Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    A 9-Hour Play? Sit, Eat, Drink, Even Fall Asleep to ‘One Night.’

    Target Margin Theater stages an enchanting riff on “One Thousand and One Nights” inside an old Brooklyn garage. Tea and pastries included, blankets welcome.The inspiration for “One Night,” the nine-hour theatrical event at Target Margin Theater in Brooklyn, began about 3,000 nights ago. Or, to tell the story another way, it began more than 1,000 years ago when certain Middle Eastern and Indian folk tales first appeared in Arabic collections. “One Night” distills these nested tales, known as “One Thousand and One Nights” or the “Arabian Nights.” Some editions include dozens of tales; some hundreds. So when you think about it, nine hours isn’t very long at all.“What it really is, for me, is an extended adventure in storytelling,” said David Herskovits, the artistic director of Target Margin, during a recent video call.The actor Anthony Vaughn Merchant telling a story to audience members who are drinking tea. Justin J Wee for The New York TimesTarget Margin, an Off Broadway stalwart, has told stories for more than 30 years, gaining a reputation for deconstructing complicated texts — Plato’s “Symposium”; Gertrude Stein’s plays; both parts of Goethe’s “Faust”— and offering them up again with colorful costumes, playful lights and stages bedecked in 99-cent store pizazz. For a company that bops cheerfully from German opera to Greek tragedy to Yiddish folklore, a lingering sojourn in the Middle East shouldn’t come as a particular surprise. But the company has never worked on a show over quite so many years or served quite so much food to audiences — fruit, pastries, popcorn, chocolate, tofu bowls, grape ceviche.That work began about eight years ago with Moe Yousuf, then an associate artistic director, now an M.B.A. student (“He’s no fool,” Herskovits said). Even though the company was then enmeshed in a yearslong exploration of Eugene O’Neill, Yousuf took turns reading aloud “One Thousand and One Nights” with other members in the company’s office in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.Herskovits didn’t think that anything would necessarily come of it. But he became fascinated by the stories and their complicated textual history.Copious servings of tea.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesPastries as well.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“There is no text,” he said, excitedly. “What you have is a tradition of stories, layered over so many different languages, cultures, religions, geographical locations.”As a longtime storyteller, he also savored the primacy of narrative within the stories — particularly the frame story. In this story, King Shahryar, outraged by the unfaithfulness of his wife, resolves to marry a virgin each night, bed her, then kill her before she has the chance to dishonor him. He kills some number of women until his vizier presents his own daughter, Scheherazade. On that first night — and for a thousand nights after — she tells a tale so enthralling that the king stays her execution so that she can continue.In 2017, with the O’Neill project concluded and the company newly relocated to a converted garage in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, workshops began. These workshops, many of them led by longtime company members, evolved into public presentations: “Pay No Attention to the Girl,” “The Sindbad Lab,” “Marjana and the Forty Thieves” and one more with an unprintable title.To devise the scripts for these presentations, the company told — and retold and retold — the tales to one another.Small stage, big tale: The actor Leonie Bell, standing center on the yellow box, recounts a story to audience members.Justin J Wee for The New York Times“I always describe this process as: How many different ways can you play telephone?” the performer Anthony Vaughn Merchant, who joined in 2017, told me, referring to the children’s game in which players whisper a message to one another, transmuting the message as the game goes on.None of these stories are played straight, not only because Target Margin has rarely confronted a text head on (please, it’s right there in the company’s name) but also because the stories themselves — with their sex and violence and exotic locales — invite Orientalist perspectives. And many of the stories, including the frame story, promote a misogynistic worldview.Audience members are encouraged to get cozy.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesSleeping is optional.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesRawya El Chab, an actress of Lebanese descent, grew up with these stories. When she began working with Target Margin in 2019, she worried how they would be told. “Are we going to say that all these Arab women need saving, which is mostly the narrative that I am afraid of, that Arab men are brutes and Arab women need saving?” she said during a recent video call.But she soon learned that Target Margin emphasizes collaborative creation, which encourages conversation among the company members. “Something amazing about working with David is the possibility for dialogue constantly,” she said.Elsouki, left, with Kate Budney. The company divides the material over two nights; other times they perform from afternoon toward midnight. A few performances run from dusk till dawn.Justin J Wee for The New York TimesDina El-Aziz, a costume designer of Egyptian descent who first worked with Target Margin in “Pay No Attention to the Girl,” also knew these stories from childhood. And she appreciated the liberties that the company took with them, as they told them anew.“We’re not doing an accurate retelling of ‘One Thousand and One Nights,’” she said. “It’s a bunch of people in a garage in Brooklyn.” She let this approach inform the costumes. “I did purposely steer away from harem pants,” she said.Pandemic closures paused these explorations. But during the pandemic’s second year, Herskovits felt the pull to return to these tales, with a totalizing show that would combine what the company had already created with new material, interpolating stories from other traditions and personal stories, too. That became the nine-hour “One Night.” For some performances, the company divides the material over two nights; other times they perform from afternoon toward midnight. A few performances run from dusk till dawn.Budney, left, performing with James Ferguson. Justin J Wee for The New York Times“That’s the dream,” Herskovits said of these overnight performances. “That’s what Scheherazade does.”This is a challenge, of course, for the actors. When he first experienced the overnight performance, during a dress rehearsal, Vaughn Merchant found it exhausting. “It was like, Oh, this is rough,” he said. But it has since become easier. Now, he said, the hours fly by.El Chab agreed. “You feel tired at the end,” she said, “but you feel a sense of liberation, you feel a sense of joy at having accomplished this.”Herskovits wants liberation and joy for the audience, too. Which explains the food, as well as Carolyn Mraz’s cozy set, scattered with comfy sofas, beanbags and poufs. Breaks are encouraged. If someone were to fall asleep, that would be OK, too.“That might even be great,” Herskovits said. “It’s like you’re a little kid, somebody’s telling you a story. That would be beautiful.”“You feel tired at the end,” an actor said, “but you feel a sense of liberation, you feel a sense of joy at having accomplished this.”Justin J Wee for The New York TimesOn a rainy Saturday, I stopped into an afternoon-to-evening performance, settling into a buttercup sofa with a mug of herbal tea. An actress (actually a stagehand, Kate Budney, gamely standing in for an absent performer) stopped by and told a small group of us the biblical story of Esther. Then the room reset for the tale of the porter and the three ladies of Baghdad, derived from the “Thousand and One Nights,” which had several other stories — dogs, a dervish, the wife-beating son of a caliph — smuggled inside.The room reset again for the story of the seven voyages of Sindbad, during which tofu bowls (delicious!) were served. Then the cast took the stage at the far end of the room to discuss how Scheherazade, having borne King Shahryar three children and entertaining him for 1,001 nights, finally earned his pardon. (Which means she gets to stay married to a rapist and a serial killer. Happy endings are weird.)“And this is the completion and the end of their story,” a performer said with brisk finality.But, of course, it wasn’t. It was just after 7 p.m. The show had four more hours to go. More

