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      ‘No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh’ Review: Seeking a Successor

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      In her new play, Christina Masciotti turns a keen gaze on an immigrant tailor who has woven her business into the fabric of a neighborhood.Inside an unassuming storefront somewhere in Queens is a woman you wouldn’t notice if you saw her on the street. The drape, fit and feel of clothes are her passion and her living, but her own outfit is pallid, frumpy — a kind of camouflage.This is Agata, who at 64 is a self-taught tailor with the skill of an artist and an unforgiving eye. When her apprentice, Janice, shows off a photo of her new fiancé, the unevenness of his pant legs is a flagrant red flag.“If you’re ignorant on pants, you’ll be ignorant on wife,” says Agata, a brusque Russian immigrant who married the same man twice by the time she hit 30, divorced him for good, then built an independent life. “Why you wanna take care of this loser?”In Christina Masciotti’s keen and unflashy new play, “No Good Things Dwell in the Flesh,” Kellie Overbey gives a beautifully supple, subtle performance as Agata — a survivor whose wariness of men and their havoc is a defining stance, like her willingness to reject customers if she disagrees with their requests.In a dozen overworked years, she has had only one vacation. So maybe it’s weariness that makes her hope that the talented but unserious Janice (Carmen Zilles) — a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology who already has a business degree — could be a worthy successor, someone Agata might simply give her thriving business to.Directed by Rory McGregor at A.R.T./New York Theaters in Manhattan — with a bit less atmospheric poeticism than the script aims for — “No Good Things” is interested in what it means to lose a business that has quietly woven itself into the fabric of a neighborhood. That’s a resonant concern these days, as so many urban storefronts sit vacant.Masciotti, who based Agata on a tailor she met in Astoria, Queens, is also characteristically drawn here to the richness of language, Agata’s in particular. As when she tells Janice, “The heart shape is kind of my enemy shape.” Or when she orders Vlad (T. Ryder Smith), the handsome but unstable ex who tracks Agata down: “Stop creating all this situation.”The night I saw the show, much of the audience was so busy enjoying Smith’s performance that they didn’t notice the danger in Vlad — even though he tells Agata, moments into their reunion, that it takes just 30 seconds to knock a woman out. Agata, who cares about him still, wants only to keep her distance from him, and from men in general. Thus, I think, her dowdy get-up, hiding her form. (Costumes are by Johanna Pan.)That’s another thing this play is about, though: the siren song of men and coupledom. Agata has spent her whole adult life trying not to get shipwrecked on those rocks.No Good Things Dwell in the FleshThrough Sept. 23 at A.R.T./New York Theaters, Manhattan; christinamasciotti.com. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Rochester Fringe Festival Returns With a Program of Free Spectacles

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      With its commitment to presenting free spectacles, the event has become one of the country’s more prominent multidisciplinary events.Sweaty venues roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Eye-catchingly daft titles. Lampposts all but sagging under the weight of promotional fliers. Drunken Shakespeare mash-ups and earnest solo shows. Volunteers shooing audiences onto the street in order to air out those closet-size venues before the next performance, and the one after that, and the one after that.These are among the standard ingredients for fringe festivals, the multidisciplinary showcases that have become economic drivers in cities looking to replicate the pell-mell, “Wait, did I sleep last night?” energy of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland.The Rochester Fringe Festival, which runs through Sept. 23 at 34 different venues, has all of the above features, with shows like “Shotspeare,” “A Jewish Woman Walks Into a Maloca” and “A Nerdy Gay Juggling Show” nestled alongside headliners like Garth Fagan Dance and Tig Notaro. And for this year’s iteration that list also includes acrobats and a grand piano dangling off a hot-air balloon.Those last two attractions, both courtesy of the French company Cirque Inextremiste, point to one aspect that sets the nonprofit Rochester Fringe apart from similar festivals: a commitment to free spectacles that have in the past lured crowds of 15,000. “Nobody else has these huge free public events, at least not in the United States,” said Xela Batchelder, the executive director of Fringe University, which sets up college classes at fringe festivals in Edinburgh and elsewhere.Past iterations have featured Bandaloop dancers rappelling down a 21-story skyscraper, the white-knuckle choreography of Streb Extreme Action, and an all-but-unclassifiable street parade of enormous fish puppets courtesy of the French troupe Plasticiens Volants.“We’ve gotten pretty good at working with the Rochester Police Department,” said Erica Fee, artistic director of the festival, which in just 12 years has become one of the country’s more prominent fringe events. (While the sheer number of performances and venues can make precise bookkeeping tricky, Batchelder estimates a total number of audience members and paid tickets comparable to those of more established festivals in Hollywood, Orlando and Philadelphia.) “But working out the logistics for a 60-foot whale puppet was a new one for everyone.”Among the complications for this year’s festival? “Exit,” a new Cirque Inextremiste work stemming from the company’s residency in a Nantes mental hospital, in which aerialists perform stunts using that hot-air balloon. Fee, who frequently travels to Europe in search of Fringe-worthy pieces, saw the piece in southern France in 2019 and immediately booked it for the 2020 festival. But Covid and then Covid-related travel restrictions prevented “Exit” from making the trip to upstate New York until now. This Friday and Saturday it will serve as the centerpiece of a variety of events in downtown Rochester’s Parcel 5 outdoor space.Ephemeral monuments: For Craig Walsh’s latest outdoor installation project, the faces of three Rochester residents, including Patricia McKinney, a parent liaison at a local elementary school, are being projected on three trees downtown every evening of the festival.Erich CampingUnfortunately, Parcel 5 sits just a few feet atop an underground garage, which makes digging stanchions for a hot-air balloon tricky. And the dangling grand piano was far less contentious than a much smaller stage prop, according to Yann Ecauvre, the Cirque Inextremiste artistic director.“It is forbidden to have a gun on the stage here. I thought, ‘But this is the U.S. There are guns everywhere here,’” Ecauvre said. “So now we use a banana gun.”Even with the balloon tethered for the duration of “Exit,” the elements play a major role on any given night. “It’s like two different shows depending on whether it is windy,” Ecauvre said. “If the wind is a monster one night, we just have to tame it.”Fee said that sort of flexibility comes with the Fringe territory, especially in the wake of the logistical headaches that came with planning a virtual Fringe during the pandemic.“We still have to plan four festivals at once,” she said. “Having lived through Covid and done an online festival, that mentality will probably never go away.”Batchelder of Fringe University says this mentality has helped fringe festivals, which typically have less fixed overhead and more topical programming, survive and even thrive in the post-pandemic cultural landscape. “They are nimbler in terms of advance planning, and they can often do better when these other groups struggle.”Even the seemingly more staid offerings require some legwork. Take “Monuments,” the latest iteration of the Australian artist Craig Walsh’s outdoor installations. As he has done around the world over the past 30 years, Walsh filmed the faces of three Rochesterians — among them the Seneca/Haudenosaunee storyteller Ronnie Reitter — and is projecting them as ephemeral monuments on three trees in downtown Rochester each night of the festival.“We had to audition trees!” Fee said. More

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      ‘Infinite Life’ Review: Is There a Cure for Pain and Desire?

