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    Book Review: ‘Encounterism,’ by Andy Field

    Conceived before the pandemic, Andy Field’s ode to sharing space in person glosses over the ways our everyday habits seem to have changed for good.ENCOUNTERISM: The Neglected Joys of Being in Person, by Andy FieldIt has been shockingly easy, hasn’t it, to fall out of the habit of being with other humans. All it took was one world-stopping pandemic that demanded we keep our distance from one another, and taught us to use technology to maintain that separation for months on end.At home with our screens, we have yet to bounce back from that disruption, yet to readopt old habits like commuting to the office or watching movies at the multiplex. If recent trends in bad behavior are any indication, we may also have yet to relearn the skill set of coexistence — like how not to throw hard objects at musicians during their live shows, even if it makes for eye-grabbing video.Into this precarious state of affairs steps “Encounterism: The Neglected Joys of Being in Person,” an argument by the British artist Andy Field for venturing out among the populace. To him, our most ordinary sidewalk interactions can be imbued with “friction and possibility … anxiety and joy.” These are little pockets of opportunity where compassion might grow.“What do we lose when we stop inhabiting the streets of our towns and cities?” he asks. “What understanding of the world, and of each other, are we depriving ourselves of as we spend less and less time in proximity to all these strangers and their lives that are so very different from our own?” In an author’s note, Field says right up front that the idea for “Encounterism” came before the coronavirus pandemic, not in response to it, and that he wrote much of the book during “the caesura it created.” That goes some way toward explaining why its chapters — essays, essentially — so often feel trapped in amber, describing realities of another time, as if no paradigms had shifted. It might also explain why the book so frequently relies on research that a person could do from home, though its premise suggests what a limited portal to understanding that can be. (Granted, I am a journalist, and I cover theater. I believe in showing up.)Field’s most vivid, potent writing channels the sensations of physical immersion in activities he clearly cherishes — like dancing in clubs, which he believes nurtures empathy among strangers finding a collective rhythm in the dark, or sitting in a crowded movie theater, navigating a shared experience with a laughing, shushing, crying, shrieking audience: “We hold each other tightly until the moment the lights come up, and then we all go our separate ways.” But Field’s opening chapter — an intended homage to the tactile care that hairdressers provide, and a nod to its absence when salons were closed — reads like a performance of appreciation rather than the genuine article. And a chapter on shared meals strains to convey the significance of everyday dinners, unmindful of the sacred longing that those simple social rituals took on early in the pandemic, when people could not eat together.This is the dissonance that trails us through the book, nagging all the way. Field makes theater and performance art, and he tells some entertaining stories about his offbeat career. (One involves a stranger, whom he was attempting to feed as part of an experimental piece, biting him hard enough to leave a bruise.) But he barely mentions what it meant for his creative work — so dependent on up-close, in-person presence, and often involving travel — to go remote.It isn’t that the memories don’t belong; it’s that the changes do, too, as do the insights that they brought. The best part of Field’s chapter on city parks is about the community he has found in the London green space where he walks his dog, and how vital that place became to him in 2020 and 2021, when people were often forbidden to meet inside.Even so, Field never truly gets at the fundamental, tangible value of being present, bodily, with our fellow human beings. Not until the lovely final chapter, on the pleasure of hand-holding, does he very briefly mention one of the most excruciating privations of the early pandemic: the inability of people to be with their loved ones, holding hands at a deathbed.But the book doesn’t plumb the desperation so many felt for in-person contact: to hug and touch one another; to sniff a new baby’s head; to gauge someone’s well-being in 360 degrees and three dimensions, unconstricted by the frame of a video screen.We have those multisensory joys back — yet whole in-person art forms (hello, theater) are mired in financial crisis because the audiences that have returned are just too small. Such a fragile moment cries out for a ferociously persuasive argument for engaging with the world in person, not through our screens.The epigraph of “Encounterism,” a quotation from the French novelist and essayist Georges Perec, is about questioning “the habitual.” But our habits are not what they were only a handful of years ago. Far better to register what’s habitual now and examine that.Laura Collins-Hughes, a freelance journalist, writes about theater for The Times.ENCOUNTERISM: The Neglected Joys of Being in Person | By Andy Field | 288 pp. | W.W. Norton & Company | Paperback, $17.95 More

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    In ‘Secret Invasion,’ Ben Mendelsohn Faces a Turning Point

    In an interview, the Australian actor discusses his character’s big moment in the most recent episode and his role as ally to Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury.This article includes spoilers for the fourth episode of “Secret Invasion.”At one point while on set for the latest Marvel TV show “Secret Invasion,” Ben Mendelsohn and Samuel L. Jackson broke into song.They had both taken a break from filming to listen to some tunes, and when “Poison Ivy” by the Coasters came on they began belting out the lyrics.“I’ll get the occasional word wrong, but Sam’s all over it,” Ben Mendelsohn, 54, said in an interview last week.It’s Mendelsohn’s interactions with Jackson onscreen — their two characters squabble like decades-long lovers as they attempt to stave off World War III — that energize this latest installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.Jackson’s character, the grizzled superspy Nick Fury, has been around since before Tony Stark was Iron Man. In “Secret Invasion,” he’s back to his old pastime of saving planet Earth — this time from an invasion of shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls — but after a hiatus in space, he seems slightly off kilter, slower and less formidable.And so it is Mendelsohn’s character Talos, a Skrull general, who steps in to help — just as he’s been doing for decades, as he reminds Fury: “Your life got a hell of a lot more charmed once I came into it.” It thus feels fitting, though no less upsetting for fans, that Episode 4 ends with Talos sacrificing his life to help Fury complete one more mission.This is Mendelsohn’s third appearance in a Marvel production, after his character’s introduction in “Captain Marvel” and a brief cameo in “Spider-Man: Far From Home.” Now, the Australian actor is relishing the chance to be part of a show full of what he calls “old-fashioned Cold War thriller stuff.”Mendelsohn gained recognition in the United States for his role in the Australian crime drama film “Animal Kingdom,” and he later starred in the Netflix show “Bloodline,” which premiered in 2015. Born in Melbourne, he first got into acting by starring in school plays and memorizing every line from the movie, “Taxi Driver.”