  • 100 Shares109 Views

    in Theater

    Bruce MacVittie, Ubiquitous Character Actor, Dies at 65

    A co-founder of the Naked Angels troupe in New York, he was a familiar face in Off Broadway theater, in movies and on TV, often playing tough guys with tormented souls.Bruce MacVittie, one of New York City’s quintessential character actors, who made his Broadway debut in David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” opposite Al Pacino in 1983 and was a mainstay on Off Broadway stages for over 40 years, as well as a familiar face on television and in film, died on May 7 in Manhattan. He was 65.His wife, Carol Ochs, confirmed the death, in a hospital, but said the cause had not been determined.Mr. MacVittie excelled at playing tough guys with tormented souls, revealing a tenderness at the heart of his characterizations. His casting type was low-life and street-smart, but he himself ran in rarefied acting circles. In the mid-1980s, he helped found Naked Angels, a troupe of young film and theater hipsters (including Matthew Broderick and Marisa Tomei) who immediately dazzled New York with the celebrity wattage and social conscience of their theatrical endeavors.“Naked Angels was the club that was too cool to let me in,” the actress Edie Falco recalled in an interview. “I was just hanging around on the fringes, dying to get my foot in the door, but Bruce was already in. Bruce and I traveled through our actor travails together. We were young together and got less young together.”Mr. MacVittie in the thriller “Killer Among Us” (2021), one of his numerous film roles.Vertical EntertainmentMr. MacVittie’s career began in 1980 at Ensemble Studio Theater in Manhattan with a lead in Edward Allan Baker’s “What’s So Beautiful About a Sunset Over Prairie Avenue?”In 1988, after bit parts on the series “Barney Miller” and “Miami Vice,” he got his first big television job, partnering with Stanley Tucci in “The Street,” a vérité slice of blue-collar cop life set in the Newark Police Department. Claiming to be “the first television series shot entirely in New Jersey,” the show churned out 40 episodes in 40 days but lasted only a season. Still, it cast a stylistic shadow over future TV crime dramas.“Bruce’s background was working class, like me,” said Frances McDormand, another longtime friend. “There was something about celebrating this in our work that was important to both of us. Bruce had a pride about where he’d come from that he carried with him and was even cocky about. It was very charismatic.”Bruce James MacVittie was born in Providence, R.I., on Oct. 14, 1956. His father, John James MacVittie, was a worker at the Narragansett Electric Company; his mother Olive (Castergine) MacVittie, was a homemaker.Bruce grew up in Cranston, R.I., where he began to act in high school, and went on to graduate from Boston University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. He moved to New York in 1979. Four years later, after understudying for the role of Bobby in the Pacino revival of “American Buffalo,” Mr. MacVittie took over the part on Broadway and ultimately performed it on a national tour and in the West End of London.“Bruce carried this currency, especially for young actors then, like me, that he’d worked onstage with Pacino,” recalled the actor Bobby Cannavale. “The fact that he’d elevated to that role as a ‘cover’ made it even more heroic.”In 2011, after over 75 film and television appearances, including 11 different roles on various “Law and Order” franchises, guest spots on “The Sopranos,” “Sex in the City” and “Homicide,” innumerable theatrical roles, like his acclaimed performance as a displaced Cuban immigrant in Eduardo Machado’s “Havana is Waiting,” 10 seasons at the Eugene O’Neill Center Playwrights Conference in Connecticut and an equal number of summers at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts, Mr. MacVittie set aside his acting career to train as a nurse. He received a Bachelor of Science degree from Hunter College in Manhattan in 2013.In addition to his wife, he is survived by his daughter, Sophia Oliva Ochs MacVittie. His first marriage ended in divorce. He lived in Manhattan.Mr. MacVittie returned to acting in his last years, including in a featured role on Ava DuVernay’s lauded Netflix series, “The Way They See Us.” He confined his nursing activities to the palliative care of friends in need.“I loved Bruce MacVittie,” Mr. Pacino said in an interview. “His performances were always glistening and crackling; a heart and a joy to watch. He was the embodiment of the struggling actor in New York City, and he made it work. We will miss him.” More

  • 113 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    An Arts Festival With Hardly a Stage in Sight

