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    How They Staged a Little Girl’s Inner Universe

    “Fish in a Tree” at New York City Children’s Theater pulls viewers into the mind of an 8-year-old girl with dyslexia, using projections and immersive sound design.At Theater Row in Manhattan, a gigantic notebook, filled with lines of type, stands open onstage. As the audience gazes at the pages, the letters refuse to stay still. They push together and pull apart, all the while bobbing like drowning swimmers.Rubbing your eyes won’t help. This moment from “Fish in a Tree,” a world premiere from New York City Children’s Theater, reveals the way a social studies textbook appears to Ally Nickerson, the play’s 8-year-old heroine. Although Ally doesn’t know it yet, she has dyslexia, a learning disability that, according to the Yale Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, affects 20 percent of the population.The goal was “to give our audience a real picture of what it’s like,” said Barbara Zinn Krieger, the company’s artistic director, who consulted more than a dozen experts on dyslexia while writing the show. Adapted from a 2015 best seller of the same title by Lynda Mullaly Hunt, “Fish in a Tree” relies on digital technology more than any other production in the company’s more than 25-year history. It focuses on Ally’s life both at home, where her brother has a secret of his own, and at school, where Ally, who has become a troublemaker to hide her disability, faces bullying from two girls.Although Ally is a sixth grader in the book, Krieger wanted her to be younger onstage, “especially when I discovered that the earlier you discover somebody has dyslexia, the better off the child is,” she said.Throughout the show, which opens on Saturday, Kylee Loera, the creative team’s video designer, uses the onstage notebook’s surface as a screen on which to show both still and animated images of Ally’s outer and inner lives: not only the pages she struggles to read, but also her family’s kitchen, her school, and her fantastical daydreams, or “mind movies.”But most of all, the notebook, which Ally calls her Sketchbook of Impossible Things, is the home for her artwork. (One of its blank pages is also outlined on the floor of Ann Beyersdorfer’s set.) In the sketchbook, which Ally carries with her, she draws fanciful creatures and encounters, which take shape onscreen overhead as the audience watches. And as Ally, portrayed by Lily Lipman, changes over the hourlong action — acquiring a diagnosis, a mentor and self-esteem — her art changes, too, shifting from black-and-white to color.As Ally changes over the hourlong action, her art changes, too, shifting from black and white to color.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn devising an onstage gateway to Ally’s imagination, “We were like, what if the portal is actually her notebook?” said Sammy Lopez, the show’s co-director. “And what if we gave the audience the opportunity to jump into the notebook with Ally? And so that kind of inspired the ways in which we built out the physical life of the show.”Ally’s sketches, which she often draws during class, are by the illustrator Ben Diskant, who is dyslexic himself. He based some of the images on references in the novel, like boxing lobsters and a small fish with wings. (The work’s title comes from a quotation attributed, probably falsely, to Einstein: “Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”) Diskant, however, also contributed his own ideas, sketching animals because, he said, he has always found their lack of language comforting.Drawing “has set me free creatively from having to explain myself in any written form or any verbal form,” he said, adding, “and so I really relate to Ally in that way.”Loera designed the imagery for Ally’s “mind movies.” As these adventures unfurl onscreen, or, in one case, as shadow puppetry, the show’s young adult performers, who also play Ally’s third-grade classmates, teacher and brother, simultaneously act them out. For instance, Ally sees herself being jailed in her imaginary film “The Prisoner.” As her schoolhouse morphs into a prison in the projection, Louis Baglio, in the role of Ally’s new teacher, Mr. Daniels, adopts clothing and props to become a Wild West sheriff. (This all occurs comically to the strains of the theme from the 1966 western “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.”)“We have to teach our young audience that, during this play, you’re going to see the players create, you’re going to see them step into Ally’s mind,” said Melissa Jessel, the production’s other co-director. Music, she added, “really helps to engage.”From left, Sadie Veach, Fernando Mercado, Lipman, Louis Baglio and Madison B. Harris. The actors who play Ally’s classmates and teacher also double as characters in the imaginary sequences Ally creates.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn addition to film-score excerpts and a musical theme that serves as a bridge between Ally’s reality and her imaginings, Glenn Potter-Takata, the production’s sound designer, uses a buzzing noise to accompany Ally’s dyslexia-associated headaches. Occasional voice-overs — “Why, why, why can’t I read like everyone else?” — further disclose her thoughts.The show’s creators also added detail and texture to the novel’s explanation of the condition. A dyslexic teacher Krieger consulted described it as like trying to extract information from mental filing cabinets, but selecting it in the wrong order. That analogy went into the script.So did up-to-date tools for dyslexic students, which the show’s dramaturge, Taylor Janney-Rovin, an educator who instructs dyslexic children at Valence College Prep, in Queens, suggested. Mr. Daniels, whose help Ally finally agrees to accept, introduces Ally — and the audience — to multisensory techniques for children with learning disabilities. These include skywriting — writing letters large in the air — and drawing words in shaving cream.Krieger continued to modify her script drafts in response to internal feedback. (In the cast, creative team, company management and staff, there are seven people with disabilities.) She had invented an encouraging statement from Ally’s grandfather, “Anything is possible if you try hard enough.” Lipman, who is on the autism spectrum and has an auditory processing disorder, objected to this wording for its implied burden on those in similar circumstances. Krieger rewrote the line as “Many things are possible if you believe in yourself.”Lipman approved the revision. “The biggest moment for me is when Ally’s like, ‘So there’s a reason why I can’t read,’” she said. Her character realizes that her classmates have an advantage, Lipman added, and “it’s just that I didn’t get that piece that they all got.”The play, however, is not intended just for young people with disabilities. Its examination of bullying, friendship and sibling bonds is geared toward a larger audience, as is its wide embrace of creativity.The company’s hope, Jessel said, is that “children walk away from the story interested to explore their own imaginations.”Fish in a TreeThrough April 9 at Theater Row, Manhattan; nycchildrenstheater.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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    ‘Ted Lasso,’ Season 3, Episode 2 Recap: Origin Stories

