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After Art House Eviction, Time for a Block Party in Clinton Hill

Arthur Wood and Broken Angel in 2007.Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times Arthur Wood and Broken Angel in 2007.

With the foreclosure process over, and an order of eviction waiting to be executed on Friday, the only thing left to do for Arthur Wood, the owner â€" or rather, former owner â€" of the Broken Angel art house, was to celebrate his departure with a block party.

Hundreds of Mr. Wood’s neighbors and friends in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, are indeed expected to show up on the street outside his house Friday afternoon for a salutatory shindig likely to include bands, barbecue, mutant bicycles and Dadaist piñatas.

Broken Angel in 2006, after a fire. Click to enlarge.Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times Broken Angel in 2006, after a fire. Click to enlarge.

“We aim to throw a kid-friendly block party, Brooklyn D.I.Y. style, to give back the love and devotion that Arthur put into his life’s work,” read the Facebook invitation that went out to almost 3,000 people earlier this week. “This will be a day to remember and one full of the love of community and the unique flavor of D.I.Y.”

Mr. Wood is an accomplished painter, but the life’s work referred to in the invitation is Broken Angel, a Surrealist ziggurat of sorts that he and his late wife! , Cynthia, bought in 1979 when the structure, at 4 Downing Street, was an abandoned four-story brick townhouse.

Employing mostly locally-sourced junk, Mr. Wood, now 81, built asymmetrical, glassy sculptures on the building’s roof, inadvertently creating a landmark on the Brooklyn D.I.Y. artscape. It attracted wider notice when it served as the backdrop for Dave Chappelle’s 2006 film, “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.”

In 2006, a fire at the building led to a series of city investigations that revealed that Mr. Wood had not built his structure according to code. The Department of Buildings ordered the removal of some of the building’s key designfeatures and, under order to make expensive renovations, Mr. Wood arranged a partnership in 2007 with a real estate developer, Shahn Anderson. Together they took out a $4 million mortgage from Madison Realty Capital with plans to construct condominiums on the site, and also next door.

That plan was never realized, and in 2009, under complicated â€" and disputed â€" circumstances, Mr. Wood and his partner defaulted on the mortgage. The bank moved in to foreclose and bought the building at auction last April after no other bidders emerged.

Thus, the block party Friday afternoon. By midweek, more than 400 people â€" artists, musicians, bookstore owners, brewers and photographers â€" had signaled their intention online to attend the event. It is scheduled to run from 4 to 8 p.m. and ! revelers ! are encouraged to dress warmly and bring something for the barbecue.



After Art House Eviction, Time for a Block Party in Clinton Hill

Arthur Wood and Broken Angel in 2007.Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times Arthur Wood and Broken Angel in 2007.

With the foreclosure process over, and an order of eviction waiting to be executed on Friday, the only thing left to do for Arthur Wood, the owner â€" or rather, former owner â€" of the Broken Angel art house, was to celebrate his departure with a block party.

Hundreds of Mr. Wood’s neighbors and friends in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, are indeed expected to show up on the street outside his house Friday afternoon for a salutatory shindig likely to include bands, barbecue, mutant bicycles and Dadaist piñatas.

Broken Angel in 2006, after a fire. Click to enlarge.Liz O. Baylen for The New York Times Broken Angel in 2006, after a fire. Click to enlarge.

“We aim to throw a kid-friendly block party, Brooklyn D.I.Y. style, to give back the love and devotion that Arthur put into his life’s work,” read the Facebook invitation that went out to almost 3,000 people earlier this week. “This will be a day to remember and one full of the love of community and the unique flavor of D.I.Y.”

Mr. Wood is an accomplished painter, but the life’s work referred to in the invitation is Broken Angel, a Surrealist ziggurat of sorts that he and his late wife! , Cynthia, bought in 1979 when the structure, at 4 Downing Street, was an abandoned four-story brick townhouse.

Employing mostly locally-sourced junk, Mr. Wood, now 81, built asymmetrical, glassy sculptures on the building’s roof, inadvertently creating a landmark on the Brooklyn D.I.Y. artscape. It attracted wider notice when it served as the backdrop for Dave Chappelle’s 2006 film, “Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.”

In 2006, a fire at the building led to a series of city investigations that revealed that Mr. Wood had not built his structure according to code. The Department of Buildings ordered the removal of some of the building’s key designfeatures and, under order to make expensive renovations, Mr. Wood arranged a partnership in 2007 with a real estate developer, Shahn Anderson. Together they took out a $4 million mortgage from Madison Realty Capital with plans to construct condominiums on the site, and also next door.

That plan was never realized, and in 2009, under complicated â€" and disputed â€" circumstances, Mr. Wood and his partner defaulted on the mortgage. The bank moved in to foreclose and bought the building at auction last April after no other bidders emerged.

Thus, the block party Friday afternoon. By midweek, more than 400 people â€" artists, musicians, bookstore owners, brewers and photographers â€" had signaled their intention online to attend the event. It is scheduled to run from 4 to 8 p.m. and ! revelers ! are encouraged to dress warmly and bring something for the barbecue.



San Francisco Symphony Musicians Go on Strike

Using a kind of brinkmanship that has become commonplace in contract negotiations of symphony orchestras, the musicians of the San Francisco Symphony went on strike on Wednesday, a week before a scheduled appearance at Carnegie Hall. The orchestra announced the cancellation of a concert at its home auditorium, Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall, that was scheduled for Thursday afternoon. The musicians’ contract expired in November but was extended to February when, by mutual agreement, the musicians continued talking and playing. On Wednesday the union rejected the administration’s latest proposal for a three-year contract that, according to the administration, “would have kept the musicians among the three highest-paid orchestras in the country” (the others being the Chicago Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic). The current average salary of the musicians is $165,000, the administration said. In addition to higher salaries, the musicians are seeking increases in benefits and pension contributions.A spokesman for the players could not immediately be reached. The administration said it had already notified the players that it would present a revised proposal on Thursday. It plans to go ahead with the presentation, it said, in hopes that San Francisco concerts can resume on Friday and an East Coast tour can proceed.

Columbia Acquires Dawn Powell Archives

Dawn Powell's biographer Tim Page with items from Powell's archive.Brad J. Vest/The New York Times Dawn Powell’s biographer Tim Page with items from Powell’s archive.

Columbia University has negotiated to permanently retain the archives of the author Dawn Powell, the novelist who cast a gimlet eye on life in Manhattan, died in 1965 and has enjoyed an unlikely resurgence among readers in recent years.

Last year, Tim Page, who wrote a biography of Powell and has done more than anyone to champion her work, announced that he was going to auction the author’s 43 handwritten diaries himself through a Web site, but no taers met his minimum bid of $500,000. “I consider this a pretty complete failure,” Mr. Page said at the time.

Columbia would not disclose the price it paid Mr. Page for the archives, which include the diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, artwork and more. The material is available at the Columbia University Libraries’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library, where it had already been kept on deposit.



Dolphin Seen on an Apparently Healthy Swim in the East River

A dolphin swam in the East River off 96th Street in Manhattan on Wednesday, against the backdrop of the Astoria, Queens, waterfront.Yana Paskova for The New York Times A dolphin swam in the East River off 96th Street in Manhattan on Wednesday, against the backdrop of the Astoria, Queens, waterfront.

A dolphin was spotted swimming in the East River off the East 90s of Manhattan on Wednesday morning and was still there Wednesday afternoon.

Dolphins are occasional visitors to New York’s waterways and, unlike in January, when an obviously ailing dolphin turned up in the filthy Gownus Canal in Brooklyn, marine mammal rescuers did not immediately sound alarms.

“I’ve been watching video of him swimming and he appears to be using a lot of water,” said Kimberly Durham, rescue program director for the Riverhead Foundation, meaning that the dolphin was covering a lot of territory. “But he intrigues me.”

The foundation’s executive director, Robert DiGiovanni Jr., was en route to the scene on Wednesday afternoon and planned to do a health assessment of the animal, believed to be a bottlenose dolphin, Ms. Durham said.

As of noon, the dolphin would swim in one direction for a couple of minutes, then turn around and swim back, remaining in the area roughly bounded by the East 90s of Manhattan, Randalls Island and the end of Astoria Boulevard in Queens.

