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    ‘Thoughts of a Colored Man,’ From University to Broadway

    The playwright Keenan Scott II, the director Steve H. Broadnax III and others discuss how “a timeless piece” for Black actors has evolved over 15 years.Plays by August Wilson were nowhere to be found in the syllabuses of Frostburg State University’s theater classes when Keenan Scott II attended the Maryland school in the mid-2000s. Nor were works by Lorraine Hansberry, Amiri Baraka, Adrienne Kennedy or Lynn Nottage.But there was Ntozake Shange’s pioneering “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf,” from 1975.Scott, who is making his Broadway debut as the author of the recently opened “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” said a class screening of the Shange work was his first — and essentially his only — exposure to theater by Black playwrights in college. And just as Shange coined the term “choreopoem” for her hybrid form, Scott began to describe “Thoughts,” his senior project, as “slam narrative.”The word “colored” brings with it a very different set of associations now than it did in 1975, when segregated drinking fountains and restrooms were only a decade in the past. And yet that word is both in the title of Scott’s play and more than 21 feet wide on the billboard at the center of Robert Brill’s set at the John Golden Theater.Like Shange (whose “choreopoem” is heading to Broadway next year), Scott has created a mosaic of speeches, poems and songs for seven performers of color. (And neither playwright identified their characters by name; Scott instead calls them such traits as Happiness, Love and Depression.) But when “Thoughts of a Colored Man” premiered in 2019 at Syracuse Stage in New York and then moved to Baltimore Center Stage, it also featured two female dancers and an onstage D.J. All three are gone, as are swaths of the original text. Only the Tony Award nominee Forrest McClendon (“The Scottsboro Boys”) remains from that cast.Scott and McClendon recently sat down with the “Thoughts” director, Steve H. Broadnax III, and Brian Moreland, a lead producer of the show, to discuss how the play has evolved, especially in the last two years. Their interviews have been edited and condensed.Forrest McClendon, second from right, with, from left: Tristan Mack Wilds, Dyllón Burnside and Da’Vinchi in “Thoughts of a Colored Man” at the Golden Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIs “Thoughts of a Colored Man” on some level a response to “For Colored Girls”? Or is it its own thing?KEENAN SCOTT II I’m inspired by the works of Ntozake and many others, but it’s completely its own thing. I liked the word “colored” because it causes a visceral response. To this day, people ask, “Why say ‘colored’? Why use ‘colored’? We don’t use that no more.” But that is the point. There was a time when we were labeled “colored.” And through the journey of the piece, you see why these men shouldn’t be labeled.FORREST McCLENDON Ntozake was writing for colored girls to have something to do. And Keenan was writing for colored men to literally have something to do. For us to be represented onstage.STEVE H. BROADNAX III The genre that Keenan coined, “slam narrative,” is loose plot — that’s the difference. You can take, say, “Def Poetry Jam” on Broadway, which is a bunch of poetry and poets that you can put in any type of mixture. But here, if you take one out, it starts to mess up the loose plot. So he’s really created something new. “For Colored Girls” doesn’t have a loose plot to it, but this does.If I’m understanding the title correctly, do these seven men also add up to, essentially, one human?SCOTT Absolutely. These are, these could be, seven parts of the same man. We can all be some of these things. We can all be all of these things.How much has the piece changed since Syracuse and Baltimore?SCOTT It’s really just a re-investigation of these characters, to make sure they all had their individual journeys. Some monologues have been added. A new scene here and there. We knew that some characters were a little more shallow than others, and we wanted to make sure that all of them are equally robust.Luke James in the play, which Scott describes as a “slam narrative.