Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    ‘The Thanksgiving Play’ Sends Up America. Now It’s Coming to Broadway.

    Rachel Chavkin will direct Larissa FastHorse’s satire, which takes aim at American mythology, next spring at the Helen Hayes Theater.“The Thanksgiving Play,” Larissa FastHorse’s satirical sendup about an elementary school drama teacher attempting to organize a culturally sensitive holiday pageant, is coming to Broadway next spring.Second Stage, a nonprofit theater that owns the Helen Hayes Theater on Broadway, said it would present the play there in a production directed by Rachel Chavkin, the Tony-winning director of “Hadestown.” The theater did not announce dates or casting information.“The Thanksgiving Play” was staged at Playwrights Horizons in 2018, and has been widely produced around the country. A starry version, featuring Bobby Cannavale, Keanu Reeves, Heidi Schreck and Alia Shawkat, was streamed online last year by the producer Jeffrey Richards’s pandemic-era online play series.FastHorse is a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation of South Dakota, and Second Stage said she would be the first female Native American playwright produced on Broadway. Last year she won a so-called genius grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.“The Thanksgiving Play” will follow a production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Between Riverside and Crazy” on the Hayes stage. That production, directed by Austin Pendleton, is scheduled to begin performances this fall.Luke Thallon and Patsy Ferran in Bess Wohl’s “Camp Siegfried” at the Old Vic in 2021.Manuel Harlan/ArenaPALSecond Stage also said Thursday that at its Off Broadway theater it would present “Camp Siegfried,” a play by Bess Wohl set at a German American summer camp where adolescents flirt not only with one another, but also with fascism. The fall production will be directed by David Cromer; the play had a previous run at the Old Vic in London last fall. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    Jana Schmieding Navigates Single Life With Indica and Stevie Nicks

    The “Rutherford Falls” co-star talks about beading for joy, writing to Fleetwood Mac and (mostly) avoiding ghosts.Early in her career, Jana Schmieding didn’t feel like she could mine Native culture in her comedy. If for no other reason, the material would have had a hard time landing. To get the joke, you have to know what’s going on.“For comedy to exist you need to have a sort of a prior understanding,” she said. “You need to have a contextual understanding of the different power dynamics and the relationality. Because of Native erasure, it’s really hard to give audiences those kinds of deep cuts without first laying the groundwork.”Schmieding is part of two shows that are providing that context. In FX’s “Reservation Dogs,” she plays an Indian Health Service receptionist, a role that she says is being expanded in the second season. She’s also a writer and co-star on Peacock’s “Rutherford Falls,” a show about a town, a neighboring tribe and a reckoning of their shared history that’s inspired by a statue of “Big Larry,” the town’s founder.On “Rutherford Falls,” Schmieding plays Reagan Wells, a woman who runs the cultural center at a Native casino. Her close friend, Nathan Rutherford (Ed Helms), runs a heritage museum out of his home and acts as a kind of self-appointed town mascot. By the start of the new season — which premieres June 16 — some of the land in Rutherford Falls has been signed over to the Minishonka Nation in a settlement, including Nathan’s museum. The museum has been converted into the Minishonka Cultural Center, run by Reagan.“We’re providing the literacy needed in order to tell these jokes,” Schmieding said. “I think you’re going to see in season two of ‘Rutherford Falls’ a lot more in-community hijinks and acknowledging more relevant issues that Native people face in-community.”In a recent Zoom interview from her apartment in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles, Schmieding discussed the Native art, expensive butter and aunties — on records, onscreen and in her family — that help her navigate through life. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Beaded Jewelry I come from a long line of beaders and bead artists. I got into making beaded jewelry through my grandmother when I was a young girl and have been beading ever since. I bead for joy, I bead for focus, I bead for relaxation. I bead in the writer’s room and on set. It’s a nice, focused activity that’s tactile and artistic and that helps keep me cool.2. “Russian Doll” Before I canceled my Netflix account recently, I binged the second season of “Russian Doll.” We get to see a woman solve issues for herself and in her personal life by traveling through time. It’s fantastical and nuts. Also, she’s a single New Yorker. That’s the life that I lived for 11 years, and it was badass. To see women portrayed outside of the male gaze, outside of heterosexuality and even outside of partnership and the need for that, I’m obsessed. I gobble that up.3. Aunties Aunties play a sacred and important role in Native culture. I have a single, cool aunt who we call Fifi, who almost felt like more of my mother at times when I was growing up. Aunts have this amazing way of holding space without judgment for children where parents have a hard time being objective. Where my parents didn’t want me to party, my aunt wanted to make sure that I was doing it safely. There are things aunties can do that parents feel restricted by, and we need that in our culture. I still talk to my aunt all the time.4. Fleetwood Mac I’ve been listening to the band’s albums in their entirety, trying to pick up the flow of each one, as I’ve been writing a screenplay that honors aunties. Fleetwood Mac gives off auntie vibes. People think of Stevie Nicks as kind of this witchy lady — this ethereal, magical, romantic woman. I also see her as this carefree, wild, adult single woman who has paved her own path, been sexually free and holds this place in our culture of the hot auntie.5. Laurie Metcalf Aunt Jackie on “Roseanne” is the cool aunt OG: She’s single, she’s flighty, she’s sexy, she’s funny — she’s the best. I don’t think I’ve seen a bad Laurie Metcalf character. Her work never fails. I just saw her as the tour manager in the new season of “Hacks,” and I haven’t stopped thinking about her character. Give me Laurie Metcalf’s career. I would die.6. Fancy Butter I’m obsessed. I’ve been putting a lot of butter into my eggs lately. When I go to the grocery store, I just look for butter labels that are in French. I’m going straight for the brick that is just, like, one cup of butter and costs $8 or $9. It’s my splurge.7. Jamie Okuma She is a Native and Japanese-American bead artist and fashion designer. She’s an incredible artist. Michael Greyeyes and I have both worn some Jamie Okuma pieces on “Rutherford Falls.”8. “Are Prisons Obsolete?” I’ve read a lot of Angela Davis in my life. This book of hers is sort of an original text that I think is very helpful in understanding the need to re-evaluate and disrupt the criminal justice system right now. Native men and Native women have some of the highest rates of incarceration in our country. It’s a huge issue that we have faced since colonization.9. “Radio Rental” I like spooky podcasts, and “Radio Rental” is a great one. It’s people telling their own experiences with spooky ghosts. Something about being frightened and afraid of the unknown is very appealing to me. I’ve had spooky run-ins of my own, but I try to avoid them.10. Indica I’ve been having difficulty sleeping, so I’ve been putting a few drops of an indica tincture under my tongue before bed. My parents actually made a tincture that I used for a while. Last night I tried a gummy that had both indica and sativa and it was not doing the trick. If a little sativa gets in there, my brain is just, like: Oh, what do we wanna think about right now? I need something to just knock me out cold. More

