Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 125 Shares179 Views

    in Theater

    Scott Rudin to Step Back From Broadway Amid Bullying Reports

    The powerful producer of “Hello, Dolly!” and “The Book of Mormon” regrets “the pain my behavior caused” and says others will directly run his shows.Scott Rudin, a powerful Broadway producer facing renewed accusations of bullying, apologized Saturday for “troubling interactions with colleagues” and said he would step aside from “active participation” in his current shows.Rudin, who has won a raft of awards for prestige productions not only onstage but also in Hollywood, was facing renewed scrutiny over a long history of tyrannical behavior toward workers in his office following a recent article in The Hollywood Reporter. He made his apology in a written statement first given to The Washington Post.“After a period of reflection, I’ve made the decision to step back from active participation on our Broadway productions, effective immediately,” he said in the statement. “My roles will be filled by others from the Broadway community and in a number of cases, from the roster of participants already in place on those shows.”Rudin, a prolific producer of starry plays whose biggest Broadway success is the long-running musical “The Book of Mormon,” acknowledged the concerns about his behavior, without detail. Through a spokesman, he declined a request for an interview.“Much has been written about my history of troubling interactions with colleagues, and I am profoundly sorry for the pain my behavior caused to individuals, directly and indirectly,” he said in the statement. “I am now taking steps that I should have taken years ago to address this behavior.”Rudin has been dogged for decades by reports that he threatened, verbally abused, and threw objects at people who work in his office, but had continued to thrive in an entertainment industry with a long history of tolerating poor behavior by people who produce acclaimed art.The Hollywood Reporter article, coming at a time of intensified concern about abusive behavior in many sectors of society, described an assistant who said Rudin had thrown a baked potato at his head and an earlier incident in which Rudin allegedly smashed a computer monitor on a different assistant’s hand.Over the last week, some performers had begun to publicly express concerns about his dominant role in the industry. When Karen Olivo, a Tony-nominated star of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” which was not produced by Rudin, announced a plan last week not to return to that show when performances resume, Olivo called on others to speak up, saying, “The silence about Scott Rudin: unacceptable.”Rudin is known as a detail-oriented producer involved with every aspect of the shows he produces, from casting to marketing, and his statement Saturday did not explain what stepping back from active participation means, prompting immediate skepticism from some corners of the entertainment industry.The Actors’ Equity Association, a labor union representing more than 51,000 stage actors and stage managers, called on Rudin to release his former employees from nondisclosure agreements that in some instances bar them from describing their experiences in his employ.“We have heard from hundreds of members that these allegations are inexcusable, and everyone deserves a safe workplace whether they are a union member or not,” said a statement from the union’s president, Kate Shindle, and executive director, Mary McColl.Actors Equity, joined by SAG-AFTRA and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802, had issued a statement on Monday saying that “No worker should be subjected to bullying or harassment” but not mentioning Rudin by name.Rudin, 62, has for years been a dominant figure in the American entertainment industry. He is among the handful of people known as EGOTs by virtue of winning Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony Awards, and he was able to combine a keen eye for casting with relationships in the film and theater industries to put together many starry projects in both industries.Although for a time he worked as a studio executive in Hollywood, in recent years many of his highest profile projects have been onstage. Recently, he has been active as a producer of NY PopsUp, a series of performances funded by the state in an effort to remind people of the value of performing arts and to employ some artists during the pandemic.Rudin had a sizable slate of projects in the works, and his move appears intended to allow those projects to proceed without the distraction of protests about his behavior.The most anticipated of those projects was a revival of “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, that was scheduled to begin previews Dec. 20 and open Feb. 10.Rudin, with Bette Midler behind him, accepting a 2017 Tony for the revival of “Hello, Dolly!”Theo Wargo/Getty Images for Tony Awards ProductionsBut he also had three shows running before the coronavirus pandemic shut down Broadway that were candidates to reopen once full-capacity commercial theater rebounds in New York: “The Book of Mormon”; “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a hit stage adaptation of the Harper Lee novel; and “West Side Story,” an adventurous revival of the beloved classic.“My passionate hope and expectation is that Broadway will reopen successfully very soon, and that the many talented artists associated with it will once again begin to thrive and share their artistry with the world,” Rudin said in the statement. “I do not want any controversy associated with me to interrupt Broadway’s well deserved return, or specifically, the return of the 1,500 people working on these shows.”Cara Buckley contributed reporting. More

  • 113 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Americans Have Discovered the Garden, and Celebrities Want In