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      Illness is no metaphor, and neither is pleasure, in Annie Baker’s weird and great new play set at a fasting clinic.A woman collapsed in a chaise longue on a brick and breeze-block patio is trying to read George Eliot’s “Daniel Deronda.” Over several days, various acquaintances also taking the sun will ask her what the book is about, a question she finds hard to answer as she keeps getting stuck on page 152. Still, she calls the novel “very weird and great.”“If I’m not reading it all the time it seems really boring,” she says, “but once I’m into it it’s like the most entertaining thing in the world.”This might be Annie Baker’s mission statement, and, sure enough, her latest play, “Infinite Life,” which opened on Tuesday at the Atlantic Theater Company, is very weird and great. Like “The Flick,” “The Aliens,” “John” and other previous work, it peeps at the greatest mysteries of life — in this case principally pain and desire, and what they have in common — through the tiny, seemingly inconsequential windows of banal human behavior.Certainly, watching Sofi (Christina Kirk) try to plow through Eliot is no confetti cannon. Nor could you say that the four other women (and eventually one man) who show up on the patio do anything exceedingly dramatic by ordinary standards. You will be asked, for instance, to watch them sleep.Books of various sorts are also prominent. Yvette (Mia Katigbak) reads a memoir about a woman with Lyme disease who starts a white-water rafting company. Ginnie (Kristine Nielsen) ponders an existential question proposed in her paperback by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Elaine (Brenda Pressley) works at a coloring book. Eileen (Marylouise Burke) is in too much discomfort to do her own reading but asks the others about theirs.Buried in books or not, they are all looking for answers. The patio adjoins a clinic in a former motel in Northern California run by a Godot-like guru we never meet. This savior figure prescribes fasts — just water or green juice for as long as several weeks — to clear the toxins he says are the cause of this group’s various cancers, infections, autoimmune disorders, “thyroid stuff” and vertigo. Enervated by the treatments as much as by the extreme pain of their illnesses, his patients spend their days and nights in a kind of stop-and-go stupor, which is frequently, unlike the Eliot, hilarious.The excellent cast includes, from left: Kirk, Kristine Nielsen, Brenda Pressley and Mia Katigbak. “For all the detailed behavior that shows up at the surface,” our critic writes, “you always sense the greater weight of whatever lies beneath.”Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesWe get to know these women deeply over the course of 105 minutes. Ginnie is bossy about other people’s behavior and Yvette is a know-it-all about diseases, having had so many. (Baker gives her what amounts to an organ recital of maladies and medications, including a hymn to the “zoles”: “clotrimazole and econazole and fluconazole and ketoconazole and itraconazole and voriconazole.”) Elaine is very certain of everything she’s very certain of. Eileen, the eldest, is unfailingly kind but prim, especially when it comes to language.That’s a problem for her because the language becomes explicit as the play gradually reveals, beneath its accumulation of brilliantly observed details, a focus on varieties of desire. Yvette tells a story about a cousin who describes porn movies for the blind. (“In person?” Sofi asks.) The arrival of a shirtless and, at first, nearly wordless man (Pete Simpson) hilariously raises the temperature, as if a rooster has broken into what you suddenly realize is a henhouse. And in a series of cellphone messages we overhear Sofi leaving, we learn how pleasure and pain have begun to merge disastrously for her.Those messages — some to her husband, from whom she is separated — seem like a slight misstep; in a play that otherwise avoids exposition like a bad smell (we otherwise know only what the women tell one another) they are too on the nose. Still, they serve a purpose, besides being harrowing, in that they propel the play into its final third, in which the discussion of desire gives way to an opportunity to enact it. But if you think you see where that’s going, you will be both right and wrong; Baker’s structures are so strong and yet open that, within them, anything or its opposite may happen at any moment.Maintaining that tension between plot and anti-plot, while using it to deepen our engagement in a story that seems random but isn’t, requires the most exquisite directorial care. “Infinite Life” (a co-production with Britain’s National Theater) gets that and more from James Macdonald, who has notably staged plays by Baker in London and by the British playwright Caryl Churchill here in New York. Indeed, “Infinite Life” most closely reminded me of Churchill’s great “Escaped Alone,” in which four women sit in a garden chatting into the apocalypse.But Macdonald understands that Baker’s practice is not the same as Churchill’s. The women here (if not the man) are fully, almost floridly conceived, not just elements slotted into a formal conceit. Baker’s is a rich minimalism, as if the characters in a Tennessee Williams melodrama found themselves in an Albee one-act. Despite the difficulty of realizing that, the cast of six New York regulars is excellent: as good as I’ve ever seen any of them, and in the case of Nielsen, so wonderfully restrained, even better. For all the detailed behavior that shows up at the surface — the various ways the women sip from their water bottles, the shuffling or striding or creeping to their chaises — you always sense the greater weight of whatever lies beneath.That the characters also live in a world of ideas gives the play its intellectual heft and complex texture, both light and profound. The contrast is beautifully maintained by the physical production, in which even the breeze-block wall framing the patio, by the design studio dots, is on point: a tracery of concrete and air. The women’s stretchy sweats, batik pajamas and lightweight cover-ups, by Ásta Bennie Hostetter, signify comfort but also the need for it. Birdsong and road noise are the poles of Bray Poor’s bifurcated sound world. And in Isabella Byrd’s lighting design, the minute we get used to the nearly invisible night, with just a cellphone to see by, we are snapped into the harsh May sun of the following midday.They are all expressions of Baker’s refusal to reduce the world to a unitary lesson; “Infinite Life” offers moral philosophy but no moral. (If pain “means anything at all,” Sofi says, “then I don’t know if I can bear it.”) Illness, after all, is no metaphor. It has no purpose, is no judgment, cannot be done right or wrong; it is only itself, incomparable (though some of the characters compete over whose wretchedness is worse) and uninterpretable.Which does not mean it is useless to think about. (When first announced for 2021, the play was called “On the Uses of Pain for Life.”) Understanding suffering, like understanding desire, may help us when we face it, or when others do, and with any luck afterward. Which, by the way, is what “Daniel Deronda,” past page 152, is about — and “Infinite Life” is always.Infinite LifeThrough Oct. 8 at the Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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      Pulitzer Prizes Expand Eligibility to Noncitizens

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      The jury for the memoir category had raised concerns that the citizenship requirement was excluding a large part of American culture.The board that administers the Pulitzer Prizes announced on Tuesday that it would expand eligibility for the awards to authors, playwrights and composers who are not U.S. citizens.Most of the awards for books, drama and music had been open only to American citizens, but beginning with the 2025 prizes, the board will consider works by permanent and longtime residents of the United States.Expanding the eligibility is a significant evolution for the Pulitzers, which were established in 1917 by the newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant who emphasized that the prizes were intended to celebrate distinctly American works.The journalism awards have long been open to people of all nationalities whose work is published by American media outlets. But with the exception of the history prize, the literary categories, as well as the music and drama awards, have been limited to American citizens.The board began discussing the possibility of expanding the eligibility in December, after the jury for the memoir category raised concerns that the citizenship requirement was excluding a large part of American culture, said Marjorie Miller, the administrator for the prizes. When the jury members brought that issue before the board, she said, a consensus quickly formed that the criterion should be changed.“This emphasizes the American nature of the work rather than the individual,” Miller said. “You can be American and write a book or play or a piece of music that is American without being a U.S. citizen.”The board is not setting firm boundaries of long-term and permanent residency, leaving the determination up to authors and publishers.