The Riverhead Foundation noted on its F! acebook page:

“We have documented four occasions of reports of cetaceans in or near the East River since 2010. Three of those events were in February and March timeframe. In all four events, intervention was not deemed necessary and the animals did leave the area without further sighting reports.”

Dolphins usually travel in groups, though, and Ms. Durham added, “a bottlenose dolphin alone is definitely something that gives me a little bit of concern.”

The police, for their part, did not seem worried.

“Just a dolphin swimming through,” a spokesman said. “It is not in distress and we did not aid it.” He added, “Why would we pursue a dolphin”

Yana Paskova contributed reporting.



Bob Dylan to Be Honored by American Academy of Arts and Letters

The American Academy of Arts and Letters will go electric (sort of ) in May when it welcomes Bob Dylan as an honorary member at a ceremony at its Upper Manhattan headquarters. If he shows up, Mr. Dylan â€" the first rock musician honored by the group â€" will also be serenaded in words by the novelist Michael Chabon, who was elected as a regular member last year and is scheduled to give an address titled “Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

The artists Richard Tuttle and Terry Winters and the novelist Ward Just will also be welcomed into the 250-person organization, which elects members only after the deaths of existing members. The South African writer Damon Galgut, the Spanish architect Rafael Moneo and the Belgian artist Luc Tuymans will become foreign honorary members.

Membership in the academy, which is based in three landmark Beau Arts buildings in Upper Manhattan, is commonly described as one of the most distinguished honors in the arts. But it was unclear whether Mr. Dylan, who was given an honorary membership when the academy couldn’t decide whether to honor him for his words or his music, would show up for the party. “I would guess it’s unlikely,” Virginia Dajani, the academy’s executive director, told Billboard, which noted that Mr. Dylan was already booked on tour dates far away from New York.



Video Nostalgia at SXSW

A scene from the documentary Rewind This A scene from the documentary “Rewind This!”

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" While the interactive leg of the South by Southwest festival touted the latest technological tools, select festival films were more comfortable basking in the nostalgic glow of tech history. These films either look back on, or involve, old video formats in their storytelling, in effect using the retro to usher in the new.

The documentary “Rewind This!,” directed by Josh Johnson, looks at the impact that videocassettes, and the VHS format, had on the way people consumed movies. It includes interviews with several filmmakers, video store operators, archivists, collectors and enthusiasts who explain how videotape laid the groundwork for the igital age.

A scene from Magnet Releasing A scene from “V/H/S/2.”

The horror anthology sequel “V/H/S/2″ plays off the scrappy appeal, as well as the messiness, of the VHS format. The film’s segments are tied together by a narrative involving two private investigators who break into a home and find a number of video screens and a stack of videotapes. As one investigator watches the tapes, she sees that each contains horrifying acts. While the filmmakers often relied on advanced digital equipment, like small cameras mounted on people and even dogs, the vignettes aim for the kind of lo-fi, DIY aesthetic that has helped video endure even as it evolves.

A scene from Andrew Bujalski's Alex Lipschultz A scene from Andrew Bujalski’s “Computer Chess.”

The drama “Computer Chess,” from the Austin filmmaker Andrew Bujalski, aims the highest (or lowest) in capturing the look of a dated format. Mr. Bujalski and his crew used black-and-white tube cameras from the early ’70s to shoot his period story about computer programmers who compete to see who can write the best chess software. The film screened on Monday at the Austin Convention Center, mere rooms away from panels and exhibition halls on the latest digital enhancements.

After the screening, Mr. Bujalski spoke about how he had been making movies for years on 16 millimeter and how, at festivals, he was often asked why he didn’t shoot on video. So a contrarian streak in him led to make a movie on video, but in one of the most outdated an challenging ways possible. In an entry on his blog, the cinematographer Matthias Grunsky wrote about how he had to use a screwdriver to adjust the video levels before each take. The result is a film that takes a complex look at technology’s past and the surprising similarities with technology’s present.



Manhattan School of Music Names New President

The Manhattan School of Music has appointed James Gandre president, effective May 6. He succeeds the composer Robert Sirota, who stepped down last fall. Mr. Gandre is currently the provost and executive vice president of Roosevelt University, in Chicago, but he has worked at the Manhattan School before, as dean of enrollment and alumni from 1995 to 2000. He joined Roosevelt University in 2000, and held positions there as interim dean of the College of Education, and dean of the Chicago College of Performing Arts.

Mr. Gandre, 53, was born in Wisconsin and earned a bachelor’s degree in music from Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisc. He took his masters at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and his doctrate in education and higher education administration at the University of Nebraska, in Lincoln.

As a tenor, Mr. Gandre has performed as a soloist and chorister with the London Classical Players, the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, the Israel Philharmonic and other international ensembles.



Scenes From South by Southwest Music

A slide show of images from the festival in Austin.



SXSW Music: Homegrown Talent in the Spotlight

My Education performing at South by Southwest.Josh Haner/The New York Times My Education performing at South by Southwest.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" Day 1 is the first plunge into the South by Southwest miscellany, and it’s the warmup; the program book has only 3-1/2 pages of listings instead of the 8-1/2 or more from Wednesday through Saturday. One thing it offered me was a chance to hear performers that Austin can hear regularly, but the rest of us can’t.

Austin continues to support the kind of Americana singer-songwriters who have stranger, more personal things to say than they could get away with most of the time in Nashville. One is Jess Klein, who has country roots, but who pushes her songs toward philosophical thoughtsâ€" particularly one she introduced as the probable title track of her next album, “Learning Faith,” a metaphorical journey along an endless, perilous bridge: “If I had known what it would take,” she sang in her wiry, determined mezzo-soprano, “I would have turned and run away.”

Dana Falconberry, another Austin songwriter, builds rich parables around glimpses of nature: trees, rivers, the night sky. “How could I be lonely with so many winking lights,” she sang.  Her music is gentle yet intricate: a rusticated chamber music using banjo, cello, and staggered, contrapuntal vocal harmonies with the other women in her band, in songs full of wordless interludes that unfurled a skein of possibilities.

At the other end of the dynamic spectrum was My Education, an instrumental band that has made a sacrament of the measured crescendo. The group introduces stately melodies, often! topped by violin, and then cycles through them, building variations by small increments from within â€" an additional cymbal crash here, a tremolo there, some slowly dawning feedback, some thickening keyboard chords â€" until the music looms as monumental, even overwhelming.  Patience becomes a detonator.



Worlds in Collision: After Tangle Over Physicist’s Book, Philosopher’s Invitation to a Debate Is Withdrawn

The annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate is the American Museum of Natural History’s biggest public event, drawing sold-out crowds for an evening billed as bringing together “the finest minds in the world” to debate “pressing questions on the frontiers of scientific discovery.”

But this year’s installment, to be held March 20 under the heading “The Existence of Nothing,” may also be notable for the panelist who disappeared.

Among the speakers will be several leading physicists, including Lawrence M. Krauss, whose book “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing” became a cause célèbre in the scientific blogosphere last spring after a scathing review in the New York Times Book Review by the philosopher David Z. Albert.

But Mr. Albert will not be onstage, having been abruptly disinvited by the musum several months after he agreed to take part.

The tone of the dustup between Mr. Albert and Mr. Krauss â€" summed up by one blogger as “an ongoing cosmological street fight” that had broken out “broad media daylight” â€" would have certainly left those who saw both men’s names on early publicity material anticipating something closer to a wrestling match than dispassionate scholarly discussion.

In his review Mr. Albert, who also has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, mocked Mr. Krauss’s cocksure claim to have found in the laws of quantum mechanics a definitive answer to the vexing question of the ultimate origins of the universe. (So where did those laws come from, he asked) Mr. Krauss countered with a pugnacious interview in The Atlantic, in which he called Mr. Albert “moronic” and dismissed the philosophy of science as worthless.

The museum originally planned to take the fight inside. Last October, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, sent Mr. Albert an e-mail inviting him to take part in a discussion exploring the “kerfuffle” surrounding his review. The panel, he said, would probably have two or three physicists on it (including Mr. Krauss), a philosopher (Mr. Albert) and another person, to be determined.

