Events of 2023: My Year in Review
A look back at events I attended myself over the last year
My monthly quest to create the Blankman List invariably makes me aware of many events that I want to (and sometimes do) attend around New York City, along with plenty that are not for me but are perfect for others. I’ve included all-night raves on the list, for example—something you could not pay me enough to do—and dating mixers that I wouldn’t attend only by virtue of not being single.
So for one year, I kept a record of every event that I went to.* In this article, I take a look back. What do I attend?
A Look at the Data
I attended 87 events, or about 1.67 events per week. Though I imagine that number is dwarfed by some of my more extroverted peers, I feel proud of it. Some days I need a mental push just to get outside. The events spanned a wide range of types, including “obvious” fare like concerts, plays, and films, but also some less obvious types, like a botanical garden show, flea market, cannabis museum, and ninja warrior class.
My 2023 events do not just include New York City. I traveled some and visited friends and family outside the city. Here is the breakdown:
71% of events were in Manhattan.
14% of events were in another borough of New York City.
4% of events were in New York State but not New York City.
11% of events were elsewhere around the country. (I didn’t leave the US in 2023.)
The Obvious Question
“So which one was your favorite?” It’s the most common question to follow a personal list like this—a question I’m plenty guilty of asking others. (We humans just need to pick a freaking gold medal winner!) It’s not really fair to compare, say, an opera to a roller disco, so I pick these top three in no particular order based only on how they made me feel at the time.
Being Mary Tyler Moore – The Mary Tyler Moore Show was formative for me. I attended an advance screening of the documentary, which brought me back to easier time when I stayed up late to watch Nick at Nite with my mom. As an adult, I came to admire not just the show’s writing, but Moore’s role as an actress and feminist icon. To this day, the show’s theme music instantly fills me with warmth and nostalgia. This film let me indulge with a full heart.
The Köln Concert - Keith Jarrett, who I was lucky enough to see live in 2012, recorded the Köln Concert in 1975 in Köln, West Germany. Postmodern choreographer Trajal Harrell choreographed movement to part of the album, paired with several Joni Mitchell songs. It just struck ALL the right nerves for me. The Köln Concert is among my all-time favorite albums, I went deep into a Joni Mitchell phase in 2014-ish, and I’ve been finding myself unusually drawn to and moved by dance this year. Which brings me to . . .
Dancin’ - I wish I could say I have no problem moving like nobody’s watching, but truth be told I feel awkward on a dance floor. Despite that, when Manuel Herrera tipped his hat and promised a “plotless musical,” I was hooked as I’d never been before. I have seen a lot of musical theater, but this was new to me. The language of Bob Fosse. By the second number, “Mr. Bojangles,” I felt tears welling up from song and dance, dance, dance. The characters within stuck with me so much that I needed to see it again. And I did. I saw it three times before it closed in May. To the “Mr. Bojangles” crew of Manual Herrera, Yeman Brown, and Jacob Guzman—and in one performance, understudy Aydin Eyikan—know that your work helped one person fall in love with dance for the first time.
Favorite Events by Genre
When I compare apples to apples, it’s a little easier to pick favorites of 2023. The percent by each genre is the corresponding percentage of events that I attended.
Musical Theater (28%): Kimberly Akimbo – This might as well have been a toss-up between Merrily We Roll Along, Dancin’, and Kimberly Akimbo. I already listed Dancin’ as an all-time favorite, so I ruled it out here. Merrily is stellar theater with sharp writing and dazzling performances. But if I may briefly set Stephen Sondheim down from his pedestal, Kimberly Akimbo is just plain one of my favorite musicals that I’ve ever seen. I saw it three times this year and two times last year, too.
Concert (9%): Renee Rapp – Rapp’s bubblegum pop-meets-Broadway style can be divisive at times, and her demeanor in interviews can be a little no-holds-barred. But I became a lifelong fan after seeing her in Mean Girls in 2019 and am in awe every time she starts to sing.
Film (8%): Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé – I didn’t want to repeat Being Mary Tyler Moore, and so instead I’ll choose a movie that hypnotized me. It was like avant-garde musical theater interspersed with a hyper-curated documentary that hit in all the right spots and easily held my attention for the full three hours.
Opera (5%): Dead Man Walking – I only saw four operas, and all were wonderful in their own way. But this is the only one that broadened my conception of what opera at the Met can be: a contemporary human story set against tonal and at times bluesy classical music.
