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    Actors and Writers and Now, Congressional Lobbyists

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStanding Up For TheaterActors and Writers and Now, Congressional LobbyistsBe an #ArtsHero started with a failed effort to extend unemployment benefits. It’s gone on to be a prime proponent of the message: Cultural work is labor.The founding members of the advocacy group Be an #ArtsHero, clockwise from top left: Jenny Grace Makholm, Carson Elrod, Brooke Ishibashi and Matthew-Lee Erlbach.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Art is what binds us. It illuminates the human condition. It’s good for the soul.Those are the kind of arguments you usually hear when artists and cultural institutions ask for money. The advocacy group Be an #ArtsHero, which was created this summer by four New York theatermakers, takes a different approach.“We are an industry, not a cause,” one of the volunteer group’s four organizers, the writer-director Matthew-Lee Erlbach, said of the arts sector in a recent video interview. “According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, we generated $877 billion. It’s more than agriculture and mining combined.” Yet, he pointed out, there’s no federal department of arts and culture, while transportation and agriculture have spots in the cabinet.Erlbach and his Arts Hero founding colleagues — the actors Carson Elrod and Brooke Ishibashi and the writer-director-performer Jenny Grace Makholm — are not cultural mucky-mucks used to the corridors of power. When the performing arts shut down, what was on their mind was their own survival.Ishibashi said the campaign began simply as a way to rally the sector to advocate for the extension of Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation that was due to expire in August.“We started by cold-calling people and building out assets and saying, ‘Here’s a tool kit, please spread the word.’ We lobby differently because we lobby for ourselves and our own desperate need. We are all worried about how we’re going to pay our rent and our mortgages.”The unemployment compensation wasn’t extended at the time, but Be an #ArtsHero forged ahead. They started creating economic reports for members of Congress — in a joint conversation, Ishibashi and Erlbach referred casually to relief efforts the group is backing, an alphabet soup of acronyms like CALMER (Culture, Arts, Libraries and Museums Emergency Relief) and DAWN (Defend Arts Workers Now).Following up on the lobbying efforts of long-running organizations like Americans for the Arts, the group has pushed to help shape legislative language so bills include relief to artists and workers, not just institutions. Erlbach’s widely circulated open letter to the U.S. Senate arguing for emergency relief drew 16,000 signatories, including rank-and-file members of the culture sector and celebrities, institutional and union leaders, and advocacy groups.The letter hammered the group’s essential point: The arts matter because they represent a lot of money and they create jobs.“We’re here to change the conversation so arts workers can understand their intrinsic value because it’s tied to an economic worth, a dollar amount,” Ishibashi said. “Those numbers are unimpeachable.”Erlbach added, “Ironically, the arts has a story problem in this country.”“We are here to become a legislative priority, and part of doing that is reframing the paradigm that we are labor,” he said. “Whether you’re an usher, a milliner, a museum docent, an administrator or a publicist, you’re an arts and cultural worker. ”Erlbach, who leads the group’s political-outreach team, says that Be an #ArtsHero has met with representatives from dozens of House members and over 60 Senate offices.“It felt like the legislative process is something someone else does,” he said. “Now that’s something that we do.”The stimulus bill just passed by Congress delivered some good news for the arts, including weekly unemployment supplements. “At $300, what passed was not enough,” Be an #ArtsHero said in an email statement. “But it was something, and we are proud to have lent our voice to the cause of getting it.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Rebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRebecca Luker, a Broadway Star for Three Decades, Dies at 59Her Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her Tony Award nominations for “Show Boat,” “The Music Man” and “Mary Poppins.”Rebecca Luker as Maria, surrounded by the von Trapp children, in the 1998 Broadway revival of “The Sound of Music.” She also starred in hit revivals of “Show Boat” and “The Music Man.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDec. 23, 2020Rebecca Luker, the actress and singer who in a lauded three-decade career on the New York stage embodied the essence of the Broadway musical ingénue in hit revivals of “Show Boat,” “The Sound of Music” and “The Music Man,” died on Wednesday in a hospital in Manhattan. She was 59. The death was confirmed by Sarah Fargo, her agent. Ms. Luker announced in February that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as A.L.S. or Lou Gehrig’s disease.Ms. Luker’s Broadway career, fueled by her crystal-clear operatic soprano, brought her three Tony Award nominations. The first was for “Show Boat” (1994), in which she played Magnolia, the captain’s dewy-fresh teenage daughter, whose life is ruined by marriage to a riverboat gambler. The second was for “The Music Man” (2000), in which she was Marian, the prim River City librarian who enchants a traveling flimflam man who thinks — mistakenly — that he’s just passing through town.In between, Ms. Luker delighted critics by playing against type in a 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” As Adriana, the neglected wife who gets her groove back (with her husband’s long-lost twin brother), she wore slinky 1930s gowns and exuded what Ben Brantley, in his review for The New York Times, called “a disarmingly confectionary sexiness.”Ms. Luker, center, with Debbie Gravitte, left, and Sarah Uriarte Berry in the 1997 Encores! production of “The Boys From Syracuse.