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCan you point to any specific examples?SCOTT I started writing this piece when I was 19, so originally these characters all hovered around 20 years old, because that’s where I was in life. Fifteen years later, being a 34-year-old man who’s married with a child, my sense of the world has deepened. I’ve been with this piece so long that I’ve literally grown up with these characters. And through development, the characters started to grow as well. So now the characters range from 18 to 65 years old.BROADNAX The connections between each of the characters have changed. We discovered, for instance, how Love and Lust connected with each other. You now have all of these “aha” moments to see how they are all interconnected.Do you think the piece would look or feel different if you had opened on Broadway directly from Baltimore, which was the plan before the shutdown?SCOTT As Steve says all the time, everything happens in divine order. I think the show would have been just as great. But it would have been different.BRIAN MORELAND After Baltimore, Keenan went through a private workshop with himself, writing.SCOTT We moved to Baltimore so quick after Syracuse. I was taking notes, and there were certain things that just couldn’t be implemented quick enough. So that’s when I went into that private workshop. And then Covid happened, and we had all the time in the world.When I saw it in Syracuse, there were also two women in the cast. What happened to them?BROADNAX We discovered that this was a story, and a space, for these Black men. The women are still very much a part of their worlds. They are there in media; they are there in spirit; they are there in language. But we thought this was a space for the men.MORELAND You go out of town so you can have a safe space to experiment. In addition to the female dancers, there was also a D.J. who was originally part of the production. All of these elements kept evolving and changing.McCLENDON Music and movement and media are all super important in terms of this play, but the star of this play is the text. And anything that in any way upstaged the text — including the actors — had to take its rightful place on the periphery. For me, in both Syracuse and Baltimore, the discovery about the women came from women in the audience. They felt it was a story really about men.SCOTT I’ve known from day one that the spectrum of the Black man is rarely, rarely shown, especially on Broadway. We don’t have that space. That’s what I wanted to create 15 years ago for myself and my peers who felt excluded from an art form we were studying.The show opened on Broadway on Oct. 13, over two weeks earlier than originally planned. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesYou were scheduled to open Oct. 31, and then opening night suddenly moved up by two weeks. Openings shift all the time, but in the other direction. What prompted the move?MORELAND Their dress rehearsal. Their first preview. Their second preview. The audiences clamoring to see these men, hear these stories, hear Keenan’s words. That’s what prompted the change. Because it was ready.When you sat back down to write, Keenan, did you feel like the play needed to be different because the world felt different?SCOTT That’s a tricky question for me. I started writing this play when George W. Bush was president. So that’s three administrations ago. A lot has changed, and a lot hasn’t. People often ask me how the events around George Floyd affected me. For the Black community, George Floyd wasn’t new. When I started writing this piece, I was loosely inspired about what was going on in my community in Queens when Sean Bell was killed [in a police shooting]. A lot of the themes that I cover in the play are as ever-present as they were 15 years ago. I feel like I created a timeless piece that can live, but it saddens me as well, because I would have hoped that these issues would have been solved by now.Do you feel as if a lot of people in the audience on Broadway are only now beginning to understand what you have known this whole time?McCLENDON The thing that radically shifted is that the American theater shut down. Audiences had an opportunity to step back and really ask themselves about what they’d been consuming. We’re dealing with longstanding, oppressive practices, but this is an industry that is usually willing to look in the mirror. To look at itself and stare. In what ways are we complicit? I think we’re in a new moment. And I think the play is a huge part of representing that. More

