Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 100 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Eurovision, Celebrating the Sounds of a Postpandemic Continent

    A dancing finger, chained demons and a victory for Italian rockers. But Eurovision, the largest music contest in the world, is more than just weird.ROTTERDAM — The Italian band Maneskin celebrated its 2021 Eurovision win by the rock ’n’ roll playbook, with bare chests covered in tattoos, champagne spraying and the thuds of fireworks exploding.The win was a close and deeply emotional one, with the band’s song, “Zitti e Buoni,” or “Shut Up and Be Quiet,” edging into first place in an exhilarating vote that was ultimately decided by the public. Maneskin barely beat France’s Barbara Pravi, and her chanson “Voilà.” After the victory, an Italian reporter was sobbing as tears streamed down his face.Capturing what many felt, he said the victory was a fresh start for Italy. “It was a very difficult year for us,” the reporter, Simone Zani, said, talking about the devastating impact of the coronavirus. Explaining through his tears, he said, “We are from the north of Italy, from Bergamo,” an Italian city with record numbers of Covid-19 deaths. “To be No. 1 now, this is a new start for us, a new beginning.”“It was a very difficult year for us,” said the Italian reporter Simone Zani.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesEurovision, the largest music contest in the world, is a campy trifle to some, but it celebrates Europe’s cultural diversity and is a reflection of the times we live in. For many outside Europe, the attraction of Eurovision can be hard to comprehend. But a key reason the 200-million plus audience is watching is that there is no cultural mold for the event. Anything goes, and diversity is highly encouraged. The global entertainment business may be dominated by U.S. pop culture, but at Eurovision, 39 different countries can showcase their ideas of music and pop culture with no industry rules other than a three-minute song limit.And, a shocker perhaps for a U.S. audience, the three-hour show is completely commercial-free.So Germany, the political leader of the continent, sent in a song against hate, with the artist Jendrik playing a diamond studded ukulele while being accompanied by a dancing finger. Tix, the singer for Norway, has Tourette’s syndrome. He was dressed in a gigantic fur coat and wearing angel wings, while being chained to four horned demons. “Remember guys, you are not alone,” he said to everyone “suffering” in the world.The three singers of Serbia’s entry, Hurricane, may have sported the big hair look of American groups of decades past, but despite seeming as if they had bought up most of the hair extensions on the continent, they sang their song, “Loco Loco,” in Serbian.Maneskin barely beat France’s Barbara Pravi, and her chanson “Voilà.” Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty ImagesPiroschka Van De Wouw/ReutersDean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty ImagesIn fact, four of the top five winning songs of this year were sung in languages other than English. “There is clearly a thirst for more originality and real meaning,” Cornald Maas, a festival commentator for Dutch Public Television for over 15 years, said of the victories for songs presented in their national languages.Europe, he said, had been looking for a song celebrating newfound life. “The winning song isn’t a restrained ballad as you might expect after corona,” Mr. Maas said, “but instead it’s an exuberant plea for authenticity, a call to ignore meaningless chatter.”The show on Saturday in the Ahoy Arena in Rotterdam showed a glimpse of life as we knew it before the pandemic, and a future in which the virus might be under some form of control.Many in the audience were wearing orange outfits, the national color of the Netherlands, singing along, dancing and hugging — and drinking. Alcohol was for sale and it was clear that some of the flag-toting celebrants had indulged. The entire audience of 3,500 was obliged to show a negative coronavirus test, taken under an elaborate testing plan paid for by the government. Members of the different delegations sat in a special zone in the middle of the arena on couches, where they had to keep socially distanced but still got up and danced around.The crowd went wild every time Nikkie de Jager came onstage. Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesThe shining star among the presenters was Nikkie de Jager, from the Netherlands who has a well-known YouTube makeup channel, Nikkie Tutorials. The crowd went wild every time she came onstage or even walked past the corridors.In normal times the Eurovision circus attracts tens of thousands of fans who turn the organizing cities upside down, taking over bars and clubs. This year the event was divided into several physical bubbles to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.During the two weeks of rehearsals, artists would meet only in one common room, where several countries had organized a table tennis contest, in which Italy also performed quite well, Samya Hafsaoui, a Dutch official, said.Two members of the Icelandic act, Dadi og Gagnamagnid, ended up quarantining after contracting the virus, meaning that their song, “10 Years,” about a successful marriage, couldn’t be performed live. The singer Dadi Freyr, and other group members, watched from a hotel room as the results came in. Standing in for the missing performers were dolls wearing the band’s outfit, topped with iPads showing their faces. Despite the recorded performance, Iceland landed fourth place.Duncan Laurence, who had won for the Netherlands in 2019, also contracted the virus and wasn’t able to perform during this year’s finals as is the tradition. The event was canceled in 2020.The entire audience was obliged to show a negative coronavirus test. Here, visitors pose for a photo before they enter the arena.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesArtists only came out for brief socially distanced news conferences. Ms. Pravi, the French singer-songwriter, held lively conversations in the days before the final, waving hands and arms and mixing French and English. Ms. Pravi said she never makes any concessions, and the same was true of her song, “Voilà.” She said, “My ‘parcours’ shows this,” referring to the French term for career path.Ms. Pravi comes from an international family of singers and painters. Her maternal grandfather is the famous Iranian painter Hossein Zenderoudi. Her song dusts off the French chanson, recalling singers like Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.Some had criticized her, calling her style of singing out of fashion, but Ms. Pravi strongly disagreed. “You don’t need to make concessions in music,” she said. “You can be absolutely yourself, doing the music you like, say the words you want and being the woman you want to be. And now I am here at Eurovision, the biggest contest in the world.”Early Sunday morning Ms. Pravi was seen in the dimly lit press center speaking to French reporters who couldn’t believe that their country had come so close to victory, after having achieved almost no Eurovision honors since their victory in 1977.Damiano David from Maneskin celebrated at the press conference after Italy’s win.Ilvy Njiokiktjien for The New York TimesAs the Italian rockers of Maneskin took off their shirts to celebrate their victory, the singer James Newman, the United Kingdom’s entrant, was nowhere to be found. His song “Embers” had received zero points from both the national juries and the international audience. “It’s Brexit,” said Meg Perry-Duxbury, a Briton living in Rotterdam, sitting next to me in the arena. “Europe doesn’t want us to win.” She herself was supporting Cyprus (another song featuring devils) anyway, Ms. Perry-Duxbury said. “So whatever.” More