    Performance venues at this year’s Kunstenfestivaldesarts, in Brussels, include a disused museum and the upper house of Belgium’s Parliament.BRUSSELS — As the biggest performing arts festival in Brussels got underway last weekend, there were few traditional stages in sight. Instead, spectators assembled in colonial-era monuments, a disused railway museum and even the debating chamber of Belgium’s Senate.There are practical reasons for the flurry of site-specific shows in the monthlong event, called Kunstenfestivaldesarts, said Daniel Blanca Gubbay, one of its directors, during a break between performances. After two years of pandemic upheaval, a lot of playhouses in Brussels were booked with rescheduled shows this year.The constraints led to a creative lineup, highlighting areas of the city that even frequent visitors don’t necessarily know. In order to see “The Weeping Woods and the Okapi Resistance,” a family-friendly puppet show created by Daniela Ortiz, audience members had to wander into a side alley of the large Cinquantenaire park — and stop in front of the “Monument to the Belgian Pioneers in Congo.”Unveiled in 1921, this sculpted tribute to the colonization of Congo is deeply uncomfortable to look at today. It features racist imagery and inscriptions that portray Belgians as the saviors of the local Black population. Since Belgium has recently begun to publicly reckon with its brutal history and to remove statues associated with it, “The Weeping Woods and the Okapi Resistance” could hardly be more timely.Ortiz is from Peru and remains based there. Here, she attempts to evoke Congo’s colonial-era plight through animal puppets manipulated by two performers from behind a curtain. In the story, the central character, an okapi, is captured by gleeful white puppets representing the colonizers.From a Belgian zoo, the okapi (a close cousin of the giraffe, native to what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo) then yearns for the independence of its native Congo, and conspires with other animals to overthrow the colonial regime. (They succeed, after strangling a human puppet and singing a song.) “The Weeping Woods and the Okapi Resistance” is full of good intentions, and on paper works as a counterpoint to its monumental backdrop in Brussels. Unfortunately, it was far too short and schematic to make for compelling theater: Initially announced as being an hour long, the performance ended up lasting 25 minutes.Aurélien Estager leading a mock tour at the Museums of the Far East as part of Satoko Ichihara’s “Madama Chrysanthemum.”Martine DewilThere was more to take away from Satoko Ichihara’s unclassifiable “Madama Chrysanthemum,” another work that premiered in a prescient setting, the Museums of the Far East. This complex in the north of Brussels, which includes a Chinese Pavilion and a Japanese Tower, is an Orientalist fantasy commissioned by Leopold II, the king who also oversaw Belgium’s violent rule in Congo.All the buildings have been shut for nearly a decade, for safety reasons, so “Madama Chrysanthemum” was a rare opportunity to look around. Ichihara, a Japanese writer and director, offered a playful introduction, too. The deadpan Aurélien Estager, one of two actors in “Madama Chrysanthemum,” welcomed the audience outside the Chinese Pavilion and proceeded with a mock tour of the surrounding landmarks.The tour ended inside the Museum of Japanese Art, one of the closed buildings. There, on a small, empty stage, Estager and Kyoko Takenaka launched into an offbeat performance inspired by the life of Masako, the current empress of Japan (who is also a Harvard-educated former diplomat). In a mix of Japanese and French, the text highlights the pressure Masako faced from the Imperial court, as well as public opinion, to produce a male heir.The critical light in which the show presents Japan’s royal family made it unperformable in Japan, Icihara said. Its surreal twists presumably wouldn’t help. Throughout, Estager assumes the role of a dog named Emperor, and Takenaka plays its owner, who dreams of being impregnated by an emperor (which one is deliberately unclear) even as she tells Masako’s story.An audience member playing the role of the interviewer in Fanny & Alexander’s “Se questo è Levi” at the upper house of Belgium’s Parliament.Werner StrouvenWhile “Madama Chrysanthemum” hijacks its Orientalist décor to tell a very contemporary Japanese story, “Se questo è Levi,” a one-man show, channels the solemnity of the upper house of Belgium’s Parliament. It’s a testament to Kunstenfestivaldesarts’ ingenuity that the organizers secured permission to stage an entire show inside the Senate’s debating chamber, with audience members watching from the lion-decorated seats of Belgian senators.“Se questo è Levi,” created by the Italian company Fanny & Alexander, takes excerpts from interviews given by Primo Levi, an Auschwitz survivor who wrote about his experience in the camp in “If This Is a Man.” The audience plays the role of the interviewer: A list of questions is provided, and they can be asked in any order. As soon as Andrea Argentieri, who plays Levi, is finished with one answer, anyone can chime in, using the microphone on each senator’s table.It may be artificial, but it is strangely moving, nonetheless, to address Levi, who died in 1987, so personally. When I asked him, “In your opinion, can you erase the humanity of a man?,” Argentieri, who mimics Levi’s demeanor down to the way he rested his glasses on his forehead, looked at me for a few seconds with unspoken pain before replying.Would it work in other contexts? It’s debatable, but in the Belgian Senate, Levi’s eloquent thoughts on the Holocaust and its legacy had the gravitas of an official hearing, for posterity. Perhaps they should be heard there more often.“Se questo è Levi,” like nearly all the other productions at Kunstenfestivaldesarts, was translated into three languages: French and Dutch, the main languages spoken in Belgium, and English. (The Senate is equipped with headsets for simultaneous translation, and in other venues subtitles are used.) That may sound par for the course in Brussels, the multilingual home of the European Union’s main institutions, but the city’s theater scene isn’t quite used to it.Wanjiru Kamuyu in Okwui Okpokwasili’s powerful piece of dance theater “Bronx Gothic.”Anna Van WaegSince the arts are funded separately for Belgium’s linguistic communities (with the exception of a few federal institutions), there is little crossover between French- and Dutch-language playhouses in Brussels, and many don’t provide subtitles. Kunstenfestivaldesarts has attempted to bridge that gap, with partner theaters from both sides.Over the first weekend, François Chaignaud and Geoffroy Jourdain’s “Tumulus,” a polyphonic work blending dance and music, was performed at the Dutch-language playhouse Kaaitheater, while the French-speaking performance space Les Brigittines played host to a new version of Okwui Okpokwasili’s powerful piece of dance theater “Bronx Gothic,” now performed by Wanjiru Kamuyu.The range of languages can be somewhat dizzying, as was the case with “Hacer Noche,” a two-hour Spanish show performed in the former railway museum nestled above the North Station. The piece is a quiet and sensitive conversation between the director, Bárbara Bañuelos, and Carles Albert Gasulla, a well-read man who works as a parking attendant. But there is a lot of translated text to absorb while hearing Spanish, and at times I wished the subtitles had slowed down to let their points about class, mental health and precarious work land.Yet that is a small gripe. In its current form, Kunstenfestivaldesarts shows Brussels at its best: a city of converging cultures, as open to addressing its past as it is to hosting others.KunstenfestivaldesartsVarious venues in Brussels, through May 28. More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel: Today Is ‘a Stupefying Day in the History of This Country’

