Eliana Willis

More stories

  • 150 Shares199 Views

    in Theater

    New York Theaters Are Dark, but These Windows Light Up With Art

    The Irish Repertory Theater is streaming poetry readings, and Playwrights Horizons and St. Ann’s Warehouse are showcasing art dealing with race and injustice.Like many cultural organizations, the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan has streamed pandemic programming on its website.But a few days ago, the theater added a new sort of broadcast to its repertoire, setting up two 60-inch screens in windows that face the sidewalk, installing speakers high up on the building facade and airing a collection of films that show people reading poems in Ireland, London and New York.On a recent morning, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Rep’s producing director, stood by the theater on West 22nd Street, gazing at the screens as they displayed Joseph Aldous, an actor in Britain, reading “An Advancement of Learning,” a narrative poem by Seamus Heaney describing a brief standoff with a rat along a river bank.“These are not dark windows,” O’Reilly said. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”In the past year, theaters and other performing arts institutions in New York have turned to creative means to bring works to the public, sometimes also injecting a bit of life into otherwise shuttered facades. Those arrangements continue, even as the State of New York has announced that arts venues can reopen in April at one-third capacity and some outdoor performances, like Shakespeare in the Park, are scheduled to resume.The panes of glass, though, have provided a safe space. Late last year, for instance, the artists Christopher Williams, Holly Bass and Raja Feather Kelly performed at different times in the lobby or in a smaller vestibule-like part of the building in Chelsea occupied by New York Live Arts. All were visible through glass to those outside.Three more performances by Kelly of “Hysteria,” in which he assumes the role of a pink-hued extraterrestrial and explores what Live Arts’ website calls “pop culture and its displacement of queer Black subjectivity,” are scheduled for April 8-10.The Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day’s photographs of sculptures are on display at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother street-level performance took place behind glass last December in Downtown Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Ballet staged nine 20-minute shows of select dances from its “Nutcracker.”The ballet turned its studio into what its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, called a “jewel box” theater; chose dances that kept masked ballerinas socially distanced; and used barricades on the sidewalk to limit audiences.“It was a way to bring some people back to something they love that they enjoyed that they might be forgetting about,” Parkerson said in an interview. “It did feel like a real performance.”She said that live performances were planned for April and would include ballet members in “Pas de Deux,” set to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles,” with live music by the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.Pop-up concerts have been arranged by the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side, in a storefront — the address is not given but is described on the center’s website as “not hard to find” — north of Columbus Circle.Those performances, running through late April, are announced at the storefront the same day, to limit crowd sizes and encourage social distancing. Participants have included the violinist Gil Shaham, the mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, the Gabrielle Stravelli Trio and JACK Quartet.St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is displaying Julian Alexander and Khadijat Oseni’s “Supremacy Project,” public art that addresses the nature of injustice in American society.The word “supremacy” is superimposed on a photograph of police officers in riot gear, and there are images by Michael T. Boyd of Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain and Emmett Till.And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, the Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day is placing photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases, encouraging viewers to reckon with definitions of beauty and race. Those displays are part of rotating public art series organized by the artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein and the set and costume designer David Zinn.The aim, Finkelstein said in January when the series was announced, was to display work that “makes constructive use of dormant facades to create a transient street museum” and to “remind the city of its buoyancy and originality.”O’Reilly, at the Irish Rep, said the theater heard last year from Amy Holmes, the executive director of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, who thought the theater might provide a good venue to air some of the short films the organization had commissioned to make poetry part of an immersive experience.The series being shown at the theater, called “Poetic Reflections: Words Upon the Window Pane,” comprises 21 short pieces by the Irish filmmaker Matthew Thompson.“These are not dark windows,” said Ciaran O’Reilly of the Irish Repertory Theater. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThey show contemporary poets reading their own works as well as poets and actors reading works by others, including William Butler Yeats and J.M. Synge, and were produced in collaboration with Poetry Ireland in Dublin, Druid Theater in Galway, the 92nd Street Y in New York and Poet in the City in London.“I think there is something special about encountering the arts in an unexpected way in the city, especially an art form like poetry,” Holmes said.The readers in the films include people who were born in Ireland, immigrants to Ireland, people who live in Britain and a few from the United States, like Denice Frohman, who was born and raised in New York City.Frohman was on the theater’s screens on Tuesday night, reading lines like “the beaches are gated & no one knows the names of the dead” from her poem “Puertopia,” when Erin Madorsky and Dorian Baker stopped to listen.Baker said he saw the films playing in the window as symbolizing a “revitalization of poetic energy.”Madorsky had regularly attended theatrical performances before the pandemic but now missed that connection, she said, and was gratified to happen upon a dramatic reading while walking home.She added that the sound of the verses being read stood in contrast to what she called the city’s “standard” backdrop of blaring horns, sirens and rumbling garbage trucks.“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s something so soothing about her voice, it just pulled me in.” More

  • 88 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Seth Meyers Recaps Biden’s First Press Conference