“Once I got bitten by that bug, I didn’t look back,” he said.Not long after the premiere of last week’s pivotal episode, Mendelsohn spoke about his role, his character’s relationship with Nick Fury and whether Talos is truly dead. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Mendelsohn’s character, Talos, seemingly sacrificed himself to help Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury complete one more mission.Des Willie/MarvelSo far Marvel’s TV series have taken different forms and explored a variety of issues. What are some of the key themes of this one?I think there is a lot to do with trust and secrecy. I think there’s a certain theme of mutability. You could take that on the obvious level with the whole Skrull-y thing, but I also think it’s about the mutability of where someone is in their life. When I think about the show I think about it through the Nick Fury lens. I’ve always looked at it very much as Sam’s piece. One of the real delights for me is that this relationship morphed between these two characters, which was not there from Day Zero. What I really love is how different Fury is, how different the world is post Infinity Gauntlet and what that does to loyalty. Because loyalty without stress or duress doesn’t mean anything.How has the relationship between Talos and Fury evolved, starting from “Captain Marvel”? At one point, Talos was impersonating Fury, right?Yeah that was such a genius flip from Marvel to have Fury [in “Spider-Man: Far From Home”] be Talos the entire time. Ostensibly the two characters start out as enemies. And what we come to learn is how incredibly loyal Talos is to Fury. What we learn is that Fury owes his entire je ne sais quoi to these creatures. And if you want to think about how deeply Marvel can flip stuff on its head, they’ve taken what were the surf Nazi punks of the Marvel world and turned them into the incredibly effective ally of the humans.Do you think Talos is too optimistic about the humans and the Skrull coexisting?If you keep boiling the argument down, Talos’s argument is really the only one that stands. Because if you take the Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) kind of perspective and you go for domination, there is one thing that Talos correctly surmises: You will not beat them. It’s their spot, and they have already shown that they can be incredibly effective at wiping out enormous numbers of beings. And so while you can look at what G’iah (Emilia Clarke) is going through and understand Gravik’s frustration, it’s similar to the frustrations that we’ve seen play out locally elsewhere. And you might well say, “OK, yeah that’s right. Go for it and go for it now.” But it’s reckless, destructive. And it’s immature both ideologically and in a realpolitik sense. So as idealistic as Talos may appear to be, he is really the only one with the genuine experience and genuine ability to call it. This is not a zero-sum game for humans and Skrull.Given how this episode started, with the big reveal about G’iah’s still being alive, is Talos really dead? Should we expect some kind of regeneration later on?Well to answer that would be to be an enemy of what I do. My greatest loyalty is always to the audience, and I try not to undermine that in any way, shape, or form. But I can definitely tell you Talos’s death is a turning point.Mendelsohn with Emilia Clarke in “Secret Invasion.” “The great strength of the studio is that they play what-if for real,” he said of Marvel.Des Willie/MarvelWhat has it been like to interact with Jackson both on-set and off?The best things that were brought to this relationship onscreen were brought by Sam. Sam’s the reason for the Skrull kiss at the very first time we see them together. It’s Sam who really brings the template in the train scene that allows me to react off and against them. Sam and I have been able to work together because we don’t take it too seriously. But we also try not to half-step. And the reason I look through the lens of Sam a.k.a. Nick Fury is because I come at it as a guy who watched “Jungle Fever” and just went crazy.I think a lot of fans are wondering: What’s the significance of the Skrull in the overarching narrative arc of the MCU?Ever since they’ve been introduced and utilized well, they do present an ever-present threat. Because how do you know? That’s one of the great things about “Secret Invasion.” “Civil War” also has that flavor. It’s just like, Who is who here?The great strength of the studio is that they play what-if for real; they don’t play what-if as an entertaining byline. They play it for real and keep integrating it. Once they have an event for “Secret Invasion,” you can’t un-have it.While I was watching the show there was a point where I wondered if Fury was going to change into a Skrull halfway through?Well, keep watching. Fury is more connected to the Skrull than any other human is. More

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    ‘Justified: City Primeval’ Review: Raylan Is Back

    Timothy Olyphant returns in a sequel to the Kentucky crime drama “Justified,” and he’s still the coolest lawman in town, even if the town is now Detroit.Eight years after he walked — gingerly, warily, every joint bent at some odd angle — into the sunset on “Justified,” Timothy Olyphant returns on Tuesday in “Justified: City Primeval,” FX’s one-off, eight-episode sequel to its hit hillbilly noir. “Justified” was one of the most entertaining television shows of the last few decades largely because of Olyphant’s cagey, obliquely sexy portrayal of Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a fantasy of a frontier lawman, simmering but sensitive, equally quick with a gun or a pithy comeback.Olyphant does not miss a single syncopated beat in “City Primeval,” which is based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard, who created Givens and traced his career in a handful of books and stories. The character has left the page and become completely Olyphant’s. It’s a wonderfully economic performance, all slouch and sloe eyes, offering a moral thermometer of the fallen world through which Raylan moves via Olyphant’s sly repertoire of expressions: grin, smirk, smile, hard stare, blank bemusement.Onscreen, Raylan has aged more than eight years — he now has a teenage daughter, Willa (played by Olyphant’s daughter Vivian Olyphant), who was a baby when “Justified” ended. Caustic, character-defining references are made to his advanced years: Chasing