New York

9 Plays to Warm Up Winter in New York

Published

12 months ago

January 3, 2025

In New York, Broadway hits its winter lull in January, as Off Broadway and beyond burst into activity. If most of the tourists have gone home after the holidays, many of the visiting theater artists have arrived from all over, for the annual festivals that draw a tantalizing breadth of new work.

The venerable Under the Radar festival (Saturday through Jan. 19), now in its post-Public Theater era, is blossoming lushly again, with some of the city’s major companies participating. The Prototype Festival (Thursday through Jan. 19) has a full menu of interdisciplinary opera, while the Exponential Festival (through Feb. 2) centers local emerging experimental theater makers. There’s also the International Fringe Encore Series (through March 16), whose lineup includes “Gwyneth Goes Skiing,” one of two Gwyneth Paltrow-focused shows at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

It’s a bountiful month, on festival stages and elsewhere. Here are nine shows worth keeping in mind.

‘Blind Runner’

In this hourlong play by the Iranian writer-director Amir Reza Koohestani, a political prisoner in Tehran asks her husband to help a young woman, who was blinded in a protest, to run a marathon in Paris. The more dangerous race is the one they undertake from there: trying to cross the English Channel through the tunnel without being hit by a train. A two-hander performed in Persian with English supertitles, and presented with Arian Moayed’s company, Waterwell, it’s about surveillance, oppression and the insistent pursuit of freedom. The critic Michael Billington called it “mesmerizing.” Part of Under the Radar. (Saturday through Jan. 24, St. Ann’s Warehouse)

‘Wonderful Joe’

The Canadian puppet artist Ronnie Burkett is a marvel to watch, manipulating populous casts of marionettes all on his own. Too seldom seen in New York, he arrives this month for a brief run of his new play, which landed on The Globe and Mail’s top-10 list of 2024 shows. The story is about an old man, Joe, and his aged dog, Mister, who lose their home to gentrification and hit the streets, approaching misfortune as adventure. This is not puppetry for little ones, though; audience members must be 16 or older. Part of Under the Radar. (Tuesday through Jan. 12, Lincoln Center)

‘Dead as a Dodo’

The company Wakka Wakka (“The Immortal Jellyfish Girl”) descends into the underworld with this sparkling puppet piece about a pair of skeletons: a dodo and a boy. Their ancient bones are in the process of disintegrating. Then, out of nowhere, the bird grows a new bone, sprouts fresh feathers — and is apparently not dead as a dodo after all. Directed by Gwendolyn Warnock and Kirjan Waage, who wrote it with the ensemble, this show is recommended for ages 7 and up. But be warned: Wakka Wakka does not shy from darkness. Part of Under the Radar. (Wednesday through Feb. 9, Baruch Performing Arts Center)

‘Old Cock‘

American history and politics are Robert Schenkkan’s dramatic bailiwick. He won a Pulitzer Prize for “The Kentucky Cycle” and a Tony Award for “All the Way.” And Brian Cox starred as Lyndon B. Johnson in Schenkkan’s most recent Broadway production, “The Great Society.” For this satire, though, the playwright teams up with the Portuguese company Mala Voadora and the director Jorge Andrade to tell a distinctly Portuguese story, pitting the rooster that is a symbol of that country against António de Oliveira Salazar, the dictator who ruled it for decades. Part of Under the Radar. (Wednesday through Jan. 19, 59E59 Theaters)

‘Grief Camp’

Eliya Smith, a master of fine arts candidate at the University of Texas at Austin whose previous forays into New York theater include the intriguingly strange, fragmented elegy “Deadclass, Ohio,” makes her Off Broadway playwriting debut with this world premiere. Directed by the Obie Award winner Les Waters (“Dana H.”), it’s about a group of teenagers in a summer cabin in Hurt, Va., confronting loss. And, yes, even this camp has a resident guitarist. (Thursday through Feb. 16, Atlantic Theater Company)

‘Show/Boat: A River’

