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    92NY’s New Season Includes Ian McEwan and Tom Stoppard

    The fall season also features Ralph Fiennes, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Katie Couric and Ken Burns.Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Katie Couric and Ralph Fiennes are among the array of actors, authors and dancers who will feature in the 92nd Street Y, New York’s upcoming fall season.“It was very important coming out of Covid and coming now into the 2022-23 season to really make a statement that we’re back,” Seth Pinsky, the organization’s chief executive, said of the programming. (The cultural institution has an updated name this year and is known as 92NY, for short.) “Every night is going to be something different, something stimulating.”In a nod to T.S. Eliot, Fiennes will read “The Waste Land” (Dec. 5) on the very stage where Eliot read the poem in 1950. The reading will coincide with the centenary of the poem, which was published in December 1922.Slated early in the season is Jann Wenner, the founder of Rolling Stone, who will speak about his new book, “Like a Rolling Stone: A Memoir,” in a conversation with his longtime friend Bruce Springsteen (Sept. 13).The following day, the filmmakers Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, Sarah Botstein and Daniel Mendelsohn will preview their forthcoming documentary series, “The U.S. and the Holocaust,” followed by a panel moderated by the journalist and podcast host Kara Swisher.The playwright Tom Stoppard, in what is believed to be his only New York talk of the season, takes the stage on Sept. 18 for a discussion about his new play, “Leopoldstadt,” with the German author and playwright Daniel Kehlmann.On Sept. 12, Couric, the journalist and author, will discuss her book “Going There,” with the New York Times investigative reporter Jodi Kantor. Also on the lineup are the Booker Prize winner Ian McEwan, who will read from his new novel, “Lessons” (Sept. 19); the Nigerian novelist Adichie reading from her new memoir, “Notes on Grief,” with the memoirist and CNN anchor Zain Asher (Sept. 11); and Joshua Cohen discussing his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Netanyahus” (Dec. 12).Last year, the Harkness Dance Center at the 92NY brought dance back to its stage. That tradition continues with the tap dancer Leonardo Sandoval and the composer Gregory Richardson (Dec. 22), and a celebration of the late dancer and choreographer Yuriko Kikuchi (Oct. 27), among other performances.The schedule will continue to be filled out with new events over the course of the season. The venue plans to continue requiring proof of vaccination for all attendees; masking requirements will be determined in the coming weeks.A full lineup can be found at 92ny.org. More

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    ‘Shy’ Excerpt: Mary Rodgers on Creating ’Once Upon a Mattress’

    In this excerpt from “Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers,” a Broadway musical is born at a summer camp.A hundred-mile drive from New York City, on the fringe of the Pocono Mountains, Tamiment was for much of the last midcentury a resort for singles and a summer intensive for emerging theatrical talent. During the first half of each season, writers assembled an original musical revue every week; in the second half, if they were interested in cranking out a show with a story — and if Moe Hack, the barky, crusty, cigar-smoking sweetheart who ran the place, thought it was a good idea — they would be free to try.Among those who tried in the summer of 1958 was Mary Rodgers, a young composer whose father’s reputation preceded her; he was, after all, Richard Rodgers. Also at Tamiment was the lyricist and book writer Marshall Barer, her mentor and tormentor. Together, with assists from Dean Fuller and Jay Thompson, they would write the musical “Once Upon a Mattress,” a perennial favorite that grew from a summertime opportunity into an Off Broadway and Broadway success starring Carol Burnett. “Mattress” was also an unintentional self-portrait of a displaced young princess trying to find happiness on her own terms.“Shy: The Alarmingly Outspoken Memoirs of Mary Rodgers,” written by Rodgers (1931-2014) and Jesse Green, the chief theater critic of The New York Times, is the just-published story of that princess. Over the course of two marriages, three careers and six children, sometimes stymied by self-doubt, the pervasive sexism of the period and her overbearingly critical parents (not just Richard but the icy perfectionist Dorothy), she somehow triumphed. But in this excerpt about the birth of her first (and only) musical hit — there would be substantial successes in other fields too — she recalls how triumphs can sometimes depend on little more than scrappiness, high spirits and a castoff from Stephen Sondheim.In New York City, Carol Burnett won the role of the Princess, whose sleep is disrupted by the incessant shrilling of the Nightingale of Samarkand, in “Once Upon a Mattress.”Friedman-Abeles/The New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsMARSHALL FOUND ME a nice four-bedroom cottage for very little money, right down the hill from Tamiment’s main buildings and near a rushing river. He even saw to it that an upright piano was waiting in the living room. And Steve, now flush from “West Side Story,” sold me his old car for a dollar. Off we went like the Joads in early June: 27-year-old me; the kids, ages 5, 4, and 2; and the Peruvian nanny — all of us scratching westward thanks to Steve’s itchy fake-fur upholstery.My von Trapp-like cheerfulness in the face of uncertainty soon crashed, though. The whole first half of the season was, for me, demoralizing. Everybody was more experienced than I. Everybody was, I felt sure, more talented. Everybody was certainly more at ease. At the Wednesday afternoon meetings to plan material for the coming week, when Moe would fire questions at us — “Who’s got an opening number?” — the guys would leap up to be recognized like know-it-alls in math class. If they were little red hens, I was the chicken, silently clucking Not I. “Who’s got a comedy song?” More leaping; more ideas. “Who’s got a sketch?” Woody Allen always did.At 22, Woody looked about 12 but was already the inventive weirdo he would become famous as a decade later. His wife, Harlene, who made extra money typing scripts for the office, was even nerdier, but only inadvertently funny. She looked, and sounded, a bit like Olive Oyl, with reddish hair, freckles, and a bad case of adenoids. Woody, whenever he wasn’t working on his sketches — his best that summer was about a man-eating cake — was either sitting on a wooden chair on the porch outside the barracks, practicing his clarinet, or inside with her, practicing sex, possibly from a manual. He was doing better, it seemed, with the clarinet.I would spend eight hours a day plinking out tunes to accompany Marshall’s lyrics. These were revue songs, with titles like “Waiting to Waltz With You,” “Miss Nobody,” and “Hire a Guy You Can Blame,” fitted to the talents of particular performers with no aim of serving a larger story. “Miss Nobody,” for instance, with its super-high tessitura, was written for a thin little girl named Elizabeth Lands, who couldn’t walk across the stage without falling on her face but was a knockout and had an incredible four-octave range like Yma Sumac.Burnett, left, and Rodgers moving a mattress into the Alvin Theater (now the Neil Simon Theater) on Broadway in November 1959. The show had premiered earlier that year at an Off Broadway theater, the Phoenix, in the East Village.Bettmann/Getty ImagesMusic did not pour out of my fingers; the process was more like wringing a slightly damp washcloth. With Marshall’s lyric propped up on the piano desk, precisely divided into bar lines as a road map, I would begin with some sort of accompaniment or vamp or series of consecutive chords, then sing a melody that matched the lyric and went with the accompaniment, then adjust the accompaniment to service the melody, which began to dictate the harmony, until I had a decent front strain that satisfied me and, more important, satisfied Marshall, who wouldn’t stop hanging over my shoulder until he liked what he’d heard. Then he’d leave me to clean it up and inch it forward while he took a long walk on the golf course to puzzle out the lyrics for the bridge. Back to me, back to the golf course, back and forth we went, until the song was finished.Even when I did that successfully, I had another problem. My abandoned Wellesley education had taught me the rudiments of formal manuscript making, but Daddy had ear-trained me, not eye-trained me. As a result, I kept naming my notes wrong, calling for fourths when I meant fifths, and vice versa. This made the orchestrations sound upside down. I could just imagine the guys saying, “Get a load of Dick Rodgers’s daughter, who can’t even make a lead sheet.”Actually, the orchestra men, kept like circus animals in a tent apart from the rest of us, were the merriest people at Tamiment. They weren’t competitive the way the writers were. They just sat there with a great big tub filled with ice and beer; you tossed your 25 cents in and had a good time. And I had the best time with them. Especially the trumpeter.Mary, left, with her parents, Dorothy and Richard; her sister, Linda, center; and Zoë d’Erlanger, right, who lived with the family for a time during World War II.via the Rodgers-Beaty-Guettel familyElsewhere at Tamiment, I felt patronized. It didn’t help that Marshall tried to dispel my parental paranoia by preemptively introducing me to one and all as “Mary Rodgers — you know, Dorothy’s daughter?” Between that and the chord symbols, it was enough to drive me to drink.Or pills, anyway.“What’s that you’re taking?” Marshall asked, when he saw me swallowing one.“Valium,” I told him.“Valium!” he screamed. “Why Valium?”“I asked the doctor for something to help me write.”“And he gave you Valium?” said Marshall. “Here. Try this.”He handed me a pretty little green-and-white-speckled spansule.Bingo! I wrote two songs in one day, and, whether because of the Dexamyl or the songs, felt happier than I’d ever been. It completely freed me up. Whatever inhibitions I had about playing in front of Marshall or feeling creative and being able to express it were suddenly gone.The story of me and pills — and, much more dramatically, Marshall and pills — can wait for later; what matters now is that Marshall had for a couple of years been nursing the notion of turning the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale “The Princess and the Pea” into a musical burlesque for his friend Nancy Walker. Nancy, a terrific comedian, liked the idea but was too big a star by then to be summer-slumming at Tamiment. Still, since Marshall was stuck with me anyway, he figured it was worth a try. Did I like the idea? he asked.As it happens, I did, very much, but it wouldn’t have mattered if I hated it. I did what I was told. At Tamiment, even Marshall did what he was told. Moe said we could write this “pea musical” on the condition that it would accommodate his nine principal players with big roles. Nine big roles? Moe had hired them at a premium, he said, and he wanted his money’s worth.The deal struck, Moe scheduled the show for Aug. 16 and 17. It was now late July.The program for the Tamiment Playhouse performance of “The Princess and the Pea,” as the musical was known that summer of 1958.Jesse Green/The New York TimesTo save time, we custom-cast the show on the cart-before-the-horse Moe Hack plan, before a word, or at least a note, was written. There was, for instance, a wonderful girl, Yvonne Othon, who was perfect for the lead, Princess Winifred: appealingly funny-looking, very funny-acting, and the right age — 20. But there was a significant drawback: She wasn’t one of Moe’s principal players. Meanwhile, Moe wanted to know what we were going to do for Evelyn Russell, who at 31 was deemed too ancient to be the Princess but was a principal player. OK, OK, we’d cast Evelyn as the Queen: an unpleasant, overbearing lady we just made up, who is overly fond of her son the Prince and never stops talking. We would give her many, many, many lines and maybe even her own song. And to seal the deal, even though the Princess was (along with the Pea) the title character, we would cut her one big number; we’d been planning to have her sing “Shy,” a revue song that hadn’t worked earlier in the summer. That was just as well because it was a tough, belty tune and Yvonne couldn’t sing a note. She was a dancer.Lenny Maxwell, a comedian and a schlub, would be Prince Dauntless, the sad sack who wants to get married but his mother won’t let him; since he had limited singing chops, we’d only write him the kind of dopey songs any doofus could sing. We created the part of the Wizard for a guy who, I had reason to know offstage, was spooky; he was practically doing wizard things to me in bed. Meanwhile, Milt Kamen, by virtue of his age (37) and credits (he’d worked with Sid Caesar), was considered by Moe, and by Milt, to be the most important of the principal players, but he too had a couple of drawbacks: He couldn’t sing on key and couldn’t memorize lines. He claimed, though, to be an excellent mime, so Marshall and Jay invented the mute King to function as counterpoint to the incessantly chatty Queen. Marshall brilliantly figured out a way to make his lyrics rhyme even though they were silent: They rhymed by implication.In this way, one role at a time, we wrote the show backward from our laundry list of constraints: a dance specialty for the good male dancer who played the Jester, a real ballad for the best singer, even a pantomime role for Marshall’s lover, Ian, who moved beautifully but, well, fill in the blank.Soon all personnel problems were solved except what to do with Elizabeth Lands. You remember, the gorgeous but klutzy Yma Sumac type? When Joe Layton, the choreographer, and Jack Sydow, the director, started teaching all the ladies of the court — who were meant to be pregnant, according to Marshall’s story — how to walk with their hands clasped under their boobs, tummies out, leaning almost diagonally backward, Liz kept tipping over. Pigeon-toed? Knock-kneed? We never discovered what exactly, but she was a moving violation. Thus was born the Nightingale of Samarkand, who was lowered in a cage during the bed scene while shrilling an insane modal tune to keep the Princess awake.Do not seek to know how the musical theater sausage is made. More