But in early January, Mr. de Grasse Tyson sent Mr. Albert another e-mail rescinding the invitation, citing changes in the panel that shifted the focus “somewhat away from the original reasons that led me to invite you.” An invitation was issued shortly afterward to Jim Holt, the author of the recent best seller “Why Does the World Exist,” which surveys the ways philosophers, cosmologists and theologians have answered the question.

p>Mr. Albert, who teaches at Columbia, noted in an interview that neither the title of the panel nor its basic composition â€" it also includes the physicists J. Richard Gott and Eva Silverstein and the journalist Charles Seife â€" had changed.

“It sparked a suspicion that Krauss must have demanded that I not be invited,” he said. “But of course I’ve got no proof.”

Mr. Tyson, in an interview, said he had withdrawn the invitation out of concern that the event (which will be streamed live at amnh.org/live) had drifted too far from the Asimov core purpose of “exposing the frontier of science as conducted by scientists.”

“I was intrigued by his argument with Krauss,” he said of Mr. Albert. “But once the panel was assembled, I took a step back and said it can’t just be an argument with Krauss.”

Mr. Krauss, who teaches at Arizona State University, said via e-mail that decisions about the lineup were Mr. Tyson’s but reiterated that he “wasn’t impressedâ€!  by Mr. ! Albert’s review. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t choose to spend time onstage with him,” he added.

But the audience may yet get a taste of the philosophical perspective. In an article about the Krauss-Albert controversy in The New York Times last June, Mr. Holt defended philosophers’ contribution to “conceptually unsettled” questions relating to string theory, quantum entanglement and entropy.

“Physicists expand the circle, and philosophers help clear up the paradoxes,” he wrote. “May both camps flourish.”



Worlds in Collision: After Tangle Over Physicist’s Book, Philosopher’s Invitation to a Debate Is Withdrawn

The annual Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate is the American Museum of Natural History’s biggest public event, drawing sold-out crowds for an evening billed as bringing together “the finest minds in the world” to debate “pressing questions on the frontiers of scientific discovery.”

But this year’s installment, to be held March 20 under the heading “The Existence of Nothing,” may also be notable for the panelist who disappeared.

Among the speakers will be several leading physicists, including Lawrence M. Krauss, whose book “A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing” became a cause célèbre in the scientific blogosphere last spring after a scathing review in the New York Times Book Review by the philosopher David Z. Albert.

But Mr. Albert will not be onstage, having been abruptly disinvited by the musum several months after he agreed to take part.

The tone of the dustup between Mr. Albert and Mr. Krauss â€" summed up by one blogger as “an ongoing cosmological street fight” that had broken out “broad media daylight” â€" would have certainly left those who saw both men’s names on early publicity material anticipating something closer to a wrestling match than dispassionate scholarly discussion.

In his review Mr. Albert, who also has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics, mocked Mr. Krauss’s cocksure claim to have found in the laws of quantum mechanics a definitive answer to the vexing question of the ultimate origins of the universe. (So where did those laws come from, he asked) Mr. Krauss countered with a pugnacious interview in The Atlantic, in which he called Mr. Albert “moronic” and dismissed the philosophy of science as worthless.

The museum originally planned to take the fight inside. Last October, Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium, sent Mr. Albert an e-mail inviting him to take part in a discussion exploring the “kerfuffle” surrounding his review. The panel, he said, would probably have two or three physicists on it (including Mr. Krauss), a philosopher (Mr. Albert) and another person, to be determined.

But in early January, Mr. de Grasse Tyson sent Mr. Albert another e-mail rescinding the invitation, citing changes in the panel that shifted the focus “somewhat away from the original reasons that led me to invite you.” An invitation was issued shortly afterward to Jim Holt, the author of the recent best seller “Why Does the World Exist,” which surveys the ways philosophers, cosmologists and theologians have answered the question.

p>Mr. Albert, who teaches at Columbia, noted in an interview that neither the title of the panel nor its basic composition â€" it also includes the physicists J. Richard Gott and Eva Silverstein and the journalist Charles Seife â€" had changed.

“It sparked a suspicion that Krauss must have demanded that I not be invited,” he said. “But of course I’ve got no proof.”

Mr. Tyson, in an interview, said he had withdrawn the invitation out of concern that the event (which will be streamed live at amnh.org/live) had drifted too far from the Asimov core purpose of “exposing the frontier of science as conducted by scientists.”

“I was intrigued by his argument with Krauss,” he said of Mr. Albert. “But once the panel was assembled, I took a step back and said it can’t just be an argument with Krauss.”

Mr. Krauss, who teaches at Arizona State University, said via e-mail that decisions about the lineup were Mr. Tyson’s but reiterated that he “wasn’t impressedâ€!  by Mr. ! Albert’s review. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t choose to spend time onstage with him,” he added.

But the audience may yet get a taste of the philosophical perspective. In an article about the Krauss-Albert controversy in The New York Times last June, Mr. Holt defended philosophers’ contribution to “conceptually unsettled” questions relating to string theory, quantum entanglement and entropy.

“Physicists expand the circle, and philosophers help clear up the paradoxes,” he wrote. “May both camps flourish.”



New Hendrix Album Hits No. 2

“People, Hell and Angels” collects unreleased recordings by Jimi Hendrix.

Jimi Hendrix is dead but not forgotten. His posthumous album “People, Hell and Angels,” rose to No. 2 on the Billboard album chart this week, selling 72,000 copies more than four decades after he died. The last time one of Hendrix’s albums charted so high was back in 1968, when “Electric Ladyland” spent two weeks at No. 1.

It is no mean feat for a deceased pop star o have such appeal this long after his death. Sometimes the death of an artist will rekindle interest and propel sales: Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” rose to the top of the chart in 2009, and Whitney Houston’s greatest hits album spent three weeks at No. 2 shortly after her death last year. Johnny Cash’s “American V: A Hundred Highways” charted in 2006, three years after his death.

But Hendrix died on Sept. 18, 1970, and there is still strong demand for any unreleased tracks from his archive, which is controlled by his estate’s label, Experience Hendrix. Few other artists have cracked the top five this long after their deaths, though Elvis Presley’s “Elvis: 2nd to None” entered the chart at No. 3 in 2003.

The album contains 12 studio recordings of blues-rock songs Hendrix made in the two yea! rs before his death, most of them after his original trio with Noel Redding and Mitch Mitchell broke up. Four of the tracks come from sessions with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox, the lineup known as the Band of Gypsies.

Elsewhere on the chart, the country singer Luke Bryan scored his first No. 1 album with a new compilation of previously released songs, “Spring Break … Here to Party.” With tracks drawn from four earlier EPs, that album sold 150,000 copies.

The rest of the Top 10 is dominated by older releases. Bruno Mars’ “Unorthodox Jukebox” fell to No. 3, while Mumford & Sons’ “Babel” landed at No. 4. The fifth slot belonged to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ “The Heist,” and the sixth to Rihanna’s “Unapologetic.” The country duo Florida Georgia Line’s debut full-length album cracked the Top 10 for the first time, landing at No. 7, as their hit single “Cruise” started to receive spins on pop stations. Rounding out the Top 10 were the “Now 45” compilation at N.. 9 and the Lumineer’s self-titled album at No. 10.

Over on the Hot 100 singles chart, novelty songs ruled. Baauer held on to the top position for the fourth week in a row with his electronic dance track “Harlem Shake.” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’s comic rap song “Thrift Shop,” which features Wanz, stayed at No. 2, gaining radio airplay and remaining strong in digital sales. Bruno Mars’s wistful piano ballad “When I Was Your Man” held steady at No. 3 on the strength of airplay on Top 40 stations. Rihanna’s duet with Mikky Ekko, “Stay,” landed at No. 4, and Justin Timberlake’s “Suit & Tie,” which contains a rap by Jay-Z, moved up to No. 5. The rest of the top ten, in order, were Taylor Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble,” Drake’s “Started From the Bottom,” Will.i.am and Britney Spears’s “Scream & Shout,” Lil Wayne’s “Love Me” (which features Drake and Future) and Mr. Mars’s “Locked Out of Heaven.”



A Couple at Sea: A. L. Kennedy Talks About ‘The Blue Book’

A. L. Kennedy’s new novel, “The Blue Book,” is set on an ocean liner, and involves a relationship between a man and a woman who used to work together as spiritual mediums. In The New York Times Book Review, Wendy Lesser wrote that the book’s mysterious strands come together in the end: “There are no sleight-of-hand tricks practiced on us here: we are promised a certain kind of novelistic satisfaction, and Kennedy fully delivers.” In a recent e-mail interview, Ms. Kennedy discussed what (if anything) she’s learned from critics, the keys to writing about sex and more. Below are edited excerpts from the conversation:

Q.

