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grandhotelabyss · 4 years ago

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My Year in Books, 2020

Introduction

I don’t want to waste your time, dear reader, with a list of all the books I read in 2020—you can track that on my Goodreads, if you care—nor even a list of all the books I wrote about on my site. But I would like to take the occasion of New Year’s Eve to revisit some of my favorites. Please click below for the list. Happy New Year!

1. Jane Austen, Sense and Sensibility

Reading old books can help us understand the present better than reading new books, which are often too caught up in today’s doxa to offer a true perspective on today’s world. Austen’s first major novel is a good example; what can help us understand class and gender better than this 19th-century narrative? As I wrote:

Marianne Dashwood (or Lily Briscoe or Sula Peace) has triumphed: today, she issues defenses of desire on podcasts and Patreon and posts pictures of her swollen ankle and putrid tonsils for the fetishists among her OnlyFans subscribers. If Elinor still functions as her conscience, she does so in the administrative bureaus of the corporation and university—human resources, diversity and equity—where her job is to intercept and interdict threats to the untrammeled unfolding of Marianne’s consciousness. This metamorphosis has undoubtedly liberated the individual from the stifling convention of bourgeois domesticity, but is the place where it has installed her now, where she must sell soul and body by algorithm just to stay alive, any less a prison?

I thought I’d get cancelled for that one, but nobody seemed to notice. Here’s another chance, cancel crew!

2. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron

Like everyone else and for obvious reasons, I read The Decameron in 2020, but it didn’t make much of an impression, besides its historical interest. This might be the problem:

The late medieval personae and settings are different from the postmodern ones: clergy in place of technocrats, princes in place of corporations, and a network of land and sea routes where fiberoptic cables now run. But Boccaccio himself, in writing a comic prose work that has, according to the scholar Robert Harrison, been called “a mercantile epic,” did much to prepare the way for our world.

I’m sure this is a mix of presentism and philistinism talking, but a literary culture divided between Dante and Boccaccio would seem to have something wrong with it. The best writers earlier and later—Homer and Sophocles, Shakespeare and Joyce—seem capable of synthesizing what in Dante’s divine comedy and Boccaccio’s human comedy are held forcibly, artificially apart.

3. James Miller, The Passion of Michel Foucault

I review a scandalous biography of the theorist who may or may not have made our contemporary world:

His identification of a new oppressed class, and his observation of oppressive power structures working in precisely those institutions meant in the modern period to correct the “barbarities” of ages past with their torture chambers and ships of fools, would change the western left forever. The “abnormal” subject (rather than the worker) was now the protagonist of history, power (rather than exploitation) the mechanism of oppression, and modern scientific and liberal institutions (rather than capitalist economics) the enemy. Foucault’s anti-psychiatry stance is now in abeyance—a recent viral Tweet promised that “under socialism all men will be sent to therapy,” an old chestnut of Stalinist terror that redefines political dissent as mental illness in an instance of exactly the thinking Foucault meant to challenge. But the drift of his thought, toward the emancipation of western reason’s underside, still defines for many what it means to be on the left today. If the left once promised, per the Internationale, “reason in revolt,” Foucault offered unreason in revolt.

4. Plato, The Republic

A much misunderstood book, in my view:

Socrates clearly describes the defects of the soul’s non-rational divisions; by contrast, reason, ordained as it is to apprehend the perfection of the idea, is presumably faultless. Yet I would suggest that Socrates’s forgetting that divine inspiration is the source of poiesis, even as he utters poetry in praise of reason, is a flaw. If the fault of the soul’s appetitive part is an insatiable quest for more and more physical satisfaction, and if the fault of the soul’s spirited part is a desire for victory or conquest without limit, then might we not theorize a parallel danger in the soul’s rational part? And doesn’t Socrates exemplify this danger when he follows the autonomous logic of his argument past all experience, including the poet’s experience of divine inspiration?

What if we took up the hint and patterned contemporary novels on Platonic dialogues?