“I think it’s defined by the identity of the writer: Do you consider the United States your permanent home, and is this a work that in some regard would be considered American?” Miller said.The decision was celebrated by artists and writers who have lobbied for the prize to be expanded.“We’re just beginning to recognize that migrant literature is American literature,” said Ingrid Rojas Contreras, a Pulitzer finalist this year for her memoir, “The Man Who Could Move Clouds.” “The role that these prizes have in curating the literature we will read in the future is immense.”In August, a group of authors posted an open letter to the Pulitzer board and asked for the prize to be opened to immigrants and undocumented writers.“Whether undocumented writers are writing about the border or not, their voices are quintessentially part of what it means to belong and struggle to belong in this and to this nation,” they wrote in the letter, which drew signatures from hundreds of writers, including Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Angie Cruz and Fatimah Asghar.Javier Zamora, who signed the open letter, helped drive activism around the issue with an opinion essay he published in July in The Los Angeles Times, in which he lamented that his acclaimed memoir, “Solito,” was not eligible for a Pulitzer Prize because of the citizenship requirement.In an interview, Zamora said he hoped the change would help expand definitions of the American literary canon to include more work by undocumented writers and immigrants.“This tells them, ‘Your story also matters — that your story could be part of a canon,’” he said.The Pulitzers are the latest literary awards to redefine or expand their citizenship requirements. The Academy of American Poets and the Poetry Foundation have both opened up their prizes to immigrants with temporary legal status. The National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award also opened their prizes to noncitizens.When the first music Pulitzers were given, in the 1940s, the United States had become a haven for European artists — such as Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill and Erich Wolfgang Korngold — who had emigrated in the shadow of fascism and World War II. Despite their successes abroad, though, Pulitzers went largely to stalwarts of the American academy.The citizenship change will expand the group of eligible composers to those who were born abroad and have settled in the United States; Thomas Adès, one of his generation’s most celebrated composers, was born in London but lives in Los Angeles. Some winners of the similarly prestigious, globally reaching Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition could also now be considered.Joshua Barone More

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      ‘Water for Elephants’ Musical to Arrive on Broadway Next Spring

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      The show, with a group of circus artists as part of the cast, is adapted from Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel.“Water for Elephants,” Sara Gruen’s novel about a Depression-era veterinary student whose life is transformed when he joins a circus, became a surprise best seller after it was published in 2006. Five years later came a film adaptation, and next spring, a spectacle-rich stage musical version will open on Broadway.The musical, as befits a show set primarily at a circus, will feature seven circus performers, who make up about one-third of the onstage cast. As in the novel, the story is told through the recollections of the main character in his older years.“Most people think of the story as about this young man who jumps on a train and joins the circus, but I’m really compelled by his older self, looking back on the chapter that changed the course of his life forever,” said the musical’s director, Jessica Stone, who also directed “Kimberly Akimbo,” the winner of this year’s Tony for best musical. “The show is about the kind of person you are when you lose everything, and it’s also about chosen family, and the choices you make with the time that you have.”“Water for Elephants,” a big-budget musical that has been in development for about eight years, had an initial run in June and July at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. After some reworking aimed at strengthening the storytelling, it is scheduled to begin previews on Feb. 24 and to open March 21 at the Imperial Theater.The musical is set largely in 1931; its book is by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys,” “Peter and the Starcatcher”) and the score is by PigPen Theater Co. The circus design is by Shana Carroll, who is an artistic director of The 7 Fingers, a prestigious Montreal-based circus collective; Carroll is also collaborating on the choreography with Jesse Robb.The show is being capitalized for up to $25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which could make it the biggest-budget production of the current Broadway season.The producing team is being led by Peter Schneider, a former Disney animation executive who played a key role in bringing “The Lion King” to Broadway, and Jennifer Costello, a former executive at the John Gore Organization, where Schneider is the chairman of the board. The other lead producers are Grove Entertainment, Frank Marshall, Isaac Robert Hurwitz and Seth A. Goldstein. More

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      Echoing Federal Theater Project, 18 Towns Plan Simultaneous Events

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      The theme “No Place Like Home” will drive shows and festivals in both large cities and rural locales of this country on July 27, 2024.One night in the fall of 1936, with Fascism rising in Europe, theaters in 18 cities and towns across the United States staged productions of the dystopian play, “It Can’t Happen Here,” under the auspices of the Federal Theater Project, which was created to provide Depression-era artists with work.Now, inspired by that moment, organizations in 18 American cities and towns are planning a contemporary version of that endeavor: On a single day next summer, they will each present a participatory arts project responding to a more hopeful prompt, “No Place Like Home,” from the “Wizard of Oz.”Given the atomization of American culture, the communities will not present a single show — in fact, many of them are not staging shows at all — but they will each come up with ways to express something that connects notions of home with culture and with health on July 27, 2024. In Chicago, the city will establish artist apprenticeships at mental health clinics; in Tucson, Ariz., Borderlands Theater will create a “theatrical showcase” including a play about mental health and healing.The initiative is the brainchild of Lear deBessonet, a New York-based director who created Public Works, a program of the nonprofit Public Theater that develops musical adaptations of classic works and stages them with a combination of professional and amateur actors. The Public Works model has been adopted by theaters in other American cities, and in London.“Art, by necessity, must look different in every place, to reflect its own community,” deBessonet said. “Our projects are not exclusively theater, or even predominantly theater, but really are reflecting the unique voice and character of the people in each of these places — they are making things that only they could make because they’re making them in direct relation with the people of their place.”DeBessonet, who is now the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center, is working with Nataki Garrett, who just wrapped up a fraught run as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Clyde Valentin, who previously led Ignite/Arts Dallas at Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. They are the artistic directors for a program called One Nation/One Project, and are calling the initiative “Arts for EveryBody.”“How do we solve these problems that are happening within these large-scale organizational structures that are not moving in the direction that we need them to move in?” Garrett asked. “One way that you do that is, you go meet the people at their source — you go where they are and you engage with them in the way that they have been engaging outside of our museums and theaters and other spaces.”The endeavor, which is inspired by a “Wizard of Oz”-based prompt, has been designed with a belief that participating in the arts can improve health outcomes.Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesThe program has set a goal of a $14 million budget. Unlike the Federal Theater Project, which was government-sponsored, as part of the Works Progress Administration, the current initiative is being supported primarily by contributions from foundations and individuals and is sponsored by the Tides Center, a nonprofit philanthropic organization that supports social change. Many of the projects are collaborations between arts groups, local governments and community health centers.The endeavor, working with the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida, has been designed in the belief that participation in the arts can improve health outcomes, and the organizers have commissioned studies to research that connection.The 18 communities chosen to take part are a mix of urban and rural, large and small, from Honolulu to the South Bronx; the National League of Cities helped with site selection and project design. Valentin said one priority was to “not have it be something that’s just in the coastal elite cities — geographically we think there’s profound diversity.”Three cities — Chicago, New York and Seattle — that were in the 1936 project are taking part. Some of the communities are planning work that will call attention to local challenges: Phillips County, Ark., will highlight issues with the local water supply; Oakland, Calif., will focus on housing costs; and Utica, Miss. is seeking to generate conversation about food insecurity associated with the lack of a local grocery store.“I think this is a much needed departure from the divisiveness we see,” said Carlton Turner, a co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, which will be organizing a food and wellness festival, with lots of music, in the rural community of Utica. He added, “This opportunity to bring these 18 communities together is a way to heighten our commonalities, versus homing in on the things we disagree about.” More