You once said that in your novels, “There’s always an interior something that happens â€" which a particular school of thought doesn’t classify as a plot.” If you had to briefly outline the plot of “The Blue Book,” how would you put it

A.

Two people decide to trust each other enough â€" and themselves enough â€" to love each other properly and be honest and to use all of themselves to be with each other. That’s the interior plot. The exterior plot is: “There are three people on a boat, one woman, two men â€" go figure.” My feeling would be that you can write as many men as you like walking into rooms with guns; if you don’t care about anyone involved, it’s not really going to swing.

Q.

What kind of research did you do about magic and mediums

A.

I slowly worked my way far enough into the magic! al fraternity to read their books on cold reading and how to impersonate psychics and produce mentalist’s effects. I even went on a cold reading course â€" cold reading is the term for the range of techniques people use to give the impression they know you and have special insights about you. I then went to see all kinds of tarot readers and crystal ball readers and palm readers â€" they were mainly dreadful and sometimes actively malign.

Q.

Do you generally do a lot of research for your fiction

A.

For any book I go through a research process that covers three years, so that I can know the people and have them constructed before I start working with them.

Q.

Writing about sex is widely considered a difficult task, but you do it with seeming confidence. Do you consider it more challenging than writing about other things Do you approach it differently in any coscious way

A.

I think the thing is not to approach it differently â€" the same rules apply. It’s a physical activity, so you have to get the details right, you don’t want the reader saying to themselves, “You did what, now” That kind of breaks the mood. And â€" like any other activity â€" the importance is in the character and the feeling. The sex has no inherent meaning without the characters providing it. And I think you need to not be embarrassed â€" you’ll never necessarily meet the reader and the reader is a grown-up person (if it’s one of my books) and has thoughts and has performed activities in the area and will hopefully go with you if you’re being honest and in some way feasible within the bounds of human nature.

Q.

The novel moves very fluidly between the first, second and third person perspectives. Was that a feature from the start or did it emerge as the solution to some problem in ! the struc! ture of the book

A.

This was a feature I knew I would have to use. I needed the book to speak to the reader as a medium would, and to give some impression of how a stranger can tell you about yourself at least fairly fluently without actually knowing anything â€" that demanded the second person. The first and third came from character considerations and the fact that the plot was trying to be a little surprising here and there.

A. L. KennedyCampbell Mitchell A. L. Kennedy
Q.

On your Web site, you quote from reviews of your books and offer teasing rejoinders. Do you read all the reviews of your books

A.

I got vey confused by the reviews of my first book. They all said different things, they disagreed, it was too late to change anything, it felt weird. The bad stuff seemed convincing and the good stuff crazed and it referred to work that was a couple of years old by then, so I gave up reading the reviews for years. When I first put up a Web site, I went through some of the coverage on the books produced â€" the idea was to give readers a proper sense of what the people who liked a book liked and what the people who hated it had hated. And there was a section for fabulously unclear and badly written reviews, which only seemed fair; they help no one, after all. Then, as each book came out I’d have one horrible day doing the same in miniature. As time went by and standards went down, the “unclear” section got larger. A couple of books ago, I gave up again. I mainly hang out with actors and they don’t read the stuff ever, which I think is wise.

Q.

Have you ever learned anyt! hing spec! ific about your craft from reading a critic’s reaction to your work

A.

From a professional critic, no. I’ve never expected to. In the U.K., the critical culture can be fairly moribund and dominated by an oddly ill-informed set of academic assumptions. There’s less and less space or money for serious criticism. From critics â€" which is to say, people who look closely at my work and are true and wide-ranging readers â€" yes, I have. But paying too much attention to external opinion â€" fashions, theories, trends, friends â€" puts you a couple of years behind your own timeline, because critics only ever follow. That whole scene can take you away from your center and your voice, while making you self-conscious. It’s a toxic combination. And an adult writer can’t always be expecting this little fantasy undergraduate workshop to tell them what to think. If you’re the author, it’s your decision to find out what you think and what you want to say and then get on with it If it were a group effort, your name wouldn’t be the only one on the title.

Q.

You started performing stand-up comedy several years ago. Was that a longtime goal

A.

I drifted into stand-up sideways by being asked to speak at political meetings and, not being a brave and adventurous activist, I only ever felt qualified to provide the comic relief. Plus, political disenchantment and matters of life and death can sometimes be re-examined through humor. It can be a way of not losing hope.

Q.

Did you have favorite comics when you were young, as you had favorite prose writers

A.

I’ve always loved good comedy; it’s storytelling, it’s imagination in action, it can be a great, human thing. And I’ve always had favorite comics â€" Dave Allen, Max Miller, Pet! er Cook and Dudley Moore, Marty Feldman, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Bill Hicks, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen, Steven Wright and Lenny Bruce. There’s a long, long bit that Bruce did about a comic wanting to play better rooms and getting his wish that is truly wonderful â€" it’s maybe not even actually funny, it’s some weird, horrible, magnificent, clear-eyed narrated nightmare.

Q.

Do you feel yourself improving as a comic, the way you might have felt significant improvements as a young fiction writer

A.

I do almost nothing in clubs now. It demands a constant effort to keep up a schedule of gigs and I have so many readings and events that I just couldn’t fit anything else in without giving up writing. I tour a one-person show and I deliver comedy monologues, I suppose you would call them, on BBC radio. I would hope the delivery, phrasing, subjects, angles and speed are improving. In a way it’s the same skill set I use for writing, it’s ust applied differently and while being stared at by possibly drunk strangers. Every author should do it. You don’t get respect unless you earn it as a comic. Writers tend to get respect whether they’ve earned it or not, which is very unhealthy for us.



At a Beach Club, a Battle to Rebuild After the Storm

The Silver Gull Beach Club in the Rockaways has been making repairs to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy to try to open on Memorial Day. But its opening has been threatened by a stop work order. Todd Heisler/The New York Times The Silver Gull Beach Club in the Rockaways has been making repairs to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy to try to open on Memorial Day. But its opening has been threatened by a stop work order.

In the 1984 film “The Flamingo Kid,” newly hired cabana boys at a beach club were made to jump off the end of a pier into the ocean below, as an initiation rite.

The film was shot at the Silver Gull Beach Club, a cluster of oceanfront cabanas in the Rockaways that was devastated by Hurricae Sandy in October.

The club is unique in New York City, with double-decker rows of cabanas jutting out into the surf on piers. Roughly 200 of its 460 cabanas were damaged by the storm.

The club, which sits on federal seashore, began rebuilding soon after the hurricane, with club officials promising to open by Memorial Day.

But now, that timetable may be delayed by a federal stop-work order issued last week on the club’s main cluster of damaged cabanas, said Bob Ordan, the club’s general manager.

Federal officials visited the site and ordered construction stopped on Big Island, one of five piers bearing cabanas and jutting out over the water’s edge.

The pier, featured in the film, was the hardest hit area of the club, with damage to half of its 84 cabanas, Mr. Ordan said. The federal official, from the Gateway National Recreation Area, which administers the property, ordered work stopped, saying that Gateway officials had told the ! club months ago not to rebuild that pier because it was too vulnerable to more storm damage.

Mr. Ordan said he knew of no such order and he showed the official a letter that Gateway had sent the club in January recommending, but not forbidding, that the club not rebuild Big Island.

The Jan. 18 letter from Linda Canzanelli, superintendent of Gateway, which grants a concession to the club allowing it to operate, specified as “comments and recommendations” that the pier not be rebuilt. Rebuilding would be “not favored,” Ms. Canzanelli wrote, according to a copy of the letter Mr. Ordan showed to a reporter on Tuesday.

The club, just east of Breezy Point, is run by Ortega Family Enterprises, whose 10-year contract with Gateway - a National Park Service entity that includes 26,000 acres in New York and New Jersey - to run the club began with last summer’s season.

Mr. Ordan said the club did heed most of Gateway’s recommendations, including not rebuilding eight cabanas on the en of the Big Island pier that were destroyed. But since the club owners were investing their own money, they decided rebuilding the other cabanas on the pier was a risk worth taking, he said.

