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    Kenneth Welsh, Memorable as a Villain on ‘Twin Peaks,’ Dies at 80

    In a long career onstage (including Broadway), in movies and on television, he ranged across genres, from sketch comedy to science fiction.Kenneth Welsh, a prolific Canadian stage and screen actor who was best known for his portrayal of the murderous, unhinged villain Windom Earle on the hit early-1990s television series “Twin Peaks,” died on May 5 at his home in Sanford, Ontario. He was 80.His longtime agent, Pam Winter, said the cause was cancer.Mr. Welsh appeared in 10 episodes of “Twin Peaks” in its second season, playing Earle, the vengeful, maniacal adversary and former F.B.I. partner of the protagonist, Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan).The series, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, follows Cooper as he investigates the murder of the high school student Laura Palmer in the seemingly sleepy town of Twin Peaks, Wash.Earle featured in some of the darker, more sadistic scenes and story lines in a series that was known for bending genres, mixing horror and surrealism with soapy and sometimes comic elements.In the years following its cancellation by ABC in 1991 and its cliffhanger ending, “Twin Peaks” developed a cult following and spawned a prequel film, “Fire Walk With Me” (1992) and returned for limited-series that premiered on Showtime in 2017. Welsh’s character did not appear in either project.Mr. Welsh was cast in the role after visiting the set in Washington State and meeting with Robert Engels, one of the show’s producers, and Mr. Frost.Mr. Engels “knew that I was a little eccentric, and he knew that as an actor I would go this way and that way,” Mr. Welsh said in an interview for the entertainment website 25YL, adding: “He just kind of knew that I was crazy and that I was perfect for Windom. I guess?”Mr. Welsh said it was he who successfully pitched the idea of having Earle wear different disguises as he stalked Cooper and various other characters.Mr. Welsh and Stockard Channing in the 1997 Lincoln Center production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Welsh thrived playing off-kilter characters, like Larry Loomis, the Sovereign Protector of the Order of the Lynx, a dying fraternal order at the center of “Lodge 49,” a short-lived comedy-drama series seen on AMC in 2018 and 2019.But in his more than 240 movie and television roles, he ranged widely across genres, including sketch comedy (Amazon’s recent revival of “The Kids in the Hall”), science fiction (“Star Trek: Discovery” in 2020), family fare (“Eloise at the Plaza,” a 2003 Disney TV movie) and historical dramas; he played President Harry S. Truman twice, in the television movies “Hiroshima” (1995) and “Haven” (2001), and Thomas Edison in the 1998 TV movie “Edison: The Wizard of Light,” for which he received an Emmy nomination.His notable film notable roles included the vice president of the United States in Roland Emmerich’s “The Day After Tomorrow” (2004), about the onset of an ecological catastrophe, and the father of Katharine Hepburn (played by Cate Blanchett) in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning “The Aviator” (2004).Mr. Welsh won five Canadian Screen Awards, four for his television work and one for his supporting role in the 1995 film “Margaret’s Museum,” a drama set in a coal-mining town on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. In 2003 he was named a member of the Order of Canada.Kenneth Welsh was born on March 30, 1942, in Edmonton, Alberta, to Clifford and Lillian (Sawchuk) Welsh. His father worked for the Canadian National Railway for more than 35 years, and his mother worked at a dress shop.Kenneth was the inaugural class president at Bonnie Doon Composite High School in Edmonton. He attended the University of Alberta, where he majored in drama, and then the National Theater School of Canada, graduating in 1965.He went on to rack up many credits on the stage, including, early on, in Shakespearean productions at the Stratford Festival in Ontario. Notably, he starred with Kathy Bates in the original Off Broadway production of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune” in 1987 and was seen on Broadway in Tom Stoppard’s “The Real Thing” (1984), directed by Mike Nichols, and at Lincoln Center in a production of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” (1997), with Glenn Close.His last stage performance was in Dylan Thomas’s “Under Milk Wood” at the Coal Mine Theater in Toronto in 2021.Drawing on his encyclopedic memory of Shakespeare’s works, Mr. Welsh was a creator, with the composer Ray Leslee, of “Stand Up Shakespeare,” a “motley musical,” as it billed itself, that opened Off Broadway in 1987. The production, also directed by Mr. Nichols, involved audience members, who would suggest Shakespeare characters, scenes or plays for Mr. Welsh to recite from memory. In the following decades he would sporadically revive “Stand Up Shakespeare” as a signature piece in various locations in the United States and Canada.Mr. Welsh, right in a 2007 episode of the science fiction series “Stargate: Atlantis” with, from left, Joe Flanigan and David Hewlett. He ranged widely across genres in his long career.Sci Fi ChannelMr. Welsh’s marriages to Corinne Farago and Donna Haley ended in divorce. He is survived by his wife, Lynne McIlvride, a visual artist, and a son, Devon, a musician, from his first marriage.In the final phase of his career, Mr. Welsh shifted his attention to independent projects and young filmmakers. His last film was “Midnight at the Paradise,” a drama directed by Vanessa Matsui, now in postproduction. Alongside Alan Hawco and Liane Balaban, he played the key supporting role of a movie critic nearing the end of his life.On set, Ms. Matsui said, Mr. Welsh captivated his colleagues.“He was always telling the cast and crew funny stories from his life, and he blew us all away with his performance and grace,” she said in an email. “I’ll never forget shooting this one scene with him and Allan Hawco, and you could hear a pin drop because the crew was just so drawn in by his performance. It was one of those special, intangible moments on set where you knew you just captured magic.” More

