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    Mike White, ‘White Lotus’ Creator, Will Return to Cast of ‘Survivor’

    Mike White, a noted reality-television aficionado, first competed on the show in 2018.Mike White, the acclaimed screenwriter, creator of the hit HBO series “The White Lotus” and reality competition show veteran, will be returning to “Survivor” for its 50th season.The “Survivor” host Jeff Probst announced White’s return on “CBS Mornings” on Wednesday.“In between writing and directing seasons of ‘White Lotus,’ Mike White is back,” Probst said.White first appeared on “Survivor” in 2018, during the show’s 37th season, and lasted on the island for 39 days, finishing in second place. Although “The White Lotus” wouldn’t premiere until three years later (White has said the show, an acerbic anthology series set at an exotic hotel chain, was partly inspired by his observations while on “Survivor”), he was already a well-regarded filmmaker, having written the film “School of Rock” and created the HBO series “Enlightened.”Conceived of and filmed during the Covid pandemic, “The White Lotus” became a breakout hit for HBO and catapulted White to a new level of fame. He won Emmy Awards for both writing and directing in the limited series or anthology categories for the show’s first season. The finale of the third season — which aired this spring and starred Parker Posey, Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins — was watched by more than six million viewers.Before “Survivor,” White competed on “The Amazing Race” with his father in 2009 and again in 2011. In a 2021 interview with The New Yorker, he attributed his love of reality television to its ability to distill real human behavior and conflict.“For me, as a writer of drama, I aspire to do what reality television already does,” he said. “To create characters that are surprising and dimensional and do weird” stuff and “capture your attention.”The landmark 50th season of “Survivor,” which is scheduled to air in 2026, will feature several returning cast members, including a Season 1 contestant, Jenna Lewis-Dougherty, and the five-time competitors Cirie Fields and Ozzy Lusth. Filming is scheduled to take place this summer. More

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    Willem Dafoe Returns to His Stage Roots at the Venice Theater Biennale

    Willem Dafoe is returning to his roots. While his distinctive, chiseled features are instantly recognizable from over 150 movie roles, Dafoe, 69, actually got his start in experimental theater. In 1980, he co-founded the New York City-based company the Wooster Group, and performed with it for more than 20 years.Now, he is taking on the role of a curator. Last year, Dafoe was announced as the artistic director of the 2025 and 2026 editions of the Venice Theater Biennale, one of several festivals that began life as offshoots of the Art Biennale. (The theater event is actually an annual fixture.)And there will be familiar faces around Dafoe at this year’s edition, which opens Saturday and runs through June 16. Dafoe is paying tribute to some avant-garde theater companies that shaped him and were prominent 50 years ago at the 1975 edition of the festival, with productions from Denmark’s Odin Teatret and Thomas Richards, formerly of Workcenter Grotowski. The Wooster Group’s longtime director (and Dafoe’s ex-life partner), Elizabeth LeCompte, will receive the event’s Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement.Under the tagline “Theater Is Body. Body Is Poetry,” the Theater Biennale will also welcome a mix of European directors whom Dafoe described in a recent video interview as “modern maestros” — including Romeo Castellucci, and Milo Rau — as well as emerging artists. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did this appointment come about? Did Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, the president of the Venice Biennales, reach out personally?Yes. I knew him a little bit: He was a very good friend of a dear friend of mine. I knew he wanted to talk to me, and it was the simplest of phone calls. I was very happy to accept.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Lea Michele Returns to Broadway in ‘Chess’

    The “Glee” star will join Aaron Tveit and Nicholas Christopher next fall in a Broadway revival of an Abba-adjacent Cold War musical.The 1980s musical “Chess,” about a love triangle set in the geopolitically charged world of top-level chess tournaments at the height of the Cold War, will be revived on Broadway for the first time this fall, with Lea Michele playing one of the three starring roles.Michele was last on Broadway in 2023 in “Funny Girl,” whose fortunes she revived after stepping in as a replacement when the initial lead wasn’t working out. Best known for portraying an ambitious musical theater actress on the television series “Glee,” Michele will star in “Chess” alongside Aaron Tveit (a Tony winner for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical”) and Nicholas Christopher (a “Hamilton” alumnus who recently thrilled critics in an Encores! production of “Jelly’s Last Jam”).The show is the brainchild and passion project of Tim Rice, the Tony-winning lyricist of “Evita” and “Aida.” Rice collaborated with Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus of Abba on the music and lyrics.The revival was announced Wednesday, but the announcement did not include specific dates or the exact theater — only that it would be staged in the fall at a theater operated by the Shubert Organization. The lead producers will be Tom Hulce, Robert Ahrens and the Shubert Organization.“Chess,” set primarily in Bangkok and Budapest, tells a fictional story about two grandmasters, one American (Tveit) and one Soviet (Christopher), facing off at a chess tournament, joined by a woman (Michele) whom both of them, at various points, love.The musical, first staged in London in 1986 and then heavily revised for a Broadway production in 1988, has an ardent fan base, but the Broadway production was a flop, and the show has been reworked for subsequent stagings around the world.This fall’s production features another new book, by the screenwriter Danny Strong. The show will be directed by Michael Mayer, who directed Michele both in her breakout Broadway role, in “Spring Awakening,” and in “Funny Girl.”Mayer and Strong, working with Rice, have been rethinking “Chess” for some time — they collaborated on a 2018 concert presentation of the musical at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington. More