  • 113 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    ‘MJ’: Dancing the Pain, and Dancing the Pain Away

    What is the role of choreography on Broadway? Two musicals, “MJ” and “A Strange Loop,” shed light on the dancing body.Don’t get me wrong: The musical “MJ” is a misfire on so many levels that it’s hard to know where to begin. “Thriller” looks like a scene out of “Cats.” The segment showing Michael Jackson’s dance influences — the Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Bob Fosse — is so poor in terms of skill level that I felt sorry for dance, the art form. Irritatingly, yet predictably, the show, directed by the ballet choreographer Christopher Wheeldon, has been nominated for 10 Tony Awards. It will run for ages. Michael Jackson — for all his flaws — is still Michael Jackson.But the production does have something to show about Jackson’s dancing body in all of its articulate anxiety. It made me think: What happened to that body when the boy became a man? How did his dancing change? Was something of his internal landscape exposed in his dancing for all to see? Did we ever really see it?When he was alive and building his pop canon of music and dance, it wasn’t always so easy to grasp how, beyond the nervous twitches of the choreography, his spirit was reflected in his dancing. So much about him was wrapped up in the fashion of the moment that you could forget about his body. (You couldn’t, after all, ignore the ever-morphing features of his face.) There were so many distractions along the way — the skin, the plastic surgery, the allegations of molestation against him.He was always hiding. His costumes were armor, masking his body, his interior life and even, for all of his extraordinary prowess, his physicality. In a sense, he made it possible for his impersonators to exist by crafting and perpetuating a Michael Jackson that anyone could borrow and put on. Like a rhinestone glove. Or a moonwalk.The Broadway musical tries its best to focus on Jackson, the perfectionist artist, MJ, as the adult Jackson is listed in the Playbill. By contrast, the role of Little Michael makes the adult seem more fragile and more bizarre. (There’s a third Michael, too, in between them in age; he makes less of an impression.) You can’t help but notice the dramatic, drastic changes that his dancing body displayed over time. From his childhood as the youngest brother in the Jackson 5 to the final rehearsals for his Dangerous tour of 1992, the moment that frames the show, we see the way turmoil ripples through his body. For Little Michael, tormented by his father, dance is an escape; for the older MJ, it’s a way for his body to scream in ways he couldn’t with words. His voice, high and whispery, never had the same emphatic force.Christian Wilson, front, as Little Michael in “MJ.” Wilson’s “ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom,” bring the musical to life, our critic says.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe older MJ, in the show, fights for rigid precision — movement phrases are knotty, spiky, full of angles, while Little Michael is smooth and enviably relaxed. (Obviously, dance styles changed drastically during that time, but the contrast seems as emotional as it is physical.) Two young boys alternate as Little Michael, Walter Russell III and Christian Wilson. I can only speak for Wilson, whose performance I saw, but it was his dancing that repeatedly snapped me back to attention.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, the first to recognize shows that opened after a long Broadway shutdown during the pandemic, will be given out on June 12.Lifetime Achievement: Angela Lansbury, an acclaimed and beloved star, will be honored with a special award during this year’s ceremony.Hugh Jackman: The actor may potentially win his third Tony Award for his role in “The Music Man.” He shared some thoughts on his life between film and theater.A New Star: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.Feinstein’s/54 Below: The beloved basement club, which bills itself as “Broadway’s living room,” will receive an honor at the Tony Awards for excellence in the theater.As a musical, “MJ” can feel as distant and as inaccessible as a music video. Wilson’s presence — his ease, his winning blend of naïveté and wisdom — brought it to life. Even during the curtain calls, his hips kept flowing, perhaps more quietly, more internally than when he was in character, but he never lost hold of his gentle yet powerful groove.That unselfconscious fluidity throws into relief the rigidity and the constraint of MJ, as played by Myles Frost. Frost’s dancing accuracy is extraordinary; it reveals a body turning in on itself and hardening — lonely, brittle, concave. The tipped hat and rounded shoulders weren’t just about Jackson imitating one of his idols, Bob Fosse. Weren’t they also a way to hide (and guard) himself from the world?Jackson’s music was pop, but the way he used his body had such a hard edge that to watch footage of his actual Dangerous tour is to see something related to punk — not in sound, but in angst and speed, anger and attack. The tone is confident and clipped, but beyond the gleaming exterior, you sense pain. Did he even want to move in front of people? I can’t decide. At the start of a performance in Bucharest, he stands still, in profile, with his arms tense at his sides, for what seems like ages while the camera pans to a crowd on the brink of hysteria.Wait for it: Michael Jackson in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, on the Dangerous tour.Alain Benainous/Gamma-Rapho, via Getty ImagesIt’s impossible to know who Jackson really was. “MJ” delivers yet another impersonation of the man we saw onstage and in videos. Often a dancing body reveals a certain truth about a person, but in Jackson’s case dancing might have been one more thing to hide behind, like another costume; it was a place he could control his body. He could be himself or the person he wanted to be: strong, powerful, sexy. Maybe the dancing body was the man, or his fantasy of himself.I don’t want to honor the choreographic approach in “MJ,” which is mostly cartoonish. But watching the dancing left me thinking about Jackson and what dancing became for him — something he was chained to, rather than a way to break free of the box he found himself in.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

