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    Making Every Second Count in Plays Too Short to Miss

    Theater shrank to tiny proportions during the pandemic. Sometimes that’s a big plus.Forever ago, in March 2020, a press agent handed me tickets before a show and said, “Ninety minutes, no intermission, thank God.”But those days of durational drama are gone. The pandemic has been whittling down running times as if attention spans, like paper towels, were running short. Even “Angels in America” caught the disease, showing up online in October at 50 minutes instead of the customary seven hours.So when I heard that the British playwright Caryl Churchill, already a master of concision, had upped (or lowered) the ante with a 14-minute play — not a doodle or a one-act meant for pairing with others, but a stand-alone event — I began to wonder what advantages might be found in the shorter forms that online theater made feasible. Or was the pandemic just an excuse for clearing out the small ideas that clutter every writer’s notepad and napping dreams?That Churchill play — “What If If Only,” presented by the National Asian American Theater Company — is the briefest of three I saw in the last week alone. “The Floor Wipers,” from the Wilma Theater in Philadelphia, runs 15 minutes; “Ali Summit,” from the Actors Theater of Louisville, weighs in at 23.Paradoxically, their similar lengths — just a gulp, and they’re over — help to differentiate them, as the various ways in which they pack their brief time are highlighted instead of papered over.Churchill is not, in any event, a paper-overer. “What If If Only” is harrowing from nearly the first instant, as a woman begs her late husband, who may have committed suicide, to make contact from beyond.“Are you not trying?” she cries. “If you’d wanted to talk to me you could have stayed alive.”Soon the husband does appear, as the wisp of a ghost that could become real, he says, if only his wife would make him “possible.”Merging Churchill’s frequent themes of dread (“Escaped Alone,” “Far Away”) and duplication (“A Number,” “Love and Information”), “What If If Only” dismisses its speculative worlds as quickly as it creates them. The wife’s despair, tearing a hole in space-time, soon releases a multiplicity of possible versions of her husband, had he lived, crowding out the “real” one. Even when she shoos them away in terror, one remains stuck in her hair.“Just brush with your fingers,” her husband says gently. “All gone.”I call the main characters “she” and “her husband” because the livestreamed production, perfectly and creepily “realized” by the stage director Les Waters and the theater tech guru Jared Mezzocchi, casts the roles to suggest that the mourner is a woman (Mia Katigbak, superb as always) and the ghost is a man (Bernard White).But the play’s horror, which in Churchill is never just cosmological but also spiritual, comes from the combination of its radical relevance to any human and its freakish compression, in which 14 minutes becomes a literal deadline. The extreme brevity — typical one-acts more often last an hour or longer — serves as a tool, like a socket wrench, to make clear that grief is unbearable, even in small doses.One of Andy Perez’s collages from “Ali Summit.”via Actors Theater of Louisville“Ali Summit,” by Idris Goodwin, also feels usefully short, in the manner of a teaser designed to encourage deeper research and reflection. The subject is the June 1967 meeting at which major Black athletes — including Jim Brown, Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor (not yet known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) — questioned Muhammad Ali about his conscientious objection to military service.Though Ali’s justification now seems incontrovertible — “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs?” — he was nevertheless convicted of draft evasion, stripped of his heavyweight title, sentenced to five-years in a federal penitentiary and fined $10,000. Five years later, the Supreme Court overturned the conviction.None of that falls within the scope of “Ali Summit,” which limits itself to the disruptive and galvanizing effect Ali had on his colleagues that summer. In fact, Ali, though he is represented, like all the characters, in a series of beautiful collages by Andy Perez, does not speak in the play. Only the others do, voiced by actors who give full force to the confusion and anguish of men who are already questioning what it means, as Black athletes working for white “owners,” to fight.“We are soldiers, all of us really, enlisted since birth,” says the Griot, or narrator figure, portrayed by the playwright and rendered as a wide-eyed witness.The language, mixing earthy jargon with breakbeat poetics, is as much a collage as the visuals and does a good job of setting the tone of urgent reflection. But also like the visuals, which are filmed in the familiar documentary pan-and-scan style, it tends to flatten conflict that wants to be more argumentative and three-dimensional. (An immersive virtual reality element is scheduled to be added later this summer.) As if to make up for that, “Ali Summit,” directed by Robert Barry Fleming, mines emotion from the pressurized implications of its transitional moment, a moment we are somehow still living through.“I’m not worried about Muhammad Ali,” Russell says. “I’m worried about the rest of us.”Jaylene Clark Owens, left, and Taysha Marie Canales in “The Floor Wipers.”via the Wilma TheaterAthletes figure in “The Floor Wipers,” too — indirectly. Its two characters, Racine and Tiana, are members of an “elite squad” given the responsibility, during the N.B.A.’s coronavirus-bubble playoffs last year, of keeping basketball courts dry and sweat-free. (This is a real job.) An exaggerated, “Law & Order”-style introduction immediately identifies “The Floor Wipers” as quick-take comedy; in a handful of episodes of just a few minutes each, the women gossip and sass on the sidelines while waiting for their big moments.For Tiana (Jaylene Clark Owens), those moments are about furthering God’s plan that she marry one of the players; she’d prefer Jayson Tatum but would settle for Nikola Jokic. Racine (Taysha Marie Canales) has more modest goals: to work off her pandemic 15 and save money for her first trip “abroad” — to Texas.Conceived by Canales, directed by Akeem Davis and written by both along with Owens, “The Floor Wipers” is really just a sketch, but it does not ignore the way the outside world penetrates even a bubble. Tiana and Racine wear Black Lives Matter T-shirts, take note of the kneeling players and lose work when games are canceled in protest over the shooting of Jacob Blake. The sure touch of the writing and especially of the performing mean that the comedy isn’t canceled by the intimations of tragedy. Instead, you laugh with a catch in your throat, and the whole thing evaporates before you can ask too much of it.That’s smart, and something I wish other sketch shows, some of which are televised on Saturday nights, would learn from.For dread, though, a heavy boil may be best. That’s what Churchill gives us in “What If If Only,” and why it will likely stand on its own even when mounted live in a theater, as the Royal Court in London plans to do this fall. But be warned that Churchill, even at 14 minutes, doesn’t evaporate. When she leaves a kettle on the fire that long, it often bursts into flames.What If If OnlyThrough June 20; naatco.orgThe Floor WipersAt wilmatheater.orgAli SummitAt actorstheatre.org More

