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    ‘Six’ Is Back in Rehearsals and Hoping to Get to Opening Night

    The red velvet seats at the Brooks Atkinson Theater on West 47th Street were covered by tech tables of computers, cables and consoles operated by designers, directors and stage managers. An audience was not due until the first preview on Friday night.But the anticipation was nevertheless high for a dress rehearsal of “Six,” the British musical dreamed up by two college students that imagines the wives of Henry VIII as pop stars.In one of the more poignant examples of the pandemic’s toll on the theater, the musical’s opening night turned out to be its closing night instead: The show had been scheduled to open March 12, 2020, the day Broadway shut down.Now “Six” will find out if the loss of 18 months has cost the show any momentum; its original opening had been buoyed by advance sales, multiple productions, a hugely popular soundtrack and fans who had been following the show since its 2017 premiere at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.So there were effusive whoops and cheers from the crew in attendance when the curtain came up on the show’s six queens, fully decked out in their sparkly costumes, glittering boots and — in some cases — crowns.“We’re finding ways of readjusting the show to who these performers are now — who these queens are at this moment in time, who their 2021 selves are, where these songs are coming from,” said Jamie Armitage, who directed the musical with Lucy Moss. “There’s a depth and fire to some of the performances which I haven’t seen before.”“I think it’s the time away, realizing what theater means and what it means to congregate,” Armitage continued, adding that the show’s theme was newly resonant: “The group is more powerful than the individual.”The production’s diverse, all female cast and band — and its message of sisterhood and self-empowerment — also resonates with the lessons of the lockdown period, specifically a heightened awareness about the importance of equal opportunities for women and people of color. The musical concludes by calling out “patriarchal structures.”The dress rehearsal went smoothly, running its 85-minute, intermission-free duration without any apparent technical hitch. And after the confetti had fallen on the curtain call, the two directors rehearsed the bows again. Then they introduced a new idea: The cast took selfies from the stage. “Six” will start previews on Friday, the same night David Byrne’s “American Utopia” begins a return engagement, as Broadway’s reopening gathers momentum. Another 28 shows are scheduled to begin performances before the end of the year.As the “Six” actors dispersed for a dinner break — before returning to the theater for notes — Moss, who co-wrote the show with Toby Marlow, said she was feeling cautiously optimistic.“Until it’s open and running I’m not going to be like, ‘We’re back,’ because who knows what’s going to happen?” she said. “It makes you very grateful for every moment in the room.” More

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    TV is highlighting Broadway this week. Here’s how to watch.

    The main reason that “Wicked,” “Hamilton” and “The Lion King” decided to start performances on the same night is that they thought they could attract more attention to Broadway that way.It looks like they were right.Even though four shows had already started running, and dozens more have yet to come, there has been a flurry of television coverage of Broadway this week, all serving to remind viewers that performances have resumed.Here are some highlights that might be of interest:This morning, Good Morning America did a segment on the reopening.Over the weekend, CBS Sunday Morning featured the return of “Wicked”:Jimmy Fallon is discussing the return of Broadway all week on “The Tonight Show.” Tonight he’s scheduled to feature “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” tomorrow is “Dear Evan Hansen,” Thursday is “Six,” and Friday is “Wicked.” Last night, he featured an Off Broadway musical, “Little Shop of Horrors,” which is scheduled to reopen Sept. 21, starring Jeremy Jordan, at Westside Theater.On “The Late Show,” Stephen Colbert talked last night with Jeff Daniels about next month’s return of “To Kill a Mockingbird,” and tomorrow night he is expected to talk with Stephen Sondheim, whose “Company” revival is coming in November.For those of you who are Spectrum subscribers, Spectrum News NY1 will feature a Broadway reopening special at 6:30 tonight. And for those of you who are TikTok users, Disney will stream “Circle of Life,” the opening number of “The Lion King,” live at 7 p.m. at @DisneyOnBroadway. More

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    A Climate Opera Arrives in New York, With 21 Tons of Sand

