Park Slope, ‘Cradle of Candidates’

The Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn is known for many things: streets teeming with strollers, sweeping views of Prospect Park, historic brownstones. On Thursday night, voters learned that the area could also count three of the Democrats vying to be mayor among its many fans, though one has not lived there since the days when a rental cost less than $100 a month.

At a forum in Manhattan, several of the candidates pointed to the neighborhood, now a case study in gentrification, when they were asked about the last place they had rented.

William C. Thompson Jr., a former city comptroller who ran for mayor in 2009, said he paid $600 a month in rent for a home on Carroll Street in 1982. “Great apartment,” he said with a grin. (He now lives in Manhattan.)

Sal F. Albanese, a former city councilman, said he had lived in Park Slope in 1969 for $60 a month.

And Bill de Blasio, the public advocate, estimated that he paid $1,800 a month for a Park Slope apartment he rented from 1992 to 1998. He grew to love the area so much that he bought a home there with his wife when his second child was born.

Kenneth Sherrill, a former Hunter College professor who moderated the forum, joked that the neighborhood had become a “cradle of candidates.”

The two other mayoral contenders at the forum, Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, and John C. Liu, the comptroller, have different allegiances.

Ms. Quinn said she had paid $2,000 a month for a rent-controlled apartment in Chelsea that she lived in from 1992 to 2010. Mr. Liu said that in 1993 he paid $700 a month for a place in Queens, his longtime home.

While the candidates set aside rivalries in discussing neighborhoods, they turned fiercer in talking about the city’s finances.

Several criticized Ms. Quinn for not doing more to heighten scrutiny of the City Council’s use of earmarks, which its members award to community groups.

“They just don’t work in terms of a democratic society that requires transparency and fairness,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Ms. Quinn argued that she had improved oversight of the system significantly during her seven years as speaker.

“Transparency is the best thing you can bring to any system,” she said.

‘Mamma Mia!’ to Move

The hit Broadway musical “Mamma Mia!” will transfer from the Winter Garden Theater to the Broadhurst Theater six blocks south this year so the Shubert Organization â€" which owns both theaters â€" can clear the way for the possible opening of a new musical, “Rocky,” at the Winter Garden next season. “Rocky,” which had its world premiere in Hamburg in November, has not been announced for Broadway, but two theater executives familiar with the “Rocky” plans said Thursday that the current plan is to open it at the Winter Garden by next spring, though nothing is set. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the “Rocky” plans are confidential. As for “Mamma Mia!,” its lead producer and creator, Judy Craymer, announced her show’s move on Thursday, and predicted that it would secure the future for “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway “for many years to come.” The reason: “Mamma Mia!” will save as much as $100,000 a week in running costs at the 1,160-seat Broadhurst, because the 1,530seat Winter Garden comes with higher costs, including rent, that are tied to its size. A spokesman for “Mamma Mia!” declined to provide the show’s weekly running costs; theater veterans believe the amount is between $600,000 and $700,000. After 12 years of performances the show’s ticket sales are usually in the mid-to-high six figures; last week it grossed $750,520.

‘Mamma Mia!’ to Move

The hit Broadway musical “Mamma Mia!” will transfer from the Winter Garden Theater to the Broadhurst Theater six blocks south this year so the Shubert Organization â€" which owns both theaters â€" can clear the way for the possible opening of a new musical, “Rocky,” at the Winter Garden next season. “Rocky,” which had its world premiere in Hamburg in November, has not been announced for Broadway, but two theater executives familiar with the “Rocky” plans said Thursday that the current plan is to open it at the Winter Garden by next spring, though nothing is set. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the “Rocky” plans are confidential. As for “Mamma Mia!,” its lead producer and creator, Judy Craymer, announced her show’s move on Thursday, and predicted that it would secure the future for “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway “for many years to come.” The reason: “Mamma Mia!” will save as much as $100,000 a week in running costs at the 1,160-seat Broadhurst, because the 1,530seat Winter Garden comes with higher costs, including rent, that are tied to its size. A spokesman for “Mamma Mia!” declined to provide the show’s weekly running costs; theater veterans believe the amount is between $600,000 and $700,000. After 12 years of performances the show’s ticket sales are usually in the mid-to-high six figures; last week it grossed $750,520.

‘Mamma Mia!’ to Move

The hit Broadway musical “Mamma Mia!” will transfer from the Winter Garden Theater to the Broadhurst Theater six blocks south this year so the Shubert Organization â€" which owns both theaters â€" can clear the way for the possible opening of a new musical, “Rocky,” at the Winter Garden next season. “Rocky,” which had its world premiere in Hamburg in November, has not been announced for Broadway, but two theater executives familiar with the “Rocky” plans said Thursday that the current plan is to open it at the Winter Garden by next spring, though nothing is set. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the “Rocky” plans are confidential. As for “Mamma Mia!,” its lead producer and creator, Judy Craymer, announced her show’s move on Thursday, and predicted that it would secure the future for “Mamma Mia!” on Broadway “for many years to come.” The reason: “Mamma Mia!” will save as much as $100,000 a week in running costs at the 1,160-seat Broadhurst, because the 1,530seat Winter Garden comes with higher costs, including rent, that are tied to its size. A spokesman for “Mamma Mia!” declined to provide the show’s weekly running costs; theater veterans believe the amount is between $600,000 and $700,000. After 12 years of performances the show’s ticket sales are usually in the mid-to-high six figures; last week it grossed $750,520.

