Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 125 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    A Complicated Collaboration for a New ‘Enemy of the People’

    Without seeing a script, Ann Dowd jumped at the chance to work with Robert Icke on his solo adaptation of the Ibsen classic. Then the debates began.You are an established stage and screen actress, an Emmy winner with pivotal roles in two of the most critically acclaimed series of the past decade. One day, a young theatermaker rings with an offer you should refuse: a drastic remix of the Henrik Ibsen play “An Enemy of the People” as a solo show in which you would play all the parts. Oh, and he hasn’t written it yet.Ann Dowd (the cult leader Patti Levin in “The Leftovers” and the brutal enforcer Aunt Lydia in “The Handmaid’s Tale”) did not hesitate. “I knew on that first call that I would trust him completely,” she said.That bond was evident during a recent chat with Dowd, 65, and her new collaborator, the British writer and director Robert Icke, 34, at the Park Avenue Armory, which commissioned and is presenting their show from June 22 through Aug. 8. Sitting on an overstuffed maroon couch upstairs at the Armory, the pair batted around ideas, arguing affectionately but spiritedly, and dryly teasing each other.In the original play, Dr. Thomas Stockmann discovers that the waters feeding his town’s popular spa baths are contaminated. For the sake of public health, he wants to disclose his findings and close the baths; this pits him against his own brother, Peter, who happens to be the mayor and fears a fatal blow to the local economy.Icke (pronounced Ike) kept that mainframe, which feels prescient in the light of debates surrounding Covid-19, then changed … a lot. For starters, Thomas is now Professor Joan Stockman, the town has become Weston Springs and there are references to pizza delivery and TV. More importantly, the audience gets to influence the outcome by voting at key points of the story.“Rob rewrites classics to bring them closer to us,” said Pierre Audi, the Armory’s artistic director. “Not by trivializing them, but by going straight to the complexity of why they are great plays. He’s categorical about being able to understand why a play needs to be done, why it’s a story we want to tell now.”Icke’s only other New York credit, “1984,” received mixed reviews when it ran on Broadway in 2017 but in his native Britain he is celebrated for daring, bracing productions that strip the rust and barnacles off familiar material. Dowd — whose stage career includes a 2008 Broadway production of “The Seagull” opposite Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard — is not shy about disagreeing about some of Icke’s aesthetic choices. But these differences appear to fuel their artistic collaboration, not hamper it. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.What was your starting point when you decided to rethink Ibsen’s play?ROBERT ICKE All I really had was the notion that it was interesting but maybe there was a different route through the story that might make a social-distanced environment feel natural rather than pragmatic. And it relied on me finding somebody I felt 100 percent confident I could write for.ANN DOWD Were you sure it would be a woman?ICKE Yes.DOWD How come?ICKE Good question. I don’t know. There’s just something about this show with a man that is completely uninteresting to me.Dowd in rehearsal with her director Robert Icke. They are fond collaborators — except when it comes to their respective takes on Chekhov.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesAnn, how did the project reach you?DOWD My very wonderful agent and manager said, “You have an offer to do a one-person show based on ‘Enemy of the People’ with Rob Icke” — Robert Icke, I think they said. Block your ears — can’t compliment him, I mean, truly, don’t even try. I could tell from the sound of their voice that it was an extraordinary honor to be asked. I didn’t know Rob’s work — I don’t really know anything about a lot of things [stage whisper] you can just cut that part — but at any rate they educated me. Part of me was thinking, “Give me a reason to say no, please, let me avoid this walk up Everest.” I say “walk” because there’ll be no climbing. Then we spoke and I thought, “Who would ever turn this man down?”ICKE Oh, it’s happened.Were you familiar with his work?DOWD My sister is a casting director in London and said, “Rob Icke? Oh, my God, I saw his ‘Vanya,’ I was riveted and when it was finished it had been four hours.” [Actually, about three and a half.] I said, “Wait a minute — whaaaat?” She was just so in the story.ICKE Chekhov said he wants that play to feel like real life so sometimes it was just like, “I just want to watch you all live for a minute, so you just tune your guitar and you maybe look at your phone for a second and then you put it back.”DOWD Well, that irritates me: What is a phone doing in “Vanya”?ICKE We do differ about this. What is our experience of being in the country in the modern age? [He pretends to hold a cellphone up in the air.] “Have I got any bars?” So there’s that idea that wherever they are, there’s no phone signal, just a rusty landline somewhere in the house.DOWD My pushback was: “No, no, it’s called imagination.” Having played Sonya [in a 1986 production] and loving her — lo-ving her — I said, “I’ll trick you: I want to be in ‘Vanya’ and I’m going to play Sonya.” But he said he would never cast me in a role I’ve played before.ICKE But there would be something interesting in asking where Sonya is when she’s your age. Like, what happened?DOWD Yeah, write that play! But let me wear the damn clothes that I wore in Russia and don’t change my name. And don’t take out a cellphone!ICKE Unfortunately if you’re doing Chekhov with me, you’re wearing contemporary clothes. There will be no samovar, there will be no parasols.How did you approach the central character of Joan? She has become a distinct person, not just Thomas Stockmann in a dress. And she can be aggressively intransigent, bordering on zealotry.ICKE It’s both simple and incredibly complicated: the genius of this lady [pointing to Dowd] is that the characters are like real people. I came in one day with a rewrite of a section. She looked at me with a genuine hurt and said, “I just don’t think that’s fair on Joan.” Joan was now a real person who existed inside the actor.DOWD If you track her early years, I think she was probably shut down quite a bit: “Lower your voice, let your older brother” — mother taking you aside — “Joan, he’s the shy one, don’t bully him.” So just learning: “I’m not going to be listened to so might as well just yell it out. And [expletive] every one of you!” I imagine one or two women have experienced that in their lives.The play now introduces an interactive element with the audience votes: The majority’s decision has an impact on what happens in the town and in the play, and it might not be to everybody’s liking.ICKE I think the same thing is true of Trump because he was democratically elected: He won a fair and free election. Whether any of us like that or not, there’s a horrible dichotomy to wrestle with.DOWD How does that excuse —ICKE It doesn’t excuse anything. But that’s the big bind: the process that put him there is the process we all claim to like and the one we signed up to. The British equivalent of that is Brexit.Audience members at this “Enemy” will be asked to respond to plot points by voting from their seats.Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesDOWD If Peter [the mayor] had said, “Look, we are going to have to close down the baths, we’re going to figure it out together. We will find a way to get help. You are not alone.” Real leadership.ICKE Isn’t real leadership to just get it done quietly: shut the baths, give a vague reason?DOWD No, people deserve to know the truth about their lives.ICKE But does it help us? Sometimes I wonder whether we’d all be happier if we knew a bit less. I sometimes think we’re all so flooded with information, it’s more than we can take in.DOWD This is slightly off topic, sorry, but you think about the people who knew what Trump knew [about Covid-19] and stayed quiet. What is that? Your job is more important than your integrity?Ann, how do you burrow into the heads of these tough characters? Of course Aunt Lydia comes to mind.DOWD I was a pre-med student for four years and the way you get through it is that you study to the point of insanity. Then I realized, You know what? Let’s go to acting school! But I applied those same rigorous studies to acting for a very long time. That’s misery because you’re not letting anything in around you. All the doors shut, except for the one you choose to go through.The other thing, and this is big: It’s playing. People ask, “How do you ever play Lydia?” I can’t get to her fast enough. It’s make believe — not to diminish the intensity — but if it wasn’t, emotionally, you’d go home, put a pillow over your head and end it all! Just chill a little bit: It’s a play, there is supposed to be fun in it.Have you reached the fun stage on this one yet?ICKE We had fun on Sunday, when you did all of it.DOWD I was in a state of shock!ICKE I’ve got the WhatsApps to prove it.DOWD [resigned] OK. The point is, that’s the goal. I’ll get there.Enemy of the PeoplePerformances June 22-Aug. 8; armoryonpark.org More