    “Sun & Sea,” an operatic installation that won the top prize at the Venice Biennale, is being staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.On a rainy morning last week, a beach arrived at the front door of a theater in Brooklyn.Or at least the raw ingredients for one: 21 tons of sand, packaged in 50-pound bags, 840 of them. Wheeled into the BAM Fisher on pushcart dollies, they were unceremoniously dropped onto the theater’s tarp-covered floor with a dull thud.Once opened and spread around, the sand would form the foundation of “Sun & Sea,” an installation-like opera that won the top prize at the Venice Biennale in 2019 and has emerged as a masterpiece for the era of climate change. Neither didactic nor abstract, it is an insidiously enjoyable mosaic of consumption, globalization and ecological crisis. And its next stop is the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it opens on Wednesday and runs through Sept. 26.Over 20 tons worth of sand were brought to the BAM Fisher for the production in 50-pound bags.George Etheredge for The New York Times“The way it delivers its ideas, it’s totally surprising,” said David Binder, BAM’s artistic director. “It disarms you and lures you in. That’s not the way we’re used to receiving work about the issues of our day — what we’re all facing in this summer of fires and floods and what we’ve done to the planet.”For the work’s creators — Rugile Barzdziukaite, Vaiva Grainyte and Lina Lapelyte — the reception of “Sun & Sea,” only their second collaboration, has been something of a Cinderella story, as they said in a recent video interview. But as much as it is a fairy tale, the work is the fruit of a friendship that began in the Lithuanian town where they all grew up.Barzdziukaite eventually became a director; Grainyte, a writer; Lapelyte, a musical artist. In working together, they were attracted to opera, they said, because it provided “a meeting place” for their individual practices. As a trio, Grainyte added, “we can listen to each other and dive into this process without fighting or dealing with egos.”The sand was used to create an indoor beach for “Sun & Sea,” which uses the setting for a musical meditation on climate change and globalization.George Etheredge for The New York TimesTheir first project was “Have a Good Day!,” which traveled to New York for the Prototype festival in 2014. Like “Sun & Sea” it approached its subject — the thoughts of supermarket cashiers, and cycles of consumption — with a light touch. The cast of 10 singers, all women to evoke a typical store in Lithuania, shared stories that charmed until, in their accumulation, they took on the nauseating excess of the photographer Andreas Gursky’s similarly themed “99 Cent.”“The idea was to have this zoom-in approach using micro narratives,” Grainyte said, “but also being conscious that we also belong to this part of buying and selling circles.”It was important to the three creators that, while bitterly ironic, “Have a Good Day!” was not polemical. “We tried to really avoid the ‘one truth’ because it’s never black and white,” Lapelyte said. “That goes the same with ‘Sun & Sea.’ When we talk about the climate crisis, it’s never coming with one view.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York Times“Sun & Sea” is more ambitious: still subtle, intimate and haunting, but sprawling in scale. From a sliver of sand, Barzdziukaite, Grainyte and Lapelyte extract broad implications. The beach, after all, is a battleground of the Anthropocene that both embraces and defies nature. It’s a destination deemed worth flying around the world, expelling tons of carbon, to simply lounge on — though not without a heavy dose of sunscreen to avoid a burn, or worse.The characters in Grainyte’s libretto, which is both plain-spoken and poetic, are overworked and over-traveled, both self-righteously against technology’s intrusion in their lives and welcoming of it. Their stories are told as monologues and vignettes, broken up by choruses of sinister serenity.Often, the characters are oblivious. “What a relief that the Great Barrier Reef has a restaurant and hotel!” one woman sings. “We sat down to sip our piña coladas — included in the price! They taste better under the water, simply a paradise!” Her husband seems unaware that his burnout isn’t so different from that of the earth itself as he sighs melodically, “Suppressed negativity finds a way out unexpectedly, like lava.”“Sun & Sea” in Venice, where it won the top prize at the Venice Biennale in 2019.Gianni Cipriano for The New York TimesSome characters find beauty in the horrors of modern life. “The banana comes into being, ripens somewhere in South America, and then it ends up on the other side of the planet, so far away from home,” one sings. “It only existed to satisfy our hunger in one bite, to give us a feeling of bliss.”Another, in the most unforgettable image of the opera, observes:Rose-colored dresses flutter:Jellyfish dance along in pairs —With emerald-colored bags,Bottles and red bottle caps.O the sea never had so much color!“We didn’t want to be too declarative,” Barzdziukaite said. “At some point, Vaiva was taking off all the words which were dealing with ecological issues directly.” The final work amounted to about half of what was written.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesWhat they didn’t want was to give the impression that they were climate activists. “It would be unfair to say that,” Grainyte said. “If we were activists, we wouldn’t create this work that is traveling the world.” (The production, like many in the performing arts, isn’t the most eco-friendly: For the BAM presentation, all that sand was transported by truck from VolleyballUSA in New Jersey to Brooklyn.)But that doesn’t mean “Sun & Sea” avoids responsibility by design. Political art is a spectrum, and its creators are aware that they are wrestling with unwieldy and urgent topics; they just want their opera to “activate,” as Lapelyte put it.Crucial to that effect are, beyond the text, the music and visual presentation. The electronic score — earworm after earworm — provides minimal accompaniment for the singers, and was written to reflect the ease of leisure.After “Sun & Sea” closes, the sand will be vacuumed up, sanitized and repurposed.George Etheredge for The New York Times“We wanted it to be quite poppy, that it would remind you of a song that you know well but you can’t say which,” Lapelyte said. “And at the same time it’s very much reduced to very few notes, and it’s also repetitive like a pop song.”The action, while largely improvised by volunteers who flesh out the cast, is obsessively managed by Barzdziukaite. Participants are asked to arrive wearing specific colors (mostly calming pastels). While the roughly hourlong opera is sung in a loop, they are instructed not to seem to be acting, nor to acknowledge the audience. For the performers, the experience shouldn’t be any different from a trip to the beach.“We are very much using this documentary approach in every aspect,” Barzdziukaite said. Observant audience members might notice how casually plastic fills the space; a pair of partially buried headphones, or some abandoned toys, will be familiar sights.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn Venice, audiences left “Sun & Sea” to be confronted by countless cheap souvenirs and towering cruise ships. When the run ended, the city was flooded. Heavy rain will also have preceded the piece’s arrival in Brooklyn, with the storm carrying the remnants of Hurricane Ida having killed over 40 people in New York and three neighboring states. None of this is lost on the creators, who find themselves wrestling with what it means to make subtle art in a world whose natural disasters increasingly have the heavy-handedness of agitprop.“I feel like I’m living in a dissonance and asking myself what’s next and how I should behave,” Grainyte said.Those who attend the BAM production might find themselves asking similar questions. They won’t see tchotchkes crowding Venetian shops, but perhaps on the way home they will take another look at the garbage on the subway tracks or the shelves of miniature Empire State Buildings in Midtown.If there’s any waste they shouldn’t be worried about, it’s all that sand. After “Sun & Sea” closes, it will be vacuumed up, sanitized and repurposed as a beach volleyball court, maybe, or as a playground. But probably never again as an opera.Sun & SeaWednesday through Sept. 26 at BAM Fisher, Brooklyn; bam.org. More

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    Julie Delpy’s New Netflix Comedy Gives Voice to Women ‘On the Verge’