    “Chuck Schumer said he called for the vote so we would know where Republicans stand. Turns out, they’re standing in the year 1865,” Kimmel 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.Stuck in the PastOn Wednesday, the Senate voted against legislation that would have guaranteed abortion rights nationwide.Jimmy Kimmel referred to the blocking of the bill as “a stupefying day in the history of this country.”“Even though a strong majority of American voters want those rights protected, every Democrat voted in favor of the bill except Joe Manchin, who voted with his fellow Republicans.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“With the Supreme Court likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Democrats wanted to get their counterparts on the record opposing it. Chuck Schumer said he called for the vote so we would know where Republicans stand. Turns out, they’re standing in the year 1865.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“It almost feels like maybe we shouldn’t have let the host of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ pick three Supreme Court justices, you know?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Put Out to Pasture Edition)“President Biden spoke today in Illinois about his administration’s plan to support farmers. Although I feel like he should be asking about their plan to support him: [imitating Biden] ‘You guys got one of those Charlotte’s Web spiders who can write something nice about me?’” — SETH MEYERS“Well guys, today President Biden visited a farm in Illinois, where he announced new steps to fight rising food costs and inflation. You know your presidency is in rough shape when your staff is like, ‘It’s time to drive you to a farm upstate.’” — JIMMY FALLON“Yeah, when Biden first arrived, a Secret Service agent was like, ‘Older McDonald is on the farm. E-I-E-I-O.’” — JIMMY FALLON“But this is strange: At one point Biden actually walked into a corn field and slowly disappeared: ‘If you build back better, votes will come.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingThe “Tonight Show” guest Florence Welch was joined by Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Buffett for a performance of “Margaritaville.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightAmy Sedaris will pop by Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutGeorge Carlin on “Saturday Night Live” in 1975. His fans include Joe Rogan and Jim Gaffigan.Herb Ball/NBCU Photo Bank, via Getty ImagesNearly 14 years after his death, the comedian George Carlin still has the power to make people across the political spectrum laugh. More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Television

