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    Conrad Janis, Father on ‘Mork & Mindy’ and Much More, Dies at 94

    His role on the hit sitcom was just one of more than 100 film and television credits; he was also a fine jazz trombonist and co-owner of an art gallery.Conrad Janis, an actor familiar to television viewers as Mindy’s father on the hit sitcom “Mork & Mindy” who was also a skilled jazz musician and a gallerist well known in the New York art world, died on March 1 in Los Angeles. He was 94.Dean A. Avedon, his business manager, confirmed the death.Mr. Janis, a child of the noted art collectors and gallerists Sidney and Harriet (Grossman) Janis, moved easily between the worlds of high art, jazz and acting, sometimes switching one hat for another in the same evening.“Conrad Janis Is Glad to Live Three Lives,” the headline on a 1962 Newsday article read. At the time he was starring in the romantic comedy “Sunday in New York” on Broadway and, after the Friday and Saturday night performances, playing trombone with his group, the Tailgate 5, at Central Plaza in Manhattan. (On Sundays he’d trek to Brooklyn to play at the club Caton Corner.) When not onstage or on the bandstand, he could often be found at his father’s art gallery.Sixteen years later he found himself on one of the most popular shows on television when he was cast on “Mork & Mindy,” which premiered in September 1978, as the father of Mindy (Pam Dawber), a Colorado woman who befriends an eccentric alien (Robin Williams). On Sundays during this period, he played in the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band at the Ginger Man, a club in Beverly Hills, Calif., whose owners included Carroll O’Connor of “All in the Family.”The key to juggling three areas of expertise, Mr. Janis told Newsday, was keeping his personas separate.“It just wouldn’t do to tell a knowledgeable art patron that ‘man, I dig Picasso the wildest,’” he said.Mr. Janis, an accomplished trombonist as well as a busy actor, peformed regularly with the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band. Among the other members of the band, seen in performance in 1980, was his fellow actor George Segal, who played banjo and sang.Ralph Dominguez/MediaPunch, via AlamyConrad Janis was born on Feb. 11, 1928, in Manhattan. His parents had a successful shirt-making business early in their married life, which gave them the wherewithal to begin collecting art and, in 1948, open the Sidney Janis Gallery, which became, as The New York Times put it in Sidney Janis’s obituary in 1989, “a major pacesetter for the art world in the 1950s and ’60s.”Harriet Janis also wrote books with the jazz historian Rudi Blesh, including “They All Played Ragtime” (1950). That connection led to Conrad’s musical expertise. Mr. Blesh’s daughter played trombone in her school’s marching band but lost interest; the spare trombone ended up in Conrad’s hands. He particularly studied the music of the influential New Orleans trombonist and bandleader Kid Ory.“I memorized a lot of what he did,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1988.His acting developed alongside his musicianship. When he was 13, a classmate at the Little Red School House in Manhattan told him that “Junior Miss,” a popular Broadway comedy about a teenage girl, was holding auditions for a road company. He auditioned, got in, and spent two years with the tour, advancing to a leading juvenile role. He started doing radio voice work at the same time.“I played kids of 14 and old men of 40” on the radio, he told The New York Times in a 1945 interview.He landed a role in the pre-Broadway run of “The Dark of the Moon,” which got him noticed by a Hollywood talent scout. He remained with the play when it went to New York, making his Broadway debut in March 1945, but within a few months he was on the West Coast to make his first film, the comedy “Snafu,” in which he played a teenager who lies about his age to enlist.It was the first of more than 100 film and television credits. In the movies, he played alongside some famous names: Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple in the notoriously bad “That Hagan Girl” (1947), Charlton Heston and other prominent stars in “Airport 1975” (1974), Lynn Redgrave in “The Happy Hooker” (1975), George Burns in “Oh God! Book II” (1980).He was on television from the medium’s earliest days, playing numerous roles in the late 1940s and ’50s, many of them on shows like “Suspense,” “Actor’s Studio” and “The Philco Television Playhouse” that were broadcast live. Some of those roles took advantage of his familiarity with musical instruments.“All through the ’50s,” he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1981, “I was in so many TV shows as a young musician on drugs, desperately trying to kick the habit, that I’m sure I helped cement in the public’s mind a relationship between musicians and dope. All they cast me in were shows in which I did or didn’t kick the habit. I was always saying, ‘Hey, man, I just got to have a fix.’”He continued to play small parts on TV in the 1960s and ’70s before landing his best-known role, Mindy’s father. His character operated a music store, but although “Mork & Mindy” ran for four seasons, he never got a chance to play his trombone on the show, something he regretted.“The producers wouldn’t go for it,” he told The Albany Democrat-Herald of Oregon in 1990. “We had a really cute script where I got together with my old Dixieland jazz band, but they didn’t think it was funny enough.”Mr. Janis with Thomas Scott, left, and Steven Scott in the 1996 movie “The Cable Guy.”He continued to work in television after “Mork,” with appearances on “St. Elsewhere,” “Murder, She Wrote,” “Frasier” and other shows. His later movie appearances included small roles in “Mr. Saturday Night” (1992) and “The Cable Guy” (1996). He sometimes collaborated with his wife, Maria Grimm, including directing two movies she wrote, “The Feminine Touch” (1995) and “Bad Blood” (2012).Mr. Janis’s acting career also included a dozen Broadway credits, among them the Gore Vidal play “A Visit to a Small Planet” in 1957 and a revival of “The Front Page” in 1969.Throughout his musical and acting adventures, Mr. Janis also kept a hand in the art world.Arne Glimcher, the founder and chairman of Pace Gallery and a friend of Mr. Janis’s for almost 60 years, said Mr. Janis worked for his father at the Sidney Janis Gallery and was responsible for certain artists there, including Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann.“His knowledge of 20th-century art and Modernism was really encyclopedic,” Mr. Glimcher said in a phone interview.When Sidney Janis reached 90, he turned the Janis Gallery over to Conrad and his brother, Carroll, who kept it going until 1999.Mr. Janis’s first marriage, to Vicki Quarles, ended in divorce, as did his second, to Ronda Copland. Ms. Grimm, whom he married in 1987, died in September. He is survived by his brother; two children from his first marriage, Christopher and Carin Janis; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.Mr. Glimcher said that in recent years some of Mr. Janis’s old jazz pals would come to his home in Beverly Hills on Thursdays and play. When his wife died, Mr. Glimcher said, Mr. Janis gave her a jazz funeral, then changed the location of those jam sessions.“Every Thursday,” Mr. Glimcher said, “he took the jazz band to her mausoleum and played there.” More

