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      John Wilson Is Making the Least Predictable Show on TV

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      Listen to This ArticleAudio Recording by AudmTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.You might think that there’d be something uncanny about walking around New York with the filmmaker John Wilson, insofar as that’s what much of his HBO series, “How To With John Wilson,” consists of: We see footage he’s magpie’d from around the city while he muses, in his thoughtful-Muppet voice, along baggy themes. A morning stroll near his building, in Ridgewood, Queens, did not offer up anything with the kind of Wilsonian surreality the show specializes in — but our destination, a dollar store Wilson described as one of his favorites, did. He told me that he spends a lot of time in dollar stores when he has writer’s block. Nearby he pointed out a display of tools from Trisonic, a budget brand he investigated in a 2016 short film, before collecting the things he’d come for: sink strainers, a miniature folding chair, a toilet seat with a fluffy white Pomeranian printed on its lid. On the way to the checkout, he marveled at a product he said he’d already purchased from a different dollar store: a clock radio with a built-in fish tank far too tiny for a fish, a “cool dollar-store-only object.” The entire place suddenly felt like a tidy analogue of Wilson’s show: filled with things too mundane, too accidentally strange, too tacky or sad or flawed or lacking in panache, to actively star in anyone else’s account of the world.“How To,” now in its second season, is (nominally) a tutorial, offering advice on subjects like wine appreciation and parking, and (formally) a documentary, following its themes to a bowling-​ball factory or to interview a teenage real estate agent — and (ultimately) a form of memoir, a personal essay on video. But Wilson does magic with his staggering archive of street footage, all full of details that, if you encountered them yourself, you’d ponder for days: peculiar behaviors, dreamlike coincidences, strange omens and general “glitches in the Matrix,” as he puts it. Two workers mop a sidewalk in balletic unison; a man in a parked car idly sucks a woman’s toes; a woman places a live pigeon in a Duane Reade bag like a salad she’ll finish later. “Sharing your most intimate thoughts can be a disturbing and messy experience,” Wilson observes, as we watch a police officer pluck a sweater from a pool of blood on a subway floor. It would take a lot of footage to craft a timeline of romance from images of people publicly flirting, groping, proposing, marrying and bickering, and even more to end it with paramedics removing a corpse from an apartment building. Imagine the volume you’d need to be able to end it, as Wilson does, with paramedics dropping that body.There are highbrow precedents for Wilson’s close attention to the strange-and-ordinary, but what “How To” often resembles is the stuff you’d see posted to Twitter or TikTok in 20-second chunks, with glib captions about urban living or relatable moods. Wilson, who is 35, says that he loves seeing that kind of stuff online — “but I find it so tragic that it just kind of disappears.” He’d always felt compelled to build something larger from that material, lest it vanish into a “formless blob of content” or rot on an old hard drive. “The impulse to make the work like this to begin with,” he says, “was about giving a shape to all the stuff I was afraid of losing.”People talk about television’s capacity for novelistic depth, but surely the medium has more in common with pop music: We expect it to obey certain rhythms, resolve its motion in certain ways, pulse appealingly in the background even when our attention is divided. Part of what’s bewitching about “How To” is the extent to which it manages to replace those conventions with its own. “I get so bored watching something when I begin to realize the pattern,” Wilson tells me. Each of his episodes contains at least one moment in which you can scarcely believe the turn things have taken. The very first — “How To Make Small Talk,” which aired in October 2020 — leads Wilson from collecting a sweater from an ex to a vacation in Cancún, where he discovers MTV filming spring-break content; there he meets Chris, a weary-eyed party bro who eventually reveals that he came here in the wake of a friend’s suicide and is processing his grief in the least reflective environment imaginable. It’s one of a few remarkable turns in the episode. What’s more astonishing is that you might, watching it, have one of those rare TV experiences when you realize all the typical rhythms have fallen away, and what you’re watching has become unpredictable and alive — and somehow you’re not sure whether you’ve been watching it for 15 minutes or 45.Illustration by Nicolás Romero EscaladaWilson presents as having lived the life of a middle-class tristate Everyman, only marbled with an obsessiveness that pulls him in deeply weird directions. He was born in Queens, to city natives who soon moved the family to Long Island. One of the first things he told me was that he was grateful for his parents’ support, in part because he’d been “a bit of a tyrant — I was just very focused on making my little movies, growing up. Sometimes I would miss family vacations just to finish these pathetic little projects.” At one point, he says in the show, he made a movie every day. In a first-season episode he reveals a pile of notebooks in which he’s tracked everything he’s done each day for more than a decade, a grid of bullet points memorializing the four strips of bacon he ate or a train he took to Union Square.When he was young, he says in the second season’s “How To Remember Your Dreams,” his friends wouldn’t let him play Dungeons & Dragons with them, “because they said I wouldn’t take it seriously.” In response, he says, “I completely rejected fantasy from there on out. I started to only read books about real stuff and became obsessed with the authenticity of documentary filmmaking.” He struggled to fully enjoy fictional TV and was especially annoyed by things like dream sequences. (We see a shot of a barbershop named the Sopranos.) “While everyone else was going to Comic Con,” he says (as a man dressed like a wizard exits Washington Square Park), “I started going on court-TV shows to fill the void” (a 16-year-old Wilson appears, beaming, at the plaintiff’s table on an episode of “The People’s Court”).John Wilson in Season 2 of “How To With John Wilson,” a documentary series on HBO.Thomas Wilson/HBOHe studied film at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he made a documentary about balloon fetishists. Afterward, in the city, he worked a series of video-related jobs, each disillusioning in its own way: advertising, shooting infomercials, combing through a private investigator’s surveillance footage or serving as a production assistant for a reality show called “American Gypsy,” which offered “one of the first moments when I was like, this is all fake.”The impulse to hoard funny chunks of reality is reflected in Wilson’s apartment, the same rooms where he films his cat vomiting or his ruined risotto getting flushed down the toilet. (The toilet, he says, is a “very underrepresented image” on TV; he didn’t think it was weird to flush food down one until his show aired and people commented.) As he was showing me title cards from the series, which he paints on bits of newsprint, I realized that he was surrounded by stuff from the show: a chart of the “Mandela Effect” explored in the first season; a painting of a relatable amputee from the new “How To Throw Out Your Batteries”; some vintage Ray-O-Vacs from the same episode; he was even wearing a T-shirt from the parking convention in “How To Find a Spot.” A nearby shelf was stocked with