This month offers St. Patrick's Day and the Oscars, vampires and Mapplethorpe, as well as free ice skating and a final bow from Jonathan Groff.
Who said you can't combine drinking and learning? On March 14, Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and Fort Hamilton Distillery partner for "Revolutionary Spirits," a discussion of Brooklyn's boozy history that includes a trolley tour of the cemetery and whiskey tastings.
On March 24, the pop historian and mixologist Jacey Powers leads "Star Spangled Sipper," a happy hour history lesson on the United States' flag that comes with cocktails made from Colonial America-era recipes. It's at Fraunces Tavern Museum in the financial district.
Spice up Academy Awards night on March 15 with a drag queen who will gag you: Pietra Parker, the bombshell "Queen From Rio," will be among the performers at Cinema Village near Union Square for a Brazil-themed watch party, which also features the drumming group Fogo Azul and the exotic dancer Naty De Ferrari. Step up your red carpet look for the best-dressed contest.
The lobby of the Pershing Square Signature Center in Hell's Kitchen is the new home of the affordable monthly series Signature Jazz. For just $15, you get a drink and live music from a changing roster of standout local musicians in an intimate yet not cramped space. Arrive early to snag one of the comfy couches for the next show on March 23, which features the British trumpeter Alexandra Ridout.
The reclusive self-taught artist Henry Darger made epic watercolor battle scenes that famously featured intersex girls and gentle dragons. Darger's life comes to the stage in the new show "Bughouse," directed by Martha Clarke and starring the performance artist John Kelly, with a script adapted from Darger's own writings by Beth Henley ("Crimes of the Heart"). It's at the Vineyard Theater near Union Square through March 29.
It's easy being green all month long. On March 1, the St. Pat's Parade for All -- which began as a response to the main parade's exclusion of open participation by gay groups -- returns to Sunnyside and Woodside, Queens, starting at noon. On March 17, the 265th New York City St. Patrick's Day Parade heads down Fifth Avenue, starting at 11 a.m. The New York Irish Center in Long Island City, Queens, keeps the merriment going at 40 Shades of Green, which offers music, dancing and more from 3 to 6 p.m.
The Chamber Music Society provides one reason to brave Friday the 13th when it presents "Century of Winds," a program devoted to the flute, oboe and other wind instruments, with works by Strauss, Farrenc and others, at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center.
The experimental choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker returns to New York with "Exit Above," a piece with songs performed live by the singer-songwriter Meskerem Mees and the blues guitarist Carlos Garbin. It's at the NYU Skirball Center from March 5 to 7.
This month's wisecracking guys include Will Burkart at the Gramercy Theater (March 27) and Stavros Halkias at Radio City Music Hall (March 28).
Alien Chicks and Thesaurus Rex are just two of the impish-sounding bands taking part in the New Colossus Festival (March 3-8), an indie music showcase on the Lower East Side devoted to new acts from around the world.
Other concerts this month, by generation: Baby boomers, Patti LaBelle is at Flagstar at Westbury Music Fair on Long Island (March 14). Gen X, New Edition, Toni Braxton and Boyz II Men are at the Barclays Center (March 14). Millennials, Cardi B is at Madison Square Garden (March 25-26). Gen Z, NMIXX is at the Brooklyn Paramount (March 31).
Bloodsuckers are taking it to the neck level this month. The Rat, an arts venue in Dumbo, Brooklyn, is hosting a staged reading of the "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" pilot (March 10). Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg presents a gift from the goths: "Vampire Time Travelers," a shot-on-video oddity from 1998 (March 19). And Broadway gives the vampire musical yet another shot when "The Lost Boys" starts in previews at the Palace Theater (March 27).
As a kid, I fantasized about hiding away one night at a library to devour as many books and movies as possible. On March 14, my dream comes this close to materializing when the Brooklyn Library hosts Night in the Library, a free after-hours festival featuring art, discussions and screenings at its central branch on Grand Army Plaza. This year's brainy theme is "The Philosophy of Mathematics," an exploration of "truths, proofs and other paradoxes." The all-ages event goes from 7 p.m. to 3:14 a.m. -- a perfect end to Pi Day.
Central Park's Wollman Rink, with its spectacular views of the Manhattan skyline, continues the celebration of its 75th anniversary with three days of free community skating from March 20 to 22.
Ken Jennings stans, this one's for you: On March 11 and 25, the Alamo Drafthouse on Staten Island hosts Jeopardy! Interactive, a competition in which you use your phone or tablet to compete against audience members. There will be prizes!
Two new shows center the senses. I recently attended one: "remini, scent," an almost spectral piece in which my partner and I were blindfolded and led by a string through spaces we engaged with only through touch, sound and smell. The 45-minute event runs through March 8 at Moonzescope in SoHo. Some shows are sold out, but there is a wait list.
The ears have it in "The World According to Sound," where for 70 minutes audience members wearing eye masks listen to curious recordings like that of ants' footsteps. It's on March 9 at the New School's University Center near Union Square. Admission is free with registration.
Sixteen large-scale photographs -- we're talking a whopping 60 inches by 60 inches -- of flowers, nudes and other Robert Mapplethorpe obsessions are on view at Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea starting on March 5. If you're in that neighborhood from March 18 to 22, stop by the Affordable Art Fair at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, where for as little as $100, you can take home a treasure of your own.
The New York Public Library marks Women's History Month with free floral design workshops led by the storyteller Ivy Paniagua and inspired by Taylor Jenkins Reid's 2017 novel "The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo." The sessions are at the Charleston Library on Staten Island (March 13) and Clason's Point Library in the Bronx (March 17). Registration is encouraged.
Endurance cinema fans, this is your month: L'Alliance New York on the Upper East Side is hosting two-day presentations of "Shoah," Claude Lanzmann's nine-and-a-half-hour documentary about the Holocaust (March 6-7 and 18-19). Anthology Film Archives in the East Village spotlights the boundary-pushing theater company Mabou Mines in a series (March 13-19) that includes a two-day screening of "Lear '87 Archive (Condensed)," a six-hour documentary -- never before shown theatrically -- about the ensemble’s gender-swapped "King Lear," set in the 1950s South. And at Film at Lincoln Center, "Satantango," a nearly eight-hour film by the Hungarian director Bela Tarr, who died in January, is screening in three parts with two intermissions (March 28).
"Jasper Johns: Between the Clock and the Bed," an exhibition of the artist's crosshatch abstractions, is at Gagosian through March 14. The New York International Children's Film Festival runs through March 15 at IFC Center and other theaters, as does the 25th Flamenco Festival, which is at performance spaces throughout the city.
On March 29, Jonathan Groff gives his final performance as the crooner Bobby Darin in the Broadway musical "Just in Time," at Circle in the Square. Matthew Morrison takes over on April 1, and Jeremy Jordan succeeds him beginning on April 21.