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    ‘Cabaret,’ Starring Eddie Redmayne, Leads Olivier Award Nominees

    A revival of the 1966 musical, with Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles, is up for 11 awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.LONDON — A revival of “Cabaret” that has been a topic of conversation here for its sky-high ticket prices as much as its stellar cast dominated the nominations for this year’s Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys — that were announced on Tuesday.The musical secured 11 nominations including a nod for best musical revival, as well as for best actor and actress in a musical for its stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley.Its prominence was perhaps unsurprising given the acclaim “Cabaret” has received since opening last December in a production that transforms the West End’s Playhouse Theater into a seedy nightclub straight out of 1920s Berlin.Audiences enter the show through the theater’s backstage corridors, and can even have a preshow meal once inside, partly explaining why tickets cost up to 325 British pounds (or about $420).Matt Wolf, reviewing the show for The New York Times, called it “nerve-shredding” for its portrayal of a world on the verge of Nazism. Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph called it “2021’s kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph,” suggesting readers “dig like your life depended on it into your pockets” to pay for a ticket.Even with such praise, “Cabaret” faces stiff competition in the musical categories, especially from a revival of Kathleen Marshall’s 2011 Broadway production of “Anything Goes” at the Barbican, which secured nine nominations including for best musical revival and a best actress nomination for Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney. Foster won a Tony in 2011 for the same role.Sutton Foster has been nominated for an Olivier for her role in “Anything Goes.”Peter Nicholls/ReutersIn the nonmusical categories, the nominations are led by “Life of Pi,” Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel telling the story of a boy stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. That play, at Wyndham’s Theater, has secured nine nods, including a best supporting actor nomination for the seven puppeteers who bring the tiger to life.“Life of Pi” was also nominated for best new play, where it is up against “2:22: A Ghost Story,” a haunted-house thriller that was at the Noël Coward Theater, “Cruise,” a tale set in London’s Soho in the ’80s (that was at the Duchess Theater), and “Best of Enemies,” James Graham’s play about the rancorous 1968 TV debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal that was at the Young Vic.One of the most highly contested categories is likely to be best actress in a play, where Cush Jumbo is nominated for her performance as Hamlet at the Young Vic Jumbo is up against Emma Corrin, nominated for her role in “ANNA X” at the Harold Pinter Theater, the singer Lily Allen for “2:22: A Ghost Story” and Sheila Atim for a revival of “Constellations,” at the Vaudeville Theater.The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Apr. 10. More

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    Seth Meyers Skewers Trump for a ‘Looney’ Idea on Russia

    Meyers said the former president’s suggestion that the U.S. paint Chinese flags on planes and bomb Russia was “a slightly stupider version of Bugs Bunny dressing up as a sexy lady to distract Elmer Fudd.”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.Flag FooleryAt a Republican fund-raiser on Saturday, Donald Trump suggested that the U.S. should paint Chinese flags on F-22 jets and bomb Russia.“Look, we came very close, very close to a world where Trump was still in charge during Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine, which is scary for many reasons,” Seth Meyers said on Monday. “One of which is Trump keeps giving us a glimpse as to how he would have responded, and, as usual, he has that unique Trump blend of being both terrifying and incredibly stupid at the same time.”“Finally, a way to bring stability to the world — a war between Russia and China.” — SETH MEYERS“So, if you’re wondering what Trump has been up to lately, the answer is huffing glue.” — JIMMY FALLON“These are the types of ideas you come up with after you stare at the sun too long.” — JIMMY FALLON“Then Trump said that he would stop Russian tanks by painting a tunnel on the side of a mountain so they slam into it. [Imitating Trump] ‘Meep meep.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He definitely gets his ideas from cartoons. I mean, this is a slightly stupider version of Bugs Bunny dressing up as a sexy lady to distract Elmer Fudd.” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Running Out of Gas Edition)“Meanwhile, here in the U.S., a convoy of truckers spent the last two days surfing the Capital Beltway outside D.C. to protest Covid restrictions. Yep, the truckers waited until all the mandates were lifted and gas hit five bucks a gallon.” — JIMMY FALLON“It’s a horrible time to be driving as your protest because now they are praying the cops tow them away just to save on gas.” — TREVOR NOAH“This is just sad. American truckers were trying to block traffic, but D.C. already has so much traffic that nobody really noticed they were protesting.” — TREVOR NOAH“And, I mean, let’s be honest — a protest isn’t much good if it is too subtle for people to know it is a protest. Yeah, it’s like if Rosa Parks bravely decided to sit in the middle of the bus — it just wouldn’t be the same.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingJames Corden was flabbergasted by a moviegoer who released a live bat during a viewing of “The Batman.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightLeslie Jones will sit down with Seth Meyers on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutThe Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes was recently convicted of four counts of fraud.Photo Illustration by The New York Times; HBO (Elizabeth Holmes)With new limited series like “The Dropout,” “WeCrashed” and “Super Pumped,” television is saturated with ripped-from-the-headlines tales of self-immolating entrepreneurs. More