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPlaying Adriana was fun, Ms. Luker admitted. “For the first time in my life, I got to do a bit,” she told The Times in 1998. “Learning to turn to the audience, learning to hold for laughs — I ate it up with a spoon.”But by the end of that year, she was deep into ingénue territory again, playing Maria, the undisciplined novice nun turned live-in governess of seven, in “The Sound of Music.”When she earned her third Tony nomination, this one for best featured actress in a musical, it was for playing Winifred Banks, a married Englishwoman with two children and a gifted nanny, in “Mary Poppins” (2006).For all her success in musicals, Ms. Luker did not identify as a show-tunes type. “I am so not a musical theater person,” she told Playbill in 2003. “I love rock music and jazz. I love the ’70s stuff I grew up with.”Rebecca Joan Luker was born on April 17, 1961, in Birmingham, Ala., and grew up in Helena, a small town nearby. She was one of four children of Norse Doak Luker Jr., a construction worker, and Martha (Baggett) Luker, the local high school’s treasurer. Rebecca sang in her church choir (First Baptist of Alabaster) and was a member of the Thompson High marching band.In high school, she entered a beauty pageant. Singing “Much More,” the ballad of girlish dreams and determination from “The Fantasticks,” she won a college scholarship as first runner-up to Alabama’s Junior Miss.That took her to the University of Montevallo, just 14 miles from her parents’ home, where she was a music major and received her diploma in 1984. Graduation was a year later than planned because she took a break to work with Michigan Opera Theater, where she met her future New York agent. Just five years after college, she was on the Broadway stage, assuming the lead female role in “The Phantom of the Opera”— Christine, the chorus girl who is the object of the phantom’s affections.“Phantom” was her Broadway debut; she began as the understudy to the original star, Sarah Brightman; became an alternate; and took over as Christine in 1989. She remained with the show until 1991.Ms. Luker moved on immediately to another Broadway show: She played a ghost, the little orphan girl’s dead Aunt Lily, in “The Secret Garden.” In his review in The Times, Frank Rich singled out “I Heard Someone Crying,” Ms. Luker’s haunting trio with Mandy Patinkin and Daisy Egan, for special praise.Ms. Luker in performance at the Allen Room of Jazz at Lincoln Center in 2005. In addition to her theater work, she had a thriving cabaret career.Credit…Rahav Segev for The New York TimesIn several of her later Broadway roles, Ms. Luker replaced the original actress in a long-running hit. She took over as Claudia, the director-protagonist’s movie-star muse, in “Nine” (2003); Marie, the temperamental fairy godmother, in “Cinderella” (2013); and Helen, the frustrated wife and mother who misses being an actress — just as Mrs. Banks had in “Mary Poppins” — in “Fun Home” (2016).She grew older gracefully in a number of her later Off Broadway roles. Twenty years after starring in a 1996 revival of “Brigadoon” as Fiona, a Scottish lass so rare she really does come along only once a century, she played a droll Buffalo matron in A.R. Gurney’s comic drama “Indian Blood” (2006). In 2011, she was an Italian duchess grieving her son’s death in Maury Yeston’s musical “Death Takes a Holiday.”Ms. Luker also had a thriving cabaret career, appearing at intimate venues like Café Carlyle and Feinstein’s/54 Below, but she professed a special love for “the live experience in front of an orchestra.”The stage was always her first home, but she did finally make her screen acting debut in her late 30s when she appeared in “Cupid and Cate” (2000), a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie in which she played the heroine’s perfect and perfectly sensible sister. Between 2010 and 2020, she had guest roles on series including “Boardwalk Empire” and “N.C.I.S. New Orleans” and appeared in three feature films, including “Not Fade Away” (2012), a drama about a teenage rock band.Her final stage role was as a small-town minister’s narrow-minded wife in a 2019 Kennedy Center production of “Footloose.” She performed at a concert in honor of the lyricist Sheldon Harnick in March 2020.Ms. Luker at home in 2015 with her husband, the actor Danny Burstein.Credit…Tony Cenicola/The New York TimesHer last performance was in June, via Zoom, in a prerecorded benefit performance, “At Home With Rebecca Luker.”“When I sing,” she told The Times shortly before that show, “I think it heals me. It helps me feel like I’m still a part of something.”Ms. Luker married Gregory Jbara, an actor, in 1993; they divorced in 1996. In 2000 she married the actor Danny Burstein, whom she met when they starred together in “Time and Again” in San Diego.Mr. Burstein survives her, as do two stepsons, Zachary and Alexander Burstein; a brother, Roger; a sister, Suzanne Luker; her mother, Martha Hales; and her stepfather, Lamar Hales. Another brother, Stephen, died last year.Looking back on her career in a 2016 Theater People podcast, Ms. Luker expressed gratitude for the roles she’d had but admitted that she probably should have broken out of the leading-lady mold — studied acting longer and more seriously, appeared in more plays, done more comedy.“I wish I had branched out a little more,” she said cheerily. “Maybe played a bitch or something.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    The Breakout Stars of 2020

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Breakout Stars of 2020Here are the 12 stars and trends that managed to thrive and shine in an impossible year.Clockwise from bottom left: Sarah Cooper, Maria Bakalova, the hand of the artist Salman Toor, Jonathan Majors and Radha Blank.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Lacey Terrell/Netflix; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Peter Fisher for The New York Times; Adria Malcolm for The New York Times; Douglas Segars for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2020Updated 7:44 a.m. ETWhile plenty of us felt trapped this year, wandering through the same spaces and talking to the same people, it was the artists and entertainers who kicked open windows to new sights, sounds and experiences. Yes, the pandemic dealt a significant hit to the culture world, but nothing could derail its creativity. So, despite the limitations, stars in a variety of disciplines managed to thrive and shine, and by doing so, made a difficult year more tolerable for most everyone. Here are 12 artists and trends who gave us a fresh perspective in 2020.Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in the autobiographical satire “The 40-Year-Old Version.”Credit…Douglas Segars for The New York TimesFilmRadha BlankRadha Blank was the hero many of us needed in 2020, when the concept of time got an overdue interrogation. In her autobiographical satire “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which was on Netflix, she portrays a playwright who — refusing to believe that her dreams have an expiration date — pivots to rap as a grown woman. Like her character, Blank, who grew up Brooklyn, is a 40-something playwright who knows what it’s like to fight to elevate her voice.And elevate it she did. She wrote, directed and starred in the film, her first feature, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that A.O. Scott called “a catalog of burdens and also a heroic act of unburdening.”In “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Cole explores sexual assault, truth, revenge and trauma; she also created the HBO series.Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOTelevisionMichaela CoelMichaela Coel may have created the most important TV show of 2020: “I May Destroy You.” The series, which premiered on HBO in June, is inspired by Coel’s own experience with sexual assault, and in it, she deftly plucks apart ideas around truth, revenge, anxiety, trauma and fear.Coel, a 33-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and actor, plays a writer who is drugged and raped in a bathroom stall. The assault leaves her traumatized and grappling with hazy, fragmented memories. “Coel brings a superb discipline to the portrayal of distress,” wrote Mike Hale, a TV critic at The Times.In a critic’s notebook, Salamishah Tillet, a professor and contributing critic at large for The Times, noted that the show could be considered “part of a larger cultural trend in which Black women’s experiences with sexual assault are appearing with greater frequency and treated with more sensitivity.” (She pointed to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” and TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “The Chi” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples.)“By offering multifaceted endings,” Tillet went on, “Coel gives victims of sexual assault, particularly Black women who have survived rape, some of the most radical and cathartic moments of television I have ever witnessed.”ComedySarah CooperSarah Cooper, 43-year-old comedian, made her mark in 2020 by pantomiming the words of President Trump in viral videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times across social media. Jim Poniewozik called her first Trump lip-sync, “How to Medical,” a “49-second tour de force” and said Cooper was helping to develop “a kind of live-action political cartooning.”“Cooper’s Trumpian drag is partly a caricature of performative masculinity,” Poniewozik wrote.The success of her videos helped land Cooper a Netflix special, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by Natasha Lyonne. “This special shows that she can do much more than lip-sync,” Jason Zinoman, a comedy columnist at The Times, said of the production. “She has a promising future as an actor in television or movies.” She currently has a show in the works for CBS.Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s teenage daughter in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesFilmMaria BakalovaIt’s no easy feat to stand out next to the unabashed actor-prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, but Maria Bakalova, a 24-year-old from Bulgaria, was riveting as the teenage daughter of his Borat character in his most recent mockumentary film. As the culture reporter Dave Itzkoff put it in The Times: “Sacha Baron Cohen may be the star of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ but it is Maria Bakalova who has emerged its hero.”Her performance also grabbed headlines for an edited scene involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is seen putting his hands down his pants in a hotel room, where Bakalova, impersonating a TV journalist, is interviewing him. He later denied any wrongdoing.About the opportunity to star in a major American film, Bakalova said: “I will be really grateful to Sacha for giving this platform to an Eastern European, to play a strong and complicated character who’s not just one thing.”Adrienne Warren was nominated for a Tony for her starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” Credit…Molly Matalon for The New York TimesTheaterAdrienne WarrenAdrienne Warren’s starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” earned her a Tony nomination in October for best actress in a musical. But it was her vocal and steadfast stand on racial injustice, including in the arts world, that brought Warren, 33, more deeply into one of the most urgent conversations of 2020. In an impassioned, impromptu speech this summer — during the Times event Offstage: Opening Night on the subject of being Black on Broadway — she questioned whether she even wanted to continue performing as part of an institution that didn’t stand up for people like her.“The last thing on my mind right now is me going back to Broadway,” Warren said. But in an interview with The Times after her nomination, she said, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but the question is whether I want to do it at the address I’ve been doing it.”As for what a dream role might look like for her in the future: “I want to make sure that I’m telling stories that represent me as a Black woman and also push the needle forward in ways that resonate with people, both in this nation and abroad,” she said.Jonathan Majors made a mark in both HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Spike Lee drama “Da 5 Bloods.”Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesTelevisionJonathan MajorsJonathan Majors isn’t afraid of pain, and that may just be his secret to success. “I’m willing to hurt more,” he told Alexis Soloski in The Times over the summer. “It doesn’t bother me.”The 31-year-old star had a big year doing just that to great effect onscreen, as a Korean War veteran in the supernatural HBO thriller “Lovecraft Country,” set in 1950s Jim Crow America, and the son of a Vietnam War veteran in “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee’s drama for Netflix that was named a Critic’s Pick in The Times by A.O. Scott.