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    Chicago Comedy Institution iO Theater Will Reopen After Sale

    The storied improv center closed under the financial strain of the pandemic, but a buyer has purchased both the building and the brand.More than a year after it was announced that the Chicago improv mainstay iO Theater was closing permanently because of the financial strain of the pandemic, the theater’s building and brand have been sold to local real estate executives, the institution’s founder said Monday.Charna Halpern, who started iO four decades ago, said the theater would reopen under the ownership of Scott Gendell and Larry Weiner, who both run real estate companies in the Chicago area. The closure of the theater — which played a crucial part in the careers of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert — was a major loss for the city’s community of improvisers, many of whom studied, performed and socialized there.“It’s a huge relief that this thing I’ve been working on for 40 years is going to continue,” Halpern said.In a statement, Gendell and Weiner, who describe themselves as lifelong friends, said that they planned to “continue the cultural gem that is this iconic theater.”In June 2020, three months into the pandemic, Halpern announced that she was closing iO for good, saying that the pressure of mounting bills, without any income during the shutdown, had become untenable. “At this point in my life, I can’t continue the struggle to stay open,” Halpern said then.The announcement came at the same time that performers associated with iO called for major efforts to improve diversity and equity there. In a petition, they said they would refuse to perform at iO unless its leadership met a series of demands: they asked Halpern to “publicly acknowledge and apologize for the institutional racism perpetuated at iO,” as well as hire a diversity and inclusion coordinator.About a week after the petition was published and Halpern had agreed to work toward meeting the demands, she announced that iO would close for good, stunning performers. She said in an interview this May that if iO had been on better financial footing, she would have met with the protesters and addressed their concerns, but that she could not do so when the theater’s prospects were so bleak.In the months since Halpern put the building, at 1501 North Kingsbury Street, on the market, her hopes that someone would step in to save the institution brightened and flickered out again and again. She said recently there had been at least three interested buyers, including a Hollywood talent agency. At one point she contemplated reopening the theater herself, but a leaky roof introduced another financial roadblock, she said.For the time being, the closed theater appears frozen in time, with signs pointing audiences where to line up for shows that were scheduled for March 2020.Now, the task of making the theater’s four stages operational again will be up to the new owners, whose deal was finalized last week, Halpern said. She declined to disclose the price. With this sale, as well as that of another storied comedy theater, Second City, Chicago’s improv scene looks very different than it did a year ago. Second City had faced its own accusations of institutional racism and calls for reform, and new leaders there pledged to “tear it all down and begin again.” In February, it was sold to a private equity group, ZMC, run by Strauss Zelnick, and in May it resumed live performances.Though it is unclear when iO will reopen, the sale will help the city become a comedy “mecca” again, Halpern said, after months of darkened theaters. For Halpern, who has run the theater from the beginning and — along with her partner Del Close — helped transform improvisation from a marginal art form into a bustling business, it is unclear what her role will be going forward, though she says, “I’m happy to return in some capacity if they want me.”“The other day I turned over the keys,” she added, “and when they walked me out and said, ‘Thank you, Charna,’ it was the first time I cried. It really hit me.” More

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    Historic Cherry Lane Theater Sold for $11 Million