  • 100 Shares99 Views

    in Theater

    ‘This American Wife’ Review: Wives Out, Knives Out

    The play is a wild genre-bending parody of, and homage to, “The Real Housewives” franchise.I hate reality TV. It’s not the annoying personalities or the absurd playground-style fights or the drama that belies a fundamental lack of substance. Nope, it’s the assertion that it isn’t another fabricated product but action that’s “real.” It’s even in the name: “The Real World” or “The Real Housewives” — with the implicit assumption that life can be as curated as, say, a filmed brunch gathering of pampered celebrity wives.But maybe I’m being too hard on these women, who exist in something between an anthropological experiment and the theater. Yes, theater, the realm where we find ourselves in “This American Wife,” by FourthWall Theatrical. It’s a wild parody of, and homage to, “The Real Housewives” franchise.If you saw Michael Breslin and Patrick Foley’s “Circle Jerk,” a bonkers queer fable on privilege and cancel culture for the internet age, you already have a sense of the kind of satirical comedy and ambition that defines “This American Wife.” Jeremy O. Harris, of “Slave Play,” is also a producer.In the 90-minute production, Breslin, Foley and Jakeem Dante Powell, who are real-life “Housewives” superfans, appear as fictionalized versions of themselves. They each end up in a Long Island mansion while recounting their love for the franchise.Once there, the actors suddenly dip into the personas of the housewives as easily as one would slip into a royal blue satin dress with fringed sleeves — or, you know, whatever you have lying around.Breslin, Foley and Powell act out scenes taken directly from the series, which are sometimes intercut into the production. At certain points the actors take charge of the cameras themselves, interviewing one another in a style that mimics the confession-room reveals of reality TV but also the voyeuristic false intimacy of porn.The production, conceived and written by Breslin and Foley, eventually spins out into a playful music video and then an improvised reunion-style segment where the actors argue and respond, as “Housewives”-esque caricatures of themselves, to questions from fans on Twitter. Throughout, an anonymous woman with a claw-like manicure and long wavy bottle-blonde hair appears in white chunky heels through the mansion — she’s like an apparition summoned from the inherited wealth of Beverly Hills, the splashy opulence of runway fashion and Bravo TV’s bulging wallet.The performers’ lips are thoroughly glossed for their close-ups.Nina Goodheart“This American Wife,” directed by Rory Pelsue (“Circle Jerk”) with mad intensity and mindful allusions to gay stereotypes and internet culture, channels “Housewives” first and foremost with its setting. The production and props designer Stephanie Osin Cohen bedazzles an already palatial Long Island mansion in Lake Success, complete with a museum-worthy collection of framed Pomeranian portraits.Like Cohen, who interrupts the upscale creams and off-whites of the décor with eruptions of colors, the costume designer, Cole McCarty, also walks the fine line between subtle and bold hues. He clothes the actors in sheer blouses and textured blazers before pulling out the extravagant party gowns and statement hats. Tommy Kurzman, the hair, wig and makeup designer, has the performers’ eyelashes ecstatically curled and lips thoroughly glossed for their close-ups.The superficial glamour of “This American Wife” is alluring, the kind of eye candy a superfan might enjoy on the show. Above all that’s Breslin, Foley and Powell embodying — with an uncanny level of precision — the various housewives. The gestures and affectations aren’t just acts of glorified mimicry, however; they are a statement on the Venn diagram of gay male tropes and a particular brand of performance by women. And so there are snapped heads and sashays and the glorious theatrics of Powell as Kenya Moore (“The Real Housewives of Atlanta”), saucily declaring himself “‘Gone With the Wind’ fabulous.” (Powell, as a Black man, also brings attention to the racial element of the franchise, which features mostly white women, but the script doesn’t offer a deeper analysis.)That would have already been a comedic feat for the three, but much of the production is also improvised — and so well that it’s hard to differentiate. The last scene, a feisty interview segment, contains such a juicy rapid-fire argument between Foley’s character and Powell’s that it might have been an actual scrap between two catty acquaintances. (Shout out to Powell’s “I could make avocado toast out of you,” the Louis Vuitton of retorts.)Though I probably risk snappy retribution here, seeing how thoroughly Foley, brandishing my colleague Jesse Green’s book “The Velveteen Father,” roasted him (bitingly and perhaps cruelly), I, like Vicki, Brandi, Danielle, Tamra and Porsha, must not back down.Because despite its vicious charms, “This American Wife” quickly becomes exhausting. Since the production is split into separate movements, the two longest of which are primarily Breslin, Foley and Powell recreating scenes from the franchise, the novelty soon wears off. And though the production is so consciously playing with the artifice of the form, each performer has a moment of vulnerability when he — or at least his autofictional persona — reveals a tragic fact or experience. But when Breslin and Foley separately share the same tragic assault story — experienced by one and appropriated by the other — the gross fabrication casts a shadow of doubt over everything.In one scene, Powell asks Breslin (who can shed white woman tears at the blink of an eye), “What’s your reality?” I had a similar question.For most of “This American Wife” I was onboard but occasionally felt left out of the joke, especially in the improvised parts that could feasibly be sincere. The same is true of the music video segment: The show often feels so seduced by its own eccentric performances that it loses track of its point.What is missing here, which was well-established in “Circle Jerk,” is a more coherent commentary on queerness and reality show divas.Conceptually and technically, “This American Wife” has much to offer, especially in the way it uses humor to seriously consider lowbrow reality TV as an art form that could be on the same level as the highbrow artifice of theater. And for “Housewives” apologists, it’s definitely a must-see.For viewers like me, who prefer their fiction with less spray tans and Prada, these housewives can offer some laughs, but not enough. If I have to watch reality TV, I’d rather look elsewhere — anyone know if “Chopped” is on tonight?This American WifeThrough June 6; thisamericanwife.live. More