  • 138 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    Broadway’s ‘Music Man’ Names British Producer, Kate Horton, to Replace Rudin

    Kate Horton will become executive producer of the show, which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. It is scheduled to begin performances on Dec. 20.A veteran British theater administrator will take over the day-to-day management of a starry Broadway revival of “The Music Man,” assuming many of the duties previously performed by Scott Rudin.The administrator, Kate Horton, who previously held high-level management positions at the National Theater, Royal Court Theater and Royal Shakespeare Company in England, will become executive producer of “The Music Man,” which stars Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and which is scheduled to begin performances on Dec. 20 and to open Feb. 10.Rudin, who was the revival’s lead producer, departed that role earlier this year, saying he was stepping back from all of his theater and film productions amid renewed scrutiny of his bullying behavior toward subordinates and collaborators.Horton was hired by the business titans Barry Diller and David Geffen, who had been producing the revival alongside Rudin, and who are now the sole lead producers. The production, at the Winter Garden Theater, reunites much of the creative team behind the Tony-winning 2017 revival of “Hello, Dolly!,” led by the director Jerry Zaks.Horton currently runs, with her longtime collaborator Dominic Cooke, a British producing company called Fictionhouse. She was previously deputy executive director of the National Theater, executive director of the Royal Court Theater and commercial director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. She and Rudin both were previously involved with the team behind Little Island, a new park and performance space in New York, but no longer have any role there, a spokeswoman said.Horton declined a request for an interview.“The Music Man,” like many Broadway shows, has been delayed by the pandemic. It was originally scheduled to open last fall. The show sold a large number of tickets before the pandemic; rather than refunding those tickets, as many shows did, the production exchanged them for future seats. During the pandemic, the producers stopped selling new tickets; tickets to the show are going back on sale starting Tuesday.Several other Rudin-related Broadway productions have found new leadership teams. A stage adaptation of “To Kill a Mockingbird” named Orin Wolf as executive producer; the musical “The Book of Mormon” and the play “The Lehman Trilogy” said their existing leadership teams would simply proceed without Rudin. (“The Book of Mormon” is overseen by members of the “South Park” team, while “The Lehman Trilogy” is overseen by Britain’s National Theater.) More

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Three Hollywood Stars Recast Their Lives Deep in the Heart of Texas