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      Carrie Mae Weems and George C. Wolfe on Defiance and Claiming Space

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the “Kitchen Table Series” artist and the theater and film director.George C. Wolfe can pinpoint the exact moment that sparked his career as a director and dramatist. When he was a fourth grader, his all-Black elementary school in Kentucky was preparing for a visit to a nearby white school to mark what was then known as Negro History Week. “We were supposed to sing this song,” recalls Wolfe, 68. “And our principal told us that when we got to a certain line, we should sing it with full conviction because it would shatter all the racism in the room.” To this day, he can remember standing with his classmates singing, “These truths we are declaring, that all men are the same,” and then suddenly belting out, “that liberty’s a torch burning with a steady flame.” “That’s why I’m a storyteller,” he says. “Because someone told me when I was 10 that if I fully committed with my passion and my intelligence and my heart to a line, I could change people.” That belief led him to become both a Broadway powerhouse — a co-writer and the director of the hit musical “Jelly’s Last Jam” (1992) and the director of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” (1993) — and the producer of the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, for which he conceived “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk” (1995). In recent years, he’s devoted more time to making films, including “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020). His latest, “Rustin,” executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground and coming to theaters on Nov. 3 and to Netflix two weeks later, tells the story of Bayard Rustin, a civil rights activist who was instrumental in planning the 1963 March on Washington, helping to recruit his friend Martin Luther King Jr. to take part. But Rustin, who was, in Wolfe’s estimation “about as out as a Black man could be in 1960s America,” was largely pushed aside by civil rights leaders who feared that his sexuality would bring shame on the movement. “Here was this monumental human being who changed history, and then history forgot him,” says Wolfe, himself a gay man, who has lived in New York City since 1979. Telling stories like Rustin’s, he says, is “a means to share, to inform, to challenge, to confront the world.”For the multidisciplinary artist Carrie Mae Weems, 70, those same objectives have influenced more than four decades of photographs, installations and performances exploring themes of class, gender and, most notably, race. The first Black artist to have a retrospective at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum (2014’s “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video”), the Portland, Ore., native who now lives between Brooklyn and Syracuse, N.Y., not only built her reputation as one of America’s most influential photographers but has also elevated fellow artists like Julie Mehretu and Lyle Ashton Harris with her convenings, for which she recruits artists, writers and scholars to come to various institutions for multiday conferences. With works like her “Museum Series” (2006-present) — for which she photographed herself, back to the camera, standing in front of institutions, including the Tate Modern in London and the Pergamon in Berlin — and “Thoughts on Marriage” (1989), which depicts a bride with her mouth taped shut, she has created indelible images of humanity in the face of injustice.Though contemporaries in adjacent disciplines, Wolfe and Weems had never had a real conversation before meeting on a steamy July day in a downtown Manhattan studio. Here, the two discuss their childhoods, art as activism and what they feel is still left to accomplish.Carrie Mae Weems: Let’s start at the beginning. Where are you from, George? George C. Wolfe: I’m from Frankfort, Ky., which was segregated for the first eight years of my life. I went to a grammar school that was part of a Black university, Kentucky State. And I went [to college] there for one year but ran away because I wanted to become another version of myself. I went to Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and then to Los Angeles. At a certain point, it became clear that I needed to leave L.A. [to direct theater], so I came to New York, and that was that. C.M.W.: What made you want to make this new film? G.C.W.: I wanted to explore the brilliance of this organizational mind who put together the March on Washington in seven weeks. It’s about the idea that activism is not a noun or a title; it’s a verb — it’s the doing of. There’s a scene in the film that was inspiring to me, where Bayard [who is played by Colman Domingo] is talking to young kids who’re organizing, and he tells them that every night they should think through every detail and ask themselves what they’re missing, what they haven’t thought about.Colman Domingo (standing) as Bayard Rustin in “Rustin.”David Lee/NetflixC.M.W.: When did you learn about Bayard Rustin? I didn’t know anything about him.G.C.W.: I helped create a museum in Atlanta called the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, which opened nine years ago, so I got into some of these stories that I didn’t know, like Jo Ann Robinson, who was the brain behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her bus seat before Rosa Parks. I became obsessed with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Often, history forgot them.C.M.W.: Yes, so many people! I knew very early on that whatever I did as an artist, I wanted to broaden the field. So I would pick up the phone and call these museums and say, “I love your collection, but I noticed there are actually no women or African Americans. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research in the area, and I’d love to come by and share with you what I have.” And they were like, “Who? What?” I was just 23. But I’d say, “OK, you don’t have any idea who I am, but I do know that this work is important, and I absolutely need you to look at it.”G.C.W.: And what would they say?C.M.W.: “Wellll, OK.” That’s how I became known as a photographer, by doing all that work. I started reading about all these artists when I was a young person, and I made little video projects about people like [the Harlem Renaissance photographer] Roy DeCarava. It was born out of deep curiosity: “Who were those who came before you? Who widened the path? And how do you acknowledge them? And then who’s coming behind you? And how do you broaden the path for them?” In 2014, when I became the first African American to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim, I thought, “This is kind of cool, but it would be really great to have a fabulous convening of a couple of hundred artists and bring all of them to the institution for four or five days and just rock it out.” I continue to do that. I’m doing another one in the fall [at Syracuse University, centered on contested monuments].G.C.W.: I’m obsessed with one aspect of your “Museum Series”: You have your back to us, looking at these buildings, and what it ignites inside of me is, “Are you going to invade it? Are you going to tear it down? Are you going into it, and will it change you? Or will you change it?” Those questions are born out of your proximity to the buildings. If you were farther away, it would say something was keeping you from going in. If you were closer, it would tell the viewer you’d already made the decision to enter. There’s a danger and a possibility of being in the in-between. Carrie Mae Weems’s “Museum Island” (2006-present).© Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkC.M.W.: It allows so much for the viewer. I started making those pieces in 2006, and it’s only recently that institutions have begun paying attention to them. Artists are often ahead of the curve in the ways we pose questions; museums are just now arriving at that moment of interrogation. I always think of George Floyd as the straw that broke the camel’s back. His death [in 2020] allowed so much to be brought into focus.G.C.W.: What is your responsibility [when infiltrating] these institutions? It was made very clear to me at a young age that if you come with a certain skill set, it’s your responsibility to invade.C.M.W.: To engage. G.C.W.: For me, it was very specifically invading. Get inside, open up the doors and the windows so that everybody else could come in. C.M.W.: I understand, but I think about it slightly differently. For me, it’s not invasion; it’s claiming of space. It’s really understanding the uniqueness of this voice and what we have to offer — our right to be in that space and to change it by our very presence. I’ve started to think about resistance as an act of love. G.C.W.: And commitment.C.M.W.: And commitment, always. I think this is both our gift and our burden. You’re never just George. You’re always in a group. It’s a part of the condition of being African American in this country. You’re forced by your identity to negotiate the space between who you are, what the group is and what your responsibilities are in relation to both. This has given us, as a people, ingenuity — a level of inventiveness, expansiveness, artistic integrity and a grace that’s truly profound. Without us, this nation would truly suffer. Are you an activist?G.C.W.: I think my work is activism. I do my job with a sense of joy and aggression and defiance.C.M.W.: I was very lucky that I had my father [the owner of a salvage company] and my mother [a seamstress] and my family. My father would say, “Remember that you have a right.” My earliest memories are of that. So that’s given me a sense of confidence, that I just feel very comfortable in the world, wherever I am. I love knowing about other cultures, but our quest to be human is what interests me. I think we are still crawling toward our humanity. We haven’t arrived yet.G.C.W.: My theory is that everything is a muscle. Love is a muscle. If you don’t use it, it atrophies. And curiosity is one of the most important muscles, curiosity about the world and about others. My first memory was of George Wolfe, whom I’m named after, my grandfather [a carpenter]. He would build a big tower of blocks and then I would knock them down and he would applaud. Defiance! C.M.W.: At this stage, my concerns are more focused on the spiritual dimensions of my life. I made a small performance piece called “Grace Notes: Reflections for Now” [for the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C.] after the 2015 killings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. At the funeral of one of the victims, [President] Obama came to the stage, spoke for a while — and then, finally, the only thing he could do was sing “Amazing Grace.” He had to go to a spiritual place in order to deal with the tragedy of that event.Over the past few years, I’ve collected over 400 photographs of primarily Black men who’ve been killed in the United States since around 2000. I’m chronicling this history of violence. There are days when I have to leave the studio early because I’ve been looking at murder all day. Ultimately, artists deal with similar ideas over and over during the course of a lifetime, so there’s a set of primary ideas that you’re always coming back to. For instance, I produced [an installation and performance] piece called “The Shape of Things” (2021), which looks at the circus of politics and the rise of Trumpism, and the extraordinary violence that has been inflicted on people of color as the country moves from white to Black and varying shades of brown. But even though you’re looking at tragedy, the real work is to find where hope resides within that tragedy.G.C.W.: This country is at its most interesting when people cross borders. The culture that phenomenon creates is astonishing. So the stories of my family are driving me now: the monumental, ordinary, astonishing, brilliant people who said, “The border that you’ve crafted doesn’t serve my definition of myself, so let me go charging through it.” That’s what Bayard did. It’s what our ancestors did. They said, “I’m bigger than your definition of me.”C.M.W.: I decided there’s a part of what I’m doing that needs to be done out of my human ingenuity, but I’m not interested in persuading anybody about anything. The work has within it all kinds of questions, but the way in which the vast majority of America views me? I couldn’t care less. I just want to get this work done.This interview has been edited and condensed.Hair: Kiyonori Sudo. Makeup: Linda Gradin More

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      in Theater

      A Guide to Musicals and Plays Coming This Fall and Spring

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      A starry Sondheim revival on Broadway, Alicia Keys’s new musical and John Turturro in a Philip Roth adaptation: a guide to this season’s theater.In a different reality, this list of show openings across the country might be longer. You’d see the world premiere of Larissa FastHorse’s “Fake It Until You Make It,” for example, one of many productions canceled or postponed because of the powerful economic headwinds that theaters are facing. Still, there’s hope: Exciting ideas are taking shape in regional theaters, where works like “Run Bambi Run,” “Illinois” and “The Salvagers” are being staged. In New York, “Swing State,” “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Sabbath’s Theater” are among the shows that remind us of theater’s promise. And Broadway, of course, with intriguing new shows like “Gutenberg! The Musical,” “I Need That” and “How to Dance in Ohio,” will always survive. (Dates are subject to change.)SeptemberDIG The owner of a dying plant shop forms an unlikely relationship with a woman carrying a lot of baggage in this play by Theresa Rebeck, who also directs the Primary Stages production. Developed at the Dorset Theater Festival, “Dig” had a well-received premiere there in 2019. (Sept. 2-Oct. 22, 59E59 Theaters)DRACULA: A COMEDY OF TERRORS Count Dracula is a pansexual Gen-Z type experiencing an existential crisis in this comedy, written by Gordon Greenberg and Steve Rosen and inspired by the Bram Stoker classic. Expect a gender-bending celebration of sex, goth and goofiness, directed by Greenberg. The cast features James Daly as Dracula and, all appearing in several roles, Jordan Boatman, Arnie Burton, Ellen Harvey and Andrew Keenan-Bolger. (Sept. 4-Jan. 7, New World Stages)PURLIE VICTORIOUS: A NON-CONFEDERATE ROMP THROUGH THE COTTON PATCH Leslie Odom Jr. stars as Purlie Victorious Judson in Ossie Davis’s 1961 comedy about a traveling preacher who returns to his hometown in Georgia to save the community church and stand up to the oppressive white plantation owner Ol’ Cap’n Cotchipee. Billy Eugene Jones (“Fat Ham”) and Kara Young (“Cost of Living”) also star. Kenny Leon directs. (Performances begin Sept. 7, Music Box Theater)SWING STATE The recently widowed Peg unintentionally sets off a small-town feud in this new play by Rebecca Gilman about the political polarization in America. In his rave review of its premiere last year at the Goodman Theater, The Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones called it “perhaps the first of the great American post-Covid plays.” Robert Falls directs this Audible Theater production, featuring the original Chicago cast, including Mary Beth Fisher as Peg. (Sept. 8-Oct. 21, Minetta Lane Theater)Rebecca Gilman’s new play, “Swing State,” arrives this month at the Minetta Lane Theater, with, from left, Anne E. Thompson, Kirsten Fitzgerald and Mary Beth Fisher.Liz LaurenMARY GETS HERS In plagued 10th-century Germany, an orphan named Mary is rescued by people desperate to protect her, and her chastity, at all costs in this new play by Emma Horwitz. The play is inspired by “Abraham, or the Rise and Repentance of Mary,” a comedy-drama written more than 1,000 years ago by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim, one of the earliest-known female poets in Germany. The show, directed by Josiah Davis, is being produced by The Playwrights Realm, which is in residence at MCC Theater. (Sept. 11-Oct. 7, MCC Theater)JAJA’S AFRICAN HAIR BRAIDING A group of West African immigrant women working together in a Harlem hair salon share their secrets, dreams and doubts in this new play by Jocelyn Bioh (“School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play”), her Broadway playwriting debut. Whitney White (“Our Dear Dead Drug Lord”) directs this Manhattan Theater Club production. (Sept. 12-Oct. 29, Samuel J. Friedman Theater)RUN BAMBI RUN Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes and the playwright Eric Simonson (“Lombardi”) have collaborated on this new true crime saga in the form of a musical. With new songs from Gano, Simonson’s book is based on the story of Lawrencia Bembenek, a Milwaukee police officer who was convicted in 1981 of killing her husband’s ex-wife. Known as Bambi, Bembenek escaped from prison, was later caught and maintained her innocence until her death in 2010. Mark Clements directs. (Sept. 13-Oct. 22, Milwaukee Repertory Theater)MELISSA ETHERIDGE: MY WINDOW From her Kansas childhood to her years in the male-dominated rock business, Melissa Etheridge entertains with stories and many of her songs. Seen Off Broadway at New World Stages last year, Etheridge’s show has a lot of humor and a few gut punches too (her son died of a drug overdose). The almost-solo show (a roadie character