bad guys at his age means he’s been passed over or he loves it too much; a retired cop tells him, “You remind me of me, man, when I started out. Except you’re old.” These comments create some cognitive dissonance, because Olyphant, despite some gray hair, doesn’t come off as a day older. That could be seen as a lapse in his performance, but come on. We all know what we’re here for.And it’s a good thing original Raylan is still there. Because despite the work of a number of the old “Justified” crew, including the writer-producers Dave Andron and Michael Dinner, and an accomplished new cast, “City Primeval” — though handsomely filmed, well acted and ample in its emotions and its violent action — feels, ultimately, like a simulacrum. The body looks good, but a large part of the soul is missing.In considering why, it’s hard to avoid the fact that Raylan Givens does not appear in the novel on which the mini-series is based — he’s been shoehorned into another cop’s story. (The original protagonist, played by Paul Calderón, gets a short, awkward walk-on.) He’s also been taken out of the Kentucky landscape that was essential to “Justified” and sent on a road trip to Detroit, where he’s now an unwanted outsider rather than a prodigal son.The change of scenery is fine in theory, but it doesn’t produce much. There are artful backdrops of urban decay, congruent with the rural poverty in “Justified,” and the largely Black cast of characters deals with injustices that parallel the hardships of the original show’s poor whites. But those elements feel obligatory — they come to life only here and there, usually in scenes involving Aunjanue Ellis as a lawyer whose life becomes entwined with Raylan’s.And while the plotting of “Justified” was always complicated — a slow build of coincidences, missed connections, bad decisions and murderous eruptions that provided a broad canvas for human weakness and duplicity — in “City Primeval,” the complications feel forced, and there isn’t the same satisfaction when the pieces click into place.Olyphant’s daughter Vivian plays Raylan’s daughter in the new series.Chuck Hodes/FXThe mechanisms by which Raylan and Willa end up in Detroit, and by which Raylan is pulled into the investigation of the killing of a judge, are murky and arbitrary. There’s no good reason for Raylan to be in this story beyond the demand for a sequel, and you can feel the writers straining with the effort of putting him there. Characters drift in and out, or disappear altogether (while still alive). A crew of Albanian gangsters, on hand for local color, conveniently drop out of the action just when you’re thinking, “They could wrap this all up in another 20 minutes.”All along, though, there are reasons to watch. Some simply have to do with the preservation of moods and motifs from the original series, but some are new. One of those is the father-daughter relationship: Willa feels abandoned because of Raylan’s devotion to his job, and the Olyphants nicely render the crossroads of brazen but sorrowful teenage manipulation and agonizing parental guilt. (This section of the story is oddly truncated, though, another instance of haphazard storytelling.)There are also excellent performers everywhere you look: Ellis; Vondie Curtis-Hall as a bar owner who used to be a musician; Norbert Leo Butz, Marin Ireland and Victor Williams as Detroit cops; Adelaide Clemens as the designated seductress. Boyd Holbrook of “Narcos” is smoothly menacing as the big bad: a talkative sociopath in the mold of Boyd Crowder from “Justified,” though you can’t help comparing him unfavorably with Walton Goggins, the man who played Boyd. David Cross turns in an amusing cameo as a wealthy mark. Terry Kinney is likable, as always, but not entirely convincing as an Albanian mob boss.“City Primeval” gets off to an entertaining but confusing start — the first episode is better on a second viewing — and generates enough of the “Justified” brew of eccentricity, off-kilter humor and underplayed suspense to hold interest through a few episodes, before the plot runs out of gas and the malaise sets in. Then a funny thing happens: After the Detroit story is resolved, there’s an epilogue that takes place in a world where we, and presumably the show’s creators, would much rather be. At that point, revealed as the place holder it was all along, “City Primeval” drops right out of your memory. More

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    Movie Stars and Broadway Veterans Share Theater Camp Memories

    In honor of “Theater Camp,” a new movie about a fictional sleepaway site, we asked Broadway veterans and movie stars for their favorite camp memories.Molly Gordon and Ben Platt met as children at the Adderley School, a theater studio in Los Angeles that runs after-school programs and summer day camps. There are photos and home videos of them starring opposite each other in some very grown-up shows like “Chicago” and “Damn Yankees.” Two decades later — with the help of the actor-writer Noah Galvin, Platt’s fiancé, and the writer-director Nick Lieberman — they have spun those memories of wonky vibrato, stumbling choreography and an ardent sense of belonging into the feature comedy “Theater Camp,” opening Friday.Set at the financially rickety establishment of the title, the film bounces among campers and counselors in upstate New York as they work on an ambitious slate of productions: “Cats,” “Damn Yankees,” “The Crucible Jr.” and “Joan Still,” an original musical inspired by the camp’s comatose founder (Amy Sedaris). The movie began as a 2017 short, and after a yearslong struggle for financing (“We wanted to make a mostly improvised movie with children; a lot of people were not down for that,” Gordon said), it was shot last summer in 19 frantic days at an abandoned camp in Warwick, N.Y.Full of in-jokes (campers barter for bags of Throat Coat tea like they are Schedule I drugs), the movie is also a hymn to all of the outcasts and square pegs who finally find acceptance in a kick line. Theater camp is, as a closing ballad explains, “where every kid picked last in gym finally makes the team.”Over the years, theater camps around the country have yielded a rich crop of Broadway stars, composers and directors. The movie’s creators and a handful of Broadway veterans who credit camp with shaping their careers spoke with me about community, stage kisses and the transformative effects of “Free to Be You and Me.” These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Gordon and Platt in the movie. “I was just a crazy wild child and so excited to be in that environment,” Gordon said about her childhood camp experience.Searchlight PicturesMolly GordonActress (“Booksmart,” “The Bear”)Camps: The Adderley School, French Woods, Stagedoor ManorMemories: At sleepaway camp, I was never a lead. I was always in the chorus — “Zombie Prom,” “West Side Story,” “Chicago.” But I absolutely adored it. I had the classic experience. I could eat all the sugar I wanted. I got to be in completely age-inappropriate shows. I kissed two guys who told me that they were gay the