“Emotions in the men in my family run deep,” Majors told Soloski — who described him as “an actor of precision and intensity.” When asked if acting gave him a place to put those big emotions, he said: “With acting, it was almost like I was in a corridor, and it just appeared to me and said, ‘Go that way, son.’ I didn’t get in trouble once I started acting. I had a place to put the energy, to put my focus.”The artist Christine Sun Kim performing in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in Miami in February.Credit…A J Mast for The New York TimesArtChristine Sun KimIn February, just minutes ahead of the Super Bowl in Miami, the artist Christine Sun Kim stood at the 40-yard line performing in American Sign Language as Yolanda Adams sang “America the Beautiful” and Demi Lovato sang the national anthem.“As a child of immigrants, a grandchild of refugees, a Deaf woman of color, an artist and a mother, I was proud to perform,” she wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times afterward. But because only a fraction of her performance was aired, she called the experience “a huge disappointment — a missed opportunity in the struggle for media inclusiveness on a large scale.”“Being deaf in America has always been political,” she wrote.Kim, 40, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, has spent years channeling this perspective into her art. At the Whitney Biennial in New York last year, she exhibited hand-drawn charcoal drawings from her “Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World,” and in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art selected her for its exhibition “Soundings: A Contemporary Score,” dedicated to sound art.“I want people to start thinking about what deafness means,” she told Vogue this year, “and maybe that will reduce the stigma and society will be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”MusicVerzuzYou could call it a battle, a face-off, a showdown. But Verzuz is also something else entirely: a pandemic pivot, cutting right to the very core of quarantine entertainment by combining livestreaming and nostalgia while filling a hole left by canceled live shows and shuttered clubs.Since April, Verzuz, the creation of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, has streamed over 20 battles. Each one has brought together two hip-hop or R&B heavyweights: Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy, Babyface vs. Teddy Riley, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, Ludacris vs. Nelly, to name a few. Millions of people have tuned in.Initially, Verzuz was streamed on Instagram Live. In July, Verzuz and Apple Music announced they’d struck a partnership which allowed the videos to be viewed live and on-demand on that platform, too.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, called the events staples of this era and “less battles in the conventional sense than choreographed chest-puffing combined with bows of respect.” To that point, there is no winner winner. As Swizz Beatz told ABC News: “The people won, the culture won, the music won.”The artist Salman Toor has his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” up at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Peter Fisher for The New York TimesArtSalman ToorThe painter Salman Toor was about to have his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art early this year when the shutdown thwarted the whole thing. He took it pretty well. “My first reaction was, thank God,” he told The Times in June. “I’m not a social animal.” But disappointment inevitably crept in as he realized the exhibition might never happen.Thankfully for him and fans of figurative and queer art, the show eventually did go up at the Whitney, where it will appear through April. And that’s only the start for Toor. Over the summer, he joined the gallery Luhring Augustine, which will open an exhibition of his work in the next few years.Toor, 37 — who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States in 2002 — primarily depicts gay men of South Asian descent. In The Times, the writer Ted Loos described Toor’s contemporary settings: “iPhones appear here and there, the glow emanating from them emphasized with bright lines.” Toor said that he aspired to represent “what this new free space is like,” referring to living an openly queer life. In Pakistan, gay sex is illegal. “People are curious to know what it means to have the freedom of so much choice, and what is the nature of that freedom and what is the cost of that.”TheaterElizabeth StanleyUp against Adrienne Warren for that Tony is Elizabeth Stanley, who was nominated for her gutting performance as Mary Jane — “a brittle tiger mom suppressing secret trauma,” as Jesse Green, a theater critic for The Times, put it — in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on Alanis Morissette’s smash album from 1995. When Broadway shut down, Stanley, 42, did not take too long before shifting her energy toward digital performances.In April, she told Deadline that she’d already been wondering about what else she could do during the pandemic: “How can I twist to this and find something new and exciting out of this time?”What came of that question epitomized what much of theater looked like in 2020: creating new digital spaces for live performance.In April, she delivered a jaw-dropping rendition of “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music,” for the acclaimed event “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration.” In June, she sang her wrenching rendition of “You Learn,” from “Jagged Little Pill,” for an Opening Night Times event on the future of Broadway. On Dec. 13, Stanley and her “Jagged Little Pill” co-stars reunited for “Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert.”Kali Uchis performing in Atlanta in 2018. She recently released the album “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).”Credit…Paul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated PressMusicKali UchisIn 2018, Kali Uchis released a debut album titled “Isolation.” Clearly she was ahead of her time. In November, the Colombian-American artist — with a moody, seductive, dance-inducing style — dropped her second studio album, this time