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    Supreme Court Will Not Review Decision to Overturn Bill Cosby’s Conviction

    Prosecutors had appealed a ruling by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which had overturned the conviction on due process grounds.The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the bid by prosecutors in Pennsylvania to reinstate Bill Cosby’s conviction for sexual assault, a decision that ends the criminal case that had led to imprisonment for the man once known as America’s Dad.In an order issued Monday, the court said, without elaborating, that it had declined to hear the appeal filed by prosecutors last November.The Supreme Court’s decision leaves in place a ruling issued by an appellate court in Pennsylvania last year that had overturned Mr. Cosby’s 2018 conviction on due process grounds, allowing Mr. Cosby, 84, to walk free after serving nearly three years of a three-to-10-year prison sentence.Mr. Cosby had been found guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand at his home outside Philadelphia, though his lawyers argued at trial that the encounter, in 2004, had been consensual.The case, one of the first high-profile criminal prosecutions of the #MeToo era, drew widespread attention, in part because of Mr. Cosby’s celebrity and in part because dozens of women had over a period of years leveled similar accusations of sexual abuse against the entertainer. But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled last June that Mr. Cosby’s due process rights had been violated when the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office pursued a criminal case against him despite what the appellate court found was a binding verbal promise not to prosecute given to him by a previous district attorney.The former district attorney, Bruce L. Castor Jr., who said he believed Ms. Constand but was not sure he could win a conviction, said he had agreed years ago not to press charges against Mr. Cosby to induce him to testify in a civil case brought by Ms. Constand. He said the substance of his promise was contained in a news release he issued at the time that said he found insufficient credible and admissible evidence. But he held out the possibility of a civil action “with a much lower standard of proof.” Ms. Constand later received $3.38 million as part of a settlement in her civil case against Mr. Cosby.During the civil case, Mr. Cosby acknowledged giving narcotics to women as part of an effort to have sex with them, a statement that was later introduced as evidence at Mr. Cosby’s trial.Understand Bill Cosby’s Sexual Assault CaseBill Cosby was released from prison June 30, 2021, after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his 2018 conviction for sexual assault.Why He Was Released: Here’s a breakdown of the issues surrounding the ruling to overturn the conviction.What Legal Analysts Think: The court’s decision opened an unusually vigorous debate among the legal community.His Uncertain Future: Experts say it’s unlikely the ruling will change the public perception of the former star.The Aftermath: The Times critic Wesley Morris looks at what to do with our fondness for “The Cosby Show,” and W. Kamau Bell’s documentary series contextualizes his legacy.Following Mr. Cosby’s conviction in 2018, an intermediate appeals court in Pennsylvania found that no formal agreement never to prosecute had ever existed, a position that aligned with what the trial court had ruled.But in a 6-to-1 ruling, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court found that Mr. Cosby had, in fact, relied on Mr. Castor’s assurances that he wouldn’t be prosecuted, and that charging Mr. Cosby and using his testimony concerning drugs at the criminal trial had violated his due process rights.Prosecutors had argued that such a promise had never been made. They said that no one else in the district attorney’s office at the time had been made aware of it and that a news release could not be the basis of a formal immunity agreement.A spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, welcomed the decision Monday, saying in a statement that the entertainer and his family “would like to offer our sincere gratitude to the justices of the United States Supreme Court for following the rules of law and protecting the Constitutional Rights of ALL American Citizens.”Ms. Constand and her lawyers released a statement Monday that criticized the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s ruling, in particular faulting the panel for assuming “there was a valid agreement not to prosecute, which was vigorously disputed in the Habeas proceedings, and determined by the trial judge not to exist.”Andrea Constand and her lawyers have consistently taken issue with the reasoning of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in overturning Mr. Cosby’s conviction.Angela Lewis for The New York TimesThe Montgomery County district attorney, Kevin R. Steele, released a statement in which he expressed his appreciation to Ms. Constand and described petitioning for Supreme Court review as “the right thing to do,” even though there was only a small chance the court would take up the case.“All crime victims deserve to be heard, treated with respect and be supported through their day in court,” the statement continued. “I wish her the best as she moves forward in her life.”Mr. Cosby was first accused in 2005 of having molested Ms. Constand, then an employee of the Temple University basketball team for whom he had become a mentor. The case was reopened in 2015, and Mr. Cosby went through two trials, the first of which ended with a hung jury. The second ended in April 2018, with a jury in Montgomery County convicting Mr. Cosby of three counts of aggravated indecent assault.Both cases were closely watched by many of the women who came forward with similar accusations but statutes of limitations in their cases made further prosecutions unlikely.Mr. Cosby has consistently denied the accusations that he was a sexual predator, suggesting that any encounters were completely consensual.Patricia Leary Steuer, who accused Mr. Cosby of drugging and assaulting her in 1978 and 1980, said in an interview on Monday that she felt “a little let down by the decision” but that “it does not change anything for me and the other survivors” since, she said, public sentiment is on their side.