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    Lisa Banes, 'Gone Girl' Actress, Dies at 65 After Hit-and-Run

    A mainstay of the New York stage, she also acted in films, including “Gone Girl.” She died 10 days after she was struck by a scooter as she was crossing a street in Manhattan.Lisa Banes, a versatile actress who came to prominence on the New York stage in the 1980s and went on to a busy career that also included roles on television and in the films “Cocktail” and “Gone Girl,” died on Monday of head injuries she sustained 10 days earlier when she was struck by a scooter in Manhattan. She was 65.Her death, at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, was confirmed by the New York Police Department, which said she had been struck by the scooter on June 4 as she was crossing Amsterdam Avenue near West 64th Street in Manhattan.The operator of the scooter had driven through a red light before crashing into Ms. Banes and then fled, said Sgt. Edward Riley, a police spokesman. Sgt. Riley said on Tuesday that no arrests had been made.Ms. Banes lived in Los Angeles and had been in New York visiting friends, her wife, Kathryn Kranhold, said.Known for her wry humor and confident, elegant presence, Ms. Banes appeared in more than 80 television and film roles, as well as in countless stage productions, including on Broadway.Ms. Banes, as the mother of a missing woman, with Ben Affleck in the 2014 movie “Gone Girl.” Alamy Stock PhotoShe found quick success in the theater after coming east from Colorado Springs in the mid-1970s and studying at the Juilliard School in New York.In 1980, when the Roundabout Theater revived John Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger,” with Malcolm McDowell in the lead role as the angry Jimmy Porter, she played his overstressed wife.“Lisa Banes has a remarkably effective final scene,” Walter Kerr wrote in The New York Times, “on her knees in anguish, face stained with failure, arms awkwardly searching for shape and for rest.”The next year, at the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn., she was in a production of the James M. Barrie comedy “The Admirable Crichton,” playing a daughter in an upper-crust British family that becomes shipwrecked on a deserted island.“As Lady Mary,” Mel Gussow of The Times wrote in his review, “Lisa Banes has a regal disdain. Gracefully, she plays the grande dame, and with matching agility she becomes a kind of Jane of the jungle, swimming rivers and swinging on vines — a rather far-fetched transformation, brought off with panache by this striking young actress.”Off Broadway roles kept coming. Later in 1981 she and Elizabeth McGovern had the lead roles in Wendy Kesselman’s “My Sister in This House” at Second Stage Theater. In 1982, at Manhattan Theater Club, she was the sister Olga in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” part of a starry cast that included Dianne Wiest, Mia Dillon, Jeff Daniels, Christine Ebersole and Sam Waterston.In 1984, when Ms. Banes was in the midst of a run in Wendy Wasserstein’s comedy “Isn’t It Romantic” at Playwrights Horizons, The Times named her one of 15 stage actresses to watch. She was nominated for a Drama Desk Award for her performance in that play. More