Gateway National Recreation Area officials had not responded yet to a request for comment.

The beach club was the setting for ABC Motion Pictures/Photofest The beach club was the setting for “The Flamingo Kid,” a 1984 movie starring Matt Dillon.

The Ortega family estimates the rebuilding will cost $3 million, and has already spent $2 million, Mr. Ordan said.

“If you build near the water, there’s always some risk,” he said. “We’ve been working seven days a week, sunup t! o sundown! , to make a private investment in public property.”

Unless the situation is resolved quickly, the club risks having its contractors leave the site, to begin work on other projects, he said.

“We’re on track to open by Memorial Day,’’ he said. “Another week or two, and that won’t be possible.”

Big Island has some of the most coveted cabanas, especially for elderly and physically challenged members since it is the easiest pier to access, he said. Some members have been renting cabanas on the pier for more than 30 years, and most Big Island cabanas are already rented for this summer, he said.

The club, which has a working-class clientele largely from Brooklyn, opened in 1963 and retains a classic look. But the place was ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, which caused a significant amount of erosion and tore up the expansive concrete patio and the concrete sea wall that had stood for 50 years.

The two large steel pools survived, but were filled with sand and concrete. Waterslides were jostled, and the kiddie pool was lost.

Mr. Ordan, 55, who began working at the club as a teenager as a lifeguard, looked at a huge pile of concrete rubble half the size of a football field, piled in the parking lot.

He said the club’s insurance policy did not cover flood damage, so it is still unclear how much of the rebuilding cost will be covered.

So far, $250,000 has been spent on Big Island alone, and the work is nearly finished on it, he said.

“It’s our risk,’’ Mr. Ordan said. “If it gets destroyed again next year, then it’s our money gone.”



London Theater Journal: Alan Bennett, a Cozy Everywhere Man

Alex Jennings in Jayne West Alex Jennings in “Cocktail Sticks.”

Dead celebrity theater has long been a staple of the English-speaking stage. In New York these days, you can’t turn a corner off Times Square without coming across some esteemed performer pretending to be Ann Richards or Sue Mengers or even the tabloid columnist Mike McClary. But London, at the moment, likes ‘em live.

Two of the most cherished tickets in town are to shows about beloved Britons who are very much still with us and whose local sentimental value ranks up there with non-human institutions like Big Ben and beans on toast. Most obviously, I am referring to a certain reigning monarch being portrayed by Helen Mirren in Peter Morgan’s “Audience.”

But I am also talking about Alan Bennett, the best-selling writer and oft-performed dramatist. Mr. Bennett is being portrayed at the National Theater by Alex Jennings, whom I last saw (also at the National) as the dead Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and before that as the dead composer Benjamin Britten in “The Habit of Art,” a play by Mr. Bennett.

Now Mr. Jennings is appearing in a double bill of short autobiographical pieces by Mr. Bennett: “Hymn” and “Cocktail Sticks,” which transfers to the West End later this month as “Untold Stories.” These are not to be confused with another popular play at the National called “People,” which was written by Mr. Bennett but in which he doe! s not appear as a character or an actor.

As it happens, the first time I saw Mr. Bennett (I mean the real Mr. Bennett, not an impersonator) was in a play (by Mr. Bennett) called “A Question of Attribution.” This was essentially an extended dialogue between his character (the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt) and Queen Elizabeth II (an impersonator in this case: the actress Prunella Scales). That was some 20 years ago.

Since then, Mr. Bennett has refused a knighthood and written a short, affectionate comic novel about the Queen, “The Uncommon Reader,” in which Mr. Bennett fantasizes about Her Majesty’s awakening literary appetite. And I eagerly await the day when I can see a play about an imagined meeting between the Queen and Mr. Bennett, in which they laugh and laugh about their fictional alter-egos. Ms. Mirren, of course, would play Elizabeth. And having seen Mr. Jennings in “Hymn” an “Cocktail Sticks,” I have no problem at all with his reprising Mr. Bennett.

They might well discover they have much in common. Though the origins of Mr. Bennett, a son of a butcher, and the Queen, a daughter of Empire, are far apart, they have come to hold not dissimilar places in the hearts of their publics. This is partly because they are both long-lived and continue to execute their respective occupations in good form, which is deeply reassuring to mortality-fearing mortals.

They are also each as cozy as a hot water bottle, which is to say warming in an old-fashioned, homey way. They make the heights they occupy - societal in her case, intellectual in his - feel like the ground floor of a parlor that we all we can step into, if only in our minds.

And despite the exposure afforded by his writing and her being, you know, the Queen, they remain essentially private people. This, too, is comforting in an age in which we know all too much about the sexual, spending and cosmetic ha! bits of t! he famous, who make up an increasingly large portion of the world’s population.

The manner in which Mr. Bennett embodies this appeal is very much in evidence in “Hymn” and “Cocktail Sticks,” tales of life with his Mam and Dad in northern England. The 30-minute “Hymn,” directed by Nadia Fall, finds Mr. Jennings as Mr. Bennett reflecting on the role music played in his life when he was a boy in Leeds.

Mr. Jennings shares the stage with a string quartet, playing music by George Fenton that captures time past in memories of things heard: concerts on the radio and at the local hall, his father’s amateur violin playing and the hymns that Mr. Bennett learned by heart as a schoolboy and that could, when he sang them with others, make him believe that he belonged to a culture in which he otherwise always felt an outsider.

The roots of this sense of not belonging are traced in “Cocktail Sticks,” in which Mr. Bennett’s parents appear, portrayed by Gabrielle Lloyd and Jeff Rawle.They were not a sociable pair, though Mam would have liked to have been and fantasized about giving cocktail parties like the ones she read about in magazines at the hairdresser’s.

Mr. Bennett, who went on to Oxford University and youthful fame as a member of “Beyond the Fringe” revue, confesses that he was ashamed of his parents when he was a student, and ashamed of his shame. Yet as success took him to the West End and Broadway, where glittering people abounded, he remained defined by - and ultimately an inhabitant of - his parents’ world.

This is affectingly conveyed by the conversations that Mr. Bennett (or rather Mr. Jennings as Mr. Bennett) continues to conduct with his parents onstage in “Cocktail Sticks,” directed by Nicholas Hytner. Pretty much anyone with parents is likely to identify with Alan Bennett here. Yet for all that he reveals with such specificity about growing up, he remains just slightly mysterious, ! as a fond! , eccentric and quiet bachelor uncle might appear to a curious child.

There is no Alan Bennett character in “People,” also directed by Mr. Hytner, which sometimes feels less like a play by Mr. Bennett than a ready-made imitation of one. The story of an outré aristocrat (Frances de la Tour) living on in a splendid but decaying family pile, “People” includes witty and sometimes lyrical Bennett-esque observations on the state of a nation as reflected by the state of a house.

Dorothy Stacpoole (Ms. De la Tour), a former couture model and the oldest survivor of her ancient family tree, is being courted by both private interests and the National Trust, which longs to turn her home into a museum. Other characters include Dorothy’s devoted, cronelike companion (Linda Bassett); Dorothy’s entrepreneurial sister (Selina Cadell), a butch vicar; and a mystery man from Dorothy’s distant past (Peter Egan), who shows up to make pornographic movies.

The play’s mix of low humor, improbable onvergences, topical reference and zingy epigrams often feels contrived in the manner of a 1980s television Brit com, all situation and little credible substance. But it has been given a deluxe production (the designer is Bob Crowley) that includes an on-site renovation of the rotting house and the not-to-be-sneezed at vision of the formidable Ms. de la Tour in both aristo-rags and haute couture.

Mr. Bennett, as you might expect, also provides clever and quotable lines on a country that turns its history into cash cows. The show will be broadcast in movie theaters on March 21 and May 16, as part of the National Theater Live series, and one can imagine its perhaps seeming more at home on a screen. And while it features a few bare bottoms and off-color double entendres, it is a show you could take Mam and Dad to without feeling at all ashamed.



London Theater Journal: Alan Bennett, a Cozy Everywhere Man

Alex Jennings in Jayne West Alex Jennings in “Cocktail Sticks.”