    As the pandemic upended Tinseltown, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Haylie Duff and Becca Tobin made a pact to abandon Los Angeles and join the mass migration from California to Texas.During the blockbuster plot twist that was 2020, three Los Angeles-based actors and longtime friends wrote themselves a scene that was playing out in cities across the United States. Early into lockdown, Becca Tobin, best known for her role as Kitty Wilde on the Fox series “Glee,” formed a pandemic pod with her fellow actors Haylie Duff and Jamie-Lynn Sigler, gathering for regular backyard confabs about shifting priorities, family demands and their future in Hollywood.“We had been able to work from home successfully and set up our careers from anywhere,” Ms. Tobin said. “And we were all kind of ready for a change.”Ms. Tobin, 35, Ms. Duff, 36 and Ms. Sigler, 40, had all moved to Los Angeles in their 20s for work and, like so many others, spent much of 2020 wondering if they wanted to live somewhere else. Hollywood the town and Hollywood the job had been cleaved apart, with acting classes going online, self-tape auditions replacing in-person, and the offscreen demands of the job — red carpets, award shows, interviews — going virtual or extinct.“We found our conversations shifting more toward life,” said Ms. Sigler, who made her mark playing Meadow Soprano on “The Sopranos.” “And then we started to fantasize about what it would be like to live in different cities, and would we ever want to leave L. A.?”They were far from alone. For the first time in more than a century, California lost people last year, according to population estimates released by the state in May. Some of that was a result of Covid-19 deaths, falling birthrates and the Trump administration’s efforts to limit immigration. But for many, it was simply a matter of finding better prices in greener pastures.The three made a pact to relocate their “quaranteam,” leaving Hollywood together for a new city where they could keep working but enjoy a less hectic, and less expensive, life.“It reminded me of being in high school and being like, ‘You’re gonna go home tonight and shave your legs, right? Because I’m going to do it, too,’” Ms. Tobin said of the agreement. “Like adult peer pressure.”During the summer, Ms. Duff, the native Texan in the group, had visited her parents in Houston and felt the pull back home. The older sister of the actress Hilary Duff, she has been acting since she was a teenager and had always planned to move back to Texas eventually, and after the trip, she cut her family’s five-year plan to a five-month plan. As more friends relocated, there was “an energy around people choosing to make a change in their life, for a positive reason, for a self-care reason,” she said.The friends considered different cities they had heard of people moving to, like Nashville or Atlanta, but they kept coming back to Texas. “We liked the idea of being in a progressive city, but not necessarily something so overly populated,” Ms. Tobin said.The obvious choice was Austin, the booming southern crossroads of culture and technology, where they could more or less split the distance between Los Angeles and New York. It was a madcap move in the rush of a red-hot sellers market, a once-in-a-century chance to pause, then fast-forward.Austin’s housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000.Stacy Sodolak for The New York Times“Even though we were together so much during quarantine and Covid, it really chipped away at us as a family, like many families,” said Ms. Sigler, who had only been to Austin once, for a film premiere at the South by Southwest festival. “Coming to this new city all together on this adventure offered a lot of repair for us, as well.”Ms. Tobin, a Georgia native who had lived in Los Angeles for 12 years, said of Tinseltown: “As easy as it was to come, it was as easy for me to say goodbye.”The three families made a common checklist, headlined by ample outdoor space and good public schools. They “hit the Zillow hard,” Ms. Sigler said, lobbing listings at one another from film sets and playgrounds. In October, they embarked on a house-hunting tour with partners and children in tow (Ms. Duff has two daughters; Ms. Sigler has two sons), and settled on a neighborhood about 20 minutes northwest of downtown Austin.When they arrived in the spring, the culture shock came by way of small-town hospitality and everyday conveniences. “You mean I can get in my car, drive five minutes and not fight people when I’m in the grocery store to get in a lot?” said Ms. Tobin, who arrived in April after filming a TV reboot of the 1989 film “Turner & Hooch” in Vancouver, British Columbia. “Oh, and you don’t pay for parking anywhere.”In decamping to Austin — home to an ever-expanding ecosystem of film festivals and production studios — they were joining a wave of high-profile Californians like Tesla founder Elon Musk and podcaster Joe Rogan, as well as the other roughly 70,000 people who moved to the area last year, according to U.S. census data, making it the fastest-growing metro area in the United States.“Once you come here, it’s hard to leave,” said Ms. Duff, whose film roles include “Napoleon Dynamite” and “The Wedding Pact,” and who spent time this year shooting a movie in Fort Wayne, Ind. She noted that each of the friends booked gigs not long after closing on their Austin homes, which felt like a nod from the universe.“I almost feel more connected to my craft and why I love acting,” said Ms. Sigler, who had just returned from recording dialogue at a studio in downtown Austin for an ABC pilot she shot in Los Angeles. “When the calls come in, it’s a beautiful surprise. I’m still on things and I’m still a businesswoman and it’s still my career, but I don’t feel the pressure around it because we took a stand for ourselves and we made decisions for our families.”With its bohemian charms, natural splendors and lack of state income taxes, Austin has been courting California’s twin economic engines, Hollywood and Silicon Valley, for years, all while trying to maintain its cherished “Keep Austin Weird” credibility. According to Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research, about 90,000 Californians moved to Texas in 2018 and 2019. The pandemic has only deepened the romance. Austin enjoyed a P.R. blitz of high-profile corporate relocations and expansions last year, with tech giant Oracle moving its headquarters there from Redwood Shores, Calif., and Mr. Musk announcing Tesla’s $1 billion “gigafactory” on the southeast edge of town.The housing market, already in a decade-long development frenzy, wound up defying the pandemic and roaring back to life. In May 2021, the median sale price in the Austin metro area hit an all-time high of $465,000, according to the Austin Board of Realtors. High-end home prices spiked 24 percent, according to Redfin, the most of any area in the country.Still, anyone used to California prices sees Texas as a bargain, said Scott Michaels, an Austin real estate agent with Compass, who described cutthroat, all-cash bidding wars that drew 40 to 60 offers on a single property. “It’s a challenge because we’re competing with people moving from out-of-state, and there’s just not a lot of inventory on the market,” he said.For Ms. Sigler, who is from Long Island, Austin’s square footage and outdoor space were revelatory. “There was a lot of like, ‘Oh my God, look what we can get for this. Look at the life we can give ourselves,’ you know, compared to what we’re able to afford here in L.A.,” she said. “I just feel like we’re taking a big, deep breath since we got here.”Apartment towers sprout on the shores of Lady Bird Lake, luring workers in entertainment, tech and other high-profile industries from cities across the U.S. “It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.Stacy Sodolak for The New York TimesMs. Sigler and Ms. Duff started their careers as teens but wanted a different lifestyle for their children in Austin, where space and nature are plentiful, and paparazzi aren’t. “That was a big choice for us, wanting our kids to stay young,” Ms. Duff said.Austin has been contending with growing pains since the early 1980s, during its first hint of what locals call Silicon Hills, said Natasha Harper-Madison, the city’s Mayor Pro-Tem. Born and raised in East Austin, Ms. Harper-Madison said the changing cityscape was best described by her mother: “She said, ‘I really like my neighbors. I just wish I didn’t have to lose so many of the old ones to get new ones.’ And I think, in large part, that’s how folks feel. It’s not any sort of absence of the desire to welcome people to our communities. It’s the exact opposite. In fact, people want to preserve and sort of steward the evolution of their communities.”Despite some natal cries of “Don’t California My Texas” from both ends of the political spectrum, what’s fueling the migration are the states’ similarities. Sitting on the border with relatively sunny climates, “they’re both super diverse, in every possible way — ethnically, economically, geographically,” said Jake Weggman, an associate professor of community and regional planning at the University of Texas at Austin.“It’s an incredible burst of prosperity for the city, but it’s also just terrifying from a housing affordability standpoint, what that means for people living here,” Mr. Weggman said.Ms. Tobin has sensed some side-eye when she tells locals where she’s from, but she tries to put them at ease. Voting and donating are two ways to do it, she said, and she has contributed to causes that support homeless outreach and abortion rights through local nonprofits like Mobile Loaves & Fishes and the Lilith Fund.“I get it, they don’t want us to L.A. their Austin,” she said. “My husband and I personally are going to really try to do our best to help out in the community and get involved where we can.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