  • 113 Shares129 Views

    in Theater

    Three Dramas Explore the Margins of the Digital Form

    Talking dogs, green screen thrillers and gold turtles: Online productions, intended as a stopgap, are testing the boundaries of what makes theater theater.Puppets can’t cry. But they can make people cry.Or at least exceptionally well-made and well-voiced ones, like those in “Vancouver” by Ralph B. Peña, can. They create a new path for emotion by blocking access to paths that have become too familiar.“Vancouver” is among the many productions that, at this late date in the era of remote playgoing, are still exploring the ways artists can engage audiences theatrically even when what they’re offering is basically film. The gorgeously carved humanoids (and canines) in “Vancouver” — like the uncanny green screens in the workplace drama “Data” and the deliberately funky video in “The Sprezzaturameron” — are just some of the de-cinematizing strategies I’ve recently experienced online. As audiences creep out of their shells, these three got me thinking about the future of the digital form — and also the live one.But first they got me thinking about their particular lives and concerns. In “Vancouver,” a production of Ma-Yi Theater and the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, the subject seems to be the unhappiness of displacement. For a Japanese man named Hiro, his white wife, Amy, and their 19-year-old daughter, Ashley, that unhappiness is a knot: No one place — certainly not Vancouver, Wash., where they live — can feel like home to them all. The only reasonably content creature in the ménage is Lucky, their scraggly poodle.That Lucky talks — lovingly, directly and frequently about bacon — is a bit of absurdity you easily accept within the conventions of puppet drama. (Like all the puppets, he’s gorgeously made; the puppetry director is Tom Lee.)The other characters are more circumspect with their needs. Hiro (voiced by James Yaegashi) often speaks in anguished interior monologue. Amy (Cindy Cheung) drinks herself to sleep most nights in a pile of partly eaten sunflower seeds. Both are exhausted from managing the needs of their daughter, Ashley (Shannon Tyo), a 19-year-old whose Asperger’s diagnosis makes her feel like an alien in her own world. Washing her hair and keeping a job are challenges for her; only video games, amusingly rendered in the most analog way imaginable, are not.If “Vancouver” is fundamentally about “a mixed-race Asian American family dealing with racial aggressions” — as Peña, who also directed, has said — we see that only glancingly during its 35 minutes. Early on, Ashley tosses off the news that the “weird kid” across the street has called her family “radioactive from the bombs” once dropped on Japan. Later, as if linking varieties of hatred, the play finds Ashley at a bus stop, where someone throws a Chinese takeout food carton at her, shouting, “weirdo.”Otherwise, the subject of race is buried beneath the family’s many other problems, where, like some underground buildup of energy, it accumulates an almost tectonic power. That’s a paradox common to all art forms — great suppression creates great force — but here, the feeling is intensified by the paradox of the puppets. Their souls seem more accessible than human souls do because their eyes are made of glass.Jake Berne, left, and Cheech Manohar in Matthew Libby’s snappy drama “Data.” The production was filmed using green screen technology.via Alliance TheaterIn those eyes, you can see how the themes of “Vancouver” are linked by the problem of conditional love: how it destabilizes children, depresses adults and, writ large, victimizes whole segments of society. Even Lucky (Daniel K. Isaac) suffers when it turns out that he too is provisional.That moment when people realize how precariously they claim space in the world is a turning point in “Data,” produced by the Alliance Theater and this year’s winner of the Alliance/Kendeda competition for playwrights in graduate school. In this case, the playwright, Matthew Libby, had the requisite background not only in drama but also