    Disney+ Added 7.9 Million Subscribers Last Quarter

    Disney+ added 7.9 million subscribers in the most recent quarter for a total of 138 million worldwide, the company announced Wednesday, helping it avoid the streaming slowdown that has lately tanked the stock price of Netflix.Like most media companies, Disney’s stock has been pummeled in the wake of Netflix’s announcement last month that it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of the year and that it expected to lose two million more this quarter. After years of applauding media companies for losing billions on streaming, investors are now applying pressure to find a path to profitability.The release of films like Pixar’s “Turning Red” helped Disney+ attract subscribers in the first quarter, which ended April 2. Shares of Disney were down about 3 percent in after-hours trading following the earnings announcement.Disney’s results are a bit of good news for Bob Chapek, the chief executive, who has been dealing with a public relations crisis stemming from the company’s response to Florida school legislation that, among other things, restricts classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. (Disney is the state’s largest private employer.)The company initially refrained from speaking out against the bill publicly but reversed itself after an internal revolt. Mr. Chapek then denounced the legislation, which earned him the ire of conservatives, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Last month, Republican lawmakers in Florida revoked a 1967 law that allowed Walt Disney World to function as its own quasi government. In the wake of the uproar, Geoff Morrell, who joined Disney in January as its most senior government relations and communications executive, resigned last month.Revenue at Disney increased 23 percent compared with last year, to $19.2 billion, but missed analyst expectations. Disney said it took a hit from a decision to pull some of its content back from other distributors in favor of its own channels, which meant a reduction of $1 billion in licensing revenue as part of a trade-off to grow its direct-to-consumer business.Disney reported earnings per share of $1.08, missing analyst expectations of $1.17.Disney’s theme parks unit came roaring back from a year ago, when the Covid-19 pandemic stunted in-person attendance. Revenue in the division doubled compared with the same period last year, with a new line-skipping system driving increases.As streaming services look for more subscribers, India is shaping up to be an important market. Deep-pocketed media companies are preparing to bid for rights to show cricket matches from the popular Indian Premier League. Disney currently has the rights to stream the matches on its Hotstar service, which it acquired in its 2019 megadeal with 21st Century Fox. Losing those rights could be a blow. However, Mr. Chapek has said that Disney can reach its subscriber targets even if it does not retain those rights.On a call following the earnings announcement, Mr. Chapek said that Disney would eventually become more aggressive about moving major live sports onto the ESPN+ streaming service. The cash generated by the lucrative portfolio of ESPN cable channels currently makes that untenable, so the company is taking a measured approach to sports streaming, Mr. Chapek said.“What we’re doing is sort of putting one foot on the dock if you will, and one foot on the boat,” Mr. Chapek said.Mr. Chapek also responded to an analyst question about the lack of new Disney movies that have opened in the Chinese theatrical market, where the company has had an uneven record in recent years. Mr. Chapek said that Disney films were performing well without help from moviegoers in China, pointing to the success of “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.”“We’re pretty confident that even without China — if it were to be that we continue to have difficulties in getting titles in there — that it doesn’t really preclude our success,” Mr. Chapek said. More

