Michael R. Jackson is helping adapt the darkly comic horror film into a musical. But can a show about a teenager with vagina dentata sing?Michael R. Jackson doesn’t have a vagina. He also doesn’t not have one.“While I’m not a teen evangelical with teeth in my vagina,” he said, “spiritually I am.”Jackson’s spectral self-identity was a guiding light as he and the composer Anna K. Jacobs collaborated on “Teeth,” a new musical based on Mitchell Lichtenstein’s 2007 indie scary movie of the same name. It’s about a high school student named Dawn who discovers to her horror that she has vagina dentata — a myth, found across cultures and eras, about a vagina that has a lethal set of chompers. (The film is streaming on Tubi, and the show is in previews Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons before a March 12 opening.)If you’re going to musicalize a horror movie, “Teeth” is a doozy, and a gamble. Darkly comic and at times stomach-churningly gory, it’s a touchstone of feminist body horror and an exemplar, along with “I Spit on Your Grave” and “Jennifer’s Body,” of a rape-revenge film that indicts misogyny and body shame for the grip they have on women’s sexual autonomy.Jackson, the show’s lyricist, and, with Jacobs, co-writer of the book, said he was drawn to adapt “Teeth” because of how it frames horror and dark comedy around sex and conservative Christianity — two themes that also raged through his 2022 Broadway musical, “A Strange Loop,” a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.“I know what it’s like to be afraid of your own body and to feel like somebody’s going to catch you masturbating and what that means, that you’re going to go to hell,” said Jackson, who grew up in the Baptist church. “I immediately glommed onto Dawn because I’ve had that internal experience.”That last line got a laugh from two other members of the “Teeth” creative team who, with Jackson and Jacobs, sat for an interview at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown Manhattan before a recent matinee: the director, Sarah Benson, and the choreographer, Raja Feather Kelly.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

Students said the latest move had upended their plans and intensified their fears.It had been all figured out, Cici Wang said. Summer at home in China, then back to get her master’s degree in Chicago. After that, if she was lucky, a job in the United States.Now all of that is up in the air, she said, a potential casualty of a crackdown that has upended the future for more than 277,000 Chinese nationals studying in this country.“Hopefully, I’ll be fine,” said Ms. Wang, a 22-year-old aspiring computer scientist, sitting with her parents in the stately main quad of the University of Chicago on Thursday. “But I’m not sure.”Across the country, Chinese students reeled Thursday from Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the Trump administration would begin “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students studying in the United States. More than two dozen students studying in the United States, most of whom did not want their names published for fear of retaliation, told The New York Times that they worried they could lose their academic opportunities in an instant, with little explanation.In a statement late Wednesday, the State Department announced it was focusing on those who were studying in “critical fields” or who had ties to the Chinese Communist Party and was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong.The vague parameters had a chilling effect on Thursday as students wondered how broadly the Trump administration would apply its new criteria. Mr. Rubio did not define “critical fields,” but science students felt particularly vulnerable because American officials have expressed concerns about the recruiting of U.S.-trained scientists by China. Nor was it clear how American officials would determine which students had ties to the Communist Party.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

In the face of mass unemployment and a rapidly contracting economy, President Trump is desperate to end the pandemic lockdown and bring the country back on line. That’s why he spent the past week asserting his “total” authority to reopen the economy (“The president of the United States calls the shots”) and promising a rapid […] More

The fever had dissipated but the six patients were having respiratory issues that were resistant to treatment and the next few hours were going to be precarious. Half the group had already crossed the line between serious and critical condition, as two of them were on oxygen and one was on life support.Meanwhile, as investigators examined the body of evidence in the case, their nexus of activity focused on the farm on Lakewood Road, where they would soon find a beautiful poison toadstool that someone had seamlessly blended in with the straw mushrooms for sale.The fever had dissipated but the six patients were having respiratory issues that were resistant to treatment and the next few hours were going to be precarious. Half the group had already crossed the line between serious and critical condition, as two of them were on oxygen and one was on life support.Meanwhile, as investigators examined the body of evidence in the case, their nexus of activity focused on the farm on Lakewood Road, where they would soon find a beautiful poison toadstool that someone had seamlessly blended in with the straw mushrooms for sale.The fever had dissipated but the six patients were having respiratory issues that were resistant to treatment and the next few hours were going to be precarious. Half the group had already crossed the line between serious and critical condition, as two of them were on oxygen and one was on life support.Meanwhile, as investigators examined the body of evidence in the case, their nexus of activity focused on the farm on Lakewood Road, where they would soon find a beautiful poison toadstool that someone had seamlessly blended in with the straw mushrooms for sale. More