    The talky, slice-of-life series follows four women whom the usual rom-com formula says should have figured it all out by now. Turns out, that’s not real life.Julie Delpy does not mince words when it comes to women and age.“Fifty is not the new 30,” she said during a recent video call from her hotel room in Paris. She was there to promote her television creation, the 12-part series “On the Verge,” which she wrote, oversaw and stars in.“There’s almost a cruel thing about women that if we can’t procreate anymore, what are we?” said Delpy, who also directed several episodes. “And then you become a grandmother and you exist again in your seventies. You have this dead zone.”Produced by Canal Plus and Netflix, “On the Verge,” is a sometimes absurd and yet all-too-real comedy that follows four mostly well-off friends in Los Angeles as they grapple with middle age — only to realize that after all these years, they still have no clue what they’re doing. The idea seems to have found a ready audience: After its debut last week, the series quickly cracked the Netflix Top 10 in the United States, reaching No. 7 by the weekend.So much for dead zones. And not bad for a talky, slice-of-life series that also toggles between English and French.Delpy, 51, has made a career out of creating and portraying worldly female characters in films where most of the action takes place on a walk, on a train or around the dinner table. It hasn’t always been easy getting those characters from page to screen, she said, but it has been especially tough since she started writing about women her age.Per the usual romantic comedy formula, women in their 20s and 30s are often shown screwing up and struggling to figure things out, and it’s supposed to be cute. But by a woman’s 40s or 50s — the part that comes after the happy ending — she is meant to have herself all put together, right?In “On the Verge,” that notion is, literally, a joke.“I loved how all our characters were just beginning to find their confidence when they are about to turn 50,” said Elisabeth Shue, who executive produced and stars in the show. She described filming one particular dinner party scene from Episode 2 that, for Shue, “was a perfect reflection of Julie’s artistic sensibility.”“It was just a lovely mixture of insanity and humor born out of insecurity and chaos,” she added.From left, Alexia Landeau, Elisabeth Shue, Sarah Jones and Delpy in a scene from “On the Verge.” NetflixIn the series, Delpy plays Justine, a successful chef with a bustling restaurant. She is writing a cookbook while working long hours at the restaurant, raising a young son and enduring a barrage of passive aggressive insults from her sulking, out of work husband. Shue plays her friend Anne, a clothing designer with a trust fund, a vaping habit and a husband who is struggling to accept their gender-fluid son.The Tony winner Sarah Jones plays Yasmin, a mother and wife who gave up her career and is desperate now to reclaim something for herself. Alexia Landeau (who co-wrote several episodes and executive produced) plays Ell, a jobless single mother of three children by three different dads.Despite the characters’ struggles, “On the Verge” is very much a comedy, and Delpy isn’t afraid to crack jokes about serious topics like the stresses endured by working mothers, toxic masculinity or ageism. In one early scene, Yasmin is interviewed by a woman half her age and is told that she is, basically, too old. When Yasmin starts to panic and clutches her chest, the young interviewer asks if she is having a heart attack.The scene details an experience that will resonate with many women; Delpy gives the audience permission to laugh, even as they’re cringing.“I’m 46, not 96!” Yasmin shoots back.It’s a comic, cerebral sensibility has been honed throughout Delpy’s career. Her parents, Albert Delpy and Marie Pillet, were both actors (they played her onscreen parents in Delpy’s 2007 feature, “Two Days in Paris”), and she grew up in France surrounded by artists, theater actors and writers. Her first big onscreen role came when Jean Luc Godard cast her in his 1985 film “Detective,” when she was 14. She went on to work with Agnieszka Holland on the Golden Globe-winning film “Europa Europa” and with Krzysztof Kieslowski on his “Three Colors” trilogy.She spent much of her childhood backstage at her parents’ experimental theater shows or dancing, making music and writing on her own; later, she studied filmmaking at N.Y.U. It’s that mix of experimentation and structure (Delpy is quick to point out that the show is meticulously scripted) that she brings to “On the Verge.”“It’s sophistication obliterated by absurdity,” said Giovanni Ribisi, who plays Justine’s endearing yet infuriating boss, speaking about Delpy’s sensibility. “Julie has made a mark with her own style. She’s a craftsman. She’s got personality. Like they had in the 1970s.”When Delpy played Céline opposite Ethan Hawke in Richard Linklater’s “Before Sunrise” (1995), her character resonated with a generation of 20-something women in the 1990s — women who were thrilled to see a romantic female lead who could be both philosophical and funny. “Before Sunrise,” shot on a modest budget, proved to audiences and critics alike that a simple tale about two people meeting on a train and talking all night long could go on to become one of the most enduring romantic films of the ’90s.Delpy went on to co-write the sequels, “Before Sunset” and “Before Midnight,” with Linklater and Hawke, earning Oscar nominations for best adapted screenplay for both films.She has directed seven films, including the drama “My Zoe,” released earlier this year. With “Verge,” she got to tackle subjects close to her heart, show off her comedy chops and explore the lives of women who, even in their 40s and 50s, deserve more than a few throwaway lines.“It’s fun to be able to talk about real things,” Delpy said. “Although it was a bit of a struggle to get there.”Delpy started thinking in 2013 about the four main characters in “On the Verge,” and a script soon followed. A few people were interested in the project over the years as she shopped it around, but financiers and studios were reluctant to back “a show about women in that age range,” she said.“Fifty is not the new 30,” Delpy said, adding: “The show is talking about not having to lie about your age.”Elliott Verdier for The New York Times“I think it eventually happened, in part, because people are ready,” Delpy said. “It was the right timing, finally.”Olivier Gauriat, an executive producer of the series, signed on in 2019 because he was a fan of Delpy’s work onscreen and off. But he was also drawn to what she was trying to do in “Verge” with regard to female representation and age.“There are not many shows out there revolving around women at this age,” said Gauriat. “Canal Plus and Netflix were very supportive, and I think that’s what was interesting to them. They gave her carte blanche.”Preproduction on “Verge” began prepandemic, before being shutdown with the rest of Hollywood. Delpy went back to the scripts. She adjusted certain story lines to reflect what was actually happening. By the time shooting finally began, she had revised the timeline to take place in January and February of 2020, eight weeks during which a crisis was building but few understood what truly lay ahead. Viewed over a year and a half later, “Verge” feels like a time capsule of those early days just before everyone started stockpiling toilet paper and hunting for N95 masks.Delpy said she had decided to incorporate real world events because the characters were, as it says in the title, on the verge of something new and unknown, and so was the world around them.“Everything is changing for these characters, but everything is changing for the world as well,” she said.Things may be changing, but Delpy harbors no illusions that women over 40 are suddenly the new “it girls.” There’s a moment in “Verge” when Jerry tells Justine, “You’re in a cultural blind spot” — no one cares about women her age.It’s funny because it’s so absurdly insulting. It’s also funny because it rings true.“The show is talking about not having to lie about your age,” she added. “Or pretend you’re something else.” More

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    Are the Movies Back? Our Critics Weigh In.

