They’ll deny it, but most college students who write plays harbor some secret fantastic hope that their new opus will be hailed as the arrival of a fresh new voice and open on Broadway to triumphant acclaim. It obviously never happens, except when it does: 28-year-old Lin-Manuel Miranda, originally from Washington Heights, conceived the musical In the Heights as a sophomore at Wesleyan. After graduating, the show, a hip hop and salsa-inflected homage to his......

Photograph of Fidel Castro from 2006, proving he was alive after intestinal surgery and wearing an Adidas tracksuit Cuban president Fidel Castro resigned his position after nearly 50 years of rule. The 81-year-old Castro has been battling illness since 2006, notably turning over power to his brother Raul and other ministers temporarily. Though he was still ruling after his 2006 surgery, Castro was little seen. Now it is expected that Castro's resignation positions Raul......

Last we checked in on Gwyneth Paltrow she was being wheeled into Mount Sinai Hospital for what ended up being a "gastrointestinal situation." Bouncing back quickly, she was at a UNICEF event last week where she dropped the bomb about a new bambino:“People who have a lot also often feel like they have a lot to give. I have a good friend who always says that if you’re a person of means at all, then......

For the past four decades, Richard Foreman has challenged and fascinated audiences with a deeply idiosyncratic aesthetic incorporating traces of vaudeville, Jungian philosophy, slapstick, surrealism and myriad other disparate sources to create what he calls the Ontological-Hysteric theater. His newest “theatrical machine”, called Deep Trance Behavior in Potatoland, is the third in a series of works that heavily emphasize video projection, this time shot on location in Japan. The live performance in Deep Trance has......

Kate Sullivan co-anchors CBS 2 News This Morning on WCBS along side Maurice DuBois every weekday morning. She is a native of New England, attended Notre Dame and came to channel 2 in April of 2006 from KATV in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is ranked #57 on the list of biggest television markets. We recently paid her a visit at the studio and asked her some questions. Did you always want to come to New......

An animal near and dear to the Gothamist heart has been embroiled in a Super Bowl controversy! This year's wardrobe malfunction is now the debate over an animated ad from SalesGenie.com that features pandas. During the commercials, two pandas discuss how to stay in business while speaking with Chinese (English-as-a-second-language) accents. There is also one panda who speaks in non-accented English. After the growing criticism (even College Humor dubbed it "the first commercial to......

Graphic from CNN It was an exciting night of Super Tuesday primary returns. In the Democratic contest, Hillary Clinton won eight states, including New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and California, but Obama won twelve - Illinois, Connecticut, Alabama, and Missouri - among them (New Mexico is still undecided as the two candidates are in a tie). The NY Times notes that since there were no decisive victories, "an electoral fight...will unfold for weeks to......

In early 2007, The New Yorker writer George Packer published an enthralling article about the desperate plight of Iraqis who had assisted the American effort in their country and were being hunted down as a result, with little or no U.S. protection. Betrayed, Packer's first play, is based on interviews conducted while in Iraq for the sixth time to research his article; the fictionalized account concerns three young Iraqis – two men and a woman......

In 2003, Sopranos star Michael Imperioli opened the intimate Studio Dante theater with his wife Victoria, who designed the elegantly formal space. In his capacity as director, producer and actor, Imperioli has been busy turning the theater into a well-regarded hotspot for new plays. The current production is a solo show by Glasgow native Russell Barr entitled Sisters, Such Devoted Sisters. In the largely autobiographical play, Barr plays Bernice, a drag queen who herself portrays......

The 21 Club opened on New Year’s Eve 1930 at 21 West 52nd Street as a speakeasy and restaurant. Legend has it that when powerful gossip columnist Walter Winchell was banned from the club, he ran an item wondering why the 21 Club had not yet been raided by Prohibition agents. (Winchell, of course, was the inspiration for the character of J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success, which features several scenes at 21.)......

MUSIC: The Stone has been bringing out the big names lately. Tonight Marc Ribot brings his solo act to the 8pm set, then follows himself up by delivering his experimental sounds with none other than Laurie Anderson. Avant-garde all the way. 8 and 10pm // The Stone [Ave C at E 2nd St] // $10 THEATER: In her multimedia musical theater piece North, Heather Christian, daughter of a go-go dancer and a blues musician, is......

The Brooklyn Academy of Music kicked off their fourth season of Eat Drink & Be Literary last night at the BAMcafé. The sold-out event revolved around author George Saunders, a craftsman of absurdly hilarious short story and essays that lovingly lift American consumerism and mass media to surreal heights. His laugh-out-loud short story Pastoralia, for instance, concerns a man and a woman portraying full-time troglodytes in a theme park exhibit. In 2006, Saunders, who has......

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of......

Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent yesterday in Oklahoma, discussing the state of politics today at a bipartisan political forum at the University of Oklahoma. Bloomberg lamented the way things are going these days:Government is dysfunctional. There is no collaboration and congeniality. There is no working together. No 'let's do what's right for this country.' I think there is no accountability today. Nobody is holding themselves accountable and to the standards of what they promised when they......

Native New Yorker Michael McKean is so identified with his ensemble work in Christopher Guest’s films – This is Spinal Tap, Best in Show, A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration – that it’s easy to forget that he created the iconic Leonard 'Lenny' Kosnowski in Laverne & Shirley some 32 years ago. What a long, strange career it’s been, with parts in almost-entirely forgotten films like Steven Spielberg’s 1941, hits like Clue and, in......