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    The Moment of Death, Live Onstage

    The Swiss provocateur Milo Rau’s latest work explores the ethics of voluntary euthanasia with real footage of an assisted suicide.DOUAI, France — A serene woman greets the audience at “Grief & Beauty,” the Swiss theater director Milo Rau’s latest production. As spectators take their seats, she appears on a video screen above the stage, silent, in a red sweater and black-rimmed glasses. Then, minutes into the show, we learn that Johanna, as she is identified, died on Aug. 28 — by choice and in Belgium, where euthanasia is legal.Real footage of Johanna’s death is the macabre centerpiece of “Grief & Beauty,” the second installment in Rau’s “Trilogy of Private Life.” The first, “Familie,” recreated a family’s real-life collective suicide in eerie detail. Like “Familie,” “Grief & Beauty” had its premiere in Ghent, Belgium, where Rau is the artistic director of the NTGent theater. This month, the show traveled to Le Tandem, a playhouse in the northern French city of Douai. Further tour dates are scheduled in France and the Netherlands.“Grief & Beauty” flirts even more closely with the choice to die than “Familie.” Instead of turning the subject matter into a drama, Rau actually shows us the moment a lethal injection killed Johanna. Yet while she is the heart of “Grief & Beauty,” the production barely scratches the surface of her life.Voluntary euthanasia, which is legal in only a handful of countries, has become a subject of fascination for Europe’s experimental theatermakers in recent years. In 2018, the Belgian choreographer Alain Platel also filmed a dying woman and played the footage throughout his 100-minute work “Requiem for L.” The next year, Marcos Ariel Hourmann, a doctor convicted of practicing euthanasia in Spain, where it is illegal, put on an interactive show in which he asked the audience members to judge him.“Grief & Beauty,” like Platel’s production, was created with the consent of everyone involved, and Rau details in an interview in the program the research that went into the production. His team, including the four actors onstage, met with health care workers and bereaved relatives, as well as patients suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. Some of them also visited Johanna last summer, we are told during the show.Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura, who was born in Sierra Leone, in “Grief & Beauty.”Michiel DevijverYet for most of it, Johanna takes a back seat to the actors’ stories. Instead of zeroing in on euthanasia, Rau assembled a motley cast of professionals and amateurs who have all experienced grief, albeit in different ways. Arne de Tremerie talks eloquently about his mother’s multiple sclerosis; Staf Smans, the oldest cast member, recounts the deaths of his sister, mother and daughter in quick succession. Princess Isatu Hassan Bangura, who was born in Sierra Leone, touches on another kind of pain —— that of being exiled and losing, as she puts it, her “African side.”Each of these performers speaks either directly to the auditorium or to a camera positioned to the right of the stage, which relays their monologues on the screen above. In keeping with Rau’s habit of mixing reality with semi-fictional scenes, they then perform vignettes set in an apartment. A kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom are visible; at one point, an actor mentions that several items in the décor, including a handmade quilt, belonged to Johanna.Here and there, the script returns to her life. We learn that she witnessed the bombing of Rotterdam in the Netherlands during World War II, when she was 4; that she loved classical music; and that she once performed as a singer at NTGent. Out of the hours members of Rau’s team spent with her, it’s not much. Instead, she hovers mostly silently above “Grief & Beauty,” her eyes and expression alive and sympathetic.Before her death is shown, Johanna speaks briefly. “I always said I would go with a smile,” she says, before adding: “I have a lot of sleep to catch up on.” The injection follows.We watch as one of her eyes closes involuntarily, and her breathing becomes halted. In Douai, some around me cried openly. (Euthanasia is illegal in France, but according to an April survey by IFOP, one of the country’s leading polling organizations, 93 percent of French people support it in cases of terminal illness.)“Dido’s Lament” from Henry Purcell’s opera “Dido and Aeneas,” which opens “Grief & Beauty,” returns at this moment, along with more personal anecdotes from the cast. Yet no matter how hard Rau tries to interweave their stories with Johanna’s, her presence is overpowering. She belonged in a production of her own.Death has also long haunted the repertoire of the French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. This fall, audiences in France have a chance to revisit those works: The Festival d’Automne à Paris, a prestigious annual event taking place across numerous venues in the French capital, is devoting a retrospective to Vienne. Her latest production, “The Pond,” was presented at the Théâtre Paris-Villette in September, and revivals of several older works are scheduled before the end of the year.“Kindertotenlieder,” created by the French director and choreographer Gisèle Vienne. Mathilde Darel“Kindertotenlieder,” created in 2007, returned this month for four performances at the Centre Pompidou with a new cast — that is, a new human cast, since the stage is mostly populated with highly realistic dolls and robots. When “Kindertotenlieder” starts, it’s difficult to gauge just how many of the hunched-over teenagers in the darkened, snow-covered space are real.When the five actors do move and speak, “Kindertotenlieder” is no less disquieting. Although there is no linear story, the murder of a teenager by one of his peers gives a starting point. When the murdered boy’s ghost, the killer and others talk, it’s often to themselves, and the American writer Dennis Cooper’s text for the production is as chilling as it is over-the-top. (Sample line: “When I grow up, I want to behead your wife and kids.”)While the play’s title, which means “Songs on the Death of Children,” is borrowed from a song cycle by Gustav Mahler, the live music — introduced as a “memorial concert” for the dead boy — is by the duo KTL. To their moody, emo-adjacent songs, slow, violent interactions play out: A doll is strangled; two men kiss before one shoves the other, viciously.In “Kindertotenlieder,” as in “Grief & Beauty,” death is at the fingertips of the living. Neither production is for the faint of heart, but compared with the relentless angst of Vienne’s teenagers, there is relief in watching Johanna say her peaceful goodbye in “Grief & Beauty.” From time to time, reality still manages to be more soothing than fiction. More

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    Late Night Suggests a Few New Names for Facebook

