Aurelia Butler

More stories

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Movies

    Hollywood Strikes Send a Chill Through Britain’s Film Industry

    Many U.S. studios’ blockbusters are filmed in Britain, so the walkouts by actors and screenwriters have caused thousands of U.K. film crews to lose work.What do “Barbie,” “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have in common? Besides being the summer’s big-budget movies, they were made in Britain, filmed in part at some of the country’s most esteemed studios.Big Hollywood productions are a critical part of Britain’s film and television industry. For years, they have brought in money, jobs and prestige, and helped make the sector a bright spot in Britain’s economy. But now, that special relationship has brought difficulty.The strikes by actors and screenwriters in the United States, which have ground much of Hollywood to a standstill, are also being strongly felt in Britain, where productions including “Deadpool 3,” “Wicked” and Part 2 of “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” stopped filming. Throughout the late summer months, when the industry would be at its busiest to take advantage of the long days, soundstages at Pinewood, Britain’s largest studios, were instead nearly empty.Film crews, like camera workers and costume designers, are out of work after productions abruptly stopped. Bectu, the British union for workers in behind-the-scenes roles in creative industries, surveyed nearly 4,000 of its film and TV members and 80 percent said their jobs had been affected, with three-quarters not working.The British impact from the Hollywood strikes is mostly on productions using members of SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, which was picketing Universal Studios in August.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times“Irrespective of whether you think the studios are right or whether the unions are right, there are people who are suffering in the U.K.,” said Marcus Ryder, the incoming chief executive of the Film and TV Charity, which supports workers who are struggling financially.In August, the charity received more than 320 applications for hardship grants, compared with 37 a year earlier.Since the first “Star Wars” movie was filmed partly in a studio in England in the mid-1970s, British film studios have been a top destination for American productions, and that impetus gathered pace in the past decade thanks to generous tax incentives and moviemakers’ demand for experienced crews. More recently, Netflix, Amazon Prime and other streaming services have snapped up studio space so quickly they set off a boom in studio building.These big-budget productions employ thousands of local workers, and pour billions into the economy. Last year, a record 6.3 billion pounds ($7.8 billion) was spent on film and high-end TV productions in Britain, according to the British Film Institute. Nearly 90 percent came from American studios or other foreign productions.The number of films or television shows delayed in Britain since mid-July, when Hollywood actors joined the writers’ strike, is relatively small, maybe about a dozen, but they are the big productions that require lots of crew and support an ecosystem of visual effects companies, catering and other services. More

  • 113 Shares109 Views

    in Music

    Olivia Rodrigo’s ‘Guts’ Is Her Second No. 1 Album

    The 20-year-old singer-songwriter’s follow-up to her 2021 debut, “Sour,” has the fourth-biggest opening of any LP this year so far.Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, “Guts,” has a blockbuster opening at No. 1 on Billboard’s chart, and the latest solo release by a member of BTS — V’s “Layover” — starts at No. 2.“Guts,” the second LP by the 20-year-old Rodrigo, becomes her second No. 1 album, after “Sour” (2021), the debut that made her an instant star. “Guts” opened with the equivalent of 302,000 sales in the United States, according to the tracking service Luminate — a hair better than Rodrigo had for the opening of “Sour,” which arrived with 295,000 and eventually spent five weeks in the top spot.“Guts” has the fourth-biggest opening of any album this year so far, after Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” (716,000), Morgan Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” (501,000) and Travis Scott’s “Utopia” (496,000). Rodrigo’s single “Vampire,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July, returns to No. 1 this week, rising from No. 9.Rodrigo’s new album, which is also No. 1 in Britain, Canada, Australia and elsewhere, had 200 million streams in the United States and sold 150,000 copies as a complete package. “Guts” was offered in an array of physical configurations, including 13 vinyl editions, four on CD, a cassette and various deluxe boxed sets. Last week, Rodrigo announced a 75-date world tour to begin in February 2024.V, one of the seven members of the BTS, the kings of K-pop, is the latest to put out a solo release since BTS went on hiatus as a group last year. “Layover” opens at No. 2 with the equivalent of 100,000 sales, including 13 million streams and 88,000 copies sold as a full album.Also this week, the singer-songwriter Zach Bryan’s self-titled LP falls to No. 3 after two weeks at the top. Wallen’s “One Thing at a Time” is No. 4, and Scott’s “Utopia” is No. 5. More