5. Umberto Eco, Foucault’s Pendulum

I have mixed to negative feelings about this cult classic, but I had fun introducing its conspiracy-laden plot with some paranoia of my own:

Finally, canvassing the Wikipedia entry on the novel before I read it, I found that among the endless occult paraphernalia Eco packed into the text was “[a]n obscure one-time reference to the fictional Cthulhu cult through a quote from The Satanic Rituals—‘I’a Cthulhu! I’a S’ha-t’n!’. The words closed a ritual composed by Michael Aquino.” Aquino was a high-ranking Satanist and a psychological warfare expert for the U.S. military; he co-wrote the notorious Pentagon position paper “From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory”. Understandably, he recurs again and again in the annals of American conspiracy theory: the politically paranoid on the right abominate him for his Satanism, while those on the left loathe his anticommunist and militarist commitments. Through a vector I’m not at liberty to disclose, I am only two of the proverbial degrees of separation away from Aquino, though I have obviously never met him or had anything to do with him or even discussed him with anyone who has. I imagine conspiracy theorists will promulgate this curious fact widely on the Internet to discredit me whenever I finally become as famous as I deserve to be, considering that I am one of America’s great writers. (Megalomania and paranoia: like horse and carriage.)

And no, I still won’t tell you how I’m connected to Michael Aquino.

6. Thomas Mann, Mario and the Magician

Writing on this classic semi-anti-fascist novella, I wondered whether “anti-” is always the solution:

It is an old problem: how not to become what we behold, how not to transform into one’s enemy—how to be sure anti-fascism doesn’t become fully indistinct from fascism itself. Given our psychology, with its tendencies toward projective and dichotomous thinking, and given political realities, which often make violent confrontation seem fated, this may be an insoluble problem. Perhaps every anti-[X] is doomed by the occult law of similarities to become [X]; perhaps our time is better spent in simply not being [X] rather than defining ourselves against and therefore by [X].

7. Cormac McCarthy, The Orchard Keeper

I took the opportunity of McCarthy’s preternaturally eloquent first novel to clarify a point of political economy:

As I insist on reminding everyone from time to time, even at the risk of repeating myself, Lenin argues in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (a book I don’t claim to understand in every particular) that the monopolization of capital is the necessary and final stage of history before communism. Monopoly represents “a new social order, a transitional one from complete free competition to complete socialisation”—i.e., let the corporations do the work of centralizing production so that the biggest corporate body of all, the state, can easily assume the economy’s commanding heights. Marxism, therefore, is not really a challenger to neoliberalism but only the loyal opposition. Hence the chief theme of McCarthy’s corpus: how the inherent flaws of humanity and nature, those organic defaults that make the marketplace a necessary evil in both serving and curbing self-interest, immeasurably worsen when magnified to the scale of organized planetary warfare in the very name of their correction by rationality—or, as a pair of unorthodox Marxists called it, the dialectic of enlightenment.

Conclusion

Speaking of the economy, though, my most important literary event of 2020 was the publication of my novella, The Quarantine of St. Sebastian House, my attempt to turn contingent crisis into permanent art. With that, I leave you. Let’s hope the poet had it wrong when he said, “Nothing changes on New Year’s Day.”

#literature #literary criticism #philosophy #critical theory #literary theory #jane austen #giovanni boccaccio #plato #michel foucault #umberto eco #thomas mann #cormac mccarthy

