Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 113 Shares179 Views

    in Television

    Aaron Sorkin Battled a Stroke as He Reimagined ‘Camelot’

    “Camelot” opened on Broadway 63 years ago, an eagerly anticipated new musical from the makers of “My Fair Lady.” But happily-ever-aftering took a while.Out-of-town, while trying to trim the overlong production, one writer was hospitalized with an ulcer, and the director collapsed of a heart attack. In New York, despite starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, “Camelot” took months to find its footing, and only did so following a televised segment on “The Ed Sullivan Show.”Today the musical, written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, is remembered as one of the last of Broadway’s Golden Age shows, but its traditional narrative — Arthurian legend with all of its romance, politics, swordplay and sorcery — has never quite clicked.“Unfortunately, ‘Camelot’ is weighed down by the burden of its book,” the New York Times critic Howard Taubman wrote of the opening. That assessment has persisted. “It has one of the great scores of all time,” said Theodore S. Chapin, the former president of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization, “but the plot starts to go haywire.”On April 13, a new version of “Camelot” is scheduled to open on Broadway, with its book rewritten by Aaron Sorkin. The Hollywood screenwriter is familiar to many as the creator of the television series “The West Wing,” and he won an Oscar for writing the movie “The Social Network.” He is also an accomplished playwright, whose first Broadway drama, “A Few Good Men,” became a hit film, and whose most recent Broadway outing, an adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” was a critical and commercial success.Clockwise from top left: Aaron Sorkin, Phillipa Soo, Jordan Donica and Andrew Burnap.Photographs by Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesBut musicals have not been part of his repertoire, until now. He earned a B.F.A. in musical theater from Syracuse University, but this, in his slightly overstated words, is “the first time I’m putting it to use.” (He tried writing a musical once before, partnering with Stephen Schwartz on a show about Houdini. It didn’t work out.)This rewritten “Camelot,” starring Phillipa Soo of “Hamilton” fame as Guenevere, alongside Andrew Burnap (“The Inheritance”) as Arthur and Jordan Donica (“My Fair Lady”) as Lancelot, is now in previews at Lincoln Center Theater. By contemporary standards, it’s a large production, with a 27-person cast and a 30-piece orchestra.Sorkin is not the first to revise the musical — even Lerner and Loewe reworked it post-opening, and others have tried, too — but his deft hand with witty, fast-paced dialogue and audience nostalgia for “Camelot,” which is adapted from T.H. White’s fantasy novel, “The Once and Future King,” has made the production one of the most anticipated on Broadway this year, with theater mavens eager to see how Sorkin puts his stamp on it.“People think the show is about a love triangle, which of course it is,” said Alan Paul, the artistic director of Barrington Stage Company and director of his own production of “Camelot” a few years back, “but I really think it’s about the birth of democracy, and when you look back at ‘The West Wing,’ which is one of my favorite shows, that is a TV show that believes government can work for the people.”‘You’re supposed to be dead.’Just getting to this point is an unexpected relief for Sorkin.In November, two months before rehearsals were set to begin, he woke in the middle of the night and noticed that, while walking to the kitchen, he was crashing into walls and corners. He thought nothing of it until the next morning, when the orange juice he was carrying to his home office kept spilling.Sorkin called his doctor, who told him to come in immediately; his blood pressure was so high, Sorkin said, “You’re supposed to be dead.” The diagnosis: Sorkin, 61, had had a stroke.For about a month afterward, he was slurring words. He had trouble typing; he was discouraged from flying for a few weeks; and until recently, he couldn’t sign his name (he has just discovered, thanks to “Camelot” autograph seekers, that that’s improving). Those issues are now behind him, and the main lingering effect is that he still can’t really taste food.“Mostly it was a loud wake-up call,” he said during one of several interviews for this article. “I thought I was one of those people who could eat whatever he wanted, smoke as much as he wanted, and it’s not going to affect me. Boy, was I wrong.”Sorkin had been a heavy smoker since high school — two packs a day of Merits — and the habit had long been inextricable from his writing process. “It was just part of it, the way a pen was part of it,” he said. “I don’t want to talk about it too much, because I’ll start to salivate.”After the stroke, he quit cold turkey, cleaned up his diet and started working out twice a day. And, he said, “I take a lot of medicine. You can hear the pills rattling around in me.”