  • 75 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    Édouard Louis, Miserable in the Spotlight

    The French writer played himself onstage and hated the experience, according to a new work he developed with the Swiss director Milo Rau. This time around, there’s an actor in the role.PARIS — Édouard Louis isn’t happy right now. That is one of the takeaways from “The Interrogation,” a new play he was set to star in, then canceled, then rewrote for another actor, working with the Swiss director Milo Rau. In May, “The Interrogation,” which was co-produced by the Belgian playhouse NTGent and had its world premiere in Amsterdam, made its way to the Théâtre de la Colline in Paris — and perhaps fittingly, left more questions than answers in its wake.It is a deeply meta addition to what I guess we could now call the Édouard Louis theatrical universe. The recent onslaught of French and international productions based on his work — with star directors including Thomas Ostermeier and Ivo van Hove — has been curious to watch, because Louis doesn’t write primarily for the stage. Most of his books, including “The End of Eddy,” which delved into his difficult childhood as a closeted gay child in a homophobic, violent, working-class environment, have been billed as memoirs or autobiographical novels.For a little while, it seemed as though Louis had happily rekindled an early passion through the medium, since theater classes were his escape as a teenager. Louis has even played himself onstage in Ostermeier’s version of “Who Killed My Father,” a monologue commissioned and originally performed by the French actor and director Stanislas Nordey.Yet if Rau’s “The Interrogation” is to be believed, Louis hated that experience. In this production, he appears only through video and in voice-overs. Onstage, he is played by the Belgian actor Arne De Tremerie. “Something didn’t feel right” about his stage debut, we learn via De Tremerie; Louis also calls the life of an actor “exhausting” and “not the dream life I had hoped for.” It’s too bad, then, that while “The Interrogation” was on in Paris, Louis was in New York to perform “Who Killed My Father” at St. Ann’s Warehouse (through June 5).There is a mild absurdity to this situation, which goes unacknowledged in Rau’s self-serious production. It starts with a letter, read in voice-over, in which Louis apologizes to Rau and tells him he doesn’t want to commit to being onstage again. “The Interrogation,” which was originally supposed to premiere in May 2021, was hastily canceled as a result. “Once again, I failed at being happy,” Louis laments.Enter De Tremerie, who took over so the production could go forward. With his blond hair and slight build, he can easily pass for Louis, and offers a heightened, more theatrical version. Where Louis, an inexperienced actor, aimed for naturalness onstage, De Tremerie has homed in on some of his quirks: the way he carries himself with his head slightly forward, the nervous flutter of his lips.De Tremerie’s performance is commendable, yet “The Interrogation” doesn’t give him enough space to exist separately from Louis. In fact, Louis keeps appearing on a screen, in a hooded sweater identical to De Tremerie’s. At several points, De Tremerie looks up at Louis, or playfully imitates him; Louis, mostly shot in close-up, looks down at the stage. Fiction meets reality, a common trope in Rau’s stage work, but here, neither appears to enrich the other.De Tremerie alone onstage in “The Interrogation.” Tuong-Vi Nguyen“The Interrogation” could have made much more of its central paradox. At its heart, it is about a literary star who unsuccessfully sought meaning in success, since he had pictured it as his “vengeance.” (“Now I exist,” De Tremerie says as Louis, after retracing his rise to the top.) Yet as the text zooms in on the backlash against Louis’s work, and the demands that come with fame, it becomes clear that the author’s dissatisfaction extends beyond acting.At the same time, “The Interrogation” feeds the frenzy around Louis, whose story has become bigger than himself, at once a lightning rod and part of French folklore. The show pores over episodes of his life that he has already recounted elsewhere without much new insight, from the bullying he endured as a child to his life-changing encounter with the writer Didier Éribon, who became a mentor. “I feel like I’ve been robbed of my freedom,” De Tremerie says onstage of Louis’s situation, before addressing the audience directly: “I am not your little clown.”But he doesn’t need to offer himself up for consumption so exhaustively. Just last year, Louis published two books that joined the flurry of stage productions. A TV adaptation of “The End of Eddy,” by the Oscar-winning screenwriter James Ivory, is also in the works, Louis said recently on Instagram. Near the end of “The Interrogation,” De Tremerie says with a sigh: “No more stories. No more revenge. Just life.” Perhaps Louis should take his own advice, at least for a time.On a much smaller stage in Paris, another real-life figure who has unwittingly become a symbol found a striking home. “Free Will” (“Libre Arbitre”), a new play co-written by Léa Girardet and Julie Bertin (who also directed), delves into the life of Caster Semenya, the South African runner and Olympic gold medalist who has been repeatedly barred from competition since 2009 because of elevated testosterone levels.Girardet had already scored a hit with a soccer-inspired one-woman show, “The Syndrome of the Bench,” and “Free Will” is equally lively and punchy, though darker. If you have lost track of the saga around Semenya, an intersex woman who was asked by World Athletics, the sport’s governing body, to take medication to suppress her natural hormones, this play is a sobering reminder.Juliette Speck as Caster Semenya, the South African runner and Olympic gold medalist, in “Free Will,” directed by Julie Bertin at the Théâtre Dunois. Simon GosselinJuliette Speck is quietly excellent when she portrays Semenya, and all four cast members perform multiple roles. They depict the sex verification tests Semenya had to undertake, imagine meetings between high-ranking members of World Athletics and recreate the 2019 case Semenya brought to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, using verbatim excerpts from the trial. At the end of the play, the court’s ruling — that the restrictions applied to Semenya were discriminatory, but a “reasonable” way to preserve the integrity of women’s sport — is, quite simply, heartbreaking.Bertin and Girardet do a superb job of explaining the complex issues and vocabulary involved, with more playful scenes interspersed. In one, the cast pretends to call World Athletics to suggest a new category for competitions: “reassuring women,” whose dainty running style (in heels, complete with a demonstration) would be more in keeping with the expectations of femininity placed on athletes.“Free Will” had its Paris premiere at the Théâtre Dunois, which caters to young people, but older adults have much to learn from it, too. Unlike Louis, Semenya isn’t in the spotlight enough for theater audiences to know the entirety of her journey — but her story deserves to be told.The Interrogation. Directed by Milo Rau. Théâtre de la Colline.Libre Arbitre. Directed by Julie Bertin. Théâtre Dunois. Further performances at the Théâtre 13 through June 4 and at the Théâtre Gérard-Philipe next season. More

