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    Under the Radar Festival Returns, Smaller but Still Funky

    The experimental festival at the Public Theater will return in person with fewer shows and, for the first time, performances outside New York City.The Under the Radar festival, the Public Theater’s annual showcase for experimental theater, will return in person next year, Jan. 12-30. The event, now in its 18th year, will feature nearly two dozen artists, with performances held at the Public and Mabou Mines in Manhattan as well as a venue in upstate New York.Those who’ve attended in past years will notice a few differences: The festival will run for three weeks instead of two and include only 15 productions at the Public — all 90 minutes or less — down from the 22 at the 2020 festival.“I’m happy we have a smaller festival this year so we can really concentrate on these pieces and give them the attention they deserve,” Mark Russell, the festival director, said in a phone conversation, adding that he hadn’t yet determined whether the change would be permanent.One of the pieces that Russell said he was most excited to land was Jasmine Lee-Jones’s “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” (Jan. 12-16, 18-23, 25-29). Staged to critical acclaim at London’s Royal Court Theater last summer, the 90-minute two-hander explores cultural appropriation, queerness, friendship and the ownership of Black bodies online and in real life.A cultural re-examination is also what Annie Saunders and Becca Wolff have planned for the New York premiere of their hourlong show “Our Country,” a meeting of mythic and modern America set in California’s marijuana country and inspired by Sophocles’ “Antigone” (Jan. 12-16, 21-23).A pair of solo shows also highlight the schedule: The playwright Inua Ellams (“Barber Shop Chronicles”) will perform his 90-minute, music- and poetry-filled piece “An Evening with an Immigrant,” which chronicles his journey from Nigeria to England (Jan. 18-20). Roger Guenveur Smith, an actor known for his roles in Spike Lee films, will return to the festival with his hourlong solo show “Otto Frank,” a historical account of the father of Anne Frank, who was the only immediate member of his family to survive the Holocaust (Jan. 13-16, 20-23).Rounding out the slate is a double bill of “Mud/Drowning,” two intimate works by María Irene Fornés, a Cuban American playwright and director who died in 2018, which, following a sold-out run last year, will return to the experimental theater company Mabou Mines (Jan. 12-16, 18-23, 25-30). “Mud,” a play by Fornés, is a grim consideration of ignorance, poverty and desperation, while “Drowning,” a half-hour “pocket” opera by the composer Philip Glass, is adapted from Fornés’s five-page surreal play based on a short story by Anton Chekhov.A new initiative, “Under the Radar: On the Road,” will also bring a pair of Pascal Rambert monologues, “The Art of Theater” and “With My Own Hands,” to a venue called PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century in Chatham, N.Y., which sits on 100 acres of orchards, meadows and woodlands (Jan. 14-15, 22-23).Following the Under the Radar Festival, “An Evening with an Immigrant” will also be performed at Oklahoma City Repertory Theater (Jan. 22-23) and at Stanford University (Jan. 29-30), and “Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner” will transfer to Washington, D.C., for a three-week run at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Feb. 14-March 6).“We’re acknowledging that small-scale work needs touring to survive and reach the widest audience,” Russell said.The festival will also include eight works in the “Incoming!” works-in-process series and the return of concerts by artists including Migguel Anggelo, Salty Brine and Alicia Hall Moran at Joe’s Pub in Manhattan.A full lineup is available at publictheater.org. More

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    Joaquina Kalukango and Amanda Williams on Creative Freedom

    The “Slave Play” actress and the Chicago-based artist discuss generational gaps, success and the art that brought them each acclaim.What does it mean for an artist to be free? And what does that freedom look like for a contemporary Black artist? Amanda Williams has recently been asking herself these very questions. A Chicago-based visual artist who trained as an architect, Williams, 47, is known for her pieces exploring the nuances of color, both racial and aesthetic. Her breakout work was “Color(ed) Theory,” a 2014-16 series in which she painted eight condemned houses on Chicago’s South Side in vivid, culturally coded shades, such as “Ultrasheen,” a dark turquoise that matches the hue of a Black hair-care product, and “Crown Royal Bag,” a purplish pigment that mirrors the packaging of a popular whisky.In a 2018 TED Talk, Williams discussed how we perceive color — specifically, how our perceptions are determined by context. One example, she said, was redlining — federal housing maps from the 1930s marked neighborhoods inhabited by Black Chicagoans as red, contributing to policies that prevented many residents from securing loans — which weaponized color and resulted in