“If you write the book to a musical with a score written by Lerner and Loewe, and they have this cast, and Bart Sher is directing it, and it doesn’t work, it was definitely your fault,” Sorkin said.Jingyu Lin for The New York TimesSorkin told me about the stroke almost in passing, when we were having a get-acquainted cup of tea in a hotel lobby (he loves writing in hotels) earlier this year. Trying to understand his creative process, I asked whether he prefers to write longhand or on a device. That’s when he said writing by hand had become difficult.At first he told me about his stroke only off the record; we agreed we’d revisit the subject the next time we met, so he could think through the implications of going public. By then, he had decided he was ready to describe what he had been through, in the hopes that his experience might be a cautionary tale. “If it’ll get one person to stop smoking,” he said, “then it’ll be helpful.”He is aware how lucky he is to have recovered, and to be able to continue to do the work he loves. “There was a minute when I was concerned that I was never going to be able to write again,” he said, “and I was concerned in the short-term that I wasn’t going to be able to continue writing ‘Camelot.’”Now he’s commuting between Los Angeles, where he lives, and New York, where he’s trimming the script, offering pointers to actors, refining word choices that don’t strike him quite right. “Let me make this very, very clear,” he said. “I’m fine. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I can’t work. I’m fine.”‘Now with no magic!’For many people, “Camelot” is more familiar as a metaphor than as a musical — it depicts a noble effort to create a just society, often associated with the Kennedy administration, because Jacqueline Kennedy, in an interview shortly after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, mentioned her husband’s fondness for the show, and quoted a final lyric: “Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment, that was known as Camelot.”Four years ago, Lincoln Center Theater, which is a nonprofit, staged a fund-raising concert performance of the show, starring Lin-Manuel Miranda as Arthur. It went so well that the creative team began talking about a full-scale production.“The music is so good, and it’s incredibly fun, and I don’t know of any other pieces set in the Middle Ages with knights,” said Bartlett Sher, a veteran of Golden Age revivals (“South Pacific,” “The King and I,” “My Fair Lady”) who directed the concert and is now directing this revival. “I realized how extraordinary the score was,” he said, “and how complicated the experience of the book was.”Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, center, starred in the 1960 production of “Camelot.”Pictorial Press Ltd./AlamySher was debriefing with Miranda when Sorkin’s name came up. “I knew Sorkin was a fan of ‘Camelot,’ because he quotes it in ‘The West Wing’,” said Miranda, who grew up hearing songs from the musical, a favorite of his mother’s, and memorized them while a passenger in her car.Sher and Sorkin already knew each other because they had collaborated on “Mockingbird,” and they were eager to work together again.“You would think we would have sat and talked for hours about the problems we had with the existing book, or what we were hoping for, but we didn’t,” Sorkin said. “I just got to work.”He made one key early decision that has guided his approach to the show: no supernatural elements. That means Merlyn, who in the original is a magician who can remember the future and can turn Arthur into a hawk, is now a wise tutor; Morgan Le Fey, who in the original can build invisible walls, is now a scientist; and the nymph Nimue is gone. Even Arthur’s sword-in-the-stone origin story is questioned.“It wasn’t that I don’t like magic — I do,” Sorkin said. “Nor were there commercial reasons — no producer wants to put on a marquee, ‘Now With No Magic!’ It was because I feel that this story, in particular, had a chance of landing more powerfully, more emotionally, if people felt real. If a problem can be solved by waving a magic wand, it doesn’t feel like much of a problem.”‘Musicals can get tangled with.’“Camelot,” like many older musicals, has its complications for a modern audience. “From a contemporary perspective, it’s very problematic,” said Stacy Wolf, director of the music theater program at Princeton University. “The musical is about heterosexual adultery ruining a visionary government, and the woman is ultimately blamed for it.”Nonetheless, Wolf is eager to see the revival. “The music that Lerner and Loewe wrote is just incredible,” she said, “and in the same way that Shakespeare gets tangled with, and operas get tangled with, musicals can get tangled with.”Sorkin quickly realized that two songs, in particular, posed problems: the sexist-sounding “How to Handle a Woman” and the classist-sounding “What Do the Simple Folk Do?”“When I first started writing it, I thought, there’s an easy way to solve this: Don’t sing the songs,” Sorkin said.But Sher asked Sorkin to reconsider, given fan fondness for the score. “There’s a reason we see ‘Camelot’,” Sorkin acknowledged, “and the reason isn’t me.”So he came up with an alternative solution: humor. The songs are back, preceded by dialogue in which Guenevere preemptively defuses their sting with Sorkin-esque wit.