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dillydedalus · 6 years ago

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what i read in march

several antigones & some other stuff

call me zebra, azareen van der vliet oloomi

oh boy. i really wanted to like this one, but uh. nah. so this book is about zebra, a young iranian-american from a lineage of ‘autodidacts, anarchists and atheists’, still traumatised by her childhood experience as a refugee (incl. her mother’s death on route). when her father dies years later, zebra decides to retrace the route of her exile thru barcelona, turkey, and back to iran. this sounds great! the beginning is good! but zebra is a quixotic figure (don quixote is unsubtly flagged as THE intertext several times), delusional about her own importance, obsessed with some kind of great literary mission and obnoxious & condescending & egotistic as all fuck (she looks down on students but treats her realisation that like, intertextuality is a thing, as this grand revelation when like..... we been knew since Lit. Theory 101) - and this is intentional & part of the quixotic thing & in general i approve of abrasive & bristly & difficult female characters BUT i expected there to be a gradual process of realisation where she sees that a) maybe her entirely male lineage of geniuses ain’t all that, c) her mission is uh.... incomprehensible. instead, once she reaches spain, she gets bogged down in endless pretentious bullshit and a #toxic relationship that takes up way too much space. knowing that all of that is likely intentional doesn’t.... make it good. also the writing is pretty overwrought for the most part & not even your narrator’s voice being Like That excuses plain bad writing, like the absurd overuse of ‘intone’ and ‘pose’ as dialogue tags. i see the potential and i see the point & i liked some of it but uh. not good. 2/5, regretfully, generously

in the distance, hernan diaz

i don’t really go for westerns or man vs wilderness stories but damn i’m impressed. despite the violence & deprivation and sheer amount of gross shit, this story of a swedish immigrant getting lost in the american west for decades remains at its core so human, so tender, so sad (honestly this book is SO SAD, yet sometimes oddly hopeful), so evocative of isolation, loneliness, and the desire for human connection. 4/5

notes on a thesis, tiphaine rivière (tr. from french)

god, if i ever considered doing a phd i sure don’t anymore. this is a short graphic novel about a young woman’s descent into academic hell while writing her dissertation about labyrinths in kafka. it’s funny, the art is expressive and fanciful, and it is incredibly relateable if you’ve ever tried to actually write your brilliant, glorious, intricately constructed argument down, battled uni administration or had a panic attack over how to phrase a harmless email to a prof. Academia: Not Even Once. 3.5/5

red mars, kim stanley robinson

this is a very long hard sci-fi novel about mars colonisation & terraforming, discussing the ethics of terraforming, the potentials of a truly ‘martian’ culture, and how capitalism will inevitably fuck everything up, including outer space. all of this is up my alley and i did really like the first half (early colonisation efforts), but the 2nd half (beginning of terraforming, lots of politicking) was a slog - i liked reading about how terraforming was going, but the rest was just bloated, scattered and confusing. also there’s a tedious love triangle the whole time. 2/5

dragon keeper (rain wild chronicles #1), robin hobb

i love robin hobb she really can write a whole 500+ page book of set-up, characterisation and politicking and make it WORK. anyway, this has disabled dragons, a quest for mystical city, lots of rain wilds weirdness, a dragon scholar in an unhappy marriage, liveships, a sweet dummy romance, and uh... a lil penpalship between two messenger bird keepers? not much happens but it’s so NICE & so much is going to happen. also althea & brashen & malta turned up & i screamed. 3.5/5

season of migration to the north, tayeb salih (tr. from arabic)

this is a seminal work of post-colonial arabic literature, a haunting tale of the impact of colonialisation, especially of cultural hegemony in the education system, the disturbing dynamics of orientalism and sex, and village life in a modernising post-colonial sudan. it’s important, it’s well-written, it’ll make you think, but fair warning, there is a lot of violence against women - it has a point but still uh... wow. 3.5/5

dune, frank herbert

SOMETIMES.... BOOKS THAT ARE CONSIDERED MASTERWORKS OF THEIR GENRE.... ARE WORSE. so much worse. the writing in this is atrocious (”his voice was charged with unspeakable adjectives”), herbert somehow manages to make court intrigue and plotting UNBELIEVABLY DULL and sure, it was the 60s, but i’m p sure people knew imperialism was bad in the 60s! the main character, the eugenically-engineered chosen one or whatever, literally spends years among the oppressed & resisting natives of a planet ruled by a space!empire and at the end he’s like ‘i own this planet bc imperialism is Good Actually’. emotionally neglecting/abusing your wife, who you (!!!) decided (!!!) to marry for political reasons bc you’d rather marry your gf is also Good Actually (cosigned by the protag’s mother....) the worldbuilding is influential for the genre, sure w/e, but mainly notable for there just.... being a lot of it, the whole mythology-science makes No Goddamn Sense, all around this is just Bad. Bad. 0.5/5 i hope the Really Big Worms eat everyone