    The “Late Night” host says the president is at his best “when he’s got the vibe of an old-timer football coach giving his young squad an inspirational halftime speech.”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.Biden Meets the PressPresident Biden held his first official news conference on Thursday, taking questions about immigration, the filibuster and his new Covid-19 vaccination goal, which builds on the early success of the initial rollout.“So he set a goal, met it, then said set a second, more ambitious goal which has credibility, because he met his first goal — that’s a novel strategy. It’s certainly different from the Trump strategy of overpromising and underdelivering,” Seth Meyers said.“That kind of announcement is Biden at his best, when he’s got the vibe of an old-timer football coach giving his young squad an inspirational halftime speech: [Imitating Biden] ‘We can do it, folks. We can score 42 points in the second half. And look, I know most of you have broken bones because I forgot to teach you how to tackle, but that’s how we learn.’” — SETH MEYERS“President Biden gave his first official press conference today. He would have given one sooner, but he spent a full month deciding if he should call on reporters with a point, a finger gun or a wink, and he landed on all three.” — JAMES CORDEN“During his press conference, President Biden said he supports changing the rules of the filibuster to require senators to stand and speak, like it was when he was in the Senate, quote, ‘120 years ago.’ Now, obviously he misspoke — 120 years ago, he was still in college.” — SETH MEYERS“Wow. Comically speaking, it should be a less believable number of years.” — JAMES CORDEN“There were a lot of questions today about immigration after Biden announced that Vice President Harris will be overseeing the challenges at the U.S.-Mexico border. It’s similar to how Trump put Pence in charge of handling the pandemic. When the going get tough, presidents are like, ‘You got this, right?’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Punchiest Punchlines (Look, Folks Edition)“Well, guys, after 64 days in office today, President Biden held his very first press conference. Normally, when a 78-year-old answers an hour of questions, they’re getting a physical.” — JIMMY FALLON“President Biden held his first official news conference today and Democrats everywhere held the edge of their seats.” — SETH MEYERS“During his first press conference today, President Biden said, quote, ‘I got elected to solve problems.’ Um, OK, so what do you know about boats and canals then?” — SETH MEYERS“It was quite the event. If you did a shot every time Biden said, ‘Look, folks,’ you got drunker than a ship captain in the Suez Canal.” — JIMMY FALLON“Yep, Biden talked about the biggest issues facing his presidency — the pandemic, the economy and Dr. Oz hosting ‘Jeopardy.’” — JIMMY FALLONThe Bits Worth WatchingOn “Desus & Mero,” the “Saturday Night Live” star Kenan Thompson talked about his new sitcom.Also, Check This Out“Notating Transcribing Transcribing” (2021) by the Berlin-based American artist Christine Sun Kim, who is deaf.Photo by Stefan KorteFrom visual art to the film “Sound of Metal,” modern deaf creatives are using American Sign Language to perform across a variety of media. More