underinvestment. When the actress Joaquina Kalukango, 32, heard the speech, she was awe-struck. Kalukango is no stranger to powerful works of art: Last year, she received a Tony nomination for best leading actress in a play for her work in Jeremy O. Harris’s searing, passionately debated drama “Slave Play,” which is set on a plantation and follows a trio of modern-day interracial couples whose relationships are stymied by conflicting views on race.One rainy morning in October, Kalukango met Williams at the latter’s studio in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Kalukango was days away from starting a Chicago run of “Paradise Square,” a musical about the 1863 Manhattan draft riots, in which Irish immigrants turned on the Black neighbors with whom they’d previously peacefully coexisted. (It’s headed to Broadway early next year.) Meanwhile, Williams is expanding on “What Black Is This, You Say?,” an ongoing, multiplatform series of abstract paintings inspired by cultural touchstones and observations related to the Black experience that she showed at Art Basel in Miami Beach this month.Amid laughter, Williams and Kalukango talked generational differences, the desire to be “regular” and the blurry line between artistic genius and madness.AMANDA WILLIAMS: Twenty twenty was a mess. I was contemplating Kool-Aid [the subject of one of her latest paintings] and laughing about it, and then the whole world was like, “How are you feeling about being Black, segregation and systemic racism?” People were like, “I want to help, right this minute.” I thought, “I don’t know how I feel right now. I was actually doing something else, and now I’m going to cry.” It’s a little easier now. We’re farther away from it. How did that feel for you?JOAQUINA KALUKANGO: It’s interesting, because “Slave Play” opened [on Broadway in October 2019] before the country had its racial awakening. There was a lot of aggression toward our production. There was a lot of pushback, specifically within the Black community. [Some who had seen the play, and many others who hadn’t, found it offensive in its use of antebellum role play and inappropriately sexually graphic; one online petition calling for the show’s shutdown referred to it as “anti-Black sentiment disguised as art.”] But after audiences saw the show, there was so much conversation. On the streets, people would come up to me and talk about it. That was affirming. It was also exhausting. The greatest thing that helped me was when we had a “Black Out” night — the audience was all Black. I heard the show in a different way: It was funny. There was this release of Black people finally being able to feel like this show was for them, as opposed to sitting next to someone and wondering, “Why are you laughing at this?” How can we get Black people to feel free regardless of who’s sitting next to them? How can we fully enjoy ourselves in situations and experience art without feeling like other people are watching us? It’s always a struggle.Kalukango in “Slave Play” at the Golden Theater in New York City, in September 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA.W.: I’ve thought a lot about the freedom question. Take Kanye West. He’s obviously experiencing some mental health issues. But also, he has a level of mastery and talent that borders on complete freedom. He says inappropriate things, and maybe he doesn’t even understand what freedom is. But if you’ve ascended beyond practically any other brown human you’ve ever met, and you can buy Wyoming, isn’t that free? [West has purchased two huge ranches there.] He just does what he wants. [For the listening party for “Donda,” his recent album named after his mother, who died in 2007,] Kanye was like, “I’m going to recreate my mom’s house in [the Chicago Bears stadium] Soldier Field.” Everybody was confused. But I thought, “This could be a mental moment, but it’s also pure creativity.” Every artist who you might say is the most free, in terms of pushing their craft to the edge, is always called crazy.J.K.: Did anyone tell you, early in your career, that you had to work within certain boundaries? Did you feel pressure to be a certain type of artist?A.W.: I trained as an architect [at Cornell University]. My parents were in a panic that I might be an artist. They were like, “Artists who make money are called architects.” In a sense, that was a boundary. Then, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area right at the height of the dot-com boom. The economy was great. Projects were bountiful; jobs were plentiful. I was able to live out this architectural career that I thought would take 30 years in five or six. Then I had a boss who said, “If you could be doing anything in the world right now, what would it be?” She thought I was going to say, “Taking over your company.” And I said, “Painting.” She encouraged me to try it. And the Bay Area lent itself to that. Everybody had an idea. Google was born when I lived in the Bay. That kind of environment helped me take the leap.If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t. I’d be like, “What if it doesn’t work? How am I going to eat?” But back then, I was just like, “Oh, I’ll eat some avocados, it’s