    Our chief film critics look at the new season in the new abnormal, while remembering the lessons of cinema history. Are we on the cusp of a new era or will this too pass?Movie theaters are open for business again. and the film world is abuzz with new release dates, in-person festivals, an accelerating Oscar race, an array of Covid-19 protocols and anxious prognostications. Is this the death of cinema (again) or its glorious rebirth? Or has it mutated into something new altogether, a two-headed Disney-Netflix monster with art somewhere in its genome? Our chief film critics, Manohla Dargis and A.O. Scott, have some thoughts on these matters. They also asked some industry veterans to weigh in.MANOHLA DARGIS Hello, friend — it’s been awhile. I recently returned from a book leave and having failed to win the lottery, I am back (happily!). I ignored most of the movie news while I was gone, though was sad to learn about the closure of my favorite theater here in Los Angeles, the ArcLight Hollywood, which was felled by the lockdowns. It felt like the beginning of the end of something, but here we are in a new season that looks more like 2019 than 2020 — even with requests to see our vax cards. What’d I miss?A.O. SCOTT You didn’t miss much, except for a few episodes in the continuing discourse — part soap opera, part séance, part tech seminar — about the Future of Movies. Judged solely from the slate of upcoming releases (some held back from 2020), that future looks a lot like the recent past. The fall will see new work from both Andersons, Wes and P.T. Jane Campion’s first feature in more than a decade. A new James Bond. The predominance of familiar directors and stars along with newly minted auteurs (like Chloé Zhao, following her best picture win for “Nomadland” with a Marvel spectacle) creates a reassuring sense of continuity. Cinema as we have known it seems to still exist.Richard Madden and Gemma Chan in Chloé Zhao’s new superhero movie, “Eternals.”Marvel/DisneyAt the same time — though not for the first time — it is widely feared to be in mortal peril. Some of that anxiety is Covid-specific. Nobody knows when or how this thing will end, and whether audiences will return to theaters in sufficient numbers to revive the old business models. The pandemic is not the only factor, and the future of movies and moviegoing may depend less on virus mutations or consumer preferences than on corporate strategy.If Covid stretches on, we will lose more art-house theaters, resulting in less box office revenue. At some point there won’t be enough theaters to generate sufficient revenue to justify releasing a movie theatrically. If you lay on how the past 18 months have changed viewing habits, it looks even worse: the art-house audience is more mature, and that demographic has so far not been eager to return to cinemas.— Richard Abramowitz, founder and chief executive of the distributor AbramoramaDARGIS That we’re social animals is what made me think that we’d get back into theaters, that and there’s too much money at stake. Moviegoing has been up and down forever. But for decades the major studios have been eroding exhibition — the moviegoing habit itself — with a business model that banks on a handful of youth-baiting tentpoles and some monster weekends. Their audience flocks to the theaters for a bit, and everyone else waits for home video (or not). I looked at the numbers for the last “Avengers” movie: it opened in American theaters in April 2019 and played through September, but it sucked up more than 90 percent of its domestic haul in 30 days.I imagine that a lot of people waited to see it, just as earlier generations waited for stuff to hit TV, cable, video — all once viewed as a threat to moviegoing. For a time, these different avenues seemed fairly complementary. But the habit of on-demand, whenever, wherever watching has proved overwhelming, which is bad for exhibition but good for the multinational companies that own the studios because they also own the companies which funnel stuff into homes. So, maybe these multinationals will shift exclusively to streaming. Maybe they’ll re-embrace theaters or buy them all up. In the end, I am far more worried about nonindustrial cinema and if its audience will return to theaters.Sure, there’s the occasional blockbuster they may want to see as an Imax experience and want to have that shared community experience, but like everything in the world, with the multitude of choices available and given time, effort and expense to go to the movies, most opt to see movies in the comfort of their homes.— Marcus Hu, co-founder of the distributor Strand ReleasingSCOTT The small screen is definitely getting bigger, whether we like it or not. Subscription revenue is unlikely ever to match blockbuster box-office numbers, but for a lot of independent-minded filmmakers, streaming offers money for projects the big studios don’t make anymore. For a long time, the big studios have been concentrating their resources on franchise, I.P.-driven entertainment at the expense of stand-alone features aimed at adult audiences. Streaming has picked up some of that slack.The upshot is that what you and I and others in our rapidly aging demographic understood by “going to the movies” may have been replaced by a different menu of choices and practices. What I mean is the idea of the movie theater as a destination, independent of a particular film that might be showing. A lot of the time, you’d just go and see whatever was there, and there was always something — art, trash or in between — worth the price of the ticket, which wasn’t all that much. A movie habit was easy enough to acquire, and a lot of us did.Kirsten Dunst in “The Power of the Dog,” Jane Campion’s new film.Kirsty Griffin/NetflixKids nowadays haven’t developed it in quite the same way. They have more screens, more options and different reasons for buying a ticket. I’m not lamenting, just observing. What I wonder about is the effect of these changes on the art form that we’re still calling by the anachronistic names cinema and film.The studios stopped making the kinds of movies I make around the time we were finishing “Moneyball” — I remember an exec telling me he would have passed on it if it had come to him then. In the years it took to get that movie made, the world for that kind of movie turned.— Rachel Horovitz, producerDARGIS Let’s check back in 50 years to see how streaming affected cinema, which is always a moving target. To be honest, while it’s interesting to see how the big companies are handling the newest normal, the work I tend to love has long had a separate ecology, with its own way of doing things, its own community and relations. In 1991, Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust” needed a slow release, critical love and word of mouth to make a dent, and the same is true of most of the movies we care about now. As a friend asked the other day, would Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” be “Parasite” if it had only been streamed? We both think the answer is no — it would still be great, but not a cultural sensation.Movies, unlike branded entertainment, need to live in the world, not just on personal devices. This isn’t about the putative romance of moviegoing, but how people experience art and culture, because while we’re talking about infrastructure, we are also talking about pleasure — the pleasure of the cinematic object, and the pleasure of your company and conversation. It’s frustrating that people keep writing lazy obituaries for cinema, something they have no feeling for or interest in. I don’t love all that’s transpired in movie history — the shift from film to digital, the loss of technical competency — but I remain buoyed by the persistence of the art and how its ecologies adapt and persevere.Even so, and I think I’ve said this before, I do increasingly view the segment of the movie world that I most worry about as akin to jazz. It’s something usually appreciated by a niche audience but that needs new blood — the kids you mentioned — to truly sustain it.Theatrical films will have exclusive windows in theaters, but those windows will be shorter and more flexible. But movies that matter, that have cultural impact, will again play exclusively in movie theaters for some time, likely 45 days.— Tom Rothman, chairman and chief executive of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture GroupSCOTT I guess I’m always optimistic about the tenacity of artists and the curiosity of audiences, and aware that the good work most often gets done against the grain of whatever the system is at a given moment. But it’s nonetheless important to be critical of that system, and reasonable to wonder how its current iteration might stymie some kinds of originality while encouraging others.Daniel Craig as James Bond in “No Time to Die,” set for the fall.Nicola Dove/MGMThere’s no going back to any previous golden age, and the gold rubs off pretty quickly when you take a close look. The old studios whose products earned the designation “classical” were built on exploitation and predation, and ruled by autocratic moguls. Things were not much better, from an ethical or political standpoint, in the New Hollywood ’70s or the indie ’90s.Still, great and weird movies were being made then, as they are now. But I fear that many of them will languish in the streaming algorithms or in the margins of micro-distribution, estranged from even the smallish publics that might have discovered them. One cause for alarm — which has nothing to do with streaming per se — is the mass extinction of the local newspapers and alt-weeklies that nourished local film scenes across the country. The health of movies is connected to the health of journalism.[I worry] that the economic challenges will force the art-house cinemas away from the smaller titles that add significantly to diversity and inclusion in our cinematic landscape. Additionally, that the downsizing of newspaper and media coverage for smaller films will force the theater owners’ hands in these decisions.— Dennis Doros, co-founder of Milestone FilmsDARGIS The pandemic has brought specific issues to the fore — at the least, maybe improved theater ventilation will put an end to watching multiplex fodder in a miasma of despair and stale popcorn. More to your last point, I think that mostly what the pandemic has done is underscore, again, that all of us are still navigating the world created by the internet, which changed how we labor, play, read, watch, think. The movie industry has a history of different production-distribution-exhibition models that work until they don’t, yet throughout these shifts, movies kept being made and people kept watching them, and I imagine they’ll keep getting made and we’ll keep watching and talking about all of it.SCOTT Let’s hope so! Otherwise we may both find ourselves on permanent book leave. More

