Any clue about William Shakespeare’s life usually excites scholars, but one piece of evidence had been neglected for decades. Now, a new analysis of that overlooked document seems to shatter a longstanding narrative about the Bard’s bad marriage. Shakespeare was 18 in 1582 when he married Anne Hathaway, the daughter of a family friend in…
WASHINGTON — Sometime soon — Sunday maybe, perhaps Thursday — Alex Ovechkin will reach the summit. In a career jammed with consequential goals, none will be remembered more than the next one. We’ll talk about it then, and we’ll do it in the grandest of terms, because that’s how it all works. To say he’s…
The hottest play on Broadway was written more than 400 years ago. Demand to see Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal face off in Shakespeare’s “Othello” is so strong that many center orchestra seats are selling for $921, helping the show break box office records. During its first week of previews, its average ticket price was…
Conventional wisdom says the theater is slow to react to current events, but dramatists like Ayad Akhtar (“McNeal”) have clamored lately to tell stories about artificial intelligence, sometimes using it to help with the writing. Matthew Gasda’s new play “Doomers” is an addition to that pack. Inspired by the 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, the…
By a campfire on the shore of Lake Geneva in 1816, five friends take up the challenge of telling the scariest story. Mary Shelley is clearly the winner, with her cautionary tale (soon to be a novel) of an obsessed doctor whose electrified monster achieves sentience, then runs wild. So freaked out is her pal…
“If you get me to 20,000 likes, I’ll do something amazing.” That is what the performance artist Louise Orwin promises audiences in “Famehungry,” a TikTok-set existential crisis about being an entertainer in the digital age. Presented before a live crowd, it is also simultaneously livestreamed on the app. In Wednesday’s show, Orwin performed tasks inspired…
If there is anything most entertainers master, it’s how to juggle gigs. In New York City, they may have sidelines in real estate or hospitality. In Las Vegas, their day jobs are, well, also in entertainment. “That’s the beautiful thing about Vegas — you’re going to find people who do everything,” said Katie Marie Jones,…
The teacher needed teenagers for her summer acting class in Kyiv, which would end with the performance of an original play. “This is a course for happy children, free in their thoughts and dreams,” the instructor, Olesia Korzhenevska, wrote on Facebook last spring. It was hard to find happy teenagers in Ukraine. The pandemic and…