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    ‘Revolution Rent’ Review: Taking the Show South

    This HBO documentary follows Andy Señor Jr. as he directs a production of “Rent” in Cuba.In the ballad “La Vie Boheme,” a colorful cadre of artists raise a toast to “emotion, devotion, to causing a commotion.” After all, Jonathan Larson’s groundbreaking musical “Rent” embodies revolution. In the earnest though narratively clumsy HBO documentary “Revolution Rent,” a director unpacks the relevance of this joyously defiant show when it’s translated to a different language, culture and political landscape.“Revolution Rent,” directed by Andy Señor Jr. and Victor Patrick Alvarez, depicts Señor’s rocky road to developing Cuba’s first Broadway musical produced by an American company in decades. The film begins with Señor’s background with “Rent” as a performer and his decision, regardless of his family’s protests, to direct a Cuban adaptation. In addition to confronting technical issues, translation adjustments and disagreements among the cast members, Señor is also forced to consider his own heritage and history. Despite the intriguing premise of the film, its cursory and lopsided narrative approach dilutes its salient themes and messages.The film feels scattered, with the first quarter too heavily reliant on abruptly intercut footage of the original Broadway cast performances, and the rest too shallowly dipping into details of the production’s story before skipping along to the next thing.And so Señor’s personal narrative shifts in and out of focus — his relationship to the musical and to his Cuban heritage are detailed just enough to leave us wanting more history, more background, more reflection and more depth. Similarly, the brief glimpses into the lives of its cast members, some queer and many impoverished, are compelling, but inconsistent and over too soon.For a documentary about a substantial staging of a beloved musical, “Revolution Rent” also skimps on the scenes of the final product itself. The production’s Roger singing an impassioned Spanish translation of “One Song Glory”; Señor pushing a cast member into an emotional reckoning with the meaning of the word freedom; the conversations about performing a queer musical in a country that hasn’t had a great track record for its treatment of L.G.B.T.Q. people: These are the kinds of moments that most resonate but are overshadowed by the film’s sporadic approach.The show “Rent” gave us an onstage revolution, while “Revolution Rent” often gives us an underwhelming translation.Revolution RentNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. Watch on HBO. More

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    Harvey Fierstein Donates $2.5 Million for Public Library Theater Lab

    The gift from the writer and performer will help create an educational hub at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.Harvey Fierstein may be a multiple Tony-winning performer and writer. But he is also the son of a librarian, who still sometimes heads to the reading room when he needs to do homework.In 2005, when he was preparing to play Tevye in a revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” he visited the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center to watch a recording of an earlier Broadway revival featuring Zero Mostel, which is included in its famed Theater on Film and Tape Archive.“And don’t tell anyone, but I’ve also used the library,” he said in an interview, dropping his famous Brooklyn molasses-spiked-with-gravel voice, “for pleasure.”Now, Fierstein has donated $2.5 million to create a new “theater lab” at the library’s Lincoln Center campus, a dedicated educational space where students and the general public will be able to attend programs drawing on its vast holdings of photographs, scripts, recordings, set models, costumes and other materials.“Live theater is live theater — you do it and that’s it,” said Fierstein, 67. “Without a library collecting this stuff, our whole history disappears.”The lab, which will be named for Fierstein, is to be built in what is currently a 770-square-foot office space. In a statement, Jennifer Schantz, the library’s director, said it would be “an incubator of creativity” that embodies “the library’s mission to inspire lifelong learning using the theater division’s unparalleled collections.”The performing arts library holds material from shows Fierstein wrote or performed in, including “Torch Song Trilogy,” “La Cage aux Folles,” “Kinky Boots” and “Hairspray.” But as it happens, his personal papers are elsewhere.In 2005, before a home renovation, Fierstein placed his personal archive at Yale University. “So I needed to also do something for the performing arts library,” he said.In addition to the $2.5 million donation, the library has been named a beneficiary of the Harvey Fierstein Trust, which will allow it to receive additional support in the future.Fierstein said he hoped the lab would help people reimagine what theater can be after the pandemic, which shuttered the entire industry. He recalled how over the years, every time he did a revival of “Torch Song Trilogy,” for which he won his first two Tonys in 1983, he would call the downtown experimental theater La MaMa to ask if he could use their rehearsal space, which he described as a kind of spiritual home.“I would ask, ‘Can I borrow your basement?’” he said. “I thought of it as a kind of womb. That’s what I think of this space as — a womb for something wonderful. You just don’t know what’s going to be born out of it.” More