    The Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which has managed the 97-year-old theater for the past decade, will take over the building in Greenwich Village.The Cherry Lane Theater, the oldest continuously running Off Broadway theater in New York City, has been sold to the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation for $11 million, the theater announced on Monday.“It has been a great run,” Angelina Fiordellisi, the executive director of the theater, said in a statement. “To stand on the stage where so many of our greatest artists, crews and theater providers have stood is to know what theater history feels like.”The new owner will be the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation, which is a few blocks from the Cherry Lane Theater on Christopher Street and has managed the building for the past decade. The sale includes the 179-seat main stage and a 60-seat studio theater.Fiordellisi, who has led the 97-year-old nonprofit theater since acquiring the building in 1996, will continue to lead the nonprofit producing group Cherry Lane Alternative, which will have readings — and possibly productions — in the theater’s studio space.She had previously announced plans to sell the building, at 38 Commerce Street, in 2010, citing financial struggles. At the time, she told The New York Times that the theater was operating at a deficit of $250,000, which she attributed to a steep drop in income from government and foundation support, ticket sales and rental fees.“It’s frightening to me, what’s happened to Off Broadway theater,” Fiordellisi told The Times in 2010. “We have to adhere to the formula of having a film star in our productions to sell tickets because it’s so financially prohibitive. I don’t want to do theater like that.”But eight months later, she reversed her decision because of a significantly reduced deficit, a new managing agent and the support of the theater’s neighbors. Cherry Lane Alternative, the resident theater company Fiordellisi established in 1997, currently has a deficit of $100,000, a spokesman for the theater, Sam Rudy, said.The theater, a Greenwich Village institution that has long been a testing ground for new work by emerging artists, reopened at full capacity last month with Jacqueline Novak’s “Get on Your Knees,” a comedy that offers a personal and intellectual history of oral sex. It is scheduled to run through July 31.Under Fiordellisi, Cherry Lane has mentored writers including Katori Hall, who won this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “The Hot Wing King”; Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu, whose play “Pass Over” will begin previews on Broadway in August after being produced at the theater in 2016; and Jocelyn Bioh, whose “Merry Wives,” a contemporary take on Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” is running at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park.Cherry Lane was started by a group of artists who were colleagues of Edna St. Vincent Millay and has showcased work by Samuel Beckett, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams. But despite its storied history, the theater had not staged a play in two years when Fiordellisi bought it for $1.7 million in 1996 and renovated it for $3 million.Cherry Lane Alternative, the nonprofit producing group, said it expects to resume a scaled-back version of its acclaimed Mentor Project, which pairs emerging writers with established playwrights like Lynn Nottage, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Taylor Mac to develop and stage their work in the studio theater space. It will likely include one production per season instead of the typical three.George Forbes, the Lucille Lortel Theater Foundation’s executive director, said the foundation plans to announce new programming shortly. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: The Olympics and the Jonas Brothers

    NBC Olympics coverage will begin on Friday with the opening ceremony, and the Jonas Brothers try their hand at Olympic-level athleticism.Between network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, July 19-25. Details and times are subject to change. More

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    Review: Endorphins Fuel an Awakening in ‘Endure’

    A solo show about a marathoner rebuilding her life takes its audience on a 5K through Central Park. Running is optional, our critic insists.We stood on the grass in Central Park, just inside the Columbus Circle entrance, and put in our earbuds. Our race numbers were already pinned to our clothes, and as we waited for the whole group to assemble, we watched people walk and bike, ride and run, along the crisscross paths on a sun-dappled New York summer afternoon.It was an ideal day for a play in the park, and we were an audience. Melanie Jones’s bracing and beautiful “Endure,” a solo show about a marathoner running a race and rebuilding her life, was about to take us on a 5K past the Pond, over and under bridges and across sloping stretches of lawn. This is not a performance you can observe from a fixed point. But the publicity materials state flat out, “Audiences are not required to run.” I, in my long sundress and sandals, decided to trust that.Casey Howes displays her nimble athleticism during the show, doing a headstand at one point.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAt another point, she wraps her legs around a lamppost.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnd the first time our marathoner — played by Casey Howes, a dancer who alternates the role with Mary Cavett — sprinted off down a path, I was the only one who didn’t break into a run behind her. Some were eager, having come dressed in sports gear; others were apparently in a panic that they would be left behind. Walk at a decent clip, keep an eye on the pack (each audience is capped at just 15) and, truly, you will keep up.Directed by Suchan Vodoor, the expertly paced action is stop-and-start, pausing frequently for interludes that are choreographed or, as with one emotionally intimate scene meant to be watched up close, delicately staged. (The choreography is by Lauren Yalango-Grant, Chris Grant, Howes and Cavett.)Whether you walk, run or jog, the text of this 75-minute play comes to you through your earbuds, which the show provides. The inner monologue is spoken by Jones, a Canadian marathoner, who has structured it in 26.2 sections to match the number of miles in a marathon.“You see so clearly that the finish line might be hard to get to,” the voice says as the race begins, “but the start line was the thing, the start line was where you were headed that whole time.”Casey Howes, a dancer, alternates the role with another actress. Walk at a decent clip, and you will keep up, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLayering the narration with instrumental music by Christine Owman, the recording is rhythmic, incantatory, relentless. It focuses the attention and soothes the mind even as its tale of amped-up competitiveness detours into memories of a painfully broken marriage and the depths of immobilizing depression. In running, our marathoner has found a healing passion, and the kind of defining obsession that makes other people view her as an oddity.Trailing her through the park, we become fully invested in the perseverance and triumph of this wounded, funny, tenacious woman, played by Howes with nimble athleticism and charismatic grace. There she is, doing a headstand on a hillside while she pedals her feet in the air; wrapping her legs around a lamppost as if it were a tall man’s waist; running and running in a widening arc while we stand mesmerized.“Endure” is a play about survival and aspiration and excellence, about having yourself for company over the long slog, about building strength in pursuit of a happier life.It won’t give you a runner’s high, but it is absolutely intoxicating.EndureThrough Aug. 8 in Central Park, Manhattan; runwomanshow.com. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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    Rattlestick Theater Focuses on Social Change in New Season