in high-tech, which is both the subject of the play and the way it got rescued when the pandemic foreclosed on a live, staged production.The tech also provides a neat visual counterpoint to the story of Maneesh (Cheech Manohar), a programmer at a data-mining company called Athena. When he is asked to transfer to a unit developing a secret algorithm for predicting terrorist acts against the United States government, Maneesh is forced to weigh the benefits to himself against the potential harm to others. The others are immigrants — including Maneesh’s own parents.If that’s too neat of a setup, it’s hardly science fiction; real-world cases involving data-mining behemoths like Palantir and Cambridge Analytica have raised similar concerns. In any case, the payoff is exciting, in an Aaron Sorkin meets Michael Lewis way. As directed by Susan V. Booth, the Alliance’s artistic director, the production leaps headlong past its problems. Certainly its 90 minutes of ticktock action, forwarded in snappy dialogue between Maneesh and two colleagues — one principled (Clare Latham) and one not (Jake Berne) — has the feel of a well-paced television procedural.Better than television, though, is the disorienting effect of the green screen technology, which allows the actors, who were actually 10 to 20 feet apart while filming, to appear together, even in endless games of table tennis. As you wonder how the effect was achieved you are brought up short by the contrast with the content: What does it mean when ethics becomes a kind of trick and a game?A giant gilded turtle in “The Sprezzaturameron,” a multimedia video from Tei Blow and Sean McElroy in which ethics are a subject of satire.via Baryshnikov Arts Center“The Sprezzaturameron” goes further: In its world, ethics are a subject of satire. This multimedia “video docudrama” from Tei Blow and Sean McElroy, who write and perform as Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, is so high concept that its content seemed to vaporize as I stared at its bizarre images and tried to decipher its opaque dialogue. From what I could make out, it’s about documentarians in a perfected future world who look back on our highly imperfect one to see how artists in these backward years behaved.Apparently, they behaved badly; most of the 30-minute show’s action consists of attempts by Blow and McElroy — dressed in bad wigs, gold short-shorts and flowing white tunics — to craft apologies for unspecified crimes against wokeness. But as much as I am generally allergic to deliberately obscure avant-gardism, the kind that sniffs at anyone who can’t unpack the meaning of a portmanteau title composed of “sprezzatura” and “Decameron,” I found something usefully troubling, and specifically theatrical, about this commission from the Baryshnikov Arts Center.What makes it theatrical is the deliberate roughing up of the video interface; you can’t mistake it (as you likewise can’t mistake “Vancouver” or “Data”) for film. What makes it troubling is its equal opportunity carping at both cancel culture and the false apologetics that try to outwit it. It’s useful to have that conversation, or whatever “The Sprezzaturameron” is, in the air.At any rate, its image of the art world as a taffy-stretched Parthenon teetering on the back of a giant gilded turtle is surely one I’ll think of the next time a genius is felled by revelations of shocking misdeeds everyone knew about anyway.It is not an unreasonable question to ask whether the live arts, under the weight of the pandemic but also their own long-festering inequities, are expanding or, like that turtle, exploding — and which would be a better thing. Right now, my more pressing concern is whether experiments like these, enforced by the shutdown, will continue after the reopening.I hope so: By exploring the wilds of what theater can be without theaters, virtual works clear a path toward continued innovation and growth of the form. No need to apologize for that.VancouverThrough May 31; ma-yistudios.comDataExtended through June 6; alliancetheatre.orgThe SprezzaturameronThrough May 31; digital.bacnyc.org More