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    The Other Affair in ‘Conversations With Friends’

    In the Hulu adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, a large and tasteful home becomes an object of infatuation.“I was a big fan of seeing the insides of other people’s houses, especially people who were slightly famous like Melissa,” Frances, the narrator of Sally Rooney’s “Conversations With Friends,” says early on in the novel.Homeownership is a remote concept for Frances, a millennial college student in Dublin who writes and performs spoken word poetry. She’s used to sharing a flat with a roommate and not interested in making a lot of money. But when she finds herself romantically entangled with Melissa and her husband, Nick, their tasteful material life becomes an object of infatuation.In the new Hulu series based on the book, the seaside Victorian belonging to Nick (played by Joe Alwyn) and Melissa (Jemima Kirke) doesn’t disappoint. The interior walls, made of a textured concrete-like material, are a moody gray-blue, and the space is dotted with sprays of eucalyptus, Irish-made ceramics, sheepskin throws and large, artistic light fixtures.The dining nook seems pulled from the pages of a recent Architectural Digest: a plant-filled space with weathered white brick walls and several doors made of large glass panes set in rectangular steel frames, leading to a courtyard.“Your house is very cool,” Frances (Alison Oliver) says over dinner. Bobbi, Frances’s charismatic best friend and ex (Sasha Lane), says: “I love it. You two are such grown-ups.” Buying a home remains a “symbol of being an adult,” said Dak Kopec, a professor in the school of architecture at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who specializes in environmental psychology. But millennials — saddled by student debt and slow to marry or have children — have entered the real estate market more gradually than earlier generations, and the ones now ready to buy are finding low supply and soaring prices. It’s no wonder they’ve become HGTV-devouring, Zillow-surfing daydreamers.Nick and Melissa — who likely considers herself part of the cuspy “Xennial” generation — have achieved the dream of homeownership that eludes many millennials. And the show turns their dwelling into a symbol of anxiety and aspiration.Home decorating has a way of illuminating the gulf between the life you want and the life you have, or the one that you can afford. You may find yourself staring down impossible questions about what your days will look like in two, five or 10 years.“I’ve heard so many couples fight over big rug purchases,” said Aelfie Oudghiri, the 36-year-old founder and creative director of Aelfie, a home décor brand. “It’s this defining feature of their home that’s supposed to indicate what kind of people they are and what kind of future they want to have.” She sees another kind of anxiety crop up in single people: “They don’t want to commit to something because they don’t know if their future hypothetical partner will like it.”Anna Rackard, the show’s production designer, and Sophie Phillips, the set decorator, aimed to create a version of a wealthy person’s house that wouldn’t repulse Frances.HuluFor Frances, Melissa’s home — and according to Anna Rackard, the show’s production designer, “it always felt like we were decorating for Melissa,” rather than Nick — is deeply appealing, despite her outward dismissiveness of the bourgeois lifestyle that it signifies. (Her evident embarrassment when Bobbi tells Nick and Melissa that “Frances is a communist” suggests that her dedication to this ideology isn’t terribly fixed.)Melissa’s spacious office, which Frances peers into while briefly unattended, is littered with books. To a young writer accustomed to working from her bedroom, it’s heaven.For Ms. Rackard and Sophie Phillips, the set decorator, the goal was to create a version of a wealthy person’s house that wouldn’t repulse Frances — that, instead, she’d find cool and aspirational. To make the space feel younger and less fussy, they used plywood for the kitchen doors and decorated the walls with prints and photographs, rather than paintings. Ms. Phillips and Ms. Rackard wanted a spare but slightly rock ’n’ roll look, with furniture and home goods that would make a strong statement on their own.Ms. Rackard and Ms. Phillips see Melissa as someone who is “effortlessly cool,” who has an instinctive sense of style when it comes to putting together a home. But in her considered approach to setting a table with matching colored glassware and bowllike plates, as she does for Frances and Bobbi, you could also read fastidiousness or insecurity.“Melissa is slightly intimidated by Frances, in a way, by her beauty and youth and where she is in this stage of her life, which enables her to be quite carefree,” Ms. Phillips said. “Melissa is at the stage where she’s thinking, ‘Where am I going?’ It makes her very self-conscious in her decisions, to create this ‘perfect’ environment.”According to Samuel Gosling, a psychologist who studies the relationship between people and their living spaces, one of the central functions of our home environments is as an ‘identity claim.’ “These are deliberate statements we want to make about ourselves to others, saying: ‘This is who I am,’” Dr. Gosling said. People generally feel happier when others see them as they see themselves, he said, citing research by Bill Swann, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin, so much so that being seen in an overly positive light can make us feel misunderstood.This may explain why it pains Melissa so much to feel “pathetic and conventional” in Frances’s eyes, a characterization out of step with the stylish, cultured person her home reveals her to be. It would explain why some people may have mixed feelings about inviting people to homes they share with roommates or others, whose décor choices they fear might be mistaken for their own. For people in their 20s and 30s, the desire to be seen accurately through design choices may be heightened, and perhaps warped, by the desire to perform our style for the public on social media. “Our homes started to look more and more like sets,” Ms. Oudghiri said, noting that bright blocks of color, zany rugs and groovy, selfie-friendly mirrors are often used to make a statement on social media. The soft, unchallenging look known as the “millennial aesthetic,” heavily marketed as a signifier of good taste, often crops up in these spaces. Among young men, the Eames lounger has become a status symbol akin to hard-to-find street wear, telegraphing success to the outside world.Melissa’s muted house doesn’t seem to contain any terrazzo or pastel pink, but it does hit certain design trends that have received the millennial seal of approval. Rebecca Atwood, a 37-year-old artist and textile designer, identified a few: enveloping wall color (that moody gray), goods purchased from brands and makers with a story (those Irish ceramics), an indoor-outdoor feeling (the greenhouse-like dining nook). Ms. Rackard noted that the conservatory’s fashionable glass doors, while perfect for the warm weather of Los Angeles, would be uncommon in Dublin, where double-paneled windows are more suited to the climate. Such is Melissa’s commitment to style, to what people think.Ms. Oudghiri, for her part, isn’t putting too much stock in her own décor. She has been renting a furnished home in Los Angeles decorated by someone with a taste for “rococo looking” furniture.“Interiors matter, to a certain extent. But I’m not on Instagram. Nobody sees the interior of my house, except for my friends,” she said. “As long as my couch is comfortable, I’m happy.” More