Early Water Delivery System in the City Cut Corners and Trees

Uli Seit for The New York Times One of the two early 19th-century wooden water pipes unearthed at a street excavation in Lower Manhattan. This one’s wrought-iron connector ring is still intact.

The Manhattan Company, founded in 1799 to provide “pure and wholesome water” to Lower Manhattan but more interested in building a banking empire, is considered to have done a pretty poor job with the water part. They cut corners all over the place, and their service was unreliable.

“Alas!” one customer lamented in 1803, “for the last 14 days, I have turned my cock repeatedly, but nothing comes from it.” Even into the 1820s, as other cities began using cast iron, the Manhattan Company was still laying wooden pipes â€" hollowed out tree trunks, actually â€" that were susceptible to leaks, low pressure and invading roots.

All of which made it rather remarkable when a 2006 street excavation near the South Street Seaport turned up two of the company’s original wooden pipes, 12 and 14 feet long, entirely intact.

The pipes, believed to date to the 1820s, are the largest remnants of the city’s original water delivery system to have been preserved whole.

And on Thursday, after several years of sitting in the headquarters of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, they were loaded on a truck at a warehouse in Maspeth, Queens, and conveyed to the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side, where they will take their places alongside an 1863 Civil War draft wheel and George Washington’s cot.

The pipes, made of pine, probably shortleaf pine, augured to an eight-inch internal diameter, look today much as they did when they were laid four feet below Beekman Street near Water Street, said Amanda Sutphin, director of archaeology for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, who went to Maspeth to see the pipes off.

“They were crudely made to begin with,” Ms. Sutphin said. “They didn’t even take all the bark off. They just hollowed it out.”

Uli Seit for The New York Times The pipes are made from hollowed out pine tree trunks that still retain some of their bark.

The Manhattan Company’s water was not much more widely revered than its piping system. While it had been expected to bring clean water down from the bucolic Bronx, the company opted instead to rely on ground wells dug in Chambers Street and its environs. The water there was rich with “the day-to-day issuances of people living in a crowded city,” said Samar Qandil, the Department of Environmental Protection’s director of records and archives.

Or, as The New York Evening Post put it in 1808: “Some wells have been dug in the filthiest corners of the town; a small quantity of water has been conveyed in wretched wooden pipes, now almost worn out, for family use; and in a manner scarcely, if at all, preferable to the former method of supplying water by the carts.”

Gerard T. Koeppel, author of “Water for Gotham,” called the pipes “evidence of how poorly New York handled its water supply in the early 1800s by relying on a private company that was not really much interested in supplying water in any great abundance.”

On Thursday, though, the various officials assembled in the Maspeth warehouse were there mostly to praise the pipes. The D.E.P.’s chief operating officer, Kathryn Garcia, called them the inspiration for the city to build its world-renowned system of aqueducts from upstate, the first of which went into operation in 1842.

Ms. Sutphin of the landmarks commission noted, “What makes this special is that where these were found, a new line is being laid for 21st-century New Yorkers - there’s a nice symmetry there.”

And Mike Thornton, a research associate at the historical society, enthused about the frayed wrought-iron connector that still clung to the end of one pipe. “What we’re excited about is that it shows not only the intact pipe, but the coupling, which tended not to survive the souvenir-collecting process,” he said.

As for the Manhattan Company, things turned out all right for them, too. In 1955, the company merged with the Chase National Bank and became Chase Manhattan. It is now known as JPMorgan Chase.

Uli Seit for The New York Times After several months at a Department of Environmental Protection warehouse in Queens, the pipes were loaded onto a truck bound for the New-York Historical Society.

New York Is U.S. Cultural Leader, at Least in Making Yogurt

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Boxes of FAGE yogurt at a cold storage facility in Johnstown, N.Y. New York State says it is now the leading producer of yogurt in the country.

New York State is now the yogurt capital of the nation.

The state’s chief yogurt promoter, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, claimed victory on Thursday in the battle for national yogurt supremacy, citing state data that showed New York topping California in production for 2012.

Hoping to milk the announcement for all it’s worth, Mr. Cuomo’s office issued a nearly 2,100-word statement celebrating New York’s triumph. The announcement is the latest in a string of dairy distinctions for the governor, including brokering peace in a dispute between two upstate mayors over the expansion of a Greek yogurt plant and convening the state’s first “yogurt summit,” which was marred only by a brief shortage of spoons.

“With New York State officially being crowned Yogurt Capital of America, it is clear that our approach to growing the economy and creating an entrepreneurial government is paying off,” Mr. Cuomo said.

In 2012, New York produced 692 million pounds of yogurt, compared with 587 million pounds in California, according to data from each state. In 2011, California produced 627 million pounds of yogurt, comfortably exceeding the 554 million pounds produced in New York.