dragon haven (rain wild chronicles #2), robin hobb

this healed my soul after toxic exposure to dune. anyway w/o spoilers: everyone is very much In Their Feelings (including me) and there’s a lot of Romance and Internal Conflict and Feelings Drama and Complicated Relationships and Group Dynamics and also dragons, which are really like very big, very haughty cats who can speak, and a flood and a living river barge with a mind of his own (love u tarman!). it’s still slow and languid but so so good. also: several people in this have to be told that People Are Gay, Steven, including Sedric, who is himself Gay People. 4/5

an unkindness of ghosts, solomon rivers

super interesting scifi story set on a generation ship with a radically stratified society in which the predominantly black lowerdeckers are oppressed and exploited by the predominantly white upperdeckers, mixed in with a lot of Gender Stuff (the lowerdeckers seem to have a much less stable and binary gender system than the upperdeckers) and neuroatypicality. it’s conceptually rich and full of potential, but just doesn’t quite stick the landing when it comes to the plot. 3/5

sanatorium under the sign of the hourglass, bruno schulz (tr. from polish)

more dreamy surreal short stories (ish?). i didn’t like this collection quite as much as the amazing street of crocodiles, but they are still really good, even tho you never quite know what is going on. featuring flights of birds, people turning into insects, thoughts about seasons and time, fireman pupae stuck in the chimney, and the continuing weird fixation on adela the maid. 3.5/5

angela merkel ist hitlers tocher, christian alt & christian schiffer

a fun & accessible guide to conspiracy theories, focusing on the current situation in germany and the current boom in conspiracy theories, but also including some historical notes. i wish it had been a bit less fun & flippant and more in-depth and detailed bc it really is quite shallow at points, but oh well. also yes the title does indeed translate to ‘angela merkel is hitler’s daughter’ so. yes. 2.5/5

the midwich cuckoos, john wyndham

fun lil scifi story in which almost all women in sleepy village midwich are suddenly pregnant, all at the same time. the resulting children, predictably, are strange, creepy, and possibly a threat to humanity. i get that it was written in the 50s but it is strange to read a book where almost all women, and only women, are affected by A Thing, but all the main characters are men & no one tells the women ‘hey we think it’s xenogenesis’ - like realistically 80% of women affected went to the Neighbourhood Lady Who Takes Care of These Things like ‘hello, one (1) abortion please’ and the plot just ended there. i still liked it tho! 3/5

antigone project

antigone, the original bitch, by sophocles (tr. by fagles)

god antigone really is That Bitch. that’s all i have to say. 4.5/5

antigone, That Bitch but in french, jean anouilh

the Nazi-occupied france antigone. loved the meta commentary on what tragedy is and how antigone has to step into the Role of Antigone, which will kill her “but there’s nothing she can do. her name is antigone and she will have to play her part through to the end”. i didn’t really like (esp. given the ~historical context) the choice to make creon much more sympathetic, trying to save antigone’s life from the beginning. hmm. 3.5/5

antigonick, anne carson

look, antigone really is That Bitch and you know what? so is anne carson. best thing i’ve read so far this year, don’t ask me about it or i’ll yell the task of the translator of antigone at you. 5/5

home fire, kamila shamsie

honestly i really wanted to like this bc politically it’s on point and an anti-islamophobia antigone sounds amazing, but it just doesn’t succeed as a book/adaption. it spends way too much time in build-up/backstory (the play’s plot only starts in the second half of the book!), waaayyy to much time on the weirdly fetishistic antigone/haimon romance, and even the most interesting characters (ismene & creon) don’t fully work out. sad. 2/5

currently reading: the magic mountain by thomas mann, but i should be done in a week or so! also: the paper menagerie by ken liu, a collection of sff short stories

#the books i read #long post

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newyorktheater · 7 years ago