    The theater will produce three plays in an ambitious 2021-22 season, but it has also committed to a five-day workweek and reforms that prioritize artists.When Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, the West Village testing ground for new playwrights, reopens Aug. 14, it will be the same 99-seat, proscenium-arch venue where Heidi Schreck (“What the Constitution Means to Me”) and Jesse Eisenberg (“The Spoils”) have premiered plays. But some things are changing behind the scenes. Despite a heavier load this season, which will feature three, not just two, main-stage shows (to honor commitments to productions planned before the pandemic), rehearsals will take place exclusively during the five-day workweek, and no rehearsal or tech call will last longer than eight hours.“It feels essential to have a healthy dynamic for everyone to do their best work and also take care of themselves,” said Daniella Topol, the theater’s artistic director. (Previously, some team members would spend as many as 18 hours at the theater.) She added that rehearsal periods would be extended by an additional week to allow for ample time to prepare for the shows.“It’s not an inexpensive change,” she said. “But it’s an essential one we’re all so grateful for.”When the season kicks off, with Arturo Luís Soria’s solo show “Ni Mi Madre,” social change will be at the heart of the new season. Soria’s show, which will be the actor’s first venture as a playwright, is one of two this season that will be presented both in person and livestreamed.“I hope this is our new normal,” Topol said of the in-person and virtual options. “It’s been great to give people who don’t just live in our borough or our neighborhood the opportunity to experience the work, as well as to open it up to people who have physical restrictions and can’t access the work live.”The one-man play, which features the music of Gloria Estefan, Cher and Maria Bethânia, explores the intersection of queerness and Latino identity in the tumultuous relationship between a larger-than-life Brazilian mother and her son. “It’s deeply personal, alive and funny,” Topol said of the show that lays bare the secrets, memories, fears and celebrations of being an immigrant and first-generation American. Rattlestick’s directing fellow, Danilo Gambini, will oversee the world premiere, which will be his first professional production in the United States after having previously worked as an opera and musical theater director in his home country, Brazil.“It will make anyone and everyone think about their relationship with their mother,” Topol said.The show will be followed in November by the Atlanta-based playwright Mansa Ra’s “In the Southern Breeze,” an absurdist drama that centers the Black male experience across centuries of American history as it follows five Black men who meet in the afterlife following their murders. Christopher Betts will direct.Topol, who first got a glimpse of the play when Rattlestick produced a reading of it in 2018, said, “I couldn’t get it out of my head, particularly when everything was happening with George Floyd and the protests. It really speaks to this moment.”In the season’s final show, and the only one to be presented exclusively online, audience members will be invited to chart their own theatrical experience in the interactive virtual game “Addressless,” which asks viewers to work together in small groups on Zoom to make choices that illustrate the challenges of homelessness. The work, written by the Hungarian artist Martin Boross and adapted by Jonathan Payne, whose day job is working in social services, will be presented virtually in January and February.“The irony is that every choice you make as the character either costs money or years of your life,” Topol said, noting that they include whether a character will sleep on the street or in a hostel, if they will ask people for money or try to find work. “Hopefully people can move toward greater empathy and change after seeing this piece.”Topol said the theater has also hired a venue and production manager to oversee Covid-19 health and safety protocols during the 2021-22 season, which include installing MERV-13 air filters. In line with the demands articulated by the advocacy group “We See You, White American Theater” last fall, Rattlestick has brought on a mental health professional to support artists in rehearsals for projects that involve trauma.“These are personal pieces that dig deep into the roots and deal with inherited and generational trauma,” Topol said, “and we want to do all we can to help artists investigate that with courage, passion, care and empathy.” More