  • 150 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    In Opening Statements, Cosby Is Accused of Assaulting Judy Huth as Teenager

    The trial stemming from Ms. Huth’s lawsuit, which says Mr. Cosby sexually assaulted her when she was a minor, began in Los Angeles as her lawyers described what she says occurred in the Playboy Mansion.Bill Cosby had taken Judy Huth and her friend to the game room of the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles in 1975 when she asked to use the bathroom in an adjoining bedroom, Ms. Huth’s lawyers said in court on Wednesday.When she came out of the bathroom, Mr. Cosby was sitting on the bed. “He taps on the bed,” said Nathan Goldberg, a lawyer for Ms. Huth who has said she was 16 at the time, as if to say, “‘Come here.’”“When she did timidly, that’s when he pounced,” Mr. Goldberg said during opening statements in the trial of a civil case brought by Ms. Huth against Mr. Cosby for sexual assault.In their opening remarks, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers disputed Ms. Huth’s account, suggesting she had been an older, and willing, visitor to the Playboy Mansion who, by her own account, did not flee after an encounter with Mr. Cosby but rather stayed on for hours, swimming in the pool and watching a movie.“Boy, did Judy and Donna enjoy themselves,” a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, Jennifer Bonjean, said, referring to Ms. Huth and her friend.The trial, expected to last seven to 10 days, is being held at the Santa Monica branch of Los Angeles Superior Court.In their filings, Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have denied the allegations, describing them as a fabrication. “We believe that Mr. Cosby will fully be exonerated once the jurors hear the evidence as well as examine the many inconsistent accounts given by Ms. Huth,” Mr. Cosby’s spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, said in a statement.The Sexual Assault Cases Against Bill CosbyAfter Bill Cosby’s 2018 criminal conviction for sexual assault was overturned, the first civil case accusing him of sexual misconduct has now reached trial.The Civil Trial: Judy Huth has accused Mr. Cosby of assaulting her as a teenager. She sued in 2014, but the case had been on hold while he was criminally prosecuted.Criminal Conviction: In 2018, a jury found the disgraced entertainer guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home near 14 years earlier,His Release From Prison: After the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction, Mr. Cosby was released from prison on June 30, 2021.The Ruling: The conviction was overturned on the grounds that prosecutors violated Mr. Cosby’s rights by reneging on a promise not to charge him.In detailing Ms. Huth’s account, Mr. Goldberg said Mr. Cosby tried to kiss her and put his hands down her pants. When she told him she was on her period, he dropped his pants, and “took her hand with his” and forced her to perform a sex act, he said.Mr. Goldberg spoke for a little more than an hour, recounting how Ms. Huth and her friend were playing Frisbee when they spotted Mr. Cosby filming a movie in a park in San Marino, Calif.He invited them onto the set and days later brought them to his tennis club, where, Mr. Goldberg continued, Mr. Cosby encouraged them to take a drink every time they lost at pool. Afterward, Mr. Goldberg said, Mr. Cosby had them follow him in a car to the Playboy Mansion, where the encounter in the game room occurred.Mr. Goldberg said Ms. Huth wanted to leave at that point, but her friend, Donna Samuelson, persuaded her to stay. Ms. Samuelson, who testified on Wednesday, said that Mr. Cosby had Ms. Huth “locked in the room,” and said Ms. Huth was crying when they went outside.“She grabbed her purse and said we are getting out of here,” Ms. Samuelson told the court. “She told me Bill Cosby tried to have sex with her.”She said she and Ms. Huth talked for about half an hour in her car, but she persuaded her friend to stay because she thought spending an evening at the mansion would calm her down.“She told me not to tell anyone,” said Ms. Samuelson. “It was embarrassing and humiliating to her.”They swam and ordered drinks, mingled with famous actors and, later, watched a movie. Only years later, in 2014, when Ms. Huth’s son turned 15 and other women started to come forward with similar accounts about Mr. Cosby, did the emotional damage of what had happened to Ms. Huth come to the fore, her lawyer said.