California.” There’s no moment I remember when somebody said I couldn’t do it. Well, I’m sure there was, but I blocked it out. My friend and I were just talking about how our generation tended to dismiss racist comments or sexual advances. We just kept moving. Your generation does not tolerate nonsense. Is that how it feels?J.K.: Definitely. The new show I’m in, “Paradise Square,” is a musical that has been in development for a long time. There was always a struggle to figure out whose lens the story should be told through. Now, it finally centers around this free Black woman in New York who owned a bar in 1863 [Nelly Freeman, the role Kalukango is playing]. We have an E.D.I. [equity, diversity and inclusion] person who talks about terminology. One day in rehearsal, an assistant said, “Joaquina, we’re not going to say the L-word in this sentence.” I was like, “ ‘Let’? ‘Listen’? ”A.W.: Which “L”?J.K.: It was “lynch.” I said, “What? We’re just not going to say this?” But the idea was, we don’t have to say that word until it’s absolutely necessary. I thought, “Well, this is a whole new way of being, even for me. That word doesn’t bother my spirit, but it’s bothering other people’s spirits.” It’s a different world from when I was growing up in Atlanta.Loren ToneyA.W.: How does that impact your craft? Does it trip you up to have to be mindful of words in a way that maybe you hadn’t been before?J.K.: We’re all more careful. Everyone’s fragile. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic, and so many issues have come up for so many people. We’re all giving each other a lot of care and grace in this new era that we’re trying to build, this new era of theater we’re trying to make. But it’s a bit of a struggle, I’ll be honest. When you do work that’s specifically about a very troublesome time — and if you look at the Jan. 6 riot [at the U.S. Capitol], it’s similar to the draft riots — you can’t sugarcoat it. You can’t run away from it. It’s always a balance of, how do you tell a story without traumatizing our community?T: When did you first encounter each other’s work?J.K.: I first saw Amanda’s work in her TED Talk.A.W.: Oh my God. I had wondered, how did you find out about me? How do you know who I am?J.K.: I had such a visceral reaction to “Color(ed) Theory.” All of it was so much a part of my life, my childhood. Plus, I just love colors. How did you get that concept? What inspired you?A.W.: I grew up on Chicago’s South Side and crossed town every day to go to school. Chicago segregation, coupled with the city’s grid, is perfect for systemic oppression because it sets boundaries, and then we mentally reinforce them. I was hyperaware of color all the time, as in race, thinking, “That’s a Mexican neighborhood.” “Chinese people are there.” “White folks do this.” Things like that. And I’ve loved [chromatic] color since birth. Then I learned about color in an academic setting.One summer, while [I was] teaching color theory, a friend joked, “They pay you money to teach people what? Red and blue is green?” I said, “No, color theory is a whole science.” She said, “You know colored theory.” We laughed and I left it alone. A week or two later, I thought, “I do know colored theory.” I spent another few years making sense of it. It seemed so juicy. I started to think, “What things make you think of the color first?” There’s a story I told in the TED Talk: I met a gentleman who grew up near the “Crown Royal Bag” house. He thought the purple house meant Prince was coming. Even after I told him about my art, he said, “You wait and see. Prince might show up and perform right here.” Suddenly, he had hope for that vacant lot, in a way that maybe he didn’t before. To me, that was success.J.K.: It was brilliant.A.W.: At first, I wasn’t as familiar with your work, but when I started to look into it, I was like, “How could I have missed all of this? These are the exact same things I’m thinking and talking about.” I’m excited about how we translate these thoughts across mediums — theater, performance, music, architecture, sculpture, writing.Williams’s “Color(ed) Theory: Pink Oil Moisturizer” (2014-16).Amanda WilliamsWilliams’s “Color(ed) Theory: Crown Royal Bag” (2014-16).Amanda WilliamsT: You both have long been working artists, but your breakout pieces — “Slave Play” and “Color(ed) Theory” — made you famous. Has that affected your work? Do you feel an added responsibility now?J.K.: An actor starts off auditioning for nearly everything. We’re told “no” 99 out of 100 times. Initially, the roles I took were just what ended up coming to me. But I also believe that what’s for you is for you. When you’re on a path that you’re aligned with, more things start coming your way. Now I am adamant that Black women see many facets of ourselves, that we are depicted with a wide gamut of emotions: the unflattering and unraveling parts but also joyful and loving, peaceful and gentle. I want it all for us, at every possible moment. I’m trying to ensure I show Black women as full human beings — not stereotypes, not archetypes. We’re not strong all the time. Yes, our ancestors had to survive, but there was always joy in the midst of all that pain.A.W.: You also have