    Also: Can AFC Richmond acquire one of the greatest footballers alive?Season 3, Episode 2: ‘(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea’“Trent Crimm! Are you kidding me?”If you did not share Ted’s joy — and mine! — at the reappearance of the erstwhile writer for “The Independent” (played by James Lance) in Rebecca’s office, well … I think you’re watching “Ted Lasso” wrong. But that’s just one person’s opinion. (And this is despite the psychologically bizarre and wildly unethical series of events that led him to leave “The Independent” in the first place.)But he’s back, with a role that looks as though it may be considerably larger, and I believe the world to be a better place for it. Welcome back, Trent Crimm.One more Trent note before I move on. I know the show doesn’t do leitmotifs. But “A Well Respected Man” by the Kinks is so perfectly suited to Trent — not the lyrics particularly, but the mood — that I desperately want it to be his regular theme music.Instead, it looks like we may have to settle for Ted’s new nickname for Trent, “Sport.” It’s not perfect, but we could do worse.OK, moving on (although you have not seen the last of Trent in this recap).Roy’s very bad dayLast week, obviously, we suffered the gut punch — plenty hinted at in Season 2, but a bit out of nowhere in the Season 3 premiere — that Roy (Brett Goldstein) and Keeley (Juno Temple) have broken up. I don’t mean to dwell on this, but it would have been so much more powerful if it had taken place at the end of last season. Here it felt a little bit thrown in, a move-the-narrative-forward tactic rather than an opportunity for one or more genuinely heartbreaking scenes.But this week we get a bit more, starting with Isaac’s delightful disquisition on the study of kinesics that enables him to instantly interpret what has happened. And then, the whole team knows. Which, of course, infuriates Roy.But angry Roy Kent is almost always the best Roy Kent. OK, fine: He’s essentially the only Roy Kent. (I was him for a Halloween party last year — the beard was tricky — in part because it gave me such an elegant excuse to shout “Oy!” and utter various expletives all night.)But then, the cards and balloons? The sighs and well wishes from the entire team? The fact that even the security guy for Chelsea knows and offers his condolences? It’s a miracle that no one was violently murdered this episode.And at the end, after the famous-but-unprintable “He’s here, he’s there, etc.” chants at Richmond’s opening game against Chelsea, where Roy was once captain and superstar, a rare moment of vulnerability: “It just felt sad, or something.” After a lousy game against Arsenal years earlier, he felt, “for the first time ever,” that he was fading as a player and could no longer keep up. So he left and came to Richmond. But as he explains, “There’s a part of me that thinks I should have stayed, and just [expletive] enjoyed myself. But that is not who I am, I guess.”Followed by Ted at his very best: “Not yet.”And no, I’m not yet done with Roy, either.It was an emotional week for Roy (Brett Goldstein).Apple TV+Origin storiesHow did Rebecca and Rupert initially hook up and eventually marry? Well, now we know. He went with his wife to a club where Rebecca — presumably 20-plus years his junior — served drinks. And then he came back, sans wife, and asked Rebecca out. She wisely said no. So he came back every night for weeks and just chatted with her. He told her it was fine that she wouldn’t date him; he just enjoyed her company. And then, finally, he asked her out again, and she said yes. “He made me feel special,” she confesses to Keeley. “Chosen.”Given the man — and the husband — he turned out to be, this is genuinely heartbreaking. And then, in a scene minutes later, he twists the knife: “I guess I’m just like any man. Got bored with the same old, same old.” So, just as he had with the previous wife, he traded Rebecca in for a newer, younger model. So brutal. Men like him make me feel like Roy Kent on a particularly furious day.A side note: I mentioned last week that Anthony Head’s turn as the kind, decent, always concerned “watcher” in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” is among my favorite TV roles ever. (“There is no spell.” You’ll know precisely the moment I mean if you watched the show.)But Rebecca’s description of Anthony Head’s superhuman charm reaches back still further, to the “Gold Blend”/“Taster’s Choice” commercials he did with Sharon Maughan for Nescafé between 1987 and 1993. They formed a serialized romantic story line that is considered among the best ad campaigns of all time. (Gold Blend sales went up over 50 percent in the U.K.) They were one of the greatest will-they-or-won’t-they romances on American and British TV in the 1980s and 1990s, even if they were doled out only in occasional episodes, months apart, and each lasted less than a minute. That’s the Rupert that Rebecca met in the bar: suave, self-confident and very, very persistent (without, I should add, ever being later revealed as a selfish, cheating scumbag, which probably wouldn’t have helped sell much coffee).But that’s not the only origin story this week. There is also the question of why Roy hates Trent so much that he threatens that anyone who talks to him will get “my forehead through their [expletive] skulls,” which is extreme even for Roy. And the answer is that, when Roy was a 17-year-old rookie prodigy, Trent wrote a withering critique of his very first game. Roy — we don’t know his precise age, but I have it on excellent authority that he is “pushing 40” — has carried that newspaper clipping in his wallet for two decades. Again, another moment of profound vulnerability and perhaps regret — for both men. Great stuff, nicely executed.ZavaThe episode’s central story line was, for me at least, perhaps its least interesting. Rebecca wants to sign superstar striker Zava (Maximilian Osinski) explicitly because Rupert wants him for his own team, West Ham. But Zava is planning to go to Chelsea. Except we already know he won’t go there because the title of the episode is “(I Don’t Want to Go to) Chelsea.” It’s a reference to the first single from Elvis Costello’s second album, “This Year’s Model.” (Personally, I prefer the songs “Radio Radio” and “Pump It Up.”)While I self-evidently enjoy this show’s wealth of pop-culture references as much as anyone, this one doesn’t really have any connection apart from the title, which, again, pretty much gives away the whole game. Zava’s not going to Chelsea, and he obviously can’t wind up at West Ham, because that would remove any tension from the entire Premier League season. So he’ll obviously wind up at Richmond.That he decides to do so because Rebecca accosts and “sour yells” at him while he’s at a urinal requires a higher-than-usual suspension of disbelief. Yet her diatribe — essentially, you’re already fading and can no longer carry a team — does have a nice pre-echo of Roy’s later confession about why he left Chelsea. That’s the downside of being a professional athlete: You know that your years of greatest fame and accomplishment are probably over by your early 30s.Odds and endsI am ashamed to confess this, but last week I failed to notice a “Jesus Christ Superstar” reference — Ted’s “What’s the buzz? Tell me what’s happening” — until it was too late to get it in before publication. I say this because I wore the original album to a nub at least twice as a boy. My wife took me to a production at the Kennedy Center for my birthday last year. But to make up for my omission last week, I will offer the tidbit that on that original album, the part of Judas — really the central figure of the musical — was sung by Murray Head, elder brother of Anthony (i.e. Rupert).I should also say thank you to the numerous readers who pointed out that Ted’s son, Henry, is almost certainly not a “teenager,” as I described him last week. I was thinking he was 13-ish, but on reflection 10-ish seems more likely. If anyone can point to his exact age as described on the show, please do.I don’t know much about soccer — and what I do know is mostly gleaned from my son — but something about Zava seemed awfully familiar. For those who follow the sport as little as I do (or less), he is a lightly fictionalized version of the real-life Swedish star Zlatan Ibrahimovic: also a world-class striker; also quite tall (6’ 5), with similar facial hair and a man-bun; also famed for goals both long distance and exceptionally athletic; also a famously difficult teammate who has changed teams many times.I don’t have much to say yet about Keeley’s PR firm, her cranky C.F.O. — which, no, does not stand for “Corporate Fine Object” — or her longtime friend and new hire, Shandy (Ambreen Razia). We’ll see where this story line goes.The scene with Jamie and Roy was a pleasure, most of all when Jamie goes in for a hug “too fast” and Roy responds as if he is being attacked. It is of course a callback to their iconic hug in Episode 8 of last season.Ted’s semi-faint when he heard the news of Keeley and Roy’s breakup was a lot like his delight at seeing Trent Crimm again. You speak for all of us, Ted.It was wonderful to see the great Harriet Walter again as Rebecca’s mom (she was so good last season), but blink and you’d have missed it. I assume this brief scene was a setup for things to come.The joke about “The Office,” in which Ted explains that it’s set in Scranton, PA, not England and, when reminded of the original, describes it as a “pre-make” — spot on. (Sorry Ricky Gervais!)More Dani Rojas (Cristo Fernández) is always better than less Dani Rojas. And his line about Richmond landing Zava, “I just wished for that 30 seconds ago”? Well, I think we can all agree that if anyone on Richmond has a direct connection to a higher power, it’s Dani. More