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    Seth Meyers Sums Up Biden’s Time at G7

    “Biden’s message at these meetings has been simple: America is back. You know, like the McRib, America’s back for a limited time only, offer not valid in Florida,” Meyers joked.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. More

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    Stephen Colbert Returns to ‘Late Show’ Stage Before Vaccinated Fans

    In a sign of life going back to normal, a capacity crowd at the Ed Sullivan Theater — face masks optional — roared for the highest-rated late night host.There was a hug for the bandleader, Jon Batiste, without any need for social distancing. There were chants of “Ste-phen! Ste-phen! Ste-phen!” And a standing ovation that lasted a minute and a half.“So how ya been?” Stephen Colbert said to a roar of laughter from a crowd of more than 420 people — all vaccinated, most of them maskless — at the Ed Sullivan Theater in Midtown Manhattan.The CBS late night host was back in his element on Monday, connecting with a capacity crowd 460 days after the coronavirus pandemic had emptied the theater where he has worked since 2015. He was reveling in the moment.“I am proud to say that we are the first show back up on Broadway,” Mr. Colbert said, adding a profane taunt of “The Lion King.”The return to the stage of late night’s highest-rated host was one of the clearest signs yet, in television and in New York cultural life, that things were starting to get back to normal.During an interview in his office last week, Mr. Colbert sounded eager to get back in the spotlight. “I’m like a dog who’s got his head out the window and can smell that we’re near the farm,” he said. “I’m ready to be out of the cage.”There were 213 audience-less episodes of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” broadcasts that came with off-camera chuckles from his executive producer, Chris Licht, and his wife, Evie, in place of big laughs from a packed hall. The usually buttoned-up host ditched his suit and grew out his hair.The remote version started in March 2020, when Mr. Colbert returned to TV with a surprise monologue from a bubble bath at his home. In recent months, he has put on the show from a retrofitted supply closet above the Ed Sullivan Theater.During an episode last week, he appeared to have had enough of the small-scale version. He broke away from his monologue to complain about Mr. Licht’s hovering presence — “I can’t escape him!” — and other annoyances of lockdown television production. The rant was filled with bleeped-out words and ended with him shaking a fist at the heavens and crying, “What you got, old man? Is that all you got? Give it to me — I can take it!”Describing the screed, Mr. Licht said in an interview that the host had “kind of lost his mind.” Mr. Colbert likened the on-air moment to an “emotional breakdown.”He started pushing for a return on March 18, the day he taped a sketch backstage, surrounded by staff members. It was, in Mr. Colbert’s telling, a lot of fun to be with his colleagues in the building again. He summoned Mr. Licht.“That’s when I said to Chris, ‘It’s really important we get back,’” Mr. Colbert said.He continued: “I think we’ve done the show the best we can in this isolated circumstance. I think the best way to do the show now is to find a way to get back in front of the audience, because it feels more honest to the national experience right now.”Jon Stewart was a guest on Monday night’s “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Scott Kowalchyk/CBSMr. Colbert set strict conditions for the return: There would be a full studio audience; there would be no mask requirement; and there would be no social distancing between him and Mr. Batiste.“We made a conscious decision that really was following his lead as a performer, which was, ‘I don’t want to go halfsies back into that room,’” Mr. Licht said.For three months the host regularly nudged his producer on how close he was to standing face to face with an audience again. “At the end of every day, I would say: ‘Chris, so what’s the answer? I mean, the answer can be no, but I just want an answer,’” Mr. Colbert said.Mr. Licht worked with ViacomCBS to get the necessary clearances. By mid-May, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lifted indoor regulations for mask use among vaccinated people, the show was well on its way to a return. Approval from New York State came May 22, Mr. Licht said.After Mr. Colbert announced, three weeks ago, that he would soon be back onstage, others followed suit, including Bruce Springsteen, who said his “Springsteen on Broadway” show would return to the St. James Theater on June 26. Mr. Colbert’s NBC rival, Jimmy Fallon, welcomed back a full audience of just under 200 people for “The Tonight Show” last week, though attendees have been required to wear masks in his 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio.The Ed Sullivan Theater, built in 1927, has hosted a number of dramatic moments in broadcast and New York history, including landmark performances by Elvis Presley and the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” and David Letterman’s return to broadcasting six days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.It was restored to its former glory after CBS bought the building, for $4 million, as the venue for Mr. Letterman’s program in 1993. When Mr. Colbert succeeded him in 2015, the network refurbished it anew at a cost of $18 million. Until Monday, the last “Late Show” broadcast from its stage took place March 12, 2020, when the host delivered his lines to empty seats.Mr. Licht said he was concerned about finding enough people willing to show up for the Monday taping so soon after pandemic restrictions had been lifted, a worry that proved unfounded. Twenty minutes after tickets were made available online, the show had received 20,000 requests, the producer said.The vast majority of those who saw the return had their masks on their laps or in their pockets. There was even the sound of scattered coughing, and no one seemed shaken up by it.Mr. Colbert with Evie, his wife, at the end of his monologue. Scott Kowalchyk/CBSAs Mr. Colbert wrapped up his monologue, he brought out Evie, his wife, who became a mainstay of the show during his remote broadcasts. “Audience, he’s all yours now,” she said. “Don’t forget to laugh, because he really needs it.”Mr. Colbert then did a remote interview with the comedian Dana Carvey, who offered his impersonation of President Biden, before welcoming his former “Daily Show” colleague Jon Stewart to the guest chair.“Can I lick these people?” Mr. Stewart said, looking at the packed house.To close the show, Mr. Batiste performed a new song of his with his band, Stay Human, and a group of gospel singers. Mr. Colbert joined everyone else onstage and danced.The song was called “Freedom.” More