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    In ‘House of the Dragon,’ Paddy Considine Claims the Crown

    A string of critically acclaimed roles has made him many British actors’ favorite actor. It has also lifted him from hardscrabble roots to a seat on the Iron Throne.WINSHILL, England — On a blindingly sunny June afternoon, Paddy Considine whipped his sedan through a working-class neighborhood in this suburb in the West Midlands, pointing out the stolid taverns, churches and council houses that combine to cast the long shadows of his childhood.There was the gospel hall where he and his friends sang hymns when they weren’t “getting kicked out for fighting about.” The pub where men from his estate pursued nightly oblivion. The post office where his tempestuous father “tossed a wheelie bin through the front window” during one of his frequent swerves into rage, a moment Considine memorialized in his bleakly beautiful 2011 film, “Tyrannosaur.”He pulled to a stop in front of a pale gray two-family house and pointed to an upstairs window. It was his old bedroom, and he told a story about a kid desperate to show the world he had more to offer than it might think.“I’d run home after school and then put the music on and stand in the window, dancing to Adam and the Ants, so the parents would see me and look up,” he said. “It wasn’t like I was a show-off. I just wanted to be seen.”He looked at me with a grin that was equal parts affable and intense. “There’s a difference, you know,” he said.Over a two-decade career in film, TV and the occasional blockbuster play, Considine has thrived within that difference. He has crafted performances that demand to be seen, partly because they forgo performative pyrotechnics in favor of a palpable, at times unsettling sense of the real. The fact that he hasn’t had what you might call a signature role hasn’t kept him from becoming many British actors’ favorite actor.“I just believe him,” said Olivia Colman, a longtime admirer. “You sort of look into his eyes, and he’s feeling it all, and he means it all.”Considine’s profile is more modest in America, but it might not stay that way: Beginning on Aug. 21, he will be dancing in his largest window yet. That’s when “House of the Dragon,” the long-awaited “Game of Thrones” prequel series, lands on HBO. A family melodrama with all the violence, sex and power-lust one would expect from a tale set in Westeros, the series seeks to recapture the magic that made the original a global phenomenon before it stumbled to its polarizing conclusion in 2019.The story, based on “Fire & Blood,” a spinoff novel by the saga’s mastermind, George R.R. Martin, is set nearly 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones.” It involves an earlier battle for the Iron Throne, one that threatens to crater the Targaryen clan long before their combustible descendant Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) arrives in the original series.At the heart of it all is Considine, who stars as King Viserys, the ruler whose decisions and frailties set into motion much of the conflict and carnage to come.Paddy Considine, who plays King Viserys Targaryen, in a scene from “House of the Dragon.”Ollie Upton/HBOIt is a surprising bit of casting, at first glance. After arriving as an eccentric thug in the 1999 film “A Room for Romeo Brass,” Considine has made his name mostly in small-bore dramas playing emotionally conflicted men who feel it all, and then some: a grieving immigrant father in “In America”; a religious zealot ex-con in “My Summer of Love”; a murderously vengeful veteran in “Dead Man’s Shoes.”While he has appeared in franchises (“The Bourne Ultimatum”), genre series (the Stephen King adaptation “The Outsider”) and surprising detours before (the goofball cop comedy “Hot Fuzz”), a dragon epic did not seem like the most natural fit.“If you look at the body of his work and the type of movies that he does, it doesn’t necessarily lend itself to a big HBO franchise like this,” said Matt Smith, who stars in “House of the Dragon” as Viserys’s belligerent brother, Daemon. “But I think he’s got good taste, and I think he realized the part was really interesting.”Considine, 48, is a man of multitudes and paradoxes. An acclaimed actor, he nonetheless struggles with attacks of insecurity to the point that he considered leaving projects like “Hot Fuzz” because he felt he was flailing. He has an unmistakable toughness, but what makes it captivating is the sensitivity that bleeds through.Ryan Condal, one of the “House of the Dragon” showrunners, said that Considine imbued Viserys, a relatively passive character in the script, “with a bit of Paddy’s working class background.”“What Paddy brought to it was Targaryen-ness, this fierceness,” he said. But as the other showrunner, Miguel Sapochnik, noted: “He wears his insecurities on his sleeve.”Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” spinoff will debut on Aug. 21.A Primer: Though it is the successor to the groundbreaking fantasy drama, “House of the Dragon” is actually a prequel. Here’s what else you need to know.The Stakes: Can the new series save the future of the “Game of Thrones” franchise? George R.R. Martin and HBO are about to find out.Wearing the Crown: A string of critically acclaimed roles has lifted Paddy Considine, who stars as King Viserys Targaryen in the show, from hardscrabble roots to a seat on the Iron Throne.‘Thrones’ Guide: Want to take a deep dive into past episodes and plot twists? Check out our obsessive compendium to the original series.This combination has already won over the toughest “Thrones” fan of all: Martin, who said Considine’s Viserys surpasses the one in the book.“Every once in a while, an actor or the writers will take a character in a somewhat different direction that is better,” Martin said. “And I look at it and I say, ‘Damn, I wish I had written it that way.’”Considine admits that he was flattered to be asked to lead such an enormous undertaking, which will almost certainly result in more people seeing him than ever before. But what drew him in were the same things he seeks in all his roles, qualities that his past and predisposition help him depict with rare delicacy.“There was just conflicts in him; there was pain in him,” he said. “There was stuff for me to do.”CONSIDINE SPENDS MOST OF HIS TIME far from the show-business fray. He lives with his wife of 20 years, Shelley, and their three children in the town of Burton-on-Trent, near where he grew up, located roughly 110 miles northwest of London. It helps him avoid having to glad-hand industry types or audition for roles, which he loathes because he’s terrible at it, he said.While Considine is generally immune to Hollywood cliché, he certainly looked the part when we first met. Sitting inside a coffee shop in a posh village near his home, he was wearing black on black with dark glasses, and he spent the first 20 minutes talking about his rock band, called Riding the Low. He knew how it all came across.“I know … an actor with a band,” he said.But the reality is, he has been playing music for longer than he’s been acting, and the band is no mere vanity project: In June, they played Glastonbury Festival, and their latest record included a cameo by Considine’s musical hero, Robert Pollard of Guided by Voices.As for the glasses, they contain special lenses to treat Irlen syndrome, a disorder that is believed to affect the brain’s ability to process visual information. (Much of the science and medical community is skeptical about the affliction, but Considine and many others say the lenses changed their lives.) Generally funny and easygoing in conversation, Considine said this condition, along with a mild form of Asperger’s he was diagnosed with in his 30s, contributed to a reputation for aloofness as a young actor.“I couldn’t concentrate or focus on you, so I’d have to look away,” he said. “It led to this behavior of me going within myself and being slightly unapproachable.”But he is used to being misunderstood — even as a boy in Winshill, Considine had a reputation that preceded him. But it wasn’t his own.Considine’s father was known as a brawler with a quick temper. “I grew up with a lot of labels on me when I was a kid, just because of the reputation mainly of my father,” the actor said.Max Miechowski for The New York TimesHe grew up with a brother and four sisters in one of the few two-parent households in his social circle. His mother, Pauline, was a natural nurturer who temporarily took in kids from around the council estate when things got rough at their own homes. “I’d go downstairs and there’d be, like, a six-foot punk lying on the sofa under a blanket, with a big red mohawk,” Considine said.His father was another matter. An Irish alcoholic with a depressive streak, Martin Considine was known as a brawler with a quick temper, and was given to staying in bed until the afternoon, “watching ‘Raging Bull’ over and over again,” Considine said.