“When I joined, ‘How to a Handle a Woman’ wasn’t there in the script, but then one day it was,” Soo said. “But there was also a beautifully written scene — and this is another reason why Aaron Sorkin is brilliant at what he does — that explores the song in a new way.”The revival has been extensively nurtured — there were four developmental workshops along the way, and Sorkin estimates that he has written about 10 drafts of the script. Lancelot “went from being a buffoon, like Gaston in ‘Beauty and the Beast,’ to a three-dimensional person.” Arthur struggles to define his feelings for Guenevere, whom he marries as part of a peace treaty. And Guenevere is now a strategic helpmate, periodically outthinking her husband.“The ideas of democracy that are discussed in this show are the ones that are discussed in this country,” said Donica, left foreground, who plays Lancelot.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“There have been rewrites at each stage of workshop, and there are even more rewrites still going on,” said the actor Dakin Matthews, who is playing Merlyn and another character.A case study: Morgan Le Fey, who in the original is a sorceress with a sweet tooth, and a threat to Arthur’s reign. At first, Sorkin simply cut the character — as Lerner had done for some post-Broadway productions — but, Sorkin said, “she found her way in, and she got better.”In an early workshop, the actress Daphne Rubin-Vega (the original Mimi in “Rent”), read the role, when Le Fey was little more than a spurned ex-girlfriend. “She, in a very nice but direct way, said I could do better,” Sorkin said. “She was right.”He made Le Fey a scientist, an unmarried mother, and, for a time, an opium addict. (Sorkin has been clean for 23 years after battling his own addictions.) Now she makes and sells brandy. “People coming in and auditioning — they were just leaning into being high on opium, and it wasn’t working,” Sorkin said.Marilee Talkington, who plays Le Fey, has embraced the character’s evolution.“The old version of ‘Camelot’ felt distant, but also fun and entertaining,” she said. “This version is inviting the audience to ask themselves who they are, what they want, and where there’s hope.”How much “West Wing” is there in “Camelot”? Sorkin said the screenwriting device for which he is most famous — the so-called walk and talk, in which characters converse while in motion, is a.) “probably exaggerated” and b.) a screen technique that “has no implications for the stage.” Having said that: Arthur has his best ideas while pacing.One trick Sorkin did transfer from filmdom: He intercut three scenes together, as in a movie, held together with scoring, and challenged Sher to figure out the staging. “Give Bart something like that,” Sorkin said, “and he’s a happy guy.”And there are lines that can clearly be heard as allusions to our contemporary challenges.“All of his films are about game-changers, and ‘Camelot’ is no different, because Arthur is a game-changer,” said Donica, the actor playing Lancelot. “And the ideas of democracy that are discussed in this show are the ones that are discussed in this country.”‘I worry that if I stop worrying then I won’t do it.’I sat down with Sorkin the morning after the first preview performance, and he was obviously pleased. It struck me that this was the first time he had seemed happy with his work. “That’s not an illusion,” he said. “It’s the most positive I’ve been during the process. I feel ashamed I didn’t have more confidence in everybody.”There was still work to be done over the five-week preview period — the show was running too long (“I’m sure I’ll be called upon to make some cuts, and I’m not looking forward to that”), and Sorkin was still wrestling with various bits of language (Would it be exciting or distracting if he changed an “or” to a “like,” with the effect of implying that Guenevere might be agnostic?).But until that first performance before an audience, Sorkin had repeatedly fretted about what might go wrong, remembering that at one point he told a group of young librettists, “If you write the book to a musical with a score written by Lerner and Loewe, and they have this cast, and Bart Sher is directing it, and it doesn’t work, it was definitely your fault.”I found it hard to understand how someone as successful as Aaron Sorkin could be so worried, so I asked him about it.“I have had some success, and I’ve also had plenty of experience feeling anxiety about what I’m doing,” he said. “Am I going to have an idea? Am I going to be able to write this?”One startling example: “I wrote 86 episodes of ‘The West Wing,’ and every single time I finished one, I’d be happy for five minutes before it just meant that I haven’t started the next one yet, and I never thought I would be able to write the next one. Ever.”Is that kind of worrying a liability, or a strength, for an artist like Sorkin? “I hope it wasn’t a waste,” he said. “And I do think to myself, as I try to relax myself a little bit, I worry that if I stop worrying then I won’t do it. That it’s the worrying that’s driving me to do it.”Sorkin, who has already begun having meetings about possible next musicals, even while dreaming up a Jan. 6 movie he is contemplating writing and directing, said he has come to see “Camelot” as a narrative about narrative.“Ultimately, the show is a valentine to storytelling,” he said.“I like that Arthur thinks if we can just keep telling these stories, then people will be inspired and they’ll believe that we do have greatness in our grasp, and that you have to keep trying,” he added. “The greatest delivery system for an idea ever invented is a story.” More