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    With the Volt Festival, the Playwright Karen Hartman Comes Home

    59E59 Theaters is putting a spotlight on a midcareer artist whose work has seldom been seen locally.“I’m feeling a tremendous sense of visibility,” the playwright Karen Hartman said. “And it’s not when I expected to be visible.”Visible through a Zoom window, Hartman was speaking from her Brooklyn home the morning after the world premiere of her play “New Golden Age.” Just a few days before, two of her other plays, “The Lucky Star” and “Goldie, Max and Milk,” had celebrated their New York premieres, as part of Volt, a new festival from 59E59 Theaters. (All three productions are being presented simultaneously through June 12.)Hartman, 51, a playwright with a robust career in regional theater, described being chosen as the inaugural playwright for Volt as “transformative.” The festival, intended to run yearly, is meant to highlight a midcareer artist whose work has seldom been seen locally.“It was really important that the playwright not be a usual suspect,” said Val Day, the artistic director of 59E59, who dreamed up the festival. “It had to be somebody who was more widely produced in the regions, who had a fairly large canon of work, which deserved to have eyes on it in New York.”Claire Siebers, left, and Mahira Kakkar in “New Golden Age,” about two sisters fighting for in-person connections in a big tech dystopia.James LeynseHartman fit the bill. Raised in San Diego, she studied literature at Yale and then enrolled at the Yale School of Drama. Shortly after graduation, several theaters produced her play “Gum,” including New York’s WP Theater, then known as Women’s Project. Reviews were mixed, and while she soon became a regular in the regionals, subsequent New York productions proved rare. In one week, Volt, which Hartman described as a “three-night Hanukkah,” changed that.“It has transformed my own story about what has been going on with my work all these years,” she said.From left, Nina Hellman, Mike Shapiro, Alexandra Silber, Dale Soules, Skye Alyssa Friedman and Alexa Shae Niziak in “The Lucky Star,” which premiered in 2017 as “The Book of Joseph.”Carol Rosegg“The Lucky Star,” which premiered in 2017 as “The Book of Joseph” and is presented here by the Directors Company, animates a trove of real letters written by a Polish Jewish family in the early years of World War II to the one member who escaped to America. “Goldie, Max and Milk,” from 2014 and produced here by MBL Productions, describes the unlikely bond between a queer single mother and an Orthodox Jewish lactation consultant in Brooklyn. “New Golden Age,” produced by Primary Stages and structured like a Greek tragedy, imagines the dark consequences of an extremely online future as two sisters struggle to connect IRL.Day, who had intended to debut Volt in 2020, felt that these plays resonated even more after the theatrical shutdown. “All of her plays are about people desperately trying to connect with each other and the difficulty in doing that, which we all can relate to,” Day said.Hartman put it differently, with a touch of knowing irony.“There is a thread of grief that runs through all these plays,” Hartman said. “It’s not the sexiest sell.”In a spirited hourlong chat, Hartman discussed her career, her plays, what the festival means to her and what it might mean to other writers. “What this festival is going to do over time is create these questions in the minds of people: Who else is out there? Who should be seen in New York? That’s the power of it,” she said.Shayna Small, left, and Blair Baker in “Goldie, Max and Milk,” about an unlikely bond between two women.Carol RoseggThese are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you become a playwright?This displaced New Yorker named Deborah Salzer started the California Young Playwrights Festival, an offshoot of the National Young Playwrights Festival. She started it when I was 14 years old. I acted in the first season. Then I was like, “Oh, I could write a play.” I wrote two plays in high school that were produced in this festival. I got kind of mainline drugged as a playwright very early.What were the questions that animated you back then?Honestly, I was a kid who liked acting. And when I went to pick scenes for girls, there just weren’t any. I felt like the roles really sucked. And it felt so small, trying to center myself in the girls that existed, that I actually just started writing for there to be parts to play. My first play was about mothers and daughters. My second play was about a girl who gets obsessed with Sylvia Plath.Not long after you finished grad school, regional theaters began to stage “Gum.” The Women’s Project staged it, too. What was that like?I felt very excited and kind of raw. It’s a vulnerable thing to write about anything personal. And that play is about policing the sexuality of girls and women in a violent way. I’d written that play very swiftly, in my last year of graduate school. But it had come out of some real-life people I had encountered when traveling in Egypt, so it was a thrilling level of potential responsibility.You went on to have a thriving career in regional theater, but you had far fewer productions in New York, though you live in New York.Most writers don’t get their plays done at all. And almost nothing I’ve written has gone unproduced. I’ve worked with amazing people and been asked onto incredible projects. But in this sense of the cultural conversation, New York is an amplifier. So if I’m a mission-driven person, and my mission is to amplify voices, especially those of girls and women, and I myself am not amplified, then I am not doing my job. Also my work almost always involves getting on a plane and living by myself in artist housing. This festival is the first time that my own community, my friends, my writers’ group, my colleagues can see my work. On a personal level, that matters tremendously.Why do you think your plays haven’t found a home here?Generally, the one narrow path from the early-career buzz that I was fortunate to enjoy with “Gum” toward a steady midcareer presence in New York is a rave in The Times. “Gum” did not get that rave. So my road has been longer, and further afield. The sense I got was, “We don’t know where to put you.” The stories I tell, which are stories that I think a lot of people want to see, are off base, but not in a particularly cool way, in a way that’s emotional. I live in emotion. That’s my home.What is it like having two New York premieres and one world premiere all at once?The companies are exquisite — the level of artistry, these directors. I’ve described the nitty-gritty of it as like having triplets. They were all in previews at exactly the same time. I called Lucy Thurber, who had this festival of her plays at Rattlestick. She’s the only person I knew who had gone through something like this. She was like, “Trust. And check in with every director every day.”What do you think unites these plays?They’re all plays about how our intimate bonds meet our political moments and meet the laws of our time, but in very radically different times and contexts. How do we become the people in the relationships that we have capacity for? And how do our times work with us and against us? I keep coming back to this question of how do we get the deep, deep closeness that we need. Or maybe I’m the only person who needs this. More