  • 100 Shares199 Views

    in Music

    Laurie Anderson and Angélique Kidjo Inaugurate Perelman Center

    Global performers including Angelique Kidjo, Laurie Anderson and José Feliciano will inaugurate the theater at ground zero.The first public events at the new $500 million Perelman Performing Arts Center, the opulent new theater near the site of the World Trade Center, are deliberately laden with symbolism. The center is opening its doors with five shows on Sept. 19-23, collectively titled “Refuge: A Concert Series to Welcome the World.”Each concert offers a different kind of refuge as its theme: Home, Faith, School, Family and Memory. Home (Sept. 19) presents musicians who gravitated from around the world to New York City; Family (Sept. 22) has sibling and multigenerational groups. School (Sept. 21) features musicians who have made education an integral part of their work.The series affirms the city’s diversity with an international lineup that includes Grammy-winning stars — Angélique Kidjo on Sept. 19, Common on Sept. 21, José Feliciano on Sept. 23 — along with lesser-known musicians dedicated to preserving and extending deep-rooted traditions. The program for Devotion: Faith As Refuge, on Sept. 20, includes klezmer music from the Klezmatics, electronic transformations of Afro-Cuban Yoruba incantations by Ìfé and Moroccan Sufi trance music from Innov Gnawa.Two decades after the Sept. 11 attack, the center’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, describes the Perelman’s mission as “civic healing.”“We want to say that everyone is welcome,” Mr. Rauch said. “There’s a lot of trauma and resilience on our part of the island that we want to honor. You know, there were 93 countries represented in the people who lost their lives on 9/11. And so it’s important that we welcome as many different artists and audiences into our building as possible.”The Perelman joins a New York City arts landscape full of big-budget performing-arts institutions, from Lincoln Center to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to the Shed. Is the scene too crowded? “When every man, woman and child who lives in the five boroughs of New York City has a life that is saturated in performing arts, then we can begin to talk about whether there’s too much,” Mr. Rauch said.The center’s artistic director, Bill Rauch, describes the Perelman’s mission as “civic healing.”Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAngélique Kidjo alongside the dancer Supaman on Sept. 14, opening night at the Perelman.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAlthough the new arts center is a monumental marble cube with elaborate technological underpinnings — theaters that can be configured more than five dozen ways, sitting on foot-thick rubber supports to insulate them from subway noise — the tickets for the inaugural shows were priced pay-what-you-will from $15-120. Most of the concerts are sold out, but some will also feature free after-parties in the Perelman’s public lobby. Forró in the Dark, which plays upbeat music from Northeastern Brazil, follows the Sept. 19 show. The center plans frequent free lobby performances.Arturo O’Farrill, the pianist who leads the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, is performing on Sept. 20 in the “School as Refuge” concert. He founded the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, which provides instruments and music lessons to public-school students in New York City. When the center was being built, Mr. O’Farrill was part of an advisory committee of artists; he urged the center to pay close attention to acoustics. “I found it incredibly welcoming to artists’ voices,” Mr. O’Farrill said. “That’s not always the case with institutions.”He added, “Bill’s a very forward-looking person. This programing is about community. He’s a very thoughtful man, and he’s looking to expand the conversation on what performing arts is, what elitism does to the arts. He’s not interested in perpetuating elitism.”Laurie Anderson, who is to perform on Sept. 19, is pragmatic but hopeful about the center’s future. “Sometimes a place opens and it never finds its audience,” she said. “I always like it when it’s opened up to the people who live in the neighborhood, but nobody lives in that neighborhood — it’s mostly abandoned offices now. So how do you make a community out of a bunch of empty offices? We’ll see. Maybe you make it by bringing music that’s just so incredible that everybody wants to get on the subway and go down there. That would be great.”Ms. Kidjo, the clarion-voiced singer and songwriter whose albums have connected West African music to the Americas and Europe, was enthusiastic about the center’s inaugural statement. “We are all refugees from somewhere,” she said. In 1983, she fled to Paris from the dictatorship in her homeland, Benin; she now lives in Brooklyn. “I think that each one of us, we have the responsibility and the duty to welcome somebody that is in a dire situation. For a performing arts center to support that speaks straight to my heart. Because everybody needs a place to put your load down and say, ‘I’ve found a place.’She added, “We have a special status after what happened on 9/11 — to prove our openness to the rest of the world. And we have the place called the Perelman Center right next to ground zero that is open to the whole world. It’s just the beginning. We have to live up to the promise.” More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Music