  • 75 Shares159 Views

    in Television

    Stephen Colbert Skewers Trump’s Covid Response

    Colbert joked on Monday night about a forthcoming book on the former president’s pandemic plan: “The main detail: There wasn’t one.”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. Looking for more to watch? Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Detour to GuantánamoA forthcoming book by two Washington Post journalists is said to provide new information about the Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.“The main detail: There wasn’t one,” Stephen Colbert joked on Monday night.According to the book, early in the pandemic former President Donald J. Trump suggested sending Covid-infected American cruise ship passengers to the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba to avoid adding to U.S. case numbers.“The president wanted to send cruise ship passengers to Gitmo, so enjoy your beach day with a complimentary head sack, then hit the bar for bottomless piña colada boarding.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“And you know he said he wants to send them to ‘Geronimo Bay’ or something like that.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Of course the reality star wanted to send them to an island. He probably sent a camera crew, too, and called it ‘Survirus’ or something.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is another good McNugget for the book. Trump — they say he was very upset about Covid testing because he believed that positive tests would look bad and hurt his chances of re-election. He had a call with Alex Azar, who was his secretary of health and human services, and he demanded to know what ‘idiot’ decided to make the federal government do testing, and Alex Azar was like, ‘Uh, do you mean Jared?’” — JIMMY KIMMEL, referencing Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser“Imagine being in that administration and someone calling you ‘the idiot.’ That’s like being in the N.B.A. and your nickname is ‘the tall guy.’” — STEPHEN COLBERTThe Punchiest Punchlines (Half the Cheer Edition)“The Olympics are almost here, and today organizers announced that venues will be at 50 percent capacity. That’s right, 50 percent, which means only four people will be allowed to watch fencing instead of the normal eight.” — JIMMY FALLON“Tokyo residents will be allowed to go to the Games but will not be allowed to cheer and they have to go straight home after. Whoever came up with these rules should win the gold medal for buzzkill.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Can you imagine going to a live sporting event with no cheering allowed? It’s like a Detroit Lions game.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Also they said fans aren’t allowed to cheer. Although they say that at the beginning of every graduation, and parents are still like, ‘Thomas, yeah! Tommy, you did it. That’s my boy, Tommy!’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingPaul Rudd crashed Bill Hader’s “Conan” interview on Monday night.What We’re Excited About on Tuesday NightWanda Sykes, star of the new Netflix sitcom “The Upshaws,” will appear on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This OutJack Robinson/Hulton Archive, via Getty ImagesJames Taylor, Brandi Carlile and other artists reflect upon Joni Mitchell’s album “Blue” on its 50th anniversary. More

  • 138 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    A Guide to Theater Festivals in New York and the Berkshires