  • 138 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    ‘The Mandalorian’ Season 3, Episode 4 Recap: Out of the Nest

    This week filled in some of Baby Yoda’s back story and offered yet another thrilling aerial chase. Then another.Season 3, Episode 4: ‘The Foundling’One aspect of the Baby Yoda special effect that has been hard to get used to is how weightless the character often seems. Granted, the little guy is … well, a little guy. But whenever Grogu jumps around or Din picks him up, it feels a bit like one of those TV scenes where someone pretends to drink out of an empty coffee cup. It disrupts the suspension of disbelief, if only for a moment.I mention this only because aside from Grogu flipping around like a thumb toy, this week’s “Mandalorian” episode is a fine showcase for how the character’s overall design works a rare kind of magic. “Realism” has never been the goal with characters like Grogu. Instead, watching slick-looking science-fiction characters interact with tiny puppets or actors in big, bulky costumes recaptures the spellbound feeling of watching old children’s shows, like “Sesame Street” or the work of Sid and Marty Krofft.The big set-piece in the middle of this episode plays like an technologically advanced version of classic kiddie television. The sound of pounding metal at the Armorer’s forge reminds Grogu of when he was forced to flee Coruscant during the violent purge of the Jedi Temple. Escorted by Master Kelleran Beq (played by Ahmed Best, best-known in “Star Wars” circles for his controversial voice and motion-capture performance as Jar Jar Binks), Grogu zips through Coruscant’s traffic-ways and train tunnels, past Monument Plaza to a rescue ship, all while being chased by relentless hordes of Stormtroopers.The sequence is thrillingly reminiscent of one of the best scenes in “Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones,” where Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi thwart an assassination attempt and pursue the killer through Coruscant’s vehicle-packed airborne roads, moving in multiple spatial dimensions, through the x-, y- and z-axes. The action is heightened by Grogu’s scrunched, saucer-eyed face, filled with awe and fear.Grogu’s physical presence also functions superbly well in a smaller, more comic sequence at the episode’s start, when Din encourages him to plunge into the Mandalorian training program by challenging the foundling Ragnar Vizsla (Wesley Kimmel) to combat. Ragnar chooses to battle with darts, so Grogu gets fitted with a ridiculously cute little cuff, containing three projectiles. He then proceeds to humiliate Ragnar, thanks to one of those fake-looking weightless leaps.As has been the way so far this season, “The Foundling” tells two stories, with the Coruscant flashback holding down the middle of the chapter, flanked by a daring rescue mission. After Grogu defeats Ragnar, the boy is snatched away by a giant flying creature, very similar to one of Earth’s prehistoric pterosaurs. He is then taken to its home to be fed to three hatchlings.Ragnar’s ward/father Paz Vizsla (voiced by Jon Favreau and embodied by Tait Fletcher) is distraught; but Bo-Katan reassures him that they can reach the peaks where the creature has its lair. Echoing Luke Skywalker when he compared blowing up the Death Star to shooting womp rats on Tatooine, Bo-Katan says, “These are no higher than the peaks of Kyrimorut. I used to climb them in basic training.”And so they climb, in heavy armor, arriving just when the mother bird is regurgitating Ragnar. What follows is another exciting aerial chase and battle, which ends when the big bird gets eaten by a dinosaur turtle — the same beast that interrupted Ragnar’s creed ceremony in the season premiere.This episode’s director, Carl Weathers, and the “Mandalorian” team of designers and effects artists effectively emphasize the size disparity of all these animals, aliens and humanoids. The large flying monster is felled by an even larger water monster. The hatchlings are brought back to the Mandalorian covert, where they dwarf their captors. At the start of the episode, Grogu is fascinated by what looks to be small moving rocks, which turn out to be scuttling crabs. Who is big, who is small, who is friendly and who is a threat … It is all a matter of perspective.Still, before it becomes clear that Grogu is playing with crabs, it appears briefly that he is using the Force to move these objects around in the sand. This serves as a reminder that the Mandalorian’s new trainee just left another training program, with the Jedi. As the Armorer gifts him with a new chest-plate, she says, “You will grow into this rondel as you grow into your station.” Part of the whole Grogu mystique is that we never fully know what he is thinking. But I do wonder: Does the kid ever get tired of devout spiritual/military organizations telling him what’s what?This is the wayIt is always nice to see Best, who had a rough time with “Star Wars” fans during the Jar Jar days. He also plays Kelleran Beq in the children’s game show “Star Wars: Jedi Temple Challenge.”There was a fair amount of confusion and frustration on social media after last week’s episode. To some extent this is understandable, given that the long detour through Coruscant’s current political situation was so unlike “The Mandalorian” norm. Nevertheless, I was surprised to see so many people dismiss “The Convert” as pointless. It seems clear to me that Dr. Pershing and Elia Kane are going to be important players later this season, at which point understanding what they have been through may matter a great deal. We will see.On the other hand, for the past few weeks I have been certain that a major story line this season will involve Din — swayed by Bo-Katan’s skepticism — questioning the Mandalorian lore and codes. Instead, this week Bo-Katan embraces the imagery of the Mythosaur when the Armorer replaces her broken shoulder-piece; and she seems open to the Armorer’s theory that she merely saw a vision of the great beast in the Living Waters. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Bo-Katan is walking the path toward become a true believer.How do the Mandalorians eat without removing their helmets? We have an answer: They do remove their helmets, just when they are totally alone. (The next question we need answered: How long before a Mandalorian takes a ride on one of those giant baby birds?) More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    What if ‘The Daily Show’ Used Guest Hosts Permanently?