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Off-Broadway in the Fall promises a homoerotic dystopia (A Clockwork Orange); a revival of Harvey Fierstein’s breakthrough play starring Michael Urie (Torch Song); bio-dramas about a transgender etiquette teacher (Charm) and Public Theater founder Joe Papp (Illyria.) There are hip makeovers of Shakespeare, Sophocles and Jane Austen; an immersive visit to a Korean pop music factory by the same theater that developed The Great Comet; and plays by Julia Cho, Caryl Churchill, Amy Herzog,Rajiv Joseph, Sarah Ruhl, Simon Stephens, John Patrick Stanley, Anna Ziegler (two!), and Stephen Adly Guirgis (three!)

Jonno Davies in A Clockwork Orange

Kpop

Chloe Sevigny in Downtown Race Riot

The Wolves

Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks

Michael Urie and Harvey Fierstein

Playwright Sarah Ruhl

Playwright Stephen Adly Gurigis

Shakespeare

Jane Austen

Playwright Anna Ziegler

Joe Papp, subject of Illyria

Unlike Broadway (See my Broadway 2017-2018 Preview Guide), Off-Broadway is full of theaters/theater companies that present whole seasons of original or originally interpreted work. That’s why my Off-Broadway preview below largely groups shows according to the theaters that are producing them, most of which offer subscriptions and/or memberships. I list the theaters in order of my preference for them (determined by such factors as their recent track record, the promise of the new season, and by my overall experience interacting with them as theatergoer and as critic.)

I’ve put a red check mark — √ — besides a handful of shows opening in the Fall about which I’m especially excited, or intrigued, or at least notably hopeful.

(The asterisk *, explained more fully at the bottom, indicates those theatrical empires that have both Broadway and Off Broadway venues.)

PLAYWRIGHTS HORIZONS

416 W. 42nd St. Twitter: @PHNYC

Annie Baker’s “The Flick” is one of six plays that originated at Playwrights Horizons that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The theater offers new plays and musicals that are consistently worthwhile, in an environment that feels dedicated both to the theater artists and the theatergoers.

For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday

August 18, 2017 – October 01, 2017 Opens September 12.

A play by Sarah Ruhl: “Playing Peter Pan at her hometown children’s theater is one of Ann’s fondest, most formative memories. Now, 50 years later, Neverland calls again, casting her and her siblings back to this faraway dreamscape where the refusal to grow up confronts the inevitability of growing old.”

The Treasurer

September 06, 2017 – October 22, 2017

A play by Max Posner, directed by David Cromer: “Ida Armstrong is broke, lonely, and fading fast. And she’s spending all of her children’s money, forcing her son to assume the unwanted role of The Treasurer: an arrangement that becomes untenable the more he questions his devotion to her.”

THE PUBLIC THEATER

425 Lafayette Street and in Central Park. Twitter: @PublicTheaterNY

Having originated both Hamilton and Fun Home, the Public is on a roll, the latest of many in the successful downtown empire that Joe Papp created half a century ago. (One of the plays this season is about Papp!) The Public is so popular these days that members have been complaining that their membership doesn’t guarantee tickets to the Public shows they want to see.

Public Works’ As You Like It

September 2 – September 5.

It’s now a Labor Day weekend tradition, to stage a Shakespeare play as a spectacular employing some 200 professional and amateur actors at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. Shaina Taub has composed the songs for this musical version of Shakespeare’s tale “of faithful friends, feuding families and lovers in disguise.”

Measure for Measure

September 17 – November 5, 2017

The innovative avant-garde theater company Elevator Repair Service adapts Shakespeare’s play about “impossible moral choices in 17th century Vienna” using athletic theatricality and Marx-Brothers-inspired slapstick.

Tiny Beautiful Things

Strayed/Vardalos

September 19 to November 12.

Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) plays Sugar, an anonymous online advice columnist in a Vardalos’ stage adaptation of the book of the same name by Cheryl Strayed. Directed by Thomas Kail (Hamilton.) This an encore presentation. My review of the play when it was presented last year.

Oedipus El Rey

October 3 to November 19. Opens October 24.