Dead celebrity theater has long been a staple of the English-speaking stage. In New York these days, you can’t turn a corner off Times Square without coming across some esteemed performer pretending to be Ann Richards or Sue Mengers or even the tabloid columnist Mike McClary. But London, at the moment, likes ‘em live.

Two of the most cherished tickets in town are to shows about beloved Britons who are very much still with us and whose local sentimental value ranks up there with non-human institutions like Big Ben and beans on toast. Most obviously, I am referring to a certain reigning monarch being portrayed by Helen Mirren in Peter Morgan’s “Audience.”

But I am also talking about Alan Bennett, the best-selling writer and oft-performed dramatist. Mr. Bennett is being portrayed at the National Theater by Alex Jennings, whom I last saw (also at the National) as the dead Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov and before that as the dead composer Benjamin Britten in “The Habit of Art,” a play by Mr. Bennett.

Now Mr. Jennings is appearing in a double bill of short autobiographical pieces by Mr. Bennett: “Hymn” and “Cocktail Sticks,” which transfers to the West End later this month as “Untold Stories.” These are not to be confused with another popular play at the National called “People,” which was written by Mr. Bennett but in which he doe! s not appear as a character or an actor.

As it happens, the first time I saw Mr. Bennett (I mean the real Mr. Bennett, not an impersonator) was in a play (by Mr. Bennett) called “A Question of Attribution.” This was essentially an extended dialogue between his character (the art historian and spy Anthony Blunt) and Queen Elizabeth II (an impersonator in this case: the actress Prunella Scales). That was some 20 years ago.

Since then, Mr. Bennett has refused a knighthood and written a short, affectionate comic novel about the Queen, “The Uncommon Reader,” in which Mr. Bennett fantasizes about Her Majesty’s awakening literary appetite. And I eagerly await the day when I can see a play about an imagined meeting between the Queen and Mr. Bennett, in which they laugh and laugh about their fictional alter-egos. Ms. Mirren, of course, would play Elizabeth. And having seen Mr. Jennings in “Hymn” an “Cocktail Sticks,” I have no problem at all with his reprising Mr. Bennett.

They might well discover they have much in common. Though the origins of Mr. Bennett, a son of a butcher, and the Queen, a daughter of Empire, are far apart, they have come to hold not dissimilar places in the hearts of their publics. This is partly because they are both long-lived and continue to execute their respective occupations in good form, which is deeply reassuring to mortality-fearing mortals.

They are also each as cozy as a hot water bottle, which is to say warming in an old-fashioned, homey way. They make the heights they occupy - societal in her case, intellectual in his - feel like the ground floor of a parlor that we all we can step into, if only in our minds.

And despite the exposure afforded by his writing and her being, you know, the Queen, they remain essentially private people. This, too, is comforting in an age in which we know all too much about the sexual, spending and cosmetic ha! bits of t! he famous, who make up an increasingly large portion of the world’s population.

The manner in which Mr. Bennett embodies this appeal is very much in evidence in “Hymn” and “Cocktail Sticks,” tales of life with his Mam and Dad in northern England. The 30-minute “Hymn,” directed by Nadia Fall, finds Mr. Jennings as Mr. Bennett reflecting on the role music played in his life when he was a boy in Leeds.

Mr. Jennings shares the stage with a string quartet, playing music by George Fenton that captures time past in memories of things heard: concerts on the radio and at the local hall, his father’s amateur violin playing and the hymns that Mr. Bennett learned by heart as a schoolboy and that could, when he sang them with others, make him believe that he belonged to a culture in which he otherwise always felt an outsider.

The roots of this sense of not belonging are traced in “Cocktail Sticks,” in which Mr. Bennett’s parents appear, portrayed by Gabrielle Lloyd and Jeff Rawle.They were not a sociable pair, though Mam would have liked to have been and fantasized about giving cocktail parties like the ones she read about in magazines at the hairdresser’s.

Mr. Bennett, who went on to Oxford University and youthful fame as a member of “Beyond the Fringe” revue, confesses that he was ashamed of his parents when he was a student, and ashamed of his shame. Yet as success took him to the West End and Broadway, where glittering people abounded, he remained defined by - and ultimately an inhabitant of - his parents’ world.

This is affectingly conveyed by the conversations that Mr. Bennett (or rather Mr. Jennings as Mr. Bennett) continues to conduct with his parents onstage in “Cocktail Sticks,” directed by Nicholas Hytner. Pretty much anyone with parents is likely to identify with Alan Bennett here. Yet for all that he reveals with such specificity about growing up, he remains just slightly mysterious, ! as a fond! , eccentric and quiet bachelor uncle might appear to a curious child.

There is no Alan Bennett character in “People,” also directed by Mr. Hytner, which sometimes feels less like a play by Mr. Bennett than a ready-made imitation of one. The story of an outré aristocrat (Frances de la Tour) living on in a splendid but decaying family pile, “People” includes witty and sometimes lyrical Bennett-esque observations on the state of a nation as reflected by the state of a house.

Dorothy Stacpoole (Ms. De la Tour), a former couture model and the oldest survivor of her ancient family tree, is being courted by both private interests and the National Trust, which longs to turn her home into a museum. Other characters include Dorothy’s devoted, cronelike companion (Linda Bassett); Dorothy’s entrepreneurial sister (Selina Cadell), a butch vicar; and a mystery man from Dorothy’s distant past (Peter Egan), who shows up to make pornographic movies.

The play’s mix of low humor, improbable onvergences, topical reference and zingy epigrams often feels contrived in the manner of a 1980s television Brit com, all situation and little credible substance. But it has been given a deluxe production (the designer is Bob Crowley) that includes an on-site renovation of the rotting house and the not-to-be-sneezed at vision of the formidable Ms. de la Tour in both aristo-rags and haute couture.

Mr. Bennett, as you might expect, also provides clever and quotable lines on a country that turns its history into cash cows. The show will be broadcast in movie theaters on March 21 and May 16, as part of the National Theater Live series, and one can imagine its perhaps seeming more at home on a screen. And while it features a few bare bottoms and off-color double entendres, it is a show you could take Mam and Dad to without feeling at all ashamed.



Signature Theater Season to Include Premiere of New Albee Work

Edward Albee.Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Edward Albee.

“Edward Albee’s Laying an Egg,” a new play by the Tony Award-winning writer of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” will have its world premiere this summer at Signature Theater - one of several productions that the company announced on Wednesday for its 2013-14 season.

“Laying an Egg” was supposed to run at Signature last year but was delayed, Mr. Albee said previously, because he had been “overcomplicating” the plotting and writing; it was replaced by the critically praised revival of Mr. Albee’s “Lady from Dubuque,” directed by David Esbjornon. The new play, also to be staged by Mr. Esbjornson, is about a middle-aged woman driven to become pregnant by several factors, including a domineering mother and the conditions of her late father’s will.

Regina Taylor’s new play “â€"- and potatoes,” about an African-American book publisher facing the digital age, will also premiere at Signature this summer. “How I Learned What I Learned,” a one-man show by another Pulitzer winner, August Wilson, will run in the fall; it will star Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who recently directed Signature’s popular revival of Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.” The director will be Todd Kreidler.

A new show by the director and choreographer Martha Clarke, “Cheri,” based on the novel by Colette, will also be performed in the fall, featuring ballet dancers and text by the playwright Tina Howe. New plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (â€! œNeighbors”) and Will Eno (“Title and Deed”) will follow during the winter/spring of 2014; details on the two plays and performance dates will be announced later.

The previously announced new play “Kung Fu,” by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”), is also scheduled to run in early 2014. The play, directed by Leigh Silverman, mixes dance and music to render the story of Bruce Lee’s arrival in America in the 1960s.



Signature Theater Season to Include Premiere of New Albee Work

Edward Albee.Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Edward Albee.

“Edward Albee’s Laying an Egg,” a new play by the Tony Award-winning writer of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” will have its world premiere this summer at Signature Theater - one of several productions that the company announced on Wednesday for its 2013-14 season.

“Laying an Egg” was supposed to run at Signature last year but was delayed, Mr. Albee said previously, because he had been “overcomplicating” the plotting and writing; it was replaced by the critically praised revival of Mr. Albee’s “Lady from Dubuque,” directed by David Esbjornon. The new play, also to be staged by Mr. Esbjornson, is about a middle-aged woman driven to become pregnant by several factors, including a domineering mother and the conditions of her late father’s will.