those “books about real stuff,” including Studs Terkel with his interviews of ordinary Americans. Another of Wilson’s favorites is Susan Orlean’s “Saturday Night,” portraits of how various Americans spend the evening, from 1990. While hiring for his second season, Wilson kept mentioning wanting someone like Susan Orlean, until an HBO executive pointed out that they could probably just ask Susan Orlean, who came on board as a writer.Wilson’s show: filled with things too mundane, too accidentally strange, too tacky or sad or flawed or lacking in panache, to actively star in anyone else’s account of the world.Wilson told me about his love for the Austrian filmmaker Ulrich Seidl’s “In the Basement” — “just a bunch of very slow portraits of people in their basements,” each space devoted to some unique purpose. He showed me a clip from one of his favorite artists, George Kuchar: “He made this series called ‘The Weather Diaries,’ where he would go to this motel in the Midwest every year and try to document extreme weather but then just get really distracted.” He’s an admirer of Louis Theroux’s BBC documentaries, of “Heavy Metal Parking Lot,” of the many hits of close documentary attention to how bizarre ordinary life can be.“Everything is such a performance these days,” he said. It’s not as if Wilson is above using shtick to shape his show — his voice-over is a beautiful one, deploying sinus noises and uncomfortable trailings-off to keen effect. But he does seem to have a fear of his reality being distorted. While constructing the show’s first season, he says, “I would break down and cry in the edit, just because I felt all these hands trying to shape this thing that was so intensely personal to me.” Working in advertising, he’d seen how you could degrade and commercialize someone’s work. His show’s format, he hoped, was protection from that — at the very least, he joked, he wasn’t about to be recast with Ryan Seacrest.If you want to see an Edenic, before-the-fall depiction of American adults, look for clips of Groucho Marx’s “You Bet Your Life” television broadcasts. They began in 1950, when you could find guests who hadn’t yet absorbed the norms of televisual behavior, and would present themselves the same way they might have addressed a new neighbor or an Elks lodge. They seem touchingly pure, while Marx, waggling his brows in the midcentury equivalent of “that’s what she said” jokes, might as well be from the ’90s.The people Wilson features on his show occasionally remind me of those guests. It’s not that they don’t understand proper TV behavior; these days we learn that before addition and subtraction. But even successful efforts to replicate it tend to be helped along by editing; Wilson likes to say that on reality TV, if you kept any shot rolling just a few seconds longer, the illusion would be shattered. “How To” is constantly finding people who crackle to life in those extra seconds. It’s important, Wilson says, to see these unpolished portraits, “because a lot of the stuff we consume makes us feel like we’re not enough, sometimes. Because we’re not cheery enough or sharp enough.” He uses the word “representation” here — the representation of ordinary American ungainliness.The people he focuses on do trend toward those typically neglected by television. They’re middle-aged with brusque local accents or wealthy but not in a worldly way; they have some kind of sales patter or nutty theory you’d normally tune out; they’re nerdy or goony or oversharers. Sometimes they aren’t trying to meet the expectations of televisibility; sometimes they’re trying too hard, and the effort is coming out lopsided. Sometimes they’re absurdly televisable, as with one Vivian Koenig, a no-nonsense older woman seen giving her husband a theatrical “can’t you see I’m busy” gesture that puts America’s top comics to shame. If TV works like pop music, seeing these humans on it is as recklessly thrilling as seeing Harry Styles pluck a random dad from an arena crowd and hand him a microphone.It must be exciting, I told Wilson, when amid the countless conversations he records, he realizes he’s stumbled across a real live one.“Do you not feel that,” he asked, “when you talk to someone that is slowly revealing a cascading story to you, or they don’t always realize how interesting it is?”Most of us, I said, are busy, and cautious, and when a stranger starts opening up about, say, their anti-circumcision concept album, we politely vanish.“I do that, too, sometimes,” Wilson said, “when I don’t have the time or the camera.” But when he’s seeking this stuff out, “you can tell immediately if someone wants to be recorded or not. And in that moment, when they give you an inch and you continue talking to them, and you raise the camera a little higher, a little higher, you begin to realize that oh, my God, so many people have a story.” Often, he told me, he would film someone for an entire day before they even asked what it was for; they just wanted to be recorded.Holding the camera himself, he says, “changes the energy of the room.” Part of Wilson’s charm is that he almost never lets this energy provoke a cringe, except at his own expense. That reversal is the point of astonishment in “How To Cover Furniture,” a rumination on how we try to protect things from harm. At its climax, an interior designer answers Wilson’s questions with a friendly evisceration of his whole vibe: His camera, she says, is a protective mechanism, which he uses to connect with people from behind a barrier. She looks into its lens and offers advice that feels both kind and situationally hostile: “I would love for you, sometimes in your life, in your head, to be like, ‘I should put the camera down in this situation. I should just be John.’”From “How To Cover Furniture.”HBOIn his 2017 short “The Road to Magnasanti,” Wilson observes that Brooklyn’s new condos “will often decorate their halls with murals of the street, and photos of a New York they’re trying to replace — which may actually end up coming in handy, because soon enough that city will only exist in pictures.” Preserving the texture of that city is one of Wilson’s fixations. He chooses wider shots that can “basically also act as a photograph, if people need to go back and reference what one corner looked like.” His prepandemic footage, he says, is very likely “one of the most comprehensive archives of what New York looked like right before it changed forever.”And yet one of the main impressions you get, watching his show, is that New York could hypergentrify itself into one continuous A.T.M. vestibule, or sink under rising oceans, and somehow you’d still go outside and find its residents, over by the deposit envelopes or oyster beds, doing their casually deranged thing.Television offers us both a chance to learn about the world around us and a chance to imagine other worlds entirely, but an unsettling amount of programming somehow combines the worst of these possibilities. It takes us to exotic worlds but insists on filling them with familiar narratives; or else it purports to show us reality but makes that reality offensively artificial. Wilson’s quirks and anxieties — the vexed relationship with fiction, the terror of impermanence, the hunger to observe — seem to have channeled him toward a lovely alternative. He wanted to be able to make his own entertainment, he told me, because so much around him felt straitjacketed, “trying to make different versions of the same thing.” He seemed sincerely baffled by all the repetition. “I don’t know why everyone feels like they need to chase these archetypes a lot of the time,” he said. “I don’t know why people are so afraid of just, like, doing something new.”Nitsuh Abebe is a story editor for the magazine. He has previously written for the magazine about the film “The Irishman,” devil’s advocates, “grifters” and the musician Richard Dawson. More