  • 100 Shares149 Views

    in Television

    Jessica Walter, ‘Arrested Development’ Matriarch, Dies at 80

    In a six-decade career, the Emmy Award-winning actress gained early fame with “Play Misty for Me” and found a new audience as Lucille Bluth, the matriarch of the dysfunctional family in “Arrested Development,” a cult hit.Jessica Walter, whose six-decade acting career included roles ranging from an obsessed radio fan in Clint Eastwood’s directorial debut, “Play Misty for Me,” to the cutting, martini-swilling matriarch of the dysfunctional Bluth family on “Arrested Development,” died at her home in New York City on Wednesday. She was 80.Ms. Walter’s death was confirmed by her publicist, Kelli Jones, who did not specify a cause.Over a long and wide-ranging career, Ms. Walter found consistent work as a versatile performer with more than 150 credits that included tart-tongued turns in television comedy series and serious roles in dramatic Hollywood movies and New York stage productions. She was often cast as — and relished playing — off-center women capable of silencing men with a withering glance, a piercing remark or the sharp point of a knife.“Lucky me, because those are the fun roles,” she told The A.V. Club in 2012. “They’re juicy, much better than playing the vanilla ingénues, you know.”Jessica Walter and Clint Eastwood in the 1971 film “Play Misty for Me.”Universal PicturesShe began her career with minor parts in 1960s television shows like “Flipper” and “The Fugitive” before gaining notice for her role as an American wife who leaves her husband, an English racecar driver, in the 1966 John Frankenheimer movie “Grand Prix.” The film earned Ms. Walter a Golden Globe nomination in the category “new star of the year” in 1967.Five years later, she was nominated for another Golden Globe for playing Evelyn, a devoted fan with a homicidal streak who becomes obsessed with a disc jockey portrayed by Mr. Eastwood in his 1971 movie “Play Misty for Me.”In 1975, she won an Emmy for her role as the title character, a detective, in the NBC mystery “Amy Prentiss.” She was also nominated for Emmy Awards for “The Streets of San Francisco” in 1977, “Trapper John, M.D.” in 1980 and “Arrested Development” in 2005.Jessica Walter of “Amy Prentice” received a kiss from Peter Falk of “Columbo” after both won Emmys in 1975.Associated PressShe appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including “Advise and Consent,” Neil Simon’s “Rumors,” “A Severed Head,” “Night Life” and “Photo Finish.” In 2011, as her star rose, she played the fur-wrapped dowager Evangeline Harcourt in a Roundabout Theater Company revival of “Anything Goes,” which won several Tony Awards.In recent years, she became a cult figure, beloved for her poisonous put-downs and side-eyed glances as the fabulously wealthy and diabolical mother Lucille Bluth on “Arrested Development.” The zany, self-referential sitcom about a narcissistic family was critically adored when it debuted in 2003, and it introduced Ms. Walter to a new generation. She said she could hardly get on a subway car or a bus without being stopped by a fan.“You know, you look a lot like that woman that plays Lucille Bluth,” they would tell her.“I say, ‘You know, I’ve heard that,’” she told The New York Times in 2018. “You know, Lucille is in my DNA now.”The show was also the source of some anguish for Ms. Walter. In 2018, she revealed that she had been verbally harassed on the set by Jeffrey Tambor, who played her husband and who had been fired that year from the Amazon show “Transparent” amid allegations of sexual harassment and verbal abuse. He denied the allegations of sexual misconduct but admitted that his temper had been an issue, and he conceded that he had blown up at Ms. Walter.“I have to let go of being angry at him,” Ms. Walter said through tears in the 2018 interview with The Times, as Mr. Tambor sat a few feet away. In “almost 60 years of working,” she said, “I’ve never had anybody yell at me like that on a set and it’s hard to deal with, but I’m over it now.”During the interview, another star of the show, Jason Bateman, painted Mr. Tambor’s behavior as typical. His comments drew a blistering reaction online, and Mr. Bateman later apologized, saying he was “incredibly embarrassed and deeply sorry to have done that to Jessica.”Jessica Walter was born in New York City on Jan. 31, 1941. Her father, David Walter, was a musician and a member of the NBC Symphony Orchestra and the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Her mother, Esther Groisser, was a teacher. Ms. Walter attended the High School of Performing Arts.She was married twice, first to Ross Bowman, a Broadway stage manager, and in 1983 to the Tony-winning actor Ron Leibman, who died in 2019.Ms. Walter’s survivors include her daughter, Brooke Bowman, and a grandson.Ms. Walter and Mr. Leibman performed together in a 1986 production of “Tartuffe” at the Los Angeles Theater Center.More recently, they had also voiced characters on the FX animated comedy series “Archer,” about an agency full of misfits who undertake James Bond-like missions but spend an inordinate amount of time drinking, having sex with one another and disparaging people. On the show, Ms. Walter voiced Malory, a ruthless mother with more than a passing resemblance to Lucille Bluth.A full obituary will be published later. More

  • 100 Shares159 Views

    in Television

    Jay Leno Apologizes for Years of Anti-Asian Jokes

    The comedian said it was not “another example of cancel culture but a legitimate wrong that was done on my part.”Jay Leno, the longtime “Tonight Show” host, apologized for a history of making anti-Asian jokes, saying that at the time he “genuinely thought them to be harmless” but now hopes for forgiveness from Asian-Americans.The comedian said in a joint statement with the Media Action Network for Asian Americans, a watchdog group that tracks anti-Asian comments and incidents in the media and entertainment industries, that he had an attitude at the time that “some group is always complaining about something, so don’t worry about it.” Whenever the show received a complaint, he said, the response was divided into two camps: “We need to deal with this” or “screw ’em if they can’t take a joke.”“Too many times I sided with the latter even when in my heart I knew it was wrong,” Mr. Leno said. “That is why I am issuing this apology. I do not consider this particular case to be another example of cancel culture but a legitimate wrong that was done on my part.”It was a recent realization. In 2019, Mr. Leno, who hosted “The Tonight Show” from 1992 to 2014, made an offensive anti-Asian joke while filming a commercial for “America’s Got Talent,” the actor and producer Gabrielle Union told Variety.MANAA, the watchdog group, had complained for decades about Mr. Leno’s jokes that relied on stereotypes of Asians, to no avail. Rob Chan, the president of the group, said in the statement that he was “happy that Jay came around, and that we will be working together in the future.”Mr. Leno is slated to host a rebooted game show, “You Bet Your Life,” starting in the fall.Mr. Leno’s apology came as Asian-Americans have endured rising discrimination and racist language during the coronavirus pandemic, while also processing the trauma of a recent mass shooting in the Atlanta area in which six of the eight victims were women of Asian descent. Mr. Leno said he would be “deeply hurt and ashamed if somehow my words did anything to incite this violence.”Some Asian-Americans have long argued that their concerns about anti-Asian speech are frequently dismissed as trivial. Asian-Americans have historically been underrepresented in Hollywood and in comedy, and in 2016, a bit by the comedian Chris Rock that relied on Asian stereotypes made it to the Oscars ceremony.While late-night comedians pick a variety of targets, it’s not the first time Mr. Leno has been criticized for jokes that got laughs at the time. Recently, a documentary about Britney Spears by The New York Times brought increased scrutiny to jokes by several late-night hosts about her mental health. Mr. Leno has not apologized to the singer, though others, including Justin Timberlake and some publications, have said they regret their behavior.Azi Paybarah contributed reporting. More