to give yourself permission to be an artist. That’s hard because there is a burden. You know how few people have the same opportunities, so you always want to make sure you’ve done justice. At the same time, you have to take the pressure off. Our society thinks about the home run, the slam dunk — the idea that each thing you do must be better than the last. But if you look at any creative being’s full oeuvre, there are ups and downs. Artists have to continue to understand themselves and improve their craft for themselves. It makes me think of this great artist Raymond Saunders, who lives in the Bay Area. He taught an advanced painting class, and I was teaching at the same school, so he invited me to his class. I went — and the students were eating handmade pastries from this beautiful boutique in Berkeley or something. I’m like, “What is this?” And they’re like, “He told us he can’t teach us how to paint, he can teach us how to live.” It was mind-blowing. Maybe we don’t have to nail it every single week of every year. Maybe we just nail it every five years. Maybe we can sleep one of those years.J.K.: I always think, “Do we ever have the space to be mediocre and figure things out?” I don’t want to be Black girl magic every day. Sometimes I want to be regular. Just regular Black. [All laugh]A.W.: Regular Black. I’m going to make a painting based on that.T: How do you two define success right now?A.W.: Just being the best me. I don’t worry so much if my work is well received or if it garners accolades. That sounds so cheesy. My husband jokes, “Well, that’s nice to say after you’ve gotten the accolades.” [All laugh]J.K.: I love originating and creating new roles. For me, success is knowing that there are girls coming up who can use work I’ve done as audition pieces for colleges. In “Slave Play,” my character, Kaneisha, has a 10- or 15-minute monologue. She takes up space for almost the entire last act. I’d never seen anything like it onstage before. For a long time, it was hard to find material or scene work that included multiple Black characters. It was hard finding those plays [when I studied at the Juilliard School]. It’s all about the next generation for me. If at any point I can make someone feel more free, more confident in their abilities, that’s the win.This interview has been edited and condensed. More

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    What’s on TV This Week: Willy Wonka and a ‘West Side Story’ Special

    “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” airs on AMC. And ABC hosts a special on “West Side Story.”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, Nov. 29-Dec. 5. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY (1971) 7 p.m. on AMC. When the reclusive, illusive candy man Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) opens the doors to his chocolate factory, a young, impoverished boy, Charlie (Peter Ostrum), joins four spoiled children for a wild, mysterious ride. Consider this your golden ticket, granting you entry into the world of magical chocolate-coated trinkets and confections of unusual design, where teacups you can sip from and take a bite out of grow from the ground, and where nothing is as it seems — not even the wallpaper.TuesdayCary Grant and Deborah Kerr in “An Affair to Remember.”Fox Home VideoAN AFFAIR TO REMEMBER (1957) 10:15 p.m. on TCM. While en route to reunite with their respective partners, Nickie Ferrannte (Cary Grant) and Terry McKay (Deborah Kerr) meet, fall passionately in love and devise a plot to rendezvous at the top of the Empire State Building in six months. Will this be time enough to sort out all their current affairs and stay in love? Or will their story of love, like so many others, also be one of heartbreak? (One might notice the parallels between this sentimental classic and the 1993 film “Sleepless in Seattle,” with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.)Wednesday89TH ANNUAL CHRISTMAS IN ROCKEFELLER CENTER 8 p.m. on NBC. Join the festivities celebrating the annual lighting of the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center. This year’s tree is a 79-foot-tall, 46-foot-wide Norway spruce from Elkton, Md., that weighs nearly 12 tons. It will be speckled with over 50,000 lights and topped with a Swarovski star. The NBC anchors Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Al Roker and Craig Melvin will host, with performances by the Radio City Rockettes, Alessia Cara, Norah Jones, Brad Paisley, Rob Thomas, Carrie Underwood and more.ThursdayANNIE LIVE! 8 p.m. on NBC. Taraji P. Henson plays the domineering orphanage matron Miss Hannigan in this live production of the beloved, Tony-winning musical “Annie!” The story follows a spunky little orphan, Annie (Celina Smith), who is determined to find her family. She is taken under the wing of a billionaire, Oliver Warbucks (Harry Connick Jr.), and charms her way around New York City — until her quest to find her parents is interrupted by a wicked plan. In this live production, Tituss Burgess plays Miss Hannigan’s weasel of a brother, Rooster.Jim Carrey in “The Mask.”New Line CinemaTHE MASK (1994) 8 p.m. Syfy. Stuck in a daily routine of humdrum, menial