A spokesman for the federal government’s National Agricultural Statistics Service said he could not independently confirm New York’s yogurt pre-eminence because his agency stopped tracking state-by-state yogurt production after 2009. But in case anyone was to accuse Mr. Cuomo of embellishing his milestone, an administration official said New York State calculated its yogurt production using the same methodology as California did.

A spokesman for Gov. Jerry Brown of California did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether he was conceding defeat in the yogurt wars. But Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the California Department of Food and Agriculture, chose a course of diplomacy.

“We appreciate Governor Cuomo’s interest in agriculture and food production,” Mr. Lyle said, “and wish New York’s yogurt producers the best in bringing a wholesome quality product to consumers.”

Jennifer Giambroni, a spokeswoman for the California Milk Advisory Board, said the board did not dispute Mr. Cuomo’s numbers.

“More importantly, though,” she said, “I think we can all agree that when dairy farmers in any state win, we all win.”

City Hall Protestors Rally Against Sale of Libraries

John C. Liu, the city comptroller and a Democratic candidate for mayor, on Thursday spoke out against selling public libraries into private hands.

“Our city libraries are civic treasures, and they should be treated as such,” Mr. Liu said in a statement released after his appearance at a rally on the steps of City Hall. ”Selling our libraries to private corporations trades a small, short-term gain for a big, permanent loss.”

Some critics have raised concerns about the proposed sale of the Brooklyn Heights Library, saying it resembles the closing of the Donnell Library in 2008. Others are upset about a $300 million plan by the New York Public Library to sell off the Mid-Manhattan branch as well as the Science, Industry and Business Library as part of an effort to finance the renovation and reconfiguration of the library’s main branch on Fifth Avenue.

The protest was organized by Citizens Defending Libraries, an advocacy organization, along with the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, which opposes the library’s $350 million renovation plan.

In an interview, a founder of the Citizens group, Michael D. D. White, said: “We are opposing the sale of libraries, the shrinking of the library system and the deliberate underfunding of the libraries as an excuse to push real estate deals out to developers.”

In response, the New York Public Library said in a statement: “Our responsibility is to continue the NYPL’s tradition of providing the best services and programs throughout our wide network of libraries, and to ensure that our library system is financially sustainable, which we are accomplishing by investing in our branches and renovating the 42nd street library to provide even more public access to this treasured building.”

In Brooklyn, the library on Cadman Plaza, along with another library near the Barclays Center, would be sold to developers, torn down and then rebuilt at no public expense on the ground floor of a new apartment tower.

“We would deliver two of these libraries for essentially no cost to the library system,” said Joshua Nachowitz, the Brooklyn Public Library’s vice president for government and community relations told The New York Times last month. “It’s a win-win.”

City’s Jobless Rate Dips as Many People Stop Looking for Work

New York City’s unemployment rate dipped back below 9 percent in March, but most of the decline was caused by people dropping out of the work force, according to data released by the State Labor Department on Thursday.

The city’s unemployment rate had been 9.1 percent in January and February after ending 2012 at 8.8 percent, its lowest point in a year and a half. Last month, it fell to 8.9 percent as the monthly survey of employers showed that the city added back almost all of the jobs lost in February.

Still, the Labor Department said the annual rate of growth of private-sector jobs in the city, now at 1.8 percent, trailed the national growth rate of 1.9 percent. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has frequently pointed to a higher rate of job growth in the city as evidence that his policies have helped the economy.

The national unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent in March, was much lower than the city’s. New York State’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.2 percent, from 8.4 percent in February.

Barbara Byrne Denham, an economist with Eastern Consolidated, a real estate investment services firm in Manhattan, calculated that the city gained 14,500 jobs in March, after adjustments to the state data to smooth out the usual seasonal fluctuations in hiring and layoffs. Most of those gains resulted from the end of the strike by school bus drivers, which temporarily pulled down the number of jobs in February, Ms. Denham said.

Over the last two months, the city has added just 500 private-sector jobs, she said. Ms. Denham noted, however, that the two surveys that contribute to the official monthly report on the job market continue to vary widely. The survey of employers shows a healthy rate of hiring, while the survey of residents indicates that far fewer people have returned to work in the past year.

Indeed, the survey of residents shows that a smaller share of adults in the city were employed in March than at any time since the summer of 2011.

Statewide, more than 785,000 residents were unemployed in March, and fewer than half of them were collecting benefits, the Labor Department said. Many New Yorkers have exhausted all of the unemployment insurance they were eligible for as Congress has trimmed the emergency benefits offered after the last recession.

City’s Jobless Rate Dips as Many People Stop Looking for Work

New York City’s unemployment rate dipped back below 9 percent in March, but most of the decline was caused by people dropping out of the work force, according to data released by the State Labor Department on Thursday.

The city’s unemployment rate had been 9.1 percent in January and February after ending 2012 at 8.8 percent, its lowest point in a year and a half. Last month, it fell to 8.9 percent as the monthly survey of employers showed that the city added back almost all of the jobs lost in February.

Still, the Labor Department said the annual rate of growth of private-sector jobs in the city, now at 1.8 percent, trailed the national growth rate of 1.9 percent. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has frequently pointed to a higher rate of job growth in the city as evidence that his policies have helped the economy.