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    Broadway Theaters Will Require Masks at Least Through June 30

    Broadway theaters will continue to require ticketholders to wear masks at least through June 30, industry leaders said Friday.The Broadway League, a trade association representing theater owners and producers, said the owners and operators of all 41 theaters had agreed to the extension of the mask policy. The decision comes at a time when New York City has declared a “high Covid alert.”Earlier this week, city officials strongly recommended medical-grade masks in public indoor settings, but Mayor Eric Adams has rejected reimposing mask mandates. But a number of performing arts venues have opted to stick with more restrictive policies in an effort to limit the spread of the virus.“The safety and security of our cast, crew, and audience has been our top priority,” the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin, said in a statement. “By maintaining our audience masking requirement through at least the month of June, we intend to continue that track record of safety for all, despite the Omicron subvariants.”Most Broadway theaters this month stopped checking whether patrons are vaccinated; only a handful of Broadway theaters operated by nonprofits are continuing to enforce a vaccine requirement for patrons.But mask requirements have been in place in Broadway theaters since they reopened last summer, and the industry has been renewing that requirement on a month-by-month basis. There have been occasional confrontations over the policy — earlier this month the actress Patti LuPone, who is starring in a revival of the musical “Company,” rebuked an attendee at a post-show talkback for the patron’s refusal to fully cover her mouth and nose with a mask. But for the most part, compliance has been high.There are 35 shows running on Broadway, and last week 246,003 people attended a performance. And if this year follows prepandemic patterns, attendance will pick up over the next few weeks with an increase in tourism after Memorial Day. More

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    Stephen Colbert Waxes Nostalgic About George W. Bush