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    Bourdain Documentary’s Use of A.I. to Mimic Voice Draws Questions

    The documentary “Roadrunner” by Morgan Neville uses 45 seconds of a voice that sounds like Bourdain, generated with artificial intelligence. Is it ethical?The new documentary about Anthony Bourdain’s life, “Roadrunner,” is one hour and 58 minutes long — much of which is filled with footage of the star throughout the decades of his career as a celebrity chef, journalist and television personality.But on the film’s opening weekend, 45 seconds of it is drawing much of the public’s attention.The focus is on a few sentences of what an unknowing audience member would believe to be recorded audio of Bourdain, who died by suicide in 2018. In reality, the voice is generated by artificial intelligence: Bourdain’s own words, turned into speech by a software company who had been given several hours of audio that could teach a machine how to mimic his tone, cadence and inflection.One of the machine-generated quotes is from an email Bourdain wrote to a friend, David Choe.“You are successful, and I am successful,” Bourdain’s voice says, “and I’m wondering: Are you happy?”The film’s director, Morgan Neville, explained the technique in an interview with The New Yorker’s Helen Rosner, who asked how the filmmakers could possibly have obtained a recording of Bourdain reading an email he sent to a friend. Neville said the technology is so convincing that audience members likely won’t recognize which of the other quotes are artificial, adding, “We can have a documentary-ethics panel about it later.”The time for such a panel appears to be now. Social media has erupted with opinions on the issue — some find it creepy and distasteful, others are unbothered.And documentary experts who frequently consider ethical questions in nonfiction films are sharply divided. Some filmmakers and academics see the use of the audio without disclosing it to the audience as a violation of trust and as a slippery slope when it comes to the use of so-called deepfake videos, which include digitally manipulated material that appears to be authentic footage.The director Morgan Neville said in a statement on Friday about the use of A.I. that “it was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I thought it was important to make Tony’s words come alive.”Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival“It wasn’t necessary,” said Thelma Vickroy, chair of the Department of Cinema and Television Arts at Columbia College Chicago. “How does the audience benefit? They’re inferring that this is something he said when he was alive.”Others don’t see it as problematic, considering that the audio pulls from Bourdain’s words, as well as an inevitable use of evolving technology to give voice to someone who is no longer around.“Of all the ethical concerns one can have about a documentary, this seems rather trivial,” said Gordon Quinn, a longtime documentarian known for executive producing titles like “Hoop Dreams” and “Minding the Gap.” “It’s 2021, and these technologies are out there.”Using archival footage and interviews with Bourdain’s closest friends and colleagues, Neville looks at how Bourdain became a worldwide figure and explores his devastating death at the age of 61. The film, “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” has received positive reviews: A film critic for The New York Times wrote, “With immense perceptiveness, Neville shows us both the empath and the narcissist” in Bourdain.In a statement about the use of A.I., Neville said on Friday that the filmmaking team received permission from Bourdain’s estate and literary agent.“There were a few sentences that Tony wrote that he never spoke aloud,” Neville said in the statement. “It was a modern storytelling technique that I used in a few places where I thought it was important to make Tony’s words come alive.”Ottavia Busia, the chef’s second wife, with whom he shared a daughter, appeared to criticize the decision in a Twitter post, writing that she would not have given the filmmakers permission to use the A.I. version of his voice.A spokeswoman for the film did not immediately respond to a request for comment on who gave the filmmakers permission.Experts point to historical re-enactments and voice-over actors reading documents as examples of documentary filmmaking techniques that are widely used to provide a more emotional experience for audience members.For example, the documentarian Ken Burns hires actors to voice long-dead historical figures. And the 1988 documentary “The Thin Blue Line,” by Errol Morris, generated controversy among film critics when it re-enacted the events surrounding the murder of a Texas police officer; the film received numerous awards but was left out of Oscar nominations.But in those cases, it was clear to the audience that what they were seeing and hearing was not authentic. Some experts said they thought Neville would be ethically in the clear if he had somehow disclosed the use of artificial intelligence in the film.“If viewers begin doubting the veracity of what they’ve heard, then they’ll question everything about the film they’re viewing,” said Mark Jonathan Harris, an Academy Award-winning documentary filmmaker.Quinn compared the technique to one that the director Steve James used in a 2014 documentary about the Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, who, when the film was made, could not speak after losing part of his jaw in cancer surgery. In some cases, the filmmakers used an actor to communicate Ebert’s own words from his memoir, or they relied on a computer that spoke for him when he typed his thoughts into it. But unlike in “Roadrunner,” it was clear in the context of the film that it was not Ebert’s real voice.To some, part of the discomfort about the use of artificial intelligence is the fear that deepfake videos may become increasingly pervasive. Right now, viewers tend to automatically believe in the veracity of audio and video, but if audiences begin to have good reason to question that, it could give people plausible deniability to disavow authentic footage, said Hilke Schellmann, a filmmaker and assistant professor of journalism at New York University who is writing a book on A.I.Three years after Bourdain’s death, the film seeks to help viewers understand both his virtues and vulnerabilities, and, as Neville puts it, “reconcile these two sides of Tony.”To Andrea Swift, chair of the filmmaking department at the New York Film Academy, the use of A.I. in these few snippets of footage has overtaken a deeper appreciation of the film and Bourdain’s life.“I wish it hadn’t been done,” she said, “because then we could focus on Bourdain.”Christina Morales contributed reporting. More