    Stephen Colbert proposed names like “Aunt Brenda’s Three-Paragraph Rant-a-torium” or “Best Fun Times America Website.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Extreme MakeoverLate night hosts couldn’t resist needling Facebook on Wednesday with news of the company’s impending name change.“They’re still facing accusations of endangering teens, spreading misinformation and destroying democracy. So they’re doing the right thing: rebranding the company with a new name,” Stephen Colbert said.“But that new name is a closely guarded secret that’s not widely known, even among Facebook senior leadership. Well, that’s surprising. Facebook has leadership?” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Just in case they haven’t settled on one yet, we here at ‘The Late Show’ have come up with a few appropriate names, like Pinsurrectionist, DikTok, Aunt Brenda’s Three-Paragraph Rant-a-torium, Best Fun Times America Website and the Washington Football Team.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Yeah, the website will still be Facebook but the company is going to have a new name. And I don’t know if this is a good idea. I mean, Facebook is one of those iconic brands like Hiroshima and Ted Bundy — do you really want to lose that name recognition?” — TREVOR NOAH“But I’m excited to find out what the new name is going to be. Like you know, I don’t know, maybe they’ll go with Myspace. I mean they already took everything else from them, might as well finish the job. Killed my friend Tom!” — TREVOR NOAH“And here’s the craziest part, I don’t know if it’s been announced yet. The new name — the new name for Facebook? Steven.” — JAMES CORDENThe Punchiest Punchlines (Replacebook Edition)“Moving on, Facebook is planning to rebrand the company with a new name. This comes as the company continues to expand its services beyond traditional social media. Facebook’s aim with the rebrand is to, quote, ‘confuse the [expletive] out of everybody’s parents.’” — JAMES CORDEN“Facebook is planning to rebrand the company. They’ve been plagued with scandals around misinformation, hate groups, selling people’s data, but they’re like ‘Yeah, we’ll change the name. That’s the problem, the name.’” — JAMES CORDEN“First, I don’t think the name is really the problem that people have with Facebook. Society is like ‘Yo, you are destroying democracy’ and Facebook is like ‘We hear you — what if we went by Bookface?’” — TREVOR NOAH“Second, if you want to change your image, I don’t think you should trust Mark Zuckerberg to do that. I mean, have you seen this man’s haircut? It looks like he goes to the barber and asks him to give him the colonial child. You trust him with your makeover?” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingIssa Rae described how she felt the pressure to please fans with the fifth and final season of “Insecure.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday Night“Dune” stars Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya will appear on Thursday’s “Late Night.”Also, Check This OutTimothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Rebecca Ferguson as Lady Jessica in “Dune.” Paul is considerably less complicated and conflicted onscreen than he is on the page, our critic writes.Chia Bella James/Warner Bros.Speaking of Chalamet, Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of “Dune” is a sweeping and intimate take on Frank Herbert’s future-shock epic. More

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    Netflix Employees Walk Out to Protest Dave Chappelle's Special