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    Actors' Equity and Producers Clear Major Hurdle to Touring Shows

    Under the agreement that will pave the way to reopening the shows, touring company members will be required to be fully vaccinated.Broadway producers and the labor union representing stage actors have reached an agreement on health protocols for touring shows that should allow hundreds of performers to return to work at theaters around the country beginning this summer.The 17-page agreement says that producers must require all members of the traveling company to be fully vaccinated and mandates free weekly virus tests. Also: “absolutely no interaction” will be permitted between performers and audience members.The union, the Actors’ Equity Association, announced the touring agreement with the Broadway League in an email to its 51,000 members Monday evening.The agreement does not apply to shows on Broadway — the rules for those are still being discussed — and it covers only actors and stage managers, not the many other theater workers represented by different labor unions. But it is a significant development for an industry that has been dark for 15 months, and gives a first indication of the safety measures producers and performers are envisioning.“This new set of protocols is another step toward the safe reopening of our industry in full,” the union email said, “and we’re excited to see where this leads us.”The Broadway League also welcomed the agreement. The League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin, said the deal followed several months of negotiations, and had been adjusted to reflect “changing guidelines, science and laws.”“It was great to work with Equity to help bring tours back and keep the employees safe,” she said.Touring shows are a major part of the commercial theater ecosystem. According to the Broadway League, 18.5 million people saw touring shows in about 200 North American cities during the 2018-2019 season, and those tours grossed $1.6 billion.Tours have been completely shut down throughout the pandemic, but many have announced plans to get back on the road. “Wicked” is planning to restart its tour in early August at Dallas’s Music Hall at Fair Park, while “Hamilton” is planning to resume performances later that month in Los Angeles and San Francisco; many other shows are planning fall performance dates around the country.The union said that safety protocols will continue to be adjusted as the public health situation evolves. But for now, the rules are quite detailed, covering everything from backstage signage to hand hygiene, mask laundering and prop disinfection, in an effort, the agreement says, “to minimize and mitigate the risk of Covid-19 transmission during a tour.”The rules require mask-wearing and social distancing “except when doing so is incompatible or interferes with their job responsibilities or part of the performance during the tour such as performing onstage.” And stage-dooring is out: “Autograph signings, meet-and-greets and backstage tours are strictly prohibited.”Some of the rules are quite detailed. There is a ban on self-serve buffets. Water dispensers should be contactless. Hair and makeup designers are to wear masks plus face shields plus gloves, and must change their gloves each time they work with a different cast member.Each touring company is to have a Covid-19 safety manager. Actors and stage managers who do not follow safety protocols can be fined and, after repeated violations, fired.The vaccine mandate allows company members to request accommodations for “a qualifying disability or a sincerely held religious belief,” but the agreement says it is up to producers whether to grant such accommodations. As for states where vaccine mandates are not allowed: “The League and Equity will determine the appropriate Health & Safety protocols.”The agreement has a few things to say about audience members as well. Venues must require that patrons be masked, and all patrons must be at least six feet from the conductor (if there is an orchestra pit) or the stage.The union and the producers also reached separate agreements outlining safety protocols for developmental work (closed-door rehearsal or performance sessions that producers and creators use to assess shows that are still being written and revised) and auditions. More