    Many of us turned to gardening for solace during the pandemic. Now Martha Stewart and Drew Barrymore want to guide us to green thumbs.Last spring, as the world descended into a collective panic, Drew Barrymore planted her first lawn. “I did not think I could do this,” said Ms. Barrymore, 46, who until last year did not include gardening in her exhaustive list of achievements.And yet, the actress, writer, producer, businesswoman, mother and recent television host managed to make grass grow. “It was all barren. I got the water and the rake and the bag of seed and I waited weeks and watched it grow,” she said, speaking by phone as one of her two daughters vied for her attention in the background.In early-stage pandemic fashion, she — like many other locked-down homeowners — also got chickens and planted a victory garden, growing tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants, strawberries and squash. “It was a miracle. I never knew I could do these things, I didn’t think I was capable of it,” said Ms. Barrymore, who lives on the East Coast. “I felt really empowered.”Now, she is sharing her enthusiasm for grass as the face of Instead, a new lawn-care subscription service that fertilizes grass using ingredients like molasses, wheat flour, feather meal, blood meal and alfalfa. Over the course of the growing season, subscribers who pay $132 for a small lawn or $264 for a large one will receive three packages that promise to deliver a “happy lawn” that will be “overjoyed with this special recipe.”Ms. Barrymore is the latest celebrity to seize on a moment when millions of Americans have turned to their gardens as a source of solace, and to spin it into a business opportunity. Martha Stewart was the first to read the room. She weathered the pandemic last summer by filming “Martha Knows Best” for HGTV, a reality series about life on her sprawling Bedford, N.Y., estate, followed quickly with a second series in the fall. The show is now filming its third season, to air this summer.Last October, Aly Raisman, the Olympic gymnast who frequently posts Instagram selfies with her overgrown zucchini and miniature lime trees, partnered with the indoor gardening-kit company AeroGarden to share growing tips. And in January, UrbanStems, a flower and plant delivery service, released the love fern, a potted Blue Bell fern designed with Kate Hudson’s King St. Vodka brand.Even noncommercial ventures seem to play better in the garden these days. During their March interview with Oprah Winfrey, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle took their guest on a tour not of their Montecito living room, but of their chicken coop, projecting a message that in this time of social distancing, the most intimate setting is the backyard.Americans don’t have a national gardener in the way that the British have Monty Don, who hosts “Gardeners’ World,” which is a national institution in Britain. But with this newfound appetite for homegrown tomatoes and luscious lawns, the time might be ripe for one. As the country emerges from a long winter and (hopefully) the pandemic, all those raised beds and carefully tended lawns planted last spring and summer are still out there, waiting to be tilled and seeded for another season. Someone needs to explain the difference between a shovel and a spade.One candidate for the role would be, of course, Ms. Stewart, 79, who has been schooling Americans on their pruning methods for decades. She published her first book about gardening in 1990 and sells a line of garden tools and décor. In “Martha Knows Best,” she offers housebound viewers advice on how to achieve the perfect gardening soil, plant trees and build stone pathways, among other things.“People have started this hobby of gardening that’s addictive,” said Jane Latman, the president of HGTV. “We get letters and comments on our social feed constantly. Where is the gardening? You’re HGTV. Put the ‘G’ back in HGTV.”The first two seasons of “Martha Knows Best” were filmed with a skeleton crew on Ms. Stewart’s 153-acre estate, where she was locked down with a few members of her household staff. The mogul of domesticity spent much of each episode haranguing her cheery gardener, Ryan McCallister, as he dutifully planted 18,000 daffodil bulbs and wrapped her enormous boxwoods in burlap for the winter. (A crew of silent workers stitched the burlap shut with sewing needles.) In typical Martha Stewart fashion, she also demonstrated how to carve pumpkins and make wreaths, and bantered with celebrities, including Ms. Barrymore, over video.Filming began on April 9 for the third season, which will offer viewers more of Ms. Stewart’s property and take them indoors, as pandemic restrictions loosen. “We’re going to see more chickens,” Ms. Latman said. “The audience was very interested in the chickens.”As HGTV begins to look beyond the pandemic, it still has an eye toward the outside. “The idea of home has changed over the last year and a half, and there is a nesting that people have done and will continue to do,” Ms. Latman said.“Inside Out,” a show about an interior designer and landscape designer squaring off to win the larger share of a homeowner’s budget, premieres April 26 on Discovery+, the streaming service for Discovery, HGTV’s parent company. And “Clipped,” a topiary competition series premiering May 12, has cast Ms. Stewart as the lead judge deciding who has created the best sculpted shrubbery.If Ms. Stewart is a natural fit to channel our newfound enthusiasm for the garden, Ms. Barrymore is a less likely one. “Had they asked me two years ago, I think I probably would have been like, ‘You don’t want me, I’m not the real deal,’” she said of her partnership with Instead.But by the time the company did come around, Ms. Barrymore, who also has beauty and home-furnishings lines, was hosting a new talk show and had acquired an appreciation for dirt. Now, her Instagram feed is an eclectic mix of trying on lipstick for her beauty brand, selfies in the television studio, and videos of her hugging her chickens.In Instead’s version of landscaping, grass has an opinion and “lawning” is a verb like nesting, Zooming, adulting or Instagramming. Ms. Barrymore is the co-chief creative officer of the company, which is funded by the venture capital arm of Scotts, the lawn-care behemoth. She defines “lawning” as the act of “setting up a space for you and your family, and it’s a place that doesn’t want to be a museum that you stare at but a place that you interact with and live.”In a 30-second commercial for the lawn-care product, Ms. Barrymore, wearing a denim shirt and patchwork skirt, spreads out on an impeccable lawn and pets the grass, professing her love for it. “Happy lawn, meet happy lawn,” she says with a giggle.For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