The experimental company Target Margin Theater does not pussyfoot when it comes to re-examining canonical classics. Adapted and directed by David Herskovits, this interpretation of “Show Boat” aims to reframe the Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II musical from 1927, about the entertainers and others aboard a riverboat on the Mississippi in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Groundbreaking in its time for its themes, including racism and interracial marriage, “Show Boat” has long been accused of being racist itself. The content advisory warns: “The production includes racially offensive language and incidents.” Part of Under the Radar. (Thursday through Jan. 26, N.Y.U. Skirball)

‘A Knock on the Roof’

The Golan Heights-based writer-performer Khawla Ibraheem plays a Gazan woman rehearsing what she will do if she hears a low-level warning bomb — a “knock on the roof” by the Israeli military — which would mean she had only minutes to evacuate her home before an airstrike escalated. Directed by the Obie winner Oliver Butler (“What the Constitution Means to Me”), who developed the play with Ibraheem, it won awards at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this summer. Part of Under the Radar, this production moves to the Royal Court Theater in London in February. (Jan. 10 through Feb. 16, New York Theater Workshop)

‘The Antiquities’

Jordan Harrison’s new play imagines a history of the Late Human Age as told by the “nonorganic beings” who will succeed us. Starting on the night in 1816 when Mary Shelley told her ghost story, it hops through time to 2240. Building on themes Harrison contemplated in “Marjorie Prime,” it’s about what it is to be human, and whether we’ve sown the seeds of our destruction. Produced with the Vineyard Theater in New York and the Goodman Theater in Chicago, where it is slated to run this spring. David Cromer and Caitlin Sullivan direct. (Jan. 11 through Feb. 23, Playwrights Horizons)

‘Vanya on Huron Street’

The writer-director Matthew Gasda, who first gained traction a few years back with his scenester play “Dimes Square,” now stages an adaptation of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya,” created with its actors over the past year. Bob Laine, a star of “Dimes Square” (which makes a fleeting return this month), plays the title role in “Vanya,” opposite fellow “Dimes Square” cast member Asli Mumtas as Vanya’s longed-for love interest, Yelena. (Jan. 14 through Feb. 4, Brooklyn Center for Theater Research)

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New York

Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2025

Published

3 days ago

December 12, 2025

Press Room

Vote For the Best Metropolitan Diary Entry of 2025

Every week since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has published stories by, and for, New Yorkers of all ages and eras (no matter where they live now): anecdotes and memories, quirky encounters and overheard snippets that reveal the city’s spirit and heart.

For the past four years, we’ve asked for your help picking the best Diary entry of the year. Now we’re asking again.

We’ve narrowed the field to the five finalists here. Read them and vote for your favorite. The author of the item that gets the most votes will receive a print of the illustration that accompanied it, signed by the artist, Agnes Lee.

The voting closes at 11:59 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 21. You can change your vote as many times as you’d like until then, but you may only pick one. Choose wisely.

Click “VOTE” to choose your favorite Metropolitan Diary entry of 2025, and come back on Sunday, Dec. 28, to see which one our readers picked as their favorite.

Two Stops

Published on Feb. 16

Dear Diary:

It was a drizzly June night in 2001. I was a young magazine editor and had just enjoyed what I thought was a very blissful second date — dinner, drinks, fabulous conversation — with our technology consultant at a restaurant in Manhattan.

I lived in Williamsburg at the time, and my date lived near Murray Hill, so we grabbed a cab and headed south on Second Avenue.

“Just let me out here,” my date said to the cabby at the corner of 25th Street.

We said our goodbyes, quick and shy, knowing that we would see each other at work the next day. I was giddy and probably grinning with happiness and hope.

“Oh boy,” the cabby said, shaking his head as we drove toward Brooklyn. “Very bad.”

“What do you mean?” I asked in horror.

“He doesn’t want you to know exactly where he lives,” the cabby said. “Not a good sign.”

I spent the rest of the cab ride in shock, revisiting every moment of the date.

Happily, it turned out that my instinct about it being a great date was right, and the cabby was wrong. Twenty-four years later, my date that night is my husband, and I know that if your stop is first, it’s polite to get out so the cab can continue in a straight line to the next stop.

— Ingrid Spencer

Ferry Farewell

Published on April 6

Dear Diary:

On a February afternoon, I met my cousins at the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Their spouses and several of our very-grown children were there too. I brought Prosecco, a candle, a small speaker to play music, photos and a poem.