“It was like a cork popped out of the bottle and all of her buried feelings rushed to the surface,” Mr. Goldberg said.Ms. Huth has produced photographs of the visit taken by Ms. Samuelson at the mansion showing Ms. Huth with Mr. Cosby. Ms. Bonjean accused Ms. Huth and her friend of “saving mementos of their rape,” raising questions about why a sexual assault victim would keep such tokens of the visit. The photographs were part of “a plan to make a buck,” said Ms. Bonjean, who spoke for about an hour. “Judy Huth has been trying to cash in on these photos for decades.”Mr. Cosby’s legal team has also introduced records from the Playboy Mansion that showed Mr. Cosby visiting with two unnamed guests, and said the records showed that the two guests had stayed at the mansion for about 12 hours. Ms. Huth’s suit, first filed in 2014, had been largely put on hold while Mr. Cosby was being criminally prosecuted in another case in Pennsylvania where he was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand. The 2018 criminal conviction in the Constand case was overturned last year by an appellate court on “due process” grounds, and he was freed from prison.Ms. Huth’s case is now being followed by some of the many other women who have accused Mr. Cosby of sexual misconduct, in part because it is the first civil case accusing Mr. Cosby of sexual assault to reach trial. Mr. Cosby has denied all allegations of sexual assault, and said any encounters were consensual.Bill Cosby has denied sexually assaulting Ms. Huth and has challenged the timeline she has put forth of when they met. Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Cosby has acknowledged meeting with Ms. Huth at the Playboy Mansion but denied her allegation of sexual battery and has challenged her contention that she was a minor at the time.Ms. Huth’s legal team said it intends to introduce two other women to testify about similar encounters with Mr. Cosby.One of the women will testify, Mr. Goldberg said, that Mr. Cosby, whom she met at a doughnut store where she worked, was also taken to the Playboy Mansion by Mr. Cosby. In the game room, Mr. Cosby gave her a pill, the lawyer said, and he assaulted her as she lost consciousness.“In each instance, he meets them in circumstances that don’t appear threatening,” Mr. Goldberg said. “He takes them places where they seem comfortable. They don’t feel threatened in this mansion, the movie set. He does not care about their family or friends nearby. He has no fear.”Mr. Cosby, 84, has invoked his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and will not testify or attend the trial, his spokesman has said. Ms. Huth, 64, attended court Wednesday and is expected to testify later in the trial.Ms. Huth also reported her accusation to the police in 2014, but prosecutors declined to file criminal charges because the statute of limitations had passed.She was able to file a lawsuit because under California law, in some cases, the statute of limitations can be extended for people who say they only recently recognized as adults the damage done by a repressed incident of sexual abuse they experienced as a child.The deadline to file such a suit is determined in part by when the person, as an adult, becomes aware of the severe psychological effect of the abuse.Mr. Cosby’s lawyers have questioned whether she had only remembered the alleged abuse a short time before filing the suit because, they said, she had contacted a tabloid about it 10 years earlier.They also tried to stop the trial from going ahead when Ms. Huth recently changed her recollection about when the encounter occurred. She initially said that it had happened in 1974, when she was 15. But more recently she concluded that it was actually in 1975, when she was 16. The law in California, then and now, holds that a 16-year-old is classified as a minor, but Mr. Cosby has contended that he did not meet Ms. Huth until several years later.She said she only recently realized she had the date wrong after, among other things, reviewing documents put forward by Mr. Cosby that clarified when the movie filming she recalled witnessing had taken place. More