tasks, a bank clerk, Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey), is at his wit’s end. Then a mysterious mask appears, giving him the ability to transform into a zany, devil-may-care alter ego. His world spins out of control. Stanley hopes to win over a nightclub performer, Tina Carlyle (Cameron Diaz). But as he falls deeper into the mask’s allure, he risks forgetting who he really is.FridayMICHAEL JACKSON’S THIS IS IT (2009) 4 p.m. on Showtime. Created from over a hundred hours of footage, this documentary follows Michael Jackson from April 2009 until his death in June of that year, as he rehearsed for a string of shows which had sold out the O2 arena in London. B-roll footage of behind-the-scenes moments and recordings of dress rehearsals capture creativity and determination during the final months of the superstar’s life, though the documentary, released months after Jackson’s death, steers clear of the descriptions of abuse that have become central to his legacy. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the film “weird and watchable, by turns frustrating and entertaining, and predictably a little morbid.”KINGDOMS OF THE SKY: HIMALAYA 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Set aside an hour to trek across the highest mountain range on earth. Yes, it only takes an hour — if you’re watching from home, that is. Follow along as this episode of “Kingdoms of the Sky” brings the wildlife and the people of the Himalayan mountain range into view.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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    ‘Succession’ Season 3, Episode 7: Citizen Ken

    Ken tries to have it both ways with a birthday party that is both absurdly over the top but disownably ironic. Unfortunately for him, it is more tragedy than farce.Season 3, Episode 7: ‘Too Much Birthday’The streaming services have been cluttered lately with “anatomy of a failure” documentaries, which detail the downfall of formerly white-hot companies like WeWork and LuLaRoe. In nearly all these docs, there’s a scene like Kendall’s 40th birthday party in this week’s episode of “Succession” — some preposterously lavish and borderline cultish shindig, celebrating a business culture about to collapse under its founding genius.In the case of the event Shiv calls “KenFest,” the party is like an endless version of that scene in “Citizen Kane” in which the brash young media magnate Charles Foster Kane dances and sings along to a jaunty pop song about himself. Moments like these are equal parts awkward and reckless. They’re a grand illustration of the whole concept of “hubris.”“Too Much Birthday” is an often very funny episode, which curdles into devastating drama by the end. But most of all, it is a triumph of production design. Nearly every set reflects some aspect of Kendall Roy — whether he intends it to or not. A lot of the décor is meant to straddle the line between amusingly ironic and cockily sincere. If a guest considers some piece of design to be over the top, Kendall can always say, “But it’s funny, right?”Here are just a few of the attractions awaiting those guests:As they walk in, they are greeted by a big sign above the door, reading “The Notorious KEN Ready to Die.”Once they enter, they pass video-screens showing wriggling sperm before heading through a passageway made up of pink, pillowy folds, leading to a coat-check room where a greeter in a nurse uniform says, “You’ve just been born into the world of Kendall Roy.” (Shiv, looking back at what is clearly meant to symbolize her mother’s birth canal, says: “Cold and inhospitable. Seems to check out.” Kendall, hearing his younger brother’s concerns about the tastefulness of this display, says: “Roman, relax. Yes, you can take it home with you.”)Behind a curtain inside, there is a room containing giant-size mock-ups of newspaper front pages, predicting pathetic futures for Kendall’s family. (Connor, who is now up to 1 percent in the Republican presidential polling, is livid at this little joke. “What if McCartney tweets this?”)There is a “compliment tunnel” filled with lush greenery and actors saying nice things about anyone who enters. This hilariously flusters Tom, who came to this party to cut loose but ends up finding Kendall’s flourishes irritating. (To be fair, Tom thinks he “took the wrong drugs in the wrong order.”)There is a room flanked by video screens depicting a raging fire, which appear in the episode right as Kendall receives his “birthday present” from Logan and Roman: a sentiment-free greeting card and a term-sheet listing the amount Waystar is willing to pay him to leave the company forever.And then there is the treehouse.This episode is credited to the screenwriters Tony Roche and Georgia Pritchett, with Lorene Scafaria in the director’s chair. I don’t know if credit for the treehouse goes to one of these people or to the series’s creator, Jesse Armstrong, or to someone else; but it is a conceptual masterstroke. This week, all the Roy kids reunite to fight about whom their dad wants to be in charge. And here is Kendall, standing in front of a literal treehouse, built in the middle of his party, telling his siblings they can’t come