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    ‘The Counterfeit Opera’ Comes Together Like a Madcap Caper

    “The Counterfeit Opera: A Beggar’s Opera for a Grifter City,” which opens the summer season at Little Island on Friday, wears its influences on its sleeve.It draws not only from John Gay and Johann Christoph Pepusch’s “The Beggar’s Opera,” which is often credited as birthing the modern musical in 1728, but also that show’s 1928 adaptation, “The Threepenny Opera,” by Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill. Indeed, many of the characters’ names — including the scoundrel Macheath and his paramours Polly and Lucy — are the same in all three works.But “The Counterfeit Opera” is also a “fake opera,” according to Kate Tarker, who wrote the book and lyrics. The story is still rooted in underworld figures. Now, though, they are a gang of modern-day burglars who use their plundered loot from places including the Metropolitan Opera, to put on a show.“These thieves are calling it an opera,” the show’s director, Dustin Wills, said with a laugh. “They probably don’t go to the opera very often.”“The Counterfeit Opera” has had a fast and furious gestation; Wills said it has been like “‘Project Runway’ for directing.” It started late last fall, when Zack Winokur, Little Island’s producing artistic director, approached Wills and the composer-arranger Dan Schlosberg, the music director of Heartbeat Opera.The “Counterfeit Opera” creative team, from left, Dustin Wills, Tarker and Schlosberg.Bess Adler for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Duck Dynasty’ Is Coming Back for a Second Term

    On Jan. 20, Donald J. Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. Two days later, A&E network announced that it had ordered 20 new episodes of its hit 2010s reality comedy “Duck Dynasty,” titled “Duck Dynasty: The Revival.”The network, in its official statement, did not connect the second restoration to the first. But short of ABC’s bringing Roseanne Barr’s character back from the dead to head the “Roseanne” revival, “The Conners,” it is hard to imagine another programming decision that would so glaringly declare that the times had a-changed back.“Duck Dynasty” actually aired primarily during the Obama era, with 11 seasons beginning in 2012, and it was never overtly about politics onscreen. (Offscreen was another story; we’ll get to that.) Focused on the Robertson family of Louisiana, who made their fortune with the Duck Commander duck-call business before becoming reality stars, the series was first and above all a lighthearted family TV show.But “Duck Dynasty” was also in many ways a precursor of the conservative identity politics that would sweep in after it. It was filled with cultural signifiers — beards, Bibles and buckshot — that spoke to the authenticity of rural life and the reverence for heritage. It became the focus of a controversy that previewed how central grievances over “wokeness” and “cancellation” would become to conservative politics.And it was a mass-market hit that found an audience by representing a kind of life — traditionalist, openly Christian, country — that was absent from much pop culture.Uncle Si Robertson, with Jessica Robertson, often functioned as the show’s gonzo philosopher. via the Robertson family/A&E (inset photo)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    The Patti LuPone Drama With Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis, Explained

    The offstage tensions between three Broadway stars became public after a dispute over sound levels, an Instagram post and a much-talked-about magazine article.Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald are two of the biggest Broadway stars of recent decades. So when LuPone pointedly referred to McDonald as “not a friend” in a new interview with The New Yorker, it caused quite a stir.LuPone made the comment when she was asked about some supportive emojis McDonald added last November to a social media post by another Broadway star, Kecia Lewis. Lewis had accused LuPone of being “racially microaggressive” after she objected to the sound levels at her Broadway show.Here’s what we know.It began with a Broadway noise dispute.When LuPone was on Broadway last year, starring with Mia Farrow in a play called “The Roommate,” she grew concerned about sounds audible from the Alicia Keys musical playing next door, “Hell’s Kitchen.” Noise is a frequent phenomenon on Broadway, and is especially noticeable at plays, where the sound levels tend to be lower than at musicals. LuPone said that she asked for help from the Shubert Organization, which operates the theaters, and that it was taken care of.Kecia Lewis, who won a Tony Award for playing a piano teacher in “Hell’s Kitchen,” posted an Instagram video in November criticizing LuPone’s actions. In what she called an “open letter” about LuPone’s complaints about the musical’s noise levels, she said, “These actions, in my opinion, are bullying, they’re offensive, they are racially microaggressive, they’re rude, they’re rooted in privilege.”She added: “Referring to a predominantly Black Broadway show as loud can unintentionally reinforce harmful stereotypes.”What does that have to do with McDonald?McDonald, a founding member of Black Theater United, a coalition formed to combat racism in the theater world, added supportive emojis to Lewis’s Instagram post. While comments on the post appear to have been removed, People magazine reported at the time that McDonald “simply commented with a series of emojis, writing: ‘❤️❤️👏🏾👏🏾’. ”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Adults’ Is ‘Friends’ for a More Anxious Generation