Playwright Luis Alfaro has set this Greek tragedy in South Central LA and recast the hero as “a troubled Latino whose dreams of controlling his own destiny soar above the barbed wire of the prison where he’s spent his life.”

Office Hour

October 17 – December 3, 2017

Julia Cho’s new play about a teacher who compels her 18-year-old student to attend her office hours to discuss his violently obscene work.”The isolated young student in her office has learned one thing above all else: that for the powerless, the ability to terrify others is powerful indeed.”

√ Illyria

October 22 – November 26

Richard Nelson (the Apple Family plays and the Gabriels) directs his play about the 1958 fight by Public Theater founder Joseph Papp over free Shakespeare productions in Central Park.

The Winter’s Tale

November 26 – December 17

The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit production of Shakespeare’s play, directed by Lee Sunday Evans

NEW YORK THEATER WORKSHOP

79 East 4th Street. Twitter: @NYTW79

NYTW got much attention two years ago for presenting David Bowie’s musical “Lazarus,” and last year for its “Othello” with movie stars Daniel Craig and David Oyelowo. Its fare has ranged from the innovative and tuneful — “Hadestown” — to the cutting edge and incomprehensible — “Fondly, Collette Richland”

Mary Jane

Amy Herzog, Anne Kauffman

September 6, 2017—October 15, 2017

Written by Amy Herzog and directed by Anne Kauffman. “During a rain-drenched summer in New York City, an indefatigable single mother navigates the mundane, shattering and sublime aspects of caring for a chronically sick child.” Stars Carrie Coon.

Hundred Days

November 15, 2017—December 31, 2017

A musical about having only 100 days to live.

Three exciting-sounding new plays for which NYTW has not provided the dates as of yet:

An Ordinary Muslim, by Hammaad Chaudry, directed by Jo Bonney

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire, by Caryl Churchill, directed by Rachel Chavkin

The House That Will Not Stand by Marcus Gardley, directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz

SIGNATURE

480 West 42nd Street. Twitter: @signaturetheatr

As the first New York theater to win the Regional Tony Award, the Signature now has some solid proof of what has been clear to its patrons for years. What has distinguished this theater is not only its track record, but its commitment to keep the price of all tickets for initial runs to $30.

With the recent expansion of both their facilities and their mission, some longtime subscribers have had to adjust to the introduction of work by more untested playwrights. This is the second season under new artistic director Paige Evans, who headed Lincoln Center’s LCT3. Signature’s founding artistic director James Houghton died in August, 2016. This season looks more exciting in the Spring.

The Red Letter Plays: Fucking A

August 22 – October 1, 2017

Suzan Lori Park’s first of two plays based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Christine Lahti portrays an abortionist trying to free her son from prison

The Red Letter Plays: In The Blood

August 29 – October 8, 2017

Hester La Negrita is a penniless mother of five condemned by the men who love her.

Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train

October 3 – November 12

The first of this season’s plays at the Signature by Stephen Adly Guirgis: “Angel Cruz is a 30-year-old bicycle messenger awaiting trial for the death of the leader of a religious cult. Inside Rikers Island, a terrified Angel is befriended by a charismatic serial killer named Lucius Jenkins. Lucius has found God.” Directed by Mark Brokaw.

Spring:

Edward Albee’s At Home at the Zoo: Homelife & The Zoo Story

Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau

Our Lady of 121st Street by Stephen Adly Guirgis

A new play by Stephen Adly Guirgis

ATLANTIC THEATER

On The Shore of the Wide World

August 23 – October 8, 2017

A play by Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) about nine months that changed the lives of a family.

Describe The Night

November 10 – December 24

Set in Russia over the course of 90 years, Rajiv Joseph’s new play traces the stories of seven men and women connected by history, myth and conspiracy theories.

PRIMARY STAGES

The theater company takes up residence this season at the Cherry Lane in the West Village

The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord

September 19 – October 22, 2017

Three historical figures who wrote their own version of the gospels debate religion, literature and marriage.