    Review: In Berlin, Opera Scales Up to Fill an Airport Hangar

    With its home theater under renovation, the Komische Oper branches out, beginning with Henze’s “The Raft of the Medusa” at Tempelhof Airport.The 1816 wreck of the French frigate Medusa, from which just a handful of passengers survived after nearly two weeks on a makeshift raft, was still very recent history when Théodore Géricault painted the scene.Exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1819, “The Raft of the Medusa” divided those who saw it, especially because the tragedy had stirred anger at the restored Bourbon monarchy.In 1968, when Hans Werner Henze premiered his oratorio of the same title, it was polarizing too: The performance was canceled when the police intervened after fights broke out among audience and artists over leftist posters and banners hoisted in the concert hall in Hamburg, Germany.On Saturday, though, when the Komische Oper of Berlin staged the work in and around an enormous pool built by the company in a hangar at the disused Tempelhof Airport, “The Raft of the Medusa” seduced more than it polarized. It is an ambitiously scaled, superbly performed, conceptually clever, politically adroit yet emotionally cool spectacle.Directed by Tobias Kratzer and conducted by Titus Engel, the show, which runs through Oct. 3, is most notable as the rare venture outside a home theater for a major opera house.It comes at a period of transition for Berlin’s three important companies. (Yes, three — a legacy of the city’s divided era and of Germany’s commitment to culture.) The Deutsche Oper and Berlin State Opera both face changes of artistic director and chief conductor. And the Komische Oper is beginning a multiyear renovation of its base in the center of town.While the Komische Oper will be largely spending this time at the Schiller Theater — as the State Opera did during its renovations some years ago — the company is also taking the opportunity to put on productions in less traditional spaces. Each nomadic season will open at the Tempelhof hangar, which is part of a complex built by the Nazis in the 1930s; most of the old airport is now a park and, more recently, an emergency refugee camp.“The Raft of the Medusa,” with its sprawling orchestra and chorus, including an eclectic battery of percussion and a boys’ choir, doesn’t feel lost in the huge space, even if — with just three soloists — its storytelling is essentially intimate.Henze dedicated the piece to Che Guevara, who had died the previous fall, and the final line, spoken to a rhythm drawn from the protest chant “Ho-Ho-Ho Chi Minh,” foretells revolution: “But the survivors returned to the world, instructed by reality, feverish to overthrow it.” Ernst Schnabel’s text toggles between poetic and starkly journalistic.A character named Charon, after Greek mythology’s ferryman of the underworld, narrates the wreck of the ship and the horrifying days that followed. Death is a dreamily alluring soprano; Jean-Charles, an agonized representative of those aboard the raft.The chorus of the living, dying and dead solemnly intones and angrily cries out. Henze’s orchestra, too, is capable of explosive power, but mostly the score restrains these grand forces to a stunned, wary quiet, played by the Komische Oper’s orchestra under Engel with remarkable sensuality and subtlety given the necessity of amplification.At Tempelhof, members of the chorus are unidentified at the start as they sit among the audience of 1,600, which is arranged in two blocks facing each other across the pool, with the orchestra on a third side of the quadrangle. The choristers, wearing black and white clothes, begin singing from their seats and eventually walk down to the pool.On Rainer Sellmaier’s pool set, performers splash violently, and powerfully, in the water.Jaro SuffnerAs the Medusa’s voyage begins, Kratzer has the performers frolic in the calf-high water as they play with inflatable rings. (The simple, effective pool set is by Rainer Sellmaier, with Olaf Freese’s lighting conveying the harshness of both night and day.)Rather than early-19th-century sailors, these people suggest contemporary bourgeois beachgoers, much like the oblivious leisure-seekers of the recent opera-installation “Sun & Sea,” too focused on tanning to perceive rising seas or the migrants lost in them. Jean-Charles (the forthright baritone Günter Papendell) here might be an accountant or lawyer.Benches come together to form the raft and are occasionally detached to use as platforms around the pool. Death (the soprano Gloria Rehm, her voice never too harsh or hard) is here a glamorous diva in a sparkling, skintight black gown. As they expire, the choristers trudge out of the water and back to their seats, so we in the audience end up eerily immersed in the ghostly sound of the afterlife.In both Gericault’s painting and Kratzer’s production, a lone Black figure is a focal point. Unlike the painting’s heroic savior, waving red fabric to get the attention of a ship on the horizon, the staging’s Charon, a Black woman (the resonant mezzo-soprano Idunnu Münch), is a pained, helpless witness: an aid worker in a rowboat too small to save anyone.With the production already depicting the bourgeoisie transformed into desperate refugees, forced to undergo agonies they usually ignore, this casting decision furthers the sense of a reversal of the standard order of things, in which whites look on (or not) as people of color suffer.It’s an intriguing decision. But in attempting to mix realism and stylization, Kratzer tends too naturalistic. As the shipwrecked passengers first scramble en masse toward the raft, splashing violently in the water, the sight is powerful. Later on, though, the survivors’ reaching, grasping hands and twitching bodies come off as strenuous cliché, lessening rather than increasing the intensity and depth of feeling. It’s not necessary to see an actor dressed as the Jesus that some of the poor souls hallucinate in their hunger, thirst and fear.But near the end, the hangar’s tremendous door, near the side of the pool opposite the orchestra, slowly slides open. The temperature drops as the fresh night air pours in, and you get a tiny, terrifying glimpse of the relief that people in such a situation might find in death. The survivors emerge from the pool and walk out toward the dark, vast expanse of Tempelhof Field, led by an emergency van.It would have been obvious, even without the van, that this forlorn procession was meant to evoke the path taken by the migrants who have been housed at Tempelhof over the past decade. But the opening of the door was a true, visceral dramatic coup, a fitting climax for a staging with the heft to feel worthy of a remarkable space.The Raft of the MedusaThrough Oct. 3 at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin; komische-oper-berlin.de. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Superpower’ Review: Sean Penn Chronicles the War in Ukraine