  • 88 Shares129 Views

    in Theater

    Shows About Abortion Surface a Stark Divide

    Decidedly anti-sensationalistic, Alison Leiby’s shrewd and funny personal monologue plays downtown. Uptown, a staged reading focuses on a gruesome case.A few nights after the leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn the right to abortion protected by Roe v. Wade, the comedian Alison Leiby walked onto the stage of the Cherry Lane Theater, in Manhattan’s West Village, to greet the audience before her monologue.“How are we doing?” she asked, taking the temperature of a friendly crowd that had more men in it than you might expect. Then, easily: “The show is exactly the same as it was before we lost all of our rights.”Low-key sardonic, politically charged humor it would be, apparently. We might have guessed as much from the title of the insightfully funny piece she was about to perform: “Oh God, a Show About Abortion.”It is probably true, in terms of Leiby’s script and Lila Neugebauer’s direction, that the monologue — constructed around an account of the abortion that Leiby had three years ago, at 35 — has not changed. But the atmosphere surrounding abortion rights has; it’s more charged, more urgent, more anxious. And the audience always brings the outside world into the room.So here is the first thing you need to know about Leiby’s abortion story: In a smart and entertaining show, full of observations about the sometimes painful messiness of female bodies — menstruation, childbirth, lactation — and the social pressure to put on a happy face about all of it, her trip to Planned Parenthood is the least dramatic, most calmly straightforward part.“Does this feel anticlimactic to you?” she asks, when she’s done retelling it.She knows it must, because back when it happened, she’d expected something more lurid, too.“I think that I thought I’d have some kind of Scarlet A that tells everyone I had an abortion,” she says, “which would have been devastating because it’s private, and also red clashes with my complexion.”A laugh line, sure, but that bit about the fear of the Scarlet A? It lands.“Oh Gosnell: A Show About the Truth” is a staged reading based on court records that features the cast members, from left, Roxanne Bonifield, Kaché Attyana, Benjamin Standford and Andrea Edgerson.Russ RowlandA couple of miles uptown, at the Chain Studio Theater on West 36th Street, is a show that announced its New York run as “Oh Gosnell: The Truth About Abortion” — a tabloid title with stalkerish overtones, especially given that its own news release mentions Leiby’s show.A publicist for “Oh Gosnell” said that the creation of the play was inspired by Leiby’s comic monologue. “They laugh about it — we tell the truth about it,” says the website of the play now going by the name “Oh Gosnell: A Show About the Truth.”It’s written by Phelim McAleer, who is credited on IMDB as being a producer of the yet-to-be-released film “My Son Hunter,” starring Laurence Fox as Hunter Biden, and as a writer and a producer of “Obamagate,” starring Dean Cain, which The New York Post described as a play that had its premiere on YouTube. His other plays include “Ferguson,” about the 2014 police shooting of Michael Brown.Laughter and truth are not mutually exclusive, of course, even if McAleer, a right-wing provocateur whose program bio calls him “a veteran investigative journalist,” implies otherwise.As for conveying any general truth about abortion, rather than specific truths about the gruesome case of Kermit Gosnell — a Philadelphia physician convicted in 2013 of first-degree murder for killing three babies after botched late-term abortions — it doesn’t. Neither is it constructed to persuade.The script for the play, simply titled “Gosnell,” says that it was “compiled, verbatim, from grand jury and criminal trial transcripts” in the Gosnell case. In a spare, somewhat murky staged reading directed by David Atkinson, it has a cast of seven that includes a compelling young actor named Kaché Attyana, who I hope will soon get better work.