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      in Music

      Overlooked No More: Ruth Polsky, Who Shaped New York’s Music Scene

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      She booked concerts at influential nightclubs in the 1980s, bringing exposure to up-and-coming artists like the Smiths and New Order.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.In the late 1970s and early ’80s, New York City’s nightclub scene was vibrant and daring, attracting an eclectic mix of creative types like artists, writers and musicians. It was also predominantly run by men.A notable exception was Ruth Polsky, who arranged concerts for cutting-edge rock artists, like the Smiths and New Order, at the influential Manhattan clubs Hurrah and Danceteria, whose regulars included Madonna and Jean-Michel Basquiat.Polsky had a knack for finding young talent, and helped both clubs earn a reputation for debuting new artists. Early in their careers, British bands like the Cure and the Specials played American shows at Hurrah, and Madonna performed one of her first-ever live shows at Danceteria, in 1982.Polsky’s choice of artists was diverse. She booked guitar-driven bands like Echo and the Bunnymen, influential minimalists like Young Marble Giants and challenging genre-busters like Einstürzende Neubauten and the Birthday Party, fronted by Nick Cave.There were potent, female-led groups, including Au Pairs, a politically-fuelled band from Birmingham, England, and kitschy Pulsallama from New York. She was an early supporter of Ru Paul, who performed with bands in the 1980s. (Ru Paul was occasionally referred to by a friend as Ru Polsky.)Polsky also arranged the United States premieres of alternative rock bands, many from the United Kingdom, including New Order, the Psychedelic Furs and Simple Minds, whose music eventually became mainstream soundtracks of the 1980s.“This is the place where anything goes,” Polsky said about Danceteria in a British television interview in the mid-1980s, “from oompah bands to Diamanda Galás to the funkiest thing happening on the street.”Her inclusive approach welcomed a clientele from all over the city, one that was racially diverse and of varying socioeconomic backgrounds. She turned her clubs into a hub for nonconformists, some of whom, like the actress Debi Mazar and the Beastie Boys, became famous.“It was kind of weirdos unite,” said Cynthia Sley, a member of Bush Tetras, whom Polsky booked several times. “Everybody who was an outcast from regular society would converge down there.”Her interactions with musicians went well beyond a professional obligation.“She was good at her job, and she had people power,” Bernard Sumner, a member of the band New Order, said in an interview. “She could handle people and charm them over.”And her dealings with performers didn’t end when the shows were over; she often invited them to her West Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians.Danceteria in 1980. The nightclub was a vibrant, daring scene that attracted creative types like artists, writers and musicians.Allan Tannenbaum“It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” said Hugo Burnham, a founding member of Gang of Four, a taut British band who played several shows that Polsky booked. “She was the punk rock Dorothy Parker.”Her style was enhanced by the sort of devotion a loyal friend would show. It was a “mixture of strength and a kind of sisterly, kind of motherly instinct,” said Johnny Marr, a former member of the Smiths, whose first American show was at Danceteria.“You could stay up until 4 o’clock in the morning with her,” he added, “but then she would make sure that you went out and had a decent breakfast and a warm coat.”Part of her drive came from frequently being the only woman in the room, interacting with managers, booking agents and club owners who were mostly men.“She wanted to show that she could make a difference as a woman in a very male-dominated world,” said Howard Thompson, a former record company executive and a friend of Polsky’s.Ruth Rachel Polsky was born on Dec. 5, 1954, in Toms River, N.J., to Louis and Bertha (Rudnick) Polsky. Her father was an egg distributor, her mother a homemaker. From a young age, Ruthie, as she was called, was an excellent student. By the time she was a teenager, her love of books and writing was matched only by an obsession with music. Her taste, even then, was precocious: In high school, she saw the Doors and Led Zeppelin play live.Polsky attended Clark University in Massachusetts, where she wrote about music for the school paper. She earned a degree in English literature in 1976 and began writing for Aquarian Weekly, an alternative newspaper in New Jersey, covering up-and-coming music as a contributing editor. She also worked at a magazine publishing company.In her writing, she championed innovative sounds and encouraged fans to support them.“Right now, people need to dance,” she wrote in Aquarian Weekly in 1979, “not the well-oiled, machine-like dancing of a bland, conformist half-decade, but the individualistic style of a crazy new era.”That year, she started booking bands at Hurrah, a club near Lincoln Center, alongside another well-known promoter, Jim Fouratt. Three years later, she moved to Danceteria, a multilevel space in the Flatiron district.Polsky, left, at a party 1982. After the club shows she had booked, she’d often invite the performers over to her Houston Street apartment to mingle with other musicians. “It was like a writers’ salon, but for punk rockers,” one musician said.Howard ThompsonBefore long her impact began reaching well beyond New York City. In 1981, Polsky took a handful of American bands, including Bush Tetras, to London to perform for the first time in England. The show was called “Taking Liberties From New York.”In the United States, bands were able to use the money they earned from the concerts Polsky had arranged to go on national tours, furthering their exposure and success.“People in Columbus and Madison and Seattle and Minneapolis could see these bands that normally wouldn’t be able to tour America,” said Robert Vickers, a former member of the Go-Betweens, an Australian band that played several shows arranged by Polsky. “It made it possible for these cutting-edge bands, the post-punk bands, that Americans in these smaller cities would never have seen except for Ruth.”By the summer of 1986, Ms. Polsky had started her own company, S.U.S.S. — for Solid United States Support, a nod to a colloquial British term for astutely figuring something out — to help artists from abroad navigate their careers in America. She was managing bands, too, and writing a memoir about her nightlife adventures.Polsky died on Sept. 7, 1986, when she was hit by an out-of-control taxi outside the Limelight, a Manhattan club where she had arranged for one of her clients, Certain General, to play that evening. She was 31.“It just seemed like such an awful waste,” Mr. Sumner said, “because she was on an upward trajectory.”As alternative music was gaining in popularity, that path might well have included working directly with superstars, her ultimate goal.“She had the smarts, she had the passion, she had the good taste and she had the nurturing qualities,” said Mr. Marr of the Smiths. “She was tough and really ticked all the boxes to have been really successful with a band.” More