  • 138 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    A Teenager’s ‘Hannibal’ Fan Art Will Hang in the U.S. Capitol

    Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey, who picked the painting to represent his district in the Capitol, did not know it was inspired by a canceled TV show.To the untrained eye, the Cubist artwork painted by Kathleen Palmer, a senior at Shawnee High School in New Jersey, would appear to show two men looking at each other.One is writing in a notebook, the other has antlers.But when Representative Andy Kim, a Democrat whose district includes the high school, included a photo of Palmer’s creation in a tweet announcing that the teenager had won an art competition that would earn the painting a spot in the U.S. Capitol, many people saw something else entirely: fan art inspired by the long-canceled NBC show “Hannibal,” nodding to a love story between two male characters, being recognized by the federal government.“I didn’t know that it was related to a TV show,” Mr. Kim, who picked the winning painting from his district, said on Friday. “I just thought it was really beautiful, well executed, and it was really striking.”The painting is titled “Dolce,” after an episode from the third and final season of “Hannibal.” The show, which went off the air in 2015, explored the relationship between the cannibalistic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter, a character made famous by Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs,” and Will Graham, a young F.B.I. agent who can empathize with serial killers.Palmer, who uses they and them pronouns, began watching the show late last year after seeing clips from the series on TikTok. It took Palmer four weeks to finish the painting — a 16-by-20-inch oil on canvas, their first work in a Cubist style — completing the final details by Dec. 23.“It was just a casual art-class project,” Palmer, 17, said on Friday. “I didn’t expect it to go this far.”The painting reflects the dynamic between the characters through its use of color, Palmer said. The warm red tones on Hannibal’s side of the painting evoke the serial killer’s bloodlust and passion, while Will’s cool blues signify how he is both hunting and being hunted in the pair’s cat-and-mouse game.The U.S. Capitol is an unusually high-profile space to display fan art, which is typically a labor of love. The art form is often long on passion but short on recognition outside generally self-contained fan communities.Fans inspired by their favorite books, shows, games and movies have long drawn in their own notebooks, with zines — independent, usually self-published magazines — being one of the few ways to get the artwork published in the pre-internet world. Others write fan fiction, creating their own scripts and spinning new stories with dialogue they want to see.But the rise of blogging platforms like LiveJournal and Tumblr allowed obsessive fans to find one another more easily than ever, putting their work in front of appreciative, like-minded audiences and inspiring more artists to take part.Sometimes the artwork is done in tribute, taking beloved characters and presenting them in a new light based on the artist’s personal style. At other times, fans take those beloved characters and thrust them into new contexts, remixing the source material as they desire.A common form that takes appears in shipping, in which two characters are imagined in a romantic relationship or an audience supports them being together. It often happens with two characters who have undeniable chemistry, even if the source material doesn’t come right out and say it. (The term “slash” is used for same-sex relationships, and “slashfic” for art and writing that places them together.)The two characters featured in Palmer’s painting, Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham, have long been shipped by “Hannibal” fans, who have given the pair a couple nickname: “Hannigram.”“I guess I did incorporate that into the painting,” Palmer said of the slashfic, adding that it’s heavily implied in the show that the characters have a romantic spark.The Congressional Art Competition, now in its 40th year, is sponsored by the Congressional Institute, a nonprofit that focuses on educating the public about Congress. The judging process is run by U.S. representatives. In the spring, a winner is picked from each of the 435 congressional districts that choose to hold the competition.Mr. Kim consulted with six local artists and art enthusiasts for recommendations, but the congressman made the final decision. There were 12 entries in New Jersey’s Third Congressional District, which stretches from the Delaware River to the Jersey Shore. This was the third year that Mr. Kim, who was first elected in 2018, has hosted the competition in his district.Each of the winning paintings is displayed in a tunnel between the House of Representatives and a congressional office building, according to Mark N. Strand, the president of the Congressional Institute.“It’s a great opportunity to have kids show their art to the world,” Mr. Strand said on Friday. “And it’s one of the most bipartisan things members can do.”Palmer started making art about six years ago, beginning with drawing. Every once in a while, Palmer said, they would fall off the wagon, but while forced to stay home during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, they rediscovered art as a passion.“I really like making beautiful things,” Palmer said on Friday. “It’s really gratifying to make beauty.”Palmer said that the unexpected support from the competition had inspired them to keep working at their art, especially as they prepare to enter Ohio University as a studio arts major.“It’s been a big motivation,” Palmer said of winning the competition. “Being validated in this scale is really, really fantastic. It’s lit the fire underneath me to paint more and work on my skills more.” More