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    She’s One of China’s Biggest Stars. She’s Also Transgender.

    Jin Xing, the first person in China to openly undergo transition surgery, is a household name. But she says she’s no standard-bearer for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.Jin Xing, a 53-year-old television host often called China’s Oprah Winfrey, holds strong views about what it means to be a woman. She has hounded female guests to hurry up and get married, and she has pressed others to give birth. When it comes to men, she has recommended that women act helpless to get their way.That might not be so unusual in China, where traditional gender norms are still deeply embedded, especially among older people. Except Ms. Jin is no typical Chinese star.As China’s first — and even today, only — major transgender celebrity, Ms. Jin is in many ways regarded as a progressive icon. She underwent transition surgery in 1995, the first person in the country to do so openly. She went on to host one of China’s most popular talk shows, even as stigmas against L.G.B.T.Q. people remained — and still remain — widespread.China’s best-known personalities appeared on her program, “The Jin Xing Show.” Brad Pitt once bumbled through some Mandarin with her to promote a film.“All my close friends teased me: ‘China would never let you host a talk show,’” Ms. Jin said, recalling when she first shared that goal with them. “‘How could they let you, with your transgender identity, be on television?’”But even as Ms. Jin’s remarkable biography has elevated her to an almost mythic level, it has also, for some, made her one of the most perplexing figures in Chinese pop culture.Ms. Jin on the set of “The Jin Xing Show” with her co-anchor, Shen Nan. For years, the show was one of the most popular in China.The Jin Xing ShowThough often lauded as a trailblazer for the L.G.B.T.Q. community, she rejects the role of standard-bearer and criticizes activists whom she perceives as seeking special treatment. “Respect is earned by yourself, not something you ask society to give you,” she said.She also has attracted fierce criticism for her views on womanhood. In a 2013 memoir, Ms. Jin wrote that a “smart woman” should make her partner feel that she was a “little girl who needs him.” On “The Jin Xing Show,” she told the actress Michelle Ye that only after giving birth would she feel complete.“You say that as if you’ve given birth,” Ms. Ye said with a nervous laugh.Ms. Jin didn’t pause. “I’ve given rebirth to myself,” she said.Ms. Jin bristles at being called a conservative. If she were a male chauvinist, she said, she would have continued living as a man. She has denounced gender-based employment discrimination and called out China’s Women’s Day as an empty commercial holiday. In May, she was featured in a Dior campaign celebrating women’s empowerment, in which she said the most important thing any woman could be was independent.Still, she admits that she is not looking to upend the rules set by men, only to help women better navigate them.In addition to appearing on television, Ms. Jin hawks products on internet livestreams.Gilles Sabrié for The New York Times“What percentage of the world’s leaders are queens or female presidents? They’re still mostly men,” said Ms. Jin. “If men conquer the world to prove themselves, women can conquer men to prove themselves.”Ms. Jin was born in 1967 in Shenyang, in China’s northeast, to an army officer father and translator mother. In memoirs, she described being pleased when family friends compared her to a “lively little girl” for her love of song and dance.At 9, she was recruited by a military dance troupe. Her mother opposed the choice, but not on gender grounds, wanting her to instead continue with regular schooling, Ms. Jin wrote. Both boys and girls could earn prestige by dancing in the military, where the arts were seen as important propaganda tools.As a teenager, Ms. Jin won a dance scholarship to New York, where in 1991 The New York Times called one of her performances “astoundingly assured.” After four years in the United States, she toured Europe — picking up French and Italian, in addition to the English, Chinese, Korean and Japanese she already knew.But in 1993, at 26, she returned to China to prepare to come out as transgender.Though she had known she was female since she was 6, she did not want to announce it until she was sufficiently prepared, Ms. Jin said. Transition surgery, though legal, was heavily stigmatized. She decided to wait until she had become one of China’s most prominent dancers.