We were there to recreate the wedding cruise of my mother, Monica, and my stepfather, Peter. They had gotten married at City Hall in August 1984. She was 61, and he, 71. It was her first marriage, and his fourth.

I was my mother’s witness that day. It was a late-in-life love story, and they were very happy. Peter died in 1996, at 82. My mother died last year. She was 100.

Peter’s ashes had waited a long time, but finally they were mingled with Monica’s. The two of them would ride the ferry a last time and then swirl together in the harbor forever. Cue the candles, bubbly, bagpipes and poems.

Two ferry workers approached us. We knew we were in trouble: Open containers and open flames were not allowed on the ferry.

My cousin’s husband, whispering, told the workers what we were doing and said we would be finished soon.

They walked off, and then returned. They said they had spoken to the captain, and they ushered us to the stern for some privacy. As the cup of ashes flew into the water, the ferry horn sounded two long blasts.

— Caitlin Margaret May

Unacceptable

Published on May 4

Dear Diary:

I went to a new bagel store in Brooklyn Heights with my son.

When it was my turn to order, I asked for a cinnamon raisin bagel with whitefish salad and a slice of red onion.

The man behind the counter looked up at me.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t do that.”

— Richie Powers

Teresa

Published on Sept. 14

Dear Diary:

It was February 2013. With a foot of snow expected, I left work early and drove from New Jersey warily as my wipers squeaked and snow and ice stuck to my windows.

I drove east on the Cross Bronx Expressway, which was tied up worse than usual. Trucks groaned on either side of my rattling Toyota. My fingers were cold. My toes were colder. Got to get home before it really comes down, I thought to myself.

By the time I got home to my little red bungalow a stone’s throw from the Throgs Neck Bridge, the snow was already up to my ankles.

Inside, I took off my gloves, hat, scarf, coat, sweater, pants and snow boots. The bed, still unmade, was inviting me. But first, I checked my messages.

There was one from Teresa, the 92-year-old widow on the corner.

“Call me,” she said, sounding desperate.

I looked toward the warm bed, but … Teresa. There was a storm outside, and she was alone.

On went the pants, the sweater, the coat, the scarf, the boots and the gloves, and then I went out the door.

The snow was six inches deep on the sidewalks, so I tottered on tire tracks in the middle of the street. The wind stung my face. When I got to the end of the block, I pounded on her door.

“Teresa!” I called. No answer. “Teresa!” I called again. I heard the TV blaring. Was she sprawled on the floor?

I went next door and called for Kathy.

“Teresa can’t answer the door,” I said. “Probably fell.”

Kathy had a key. In the corner of her neat living room, Teresa, in pink sweatpants and sweaters, was sitting curled in her armchair, head bent down and The Daily News in her lap.

I snapped off the TV.

Startled, she looked up.

“Kathy! Neal!” she said. “What’s a five-letter word for cabbage?”

— Neal Haiduck

Nice Place

Published on July 20

Dear Diary:

When I lived in Park Slope over 20 years ago, I once had to call an ambulance because of a sudden, violent case of food poisoning.

Two paramedics, a man and a woman, entered our third-floor walk-up with a portable chair. Strapping me in, the male medic quickly inserted an IV line into my arm.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his partner circling around and admiring the apartment.

“Nice place you’ve got here.” she said. “Do you own it?”

“Yeah,” I muttered, all but unconscious.

Once I was in the ambulance, she returned to her line of inquiry.

“Do you mind me asking how much you paid for your apartment?”

“$155,000,” I croaked.

“Wow! You must have bought during the recession.”

“Yeah” I said.

They dropped me off at Methodist Hospital, where I was tended to by a nurse as I struggled to stay lucid.

At some point, the same medic poked her head into the room with one last question:

“You wouldn’t be wanting to sell any time soon, would you?”

— Melinda DeRocker

Illustrations by Agnes Lee.

New York

They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

Published

1 week ago

December 8, 2025

Press Room

They Witness Deaths on the Tracks and Then Struggle to Get Help

‘Part of the job’

Edwin Guity was at the controls of a southbound D train last December, rolling through the Bronx, when suddenly someone was on the tracks in front of him.