Play (12%): Solo: A Show About Friendship – At the time, I was reading a memoir largely about producing Off- and Off-Off-Broadway shows, and this show—a one-person play about friendship and loss—came at just the right time. Comedian Gabe Mollica is a gem.
Cultural Exhibition (12%): The Museum of Broadway – It is no secret that I love Broadway. I made 26 trips to a Broadway theater this year, seeing 19 different shows, not counting theaters off and outside Broadway. I was worried this museum would be a tourist trap—and it did have some set pieces designed for Instagram photos. But it also had so, so many fascinating artifacts, photos, and art installations that I could have spent the whole day there.
Sports (5%): Baltimore Orioles at New York Yankees – I am a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan—with baseball being the only sport that I follow with regularity. Three memories from the game: 1) I went with my husband and my friend E., 2) the Orioles won, and 3) right fielder Anthony Santander hit a home run.
Art Exhibition (14%): Tetsuya Ishida: My Anxious Self – The surrealist Japanese painter tragically died at 31, and the Gagosian featured a retrospective of his work. The works offer a heartbreaking and stunning look at the darker underbelly of Japanese society. Second place goes to another of the Gagosian’s galleries, with their Cy Twombly show earlier in the year.
The remaining 7% are a mixed bag, such as zoos and drag shows. There is a lesson here for me. I only attended a single purely dance event: The Köln Concert at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. All other dance I saw, like in Dancin’, was in service of another art form, such as musical theater. Considering how deeply dance resonated with me in 2023, I’d like to improve this number next year.
Least Favorite Events
Sometimes, the quality and passion are both there, but it’s not right for me. I might have misunderstood what the event involved or found myself in an audience in which I didn’t feel I belonged.
The Ghosts of New Orleans Tour – I like walking tours. They can put history and architecture in context and don’t have me sitting in one place for hours. I also went on a voodoo tour during this trip to New Orleans, which was great. That tour explored the religion’s history, showcased sites of interest, and debunked common myths. This tour, however, played wishy-washy with history and focused on when and where to find specific ghosts that—spoiler—we never actually saw. I recognize that there are people who find this approach fun and interesting, but you will not see it show up on any Blankman List.
A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical – Look, this is Broadway. The performers are top-tier. The orchestra, set, costumes, choreography—all brilliant. But I have two major criticisms that made this show tough for me. First, the story is cliché and undaring for 2023. This does not need to be the case when telling someone’s story, especially a rock star’s! Contrast that with the grandiosity of Hamilton, the cleverness of Tina, or the showmanship of MJ. Second, the audience surrounding me was a bunch of boomer tourists with zero theater etiquette who talked through dialogue, sang along to everything, and took pictures incessantly.
Mind Mangler: A Night of Tragic Illusion – The crux of a story is a magic performance “gone wrong” à la The Play That Goes Wrong. The magician makes jokes and excuses when tricks go awry, and in one scene of screwball-meets-improv comedy, the assistant accidentally hypnotizes the magician. If that’s all it was—a comedy play—then it would have been goofy but tolerable. The problem for me was the magician performs actual magic tricks, too. In fact, that’s the reason I wanted to see it. I’m lukewarm on screwball comedy but love stage magic! The first actual trick was tearing apart a newspaper and magically restoring it. The second trick was a drawn-out mentalism trick where it seemed as though he was reading an audience member’s mind. But this second type of magic is not for me. It bores me and is so often used for nefarious purposes like claiming psychic or supernatural powers (cf. Crossing Over with John Edwards). After the “mind-reading” trick, he did it again. And again. I wanted out, so I left at intermission, a first for me.
Broadway in 2023
When Broadway first reopened in 2021, I went like it was about to close again. I saw over one new play or musical per week for over a year, often seeing shows multiple times and occasionally being able to check off having seen every single Broadway musical being staged at a particular time. My Broadway obsession has since cooled, but my love of theater went nowhere. I saw 31% of my 2023 events at a Broadway theater. These were overwhelmingly musicals, with only four exceptions: El Mago Pop, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, The Cottage, and The Shark Is Broken. Of those, El Mago Pop was my favorite, which I explain later.
12% of the events were at a non-Broadway theater. (I’m lumping together Off-Broadway, Off-Off-Broadway, and non-Broadway, but not counting opera houses or mixed performance spaces.) Of these, my favorite was Merrily We Roll Along, and it’s not even close. I still have yet to see the current Broadway run, but I saw the original Off-Broadway version, and it was PERFECTION.