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    Late Night Is Getting Antsy for a Trump Indictment

    The former president was not charged Tuesday, as he predicted. “Right now in Times Square, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen are hosting the indictment countdown,” Jimmy Fallon said.Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Book him!Former President Donald Trump was not arrested on Tuesday, as he previously suggested would happen. A Manhattan grand jury could indict him as early as Wednesday over a secret payment to a porn star to cover up a tryst.Jimmy Fallon said that people were excited to see Trump officially charged. “Right now in Times Square, Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen are hosting the indictment countdown,” Fallon said.“I read that former President Trump is expected to be formally charged tomorrow but will not surrender until next week. Yeah, apparently Trump signed up for the government’s ‘charge now, pay later’ option.” — JIMMY FALLON“They’re actually delaying it a bit so the courtroom sketch artist has enough time to load up on orange pencils.” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (‘Jail to the Chief’ Edition)“We should have known he wasn’t getting arrested the minute he said he was getting arrested.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And I have to say, it’s really a shame he wasn’t arrested today, because what better day for Trump to get arrested than on Rosie O’Donnell’s birthday?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“That’s the last time I believe something that guy says.” — AL FRANKEN, guest host of “The Daily Show”“Here’s a question: If Trump goes to prison, does the Secret Service go with him? Like, do they have to be in? Do they have to serve? It sounds like the premise for a Mark Wahlberg/Kevin Hart movie, right? ‘Jail to the Chief.’” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Tell you what: I bet Trump’s ready to defund the police now.” — JAMES CORDEN“Melania is at Mar-a-logo like, ‘Please don’t put him under house arrest, please don’t put him under house arrest. Anything but house arrest!’” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth WatchingThe comedian Nicole Byer talked about the difficulty of pulling off D.I.Y. projects on Tuesday’s “Late Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightThe singer-songwriter Caroline Polachek will perform a track from her new album “Desire, I Want to Turn Into You” on Wednesday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This Out“It was a really lovely bunch of actors,” Matthew Macfadyen said about his “Succession” colleagues. “It’s a weird thing, the grief when you finish a job.”Mark Sommerfeld for The New York TimesThe “Succession” star Matthew Macfadyen is experiencing “a complicated mélange of feelings” about the end of the hit HBO series. More