“When you haven’t accumulated enough power, you can’t speak out,” she said. “Once you’ve achieved enough strength, and people can’t knock you down, then you can face them.”Ms. Jin with members of the Jin Xing Dance Theatre in “Shanghai Tango” at the Joyce Theater in New York City in 2012.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesHer calculation appeared correct. While some attacked her after her surgery, much of the public reception was supportive.China in some ways offers more recognition to transgender people than to gay people, said Bao Hongwei, a scholar of Chinese queer culture at the University of Nottingham, in England. In the 1980s and 1990s especially, surgery was seen as a cure that allowed transgender people to live within traditional gender roles.“She upholds all the gender norms,” Professor Bao said. “I think all this contributed to her being recognized in China’s media sphere.”Yet even as Ms. Jin hewed to certain norms, she flouted others.She founded Jin Xing Dance Theatre, the country’s first private dance group, in 1999. She became a single mother, adopting three children, though China’s one-child policy was still in place at that time.And she has made being unapologetically blunt the secret to her success on television.Ms. Jin’s television fame began in 2013, when her at-times abrasive assessments of competitors on a dance show earned her the nickname Poison Tongue. In 2015, she channeled that popularity into “The Jin Xing Show.” With guests she was warm and conspiratorial.Ms. Jin instructing dancers from her troupe in Shanghai in 2006. The Jin Xing Dance Theatre was the country’s first private dance group.Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBut she also didn’t hesitate to name celebrities who she thought lacked talent. She spoke openly about taboo issues, including sex.She was polarizing but wildly popular, saying on her show that 100 million people tuned in each week.Ms. Jin has consistently rejected the idea that her fame was tied to her transgender identity.“Don’t think that I did surgery and became an enchanting person. Wrong. When I was a boy, I was plenty enchanting,” she said. “Stick whatever label on me, male or female, I’m still a very luminous person.”In 2017, “The Jin Xing Show” was abruptly canceled. At the time, Ms. Jin blamed “small people” who were jealous of her success, but the details of the decision have never been made public.Since then, she has continued to run her dance troupe, sold products on internet livestreams and hosted matchmaking shows, though none has approached the popularity of her talk show.Ms. Jin has long talked openly about taboo issues, including sex.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesGuo Ting, a gender studies scholar at the University of Hong Kong, said Ms. Jin’s ebb in popularity coincided with a broader government crackdown on gender-related activism. While there is no clear link between the two, the state has recently sought to promote traditional values, Dr. Guo said.Still, others noted, many in China have grown more accepting of transgender people. They said they hoped Ms. Jin — vital as she had been to that acceptance — would no longer be the community’s only face.“I see Jin Xing as part of our parents’ generation: They have achieved progress in their time, but to us, they may seem outdated,” said Jelly Wang, 25, a transgender rights activist in Sichuan Province.That assessment is just fine with Ms. Jin.“I have always acted entirely according to my own wishes,” she said. “If I indirectly became an idol to some young people, that’s fine, but I have never made myself into a leader.“By living healthily and facing life positively, I’ve already positively impacted society,” she continued. “That’s enough.” More