  • 63 Shares129 Views

    in Theater

    The Return of Live Theater

    As productions and festivals reopen this summer, it will be nice to experience some drama outside of our own.As vaccinations and an announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have caused many to reduce their mask use, live performances are slowly returning. While Broadway’s official return is not until September, Radio City Music Hall will reopen on June 19 to host the final night of the Tribeca Film Festival (guests must be vaccinated). And across the New York, venues like the Park Avenue Armory and St. Ann’s Warehouse are already experimenting with socially distanced outdoor performances to resuscitate live theater with caution.Last year saw a blanket cancellation of summer stock theater festivals, but this season they’re coming back, albeit with some adjustments. The Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts will stage all its shows outdoors, while the Utah Shakespeare Festival will require masks and offer concessions outside only. So while the summer arts season won’t look quite like 2019, theater lovers are about to have a welcome awakening.‘Ring of Fire’ at the Rocky Mountain Repertory TheaterThis theater in Grand Lake, Colo., is holding its 2021 season indoors, and will open with the Johnny Cash jukebox musical, “Ring of Fire,” which debuted on Broadway in 2006. The musical, which will feature Cash classics like “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” begins a season that runs through September and will include “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” Starts June 4, $45; rockymountainrep.com.“Outside on Main: Nine Solo Plays by Black Playwrights” at the Williamstown Theater Festival This esteemed Berkshires festival has minted many a future star and premiered Broadway-bound shows like the Bradley Cooper-headlined production of “The Elephant Man.” When it returns for an in-person season, the debut show will be the world premiere of “Outside on Main,” which is directed by Wardell Julius Clark, Awoye Timpo and Candis C. Jones, and guest curated by the playwright Robert O’Hara. Each performance will consist of three 30-minute plays, all written by Black writers for actors of color. Season starts July 6, festival tickets are $100 each and will go on sale June 22; wtfestival.org/shows-events/.“Pericles” at the Utah Shakespeare FestivalThis Shakespeare festival, part of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, will open its 60th-anniversary season with “Pericles.” Also featured this season, which runs from June until October, will be Shakespearean classics like “Richard III” and “The Comedy of Errors,” as well as a few ventures off theme with “Pirates of Penzance” and “Ragtime.” Season starts June 21, tickets start at $9; bard.org.“The Magic Flute” at Glimmerglass FestivalThis opera institution in Cooperstown, N.Y., will move shows from its traditional theater to a newly designed outdoor space. The season begins with a new take on “The Magic Flute,” but what looks to be the gem of the festival is “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” a world premiere starring Denyce Graves about the life of the founder of the National Negro Opera Company in 1941. Season starts July 15, tickets start at $80 for a socially distanced square accommodating up to four; glimmerglass.org.“A Thousand Ways (Part Two): An Encounter” at the Public TheaterIn December, New York’s Public Theater debuted the socially distanced piece “A Thousand Ways (Part One): An Encounter,” which connected the audience via telephone line. Created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone of the Brooklyn theater company 600 Highwaymen, “Part One” was the first of a trilogy, and now in-person participants can experience “A Thousand Ways (Part Two).” In this experimental work, attendees will be paired together and follow directions to create a private work. June 8-Aug. 15, $15; publictheater.org.“What to Send Up When It Goes Down” from BAMThe playwright Aleshea Harris’s monumental work, which debuted Off Broadway in 2018, bears witness to the epidemic of Black death from racist violence. With a permeable border between the audience and the actors, the play will allow for an emotional experience of discussion and healing. The production is being presented by BAM and Playwrights Horizons, in association with the Movement Theater Company.Check the website for the opening date in June; bam.org. More

  • 125 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Discovery and AT&T: How a Huge Media Deal Was Done

    An early-morning meeting at a Greenwich Village townhouse, under the watchful eye of Steve McQueen, was part of a monthslong campaign.In the predawn hours of April 1, David Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, arrived at a rented townhouse in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village — decorated with photos of rock stars and one of the actor Steve McQueen in sunglasses holding a gun — to prepare for a meeting that would soon reverberate across the American media industry. More