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    Puppetry So Lifelike, Even Their Deaths Look Real

    Members of the puppetry team for “Life of Pi” discuss making the show’s animals seem all-too-real on a very crowded lifeboat.Fair warning: This article is riddled with spoilers about puppet deaths in “Life of Pi,” the stage adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel about a shipwrecked teenager adrift on the Pacific Ocean. He shares his lifeboat first with a menagerie of animals from his family’s zoo in India — large-scale puppets all, requiring a gaggle of puppeteers — and eventually just with a magnificent, ravenous Royal Bengal tiger named Richard Parker that takes three puppeteers to operate.Now in previews on Broadway, where it is slated to open on March 30 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, the play picked up five Olivier Awards in London last year. Puppetry design by the longtime collaborators Nick Barnes and Finn Caldwell was included with Tim Hatley’s set in one award, and, unprecedentedly, a team of puppeteers won an acting Olivier for playing Richard Parker.Caldwell, who is also the production’s puppetry director, and two of those Olivier-winning puppeteers, Fred Davis and Scarlet Wilderink, sat down at the Schoenfeld one morning last week to talk about bringing the show’s puppets to life — and then, in several scenes, to vivid and often gruesome death. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Foreground, from left: Fred Davis, Scarlet Wilderink and Finn Caldwell. Behind the tiger, from left: Andrew Wilson and Rowan Ian Seamus.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIt’s a very crowded lifeboat. Who all is in there, and how complex is that dance?SCARLET WILDERINK That is such a beautiful way to describe good puppetry. Because it is a synchronicity like dance that looks completely unchoreographed. Well, what have we got in there? We’ve got hyena. Rat for a short time.FRED DAVIS Zebra. Orangutan. Tiger. And Pi.FINN CALDWELL In the end of the first act, where we see the tiger’s about to kill the hyena, and the hyena’s killed the zebra and everything else — we call that section Megadeath. How many puppeteers do we use in Megadeath?WILDERINK Three, five, six, eight, 11.CALDWELL Eleven puppeteers. That’s the most puppeteers we’ve ever used on a show in one sequence.Richard Parker is such a cat. He seems plush and furry with padded paws, and he hogs the bed. How do you figure out animal movement?CALDWELL We look at anatomy. We look at pictures of skeletons of tigers, blow that up to a real tiger size and start marking on pieces of paper on the wall where the joints are all going to be. Because when we build on a framework, our armature, it wants to move like a tiger, because the limbs are all the right length. The joints want to move in the right way.Hiran Abeysekera, left, as Pi, with Richard Parker, eventually the last surviving passengers aboard a lifeboat stranded in the Pacific Ocean.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesDAVIS In terms of bringing it to life, we start off by looking at videos of tigers moving in different environments — when they’re relaxed, when they’re hunting, analyzing their foot patterns and how their weight shifts from one paw to another, how their tail flicks when they’re feeling a certain way. One thing that is always challenging for us to do is the noises. Because no human has the same lung capacity or vocal cords as a tiger.WILDERINK One of the most helpful tools for us is imagination. If the puppeteer is really seeing the thing, the audience will see the thing. The tiger’s fur, you know, he doesn’t have real fur. But if you imagine the softness of it, this sort of stretchiness of their skin, the weight — like if he collapses into Pi, how do you make him look like he’s soft in his lap? It’s part of the design because we’ve got all those bungees that tie all of the armature together, which makes him look like that. But the sensory stuff, I think, is in our minds.What is it that makes the audience believe?CALDWELL It’s you and I as 3-year-olds going, “There’s a doll. Should we agree that this is real and play a game together?” That’s the same offer that you make to the audience: “Here’s a tiger. Do you want to agree that it’s real with us?” That means that they then take part in the creation. Intellectually, we know it’s a puppet. But really quickly, most people want to buy into the game.Why is violence sustained by puppet animals so shocking and affecting?CALDWELL If it was the real animal, you’d be really worried about the situation. You’d be like, “Is that a real hyena?” With a puppet, no matter what it’s playing, all you have to worry about is what it’s telling you onstage. The puppets are only there to be themselves, so that when you start to wound them, all the audience is thinking is, well, (a), I’ve taken part in bringing this thing to life, and now you’re killing it in front of me, and (b), this is all that’s happening. All you’re getting is the pure story, the pure thing that’s happening, and so I think you get the straight emotional connection to it.The puppetry team also built and operated a hyena, a zebra, a goat and an orangutan.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAnd yet you really do not expect to hear a puppet’s neck crack.WILDERINK It is so rare that you get to do something so grisly with puppets. That’s why I love it so much. If the zebra is being attacked, the orangutan is being killed, the goat’s being killed, I love hearing the audience react to it and then be surprised by their own reaction. Because they don’t realize how invested they are until it happens. They feel the shock and the pain of the orangutan dying, and then they’re surprised by the fact that they believed it so much.DAVIS One of my favorite things that’s happened: The goat’s head came detached from the goat’s body. Something got broken in there. Through that last scene in the zoo in Pondicherry, where the goat gets brought on and shoved in the tiger cage, the puppeteer’s doing a dutiful job of keeping the body and the head attached. And then we get in there and the goat gets attacked by the tiger. As the tiger, you don’t know that the head’s come off the goat. So the neck breaks, and then you see that it’s actually disconnecting. What we decided in the moment, we left with the body, left the head on the stage. The tiger went away, came back, picked up the head and then left. We spoke to the actors afterward and they were like, “I was crying. I’m scarred from seeing that happen. Why did you do that?” I’m like, “Well, you know, it’s a tiger.”Seven puppeteers who operated from “Life of Pi” shared the Olivier Award for best supporting actor in 2022.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesI’m wondering: What did winning the Olivier mean to you?DAVIS It was really big. It’s also really validating, because I think when you’re involved with the puppetry that we’ve done over the last few years, we believe and invest in these puppet characters as much as anyone would a human character.It’s acting, yes?DAVIS It is acting. But I think a lot of the time, from an outside perspective, it cannot be considered acting or judged as harshly as acting. We want people to be looking at it and considering it worthy of criticism. That’s what was so heartening: that what we were doing was believable enough that people wanted to judge it.WILDERINK I had people from all over the world — puppeteers, puppet theater companies — contacting me on social media, saying how many waves it’s created in their communities. It felt very special on a global scale.CALDWELL It was just amazing that the industry sat up and took notice. It mainly just feels like a door opened — and an invitation to what we can do next. More

