About 150 people gathered recently for a little face time with a mystery celebrity inside an 8x8 mirrored, Mylar box.

It was the first of four Friday performances of Starbox, the brainchild of experimental theater troupe Art.Party.Theater.Company.

Independent theater companies are working to stengthen New York City's parks. Find out where to catch free theater in the parks this summer.

After seeing The Public Theater's production of The Merchant of Venice in Central Park, critics Adam Feldman and Elisabeth Vincentelli had disparate opinions, and they're sticking to them.

Far from the jazz hands and high kicks of Broadway, two stalwart downtown theater festivals open this week with productions that range from Wagner's Ring Cycle to the predictions of Nostradamus.

When a disgruntled cast member of P.S. 122's Octoroon sent out an email trashing and satirizing the very show he was a part of ("I would like to invite you to a train wreck," the missive began), and the Village Voice posted it online, the downtown theater community responded. And they were not pleased.

It's never been easy to be a working artist. Now, a web-based project called MadeHERE asks how forty New York performing artists manage to pay rent, raise families and make art.

One night every year, Broadway pulls out all the stops for the Tony Awards. If Twitter is a barometer of the zeitgeist, it worked. Emcee Sean Hayes and attendee Catherine Zeta-Jones were trending in the top 10, despite competition from the NBA Finals, a potential no-hitter in Chicago, and the season premier of True Blood. Whether that bodes well for the theaters, struggling to sell tickets in a down economy, is yet to be seen. In the meantime, here are the top 5 things to take away from the Tonys.

Every August, the sprawling International Fringe Festival brings 1200 performances from over 200 countries to 20 venues around the city (or thereabouts.) In the meantime, there are a number of smaller festivals popping up with promising new fare.

WNYC takes you behind the scenes of one of the city's major theatrical institutions. Watch the video for details.

Get the lowdown on the best of the bard in New York this summer.

Free concerts in the summer contain all the elements of complete mayhem, and the Summerstage series in Central Park is no exception.

29-year-old playwright Annie Baker was the big winner at Monday's Obie Awards, which honor the best of Off-Broadway. 

No more tickets at TKTS?  Not to fear.  Visitors heading to Times Square to see a show can now be a part of one.

From centaur fetishists to adults who pretend to be babies, sex advice columnist  Dan Savage has heard just about everything about people's private lives.

Arguing over aesthetics can make for good drama. Painters from Vermeer to Pollock have been subjects of biopics. Both Stephen Sondheim's Sunday in the Park with George (selection of which are featured in Sondheim on Sondheim) and Art by Yasmina Reza reaped Tony Awards, and a number of current plays are trying to repeat their success.

The Times Square bomb attempt will not be a focus of the jokes at this year's Arab American Comedy Festival.

The panel of twenty-seven theater professionals met last night on West 47th Street to decide this year’s nominees for the Tony Awards, which honor the best of Broadway in the past year.

Listen to what drama critics Elisabeth Vincentelli and Adam Feldman had to say about this year's picks.

Whether it’s cross-dressing, drag, or transgender characters, the New York stage has welcomed all kinds of gender ambiguity. Of course the theater has blurred lines between the sexes even before Shakespeare cast men as his female leads.

WNYC's Richard Hake sat down with 26-year-old twin brothers Will and Anthony Nunziata and director Richard Jay Alexander to talk about the next generation of American songbook interpreters.

Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Director Michael Mayer discuss the Broadway musical, American Idiot, which was based on the band's music. Watch the video.