Pride and Prejudice

Kate Hamill and Mark Bedard in Pride and Prejudice at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, which is co-producing its transfer to Primary Stages.

November 7 – December 15, 2017

Kate Hamill (Bedlam’s Sense and Sensibility) adapts and stars in this playful adaptation of Jane Austen’s tale of outspoken Elizabeth Bennet and the aloof Mr. Darcy.

LINCOLN CENTER THEATER*

@LCTheater

The shows at Lincoln Center’s Off-Broadway venues are inexpensive (especially at the Claire Tow theater, where initial-run tickets cost $20) and often rewarding.

After The Blast

October 7 to November 19. Opens October 23.

A play by Zoe Kazan “set in the wake of total environmental disaster, when the human population has retreated underground”

The Wolves

November 1 to January 7, 2018. Opens November 20.

Sarah DeLappe’s play about a teenager girls soccer team is being encored in a new venue. My old review of The Wolves.

ROUNDABOUT* LAURA PELS

The empire that is now Roundabout includes three Broadway theaters, and that’s where most of the attention is focused, mostly on star-studded revivals, especially musicals. But its fourth building houses two Off-Broadway theaters (one of them a tiny “Black Box” theater.) It is in its Off-Broadway facility that Stephen Karam’s The Humans originated, which went on to Broadway and Tony love. The Roundabout’s “Underground” series discovers new playwriting talent, with tickets priced at $25.

The Last Match

September 28 – December 24, 2017. Opens October 24.

A new play by Anna Ziegler about two tennis greats who are facing off in the match of their lives

Too Heavy for Your Pocket

September 15 – November 19, 2017. Opens October 5.

Jiréh Breon Holder’s play takes place in Nashville in 1961, when 20-year-old Bowzie Brandon gives up a college scholarship to join the Freedom Riders.

MCC THEATER

Address: The Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street.

Twitter: @mcctheater

Charm

August 31 – October 8. Opens September 18

A play by Philip Dawkin. “When Mama Darleena Andrews– a 67-year-old, black, transgender woman — takes it upon herself to teach an etiquette class at Chicago’s LGBTQ community center, the idealistic teachings of Emily Post clash with the very real life challenges of identity, poverty and prejudice faced by her students. Inspired by the true story of Miss Gloria Allen

School Girls, Or The African Mean Girls Play

November 2 – December 10

Rebecca Taichman (Tony winner for Indecent) directs Jocelyn Bioh comedy about a fight over the Miss Universe pageant in Ghana’s most exclusive boarding school.

CLASSIC STAGE COMPANY

136 East 13th Street Twitter: @ClassicStage

Its 50th anniversary season is heavy on Shakespeare in the Fall, but in the Spring branches out to Tennessee Williams as well as an original play by Terrence McNally about Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russe,and the first major New York revival of Carmen Jones, Oscar Hammerstein’s adaptation of the opera by Bizet with an all African-American cast.

As You Like It

September 13-October 22

Shakespeare’s comedy, with music by Stephen Schwartz, set in the Jazz Age.

The Stowaway

November 5 – 19

This play geared to children is “inspired by the plays and language of Shakespeare.” By Trusty Sidekick Theater Company, which uses puppetry and live music,

Fiasco Theater’s Twelfth Night

November 29-January 6

SECOND STAGE THEATER*

Second Stage will launch its first Broadway season at the Helen Hayes in Spring 2018, the fourth “non-profit” to produce theater both on and Off Broadway. I’m hoping this will encourage them to become literally more inviting to independent New York critics.

√ Torch Song

Michael Urie stars in the play that made its author and first star Harvey Fierstein famous, in a production directed by Moisés Kaufman. “It’s 1979 in New York City and Arnold Beckoff is on a quest for love, purpose and family.”

MTC* At City Center

131 West 55th Street Twitter: @MTC_NYC

The theater has recovered from the public criticism of a couple of seasons ago that it lacks diversity in its offerings, but this “club” is still not especially welcoming to non-subscribers or independent professional critics.

The Portuguese Kid

September 19 – November 26. Opens October 24.