next day. I was just a crazy wild child and so excited to be in that environment.Ben PlattActor (“Parade,” “Dear Evan Hansen”)Camp: The Adderley SchoolMemories: There’s an independence. You’re forced away from your parents, and you are having to risk embarrassing yourself; you throw yourself into things and fall on your face. It’s healthy failure. For queer kids, like me, it was where I was the most completely embraced, not having to fit a box or semi-pretend to be enjoying certain things. At day camp at Adderley, Molly and I were Adelaide and Sky in “Guys and Dolls.” We were Lola and Joe in “Damn Yankees.” We were Roxie and Billy Flynn in “Chicago.” We were Tracy and Link in “Hairspray.” I was pretty much the queerest Link Larkin. Molly, one of her first kisses was our kiss in that.Noah GalvinActor (“The Good Doctor,” “Dear Evan Hansen”)Camps: Northern Westchester Center for the ArtsMemories: My first play was “Charlotte’s Web.” My mom tells this really disturbing story of me coming onstage as the gander with my script in my hand, because I was so nervous about forgetting my lines. My mom was like, “I’m not certain that he’s cut out for this.” But it teaches you agency as a young person; it gives you real independence, emotionally and physically. There were kids of all shapes and sizes and gender expressions. I walked into a space and there were 120 like-minded individuals who all want to do “Anything Goes.”Jason Robert BrownComposer (“Parade,” “13”)Camp: French WoodsMemories: I went in thinking I was an actor, but I was also in the rock bands and jazz bands. Fortunately for everyone, actor guy has gone away. I was Pirelli in “Sweeney Todd” and Charley in “Merrily We Roll Along.” In a role I truly should never have been doing, I sang “Tomorrow Belongs to Me” in “Cabaret.” I was able to see this whole world of work. I’m not a happy-ending guy. And if all you see are the most popular shows, you might feel like that’s all there is. Because I got to do all this material that was darker than that, that was stranger than that, I got to say, “Oh, there is a place for the thing I want to do.”From left, Andréa Burns, Karen Olivo, Janet Dacal and Mandy Gonzalez, seated, in “In the Heights” on Broadway. Burns grew up going to the French Woods theater camp.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAndréa BurnsActress (“In the Heights”)Camp: French WoodsMemories: It was a miracle. In my own school, I was the only person who really liked theater. Going to this wonderland, where I met other kids who loved this as much as I did gave me a true sense of belonging. I played Sally Bowles in “Cabaret” and Aldonza in “Man of La Mancha” the same summer. I was 14, singing “Aldonza the Whore” and talking about sleeping around. The way we would root for one another, it was such a joyful experience. Being inspired by the gifts of my peers drove me to work harder. I discovered true happiness in that atmosphere of collaboration and growth. Quite honestly, I’ve been chasing that feeling my entire professional life.Celia Keenan-BolgerActress (“To Kill a Mockingbird”)Camp: Interlochen Arts CampMemories: I felt like I had landed in some sort of magical world. We were all talking about what our favorite Sondheim musical was instead of what was playing on the radio. The thing that has kept me in the theater for so long is that sense of belonging. I felt the most like myself when I was at camp. This feeling of wanting to do musicals was something that always felt singular and a little bit lonely, growing up, and then to be with all of these people who were so talented and loved it as much as I did, something clicked into place. Camp made me feel like, “Oh, this could be my profession.”Rachel Chavkin winning the Tony for best direction for “Hadestown.” She went to Stagedoor Manor as a child.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRachel ChavkinDirector (“The Thanksgiving Play,” “Hadestown”)Camp: Stagedoor ManorMemories: I did “The Cell,” where I played a nun who murders a bird or a child or both. I did Arthur Miller’s “Playing for Time.” I played the lead in “Ruthless!” and the evil mother in “Blood Brothers.” We did “Our Town,” and I played the stage manager. A huge profound thing about Stagedoor was it was filled with people who were alienated in their home schools. For queerness of all kinds, it was a haven. And as ambivalent as I am about the strange status games at Stagedoor, I don’t think I would be in theater without it. It nurtured my curiosity. And it began to teach me about taste. I showed up to college a year after leaving Stagedoor and saw my first Wooster Group show, and I was like, “I never want to see another musical again.”Jeanine TesoriComposer (“Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home”)Camp: Stagedoor ManorMemories: I didn’t even know what theater was until I was 18. But it all started at Stagedoor for me. I was a music director and a counselor. I music-directed “Free to Be You and Me.” My friend was directing it, and she wanted new material and that was the first song I ever wrote. I immediately thought, “Oh, this is the missing piece for me.” At that point, I was still a pre-med major at Barnard. After that summer, I did the music major at Columbia. I did that because of Stagedoor. It was just a ticket to a whole different world. More

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    Why Basketball Is So Popular Off Broadway

    Basketball is central to the plot in new shows, including “Flex” and “The Half-God of Rainfall.”In Inua Ellams’s new play, “The Half-God of Rainfall,” the gods play thunderous games of basketball in the heavens. For Candrice Jones’s “Flex,” high schoolers practice their defensive stances while scraping by in rural Arkansas. Near the end of Rajiv Joseph’s “King James,” the two main characters play a one-on-one game of basketball using a crumpled up piece of paper after waxing poetic about the greatness of the N.B.A. star LeBron James.Basketball hasn’t just been on the playgrounds of New York City this summer. Hoop dreams are also playing out onstage, highlighting a theater, ahem, crossover that has become more pronounced in recent years.While basketball is not as popular as, say, American football, its cultural reach surpasses that of other American team sports because its players are among the most publicly recognizable. (Three of the 10 highest-paid athletes in the world, when including endorsements and other off-field endeavors, according to Forbes, are N.B.A. players.)“Watching a basketball game is the same excitement I get from watching great theater,” said Taibi Magar, the director of “The Half-God of Rainfall.” “It’s like embodied conflict. It’s executed by highly skilled performers. When you’re watching Broadway, you feel just like you’re watching N.B.A. performers.”For Joseph, who grew up in Cleveland, basketball is the most culturally important sport partly because so many international stars play in the N.B.A., like the Denver Nuggets’s Nikola Jokic, who is Serbian, and the Milwaukee Bucks’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, who’s from Greece.