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    Review: In ‘Hang Time,’ Lynched Men Tell Finely Tuned Tales

    Zora Howard’s new play at the Flea catches three men during a few moments of their breathless eternity.Walking into the Flea for Zora Howard’s “Hang Time” is like stepping into a horror film. Darkness pervades the black box theater, and cicadas carry on conversations in some unseen woods. A large obstruction — perhaps a statue? or installation? — interrupts the space. Then it becomes clear: Three Black men seemingly hanging from invisible ropes above an elevated round platform. Lights faintly illuminate their slumped heads and shoulders; their shadows are cast on the right wall, evoking Kara Walker’s silhouettes. You have to pass by them to get to your seat.Howard, who wrote and directed this production, certainly knows how to make an impression.In this hourlong premiere, produced by the Flea and WACO (Where Art Can Occur) Theater Center in Los Angeles in partnership with Butler Electronics, the three lynched men, named Bird (Dion Graham), Slim (Akron Watson) and Blood (Cecil Blutcher), have conversations about women, work, fatherhood and loss. The space is bare, and the play stops as suddenly as it starts — as if we’re catching just a few moments in a breathless eternity.Even though there are no visible signs of the men’s restraints, occasionally we hear the sound of ropes tightening, and the men jerk backward and stiffen into their signature pose. The limp lolls of their heads, the surfacing veins of an extended neck, even the synchronized eye movements: This dance of rigor mortis is a master work of small intricacies, even if it grows more gratuitous and less poignant with every reoccurrence.Bird, Blood and Slim are like three chapters in the life of a Black American man: Blood (as in “Young Blood”) is still coming into his own. Slim is the clown, who sings, jokes and brags about his machismo. Bird, the eldest, is the sanctimonious curmudgeon, who preaches a gospel of God, firm morals and hard work, but also has his own losses that have hardened him. Each of the perfectly cast actors manages to straddle the line between realism and the metaphorical space where “Hang Time” exists.Howard draws out every subtlety of her already fine-tuned dialogue, which renders innocuous expressions into brutal double entendres about the men’s hanging bodies (“Look at him getting all red in the face,” Slim jokes at Blood’s expense). But the men don’t just communicate with words; they also grunt, snort and chortle, and at times the wordless exclamations form their own harmony.To accentuate the emotional shifts, Megan Culley’s sound design — which brings the outside world into the space, from rustling leaves to the bellowing of a train — works in tandem with the portentous lighting (by Reza Behjat) and the script’s varied pacing and silences. And the jeans, sneakers and plaid button-down shirts (by Dominique Fawn Hill) worn by the men are discreetly shabby and tattered, so you may not notice the bullet holes and bloody tears until late.There are purposely unanswered questions, including how these men ended up here. Bird, Blood and Slim never mention their deaths; they seem only vaguely aware of their predicament. They repeat exchanges, never seem to grasp the time, and talk about the weather and their plans as if the future were someplace they could actually confront.In both this work and her captivating 2020 play “Stew,” a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize, Howard writes her characters into a Möbius strip of trauma and injustice that is Black American history.And while “Hang Time” offers a work of theater that’s undoubtedly moving, it’s also too static to leave a more lasting impression. Even the absurdist purgatories and in-between spaces of Beckett, whose language has the same kind of circuitousness, take us someplace, even if we ultimately end up back where we started.“Hang Time” begins with a visual declaration of horror but, amid its chitter and chatter, never seems to finish the conversation.Hang TimeThrough April 3 at the Flea Theater, Manhattan; theflea.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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    Why There Is Talk of a Writers’ Strike in Hollywood