“I grew up with a lot of labels on me when I was a kid, just because of the reputation mainly of my father,” he said.For a while, he lived up to them, alienating his teachers by being an uninterested student and a class clown. But when he signed on to a school production of “Grease,” it was transformative in more ways than one. When he opened his mouth to sing “Greased Lightning” in the first rehearsal, he discovered a robust voice he didn’t know he had. On opening night, everyone else discovered something, too.“It changed the entire school’s perception of me,” he said. “The teachers perceived me differently, the students. And I thought, this is powerful.”At 16, Considine began a drama program but “didn’t really learn that much, and I just left,” he said. (He eventually got a photography degree.) But he struck up a fortuitous friendship there with Shane Meadows, a fellow Midlander with similar tastes in music and film. Several years later, Meadows cast Considine in “Romeo Brass,” which won both men acclaim.Higher-profile roles followed in films like the Factory Records chronicle “24 Hour Party People” (2002) and the melancholy immigrant tale “In America” (2003). Then came “Dead Man’s Shoes,” a nervy, lo-fi riff on a slasher picture that stars Considine, in a frightening but grounded performance, as an ex-soldier stalking his brother’s former tormentors.The film is still revered in Britain — nearly everyone I talked to about Considine mentioned it — though the actor long ago tired of discussing it. (“Part of me wants to die” when people bring it up, he said, but he has made his peace with it.)That indelible performance indirectly enabled Considine to subvert it, to change perceptions again. He met Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright on the awards circuit for “Dead Man’s Shoes” — it and their film “Shaun of the Dead” were both released in Britain in 2004 — and the result was a part as a doofus detective in “Hot Fuzz.”“Meeting Paddy in person was a revelation; he was incredibly warm and funny,” Wright wrote in an email. “We knew he had a comic presence that hadn’t been fully unleashed yet.”Considine (center, with Rafe Spall, left, and Simon Pegg) tried to quit “Hot Fuzz” over a crisis of confidence about his comic chops. “This was, of course, ridiculous,” said Edgar Wright, the film’s director.Rogue Pictures, via Alamy“Hot Fuzz” was where Considine met Colman, a co-star, who went on to lead his first feature as a director, “Tyrannosaur.” The film, which he also wrote, tells a grueling but powerful story about a splenetic widower (Peter Mullan) who befriends a devout woman (Colman) trapped in an abusive marriage.For Colman, then known primarily for comedy and TV, the wrenching performance opened new dramatic opportunities that eventually led to an Oscar for the 2018 film “The Favourite.”“He sort of directly changed the trajectory of my career,” she said.For Considine, it offered a chance to revisit his upbringing via the means that had allowed him to escape it. As we drove around Winshill, he pointed out landmarks that had inspired scenes in the film.“I think ‘Tyrannosaur’ was just a love letter and an apology to my parents,” he told me. “It was me just trying to make sense of some of the things I grew up with.”CONSIDINE STARTED ACTING long before he became an actor.As an insecure kid cowed by a chaotic home and by other parents who “shut doors in my face” because of the sins of his father, he learned to perform confidence and swagger. “I had to create a sort of carapace to be able to protect myself,” he said.That armor never entirely went away — he still dusts it off for premieres and red carpets. Neither did the insecurity. As his career blossomed, it became both the thing that made acting a misery, at times, as well as a force pushing him to go deeper into performances that dazzled his contemporaries.“In England, I think a lot of actors feel the same way about Paddy,” Smith said. “We hold him in very high regard.”Tony Pitts (“All Creatures Great and Small”), a friend of Considine’s and past co-star, called him “the male actor that most male actors want to be.”Considine is choosy about his parts — it’s hard to find an outright stinker on his IMDb page. Friends say this derives from the fact that acting can take a profound psychic toll on him, so he has to be invested in a role to accept it.“Paddy’s not one to just pitch up and say the lines,” Pitts said. “I’ve seen him when he’s been at the point where he said, ‘I don’t think I want to act again.’”Wright calls Considine “Mr. 11th Hour” because that’s when he “had to be talked out of leaving” both “Hot Fuzz” and a later comedy, “The World’s End,” over a crisis of confidence about his comic chops. “This was, of course, ridiculous,” Wright said. “It just shows me he cares, maybe too much.”From left, Glenn Speers, Considine, Stuart Graham and Genevieve O’Reilly in “The Ferryman,” Considine’s first performance in a play. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesConsidine went through something similar in “The Ferryman,” Jez Butterworth’s 2017 drama set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. It was Considine’s first play, and he took it on as a kind of trial-by-fire apprenticeship because he felt limited by his lack of formal acting training, even after numerous series and films. “I was running out of places to hide, and I was running out of enthusiasm for it, too,” he said.He found stage acting terrifying. His self-doubt reached a crisis point during the initial run, at London’s Royal Court Theater, and then again when “The Ferryman” moved to Broadway — both times Sam Mendes, the director, helped him through it. (Reviewing the Broadway production, The Times said Considine gave “a superb, anchoring performance.”) The actor now says “The Ferryman” was “a game-changer,” in terms of his comfort with his craft.That comfort wasn’t always apparent on “House of the Dragon,” however. Considine said he based the physically ailing Viserys partly on his mother, who went through multiple amputations resulting from diabetes before dying of a heart attack. Colleagues said watching him inhabit the role sometimes bordered on concerning.“He turns himself inside out in his performance, and that metamorphosis is sometimes really painful to watch,” said Olivia Cooke, who stars as Alicent Hightower, a woman close to Viserys. “We spoke about it, and the only way he can access his performance, sometimes, is to go to such a horrid and painful place.”Sapochnik said that when Considine struggles with material or anything else, “his default is anger.” Directing him involved “helping to work through that, being patient about it, sometimes saying to him, ‘Mate, calm down,’” he explained. “But also then seeing how he brought that into Viserys.”Considine brought fierceness to Viserys, but he also “wears his insecurities on his sleeve,” said Miguel Sapochnik (right, with Considine and the actress Milly Alcock), a “House of the Dragon” showrunner.Ollie Upton/HBOAt the same time, his co-stars, from old hands like Smith to relative newcomers like Emily Carey, who plays a younger version of Alicent, roundly praised Considine as a funny, warm and supportive colleague and collaborator. The person he is hardest on is himself.“It sounds like I’m a miserable sod, but I have a good time doing these things, as well,” Considine said. “It’s just that when I perform in any way, I have these challenges in front of me again.”What keeps him going are the flashes of transcendence. He mentioned one late-season monologue Viserys gives before his family that “touched a bit of old Hopkins,” as in Sir Anthony, one of his acting heroes.“The moments where you are fully in it, all that goes — all that awareness, all that self-observation, all that stuff, that inner critic,” Considine said. “That horrible stuff just falls off you. And that’s ultimately what I’m searching for.”And to the extent that any of that horrible stuff is linked to his past, he’s learning to let some of that fall off him, too, as achievements mount and the passing years bring distance and perspective.“That kid in the window, he hasn’t got to die, but it can’t keep dominating your life,” he said. “You’ve got to explore other things, and ‘Game of Thrones’ is part of that.”“Who would’ve thought that kid would end up playing a [expletive] king?” he added. “Who would’ve ever conceived that I would be a king in anything?” More