“It’s drawing from every place on the planet, which means that the sport has become a really important athletic pursuit globally,” said Joseph, whose play “King James” just ended its run at New York City Center.In Inua Ellams’s “The Half-God of Rainfall,” at New York Theater Workshop, Demi (played by Mister Fitzgerald) is a half-Greek god who becomes the biggest star in the N.B.A.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd basketball’s prevalence in pop culture — including in the worlds of hip-hop and fashion and more recently in film and television — has also penetrated the theater space. Dwyane Wade, who retired from the N.B.A. in 2019, was among the producers of the Broadway shows “American Son” and “Ain’t No Mo’.”“Even if one hasn’t played on a team or hasn’t played organized ball, we all have access to basketball,” Jones, who wrote “Flex,” said in a recent interview. “You go in any hood or any small town, someone has created a basketball goal.”In casting “Flex,” which is in previews at the Lincoln Center Theater’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, prospective actors recorded themselves playing basketball as part of the audition process. Jones and the show’s director, Lileana Blain-Cruz, who both played basketball in high school, said they wanted the basketball being played onstage to look authentic.“People have different styles, different ways of shooting, different personalities, different kinds of swagger,” Blain-Cruz said. “We care about the individual in the role that they play and how they’re playing it. And I think that aligns itself to theater.”Jones’s play, set in rural Arkansas, tells the story of a girl’s high school basketball team in 1998, which aligned with the second year of the W.N.B.A. So as the audition process advanced, the actors were asked to dribble, shoot and do layups for the creative team. Once the cast was set, some rehearsals weren’t about staging at all: The cast had basketball practice at nearby John Jay College.“There’s a kind of ensemble quality to it,” Blain-Cruz said about the sport. “Like an ensemble of actors playing together, a team of basketball players performing together. Together, they create the event.”Minutes later, as Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” blared, Blain-Cruz led a warm-up with the cast that included hip openers and upward arm stretches. It could have doubled as pregame preparation. The set itself had a basketball hoop hanging in the rear, and a basketball court painted on the floor. “Flex” refers to a type of play basketball teams run, and the staged work features several instances of game play.“There’s a real rigor. It is real,” Blain-Cruz said. “That’s what’s so satisfying, I think, about sports onstage. There’s an honesty to it, right? Dribbling the ball is actually dribbling the ball. We’re not performing the idea of dribbling the ball.”After a recent outing to a New York Liberty game, the actress Erica Matthews, whose character, Starra Jones, is the 17-year-old point guard of the fictional team, said watching the players reminded her of watching live theater.“Basketball is very intimate. You can play a one-on-one game in a small amount of space,” Matthews said. “They’re actually performing on a stage and with the way the audience is surrounding them, the way they’re cheering, it’s basically storytelling.”Downtown at the New York Theater Workshop, Ellams’s “The Half-God of Rainfall,” a Dante-inspired “contemporary epic” about a half-Greek god named Demi who becomes the biggest star in the N.B.A., is in previews and is scheduled to open July 31. While “Flex” deals with down-to-earth issues, such as teen pregnancy, “The Half-God of Rainfall” transports basketball to a mythical world for immortals to deal with.At a recent rehearsal, cast members pantomimed slow motion basketball movements at the direction of the choreographer, Orlando Pabotoy. The actors Jason Bowen and Patrice Johnson Chevannes worked on setting up a proper screen, and Bowen later practiced a Michael Jordan impersonation — complete with the tongue wagging. (Jordan is referenced in the play.)As Ellams and Magar, the show’s director, looked on from desks cluttered with tiny inflatable basketballs, they worked on reallocating lines as the choreography required. Though this version of Ellams’s poem has a cast of seven, he said it can be staged with as many or as few performers as the production desires. (A 2019 production at the Birmingham Repertory Theater in England had only two actors.)Ellams, a Nigerian poet and playwright, who has played basketball since he was a teenager, said he created the character Demi to “do all the things that I never could” on the court. He mused that basketball has a greater draw to the stage because it is “a far more beautiful sport.”In Rajiv Joseph’s “King James,” which just ended its run at New York City Center, Chris Perfetti and Glenn Davis play two men who bond over their love of LeBron James.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times“There’s something humbling and mortal about basketball in the sense that there’s a simple equation,” Ellams said. “The ball bounces; it comes back up to your palm. You can break that down. This is solitariness, which invites the blues and what it means to play the blues. There’s a longing.”“There’s a natural melancholy about it,” he added, which makes it “easier to pair with the human spirit.”Of course there have been other basketball-related plays. In 2012, “Magic/Bird” explored the friendship and rivalry between the 1980s basketball stars Magic Johnson and Larry Bird on Broadway. The 2011 Broadway musical “Lysistrata Jones,” inspired by Aristophanes’s “Lysistrata,” followed a group of cheerleaders who withhold sex from their boyfriends on the basketball team because they keep losing games. Lauren Yee’s 2018 Off Broadway play, “The Great Leap,” also directed by Magar, tells the story of a teenage basketball prodigy who travels to China in 1989 to play in an exhibition game between college teams from Beijing and San Francisco.Daryl Morey, now an executive with the N.B.A.’s Philadelphia 76ers, commissioned a musical comedy called “Small Ball” that played in Houston in 2018. It depicts a fictional character named Michael Jordan — not the Jordan — as he finds himself playing in an international league with teammates who are six inches tall.“I think basketball is just the most important of all of the sports among the up-and-coming directors and playwrights, at least the ones I’ve spoken to,” Morey said.Not that basketball has a lock on the theater. Baseball has long been an object of fascination for playwrights, including classic shows like “Damn Yankees.” Richard Greenberg’s Tony-winning 2003 play, “Take Me Out,” about a baseball player who comes out as gay, had a Tony-winning revival on Broadway last year. In 2019, “Toni Stone,” written by Lydia R. Diamond, depicted the life of Marcenia Lyle Stone, who became the first woman to play in a men’s baseball league when she took the field for the Indianapolis Clowns in the Negro Leagues.Football and boxing, too: “Lombardi,” a biographical play based on the life of the legendary football coach Vince Lombardi, ran on Broadway in 2010, and 2014 brought a stage adaptation of “Rocky,” the famous 1976 underdog boxing film, to Broadway.But for the moment, it is basketball that is having a renaissance in theater. Or to put it in basketball terms, playwrights who take on the sport currently have the hot hand. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Below Deck’ and FIFA Women’s World Cup