    TV and movie writers want more money, but Hollywood companies say the demands ignore economic realities. The deadline to sort out those differences is approaching.Television and movie writers want raises, saying that Hollywood companies have taken unfair advantage of the shift to streaming to devalue their work and create worsening working conditions.The companies bristle at the accusation and say that, while they are willing to negotiate a new “mutually beneficial” deal with writers, the demands for an entirely new compensation structure ignore economic realities.Whether the sides can settle their differences will determine if the entertainment industry can avoid its first writers’ strike in 15 years.Unions representing more than 11,000 television and movie writers and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of Hollywood’s nine largest studios, including Amazon and Apple, began talks on March 20 for a new three-year contract. The current agreement expires on May 1.The Writers Guild of America, West, and the Writers Guild of America, East, have the strength to bring Hollywood to a halt if they do not get a deal to their liking. Chris Keyser, a co-chair of the W.G.A. negotiating committee, said in an interview that this moment for writers was “existential.”“The industry is almost always unfair to labor,” Mr. Keyser said. “This time it’s broken — it’s actually broken.”Here is what you need to know:Will there be a strike?No outcome is certain, but little in the posturing so far suggests an easy resolution. Producers have begun to stockpile scripts by asking writers to complete as many ahead of the May 1 deadline as possible.The negotiations will likely be acrimonious given the seismic changes in the industry. The rapid transition to streaming entertainment has upended nearly every corner of Hollywood, and writers believe they have been left behind.Unlike directors and actors, writers have historically been willing to strike. The most recent strike stretched from 2007 into 2008, lasting 100 days. One in 1988 dragged on for five months. A walkout must first be authorized by union members; the W.G.A. has signaled that it could conduct a vote as early as the first week in April.Authorization gives the union leverage, but it does not mean a strike is inevitable. In 2017, writers overwhelmingly gave the go-ahead for a strike (with 96 percent of the vote). The sides ultimately reached an agreement a few hours before the first pickets hit studio sidewalks.The entrance to NBC Studios in Manhattan.Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesHow would a strike affect audiences?There will be a gradual halt in the production of many television shows, except for reality and news programs, which would be mostly unaffected.Viewers will notice the fallout first among entertainment talk shows, including “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.” If a strike lasts several weeks, “Saturday Night Live” would not be able complete its season. Soap operas, already on viewership life support, would run out of new episodes after about a month.Plenty of high-profile TV series have coming seasons that are already finished. But premieres for fall series like “Abbott Elementary” would be delayed by a monthslong strike, and viewers would begin to notice fewer scripted TV series by the end of the year. Reality and international shows will start to run in heavy rotation.Moviegoers would not experience immediate effects; movie studios work about a year ahead, meaning that almost everything planned for 2023 has already been shot. The risk involves 2024, especially if studios rush to beat a strike by putting films into production with scripts that aren’t quite ready.The offices of the Writers Guild of America West in Los Angeles.Andrew Cullen for The New York TimesWhat are the writers’ complaints?Every three years, the writers’ union negotiates a contract with the major studios that establishes pay minimums and addresses matters such as health care and residuals (a type of royalty), which are paid out based on a maze of formulas.And though there has been a boom in television production in recent years (known within the industry as “Peak TV”), the W.G.A. said that the median weekly pay for a writer-producer had declined 4 percent over the last decade.Because of streaming, the former network norms of 22, 24 or even 26 episodes per season have mostly disappeared. Many series are now eight to 12 episodes long. At the same time, episodes are taking longer to produce, so series writers who are paid per episode often make less while working more. Some showrunners are likewise making less despite working longer hours.“The streaming model has created an environment where there’s been enormous downward pressure on writer income across the board,” David Goodman, a co-chair of the guild negotiating committee, said in an interview.Screenwriters have been hurt by a decline in theatrical releases and the collapse of the DVD market, union leaders said.Between 2012 and 2021, the number of films rated annually by the Motion Picture Association fell by 31 percent. Streaming services picked up some slack, but companies like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO Max, have been cutting back on film production to reduce costs amid slowing subscriber growth.Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, Calif.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesAre the companies in a position to pay more?They would argue this isn’t the best time for it.Disney said in February that it would cut $5.5 billion in costs and eliminate 7,000 jobs to address streaming losses, an atrophying cable television business and steep corporate debt. Warner Bros. Discovery has already cut thousands of jobs as part of a $4 billion retrenchment. NBCUniversal is also tightening its belt as it contends with cable cord-cutting and a troublesome advertising market.The writers are unmoved by this. Mr. Keyser noted that Netflix is already profitable (to the tune of $4.5 billion last year), and that rival companies have said their streaming services will be profitable in the next year or two. “We don’t get to negotiate again until 2026,” Mr. Keyser said. “We’re not waiting around until they’re profitable.”Who’s doing the negotiating?In a rarity for Hollywood, the chief negotiators are both women. Carol Lombardini, 68, leads the studio effort; she has worked at the producers’ alliance for 41 years. Ellen Stutzman, 40, leads the W.G.A. effort. She was appointed only about a month ago, after David Young, who has served as the ferocious negotiator for writers since 2007, stepped aside, citing an unspecified medical problem.Ms. Stutzman, who has been with the W.G.A. for 17 years, said in an interview that Mr. Young would play no part in these negotiations. She called him “a wonderful mentor.”Are the studios aligned?Absolutely, according to the producers’ alliance. “The A.M.P.T.P. companies approach this negotiation and the ones to follow with the long-term health and stability of the industry as our priority,” the alliance said in a statement, referring to impending contract renewal talks with directors and actors. “We are all partners in charting the future of our business together and fully committed to reaching a mutually beneficial deal.”But differences start to appear when you talk to senior executives on a company-by-company basis. In private conversations, they point out that the group is much less monolithic than in the past. It now includes tech companies like Amazon and Apple, for example, whose primary business is not entertainment.Striking members of the Writers Guild of America passed out leaflets in Rockefeller Center in 2007.Librado Romero/The New York TimesIs the W.G.A. united?For generations, ever since the end of the silent film era, Hollywood writers have complained that studios treat them as second-class citizens — that their artistic contributions are underappreciated (and undercompensated), especially compared with those of actors and directors. This sentiment runs deep among writers and has historically resulted in extraordinary unity.In 2019, when film and TV writers fired their agents in a campaign over what they saw as conflicts of interest, many agency leaders figured that the W.G.A. would eventually fracture. That never happened: After a 22-month standoff, the big agencies effectively gave writers what they wanted.What about collateral damage?Tens of thousands of entertainment workers were idled during the 2007 strike, and the action cost the Los Angeles economy more than $2 billion, according to the Milken Institute. This time around, many of the small businesses that service Hollywood (florists, caterers, chauffeurs, stylists, lumber yard workers) have only started to regain their footing after pandemic shutdowns, increasing the stakes of a strike and potentially leading to community fissures. More