It’s a good thing there weren’t any broken bats in the room because Roger Clemens might have thrown one. Clemens was aggressive and sometimes bullying towards the assembled media at his press conference on Monday, repeating his vehement denials of illegally using steroids and HGH. The press conference was highlighted by a 17-minute taped conversation from last Friday night between Brian McNamee and Roger Clemens. In the call McNamee initially apologizes to Clemens telling......

Former mayor Rudy Giuliani is in Florida today, skipping the Iowa caucus that his team never counted on anyway. Still, his staffers are trying to remain relevant in Iowa by "contacting reporters, reminding them that even though the former New York mayor is lagging badly [in Iowa]...he will remain a player in the big states that hold their primaries in upcoming weeks." We kept Giuliani on the brain by reading Elizabeth Kolbert's New Yorker......

After Isiah Thomas said that he was still fit to coach the Knicks on Tuesday, we wondered if he was the most delusional man in the history of sports. That answer emerged yesterday as Thomas proclaimed that the Knicks will win a championship with him AND that he wants to leave a legacy. BWAHAHAHAHAHA. That's the best joke we'll be hearing all year. Seriously though, that smell of bullshit at Madison Square Garden isn't coming......

On Friday Gothamist visited the set of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Undead, a bizarre little indie shooting in the East Village. The movie is a sequel of sorts to Tom Stoppard’s hilarious existential comedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, but with “sexy vampires, the Holy Grail and Hamlet.” Jake Hoffman (son of Dustin), who appeared on some Arrested Development episodes, is a broke, frustrated ladies man who jumps at the chance to direct an......

Charles Mee is renowned for his distinctive approach to playwriting, which synthesizes disparate pre-existing texts into startlingly new theatrical creations bursting with music, dance, video and other inspired surprises. The superb Signature Theatre is now in the midst of their season devoted to his plays; the first production, Iphigenia 2.0, was a devastating depiction of America’s Iraq catastrophe as seen through the prism of classic Greek tragedy. The current show, Queens Boulevard, is a funny,......

Alex Rodriguez went on 60 Minutes last night and firmly denied that he used steroids. When asked if he had ever used steroids, HGH or any other performance-enhancing drug A-Rod firmly stated “no” and then explained, "I've never felt overmatched on the baseball field. I've always been a very strong, dominant position. And I felt that if I did my work as I've done since I was, you know, a rookie back in Seattle, I......

The New York Knicks are the most entertaining team in the NBA. Not because of the team's play on the court, but because of the soap-opera-like drama that takes place off the court. During Knicks practice yesterday, Isiah Thomas said that he's not walking away from the team he created. "If there's one thing that I hope all of you know about me, or will learn about me, I fight 'til I die. It's not......

When The Villager broke the news that fancy East Village cocktail lounge Death & Co. would be temporarily shut down by the State Liquor Authority, no one was as publicly dismayed as Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni. In a blog homage to the elegantly dark nightspot, Bruni gushed:There’s a drink on Death & Co.’s latest cocktail menu with bourbon and rye, along with Courvoisier and bitters. I may in fact have had it – or......

Tim Russert has invited all the presidential candidates to appear on Meet the Press, and yesterday former Mayor Rudy Giuliani appeared. We imagine many New Yorkers watching the program gnashed their teeth and/or swore at the TV (we happened to do both), as Giuliani tried to answer questions ranging from the straightforward (Giuliani's Iowa poll numbers, Russert asked, "Fifth place, is that a problem?") to the interesting (Russert on Giuliani's consulting business: "A Las......

Entertainment Weekly’s #1 “smartest” Hollywood player, Judd Apatow, says “it doesn’t look good” for an end to the writers’ strike any time soon. The well-connected catalyst behind hits like Knocked Up has told the Toronto Star that the studios and producers are prepared to dig in and crush the union’s demand for payment for Internet downloads and movie streaming, “which are expected to become a big part of the industry in the coming years.”It would......

Singer-songwriter Elvis Perkins has steadily cultivated a loyal following with his warm and thoughtful catalog of tunes. Subdued but soulful, and sometimes swinging, Perkins's debut album Ash Wednesday won critical raves for what Pitchfork called his "ability to merge instrumentation and lyricism to create a romantic's sense of atmosphere." Rolling Stone's review observed a somewhat sombre tone in the album and attributed it to Perkins's unique and rather traumatic family history: His father, actor Anthony......

Rudy Giuliani told the American public, via a sit-down with Katie Couric, that the story pointing out expenses for trips to the Hamptons - to see then-mistress Judi Nathan - were billed across a number of obscure city agencies was a "typical political hit job" and a "debate day dirty trick." He even called it a "false story," but Politco, the website that broke the story, pointed out neither Giuilani or his aides "have questioned......

Since the Subway Sweethearts are so over, we're turning our slightly interested, but mostly disaffected, heads towards the "Love Spammer". The mysterious man who has apparently approached every girl that walks by him on 6th Avenue with the same exact line. What gumption! His name is (coincidentally) Patrick, his line is asking where Union Square is, and he somehow manages to get some of these innocent passerby to come to his "art studio" for some......

Brian Cox is widely admired for commanding performances in films like The Bourne Identity, Rushmore and the original Hannibal Lecter in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. But like most actors from across the pond, the Scottish Cox originally built his reputation on decades of tireless stage work in theaters around the word. Until the stagehands’ strike shut down Broadway, he could be seen in the role of Max, a diehard British Marxist and Cambridge professor in Tom......

It's hard to say what enigmatic actor Crispin Glover is best known for: Back to the Future's George McFly? His role in Charlie's Angels? Almost kicking David Letterman in the head? If Glover has his way, he'll ultimately make his mark with his trilogy of films exploring the ways in which the monolithic American movie industry systematically excises various taboos from cinema. The first film in the series, the surreal non-narrative What Is It?, employed......