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    A Puppet Festival Returns to New York, All Grown Up

    After more than a year of pandemic-related crises, Manuel Antonio Morán wanted to give a gift to New York. He envisioned something lighthearted and uplifting, but also thought-provoking and as varied as the city itself. The answer? Puppets.But there’s nothing here to prompt sneers or eye rolling. The International Puppet Fringe Festival NYC, which arrives this week with over 50 shows and events, more than a dozen short films and five accompanying exhibitions, including “Puppets of New York” at the Museum of the City of New York, is far from a kiddie celebration.“The wrong perception in the United States is that puppetry is just for children or to be used for education,” Morán, the festival’s artistic director, said in an interview at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, the programming’s Lower East Side hub. “That’s something I’m fighting every single day.”The works on display in the “Puppets of New York” exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York include Bruce Cannon’s marionette Lady Love Power (inspired by Diana Ross).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRolando, a puppet by Agrippino Manteo whose family immigrated to New York a century ago. They specialized in making complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesAlan Semok’s Howdy Doody marionette (recostumed by Richard Liljeblad).Karsten Moran for The New York TimesRick Lyon’s hand puppet Trekkie Monster from “Avenue Q” and others in the exhibition, which opens Aug. 13, highlight puppetry traditions.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesThis festival, which is offering 60 percent of its performances free (tickets to the rest are $15 each), may help convince the doubters. Although Morán founded Puppet Fringe NYC as a biennial in 2018 — Covid-19 prevented its 2020 edition — this version is almost twice the size of the original and essentially a rebirth. Beginning on Wednesday with the first Puppet Week NYC, which comprises five days of live events, the festival continues through Aug. 31, mostly in virtual form, with shows from countries including India, Israel, Argentina, Spain, South Korea and the Ivory Coast.It “represents the whole immigrant ethos of the Lower East Side, channeled through the lens of these other citizens that are puppets,” said Libertad O. Guerra, the executive director of the Clemente. The center is producing Puppet Fringe NYC with Teatro SEA, the downtown Latino theater Morán started in 1985, and Morán’s own agency, Grupo Morán.This year’s festival will also have workshops in puppet construction, four of them for adults. And for those whose tastes run to the politically barbed or the comically risqué, two grown-ups-only puppet evenings are planned, one of them called the “Bawdy, Naughty Puppet Cabaret/Puppet Slam.”“They’re including elements of burlesque,” Morán said of the slam, to be presented on Saturday by the Puppetry Guild of Greater New York. “There might be a little bit of skin,” he added with a laugh.Herbert and Lulu, the hobo bugs, by Craig Marin and Olga Felgemacher, as they are installed at the Museum of the City of New York.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesInstallation view of Shari Lewis and James Patrick Brymer’s hand puppet Lamb Chop, with costumes by Pat Brymer Creations. On Wednesday, Lewis’s daughter Mallory and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut perhaps this festival’s most novel element is its partnership with the Museum of the City of New York, which will open its 2,500-square-foot exhibition with a sold-out celebration on Thursday evening. “Puppets of New York,” which runs until early April at the uptown Manhattan museum, features photographs, videos, films and sets, as well as more than 60 puppets. They range from cardboard finger models designed by Penny Jones to José A. López Alemán’s 12-foot-tall Titanya, the fairy queen from “Sueño,” Teatro SEA’s Afro-Caribbean version of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”“The main argument of the show uptown is that the history of puppetry in New York City mirrors the demographics of the city,” said Monxo López, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation fellow who curated “Puppets of New York.” And, he noted, “many different puppeteers that reflect that diversity have not been as visible as others. It was important to tell that story of diversity, of visibility, of inclusiveness, in a way that also showed joy and possibility.”Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane’s puppet (called a man whose name is never known) from their 2020 production “Fly Away.”Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo that end, the exhibition includes not only designs by famous masters like Jim Henson and Ralph Lee, but also work by artists like the Manteo family, who brought complex metal-armored Sicilian marionettes when they immigrated to New York a century ago, and Derek Fordjour and Nick Lehane, whose 2020 puppet production, “Fly Away,” featured a nameless young Black man.“My strategy was that each object had to tell as many stories as possible,” said López, who also collaborated with the author and curator Leslee Asch to organize “Puppets of New York: Downtown at the Clemente,” a complementary exhibition on view through Sept. 30. It joins three other art shows that will be there through August: “Teatro SEA’s International Collaborations”; “Murals of Puppetry Around the World,” featuring Alfredo Hernández’s paintings; and “Vince Anthony’s Legacy,” which celebrates the retired founder of the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, to whom the festival is dedicated.The exhibitions reveal a synergy with the festival’s live performances, which will mostly be presented outdoors. (All in-person events require registration and face masks.) Chinese Theater Works, which will deliver puppet dragons and the Chinese judge of the dead to the Clemente’s plaza over four nights in “The Triple Zhongkui Pageant,” will be represented by shadow puppets at the Museum of the City of New York. Also at both those locations will be Lamb Chop, perhaps the most memorable — and feistiest — sock puppet of all time, who appeared on children’s television for 40 years with her ventriloquist co-star, Shari Lewis.“She’s the Velveteen Rabbit of puppets,” said Lewis’s daughter, Mallory Lewis, referring to Margery Williams’s children’s classic about a stuffed animal that becomes real. On Wednesday evening, Mallory Lewis and Lamb Chop will perform “The Shari Lewis Legacy Show,” an interactive production featuring a new, pandemic-related ending. “It’s a tribute to the first responders,” she said in a phone interview.The City Parks Foundation’s production of “Little Red’s Hood” will be performed in both English and Spanish.via Museum of the City of New York Other family-friendly performances will take place all weekend. Bruce Cannon, artistic director of the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park, contributes his talents to the City Parks Foundation’s jazzy production of “Little Red’s Hood,” to be performed in both English (Saturday) and Spanish (Sunday).Besides this fairy tale, in which the Wolf stalks Little Red through Manhattan, Cannon will present his own “Harlem River Drive,” a one-man homage, on Sunday.“It explores how Harlem became Harlem,” he said in a phone interview. While touching on serious topics like racism and the Depression, it also offers joyful music and multiple kinds of puppets, all operated by Cannon. They usually include a marionette inspired by Diana Ross — absent from the festival performance because it’s in “Puppets of New York” — and two of Michael Jackson. (When was the last time you saw a moonwalking marionette?)The festival will host three performances of Deborah Hunt’s “La Macanuda.” Here, an image from a 2019 performance at the National Puppetry Festival in Minneapolis.Richard TermineDeborah Hunt, a New Zealander living in Puerto Rico, will also examine a community’s evolution in three performances of “La Macanuda,” whose title, she said in a phone conversation, means “a large, friendly being.” Hunt, whose work appears in the Teatro SEA exhibition, portrays the character in a puppet that encases her entire body. Accompanied by cutouts, scrolls and a smaller puppet, she enacts a wordless tale — essentially a statement supporting immigrants — in which La Macanuda rescues the victims of a city-destroying ogre. “She’s a kindly departure for me,” said Hunt, whose work often tends toward the macabre.The Clemente’s own neighborhood stars in nightly performances of “Los Grises/The Gray Ones,” Morán’s music-filled show about the community’s elders, and Saturday and Sunday in “Once Upon a Time in the Lower East Side,” which the center commissioned from the Junktown Duende collective, a troupe that creates puppets from recycled materials.Its production is “centered around a tenement where waves of immigrants settled,” said Adam Ende, a member of Junktown Duende. And it’s “specifically about the history of immigrant puppetry.”While the show deals with gentrification and police brutality, it also illustrates the transformation of a blighted space into a community garden. And like Puppet Fringe NYC, it’s a testament to strength amid hard times. “The struggle continues,” Ende said. “And we’re celebrating together, endlessly.” More

