Maya Drake (Ali), right, and the company of the North American Tour of Alicia Keys’ “Hell's Kitchen” (Photo by Marc J. Franklin) The Public Theatre in New York City may be the theatrical equivalent of Max Martin or Quincy Jones in terms of its hitmaking history. The shows it has sent to Broadway over the years have included iconic, award-winning works like “Hair,” “A Chorus Line,” “The Normal Heart,” “Topdog/Underdog”, and more recently “Hamilton,” “Fun Home,” “Fat Ham,” “Suffs” and, yes,...

From left: Russell Edge, Trieu Tran, Iris Liu and Jorge-Luis Pallo in “Ascent” at Skylight Theatre (Photo by Randy Wong-Westbrooke) Recently, many Americans (and people around the world) were captivated by the Artemis II mission, which was the first crewed flight beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in 1972. We watched videos of the astronauts in their space capsule floating in zero gravity, marveling at a solar eclipse and views of our home planet, before finally splashing down in the...

From left: Mathias Brinda, Xol Gonzalez, and Khalif J. Gillett in “Level Up!” (Photo by Jenny Graham) From the moment you walk into the Latino Theater Company to see “Level Up!,” you feel like you’re in The Matrix . Credit for that goes to scenic designer François-Pierre Couture, lighting designer Xinyuan Li, sound designer Robert J. Revell and especially projections designer Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh. It’s not often that the creative team behind a play is mentioned first in a theatre review, but the...