ChelseaCommunityNews.com (CCNews) is an independent online newspaper providing news, arts, events, and opinion content to Manhattan’s Chelsea community and its adjacent areas. That free content is made possible by advertising revenue, grants, and voluntary reader donations. Click here to contribute to our GoFundMe campaign. ******************************* BY MICHAEL MUSTO | Every year, the Drama Desk awards […]
BY TRAV S.D, (Reprinted with author’s permission from its original publication here on Travalanche March 11 is the birthday of downtown impresario Robert Prichard, co-founder and bull goose looney of the much-missed performance space known as Surf Reality (or, by the full title, Surf Reality’s House of Urban Savages). I’ve had cause to mention Surf close to […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | As a professional talking head, I’m in virtually every documentary known to man—whether it be about club kids, Fashion Week, or the bald lady from the first Star Trek film—but I’ve never been the subject of my own doc, and it’s not for lack of trying. Sure, my flaws and lapses […]
Actor, writer, comedian, and consistently hilarious gay wit Alec Mapa (as seen on Ugly Betty, Frasier, and RuPaul’s Drag Race) is returning to West 42nd Street’s legendary Laurie Beechman Theatre with the debut of his solo performance Ha! Penis! It’s a fitting setting for the show’s world premiere, with the Beechman (currently scheduled to shutter […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Laurels from countless luminaries began pouring in this summer, after word came down that Laurie Beechman Theatre (407 W. 42nd St.) would close for good come the end of August. Thankfully, the legendary downstairs performance space got a reprieve through October, as has the ground-level West Bank Cafe that sits above […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | With only 12 episodes in the rearview mirror, Season 3 of The Sherry Vine Variety Show (airing now on OUTtv) finds its titular star with plenty of genre tropes left to explore in the profane manner one might expect from the drag queen who turned Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah into How I […]
“Drag, whether we like it or not, is inherently political, and our presence alone, before we even open our mouths to sing, is a threat to some people. Thankfully, the unholy blend of music and outrageous antics while addressing injustice, ignorance, and bigotry almost always wins over an audience and has powered us through these […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Comedy great Kevin McDonald earned that apt description decades ago, for his work with The Kids in the Hall—the 5-man, 80s/90s Canadian sketch troupe literally unearthed by Amazon Prime last year for an all-new, 8-episode run. A well-deserved second season continues to elude, but McDonald gathers no moss waiting for it. […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Legendary, leggy, lewd drag queen Lady Bunny has returned to her NYC home base, after being a sell-out at Australia’s Sydney Comedy Festival. No, wait, we mean selling out—as in, every available ticket was gobbled up. Now that she’s back in town, word on the street (or perhaps more accurately, the […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Take the studied mimicry of a musical tribute act, add the dead-on burns of a Friar’s Club Roast, and top it off with the showy vocal flourishes of a Kennedy Center Honors cover, performed as the iconic originator looks on from their box seat. Whisk together and bring to a near-boil—and […]