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    Taylor Mac’s ‘Joy and Pandemic’ Is Postponed as Covid Cases Surge

    The play, which had been set to have its world premiere in September at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, takes place during the 1918 flu pandemic.Taylor Mac’s “Joy and Pandemic,” a play set during the 1918 flu pandemic, was a bright spot on the horizon at the Magic Theater in San Francisco: a world-premiere production, to open in September for what would have been the theater’s first live audience in 18 months.But now, in a further life-meets-art-meets-life twist, the production, which was announced in March, has been postponed indefinitely because of the Delta-variant-driven surge in Covid cases.“Timing is everything,” Mac said in a statement. “With the rise of infections, this is not the time to engage wholeheartedly with the themes in this work. Our hope is that time will come soon.”Mac is best known for “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music,” a marathon 24-hour performance piece that takes in all of American history through song, refracted through a radical queer lens (and involving some exuberant audience participation). “Joy and Pandemic,” to be directed by Loretta Greco, was partly inspired by some of Mac’s research for that show and had been commissioned by the Magic, a 144-seat nonprofit theater with which Mac has a long association, before the Covid-19 pandemic.The play (in which Mac will not appear) is set in Philadelphia in September 1918, near the end of World War I — on the day of the Fourth Liberty Loan Parade, which became an infamous superspreader event — and also flashes forward to 1951. It is set in a children’s art school and deals in part with Christian Science, in which Mac was raised.In an email on Wednesday, Mac called “Joy and Pandemic” a work “with a lot of humor,” and wrote that the realization that the Delta variant can infect even vaccinated people “would alter the way the audience is able to listen.”But “‘Joy and Pandemic’ isn’t really about a pandemic (just set during one),” Mac said. “It’s more about how belief, hope and faith collide with reality. So our pandemic’s progress, and the way Americans have politicized it, has only deepened the major theme of the play.”The postponement came as some live theater has begun an uncertain return in the San Francisco Bay Area. On Tuesday, “Hamilton” reopened at the Orpheum Theater, where the audience of roughly 2,000 were required to submit proof of vaccination or a negative coronavirus test. And on Wednesday, the Berkeley Repertory Theater pushed back its season opening from Oct. 1 to Nov. 12, and will now open with Charles Mee’s “Wintertime.”Sean San José, the Magic’s recently appointed artistic director, vowed that Mac’s show will, ultimately, go on.“This is, as Taylor Mac has reminded me, a time for ‘radical empathy,’” San José said in a statement. “This piece WILL be premiering at Magic, but with the uncertainty around variant strains, we cannot fully embrace the resonance in the work. We need proper reflection time for this piece to be rightfully presented.” More

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    Elka Schumann, Matriarch of the Bread and Puppet Theater, Dies at 85