I saw 17 distinct musicals in 2023 (a two-thirds year-over-year reduction) and was humbled to find that only three of them included women composers (Kimberly Akimbo, Shucked, and Once Upon a One More Time, counting Britney Spears). A few additional shows had book writers who were women: Bad Cinderella and New York, New York. The count of shows with BIPOC creative team members was embarrassing: only New York, New York and MJ. Though I will note extreme sample bias; Broadway creatives are still overwhelmingly white.
If I add operas to the mix, which seems fair since they also have a composer and book writer (or librettist, rather), 17% of the shows I saw had at least one writer or composer of color. I do see a movement towards more straight plays in NYC being written by Black playwrights and playwrights of color, a deliberate post-pandemic effort. Of plays I saw in that category, I especially loved Black Odyssey, a wild reimagining of the Odysseus story set in modern-day Harlem.
The Little Things You Do Together
It’s comforting to me that one of the first details I can recall about any event is who was with me. It’s a major factor of my experience. The wrong audience neighbor can make the best show in the world unbearable. Or to be less cynical, with the right person, a lackluster show can still be a great shared experience.
There were a total of 23 friends and family members that accompanied me to events, but of course some joined more than others:
34% of events – My husband was with me.
48% of events – I was with one or more friends, but not my husband.
18% of events – I went alone.
I have found that people’s opinions on going out alone get right at universal feelings of fear and belonging. Personally, I can’t stand going to bars, movie theaters, or table service restaurants alone. But I love going to concerts, art museums, and plays alone. Go figure. I usually don’t mind when the person next to me starts chatting, although I’m unlikely to initiate it and have felt trapped in some conversations that I desperately wanted out of. Anyway, a couple standouts:
Dead Man Walking – I got one digital rush ticket to this opera and was blown away by it. The music is breathtaking, but the final scene is a tough one if you’re needle phobic. I had to look away and was briefly afraid that I would pass out on the poor stranger sitting next to me!
Kimberly Akimbo – Let’s just say there was a lot of Kimberly Akimbo in my Spotify Wrapped. I happened to have an unlikely Wednesday where I was off work with an entire afternoon to kill, and I had won the lottery for the matinee. This was a straight-up solo date, complete with coffee and Krispy Kreme donut.
El Mago Pop – I really wanted to see this magic show for the few weeks it was here and hadn’t had great luck with the lottery for it. I entered for just one ticket, hoping it would improve my odds, and it worked! It wasn’t until I got there that I realized it was for opening night.
Feeling Starstruck
At first I called this section “Spotting Celebrities,” but 1) I’m not sure what counts as a celebrity, and 2) as many friends can attest, I am miserable at recognizing celebrities. The list here is personal; when did I feel starstruck? I’m not counting seeing a celebrity on stage or signing autographs after a show, although I do remember feeling momentarily starstruck when first seeing Ben Platt, Ana Gabriel, Phillipa Soo, and the entire starting lineup of the Baltimore Orioles on their respective turfs.
A Beautiful Noise: The Neil Diamond Musical – I guess this doesn’t really count as a seeing a star in person, but I saw it on Diamond’s birthday, so his phone was called from the stage so that the audience could sing “Happy Birthday” to him.
Gutenberg: The Musical – Every performance has a guest “producer” emerge from the audience at the end. When I went, it was Jason Alexander. Coincidentally, I also spotted him in the theater earlier in the year after seeing The Cottage, a play he directed.
Being Mary Tyler Moore – The subsequent film screening included a Q&A with surviving husband Dr. Robert Levine, and though not part of the Q&A, Mary Tyler Moore Show writer Treya Silverman was in the audience.
El Mago Pop – As described earlier, I accidentally found myself here on opening night. I recognized a few Broadway actors in the audience: Jordan Dobson, Andrew Barth Feldman, and Justin David Sullivan.
MJ – I won the lottery for one ticket as an impromptu weekend evening treat to myself. After the show, on the walk back to the subway, I spotted two cast members of Dancin’ walking (walkin’?) on their way home, too: Ron Todorowski and Yeman Brown.
Good Burger 2 – Thanks to my friend N., I was at a red carpet premiere for the movie, followed by an after party. Both Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell were at the premiere, and at least Kenan was at the after party.
Twice I ran into a show’s cast member on the commute home afterwards. Once was with a former Broadway lead who was taking the LIRR home at the same time and in the same car as me, and another was an understudy who was coincidentally sitting across from me in the subway. These encounters feel a bit too stalker-ish to name names, but I felt hyperaware of their presence and found myself thinking about the juxtaposition between being in the literal spotlight for a thousand people, followed shortly by being another anonymous face taking public transit.