  • 113 Shares139 Views

    in Theater

    Coming to Broadway: Vaccinations for New York’s Theater Workers

    Mayor Bill de Blasio said that the city would create a vaccination site for theater workers to try to help Broadway shows reopen by the fall.Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York said on Thursday that the city plans to open a Covid-19 vaccination site on Broadway, as well as a mobile vaccination unit and pop-up sites specifically for theater industry workers.Jeenah Moon/ReutersMayor Bill de Blasio announced on Thursday that the city plans to create a coronavirus vaccination site on Broadway that will be reserved for theater industry workers, promising to dedicate city resources to help Broadway theaters reopen for live performances in the fall.At a news conference, Mr. de Blasio said that in addition to the Broadway vaccination site, there would be a mobile vaccination unit to serve theater workers beyond Broadway. The sites will be staffed by theater workers, many of whom have been relying on unemployment insurance since Broadway shut down over a year ago.“This is going to be a year to turn things around,” Mr. de Blasio said. “It’s time to raise the curtain and bring Broadway back.”TIMES EVENT On April 29, subscribers can explore Australia’s theater reopening and lessons for Broadway, with conversations and songs from “Moulin Rouge!,” “Frozen,” “Come From Away” and more.The city’s plans will not change the state’s rules around vaccine eligibility, which currently allow residents older than 50 to sign up for shots, as well as those in certain job categories and with certain health conditions. Mr. de Blasio said that the sites would be set up over the next four weeks or so and that vaccination eligibility is expected to be much more broad by then.“We want to get the Broadway community involved, and the Off Broadway community, in vaccinating their own folks, by definition a very high percentage of whom are eligible right now,” he said. “We also know that in just a matter of four or five weeks, at latest, everyone will be eligible. I won’t be surprised if that even is sooner.”There will also be pop-up coronavirus testing sites located at or nearby Broadway and Off Broadway theaters to make sure that there is ample testing available as the theater industry tries to get back on its feet. The city will be assisting Broadway theaters in developing plans to manage crowds as they flow in and out of venues.This month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that arts, entertainment and events venues can reopen April 2 at 33 percent capacity, with a limit of 100 people indoors or 200 people outdoors, and higher limits if patrons show they have tested negative for the coronavirus. But Broadway producers say it is not economically feasible to run commercial productions at reduced capacity, and although there are likely to be some special events inside theaters this spring and summer, full-scale plays and musicals are not likely to open until after Labor Day.In the months leading up to a full revival, there will be a period of preparation needed to mount plays and musicals, including rehearsals and stage maintenance, which will involve actors and stagehands returning to work in close quarters. That period will require ample testing accessibility, Mr. de Blasio said.Mr. de Blasio urged the state to create clear guidelines for the theater industry around mask usage, as well as on how audience members can prove they were vaccinated or received a negative coronavirus test result before a performance. He did not mention a similar effort for other performing arts workers outside the theater industry. The mayor’s office said that once eligibility rules are expanded, this newly announced vaccination site would not turn away workers in the performing arts industry who are outside the theater sector.Some public officials are anxious about the revival of arts and entertainment next week and are calling for more caution. On Wednesday, Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate, urged Mr. Cuomo in a news conference to hold off on the planned reopenings — which will include theaters, music venues and comedy clubs — citing his concern for the spread of the virus variants. New York and New Jersey currently have the highest per capita rates of Covid-19 cases in the country, averaging 39 and 47 new cases per 100,000 people in the last week, respectively.“We have to scale back the rush to reopen,” Mr. Williams said. “One of the side effects of rushing to reopening is that it makes people feel safe to start doing things again.”Mr. de Blasio was joined at the virtual news conference by two Broadway performers, André De Shields, a Tony winner for “Hadestown,” and Telly Leung, whose roles have included starring in “Aladdin.” Both of them welcomed the mayor’s support.“We’re ready, we’ve stayed in shape, our voices are strong,” Mr. De Shields said. “All we need is a stage.”Mr. Leung said reopening would require safety measures for performers and audience members.“This pandemic has hit our industry particularly hard,” he said. “We all have a long way to go as a community, but I really do think that today is a really good first step in our healing.”The Broadway League, which represents theater owners and producers, and Actors’ Equity, the labor union representing 51,000 stage actors and stage managers around the country, welcomed the mayor’s announcement. The union, which has barred its members from working in all but a few dozen productions before live audiences during the past year, has been eager to see its members vaccinated to make the return to the stage safer.Mary McColl, the union’s executive director, said in a statement that the mayor understood that theater workers could not socially distance, making testing and vaccine availability “critical for maintaining a safe workplace.”“Our community has suffered catastrophic losses,” the Broadway League said in a statement, “and the sooner we can return to share our stories in a safe and secure way, the better our city will be.” More