“The survivors did what we were supposed to do which was to come forward and tell the truth and that’s what we did,” she said. “The rest is out of our hands.”Legal experts had predicted it would be unlikely that the Supreme Court, which denies the vast majority of petitions for review, would take up the Cosby case. For one thing, they said, the case involved a unique set of circumstances that did not necessarily raise far-reaching constitutional issues.Dennis McAndrews, a Pennsylvania lawyer and former prosecutor who has followed the case, said the Supreme Court typically “looks to determine whether there are compelling issues of constitutional law about which the courts across the country need additional guidance, especially if the case is capable of repetition.”Shan Wu, a former federal prosecutor in Washington, said the Supreme Court likely considered whether its ruling would have the potential for broader significance outside the parameters of this case. “It’s a very unique set of circumstances,” he said. “It’s highly unlikely to be repeated.” More

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    The Flea Theater, Experimenting Again, Walks a New Tightrope

    Back from the brink of extinction, the Off Off Broadway fixture is testing a new structure that gives artists the autonomy they demanded.Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the Flea Theater has positioned itself as a haven for experimentation, an unpretentious home for risk-taking and for young actors eager to get their start.But for years, discontent simmered beneath the surface.Actors were frustrated by the fact that the theater asked for lots of work with no pay; Black artists felt mistreated even while working on shows meant to center Black experiences; artists felt exploited, intimidated, voiceless.In 2020, the bad feelings bubbled over when an actress who had performed at the Flea, Bryn Carter, published a letter detailing her experiences, pointing out what she described as elitist, racist and soul-crushing encounters and attitudes.When the reckoning at the organization collided with the pandemic shutdown, the survival of the Flea became uncertain.“What we’re doing is driven by our mission,” said the Flea’s artistic director, Niegel Smith, right, with Hao Bai, the show’s lighting, projection and sound designer.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesBut now, the Off Off Broadway nonprofit theater is fighting to come back — this time with a new hybrid structure built to give complete artistic autonomy to a group of writers, directors and actors that has spoken out against the old Flea. That group, now known as the Fled Collective, is being given funding by the Flea to stage its own programming in the theater’s TriBeCa space. In addition, the Flea will produce shows of its own, but now all actors will be paid and there will be a focus on work by “Black, brown and queer artists.”The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” took the stage last month and just extended its run.But major challenges, chiefly financial, remain. When the organization’s longtime producing director, Carol Ostrow — a target of much of the criticism — retired following calls for her ouster, about half of the Flea’s board members followed her out the door. The departures resulted in a loss of trustee donations and fund-raising that depleted the organization’s $1.5 million budget by about a third, said Niegel Smith, the organization’s artistic director.Dolores Avery Pereira, a leader of the Fled Collective, which is trying to build a new future within the reconfigured Flea, said she is not discouraged.“I believe that the money will come,” she said. “I choose my artistic freedom every time.”When the Flea was born in 1996, the founders, who included the theater couple Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver, viewed it as a passionately edgy alternative to the commercial imperatives of Broadway.From its beginnings, the Flea was seen by aspiring actors as a place they could exercise their talents without needing to present a long résumé or a fancy degree at the door.“If you didn’t go to Juilliard or Yale or Brown, this was a place you could start,” said Adam Coy, a Fled leader who joined the Bats, the Flea’s resident acting company, in 2017.The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” during rehearsals in January.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe new iteration of the Flea pushes the parameters of that kind of experiment a good bit further in its effort to dismantle traditional hierarchies — think autocratic impresarios — that have long ruled over theater spaces. In its push to democratize the production of works, the Flea is echoing the sorts of demands heard in theater communities across the country over the past two years as the pandemic’s threats to the industry and urgent calls for racial equity have spurred collective organizing among artists.But to pull it off under new financial constraints, the Flea’s leaders have had to reckon with the reality that its output may not match what it had been in the past, especially now that all actors will be paid. (In March 2020, for example, the Flea had 13 employees; it currently has two.)“We do a whole lot less now, and we’ll probably do a whole lot less for a long time,” said Smith, who is one of few Black artistic directors at New York City theaters. “But at least what we’re doing is driven by our mission.”The issue of pay for actors had been kicking around the Flea for years. Some recalled receiving no payment except a single stipend of $25 or $75 after spending weeks in rehearsals, on top of a requirement to spend several hours a month doing unpaid labor around the theater.The issue became particularly frustrating to actors when the Flea opened a new three-theater performing arts complex in TriBeCa which cost an estimated $25 million in 2017. As the Flea was transitioning to the new building, the phrase “pay the Bats” appeared written on the walls of its old theater, said Jack Horton Gilbert, who had been a member of the Bats for about five years. Beyond the question of surviving in New York, the lack of pay focused attention, critics said, on the demographics of who could afford to work for free.Leaders of the Flea have said that, going forward, they intend to employ a more democratic vision of artistic creation that gives actors, writers and other creatives greater voice in productions. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“By not paying actors, the diversity of the company suffers because the people who can actually be around and invest are privileged,” Carter, who had been part of the Bats troupe, wrote in her June 2020 letter. “Many actors of color have not felt welcome or safe in your doors.”Much of Carter’s criticism was directed at Ostrow, who she said had mistreated her, generally was patronizing toward Black creatives and did “not know how to speak to Black people.” Once, she said, Ostrow had touched her hair without permission. Another time, she said, Ostrow had mixed up a Black lead actor and her understudy.Flea leaders apologized. Ostrow wrote Carter in June 2020 to say that she was “accountable for the behavior that you describe” and was “deeply sorry.”Later that month, a group of artists with the Flea posted a letter on social media condemning the theater for, among other things, creating a culture of “intimidation and fear.” The letter cited a case in which Black artists who took issue with a “trauma-centered” season of works about race were told, the critics said, that they could be replaced; it also repeated the concerns about expecting actors to work for free.“We have seen these same artists paid to cater your events and galas, rather than for their creative work,” the letter said.Members of the Fled Collective met in the Flea Theater in TriBeCa to plan their first season.Christopher Garofalo In response, the Flea’s leadership declared it would pay all artists for their work and said the theater needed to “reckon with the intersection of racism, sexism and pay inequity.”Later that year, the artists’ collective delivered demands to the Flea’s board, which included involving artists of color in planning the season, making sure there was board representation from their ranks and getting rid of Ostrow.In November 2020, Ostrow, who had been working without a salary for years, announced her retirement. Soon after that, five members of the board resigned, Smith said, resulting in a loss of about $475,000 in annual contributions. (Ostrow and her husband, the board member Michael Graff, had been major funders: the couple was listed as having donated more than $500,000 to the Flea’s new building.)Neither Ostrow nor her husband responded to requests for comment.Relations only soured further when the board, in what it said was a cost-saving measure, decided to dissolve its resident artist programs, including the Bats, infuriating the artists’ collective that had worked for months to try to shape an organization that they would be willing to return to.In a statement posted to social media, the artist group, now operating as the Fled, made a bold appeal to the Flea to “hand over the keys.” In a statement to New York Magazine days later, Simpson and Weaver threw their support behind the idea.Later on, Smith shocked Pereira when he told her that he and the board would be willing to explore actually transferring the property in TriBeCa to the Fled.Artwork by Carrie Mae Weems, one of the creators of “Arden,” in the rehearsal space. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe agreement that was actually struck was more modest, but still extraordinary. The Flea, which continues on as a nonprofit, will still own the building. But the Fled, which is made up of about 100 artists, will operate there under a three-year residency, whose costs will be underwritten in part by the Flea. The theater will also provide production and marketing support.Separately, the Flea is producing its own content, like “Arden,” which was funded by a collection of grants. “Arden” includes sculpture and video by the visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, music by the multi-hyphenate artist Diana Oh, as well as improvisational song by the choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili and the designer and director Peter Born.Smith’s own segment of the show addresses the Flea’s recent turmoil head on, something he felt was necessary to do in the first work under the Flea’s new mandate.Wearing a white robe and no shirt, Smith walks around the stage of the small black-box theater in a ritualistic trance, muttering — and eventually shouting — the phrase “this place is fraught.”“This place has held oppressive structures fueled by coercion and ambition,” he says in the show.Some artists say they are still skeptical that an organization with the same artistic director can truly start anew. Others are simply uninterested in performing, or even sitting in the audience, at the Flea again after their personal experiences there.“I just moved on from wanting to be involved in any way in that space,” Carter said, noting that she nonetheless supports the Fled’s work.The leaders of the Fled, which plans to host its first developmental workshop at the Flea in May for a play by Liz Morgan, are unsure whether it will go beyond the three-year contract. The goal right now is to hold the Flea to the promises it has made and to create a model for an effective artist-led theater collective, said Raz Golden, one of the Fled’s leaders.“It hasn’t been easy,” Pereira said. “But it’s a relief to be at the art-making part.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘The Thing About Pam’ and the Critics Choice Awards

    Renée Zellweger stars in a new true-crime mini-series. And this year’s Critics Choice Awards ceremony airs on the CW and TBS.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, March 7 -13. Details and times are subject to change.MondayTHE THING ABOUT PAM 10 p.m. on NBC. The slurp of a Big-Gulp-size beverage becomes something sinister in this true-crime limited series, which stars Renée Zellweger as a Missouri woman, Pam Hupp, who is implicated in a murder that ultimately reveals a larger illicit scheme. It’s a juicy role for Zellweger, who squares off with Judy Greer (as a prosecutor) and Josh Duhamel (a defense attorney). For more true crime, see the two-part documentary UNDERCURRENT: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF KIM WALL, debuting on HBO at 9 p.m., which looks at the killing of Wall, a Swedish journalist, in 2017 while she was reporting a story aboard a submarine.TuesdayTHE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) 7 p.m. on Showtime. You’ve probably already seen a movie about King Arthur — or at least have heard the tales, or baked with the flour. You’re less likely to have seen the tale of Arthur’s nephew Gawain — the subject of the anonymous 14th-century poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” — on the big screen. This aesthetically pleasing adaptation from the filmmaker David Lowery stars Dev Patel as Gawain, who goes on a quest to hunt down a giant. In his review for The New York Times, A.O. Scott called the movie “sumptuous, ragged and inventive.”WednesdayDOMINO MASTERS 9 p.m. on Fox. Ambitious domino builders square off in this new competition show, in which contestants vie to create the most impressive toppling-domino arrangements, Rube Goldberg style. Expect the exactitude required here — where a false move can completely ruin a project — to create some tense moments. Imagine a reality cooking show in which chefs have to juggle their culinary creations before the judges sit down to eat.ThursdayMahershala Ali, left, and Matthew McConaughey in “Free State of Jones.”Murray Close/STX EntertainmentFREE STATE OF JONES (2016) 7:40 p.m. on FXM. The composer Nicholas Britell and the actor Mahershala Ali worked on two notably different movies released in 2016: Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winning contemporary coming-of-age story “Moonlight” and Gary Ross’s historical drama “Free State of Jones.” In Ross’s movie, Ali plays a man named Moses, who is a close friend and confidant of the film’s subject, Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey), a Southern dissident who established a homespun army that rebelled against the Confederacy in Mississippi, and whose work on behalf of African American rights extended beyond the war. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott praised what he called Ross’s “unusual respect for historical truth,” and wrote that he does “a good job of balancing the factual record with the demands of dramatic storytelling.” Another of Ross’s movies, the jockey drama SEABISCUIT (2003), will also air on Thursday, at 4 p.m. on Showtime.FridayJULIA (1977) 6 p.m. on TCM. Jane Fonda plays a fictionalized version of the playwright and author Lillian Hellman in this historical drama. Adapted from a slice of Hellman’s 1973 book, “Pentimento: A Book of Portraits,” the film takes place in the lead-up to the Second World War, centering on a friendship between Hellman and a character known only as Julia (Vanessa Redgrave), a young American woman from a wealthy family who uses her money to aid anti-Nazi efforts. The movie was also the feature debut of Meryl Streep, who has a small role as another friend of Hellman’s.SaturdayRachel Zegler in “West Side Story.”Niko Tavernise/20th Century StudiosWEST SIDE STORY (2021) 8 p.m. on HBO. The last few years have brought two attempts to reinvigorate “West Side Story.” On Broadway in 2020, the Belgian experimental theater director Ivo van Hove presented a version that injected the musical with projected video and skinny jeans. Even more recently, we got this big-screen rethink from Steven Spielberg, which reworks some elements while sticking closer to the original Broadway and Hollywood productions, at least on the surface (take one look at the sets and haircuts here, and you know we’re in mid-20th-century New York City). But this version of the forbidden-love story between Maria (Rachel Zegler) and Tony (Ansel Elgort) still has a lot of new ideas, thanks in large part to its substantial reworking of Arthur Laurents’s book by the playwright Tony Kushner and its ​​new choreography by Justin Peck. In his review for The Times, A.O. Scott wrote that the new movie makes the musical feel “bold, surprising and new,” even as the performances and the transitions between musical numbers and other scenes can be uneven. “The seams — joining past to present, comedy to tragedy, America to dreamland — sometimes show,” Scott wrote. “But those seams,” he added, “are part of what makes the movie so exciting. It’s a dazzling display of filmmaking craft that also feels raw, unsettled and alive.”SundayTaye Diggs hosting the Critics Choice Awards in 2020. He will host this year’s ceremony on Sunday alongside the comic actress Nicole Byer.Kevin Winter/Getty Images for Critics Choice AssociationTHE 27TH ANNUAL CRITICS CHOICE AWARDS 7 p.m. on the CW and TBS. Awards season will continue on Sunday night with this broadcast of the Critics Choice Awards, which this year comes just two weeks before the Oscars. The nominees for best picture at the Critics Choice awards largely overlap with the Oscars — “West Side Story,” “CODA,” “Don’t Look Up,” “Dune,” “King Richard,” “Licorice Pizza,” “Nightmare Alley” and “The Power of the Dog” are all nominated for the top prize in both competitions — with Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!” taking the place of the Haruki Murakami adaptation “Drive My Car” at the Critics Choice awards. There are also differences in the best actor and actress categories, which here include nominations for Nicolas Cage (“Pig”), Peter Dinklage (“Cyrano”), Lady Gaga (“House of Gucci”) and Alana Haim (“Licorice Pizza”), none of whom will be up for an acting award at the Oscars. Taye Diggs and Nicole Byer host. More

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    ‘Billions’ Season 6, Episode 7 Recap: Let the Games Begin

    Chuck visits an old friend. Wags tries to cover his boss’s tracks as the decision about New York’s Olympics bid nears.Season 6, Episode 7: ‘Napoleon’s Hat’You know, it’s funny: Before I watched this episode of “Billions,” I’d been thinking to myself, “It’s been too long since Chuck Rhoades went to a dungeon.”Seriously! The series launched with an image of Chuck in flagrante, and his so-called “arousal template” played a major role in the show on and off for quite some time. A calculated admission of his predilections helped him win the attorney general’s office. And a failure to service his kink spelled the end of his relationship with last season’s romantic interest, played by Julianna Margulies.In this very episode, in fact, Rhoades says regarding sex workers, “I’m out of that game.” An almost entirely sexless sixth season, at least as far as Chuck is concerned, just didn’t sit right.So it was with some pleasure that I greeted Chuck’s descent into his old dungeon, on a quest to uncover the current location of the high-end brothel where Wags illegally entertained the bigwigs who select the host city of the 2028 Olympics. It was great to see Clara Wong as Troy, Chuck’s one-time dominatrix, and even better to see Paul Giamatti squirm as Troy painfully tweaked Chuck’s ear.It even meshed well with the subplot in which Chuck and his ex-wife-slash-amateur domme, Wendy, briefly rekindled their old friendship, only to bail when professional concerns got in the way. At their son’s