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    What to Know About ‘House of the Dragon,’ ‘Game of Thrones’ Prequel

    HBO’s new “Game of Thrones” prequel takes us back to the land of Westeros, hundreds of years earlier. We’ve got your cheat sheet.In the final episodes of HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” the mad queen Daenerys Targaryen incinerated most of the capital city of King’s Landing. But what was it like when it was all still standing, and the Targaryen dynasty ruled with an iron fist — er, throne?That’s the question explored by “House of the Dragon,” the new series set in author George R.R. Martin’s revisionist epic-fantasy world. Created by Martin along with Ryan Condal, who serves as showrunner with the veteran “Thrones” director Miguel Sapochnik, “Dragon” takes place far back into the ancestral line of the “Thrones” protagonists Daenerys and Jon Snow, whose own Targaryen identity was revealed late in the original show’s run.As their forebears battle for control of Westeros’s Iron Throne, what do you need to know about the new series, and its connection to what has gone before — or, more accurately, after? Our cheat sheet has you covered. Read on and prepare to dance with dragons.A pregame of thronesThough it is the successor series to “Game of Thrones,” “House of the Dragon” is actually a prequel. Set 172 years before the birth of Daenerys Targaryen, it chronicles the history of her royal family during a tumultuous time, a calamitous internecine war known as “The Dance of the Dragons.” During this conflict, a slew of Targaryens and their dragon steeds — these fire-breathing beasts were more plentiful at this point in Westerosi history — did battle for the Iron Throne.That said, “Dragon” shares several key elements with its predecessor series. These include Martin, who wrote the books that form the basis of both shows — the “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels for the original series and the prequel book “Fire & Blood” for the new one.Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” spinoff will debut on Aug. 21.A Primer: Though it is the successor to the groundbreaking fantasy drama, “House of the Dragon” is actually a prequel. Here’s what else you need to know.The Stakes: Can the new series save the future of the “Game of Thrones” franchise? George R.R. Martin and HBO are about to find out.Wearing the Crown: A string of critically acclaimed roles has lifted Paddy Considine, who stars as King Viserys Targaryen in the show, from hardscrabble roots to a seat on the Iron Throne.‘Thrones’ Guide: Want to take a deep dive into past episodes and plot twists? Check out our obsessive compendium to the original series.Condal is new to the franchise, as is the entire cast. But Sapochnik, the other showrunner, directed several of the most memorable “Thrones” episodes, including “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards” and “The Bells.” The composer Ramin Djawadi returns, as do unmistakable elements of his “Thrones” theme music.In addition, the setting of King’s Landing and its royal seat, the Red Keep, are virtually identical to the versions we’ve seen previously, as are the various noble houses’ symbols or “sigils” and even their hairstyles. The Iron Throne itself may have been enhanced by hundreds more melted-down blades, but this is very much the same Westeros we’ve already occupied for eight seasons.“House of the Dragon” begins with the naming of Viserys as heir to the Targaryen throne.Ollie Upton/HBOA family affair“Game of Thrones” famously depicted strife between several noble houses, most notably the Starks and the Lannisters, who rose to power after the death of the last Targaryen monarch, the Mad King Aegon IV. But most of these houses — Stark, Lannister, Greyjoy, Tyrell, Martell — recede into the background in “House of the Dragon.” The new show is focused almost exclusively on the Targaryen family, the dynasty that conquered Westeros over a century before the events that kick off “Dragon.”When the series begins, a great council of the aristocracy is convened to select Old King Jaehaerys Targaryen’s son Viserys (Paddy Considine) over his older female cousin, Rhaenys (Eve Best), as heir to the throne, on explicitly patriarchal grounds. The council, a comparatively democratic body during these feudal times, is intended to put such questions of succession to rest.In Westeros, as in our world, momentous decisions often reverberate in unexpected directions and lead to unanticipated conflict. The main players in “House of the Dragon” include the well-meaning but ineffectual King Viserys and his younger brother, the roguish Prince Daemon (Matt Smith), who would inherit the throne if his brother dies. Viserys’s closest adviser is Otto Hightower (Rhys Ifans), the Hand of the King — a position of great influence, as it was in “Thrones.” Hightower is a rival of the kingdoms’ richest man, the veteran seafarer Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint), who is married to Rhaenys and who, like the Targaryens, is a descendant of the ancient empire of Valyria.In an echo of the earlier succession dispute, another natural claimant to the throne is Viserys’s daughter, Princess Rhaenyra (Milly Alcock as a youth, Emma D’Arcy as an adult), his only surviving child. Also central to things is Rhaenyra’s childhood friend Alicent Hightower (played by Emily Carey and Olivia Cooke), the daughter of the ambitious and calculating Otto.Trouble, obviously, ensues.The story’s main players include Corlys Velaryon (Steve Toussaint) and Rhaenys Targaryen (Eve Best).HBOUnreliable narrators“Game of Thrones” was based on Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels: “A Game of Thrones,” “A Clash of Kings,” “A Storm of Swords,” “A Feast for Crows” and “A Dance With Dragons.” (Still to come: “The Winds of Winter,” which Martin has been working on for years, and “A Dream of Spring.”) But “Fire & Blood,” the “Dragon” source material, is written as a faux-historical tome rather than as a proper novel. Martin wrote the book in the voice of one Archmaester Gyldayn, a historian from within the world of Westeros itself. As such, many of its main characters’ motives, actions and dialogue remain matters of conjecture.Complicating matters further, Gyldayn’s primary and secondary sources have their own conflicting writing styles, political loyalties and points of view. (Among the fandom, the most popular of these is “The Testimony of Mushroom,” a salacious account of events written by the Targaryen court jester, who does not seem to appear in “Dragon” at all, at least not yet.) These shifting viewpoints leave several crucial matters, from trysts to betrayals, in a did-they-or-didn’t-they limbo.Given that several of these question marks drive the battles for supremacy that will likely drive “Dragon” in turn, the show will have to come down on one side or the other. For longtime fans and newcomers alike, these are likely to be the juiciest and most thrilling sections of the story, which will unfold over multiple seasons, if the gods be good.Light your candles to the Seven, and we’ll learn together who comes out on top. More