    She and her husband ran a Vermont-based troupe that has taken on social and political issues in productions featuring enormous puppets.Elka Schumann, who with her husband, Peter, ran the Bread and Puppet Theater in Vermont, known for its countercultural messaging through avant-garde puppeteering, died on Aug. 1 in a hospital in Newport, Vt. She was 85.The cause was a stroke, her son Max Schumann said.As its name suggests, the Bread and Puppet Theater is dedicated to two types of art: baking and puppetry. Fresh sourdough bread, milled and baked by Mr. Schumann, was distributed to troupe members and the audience while monstrous papier-mâché puppets, propelled by actors inside them, told stories that took on social and political causes like housing inequality and antiwar and anti-draft activism.Among the recurring characters was the troupe’s first antagonist, Uncle Fatso, whose roles included a slumlord and allegorical representations of Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. The troupe’s productions included renditions of plays by the leftist German playwright Bertolt Brecht and shows based on the diaries of the anarchist Emma Goldman.The critic Holland Cotter of The New York Times described a visit to Bread and Puppet Theater in 2007 as surreal, “an impossible trick of stagecraft, a miracle experience.”The Schumanns ran their operation out of a farm in Glover, Vt., in the northeast part of the state, and toured the country in a sky-blue school bus with a mountain landscape, an angel and a beaming sun painted on it. The company made a point of putting on shows in underserved communities and involving children from there in making costumes and sometimes performing.But the troupe was best known for its annual festival, Our Domestic Resurrection Circus, a puppet-dense two-day Woodstock-like affair with a pageant, a parade and politically bent skits about climate change, global consumerism and nuclear annihilation. For many years the event, “a countercultural spectacle,” drew crowds of nearly 40,000 and was the troupe’s main source of funding, John Bell, a puppeteer and theater historian, wrote in a paper.A 1995 performance by members of the Bread and Puppet Theater. For many years they put on a puppet-heavy, Woodstock-like annual festival called Our Domestic Resurrection Circus.Craig Line/Associated PressThe Resurrection Circus started in 1970 but abruptly ended in 1998 after a fight broke out on the grounds resulting in a man’s death.Ms. Schumann was an avowed anticapitalist, and the farm in Glover, complete with livestock and a maple-sugaring operation, became her own quasi-society operating on socialist principles. As the troupe matriarch she kept the books and managed the finances and sometimes performed in shows.She also managed The Bread and Puppet Press, which distributed pamphlets, broadsheets and posters delivering political and cultural commentary. In a manifesto titled “Why Cheap Art,” which she printed on posters, Ms. Schumann wrote: “Art is food. You can’t eat it but it feeds you.”It continued: “Art is like good bread! Art is like green trees! Art is like white clouds in blue sky! Art is cheap! Hurrah!”Ms. Schumann with her husband, Peter, in 2003. As the troupe matriarch she kept the books and managed the finances and sometimes performed in shows.Associated PressElka Leigh Scott was born on Aug. 29, 1935, one of two girls, in Magnitogorsk, a city in Russia about 1,000 miles east of Moscow. Her mother, Maria Ivanova (Dikareva) Scott, was a teacher. Her father, John Scott, was an American who worked as a journalist in the Soviet Union. Her parents had supported the Russian Revolution.When Elka was young, as German forces invaded, the family fled the country, taking a train to Japan and an ocean liner to Hawaii before continuing on to San Francisco. They lived for a time in Pennsylvania, moved to New York City and spent four years in Berlin after the war before returning to the United States in 1949, settling in Ridgefield, Conn.Elka attended Ridgefield High School for three years before transferring to the private Putney School in Vermont, where her grandfather Scott Nearing, a prominent left-wing economist, was a lecturer. She went to Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, graduating with a degree in art history in 1958.In a 2016 oral history with the Vermont Historical Society, Ms. Schumann said that her first years at Bryn Mawr were somewhat disappointing: Her classmates spent more time darning socks for their boyfriends than anything else.In her junior year she studied abroad in Munich, where she met Peter Schumann. They married in 1959 and had five children while living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where they started the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963. The heated political climate of the ’60s made the couple’s work more urgent.Some of the company’s first performances were street parades and protests supporting rent strikes and the labor movement. One protest involved Mr. Schumann parading a puppet of Jesus in Manhattan holding a sign that simply said, “Vietnam.”The family moved to Plainfield, Vt., in 1970, and lived on a farm there for four years until Ms. Schumann’s father purchased the Glover farm that became Bread and Puppet’s home, complete with a museum.In addition to her son Max, Ms. Schumann is survived by her husband; another son, Salih; three daughters, Solvieg, Tamar and Tjasa Maria Schumann; five grandchildren; and her sister, Elena Scott Whiteside.In 2001, Tamar Schumann and the activist DeeDee Halleck made a documentary film titled “AH! The Hopeful Pageantry of Bread and Puppet.”Ms. Schumann was buried in a pine grove on the farm. More

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    ‘Jeopardy!’ Announces Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik as New Hosts

    The long-running game show decided to turn to its own executive producer in succeeding Alex Trebek, who died last year, as the show’s regular host.After the death of the longtime “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek, the game show has decided that it will take not one — but two — people to fill his shoes: Mike Richards, the show’s executive producer, will become its new regular host and the actress Mayim Bialik will take over for prime time specials. More

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    Edinburgh Fringe Is Back. Is a Smaller Festival Better?