    Amid cheers and chants of “Team trans!,” dozens of Netflix employees walked out of a company office building in Los Angeles on Wednesday to protest a recent Dave Chappelle stand-up special, in one of the most visible signs of worker unrest in the history of the streaming service.Critics inside and outside the company have said that Mr. Chappelle’s show, “The Closer,” promotes bigotry against transgender people. The protest put the tech company directly at the center of broader cultural debates about transphobia, free speech and employee activism. Throughout the day, #NetflixWalkOut was a top trending topic on Twitter.Carrying signs that read “Hey Netflix: Do Better” and “Transphobia Is Not a Joke,” the employees joined more than a hundred supporters and activists who had begun rallying a couple of hours before. In addition to the scene in Los Angeles, some Netflix staffers working remotely shut their laptops and called off work for the day at noon. It’s unclear how many at Netflix, which had more than 9,000 full-time employees globally at the end of last year, participated in the virtual walkout.Netflix has found itself directly at the center of broader cultural debates about transphobia, free speech and employee activism.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAt the protest in Los Angeles, Joey Soloway, the creator of the Amazon Prime comedy series “Transparent,” urged Netflix executives to add a transgender person to its corporate board “this week,” and pushed the entertainment industry as a whole to begin hiring significantly more transgender people, adding: “I want to pitch to a trans person. I would love to have a trans person give me notes on my story. I want a trans agent. I want a trans manager. I want so many trans critics at newspapers.”Under bright skies, activists and supporters vastly outnumbered a small group of counterprotesters who carried signs that read “Jokes Are Funny” and “Netflix, Don’t Cancel Free Speech.” There were a few minor skirmishes, but the atmosphere was mostly peaceful, with supporters chanting, “We want accountability. When do we want it? Now!” and, “Trans lives matter.”One of the organizers of the protest was Ashlee Marie Preston, who was featured in the Netflix documentary “Disclosure,” about Hollywood’s impact on the transgender community. In an interview, Ms. Preston said she was there because Netflix employees have to be “very careful” about speaking to the news media. Ashlee Marie Preston, who was featured in the Netflix documentary “Disclosure,” about Hollywood’s impact on the transgender community, helped organize the rally.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesB. Pagels-Minor, who is transgender and was fired last week from their job as a program manager at Netflix, read a list of demands that employees had for the company. Among them were hiring more transgender people and including disclaimers for content that is criticized for being transphobic. Netflix has said Mx. Pagels-Minor was fired for sharing sensitive documents outside the company; a lawyer for the former employee denied that her client shared information with the news media.One employee, Gabrielle Korn, wrote on Twitter: “We aren’t fighting WITH Netflix. We’re fighting FOR Netflix. We all know how great it can be and that it’s not there yet.”Though Mr. Chappelle’s special has come under fire, there are some who have defended him, including the comic Damon Wayans, who told TMZ last week, “We were slaves to P.C. culture and he just, you know — as an artist, he’s van Gogh. He cut his ear off. He’s trying to tell us it’s OK.”The rally attracted counterprotesters, including one who was pushed and asked to leave the premises.Mark Abramson for The New York TimesAmid the rolling public relations crisis, Netflix executives have begun to adopt a conciliatory tone while still remaining supportive of Mr. Chappelle.Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, gave several interviews on Tuesday in which he said that he had “screwed up” communication with employees after the outcry and that he should have discussed the controversy with more “humanity.” Mr. Sarandos also conceded that shows, series and movies on Netflix did have an impact on the real world, something he denied in an initial statement.Similarly, hours before Wednesday’s protest, the company said in a statement that it supported the walkout.“We value our trans colleagues and allies and understand the deep hurt that’s been caused,” Netflix said in a statement. “We respect the decision of any employee who chooses to walk out and recognize we have much more work to do both within Netflix and in our content.” More

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    Review: ‘Songs for a New World,’ Stuck in Another Time

    Jason Robert Brown’s show is beginning to show its age, but Carolee Carmello’s deft performance lifts an otherwise straightforward revival.MILLBURN, N.J. — Jason Robert Brown is a composer-lyricist who knows how to write the perfect audition song: an entire character arc in a tidy, self-contained package that allows a performer the opportunity deliver a complete story.It’s a skill that is evident in even Brown’s first staged show, “Songs for a New World,” from 1995 and given a new production that opened Sunday at the Paper Mill Playhouse here. Somewhere between theater and song cycle, it is a collection of piano-driven pathos generators with plenty of wistful character beats, loosely structured around watershed moments in which “the things that you’re sure of slip from your hand.”Directed by Mark S. Hoebee, however, this straightforward revival keeps the show’s wide-eyed yearnings intact without taking the past quarter-century of change into account — its new world now seeming older. Each number stands alone, and you don’t have to look too closely to notice that the heaviest of them are shouldered by the production’s sole Black cast member, Roman Banks. One is titled “On the Deck of a Spanish Sailing Ship, 1492”; others are about a dead soldier, a basketball player surrounded by disadvantages, a man imprisoned.To be fair, the casting here follows the same racial lines as the original production’s, which featured Billy Porter in Banks’s role. But consider the subjects of songs sung by his white male co-star, Andrew Kober: leaving a fiancée, being in love, reuniting with a partner. It makes for a dated artistic vision that plays into tired stereotypes of Black pain in a show that does not otherwise explore race.A great performance can transcend the material, though, and in this production, these moments belong to Carolee Carmello. She lends her vocal deftness to the cabaret standard “Stars and the Moon,” and goes full “Cabaret” with the Kurt Weill sendup “Surabaya-Santa,” in which a scorned Mrs. Claus straddles a chair and bids her bearded lover goodbye. Her powerful, textured voice beckons listeners even as it resonates up to the rafters. And her first solo, the comedic “Just One Step,” smartly mines humor from preposterously elongated vibrato.Mia Pinero and Banks are young and talented, but not assuredly able to drive home the powerful numbers they are given, though Pinero was at her finest in “Christmas Lullaby”; Banks, in “King of the World.” Kober, with his hands permanently in his pockets and a shrug fixed on his shoulders, seems to actively resist any real engagement with the audience. (It doesn’t help that he’s tasked with the least interesting songs.)Kelly James Tighe’s set design rightly places the pianist front and center, behind which the orchestra plays — wonderfully, conducted by Sinai Tabak — on a platform with steps at either side of the stage for unfussy, simple entrances and exits by the cast. The choreography, by Kenny Ingram, is agonizingly literal: predictable in the way musicals are often mocked with bouncy, handy moves. At one point, Carmello dances to “The Steam Train” with a locomotive “choo-choo.”You can almost forgive the indignity of that, though, whenever she begins to sing. If this “Songs for a New World” production feels wobbly in its search for brighter lands, she is the X that marks the spot.Songs for a New WorldThrough Nov. 7 at Paper Mill Playhouse in Milburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. More