  • 150 Shares99 Views

    in Television

    Helen McCrory, British Star of Stage, Film and TV, Dies at 52

    She was acclaimed for her work on the TV series “Peaky Blinders” and in three Harry Potter movies, but she first gained notice in the London theater.Helen McCrory, the accomplished and versatile British stage and screen actress who played Narcissa Malfoy in three Harry Potter films and the matriarch Polly Gray on the BBC series “Peaky Blinders,” in addition to earning critical plaudits for her stage work, has died at her home in north London. She was 52.Her death, from, cancer, was announced on social media on Friday by her husband, the actor Damian Lewis.Ms. McCrory was a familiar face to London theater audiences and to British television and film viewers well before she won wider recognition in the Harry Potter movies. She began her career in the theater in 1990, straight out of drama school, playing Gwendolen in a production of Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” in Harrogate, Yorkshire. In 1993, the director Richard Eyre, who was the head of the National Theater, cast her in the leading role in his production of Arthur Wing Pinero’s comic play “Trelawny of the ‘Wells,’” for which she earned glowing reviews.“Helen McCrory, in the title role, perfectly captures Rose’s crossover from a lovelorn ingénue to wounded woman,” Sheridan Morley wrote in The International Herald Tribune.The next year she played Nina in Chekhov’s “The Seagull” at the National Theater, alongside Judi Dench and Bill Nighy, and in 1995 she was named “most promising newcomer” in the Shakespeare Globe Awards for her portrayal of Lady Macbeth in the West End.Ms. McCrory worked steadily in the theater over the next two decades, with notable appearances as Yelena in Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya” in 2002; as Rosalind in “As You Like It” in 2005 (which earned her an Olivier Award nomination for best actress); as Rebecca West in Ibsen’s “Rosmersholm” in 2008; and as Medea in 2016.“Portrayed with unsettling accessibility and nerves of piano wire by Helen McCrory,” Ben Brantley wrote in The New York Times, “the Medea of ancient myth has become the sad but scary crazy lady next door, the kind who inspires you to lock up your children.”But as early as 1994, Ms. McCrory was also venturing into film and television work. In 2003 she appeared as Barbara Villiers, the mistress of Charles II, in Joe Wright’s four-part series “Charles II: The Power and the Passion,” and in 2006 she made a cameo appearance as Cherie Blair, the wife of Prime Minister Tony Blair, in Stephen Frears’s “The Queen” — a role she reprised in the 2010 film “The Special Relationship,” written, as was “The Queen,” by Peter Morgan.Ms. McCrory became known to worldwide audiences through her 2009 role as Narcissa Malfoy, the mother of Harry’s nemesis, Draco Malfoy, in “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” She played the role again in Parts 1 and 2 of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” the final films in the series. (She had in fact been slated for a larger role, as Bellatrix Lestrange, in the earlier “Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix,” but had been forced to withdraw after discovering she was pregnant; Helena Bonham Carter took over.)She was good at playing villains — the evil alien Rosanna Calvierri in an episode of “Doctor Who,” the spiritualist Evelyn Poole in the series “Penny Dreadful,” and, perhaps most notably, Polly Gray, the aunt of the gang boss Tommy Shelby, on the period crime drama “Peaky Blinders,” a role she played for its entire five-season run, from 2013 to 2019.Ms. McCrory with Jason Isaacs, left, and Tom Felton in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2” (2011).Jaap Buitendijk/Warner Brothers PicturesHelen Elizabeth McCrory was born on Aug. 17, 1968, in the Paddington neighborhood of London, the eldest of three children. Her father, Iain McCrory, was a diplomat; her mother, Ann (Morgans) McCrory, worked for the National Health Service.During her childhood, her father’s work for the Foreign Service took the family to Tanzania, Norway, Madagascar and Paris.“Dad tells me my first appearance onstage was dancing during an official visit by the French president,” Ms. McCrory said in a 2014 interview with The Times of London. “I’m pretty sure the idea of being an actress came to me around that time. Every evening at the house was like a little concert.”In her teens she was sent back to England, to the Queenswood School for Girls in Hertfordshire. She began to act while there and, after graduating, spent a year traveling around Italy before being accepted at the Drama Center London.Being an actress “was the only thing I wanted to be,” she told The Times of London in 2017, adding that she had been “incredibly lucky” to be quickly given major roles.Ms. McCrory met Mr. Lewis in 2003, when they were both appearing in Joanna Laurens’s “Five Gold Rings” at the Almeida Theater in London. “Damian’s naughty, and I’ve always loved my naughty boys,” she said last year on the BBC 4 radio program “Desert Island Discs.” They had two children, Manon in 2006 and Gulliver in 2007, and married in 2007. Although Mr. Lewis also found fame, on the television series “Homeland” and “Billions,” they maintained a low-key life in London.Ms. McCrory with her husband, the actor Damian Lewis, in London in 2017 after she was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire.Pool photo by Wpa“I’m much happier as I’ve got older,” Ms. McCrory told The Times of London in 2016. “Age has given me nothing but confidence, security and joy.” She added, “To me, ‘Helen McCrory, 47’ means nothing. ‘Helen McCrory, bad housewife and argumentative after a bottle of gin’ would be much more relevant.”In recent years she appeared on TV in leading roles in David Hare’s political drama “Roadkill” and James Graham’s “Quiz” and as the voice of a daemon in “His Dark Materials.”Last year, Ms. McCrory and Mr. Lewis spearheaded a fund-raising effort to provide meals for members of the National Health staff amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their work led to donations of close to £1 million ($1.4 million) to the Feed NHS Scheme. Just a month ago, on March 12, she appeared with Mr. Lewis on ITV’s “Good Morning Britain” to discuss the project.Her illness was not widely known, and her death came as a surprise to most. Complete information on survivors, in addition to her husband and children, was not immediately available. More