The national unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent in March, was much lower than the city’s. New York State’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.2 percent, from 8.4 percent in February.

Barbara Byrne Denham, an economist with Eastern Consolidated, a real estate investment services firm in Manhattan, calculated that the city gained 14,500 jobs in March, after adjustments to the state data to smooth out the usual seasonal fluctuations in hiring and layoffs. Most of those gains resulted from the end of the strike by school bus drivers, which temporarily pulled down the number of jobs in February, Ms. Denham said.

Over the last two months, the city has added just 500 private-sector jobs, she said. Ms. Denham noted, however, that the two surveys that contribute to the official monthly report on the job market continue to vary widely. The survey of employers shows a healthy rate of hiring, while the survey of residents indicates that far fewer people have returned to work in the past year.

Indeed, the survey of residents shows that a smaller share of adults in the city were employed in March than at any time since the summer of 2011.

Statewide, more than 785,000 residents were unemployed in March, and fewer than half of them were collecting benefits, the Labor Department said. Many New Yorkers have exhausted all of the unemployment insurance they were eligible for as Congress has trimmed the emergency benefits offered after the last recession.

City’s Jobless Rate Dips as Many People Stop Looking for Work

New York City’s unemployment rate dipped back below 9 percent in March, but most of the decline was caused by people dropping out of the work force, according to data released by the State Labor Department on Thursday.

The city’s unemployment rate had been 9.1 percent in January and February after ending 2012 at 8.8 percent, its lowest point in a year and a half. Last month, it fell to 8.9 percent as the monthly survey of employers showed that the city added back almost all of the jobs lost in February.

Still, the Labor Department said the annual rate of growth of private-sector jobs in the city, now at 1.8 percent, trailed the national growth rate of 1.9 percent. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has frequently pointed to a higher rate of job growth in the city as evidence that his policies have helped the economy.

The national unemployment rate, at 7.6 percent in March, was much lower than the city’s. New York State’s unemployment rate dropped to 8.2 percent, from 8.4 percent in February.

Barbara Byrne Denham, an economist with Eastern Consolidated, a real estate investment services firm in Manhattan, calculated that the city gained 14,500 jobs in March, after adjustments to the state data to smooth out the usual seasonal fluctuations in hiring and layoffs. Most of those gains resulted from the end of the strike by school bus drivers, which temporarily pulled down the number of jobs in February, Ms. Denham said.

Over the last two months, the city has added just 500 private-sector jobs, she said. Ms. Denham noted, however, that the two surveys that contribute to the official monthly report on the job market continue to vary widely. The survey of employers shows a healthy rate of hiring, while the survey of residents indicates that far fewer people have returned to work in the past year.

Indeed, the survey of residents shows that a smaller share of adults in the city were employed in March than at any time since the summer of 2011.

Statewide, more than 785,000 residents were unemployed in March, and fewer than half of them were collecting benefits, the Labor Department said. Many New Yorkers have exhausted all of the unemployment insurance they were eligible for as Congress has trimmed the emergency benefits offered after the last recession.

San Francisco Museum Is Sued by Former Curator

A bit more turmoil has come to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Earlier this week a former curator sued the institution saying she was wrongfully fired because she was a union supporter and whistleblower.

In the suit, Lynn Orr, who spent 29 years working at the institution’s de Young and Legion of Honor museums, says she was told she was being fired for performance-related reasons despite having had sterling evaluations. She charges her dismissal is related to her appearance at a union protest and to objections she raised about the changing of an appraisal that she “believed fraudulent and unlawful.”

Ken Garcia, a museum spokesman, said it has not been served yet with the lawsuit, which also names the city as a defendant. “When that happens, we will have an appropriate response and defend our position vigorously,” he said. The museum has previously said it investigated the appraisal and found nothing amiss.

The institution had been without a director for more than a year until the appointment last month of Colin Bailey. During that time, some staff, donors and board members complained about management.

Tribeca Film Festival: ‘Alberi’

Always far flung, the Tribeca Film Festival reaches north and east this year, to MoMA PS1 in Queens, site of “Alberi,” an installation by the celebrated Italian artist and filmmaker Michelangelo Frammartino.

Mr. Frammartino’s feature-length “Quattro Volte” was a critics’ favorite in 2011 â€" my colleague A.O. Scott called it “idiosyncratic and amazing” â€" and the 25-minute “Alberi” (it means trees in Italian) bears a strong family resemblance to the earlier film. It is free of dialogue but full of sound, and the VW Dome at PS1 wraps the viewer in wind, footsteps, rustling leaves and the indistinct hum of distant human chatter. It takes place in and around a village perched in the hills of southern Italy, and it gives equal, if not preferential, billing to its nonhuman characters: trees, streams, ancient stone buildings.

Where “Quattro Volte” achieved a full-fledged narrative involving cycles of life, from goat to man to tree and back again, “Alberi” is more of a fable or anecdote, as well as a piece of arboreal performance art (reportedly based on an ancient ritual of the Basilicata region). The men of the village gather and walk into the forest, where they encase themselves head to foot in vines and twigs. Then, like Birnam Wood, or a company of Swamp Things, they walk back into the village, recreating the forest in the town square while women and children clap and dance.