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      in Music

      ‘Be Nice to Tourists’: New York’s Arts Scene Needs International Visitors

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      The United States now allows vaccinated international travelers into the country. It’s welcome news for arts institutions that lost revenue and cut jobs during the pandemic.When many readers in Toronto, London, Paris and Hong Kong open their newspapers on Monday, they will be greeted with a full-page advertisement from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.“We reopened in August 2020, but have been missing one critical thing — you, our international visitors,” the ad will say. “The Met is only The Met when it is being enjoyed daily by visitors from around the world.”The unusual display — museum officials say they do not believe they have ever run a global marketing campaign of this scope aimed at visitors so far from their Fifth Avenue home — is a signal of the thirst among New York arts institutions for foreign visitors to return. American borders reopened to international tourists this week for the first time since the early months of 2020. Their return represents another milestone in New York’s reopening, and few sectors of the city’s economy are more of a draw to foreign travelers — or lean more heavily on them for revenue — than the arts.“It’s crucial that we recover this segment,” said Chris Heywood, a vice president for global communications at the city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company. “Arts and culture are going to lead our recovery. That is the backbone.”Indeed, billions of dollars and many thousands of jobs are at stake. Employment in New York City’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector plummeted by 66 percent from December 2019 to December 2020, according to a state report. Even as things reopen, and workers are hired back, challenges remain: The tourism agency forecasts that visitor spending in 2021 will be about $24 billion, roughly half of what was spent in 2019.Few sectors of the city’s economy are more of a draw to foreign travelers — or lean more heavily on them for revenue — than the arts.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesInternational visitors typically make up about a fifth of the city’s visitors, but they tend to stay longer and spend more than domestic visitors: what they spend accounts for roughly half of all tourism dollars.On Broadway, tourists from outside the United States comprise about 15 percent of the audience during a traditional season, said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League. (There is a reason that the website of “The Lion King” is lined with flags indicating where to click for translations of its sales pitch in French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Chinese and Spanish.)The Metropolitan Opera said that international ticket sales have accounted for about 20 percent of total box office revenues during the last five seasons. And more than half of New York’s international visitors go visit an art gallery or museum during their trip, according to data from NYC & Company. One in four go to some kind of live performance when they are in the city — be it a concert, play, musical, a dance performance or opera.So New York has been missing them.“This is a big step forward,” said Victoria Bailey, the executive director of Theater Development Fund, the nonprofit organization that operates the TKTS booth, where about 70 percent of the tickets are bought by tourists and roughly half of those sales are to foreign travelers.Groups catering to tourists from overseas are gearing up. Broadway Inbound, a subsidiary of the Shubert Organization that is responsible for the wholesale distribution of show tickets, recently restarted a marketing program that helps highlight more than 20 partnering shows to group buyers, tour operators and the travel industry.The Metropolitan Museum of Art has moved some of its marketing dollars overseas in part because the it has hit something of a “ceiling” on attendance, Ken Weine, a spokesman for museum, said. Before the pandemic, international travelers accounted for about a third of the museum’s visitors; these days, the number of people who come to the museum daily is about half of what it was before March of 2020.The newspaper ad from the Metropolitan Museum of Art that will run in Toronto, London, Paris and Hong Kong. Museum officials say they do not believe they have ever run a marketing campaign of this scope aimed at visitors so far from their Fifth Avenue home.Metropolitan Museum of ArtMusicals like “The Phantom of the Opera,” which have leveraged the interest of tourists who want to see a long-running show that they are familiar with, have purposefully invested advertising dollars during this holiday season and placed their displays in high-traffic, touristy areas. That is why there is an imposing three-dimensional statue of the Phantom’s mask strategically plopped next to the TKTS booth and outdoor advertising for “Chicago” all over Times Square.Foreign travelers have not yet begun buying tickets to “Phantom” in material numbers, said Aaron Lustbader, the general manager of the show. But officials hope that will change soon.“Typically, January and February are two of the very weakest months of the year and this has certainly been true for ‘Phantom,’” he said. “Our hope is that due to pent-up demand of nearly two years and assuming it would take most people at least a few weeks to put together plans, that the city sees a far higher number of international tourists in these otherwise lean months.”Barry Weissler, a producer of “Chicago,” said the show typically partners with online travel sites to serve ads and try to spark the interest of inbound, foreign tourists ahead of their flights to New York.And for their part, tour operators and ticket vendors overseas say they have started to see their New York business bounce back — somewhat.Eric Lang, who runs an Amsterdam-based travel and information website that helps vacationers plan trips to New York, said his ticket sales in October were up to about 5 percent of normal. This month, sales are closer to 15 to 20 percent of what he had come to expect for this period, before the pandemic. “Growth from zero,” he said.Lee Burns, a product manager for AttractionTickets.com, which sells event tickets to people and travel agents in the United Kingdom, said he thought the timing of the American reopening might have come “a bit too late” to capitalize on the 2021 holiday season. So far, he said, his company’s New York sales are at only about 10 percent of what is normal for the holiday season.“People are booking now for next Thanksgiving and next Christmas,” he said. Nonetheless, he said he and his team are trying to figure out if there is any sort of deal they can offer for this Black Friday.Those who come to New York from overseas will need to navigate and adhere to the rules and vaccine requirements set by the state, the city and individual venues.They will find that many venues and presenters, including Broadway theaters, the Met Opera, the New York Philharmonic, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall, will admit travelers who show proof of having received one of the vaccines approved by W.H.O. — a list that includes AstraZeneca, Sinopharm and Sinovac, vaccines that have not been authorized for use in the United States.To help theatergoers prepare for their visit to “Come From Away,” the show recently released a health and safety video outlining what patrons should expect when they show up at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater. An official with Broadway Inbound said it had touched base with the creators of the video to help ensure it would be educational to both domestic and foreign visitors.Heywood, meantime, had a plea for New Yorkers already here. “Be nice to tourists,” he said. “This is important.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘I Think We’re Cousins?’: ‘Ain’t Too Proud’ Performers Realize Link