    “Dubya and I had so many good times together back at the old ‘Colbert Report,’” he said. “I made so much fun of him, and he gave me so many reasons to do that.” 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.Back to the FutureDuring a speech in Dallas on Wednesday, former President George W. Bush misspoke while talking about Russia’s war in Ukraine, referring to it as “a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”On Thursday’s “Late Show,” Stephen Colbert said the slip of the tongue had him feeling “a little nostalgic,” calling Bush “a man who I spent many happy years pretending to like.” (On “The Colbert Report,” his long-running previous show, Colbert assumed the persona of an egotistical conservative TV commentator.)“Dubya and I, for about 10 years, had so many good times together back at the old ‘Colbert Report.’ I made so much fun of him, and he gave he so many reasons to do that.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Jiminy Christmas! The one phrase he definitely should never utter for the rest of his life. It’s like he’s thinking about it all the time, and it just popped out.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Oof. That’s like your wife asking if you’re hungry and saying, ‘I could cheat. I mean eat. I could eat with my mistress.’” — SETH MEYERS“I hate when I mix up my unprovoked invasions.” — JAMES CORDEN“Maybe Bush is going to start admitting to everything he’s been holding back: [imitating Bush] ‘Also, I just want to say: My grandkids are the ones who paint the watercolors; Dick Cheney is a Terminator sent from the future; and there are no human-animal hybrids. I saw the Phillie Phanatic with his head off, and I freaked out.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Tanking Stock Edition)“Some business news, it’s been a rough couple of months for the economy and I saw that yesterday was the stock market’s worst day in over two years. Yeah, stocks fell so fast, the oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling at CNBC.” — JIMMY FALLON“Experts say if this keeps up, every Merrill Lynch office is going to become a Spirit Halloween.” — JIMMY FALLON“Things are so bad, they replaced the stock exchange closing bell with the losing sound from ‘Price is Right.’” — JIMMY FALLON“The Dow took a drubbing after investors were alarmed by disappointing earnings from Target, Walmart and Lowe’s. There’s only one solution: release the strategic reserve of dads running little errands. Go get some batteries, guys! Buy some spackle! The little bucket — the old one’s probably dried out by now. Just putter around the paint aisle and pick out swatches. She says she wants yellow, but you don’t know which one! Remember, satin shine! It should glow, but not glisten, OK? It should have sheen, but not shimmer. So just buy one can of each. Your country needs you!” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Bits Worth WatchingDesus and Mero threw Rihanna a baby shower, with help from the celebrity party planner Karleen Roy and the CBS newscaster Maurice DuBois.Also, Check This OutFrom left, Harry Hadden-Paton, Laura Carmichael, Tuppence Middleton and Allen Leech in “Downton Abbey: A New Era.”Ben Blackall/Focus Features“Downton Abbey: A New Era” is familiar territory for fans missing Lady Mary and company. More

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    Lorraine Hansberry Statue to Be Unveiled in Times Square

    A life-size likeness of the pioneering playwright will be unveiled in June as part of a new initiative to honor her legacy.When the Los Angeles-based artist Alison Saar was commissioned a little over four years ago to sculpt a statue of the playwright Lorraine Hansberry, she had just one thought: “Am I the right person for the job?”“I don’t really work with likenesses,” said Saar, 66, whose artwork focuses on the African diaspora and Black female identity. “But they said, ‘No, no, we want it to be more of a portrait of her passion and who she was beyond a playwright.’”The request had come from Lynn Nottage, the two-time Pulitzer-winning playwright, as part of an initiative she was developing with Julia Jordan, the executive director of the Lilly Awards, which recognize the work of women in theater. The Lorraine Hansberry Initiative was designed to honor Hansberry, who was the first Black woman to have a show produced on Broadway.“She’s just part of my foundational DNA as an artist,” Nottage said in a phone interview on Wednesday. “Throughout my career, if I needed to look to structure, or storytelling, or inspiration, I could go to ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ this perfect piece of literature.”The statue, a life-size likeness of Hansberry surrounded by five movable bronze chairs that represent aspects of her life, and, Saar said, invites people “to sit and think with her,” will be unveiled in Times Square on June 9. The event will include performances and remarks from Nottage and Hansberry’s 99-year-old older sister, Mamie Hansberry. It will remain in Times Square through June 12, and then begin a tour of the country over the next year or so on its way to its permanent home in Chicago, Hansberry’s birthplace.Lorraine Hansberry in 1959, the year she made history when she became the first Black woman to have a play reach Broadway. David Attie/Getty ImagesBut, Nottage said, they also wanted a more forward-looking way to honor Hansberry, leading to the initiative’s second prong: A scholarship to cover the living expenses for two female or nonbinary graduate student writers of color who create for the stage, television or film. Beginning next year, the $2.5 million scholarship fund will give its first recipients $25,000 per year, generally for up to three years — the typical length of a graduate program. (LaTanya Richardson Jackson, who was nominated for a Tony Award for her role as Lena Younger in the 2014 Broadway revival of “Raisin,” the Dramatists Guild and the National Endowment for the Arts are among the initial donors.)“So many graduate programs for writers at elite institutions like Juilliard, Yale and Brown now offer free tuition,” Nottage said, “but you see people not taking a place because they can’t afford to take three years off to pay for rent, computers, food and travel, which could be, on average, anywhere from $15,000 to $35,000 per year.”“It would’ve made a huge difference for me,” Nottage said of the scholarship fund. “When I was at the Yale School of Drama, one of the actors told me I could get public assistance to pay for groceries and electricity, and when I showed the welfare department in New Haven my financial aid package — I was doing work-study — they were like, ‘Oh, yeah, you’re living below the poverty line.’”Hansberry, who was just 34 when she died of pancreatic cancer in 1965, is best known for “Raisin,” a semi-autobiographical family drama that tells the story of an African American family living under racial segregation on the South Side of Chicago. The play, which opened on Broadway in 1959 with Sidney Poitier in the cast, would go on to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle award for best play, making Hansberry, at 29, the youngest American and first Black recipient of the award.The life-size statue shows Hansberry holding a flame. It will be surrounded by five movable bronze chairs that represent aspects of her life and work. Nolwen Cifuentes for The New York TimesHansberry was also active in political and social movements, including the fight for civil rights, regularly writing articles about racial, economic and gender inequality for the Black newspaper Freedom. She also wrote letters signed “L.H.N.” or “L.N.” — for Lorraine Hansberry Nemiroff (her husband’s last name) — to The Ladder, a monthly national lesbian publication. In those letters, she wrestled with issues she faced as a lesbian in a heterosexual marriage and the pressure on some lesbians to conform to a more feminine dress code.Her older sister, Mamie, recalls Lorraine being bookish from a young age. Their parents allowed them to sit out on the sun porch during visits from prominent individuals, such as the poet Langston Hughes and Paul Robeson, the singer, actor and activist. “Daddy wanted us to be able to listen to some of the distinguished people who came by the house,” she said.Lorraine Hansberry would write letters to congressmen — “My mother would find them when she was cleaning her room,” Mamie Hansberry said. “She was free to write to anyone,” Mamie said, “and they would answer!”It is that spirit that Nottage and Jordan said they hope to cultivate in the next generation of playwrights. The statue’s tour will begin with stops at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem (June 13-18) and Brooklyn Bridge Park (June 23-29) before traveling to cities like Atlanta, Detroit and Los Angeles. It is also set to make stops at historically Black colleges and universities, including Spelman College in Atlanta and Howard University in Washington.Jordan said the initiative will also work with local theaters and artists to present Hansberry’s work, as well as the work of contemporary writers of color, in conjunction with the sculpture’s placement. New 42, the nonprofit organization behind the New Victory Theater, has also created a resource guide to teach middle- and high-school students about Hansberry and “Raisin,” which will be free for schools and organizations to use.“I do think that if Hansberry had continued to write and develop as an activist, one of the things she would’ve done was amplified voices of other women of color,” Nottage said.Jordan said she and Nottage had already raised $2.2 million of their $3.5 million goal for the statue construction costs, tour and scholarship fund. By 2025, Jordan said, they expect to support a total of six playwrights per year.“Everyone wants to produce these women,” Nottage said. “But we want to make sure people are prepared — that they’re secure in their voices and secure in their craft — so they don’t fail when they get that opportunity.” More