    One “Below Deck” spinoff wraps up its season, as another begins on Bravo. And Fox begins coverage of the women’s soccer championship.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 17-23. Details and times are subject to change.MondayBELOW DECK DOWN UNDER 8 p.m. on Bravo. The peppy chief stew, Aesha Scott, and Captain Jason Chambers return to sail through Australia on a superyacht for this “Below Deck” spinoff. As anyone who is a loyal watcher of this franchise knows: obnoxious guests, drunken crew hookups and lots of tears are most certainly on the docket for this second season.TuesdayThe sailing yacht from “Below Deck Sailing Yacht.”Fred Jagueneau/BravoBELOW DECK SAILING YACHT REUNION 8 p.m. on Bravo. After multiple engine failures, one exhausting love triangle (or, really, a love pentagon) and some of the rudest guests we’ve seen, there is a lot to debrief at this reunion. Are Daisy and Colin still together? Has Gary gotten his act together? Does Captain Glenn feel bad for how he treated Daisy? Hopefully the reunion host Andy Cohen gets us all the answers we want (and need).LOVE ISLAND 9 p.m. on E! The American version of the original British dating show is back for a fifth season. Sarah Hyland is returning as host, alongside the narrator Iain Stirling, with 10 new contestants. If you are ready to embark in content overload, the show will air seven days straight for the first week. Afterward, there will be new episodes every day except Wednesdays so that viewers can follow along in real time.SOUTHERN STORYTELLERS 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Each episode of this new show uses the story of famous poets, songwriters and writers to illustrate the impact that the South has had on music, movies and literature. The screenwriters Qui Nguyen and Michael Waldron, the actor Billy Bob Thornton and the author Angie Thomas are just a few of the people you will spot on this show.WednesdayCMA FEST 8 p.m. on ABC. The 50th anniversary of the Country Music Association Festival took place in Nashville in June, and now those performances are being broadcast for anyone who missed it — or anyone who wants to relive it. The show, hosted by Dierks Bentley, Elle King and Lainey Wilson, includes performances from Luke Combs, Jason Aldean, Carly Pearce and Darius Rucker — just to name a few.Charlie Day, left, and Glenn Howerton in “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.”Patrick McElhenney/FXIT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA 10 p.m. on FXX. The 16th season of this sitcom is wrapping up this week, but don’t worry: The show has been renewed through Season 18. (For context, this show premiered in 2005 alongside “Weeds,” “The Office,” and “How I Met Your Mother.”) This season, with only eight episodes, follows the gang getting up to their usual, slightly offensive shenanigans, with Dennis trying (and failing) to have a relaxing day at the beach in the finale.Thursday​​THE PREVIEW MURDER MYSTERY (1936) 8 p.m. on TCM. After a series of menacing notes are received on a movie set, the studio is quarantined, and executives start to suspect a murderer might be lurking. The film stars Reginald Denny, Frances Drake and Gail Patrick, and is directed by Robert Florey.FridayFIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP various times on Fox. The women’s soccer championship is beginning this week, and the United States Women’s National Team are competing for a chance to win their third consecutive title. Because the tournaments are taking place in Australia and New Zealand, the games will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1 while quarterfinals, semifinals, third-place match, the Final and recaps will air on Fox.SaturdayHarrison Ford in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”Paramount PicturesINDIANA JONES MARATHON various times on Paramount. To prep for the fifth installment of the franchise, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” now in theaters, watch this marathon of the first three. Catch RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981) at 12 p.m., followed by INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) and finally, INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989). Harrison Ford stars in all three as the titular character who beats a group of Nazis in finding a religious relic; searches for the sacred stones in India; and sets out to recover the Holy Grail.SundayBELLY OF THE BEAST: FEEDING FRENZY 8 p.m. on Discovery. Few things are certain in this world, but one thing we can always count on? Shark Week. Every July, Discovery showcases all things shark. This year Jason Momoa is acting as host, and each day there will be three to four programs highlighting all aspects of these scary and majestic creatures.MAYBE IT’S YOU (2023) 9 p.m. on E! In this original film, Peter (Brett Dier) and Lexa (Veronica St. Clair) fall into the classic friends-to-lovers trope. As these two best friends find themselves single at the same time, they can’t help but wonder: What if what they’ve been looking for has been right here the whole time? Filmed in Canada, this snowy movie will break you out of the summer heat, at least for a couple of hours. More

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    Tim Baltz on B.J.’s Test in ‘The Righteous Gemstones’

    Sunday’s episode was a test for Baltz’s character, but B.J. seized the moment. Still, his victory came at a price.This interview contains spoilers for Sunday night’s episode of “The Righteous Gemstones.”The first thing to know is that the testicles were fake — in one of the shots, at least. Anyone who has seen Sunday night’s episode of the HBO televangelist family satire, “The Righteous Gemstones,” knows which shot.Near the end of the episode, the sixth of Season 3, Tim Baltz’s character, B.J., gets in a brutal brass-knuckle fight with a naked man that spills onto a suburban front lawn. Just when it seems that B.J. is out cold, his eyes fly open and he reaches, grabs, twists. The neighborhood children watch in horror.In an instant, the typically mild-mannered B.J. has victory well in hand. His nemesis, the philandering Christian rock guitarist Stephen (Stephen Schneider), drops to his knees and pays a brutal price for his affair with B.J’s. wife (Edi Patterson).It was a difficult scene to film, Baltz said last month by video from his home in Los Angeles, and not only because of the endless takes. He also did most of his own stunts — and accidentally got punched in the face several times.