“The first thing I want you to be assured of, ladies and gentlemen,” a prosecutor (Roxanne Bonifield) says, close to the top of the show, “is that this is not a case about abortion.”For emphasis, she repeats that assertion. Maybe McAleer, the co-author of a book about the Gosnell case, and a producer and co-screenwriter of the 2018 movie “Gosnell: The Trial of America’s Biggest Serial Killer,” didn’t hear her?Then again, in a program note, McAleer writes of the Gosnell trial: “Perhaps the desire to suppress information was why no national media covered the story. There is a reluctance to shine a spotlight on abortion in the U.S. Few people are prepared to go behind the doors and tell the truth of what is really happening there.”Heidi Schreck in her play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which opened on Broadway in 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe problem with saying that no national media covered the story — well, his own show contradicts that right off the bat, when images of news clippings about the case include one from The New York Times. (Projections are by Meghan Chou.)As for going behind those doors, women do that every day, seeking abortion care. Leiby did it. I’ve done it. My mom did it, too, pre-Roe v. Wade, to save her life from an ectopic pregnancy before my brothers and I were born.Telling the truth about abortion, though — speaking of those experiences, that is, in a culture where abortion remains heavily stigmatized — well, that is rare.Which is maybe why Leiby expected to feel something more sensational than relief after her own abortion.“I thought I’d spend the next few days or months staring out the window like I’m in a depression medication commercial,” she says. “I thought I would carry sadness and emptiness with me everywhere I went.”Kidding, a little bit? Probably. But the notion of abortion as an automatic trauma is pretty deeply rooted in the culture, and it’s not often interrogated onstage. Which leaves the mystery intact.And, conversely, gives the shows that do discuss it an added potency — like Ruby Rae Spiegel’s “Dry Land,” which harnesses the ticking-time-bomb feeling of an unwanted pregnancy, and Lightning Rod Special’s “The Appointment,” which juxtaposes wild musical satire with the crisp quiet of an abortion clinic. And, of course, Heidi Schreck’s “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which put an abortion story on Broadway.In the Signature Theater revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s play, Christine Lahti (right, with Joaquina Kalukango) portrayed an abortion provider. Richard Termine for The New York TimesWhen Leiby mentioned the Scarlet A, I thought of Suzan-Lori Parks’s take on “The Scarlet Letter” — the one of her Red Letter Plays whose title we can’t print here — with its heroine, Hester Smith, who is described in the list of characters as “the Abortionist.” Kia Corthron’s “Come Down Burning,” which also has a heroine who performs abortions, makes a clear connection between the option to safely end a pregnancy and women’s ability to control their own lives.Then there is Ciara Ni Chuirc’s “Made by God,” which had its premiere this winter at Irish Repertory Theater: a drama about a shame-filled Irish teenager who died alone with her newborn in the 1980s, and about the seismic shift in public opinion that led Ireland to legalize abortion in 2019. The play’s principal anti-abortion character is an American interloper.Leiby — who reports, incredulously, that she whispered the phrase “an abortion” to Planned Parenthood when she called to make an appointment for one — means her monologue to start people talking about theirs.Beyond that, though, her show makes a broader point: about the need for women to be able to decide what they want and don’t want, and shape their existences accordingly.“I’m a woman who did something she needed to do,” she says, “to protect the life she built for herself.”It’s not funny, but it’s true.Oh God, a Show About AbortionThrough June 4 at the Cherry Lane Theater, Manhattan; cherrylanetheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 10 minutes.Oh Gosnell: A Show About the TruthThrough May 15 at the Chain Studio Theater, Manhattan; ohgosnell.com. Running time: 1 hour. More