  • 138 Shares189 Views

    in Television

    Creator of ‘All Rise’ on CBS Is Fired After Writers’ Complaints

    Greg Spottiswood had faced numerous complaints over the way issues of race and gender were addressed on the show, a rare prime-time CBS drama with a Black woman as a protagonist.Warner Bros. Television has fired the showrunner and creator of the CBS show “All Rise,” Greg Spottiswood, after a second investigation into allegations regarding how he dealt with the show’s writers, including in conversations involving race. “Warner Bros. Television has relieved ‘All Rise’ executive producer Greg Spottiswood of his duties, effective immediately,” the studio said Wednesday night in a statement. “We remain committed, at all times, to providing a safe and inclusive working environment on our productions and for all employees.”Mr. Spottiswood had previously been investigated for his treatment of the writing staff during the first season of the CBS procedural, which debuted in September 2019 and stars a Black actress, Simone Missick, as the show’s protagonist, an idealistic Los Angeles judge. The studio kept Mr. Spottiswood, who is white, in charge of the show, and provided him a corporate coach to advise him. It also hired a new co-showrunner, Dee Harris-Lawrence, after his original co-showrunner, Sunil Nayar, left the production.Five of the original seven members of the “All Rise” writing staff left the show because of his treatment of them and the way the show, under his direction, depicted race and gender, The New York Times reported in August. Among those who departed were the series’ three highest-ranking writers of color, including Shernold Edwards, a Black woman who departed in November 2019 after multiple disagreements with Mr. Spottiswood.“We had to do so much behind the scenes to keep these scripts from being racist and offensive,” Ms. Edwards told The Times.At the time, Mr. Spottiswood said he was aware of the problems with his leadership and pledged to do better.“All Rise” has been celebrated by CBS after its prime-time lineup had been criticized for its lack of diversity. It has been applauded both for its inclusive cast and its equally diverse writers room. Yet the writing staff from the original season said problems were apparent from the start.Mr. Nayar, for one, complained of being sidelined by Mr. Spottiswood, claiming he was interested only in having Mr. Nayar appear at public events with the title of executive producer but did not give him the duties to match that position.“It became clear to me, when I left the show, that I was only there because I’m the brown guy,” Mr. Nayar said in an interview at the time. “Greg hired me to be his brown guy.”The most recent investigation was again focused on statements Mr. Spottiswood was said to have made in the writers’ room. After the studio’s inquiry, Mr. Spottiswood was also dropped as a client by his talent representatives at the Agency for the Performing Arts. The agency had represented him since 2015.A lawyer for Mr. Spottiswood did not respond to a request for comment.Ms. Harris-Lawrence will take over Mr. Spottiswood’s responsibilities for the remainder of the season. The show is in production on its 15th episode of its 17-episode season. Production is scheduled to conclude next month. More

