Join Tim Dolan, an actor and owner of Broadway Up Close tours in New York City, as he leads a virtual stroll that takes in the theaters at the northern end of the Broadway Theatre District from 47th Street to 54th Street. Along the way, discover how the stage was transformed in the 1960s and 1970s by the introduction of rock musicals with the landmark production of Hair, Via Galactica the first million-dollar show, and a belting orphan with a dog named Sandy.
Ponder the possibilities that the contemplative season of Advent provides inspired by Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting The Annunciation and a poem by Wendell Berry. Designed for writers of all levels, and for the curious, the workshop led by Mary Hall Surface invites you to look outwardly at art and to look inwardly through writing. These reflections can become creative fertile ground for memoir, poetry, and more.
Over the course of history, volcanoes have influenced culture, art, agriculture, scientific innovation, and even media. Was the French Revolution sparked by volcanic activity? Did a volcanic eruption influence Edvard Munch’s The Scream? Could volcanic mining be a solution to electrification for the future? Volcanologist Samuel Mitchell explores the ways in which volcanoes have shaped our world, drawing on examples from the beginning of our planet through this year.
In popular culture and historical fiction, Louis XVI, the last king of France before the fall of the monarchy in 1792, is typically portrayed as either a feeble puppet manipulated by his glamorous wife Marie Antoinette or a heartless tyrant whose downfall was richly deserved. Historian Alexander Mikaberidze examines these familiar tropes, offering a more nuanced reappraisal of a monarch caught in the violent center of a world in transformation.
How did room-sized computers and dial-up connections evolve into tools that can write, analyze, and even create? Information science educator Nancy Friedland focuses on the key moments in history that shaped today’s digital world and how these developments changed the way people communicate, access knowledge, and navigate daily life.
People of the late 19th century had great hopes that technological innovation 100 years into the future would change human life for the better. Artists of the period offered their visions of this new world—including robot barbers and manicurists, jet-pack-propelled tennis, and a Victorian-era version of Zoom—in colorful illustrations for collector’s cards, postcards, and cartoons. Writer Adam Tanner looks at these depictions to reveal how some futurists were hilariously off-base, while others uncannily predicted the world of today.
When young Will Shakespeare showed up in London sometime before 1592, it was full of travelers from all over the world—a polyglot of languages and cultures crammed together in narrow streets and taverns. Tudor scholar and historian Carol Ann Lloyd-Stanger explores how London served as a backdrop and inspiration for Shakespeare’s works, revealing how he was inspired by the humanity he observed—the city’s nobility, merchants, artisans, laborers, actors, beggars, thieves, visitors, and more—to create the unforgettable worlds of his plays.
From sleigh bells and sugarplums to the mystical beauties of the Nativity, December is alive with the music of Christmas. Lecturer and concert pianist Rachel Franklin revisits this most beloved seasonal repertory, exploring how classical Western composers created a canon of both secular and sacred experiences that are deeply rooted in the celebration of the holidays.