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    Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse’s Wife, Gets Her Due This Fall

    A dance is never just about the steps. But what if Gwen Verdon hadn’t happened to Bob Fosse?Nicole Fosse, their daughter, has a suspicion that her mother had a good deal to do with Fosse’s steps. Nicole was there when he would ask Verdon to show him a few. He would rearrange them, change the angle. He would connect them.“He’d be trying to find something in his body, and she would get next to him and start imitating him,” Nicole said. “He’d look at her and then all of a sudden there was this symbiotic thing that happened between them: And then there was the step.”This October, as part of the Fall for Dance Festival at New York City Center, Nicole is giving her mother credit where she believes credit is due. In a festival commission, the Verdon Fosse Legacy — which Nicole formed in 2013 to promote, preserve and protect the work of her parents — presents “Sweet Gwen Suite,” a trio of short dances originally performed on “The Bob Hope Special” in 1968 and “The Ed Sullivan Show” in 1969. Each featured Verdon, who will be credited, alongside Bob Fosse, with the choreography. (Verdon died in 2000; Fosse in 1987.)Hat tip: Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon in “I Wanna Be a Dancin’ Man” on “The Garry Moore Show” in 1962.via The Verdon Fosse LegacyLinda Haberman, a former director of the Radio City Rockettes and a former assistant to Fosse, is providing direction, reconstruction and additional choreography to give the works a sense of flow and arc. “Sweet Gwen Suite” is scheduled for Oct. 13 and 14 (other festival commissions are by Ayodele Casel, Lar Lubovitch and Justin Peck).While it may be impossible to know the exact degree of Verdon’s input, her artistic connection with Fosse — they met in 1955 and married five years later — created dancing that was brazen, lasting and so impossibly stylish that Beyoncé borrowed some of it for her “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)” video. If only she had asked.Nicole has no hard documentation to prove what Verdon contributed to the dances in “Sweet Gwen,” but she has studied her parents’ work — and been in the room while they worked. When she was 18, her father choreographed a ballet for her: “Magic Bird of Fire.” Verdon was there, too, and she helped when he would get stuck.“She’d say, ‘Leave the room, Bob, come back in 10 minutes, come back in 20 minutes,’” Nicole said. “And he would peek in, and he’d go, ‘Can I come in?’ And she’d say, ‘No, give us a little bit more time.’ And she would have constructed something. It was like she could read his mind. She knew what he was after. She could sense where he was going with something and then she could create that.”But their creative symbiosis wasn’t limited to rehearsals. “Maybe what even happened in the studio wasn’t their first pass at it,” Nicole said. “Maybe it was in the living room. There was a lot of dancing in the living room. A lot, a lot.”Where does a choreographer stop and a dancer begin? The importance of dancers in the creative process is unassailable, yet power dynamics persist. Should dancers who make up original casts be compensated for their contributions? In the more experimental, contemporary dance world, dancers are regularly cited for their choreographic collaboration, but in ballet and on Broadway — where the chances of making money are higher — dancers are rarely given credit.The situation of a choreographer and muse is murkier. Verdon’s dance lineage includes years with Jack Cole, the Broadway and film choreographer, whom she danced with and assisted beginning in the 1940s. “She trained in Afro-Caribbean and flamenco and East Indian and several disciplines of modern,” Nicole said. “So that’s what she brought with her.” As for Bob Fosse: “You see his style change after he meets my mother,” Nicole said. “It goes from Fred Astaire, Mr. Showbiz to something else.” (Mr. Showbiz being her father.)“Sweet Gwen” is certainly a celebration of that meeting — and of Verdon herself. Taking over her parts is another spirited dancer: Georgina Pazcoguin, the New York City Ballet soloist who has appeared on Broadway and can blaze her way across a stage.“I am in no way, shape or form saying that like, ‘Oh yes, I know this,’” Pazcoguin said. “And that’s what drew me to the project: This chance to really steep myself in a new dance language.”Haberman, who performed in “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” (she was in the original workshop) and “Pippin,” was an assistant choreographer to Fosse on the Broadway show “Big Deal.” In “Sweet Gwen,” the dances, which never had formal titles, are named after the music: “Cool Hand Luke,” “Mexican Shuffle” and “Mexican Breakfast,” which inspired the Beyoncé video. To Haberman, that final number — with its jaunty head bobs and frisky, hip-gyrating walks — feels the most like Verdon.