Tarell Alvin McCraney’s New Play Confronts State Violence and the Price of “Blood Money”
In Windfall, Tarell Alvin McCraney asks a devastating question: what happens when a city budgets for your child’s death? Set in a near-future America that feels uncomfortably present, the play follows a father offered a government settlement after state violence takes his child. The money could save his home—but at what moral cost? In this preview, we explore how Windfall turns policy into heartbreak and forces audiences to confront the true price of “blood money.”
The Forgotten Queen of Magic: Adelaide Herrmann in NYC
Adelaide Herrmann spent twenty years performing beside her husband, the legendary magician Herrmann the Great, dazzling audiences across America and Europe. But after his sudden death, she did something no woman had ever done before: she took center stage herself. Known as the Queen of Magic, Herrmann became the first woman to headline her own magic act, performing death-defying illusions, touring internationally, and reshaping the Golden Age of Magic. Her extraordinary and often overlooked story is now featured in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’ exhibition Mystery and Wonder: A Legacy of Golden Age Magicians in New York City.
Burns Night Reeling Ball NYC: One of the Best Events I’ve Ever Been To
I’ve been to Broadway shows, rooftop parties, and ball-adjacent spectacles that promised magic and delivered… content. The Burns Night Reeling Ball in NYC actually delivered—kilts, whiskey, live music, strangers spinning into friends, and the kind of joy New York rarely allows itself.
The City While We Wait
Before smartphones, waiting in New York meant sharing space with strangers, on subway platforms, buses, benches, and sidewalks. Boredom was public, attention was communal, and unmediated time felt unavoidable. This essay reflects on growing up before constant connectivity, arriving in New York without a smartphone, and noticing how screens have quietly reshaped waiting, presence, and civic life in a city built on shared downtime.