  • 125 Shares149 Views

    in Theater

    Head of New York Theater Workshop to Depart in 2022

    James C. Nicola, who balanced provocative programming with shows aimed at Broadway, will have served 34 years as artistic director.As the New York theater world points toward reopening, one major force within its nonprofit sector — and a central figure in its often lucrative collaborations with Broadway — is preparing to walk away.James C. Nicola, the artistic director of New York Theater Workshop, announced on Friday that he will step down in June 2022. At that point, he will have spent 34 years — nearly half his life — at the off-Broadway theater, which spawned the once-in-a-lifetime hit musical “Rent” and grew under his leadership into a steady home for provocative fare by the likes of Caryl Churchill, the Five Lesbian Brothers and the director Ivo van Hove.“I’ve been around long enough to see some of my colleagues carried out of their jobs in a pine box,” Nicola, 71, said on Thursday. “I didn’t want to go that route.”His announcement comes at a time when theaters in New York are grappling with numerous internal and external pressures. Besides the protracted closures related to Covid 19, which has wreaked havoc on theaters’ finances, several groups of theater artists who are Black, Indigenous or people of color have pointed out the overwhelmingly white and male demographics of their artistic leadership, most notably in the “We See You, White American Theater” manifesto that came out in July 2020.One of its demands was that theater leaders should view it as “an act of service to resign” if they have served in the role for more than 20 years — a benchmark that Nicola reached when George W. Bush was president. Nicola is the first prominent New York artistic director to announce his departure since then, and the process of replacing him will undoubtedly be closely watched.Asked about his replacement, Nicola said he would “love to see someone who has the trust and faith of all the constituencies of the community.”Unlike many artistic directors, Nicola was not primarily a stage director himself. He came to New York Theater Workshop in 1988 after stints in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s casting office and at Arena Stage in Washington.In recent years, the workshop has seen several works transfer to Broadway from its airy East Fourth Street theater, including the Tony Award-winning musicals “Once” and “Hadestown”; the acclaimed personal-meets-political memoir “What the Constitution Means to Me”; and “Slave Play,” which is currently nominated for 12 Tonys. (Another transfer, “Sing Street,” was two weeks away from its first preview on Broadway when the Covid-19 lockdown happened.)Nicola — who recently celebrated the 25th anniversary of “Rent,” the theater’s first Broadway transfer, with a starry online fund-raiser — says he is of two minds about the pipeline between commercial and nonprofit theater.“There are many wonderful people in the commercial Broadway world, but I think we’ve become too dependent on their enhancement money,” said Nicola, referring to the funds that commercial Broadway producers will invest in smaller productions with an eye toward larger subsequent productions.“If it’s a large project and it doesn’t have commercial enhancement, it’s probably not going to happen,” he said. “And I think that’s something we as an industry need to be really concerned about.”New York Theater Workshop still plans to present two works that were canceled last year, the Martyna Majok play “Sanctuary City” and a new adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” by Clare Barron.Until that is feasible, the theater has established an ambitious Artistic Instigators program, connecting traditional theater artists, filmmakers and digital artists on projects that subscribers can watch in their evolving states. As Nicola envisions a post-coronavirus theater landscape, he hopes theaters will learn from these innovations.“This year, we had 18,000 people view the ‘Rent 25’ gala from all over the globe,” he said. “Eighteen thousand. That kind of access — it’s hard to imagine not having the capacity to do that going forward. So maybe instead of doing eight shows a week, we do seven live shows and then stream a capture.”Members of the original “Rent” cast during the recent anniversary fundraiser.via New York Theater WorkshopBut those decisions will ultimately fall to his successor. Whoever it is, Nicola will be watching from the sidelines.“I want to absolutely stay out of it,” he said. “I think it’s completely inappropriate to be hovering or hanging out, both during the process and when that person comes in. They shouldn’t have to contend with the old guy.”He said he was at peace with what comes next.“As a child, my dad told me he thought he was going to die at 37,” Nicola said. “He didn’t, but I started thinking the same thing: Was I going to make it past 37? And oddly, I was 37 when I started at New York Theater Workshop. In a certain way, it was like the beginning of my life, not the end.” More