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    ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ at 40: The Plant That Conquered the World

    Members of the cast and creative team from the original production, as well as the current Off Broadway revival, look back on how the show came together and discuss its enduring influence.“Little Shop of Horrors” was Alan Menken’s last shot.It was the winter of 1979 when Menken, a young composer, and Howard Ashman, the lyricist, playwright and director, were coming off a disappointing Off Broadway run of a musical version of the Kurt Vonnegut novel “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”So, when Ashman called with the idea to develop a low-budget musical comedy about a murderous plant, based on Roger Corman’s semi-obscure 1960 black comedy film, Menken made a deal with himself: He would give musical theater one more shot. If it didn’t work, he would commit to writing advertising jingles full time.Of course, the off-the-wall, low-budget musical would go on to become an improbable success, selling out houses at the 98-seat WPA Theater in the East Village before transferring to the 347-seat Orpheum Theater, where it would run for a little over five years. In the decades since, it’s reached cult classic status and become one of the most produced shows at high schools across the country.On the 40th anniversary of the original Off Off Broadway production, which opened on May 20, 1982, at the WPA Theater, members of the original cast and creative team, as well as some from the current Off Broadway revival and family members of Ashman, who died in 1991 from AIDS, at 40, reflected on how it came together, its improbable success and why it still resonates. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Howard Ashman directing Ellen Greene, who played Audrey. “He just loved me, and when a director just adores your creativity, your creativity blooms,” she said. Estate of Howard AshmanThe seed that would become “Little Shop of Horrors” had been planted in Ashman’s head for a few decades, ever since he saw Corman’s black-and-white horror spoof of the same name when he was around 14. But revisiting it proved a bit tricky.SARAH ASHMAN GILLESPIE (sister of Howard Ashman) My husband and I were the only people Howard knew who had the Betamax, and we rented “Little Shop” — the movie — for us all to watch. Except for Howard, we were appalled. We didn’t think it would be a good idea at all to do the show. Of course, he ignored us entirely. That was Howard’s way; when he had a vision for something, he wasn’t going to take no for an answer.And Ashman had the perfect partner in mind: The composer Alan Menken, with whom he’d just collaborated on “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.”BILL LAUCH (Ashman’s partner) Howard had the idea that “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” had an Off Broadway sensibility, but it was just too expensive. He resolved that the next musical he was going to do is going to have a very small cast — under 10 characters. And it was going to have some kind of element at the heart of it that would be so unusual that it would just demand attention.ALAN MENKEN (composer) I hadn’t seen the film, but a few weeks after he told me he wanted to make a musical, it showed up on cable TV. My God, there were so many fun elements!40 Years of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’The off-the-wall musical comedy about a murderous plant, which debuted in 1982 Off Off Broadway, continues to resonate.  Revisiting a Classic: The comedy becomes a morality tale for the age of universal celebrity in Michael Mayer’s revival, which opened in 2019. Leading Man: Conrad Ricamora just ended his run in the revival as Seymour, the show’s nebbishy hero.Inhabiting Seymour: The actor Jonathan Groff took on the iconic role in 2019. From the Archives: In 1982, our critic described “Little Shop of Horrors” as a show “for horticulturists, horror-cultists, sci-fi fans and anyone with a taste for the outrageous.”The production at the WPA had to come together quickly, cheaply and without the reassurance of big names in the cast.MENKEN The theater was run by Howard and Kyle Renick, and they used to joke that WPA stands for “We’ll Produce Anything.” Howard and I paid for Marty Robinson to be able to construct the first Audrey II, and I played [the piano in] the show myself.FRANC LUZ (Orin Scrivello, Audrey’s sadistic dentist boyfriend in “Little Shop”) They sent me the script, and I turned the audition down. I was like, “How did this get at the highly regarded WPA with lines like, ‘Oh, Seymour?’” It wasn’t until I heard the demo cassette tape Howard and Alan had made that it made sense. I thought, “Jesus, this is really special.”LEE WILKOF (Seymour) I originally auditioned for the dentist. But Alan Menken, who I had known from a revue I did some years earlier, was giggling at me in the toupee — I’d been bald since I was 18 — so I took it off. And Howard Ashman said, “You’re a Seymour!” It came down to me and Nathan Lane for the part, and Connie Grappo, who was Ashman’s assistant director, told Howard to cast me. That’s why I married her! [Laughs]Christian Borle, left, as the dentist and Jonathan Groff as Seymour in the Off Broadway revival that opened in October 2019.Julieta Cervantes for The New York TimesNext was his most important piece of casting: The person who would design, build and perform the murderous plant, Audrey II.MARTIN P. ROBINSON (puppeteer) Howard told me later that when he presented the challenges of the script — the need for a plant that would start small and get bigger in increments, as well as talk, sing and take over the stage, then the world — most people he talked to said, “Well, you’re going to have to give up this.” I was the only guy who said, “Yeah, sure, you can do all that.”Rehearsals began in earnest, with Menken and Ashman continuing to prune their project as the actors settled into their