Javier Milei, a libertarian economist often compared to Donald Trump, will face off against Sergio Massa, Argentina’s economy minister, in a runoff next month.After two votes, Argentina’s presidential race now heads into its decisive round with the final two political survivors vying to lead a country where people are desperate for a financial turnaround.They are Javier Milei, a far-right libertarian economist and television pundit who has embraced comparisons to Donald J. Trump, and Sergio Massa, Argentina’s center-left economy minister who oversees an economy that has a nearly 140-percent annual inflation.Mr. Milei won the open primary elections in August and had led the polls for months after, but in the election on Sunday night, Mr. Massa was the clear winner. He captured nearly 37 percent of the vote, compared with 30 percent for Mr. Milei, sending them to a runoff on Nov. 19.Here are five takeaways from Sunday’s vote and the road ahead for Argentina.Mr. Milei captured 30 percent of the vote on Sunday.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesMilei is in a weaker position than expected.Mr. Milei had entered Sunday as the clear favorite, with some in his campaign predicting that he could win the election outright in the first round.However, he ended the night capturing almost exactly the same percentage of the vote as he did in the primary election in August, and now he faces an opponent in Mr. Massa who looks much stronger than previously thought.Mr. Milei has attracted a lot of attention for his promises to radically overhaul the Argentine government and economy with a plan to eliminate the nation’s central bank and replace its currency with the U.S. dollar.But analysts said that his brash political style, which had drawn comparisons to Mr. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former right-wing president, likely turned away many centrist voters.“The supporters who made memes of him with Bolsonaro and Trump didn’t do him any favors,” said Brian Winter, a Latin American analyst and former journalist in Argentina. “Argentines desperately want change, but there’s not enough demand for that brand of conservatism.”Mr. Massa won the largest share of the vote on Sunday, but has the baggage of being the economy minister in a failing economy.Enrique Garcia Medina/EPA, via ShutterstockMassa finished first with old-school politics.Mr. Massa is a two-decade veteran of Argentine politics and the new leader of the Peronist political movement that has held sway in Argentina for decades and has won nine of the last 12 free and fair presidential elections.After finishing third in the primaries, the powerful Peronist political machine came out in force on Sunday. Overall turnout increased from August by eight percentage points to nearly 78 percent on Sunday — and all of that seemed to benefit the Peronists, with the movement’s support increasing from the primary by more than nine percentage points.“Peronism got scared and acted much more unified,” said María Esperanza Casullo, a political scientist at Argentina’s National University of Rio Negro. “Everyone did everything possible to win these elections, and in provinces where things had gone very badly, they rebounded.”Mr. Massa also took advantage of his position as economy minister and pushed through several policies to aid his candidacy, including programs that return sales tax to certain workers and eliminate income tax for others.Buenos Aires, the capital. Inflation in Argentina is nearing 140 percent.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesThe loser of the election might be Argentina’s already ailing economy.Those tax breaks might help Mr. Massa win the election, but they are questionable measures in a country that is already broke and struggling through one of its worst economic crises in years.Poverty is rising, inflation is nearing 140 percent and the value of the Argentine peso is plummeting. That economic turmoil has given Mr. Milei an opening to the presidency, despite his inexperience, but some economists worry that his radical policy proposals, like dollarizing the economy, could do even more harm to an already fragile economy.Yet Mr. Massa has led Argentina’s economy for more than a year, just as things have gotten worse, and his platform does not include plans to significantly change course. In fact, he has promised to maintain some economic policies that conservative economists criticize, such as large subsidies for residents’ energy costs.Still, Mr. Massa has generally been more market friendly than other Peronist leaders, and with Sunday’s elections giving the Peronists the most seats in Argentina’s Congress (though still short of a majority), he will have a much better ability to govern than Mr. Milei, said Martín Rapetti, an Argentine economist.But how would he govern? “Here we enter conjectural territory,” Mr. Rapetti said. “Massa has not said anything concrete regarding his economic program.”The candidate that markets liked the most — Patricia Bullrich, a right-wing former security minister — was knocked out of the contest on Sunday.Patricia Bullrich was knocked out of the race on Sunday, and her supporters may decide the outcome of the runoff.Natacha Pisarenko/Associated PressThe next four weeks will be a fight over Bullrich’s voters.While Ms. Bullrich is out of the race, she still could decide the presidency.Despite coming in third, Ms. Bullrich still earned 24 percent of the vote, and where her 6.2 million voters swing is the major question of the race.Mr. Milei, as a conservative, is thought to have the inside track on those voters, and in her concession speech on Sunday night, she criticized the Peronists. Many of her supporters, after years of failed Peronist policies, are unlikely to switch to Mr. Massa.Yet many other Bullrich supporters are centrists, and for them, Mr. Milei could prove to be too extreme.The race is still a tossup.While Mr. Massa won on Sunday, he is far from a sure bet in the runoff.There is ample anti-Peronist sentiment in Argentina after years of corruption scandals and economic crises, and Mr. Massa also has the baggage of being the economy minister in a failing economy.“Countries don’t usually elect finance ministers overseeing 140 percent inflation,” Mr. Winter said. “But they also don’t usually elect people like Javier Milei.”Mr. Milei appears to have hit a ceiling of voters who truly want him to be president. Now he must convince most of the voters in play to bet on his vision of drastic change for a country that has long been resistant to change.Both candidates took a shot at moderation in their speeches on Sunday night and will try to open their doors to the political parties that were eliminated from the final round. There is a lot of campaigning to go.Lucía Cholakian Herrera More