  • 100 Shares119 Views

    in Television

    The ‘Solar Opposites’ Creators Apologize for Their Clairvoyance

    Who knew an animated series about misanthropic space aliens could feel so relevant? Mike McMahan and Justin Roiland explained ahead of Season 2 why it isn’t their fault.Half of them hate it, half of them love it. But nobody knows more about American pop culture than the aliens in “Solar Opposites,” who have crash-landed in suburbia and absorbed the culture as voraciously as Daryl Hannah’s TV-addicted mermaid in “Splash.” Justin Roiland, who created the animated series for Hulu with Mike McMahan, believes he would do the same thing if he found himself on their home, on the utopian planet of Shlorp.“I would be up all night watching their TV,” Roiland said in a group video call earlier this month. “I’d know more than they did about their own stupid movies and culture and pop culture. It makes sense that these aliens would just have this insane list of like all these stupid things that they’ve watched.”That level of pop obsession carries over from their work on “Rick and Morty,” the Adult Swim hit Roiland created with Dan Harmon, for which he also voiced both title characters. McMahan wrote scripts for all four seasons of that show, and the two seem to anticipate a self-awareness from their audience that allows their creations to speak in winking shorthand. Terry (voiced by Thomas Middleditch), a frog-mouthed connoisseur of trash art and junk food, often refers to his makeshift Shlorpian family as “the solar opposites,” as if he knows they’re in a TV show. (A lot of jokes come at Hulu’s expense, too.) Korvo (Roiland), his sour egghead counterpart, is able to “sci-fi” his way in and out of sticky situations with an endless supply of high-tech, plot-resolving gizmos.The series is in many respects an affectionate riff on family sitcoms. “When we do switch into sitcom mode, we want our family to feel like a family,” McMahan said.FOXAmong the gizmos deployed in the eight-episode second season, which arrives in full on Friday, is a “Lake House” device: a mailbox that sends messages back and forth from separate points in time, a reference to the high-concept 2006 romance of the same name starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves. Then there’s a single-use gun that converts a natural landscape into thriving urban center, with one hilariously grisly twist.Roiland and McMahan’s penchant for pocket universes continues this season with more intrigue inside “the Wall,” a terrarium that the high school misanthrope Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone), Korvo’s “replicant,” has filled with the miniaturized bodies of people he dislikes. As Yumyulack and Jesse (Mary Mack), Terry’s cheery replicant, go obliviously about their teenage lives, the miniature society of the Wall evolves behind them, as the former resistance hero Tim (Andy Daly) becomes the new lord of the flies — or, perhaps, the terror of tiny town.Speaking from their home offices in Los Angeles, Roiland and McMahan talked about their own love-hate relationship with pop culture, how the show fiddles with sitcom and sci-fi conventions and where the real world intersected with the sandbox society of the Wall. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. (The conversation took place before accusations of sexual misconduct against Middleditch were reported by the Los Angeles Times; Hulu declined to comment on the accusations.)“Solar Opposites” is a situation comedy. There’s a family in a house. There’s an odd couple at the center of it. It has a fish-out-of-water quality to it. How do you see the show fitting into that tradition?MIKE McMAHAN: We grew up watching those shows and loving those shows and wanted a show that felt like, at a distance or at certain moments, it lived in the world that those shows created — or if not the world, at least in the format or at least the comfort level that audiences would have with it.JUSTIN ROILAND: There’s something really fun and whimsical about these characters and the fact we’re putting them in a sitcom-y world allows us to do some of the insane [expletive] we want to do that we’ve never seen in that framework.McMAHAN: At the same time, when we do switch into sitcom mode, we want our family to feel like a family. Terry and Korvo love each other, and they love the replicants, and they love the family that they’re in. And so we have these emotional stories we’re telling, and then [expletive] goes off the rails all the time.The alien characters in “Solar Opposites” often speak in winking shorthand that is self-aware and deeply versed in American culture.FOXAs for that science-fiction part of the show, the characters here often use the term “sci-fi” to explain whatever gadget they might be using to get out of scrapes. How do you see “Solar Opposites” fitting into that tradition?McMAHAN: That’s something Justin and Dan [Harmon] really created with the pilot of “Rick and Morty” because Rick is able to call things out and be like, “Look, this is just some sci-fi [expletive] we’re dealing with today.” It’s a very Rick sentiment. And then once we’d worked on “Rick and Morty” for a number of seasons, it just felt good. There were some things in “Solar Opposites” that felt