    This documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, includes Penn’s interview with the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion.Near the beginning of “Superpower,” Sean Penn tries to pre-empt the criticism generated by his previous trips to conflict zones. “Weathered though it is,” he says in narration, “my famous face gets me access to places and people I may otherwise not have known.”That is undoubtedly true, even if, in the past, he has used that access to lob softball questions at El Chapo. When it comes to chronicling the war in Ukraine, the subject of this documentary, which Penn directed with Aaron Kaufman, it is hard to begrudge the actor’s mission. Like the French intellectual Bernard-Henri Lévy, who has been making his own documentaries on the war, Penn appears to have one eye in the mirror, but at least he’s taking some sort of action.“Superpower” began as a film about the unlikely presidency of the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky and his path from comic actor to politician. Much of the first part consists of material Penn compiled from the preinvasion period. Experts lay out the complexities of the country’s 21st-century history. Ukrainians reflect on the legacy of the Maidan protests and express skepticism about Zelensky’s potential.Penn scores a coup by getting an on-camera interview with Zelensky on the first day of Russia’s invasion, and he films him on two additional occasions, in a video interview and in person on a later visit. Zelensky’s words — about what his country needs, about how his 9-year-old has prematurely grown into being like a “wise political man” — are often familiar but still stirring. Potentially more of a stunt is Penn’s trip to the front, which seems as much about proving his mettle as getting the story.SuperpowerNot rated. In English and Ukrainian, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. Watch on Paramount+. More