  • 150 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    Netflix to Debut Italy’s First TV Show With a Majority Black Cast

    The creators of “Zero,” including the co-writer Antonio Dikele Distefano, say they hope viewers enjoy it so much that the characters’ racial identity becomes irrelevant.ROME — While much of the world spent 2020 in lockdowns of varying severity, the 28-year-old Italian author Antonio Dikele Distefano had the busiest year of his life.Along with working on his sixth novel and interviewing Italians of different ethno-cultural backgrounds for a television program, he spent months on the set of “Zero,” a show inspired by one of his novels that premieres on Netflix on April 21.This is Dikele Distefano’s first time co-writing a television show. Until now, he has been best known for his books, gritty coming-of-age fiction, with classic themes of heartbreak, friendship and uncertainty about the future, which have become a publishing sensation in Italy. But the work of Dikele Distefano, whose parents migrated from Angola, also integrates his experiences of being a Black Italian.And “Zero,” which refers to the nickname of the lead character, is the first Italian television series to feature a predominantly Black cast.Center from left, Giuseppe Dave Seke, Daniela Scattolin and Dylan Magon shooting an episode of “Zero.”Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixVirginia Diop and Dave Seke, who plays Omar, the lead character in the show.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixDikele Distefano says he hopes that fact will only briefly be a talking point. He likes to cite “Coming to America,” the 1988 Eddie Murphy comedy that made more than $288 million at the box office worldwide, as an inspiration. “The film is so entertaining that you don’t even think about” the fact that the cast is all Black, he said of that movie in a Zoom interview this week. “For me, that is a victory.”In his novels, Dikele Distefano takes a similar tack, throwing light on the lives of young people, the children of immigrants, who are not considered citizens even when they are born in Italy, speak the language and share the same cultural references. They can apply for Italian citizenship only when they turn 18.The desire to change society motivates much of his work, he said, including “the idea of, in the future, having a country where my nieces and nephews can say, ‘I feel Italian.’” So far, growing calls to change the law and grant citizenship to anyone born in Italy have not gotten far in Parliament.Dikele Distefano’s raw and emotionally open approach to his writing has struck a chord with readers of his novels. While his books are shaped by his background, they home in on universal emotional truths.“People often say that we need beautiful stories,” he said. “I’ve always been drawn to real stories. Truth appeals to me.”He added, “I wouldn’t be able to tell a story far from me, something that I haven’t lived or that doesn’t belong to me.”Dikele Distefano in the Barona district on the outskirts of Milan, where “Zero” was largely filmed. His raw and emotionally open approach to writing has struck a chord with readers of his novels.Alessandro Grassani for The New York TimesIt was Dikele Distefano’s “authentic voice” and “clear language” that caught the attention of Netflix, said Ilaria Castiglioni, the streaming service’s manager for Italian original series. She said that he was the first to bring to Netflix Italy the experiences of second-generation immigrants in Italy and that “we were drawn to how he narrated his experience so naturally.”“Zero” is the sixth made-in-Italy series for Netflix, after the crime drama “Suburra: Blood on Rome,” now in its third season; the teenage drama “Baby,” also in its third season; the historical fantasy “Luna Nera”; the supernatural drama “Curon,” and “Summertime,” whose protagonist is a woman of Italian and Nigerian descent.Castiglioni said Netflix had seen a need to better represent Italy’s changing society. “A very important theme for us is representation, to create empathy, so that as many people as possible find themselves reflected in what they see onscreen,” she said.But “Zero” is not overtly about the struggles and discriminations faced by Black Italians, she added.“We tried to tell a story that was universal,” while recognizing the greater difficulties that Black Italians have to deal with, she said. “Our objective is to create entertainment,” she added, “and if that entertainment creates a debate, it’s a plus, but we leave that aspect to our public.”“Zero” explores the metaphorical invisibility felt by many young people facing an uncertain future. In the figure of the main character, Omar (Giuseppe Dave Seke) an often-ignored pizza delivery guy, the metaphor is made literal: He can actually will himself to become invisible. Attempting to save his neighborhood from greedy property investors, the mild-mannered Omar becomes a community superhero, joining a group of other young people who have their own useful skill sets.Characters in the show, such as Sara (played by Scattolin) and Momo (Magon), have their own useful skill sets.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixOmar (Dave Seke) can will himself to become invisible and becomes a community superhero.Francesco Berardinelli/NetflixAngelica Pesarini, a professor at NYU Florence who focuses on issues of race, gender, identity and citizenship in Italy, said, “The fact that the main character is a dark-skinned Black man — already I think it’s revolutionary in the Italian landscape.”Though racism is rife in their country, Italians are loath to admit it to themselves, Pesarini said.“Netflix is doing a series with an almost entirely Black cast and then on the national channels you have horrific instances of racism that wouldn’t be imaginable in the United States,” she noted.Among recent examples, an Italian actress used a racist slur during an interview on the national broadcaster in March. A few days later, a satirical program on the private broadcaster Mediaset aired an old parody of a lawmaker that also used the slur. In another skit, which aired this month, the same program was again accused of racism after the hosts made fun of Chinese people. On Wednesday, one of the hosts posted a video to apologize for that episode.Pesarini, the NYU Florence professor, said, “I was thinking of all the Black Italian kids watching these programs,” and “hearing the N-word referred to them.”“It was so violent for me as an adult, I can’t imagine the damage this does for someone growing up in this country as a nonwhite Italian,” added Pesarini, who is of Italian and East African heritage.Pesarini and other activists have started a campaign, #cambieRAI (a play on the national broadcaster’s name that translates as “you will change”). She said that they had sent a letter to RAI “explaining why we were shocked and fed up and frustrated” with how Black people were represented on television in Italy. So far, there has been no response, she added.The coronavirus set the production of “Zero” back an entire year. When Italy went into national lockdown in March 2020, the cast and Dikele Distefano decided to remain ensconced in a hotel in Rome, giving them an unexpected opportunity to bond, a chemistry that is manifest in the actors’ onscreen interactions.Dikele Distefano said he was motivated in part by “the idea of, in the future, having a country where my nieces and nephews can say, ‘I feel Italian.’”Alessandro Grassani for The New York Times“We became best friends, we still speak every day,” Dikele Distefano said. That said, the tension of working within the restraints imposed by the pandemic is something he hopes never to repeat. “I would like to work in a more relaxed way,” he said, laughing.“Zero” has a carefully selected soundtrack. Dikele Distefano’s first forays into writing came via his passion for music, he said, and in his teens, he rapped under the name “Nashy.” In 2016, he founded Esse Magazine, a digital publication about Italian music and urban culture. “Rap was a school for me, the possibility to express what I was feeling in four-four time,” he said. When he discovered books, he gave up rap, he added, but without the music, “I wouldn’t be writing.”Dikele Distefano worked on the script for “Zero” alongside the writers Carolina Cavalli, Lisandro Monaco, Massimo Vavassori and Stefano Voltaggio. The eight initial episodes end in a cliffhanger that seems to beg for a second season.But Castiglioni said that Netflix had made no decision about any continuation. “For now, we’re concentrated on this series,” she said. “Let’s see how it goes and then look to the future.” More

