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Arts Intel Report

Bughouse

An illustration for Bughouse.

Feb 18 – Mar 29, 2026
108 E 15th St, New York, NY 10003, United States

Talk about talent. The choreographer and director Martha Clarke has been astonishing audiences with her visionary movement-theater since she first made her name in 1984, with The Garden of Earthly Delights, based on the painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Her subjects since have included fin de siècle Vienna, Kafka, and the Shakers. The performance artist and countertenor John Kelly works in a similar dimension of energized imagery, of visions animated and let loose. His subjects have included Orpheus, Egon Schiele, Caravaggio, Joni Mitchell, and Jean Cocteau. And then there’s Beth Henley, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Crimes of the Heart). The three artists come together for Bughouse, a world premiere that explores the inner life of the Chicagoan Henry Darger, a hospital worker and janitor whose private creativity—fantastical novels and paintings of strange realms populated by children—was discovered only after his death at 81, in 1973. Conceived and directed by Clarke; script by Henley; starring Kelly. —Laura Jacobs

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