  • 100 Shares189 Views

    in Movies

    With Striking Actors Off-Limits, Directors Get Their Close-Ups

    Since striking movie stars are not allowed to promote studio films, filmmakers unexpectedly, and in some cases uneasily, have the spotlight to themselves.For more than half a century, a coterie of critics and filmmakers has been making the case for what’s known as auteur theory: the idea that great directors are the central creative forces behind their films, shaping them just as authors shape their books.But outside a relatively small pantheon of great filmmakers, most directors have continued to be overshadowed, at least in the public eye, by their movie stars.The Hollywood strikes are changing that.With striking actors forbidden by their union from promoting studio films, directors suddenly have the spotlight largely to themselves, if somewhat reluctantly. They have been the main attractions at recent film festivals in Venice, Telluride and Toronto and on press tours that were once organized around A-list movie stars.Even star vehicles must be promoted without their stars. With Denzel Washington, one of the most recognizable names in Hollywood, and his co-star, Dakota Fanning, unable to promote the third installment of the “Equalizer” series, it fell to the director, Antoine Fuqua, to go on a one-man press tour.“It’s a strange time,” Fuqua told a TV news reporter ahead of the movie’s Sept. 1 premiere. “I would love to have them here.”At the Toronto International Film Festival, Q. and A. sessions after screenings typically involve actors and filmmakers, but this year, many of the directors — including Ava DuVernay and Richard Linklater — answered questions alone. Behind-the-scenes figures were suddenly in front of the cameras: As the red carpet at the festival opened, a staff member warned the press and onlookers not to be surprised if they didn’t recognize some of the people posing for photos, assuring them that they were associated with the films.Atom Egoyan, a Canadian filmmaker whose relationship with the Toronto festival goes back 40 years, said the focus on filmmaking over celebrity at this year’s event reminded him of the festival’s earlier years, before the increasing presence of studio films made high-profile Hollywood actors more of a central focus there.“Certainly for auteur filmmakers, it’s been a breath of fresh air,” said Egoyan, whose latest movie, “Seven Veils,” starring Amanda Seyfried, debuted in Toronto last week. “The industry is going through monumental transitions, and so this has been a nice little oasis.”And as the Venice International Film Festival closed earlier this month, the director Yorgos Lanthimos accepted the competition’s top prize for his surrealist comedy “Poor Things” without any of the film’s stars behind him.“Celebrity is always going to sell more than a director,” said David Gerstner, a professor of cinema studies at City University of New York. “But it is a moment in which directors are being given the opportunity to shine, to be the centerpiece. It’s just unfortunate that it’s under these circumstances.”The director David Fincher promoted his Netflix movie “The Killer” at the Venice International Film Festival. Kate Green/Getty Images, via NetflixIt is not necessarily a comfortable position for some of the directors, amid broad social pressure to stand in solidarity with unionized writers and actors against the major entertainment studios they are at odds with.And there are already bubbling tensions: When the union that represents Hollywood directors, the Directors Guild of America, made a deal with the studios in June, keeping them out of the labor unrest, it drew some criticism from striking screenwriters.Caught in the middle of the studios that fund their ambitions and the actors and writers who help realize them, directors tend to tread carefully when discussing the strike.“I can understand both sides,” the director David Fincher said earlier this month at a news conference for the Venice premiere of his movie “The Killer,” whose star, Michael Fassbender, was absent. “I think all we can do is encourage them to talk.”It is a particularly complicated moment for directors who are also actors or writers and hold multiple union memberships.Bradley Cooper, who both directs and stars in “Maestro,” about the conductor Leonard Bernstein, decided not to attend the film’s premiere at the Venice Film Festival.And Kenneth Branagh — who both directs the new Agatha Christie mystery movie “A Haunting in Venice,” which debuted in theaters this past weekend, and stars in it as the detective Hercule Poirot — has decided to leave interviews about the film to behind-the-scenes figures such as a top producer, the production designer and the composer.Between the multiple roles many artists hold, and the fact that some actors have been given permission by their union, SAG-AFTRA, to promote independent films, the landscape is a bit confusing.“It’s a little bit like the wild west,” said Peter Principato, chief executive of a Hollywood management production company that represents directors, actors and writers.People are making their own calculations, he said: Some are simply following the letter of the rules, which allows multi-hyphenates to promote movies in a director’s capacity, while others are more wary of taking active roles. In some cases, he said, directors are required by their contracts to promote their films.When “Poor Things” won the Golden Lion Award at the Venice Film Festival, its director, Yorgos Lanthimos, was on hand but not its stars. Guglielmo Mangiapane/ReutersOf course, some directors are as much of a draw as their stars. Few directors attract as much natural interest as Martin Scorsese, whose highly anticipated, Apple-backed film “Killers of the Flower Moon” is slated for release in theaters next month, even if the movie’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, are unable to act as the magnets for press that they typically are.And Fuqua, the director of “The Equalizer 3,” has the kind of heightened profile — thanks to a varied career creating music videos for stars like Prince and Stevie Wonder, directing successful Hollywood thrillers, and making documentaries — that can make him a successful emissary for the film, noted Alan Nierob, a publicist for the director. Fuqua promoted the movie by speaking with “Good Morning America” about his career; with movie blogs about the trilogy; and with myriad other publications.The strike is also testing the accepted wisdom of movie marketing. Nierob noted that the limitations around promotion had not appeared to affect the movie’s release; it topped the U.S. box office its first weekend, earning just under $35 million. (Of course, Washington’s name on a movie poster or face in a trailer may do the promotional work as well as any interview.)But it is unusual to see directors carry so much of the promotional weight on their shoulders. With this summer’s Disney horror-comedy “Haunted Mansion” unable to rely on its big-name actors — LaKeith Stanfield, Owen Wilson, Danny DeVito and Jamie Lee Curtis among them — its director, Justin Simien, who is also a member of the Writers Guild, went on interviews alone. “I felt pulled at the seams,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.And to promote the superhero film “Blue Beetle,” which topped the box office last month, Warner Bros. sent the director Ángel Manuel Soto to England, Mexico and around the United States, including Puerto Rico, to host screenings and conduct an estimated 100 interviews.The director Ángel Manuel Soto toured England, Mexico and the United States to promote his film “Blue Beetle.”Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAt festivals, directors have been faced with questions that, in previous years, they would have sat back and let the actors answer.Lanthimos, whose film “Poor Things” generated buzz at Venice both for its Oscars potential and its many boundary-pushing sex scenes, was the only person at the festival’s news conference who could speak to the movie’s graphic nature and how its lead actress, Emma Stone, had handled it.“It’s a shame that Emma could not be here to speak more about it, because it will be coming all from me,” Lanthimos said at the news conference, where he was flanked by his cinematographer and one of his production designers. He later noted, according to Variety: “We had to be confident Emma had to have no shame about her body, nudity, engaging in those scenes, and she understood that right away.”And at the Telluride Film Festival last month, Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, the directors of “Nyad,” the Netflix film about the marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, were not only without their stars, Annette Bening and Jodie Foster, but without the main subject of the movie, who also happens to be a SAG-AFTRA member.After the film’s first screening, the directors said they wished that Nyad and the movie’s stars could have been there to see it, and share their own perspectives with the audience.“It’s tough to have to try to speak for them,” Chin said.Mekado Murphy contributed reporting from Toronto and Nicole Sperling from Telluride, Colo. More