  • 88 Shares159 Views

    in Theater

    Karen Olivo Won’t Return to ‘Moulin Rouge!’

    Citing recent reports of abusive behavior, including by the powerful producer Scott Rudin, the actress said advocacy mattered more than a lucrative role.Karen Olivo, a Tony-nominated star of “Moulin Rouge! The Musical,” said Wednesday that she would not rejoin the show’s cast when Broadway performances resume.She made the announcement in a five-minute Instagram video. “I could easily go back to the show and make a lot of money,” she said, “but I still wouldn’t be able to really control what I was putting out into the world, and what I’m seeing in this space, right now, with our industry, is that everybody is scared, and nobody is really doing a lot of the stuff that needs to be done.”She referred specifically to the powerful producer Scott Rudin, who has long been described as abusive toward staffers, most recently in a detailed April 7 article in The Hollywood Reporter. Rudin is not a producer of “Moulin Rouge!,” and Olivo has not worked with him, but she has been vocal with her concerns about overall industry practices.“The silence about Scott Rudin: unacceptable,” she said in the video. “That should be a no-brainer.”She challenged colleagues to speak up. “Those of you who say you’re scared — what are you afraid of?” she said. “Shouldn’t you be more afraid of not saying something and more people getting hurt?”In a phone call later Wednesday, Olivo said that the lack of a broader response to The Hollywood Reporter story “cracked me open” and contributed to her feeling that “Broadway is not the place I want to be.”A Rudin spokesman said he would have no comment.Olivo, 44, began her Broadway career as an understudy in “Rent.” She broke out in the original cast of the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical “In the Heights,” and in 2009 won a Tony Award playing Anita in a revival of “West Side Story.”She has stepped away from the industry before. In 2013 she relocated to Madison, Wis., where she and her husband have a home and are co-parenting two children. She has been living there since Broadway shut down last spring.Olivo has been teaching classes virtually at her alma mater, the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, and said she remained committed to helping develop aspiring artists. During the pandemic, she and another actor, Eden Espinosa, also formed an advocacy organization, Afect, that seeks to bring greater financial transparency to the theater industry.In an interview conducted in December, Olivo expressed concerns about whether Broadway would evolve after the shutdown, and whether she would return to it. “I hope that everyone is working to change the industry and not just trying to get back so we can fill our coffers again,” she said.Since the Broadway shutdown, Olivo has moved back home to Wisconsin and is teaching classes virtually.Lauren Justice for The New York Times“Social justice is actually more important than being the sparkling diamond,” she said in Wednesday’s video, alluding to her “Moulin Rouge!” character, Satine, who is referred to that way in the musical. “Building a better industry for my students is more important than me putting money in my pockets.”In the telephone interview, Olivo added: “I’m going to make art with the people that I think match my integrity, who want to do it right, and if those people don’t come, then I will make it myself.”The “Moulin Rouge!” producers said in a statement that the show “is forever indebted to Karen Olivo’s artistry, passion, and craft in creating the role of Satine onstage. We applaud and support Karen’s advocacy work to create a safe, diverse, and equitable theater industry for all.”Earlier this week, three entertainment industry unions issued a statement calling for “harassment-free workplaces,” prompted by the Hollywood Reporter story, but not referring to it.“No worker should be subjected to bullying or harassment, whether or not they are a union member,” said the statement from the presidents of SAG-AFTRA, the Actors’ Equity Association, and the American Federation of Musicians Local 802. More