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    in Theater

    Danny and Lucy DeVito Head to Broadway With Roundabout Theater Company’s New Season

    The actors will play a father and daughter in “I Need That,” a comedy written by Theresa Rebeck.Danny DeVito and his daughter, Lucy, will co-star in a new Theresa Rebeck play on Broadway this fall, presented by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company, which announced its 2023-2024 season on Tuesday.Roundabout said that its Broadway season would include two three-hander plays: “I Need That,” the new Rebeck play, as well as a revival of “Home,” a 1979 play by Samm-Art Williams.“I Need That” is a comedy about a widower, played by DeVito, struggling to let go of clutter after the death of his wife. Lucy DeVito will play the character’s daughter, and Ray Anthony Thomas will play his friend; the production, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, will begin performances in October at the American Airlines Theater. Von Stuelpnagel also directed Rebeck’s last Broadway play, “Bernhardt/Hamlet,” in 2018; that show was also produced by Roundabout.Danny DeVito previously starred on Broadway in “The Price,” another Roundabout production, in 2017.“I had such a great time the last time I was there, and we’re chomping at the bit to do this one,” Danny DeVito said in a joint interview with his daughter.In 2021, when many theaters were still closed, Danny and Lucy DeVito collaborated on an audio play, “I Think It’s Worth Pointing out That I’ve Been Very Serious Throughout This Entire Discussion or, Julia and Dave Are Stuck in a Tree,” by Mallory Jane Weiss, for Playing on Air. That show was directed by Von Stuelpnagel, and led to this new venture: The DeVitos said they’d be open to working with Von Stuelpnagel again, at which point he mentioned their interest to Rebeck, who wrote the new play for them. They workshopped it with a staged reading at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont in 2022.“It’s a very humanistic, character-driven, slice-of-life story,” Lucy DeVito said. “The themes speak to loneliness and love, and the hardships you experience with your family while getting older.”“I Need That” will be her Broadway debut.Danny and Lucy DeVito have worked together on a variety of projects: Among them, last year’s “Little Demon,” an FXX animated comedy, as well as “Curmudgeons,” a short comedic film in 2016.“Home,” which Roundabout plans to stage on Broadway next spring, is about a North Carolina farmer who is imprisoned as a draft dodger during Vietnam, and then has a series of adventures in a big city as he tries to put his life back together. The play was first staged Off Broadway by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1979 and then transferred to Broadway in 1980.“The play itself is a freshet of good will, a celebration of the indomitability of man, a call to return to the earth,” the critic Mel Gussow wrote in the Times in 1979. “In all respects — writing, direction and performance — this is one of the happiest theatrical events of the season.”The revival will be directed by Kenny Leon, one of the most prolific directors on the New York stage and a Tony Award winner for directing the 2014 revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.”Roundabout, which only staged one show on Broadway this season (a revival of “1776” that ran for three months), said it hopes to stage three next season; the third has not yet been announced.Roundabout also announced Tuesday plans to stage two plays Off Broadway next season: “The Refuge Plays,” an intergenerational family drama written by Nathan Alan Davis (“Nat Turner in Jerusalem”), and directed by Patricia McGregor (she is the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, and that theater is also associated with the production), next fall, and “Jonah,” a boarding school coming-of-age story written by Rachel Bonds (“The Lonely Few”) and directed by Danya Taymor (“Pass Over”), next spring. And it said it would produce “Covenant,” about a blues musician who may or may not have made a deal with the devil, written by York Walker and directed by Tiffany Nichole Greene and staged in its Off Off Broadway underground black box space in the fall. More

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    in Television

    The Problem With Celebrity Travel Shows? The Celebrities.