predominantly in Spanish, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).” (Its lead single, “Aquí Yo Mando,” features the up-and-coming rapper Rico Nasty.) The album “goes genre-hopping and era-hopping, from romantically retro orchestral bolero to brittle reggaeton,” Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The Times, wrote this month.Having grown up between Colombia and the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, Uchis, 26, had many inspirations and influences, she told Interview magazine. “The last thing I ever want to do is be a predictable artist. I love that my fans never know what to expect when I drop a song.”DanceThe Year of the SoloIt wasn’t just that the coronavirus put an end to live performance in March. The need for social isolation uprooted every part of what gets a dance onto a stage: Suddenly, there were no more classes, no more rehearsals. How to fill that void? The solo.This solitary form has provided an outlet for frustration, for sadness and even for euphoria as dance artists continue to find meaning through movement. It’s true that some attempts have been sentimental and aimless, but much good has emerged from it, too. Instagram, from the start, illuminated these explorations in a steady stream of posts; choreographers worked with dancers remotely to create films in which the body could be fearless and free. “State of Darkness,” Molissa Fenley’s 1988 solo revived for seven dancers, was a glittering, harrowing reminder of the achievement that comes from strength, both internal and external.One of its interpreters, the dancer Sara Mearns, said that she saw herself as “someone that has gone through really, really hard times, but then in the end has come out stronger and on top.” Yes, dance and dancers are suffering right now. But the solo has given it — and them — a powerful voice. — Gia Kourlas, dance critic for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    ‘Saturday Night Live’ Finds a New Joe Biden After Jim Carrey Exits

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Saturday Night Live’ Finds a New Joe Biden After Jim Carrey ExitsAlex Moffat became the latest “S.N.L.” cast member to portray Biden, following Carrey’s announcement that he was stepping down from the role.The role of Joe Biden was taken over on “S.N.L.” this week by Alex Moffat, left, pictured with Maya Rudolph as Kamala Harris and Beck Bennett as Mike Pence.Credit…NBC Universal, via YouTubePublished More

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    Zosia Mamet’s Week: Log Cabin Living

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyRecently ViewedZosia Mamet’s Week: Log Cabin LivingThe former “Girls” star, who played a mordantly comic lawyer in “The Flight Attendant,” spends her days at the barn and her nights with David Sedaris and Meryl Streep.Zosia Mamet, who stars in “The Flight Attendant,” with her horse, Ten: “She’s the love of my life (don’t tell my husband) so just being with her makes me happy.”Credit…Heather Sten for The New York TimesDec. 22, 2020, 10:40 a.m. ETWhen Zosia Mamet auditioned for “The Flight Attendant,” Kaley Cuoco unexpectedly booped her on the nose. Mamet reacted by swatting her hand away, and a relationship was born.“We had this immediate chemistry,” said Mamet, who is best known as the “Girls” naïf, Shoshanna Shapiro, “and the scene, just like lava, flowed out of us.”In “The Flight Attendant,” the zingy thriller on HBO Max that just finished its first season, Cuoco plays the booze-swilling Cassie Bowden, who picks up a passenger on a flight then wakes up in Bangkok with his dead body in bed beside her — and no memory of the night before. Mamet is her best friend, Annie Mouradian, a stony-faced lawyer who keeps the F.B.I. at bay using skills she cultivated while representing mob wives.At the moment, Mamet is nesting in New York’s Hudson Valley, with her husband, the actor Evan Jonigkeit, and their dog, Moose. But she more or less lives at the horse stables down the road, doling out snuggles and peppermints to her thoroughbred, Ten. In a Zoom interview from her 1920s Sears catalog cabin, with a log wall behind her, Mamet talked about life in and out of the riding ring, and her seasonal affliction. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Thursday MorningWoke up at 8. I’m a big-time sleeper. My husband says I could sleep through anything. But I wanted to get up early to give Moose a good long walk. First things, first: coffee, made in a French press with a big chunk of oat milk. I used to be quite picky about the brand of coffee, and I’m not anymore. I know this is a controversial point for snobby coffee drinkers, but we love a flavored coffee in our house, like a hazelnut or a vanilla.Mamet is nesting with her husband, the actor Evan Jonigkeit, in the Hudson Valley. Credit…Heather Sten for The New York TimesThursday AfternoonThe barn is about a 25-minute drive from our house so I normally either do NPR, Howard Stern, music or a podcast. I love a good podcast. Today was the new Whitney Cummings with Alison Brie. I didn’t get past the opening but that alone was killing me. They were talking about the frustration with stores putting stickers on things that you can’t get off, and it leaves this horrible residue. The struggle is real.My horse, Ten, sadly has a boo-boo in her front right foot, so she’s currently on what’s called stall rest, which is basically the equivalent of bed rest for a human. I’ve been gone for almost a month, and she’s developed this very sweet silly habit of trying to nibble on every part of me. Yesterday it was my beanie. Today it was the arms of my jacket. But she’s the love of my life (don’t tell my husband) so just being with her makes me happy.Evan is still in Pittsburgh shooting a new Netflix show called “Archive 81,” so we chatted on my drive home. We like to stay as much a unit as possible. I went out there for three weeks, and then I came home a little bit earlier than him because I wanted to be with Ten. The minute I found out she got hurt, he was like, “If you need to go home, I’ll understand.”Thursday EveningMy best friend, Emma, claims that I was an elf in a previous life. I do all the Christmas shopping for both of our families and all of our friends, so I’m currently set up in our living room surrounded by presents, my Christmas 2020 Excel spreadsheet, wrapping