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      A post in a family Facebook group led an actor and a musician in the Broadway musical to discover that they are distant cousins.Before the curtain comes down each night on “Ain’t Too Proud,” the Broadway jukebox musical that follows the rise of the R&B group the Temptations, the cast turns around in unison and lowers down to one knee as the lights go up to illuminate the show’s 17-piece band.After playing more than two hours of Motown classics, the guitarists, the drummers and the string section wave as the audience applauds.During the curtain call on Feb. 28, 2020, the day Matt Manuel made his Broadway debut in the flashy role of David Ruffin, he bowed alone, then with his fellow Temptations, all wearing gleaming white jackets and ties. When he turned and knelt down to give the musicians the spotlight, he thought to himself vaguely that the violist had cool hair.Two days later, he received a message from that violist, Andrew Griffin, who had been in the band since the show opened in 2019.“So…I think we’re cousins…?” Griffin wrote to Manuel in an Instagram message.Manuel responded with the requisite number of exclamation points for such a discovery: “Omg yes we are cousins!!!!!!!!”In fact, they’re second cousins once removed, according to the family tree recently drawn by Griffin’s mother. (She’s enthusiastic about genealogy.) Manuel’s great-grandmother is Griffin’s grandfather’s older sister, with 14 years separating the two siblings.Manuel made his Broadway debut as David Ruffin in the show just weeks before the shutdown.Julieta CervantesThe realization was a delight and a comfort to Manuel, 29, who, in January 2020, arrived in New York from Detroit after he had been cast as Ruffin, replacing Ephraim Sykes. It was a daunting move across the country: He left quickly with only two suitcases — the rest of his stuff remained in his parents’ garage — and it was his first time living independently, away from his family.He had always heard that Griffin’s side of the family eagerly supported their relatives however they could.“Wherever you’re at, they will take you up in a heartbeat,” said Manuel, whose professional acting debut was playing Marvin Gaye on tour in “Motown: The Musical.” “If you’ve got family, you’ve got everything that you need.”Griffin, 35, who grew up in Pittsburgh and moved to New York about six years ago to advance his music career, was shocked to learn that a new leading member in “Ain’t Too Proud” was a blood relative.“I knew nothing of him — absolutely nothing,” Griffin said. “I saw him onstage whenever they turn around and the musicians wave. That’s about it.”If it wasn’t for a video of the curtain call on Feb. 28, they might never have realized it. Manuel and his family had missed an earlier reunion, and the one scheduled for 2020 was canceled because of the pandemic.In February 2020, Manuel’s mother, Amiesha Williams, traveled to New York City to see his debut, and the day after, she posted a YouTube video of the curtain call on a family Facebook page used to plan reunions.“You know how proud moms are,” Manuel said, “they just brag.”The post garnered clapping emojis, encouraging remarks and then a comment from Griffin’s mother, Linda, pointing out that her son was in the center of the video playing the viola. She didn’t realize who Matt Manuel was and why Williams had posted the video of him in the first place.“How do you know him?” Linda Griffin wrote in the comments section.Williams replied the next day: “I’m sorry I fell asleep so I’m just seeing this. Matthew is my son.”As comments flew back and forth about the specifics of their genealogy, Manuel was onstage crooning into the microphone as Ruffin, the original lead voice of “My Girl.” Griffin was not far away, playing his viola beneath the stage. When Manuel returned to his dressing room, he saw a text from his mother: He had a cousin in the band and he should go meet him.“I’m like, ‘What does he look like?’” Manuel said. “And she’s just like, ‘His name is Drew and he plays the viola.’”Outside the stage door, Manuel signed autographs for a throng of giddy Broadway fans, glancing back every so often to look for the viola player. When Griffin walked out, the two introduced themselves tentatively. “I think we’re cousins,” Griffin said. Two fans holding a poster stared at them blankly, Manuel recalled.The pair did the natural thing to do when you discover a family member: schedule a lunch date. They made plans for the following week, but soon, the airborne virus that had been spreading across the world had producers worrying. Then, on March 12, less than two weeks after Manuel’s debut, the industry shut down.“Maybe we should postpone,” Griffin remembered saying.During the lockdown, Griffin fled to North Carolina to hunker down with his girlfriend and her family; Manuel went back to Detroit, thinking the pause in the production would be a good opportunity to drive back the rest of his stuff in a U-Haul.The shutdown stretched on and on, keeping performers like Griffin and Manuel out of a regular job and perpetually wondering when they would get a return date. Griffin spent time composing, something he didn’t always have time to do with a full performance schedule. Manuel grieved the loss of a relative, spent time with family and tried to reconnect with the part of himself that wasn’t a performer, always eager to entertain those around him.The cousins fell out of touch, their discovery outside of the stage door seeming like another era, where fans mingled freely with actors after exiting a tightly packed theater.But last month, the show took back its place at the Imperial Theater. The initial days were all work: Manuel, who lives in Harlem, tried to get his body accustomed to doing back flips, splits and microphone tricks for seven shows a week. Griffin, who lives in Williamsburg, had four days to sit back in front of his music stand with the rest of the band and get songs like “You’re My Everything” and “Get Ready” back into their muscle memory.“Going down the street for the first day of work, I started to well up a little bit,” Griffin said. “It was like nothing had really changed — there were still jokes and stuff written on our stands.”They hadn’t gotten a moment to spend time together until late last month, when a member of the show’s production staff had a birthday party and they were both invited.“Now let’s pick up where we left of,” Manuel said. “Actually go eat a meal and talk and, you know, gossip.” More

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      New York’s Irish Arts Center Upgrades to a ‘Flagship Hub’

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      Irish Arts Center, a New York nonprofit devoted to championing the culture of Ireland and Irish Americans, is finally moving into a home as big as its aspirations.The organization, founded in the East Village in 1972, has been operating for decades out of a onetime tenement in Hell’s Kitchen. Now, wrapping up a pandemic-delayed construction project first set in motion 15 years ago, the center is moving just around the corner after converting a longtime tire shop into a state-of-the-art performance facility where it aims, starting in December, to present theater, dance, music, visual art and more.Ireland “still has these incredibly deep roots to its own artistic legacy, and it still fundamentally feels like a land of poets in its sensibility and its storytelling,” said Aidan Connolly, the center’s executive director. But, he added, “New Yorkers might not know how exciting the emerging contemporary dance scene in Ireland is; they might not know how Ireland’s cultural evolution in the last 20 years has yielded an exciting, dynamic, more diverse generation of musical artists, and on and on.”The centerpiece of the new building is a flexible theater space that can seat up to 199 people.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesFabric banners and black curtains can be used for acoustic purposes, modifying the way sound is heard in the theater.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe theater’s walls are covered in red oak plywood panels that have been stained and textured.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe four-story, 21,700-square-foot building on 11th Avenue, which retains its original brick repair shop facade, houses, at its center, a black box theater space that has 14 approved configurations, the largest of which will seat 199 people. The theater is a major technological upgrade for the center, with retractable seating, flexible lighting, sound, and set rigging, an overhead wire tension grid and the capacity for digital capture and streaming.On the ground floor, the building has a cafe, with blackened steel panels and a walnut bar, which will be run by Ardesia, a local wine bar. And above and below the theater are rooms that can be used for educational and community programs, as well as rehearsals and meetings.The $60 million building was designed by Davis Brody Bond, a New York-based architecture firm, in consultation with Ireland’s state architect. There are nods both to the industrial history of Hell’s Kitchen, and the Irish mission of the center — lots of brick and steel, and also lots of places to sit and talk, because the center sees hospitality as an Irish virtue.Irish Arts Center is led by the executive director Aidan Connolly, center, along with Rachael Gilkey, left, its programming director, and Pauline Turley, the vice chair.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThere are Irish touches throughout the building — most conspicuously, the main stairway will feature lines of Irish poetry on the risers, but also the signs throughout the building are in Irish as well as English, in a font created in collaboration with the Irish typographer Bobby Tannam. Much of the furniture is from an Irish craft furniture designer, Orior, which makes pieces “injected with Irish character.”The center plans to keep its offices in its existing building, on West 51st Street; at some point, it plans to redo that building and resume using its 99-seat auditorium for smaller-scale performances. Cybert Tire, which previously occupied the 11th Avenue site, by the way, still exists — founded in 1916, it claims to be the city’s oldest tire shop, and has simply moved around the corner, onto West 52nd Street.Irish Arts Center began its life as an Off Off Broadway theater that produced its own work, but over the last 15 years it has embraced a broader portfolio; Connolly often says he likes to think of the center’s programming as a hybrid of the 92nd Street Y and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Irish culture is represented in New York in any variety of ways — there are periodically Irish writers on Broadway, for example, and the Irish Repertory Theater presents often acclaimed productions of Irish drama, but Connolly argues that, until now, there has been “no flagship hub to celebrate and promote Irish culture in a way that is commensurate with its impact,” akin to institutions like the French Institute Alliance Française or Scandinavia House.The organization remains modestly sized, at least by the scale of New York City nonprofits, with an anticipated $7 million budget for its first year in the new building. But it has been growing at a steady clip — its operating budget was only $690,000 in 2006-07.Above the theater is a wire tension grid for lighting, sound and other technical equipment.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe lighting is meant to be easily adjustable.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe building also has infrastructure to allow video capture, broadcast and streaming.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn a demonstration of the expanded work made possible by the new theater, the center plans next summer to stage its first musical, an adaptation of the 2012 film “Good Vibrations,” about the Belfast punk rock scene. The first year will also include a production of “The Same,” a play by Enda Walsh about two women in a psychiatric institution, and “Chekhov’s First Play,” via Dead Centre, an Irish/English theater company.The center will open with a monthlong run by the Irish-French cabaret singer Camille O’Sullivan, who said she would fondly remember the old building, where she performed several times.“They’re family, and they’re friends,” O’Sullivan said, “and they’re very much giving a home to people like myself.”There will also be dance programs from Oona Doherty; Mufutau Yusuf; and Sean Curran with Darrah Carr. And there will be an array of music, poetry, readings and visual art.There are 31.5 million Americans of Irish ancestry, but the center has a broad view of Irishness, and although its donor base is made up primarily of Irish Americans, its audience is varied.The theater retained the brick facade of the tire shop that previously occupied the site. Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesMiranda Driscoll, an Irish curator, arranged an opening exhibition of visual art for the building.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesThe structure’s building materials are primarily wood, brick, glass and steel.Vincent Tullo for The New York Times“They have a really inclusive way of thinking about the culture of the Irish diaspora,” said Georgiana Pickett, an arts consultant who staged several collaborations with the center when she was executive director of the Baryshnikov Arts Center. “They’ve done a lot to ensure that they’re linking the histories of the arts that come through Ireland to many other places in the world, and that’s allowed them to include Appalachian music, new immigrant communities in Ireland, people of Irish descent that collaborate with other cultures — it’s the Irish Arts Center, but has a really diverse definition of what that means.”The project is primarily funded by government largess in both the United States and Ireland — New York City, which has supported multiple arts institutions over time, set aside $37 million for the project.“This amazing building is so timely,” said Gonzalo Casals, the city’s cultural affairs commissioner, “because it brings down the barriers among disciplines, and offers an in-depth understanding of Irish culture.”The Irish government contributed $9 million, and the state of New York gave $5 million. Private donors contributed $15 million. That’s $66 million raised thus far — the money not spent on the new building will be used in part to support the operating budget.The Irish government continues to support the center through Culture Ireland, which promotes Irish culture around the world as part of an effort announced in 2018 to double the country’s global footprint. Irish Arts Center has been a significant beneficiary of that effort; Christine Sisk, the director of Culture Ireland, said her agency is making a “big investment” in the center.“New York is an amazing city for the arts, and we also see it as a gateway to the rest of the U.S.,” said Sisk, who said she expected that Irish artists whose work is presented at the center could then more easily tour the United States. “It’s a shop window, and a guaranteed space, to present Irish arts.” More