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    Trevor Noah Talks ‘Striketober’

    “The Daily Show” host joked that jobs are “how Americans prove that they deserve health care.”Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. Here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Working One OverOn Tuesday night’s “Daily Show,” Trevor Noah looked into ‘Striketober,’ where workers at companies like Kellogg’s and John Deere are striking for things like bigger pensions and getting part of the profits.Noah referred to jobs as “how Americans prove that they deserve health care.”“With more job openings than ever and more people quitting than ever, workers suddenly find themselves with a lot of leverage, and they’re using it to demand things like better pay, more flexible hours and canceling the annual company ‘Squid Game.’” — TREVOR NOAH“And right now, workers from so many different industries are striking — although, it’s none of the bad industries that you wish would go on strike. Like, have you ever noticed how the people who collect student loans, they never go on strike. Or telemarketers? Come on, you guys deserve better pay!” — TREVOR NOAH“Now, going on strike is not a step that workers take lightly. It’s a major decision, you know? You risk your jobs. You lose out on pay. You have to protest in front of your workplace, but you can’t go in to pee.” — TREVOR NOAH“Yeah, I’m not going to lie: When I heard how brutal these hours were, I was shocked. Like, what the hell, Kellogg’s? You shouldn’t be working people to the bone for cereal. We can all eat a pancake once in a while.” — TREVOR NOAH“And it’s not just inhumane to treat employees this way; it totally goes against the Kellogg’s brand image of cheerful colorful cartoon mascots, you know? If Kellogg’s keeps this up, those games on the back of the box are going to start getting a lot less cheerful.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Punchiest Punchlines (Mix-and-Match Edition)“Let’s kick things off with the topic on everyone’s mind: vaccine booster shots. They’re like a butt lift for your immune system.” — TREVOR NOAH“And one thing people are wondering about is whether they should mix and match their shots, because maybe vaccines are like superheroes. Sure, Iron Man can save your life, but if you follow him up with Captain America, now you have the Avengers.” — TREVOR NOAH“It will spice up all those vaccine conversations a little bit: ‘What shot did you get?’ ‘Pfiderna.’” — JAMES CORDEN“This is kind of like mixing alcoholic beverages — you can do it, but should you? Just remember the rule of thumb: Moderna before Pfizer, always wiser. Pfizer before Moderna, some concern-a.” — JAMES CORDEN“And where it really gets complicated is with the Johnson & Johnson shot, which is basically Hawkeye: You know it’s better than nothing, but, come on, huh?” — TREVOR NOAH“The government is careful to say they would not recommend one shot over another. They’re like parents talking to their kids about college: ‘Hey, pick whatever major makes you happy, as long as it’s not poetry or Johnson & Johnson.’” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Clearly, someone at the company has to be held accountable for this. Personally, I blame Johnson. Then again, maybe it was Johnson I should blame? No, no, it’s definitely Johnson.” — TREVOR NOAHThe Bits Worth WatchingNick Offerman shared some sweet tidbits about his bromance with Wilco’s frontman, Jeff Tweedy, and the writer George Saunders while on Tuesday’s “Late Show.”What We’re Excited About on Wednesday NightIssa Rae will talk about the end of her HBO hit “Insecure” on Wednesday’s “Late Show.”Also, Check This Out Calla Kessler/The New York TimesBilly Porter’s new memoir, “Unprotected,” details his early introduction to musical theater and the emotional trajectory that followed. More