Seeing “Alberi” in the VW Dome, where it runs on a continuous loop, is not overwhelmingly different from seeing it projected conventionally â€" the space and screen aren’t big enough to produce a true Cinerama or Imax immersion effect. With its steep curve and absence of seats, however â€" the preferred viewing position is lying on the floor close to the screen â€" the dome is perfect for the film’s mirrored beginning and end, in which the camera looks up into canopies of leaves, first vast and whispering and alive, later constrained and crackling and already beginning to die.

In “Quattro Volte” Mr. Frammartino’s camera often hung back, taking in wide scenes from a distance in a way that facilitated a kind of slapstick silent comedy. “Alberi” is more intimate, with the camera sometimes traveling through the forest branches, and the effect is to replace the omniscient eye of the director with the point of view of nature itself: the trees, the boulders in a stream, the weathered ruins of farm buildings seem to be observing the strange doings of the humans, and comparing notes.

Theater Talkback: In the Minority

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Oona Laurence on Broadway in “Matilda the Musical.”

I’ll admit, I don’t have it as bad as poor little Matilda. For her assorted deviances from the norm, she is called stupid at home and routinely humiliated at school. I, on the other hand, am merely made to feel uncomfortable, alienated, and perhaps a shade indignant on account of my most recent heresy: I didn’t much like “Matilda the Musical.”

Yes, I’m talking about the same new Broadway show that critics, including Ben Brantley of the TImes, have welcomed as a revolutionary miracle, the best musical of this or of many recent seasons, and so on, and which audiences seem to be embracing just as enthusiastically. I came, I saw, and though “Matilda” eventually conquered me, kinda sorta, in its last third, I spent an inordinate amount of the show just not feeling it. The lavish storybook design and fluid direction, the lively if over-insistent music, the brightly drawn performances â€" none of these were working on me, not until deep into the second act, when the story takes an unabashedly Gothic turn and the show’s cartoon villain, Miss Trunchbull, takes center stage, in Bertie Carvel’s definitive, mesmerizingly odd performance.

Still, mine was a conditional surrender at best. Certain flaws still nagged: “Matilda” has the sneer of satire, but what world is it satirizing, exactly, with its grossly caricatured adults and plaster-saint children? It’s a fairy tale of sorts, sure, but would it be too much to ask that anyone onstage behave like a recognizable human being? (Come to think of it, my second-act capitulation also had a lot to do with the lovely, uplifting song “When I Grow Up,” in which the show’s amped-up little over-performers take a breath to behave like actual kids.)

It is one of the mixed blessings of theater-going that an experience as conflicted as this-the kind of odd-man-out feeling that can force us to reconsider our own tastes and biases â€" is likely to haunt us as much or more than a blissfully untroubled evening of theatrical pleasure. For if there are stages of grief, there are just as surely stages of not-liking-a-show-as-much-as-everyone-else. Do the Germans have a word for this?

In my case, when a show feels to me like it’s falling short of its hype or its intentions, I first start to look harder and harder at it â€" maybe too hard. The next stage, it’s only fair to admit, can be a sort of immature contrarian glee, the feeling that you alone are seeing the emperor’s nakedness, and what are all those other fools thinking? Then comes reckoning, when you find yourself articulating your objections to your theater-going companion and peers, or, if you’re so inclined, on a blog or via social media.

This leads inexorably into the next stage, which I find the hardest: reconsideration. I try not to look too closely at reviews before I see a show, and when I go back and read them after the fact, I find myself alternately reassured and challenged, even at times persuaded to see a show differently in retrospect. But when my feelings are as divergent from the reviews as they were about “Matilda,” browsing through the raves can feel like an out-of-body experience, a near-Orwellian process in which my own memories are being subtly changed or replaced, my misgivings unseated by effusions. With every point I concede â€" yes, that song was charming, now that I think of it â€" I feel more and more unmoored from myself, and from the experience I could swear I had in that theater that night. Can that be taken away from me? Even if I might wish it so, I would hope not.

Sometimes I emerge from such second-guessing in full hairshirt mode â€" the fault is mine, not the show’s â€" and at other times I maintain a stubbornly defiant front worthy of steely Matilda herself. Either way, processing such profound disagreement is valuable, if only because it offers a visceral experience of a banal truth: that all art is radically subjective, and the rest is interpretation.

How about you? When did you feel like the vocal minority, alienated from the cheering section for a popular show? And how did you handle it?

Sondheim and Marsalis to Collaborate on Show for City Center

Stephen Sondheim and Wynton Marsalis are collaborating on a new show to be staged at the New York City Center next November that will feature jazz interpretations of Mr. Sondheim’s love songs.

The show, “A Bed and a Chair: A New York Love Story,” marks the first time Mr. Sondheim, one of musical theater’s great lyricists and composers, and Mr. Marsalis, the master jazz trumpeter, have worked together.

The conceit of the show is that Mr. Marsalis and his Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra will arrange and interpret about a dozen of Mr. Sondheim’s romantic songs, all of which have some connection to New York City.