“What I actually think is really interesting about these three pieces is that they’re very soft and sweet, and there’s no dark thing,” Haberman said. “There’s no irony.”They’re also, she said, straightforward. And they add up to more than a pose with a derby hat. In other words, Haberman is drawing out nuance and humor, along with — following Verdon’s lead — generosity and playfulness. It’s what made her dancing so delightful. “To me, that’s why it’s so attractive, and that’s why I hate so much of the interpretations now,” Haberman said of Fosse’s work, “because it’s hard — it all has hard edges and it doesn’t have any intention except kind of like counts and sex.”At a rehearsal in July, Haberman broke down the movement, fixing accents and shifting focus, but also urging the dancers — two men along with Pazcoguin — to be as effortless as possible. “I keep saying, when we get there, it has to be like nothing,” Haberman said. “I mean the beauty of watching Gwen in those videos, it’s just like ahhh. There is just this ease. It was kind of Gwen’s brilliance. It just was easy.”For the new suite of dances, Lynne Shankel has orchestrated and arranged the music, by Herb Alpert, Lalo Schifrin and Johnny Mandel. While Haberman sees the first two works as being choreographed by Fosse in terms of their clear structure, “it doesn’t really matter to me in some way who choreographed it,” Haberman said. “Bob and Gwen — she gave him stuff, he gave her stuff.”“What I actually think is really interesting about these three pieces is that they’re very soft and sweet, and there’s no dark thing,” said Linda Haberman, here rehearsing with the dancers. “There’s no irony.”Their approaches were different. Haberman said that while Fosse would give dancers images for inspiration — “you should feel like a horse behind the starting gate” — Verdon was driven by narrative. Haberman didn’t work with Verdon closely but spent some time with her after “Dancin’” opened and Fosse left to work on his semi-autobiographical movie, “All That Jazz” (1979). Verdon was there to keep an eye on the production. Haberman was rehearsing a pas de deux when Verdon asked her why she was leaving her partner at a particular moment in the dance.“I said, ‘Because that’s the step?’” Haberman said. “And she goes: ‘No. Why are you leaving him?” She wanted a narrative right there. “She’s got a whole dialogue going on in her head, and that’s what’s informing everything she does, but it’s so simple and sort of so innocent. She makes an instant connection with whatever is coming out of her brain.”Haberman’s staging of “Sweet Gwen” is taken from Verdon’s point of view. For the first section, a trio, Haberman told the men they should think of themselves as being Pazcoguin’s best friends. “But for Georgina, it’s how you felt when you were a young dancer and you were starting to make it,” she said. “There’s still a great innocence, and it’s fun and light, and you don’t even know how good you are yet. That’s the beauty of it.”The second section, a solo for Pazcoguin, has to do with being in the middle of a journey, not just as a dancer but as a woman. The dances were created at a particular time in Verdon’s life, after the film adaptation of the musical “Sweet Charity,” in which Verdon originated the title role on Broadway. (The screen role went to the younger, better known Shirley MacLaine.)“By then she had Nicole, and she was older and a mom,” Haberman said. “It’s that time of life when you’re like, Oh. It’s not sad, but it’s all of those feelings. It’s mourning for the past when you were young but hopeful that the future has got better things for you.”It also requires a quality of vulnerability, which doesn’t come completely naturally to Pazcoguin. Generally, she dances strong roles. But it’s happening at a good time: Pazcoguin recently published “Swan Dive,” an incendiary memoir about her life as a ballet dancer.“It’s been a huge practice of vulnerability, just sharing my story in that way,” Pazcoguin said. “I’m looking back to the past and being like that is the past. The past is fact, and the future is possibility. And I think that’s where it bubbles up in my chest and makes me want to cry. That’s what I hope to be able to portray and make the audience feel.”The third piece, Haberman said, is about owning it. “This is like, I can come out here and be sassy and have a good time,” she said. “I can turn around and do my take right back to Beyoncé.”Haberman is drawing out nuance and humor in the dances, along with — following Verdon’s lead — generosity and playfulness. The dancers, in that moment, look into the direction of the audience and give a purposeful nod — as if to say, yes, we know about the video. To Haberman, “people will get it maybe if they’re dancer nerds or they won’t — it doesn’t matter,” she said. “But I think it’s just feeling of a grown, confident woman who owns everything about herself. And that, again, creates an ease because you’re comfortable in your own skin and you can have a good time.”To Haberman, the suite is not about celebrating some sort of Fosse style — she doesn’t buy into that anyway — it’s about dancing. The simple joy of good dancing. That’s what Fosse was after. And Verdon, too. Lee Roy Reams, an original dancer in both trios, said that when Verdon danced, “it was more than that just her body.”“She danced with her face and everything else that went with it,” he said.And with “Sweet Gwen,” Nicole Fosse is hoping for something else. “I would like some of my father’s and mother’s work to have a home outside of being embedded into a Broadway show,” she said. “I think that there’s a dozen or more pieces that can live in the concert dance world.”“Dancin’” is aiming for a Broadway revival in 2022. “I imagine it’s going to have a wonderful run,” Nicole said. “But then when the show closes, it’s gone. And it’s a shame that ‘Big Deal’ or ‘Sweet Charity’ has to run on Broadway for those dances to be seen.” More