  • 113 Shares169 Views

    in Television

    Jimmy Kimmel Heckles ‘Future Former Florida Congressman’ Matt Gaetz

    Kimmel poked fun at Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg for making their Venmo transactions public: “One of those ‘salads’ cost more than $1,000 — I guess they added avocado.”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. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Public FinanceJimmy Kimmel poked fun at “future former Florida congressman” Matt Gaetz on Thursday night over the more than 150 public Venmo transactions that Gaetz and his friend Joel Greenberg made to dozens of young women.“Three payments for $500, $500, $250, labeled ‘ice cream’; five other payments labeled ‘salad,’” Kimmel noted. “One of those ‘salads’ cost more than $1,000 — I guess they added avocado.”“Two of the transactions were for ‘stuff’ and ‘other stuff.’ And let me just say this: It’s bad enough that Matt Gaetz is implicated in doing ‘stuff.’ But ‘other stuff’? That’s outrageous.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And, of course, we know about all of this because stupid Joel Greenberg made his Venmo transactions public, as did Matt Gaetz. They didn’t check the privacy box. What’s the opposite of a criminal mastermind?” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Chances are pretty high that if you’ve broken the law, there’s evidence of it on your phone, especially since Gaetz was reportedly using Cash App and Venmo to make payments to his indicted buddy. Used to be when politicians broke the law, they stuffed an envelope full of $100 bills and met their contact in a parking garage. Now they just Venmo a buddy with an emoji of an envelope stuffed with cash.” — SETH MEYERS“I’d say along with getting your phone seized, being chased down a flight of stairs by a crowd of reporters and getting hustled into the back seat of a waiting car isn’t a sign that things are going great. That’s classic corrupt politician stuff. No one ever in that situation is in it for a good reason: ‘Sir, sir, can you tell us how you cured cancer?’ ‘I didn’t cure cancer; stop spreading lies about me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to be rushed into this unmarked van.’” — SETH MEYERSThe Punchiest Punchlines (Northern Exposure Edition)“In Canada yesterday, a member of Parliament, which is Canada’s equivalent to our House of Representatives, accidentally exposed himself on an official government Zoom meeting. His camera was on, he didn’t know it, and everyone saw his Canadian bacon.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“This is the Canadian version of storming the Capitol.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“People alerted him right after they took a million screen shots.” — JIMMY FALLON“Before putting on pants, he was like, ‘It’s cold here today in Canada, isn’t it cold? Everyone’s talking about how cold it is.’” — JIMMY FALLON“He was completely nude. He was changing after a jog, and thought his camera was off. From now on you can call me that guy’s camera because I am turned on.” — JAMES CORDEN“The member of Parliament apologized and explained it was an innocent mistake — but also, if you want to see more, check out his OnlyFans page.” — JAMES CORDEN“Of course, he apologized — he’s Canadian. He would have apologized whether it happened or not.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“But can you imagine if this happened here? If Jerry Nadler started swinging his thing around on camera?” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth Watching“The Daily Show” detailed what it’s like for Black families to have “the talk.”Also, Check This OutIn “Mare of Easttown,” Kate Winslet plays a Pennsylvania detective dealing with missing girls and mounting personal problems.Michele K. Short/HBOKate Winslet plays a small-town cop investigating the murders of several young women in HBO’s new mini-series, “Mare of Eassttown.” More

  • 113 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    With ‘Dramazon Prime,’ Streamed Theater Goes Head-to-Head With TV