    From the Williamstown Theater Festival to New York Stage and Film, theatergoers can experience world premieres, concerts and more.Most summers, as tourists pour into New York City to see theater, New Yorkers pour out to see theater elsewhere. This summer, though, they may do so with extra ardor. As the pandemic lifts, the pent-up demand for live, in-person theater is first being met in the Berkshires and in the mid-Hudson region, where companies are putting up tents, arranging outdoor immersive experiences and welcoming audiences to buildings that have been empty for too long.Some of those companies are old and some new: The Williamstown Theater Festival has been at it since 1955, but Great Barrington Public Theater just started in 2019. Shakespeare & Company, as its name implies, goes heavy on classics — starting July 2, Christopher Lloyd plays King Lear — while Barrington Stage Company focuses on musicals and new plays. For mainstream fare (if “The Importance of Being Earnest,” opening next week, counts as mainstream), look to the Berkshire Theater Group. For something more experimental, try Bard SummerScape or New York Stage and Film.Wherever you go — below, our critics highlight five possibilities — you will still find pandemic precautions in place. (Check each theater’s website for specific safety policies.) Even so, after a dark time, these summer shows and festivals truly offer something to celebrate. JESSE GREENWilliamstown Theater FestivalAudiences have always been drawn to the Williamstown Theater Festival for its artistry, which is strong, and its geography, which is sublime. Tucked amid the Berkshires on the campus of Williams College, in a corner of western Massachusetts that’s just a meander away from Vermont, it seems like the kind of spot that would have an open-air stage or two.In an ordinary summer, no such luck. But this year, Williamstown is taking its slate of world premieres outside.The first stop is the front lawn, where the season starts with “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays.” Curated by Robert O’Hara, a current Tony Award nominee for his direction of “Slave Play,” the production offers three separate programs, each made up of three 30-minute plays: by Guadalís Del Carmen, France‑Luce Benson and NSangou Njikam (July 6 to 10); J. Nicole Brooks, Terry Guest and Ike Holter (July 13 to 18); and Charly Evon Simpson, Ngozi Anyanwu and Zora Howard (July 20 to 25).“Row,” a production of the Williamstown Theater Festival, will take place on the grounds of the Clark Art Institute, which a reflecting pool.Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesDown the road at the Clark Art Institute, from July 13 to Aug. 8, the museum’s vast reflecting pool will become the stage for “Row,” Daniel Goldstein and Dawn Landes’s musical, starring the singer-songwriter Grace McLean, part of the original Broadway cast of “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812.” Directed by Tyne Rafaeli, “Row” is inspired by Tori Murden McClure’s memoir, “A Pearl in the Storm,” about rowing solo across the Atlantic Ocean.And from July 20 to Aug. 8 around the town of Williamstown, audiences can experience the immersive performance “Alien/Nation” on foot or by car. The director Michael Arden and his company, the Forest of Arden, who made last summer’s immersive “American Dream Study” in the Hudson Valley, teamed up with the playwrights Jen Silverman and Eric Berryman for this one, which uses local history from 1969 as a starting point. (wtfestival.org) LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESBard SummerScapeThe Frank Loesser musical “The Most Happy Fella” boasts one of the most wondrous scores of the 1950s — a decade filled with stiff competition. The show is packed with songs whose styles are mixed and matched with formidable agility, going from operatic arias to dance romps to jazzy croons and back again.Yet “The Most Happy Fella” is less famous than, say, Loesser’s “Guys and Dolls,” and that might have something to do with what some might generously call its baggage. The middle-aged, homely title character, Tony, an Italian immigrant prone to mangling English, falls for, deceives and eventually wins over a younger waitress. This plot has not aged well.This makes the prospect of the director Daniel Fish’s “Most Happy in Concert” (Aug. 5-7) even more intriguing — especially since his ensemble is made up of seven female and nonbinary performers. (While SummerScape events usually take place on the Bard campus, in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., this year’s productions will be performed at the Stage at Montgomery Place, an outdoor venue in nearby Red Hook.)Daniel Fish’s upcoming “Most Happy in Concert” at Bard SummerScape will feature Mallory Portnoy, third from left above, and Mary Testa, above right. They both appeared in Fish’s “Oklahoma!” production, above, at Bard in 2015, with, from left: Mitch Tebo, James Patrick Davis, John Carlin and Benj Mirman.Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesOf course, the experimentally minded director has been there and successfully done that already: In 2015, also at Bard, he took “Oklahoma!,” long associated with a certain aw-shucks all-Americanness, and pulled off a “vibrant, essential excavation,” as Ben Brantley put it in his review of the premiere production. The show went on to win the Tony Award for best revival four years later.Now Fish is teaming up again with his “Oklahoma!” musical collaborators, Daniel Kluger and Nathan Koci, and the actresses Mary Testa (Aunt Eller) and Mallory Portnoy (Gertie Cummings), who will sing alongside the likes of the “Toni Stone” star April Matthis and the protean performer Erin Markey. Whether a full production ever happens remains a mystery for now, but the prospect of this director with this cast and this score is enough to light up