“There were a lot of little very quick decisions that either injured us, or barely avoided injury,” Baltz said of shooting the scene, which took all day. He added: “That’s the most intense day of work I’ve ever had.”Baltz grew up in Joliet, Ill., near Chicago, and he has the kind of boyish blond looks, deadpan delivery and cheery Midwestern affect that can make it difficult to tell whether he’s putting you on. (Given the circumstances, I believed him about the shoot.) That affect is one reason he is so convincing as B.J., a sensitive soul who lets his wife dress him in shiny pink rompers and who Rollerblades in full protective gear: It’s hard to believe that anyone could ever really be that earnest; B.J. keeps surprising you because he really is.“Despite being an atheist or a nonbeliever, he’s the most pious and religious character in the show,” Baltz said. “Which is odd,” he added, for a character who married into a family of preachers.Baltz’s character, B.J., has been a pushover for most of the series but Sunday’s brutal battle was a turning point.Jake Giles Netter/HBOB.J. also may be the most meme-worthy character in “Gemstones,” which is saying something in a show created by and starring Danny McBride. Baltz talked about the character, his outfits and the true cost of B.J.’s fight. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.First things first: How did you guys choreograph that, uh, decisive shot?That fight scene took an entire day to film. Once we got outside, we were worried about losing light, and with the camera looking up, the camera moving, I have to grab these fake testicles. I’m looking up at Stephen, who’s barely covering his own junk, and I’m like: “All right man, here we go, and we’ve got to get it right for the camera, too.”There was a stuntman involved for at least some of your parts, right?Yeah. My stunt double for the show has been a guy named T. Ryan Mooney, who looks shockingly like me. Same body type, too. To be honest, I don’t think that I’m like B.J. in real life, but I never feel more like my character than when I watch a guy who looks like me and has my body type do insane stunts, and he does it for a living. It’s kind of emasculating. But aside from B.J. getting thrown through the lattice work or when he gets dragged off the brick steps into the front yard, every shot you see, I did.Stephen seems like a champ for having done his whole part naked. What were your conversations about the scene like?He was really awesome. He was wrestling with whether he should go au naturel or use a prosthetic. It ended up being the last shoot day of the season for both of us, so there was a lot of buildup and anticipation. Stephen would come into town every few months to film stuff, and I would be like, “Let me take you out to dinner, man, because we’re going to have an intense day.” And then halfway through the season, he’s like: “I’m going to do it. I’m going to be naked. I just think there are only so many challenges in life, and I see this as a challenge.”Baltz tried to get to know his co-star Stephen Schneider ahead of time. “By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight,” he said.HBOPresumably he had to get your consent.I mean, the intimacy coordinator definitely called several times to prep me. But for me, it was more like: “All right, this guy’s being really vulnerable with this. So every time he comes into town, we’re going to get to know each other so that we’re buddies going into this.” And honestly, it really worked. By the end, I considered him a dear friend, this naked guy I had to fight.You’ve played around with this image of the wholesome naïf a lot over the years. How much of that feels like you?I grew up playing sports — I was hypercompetitive. I really am not like [B.J.] at all. If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has, and I think a lot of people see that as being a mark in our society.When you book something, you lean into it as hard as you can whether it’s a nice character or someone creepy. But this one in particular you have to understand, Where does the unconditional love come from? And how do I keep in touch with that? This season that really gets tested for the first time, and it gets tested so much that he thinks that he has to change who he is. And the fight scene is the culmination of that.After the fight, B.J. tells Judy, “I hope you like me now.” Does he feel worse about beating up Stephen than he feels about having gotten beat up himself?I think he’s probably more hurt that he betrayed his own values. Danny always said: “When you play B.J., he’s the eyes of the audience within the show. He’s looking at the family the way we all look at the family.” I’ve carried that with me the entire time. So that moment is, “Not only did you cheat on me, but you made me betray myself.”Do you think there’s any part of standing up for himself that he takes in a positive way?I think so. It’s a fascinating evolution of the character. When I first read it, I was excited because I think it puts that card on the table for him. I think parts of our culture see something like that as a rite of passage, or something that you have to rise to the occasion to do. So in that sense, he does do it. But when he comes back, you can also look at that final line as saying, “I’m not the same anymore, so I hope you like what this has changed me into.” You can’t go back after something like that.Baltz said he his not anything like B.J. “If I relate to the character in any way, it’s just the kindness and the generosity that he has,” he said.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesIt’s like a more complex George McFly moment.Right. The sliding-door part of that [“Back to the Future”] trilogy is you see what happens if he doesn’t throw the punch, and his life is miserable. And then if he does throw the punch, everything is saved and the family’s OK. With this, I think B.J. probably looks at it and is like, “No, that’s a doorway that I can step back and forth from as I see fit now.” The truth is, his values are, “You shouldn’t do that.” He was forced to do it, and he rose to the occasion. But if given a choice, then he probably wouldn’t.Can we talk about the outfits? There’s a flamboyant dimension to them, and I’ve always wondered what that signifies.There’s a blend of a few things. First, I think he starts as Judy’s kept man; this is her wardrobe for him, and he feels a bit out of place. And then I think he gets more comfortable with it and starts to take bigger swings. Also, if you walk down King Street in Charleston [S.C., where the series is filmed], you will see guys kind of dressed like that. Maybe not as opulent, but the color palettes — there’s a lot of pastels.A lot of salmon.Before I’d really explored Charleston and saw some of these outfits, I thought, “Whoa, this is really out there.” And then in the real world you see it, and these people aren’t making a joke of it. They’re going about their regular lives. I always say that if B.J. was a Christian holiday, he’d be Easter because of the pastels. And it’s incumbent on me to feel comfortable and live in those outfits without making them the point of the joke. More