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    in Theater

    Following Theater Graduates Who Were Left Without a Stage

    The Times’s theater reporter tracked drama students who emerged from a well-regarded North Carolina conservatory into a world with performance on pause.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.I’m the theater reporter at The New York Times. But for more than a year, there was very little theater.So what have I been doing? Well, at least in part, I’ve been writing about the people whose lives, and livelihoods, have been upended by the pandemic-prompted shutdown.That means actors, of course, and fans, too. But I’ve also been intrigued, almost since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, by what the widespread layoffs and absence of productions would mean for aspiring theater artists,. That’s what led me to report the article that appeared in Sunday’s paper about a group of drama students who graduated last year from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.Over time, I was able to talk to 22 of the 23 drama students in the class of 2020, and they reminded me of so much that I love about journalism, and about artists — they were open and generous and self-aware, and sometimes uncertain about how to think about what this strange and unexpected time would mean for them. And it seems like the article has resonated with readers, for which I am grateful.I started pitching the story to The Times’s culture editors last summer. Then, in January, prompted by the annual what-do-we-want-to-do-this-year meetings, I moved it to the top of my wish list.But how to proceed? I started by reaching out to a number of leading drama programs in New York and around the country, and by talking with educators and students about what was happening with the class of 2020. I was just trying to get my head around what a story might look like.As I gathered reporting, my editors and I resumed a debate we have over and over: breadth versus depth. Was the best way to proceed to write in a sweeping fashion about the most interesting graduates from a variety of programs, or to go deep on a single program that could stand in for the larger universe?Once we decided to focus on one class, it was time to select a school. This is the kind of multiple-choice question for which there is no single right answer. We wanted a well-regarded program, but maybe not one of the schools right in our backyard, and we wanted a group of students with a variety of back stories and a range of pandemic experiences.The University of North Carolina School of the Arts appealed because it met those criteria, and I just had a gut feeling, after talking with the program’s dean, its communications director and a few of the students, that I would find the level of candor that might make a story succeed.As has been true for much of my work over the last year, the reporting was largely by phone — the students have scattered, with one in England, one in Australia and the others all over the United States and often on the move. But I did get to meet some of them.In May, I took my first reporting flight since the pandemic began, to Winston-Salem, to tour the campus and attend the 2021 commencement, which members of the class of 2020 were invited to attend, and two did. (One bonus: I got to see what a Fighting Pickle, the school’s mascot, looks like.)I visited with three members of the class. David Ospina, who is now working as a real estate photographer, met me for cold brew coffee on a very hot North Carolina morning; Lance Smith showed me around his mom’s apartment, where he’s been making music and self-taping auditions during the pandemic; and Sam Sherman joined Mr. Smith and me at a picnic table on campus to debrief the morning after commencement. And over dinner with the dean and several faculty members, I learned more about the school’s programs and how it had weathered the pandemic.It’s been great to start reporting in person again. It just leads to better conversations and richer material, and I’m so grateful to all the students for their thoughtfulness. As I sat with Mr. Smith and Mr. Sherman, one memory prompted another — the student production of “Pass Over” they worked on, the alumni panels they attended, the books they’re reading and the survival jobs they’re taking and the dreams they’re trying to hold on to. “I’m starving to be in a room with people, playing with each other, having fun and goofing off and seeing what works and maybe having a breakthrough one day,” Mr. Sherman said. Mr. Smith agreed. “I miss being in it,” he added. “I miss doing it.” More