  • 125 Shares169 Views

    in Movies

    ‘Purlie Victorious’: Ossie Davis’s ‘Gospel to Humanity’ Returns to Broadway

    The stars Leslie Odom Jr. and Kara Young and the director Kenny Leon discuss the revival, and why its satirical take on racism is still so timely.Ossie Davis’s satirical play “Purlie Victorious” opened at the Cort Theater in September 1961 with Davis as the charismatic preacher Purlie Victorious Judson and Ruby Dee, his artistic collaborator and wife, playing Purlie’s green but soon-to-be-wise sidekick, Lutiebelle Gussie Mae Jenkins. Six decades later, Leslie Odom Jr. (“Hamilton”) and Kara Young (“Clyde’s,” “Cost of Living”) are stepping into those roles in the play’s first Broadway revival, directed by Kenny Leon at the Music Box Theater.Set in the 1940s on a plantation in the segregated South, the story follows Purlie’s return home to Georgia to claim a $500 inheritance, which he wants to use to buy and integrate the local church. To prevent Cap’n Cotchipee, the white plantation owner, from usurping his family’s birthright, Purlie has to trick Cotchipee — a plan that will also involve recruiting the unsuspecting Lutiebelle to stand in for his recently deceased Cousin Bee, who is the rightful inheritor of the money. In other words, Purlie’s strategy hinges on Cotchipee’s inability to differentiate one Black woman from another, and in so doing, the play uses comedy to expose racism as absurd, arbitrary and detrimental to Black life.That pointed critique of racism, and Davis’s clever use of language, is why the play was so well received. “Although his good humor never falters,” the Times critic Howard Taubman wrote at the time, Davis “has made his play the vehicle for a powerful and passionate sermon.” It ran for nearly a year, and the activists W.E.B. Du Bois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X all saw it. A film adaptation, “Gone Are the Days!,” followed in 1963, and then came the 1970 Broadway musical, “Purlie.”Davis and Dee’s children, Nora Davis Day, Guy Davis and Hasna Muhammad, remember watching all of those versions. The siblings, who are the executors of their parents’ estate, had personal reasons for reviving the play. “It resonates with us because it is my dad’s specific language,” said Guy Davis, who composed the revival’s incidental music. “My sisters and I just wanted to revisit that part of our lives.”“This soars as a true work of art,” said Kenny Leon, the show’s director. “Everything about being American, definitely about being Black in America, you can find in his play.”Elias Williams for The New York Times“Purlie Victorious” itself was inspired by Davis’s childhood. “Dad grew up in the deepest part of Georgia, and had cause to be irate about the conditions there,” Day recalled. “He tried to write a play that was full of anger, vitriol, and righteousness, but it just didn’t work until he began to look at it and laugh and say, ‘This is ridiculous, that one group of people feels like they can control and own other people.’”But Dee had reservations about Davis’s use of satire.“She didn’t like it,” Muhammad said. “She thought it was stereotypical. How could he have these characters? And then he read it aloud to her, and then she was laughing and realized the power of the language and the value of the piece.”Now Leon, Odom and Young say they are excited to share a work that they consider a classic with new audiences. During an interview last month before a rehearsal, they discussed their history with the play, the power of its satire and what it means to stage this production today. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.The Davis-Dee children, from left: Guy Davis, Nora Davis Day and Hasna Muhammad, who together helped bring the revival to Broadway.Elias Williams for The New York TimesHow did this production come about?KENNY LEON Our producer Jeffrey Richards, whose mom [Helen Stern Richards] was the original company manager of the play and the general manager of the musical, began talking to me about this seven years ago. But I also spent time with Ossie and Ruby when they came to the rehearsals for my first Broadway show, “A Raisin in the Sun” [in 2004]. When Jeffrey approached me about possibly doing this on Broadway, I said, “I’m your guy,” because I love Ossie Davis. And I love this piece. I directed the musical [in 2008 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta]. It’s an exciting play and an outrageous comedy that is somewhere between rage and hope.LESLIE ODOM Somebody had shoved the script in my hand as a young theater student. It was one of those plays that you should look at for an audition or a scene study class. The musical was also done in Philly when I was a kid, at the Freedom Theater, where I started acting as a 13-year-old.LEON But Leslie is what made this production a possibility — being that anchor. I found out that he always loved the play, so to have him want to be in it and produce it with Jeffrey Richards made it a reality. KARA YOUNG I was really surprised that Ossie Davis wrote a play like this. At that time, and this is just my imagination, because “A Raisin in the Sun” was so prolific, he really had the chance to change the world and the way that people thought about Black life. [Dee starred in the original 1959 Broadway production with Davis joining the cast later that year.] He dissected the absurdity of the social and racial structures of this world, and America in particular, and the legacy of slavery in this country. It is Ossie’s gospel to humanity. There are just so many amazing lines here