August. (fishercenter.bard.edu) ELISABETH VINCENTELLIBarrington Stage CompanyLast year, this regional theater in the Berkshires, a proving ground for new musicals, announced a truncated summer season. But state directives meant that its artistic director, Julianne Boyd, had to constrict it even further, moving an indoor show, “Harry Clarke,” outdoors. But summer 2021 promises more shows in more venues, inside and out.Mark H. Dold in last year’s production of “Harry Clarke,” at Barrington Stage Company.Daniel RaderThis season begins, in a tent on the Barrington Stage Campus, with a celebration of the songs of George Gershwin (June 10-July 3). Directed by Boyd, it stars Allison Blackwell, Alan H. Green, Britney Coleman, Jacob Tischler and Alysha Umphress. The tent will also host “Boca” (July 30-Aug. 22), an evening of Jessica Provenz’s short comedies about Florida seniors; as well as concert evenings featuring the Broadway stars Elizabeth Stanley (June 28), Jeff McCarthy (July 24) Joshua Henry (Aug. 16), and the husband-and-wife pair Orfeh and Andy Karl (Aug. 23). The couple, who met in the Broadway adaptation of “Saturday Night Fever” and later appeared together in “Legally Blonde,” call the show “Legally Bound.” Aaron Tveit, a current Tony nominee for “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” will perform at the theater’s gala.Indoors, the father-and-son Reed and Ephraim Birney star in the lachrymose two-hander “Chester Bailey,” starting on Friday. Harriet Harris then appears in “Eleanor” (July 16-Aug. 1), Mark St. Germain’s one-woman play about Eleanor Roosevelt. And the New Yorker writer Alec Wilkinson adapts his article about the conceptual art project, the Apology Line, into a new play, “Sister Sorry” (Aug. 13-29), directed by Richard Hamburger. (barringtonstageco.org) ALEXIS SOLOSKINew York Stage and FilmTheater is not just what you see when it’s finished, it’s what goes on beforehand. New York Stage and Film, an incubator of works in development, provides that “beforehand”; something called “The Hamilton Mixtape” showed up there in 2013, two years before it opened as “Hamilton” on Broadway.Usually held on the campus of Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, the festival looks a little different this year. The pandemic has pushed its events into various venues around town, and the Black Lives Matter movement has pushed it, like all arts organizations, to rethink programming. The new artistic director, Chris Burney, has responded with a promising slate of work from Black, Latinx and Asian American artists.The big draw, on July 31 and Aug. 1, is Michael R. Jackson’s “White Girl in Danger,” a follow-up to his 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner, “A Strange Loop.” Directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz, “White Girl” is a satire of Lifetime Original-style movies as seen from a Black woman’s perspective, but Jackson’s radically sympathetic worldview suggests more than a little love in the critique.Daveed Diggs, left, and Lin-Manuel Miranda working on “The Hamilton Mixtape” at New York Stage and Film in 2013.Buck Lewis, via New York Stage and FilmJackson is not the only theater artist exploring race and danger in Poughkeepsie this summer. “Mexodus,” a “concept album” created and performed by Brian Quijada and Nygel D. Robinson, is about the thousands of enslaved people who instead of heading north on the Underground Railroad went south to Mexico (July 17 and 24). “South,” by Florencia Iriondo and Luis D’Elias, is a one-woman musical inspired by Iriondo’s experiences as a Latina in the United States (July 23 and 24). And “Interstate,” by Melissa Li and Kit Yan, follows a transgender slam poet and a lesbian singer-songwriter on an eventful cross-country journey (July 25).New York Stage and Film is for artists, yes, but since artists need feedback, it’s for audiences as well. (Most events are “pay what you can.”) Who isn’t it for? Critics. We can go, but can’t review, which makes it a real vacation for everyone. (newyorkstageandfilm.org) JESSE GREENHudson Valley Shakespeare FestivalThe serenity that descends on visitors upon arrival at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival has everything to do with the landscape as seen from the bluff — breathtaking river, low mountains and sky. Never mind the saber-rattling name of the town, Garrison, or the fact that West Point is across the water, barely downstream. These grounds, at the historic Boscobel House and Gardens, are a soothing setting for pre-performance picnics and a gorgeous backdrop to the stage in the open-air tent as sunset turns to night.“As You Like It,” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in 2016.T Charles Erickson, via Hudson Valley Shakespeare FestivalStill, it is an area with a particular reverence for the Revolutionary War, which makes the festival’s season opener an enticingly provocative match. “The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington” — directed by Taylor Reynolds and running June 24 to July 30 — is by James Ijames, one of the most exhilarating playwrights the American theater has right now. Set at Mount Vernon as the widowed Martha lies ill, tended to by enslaved people whose freedom is promised as soon as she dies, it is described as a fever dream — and if it’s anywhere near as brilliant as Ijames’s Sally Hemings-Thomas Jefferson satire “TJ Loves Sally 4 Ever,” it could be unmissable.So it’s helpful that both of the festival’s live productions this summer will be filmed for streaming. But if you can, do yourself a favor and go in person. “The Tempest,” directed by Ryan Quinn and running Aug. 5 to Sept. 4, will be the company’s goodbye to Boscobel, its home of 34 years. The theater isn’t going far — just upriver to Philipstown — but if you want to catch that stellar view from the tent, this is last call. (hvshakespeare.org)LAURA COLLINS-HUGHES More

