For many Broadway fans, this weekend is their Super Bowl. Yes, BroadwayCon is exploding in New York City at the Midtown Hilton where fans from all over the world will converge for three days of theatre heaven. So for people coming for the first time, what are some tips to help navigate the convention to get your money’s worth?

Aviva Sokolow-Shahar unassuming front does not pay homage to the powerhouse within. A Broadway influencer with an account called “Humans of Broadway,” with more than 65,200 followers and an activist for improvement in the theater community and an orthodox Jew.

Site-specific theater is not a new concept, but it’s ‘newer’ for some audiences in America. In the UK, immersive and site-specific theater is as ubiquitous as more traditional theatrical performances.  Much like the fringe circuit, these performances exemplify the concept that a performance only needs an engaging story. The fancy bells and whistles, the expensive scenery and costumes aren’t necessarily needed to make a great play or performance.  It always must be about the commitment to the story.

The word brave seems somewhat cliche and at the same time insufficient to describe Anna Snapp’s raw telling of this tumultuous time in her life.  All in all, it is an honest example of how we all go through some difficult and tiring experiences that shape us into who stands before an audience of our peers.

Larger bodies seem to be the last frontier in the push for greater inclusivity in casting. The topic is only beginning to surface in the theatre community. And this is why the casting in the current Broadway production of The Rose Tattoo rubs me the wrong way, like my thighs on a hot summer day.

In 2020, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s masterpiece Company will be opening on Broadway for the third time. As is usual with incarnations of this show, the creative team has assembled a cast chock full of incredible talent. However, as is also usual with incarnations of this show, the cast is almost all-white.

“Putting together a reading is nerve-wracking, at least it was for me. Fortunately, I had the resources of a small theatre company, including their space and a corral of actors.”

When Amar Ramasar takes his first bows as Bernardo, it will have been just a year and a half since he was fired from the New York City Ballet for sharing nude photos of female company members without their knowledge or consent. Yet, in typical professional theatre industry fashion, the powers-that-be decided to overlook egregious behavior and declare that talent trumps unethical behavior, no matter how vile.

So when Ramasar takes his first bows, I encourage you to give him the reception he deserves - boo him.

The Argentinian Prostitute Play puts an unknown, female-driven story on an off-Broadway stage.  It is a complex immigrant story, a feminist story, and one where women escape their male oppressor in a time where their independence is difficult to grasp on to. 

Upon entering the Helen Hayes Theatre to see “What the Constitution Means to Me”, I was met with a wall of white cis male faces symbolically relegating anyone falling outside of these parameters as an inherent outlier. Fortunately, this was not my experience walking into the 92Y to hear Heidi Schreck and Harvard professor Laurence Tribe discuss Schreck’s play as well as our nation’s complicated relationship with the titular document.

With performers on a press tour, it often feels like answers are rehearsed or over-thought, yet Kevin McDonald's were both exuberant and winding, his words spilling out in an over-caffeinated cascade of ideas and jokes. It turns out, McDonald has a lot to say, which is why it's perfect time for his new one-man show "Kevin McDonald ALIVE on 42nd Street" to premiere Off-Broadway.

Being able to keep a classic theater alive and intact in this manner shows the significance of theatre in this quickly evolving society that often put more value on new tech than on the classic arts.

The Empire Theater on 42nd Street, the most notable of these moves in recent history, now functions as an AMC movie theater a mere 170ft from where it once stood as a Broadway performance theater.