    A new FX comedy follows a crew of aimless 20-somethings living together in Queens.The FX series “Adults” is the latest of many sitcoms to follow in the footsteps of “Friends,” and it has several qualities typical of such shows: a vague title, a loose premise that is basically, “People hang out.” The wrinkle with this one is that the pals are members of Gen Z, their brains poisoned with all the anxieties of their internet-obsessed cohort.The first episode of “Adults” is rough. The creators Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw, Yale grads who have written for “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” seem eager to make their pilot as taboo-breaking as possible. (In the main plotline, the group is jealous of an acquaintance for getting sexually harassed at work.) But the show quickly finds its rhythm and starts to define the characters beyond their relationship to hot-button issues. (The first two episodes premiere Wednesday on FX; the entire season arrives on Thursday on Hulu.)These aimless 20-somethings all stay together in the Queens childhood home of Samir (Malik Elassal), an impulsive, awkward slacker. (His folks are traveling.) They are a motley bunch. Billie (Lucy Freyer) is a neurotic overachiever now flailing. Issa (Amita Rao) is talkative and oversexed with an inflated ego. Anton (Owen Thiele) forms fleeting connections with everyone but is resistant to finding something deeper. Eventually, Paul Baker (Jack Innanen), a gorgeous bisexual sweetie pie, moves in. Everyone calls him by his full name, “Paul Baker.”“Adults” starts to sing when it finds creative ways to exploit these roommates’ quirks for comedy. A standout episode involves the gang realizing that Anton — who exchanges phone numbers with everyone he meets — may have accidentally befriended a local stabber. Later, Charlie Cox guest stars in a surprising and delightful turn as Billie’s former high school teacher — she reconnects with him when she visits her old school in an attempt to relive her glory days. If you don’t think Daredevil can be funny, watch Episode 6, in which he unleashes some impressive physical bits.Set in New York but clearly not shot there — it was filmed mostly in Toronto — the show’s strengths lie less in “Girls”-esque verisimilitude than in ridiculous sitcom setups. “Adults” is frank about sex and drugs, but it is best when it is just straight-up zany. While it seems unlikely to become a generation-defining sensation, once “Adults” finds its groove, it is perfectly diverting TV. More

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    Harry, Hermione and Ron Are Cast for HBO’s ‘Harry Potter’

    After tens of thousands of auditions, three newcomers were selected to play the television show’s leading roles.Accio Harry, Hermione and Ron!After years of intense speculation and tens of thousands of auditions, three young actors have been cast for HBO’s upcoming television series about the boy wizard. The newcomers Dominic McLaughlin, Arabella Stanton and Alastair Stout will play Harry Potter, Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley, Warner Bros. Discovery announced on Tuesday.Last month, HBO announced it had cast John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape and Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid. The show, which will air on HBO and stream on Max, still does not have an official title or air date.“The talent of these three unique actors is wonderful to behold, and we cannot wait for the world to witness their magic together onscreen,” Francesca Gardiner, the showrunner of the series, and Mark Mylod, who will direct several episodes, said in a statement about the child actors. They added, “It’s been a real pleasure to discover the plethora of young talent out there.”This is Stanton’s first onscreen role, but she previously starred in “Matilda” on London’s West End in 2023. She was one of four girls who played the title role.The “Harry Potter” film franchise accelerated the career of Daniel Radcliffe, who has since anchored movies like “Swiss Army Man” and won a Tony Award last year for his work in “Merrily We Roll Along.” Radcliffe starred in eight “Harry Potter” films from 2001 through 2011 alongside Emma Watson and Rupert Grint, who played Hermione and Ron.HBO has said the new television series will be a “faithful adaptation” of the seven books written by J.K. Rowling that were published between 1997 and 2007. More