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The article reviews the films "The Essential John Ford" and "Live-In Maid," and discusses the 14th New York Asian Film Festival at the Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater in Chelsea, New York through July 11, 2015 featuring the Chinese drama "River Road," hip-hop action musical "Tokyo Tribe," and Korean comedy "The President's Last Bang."

The article presents reminiscences and memories by theater directors, artistic directors, and playwrights of the Ohio Theatre in New York City. Directors featured include Robert Lyons, Alex Timbers, Kip Fagan, and John Collins. Playwrights featured include Tony Kushner and Adam Bock. Topics discussed include set design for theatrical productions, rats, the use of factory space for theater, performing during heat waves, a visit to the theater by Czech playwright Václav Havel, and productions such as "Dance Dance Revolution," "The Importance of Being Earnest," and "No Plays No Poetry."

The article review the theatrical performance "Ball of Fire" held in New York till December 2015.

The article previews the exhibitions in New York City including those which features films by Darren Aronofsky at the Museum of the Moving Image, "The Beyond" featuring films that influenced artist director Ben Rivers at the Nitehawk Cinema, and New Voices in Black Cinema at the BAM Rose Cinemas.

The article focuses on the New York International Fringe Festival until August 25, 2013, along with the highlights of the strategies and the productions of the shows, including "The Famous Play," by Anthony Natoli, the play "Rubble," and the comedy "Clown Play," by Paul David Young.

Wonderment comes roughly in four-minute intervals at the New Victory Theater these days. That's about how much time is given to each sequence in Cirque Shanghai's ''Bai Xi,'' which translates rather hyperbolically to ''100 amazing acts.'' The title overstates the number of acts by about 80, but that's the only example of overpromising in this child-friendly spectacle of traditional and updated Chinese acrobatics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

''WORLD WAR I is thought of as this old-fashioned war,'' the director Garry Hynes said, ''but to my point of view it has the force of an apocalypse.'' Ms. Hynes, whose Druid Theater production of the 1928 Sean O'Casey play ''The Silver Tassie'' arrives on Sunday as part of the 2011 Lincoln Center Festival, is hardly alone in feeling the urge to remind people just how bloody the conflict stretching from 1914 to 1918 was. ''The war to end all wars,'' as Woodrow Wilson optimistically called it, failed woefully in achieving that goal, to the point where the historian Adam Hochschild titled his acclaimed recent book about the period ''To End All Wars.'' [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

PERFORMING two of Shakespeare's ''problem plays'' in repertory during the wilting summer nights, contending all the while with low-flying helicopters and errant raccoons, can be challenging. But summer at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where ''Measure for Measure'' and ''All's Well That Ends Well'' are both in previews, should be a snap for John Cullum. After all, this is a man who not too long ago opened ''August: Osage County'' with what amounted to a 16-minute monologue, then made a brisk walk to his second performance of the night -- a Tom Stoppard translation of the Gerald Sibleyras drama ''Heroes'' -- with a quick stop at a 99-cent pizza stand on the way. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of ''Radio Play,'' a formless jumble of dopey humor and loopy music, by Tommy Smith and the alt-comedy darling Reggie Watts, is performed in almost complete darkness. This places a higher premium on what we hear as opposed to on what we see -- a shift in focus that, Mr. Watts's considerable musical gifts notwithstanding, doesn't always play to his strengths. Before the lights go down, the audience at Performance Space 122 is treated to Seth Reiser's wondrous set, a Luddite's paradise of reel-to-reel players, turntables, thick wires and other bulky remnants of predigital life. (Is that a microfiche machine in the back?) The eye searches somewhat anxiously for a surge protector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

''A Couple of Poor, Polish-Speaking Romanians'' may wear its shambolic nature on its sleeve, and it could stand to shed at least a third of its nearly two-hour running time. But in this blistering picaresque by an acclaimed young Polish novelist, Dorota Maslowska, having its New York premiere at the Abrons Arts Center under the auspices of the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and East River Commedia, she tempers her grotty verve with a tenderness that helps steer its lead performers through any number of stylistic hairpin turns. The seemingly feral couple who give this 2006 play its title are, as it happens, neither a couple nor Romanian. (Nor do they speak Polish in this production, courtesy of Benjamin Paloff's crackling translation.) They may seem like volatile nihilists, with ''foul, brownish pegs like cigarette butts'' in lieu of teeth. But Blighty and Gina (Troy Lavallee and Robin Singer, both equally good at playing terrifying and tender) are actually a soap opera actor and a flaky young mother who partied a little too hard one night. The result is a botched bit of play-acting that leaves them at the mercy of various oddballs as they try to make their way across Poland, shifting as they go from menacing to menaced. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

AS a young actor new to New York, with a cluster of impressive stage credits and a fair number of disappointments to go along with them, T. R. Knight would frequently take note of the television and film actors snatching up choice roles on Broadway. ''You'd have to be pretty thick not to see who was being hired as you walked past theaters,'' said Mr. Knight, who used the trend as an incentive to become marquee material but also to prove himself worthy of the recognition. ''I don't want to be one of those actors who people walk past the theater and roll their eyes about.'' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the casting of John Ahlin to the title role of the theatrical production "Orson's Shadow," at the Barrow Street Theater in New York City.

Reports on the prevalence of musicals providing various voices of God in New York.

Two of New York's most important experimental theater festivals, Under the Radar and Coil, have been running concurrently in January. Following are reviews of shows in the festivals. Information on Under the Radar: www.undertheradarfestival.com; for Coil: www.ps122.org/performances/coil--2011.html. Even if you're overstuffed and partied-out from last month's holiday marathon, you should still try to make the acquaintance of one special ghost of Christmas future haunting the Under the Radar Festival at the Public Theater through Saturday. In the Teatro en el Blanco's ''Diciembre'' (yes, that's Spanish for December), Guillermo Calderon envisions Dec. 25 in Chile in 2014. And if the view ain't pretty, it is highly picturesque -- a witty, sharply focused vision of a time well past celebration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]