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      Behind the 'Boo!': How Haunted House Actors Scare Guests

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      SurfacingWhen ‘Boo!’ Is Only the BeginningWhat does it take to scare the candy corn out of someone? Performers at two of New York’s hallowed haunted attractions explain the secrets behind the shocks.Keenan Loughney, who portrays a nurse at Headless Horseman in Ulster Park, N.Y.Angie Hansen knows what she wants: energy, professionalism, a gift for ad-lib. “And then somebody that really likes to scare people,” she said cheerfully.As the creative director of Blood Manor, a 10,000-square-foot haunted house nestled inside a TriBeCa skyscraper, Hansen assembles 60 performers annually, many of them Blood Manor veterans. She sorts the newcomers into appropriate roles — clowns, killers, corpse brides, victims weeping silicone wounds. In just three or four days of rehearsal, she teaches them to terrify the thousand or so guests who enter Blood Manor, a Halloween staple since 2005, each weekend evening.About two hours north, at Headless Horseman in Ulster Park, N.Y., David Berman leads acting workshops for seasonal scare actors. Because it takes more than ghoulish makeup and vibrating vocal cords to make ticket holders scream.“To just jump out of a closet and just yell, it doesn’t do anything,” Berman said.Nicole Borbone plays a reanimated corpse at Blood Manor.Such haunts — the industry term for a variety of haunted attractions — became popular in the 1980s. Spencer Terry, the president of the Haunted Attractions Association, a trade group, estimates that there are about 1,800 professional haunts in the United States this year. While horror now thrives in sundry forms, these destinations offer something entirely immersive, a 360-degree experience in which audiences can star in their worst nightmares.William Burton is Blood Manor’s mortician.Even as professional attractions move toward more extreme effects — animatronic monsters, plummeting elevators, rippling walls — most still depend on the potential of the human body alone. (Well, the human body and some terrifying face painting.) “Yes, you can scare folks with jump scares, or even puffs of air,” said Beth Kattelman, a professor of performance at Ohio State University. “But what people really remember are the characters, the special things that folks do.”Before Michael Jubie opened Headless Horseman nearly 30 years ago, he worked as a commander of a mounted police unit in Kingston, N.Y. He still projects extreme stoicism, and yet, his actors regularly frighten him. “Oh, I’ve been scared,” he said. “Oh, yes.”Shamia Diaz, a Blood Manor regular, plays the Bride, an asylum escapee. In the weeks leading up to Halloween, we spoke to some of the actors of Blood Manor, amid the hustle of New York City, and Headless Horseman — which operates escape rooms, haunted houses and a very scary corn maze on 65 acres a half-hour drive from the nearest train station — about how they make those scares happen.While some haunted houses use trained actors, most fill their ranks with enthusiastic amateurs. Before the pandemic, applicants came in for interviews and auditions. Now they typically audition remotely, scaring the camera. What makes a great haunt actor? “There has to be at least a little something off about you,” said Will Szigethy, a longtime Headless Horseman actor. But not too off. Most haunts run background checks.Scott Taylor, a packaging engineer for Avon by day, has worked at Headless Horseman for 10 years, with nine of them spent playing a very unsettling clown. “You can tell the people whose heart is in it,” he said. “And you can tell the people that are here just for a paycheck. Those people don’t usually last very long.”Scott Taylor has worked at Headless Horseman for 10 years, playing a clown for most of that time.Veterans take first-timers under their wings, helping them improve their personae and teaching them to scream without shredding their throats. (The trick: Howl from the diaphragm.) Over the course of a season, newcomers will refine characters based on their environment — a morgue, a cemetery, a sideshow — finding distinctive ways to move, to scream, to wield a chain saw or an ax. They will also find their rhythms: a horror variant on comic timing, with a shriek in place of a punchline.Shamia Diaz, a Blood Manor regular, plays the Bride, an asylum escapee. In her blood-smeared hands, the role involves a lot of shaking, a lot of screaming, a lot of encouraging attendees to read scripture from the book of Satan. “You have to find your own mojo, your own vibe,” she said. “Because once you find what works for you, you’re unstoppable.”Jose Torres as Jack, Blood Manor’s masked serial killer.For Dominique Peres, who joined Headless Horseman five years ago as a painfully shy teenager, mojo meant creating a character called Jacket, an exuberant take on a psycho killer. “Jacket is crazy, has an ax, runs rampant, likes candy, likes to make friends,” she said.Some performers specialize in jump scares, popping out from unexpected corners. Others prefer more psychological scares, sidling up to ticket holders, whispering in their ears. (Before Covid-19, some haunts allowed performers to do more than just whisper, but Blood Manor and Headless Horseman have always maintained strict no-contact policies.) Others are more versatile. Amateur psychologists, they vary the scare depending on the mood in the room.Jose Torres, who plays Jack, Blood Manor’s masked serial killer, adjusts his attitude for each new group. “It’s just a connected energy that comes between you and the people walking through,” Torres said.David Berman leads acting workshops at Headless Horseman.That energy, however connected, can be difficult to maintain. While a stage actor will perform once or twice per day, a haunt actor may replay the same scene 10 times an hour, for six to eight hours at a stretch. “It is physically strenuous,” said Meagan Donovan, who oversees a haunted house on the Headless Horseman property. “You’re swinging an ax around all night or just hiding in a small space, being loud.”But the adrenaline rush of eliciting scream after scream keeps performers swinging. “It’s better than a roller coaster,” said Hansen, who spent years playing a Blood Manor victim. “It’s better than sex. It’s better than then the best meal you’ve ever had. The feeling of scaring somebody is what makes you want to do it again and again and again.”Ketara Adolphus plays a character named Stressedgod at Blood Manor.This brand of acting rewards performers in other ways, too. Putting on the makeup and picking up a fake weapon allows them a sense of freedom and disinhibition they may not feel otherwise. “For me, the experience has been very empowering,” Diaz said.Many also treat haunt acting as a form of stress relief. “They use it as a kind of therapy,” said Berman, who plays a gross-out character named Dewey Tewey at Headless Horseman. “You can’t, in your regular day job, tell somebody you’re going to rip their arms and legs off and toss them into the woods.”As Reff, Hector Vega Toro prowls the depths of Blood Manor.Every so often an actor goes too far, continuing to scare a ticket holder who is obviously already petrified. But most know when to quit or even how to lend a helping, blood-covered hand, scooting people out of a room without breaking character. Besides, the best scares, many performers said, are the ones they really have to work for.Nicole Borbone and William Burton, recent college graduates, perform a scene set in Blood Manor’s sinew-stained morgue. They begin with a jump scare, then move into a sequence in which Borbone’s corpse suddenly rises from the table and begs attendees to help her. Burton likes to lock eyes with the customers who look like they’d be tough to scare; Borbone tends to lunge for them. Usually she gets the reaction she wants.“When I make a grown man scream and fall on his knees,” she said, “I’ve done my job.”Dominique Peres performs as Jacket, an exuberant psycho killer.Surfacing is a column that explores the intersection of art and life, produced by Alicia DeSantis, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick. More