  • 138 Shares169 Views

    in Theater

    Leaked Video of Jesse Williams’s Staged Nude Scene Denounced by Union

    Despite an attempt to ban smartphones in the theater, a video of the actor’s nude scene in the Broadway production of “Take Me Out” circulated widely online.The first time “Take Me Out,” a baseball play with nude shower scenes, arrived on Broadway, there were no iPhones in the theater, because they hadn’t been invented yet.This year, when the acclaimed play returned for its first revival, the nonprofit presenting the show instituted a no-phones policy, requiring patrons to put their phones in locked pouches before entering the theater, in an effort to prevent the photographing of naked actors.The effort failed.This week, someone posted to social media video of a naked Jesse Williams, a star of the play, in a shower scene. The video circulated widely.The incident prompted outrage both from Second Stage Theater, the nonprofit producing the play, and Actors’ Equity Association, the union that represents stage performers.“We condemn in the strongest possible terms the creation and distribution of photographs and videos of our members during a nude scene,” Kate Shindle, the union president, said in a statement. “As actors, we regularly agree to be vulnerable onstage in order to tell difficult and challenging stories. This does not mean that we agree to have those vulnerable moments widely shared by anyone who feels like sneaking a recording device into the theater.”Second Stage, which distributes Playbills with an insert reminding patrons that “photos and videos are strictly prohibited,” issued its own statement, saying “we are appalled that this policy has been violated” and that “taking naked pictures of anyone without their consent is highly objectionable and can have severe legal consequences.”The theater said it was seeking to have the online videos removed, and was adding security at the theater to enforce its phone ban.Second Stage has been using Yondr pouches to restrict phone use — when patrons arrive, they are asked to turn off their phones and put them into the locked pouches, which the patrons hold through the show, and then hand back to be unlocked after it is over. The system, used at some comedy shows, pop music concerts and other live events, is imperfect — some people have figured out how to open such pouches, while others smuggle in phones despite the rules.“Take Me Out,” written by Richard Greenberg, is about homophobia in baseball; Williams plays a team star who comes out as gay and confronts discomfort among some of his teammates. In 2003, the drama won the Tony Award for best play; this week the current revival picked up four nominations, including one for best revival, and three for actors, including Williams, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Michael Oberholtzer. Oberholtzer can also be seen, naked, in some of the online video.In the run-up to the show, Williams, best known for “Grey’s Anatomy,” discussed the nudity. “It’s terrifying in all the right ways,” he said on “The Ellen Show” last year. In an interview this year with The New York Times, he was more sanguine. “I’m here to do things I’ve never done before,” he said. “I have got one life, as far as I know. It’ll be fine.” More