  • 100 Shares109 Views

    in Theater

    ‘Dreaming Zenzile’ Review: A Tribute to Mama Africa

    The musical is Somi Kakoma’s thank-you note, written across generations, to the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba.If you want to see a performer in full command of her instrument and her powers, take the F train to Second Avenue and walk the few blocks to New York Theater Workshop to savor Somi Kakoma in “Dreaming Zenzile,” her tribute to the South African singer and activist Miriam Makeba, born Zenzile Miriam Makeba.Makeba, a star from the 1960s through her death in 2008, pioneered the form broadly known as world music. Singing in Xhosa, Swahili, Sotho, Zulu and English, Makeba popularized African songwriting among American and European audiences, earning the nickname Mama Africa. Throughout her life, she lent her voice to social justice causes, particularly that of Black South Africans living under apartheid. Onstage, at New York Theater Workshop, in collaboration with the National Black Theater, Kakoma, in a marigold dress, with a voice like a sunrise, plays her through 76 years of her eventful life.Makeba was a vocal shapeshifter who could triumph in practically any genre — folk, jazz, American songbook, Afropop. Vocally, Kakoma has that chameleonlike quality, too, varying her big, bright voice with husky breaths, vivid ululation and the Xhosa clicks for which Makeba was famous. Her singing seems as effortless as it is varied, as easy as it is virtuosic. “Dreaming Zenzile,” directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz with music direction by Hervé Samb, is best understood and enjoyed as Kakoma’s gift of love and dignity, across generations, from one artist to another.The set, by Riccardo Hernández, suggests a concert stage, illuminated by Yi Zhao’s vibrant lights.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut as a work of theater, “Dreaming Zenzile” struggles among the competing forms of recital, dream play, memory play and biography. The bare set, by Riccardo Hernández, suggests a concert stage, illuminated by Yi Zhao’s vibrant lights and backed, less helpfully by Hannah Wasileski’s banal projections of waves, flowers and rainbow abstractions. Is this an auditorium or some astral way station? Is it the afterlife? Lacking the style and thematic force that defines Blain-Cruz’s best work, the show feels less like a narrative than a tone poem, which can make time hang heavy in the first half; it takes an hour just to bring young Miriam to her professional debut.Amplified by a four-person chorus (Aaron Marcellus, Naledi Masilo, Phumzile Sojola and Phindi Wilson) and a four-person band, the music feels electric, often joyful, a sharp shock of pleasure that Marjani Forté-Saunders’s supple, elegant choreography enhances. But the interplay between book passages and Makeba’s songs, which are not subtitled, rarely feels essential. Why these songs, in these moments? By contrast, Kakoma’s emotion-heavy, jazz-inflected songs are too on the button. Really, they’re all button. Those who arrive without a working chronology may feel lost.Though it touches briefly on some central themes — exile, responsibility — and limns, however elliptically, most of the major life events of its subject, “Dreaming Zenzile” withholds what most of us desire from a work of this kind: a greater understanding of how a performer’s life shapes and impacts her art, the relationship between experience and oeuvre. This desire isn’t necessarily fair or sensible. Sometimes that relationship doesn’t exist. Sometimes it is too oblique to parse. But because “Dreaming Zenzile” too often favors symbol and abstraction, the audience is denied this connection.Only in its closing moments, which occur shortly before Makeba’s death, does the show achieve a kind of cohesion and vigor. Throughout, Makeba has taken up the burden of activism with sturdiness and poise, freeing her voice in the hope that others might be made free. Finally, she announces the cost.“Do you know what it is to be the first?” she says, choking on the words. “Do you know the weight of that? The loneliness?”To ask one woman to stand in for an entire continent was always too great a burden. Mama Africa? It was impossible. That Makeba bore it for so long, and with such grace, is a wonder and a gift. At its best, “Dreaming Zenzile” is a thank-you note, written with deep and abiding gratitude.Dreaming ZenzileThrough June 26 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes. More

  • 138 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    For Norm Macdonald and Bo Burnham, No Audience Is No Problem

