Theater

Mr. Horovitz found success Off Broadway, working with actors who later became household names, but he was also accused by multiple women of a pattern of sexual misconduct and assault. More

Among the things to be thankful for: Turkey is on the menu, your Uncle Charlie is not coming and, after a long absence, Broadway casts will be back onstage. More

A musical satire reframes the origins of the invasion of Iraq as a story of bureaucratic bungles and spy games gone catastrophically wrong. More

Jason We lost our jobs on the same day and were both home because of the pandemic shutdown. I went into a depression. I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt like we changed our entire lives to move to Oregon from California for nothing. It was like a horrible breakup, like a death. I just didn’t know how to cope, and I wasn’t sure what our future was.

James My coping mechanism was to solve all the problems so he didn’t have to worry so much. We made plans, like, Jason likes to go food shopping, so he is the only person who left the house and I stayed in the house all the time. I didn’t see another human being other than my husband, because we wanted to be super safe.

Jason The pandemic made us more resilient. We realized we had each other and needed to rely on ourselves, which was really kind of daunting. Between Covid and the fire, we started to slowly make our own new normal by giving ourselves a daily schedule. And we hadn’t done that before because we didn’t have to before. We had jobs, and we came home and had dinner and watched TV.

On the day of the fire, James told me to come look out the window and he pointed to the smoke that was coming up over the horizon. We grabbed some suitcases. We grabbed our passports, our marriage license and some personal things. So maybe 45 minutes later, we heard the helicopters.

James I went outside, and a helicopter flew by and opened the water bucket the next block over. There was black smoke directly over our house, and all of our neighbors were packing. That’s when we said we need to get out of here, so we put our dog in the car and left.

Jason Unfortunately we left behind a photo album that my mom had made me with pictures of grandparents and pictures of me as a baby and all through high school. But I took a box with photos of James from high school and us when we started dating, and some of his marching band medals. That was the last thing we ended up packing.

James Honestly, we were just focusing on the moment. But now it’s like, wow, what else can happen to us this year? More

This week, pick the best indoor plants, jam with the ‘queen of Kindie rock,’ dive deeper into the power of the X-ray and be swept away by the San Francisco Symphony. More

I’m 15 years old and here is my question: When was the moment you fully trusted yourself and your opinions as a critic? ELLA BRITTON, BrooklynI don’t think I would have been hired at The Times if I hadn’t had that confidence from the beginning. Such self-trust is among the most essential traits in a critic’s toolbox. I came from a family that insisted we be able to explain and justify our opinions, and that sort of mental discipline has served me well. And because I loved theater so much from early childhood, and spent so much time thinking about it, writing about it with conviction came naturally to me.How have you kept any openness to what you see, and kept a love for the theater, when you’ve had to go — per contract — so often? BILL IRWIN, New YorkI’m lucky. Watching plays has never felt like a chore for me. Partly this is because I’m aware that the chemistry of a play is so different with each performance, that each night is in a way a new proposition in which things could potentially go very right or very wrong. I’ve never stopped feeling that excitement. When I fell in love with the theater, it was for keeps.Can you point to a specific play or production that your forceful aesthetic advocacy brought into existence? PATRICK WHITE, Albany, N.Y.I’ve always felt my role was responsive and interpretive, not instructive, and I kept a deliberate distance from the artists I reviewed. Of course, there have been small productions that have gone on to larger and longer lives because of Times reviews. And it has been one of the great pleasures of my tenure to try to make a case for — to translate — the work of theater artists who might initially seem off-putting or obscure. (I love writing about such experimental pioneers as the Wooster Group, Richard Maxwell, Suzan-Lori Parks and Jackie Sibblies Drury.) But I doubt any playwright or director has conceived a project with my aesthetic in mind.How does one stay open to new approaches when your sense of what is good may have solidified after seeing so many shows? SAANYA and DHRUV JAIN, Washington, D.C.I think it’s precisely because you see so many shows that you’re receptive to being jolted by what’s truly new. When a playwright or director comes along working in an original vocabulary, your ears start to tingle. You’re hearing something different, something that doesn’t sound like any of the customary variations on a theme that make up at least 90 percent of your theatergoing life. And because truly original work is unsettling, you focus on it more intently.Why do you think people don’t care about American theater heritage? GAIL ANN COHEN, St. Petersburg, Fla.I was fascinated by the cultures of earlier generations when I was growing up. Surely, these types still exist. And they have such a pool of visuals to draw from now — the memory of YouTube stretches way back. It’s true, though, that people tend to want to stay in their own grooves of time these days. In the meantime, you have institutions like the Mint Theater Company in New York, which is devoted to overlooked plays of other times. So there are a few torchbearers around.Over your New York Times career, what was the biggest innovation in a single Broadway show? JOHN McCAWLEY, Horsham, Pa.I suppose the short answer is “Hamilton.” Lin-Manuel Miranda’s portrait in song of an ambition-driven founding father stretched the sense of what a mainstream musical could be in its language (both musical and spoken), tempo, soliloquizing and casting. And yet, it still appeals on the level of a classic Broadway musical. It’s satisfying in that deeply emotional way.Are you now willing to admit that your initial appraisal of “Wicked” was way off target? ELLIOTT KAHN, Pueblo, Colo.I can only write about my personal experience of a show. And while there were elements of “Wicked” I admired, particularly its star performances, I was clearly not its target audience. Nor, it would seem, was it beloved by many other daily reviewers when it opened. I am delighted “Wicked” found such an enthusiastic audience, especially among young people.Is “Wicked” analogous to Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” which inspired not just revulsion but riots in Paris in 1913, yet is now perceived as a watershed in modern music? Nah. More

Delayed from the summer, France’s biggest stage celebration was further curtailed as restrictions again hit the country. That made the moments of grace that were possible all the more powerful. More

Our critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually or in person in New York City. More