John Patrick Shanley directs his new romantic comedy about a habitually widowed woman (Sherie Rene Scott) who pays a visit to her second-rate lawyer (Jason Alexander), intending to settle her latest husband’s affairs.

Actually

October 31 – December 3

Anna Ziegler (Photograph 51) explores the issue of consent on campus. “At a raucous party during their freshman year at Princeton, Tom and Amber connect in ways that seem innocent enough at first. But as things progress, they find themselves in murky territory.”

OTHER HIGHLIGHTS

√ KPOP (Ars Nova)

September 5 – October 7, 2017

The world-conquering success of Korean pop music is the subject of this new immersive theatre piece in the theater that developed “Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812.” The show, about a new record label on the eve of its launch, is put together by the theater companies Ma-Yi and the Woodshed Collective, the latter of which did an amazing show called Empire Travel Agency, a kind of on-the-town spy-murder mystery.

√ A Clockwork Orange (New World Stages)

September 2 – January 6, 2018. Opens September 25

A stage adaptation of Anthony Burgess’ dystopian novel, best-known for the 1971 Stanley Kubrick film, about a teenage hoodlum in the near future who is arrested, and brainwashed to be submissive by the authorities.

Downtown Race Riot (The New Group)

Chloe Sevigny stars in In Seth Zvi Rosenfeld’s play as a strung-out, free-wheeling single mom whose son Pnut and his Haitian best friend Massive wrestle with their obligation to join rioters in Washington Square Park in 1976 attacking any people of color they can find.

Other companies worth checking out:

St Ann’s Warehouse

Rattlesticks Playwright Theater

Mint Theater

Mayi Theater Company

There are also commercial shows put together by independent producers that appear in theaters for rent, such as:

Cherry Lane Theatre Daryl Roth Theatre Gym at Judson Lucille Lortel Theatre New World Stages Orpheum Theater The Players Theatre Snapple Theater Center Theatre Row – The Acorn Union Square Theater Westside Theatre

*THE ASTERISK: Off-Broadway AND Broadway

*Just to complicate matters, several of the resident theaters also present shows on Broadway – Lincoln Center, Manhattan Theater Company (MTC), the Roundabout Theater Company., and starting this season, Second Stage Theatre, which has bought the Helen Hayes. Their Broadway offerings are listed in my Broadway 2017-2018 Preview Guide.

What Is Broadway, Off-Broadway, Off-Off Broadway?

Off-Broadway theaters, by definition, have anywhere from 99 to 499 seats. If a theater has more seats than that, it’s a Broadway house. If it has fewer, it’s Off-Off Broadway.

There are some terrific Off-Off Broadway theaters, sometimes confused for Off-Broadway. These include (but are not limited to) The Flea, Labyrinth Theater, and LaMaMa ETC.

Monthly Calendar of Openings

Because there are so many shows Off-Off Broadway, and their runs are so limited, I include them in my monthly theater preview calendar (along with Broadway and Off Broadway openings) posted near the beginning of each month.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

For more information about Off-Broadway, go to The League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers (aka The Off-Broadway League). This should not be confused with the Off-Broadway Alliance, which is a separate organization (though they should probably merge, no?)

What’s Off-Broadway Dough? Does that mean there’s not much of it? pic.twitter.com/KHH1kApUzb

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) September 4, 2016

Off Broadway Fall 2017 Guide Off-Broadway in the Fall promises a homoerotic dystopia (A Clockwork Orange); a revival of Harvey Fierstein's breakthrough play starring Michael Urie (Torch Song); bio-dramas about a transgender etiquette teacher (Charm) and Public Theater founder Joe Papp (Illyria.) There are hip makeovers of Shakespeare, Sophocles and Jane Austen; an immersive visit to a Korean pop music factory by the same theater that developed The Great Comet; and plays by Julia Cho, Caryl Churchill, Amy Herzog,Rajiv Joseph, Sarah Ruhl, Simon Stephens, John Patrick Stanley, Anna Ziegler (two!), and Stephen Adly Guirgis (three!)

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