Some people use noir to mean a spare writing style; others, a type of plot that tends toward deceit and despair. But it’s maybe best described as a place where no one wants to end up, literally or metaphorically. It’s probably my favorite genre. I first got into noir through my father’s Black Lizard Press … Read more
AS A YOUNG woman in Mexico City, Gaby Muñoz, a 43-year-old performer known onstage as Chula the Clown, recalls, putting on makeup with her friends was always a fraught experience. “There was this whole idea of how to be a woman. They had this beautiful hair and these divine bodies, and I would look in … Read more
The first time Phylicia Rashad realized what she wanted to do with her life, she was making her way to the exit of a bustling auditorium. This was November 1959, in Houston, after a student music festival at the 9,000-seat Sam Houston Coliseum. Rashad, who was then Phylicia Allen, had been the festival’s mistress of … Read more
It was a Saturday night, and behind the graffiti-scrawled facade of Atelier Jolie, her downtown creative space and gallery, Angelina Jolie was in conversation with the artist Shirin Neshat. The topics were heady: the plight of refugees, the rights of women, how to wrench meaning from exile; the value of art in all that. Jolie, … Read more
“Y’all” is pleasant enough on its own, but to hear it more than a dozen times during a ballet class in New York City is a happy find. As in: “I want y’all to move a lot more. If you fall off your pirouette that is ohhh-kay.” That voice, that word, that Southern sound — … Read more
She has been electrocuted, hatcheted, murdered by a doll with her soul trapped inside it. She has also notched up an epic kill count of her own, decapitating one victim with a nail file, eviscerating another and melting one unfortunate’s face off with boiling water. And that was before she joined “The Real Housewives of … Read more
Every two years the nonprofit Performa Biennial commissions a global mix of established and up-and-coming visual artists to mount live spectacles all over New York City. Performa plans to announce this week that the eight premieres in this fall’s edition, Nov. 1-23, will include a musical written by the French artist Camille Henrot, whose oversize … Read more
In honoring Conan O’Brien at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on Sunday, a lineup of big-name comedians made the veteran late-night host and comedy fixture the main focus of roasting — but President Trump and his recent takeover of the Washington arts center quickly became the second-favorite target of the night. … Read more
Dive into dating. “The Bachelor” franchise has had a couple of explosive seasons in recent years, but for better or worse, Grant Ellis’s journey to find love has been pretty uneventful. With two women left vying for his attention, the three-hour finale will reveal who receives the final rose, if he gives one at all. … Read more
Just moments earlier, he was an infatuated new husband, and she his “gentle love.” Now, in Act III, Scene 3 of “Othello,” he vows to kill her. What has happened? Why does Othello, the great Black general, the savior of Venice in a war with the Ottomans, resolve to murder Desdemona, the pearl of the … Read more