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    Coping With Crohn’s Disease, With the Help of Rachael Ray

    The stars of the Food Network help a teenage patient make it through the long days in the hospital with no solid food.When I was 15, I fell in love with the voice of Rachael Ray. That velvety contralto was the soundtrack of my days in the children’s hospital I hated — with its plaid curtains and kind nurses — but called home.For weeks I spent my days hopped up on morphine, in and out of consciousness, nestled in a snake hive of drip tubes and wires. I was intent on fighting off this invader without a name, but even more devoted to the tiny television set that was giving me an education on how to beat a meringue into submission or throw a “simple yet stunning” dinner party (even when one of the guests is a vegetarian).What I remember most was the hunger. I was starving, literally. But I had the Food Network.Under doctors’ orders, I ate hardly anything — not a drop of ginger ale, a bite of a cracker or even an ice chip. This was my first foray into a kind of forced asceticism, something that my body, ravaged by this yet-to-be-diagnosed disease, would frequently require. Ravenousness was embedded in my bones, a constant pang.My gut was too inflamed, spastic and maniacal to handle nutrition by mouth, and the team of doctors proclaimed, with the nonchalance of those who could pop down to the cafeteria for a sandwich, that my digestive tract needed “a break” and should “cool down.” Forgoing food by mouth was the way to get this done.My fate was N.P.O. — nil per os, Latin for “nothing by mouth.” When I had run out of celebrity tabloids to inhale and dutifully completed my homework, I became fluent in medicalese, injecting abbreviations and obscure medical terms into my vocabulary. I learned that this diet — or nondiet, really — was the first step in getting my irate system back to a seemingly elusive homeostasis.I soon received the decidedly unsexy, unglamorous diagnosis of Crohn’s disease. It’s one of those things — chronic, incurable, but can be managed — that can physically and financially debilitate you for long periods of time, in events called flares.Without food, I became half girl, half robot, with angst coursing through me and machines pumping nutrition into my body intravenously in a process called T.P.N., or total parenteral nutrition. T.P.N. is a common treatment for a severe Crohn’s flare. It bypasses the digestive system, giving your colon the ultimate vacation. How luxurious.I lost the contours of a fully sane and satiated human, morphing and flattening into pure desire — skin and bones, ribs visible, thighs that no longer touched — and I became obsessed with the idea of preparing food and thoughts of my favorite meals. Roast beef. Buttery potatoes. Burgers so big and dripping with juices that you’d need six napkins. Most bewildering to those around me, I became obsessed with the Food Network.Instead of food, I devoured clips of Paula Deen inserting pounds of butter into a cake recipe and Sandra Lee concocting something deliciously semi-homemade. Emeril Lagasse’s shrieks of “Bam!” sounded even more authoritative through the fog of opioids. And watching Rachael Ray whip up something “delish” became a lustful experience through those hours of rotting in a hospital bed.I grew accustomed to the emptiness of days unbroken by the familiar markers of mealtimes and instead became dependent on the intervals of carefully dispensed pain medications, always wanting more. I felt swathed and safe in that chemical cocoon and didn’t realize, until years later, that what I had thought was feeling happy really meant being high.All the while I was flipping through channels to see the beloved friends who were always there for me: Rachael, Emeril, Sandra, Paula.The rays of the setting sun would blaze through the hospital windows. Then came the darkness that would allow me to see the TV screen with more clarity as I curled into the warm abyss of a sleeping aid — “the good stuff” that sent me drifting off to a zone of semiconsciousness, free of pain, with dreams of lunches and Coca-Cola and a warm, full belly. The Food Network shows, with their bright colors and erotic displays of shiny spatchcocked chickens, were my proxy for a primal unmet need.I endured the daily drone of doctors and medical residents who poked and prodded, promising “just a few more days of no food.” This went on for weeks, with starts and stops along the way. The few days when I was allowed the most delectable of gastronomic wonders — chicken broth and lemon water ice — were followed by pains so searing and gruesome, and complications so life-threatening, that I would be forced back to square one.I became an animal closing in on its prey, except the prey was a vanilla pudding cup and the messenger was some poor nurse named Liz. If I smelled food, I would devolve into a rageful miscreant, screaming at the visitors who had food with them and ordering them out of my room. I resented those who could tend to their most basic needs with such ease.Psychologists and therapists tried to teach me breathing techniques and other coping mechanisms, which I scoffed at with laughs and eye rolls that only teenage girls know how to give. Even as some of my muscles atrophied, it seemed my middle finger functioned just fine. More than ever, I came to rely on the trusted TV hosts who grilled and baked with such ease. Imagine Ina Garten denying me a meal!I try to think of when Food Became Good Again, when eating became a vehicle of pleasure and not pure pain. There’s no perfect data point. That’s the thing with having an illness that goes on and on: “Before” and “after” are irrelevant. Living in a body on fire requires you to tend to it like a garden — carefully and meticulously and, most importantly, every day.I say I have two jobs, my day job at a newspaper and a second as a secretary of myself and of my body. Skills include a deftness at wading through the health care system, an ability to scream on phones at middle-managing insurance agents and a knack for properly budgeting for “emergencies.” One wrong move could mean a Crohn’s flare or a hefty medical bill.There came a time, after that initial stay in the hospital, when food became not the enemy, but a sort of benign suitor. After months of feeding tubes and stomach pumping, along with one helicopter “life flight” and surgery, I began to get over being sick. The drugs seemed to be working. The doctor’s visits, though tiresome and often marred by procedural nonsense, were helping.I was once again able to eat in a “regular” way — small bites of pizza and greasy chicken tenders, crisp apples cloaked in drippy peanut butter, my favorite. The saccharine taste of Diet Coke and the zing of cheap black coffee are daily pleasures. Rachael, Ina and Emeril are still in the picture, but now when I watch them, at home, I can run to the fridge.Annie Tressler is a corporate communications manager at The New York Times. More