in.Kendall’s pettiness is, to some extent, justified. When Roman, Shiv and Connor first show up at Kendall’s party, he seems genuinely happy, giving them hugs that appear to be heartfelt. But then he learns the real reason Shiv and Roman are there.Waystar needs to upgrade its streaming platform by partnering with the tech company GoJo, run by the mercurial Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard), who earlier that day skipped a meeting with Logan and sent his underlings. Kendall has Matsson — whom he calls “the Odin of codin’” — stashed away in his treehouse, where any illicit thing he needs is supplied by Kendall’s own “one-man dark web.” (“He’s not a good guy,” Kendall says to Matsson about his drug dealer. “Enjoy.”)When Roman and Shiv try to enter, Kendall personally blocks them, saying, “The treehouse is cool and you’re not cool.” He calls his siblings Nazi-lovers while he is “a defender of liberal democracy.” As his brother and sister argue that landing GoJo could raise the family’s net worth, Kendall replies, “I have to weigh that against the consideration that no losers are allowed.”Ultimately, Roman weasels his way into the treehouse anyway, where he appears to connect with Matsson. Roman pitches Waystar’s library of broadly popular entertainment and news content (not the “gay moms” or “wheelchair kids” the other media companies are selling); and he talks up GoJo’s platform, which unlike Waystar’s doesn’t take over 30 seconds to load a page. Matsson seems amenable to some kind of deal, so long as he never has to interact with the meddling, out-of-touch dinosaur Logan. (“When will your father die?” he asks earnestly, to which Roman chuckles and then mutters, “We’re laughing here, but that is my dad, so …”)This is the second “Succession” in a row where Roman notches a big win; and he is not gracious about it. He skewers Shiv, who has been excluded from the offer to buy Kendall’s shares, shielded from the decision to send private investigators to harass Kendall’s children and is absent when Roman gets a tentative yes from GoJo. Roman also insinuates that Shiv might be annoyed by rumors that the Justice Department is ending its investigation into Brightstar without sending Tom or anyone else to prison. If true, that would squelch her secret hope that the wicked Waystar dudes might be shoved out of her way by the long arm of the law.Shiv can take comfort, though, in knowing that on this show, no Roy thrives for long. Roman is likely overestimating how much power he has to make deals on his father’s behalf; and it is possible that deep in his bones he senses something is off. That may explain why he later tries to goad Kendall into hitting him and then gives his brother a shove in the back that sends him sprawling. Maybe Roman is trying to hasten his own inevitable comeuppance.It’s too bad for Roman, then, that Kendall is already too beaten down to stand up for himself. From the moment he gets Logan’s term sheet, Kendall starts to spiral — first slowly, and then in a hurry. He abandons his plan to sing Billy Joel’s “Honesty” in front of his guests while hanging from a cross. He falls into a maudlin mood, making what may be references to tragic F. Scott Fitzgerald characters (and, yes, “Citizen Kane”) by promising to buy his girlfriend, Naomi Pierce, “a diamond the size of the Ritz-Carlton and a couple of newspapers.”The real triggering moment for Kendall, though, is when his ex-wife tells him to keep an eye out for a present from his kids, wrapped in rabbit-patterned paper. The missing gift eats at Kendall — almost as much as it bothers him that his brother Connor refuses to pay him the simple respect of taking off his coat at the party. Finally, he starts tearing through his pile of presents until he breaks down sobbing. Here is a man who seemingly has everything, except for some cheap handmade trinket that represents his children’s love.Surely somewhere off in the distance, an old man is whispering, “Rosebud.”Due DiligenceShiv is getting concerned about Logan’s possible affair with his assistant Kerry, while Roman thinks this is actually one of the most normal things an aging oligarch could do. Shiv’s instincts may be right, though. After Matsson skips the meeting, Logan is swayed by Kerry’s blithe encouragement to ditch GoJo.The Roy family also questions Greg’s romantic interest in Kendall’s public relations agent Comfry (Dasha Nekrasova). Their skepticism ranges from Tom’s relatively mild comment that the relationship would be “like a haunted scarecrow asking out Jackie Onassis” to Ken’s savagely calling Greg “a human tapeworm” (and then refusing to clarify whether he’s kidding). But while Comfry may have to feed damaging intel about Greg to the press — something he clumsily forgives in an exaggerated southern accent, for some inexplicable yet delightful reason — she is so annoyed with her boss that she agrees to a date anyway. Her assent may be rooted in “rancor or pique,” but Greg will take it.Kendall has a grand vision for his party, hoping that even “the imagineers” and “the D.J. crew” will enjoy themselves as they work. (“No boundaries if you’re cool,” he insists.) He is especially stoked about the group of kids he hired to perform Wu-Tang Clan covers; but when he cancels his performance, he has to drop “tiny Wu-Tang” too. (Genuinely remorseful, he says, “Tell them they’ve got it all ahead of them, yeah?”)Kendall’s siblings show some crack comic timing when they ask him who’s at the party and he answers, “Who isn’t?” Without missing a beat, they rattle off a list: “Your dad.” “Your mom.” “Your wife and kids.” “Any real friends.” More