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      Chad Kimball Sues ‘Come From Away’ Over His Termination

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      The actor, who is Christian, said in an interview he was let go because of his religious beliefs. The show’s producers declined to comment.A former lead actor in the musical “Come From Away” has sued the show’s producers, claiming that he was let go from the production because of his Christian beliefs.Chad Kimball, 45, a Tony-nominated performer who had been with the show since before its transfer to Broadway in 2017, filed suit this week in New York State Supreme Court, alleging that the production had violated his rights under New York City’s Human Rights Law.In the lawsuit, which was first reported by The New York Post, Kimball claimed he was terminated “wholly or partly” because of his religious beliefs. According to the lawsuit, one of the show’s producers allegedly told him there were concerns about supposed connections between his faith and Christian conservatives connected with the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.Matt Polk, a spokesman for the show, which reopened on Sept. 21, said the producers declined to comment.Kimball, a Broadway veteran described in the lawsuit as “a devout and practicing Christian,” had stirred controversy in November 2020 when he announced on Twitter that he would “respectfully disobey” Washington State’s coronavirus-related restrictions on religious services, including rules forbidding even masked worshipers from singing. At the time, he was living in Seattle, his hometown.“Respectfully, I will never allow a Governor, or anyone, to stop me from SINGING, let alone sing in worship to my God,” Kimball, who had previously had Covid-19, wrote.That statement drew strong criticism from some in the theater industry, including a co-star, Sharon Wheatley, who responded, “I respectfully totally and completely disagree with you.”Kimball said in an interview Friday that it was hurtful to have the initial reaction to his social media posts subsequently “snowball” into discussion of him as a “conservative Christian” whose beliefs were somehow connected with the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he described as “an event I wasn’t even involved with.”“I don’t talk about politics at all,” he said. “The only thing they really know about me for sure is that I’m a Christian.”Before the social media exchanges, the lawsuit said, Kimball, who had appeared in more than 1,000 performances of the show before the shutdown in March 2020, had never received any reprimand or complaint, and had never been told by anyone connected with the show that he “made them feel unsafe.” But subsequently, he “was forced to explain and defend his Nov. 15, 2020, tweet to Defendants’ agents and employees,” the suit claims.Then, on Jan. 18, the suit said, he was contacted by a producer, Susan Frost, who allegedly informed him that there was conversation around his “conservative Christian” faith and his “freedom to believe.”Frost, the suit claims, also mentioned the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and said that there were concerns that “the events at the Capitol, Josh Hawley and the conservative Christian movement were tied together and implied a connection” between Kimball’s faith and the “ideas and actions” of that day.On Jan. 22, according to the lawsuit, Frost told Kimball he would not be invited back to the production, which he was told “needed to focus on bringing the show back together and ensure people’s safety.”At the suggestion of Frost, the suit said, he spoke with the show’s director, Christopher Ashley, on Feb. 2, and asked him if he had been let go because of disagreements with colleagues or his religious beliefs. “In response,” the lawsuit continues, Ashley “stated that it was ‘everything.’”As a result, according to the lawsuit, Kimball was “made to suffer significant economic and professional harm,” as well as “emotional and physical pain and suffering.” The lawsuit is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and lost wages, as well as legal costs.Kimball was nominated for a Tony Award in 2010 for his role in the musical “Memphis.” While he has always been a Christian, the lawsuit said, it was following his recovery from an injury while in the show that he started becoming “more outspoken regarding his beliefs.”In the interview, a joint one with his lawyer, Lawrence Spasojevich of the firm Aidala, Bertuna & Kamins, Kimball said he had an inkling that his position with the show might be in jeopardy as early as December 2020 when he contacted the show’s producers to inform them of the tweets and the reaction to them.Kimball, who said he was currently not working, added that negative reactions to his beliefs weren’t new to him. “What was new to me was the idea that a religious belief could be used as fodder for deciding I wasn’t worthy of being a part of the show,” he said. More