that are the voices of a million people and a million spirits.LEON I don’t want people to shortchange Ossie Davis’s craftsmanship and his writing an outrageous comedy that embraced different styles, like vaudeville, broad comedy, and a little bit of the drama from “A Raisin in the Sun.” Look at this penmanship, poetry, movement and song. Many times, I think for an African American work, they have a different set of rules to gauge its greatness. But this soars as a true work of art.In addition to Young and Odom Jr., the cast includes Vanessa Bell Calloway, far left, and Heather Alicia Simms, far right. Elias Williams for The New York TimesHow do you think it will land at this moment?ODOM I’m curious, too. When I think about the last incredible experience I had in this town with a piece of work [“Hamilton”], and I think that if that piece of work had been written five years before, it might not have done the thing. So, I am excited to discover why now, and I am along for the ride.YOUNG I feel like the timing is almost perfect.LEON We were talking earlier about how every generation has to fight for democracy. We have to fight for true freedom and beauty, and what better time to be reminded of that than right now as we engage in the 2024 election? As we think about those things that Ossie Davis talks about, we got to stay in truth.YOUNG And remember our history.LEON What’s that line Purlie says? “Give us a piece of the Constitution.”ODOM “We want our cut of the Constitution and we want it now: and not with no little teaspoon, white folks. Throw it at us with a shovel.”How do you balance the play’s humor and its politics?ODOM It’s a romp. It’s a real hoot. We’re having a ball. As joyful and as light-filled as this experience is, he realized it was too painful to ask an audience to sit through it. It’s already an act of great generosity and grace that he decided to put it together in this way. He wanted us to be able to witness these people that he grew up with, this country that he grew up in, this farm that he knew so well, but he wanted you to be able to stand it and to tolerate it. LEON We’re telling it in a joyous way and dealing with some real stuff.YOUNG There are just so many gems about the violence of our just existing. There is a line I said the other day that reminds me of gentrification. Lutiebelle says, “The whole thing was a trip to get you out of the house.” I’m a Harlemite, and I’ve been feeling the violence of gentrification for years. I know that’s not what the play is about, but these things are dropped in the story, and because it is so dramaturgically sound, they can live on their own.LEON That’s so beautiful because that, to me, is what artists are supposed to do. We’re supposed to revisit the work from the previous generation and say, “How does that relate to me now?” I treat revivals like they’re new plays. Everything about being American, definitely about being Black in America, you can find in his play.Is that why you changed the structure from three to two acts, without an intermission?LEON I read plays five times to inform me of what I will do with them. After the fifth reading, I came away with the idea that it is about getting to that last page and scene. And getting to that last scene meant it’s about the rhythm of what’s happening onstage and people in the audience not thinking about time. I don’t want the outside world to come in. I just want them to get lost in this world.Kara and Leslie, what is it like to invoke the spirit of Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis onstage?YOUNG I’m a huge fan of Ruby, oddly also as a Harlemite. Ruby and Ossie are great examples of what it means to be organizers and activists and to be a force of change. But what it means to step into a role that Ruby Dee originated, I can’t quite put that into language. But this is also a role about a young woman and her journey, about finding a sense of self and her importance in the world for the first time and standing in that. It feels like a very universal story for a Black girl.ODOM The thing about these drama schools around the country is that they train you in the classics. My training prepared me for this. But I think my responsibility as an artist is to choose the projects that I’m a part of thoughtfully, collaborate with people that I respect, and work on things at the highest level. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing. It takes a while to get there. We’re doing this play as written in 1961, but people will be so surprised at how hip it is and how much it stands up. The more we learn, the more we build trust with Mr. Davis and his words. It rises to support us. How do you want people to feel after leaving “Purlie Victorious”?LEON That this feels like a new play. I think that’s what Ossie would want: us to introduce this to live human beings whose lives are affected daily.YOUNG The irony of racism. When you really break it down, the construct of racism is just really absurd. But, even in those power structures, these characters need each other. We need each other.ODOM Recently, I read Clint Smith’s book “How the Word Is Passed.” He paints a more honest picture of chattel slavery and the truth of that in this country. “Nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts,” he says. “And somewhere in between is memory, which is kind of this blend of history and a little bit of emotion.” Man, did that strike me. I want this “Purlie” to feel like a memory. I hope that it feels like the facts need emotion. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Music