Regina Taylor’s new play “â€"- and potatoes,” about an African-American book publisher facing the digital age, will also premiere at Signature this summer. “How I Learned What I Learned,” a one-man show by another Pulitzer winner, August Wilson, will run in the fall; it will star Ruben Santiago-Hudson, who recently directed Signature’s popular revival of Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson.” The director will be Todd Kreidler.

A new show by the director and choreographer Martha Clarke, “Cheri,” based on the novel by Colette, will also be performed in the fall, featuring ballet dancers and text by the playwright Tina Howe. New plays by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (â€! œNeighbors”) and Will Eno (“Title and Deed”) will follow during the winter/spring of 2014; details on the two plays and performance dates will be announced later.

The previously announced new play “Kung Fu,” by Tony Award winner David Henry Hwang (“M. Butterfly”), is also scheduled to run in early 2014. The play, directed by Leigh Silverman, mixes dance and music to render the story of Bruce Lee’s arrival in America in the 1960s.



Seeking Funds for Movie, Creator of ‘Veronica Mars’ Turns to Kickstarter

Kristen Bell (center) and the cast of Warner Brothers Kristen Bell (center) and the cast of “Veronica Mars.”

If a “Veronica Mars” movie doesn’t happen now, there will be no mystery about who did it in â€" its loyal fans will be the culprits. Rob Thomas, the television producer and creator of “Veronica Mars,” the cult hit series that starred Kristen Bell as a crime-solving teenager, has thrown down a challenge to viewers who have long clamored for this show to be turned into a film, telling them that they had 30 days to help raise $2 million for the project and calling it “our one shot” to see it happen.

On Wednesday, Mr. Thomas posted his entreaty on Kickstarter, the fundraising Web site, writing that he had tried to pitch a film adaptation of “Veronica Mars,” which ended its television run in 2007 after three seasons on the UPN and CW networks.

“I probably stoked fan fervor in my optimistic comments about the prospects,” Mr. Thomas wrote, adding that Warner Brothers, which owns the “Veronica Mars” property, “wasn’t convinced there was enough interest to warrant a major studio-sized movie about Veronica and the project never got off the ground.”

But after learning of Kickstarter, and calculating that it would take about 30,000 donors pledging $71 each (or 80,000 donors pledging $25 each), Mr. Thomas wrote, “we could finance the movie, particularly if the cast and I were willing to work cheap.”

Since then, Mr. Thomas said, he and Ms. Bell have met with executives at Warner Brothers who, he said, have “agreed to ! allow us to take this shot.” He added: “Their reaction was, if you can show there’s enough fan interest to warrant a movie, we’re on board. So this is it. This is our shot. I believe it’s the only one we’ve got. It’s nerve-wracking. I suppose we could fail in spectacular fashion, but there’s also the chance that we completely revolutionize how projects like ours can get made.”

In her own post on the Kickstarter page Ms. Bell wrote, “I am currently the happiest blonde in a hamster ball the world has ever seen.”

As of 12 noon Eastern time on Wednesday the Kickstarter side had raised more than $120,000 in pledges from some 1,500 donors, or about 6 percent of its $2 million goal. The ball is in your court, “Arrested Development.”



‘Short Term 12’ and ‘William and the Windmill’ Win SXSW Film Honors

Brie Larson and Keith Stanfield in Short Term 12 Brie Larson and Keith Stanfield in “Short Term 12,” written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" The South by Southwest grand jury award for best narrative feature was given to “Short Term 12” on Tuesday night, while “William and the Windmill” received the grand jury award for best documentary.

“Short Term 12,” about a young supervisor at a foster-care facility, was written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The film garnered strong reviews and featured a much talked-about lead performance by Brie Larson.

A scene from the documentary William and the Windmill A scene from the documentary “William and the Windmill.”

“William and the Windmill,” about a young Malawian who builds a windmill from scrap metal to save his family from famine, was directed by Ben Nabors.

The festival also announced special awards: one for Texas filmmaking went to the Geoff Marslett drama “Loves Her Gun” and one for emerging female directors was given to Hannah Fidell, whose “A Teacher” is about a high school instructor who becomes sexually involved with one of her students.



‘Short Term 12’ and ‘William and the Windmill’ Win SXSW Film Honors

Brie Larson and Keith Stanfield in Short Term 12 Brie Larson and Keith Stanfield in “Short Term 12,” written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.

AUSTIN, Tex. â€" The South by Southwest grand jury award for best narrative feature was given to “Short Term 12” on Tuesday night, while “William and the Windmill” received the grand jury award for best documentary.

“Short Term 12,” about a young supervisor at a foster-care facility, was written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The film garnered strong reviews and featured a much talked-about lead performance by Brie Larson.

A scene from the documentary William and the Windmill A scene from the documentary “William and the Windmill.”

“William and the Windmill,” about a young Malawian who builds a windmill from scrap metal to save his family from famine, was directed by Ben Nabors.

The festival also announced special awards: one for Texas filmmaking went to the Geoff Marslett drama “Loves Her Gun” and one for emerging female directors was given to Hannah Fidell, whose “A Teacher” is about a high school instructor who becomes sexually involved with one of her students.



SXSW Music: Korean Pop With Its Own Special f(x)

F(x) at South by Southwest.Josh Haner/The New York Times F(x) at South by Southwest.

Mystique does not thrive at South by Southwest. It is very rarely a festival where the polished pop star bestows a slick, remote performance on distant fans and then disappears back behind the veil of celebrity. The clubs where most gigs take place are too small and the stages are too low for that; audience members are close enough to see musicians eye to eye. They can probably run into them backstage, too, loading their own equipment into the van. Even at larger places, the stars don’t get to bring their custom-built stages, lights and sound systems; they play in the existing setups, like the big bumpy back yard of a barbecue place or a generic temporary stage in a warehouse or a vcant lot. Performers also experience the same Texas weather â€" summery even in March â€" that audiences do. It’s a kind of leveler; who are you without your gimmicks, and how do your songs really hold up

But along came f(x), a five-woman group from South Korea â€" four of them under 21 â€" that is a female “idol band” from the artificial world of K-pop. On the model of American boy bands like ‘N Sync, idol bands are assembled, trained, choreographed and supplied with material by their management companies.

F(x) is reportedly one of the more daring idol bands; one of the five women’s costumes was a modified T-shirt from the horror-punk band the Misfits. They have song titles like “Hot Summer,” “Danger” and “Electric Shock,” which were all part of the group’s brief set, sung (in Korean, with English refrains) to prerecorded tracks that closely fo! llow American and European electropop. The group didn’t have its lasers, but it did have video screens. The set was all catchiness and choreography, with lots of angular elbow and shoulder action, like Janet Jackson above the waist; hip motion, not so much. ”Hot Summer” included one move like wiping sweat off the girl’s forehead. The group was impeccable, twitching and twirling and hitting its marks with smiles while an audience full of Korean girls squealed and took photos. SXSW or not, this was pop, and no one wanted idols brought down to earth.



New York Performing Artists Share Inspiration on ‘Made Here’

“Made Here,” a documentary series and interactive Web site that gathers interviews, performances and other footage to showcase the lives of New York City performing artists, is headed into its third and fourth seasons.

Beyond entertainment, the series is conceived as a mashup of advice and inspiration, offering a platform for artists not seen anywhere else. The lineup for the next two seasons features artists that include Bill T. Jones, Cherry Jones, Reggie Watts, Joey Arias, Mohammed Fairouz, Lisa Kron, Eisa Davis, Elizabeth Streb and Ethan Lipton. They talk about issues like gender, criticism, influences and staying in New York as well as offering advice for the next generation.

Started in 2010, the Web site has attracted roughly 36,000 visitors, from more than 77 countries. In May 2011, NYC Life (the city’s official public television station) began to broadcast episodes. Since June 2012, “Made Here” has been distributed on Hulu and other places by TenduTV. Season 3 will have its premiere on April 8 and Season 4 on Sept. 16.  With each season’s premiere, a new episode will become available for streaming online on Mondays at 10 a.m.