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    Dominique Morisseau Pulls Play From L.A. Theater, Citing ‘Harm’

    The playwright ended a run of “Paradise Blue” a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse. The theater acknowledged “missteps.”The playwright Dominique Morisseau has ended the run of her play “Paradise Blue” just a week after it opened at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles, saying that Black women who worked on the show had been “verbally abused and diminished.”Morisseau did not specifically describe what happened. But in a 1,100-word Facebook post on Wednesday, she said that members of the creative team had been “allowed to behave disrespectfully,” that she had demanded an apology from one member of the team and that “instead of staunchly backing this, the Geffen continued to enable more abuse.”“Harm was allowed to fester,” Morisseau said in the Facebook post.“I gave the theater an ultimatum,” she added. “Respect the Black womxn artists working on my show, or I will pull my play.”In a statement about the cancellation, the Geffen Playhouse said that officials had “apologized to everyone involved” and acknowledged having “fallen short” in its commitment to artists.“An incident between members of the production was brought to our attention and we did not respond decisively in addressing it,” the theater’s statement, released on Wednesday, said. “As a result of these missteps, some members of the production felt unsafe and not fully supported.”“Paradise Blue,” which is set in 1949, is part of Morisseau’s trilogy of Detroit plays, which have been widely produced at theaters around the country. It played Off Broadway in 2018; the Geffen production had opened to strong reviews on Nov. 18, and had been set to run through Dec. 12.“Skeleton Crew,” another play in the trilogy, is scheduled to begin Broadway performances on Dec. 21.The theater declined to comment beyond its written statements. Morisseau did not respond to a request for additional comment.Morisseau’s decision to pull the play over what she described as the mistreatment of Black artists and the dismissal of their complaints comes as theater continues to grapple with how to reform itself and improve its culture.The protests over the police killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020 ignited a nationwide reckoning over racism and inequality in America that resonated in the theater world. As artists prepared to return from the long pandemic shutdown, some have grown more outspoken about what they say are pervasive problems in the industry.This summer Broadway power brokers signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters were preparing to reopen.In her Facebook post, Morisseau — who earned a Tony Award nomination as the book writer for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations”— said she had been “gutted” by what had transpired with “Paradise Blue.”She urged the theater industry to “look inward and acknowledge a pervasive culture of anti-blackness, anti-womxness, and anti-black-womxnness.” More

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    Stephen Sondheim Tributes Pour In From Stars

    Audra McDonald, Bernadette Peters, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others mourned and celebrated the essential composer and lyricist, who died at 91.Passionate tributes to Stephen Sondheim came quickly as the news of his death reached the theater world and beyond on Friday. Comparisons to Shakespeare were invoked more than once; so was appreciation for his tough-love feedback to those who interpreted his songs.Because the Pulitzer-Prize-winning composer of such beloved shows as “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Sweeney Todd” was known for his wit and wordplay, writers who stick to the page, not the stage, weighed in with admiration as well. (The pop tunesmith Jack Antonoff did, too.) And, given how often Sondheim songs traded in wistfulness and melancholy, the composer’s own lyrics were used to celebrate and remember him, too. Here is a sampling of responses.InterpretersI’m weirdly numb and super-emotional all at the same time. I can’t quite process what the world (especially the theatrical world) looks like without him. He was a giant, he was a genius, he was a legend, he was wickedly funny, he was wildly supportive but bluntly honest, and he was one of the wisest, toughest, most profound mentor/teachers I’ve ever known. I will miss him terribly. AUDRA McDONALDEven in a time so full of loss, this news feels like a unique punch to the heart. Which is appropriate, I guess, given that is exactly how his music always affected me. What do you say when the ocean goes away, or when a mountain disappears? Steve was that