roles.ELLEN GREENE (Audrey) Howard lived on Greenwich Avenue right around the corner from the Pink Tea Cup, and Alan would be sitting at the piano, and Howard would pace up and down shouting. He was a very strong director — very bright, with a dry sense of humor and tremendous heart. Alan wanted to please Howard, and it was like a dance between the two of them. It was glorious to watch.LUZ Ashman had that kind of intellect that goes at 100 miles faster than everybody else. He would remember lyrics, and he knew every bit of music from the ’60s and ’70s.MENKEN Howard could be impatient about music because it was the one thing he couldn’t directly do himself! [Laughs]For the score, Menken opted for a blend of pop, rock and Latin music.MENKEN It’s the dark side of “Grease,” but there are also elements winking at the late ’50s and early ’60s — beach blanket horror movies with people dancing on the beach while some monster came in from the water to terrorize people — as well as Phil Spector rock, which is apocalyptic in tone. And then our narrators were a girl group derived from the Ronettes and the Shirelles. It was a real cocktail of really dark themes and fun spoof elements.Thanks to his father, Menken had an idea for the stage musical that would become iconic.MENKEN My dad, who was a dentist, was actually president of the New York chapter of the American Analgesia Society, which is a society of dentists who promote the use of nitrous oxide as safe. So I had the idea that Orin was obsessed with nitrous oxide and put the mask on himself to enjoy the sadomasochistic joy of drilling teeth and then get the mask stuck. Howard thought it was hilarious. My dad actually provided the slides for the “Look, Seymour, this could happen to you” part!Ashman was an intense, demanding director, but his dry wit captured the hearts of the cast.LUZ Even if we fought about something — “You know, I don’t think this character would do that” — he’d say, “Oh, he would, he would.” Eventually, you just learned that he was always right.GREENE Howard and I had a respect and a free-flowing love between the two of us. We just got each other. He just loved me, and when a director just adores your creativity, your creativity blooms.MENKEN He was brilliant, and I don’t say that lightly.Meanwhile, the enormous, man-eating Audrey II puppet was taking shape in Robinson’s apartment.ROBINSON I started with the imagery in the Corman film, but I made the shape a little more sophisticated, with curved sharp teeth hidden on the inside that you didn’t see until she started talking. It’s carpeted inside, with a red, hairy interior. It was a workout moving those arms, but I was 28 and I was jacked. I see pictures of myself back then and say, “Oh, my God.”LUZ Marty started the show as this tall, skinny guy with this big Afro, and by the end of it, he had a swimmer’s body. He was like Adonis.Finally, after two weeks of previews, opening night arrived on May 20, 1982.WILKOF We blew the roof off the first night.MENKEN People just went absolutely crazy.WILKOF We were all just floating during that performance. I’ve never experienced anything like it in my career.“Little Shop of Horrors” was a smashing success — and quickly became the hottest ticket in town.WILKOF I was going around the week before opening night handing out fliers, and casting directors would go, “What the hell is this?” And two weeks later, they were calling and asking — no, begging — me for tickets.Rick Moranis as Seymour in the 1986 film.Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS, via Alamy After a month of performances at the WPA, “Little Shop” transferred Off Broadway to the Orpheum. When it closed on Nov. 1, 1987, it was the third-longest-running musical and the highest-grossing production in Off Broadway history.MICHAEL MAYER (director of the current Off Broadway revival) The buzz around it was incredible. It walked to the razor’s edge of being a satire of a kind of B movie, and yet it had so much true heart.The musical went on to receive Los Angeles and West End productions in 1983 before being turned into a film in 1986, which starred Greene as Audrey and Rick Moranis as Seymour. More than two decades after its original opening night, it finally debuted on Broadway in 2003. Ashman, who had declined a Broadway transfer, believing a smaller house was needed to preserve the impression of the plant’s massive size, never got to see it.LUZ It’s still a shock and a shame that we lost him so young. In October 2019, the current Off Broadway revival opened at the Westside Theater, starring Jonathan Groff as Seymour, opposite Christian Borle as the dentist.MAYER I never saw the film, so I tried to be true to my memory of what Howard did as director.CHRISTIAN BORLE (Orin Scrivello in the current Off Broadway revival) Obviously it has to be funny, but the abuse stuff is so ugly, especially in this day and age, that I felt compelled to play that stuff as straight and dark and awful as possible. Ultimately, he has to be worthy of being fed to the plant.Though the original cast and creative team have gone on to other careers, including Menken’s award-winning run with Disney’s animated musicals, they all agree: They’ve never come across another project like “Little Shop.”ROBINSON When you’re 28, you think, “Oh, this happens all the time.” But that was a once-in-a-lifetime thing.MENKEN Howard and I jokingly called “Part of Your World” from “The Little Mermaid” “Somewhere That’s Wet.” “Little Shop” is the DNA of everything that ended up exploding at Disney, in a funny way.MAYER It resonates more than ever right now — the idea of the Faustian bargain you make for fame and success in a world where people are making a living being TikTok performers and Instagram influencers, and people are famous for being famous more than at any other time in history. It examines the dark side of the American dream, and because it’s so funny and entertaining and moving, it isn’t going to bum you out so much. More