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Theater

    Cultural Institutions Still Waiting for $16 Billion in Federal Aid

    The Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program has been marred by delays, but officials say some applicants could learn next week if they have been approved for aid.Five months after Congress approved a $16 billion federal aid program to help live performance venues and cultural institutions survive the pandemic, more than 12,000 applicants have sought help but no money has been disbursed yet.But some venue owners, theater producers and museum officials — eager, and in cases desperate, for financial help after more than a year of steep pandemic losses — could soon learn if help is on the way. The Small Business Administration, which runs the program, said in a statement Friday that the highest-priority applicants — those that lost 90 percent of their revenue compared to the prior year — are tentatively scheduled to receive notices about the fate of their applications beginning next week.But some business owners are wary of the promise after weeks of delay and confusion over the initiative, the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, which many had cheered as a lifeline. Each day applicants vent their frustrations on an online forum, regularly polling one another on whether any applications have yet been officially approved or rejected.“They’re hanging on by a thread right now,” said Meredith Lynsey Schade, a theater producer and nonprofit leader who helps answer questions from grant applicants on the forum. “They’re on life support, and every day they’re told, ‘just a little bit longer.’”At a news conference on Friday in Times Square, not far from the TKTS booth that sells discounted Broadway tickets, Senator Chuck Schumer and Broadway industry leaders celebrated the program as a savior for the hard-hit performing arts sector.“Right now $16 billion is on the way to the theater district, our theater industry, our live venues and our cultural institutions in New York and across the country,” Senator Schumer said. He did not address the delays that have hampered the application process or the frustrations of those awaiting relief.In response to a question about the program’s persistent delays, a spokesman for Senator Schumer, Angelo Roefaro, said “We are urging an ASAP release of these federal dollars.”Senator Chuck Schumer spoke about the promised aid at a news conference on Friday with Broadway officials and performers.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesNow that more theaters, concert halls and nightclubs are getting the green light to reopen across the country, new expenses are starting to mount, even as organizations try to figure out how to handle the losses of the past year.Forty Broadway shows are expected to open during the 2021-22 season, Mr. Schumer said at the news conference, some of them as early as September. In recent days, tickets have gone on sale for 19 shows, he said.Grant applications from live venue operators or promoters make up more than 40 percent of the 12,213 funding applications that were submitted as of earlier this week, according to data from the Small Business Association; theatrical producers make up about 7 percent of that total. The program offers grants worth 45 percent of applicants’ prepandemic gross earned annual revenue, up to $10 million.As Broadway shows prepare for reopenings beginning in September, producers and theater owners are among the applicants waiting anxiously for funding. Broadway applicants will most likely be considered in the highest priority window to receive the grant funds because they generally lost the vast majority of their revenue when theaters shut down, said Ms. Schade, who was a producer on two Broadway shows that were running at the start of the shutdown, “Hadestown” and “The Inheritance.”Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade organization representing producers and theater owners, said in an interview that the Small Business Administration had told the group that money would start coming in by the end of the month, and that the industry understands “how government works.” Ms. St. Martin said that the agency had to take some time to familiarize itself with the Broadway industry.“If we don’t get some money soon I may have different things to say,” she said, “but I think they’re being extremely cooperative and supportive of our industry and trying to learn it while also handing out money.”The application process for the grant money has been chaotic from the start: On what was supposed to have been day one for people to submit applications, the online system broke down and the agency’s inspector general sent out an alert warning of “serious concerns” with the program’s waste and fraud controls.In its statement on Friday, the Small Business Administration acknowledged that there continues to be “some fine-tuning of technical components of the program” but said the agency is “committed to quickly and efficiently” disbursing funds to venues and organizations in need. More

  • 138 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    Disabled People Fear Being Left Behind as U.K. Culture Venues Reopen