high school carnival, Chuck had won a private dinner for two with the Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, to which he invited Wendy for old time’s sake. But poor Boulud, playing himself, wound up serving the multicourse meal to their nanny and himself instead. C’est la vie!In the end, however, Chuck’s reunion with Troy bore no fruit, legally speaking. Wags was one step ahead of him, tipping off the elite brothel that the cops were on the way; the pros in question converted the place into the world’s least-geriatric bridge club, stymying Chuck’s attempt to tie Prince to illegal activities and thus scupper his Olympic bid.Even Chuck’s Plan B winds up D.O.A. With the help of his lieutenants, Dave and Karl (who’s been increasingly entertaining), Rhoades pinpoints the Olympic “fixer” Colin Drache as the recipient of a $5 million bribe, presumably from Prince. (Even Wags, of all people, is aghast at the brazen nature of the graft, at least as it pertains to a self-conceptualized straight arrow like Prince.) But just when he’s ready to make an arrest amid New York City’s celebration for securing the games, Drache simply vanishes, like Keyser Soze.In a way, watching this season of “Billions” is like watching some kind of ethical disease spread. Taylor Mason, head of the Prince Capital subsidiary Mase Carb, could well be patient zero. The one-time wunderkind spends this episode setting up a crowdsourced algorithm for investment ratings, then lording it over an established ratings agency in order to force them to downgrade the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. The idea is to allow Prince to weasel his way back into the system after his previous $2 billion donation to the authority backfired, abrogating the city’s need for his big ideas to improve the subway.It’s such an effective play that the governor, the mayor and the head of the M.T.A. can basically only nod and go along with it. Prince is upset that Taylor and his own right-hand man, Scooter, went behind his back with the plan, but he knows how to take a W. Still, he insists he’s not like some drunk dad from whom the booze needs to be hidden at Christmas; he wants to be included in future maneuvers of this sort.Meanwhile, Rian, who has been spending the season as a sort of Jiminy Cricket-style externalization of Taylor’s conscience, rues handing over the spiffy new ratings algorithm to the corrupt old guard just to have it squashed. The Rian-Taylor dynamic is one of the show’s most intriguing at this point; I have no idea where the endgame is with these two.But the most compelling duo in this episode is Chuck and Dave, thanks to their verbal sparring over the nature of extreme wealth. Chuck has the zeal of the convert when it comes to the rich: He calls billionaires a threat to democracy itself and says that the lower classes have been sold a myth because they hope against hope to be rich themselves one day. Dave argues that “only those with wealth have the privilege of resenting it, but for the rest of us, it’s that dream that makes us go.”Honestly? For as shrewd a legal operator as Dave is made out to be, her position sounds hopelessly jejune. I mean, Horatio Alger? In this economy? Please. By contrast, Chuck’s rage against the billionaire class reads like a logical and narratively fruitful outgrowth of his old enmity for one specific billionaire, Bobby Axelrod, and his current grudge against Axe’s successor, Mike Prince. Chuck has met the enemy, and he is cash.Loose change:No “Godfather” allusions that I caught this week, but there was a shout out to another gangster movie, “A Bronx Tale.” For my money, though, the best pop-culture reference of the episode was a subtle but unmistakable quote from “The Big Lebowski” when Chuck talks about the scholarship students sponsored by Prince: “Proud we are of all of them,” he says, quoting Julianne Moore’s Maude Lebowski on the “Little Lebowski Urban Achievers.”As a charter member of the Karl Allard fan club, I was delighted to no end by this episode as it revealed the wild side of the old legal hand. Dave recoils in borderline disgust as Karl recalls nights in an Okinawa sex club with viper-seasoned sake; Chuck gazes at him incredulously as he describes his prowess as a “spirit guide” in the psychedelic era. (“Loose, breathable clothing is key.”)Still no clues as to whatever Mike’s secret agenda may be, beyond his vaguely proclaiming, “I plan on having a lifetime of grand projects.”Crucial to all of Mike Prince’s plans is the approval of his semi-estranged wife Andy, an Olympic-level rock-climbing coach. She ends the episode with an anecdote about racing up a summer-camp rock wall to kiss pinups of era-appropriate heartthrobs at age 8 and by extracting a promise from Prince to fly back and forth to Denver. Can he really be trusted to put his marriage ahead of his city?“The year Sperrys or a Vineyard Vines blazer shows up on Kevin’s Christmas list is the year we’re transferring him to public school”: Wendy is decidedly sour on her son’s private-school upbringing after she and Chuck are confronted by an obnoxious parent at the carnival, who calls Chuck a communist and Wendy a Karen. As an aside, the way they ferociously stick up for each other makes me think there’s still dramatic juice to be squeezed from their relationship.For all of Chuck’s self-conception as a man of the people, he still reacts like a scalded dog at the prospect of his son going to — gasp — Cornell instead of Yale.“That guy … a Cypress Hill song comes to mind,” says Prince of Chuck. Which one, I wonder? “Insane in the Brain”? “How I Could Just Kill a Man”? Uh, “Hits from the Bong”?Chuck on that fancy brothel: “These places shuffle locations like handsy priests change dioceses.” As a veteran of a Catholic upbringing, this one hit home hard.“Next time I pay every employee their full night’s wages,” Wags says to one of the brothel’s workers, “something unspeakable is going to transpire, and I will be right in the middle of it.” Now that’s our Wags! More

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    Tony Walton, Award-Winning Stage and Screen Designer, Dies at 87