While the 15-piece band plays, singers will appear on sets evoking the city’s famous locales, like Central Park and Wall Street, alternating with a set of a simple apartment with a bed and a chair. That more intimate space, mentioned in the title, is a nod to Mr. Sondheim’s song “Broadway Baby.”

The show will run for seven performances from November 13 to November 17. The performance on November 14 will serve as the entertainment for City Center’s annual Gala. A dinner will be held afterwards at the Plaza Hotel.

The collaboration is the brainchild of Peter Gethers, a novelist and editor who is a friend of Mr. Sondheim’s and a fan of Mr. Marsalis. Mr. Gether said he woke up one morning last October and thought he had never seen a first-rate jazz band perform Mr. Sondheim’s work. “I thought ‘That’s something I would pay a lot of money to see,’” he said.

Mr. Gether proposed the idea to Mr. Sondheim and to Jack Vertiel, the artistic director at New York City Center Encores! It was Mr. Vertiel who presented the concept to Mr. Marsalis, with whom he had worked in 2011 on the “Cotton Club Parade,” an celebration of Duke Ellington’s songs at City Center.

Though the general outline of the show has been sketched out, Mr. Gether said the production is still in the early stages. Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Marsalis have yet to settle on a set list or to hire vocalists, and it remains unclear if they will choose Broadway performers, jazz singers or some combination. Some of the songs might also be done as pure instrumentals, he said.

Bloomberg Blasts Senators Who Opposed Broader Background Checks for Gun Buyers

Jennifer S. Altman for The New York Times Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, during a news conference on Thursday at Rockefeller University, harshly criticized lawmakers who voted against gun control legislation.

A day after the Senate defeated a gun control measure that would have expanded background checks for gun buyers, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Thursday sharply criticized the lawmakers who voted against it.

“Children lost, they’re going to die, and the criminals won â€" I think that’s the only ways to phrase it,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference at Rockefeller University. “This is a disgrace.”

Mr. Bloomberg had personally spent $12 million on an advertising campaign aimed in support of the background check measure, which was part of a package of legislation pushed by the White House in the wake of the December shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

“This year 12,000 people will get murdered with handguns,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “Nineteen thousand will commit suicide with handguns. Add those two numbers together and just think of the number of families that will be grieving and the tragedy of losing all those people.”

He lashed out at those senators who voted against the background check bill, saying they had acted out of political self-interest, and he predicted they would ultimately find their calculation to have been wrong.

“You wait until the next November, a year from now, when people who run against them will say, ‘Look at how many more people died since they voted to stop sensible rules that would simply keep guns out of the hands of criminals and the mentally ill,’” he said. “That’s all this legislation would have done, but it would have made an enormous difference.”

Mr. Bloomberg also ridiculed senators who had raised objections to the bill.

“Condone murder or don’t, it’s not any more complex than that,” he said.

“All of these little things â€" they say, ‘Well, I didn’t like this particular thing or that particular thing.’ Get serious. The founding fathers certainly didn’t mean to leave guns in the hands of criminals and people with psychiatric problems. Ninety percent of the public doesn’t believe that, and if a handful of senators do believe that, maybe they should go back and read the Constitution, and read a little bit of history about how the Constitution was made.”

Mr. Bloomberg, however, suggested that he was not all that surprised that the measure and the other gun control efforts had been defeated.

“I think the general public believed that there would be reform,” he said. “I’m a little bit more skeptical and cynical.”

He said he would use his wealth to support senators who had voted for the background check measure, but he chafed slightly at reporters’ efforts to get him to say what he would do to defeat the senators who had voted against it.

“I’m going to support those who did the right thing, and if there’s an election between somebody who didn’t and somebody who wants to, of course I’m going to do that â€" and I would hope you would do that, too,” he told one reporter. “Just because you’re a reporter doesn’t mean you don’t have the same obligation that I do to try to do something.”

Then, when a New York Post reporter announced that he was switching to a different topic after several questions about guns, Mr. Bloomberg muttered sarcastically, “I’m shocked.”

Vision Festival Announces Its Lineup

The 18th edition of the Vision Festival, New York’s annual celebration built around the lineage of free improvisation and jazz’s non-mainstream languages, will take place from June 12 to 16, according to Arts for Art, the festival’s producers.  As it did last year, the festival will be staged at Roulette, in downtown Brooklyn.

The drummer Milford Graves is the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient this year; he will perform in three different bands on the first night, one including the Cuban musicians David Virelles, Román Diáz and Román Filiú; one with the pianist D.D. Jackson and the tenor saxophonist Kidd Jordan; and one an ensemble bringing together the tenor saxophonist Charles Gayle, the trombonist Roswell Rudd, the bassist William Parker and the poet Amiri Baraka.   The festival’s other highlights include: the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell leading a trio on the 13th; two bands featuring French improvisers collaborating with American and Asian musicians on the 14th, including the pianist Francois Tusques, the cellist Didier Petit and the clarinetists Louis Sclavis and Sylvain Kassap; and the bassist Christian McBride playing on the 16th in a band including his father, Lee Smith, and uncle, Howard Cooper â€" both of them bassists as well â€" alongside the Sun Ra Arkestra saxophonist Marshall Allen.