“It’s grown huge,” Tanya Selvaratnam, a writer and actor who is one of the series producers, said in an interview on Tuesday. “We’re re-doing the Web sites and we have 25 new artists in the series. I’m very surprised with how open they are about how they’ve had to struggle.” Chiara Clemente, the director of the series, said the challenge was to turn each episode “int! o a dialogue, a conversation. There are so many artists it’s a series that can continue for a long time.”

HERE, an organization that presents hybrid art, conceived the series and is executive producer. “Made Here” emerged from the HERE Artist Residency Program, which provides long-term developmental and production support to New York-based performing artists. Since the series began, the project has released 30 episodes featuring 68 artists, and has covered a wide range of issues affecting the performing arts community, including real estate, family balance, technology and money.

Public screenings and events for “Made Here” will take place over the next two seasons, beginning with a premiere screening and conversation on April 10. The event is free and open to the public. Reservations can be made by email to rsvp@madehereproject.org.



National Gallery of Art’s Renovation Plan Envisions Two New Tower Galleries

Buildings often start to age after 35 years and generally it’s the unglamorous bits - the staircases or skylights - that need attention. Such is the case with the National Gallery of Art’s fabled I.M. Pei-designed East Building. “When we were beginning to look into things that required work Perry Chin, who works with I. M. Pei, would say, if you’re going to do this you might consider ….,’’ recalled Earl A. Powell III, the Gallery’s director.

One idea that intrigued Mr. Powell was to explore the possibilities of carving out space in two sky-lit towers that are rarely used, and transforming them into formal galleries. That was the start of a plan to add 12,260 square feet of new exhibition space within the East Building’s original footprint. Plans call for the creation of two new Tower Galleries on the northeast and northwest sides of the building, inspired by its current Tower Gallery in the southwest portion of the building. Each new space will e sky-lit and hexagonal in shape. A new outdoor sculpture terrace will be situated between the galleries.

The project is part of a federally financed Master Facilities Plan, which started in the West Building in 1999 and included improving the infrastructure and renovating its main and ground floor and sculpture galleries. When work starts, portions of the East Building will close from July through December and construction will begin in January. It is expected to last about three years.

The entire East Building project, which is estimated to cost $38.4 million, is a public-private partnership with $30 million coming from several Washington philanthropists â€" Victoria P. Sant, the Gallery’s president and her husband, Roger W. Sant, a member of the Gallery’s Trustees’ Council; Mitchell Rales, a board member and his wife, Emily; and David M. Rubenstein, chief executive of the Carlyle Group.

At the same time, the National Gallery is close to working out an agreement with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to collaborate on programming, research and exhibitions. Under the plan, the Gallery might lend works to the museum.



For a Subway Seat, Weighing Pregnancy Against Old With a Cane

Dear Diary:

It was 8:45 a.m. and we had been waiting for the Manhattan-bound A train (or the C, or the F, at this point) for 15 minutes. It was one of those rainy, late-winter mornings, and the crowd on the platform at Jay Street/MetroTech in Brooklyn was growing in size and turbulence.

Finally an A train came crawling into the station. The train was already packed, but we were desperate and running late, so into the wet, steamy train car we squeezed. Suddenly, a man who had the luxury of a seat bolted up from it and ran out the doors just as they were closing.

The two people closest to the seat, a man and a woman, made a move at the same time, then stopped mid-lunge and looked at each other. The man was older and had a cane, and the young woman was rather pregnant.

The whole train car held its breath. Who was more deserving Would there be a fight Why isn’t someone else standing up

Finally, as the train started to lurch out of the station, the man with the cane inisted, “Pregnancy beats cane! Pregnancy beats cane!”

The whole train started to laugh and applaud, shrugging and shaking our heads at one another. After a few back-and-forths, the pregnant woman made the man with the cane take the seat, because she was getting off at the next station. But we witnesses didn’t stop laughing until probably around 14th Street.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.



For a Subway Seat, Weighing Pregnancy Against Old With a Cane

Dear Diary:

It was 8:45 a.m. and we had been waiting for the Manhattan-bound A train (or the C, or the F, at this point) for 15 minutes. It was one of those rainy, late-winter mornings, and the crowd on the platform at Jay Street/MetroTech in Brooklyn was growing in size and turbulence.

Finally an A train came crawling into the station. The train was already packed, but we were desperate and running late, so into the wet, steamy train car we squeezed. Suddenly, a man who had the luxury of a seat bolted up from it and ran out the doors just as they were closing.

The two people closest to the seat, a man and a woman, made a move at the same time, then stopped mid-lunge and looked at each other. The man was older and had a cane, and the young woman was rather pregnant.

The whole train car held its breath. Who was more deserving Would there be a fight Why isn’t someone else standing up

Finally, as the train started to lurch out of the station, the man with the cane inisted, “Pregnancy beats cane! Pregnancy beats cane!”

The whole train started to laugh and applaud, shrugging and shaking our heads at one another. After a few back-and-forths, the pregnant woman made the man with the cane take the seat, because she was getting off at the next station. But we witnesses didn’t stop laughing until probably around 14th Street.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.



SXSW Music: Fame Is Just One Motivation in Austin

AUSTIN, Tex. - As the South by Southwest Music Festival got underway on Tuesday, Panache Booking, a Brooklyn agency, held a party at the Tillery Street Plant Company, letting their clients and a few friends fill the normally quiet and meditative nursery with raucous rock. For many bands on the bill it was the start of a long week.

Mac DeMarco, the Canadian rocker, and his quartet struggled through a tough set. Mr. DeMarco’s vocals were mixed too low in the monitors and he couldn’t hear them. One of the strings broke in the middle of a song and he had to sit crosslegged onstage and change it himself, while his bandmates played “The Girl from Ipanema” and made feeble attempts at humor.

Then he cut his picking hand badly while strumming and started to bleed all over his guitar. He took a swig of beer from a 24-ounce Heineken can, smiled winningly and told the crowd of 150 people he was sorry for the interruptions.

“Weare playing about 500 more times in the week so maybe we can hang out again,” he said.

He exaggerated only slightly. Mr. DeMarco and his band are doing 11 shows over the five-day music festival. And they are not alone. Earlier in the day at the Panache party, Hunters, a Brooklyn indie punk rock band, also did the first of 11 planned shows this week.

With more than 2,200 band vying for attention from journalists, agents, labels and other music industry figures, many groups who are still in the early stages of their careers turn the SXSW festival into a marathon of appearances, hoping to raise their profiles, attract the attention of critics and sell recordings. The proliferation of unofficial live-music parties piggybacking on the festival’s official showcases makes it possible for an industrious band to do three or four shows in a day.

This year is no different. Robert DeLong, an alternative rock musician from California who recently signed with! Glassnote Records, is doing a dozen shows, trying to promote the album he released last month called “Just Movement.”

Charli XCX, a 20-year-old British pop singer and songwriter who has been trying to conquer the American scene, is doing a series of eight shows here, hoping to promote her debut album “True Romance,” which comes out on April 26. “The Lone Bellow,” an Americana trio from Brooklyn promoting their debut album, is also blitzing SXSW, doing a dozen shows.

Despite the obstacles, Mr. DeMarco pushed through his set in good cheer, offering up his lighthearted rock songs and throwing in a few tongue-in-cheek diversions (the band broke into Dave Brubeck’s Take 5 during one jam and transformed another riff into “Taking Care of Business.”) He finished with a lounge-singer-tyle torch song “for the ladies.”

After the set, he professed to not know why he was doing so many shows this year. In October, the band put out its second album, “Mac DeMarco 2,” on Captured Tracks.

“It’s weird because we are coming down to play about a million shows, and I kind of get the impression South-By is for meeting agents and meeting labels, but we already have booking agents and a label, so I guess we are just playing,” he said. “Maybe we’ll meet some cool people.”

He acknowledged another motive was a desire for vindication. Four years ago, the festival declined his application for a showcase spot. “I played house shows and slept in my car the whole time,” he said.

Hunters â€" guitarist Derek Watson, vocalist Isabel Almeida, bassist Thomas Martin and drummer Gregg Giuffre â€" have a more pressing need to generate buzz among tastemakers. The band recently acquired a manager, signed a deal with a label and are putting the finishing touches on! a debut ! album to release later this year. Good reviews at the festival could give the album a lift. So they spent the money for four people to travel from New York to Austin and are sleeping at a friend’s house.

“It’s fun to play a bunch of shows and see everyone,” Mr. Watson said.