The Cost of Living
I did not pay full retail ticket price for every (or even most) events. One data point I’ll share: 39% of these events were $10 or less. I offer advice for finding events like this in “Where to Find Free and Cheap Things to Do in New York City.” A few highlights among my free or cheap events:
Of Mythic Worlds: Works from the Distant Past through the Present – I discuss this art exhibition briefly in my post “On Going Out in NYC.” It was a wide range of drawing styles, all in service of fantastical and otherworldly images. I was especially transfixed by drawings by Georgia O’Keeffe and Betye Saar and will always recommend the free-to-enter Drawing Center in SoHo.
The Book of HOV: A celebration of the life and work of Shawn "JAY-Z" Carter – The NYC public library system has many art and cultural exhibitions that are free and worth checking out. But this one in particular at the Brooklyn Public Library’s Central Library location blew me away: a multi-floor exhibit with art, objects, and major installations including the inside of a recording studio and the large-scale sculpture that was the cover of The Blueprint 3!
The Shark Is Broken – In my post “How to See Broadway Shows for Cheap,” I walk through how to see theater in NYC without breaking the bank. In the $10-or-less category, I saw two Broadway plays, five Off- and Off-Off-Broadway plays, and one Off-Broadway musical. I think my favorite of the bunch was The Shark Is Broken, which included a scene of acting virtuosity where Alex Brightman, playing Richard Dreyfuss on the set of Jaws, suffers a nervous breakdown.
I used a variety of cost-saving tactics throughout the year but want to specifically call out the Met Opera’s digital rush. It is shocking to me how easy it is—for shows whose demand isn’t too high, at least—to score close orchestra seats for $25.
Resolutions for 2024
Looking back, I only tagged eight events as “concerts.” (Though I tagged others as “opera,” and there were a handful of other events, like musical theater or the Beyoncé film, which featured music.) This is a far cry from my peak concertgoing in years past, but at least of those eight events, they spanned a lot of music: indie folk, classical, jazz, alternative rock, showtunes, pop, American traditional, and Latin pop.
That list of genres still has some notable gaps if I really wanted to hear it all. Very little is from the nonwestern tradition, and it’s missing major genres of rap, R&B, and country. Some of that I just chalk up to being one human with limited time, but given my love of classical music and formative years spent listening to and studying it, I can do better next year than attending just one dedicated classical concert.
So long I count opera, I did see classical music by living composers (my favorite being the opera Dead Man Walking), and I was even at the experimental venue Roulette once, but it was to see a classical choral group performing works of Stephen Sondheim. Where was Stuart Saunders Smith?! Next year I want to hear more classical music being composed today.
There are two art forms whose praises I sing throughout this reflection: dance and stage magic. However, I only saw one dance performance (The Köln Concert) and one magic show (El Mago Pop). Next year I want to indulge more in different art forms that I love.
Call it FOMO, call it complacency, whatever happened, I regret a few instances throughout the year where I didn’t grab the chance to see high-quality events at very little cost. I passed on a rush ticket to the opera Florencia en el Amazonas and a heavily discounted ticket to the musical How to Dance in Ohio. Next year I want to say “yes” a few more times.
I’ve heard others talk about how time has slowed since the pandemic. I tend to agree. It changed me, and this urgency to go out and see the world has abated a little. Sometimes just making it through another day is accomplishment enough. My main feeling about 2024 is not a resolution, but rather a reminder to be grateful. Grateful that there are theaters and concerts to go to. Grateful to be able to attend. Grateful to start one more revolution around the sun.
* Something I have learned since transitioning into a paid, predictable list is that it’s not always clear what counts as an “event.” In recording my events, I didn’t include anything private like hanging out a friend’s apartment, and I generally didn’t include shopping or dining events, although events along those lines do sometimes make my monthly Blankman List. Tabulating the data forced me to make a lot of arbitrary decisions. If I see three art exhibitions in one museum, is that three events or one? If I see two performers back-to-back at one venue, is that two events or one? In every case, I simply made a call and moved on. I also included two 2023 events that have not yet occurred but I’ve already bought tickets for, along with one event that occurred on December 29, 2022. Additionally, in working on this post, I stumbled across a few events that I had forgotten to include in the data. When this happened, I did not always update numerical summaries that I had already calculated and written about.