    What used to be meaningfully informative programming, delivered by personable but only tangentially notable hosts, is gradually being swallowed up.In the resplendent green of Costa Rica, a peak reaches toward the clouds. Eugene Levy gazes up at it in awe. “That’s a volcano,” his host explains, adding that it last erupted about 10 years ago. Levy looks unsettled. “I was hoping it would be more dormant,” he says. The understated delivery is classic Levy, but it feels different, less endearing, in this context. The premise of Apple TV+’s “The Reluctant Traveler” is that the celebrity actor hasn’t liked to travel in the past, but is now pushing himself out of his comfort zone with televised trips to places like Finland, Italy and Japan. With that, he joins an increasingly established subgenre: the celebrity travel show. Netflix has “Down to Earth With Zac Efron.” TBS had Conan O’Brien’s “Conan Without Borders.” CNN had “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy,” which was both a celebrity travel show and a celebrity food show — another thriving subgenre, with entries from Selena Gomez, Amy Schumer, Jon Favreau and Paris Hilton.The idea behind these programs is the same as ever: You settle in and watch your host learn about new places. It’s just that, in these shows, it’s the host’s very celebrity that inevitably becomes the star around which everything revolves. Consider Levy and that Costa Rican peak: You’re offered one moment to admire a beautiful scene before the active volcano becomes the setup for celebrity quipping. The shows’ stars can rarely help drawing attention this way, whether it’s with solemn head-nodding or relentless cleverness. O’Brien, traveling in Armenia, is so shameless in his pursuit of laughs that he almost seems to embarrass his Armenian-American assistant. Stanley Tucci, eating cantucci in Florence, has to remark that “anything that ends in ‘tucci,’ I like.” The celebrity travelogue doubles as proof of just how hard it is for performers to subordinate themselves to their surroundings.The point of featuring celebrities seems obvious enough; in a crowded TV market, a familiar host can lure people to watch a new show. The trade-off, of course, is that the format and subject matter — whether travel or food or, say, home renovation — will find itself drifting toward the formal demands of a reality show, sacrificing its capacity to inform to its host’s own shtick or charisma. The things we see must serve the narratives and characters of the stars, providing opportunities to play to or against their images, drawing out their particular moods or charms. A result is a suffocating and often superficial take on how fascinating or delicious everything is. Eventually you come to suspect that each show would feel functionally identical no matter where you sent the celebrity — that Stanley Tucci could tour America’s bowling alleys, or Zac Efron could sample Midwestern diners, or vice versa, without much changing. This is happening across the TV world: What used to be meaningfully informative programming, delivered by personable but only tangentially notable hosts, is gradually being swallowed up by celebrity.I still remember the first time I traveled abroad, and the feeling I had emerging from the Paris-Nord train station to behold one of the world’s most beautiful cities. It made me feel alien and bracingly helpless. I was an outsider. That was the whole point of my being there. That decentered feeling never really went away, neither on that trip nor on later ones. I wouldn’t want it to.Celebrity travel shows tend to evoke something close to the opposite of that feeling. This is not to say that you can’t learn anything from them. It’s just that the celebrity at the center will generally steal the spotlight from the locale itself. Levy, interestingly enough, seems to exhibit some self-awareness about this phenomenon; per his show’s premise, he seems, at times, to progress from fear of travel to an embrace of travel’s helplessness. In southern Utah, he spends time with his guide in the quiet of night, discussing the stars and the spirituality of the desert. It’s a striking contrast to your typical celebrity fare, in that it seems to capture Levy giving himself over to the unfamiliar in a strikingly vulnerable way.But it’s fleeting. The show has Levy spending a lot of time at luxury hotels, where fame affords him deferential treatment. Earlier in the Utah episode, he spends breakfast chatting with a chef (who is making one very elevated pancake) about whether he’s ever cooked for Brad Pitt or George Clooney. Much of the series revolves around this kind of celebrity-centric riffing. The show’s entire premise, after all, revolves around Levy’s own experiences and hang-ups, not the curiosities of a viewer or a would-be traveler. Offered “crocodile schnitzel” at Kruger National Park in South Africa, Levy tells his guide, “I’m going to enjoy watching you eat that,” and quips that he’ll just take a vodka-tonic. In Lisbon, his guide tells him the Portuguese people like to explore the world, and asks if Levy does, too. The actor says that “adventure is my middle name,” and that world exploration is “in my nature,” but he’s then seen confessing his deceit to the camera: “That’s where acting comes in. You know, when you can hide ineptitude on a scale like that, give me an Oscar.” He is traveling as a character in his own travel series, all while ostensibly trying to break free from that character’s limitations and experience new places — which he can never quite do, because the show is ultimately about the character, not the places.Travel stories have often benefited from a guide, from Matsuo Bashō’s “The Narrow Road to the Deep North” in the 17th century to Peter Matthiessen’s “The Snow Leopard” or Pico Iyer’s “The Lady and the Monk” in the 20th to Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” and “Parts Unknown” in the 21st. (Bourdain became a celebrity, but he had a curiosity and humility, an authenticity in his travels that could make him feel like he wasn’t.) These figures serve as proxies and narrators and cultural synthesizers, both standing in for us and offering us their impressions. When we come to trust them, it’s often precisely because they know how to step out of the way and help us engage with the places they’re exploring. The same goes for any other topic. We know names like “Julia Child” and “Bob Ross” because of how compellingly those people served their subjects, not because of their pre-existing star power. And, I suppose, because nobody at the time thought to develop “Learning to Paint With Mr. T.”I’m inclined to say the ideal travel show would merely be a video montage with someone reading a guidebook over it. The less narrative basis, the better. “Rick Steves’ Europe” and “Big City, Little Budget,” with Oneika Raymond, may be two series that come closest to that ideal, in that they’re basically video guidebooks. The hosts subordinate themselves to the places they visit. They aim to show people why to travel, and what it’s like — not to entertain them along the way.Not so today. In one episode of “The Reluctant Traveler,” Levy visits the Maldives, where he meets a local who seems eager to dispense some wisdom. “You really need to connect — remove your shoes, feel the sand,” he tells Levy, as the camera shows his bare feet and Levy’s footwear. You get the distinct feeling he’s saying this, in part, because it’s what Levy wants to hear. Still: Point taken. To center the place, you must decenter yourself. In travel, as in all things, fame is a distraction.Source photograph (Levy): Maarten De Boer/Contour by Getty Images.Nicholas Cannariato is a writer living in Chicago. He last wrote about common birds for the magazine. More