like they were conventions we could just do away with.One of them was, we didn’t want to do a show where a human on the street would be like, “Ahhh, an alien!” It was more interesting to us to have everybody be fine with it.ROILAND: I think for me it’s important not to get caught up in the silly gun and how does it work, you know what I mean? It’s more about the emotional core of the characters and what are they going through. What are these characters feeling? How do I relate to them? It doesn’t matter that somebody got a schmoogie schmoogun, and what does it do?McMAHAN: We get freed up to get to have fun and make more jokes when you’re tracking what the characters want, as opposed to how the tech works. And at the same time, we were like, “Let’s lean into the absurdity of sci-fi.” It’s like how Doctor Who’s Tardis can be bigger on the inside than on the outside. You go, “Ah, it’s sci-fi stuff. It’s a static work bubble or whatever …”ROILAND: Yeah. It’s like an iPhone to somebody from the early ’90 or early ’80s. It’d be like, “What is this?”McMAHAN: “Look at this magic.”ROILAND: “It’s magic, don’t worry about it.”McMAHAN: Whenever we need it for jokes, [the aliens] can open up a panel on the ship and be like, “Oh, here’s the gun that turns you into an elephant for this episode.” Because the point of the sci-fi isn’t, “Wow. We’ve really gamed out that somebody will one day be able to make an elephant gun.” It’s more, would it be wrong to use this elephant gun in this situation?Fundamental to the show is the premise that half of the Solars like the planet and half do not. But the basis of their disagreement seems to be rooted specifically in American pop culture and the way it has shaped humankind. Do you feel that conflict within yourselves? Is their disagreement an expression of that? Of both loving and hating American pop culture?McMAHAN: One hundred percent.ROILAND: Yeah, absolutely. There’s so much stuff to love and hate. To me, it’s funny that these aliens know more about [expletive] than I do even.McMAHAN: We’re both kids of the ’80s. We both grew up just loving TV and comics and video games and toys, and just the packaging and food that you have to cook in the microwave, and oatmeal that you can put sugar dinosaur eggs in.ROILAND: But at the same time, we know we’re self-hating consumers. We know that that’s bad for the environment and we have to do better. And it’s important to us that we leave the world a better place than we found it. And that’s hard when we also want toys.McMahan and Roiland weren’t worried about explaining all the sci-fi tech. “It’s important not to get caught up in the silly gun and how does it work,” Roiland said.Jessica Lehrman for The New York TimesI wouldn’t describe “Solar Opposites” as a terribly political show, but do you see the Wall as a way to kind of comment on how societies are built? Are there opportunities that this “Lord of the Flies” situation has given you?McMAHAN: Absolutely. From the pitch, that’s what it was.ROILAND: Let’s just be honest. Let’s get it out there, I was playing that … what was that game?McMAHAN: The Vault-Tec game.ROILAND: Yeah. The“Fallout Shelter” game.McMAHAN: There’s iOS games where you control little worlds, and you have to manage the food.ROILAND: And they had just announced it at E3 [an annual gaming expo], and they’re like, “And it’s free and it’s available right now.” So I downloaded it. This is around the time we were developing the show and I’m playing it and I was like: “Oh my God, wouldn’t it be fun to just have these kids shrinking humans? And then let’s just play with society.”What would a small town look like in the wall of these kids’ room? How would they form law? Because at that point it’s like: “Hey, we’re not in America anymore. We’re not in anywhere on Earth. We’re in our own ecosystem. We make the law. We make the rules.” And it’s sort of like how a pod in a prison might work. You know what I mean? It’s like: “Who knows if the strongest are going to be the ones making the law? Or the most intelligent?”But anyway, yes, it’s very fascinating to play around in that sandbox because humans are very interesting and society is interesting. How did we end up where we are now? It’s ridiculous. And when is it going to collapse? Tomorrow? A couple of days from now?McMAHAN: When we started writing “Solar Opposites,” we weren’t paying attention to politics. This was pre-2016. This was before I knew the name of everybody in the cabinet and who the secretary of the Treasury is, and I think we’re all, maybe against our own best wishes, our own wishes, more political than we used to be. And what we originally were trying to build in the Wall is, we wanted something that felt comfortably serialized in a mythologically broad and storytelling way — where you understand that when communities are created in a crisis that heroes and villains rise. We grew up seeing stories like that. You see that with, like, you said, “Lord of the Flies.” I would say, “Under the Dome” or “Escape From New York.” It’s a very sci-fi sort of sensibility.ROILAND: It was so funny to Trojan horse that dramatic human story into this crazy comedy.McMAHAN: Sorry we accurately predicted this weird proto-fascist era with our Wall story. That was our bad. More