is along for the ride) heads to Broadway with the same director, Amy Tinkham. (Sept. 14-Nov. 19, Circle in the Square Theater)Melissa Etheridge, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, brings her memoir-style show to Broadway this fall after a run Off Broadway last year.Richard Termine for The New York TimesTHE REFUGE PLAYS This new epic tale by Nathan Alan Davis (“Nat Turner in Jerusalem”) follows a Black family over 70 years, beginning with a ghostly visit to a woman who is told she will die within 24 hours. This Roundabout Theater Company presentation is produced in association with New York Theater Workshop, whose new artistic director, Patricia McGregor, will direct a cast including Nicole Ari Parker, Daniel J. Watts, Ngozi Jane Anyanwu and Jon Michael Hill, among others. (Sept. 14-Nov. 12, Laura Pels Theater)GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL! I still remember how much my abs hurt — back in 2011 — from laughing at Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells in “The Book of Mormon.” So their reunion is a season highlight. This time, they play aspiring (and inept) musical theater creators doing a backer’s audition of their new play about the inventor of the printing press. If the subject sounds dry, don’t worry — they have injected plenty of wildly inaccurate history into their script to spice things up. The show, written by Scott Brown and Anthony King (“Beetlejuice”), started out at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and has run Off Broadway. Alex Timbers directs. (Sept. 15-Jan. 28, James Earl Jones Theater)BILLY STRAYHORN: SOMETHING TO LIVE FOR This new musical tells Strayhorn’s story, from his poor upbringing in Pittsburgh to fame as one of the greatest jazz composers, including his collaborations with Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday, and his life as an openly gay Black man living through the early days of the civil rights movement. The Broadway veteran Darius de Haas (who did the vocals for the Shy Baldwin character in “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”) stars as Strayhorn, with J.D. Mollison as Ellington. The book is by Rob Zellers and Kent Gash, who also directs. The music and lyrics are by Strayhorn, and Matthew Whitaker will conduct a nine-piece jazz band. (Sept. 19-Oct. 11, Pittsburgh Public Theater)MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff and Lindsay Mendez star in this Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical about three friends trying to make it in showbiz. The story is told in reverse chronological order, allowing us to see the broken ties of later life before the starry-eyed hopefulness of younger days. Maria Friedman directs. The 1981 Broadway debut was a flop, but this production, with a sold-out, well-reviewed run at New York Theater Workshop, might have the makings of a smash. (Sept. 19-March 24, Hudson Theater)ULYSSES Elevator Repair Service brings the epic and challenging James Joyce novel about one day in 1904 Dublin to the stage in this new production, commissioned by the Fisher Center at Bard College. While the company is not doing the entire text, as it had for “The Great Gatsby,” selections from each of the 18 episodes in the Joyce novel will be performed, using a fictional academic panel discussion as the jumping-off point. The cast features company regulars including Scott Shepherd, Vin Knight and Maggie Hoffman, with John Collins directing. (Sept. 21-Oct. 1, Fisher Center at Bard)THE WIZ This musical — an adaptation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s book with an all-Black cast — was a hit in 1975 with André De Shields in the title role. The new production kicks off a national tour in Baltimore, starring Alan Mingo Jr. as the Wiz, Nichelle Lewis as Dorothy and Deborah Cox as Glinda. The show is intended to hit Broadway in spring 2024, with Wayne Brady stepping into the title role in time for appearances in San Francisco and Los Angeles. “The Wiz” features a book by William F. Brown, with additional material by Amber Ruffin and a score by Charlie Smalls (and others). Schele Williams (“The Notebook”) directs. (Tour begins Sept. 23, Hippodrome Theater)HERE WE ARE Stephen Sondheim fans will get to see one more new musical by the master, who died in 2021, when this long-gestating show, a collaboration with the playwright David Ives and the director Joe Mantello, has its world premiere. The musical is adapted from two Luis Buñuel films, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” and “The Exterminating Angel.” Sondheim was guarded about the exact story, telling The New York Times days before he died: “I don’t know if I should give the so-called plot away, but the first act is a group of people trying to find a place to have dinner, and they run into all kinds of strange and surreal things, and in the second act, they find a place to have dinner, but they can’t get out.” The talented cast includes Tracie Bennett, Bobby Cannavale, Micaela Diamond, Amber Gray, Denis O’Hare, Steven Pasquale and David Hyde Pierce. (Sept. 28-Jan. 7, the Shed’s Griffin Theater)ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE: HOW SHAKESPEARE INVENTED THE VILLAIN Patrick Page is no stranger to playing bad guys (Hades in “Hadestown” comes to mind), but he doesn’t often play a bunch of them in one show. In this solo creation, Page embodies more than a dozen of Shakespeare’s great villains — even Lady Macbeth — as he explores their motivations and Shakespeare’s interpretation of villainy. The show was presented at the Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C., a couple of years ago, and The Times’s Maya Phillips wrote that seeing Page in action was “like watching a chameleon change hues before your eyes: stupefying, effortless.” Simon Godwin directs. (Sept. 29-Jan. 7, DR2 Theater)OctoberDRUIDO’CASEY The Irish playwright Sean O’Casey, who wrote about the Easter Rising of 1916 and Dublin’s working classes, is getting quite the celebration at the N.Y.U. Skirball Center. O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy — “The Plough and the Stars,” “The Shadow of a Gunman” and “Juno and the Paycock” — is being presented in this Druid Theater of Galway production, directed by Garry Hynes, Druid’s artistic director. The works, which audiences can watch as a marathon or single-play performances, are being produced in partnership with the Public Theater. (Oct. 4-14, N.Y.U. Skirball Center)Aaron Monaghan and Hilda Fay in Sean O’Casey’s “Juno and the Paycock.” The Druid Theater of Galway production, in partnership with the Public Theater, will be at N.Y.U. Skirball Center.Ros KavanaghSTEREOPHONIC A rock band recording a new album in the mid-1970s is catapulted to stardom much quicker than its members could have imagined in this new play by David Adjmi (“Marie Antoinette”), featuring music by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire. Does the group make it, and stay together? Daniel Aukin directs. (Oct. 6-Nov. 19, Playwrights Horizons)I CAN GET IT FOR YOU WHOLESALE Santino Fontana stars in a revival of this 1962 musical about a shamelessly corrupt Depression-era shipping clerk. The original book, by Jerome Weidman, based on his 1937 novel, has been revised by his son, John Weidman, with music and lyrics by Harold Rome. Trip Cullman directs a cast that also includes Adam Chanler-Berat, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Judy Kuhn, Sarah Steele and Julia Lester. (Oct. 10-Dec. 3, Classic Stage Company)POOR YELLA REDNECKS The inventive playwright Qui Nguyen (“Vietgone”) is influenced as much by his Vietnamese background as by a love for comic books and action movies. His latest is about a Vietnamese family, with big dreams and small salaries, trying to adapt to a new life in Arkansas. There will be struggle and drama … and also Kung Fu and hip-hop. May Adrales directs the play, co-commissioned by South Coast Repertory and Manhattan Theater Club. (Oct. 10-Nov. 26, New York City Center Stage I)SABBATH’S THEATER Philip Roth’s raunchy, funny 1995 novel, about a debaucherous womanizer and retired puppeteer questioning the value of his life (and goaded toward suicide by his mother’s ghost), is being adapted for the stage by John Turturro and Ariel Levy. Turturro also stars as Mickey Sabbath, alongside Elizabeth Marvel and Jason Kravits. Jo Bonney (“Cost of Living”) directs this world premiere for the New Group. (Oct. 10-Dec. 3, Pershing Square Signature Center)MERRY ME Hansol Jung (“Wolf Play”) is inspired by restoration comedy and Greek theater for this new play about women on a Navy base seeking libidinous pleasure, while also trying to save the world. The show, directed by Leigh Silverman (“Hurricane Diane”), sounds unique, intriguing and naughty at the same time. (Oct. 11-Nov. 19, New York Theater Workshop)THE GREAT GATSBY The heartthrob Jeremy Jordan is the eccentric millionaire Jay Gatsby in this new musical based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, about a man on a mission to pursue the love of his life: Daisy Buchanan (Eva Noblezada of “Hadestown”). The book is by Kait Kerrigan (“The Mad Ones”), the score by the Tony Award nominees Nathan Tysen and Jason Howland (“Paradise Square”), with Marc Bruni (“Beautiful: The Carole King Musical”) directing. (Oct. 12-Nov. 12, Paper Mill Playhouse)HELEN. Caitlin George’s