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    Can ‘House of the Dragon’ Be HBO’s Next ‘Game of Thrones’?

    The stakes are high for the first “Thrones” spinoff, which could determine nothing less than the future of the franchise.LOS ANGELES — George R.R. Martin has seen the comments, and he’s read the emails.Ever since “Game of Thrones,” the groundbreaking HBO fantasy series, went off the air in May 2019, he has been well aware of the backlash against the show’s final season. Martin, the man who painstakingly created the “Thrones” universe over the last three decades through his many books, and who was mostly on the sidelines during the final seasons of the TV series, does wonder if there will be some viewers who skip “House of the Dragon,” the first “Thrones” spinoff. The series will make its much-anticipated debut on HBO and HBO Max on Aug. 21.“People say, ‘I’m done with “Game of Thrones,” they burned me, I’m not even going to watch this new show — I’m not going to watch any of the new shows,’” Martin said in a recent interview.The question, he said, is how much of the “Thrones” audience do the complainers represent?“I mean, are we talking about a million people?” he asked. “Or are we talking about 1,000? People who have nothing to do except tweet all day over and over again? I don’t know.”Martin and HBO are about to find out.Three years after the most popular show in HBO’s history bowed out, the hunt for a successor is finally over. It took a lot of effort to get here. Numerous “Thrones” prequels were put into development, and a pilot episode for another spinoff was filmed before it was canceled. Tens of millions of dollars have been poured into the winner of the bake-off, “House of the Dragon.”The stakes are high. Success for “House of the Dragon” would reassure HBO executives that viewers are craving more “Thrones” stories and could lead to many more shows set in Westeros and beyond. In addition to this series, HBO has at least five other “Thrones” projects in active development.“The trick here is, you don’t want to just remake the original show,” said Casey Bloys, the HBO chief content officer. “You want to make a show that feels related and honors the original, but also feels like its own.“It is a very important franchise to us.”Paddy Considine plays King Viserys Targaryen, the occupant of the Iron Throne.Ollie Upton/HBOBut if the first one out of the gate fails to find an audience, it could raise questions about whether the Thrones Cinematic Universe is really the intellectual property gold mine that HBO executives hope it is.HBO’s new corporate overlords, executives from Discovery, have a crushing $53 billion debt load, and they have been looking for savings — in other words, high-cost “Thrones” spinoffs had better pay off. “House of the Dragon” will also have plenty of competition in the would-be blockbuster space. Two weeks into the prequel’s run, Amazon will debut its enormously expensive and ambitious “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Will two splashy, big-budget fantasy series be too much for some viewers?It will also have to overcome the stench of a final few episodes that left fans and critics scratching their heads at hairpin narrative turns as the series galloped well past the still-unfinished works of Martin’s series of books, “A Song of Ice and Fire.”Return to Westeros in ‘House of the Dragon’HBO’s long-awaited “Game of Thrones” spinoff will debut on Aug. 21.A Primer: Though it is the successor to the groundbreaking fantasy drama, “House of the Dragon” is actually a prequel. Here’s what else you need to know.The Stakes: Can the new series save the future of the “Game of Thrones” franchise? George R.R. Martin and HBO are about to find out.Wearing the Crown: A string of critically acclaimed roles has lifted Paddy Considine, who stars as King Viserys Targaryen in the show, from hardscrabble roots to a seat on the Iron Throne.‘Thrones’ Guide: Want to take a deep dive into past episodes and plot twists? Check out our obsessive compendium to the original series.But those are the challenges.Here’s what “House of Dragon” has going for it: “Thrones,” which ran between 2011 and 2019, was the most-watched show in HBO’s history. That controversial finale drew nearly 20 million viewers the night it premiered — an astonishing figure in the fragmented streaming era. “Thrones” was also a delight to critics and won more Emmys than any series in TV history, including winning best drama four times.The series changed television in so many ways — lavish budgets, technical wizardry, a cinematic scope that was once rare for the small screen — that it can be a little too easy to overlook the incredibly strong foundation it built for spinoffs.“I do believe that is a little bit more of an online narrative than it is in real life,” Bloys said, of the final season backlash. “I mean, we have the data of who’s watching ‘Game of Thrones,’ and it is consistently in the Top 10 assets that people watch on HBO Max around the world. As we’re coming closer to the premiere of this show, we’ve seen people going back, and we’ve seen an uptick in the viewership on HBO Max for the flagship series.”The final season of “Game of Thrones” inspired a backlash online.HBO“House of the Dragon” takes place almost 200 years before the events of “Game of Thrones.” The series follows the Targaryen family — that would be the silver-haired, dragon-flying crew, the one that Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) made famous in the original series — just as it is about to rupture, with dire consequences for the realm.And in the premiere episode, there are elements that will look familiar to “Thrones” viewers, including plenty of gore, multiple dragons and an Iron Throne. Also: nudity and an orgy.It took more than five years to get to this point. In May 2017, with the penultimate season of “Game of Thrones” about to debut, the network announced that it had four potential spinoffs in the works. A year later, a candidate was chosen: a prequel that would take place some 1,000 years before the events of the original series.It would not last. By 2019, after the pilot was shot, the network pulled the plug.“Once I saw that first pilot, I knew that was not the series to launch,” Bob Greenblatt, the former chairman of WarnerMedia Entertainment, where he oversaw HBO, wrote in an email. Greenblatt said the pilot didn’t feel “expansive or epic enough.”At that time, the clock was also ticking. HBO had been very deliberate in developing spinoffs, and WarnerMedia, then owned by AT&T, was months away from debuting its new streaming service, HBO Max. Greenblatt was “desperate to get something — anything — from the ‘Game of Thrones’ I.P. into our pipelines,” he wrote.“I understood Casey and the team’s reluctance to throw a new ‘Game of Thrones’ show into production (especially since the backlash from the final season of the original series),” he added. “However, while we all knew no sequel or prequel would probably ever rise to the level of the original, there was agreement we had to go forward with something.”Luckily, the network had another project in development, one that Martin had been pushing for some time: his rise-and-fall tale of the Targaryens, which he had written about extensively in his books. “House of the Dragon” is adapted from Martin’s “Fire & Blood,” the first in a planned two-volume chronicle of the family’s exploits and clashes.Miguel Sapochnik (right, with Matt Smith, left, and Fabien Frankel), a director of “Game of Thrones,” is a showrunner of the new series.Ollie Upton/HBO“He was very passionate about this particular story,” said Miguel Sapochnik, a veteran of the original series and a showrunner of “House of the Dragon.”The network cycled through two writers before Martin asked for help from an old friend: The writer Ryan Condal, a creator of the USA science fiction show, “Colony.”Condal caught up regularly with Martin over dinner and drinks and geeked out over the works of other fantasists like Robert E. Howard, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Ursula K. Le Guin. “When we would get together we would, you know, talk like two fanboys do,” Martin said. Martin asked Condal to start writing a Targaryen prequel.HBO executives liked what they saw in Condal, who signed on as a creator, with Martin, and as a showrunner. After Sapochnik, who directed some of the original’s biggest episodes, also agreed to be a showrunner, HBO ordered “House of the Dragon” straight to series.“What appealed to me about it was it’s a family drama,” Bloys said. “Anybody who has stepparents or siblings or half siblings, or had warring factions of a family — I think every single family in America has dealt with some version of this.”As Condal got to work on “House of the Dragon,” he leaned on Martin’s expertise a lot — the opposite of what had happened with Martin in the later seasons of “Game of Thrones.” In the early seasons, Martin wrote and read scripts, consulted on casting decisions and visited sets. Over time, however, as he stepped back to focus on his long-delayed next “Thrones” novel, “The Winds of Winter,” Martin grew estranged from the show, which was created by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.“By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop,” Martin said.When asked why, he said, “I don’t know — you have to ask Dan and David.” (A representative for Weiss and Benioff declined to comment.)Martin also said that “The Winds of Winter” — which he conceded is “very, very late” but vowed to finish — diverges from where “Game of Thrones,” the series, went.“My ending will be very different,” he said.Martin said he wants from “Thrones” what Marvel has done — created a world that Disney continues to mine and that fans reliably show up to watch. Last year, he signed an overall deal with HBO, and he has been actively involved with the other spinoffs in development.“George, for us, in this process has been a really valuable resource,” Bloys said. “He is literally the creator of this world. He is its historian, its creator, its keeper. And so I can’t imagine doing a show that he didn’t believe in or didn’t endorse.”As for viewership totals, Bloys said he did not expect “House of the Dragon” to match the heights of “Game of Thrones.” But he was still hopeful that it will be a hit and lay the groundwork for future spinoffs.“There’s no world in which we expect this to pick up where the original left off,” Bloys said. “I think the show will do really well. But it will have to do the work on its own to bring people in and to sustain the viewership.” More