elemental and irreplaceable a part of my career and my understanding of art and life. And I’m surely not alone in that feeling. I don’t really have the words. Steve would. MICHAEL CERVERISHe was like Shakespeare, and what a privilege to be able to say, “Steve, what did you mean when you wrote that?” You could get it right from the horse’s mouth. I always say, he gave me so much to sing about. BERNADETTE PETERSTake a walk in the words and music that he left us. Walk in privacy, walk with a friend, put it on at different times in your life. Listen to it, sometimes listen more than once because the simplicity with which he expresses the most complicated human emotions — he’s able to do it in a way that once you hear it, it’s unforgettable. He was simply one of our greatest teachers. MANDY PATINKINHow I cherished his ambivalences! Once, after the final dress rehearsal for “Do I Hear a Waltz?” Sondheim stood in front of the entire company and crew. He suddenly noticed me, and I said “Hello!” and he burst out, “Oh, hello! You were wonderful, most of the time.” That comma, that breadth of affirmation and doubt, is what makes him so astounding, and so wonderful to sing — most of the time. No, all of the time. MELISSA ERRICOThere is no way to overestimate Steve’s impact on my life and work. He was like my second father. I honestly can’t imagine a life without him in it. LONNY PRICEAdmirersFellow theater writersWriters from all cornersPaying tribute with his own wordsThe theater has lost one of its greatest geniuses and the world has lost one of its greatest and most original writers. Sadly, there is now a giant in the sky. CAMERON MACKINTOSH More

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    Review: Getting a Moral Fix From ‘Approval Junkie’

    The radio and television journalist Faith Salie stars in a one-woman show about the perils of striving for achievement and affirmation.A loosely drawn girl eyes a gold star near the top of an illustrated tree. She climbs up to reach it but tumbles to the ground and lands on her feet. The brief animation serves to introduce “Approval Junkie,” a one-woman Audible production that opened Tuesday at the Minetta Lane Theater, neatly encapsulating the whole of its familiar, and repeated, moral fable about chasing the highs of success.By some measures, the subject in this case is exceptional. “Approval Junkie” is written and performed by the radio and television journalist Faith Salie, in collaboration with the director Amanda Watkins. Fans may recognize Salie’s bright, even demeanor from her roles as a regular panelist on the NPR news quiz show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” and as a contributor to “CBS News Sunday Morning,” positions that reward gentle, authoritative relatability.But the anecdotes from her life that Salie recalls here, of striving for achievement and affirmation, reflect gendered expectations and social pressures that many women will recognize.After four years of competing in her high school pageant, Salie finally won by performing a Barbra Streisand song in a rainbow-sequin mini. She still has the tiara. (“It’s missing some stones … aren’t we all?”) Pursuit of the spotlight drew her to Los Angeles, where an acting coach once asked, “Why aren’t you as pretty as I want you to be?” adding that motherhood would soften her features.Salie’s quest for thinness led to early struggles with anorexia and a lasting fixation on appearance. “I don’t know who could tell me enough that I’m beautiful,” she says.Perhaps it’s no surprise then that Salie is not exactly an unselfconscious performer. With the exception of one truly unrestrained outburst (at an Ayurvedic healing center, no less), onstage she is poised and polished, watchfully reserved. This is not an unruly takedown of conventional womanhood’s narrow strictures from someone on the outside. In a navy silk jumpsuit and beige heels (the costume design is by Ivan Ingermann), Salie could stroll into an advertisement for no-makeup makeup, pointing to the beauty ideals she embodies as a trap.The production has an amiable, anodyne quality well tailored to its release as an Audible Original recording (“Approval Junkie” is based on Salie’s 2016 book of essays of the same name). Watkins’ minimal staging marks Salie’s incidental transitions with as little as the spin of a bar stool or a few steps to one side. A backdrop of fractured panels glows in shades of pastel (the set design is by Jack Magaw, and lighting by Amanda Zieve), and a buoyant piano composition by the sound designer Brandon Bush comforts listeners like a plush love seat.“Approval Junkie” wants to suggest a certain self-awareness about the fallacy of craving outside validation. But for all its pat wisdom — “Don’t change yourself for someone else,” Salie tells her kids, “change yourself for you” — the play still demonstrates the value of caring what other people think.“Seeking approval has not undone me,” Salie says. “It’s built me.” Even so, being put together is not nearly as interesting onstage as falling apart.Approval JunkieThrough Dec. 12 at the Minetta Lane Theater, Manhattan; audible.com/theater. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More