There will also be a screening of Vipal Monga’s new documentary on the late composer and conductor Butch Morris, “Black February”; panel discussions on issues of access and cultural exchange; and three youth bands playing three individual concerts and then all together, as a group of 80, playing with the drummer Hamid Drake, under the direction of Mr. Parker.   Tickets are $30 per day, or $20 for students and seniors; a full-festival pass costs $140.   Information at artsforart.org.

In Fine Print of ‘Spider-Man’ Settlement, Taymor Comes Out on Top

The earlier credits, left, and the newer ones.

Julie Taymor is back on top.

As a result of last week’s settlement in the legal battle over Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Ms. Taymor’s directing credit on the musical has been enhanced - and it is now listed above the credit for Philip Wm. McKinley, who replaced Ms. Taymor after its producers fired her in March 2011. Like the legal settlement, the new credits represent a final chapter to a long and twisting history.

When “Spider-Man” began performances in late 2010, the credits included standard theater language: the show was “directed by” Ms. Taymor. Once Mr. McKinley came aboard and made changes to lighten up the show and make it more commercially appealing as the producers wanted, the wording changed: Mr. McKinley was listed in the playbill and elsewhere as “creative consultant,” with Ms. Taymor dropped below him and credited with “original direction.”

As Ms. Taymor and the producers began tangling in court over her back pay and contractual rights as a director and scriptwriter, Mr. McKinley’s credit was beefed up further: “Spider-Man” was “directed by” Mr. McKinley, followed by Ms. Taymor’s credit for “original direction.” (At one point, Ms. Taymor’s credit and photo were removed from the musical’s Web site altogether.)

The settlement changes that. In the Broadway production’s playbill and marketing materials going forward, Ms. Taymor will be listed first with the credit of “direction by” - a fuller tip of the cap than the “original direction” phrasing - followed by Mr. McKinley with “additional direction by.”

A person familiar with the settlement, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the terms were confidential, said the new billing was important to Ms. Taymor because she is proud of her work on “Spider-Man” and had spent years creating it with her onetime friends, Bono and the Edge of U2, the show’s composers. The wording and order of the credits have no bearing on the amount of money that Ms. Taymor stands to make from the settlement, which could amount to millions of dollars if “Spider-Man” goes on to wide popularity in productions around the world.

A spokesman for the production declined to comment on Thursday. Mr. McKinley, for his part, said he was fine with the credit change.“I’m just glad the parties have came together, recognized everyone’s contribution, and now we can focus on the future of the show in New York and hopefully elsewhere,” he said by telephone.

Tribeca Film Festival: ‘Mr. Jones’

Growing up in a small Minnesota town, the director Karl Mueller had plenty of inspiration for his indie horror movie “Mr. Jones,” part of this year’s Midnight Section of the Tribeca Film Festival. The film is set at a remote house where a couple, played by Jon Foster and Sarah Jones, goes up against unseen forces unleashed when they encounter an eccentric artist neighbor known as Mr. Jones (Mark Steger).

“We would spend the summer in a cabin, and there were some strange people up there,” said Mr. Mueller, 35. “As a kid you make up stories about the boogie man. There were a lot of guys sitting around for no reason who trapped animals and didn’t really socialize at all. In the imagination of a child you can blow it up quite a bit.”

Mr. Mueller’s film starts out in a found-footage style, with actors speaking to the camera and filming the action, which grows increasingly disturbing. But as the film progresses the storytelling becomes unhinged to the point where it’s unclear just who’s doing the taping. In its last 15 minutes “Mr. Jones,” buoyed by low-fi but highly aggressive special effects, becomes a nearly wordless experimental experience.

Mr. Mueller recently spoke with ArtsBeat about his film. Following are edited excerpts from the conversation. Click on the video above to watch an exclusive scene.

Q.

There are a lot of horror movies about people in the middle of nowhere who are attacked by strange forces or people. In your movie that force is a weird artist named Mr. Jones who lives in the middle of nowhere and sends his sculptures to strangers. Where did that idea come from?

A.

I would say it came from these weird hermits in rural areas, the off-the-grid people who I saw growing up in an isolated area. But I also like the idea of notoriety. Banksy has constructed this larger-than-life persona by going by a strange name and remaining anonymous. There’s a mystique about that that I thought could be exploited by the character of Mr. Jones. The idea of sending sculptures to people at random felt dangerous. I thought about the Unabomber, and the random nature of that, about not knowing who is sending things.

The other thing was the Tom Waits song “What’s He Building in There.” It’s a story told from the perspective of a guy who gets obsessed with a neighbor and all these noises from his neighbor’s house.

Q.

Did you ever meet someone like Mr. Jones when you were a kid?

A.

No. It was more like you’d go up to the house, peek in and run away.

Q.

Where did you shoot the film?

A.

We shot about 20 miles north of Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles. We found a movie ranch, a big parcel of land with derelict houses on it. You can go there and mess them up. The guy who rented it to us had another piece of land where, for some reason, which was great luck, there was an abandoned mine shaft. Some of the movie takes place in caverns, but we didn’t have money to create that. But we had an abandoned mineshaft.

Preferred Film and TV Sarah Jones and Jon Foster in “Mr. Jones.”

Q.