    Locals long complained that the event had gotten too big. This year, because of the pandemic, their wish for a reduced Fringe has been granted.EDINBURGH — The drone of bagpipes drifted down the Royal Mile last Saturday, as members of a student theater troupe walked the cobblestones trying to drum up interest in their show.In a normal year at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this central artery of the city’s Old Town district would have been packed tight with young performers and street acts, all competing loudly for the attention of passers-by. But late Saturday morning, there was only one group around.“We were the only ones here yesterday, too,” said Serena Birch, 22, a member of the Aireborne Theater Company, from the University of Leeds. “Usually, it’s like a fight.”Before the pandemic, the Edinburgh Fringe, which opened last Friday and runs through Aug. 30, was surpassed only by the Olympics and the soccer World Cup in terms of audience size. In 2019, the Fringe sold more than three million tickets for 3,841 shows at 323 venues — an increase of 31 percent in five years. Independent researchers estimated that the event generated around $1.4 billion for Scotland’s economy.During the Fringe, the Royal Mile, a central Edinburgh artery, is usually full of performers and street acts jostling for the attention of possible audience members.Iain Masterton/AlamyBut after the 2020 event was canceled, the Fringe was plunged into financial peril. A tentative comeback this year, buoyed by a $1.4 million government bailout, will see fewer than 850 shows presented — a third of them online. Uncertainty around the easing of coronavirus restrictions in Scotland, where limits on audience sizes were in place until Monday, seems to have kept performers and spectators away.This year’s slim, yet typically weird and wonderful, program features stand-up comics, like Daniel Sloss and Jason Byrne; a choral drama about migration staged on an out-of-town beach; and an educational walking tour, led by pelvic physiotherapist, titled, “Viva Your Vulva.”Established in 1947 as a free-spirited alternative to the highbrow Edinburgh International Festival, the Fringe is built on the principle of open access for performers, meaning any acts that pay a registration fee can present a show. It is one of several major festivals that take place in Edinburgh in August, but it is by far the largest.For some in a city with a population of only around 500,000, a break from the Fringe last year, followed by a much smaller festival this year — one that doesn’t clog up roads and sidewalks, or cause short-term rents to skyrocket — has been welcomed.Shulah Stewart, 35, a home care manager, said last year’s cancellation gave locals “an opportunity to just enjoy the city in summer, in a way that they can’t ordinarily.”And even the Fringe’s organizers say the event had become too big.In an interview, Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of the Fringe’s coordinating body, said it was time for a “serious conversation” in the coming months about how to build back in a smaller and more sustainable way. She said that “some kind of regulation” of the Fringe’s open-access policy could be considered for future editions.“Some kind of regulation” of the Fringe’s open-access policy could be considered for future editions, said Shona McCarthy, the chief executive of its coordinating body.Jane BarlowWhile theater and comedy make up most of its program, the Fringe has expanded over the years to embrace a broad range of acts. McCarthy said that some items on the schedule — like open-top bus tours and wine tastings — stretched the definition of performing arts. The Fringe needs to “be brave” and question why events like those have become such a huge part of the festival, she said.Yet the owners of Underbelly, an events producer that runs some of the Fringe’s busiest venues, said in a joint interview that a move away from the open-access policy would hamper the event’s fragile recovery. “As soon as the Fringe became closed access, then a new fringe would just start up alongside it,” said Charlie Wood, an Underbelly director.“No one can control the festival,” he said. “It’s organic.”Ed Bartlam, Wood’s business partner, said many locals’ criticism of the Fringe’s size was based on an “urban myth” that the event was primarily for people from outside Edinburgh and Scotland.According to a Fringe spokeswoman, people from Scotland made up more than half of the audience members at the 2019 event, and Edinburgh residents around 35 percent. About 7 percent came from outside Britain, she added.McCarthy said the digital hybrid model for this year’s festival, with a mix of online and in-person events, would remain for future editions so that audiences and performers could take part in the Fringe “without necessarily having to travel here.”Underbelly’s owners said they would not be presenting any online events in this year’s program. They “can sometimes work,” Wood said, “but you have to spend a lot of money on it, and therefore it doesn’t work for this festival.”Nerea Bello, left, Julia Taudevin and and Mairi Morrison. They are performing in “Move,” a choral drama about migration.Jeff J Mitchell/Getty ImagesOut and about in Edinburgh, the question of whether a bigger Fringe was better drew a range of responses.Claire Mackie, 41, an animator, said the event’s usual “noise and chaos” never used to bother her, even when she lived close to the Royal Mile. “I liked the buzz,” she said, adding that this year’s Fringe seemed “subdued.”Jackie Honisz, 70, a retiree, sitting in her garden beside the Pleasance Courtyard venue complex, said she didn’t miss the Fringe last year, and didn’t want it to return to its previous scale: “Because of Covid,” she said, and because festivalgoers would regularly leave trash in the streets around her home.The comedian Josie Long, 39, made her Fringe debut at 17 and has returned as a performer for 16 of the past 22 years, including this year with a work-in-progress show for limited, socially distanced audiences at the 100-capacity Monkey Barrel Comedy. In a phone interview, she said she felt like this year’s festival was “just about enough Fringe that people can handle psychologically.”But Long added that she hoped the festival would one day return to its sprawling prepandemic proportions. “Making fewer opportunities doesn’t tend to stop the arts being the preserve of privileged people,” she said.“I can’t wait until it’s in a position where I can say it’s annoying again,” she added. More