    A German playhouse realizes it’s no longer competing merely against other local venues for audience attention.MUNICH — When playhouses throughout the world first closed their doors in the early days of the pandemic, many scrambled to upload recorded performances to their websites as a way of staying connected to their audiences. The result was an overwhelming — but short-lived — explosion of archived theater that varied in artistic and technical quality. Virtually all of it was free.Since then, a growing number of theaters have flirted with pay-per-view formats, devoting lavish resources to professionally filmed productions for online premieres. Along with ensuring that the show goes on, these pay-per-streams are designed to test the hypothesis that people are willing to open their wallets for quality shows they won’t find anywhere else.It took decades before anyone figured out how to successfully charge for media content on the internet. It’s easy to forget just how difficult it was to convince people that digital subscriptions were worth paying for. That pay-per-view theater has taken off so quickly seems one measure of how the pandemic has changed the way people consume culture.Here in Germany, theaters like the Volksbühne, in Berlin, and the Bavarian State Opera, in Munich, are finding that audiences starved for culture are willing to fork out significant sums to virtually experience the drama that they love and miss.Perhaps nowhere else have these streaming efforts been so focused and abundant as at Schauspiel Köln, the main theater in Cologne, in western Germany.In little more than a year, its pandemic-era streaming platform, Dramazon Prime, has become an increasingly sophisticated and flexible online showcase. Indeed, its programming has evolved to something resembling an actual theater schedule, with nightly streams of new and recent productions.Birgit Walter, left, and Kristin Steffen in Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II,” directed by Pinar Karabulut.Ana LukendaAnd despite the bad play on words, the platform’s name indicates that, even early in the pandemic, the Cologne theater had a key insight: When they offer programming online, playhouses are no longer merely competing against other local venues for audience attention. They need to contend with streaming giants like Netflix that lure us with the promise of endless “content.”Dramazon Prime’s recent schedule shows how Schauspiel Köln is attracting virtual audiences with finely wrought streams of everything from traditional to experimental productions that tinker with formats reminiscent of film and TV.Recently, the theater unveiled its most elaborate digital production to date, a six-part mini-series based on Christopher Marlowe’s “Edward II.” Cheekily updating the 1592 tragedy for the streaming age, “Edward II: The Love Is Me” is a sendup of Netflix costume dramas, with sitcom and soap operatic touches. Each episode runs between 20 and 40 highly stylized minutes, with glamorous sets (it seems to have been largely shot in a shuttered luxury hotel) and costumes that liberally mix Elizabethan dress and modern styles.This “Edward II” was directed by the young German director Pinar Karabulut. As in her recent “Mourning Becomes Electra” for the Volksbühne, she shows a flair for pop cultural pastiche — but it threatens to overwhelm the production. She wears her movie mania on her sleeve, and one often tires of all the fangirl references to the likes of Scorsese, Tarantino and Luca Guadagnino. There’s sex and camp and violence galore.The most consistently enjoyable parts of the series are the lavish opening credit sequences, which establish a slick, tongue-in-cheek tone that the episodes struggle to sustain. The more sexually explicit installments are prefaced with disclaimers that the actors have all been tested for the coronavirus, and advise viewers never to engage in unprotected sex, in an apparent sendup of American “trigger warnings.”Nicola Gründel in Elfriede Jelinek’s “Black Water,”  directed by Stefan Bachmann.Tommy HetzelA more distilled version of theatrical madness packaged as film is “Black Water,” a short feature based on the latest play by Elfriede Jelinek, the Austrian Nobel laureate. “Black Water” had its world premiere in Vienna shortly before the pandemic hit, in a production that ran to three and a half hours; the Dramazon Prime version, by the theater’s artistic director, Stefan Bachmann, is a mere half-hour. It features six of the company’s actors reciting bitter and often darkly comic monologues in a cocaine-fueled bacchanal, trapped in a freight elevator and, later, huddled together on the floor of a bathroom. There’s lots of belching, Red Bull-guzzling and expulsion of bodily fluids. And I would be hard pressed to tell you what any of it means.Even when dealing with more conventional stage works, Dramazon Prime seems committed to making online drama that is more than a secondhand theatrical experience.“Birds of a Kind” by Wajdi Mouawad, directed by Stefan Bachmann.Tommy HetzelBold camerawork and editing distinguish Bachmann’s production of Wajdi Mouawad’s “Birds of a Kind,” which premiered before a live audience in September. For its stream (which is subtitled in English), the theater enlisted the cameraman Andreas Deinert, who devised a rigorous and restrained visual style that cuts between wide- and split-screen compositions to show the characters from multiple perspectives. In the end, the cinematography and editing are far more impressive than the play itself, a sprawling and overwrought family saga set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with dialogue in German, English, Hebrew and Arabic.A more harmonious blend of stagecraft and camerawork comes in an emotionally shattering version of “The Grapes of Wrath.” Rafael Sanchez’s production sets the action of John Steinbeck’s vast American tragedy in various backstage sites, with simple props to suggest the locations crossed by the Joad family on their journey from Oklahoma to California during the Dust Bowl years. Sanchez is the Schauspiel Köln’s in-house director, and his production (also subtitled in English) succeeds at being at once epic and intimate.Martin Reinke, left, and Seán McDonagh in “The Grapes of Wrath.” Krafft AngererAs with all the Dramazon Prime streams, you pay what you want to watch “The Grapes of Wrath”: For most productions, you can select a price between 1 and 100 euros. According to Jana Lösch, a theater spokeswoman, people tend to choose amounts that reflect what they would ordinarily spend for a night at the theater. Even so, online ticket sales don’t nearly cover the theater’s operating costs, let alone generate profit, Lösch said.I’ve heard similar things from other theaters: Nobody’s expecting to get rich from selling online tickets. Then again, state-subsidized theaters in Germany, such as the Schauspiel Köln, do not rely on box-office receipts the same way Broadway or West End venues do. Generous government support for the arts here in the best of times means theaters and other culture venues can still forge ahead in the worst. But state largess is not enough to ensure the show goes on. For that, you need determination, creativity and a willingness to experiment with new formats and aesthetic possibilities. More