    Fill-ins for Trevor Noah have shown how exciting the lack of a permanent replacement could be. It’s an option with an illustrious history in television.For two months, Comedy Central has conducted something of a public audition. Nine different guest hosts have each taken over “The Daily Show” for a week, including Chelsea Handler, Wanda Sykes, Leslie Jones, Hasan Minhaj, Sarah Silverman and, currently, the former Democratic Senator Al Franken. Who should get the job?I’m a mere critic, not a network pinhead, as David Letterman referred to executives who made these kinds of decisions, but that doesn’t mean I can’t dream up cockamamie ideas. My original preference was for a veteran correspondent like Roy Wood Jr. to fill the shoes of former hosts like Trevor Noah, who stepped down in December, or Jon Stewart before him. But after watching this lively parade of hosts, and surveying the shrinking late-night landscape, a more radical rethinking seems worth considering: Why not make temporary guest hosts permanent?My proposal rests in part on the reality that the success of “The Daily Show” has already made it less unique. “Late Night With Seth Meyers” has shrewdly filled the role that Stewart’s desk pieces once played by providing funny, progressive-leaning deadline comedy on the big news of the day. As for the prickly interviews that Stewart made famous on Comedy Central, you can now see them on his Apple TV+ series or, more likely, social media, where they go viral.“The Daily Show” remains a beloved institution with strong comedic bones primed for exploitation. It has always featured one of the best supporting casts in comedy, with its team of correspondents, many of them stalwarts of the New York standup scene, and nimble writers, whose skill and professionalism has only become more evident from watching these guest hosts.Even though each fill-in brought a distinct style, what stands out is the consistency of their desk monologues. Handler spits out jokes with a sneaky swagger, deftly skewering the machismo of President Biden announcing he shot down the Chinese balloon and offering a setup that you would never hear from a veteran host. “I’m going to be honest,” she said. “I have never watched the State of the Union before because I have a life.”Sykes dug deeper into wonky policy, offering a surgical breakdown of how over-ticketing by police punish the poor before suggesting we learn from Finland, which adjusts fines according to wealth: “$30 for a rich person is not a punishment,” she said. “Rich people don’t even know money goes that low.”Of the guest hosts so far, Hasan Minhaj turned in the most impressive week.Matt Wilson/Comedy Central’s The Daily ShowMinhaj brought a more flamboyant theatrical streak, turning a bit on giving up Twitter into a virtuoso and hilarious one-man show. Jones, who added elevated lewdness to analyzing a new Martin Luther King Jr. statue, may not have had the precision delivery of Silverman. Kal Penn was more likely to gush, while D.L. Hughley adopted a skeptical eye. The most impressive accomplishment is how everyone, with the benefit of typical “Daily Show” video and script, is, at least, fine.It’s evidence that this vehicle, more than a quarter century old, has become a smooth-running, user-friendly machine, a strength and a weakness. You saw both sides in the Trevor Noah era, which was competent, charming if a little dull. The current guest-host shows are not that. They display passion, unpredictability and the looming possibility of disaster, particularly in the interviews.As you might expect, these hosts, some of whom have publicly lobbied for the job, are trying to impress, calling in favors. Penn, who has called “Daily Show” host his dream job in the press, got a (mostly wasted) interview with Biden, and Marlon Wayans not only talked to Mayor Eric Adams, but also did it in the character of a kid name Quan. Was it a little cringey? Sure, but that made for fun TV.Not surprisingly, considering his experience as a correspondent and a host of his own show, Minhaj has put on the most impressive week so far, staging a confrontational interview about FTX with the businessman Kevin O’Leary from “Shark Tank” that was bracing in its tension. Franken also tried to introduce some much-needed tension into the talk-show interview by booking Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. It didn’t generate sparks but it was a