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    Betty Lynn, Thelma Lou on ‘The Andy Griffith Show,’ Dies at 95

    She played Deputy Barney Fife’s girlfriend on the long-running sitcom and was remembered by fans with fondness more than 50 years later.Betty Lynn, who portrayed Thelma Lou, the patient girlfriend of Barney Fife, the bumbling deputy sheriff of the homespun town of Mayberry in the long-running 1960s sitcom “The Andy Griffith Show,” died on Saturday in Mount Airy, N.C. She was 95.The death was announced by the Andy Griffith Museum in Mount Airy, Mr. Griffith’s hometown and the inspiration for fictional Mayberry.Ms. Lynn joined the cast of the show in 1961, late in the first season, for an episode in which Sheriff Andy Taylor (Mr. Griffith) plays matchmaker between Barney and Thelma Lou.Thelma Lou’s occupation through 26 episodes remained a mystery, as did her surname. Although Barney (Don Knotts) had an occasional telephone flirtation with Juanita, a diner waitress who was never seen, it was clear that Thelma Lou was Barney’s steady girl. But in a 1966 episode, after Mr. Knotts departed as a series regular, Barney returned for a high school reunion to learn that Thelma Lou had gotten married.Still, all was not lost for him. When much of the cast reunited in 1986 for a two-hour television movie, “Return to Mayberry,” Thelma Lou had gotten divorced. She and Barney married in the film.Ms. Lynn moved from West Hollywood to a retirement community in Mount Airy in 2007. In addition to the Griffith museum, the town offers recreations of familiar Mayberry haunts like Floyd’s barber shop. Ms. Lynn became a nostalgic lure to tourists, who would stand in line once a month to get her autograph, to give her a kiss or to chat about the series.“I think God’s blessed me,” she told The Associated Press in 2015. “He brought me to a sweet town, wonderful people, and just said, ‘Now, that’s for you, Betty.’”Elizabeth Ann Theresa Lynn was born on Aug. 29, 1926, in Kansas City, Mo. Her mother, Elizabeth, was a singer, organist and church choir director who raised Betty with her parents. By 14, Betty was singing in local supper clubs and at 18 began performing in U.S.O. shows. After the war, she had small roles in the Broadway musicals “Park Avenue” and “Oklahoma!”She appeared in films like “Sitting Pretty” and “June Bride” in 1948 and “Cheaper by the Dozen” in 1950. On television, she acted in anthology series, westerns and sitcoms, including “Family Affair and “My Three Sons.” In 1986, she played Mr. Griffith’s secretary on four episodes of his dramatic series, “Matlock,” in which he played a lawyer.Ms. Lynn never married and did not leave any immediate survivors. Among regular cast members of “The Andy Griffith Show,” only the director Ron Howard, who played Opie, Sheriff Taylor’s son, is still alive.Ms. Lynn said that she could have stayed with the series, which ended in 1968, had she accepted the producers’ offer to make her the owner of a hairdressing salon. But Mr. Knotts was gone, having moved on to a film career.Without Barney, she told The A.P. in 2007, “I didn’t think Thelma Lou made much sense.” More