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    Late Night Weighs In on Andrew Cuomo’s Resignation

    “It’s gonna be tough for Cuomo. With a track record like this, his only future is either president or Supreme Court justice,” Jimmy Fallon joked.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.Exiting the Governor’s MansionAndrew Cuomo’s resignation as New York’s governor was the talk of late night on Tuesday.“It’s gonna be tough for Cuomo,” Jimmy Fallon said. “With a track record like this, his only future is either president or Supreme Court justice.”“New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced today that he will resign amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment. And this is, frankly, amazing — he made the announcement via book.” — SETH MEYERS“But during his remarks he said it was best that he step aside — and then every woman in the room took two steps aside.” — JIMMY FALLON“Don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out. But if it does, that door should also resign.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“That’s right, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today that he will resign amid multiple allegations of sexual harassment, so tune in to CNN tonight for, I don’t know, a rerun of ‘The History of the Sitcom.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Two Weeks’ Notice Edition)“For now, Cuomo’s still governor, because, for reasons I do not understand, Cuomo’s resignation will take effect in 14 days. Evidently, he gave himself two weeks’ notice.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I’m sorry, is this really a two-week-notice type of situation?” — JIMMY FALLON“Cuomo’s replacement will be Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul. And this is — yeah, this is strange. Right after she was announced as New York’s next governor, CNN offered a prime-time show to her sister.” — JIMMY FALLON“Hochul will be taking the seat vacated by Cuomo — hopefully, after putting a towel down first.” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingMarlon Wayans, a “Tonight Show” guest, said he quit doing stand-up for 20 years after Chris Rock heckled him.What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightSarah Silverman will kick off a two-night stint as a guest host on “Jimmy Kimmel Live.”Also, Check This OutJennifer Hudson, with Marc Maron, left, and Marlon Wayans, learned to play piano for “Respect.” Quantrell D. Colbert/MGMJennifer Hudson did a deep dive into her friend Aretha Franklin’s past to portray the Queen of Soul in “Respect.” More

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    'West Side Story' Will Return $10 Million Federal Aid

    The Broadway revival received federal aid through the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program. But the show decided not to reopen, and said it would return the money.Earlier this summer “West Side Story,” the ambitious, avant-garde-tinged revival of the classic musical, got some significant relief: $10 million in federal funding. It was the maximum amount allowed under the new Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative, which devoted $16 billion in federal aid to help music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses recover from the pandemic.But even with that aid in its war chest, the show announced this week that it would not return to Broadway. Asked about the grant on Tuesday, the show said it would give back the money.“‘West Side Story’ will be returning the entirety of the S.V.O.G. grant with the hope that another production will be able to use the funds,” a spokesman for the show, Rick Miramontez, said in a statement.The revival — which was reimagined by the director Ivo van Hove and the choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker — opened to mixed reviews in February 2020, less than a month before the coronavirus outbreak shut down Broadway. While it was closed, its lead producer, Scott Rudin, announced in April 2021 that he would step back from active roles in his Broadway productions after he came under fire for a long history of abusive behavior; he said that he hoped the show would reopen without him.Federal records showed that Danish San Juan Limited Liability Company, which court records said had been formed by Rudin to operate “West Side Story,” had been approved to receive $10 million under the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant initiative. Documents posted by the Small Business Administration, which runs the grant program, say that the federal funding is intended for “entities that are currently operating or intend to resume full operations.”“West Side Story” had grossed $1.5 million in ticket sales the week before the pandemic closed it down. Miramontez did not respond when asked to elaborate on why the show had decided to close, despite the federal aid.During the long shutdown, and with the prospects for rebounding uncertain, Broadway shows, nightclubs and arts institutions across the city jumped at the prospect of federal relief. This spring, after a long wait and many hiccups, more than 10,000 music clubs, theaters and other live-event businesses across the country got a share of a $16 billion federal grant, records show.The records also show that many of New York’s best known cultural institutions got millions of dollars in funding, as did Broadway musicals like “Hamilton” and “Hadestown,” which plan to open next month.Stacy Cowley contributed reporting. More