  • 113 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    What’s on TV This Week: ‘Two Gods’ and ‘Conan’

    PBS airs a documentary about a New Jersey coffin maker and his mentees. And the final episode of “Conan” airs on TBS.MondayINDEPENDENT LENS: TWO GODS (2021) 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Hanif, a coffin maker in Newark takes a pair of mentees under his wing in this admirable documentary from the filmmaker Zeshawn Ali. Through intimate black-and-white footage, the film delves into Hanif’s life, and the way that his guidance bolsters his young students. Ali does this with “a matter-of-fact compassion,” Nicolas Rapold wrote in his review for The New York Times. “He cuts efficiently without turning anyone into a case study.” More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Television

    Raja Feather Kelly and 'The Kill One Race': TV and Theater

    Raja Feather Kelly’s “The Kill One Race” and “This American Wife” exist in a realm between, changing our relationship with what we witness.There’s reality and there’s fiction: an easy distinction to make, right? Well things aren’t always so cut and dried, especially when we consider the performances we undertake in our real lives and the fictional stories that borrow from reality — the boundaries between what’s true and what’s false often get blurred.In Playwrights Horizons’ new series, “The Kill One Race,” reality TV meets theater for an examination of the ways we shape our values, form relationships and bounce between the realms of reality and fiction in both our entertainment and our daily lives. This streaming production, and another recent digital theater hybrid, “This American Wife,” reflects how the peculiar combination of theater and reality TV may complicate the viewers’ contract with the art form and their understanding of what is artifice and what is truth.“The Kill One Race,” conceived by the choreographer Raja Feather Kelly and his company Feath3r Theory, brings us to a dystopia where 24-year-olds become contestants in a reality competition full of social experiments. The most ethical person in the group is granted the honor of dying and ascending to the Empire, a vague Xanadu of eternal comfort and righteousness.Seven characters compete over seven days that are rife with challenges and schemes and manipulations. You may be thinking of “The Hunger Games” or any of the countless other dystopian works of fiction that involve monitored competitions. Despite the proliferation of these stories, I was still surprised by the variation theater brought to the theme. Filmed at Playwrights Horizons and released over the course of eight overly lengthy episodes, “The Kill One Race” so closely mimics the style of “Big Brother,” “The Real World” and other classic reality series that “theater” feels like a terribly insufficient way to describe it.Kelly, who also directs, borrows the filming conventions of the genre, with many split screens, confessionals and voyeuristic close-ups. He uses the techniques so well, in fact, that the naturalism is jarring — confusing, even. The performances of the cast, too, are so exact and understated, with each actor having such a clear understanding of his or her character’s disposition and way of thinking that the ethical discussions feel uncannily real.Jamen Nanthakumar, left, and Raja Feather Kelly, who created and performs in the production. Kate EnmanThis is what tripped me up (other than the production’s long run time and the fascinating though similarly overlong Ethics 101 discussions): Was I actually watching some kind of social experiment, featuring real people responding in real ways within the scaffolding of a fictional world?It reminded me of the discomfort I felt watching “This American Wife,” with its meta play on the Bravo “Real Housewives” franchise that reproduced actual scenes and dialogue from the shows alongside scripted and improvised material. In my review I wondered what was improvised, what was borrowed from the franchise and what was real.My problem has to do with the question of artifice and honesty — fitting for a show about ethics. I avoid watching reality TV dramas because the performances of these supposedly “real-life” scenarios are too transparent. They feel disingenuous, parodies of reality despite the shows’ claims to the contrary. And this extends beyond the frames of the TV screen — the carefully curated fiction of characters’ stories and their relationships with one another become part of those individuals’ celebrity. It’s profitable.Though theater isn’t an art form of total honesty either, it is its own kind of artifice; the difference is in the presentation of that fiction. In theater there is the expectation of fantasy — we sit in an audience and wait for the curtains to open. When we step into a theater we agree to suspend our disbelief for the duration of a show. Reality TV, however, depicts lives that continue without intermissions and characters who actually exist in the world.When these two realms collide, then, as they do in “The Kill One Race” and “This American Wife,” it warrants a renegotiation of terms between the theatrical production and the audience — a redefinition of the art form and what is generally known and expected of it in its most traditional forms.I’ve stated my unease with this collision between reality TV and the “honest” fiction of theater, but that’s not to say that this is an aberration — or even an error — that productions ought to avoid. In fact, such contortions and hybridizations of theater and other media allow art to confront audiences with their preconceived notions about which stories should be told in which ways. In the end, perhaps the truest sentiments lie somewhere in the space between reality and theater.The KILL ONE RaceThrough July 4; thekillonerace.com More

  • 163 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    She Never Saw Herself in Children’s TV Shows. So She Created Her Own.