    Irish Grinstead of R&B Group 702 Dies at 43

    The singer, who appeared on the hit track “Where My Girls At?,” took a “medical leave of absence” from the group late last year; a cause of death was not immediately available.Irish Grinstead, a member of the R&B trio 702, known for its 1999 hit “Where My Girls At?,” died on Saturday evening at the age of 43, according to her sister.A cause of death was not immediately available, but the group announced in December that Irish Grinstead was taking a “medical leave of absence due to serious medical issues.”LeMisha Grinstead, Irish Grinstead’s sister and bandmate, said in an Instagram post announcing her death that she had “had a long battle and is finally at peace.”“That girl was as bright as the stars! She was not only beautiful on the outside, but also within,” LeMisha Grinstead wrote. “Sharing the stage with her was a joy I will cherish for the rest of my life!”Members of 702 (from left): Kameelah Williams, LeMisha Grinstead and Irish Grinstead attending the Teen Choice Awards in 1999.Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesThe Grinstead sisters and Kameelah Williams comprised 702, which was named for the telephone area code in Las Vegas, where they were from.“Devastated & heartbroken,” Ms. Williams wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. “There’s a lot I want to say, but there’s no way to say what your heart hasn’t fully accepted.”The group’s 1996 debut album, “No Doubt,” included a song called “Steelo,” featuring Missy Elliott. A version of the track was the theme song for the Nickelodeon show “Cousin Skeeter.” The song was also sampled in a 2019 dance music hit produced by Diplo.“Irish May your beautiful soul Rest Peacefully in the arms of the Lord,” Ms. Elliot wrote in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Sunday. “Multitude of prayers for the entire Grinstead family.”702’s defining hit was “Where My Girls At?,” which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1999, according to Billboard.As news of Irish Grinstead’s death circulated, fan tributes flooded social media in the form of music video clips featuring Irish Grinstead dancing alongside her sister and Ms. Williams in distinctive ’90s glam and choreography.The group released its last album, “Star,” 20 years ago but continued to perform shows, with several scheduled through the rest of this year.Irish Grinstead’s twin sister, Orish Grinstead, died in 2008, according to IMDb. More