story about three sisters, which interweaves mythology and history, is being produced by the SuperGeographics and presented by La MaMa in association with En Garde Arts. (Oct. 13-29, La MaMa)I NEED THAT Danny DeVito stars as a hoarder facing eviction if he can’t clean up his act in Theresa Rebeck’s new comedy. DeVito’s daughter Lucy DeVito plays his fictional daughter in the play, also starring Ray Anthony Thomas. Rebeck teams up again with her “Bernhardt/Hamlet” director, Moritz von Stuelpnagel, for this Roundabout Theater Company production. (Oct. 13-Dec. 23, American Airlines Theater)HARMONY After many years of development, this musical by Barry Manilow (music) and Bruce Sussman (book and lyrics) is Broadway bound. And no, it’s not a Manilow jukebox musical (though I don’t hate that idea). Instead, “Harmony” is based on the true story of the Comedian Harmonists, a wildly successful singing group formed in Berlin in 1927, and follows them during the rise of Nazism. The ubiquitous Warren Carlyle directs a cast including Chip Zien, Julie Benko and Sierra Boggess. (Performances begin Oct. 18, Ethel Barrymore Theater)THE GARDENS OF ANUNCIA The adolescent years of the director and choreographer Graciela Daniele, who grew up in Argentina during the fascist regime of Juan Perón, form the basis for this musical featuring a book, music and lyrics by Michael John LaChiusa. The show had its premiere at the Old Globe Theater in 2021 and will be presented in New York by Lincoln Center Theater. Daniele, still working at 83, directs and co-choreographs with Alex Sanchez. (Oct. 19-Dec. 31, Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater)NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL Boundary-pushing theater tends to be the first to suffer from budget cuts (farewell, Under the Radar Festival), so it’s heartening that the Brooklyn Academy of Music is sticking with this annual event, even if it’s much smaller than in past years. “Food” (Nov. 2-18) stars the absurdist performer Geoff Sobelle, who gathers the audience at a massive table for a meditation on how and why we eat. Lee Sunday Evans co-directs with Sobelle, who cocreated the show with Steve Cuiffo. Also on the program is “How to Live (After You Die),” Dec. 7-9, a solo show by the Australian artist and filmmaker Lynette Wallworth, about her experience of being drawn into cultism and escaping through art. (The festival runs Oct. 19-Jan. 13, Brooklyn Academy of Music)In “Food,” Geoff Sobelle presents a dinner party that’s an absurdist theatrical spectacle. It will be presented at the Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.Iain MastertonTHE FRIEL PROJECT The Irish Repertory Theater honors the great Irish playwright Brian Friel with three of his plays set in the fictional town of Ballybeg. First up is “Translations,” set in the 1830s, when British rule made efforts in Ireland to erase the Gaelic language; Doug Hughes directs (Oct. 20-Dec. 3). The Friel season continues with “Aristocrats,” directed by the theater’s artistic director, Charlotte Moore (Jan. 11-March 3); and “Philadelphia, Here I Come!,” with the theater’s producing director, Ciarán O’Reilly, directing (March 16-May 5). (Irish Repertory Theater)HELL’S KITCHEN Ali, a 17-year-old girl growing up in a tiny New York apartment with her single mother, has big dreams but feels trapped. When she hears a neighbor playing the piano, she sees a path out. This show features music and lyrics by Alicia Keys (some new music and some previous hits), and is loosely based on her experience growing up in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, surrounded by a community of artists. The project, more than a decade in the making, will now have its world premiere at the Public Theater. The book is by Kristoffer Diaz, choreography by Camille A. Brown, and Michael Greif directs. (Oct. 24-Dec. 10, Public Theater)SCENE PARTNERS Dianne Wiest stars in a neat twist on the “young wannabe starlet heads to Hollywood” story: Meryl, at 75 years old, decides to leave her Milwaukee home for Los Angeles, where she is determined to become a movie star. Who says it’s too late for her big break? Rachel Chavkin directs this new play by John J. Caswell Jr. (“Wet Brain”). (Oct. 26-Dec. 3, Vineyard Theater)DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 Bronx-set drama about two outsiders circling the drain earned a young John Turturro his first rave in The Times. Aubrey Plaza (“The White Lotus”) makes her stage debut in this revival, alongside Christopher Abbott (“Girls”), with Jeff Ward directing. (Oct. 30-Jan. 7, Lucille Lortel Theater)SPAMALOT The over-the-top, delightfully goofy Monty Python musical set during the days of King Arthur (and the Knights Who Say ‘Ni!’) is returning to Broadway, where it first had us in stitches more than a decade ago. This new production, whose cast includes James Monroe Iglehart, Christopher Fitzgerald, Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer, Michael Urie and Ethan Slater, had a well-received run in May, with Josh Rhodes directing and choreographing, at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The book and lyrics are by Eric Idle, music by Idle and John Du Prez; Rhodes directs and choreographs again. (Performances begin Oct. 31, St. James Theater)“Spamalot” heads to the St. James Theater, with Nik Walker as Sir Galahad and Leslie Rodriguez Kritzer as the Lady of the Lake, after a brief run at the Kennedy Center in Washington in May.Jeremy DanielNovemberPAL JOEY The nightclub singer and cad Joey Evans is transformed into an ambitious (but more redeemable) Black jazz singer, played by Ephraim Sykes in this new version of the 1940 musical based on stories by John O’Hara, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart. Richard LaGravenese and Daniel Beaty are rewriting its book to include the original songs along with other Rodgers-Hart classics like “My Heart Stood Still.” Savion Glover and Tony Goldwyn direct this City Center gala presentation. (Nov. 1-5, City Center)WAITING FOR GODOT Some classics, like this 1953 Samuel Beckett tragicomedy, continue to attract actors and directors aiming to make their mark. Having (ahem) played Estragon in college, I confess the play has a long-lasting appeal to me and seeing Michael Shannon take on the role in this Theater for a New Audience production sounds especially exciting. Arin Arbus directs a cast that also includes Paul Sparks (Vladimir), Jeff Biehl (Lucky) and Ajay Naidu (Pozzo). (Nov. 4-Dec. 3, Theater for a New Audience)SPAIN A couple of filmmakers find an unlikely backer — the KGB — for their epic Spanish Civil War movie in Jen Silverman’s new comedy about the age of disinformation. The cast will include Marin Ireland (“Reasons to Be Pretty”), Zachary James (“The Addams Family”) and Erik Lochtefeld (“Metamorphoses”). Tyne Rafaeli directs. (Nov. 8-Dec. 17, Second Stage’s Tony Kiser Theater)HOW TO DANCE IN OHIO A group of young adults on the autism spectrum prepares for a spring dance, hoping to learn to better navigate social challenges in this musical that had its premiere at Syracuse Stage last year. It’s based on a 2015 documentary by Alexandra Shiva, and features a cast made up largely of autistic actors from the Syracuse production. The book and lyrics are by Rebekah Greer Melocik and music by Jacob Yandura, with Sammi Cannold directing. (Performances begin Nov. 15, Belasco Theater)MANAHATTA A Native American woman, also a promising businesswoman with an M.B.A. from Stanford, heads to Oklahoma for a banking job, connects with her Lenape ancestry and tries to straddle the worlds of finance and her family in this new play by Mary Kathryn Nagle. Laurie Woolery directs. (Nov. 16-Dec. 17, Public Theater)BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB A group of great talents from the golden age of Cuban music in the 1940s and 1950s gathered in Havana for a week in 1996 to record the album “Buena Vista Social Club.” This new musical, with a book by Marco Ramirez (“The Royale”), tells the story of these artists and the creation of the unlikely blockbuster album and a 1999 documentary. Saheem Ali (“Fat Ham”) directs the world premiere for Atlantic Theater Company, featuring music from the album. Musical direction by David Yazbek (“The Band’s Visit”) and choreography by Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck. (Nov. 17-Dec. 31, Linda Gross Theater)THE SALVAGERS A father and son (only 14 years apart in age) have a tense enough relationship when possible romance opportunities come up for both and complicate their lives further in this new play by Harrison David Rivers (“The Bandaged Place”). Mikael Burke directs. (Nov. 24-Dec. 16, Yale Repertory Theater)SWEPT AWAY After a brutal storm sinks their whaling ship off the Massachusetts coast, four men struggle to survive in this new musical with a book by John Logan (“Red”) and music and lyrics by the Avett Brothers, based on their 2004 album “Mignonette” (which, in turn, was inspired by a 1884 shipwreck off the Cape of Good Hope). The show premiered at Berkeley Repertory Theater last year, and among the cast returning for this Arena State run are John Gallagher Jr., Stark Sands, Adrian Blake Enscoe and Wayne Duvall. Michael Mayer directs. (Nov. 25-Dec. 30, Arena Stage)APPROPRIATE When the Lafayette family returns to their dead father’s Arkansas home