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      in Movies

      What to Do for Halloween in New York City

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      The Village Halloween Parade is back. Haunted houses have reopened. And we’ve rounded up movies that are not-so scary or are downright horrifying.Recently, a friend told me she hated horror movies. Make that horror movie. Turns out she’d only seen one, and didn’t make it through: “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”Renouncing horror after watching one of its most notoriously grisly films through trembling fingers is like watching “The Sopranos” and swearing off New Jersey. Take it from a horror movie fan: Being scared doesn’t have to be that scary.In time for Halloween, here’s a selection of in-person experiences around New York City, as well as movies to view at home, to get the just right amount of fright, whether you’re a curious newbie or a seasoned aficionado.Creepy CuddlyFor families with kids.Through Oct. 31, the Metrograph Theater is offering digital streams of a 45-minute compilation of Halloween-themed cartoons from the collection of the archivist Tommy José Stathes, with live-action and animated shorts featuring Felix the Cat and Koko the Clown. (It’s recommended for ages 8 and up.) On Halloween, head to the Film Forum for an 11 a.m. screening of the original “Frankenstein” (1931).“Frankenstein,” from 1931, will be screened at Film Forum on Oct. 31.Universal Studios Home EntertainmentOn Saturday, costume contests for all ages are set at the Bronx Halloween Parade, where the entertainment lineup includes the Marching Cobras, a drum line; Mazarte, a Mexican dance company; and the comedian Sasha Merci, the parade’s host. The Halloween Kids Spooky Cruise (Oct. 23, 30 and 31) offers panoramic views of the Manhattan skyline and — you’ve been warned — unlimited Halloween-themed candies. BAMboo! at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (Oct. 31) is a free block party with goody bags that kids can grab from decorated car trunks.For families with little ones, steer clear of the movie “Pumpkinhead” and go for the real thing. Pumpkin Point transforms Nolan Park on Governors Island into a family-friendly pumpkin patch; for a donation, you can take home a pumpkin of your own. Decker Farm on Staten Island offers pumpkin carving and a corn maze. Bring your own bag and load up on pumpkins or explore the Amazing Maize Maze at the Queens County Farm, which will host trick or treating with farm animals on Halloween.Finish your day with “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown,” streaming on AppleTV+.Easily EerieFor horror beginners.After being canceled last year because of the coronavirus, New York City’s Village Halloween Parade is back on Oct. 31. Now in its 48th year, the parade runs up Sixth Avenue from Spring Street to 16th Street, starting at 7 p.m. and finishing around 11 p.m. The grand marshal is the comedian and YouTube star Randy Rainbow. If you can’t participate in person, the parade will be telecast live on NY1 starting at 8 p.m.“Universal Horror,” a new eight-film collection on the Criterion Channel, spotlights some of the legendary movie monsters, like Frankenstein and the Mummy, that originated at Universal Pictures in the 1930s. Highlights include the longer and racier Spanish-language version of the original “Dracula” (1931), and Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the grisly, Poe-inspired revenge tale “The Raven” (1935).Bela Lugosi in “Dracula,” from 1931. Universal PicturesGhost stories, true crime — and interior design? That’s “Dark House,” a new podcast from House Beautiful magazine and the first podcast in Hearst’s 125-year history. The five-episode series is free, and explores the architectural elements of spooky houses around the country. One episode is about a house in the Hollywood Hills — where Jean Harlow and Sharon Tate’s boyfriend Jay Sebring once lived — that may be cursed.The Brooklyn Brainery offers digital and in-person (and affordable!) classes for adults who want to learn about the scary side of history. Options include a “Murder at the Seaport” walking tour in Manhattan (Oct. 23 for $25) and a virtual class on witch hunts (Oct. 27 for $7)..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Moderately MacabreFor a scare that won’t keep you up at night.The guided NYC Ghosts tour stops at said-to-be haunted locations across New York, including the Jefferson Market Library, which once served as a women’s prison, and a Revivalist Greek brownstone in the West Village that’s known as the House of Death, where the ghost of Mark Twain, who lived there for a year, allegedly roams. For chilly nights, stay at home and read “Yours Cruelly, Elvira,” the dishy new memoir from Elvira (a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson), the longtime horror movie hostess and entrepreneur. In it, she details her rise from a Kansas childhood to Las Vegas showgirl to beloved horror personality. But she also spills the beans on her chance encounter with Elvis and her relationship with a woman. Stream the horror comedy “Elvira, Mistress of the Dark” (1998) on Amazon Prime.The Alamo Drafthouse Lower Manhattan opened this month beneath the landmark 28 Liberty Street building in the Financial District. “Lights of New York,” a series of movies set in and about the city, will include the religious paranoia thriller “God Told Me To” (1976) and the gritty vampire film “The Addiction” (1995), for a week starting Oct. 29. For horror fans on a budget, the new streaming service Kino Cult offers a free deep dive into cinematic weirdness. The collection includes bizarro films by the Oscar-winner Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth”) and the Italian master Mario Bava (“Black Sabbath”), as well as themed collections like ’70s and ’80s Flashback (“The Pit”) and Drive-In Favorites (“Beware! The Blob”).Truly TerrifyingFor those who like their horror pitch black.“The Dark House” in the Hudson Valley, inspired by W.W. Jacobs’s ghost story “The Toll House,” is an immersive theatrical experience that takes place entirely in the dark. Written and directed by Timothy Haskell, the story is told through a headset you wear as you navigate the darkened space, where sounds, tastes and smells emerge around you. The show continues through Oct. 31 at the Philipstown Depot Theater in Garrison, N.Y. The Dark House in the Hudson Valley is an immersive theatrical experience that takes place in the dark.Russ RowlandSpectacle Theater, the offbeat Brooklyn microcinema, has reopened its doors, and its Halloween offerings are as delightfully bizarre as ever. On Halloween night the theater is showing “Cemetery of Terror” (1985), a Mexican film about teenagers who bring a serial killer back from the dead.The creative team behind Blood Manor, the ultra-scary haunted house in Lower Manhattan (through Nov. 6), takes a culinary turn this year with Nightmare on Beech Street, a “haunted dining experience” in Long Beach on Long Island. Costumed actors will interact with diners, who will choose from a menu that includes Witches Hair Pasta, the Death Wish-key cocktail and the Brain Hemorrhage, a chocolate brain-shaped dessert. The venue is open until 2 a.m. through Oct. 31. More