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    Chase Mishkin, Tony-Winning Producer of ‘Dame Edna,’ Dies at 85

    She was nearly 60 when she began producing shows on Broadway. In 19 years, she had a hand (and her money) in 30 plays and musicals.Chase Mishkin, a prolific theatrical producer who received two Tony Awards, one for bringing the uninhibited Australian character Dame Edna Everage to Broadway, and who was something of flamboyant figure herself, chauffeured around town in her London taxicab, died on July 24 at her home in Manhattan. She was 85.Her sister Julie Kahle confirmed the death, adding that Ms. Mishkin had dementia. She had also had two strokes.After her husband died, Ms. Mishkin arrived on Broadway in 1996 with her first play, “The Apple Doesn’t Fall . . . ,” which she had produced in Los Angeles. Over the next two decades, she became one of the most prominent female producers on Broadway, with a hand, and her money, in 29 more shows.“She had a real commitment to be a Kermit Bloomgarden” — who produced “Death of a Salesman” and “The Music Man” in the 1940s and ‘50s — said Joe Brancato, a friend who is founding artistic director of the Penguin Rep Theater in Stony Point, N.Y., in Rockland County. “She had a real dedication to each show.”Working with other producers, her hits included the musical “Memphis,” for which she shared the Tony for best musical in 2010; Martin McDonagh’s Irish drama “The Beauty Queen of Leenane” (which opened in 1998); Claudia Shear’s Tony-nominated play “Dirty Blonde” (2000), and “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” (2005), a musical adaptation of the Frank Oz film with Steve Martin and Michael Caine as con men.“Dame Edna: The Royal Tour” was one of Ms. Mishkin’s most conspicuous successes. It starred the Australian actor Barry Humphries as a former housewife-turned-self-appointed “gigastar” who, dressed in an elaborate evening gown, mauve wig and wild eyeglasses, held court with the audience, whom she called “possums.”It was a profitable hit during its run, from 1999 to 2000, and earned Ms. Mishkin, along with her frequent producing partner Leonard Soloway and two other producers, a special Tony for live theatrical presentation. But when Mr. Humphries went on tour two years later, he stunned his producers by leaving them behind.Ms. Mishkin said she felt betrayed. Asked if she would work with Mr. Humphries again, she told Michael Riedel, who was then the theater columnist for The New York Post, “I am in the enviable position of being able to say that once you lose me, you lose me forever.”Ms. Mishkin in 1997 with, from left, Steven M. Levy, Peter Crane and her frequent producing partner Leonard Soloway, inside the Gramercy Theater, which they were converting from a movie house to an Off Broadway theater. It is now a live music venue.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe was born Mary Margaret Hahn on Jan. 22, 1937, in Vanduser, Mo., and grew up in Sparta, Ill., and Dexter, Mo. Her mother, Violet (Phegley) Hahn, was a homemaker. Her father, Harold Hahn, was not a part of her life. She attended Washington University in St. Louis for a semester in 1955.Little is known about her next decade or so, other than that she was a dancer in Las Vegas who met her future husband, Ralph Mishkin, while modeling for an advertisement for his carpet manufacturing company. By then she had changed her given name to Chase.She and Mr. Mishkin married in 1970 and lived for a while in an estate they had bought from the singer and actress Cher in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles. Ms. Mishkin became known as a hostess and philanthropist, but she turned to theater after Mr. Mishkin’s death in 1993.In 1996 she staged Trish Vradenburg’s “The Apple Doesn’t Fall … ” — about a woman’s relationship with her mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease — at a small theater in Los Angeles before taking it the Lyceum Theater on Broadway, with her friend Leonard Nimoy directing.It flopped, but Ms. Mishkin moved on, becoming increasingly familiar on Broadway for her flaming red hair and mink coats and her arrivals at premieres — and at Sardi’s, the theater district gathering spot — in her black London cab, which she had reupholstered in Burberry plaid.“She came on the scene in a bold way,” said Mr. Riedel, the author of “Razzle Dazzle: The Battle for Broadway” (2016) and a co-host of a morning radio show on WOR-AM in New York. “She was part of a new breed of female producers who said, ‘If I’m going to give you $500,000, I won’t be a passive investor — I want to be involved in every aspect of the show.’”Daryl Roth, another woman who started to find success as a theatrical producer in the late 1980s, wrote in an email about Ms. Mishkin, “My impression of her is one of being a ‘dame’ in the best possible way; she was outspoken but always gracious; she had a great attitude about enjoying life.”Ms. Mishkin endured failures like “Prymate,” about the battle for control over an aging gorilla between an anthropologist and geneticist, and “Urban Cowboy,” a 2003 a musical adaptation of the 1980 film about a Texas honky-tonk.In 2003, Ms. Mishkin and other producers decided that “Urban Cowboy” — devastated by bad reviews, a four-day musicians’ strike, the start of the war in Iraq and dismal ticket sales — would close after its fourth performance. But as Lonny Price, who directed the musical, walked to the stage to say goodbye to the audience, he encountered Ms. Mishkin backstage.“She said, ‘We’re not closing,’ and I said, ‘What did you say?’” he recalled in a phone interview. “She said, ‘I’ve decided not to close the show,’ and I said, ‘May I say that?’ And she said, ‘Go ahead.’ And she funded the show for the rest of its run.”The musical stayed alive — it got two Tony nominations — but closed after 60 performances.“When business didn’t pick up, she reluctantly closed the show,” Mr. Price said.She was just as persistent with Mark Medoff’s 2004 play, “Prymate.” At its center was a Black actor, André De Shields, as Graham, a 350-pound gorilla. Wearing a baggy T-shirt and shorts, Mr. De Shields grunted, screeched and scooted about onstage and, in one notorious scene, was masturbated by a sign-language interpreter.Faced with poor reviews and ticket sales, Ms. Mishkin bought an advertisement in The New York Times that urged theatergoers to see the play, which also starred Phyllis Frelich, James Naughton and Heather Tom. “Come Be Engrossed!” she wrote. But it closed after five performances.“I don’t try to defend that one,” she told New York magazine in 2009. “But I don’t throw rocks at it, either.”Ms. Mishkin also produced Off Broadway shows and earned an Emmy Award as executive producer of “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street In Concert,” which Mr. Price directed on PBS in 2001. Her final Broadway show, “Doctor. Zhivago” (2015), closed after 23 performances.In addition to her sister Julie, she is survived by another sister, Dixie May; a stepson, Steve Mishkin; and five step-grandchildren. More