  • 100 Shares189 Views

    in Theater

    Theater Review: ‘Polis/Reset’ at the Volksbühne in Berlin

    The drama behind the scenes at the Volksbühne in Berlin has surpassed any onstage. A series of premieres involving vengeful gods, inescapable fates and tragic flaws seems apt.Sing, o muses of the house of unceasing calamities!Over the past three years, the drama behind the scenes at the Volksbühne in Berlin has surpassed any onstage. To say that the company has struggled would be putting it mildly: Depending on your point of view, the goings-on have increasingly resembled either a Greek tragedy or a satyr play.Since 2017, dysfunction if not outright misfortune has dogged the venerable theater, which, like most in Berlin, is publicly run. It began when the minister of culture at the time fired the longtime artistic director Frank Castorf, who had led the house for 25 years and was known to rule with an iron fist. Berlin politicians passed the torch to Chris Dercon, a former director of the Tate Modern in London.Berliners vehemently objected; the theater was briefly occupied by protesters. Feces were left in front of Dercon’s office. He quit only months in and was replaced by Klaus Dörr, who was supposed to fill the vacancy until René Pollesch, one of Germany’s leading dramatists and a veteran of Castorf’s Volksbühne, took over as artistic director in 2021.Last week, Dörr abruptly resigned over sexual harassment allegations. Yet in the midst of a trying season for theaters worldwide, the Volksbühne has plowed ahead with an ambitious series of premieres inspired by ancient Greek drama and myth called “Polis/Reset.”Although the cycle examines the relevance of its classical sources from the contemporary perspective of our world’s environmental and economic ills, the themes of unappeased gods, inescapable fates and tragic flaws seem oddly appropriate to the Volksbühne in light of its long-running bad luck.Half of the eight productions planned for “Polis/Reset” are streaming on the Volksbühne’s website. The shows are a diverse crop, but they all confront, to varying degrees, the existential issues facing humanity in the Anthropocene, the era in which humans are the dominant influence on the natural world.An omnidirectional camera, center, was used to present “Anthropos, Tyrant (Oedipus)” as a livestream in 360 degrees.Thomas Aurin“Oedipus is the last king of the Anthropocene. This is our last winter. No one will escape this catastrophe,” an actor intones early in “Anthropos, Tyrant (Oedipus),” an associative and sometimes pedantic stage essay by the writer-director Alexander Eisenach. Of the productions in the Volksbühne’s series, this one, loosely based on Sophocles’ Theban Plays, most directly addresses environmental and economic devastation. In the middle of the performance, the marine biologist and climate expert Antje Boetius delivers a lecture on the Anthropocene that is informative, though dry.I enjoyed some of the snappier slogans, such as “Tragedy has become the language of science” and “Awaking the wrath of the gods is not a metaphor. It’s very real.” But it is possible to agree while still feeling that the show is rough around the edges.Since it couldn’t be shown in front of a live audience, the theater presented it as a livestream in 360 degrees: It was filmed with an omnidirectional camera, and viewers at home were able to control their perspective of the stage. The effect was kind of cool, although it seemed more like an interesting experiment with technology than a full-fledged production. My internet connection was too weak to view it as intended, in razor-sharp 4K.Oedipus and the other rulers of the ancient world were judged by their ability to keep nature in balance and the deities happy. The director Lucia Bihler put an environmentally conscious spin on the divine wrath in “Iphigenia. Sad and Horny in Taurerland,” a reworking of Euripides’ two Iphigenia plays that is peppered with cheeky dialogue by the young Austrian writer Stefanie Sargnagel.Vanessa Loibl, left, and Emma Rönnebeck in Lucia Bihler’s “Iphigenia. Sad and Horny in Taurerland.”Katrin RibbeIn the original, Agamemnon, king of Mycenae and commander of the Greek fleet, sacrifices his daughter Iphigenia to the goddess Artemis to gain favorable winds for sailing. Bihler’s staging suggests environmental parallels: with the deities’ refusal to bestow nature’s fortune on humanity and with the notion of mortgaging the future that child sacrifice represents. In the evening’s irreverent second half, Iphigenia (the young American-born actress Vanessa Loibl) is whisked away to the island of Tauris, where she works in a call center alongside a vulgar, funny gang of women who put up with verbal abuse from prank callers.Iphigenia’s sacrifice is the preamble to “The Oresteia,” Aeschylus’ tragic trilogy about Agamemnon’s family. The young German director Pinar Karabulut has tackled Eugene O’Neill’s 1931 play cycle, “Mourning Becomes Electra,” which transposes the action of “The Oresteia” from ancient Argos to New England shortly after the Civil War. Although there is much to admire in Karabulut’s muscular production, it turns O’Neill’s tragic cycle into a dreary and sordid soap opera.On the plus side, the production looks great: sleek and stylish, with colorful costumes and props dominated by reds and blues. The atmosphere of surreal domestic horror is heightened by visual allusions to David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” and Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby.” Those scenes are effectively unsettling, but they also seem irrelevant. Another element that doesn’t quite work is a bracing monologue about race delivered by Malick Bauer, the only Black actor in the company’s performing ensemble. Written by a dramaturge, Laura Dabelstein, the soliloquy is a very politically incorrect disquisition about prejudice in Germany, designed to shake the audience up, among other ways, with the repeated use of the N-word. It’s a powerful text and Bauer delivers it with conviction, but it feels like a forced bid for timeliness.Paula Kober, left, and Manolo Bertling in Pinar Karabulut’s “Mourning Becomes Electra.”David BaltzerO’Neill’s play stands in a long line of works refashioned from Greek sources. One of the earliest is the Roman poet Ovid’s “Metamorphoses,” written in A.D. 8 and comprising roughly 250 myths. In this epic poem, women turn into trees and birds, drowned men become flowers, and gods transform themselves into animals.Like “Iphigenia,” Claudia Bauer’s “Metamorphoses [overcoming mankind]” doesn’t strain for relevance. It’s an arresting production that combines surreal pantomime and song. For the majority of the performance, the actors wear blank masks. They become mythical characters through movement accompanied by live music (featuring the accordion virtuoso Valentin Butt) and voice-over narration delivered by actors whose faces are projected above the stage.“Metamorphoses” proposes the transformative world of myth as an alternative to the Anthropocene. Even though there is much violence in Ovid, including cannibalism and rape, the production holds up the enchanted symbiosis between man and nature as a sort of utopia. Of the Volksbühne’s digital streams, it’s the one with the most rhythm and verve, thanks to skillful filming and editing. It’s also the only one I’m dying to see live once theaters reopen.The cast with blank masks in Claudia Bauer’s “Metamorphoses [overcoming mankind].”Julian Röder“Polis/Reset” is a step toward making the Volksbühne a place for engagé theater that tackles burning issues. Castorf, the former artistic director, didn’t go in for topicality. It’s hard to imagine him ever structuring a season around environmental themes.The recently departed Dörr deserves credit for replenishing the acting ensemble. This versatile group of 17 has been the most consistently exciting thing about the new Volksbühne, and many of them, including Bauer and Loibl, are prominent in “Polis/Reset.”It remains to be seen whether Pollesch will be able to lift the curse placed on the house by the theatrical deities when he arrives in the fall. He faces formidable artistic and managerial challenges. I pray that Pollesch, who, like Castorf, favors intense theatrical partnerships with a small group of collaborators, doesn’t send the acting ensemble packing when he takes over. That would be a real tragedy. More