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    Lend Us Your Ears, and Don’t Forget Your Farm Boots

    Seeing a play at Willow Wisp Organic Farm in Damascus, Pa., has a simple but highly recommended dress code: sturdy shoes.At the farm, which recently finished a run of a site-specific play about climate change, the boundless stage includes a courtyard lined with hydrangeas, greenhouses and a field of flowers. Over four nights last week, audience members trekked the outdoors there, walking from scene to scene, as the actors, musicians and stilt walkers performed in vibrant, whimsical costumes.The performance is the second installment of a decade-long series, “Dream on the Farm,” in which the Farm Arts Collective, whose home is on the 30 acres, plans to produce one play a year centered on climate change.“This is an intense and troubled time and as an organic farmer and theater maker, we’ve got to keep making work about this issue,” said Tannis Kowalchuk, the ensemble’s artistic director, who started the farm — which sits just across the river from New York — with her husband, Greg Swartz. (They sell their wares at the Union Square and Grand Army Plaza farmers’ markets.)Tannis Kowalchuk, artistic director of Farm Arts Collective, directed the show. She is also a co-owner of Willow Wisp Organic Farm with her husband, Greg Swartz.Jess Beveridge, left, and Annie Hat at a rehearsal in June. The show was the second of 10 annual plays about climate change that the collective is planning to perform.A rehearsal inside a Farm Arts Collective greenhouse on a rainy day. The collective is a group of artists and farmers. This year’s play transported guests into an “Alice in Wonderland”-esque fantasy in which two scientists, the astronomer Carl Sagan and the biologist Lynn Margulis, are brought back from the dead to help save life on Earth from the climate disaster. Audience members watch as Sagan encounters eccentric characters representing the atmosphere and the hydrosphere, as well as a man trying to find a way to escape the planet through space travel. The rest of the group followed the Margulis character on the other side of the farm. (The audience was split into two to avoid overcrowding.)At the end of the show, the audience of about 80 people received chilled cucumber soup made from ingredients grown on the land.Audience members walked from scene to scene, including through a corridor of painted fabric, essentially going on a walking tour of the farm.Audience members made their way to the next act.An assistant director’s notes and a snack from the harvest table.Waiting in the wings: Daniel Lendzain chilled out before making his entrance on opening night.It was the job of Simon Kowalchuk-Swartz (son of Kowalchuk and Swartz), to transport the musical instruments. The pianist Doug Rogers, left, also helped compose original music, and the guitarist Melissa Bell helped write the play.But the reality of the pandemic burst the fantasy bubble on Sunday after one of the people in the accompanying band tested positive for the coronavirus, despite having been vaccinated, and the arts collective decided to cancel the fifth and final performance.Kowalchuk said she hopes the play will be performed again, though. She has imagined bringing it to New York City, where the ensemble might be able to find a new stage in a park or botanical garden.The “Alice in Wonderland”-esque play posed a question: Is it better to look at climate change through a wide angle lens or a microscope?Marguerite Boissonnault played the character Fungus.Gregg Erickson played the character Hydrosphere.Cast members, including Hudson Williams-Eynon, center, in white, faced off in a tug-of-war.Williams-Eynon, Beveridge and the rest of the cast took a bow after a performance. More