There are a lot of found-footage elements in the movie, where you have actors film themselves. But by the end the story starts to get surreal and you’re not sure exactly sure who’s filming who.

A.

It evolves into a literal nightmare. It came out of creating a mood and trying to sustain the feeling of the uncanny, or of being in a dream. We spent a lot of time on the sound design to make it feel like you’re under water, or in somebody’s head and they have a bad cold. I hate movies that end up exactly where you thought they were going to go at the beginning. That happens most with genre movies.

Q.

Did you look to any other directors for inspiration?

A.

David Lynch, whose movies are basically on-screen representations of dream states and nightmares. He’s always experimenting with different uses of sound, pictures and lighting.

I also thought about “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” where they pull off things with fairly low-fi tricks. They would strap a flashlight on a camera. I can’t afford to do anything expensive, so we did a lot of in-camera stuff, like messing with the lenses and putting panes of glass over the lenses to provide different effects.

Q.

How much of the film comes from nightmares of your own?

A.

It’s nothing specific from my nightmares, really. A lot of what I was trying to capture was the state of falling asleep, when you’re losing control about what you’re thinking about. The imagery becomes more surreal. Sometimes you snap out of it, but that can be a nightmare feeling too.

American Youth Orchestra to Perform at BBC Proms

The maiden tour by a new youth orchestra established by Carnegie Hall will include an appearance at the BBC Proms concerts, Carnegie said on Thursday. The Proms engagement is a sign of the hall’s influence and the weight it is throwing behind the venture.

The National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America will convene for two weeks of rehearsals at Purchase College in Purchase, N.Y., and go on to perform in July under the conductor Valery Gergiev at the college; the Kennedy Center in Washington; Moscow; St. Petersburg; and finally at the Proms in London, a prestigious concert series, on July 21. The orchestra is made up of 120 players between ages 16 and 19 from across the country.

The Knicks, a Poem

Barton Silverman/The New York Times The Knicks defeated the Indiana Pacers on April 14.

Dear Diary:

My beloved New York Knickerbockers,
Whom I do adore.
You have the kind of talent,
Not bought in any store.
You make LeBron quiver,
And Kobe breaks into a sweat.
Melo buries a three,
Like nobody is as wet.
J.R. hits a game-winner,
And stares you in the eye,
Every time he does this,
You should just say goodbye.
When Raymond throws an alley-oop
And Tyson slams it home,
They do this almost every night,
It chills you to the bone.
When J. Kidd steals the ball from you
It jumps right out of your hand,
He shoots a three and nails it,
And your momentum is not grand.
When Shump throws a pass to you,
It’ll burn off both your hands.
He’ll also steal the ball from you,
And do a creative jam.

This poem was submitted on behalf of the author, age 12, by his parents, Robert and Geraldine Welch. It was written as part of a seventh-grade poetry project that encouraged students to write about their passions.

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.

The Knicks, a Poem

Barton Silverman/The New York Times The Knicks defeated the Indiana Pacers on April 14.

Dear Diary:

My beloved New York Knickerbockers,
Whom I do adore.
You have the kind of talent,
Not bought in any store.
You make LeBron quiver,
And Kobe breaks into a sweat.
Melo buries a three,
Like nobody is as wet.
J.R. hits a game-winner,
And stares you in the eye,
Every time he does this,
You should just say goodbye.
When Raymond throws an alley-oop
And Tyson slams it home,
They do this almost every night,
It chills you to the bone.
When J. Kidd steals the ball from you
It jumps right out of your hand,
He shoots a three and nails it,
And your momentum is not grand.
When Shump throws a pass to you,
It’ll burn off both your hands.
He’ll also steal the ball from you,
And do a creative jam.

This poem was submitted on behalf of the author, age 12, by his parents, Robert and Geraldine Welch. It was written as part of a seventh-grade poetry project that encouraged students to write about their passions.

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.

Cannes Competition Lineup Includes Coen Brothers and Payne

New films from Joel and Ethan Coen, Alexander Payne, Nicolas Winding Refn, Roman Polanski and Steven Soderbergh are among the features that will be presented in competition at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, organizers announced on Thursday. The Coen brothers, the writer-directors of “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men” and “The Big Lebowski,” will be represented by “Inside Llewyn Davis,” their new film starring Oscar Isaac as a fictitious singer in the New York folk-music scene of the 1960s.

Mr. Payne, whose previous features include “Sideways” and “The Descendants,” will present his new film, “Nebraska,” starring Will Forte and Bruce Dern as a father and son on a road trip. Additional selections include “Only God Forgives,” a crime thriller starring Ryan Gosling and written and directed by Mr. Winding Refn (“Drive”), and an adaptation of “Venus in Fur” directed by Mr. Polanski (“Chinatown”). Mr. Soderbergh, who vows that he’s getting out of the feature-directing business, will nonetheless be represented by “Behind the Candelabra,” his biographical film starring Michael Douglas as Liberace, which will be shown in the United States on HBO.

Other directors with films in competition include Asghar Farhadi, Takashi Miike and François Ozon. The festival will run May 15 to 26, opening with Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of “The Great Gatsby” and closing with “Zulu,” a crime film directed by Jérôme Salle.