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    Rudy Giuliani’s Rowdy 9/11 Speech Leaves Late-Night Hosts Reeling

    ‘I’m not saying Rudy was drunk, but that’s usually when guys from Brooklyn start to imitate the queen of England,’ Seth Meyers 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.‘What Is He Doing?’This weekend’s 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks would not appear to be very good fodder for lighthearted late-night humor. But that was until Rudy Giuliani got involved.On Saturday, Giuliani turned a speech commemorating the occasion into a wandering, unfunny but still-comic monologue. He impersonated Queen Elizabeth II and reminisced awkwardly about his run-ins with Prince Andrew.Trevor Noah was one of many late-night hosts who responded with baffled amusement.“You know your speech went off the rails when people watching it are like: ‘I wish this guy would talk more about 9/11. What is he doing?’” — TREVOR NOAHOn “Late Night,” Seth Meyers said there was reason to agree with the commentators who suggested that Giuliani was not in full command of his faculties.“I’m not saying Rudy was drunk, but that’s usually when guys from Brooklyn start to imitate the queen of England.” — SETH MEYERS“I guess Rudy can add this tape to his reel of impressions if he ever auditions for ‘America’s Not Talent.’” — SETH MEYERSTaco Bell EnvironmentalismTaco Bell recently started a program that aims to help customers recycle the plastic from used sauce packets by having them mail those packets back.Noah said the idea deserved points for creativity but probably wouldn’t actually do much to help the environment.“This idea has all sorts of problems with it. For one thing, people who eat at Taco Bell don’t care about the environment. I mean, they don’t even care about their own bodies.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, this is a weird idea, but what did you expect? Coming up with weird ideas is Taco Bell’s whole thing. This is a place that will still wrap a soft shell around a hard shell and wrap that inside a Dorito’s chip — which is delicious, but you really think their idea to save the environment is going to make sense?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (M.T.A. Edition)“At the Washington Football Team’s season opener, a pipe at the stadium burst over a group of fans, and some people said it might have been sewage. I don’t know; take a look. [Shows footage] Well, that’s a good omen for the season, you know? Washington is still looking for a team name; it’s too bad the Browns are already taken.” — JIMMY FALLON“An investigation concluded last week that a recent M.T.A. subway outage that shut down 83 trains was caused by someone accidentally flipping a power switch. Said one man, ‘So thaaaat’s what it does.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Bits Worth WatchingDr. Anthony Fauci talked to Noah about combating vaccine hesitancy and what he called the need for vaccine mandates.Jimmy Kimmel’s wife, Molly McNearney, came up with a skit that allows her to declutter their house at the same time: It’s called “Win Jimmy’s Crap.”What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightJustice Stephen Breyer, who at 83 has been fending off calls from fellow liberals to step down, will talk to Stephen Colbert on Tuesday. Will Colbert hold his feet to the fire?Also, Check This OutThe Metropolitan Opera performed Verdi’s Requiem on Saturday, the company’s first time playing inside its theater since March 2020.Richard Termine/Met OperaAnthony Tommasini, The Times’s chief classical music critic, gave an enthusiastic review to the first performance at the Metropolitan Opera since the start of the coronavirus pandemic: a staging on Saturday of Verdi’s Requiem in commemoration of 9/11. More

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    With a Mess of Fabrics, Broadway’s Costume Shops Return to Work