He jammed on the emergency brake, but it was too late. The man had gone under the wheels.

Stumbling over words, Mr. Guity radioed the dispatcher and then did what the rules require of every train operator involved in such an incident. He got out of the cab and went looking for the person he had struck.

“I didn’t want to do it,” Mr. Guity said later. “But this is a part of the job.”

He found the man pinned beneath the third car. Paramedics pulled him out, but the man died at the hospital. After that, Mr. Guity wrestled with what to do next.

A 32-year-old who had once lived in a family shelter with his parents, he viewed the job as paying well and offering a rare chance at upward mobility. It also helped cover the costs of his family’s groceries and rent in the three-bedroom apartment they shared in Brooklyn.

But striking the man with the train had shaken him more than perhaps any other experience in his life, and the idea of returning to work left him feeling paralyzed.

Edwin Guity was prescribed exposure therapy after his train struck a man on the tracks.

Hundreds of train operators have found themselves in Mr. Guity’s position over the years.

And for just as long, there has been a path through the state workers’ compensation program to receiving substantive treatment to help them cope. But New York’s train operators say that their employer, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, has done too little to make them aware of that option.

After Mr. Guity’s incident, no official told him of that type of assistance, he said. Instead, they gave him the option of going back to work right away.

But Mr. Guity was lucky. He had a friend who had been through the same experience and who coached him on getting help — first through a six-week program and then, with the assistance of a lawyer, through an experienced specialist.

The specialist prescribed a six-month exposure therapy program to gradually reintroduce Mr. Guity to the subway.

His first day back at the controls of a passenger train was on Thanksgiving. Once again, he was driving on the D line — the same route he had been traveling on the day of the fatal accident.

Mr. Guity helps care for his 93-year-old grandmother, Juanita Guity.

M.T.A. representatives insisted that New York train operators involved in strikes are made aware of all options for getting treatment, but they declined to answer specific questions about how the agency ensures that drivers get the help they need.

In an interview, the president of the M.T.A. division that runs the subway, Demetrius Crichlow, said all train operators are fully briefed on the resources available to them during their job orientation.

“I really have faith in our process,” Mr. Crichlow said.

Still, other transit systems — all of which are smaller than New York’s — appear to do a better job of ensuring that operators like Mr. Guity take advantage of the services available to them, according to records and interviews.

An Uptick in Subway Strikes

A Times analysis shows that the incidents were on the rise in New York City’s system even as they were falling in all other American transit systems.

Source: Federal Transit Administration.

Note: Transit agencies report “Major Safety and Security Events” to the F.T.A.’s National Transit Database. The Times’s counts include incidents categorized as rail collisions with persons, plus assaults, homicides and attempted suicides with event descriptions mentioning a train strike. For assaults, The Times used an artificial intelligence model to identify relevant descriptions and then manually reviewed the results.

Bianca Pallaro/The New York Times

San Francisco’s system provides 24-hour access to licensed therapists through a third-party provider.

Los Angeles proactively reaches out to its operators on a regular basis to remind them of workers’ compensation options and other resources.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority has made it a goal to increase engagement with its employee assistance program.

The M.T.A. says it offers some version of most of these services.

But in interviews with more than two dozen subway operators who have been involved in train strikes, only one said he was aware of all those resources, and state records suggest most drivers of trains that strike people are not taking full advantage of them.

“It’s the M.T.A.’s responsibility to assist the employee both mentally and physically after these horrific events occur,” the president of the union that represents New York City transit workers, John V. Chiarello, said in a statement, “but it is a constant struggle trying to get the M.T.A. to do the right thing.”

New York

Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

Published

2 weeks ago

November 30, 2025

Press Room

Video: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

new video loaded: Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

transcript

Protesters Arrested After Trying to Block a Possible ICE Raid

Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

: [chanting] “ICE out of New York.”
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Nearly 200 protesters tried to block federal agents from leaving a parking garage in Lower Manhattan on Saturday. The confrontation appeared to prevent a possible ICE raid nearby, and led to violent clashes between the police and protesters.

By Jorge Mitssunaga

November 30, 2025