    For Chris Nee, the producer behind the popular “Doc McStuffins” series, diversity and representation aren’t nice-to-haves. They’re the things she wished TV producers considered when she was a kid.“I am writing to my own experience as a kid.”— Chris Nee, producer of “Doc McStuffins”In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.In early June, Chris Nee, the award-winning children’s show writer and producer, found herself at a loss for words. She could not name a single TV show from her childhood that had left a lasting impression on her.“Maybe ‘Quincy’…?” she said in a recent interview over Zoom from her house in the Venice Beach neighborhood of Los Angeles. Her face scrunched up with a mix of confusion, bewilderment and disappointment as she tried to recall another show — any show — from the late ’70s and early ’80s. “I was not growing up in a great era of TV,” she concluded.It is, of course, not lost on Ms. Nee that part of the reason she — a gay “relatively butch” woman, as she put it — didn’t connect with any shows was because she never saw herself represented onscreen. She simply wasn’t like the little girls that TV glorified back then. Ms. Nee felt uncomfortable in a dress and in social situations, feeling early on that she was “different.”Ms. Nee came out as gay when she turned 18 in the ’80s — a time when being openly gay was an incredibly heavy burden to carry. The AIDS epidemic, still little undersood at that point, was exploding around the country, killing hundreds of thousands of L.G.B.T.Q. people. The Reagan administration treated the epidemic as a laughing matter, publicly making jokes about the disease and further marginalizing L.G.B.T.Q. people who watched friends and loved ones die. And, in the broader context, there were few pop culture and entertainment icons who were openly gay; even Elton John only publicly revealed that he was gay in 1992.“It was just a really different space,” Ms. Nee said, of that time. “And I carry that stuff with me. I can still touch those feelings of hurt and anxiety and fear.”In large part, Ms. Nee’s artistry has been capturing that not-fitting-in-ness in the heart of her stories; stories that touch on the idea of difference as the very “thing that can give us great strength.”“I always say that the answer you’re supposed to give when you’re asked ‘who are you writing for?’ isn’t kids,” she said. “I am really not writing for the kids, I am writing to my own experience as a kid.”“We Are Doc McStuffins”In 2012, Disney released “Doc McStuffins,” an animated children’s show pitched and produced by Ms. Nee. The lead character is a 7-year-old Black girl, Doc, who dreams of becoming a doctor, like her mom, and spends her days carrying around a “Big Book of Boo Boos” and tending to her toys that fall sick. It was also the first Disney show to air an episode featuring an interracial lesbian couple.A scene from Chris Nee’s animated Disney series “Doc McStuffins.”Disney Junior“Doc McStuffins” quickly became one of the most popular children’s TV shows, running for five seasons and viewed by millions of children, age 2 to 5. In fact, in 2016, the first episode of Season 4 reached more than four million children, according to the book “Heroes, Heroines and Everything in Between: Challenging Gender and Sexuality Stereotypes in Children’s Entertainment Media.” The show was nominated for several Daytime Emmy Awards and, in 2014, it won a Peabody Award for children’s programming.Most importantly, the show helped shift perceptions of Black medical professionals, spurring thousands of female physicians to post pictures of themselves on social media with the caption “We are Doc McStuffins.” In a recent tweet, Dr. Rachel Buckle-Rashid, a pediatrician in Rhode Island, posted that a little girl had just jumped into her arms assuming she was “Doc.” “Maybe Disney Junior has done more for me as a Black woman in medicine than most D.E.I. initiatives,” Dr. Buckle-Rashid added.In a 2018 survey by the Geena Davis Institute, a research organization focused on representation in film and TV, more than 50 percent of over 900 girls in school and college named “Doc McStuffins” as the show that left enough of a lasting impression on them to pursue a career in STEM.Interestingly, Ms. Nee noted that boys were watching the show, too, pointing to data from the time indicating that they made up about 49 percent of “Doc” viewers, which exposed them to ideas of more empowered girls as well. Breaking New GroundMs. Nee originally wanted to be an actor. But with her shaved head and baggy T-shirts — “I was deeply queer in the old school sense, which was actually hard-core punk rock,” she explained — she didn’t know who would cast her or how she could fit in. Instead, she decided then to get into production, taking on a role as an associate producer with Sesame Street’s international arm, which took her from Jordan to Mexico to Finland. It was, as she described it, “the coolest job in the world.”She eventually realized, though, that her greatest strength was writing. She began working on scripts for shows like “Blue’s Clues” and “Wonder Pets,” even as she continued to work as a producer (TV production was and, in large part, still is a freelance-driven business). At one point she was producing “Deadliest Catch,” a reality TV show about Alaskan king crab fishermen, during the day and writing children’s TV shows at night.“The first Christmas special of the ‘Wonder Pets’ was written from the barracks on the islands of Unalaska,” she said.The idea for “Doc McStuffins” came to Ms. Nee in the shower one morning. Just a few days prior, her family had rushed to the hospital in an ambulance because her son, 2 years old at the time, was dealing with severe asthma. It was one of many trips in and out of the doctor’s office and the emergency room that they would make. “It was all so brand-new for him,” she said. “And I was like, why hasn’t somebody done something to make this less scary for kids?”When she took the concept to Disney, the company said yes almost immediately.“It was one of those times where you said to yourself ‘Oh, why didn’t I think of that?’” said Nancy Kanter, who at the time was the creative head of Disney Junior. “The idea was simple and brilliant.”Ms. Kanter had just one suggestion for Ms. Nee: Instead of making Doc a little white girl, why not make her a little Black girl?“That was an easy yes for me,” Ms. Nee said.There was early pushback and hesitancy from the business side of Disney that a female lead might not have mass appeal. The prevailing wisdom at the time of the perfectly bifurcated pink and blue worlds of children’s TV was that a girl would watch an action-packed “boy’s show” but a boy wouldn’t watch a “girl’s show”. There was also a concern that a Black lead, rather than a white lead, might not sell as much merchandise, one of the biggest revenue drivers for children’s entertainment.But Ms. Kanter was undeterred. “I said, ‘You may be right but we’re not going to change it,’” she recalled. “I was willing to stick my neck out.”In the end, both of the business-side assumptions proved false. The show inspired so many little girls of all races to dress up in lab coats and carry their own stethoscopes that within a year, “Doc McStuffins” merchandise generated about $500 million in sales, making it one of the top-selling toy products featuring a nonwhite character. And Ms. Nee added that girls and boys were tuning in in almost equal numbers. “Rules are rules until somebody breaks them,” she said.Since the release of “Doc McStuffins” in 2012, children’s TV shows have hit a milestone that Hollywood and the broader entertainment industry have not yet crossed: 52 percent of children’s TV shows now feature female leads, according to a 2019 analysis by the Geena Davis Institute. Compare this with the top 100 Hollywood movies of 2018, where women held 39 percent of leading roles. And, the analysis found, female characters in children’s shows are now more likely than male characters to be depicted as leaders, which wasn’t the case for the top Hollywood movies.A Blue SuitIn the coming weeks, Netflix will begin streaming two of Ms. Nee’s latest shows. “We the People,” to be released on July 4, is a series of animated civics lessons created in collaboration with Higher Ground Productions, the company run by the Obama family. And “Ridley Jones,” set to be released on July 13, is the tale of 6-year-old Ridley who lives at the natural history museum that her mom manages.Chris Nee’s new show “Ridley Jones”NetflixIn the first episode of “Ridley Jones,” Ridley discovers that at night the creatures in the museum come to life. That’s when she meets Fred the Bison.“Is Fred a he or a she?” she asks one of her new friends.“I don’t know, they’re just Fred,” he replies.“Cool,” Ridley says, and off she jets on a mission to rescue a necklace.In another episode, Ridley and her gang have to attend a ball at the museum, but they find out that Fred doesn’t want to go because they didn’t feel comfortable wearing the dresses they’ve always worn.By the end of the episode, all is resolved: Fred ends up attending the ball in a blue suit. And Fred’s blue suit just happens to resemble a blue suit Ms. Nee used to love wearing when she was a kid. More