked with her on the stage but helped her crea…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 10, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Robert Wilson's The Threepenny Opera at BAM. by Hilton Als

The stuff that’s always interested me about “The Threepenny Opera” doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with the marquee names most closely associated with the pie…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 3, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Rediscovering Alice Childress, playwright and novelist. by Hilton Als

Few artists and writers of color haven’t at least heard of the Hatch-Billops Collection. Situated on lower Broadway, in Manhattan, the collection, which was founded by the theatre hist…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on October 3, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: “Seed” and the Classical Theatre of Harlem. by Hilton Als

When Alfred Preisser and Christopher McElroen founded the Classical Theatre of Harlem, in 1999, they started off auspiciously, staging works ranging from “Medea” to Jean Genet…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on September 26, 2011☆⚑

Porgy and Bess, Reimagined by Diane Paulus : The New Yorker by Hilton Als

As audience members took their seats before a recent performance of the director Diane Paulus's politically radical and dramaturgically original musical adaptation of DuBose and Dorothy Heyw…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 7:20am on September 21, 2011☆⚑

Hilton Als: Stephen Sondheim’s “Follies” revival. by Hilton Als

The theatre can kill a man. As in the art and film worlds, which the stage sometimes brushes up against but never entirely submits to—Thalia and Melpomene are pretty haughty girls̵…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 12:00am on September 19, 2011☆⚑

Tyne Daly as Maria Callas in "Master Class" : The New Yorker by Hilton Als

I'm not really much of an opera queen. When, among my gay male friends of the eighties, the talk turned to opera seria versus the "reform" operas of the mid-eighteenth century, say, or opera…

SOURCE: The New Yorker Subscription at 1:15pm on July 18, 2011☆⚑