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    Martha Plimpton’s Favorite Things: Pamela Adlon, the Tate Modern, Abortion Rights

    The star of Amazon Freevee’s new comedy, “Sprung,” also confesses her public radio addiction and shows off her Edward Gorey tattoo.In a perfect world, Martha Plimpton typically has three to six months before shooting to get into character.But her latest role, in “Sprung” — which reunites Plimpton with her “Raising Hope” creator, Greg Garcia — happened on the fly.About a year ago, Plimpton was at her London home cooking dinner when Garcia called to ask about her plans for the next couple of months.Why? she responded.“He said, well, could you get on a plane on Sunday, do fittings on Monday and start shooting my series on Tuesday?” she said. “And I said, yeah, absolutely, get me the ticket.”“I didn’t even have to read the script,” she added. “It was Greg, and I would follow him into a volcano.”On her flight to Pittsburgh, she dug into that script. And somewhere over the Atlantic, Barb was born: the mother of a recently released convict (Phillip Garcia) who offers two of his fellow inmates room and board — if they join her robbery crew to earn their keep. A dowager’s hump, bright red hair streaked with white and a perma-snarl completed the character. “Sprung” debuts Aug. 19 on Amazon Freevee.In a video call from London, where she lives when she’s not in Brooklyn or Los Angeles, Plimpton elaborated on 10 things she can’t live without from a list of hundreds — “I wanted to say toilet paper or, I don’t know, clementines,” she quipped. Among them: driving Highway 101; her pandemic pooches, Walter and Jimmy Jazz; and abortion rights, for which she is a famously outspoken advocate.“They can make all the laws they want,” she said of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling, “but they’re not going to stop us.”These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “Gloria” (1980), directed by John Cassavetes “Gloria” is the first movie I remember seeing that was an action film with a woman heroine, firing a gun and running through Penn Station in heels and a fabulous silk Ungaro suit and easily the best hair in the history of Hollywood. I get goose bumps from Gena Rowlands’s power in this movie. It’s just a badass woman, kicking butt and taking names. It’s part of why I wanted and still want to be an actor, because I really [expletive] hope I get a role like that someday.2. Her Dogs During the early months of the pandemic, I thought I was going to lose my mind if I didn’t have an animal to take care of to get me out of the house. I contacted a lot of shelters and nobody had any dogs left. Then this lovely woman named Tiffany [at Animal Haven] wrote me back and said, “I just happen to have two little dogs here. I’ll bring these guys over.” I wanted to foster first, but I’m a typical foster fail because my dogs bring me enormous peace and a sense of living in the moment as much as humanly possible. They’re magical little creatures that make my heart bigger and teach me patience.3. Highway 101 It’s the route to my family home in Oregon. It’s astonishingly beautiful going from the California coast up through the redwoods and past the little motels on the side of the road and the lighthouses. And you’ve got to drive slow. You cannot go 75 miles an hour on Highway 101 or you’ll end up in the ocean. It forces you to take it all in one mile at a time.4. Tate museum membership Some of the most exciting things I’ve seen have been at the Tate Modern. Also, they have the best museum gift shop, and I’m huge on museum gift shops. The last show I saw was Lubaina Himid, who’s an extraordinary artist who works in a multitude of mediums, from sculpture to audio to site-specific stuff to these colorful, bright, beautiful paintings about life in London and colonialism, family, food.5. Public Radio I listen to NPR or WNYC easily 24 hours a day. I love the reporters. I love the name generator, where you can type in your birthday or whatever and it gives you one of those kooky names that they all have. It brings me a sense of continuity and keeps me informed because I don’t like to watch television news. I’m like one of those crazy spinster ladies who listen to the radio at night.6. The photographer Weegee My mom, for a time, was a research librarian so she had a lot of great photography books, like Robert Frank’s “The Americans.” But the one that I still have, and that I will never let go of, is her book of photographs by Weegee. I’ve been totally entranced by those photographs, completely mad for them. Photos of city life, freaks and weirdos and criminals and cons and card players and kids playing in the street. His photograph of a transsexual being carted off in a police wagon — just the look of joy on her face as she lifts her skirt to show her stocking — is one of the most extraordinary photographs I’ve ever seen.7. Edward Gorey My first and only tattoo is an Edward Gorey phrase. [Reveals the underside of her arm.] It says, “On which she flung herself over the parapet.” And then down here [shows her rib cage], there she is flinging herself over the parapet. I got that when I was 42. But Edward Gorey is an artist that I’d been looking at since I was very little — 3, 4, 5, 6. His “Gashlycrumb Tinies” book is, I suppose, the most famous. It’s all these children’s names that start with a letter from the alphabet, along with what horrible way they died.8. Abortion rights I’m angry, and I’m frustrated. I feel very strongly that a law codifying the right to abortion federally needs to be passed. I think we should pass the [Equal Rights Amendment] sooner rather than later. I think that our president has an obligation to do these things without concern necessarily for the climate in the Senate. Abortion is normal. It is a regular health procedure. I think the way we’re living now with this is sadistic and cruel, and it’s meant to silence us and to sideline us. And that’s just not going to happen.9. Pamela Adlon “Better Things” is one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen. I have rarely seen family portrayed so brutally honestly and also with such heart and good humor. Pamela has this sort of signature move. She leans over, she grabs her knees and she just exhales. [Demonstrates the move.] And that’s something that I so relate to, even though I don’t have kids. The boring, tedious agony of being a middle-aged woman, and particularly an actress, in our culture is ripe for that kind of exploration, for that kind of truth.10. Stephen Sondheim He is easily for me the greatest composer-lyricist of the 20th century, and he was utterly fearless, seemingly, in what he was willing to do. Musical theater has died a million deaths and he always seemed to be the one to bring it back to life. There are certain things that I will never be able to listen to without collapsing in a heap of tears and chills and goose bumps. “Sweeney Todd” might be up there as my absolute favorite. “Sunday in the Park With George” is another. When he died, I had those two on repeat very, very loud in my house, listening to them over and over again. He’s just such an extraordinary capturer of what it means to be a human being and to love and to believe in art. More