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    Tony Awards 2022: Who Will Win (and Who Should)

    A critic’s picks in a hard-to-predict Broadway year, plus nods to shows from Off Broadway and other, odder corners.Though I see hundreds of shows a year, I’m not a seer. Nor am I the kind of theater lover who easily sorts treasured experiences into tranches of good, better and best. Nevertheless, here I am with prognostications and preferences for the Tony Awards that will be given out on June 12.The Will Win category simply lists my predictions in a hard-to-predict year. The Should Win category indicates how I would vote if I were allowed to, with an exception: I get more wiggle room, including the chance to select two “winners” in some cases. Even then, I was often torn, cherishing nearly equally some shows and artists likely to win and some that weren’t nominated at all.Which brings us to the Should Have Been Nominated category. A larkish Times tradition allows me to include not just other work seen on Broadway but also (as indicated by an asterisk) artists and productions hailing from Off Broadway and other, odder climes.Potential “nominees” in this category are always too numerous to acknowledge — and this year I’m skipping some I’ll probably get to champion next year, like the cast and team behind “Kimberly Akimbo,” a terrific musical that played at the Atlantic Theater Company this past winter and transfers to Broadway in the fall.But even then I wanted to celebrate more of the work that helped us feel less alone in a chaotic year — hence my introduction of a noncanonical best ensemble category. After all, this was a season when merely making theater was a victory.Best PlayWILL WIN“The Lehman Trilogy”SHOULD WIN“Skeleton Crew”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Dana H.”“Pass Over”“A Case for the Existence of God”*The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters.Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions.Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid.A Tony Nominee: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process.The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.Best MusicalWILL WIN“A Strange Loop”SHOULD WIN“Girl From the North Country”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Oratorio for Living Things”*Best Play RevivalWILL WIN“Trouble in Mind”SHOULD WIN“Trouble in Mind”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Cyrano de Bergerac”*“Wedding Band”*Best Musical RevivalWILL WIN“Company”SHOULD WIN“Caroline, or Change”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED“Into the Woods”*Best Actor in a PlayWILL WINSimon Russell Beale, “The Lehman Trilogy”SHOULD WINDavid Threlfall, “Hangmen”orDavid Morse, “How I Learned to Drive”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDJon Michael Hill, “Pass Over”James McAvoy, “Cyrano de Bergerac”*Best Actress in a PlayWILL WINLaChanze, “Trouble in Mind”SHOULD WINDeirdre O’Connell, “Dana H.”orMary-Louise Parker, “How I Learned to Drive”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDEmily Davis, “Is This a Room”Mary Wiseman, “At the Wedding”*Brittany Bradford, “Wedding Band”*Best Actor in a MusicalWILL WINMyles Frost, “MJ”SHOULD WINJaquel Spivey, “A Strange Loop”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDJay O. Sanders, “Girl From the North Country”Best Actress in a MusicalWILL WINJoaquina Kalukango, “Paradise Square”SHOULD WINSharon D Clarke, “Caroline, or Change”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDKearstin Piper Brown, “Intimate Apparel”*Best Featured Actor in a PlayWILL WINJesse Tyler Ferguson, “Take Me Out”SHOULD WINChuck Cooper, “Trouble in Mind”orRon Cephas Jones, “Clyde’s”SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATEDBrandon J. Dirden, “Skeleton Crew”Brandon J. Dirden, “Take Me Out”Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More