    He worked with the directors Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning three Tony Awards and an Oscar for “All That Jazz.”Tony Walton, a production designer who brought a broad visual imagination to the creation of distinct onstage looks for Broadway shows over a half-century, earning him three Tony Awards, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.His daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, whose mother is Julie Andrews, said the cause was complications of a stroke.In more than 50 Broadway productions, Mr. Walton collaborated on designing the sets (and sometimes, the costumes) with directors like Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning Tonys for “Pippin,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Guys and Dolls.”He also worked in film, where he shared the Oscar for the art and set decoration of Mr. Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979); years earlier, Mr. Walton designed the interior sets and the costumes for “Mary Poppins” (1964), starring Ms. Andrews, to whom he was then married.Mr. Walton’s television work included “Death of Salesman” (1985), which starred Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid and John Malkovich, for which he won an Emmy.Before the opening of his final Broadway show, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in 2008, Mr. Walton described his process of conceiving a production’s design.“These days, I try to read the script or listen to the score as if it were a radio show and not allow myself to have a rush of imagery,” he told Playbill. “Then, after meeting with the director — and, if I’m lucky, the writer — and whatever input they may want to give, I try to imagine what I see as if it were slowly being revealed by a pool of light.”Mr. Walton with Julie Andrews and their daughter, Emma, in 1963.Associated PressDonald Albrecht, the curator of an exhibition of Mr. Walton’s theater and film work at the Museum of the Moving Image in 1989, told The New York Times in 1992: “He never puts a Walton style on top of the material. He comes from within the work out.”Mr. Walton worked with Mr. Zaks on many Broadway shows, including “Guys and Dolls,” a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Anything Goes.”“I started directing because I liked working with actors,” Mr. Zaks said in a phone interview. “I had no appreciation for what a set could for a production. Tony pushed me to visualize the different possibilities that might be used to create a set.”For the 1986 revival of John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves,” about a family in Sunnyside, Queens, on the day Pope Paul VI visited New York City in 1965, Mr. Zaks recalled what Mr. Guare wrote in the actor’s edition of the play.“He referred to Manhattan as Oz to the people who lived in Queens,” Mr. Zaks said, “and out of that he came up with a set that always had Manhattan in the distance.”In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich described the impact of Mr. Walton’s set as a “Stuart Davis-like collage in which the Shaughnessys’ vulgar domestic squalor is hemmed in by the urbanscape’s oppressive brand-name signs.”Four years later, Mr. Zaks added: “I said, ‘Tony, we could do ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ with two sofas and a Kandinsky.’ He said, ‘Trust that, believe that,’ and he made me a better director.”The double-sided Kandinsky hung over the two red sofas on the stage in the play by Mr. Guare, about a mysterious young Black con man.Anthony John Walton was born on Oct, 24, 1934, in Walton-on-Thames, England. His father, Lancelot, was an orthopedic surgeon. His mother, Hilda (Drew) Walton was a homemaker.Ann Reinking in the 1979 film “All That Jazz.” Mr. Walton shared the Oscar for art and set decoration on the film.Museum of Modern Art Film Stills ArchiveHe traced his love of theater to a night during World War II when he was 5 or 6. His parents had just seen the musical “Me and My Girl,” he said in the Playbill interview, and “they had paper hats and little hooters — and had obviously had a few bubbles to cheer them along the way — and they woke my sister and me up and taught us ‘The Lambeth Walk.’”His interest in the theater blossomed at Radley College, which is near Oxfordshire, where he acted, directed and put on marionette shows. After serving in the Royal Air Force in Canada, he studied art and design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. While there, he was a part-time actor and stagehand at the Wimbledon Theater.After graduating in 1955, he moved to Manhattan where he got a job sketching caricatures for Playbill. His first significant theater project in the United States was an Off Broadway revival of the Noël Coward musical, “Conversation Piece” in 1957.Four years later, after commuting to London where he designed productions for various shows, he was hired for his first Broadway play, “Once There Was a Russian,” set in 18th-century Crimea; it closed on opening night.His next show, the original production of “A Funny Thing,” ran for more than two years, and used his idea to project various sky images onto a curved screen across the stage.For the next 47 years, he toggled between musicals, comedies and dramas like a 1973 Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” For one of its stars, Lillian Gish, he had designed an eggplant-colored dress that she rejected, telling him that “Russian peasants only wore beautiful pastel colors,” according to Ms. Walton Hamilton. “He said, ‘Of course, Miss Gish,’” she said, then he had it dyed one shade darker with each subsequent cleaning.On the set of “The House of Blue Leaves” at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1986. From left: Christine Baranski, Swoosie Kurtz and John Mahoney.Brigitte LacombeIn the 1990s, he began directing at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in New York, which his daughter helped found. At Bay Street, he was also the production designer of a 2003 revival of “The Boy Friend,” which was Ms. Andrews’s directorial debut.Mr. Walton also illustrated the 12 children’s books about Dumpy the Dump Truck, and “The Great American Mousical,” that were written by Ms. Andrews and Ms. Walton Hamilton.“Tony was my dearest and oldest friend,” Ms. Andrews, who met Mr. Walton when she was 12 and he was 13, said in a statement. “He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes, and his talent was simply monumental.”In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton; his stepdaughter, Bridget LeRoy; five grandchildren; his sisters, Jennifer Gosney and Carol Hall; and his brother, Richard.In 1989, Mr. Zaks recalled being uncertain about the type of hotel for the setting for the farce “Lend Me a Tenor.” Mr. Walton sketched one that had a Victorian style, then another, more compelling one, with an Art Deco design.“The beauty of the Art Deco sketch just blew me away,” he said, “and I knew right away that when things got amok onstage, when people started slamming doors within a beautiful piece of Art Deco architecture, it would be much funnier.” More