    During the pandemic they helped by sewing cloth masks and surgical gowns. Now, they are back in a frenzy to make theater sparkle.The work spaces at Parsons-Meares Ltd., one of New York City’s premier costume shops for Broadway shows, tend to be a spectacular confusion of satin and silk, lace and lamé, milliskin and muslin, scraps of brown paper in unique and strange shapes. Each surface seems on the verge of being inundated by leftover materials of varying hues and textures.“It’s kind of a big mess, because the work creates mess,” said Sally Ann Parsons, the shop’s owner and the only costume shop proprietor to receive a Tony Award. “But I happen to find the mess interesting.”If Parsons-Meares and the dozens of other costume shops like it in the city are a bit cluttered lately, it’s a happy return to form after more than a year of inactivity. When the pandemic shuttered the theater industry in March 2020, Broadway’s dressmakers, tailors, milliners, cobblers, pleaters, beaders, embroiderers, glove makers, fabric painters and dyers were suddenly out of work. Few performers, it turned out, needed painstakingly crafted costumes for all those shows on Zoom.Work at shops like Parsons-Meares ground to a halt during the pandemic shutdown.Yudi Ela for The New York TimesBut as Broadway rolls out its return, costumers are again busy with the meticulous, mess-making handiwork that makes the industry sparkle onstage. Starting this month, the creations of Parsons-Meares will dress anew the casts of shows including “The Lion King,” “Hadestown” and “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” as well as productions of “Hamilton” across the country.“Costume shops are extremely important,” said Catherine Zuber, who designed costumes for “Moulin Rouge.” “A costume might turn out completely different depending on who’s interpreting it. Most designers are very particular about where the costumes get made. It’s really quite a responsibility.”To achieve the sartorial splendor of “Moulin Rouge,” 180 artisans at 37 costume shops spent 36,000 hours translating Zuber’s drawings into 793 unique pieces. For some, part of the job was being able to track down materials in, for example, the perfect shade of red.In other words, all that get-up takes a lot of know-how and can-do.A bodice for a “Moulin Rouge” dress.Yudi Ela for The New York Times“When you need a costume for ‘Hamilton,’” said Donna Langman, whose shop dresses the elder Schuyler sisters in that show, “you can’t just run out and buy it from the 18th-century clothing shop down the street.”And it’s more than just looks. Effective stage clothes are able to withstand vigorous, sophisticated movement for eight performances a week, all year. They also have to facilitate dizzyingly fast costume changes: Think snaps that look like buttons, zippers that look like lacing, and shirts sewn onto pants. They need to be easily alterable by the show’s wardrobe department, and to stay fresh without daily dry cleaning.In a way, costume shops also help coax actors into their roles. “There is a magic that happens in the fitting room with the actor or actress,” Langman said. “We’re the ones that help them become their character. It’s kind of like being a doctor: ‘Hello, nice to meet you. Take your clothes off.’ They are at their most vulnerable in that moment, and our job is to make them feel good about whatever it is they have to go out there and do.”Yudi Ela for The New York TimesYudi Ela for The New York TimesYudi Ela for The New York TimesYudi Ela for The New York TimesAt the height of the pandemic in New York, many artisans, including Parsons and her staff, sewed and donated cloth masks and surgical gowns. Television and film work resumed later in the year, though some shops that are stubbornly loyal to the performing arts — such as Parsons-Meares Ltd. — continued to wait for Broadway’s return. (One lifeline for the shop came from Colorado Ballet, which ordered costumes for “The Nutcracker” a year in advance.).css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}When Broadway did come back, nearly a year and a half later, for costumers it wasn’t as simple as picking up where they left off. Numerous suppliers in the garment district of Manhattan have reduced hours or shuttered entirely, and costume shops report higher prices for fabrics and slower shipping times. Pandemic protocols have affected how the shops operate, such as how work stations are laid out and how fittings are conducted. Many workers have relocated or retired; it hasn’t been easy to find and train their successors.So workshops are frenziedly trying to keep up with demand. Since June, Parsons-Meares has been rushing to fulfill orders for 178 pairs of pants, 120 vests and 125 dickies for “Hamilton” alone.Sally Ann Parsons, the owner of Parsons-Meares, is the only costume maker to receive a Tony Award. “It’s kind of a big mess, because the work creates mess,” she said of the current state of the shop.Yudi Ela for The New York TimesFor some, the crowded opening schedule and the unreasonable demands it places on costume shops feels like the latest example of the indifference with which they are treated by Broadway producers. “We’ve always been the lowest on the totem pole,” Langman said.Profit margins, as ever, are slim, and shops have a long recovery from pandemic closures ahead. The Costume Industry Coalition calculated that its 50-plus member businesses lost $26.6 million in gross revenue last year. (That group includes Ernest Winzer Cleaners, the largely Broadway-dependent, Bronx-based facility that has been in operation since 1908.)Janet Bloor, the owner of Euroco Costumes, said: “We got one payroll protection loan. Sadly, we had no payroll to protect. We may never catch up to the massive amount of back rent we owe. It’s still possible we won’t survive the pandemic without some kind of aid.”A painted skirt from “Moulin Rouge.”Yudi Ela for The New York TimesAs the pandemic continues to loom over the return of live performances, the Broadway season remains precarious. “Everyone’s very nervous,” Langman said. “Are people going to go back to the theater? We’ve got work for the next month or two, and then what?”Brian Blythe, a founding member of the Costume Industry Coalition, said that recovery could take years, adding, “This industry is filled with some of the most resourceful costume experts in the world, but our collective survival depends on continuing to inform our stakeholders of what it takes to do what we do.”Some recognition might help.At “Showstoppers! Spectacular Costumes From Stage and Screen,” a 20,000-square-foot exhibition on 42nd Street, over 100 costumes for theater, television, film, cruise ships and theme parks are on view, along with regular artisan demonstrations such as rhinestone application and 3-D printing.Gillian Conahan at work. Costume shops have been rushing to fill orders for Broadway’s return.Yudi Ela for The New York TimesGiven museum treatment, the exhibition’s costumes can finally be appreciated up close as the remarkable, wearable sculptures they are: the Tudor-meets-Rihanna outfits of Henry VIII’s wives from “Six,” bedazzled with 18,810 studs; the elaborate roping and beading of corsets for “The Lion King”; Miodrag Guberinic’s Medusa for Heartbeat Opera, with its laser-cut snake vertebrae; the intricate bead work for “Aladdin,” which occupied the beader Polly Kinney every day for nearly six months. Even the gravity-defying undergarments worn by performers of “Wicked,” by the foundation wear specialist and Bra Tenders owner Lori Kaplan, get a shout-out.While “Showstoppers” is letting theater-lovers see the art of Broadway costuming in a new way, members of the Costume Industry Coalition hope that Broadway producers might be similarly enlightened.Recovery from the pandemic could take years, according to the Costume Industry Coalition, a group of more than 50 businesses.Yudi Ela for The New York Times“Some people seem to think these are things your mom can sew at home,” said Sarah Timberlake, the owner of Timberlake Studios. “And, because of that, it doesn’t have to be that expensive. There needs to be a rethink at the highest levels as to what’s regarded a living wage, and what we can ask for, in order to make this work.”Langman sees sexism in the treatment of her field, including when it comes to pay, with women making up 70 percent of its work force, according to the coalition. “We’ve always been looked at as ‘the women,’ because the majority of our industry is women, or gay men,” she said. “That’s just the nature of our business. We’ve never wielded as much power or been given as much respect compared to the guys in the scenic department who can swing a hammer.”There is a wider hope that young people will be drawn to the industry. Many leading costumers are approaching retirement age, and the industry stands to benefit from the fresh eyes of young people who might never have realized these careers existed. “It would be great for them to know that this is an option,” Langman said. “For kids to know this is something that you can do with your life that’s creative and meaningful.”That kind of advocacy is starting to feel like a second job, Langman said, but a necessary one. “By their nature costumers prefer to stay backstage, supporting the people onstage,” she added. “But we’ve been forced to push our faces forward — to let everyone know that we’re here.” More