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    in Theater

    No Mask Required: The Joys and Fears of Seeing U.K. Theater Now

    With mask wearing and proof of vaccination not legally required, it’s up to venues and audience members to make their own decisions about coronavirus safety.LONDON — Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit, Nicolette Jones used to go to the theater with her daughter about 50 times a year.Now, she’s not going at all. “Theater is my relaxation, my escape,” said Jones, 61. “The thought of sitting next to somebody who is unmasked for two hours, laughing and whatever, that is going to remove all that,” she added.Theaters here have now been allowed to open without restrictions for three months, and while many audience members have been delighted to return to live performances, inconsistent rules are troubling some fans.Unlike on Broadway, theatergoers in England are not required to wear masks in their seats, or be fully vaccinated. Instead, it’s up to each venue to decide what they require. Most West End venues are asking for proof of vaccination or a negative test result at the door, but some smaller venues don’t. Spectators are also encouraged to wear masks, but many choose not to, even as the number of virus cases in Britain steadily grows.How are theater fans feeling about this new normal? Has the pandemic changed what they’re seeing, and how they’re seeing it?We spoke to seven other theater enthusiasts to find out. These are edited extracts from those conversations.Robbie Curran, 29Actor and writerNick Arthur DanielI’ve mainly been going to fringe theater. The best moment so far was probably in “The N.W. Trilogy” at The Kiln, these three plays about immigrants in northwest London.At the end, the whole cast came together with banners, and marched. And it had such a high energy and pulse, I turned to my partner and she went, “Wow, we’ve missed this!” It’s those moments of real connection and catharsis that we were lacking in lockdown.At the small venues no one’s asked to check vaccine status or any of that. They’re probably just trying to get their audiences back so going on trust that everyone is doing their best.With masks, it’s different every night. Sometimes one person is wearing a mask, sometimes half the audience is; sometimes no masks, sometimes all masks.Fazilet Hadi, 64Works for a disability organizationAlbert ClackI hate to admit this — some of my friends would be horrified — but I haven’t been wearing a mask. I don’t know why. I suppose because I’m blind, I can’t see who’s wearing them and who’s not, so in my little world no one is! No one’s said anything to me.I’m not fussed about Covid, really. We’ve all got different levels of risk.I’ve been to “Twelfth Night” at The Globe, with audio description, and that felt so good. There wasn’t an interval and I did think, “Oh, my goodness, two hours 40 minutes without a break!” But it flew by.I’ve got three more plays booked. What Covid’s done to me is just clarify what I love doing, accentuating the pleasure. That might wear off, but hasn’t yet.Nikki Reilly, 46, and Izzy Reilly, 15Maths and computing teacher; studentIzzy ReillyNikki: Going to the theater’s always been expensive, but we found this app where you can buy rush tickets on the day, and because many people aren’t ready to go back yet, and there isn’t the influx of tourists you normally get in London. We saw “Heathers” one day, and we saw “Come From Away” in the stalls for just £25 ($34). Normally it’d be £150!Izzy: It feels like I’ve got so much more agency to see things I want to. I can go, “Can we see this?” and normally we can.Nikki: We’ve been to the West End six times. As soon as it gets busy again, we’ll probably go back to local theaters. Izzy’s at school and I’m a teacher, so maybe we’re more used to being around big groups of people: We haven’t been concerned about Covid. And everyone’s been wearing masks. What bothers me more has been traveling to the theaters: People not wearing masks on the train, the tube, particularly if they’re ill and coughing. That does concern me.Jane Duffus, 43AuthorJon CraigPre-Covid, I used to go to the theater all the time. But tomorrow is my first trip. I’m going to see “Wuthering Heights” at the Bristol Old Vic, and I specifically booked it as it’s socially distanced. We’re lucky where I live, a few theaters are still doing distanced performances.I just haven’t been ready until now. I went to an event in August and it really freaked me out: About 400 people, no distancing and I was one of only about six people wearing a mask. A few days later, a friend texted me to say they had Covid. I didn’t feel remotely relaxed. Every time I heard a cough … It was a lot.I picked “Wuthering Heights” as I love Wise Children, the company doing it. If you’re going to put yourself through anxiety, it should be something you know you’ll enjoy.Bryony Rose20, Theater YouTuberTracy J.I used to see some shows again and again: “Six” and “& Juliet.” But when theater wasn’t there, it sparked a passion for shows I hadn’t seen, so I’ve tried to really branch out. It’s still mainly musicals, but I love them.“Frozen” was absolutely incredible, especially seeing the younger generation in the audience and their eyes lighting up, like mine did at that age. At the end of “Let It Go,” I almost cried. The diversity in the ensemble was really inspiring too.In lockdown, when I couldn’t express my passion for theater, it was really difficult. I hadn’t realized how much I relied on that to express who I was.When theaters reopened, I got so many comments from people on my channel saying “I want to go to a show, but I’m worried it’s not safe.” So I started using my blogs to show there were things in place to keep people safe, and how people can do things themselves like a test at home. Now I’m getting all these comments saying, “Because of you, I feel safe enough to go.”Stephanie Kempson, 34DirectorPaul BlakemoreI’m a theater director so I need to see work, but I’ve been getting nervous as people stopped wearing masks this autumn.I’ve been trying to pull favors so I can get into rehearsals to see things, and I’m trying to watch live streams, but often only one performance in a run is being live streamed now.So socially distanced performances are the way to go for me. I have ME/CFS so I’m aware of what long Covid could be like.People are so excited to be back and I can forgive them for that, but it does seem there’s a lack of awareness and common-mindedness. More