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    Daniella Topol of Rattlestick Theater’s New Calling: Nursing

    The artistic director of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater is making an unusual career change after preparing the company for a major renovation.There’s been a lot of turnover in theater leadership lately. Some have been drummed out of their jobs. Others have quit to do something else in the arts. Many have retired.Daniella Topol, the artistic director of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater and a career-long theater director, is leaving to become a nurse.The unusual move arrives at a pivotal time for Rattlestick, a small Off Broadway company that, in addition to rejuvenating following the long pandemic shutdown, is about to embark on a much-needed renovation of its cozy but imperfect West Village home, located in a 19th-century church parish house.Topol, 47, has been leading Rattlestick since 2016, succeeding David Van Asselt, who co-founded the company. Just before assuming the leadership position, she directed at Rattlestick a production of “Ironbound” by Martyna Majok, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for “Cost of Living.”Marin Ireland played a Polish immigrant in New Jersey in Martyna Majok’s “Ironbound,” directed by Topol for Rattlestick in 2016.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThree years later, another production Topol directed at Rattlestick altered her trajectory. While working on “Novenas for a Lost Hospital,” a play that both chronicled and mourned the demise of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village as patrons moved from location to location connected to the story, she consulted with nurses and nursing students, and something sparked.“A seed was planted and then we continued forward — a pandemic happened six months after that, and there was a lot of reflection around, ‘Where are we as a field?’ ‘Where are we as a city?’ ‘Where are we as a country?’ ‘Where are we going?’ ‘What role do we play or not play?’ ‘How do I as white woman hold power and privilege?’ ‘How don’t I?’ ‘Where do I fit in a constellation in a way that is productive?’” she said. “I have been doing, obviously, a lot of reflection about my own personal life, and meaningful and challenging experiences that I have had, on a very personal level, and many of them have centered inside of maternal care complexities, and so it sort of felt like it was aligning with the stars.”She said she is not sure exactly what she wants to do as a nurse, but she plans to stay in New York, and said that maternal health and birth equity — a term used to describe efforts to reduce racial and class inequities for new mothers and their infants — have become particular interests, intensified by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. “I’ve been pregnant many times — I’ve had a late-term loss, early term losses, and I have a child,” said Topol, who lives in Brooklyn with her husband and 10-year-old daughter. “I feel like it’s a way to hold the loss and let that help inform my next steps on a very personal level.”Ensemble members in “Novenas for a Lost Hospital,” a play marking the death of St. Vincent’s Hospital. “A seed was planted,” Topol said of her work on this 2019 production.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSo now, while preparing to direct a final play for Rattlestick this fall and working on other theater projects, she is taking prerequisite courses and volunteering at a hospital; Rattlestick is beginning a search for her successor, and she hopes that she will overlap with that person and then leave sometime next year, before starting nursing school next summer or fall.“I’ve only been a theater person,” she said. “Here I am, I’m waking up at 4:30 a.m. to study science and memorize muscles and bones and I’m dissecting a pig. It’s all kinds of things I never thought I would do.”Topol said there were other factors as well. She said that she has thought about “how long should anybody stay in any kind of leadership position,” and that the civil rights unrest of 2020 had intensified that thinking: “Part of the reckoning was about who is running companies, where does power lay, and how much power sharing is there — defining what the trajectory of the field is.”“There are other wonderful artists who can take over Rattlestick and do a beautiful job leading it and imagine things I haven’t been able to imagine,” she added.As the paths of Topol and Rattlestick diverge, she’s interested in highlighting the theater’s survival and growth, and its commitment to a smooth transition.Dael Orlandersmith in her one-woman show “Until the Flood,” which was produced at Rattlestick in 2018 during Topol’s tenure.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe company, founded in 1994, is small — its annual prepandemic budget was $1.2 million, of which 80 percent was raised from foundations and donors — but has consistently attracted attention for its ambitious work, including not only Majok’s early play, but also work by Annie Baker, Samuel D. Hunter, Dael Orlandersmith and Heidi Schreck. The theater describes its mission, in part, as prompting “social change,” and much of its programming reflects that; its first post-shutdown play was “Ni Mi Madre,” a much-praised autobiographical examination of culture and sexuality by Arturo Luís Soria, whom the theater has now commissioned to write a follow-up.“What I’ve loved about Rattlestick is we’re small and scrappy and authentic and take chances and aren’t burdened by huge institutional issues of massive unaffordable space — we’re like a motorcycle, not a cruise ship,” Topol said. “You don’t get the luxury of the cruise ship — you get the scrappy ride of the motorcycle — but you get the flexibility to be able to twist and turn as things go.”Topol said she feels comfortable leaving in part because the theater now has a fully financed plan to redo its performance space, which it rents harmoniously from St. John’s in the Village, an Episcopal church. The theater space, where it has been located since 1999, has had two serious challenges: The only way to get there is to climb a narrow stairway, which means the theater is not accessible to those who can’t navigate those stairs; and the only way to use the bathroom is to traverse the stage.Rattlestick has now raised the $4 million — about half from the city — to finance a project that will, at its most basic, add an elevator and patron bathrooms, but will also modernize the entrance and the theater itself by relocating the front door, adding a box office and a small lobby, and removing the raised stage so that the performance and seating areas are flexible, as well as accessible. The theater will be able to seat up to 93 people — about the same as it does now. “It’s not ‘bigger is better,’” Topol said. “It feels like we are really right-sized for the work that we are doing.”“I was shocked, but also, as I thought about it, I saw where there was a connection with who she was,” Jeff Thamkittikasem, the chairman of Rattlestick’s board, said of Topol’s move.Dana Golan for The New York TimesThe renovation will allow Rattlestick to stay in the West Village, which has become a very pricey area, but is the neighborhood where the theater has long been located and is determined to remain. Rattlestick also shares a rehearsal space on Gansevoort Street with three other theater organizations. “It is critical to maintain places for artists in our neighborhoods,” said the renovation’s architect, Marta Sanders.Construction, Topol hopes, will begin next summer, pending city approval, and would last a year; during construction, the theater would present work at other locations. The theater is continuing to raise money for programming and operations.The chairman of the theater’s board, Jeff Thamkittikasem, acknowledged surprise at Topol’s move, but said he had become supportive.“When I first heard about it, I tried to talk her out of it, but my mom is a nurse, and at some point it switched for me and I saw that connection about wanting to care for others in a much more direct, physical way,” he said. “I was shocked, but also, as I thought about it, I saw where there was a connection with who she was.”Thamkittikasem said the organization is healthy and that the board has retained a search firm to look for Topol’s successor. He added, “Rattlestick is in a very strong place since Daniella took over — we’re stronger financially, we have good connections to foundations and funders, we have an active board and a solid staff, and our reputation has grown.” More