    Some disabled people have spent a year devouring shows online, and they want continued access. Some theaters are promising to provide it, but fears persist.LONDON — Before the pandemic hit Britain last year, Michelle Hedley could only go to her local theaters in the north of England if they happened to be doing a captioned performance.That happened five times a year — at best, said Hedley, who is deaf.But during the pandemic, suddenly, she could watch musicals all day and night if she wanted, as shuttered theaters worldwide put shows online, often with subtitles. “I started watching anything and everything simply because I could!” Hedley, 49, said in an email interview. “Even subject matters that bored me!”“I viewed more theater than I had done (it felt like) in a lifetime,” she added.Michelle Hedley worries she will be forced to go back to being “grateful” for being able to access just a handful of captioned shows each year now that British theaters have reopened.Mary Turner for The New York TimesNow, Hedley fears this access is about to be lost.On Monday, theaters, museums and cinemas started reopening across England, some for the first time since March 2020. Audiences have been so grateful to be back inside theaters, they have clapped following the announcements to turn cellphones off.But for many disabled people, who make up 22 percent of England’s population and have diverse requirements — such as wheelchair access, audio description or for “relaxed” performances where audiences are allowed to make noise — this moment is causing more mixed reactions. Some fear being forgotten, and that struggling venues will concentrate on producing in-person shows and forgo online offerings, or cut their in-person services for disabled people.There is little evidence of that so far, and some venues say they will continue to include disabled people, but the real effect of venues’ reduced budgets won’t become clear for months.“I will be forced to go back to being grateful for just five shows a year,” Hedley said. “It is very frustrating.”Others are concerned, too. “I just have this sense of being left behind with people being so euphoric that they can do things in the flesh again,” Sonia Boué, an artist who is autistic, said in a telephone interview.Before the pandemic, Boué, 58, would only visit museums if she was convinced a show would be worth the huge amount of energy the experience took. Getting the train from her home in Oxford to London could be overwhelming, she said, as could dealing with crowds in a packed museum. “I’ve been in situations when I’ve just wanted to throw myself down on a station platform and lose it,” she said.Online, she could view shows whenever she wanted. Last year, she went back again and again to one by the painter Tracey Emin and the photographer Jo Spence, she said, with both influencing her own art. “The whole experience was so rich and wonderful,” Boué said.Sonia Boué believes that following Britain’s lockdowns, it should be easier than ever to identify with, and consider the needs of, disabled people.Lauren Fleishman for The New York TimesBritain’s cultural venues have struggled over the past 12 months, with thousands of layoffs. Many venues only survived the pandemic thanks to emergency funding from the government.Some high-profile venues have said they will keep working to include disabled people as they reopen. Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic theater in London, told The Guardian in May he wanted to livestream at least two performances of all future shows, with viewers limited to about 500 per stream, mimicking the theater’s capacity. The Young Vic intends to guarantee some of those tickets for disabled people, a spokeswoman said in an email. On Friday, the Almeida, another London theater, said it would film and released digitally its next season’s shows “where possible” but gave no further details.But for regional theaters that are coming off a year without ticket sales, streaming may not always be possible. “It’s a huge financial outlay, making films, so you really need to think about it from the start,” Amy Leach, the associate director of Leeds Playhouse, said in a phone interview. She hoped her theater would do that for future work, she said.People’s concerns are not just about cuts to streaming. Jessica Thom, a performer and wheelchair user who’s made work about her Tourette’s syndrome, said in a telephone interview that she was worried that some venues may see online shows as an accessibility alternative to offering the relaxed performances she loved to go to, where people were free to move around or make noise. “The anxiety about being written out is real,” she said.Last week, English National Opera said it would be doubling the number of relaxed performances it offers in its next season, although only to two from one.Leanna Benjamin, a wheelchair user who has myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and often experiences pain, said in a telephone interview she was worried venues may drop online ways of working that have flourished during the pandemic.In the last year, Benjamin was commissioned to write three short plays — her first assignments as a playwright. “I’m like, ‘Thank you, Covid!’” she said. “You may have made me be isolated and life feel really tough, but on the other hand you’ve launched my career.”Those commissions included work for Graeae, Britain’s leading deaf and disabled-led theater company, as well as “The Unknown” for Leeds Playhouse (streaming until June 5).She has been helped in such work by being able to have meetings and rehearsals virtually. “My experiences have been incredibly inclusive,” she said, “and I think a lot of us are having the same concerns about ‘Will we go back to old ways of working, when we’re told we need to be in the room?’”Leach, of Leeds Playhouse, said she didn’t think that would be the case. Her theater was intending to keep using video technology so it can expand work with disabled people in the industry.“I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” said Joanna Wood, who lives on England’s south coast.Tom Jamieson for The New York TimesNot all disabled people have found the pandemic liberating in terms of access to culture. Joanna Wood, who is blind in one eye, and can only see blurred shapes with the other, said for her, the pandemic has been a disaster.Before the pandemic, she’d attended plays or gone to art exhibitions at least once a week, taking advantage of a boom in audio description (for a play, that involves a describer explaining what happens onstage in between gaps in dialogue).But it took months for theaters to start putting audio-described content online, she said. There were some highlights, she added — the Old Vic in London made sure all its livestreamed shows had audio description — but she often felt like she had gone back to the moment five years ago when she started losing her sight and couldn’t access culture at all. “It felt completely disabling,” she said of last year’s experiences.Some theaters, like the Globe in London, have started offering in-person performances with audio description, Wood said. But she won’t be able to attend for months. “I worked out the other day I’d need to be guided by about 25 people to go from my home to a London theater,” she said. “I can’t tell if someone is wearing a mask or not, I can’t keep distance, so I don’t feel ready,” she added.Many other disabled people feel similarly anxious about attending events in person, she said, having been disproportionately affected by the pandemic. She was worried theaters might cut back on services assuming there isn’t demand, even if the trend for that hasn’t happened yet.Six British museums and theaters said in emails they intended to maintain provisions for disabled audiences, and not cut back. Andrew Miller, a campaigner who was the British government’s disability champion for arts and culture until this spring, said many institutions would be hard pressed to “wriggle” out of commitments even if they for some reason wanted to, as much funding in Britain comes with a requirement to expand access. But future funding cuts could make the situation “messy,” he said. “There is a genuine worry there’ll be significantly less investment,” he added.Boué said she just hoped British theaters and museums kept disabled people in mind. It should be easier than ever to identify with disabled people, she said. When the first lockdown hit, “it was this jaw dropping moment when everyone felt completely immobilized and like they didn’t have the freedoms they’d always taken for granted,” she said.For once, “it was like disability was really everyone’s problem,” she added. More