worthy idea. Stewart once decried “Crossfire”-style talking-heads debate shows, but the relative dearth of debate that we have now is worse.A full-time guest host might seem like a desperate move, but in fact it celebrates one of the most venerable television traditions. David Letterman, Jay Leno and Joan Rivers earned full-time talk show jobs by guest hosting for Johnny Carson, who was a fill-in on Jack Paar’s “Tonight” show. John Oliver got his current job, on HBO’s “Last Week Tonight,” based on a “Daily Show” guest-host stint replacing Stewart, who himself was one of many guest hosts of the longtime NBC show “Later.” That program pioneered the permanent guest host in the late 1990s, using everyone from Martin Mull to Cindy Crawford and even Joe Rogan (who interviewed a UFC fighter on network television long before he did on a podcast). Since “Later” aired in the early-morning hours, no one noticed, which The Onion giddily mocked with an article headlined, “Police Seek Suspect in Series of Random ‘Later’ Hostings.”There’s a long tradition of guest hosts in late-night talk shows. Joan Rivers, here interviewing Oprah Winfrey, filled in for Johnny Carson. Paul Drinkwater/NBCUniversal, via Getty ImagesAfter Leno took over “The Tonight Show” and Letterman started “The Late Show,” these major combatants in the late-night wars of the 1990s stopped using guest hosts. (Conan O’Brien never used one either.) “Our attitude and Letterman’s was to ‘never give up the chair,’” the longtime Letterman producer Robert Morton told me in an email. Among the few times they did, in 2003, “The Late Show” offered Jimmy Fallon his first late-night hosting gig. Watching it now reveals an altogether different Fallon, more sarcastic wiseacre than chipper enthusiast. It’s clear he loved and was influenced by Letterman’s early comedy, and one of the fun aspects of guest hosts is seeing comics working out their personas.Jimmy Kimmel has done more than anyone to bring back guest hosts, using them during his vacations. Some of the comics who substituted for him, like Handler, Franken and Sykes, have gone on to weeks on “The Daily Show,” creating something of a modern guest-host circuit.The most successful model with a permanent guest host is of course “Saturday Night Live.” There are many decisions Lorne Michaels made that have resulted in a singularly enduring show, but this foundational idea is at the top of the list. It keeps the comedy staple in the news, builds anticipation and injects star power. In style and cadence, “Saturday Night Live” and “The Daily Show” are very different machines, but both have an experienced staff, well-honed style and a deep bench of talent.Imagine monthly stints with alumni Samantha Bee or Larry Wilmore. Give Josh Gad some time to plan a musical version with former “Daily Show” producer and musical maker David Javerbaum. If Eric André wants to promote a movie, let him smash up the set for a week.If there is one conspicuous absence in the lineup of guest hosts so far, it’s youth. Many hungry young stand-ups would surely love the opportunity. The 24-year-old Leo Reich, the self-described “youngest comedian ever,” just finished a very funny downtown show about Generation Z called “Literally Who Cares?!” and represents the opposite of the engaged righteousness of Iraq war-era Jon Stewart. What mess would Reich make?“The Daily Show” producers are probably cursing my name right now. Getting new talent up to speed is not easy. And sacrificing the advantages of consistency and experience should not be underestimated. But considering the dwindling ratings of late-night talk shows, their future is not secure. That James Corden’s show is not being replaced with a talk program is an ominous sign.The late-night talk show is one of the most illustrious, essential genres in television history, one that many of us hope remains artistically vital. But that will require risk and reinvention.The current plan is to keep rotating guest hosts through the spring and then restart “The Daily Show” in the fall. Every great late-night talk show starts with excitement and experimentation before settling into routine, but the utopian goal of a permanent guest host would be to build innovation into the DNA, to make it the point.Could it produce train wrecks? For sure. But people like to gawk at those. More important: Better to fail interestingly than slowly fade into irrelevance. More