paper, scissors, ribbon, tape. All the essentials. I listened to Alabama Shakes. Evan proposed to “I Found You,” and sometimes when I miss him, I put them on.I’m in bed with a hot water bottle because I’m 90 and watching “The Queen’s Gambit.” I’m trying to savor it because I just think it’s so good. No, I have not learned chess. A card game like rummy, that’s my jam. Chess is too much for my brain to handle.I have a book problem, and there is a stack on my bedside probably 10 books high. I’m currently halfway deep into the latest David Sedaris, “The Best of Me,” and loving every second. I adore him. I’ve read almost all of his books and also listened to a lot of them on tape. His writing is so wonderful to begin with, but then when you hear him reading his writing, it just elevates it to the next level.Friday MorningEvan is the one that got me into the routine of putting music on first thing in the morning. It sets the tone for the day. Whitney Cummings mentioned the Lone Bellow the other day on her podcast, and I hadn’t listened to them in forever, so that’s what was on this morning.Spotify very kindly made me a 2020 playlist of the things I’d listened to most, so I put that on my drive to the barn. It was cold but sunny, so it was more of a sing-at-the-top-of-your-lungs-with-the-window-slightly-down than listen-to-a-podcast kind of day. A few faves on the playlist: Red Hearse, Lucy Dacus, Billy Joel, Fleetwood Mac, Phoebe Bridgers. Portugal. The Man is also on there; Nathaniel Rateliff, who came out with a solo album this year that’s super beautiful and lovely. Oh, there’s this great album that I love called “Trio.” It’s Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris. Sometimes when I’m cleaning the house, I’ll listen to it on repeat because their harmonies sound like angels.“My husband is like, ‘How do you spend six hours at the barn?’”Credit…Heather Sten for The New York TimesFriday AfternoonI got to the barn and first had to say hi to Tenny because she’s my princess unicorn, so she needs treats and kisses. Then I got to ride a Polly Pocket-size pony named Snickers. I had my lesson with my amazing trainer Vanessa. I got to ride one of our barn’s trusty steeds named Junior, who gave me a run for my money.My husband is like, “How do you spend six hours at the barn?” Well, we have to untack the horse. When we jump them, we wash their legs and spray them with liniment that keeps their legs healthy. Then we clean all of our tack. It’s part of the process that I love just as much as the riding — the care of the horse, the care of my tack.I stopped at Michaels because I needed a wreath hanger for our door. In middle and high school, there are horseback riding teams called [Interscholastic Equestrian Association], and there’s a whole show circuit. Our barn has one, and each year they take old horse shoes and paint them red, blue, green, silver or gold, and they make wreaths and sell them to raise money for the I.E.A. team. So I got one.Friday EveningI spent a little time decorating. I love Christmas more than anything. My maternal grandmother had this way of making Christmas exceptionally magical. There were all of these traditions, and the house was full of smells and sounds and lights. We always decorated the tree together. I’ve been enamored with magic since I was little, and what is more magical than Christmas? I’m the person who will sit on the stairs with all the other lights off at night and just watch the tree.I finally realized I was starving so I went with tacos. I listened to Phoebe Bridgers’s new holiday album, which is heartbreaking and gorgeous and sadly only four songs, so I had it on repeat for a bit. Then I put on “The Prom,” which was delightful, while wrapping presents. Elf duties.Saturday AfternoonI love Marc Maron’s podcast, and a friend recommended his episode with Glenn Close, so I finished that up on the way to the barn. What an epic human. What a crazy life. I had no idea she was in a cult!There are a few podcasts I’m obsessed with. I love “You Must Remember This,” which is all about old Hollywood. On the drive to Pittsburgh, I listened to “Dr. Death.” Oh my God, it’s crazy and fascinating. It’s about this surgeon who keeps botching all of these spine surgeries, but everyone’s too afraid to report him to the medical board. So he just keeps moving from hospital to hospital and paralyzing people. It’s very dark, but it was a six-hour drive, so it kept me entertained.Saturday EveningI’m about to start wrapping more presents while watching “Let Them All Talk.” Then it’s a pit stop for some of my banana bread that is my favorite thing ever. It’s gluten- and dairy-free with like five ingredients and yes, I know — Covid/lockdown/banana bread — but I’ve been making this literally for years. So please, no judgment.Sunday MorningWe were having a barn-decorating contest at the farm today so I decorated Ten’s stall with a unicorn theme. I didn’t win, but it’s just an honor to be nominated or whatever.Sunday AfternoonAfter the judging for the stall-decorating contest, we all gave our secret Santa gifts. Then I took down Ten’s decorations because she almost ingested a 10-foot-long piece of tinsel.Sunday EveningI headed home to wrap more gifts and hang with Moose. I really want to watch “PEN15,” but Evan and I watch that together so I can’t. So perhaps an old movie, possibly “Death Becomes Her.” I just realized that there seems to be a Meryl Streep theme going on here. Listen, I love me some Meryl — I mean, who doesn’t — but I definitely didn’t do that on purpose. Although what says, “It’s the holidays!” more than Meryl Streep? So I guess that’s it: I’m just in a very Meryl Christmas mood.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    What’s on TV This Week: ‘City Hall’ and ‘The Masked Dancer’