to settle his affairs in Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s Obie Award-winning play, a photo album of disturbing images creates tension and raises questions about the man they thought they knew. Jacobs-Jenkins’s works include the Pulitzer Prize finalists “Gloria” and “Everybody,” but this Second Stage production is the first play he has written to land on Broadway. Lila Neugebauer (“The Waverly Gallery”) directs a cast that includes Sarah Paulson. (Performances begin Nov. 29, Hayes Theater)Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s “Appropriate,” which ran Off Broadway in 2014, is getting a Broadway run this winter with a cast that includes Sarah Paulson.Richard Termine for The New York TimesDecemberREAL WOMEN HAVE CURVES Ana, full-figured and fresh out of high school, dreams of an education, but as a first-generation Mexican American in 1987 Los Angeles, she must battle her immigrant mother and the expectation she works in a sweatshop. This new musical is based on the 1990 play by Josefina López that inspired the 2002 film by López and George LaVoo. The new musical version features music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a book by Lisa Loomer, with the Tony winner Sergio Trujillo directing and choreographing. (Dec. 8-Jan. 21, American Repertory Theater)PRAYER FOR THE FRENCH REPUBLIC A Jewish family in 2016 Paris question their safety in an increasingly hostile world in this play by Joshua Harmon (“Bad Jews”), which had its premiere Off Broadway via Manhattan Theater Club last year. David Cromer returns to direct this Broadway transfer. The story, which moves between two time periods, also includes the family’s older relatives, who in 1944 managed to survive in occupied Paris. (Dec. 19-Feb. 4, Samuel J. Friedman Theater)From left, Nancy Robinette, Kenneth Tigar, Peyton Lusk and Ari Brand in “Prayer for the French Republic,” about a family grappling with antisemitism, at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater in Manhattan. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJanuaryILLINOIS This new dance-theater hybrid is based on Sufjan Stevens’s 2005 concept album “Illinois,” about people, places and events in the Prairie State. With a story by Jackie Sibblies Drury (“Fairview”) and choreography and direction by Justin Peck, the show had a premiere at the Fisher Center at Bard this past summer. (Jan. 12-28, Chicago Shakespeare Theater)THE CONNECTOR A talented up-and-coming journalist faces off with a diligent copy editor in this new musical, conceived and directed by Daisy Prince. The book is by Jonathan Marc Sherman and music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown (“Parade”), who also leads the band in this MCC Theater world premiere. (Jan. 12-Feb. 18, Newman Mills Theater)ENCORES! Don’t be fooled by the words “staged concert readings”; these productions, now in their 30th year, are more elaborate and moving than simple readings. This season includes “Once Upon a Mattress,” the 1959 musical comedy adapted from the fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” (Jan. 24-Feb. 4), directed by Lear deBessonet and starring Sutton Foster; “Jelly’s Last Jam,” the 1992 musical about the life of the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton (Feb. 21-March 3), directed by Robert O’Hara; and “Titanic,” a 1997 musical recounting of the famous maritime disaster (June 12-23), directed by Anne Kauffman. (New York City Center)FebruaryDOUBT: A PARABLE Tyne Daly and Liev Schreiber star in a revival of John Patrick Shanley’s powerful Tony- and Pulitzer Prize-winning drama about a Catholic school nun who suspects a priest of sexual abuse. Scott Ellis directs the Roundabout Theater Company production, the first Broadway revival of “Doubt” since the 2005 premiere. (Feb. 2-April 14, American Airlines Theater)THE NOTEBOOK Nicholas Sparks’s 1996 novel about romantic idealism and lifelong love comes to Broadway as a new musical (there was a screen adaptation in 2004 too, of course). The book is by Bekah Brunstetter, music and lyrics by Ingrid Michaelson, and Michael Greif and Schele Williams direct. “The Notebook” arrives in New York following a well-received premiere last year at Chicago Shakespeare Theater. (Performances begin Feb. 6, Gerald Schoenfeld Theater)REDWOOD Idina Menzel stars in a new musical about a seemingly successful businesswoman who suffers heartbreak and escapes her life and family to immerse herself in the redwoods of Northern California. Tina Landau wrote the book and directs this world premiere; the music is by Kate Diaz and lyrics by Diaz and Landau, with additional contributions from Menzel. (Feb. 13-March 17, La Jolla Playhouse)TEETH I can’t believe a team decided to adapt the 2007 cult classic film about a young woman with toothed genitalia. Talk about pushing boundaries. The film, about an evangelical Christian teenager whose body bites back, didn’t even get the greatest reviews, but I’m in. The book is by Anna K. Jacobs and Michael R. Jackson (“A Strange Loop”), with music by Jacobs and lyrics by Jackson. Sarah Benson (“Blasted”) directs. (Performances begin Feb. 21, Playwrights Horizons)MarchONE OF THE GOOD ONES A young Latina brings her boyfriend home to meet the parents in this new comedy by Gloria Calderón Kellett (“One Day at a Time” reboot); naturally biases come to the surface. The Pasadena Playhouse, winner of the 2023 regional theater Tony Award, commissioned this new play. (March 13-April 7, Pasadena Playhouse)PURPOSE A youngest son’s homecoming forces a politically powerful Black American family to grapple with some secrets, faith and radicalism in this new play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. Phylicia Rashad directs the world premiere for Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company, leading a cast including Alana Arenas, Glenn Davis and Jon Michael Hill. (March 14-April 21, Steppenwolf Theater)THE OUTSIDERS It’s the poor Greasers vs. the rich Socs in this new musical about angsty teenagers in 1960s Tulsa based on the S.E. Hinton novel (as well as Francis Ford Coppola’s 1983 film starring C. Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon and a bunch of other now-famous actors). The show, which had its premiere at La Jolla Playhouse earlier this year, features a book by Adam Rapp with Justin Levine and music and lyrics by the folk duo Jamestown Revival (Jonathan Clay and Zach Chance) and Levine. Danya Taymor directs. (Performances begin March 16, Bernard B. Jacobs Theater)“The Outsiders” will make its way to Broadway in the spring, following its premiere earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, Calif.Rich Soublet IISALLY & TOM A playwright and director (who are also a married couple) star in a play about the relationship between Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson — that is the setup of Suzan-Lori Parks’s new play about history, consent and power. The show, directed by Steve H. Broadnax III, is being presented in New York by the Public Theater in association with The Guthrie Theater, where it had its premiere last year. (March 28-April 28, Public Theater)April and beyondTHREE HOUSES A new musical by Dave Malloy (“Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812”) is always going to be a highlight. In his latest, Malloy employs book, music and lyrics to explore our post-pandemic world, bringing together three strangers after a long period of a time that was as communal as it was solitary. Annie Tippe directs. (April 30-June 9, Pershing Square Signature Center)MOTHER PLAY Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons and Celia Keenan-Bolger star in this new play by Paula Vogel (“How I Learned to Drive”). Vogel’s latest, set outside Washington, D.C., in 1962, is a study of the power of family bonds, focusing on a mother (Lange) with firm ideas about what her two teenage kids need to do to be successful. Tina Landau directs this Second Stage Theater premiere. (Performances begin April 2, Hayes Theater)ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE The “Succession” star Jeremy Strong takes the stage in Henrik Ibsen’s 1882 classic about a small-town doctor who tries to speak truth to power when he discovers the community’s water is tainted, and nearly ruins his life in the process. Sam Gold will direct this new production, an adaptation by the playwright Amy Herzog, whose revision of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” ran on Broadway this year. (Performances dates and theater to be announced)CABARET Eddie Redmayne starred in a recent, lauded London revival of this 1966 Kander and Ebb musical that shows us the Nazi rise to power through the lives of people in a Berlin nightclub. Redmayne is expected to reclaim the role of the Emcee when this new production, directed by Rebecca Frecknall, opens on Broadway. The book is by Joe Masteroff, music by Kander and lyrics by Ebb. (Previews begin in the spring, August Wilson Theater)GATSBY American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., is planning its own musical adaptation of the Fitzgerald novel, directed by Rachel Chavkin. The A.R.T. production will feature a score by Florence Welch (Florence + the Machine) and Thomas Bartlett (Doveman) with a book by Martyna Majok (“Cost of Living”). (May 25-July 21, 2024, American Repertory Theater) More