    Filmed during lockdown, a new Netflix special from Norm Macdonald and outtakes from Bo Burnham’s “Inside” suggest that crowd laughter can be limiting.If a comic tells a joke in the forest, did it really kill?There’s a school of thought, one I have long been sympathetic to, that believes that stand-up without a live audience isn’t stand-up at all. Just listen to the debrief among famous comedians that, oddly, follows right after Norm Macdonald’s “Nothing Special,” his posthumous set recorded in his home during lockdown in 2020 and released this week on Netflix.Dave Chappelle compares comedy without an audience to a swim meet without water. David Letterman keeps returning to the point that without an audience, Macdonald didn’t have his “partner,” and something was missing. The closest to a dissent comes from Conan O’Brien, who makes the point that Macdonald always seemed like he could do comedy by himself, saying that when Macdonald appeared on his talk show, the host felt irrelevant.Macdonald is perhaps uniquely positioned to serve as an example of the shortcomings of the audience. His standards could be higher than the crowd’s. There are stories of him deciding to do jokes on “Saturday Night Live” that he knew were funny even if they died in rehearsal.This final special, a raw and moving production, is a gift to fans. It’s a pleasure to hear one last time his faux-folksy locutions (“It doesn’t make no sense”) and the way his jokes could twist (“I have opinions that everyone holds, like, I don’t know, yellow is the best color”) or move full steam ahead. After years of therapy, he says, he discovered why he has a fear of flying. “It’s the crashing and the dying,” he says, his wide eyes twinkling.Judged by aesthetic slickness and tight jokes, this hour isn’t nearly as successful as his last one, from 2017, “Hitler’s Dog, Gossip & Trickery.” But it’s mesmerizing in different ways. There’s something uncanny about letting the jokes stand on their own, the quiet awkwardness and messy intrusions (a dog barks, a cellphone goes off) offering a reminder that something bigger than showbiz is happening here, a glimpse of a man facing the end, giving his last jokes everything he’s got.Norm Macdonald made Netflix’s “Nothing Special” in his home during lockdown in 2020; he died last year.NetflixMacdonald, who died of cancer last year and is quoted in a scroll at the start of the special saying he filmed it before a medical procedure because he “didn’t want to leave anything on the table in case things went south,” becomes unusually earnest about his mother, expressing what she means to him. In what seems like a tangent, he points out that she didn’t speak with irony and couldn’t tell a good story but she “knew how to love.” As he gazes off, his face inches away from the screen, you might wonder if this is heartfelt or part of a joke (hint: could be both) before the punchline lands. There’s a cleverness as well as a poignancy here that I don’t think could be replicated if an audience were there.Live entertainment is of course singular, and the lockdown only emphasized my appreciation for it. But despite what you might have heard, audiences are often wrong. (Think of the famous comic you hate the most and I promise you they have delighted the crowd.) The audience has an underexamined impact on the aesthetic of specials. Comics spend so much time thanking and praising the people in the seats that it’s worth at least considering an opposing view.Here goes: The audience in specials is fundamentally manipulative, a bullying intrusion on the relationship between artist and observer at home. It can operate like peer pressure. And just as it adds to the excitement of stand-up, the steady, familiar sound of laughter, the most beloved cliché in all of comedy, can also be limiting. When Macdonald talks about his fear of dying and finding a different God than he expected, no sound distracts from the poignancy, and you find yourself looking closer at his face, studying it for clues, hints that may or may not be there.The pandemic forced so many comics to learn about performing to screens. Most didn’t like it, but some had considerable success. And a comic working by himself, Bo Burnham, made “Inside,” the most acclaimed special last year and one of the finest works of art about that period.As it happens, Burnham, who has been relatively quiet for the past year, released over an hour of outtakes from “Inside” the same week that Macdonald’s special premiered.Burnham and Macdonald are from different generations and have clashing styles, one theatrical and flamboyantly satirical, the other deadpan and folksy. But they share a love of language and a bone-deep ironic sensibility. And in these specials, both haunted by death, they show that removing the audience can access emotions a traditional special cannot.Burnham tapped into the pandemic zeitgeist while mounting a musical comedy that portrayed his own unraveling mind. The lockdown became a metaphor for larger trends of the internet age, and “Inside” became a hit not only on Netflix but also on social media, among young audiences who will delight in and study this fertile new release, free on YouTube.Burnham includes many cut songs and satirical sketches as well as alternative versions of familiar bits. It doesn’t play like a director’s cut, but it’s also more than a series of odds and ends not ready for prime time. If anything, it’s instructive to see how some of the bits are funnier than what is in the original special.In one outtake, Burnham performs a parody of a Joe Rogan podcast.YoutubeAmong the darlings that Burnham killed was a scathing, spot on parody of a Joe Rogan podcast, with Burnham on split screen playing two different guys. It captures an essential incoherence of so many thin-skinned comics when they complain about offended audiences: The podcasters insist they are just telling inconsequential jokes a second before describing comics as philosophers.An even more hilarious spoof comes later when multiple versions of Burnham, one representing the writer of “Inside,” the other the director and on and on, appear in a grid onscreen to be interviewed by a glib internet journalist. When they’re asked why there isn’t more diversity, they all freeze and then one Burnham pipes up to flamboyantly offer gratitude for the question. Burnham is gifted at mocking the performative liberal sanctimony of the moment as well as corporate attempts to exploit it, such as his very realistic YouTube ads that pop up below. One reads, “It’s mental health awareness decade at Kohl’s,” followed by the promise: “All laceless shoes 60 percent off.”He has a song at the end of these outtakes that is a clever riff on the chicken crossing the road joke. It could have been a closer to the special, but he cut it. Instead, we see him panicking at the sight of an audience.Performing to no one doesn’t fit most comedy, but it has its advantages. Burnham and Macdonald created a more direct relationship with the viewer, one with more intimacy than can be generated by a close-up.Burnham wanted to capture the uneasy mood of the early pandemic as viscerally as possible. And he clearly succeeded. When my 13-year-old daughter saw “Inside,” her first reaction was: “Is he OK?”It’s not something you would ask about a comedian who just received a round of applause. More

  • 125 Shares119 Views

    in Theater

    With Cameras on Every Phone, Will Broadway’s Nude Scenes Survive?