  • 138 Shares119 Views

    in Theater

    A Stage Adaptation of ‘Smash’ Is Setting Its Sights on Broadway

    Producers including Steven Spielberg have been exploring several possible incarnations of the decade-old TV series. Now they have a plan.A long-discussed stage musical version of the television series “Smash” is finally coming to Broadway … but fans are going to have to wait a bit more.The adaptation’s producers, who include Steven Spielberg, announced Wednesday that they expect to bring the show to Broadway during the 2024-25 theater season. They said the musical will be directed by Susan Stroman, a five-time Tony winner whose latest endeavor, “New York, New York,” starts previews on Friday.The “Smash” musical will be based on the two-season series, broadcast on NBC in 2012 and 2013, about a group of New York City theater artists struggling to bring “Bombshell,” a musical about Marilyn Monroe, to the stage. The show, with plenty of soap-style backstage drama and exuberant production numbers, was dreamed up by Spielberg, developed by Robert Greenblatt and created by Theresa Rebeck, and, although its TV run was canceled because of declining ratings, it retains a passionate fan base.“It’s crazy that we’re still talking ‘Smash,’ but not a week has gone by where somebody doesn’t tell me they miss the show, so it’s kind of great to be seeing it in another incarnation,” said Neil Meron, who was an executive producer of the TV series.Meron and Greenblatt, who will produce the adaptation with Spielberg, said the stage version would be funnier than the television show, and that it would include some of the same characters, but also new ones, and would be set in the present day.“It’s a backstage comedy about the putting on of a Marilyn Monroe musical,” Meron said, while Greenblatt’s summation was: “We’ve been calling it a comedy about a musical.”The musical will feature a score by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, including songs they wrote for the television series as well as new ones; the team is best known for the Tony-winning score of “Hairspray” and is represented on Broadway this season by “Some Like It Hot.” The book will be written by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys”) and Bob Martin (“The Drowsy Chaperone”). Joshua Bergasse, who choreographed the television series, will do the same for the stage show.The producers oversaw a developmental reading of the script about a year ago, and said they expect more workshops before the move to Broadway. The long lead time was needed to accommodate the schedules of the creative team, they said; casting has not yet been determined.“Every few years the show comes back into our lives, and now we’re excited to go on a new adventure with it,” Greenblatt said.The creative team has always imagined there would be a path from the television show to the stage, but its form has changed over time. In 2013 there was a concert performance of songs from “Hit List,” the musical that was a subject of the second season, and in 2015 an effort to develop a Broadway adaptation of “Bombshell,” the musical that was the subject of the first season, was announced after a concert performance of songs from that show.But then in 2020, the current producers announced that they would develop a loose adaptation of the series itself, rather than working with one of the musicals-within-the-television-show.“What we didn’t want to do was just put the TV series onstage — we wanted our own spin on it,” Meron said. “We are very conscious of our fan base, and very conscious that there’s a new audience that’s never been exposed to ‘Smash’ before. So our take is more comedic and more of a love letter to Broadway.” More

  • 100 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    How They Staged a Little Girl’s Inner Universe

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

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Television

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

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

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Late Night Is Getting Antsy for a Trump Indictment

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

  • 100 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    Puppetry So Lifelike, Even Their Deaths Look Real

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