    Audiences are increasingly asked to lock their phones in pouches at comedy shows, concerts and some plays. But what happens onstage doesn’t always stay onstage.Jesse Williams was nominated for a Tony Award last month for his work in “Take Me Out,” an acclaimed play about baseball and homophobia. But when his name trended on Twitter the next day, it was not because of the accolade: it was because someone had surreptitiously taken a video of his nude scene and posted it online.In a recent interview Mr. Williams, who became a star through his appearances on “Grey’s Anatomy,” said he was undeterred by the incident. “I come here to do work — I’m going to tell the truth onstage, I’m going to be vulnerable,” he said. But he also made it clear that he was not all right with what had happened to him, saying that “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.”Mobile phones have long disrupted live performances by ringing at inopportune moments, and have irked artists when people use them to illicitly film their work. Now the ubiquity of smartphones with ever-better cameras is leading some actors, particularly celebrities, to reconsider whether to appear nude onstage, given the risk that what is intended as an ephemeral moment can live online forever, out of context.“Ten years ago, I don’t think the first thing out of my mouth would have been: ‘Are you OK knowing that there is a decent chance that this will be filmed or photographed and be out there on social media?’” Lisa Goldberg, a publicist who represents actors in Broadway, television and film, said of the discussions she has when a performer is asked to appear nude. “That would be one of the first things I would bring up to a client today.”Jesse Williams, right, said “putting nonconsensual naked photos of somebody on the internet is really foul.” He appeared in “Take Me Out” with Carl Lundstedt.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNudity has grown common onstage over the past 50 years, and major stars including Nicole Kidman and Daniel Radcliffe have performed scenes without clothes on Broadway when their scripts have called for it. But the chances of being photographed au naturel have grown considerably. Being Broadway royalty offers no protection: Audra McDonald, who has won six Tonys, noticed in 2019 that someone had snapped a photo of her during a nude scene from “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.” “Not cool at all,” she wrote in a tweet.The recent videos of Mr. Williams surfaced despite the extraordinary steps that Second Stage Theater, the producer of “Take Me Out,” has taken to protect the privacy of the actors who appear nude. Audience members are required to switch off their phones and place them in pouches that are kept locked until the end of the show. The pouches, made by a company called Yondr, have grown increasingly common in recent years, especially at stand-up shows, since comedians are both fiercely protective of their jokes and concerned that some, taken out of context, could cause blowback.Roughly a million Yondr pouches were used at live events in April, nearly five times as many as were used the same month in 2019, the company said. Other shows with nude scenes are now trying them: At the end of May, Penguin Rep Theatre announced that it would deploy Yondr pouches at its upcoming Off Broadway production of “Mr. Parker” because the show contains a brief moment of nudity.Graham Dugoni, who founded Yondr in 2014, lamented that many people still have difficulty figuring out how to “be a human in the world with a computer in your pocket.”“A nude photograph is obviously one very far extreme,” Mr. Dugoni said. “But a comedian’s bit being taken out of context and repackaged on social media and reinterpreted — all of these things don’t enhance the art form. They kind of nibble away at it in a way that makes people go into hedgehog mode.”But the precautions are not foolproof. A night of comedy at the Hollywood Bowl last month was supposed to have been cellphone free, but when its headliner, Dave Chappelle, was tackled onstage, video emerged from a few people who had managed to skirt the rules. And earlier this spring, when Chris Rock had his first public stand-up set after Will Smith slapped him onstage at the Academy Awards, attendees at the Wilbur Theater in Boston were required to put their phones in Yondr pouches, too. They were only allowed to use them in a designated space near the lobby, where one ticketholder sheepishly asked for his phone back because he had forgotten to text the babysitter. Video of that show emerged, too.The ease of recording and uploading video has given pause to people thinking of disrobing in other situations, including some college students who have reassessed the wisdom of traditional naked campus runs and habitués of nude beaches, who are increasingly on the lookout for cameras. But it is becoming a particular issue in the theater, where actors who are asked to appear nude must consent to it when they sign their contracts.Many major stars have appeared nude on Broadway over the years, including Daniel Radcliffe, center, in “Equus” in 2008.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKate Shindle, the president of Actors’ Equity Association, said in an interview that many actors believe that live theater is “meant to be participated in within four walls” and that “if that sanctity is compromised, the work suffers.” Recording from the audience, she said, can feel “like a violation — even if you have all your clothes on.”Advanced written consent is required for any filming or photography that involves nudity, union officials said. That includes any video that will appear in Theater on Film and Tape Archive at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, said Patrick Hoffman, the director and curator of the archive, which holds more than 4,400 video recordings of live theater productions. Most agree. But over the years, some actors have declined to have their nude scenes recorded for the archive. In some cases understudies have gone on in their places, and in others, their productions have simply not been recorded. Some videos of shows featuring nudity in the archive are specially formatted so researchers can watch them, but cannot pause, rewind, or fast forward.Surreptitious photography posed a challenge to actors appearing nude onstage long before the iPhone debuted in 2007.The theater environment today, where nudity is a regular feature on Broadway and even in some productions at the Metropolitan Opera, is a far cry from what it was like in 1969, when Margo Sappington, the choreographer and a cast member of the original production of “Oh! Calcutta!,” which featured extensive nudity, was among those arrested on charges of indecent exposure after a performance in Los Angeles.Even in that pre-smartphone era, cameras were a nuisance, Ms. Sappington said. So the company decided on a low-tech mitigation measure: If someone spotted a camera from the stage, they would stop the show, break the fourth wall, and call for the ushers.“Now it’s impossible in a Broadway theater in the dark to see cellphones,” she said. “People are so disrespectful. It amazes me.”And the leak of the video featuring Mr. Williams had an all-too-familiar feeling for Daniel Sunjata, who played the same character, Darren Lemming, when “Take Me Out” first ran on Broadway in 2003. Photos of his nude scenes leaked too, but were somewhat more contained in the era before Facebook and Twitter made social media so pervasive.“The main difference between now and then is amplitude,” Mr. Sunjata said, “the speed, the rapidity with which things like this can be spread.”But the leaks troubled Mr. Sunjata, who had found the nude scenes a challenge to begin with. He said he consulted his lawyers and had “wanted heads to roll.”Tatianna Casas, who works for Yondr, helped people seal their phones before a recent comedy show.Calla Kessler for The New York TimesFor Mr. Sunjata, the main difference between performing naked onstage eight times a week before a live audience, and having a photo taken of the nudity, is less about the photo’s permanence then about the lack of context surrounding it. “Someone who hasn’t seen the play just sees naked guys onstage,” he said.The current revival of “Take Me Out” has taken further steps to keep people from filming its actors. As a backup to the Yondr pouches, Second Stage Theater has installed an infrared camera with the ability to pan, tilt and zoom so that security officials can see if any members of the audience are trying to film the nude scenes.At a performance of the play last month, two theater staff members were stationed at the front of the theater at either end of the stage. They stood up during scenes that included nudity. For all the precautions, a phone rang five minutes into the first act. The crowd audibly groaned.When Mr. Williams was asked whether he would sign up again for a show in which he must appear nude, he demurred. “I don’t know,” he said. “My reaction is never as hot, or loud or miserable as everybody expects it to be.”Michael Paulson and Julia Jacobs contributed reporting. Sheelagh McNeill and Alain Delaquérière contributed research. More