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhat’s on TV This Week: ‘City Hall’ and ‘The Masked Dancer’Frederick Wiseman’s latest documentary airs on PBS. And “The Masked Dancer” debuts on Fox.Mayor Martin J. Walsh of Boston, as seen in Frederick Wiseman’s “City Hall.”Credit…Film ForumDec. 21, 2020, 1:00 a.m. ETBetween network, cable and streaming, the modern television landscape is a vast one. Here are some of the shows, specials and movies coming to TV this week, Dec. 21-27. Details and times are subject to change.MondayWONDER WOMAN (2017) 6 p.m. on Cartoon Network. Superpowered sword and shield meet World War I weaponry in this DC Comics blowout, the first stand-alone “Wonder Woman” movie with Gal Gadot. (The second, “Wonder Woman 1984,” comes out this weekend.) Directed by Patty Jenkins, this take on the superhero’s origin story takes place primarily in the early 20th century, introducing Gadot’s character as a mythical Amazon warrior who lives with other Amazons on a Mediterranean island. That island is magically insulated from the rest of the world — until an American fighter pilot (Chris Pine) crash-lands there, tailed by German soldiers. The hodgepodge of mythology (of both the Greek and the comic-book varieties) and history that follows makes for a movie that “cleverly combines genre elements into something reasonably fresh, touching and fun,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The New York Times. The film’s “earnest insouciance recalls the ‘Superman’ movies of the ’70s and ’80s more than the mock-Wagnerian spectacles of our own day,” Scott added, “and like those predigital Man of Steel adventures, it gestures knowingly but reverently back to the jaunty, truth-and-justice spirit of an even older Hollywood tradition.”TuesdayCITY HALL (2020) 8 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). The documentarian Frederick Wiseman (“Titicut Follies,” “Ex Libris”) trains his patient, piercing lens on the Boston City government in this, his most recent documentary. Shot around Boston’s administration building and in other areas of the city (including, during one extended sequence, Faneuil Hall), the film follows Boston’s mayor, Martin J. Walsh, and other city employees during moments both mundane (streams of people arriving at City Hall, workers answering calls at a 311 center) and extraordinary (a town-hall meeting about a proposed cannabis dispensary that turns into an impassioned debate). In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis wrote that the film is both “an exploration of civil society and the common good” and “fundamentally a portrait of a people.” Dargis and Scott each included the film on their lists of the top 10 movies of 2020.WednesdayChris Rock, left, and Bernie Mac in “Head of State.”Credit…Phillip V. Caruso/DreamWorks PicturesHEAD OF STATE (2003) 10 p.m. on Showtime 2. A black-tie donor event derailed by Nelly’s “Hot In Herre.” A presidential debate where candidates quarrel over whether a debate is the same thing as an argument. These are a couple memorable moments from “Head of State,” Chris Rock’s directorial debut and a very early-2000s satire of American electoral politics. Rock stars as Mays Gilliam, an alderman who’s unexpectedly chosen to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. (He eventually enlists his older brother, played by Bernie Mac, to be his running mate.) The tone is set in the very first sequence, when a staid shot of Mount Rushmore tilts down to reveal the singer Nate Dogg performing at the monument’s base.MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS (1944) 8 p.m. on TCM. Hear Judy Garland sing “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” — and other songs that became standards — in this technicolor musical. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, the film follows four sisters coming-of-age over the four seasons leading up to the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis. The story it tells through sound and color, Bosley Crowther wrote in his 1944 review for The Times, is “warm and beguiling.”ThursdayA CHRISTMAS CAROL (1951) 7:50 p.m. on FXM. When this British adaptation of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” debuted in 1951, it stood in stark contrast to some of the more upbeat versions that had come before. “Where the last ‘Carol,’ produced by Metro, was a ruddy and generally cheerful affair, this one is spooky and somber, for the most part, except toward the end,” Crowther wrote in a review for The Times. It’s fitting, then, that FXM is airing the 1951 version, with the Scottish actor Alastair Sim, alongside a rebroadcast of last year’s FX’S A CHRISTMAS CAROL, another gritty take on the tale. That newer version, with Guy Pearce as Scrooge and Andy Serkis as the Ghost of Christmas Past, airs at 9:40 p.m.FridayFrom left, Cliff Parisi, Daniel Laurie and Annabelle Apsion in “Call the Midwife Holiday Special.”Credit…BBC Worldwide LimitedCALL THE MIDWIFE HOLIDAY SPECIAL 9 p.m. on PBS. This British series based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, an English nurse, has developed a fan base by offering a compassionate look at life — and a group of nuns at work — in a poor area of London in the late 1950s and ’60s. In a review for The Times, Jeannette Catsoulis called the show “unfailingly humane.” Those running low on holiday cheer may want to give this special episode a look.Saturday1917 (2019) 8 p.m. on Showtime. This time last year, the director Sam Mendes exploded into the award-season race at the last minute with this meticulous World War I movie. (It ended up winning several Oscars, including one for Roger Deakins’s cinematography, though it fell short of winning best director or best picture honors.) Made to look as though it were shot in a single take, the film follows a pair of British soldiers (played George MacKay and Dean-Charles Chapman) who are sent on a dangerous mission to deliver a message to a battalion on the front lines. It’s the kind of movie most would doubtlessly prefer to watch in a movie theater, as many audiences did last holiday season; the contrast between December 2019 and December 2020 is pretty well encapsulated by the idea of watching “1917” on a small screen, stuck at home.SundayA scene from “The Masked Dancer.”Credit…Michael Becker/FOXTHE MASKED DANCER 8 p.m. on Fox. Fox had a hit with “The Masked Singer,” a bizarre competition show in which celebrities compete in singing contests while their identities are hidden by elaborate costumes. The series, which was itself adapted from a South Korean program, gets a spinoff with “The Masked Dancer.” The new show’s participants will presumably be up against both their fellow contestants and the elasticity of their costumes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Catie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCatie Lazarus, Comedian With a Lot of Questions, Dies at 44On her live show “Employee of the Month,” she got laughs by interrogating writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and her fellow comics.The comedian Catie Lazarus in 2015. She began interviewing prominent people about their careers, she said, “because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in.”Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesDec. 20, 2020, 2:10 p.m. ETCatie Lazarus, a writer and comedian who probed the minds of celebrities and created her own late-night comedy universe on her longstanding self-produced live New York talk show, “Employee of the Month,” died on Dec. 13 in her apartment in Brooklyn. She was 44. Her father, Simon Lazarus III, said the cause was breast cancer.In 2011, as the nation recovered from the Great Recession, Ms. Lazarus was just another struggling comic trying to make it in New York. She had dropped out of a doctoral program in clinical psychology at Wesleyan University to move to the city, but as she tried establishing herself on the stand-up circuit, she discovered that stable jobs were hard to find. In light of these circumstances, she started hosting “Employee of the Month,” an interview-based talk show about work and labor at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.Ms. Lazarus asked notable writers, artists, politicians, intellectuals and comedians how they had achieved their enviable careers. She eventually interrogated subjects like Rachel Maddow, Dick Cavett, Greta Gerwig and David Simon. She inquired about disappointment, too — for example, she asked the journalist Kurt Andersen how he felt about getting pushed out of New York magazine.“I started hosting this show because I couldn’t quite figure out how to break in,” Ms. Lazarus told The New York Times in 2015. “I wanted to hear from people who, for the most part, love what they do and have carved out a niche for themselves. It wasn’t just about how they broke in, but what they continue to find worth struggling for, worth the heartache and the rejection and the economic toil and other types of losses that go along with it.”Her disarmingly intrusive interview style developed a following, and in 2014 Ms. Lazarus started hosting the show monthly at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. A live band accompanied her onstage, and nights crackled with the spontaneous energy of late-night television.Ms. Lazarus with her house band at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater in 2017.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus approached her inquiries from a more philosophical level as well, seemingly trying to answer a bigger question: Why exactly do people do what they do for a living during their relatively brief time on earth? She often steered guests into illuminating revelations and spectacle.Wallace Shawn reminisced about how he had considered becoming a taxi driver. Billy Crudup whispered something to her when she asked him how much he was paid for voicing Mastercard ads (she looked shocked). Gloria Steinem tap-danced onstage. And Ms. Lazarus asked Josh Russ Tupper, a co-owner of Russ & Daughters, to participate in a blind taste test of lox from his competitors Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass.“They said you can tell the difference in the lox,” she challenged him. “Do you feel there’s a difference in how your lox tastes?” (Mr. Tupper largely succeeded in identifying his shop’s salmon.)Lin-Manuel Miranda, who appeared on the show, was also a frequent guest in her audience. “Catie was the ultimate New York comedy connector,” he said in a phone interview. “Once you did the show, you were in the alumni group.” He added: “It’s unbelievable the level of connections that came through there. People before they blew up. After they blew up.”“It was,” Mr. Miranda said, “sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show.”Catherine Simone Avnet Lazarus was born on April, 26, 1976, in Washington. Her father was a public policy lawyer who had been associate director of the White House domestic policy staff in the Carter administration. Her mother, Rosalind (Avnet) Lazarus, was a federal government lawyer. A great-great-great-grandfather was Simon Lazarus, founder of the Lazarus & Company department store chain, which later became Macy’s Inc.A nursery report card from the Beauvoir School appeared to portend Ms. Lazarus’s future. “Katie is a great talker and will volunteer to sit in the ‘hot seat’ and speak on any topic whether she knows anything about her subject or not,” it read. “The class expects this now and, in fact, the resulting arguments are more lively due to Katie’s proddings.” (Ms. Lazarus delighted in this document as an adult and quoted from it frequently).She attended the Maret School and Wesleyan University, where she received a B.A. and an M.A. in psychology. She eventually pursued a doctorate in clinical psychology at Wesleyan but dropped out after a semester to try comedy in New York. (Ms. Lazarus said that an encouraging chance encounter with Tina Fey, in which they discussed improv, helped galvanize her decision.)Ms. Lazarus first took the stage at Stand Up NY on the Upper West Side, and she relished the nervous rush of trying to get people to laugh. She began performing on the comedy circuit at clubs like Carolines on Broadway and the Laugh Factory. And she took improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, where she started hosting her show. Early guests included Rachel Dratch, Reggie Watts and the Times journalist David Carr.“I was keenly aware that people went on to achieve these great things,” Ms. Lazarus told The Times. “I just didn’t know the steps that were involved to get there. That is why I started my show, because there is somewhat of a science to success.”In 2015, Ms. Lazarus had a career break herself when Jon Stewart gave her his first interview after leaving “The Daily Show.” She pressed Mr. Stewart about his next projects and who he thought might replace him on the show. While discussing his career, she projected an image of him wearing underwear in a spoof of a Calvin Klein ad from his MTV talk-show days.Around 2017, Ms. Lazarus ended her run at Joe’s Pub and brought her show to other venues, including the Gramercy Theatre in Manhattan and the Bell House in Brooklyn. Slate started airing a podcast of the show in 2018. Ms. Lazarus also took the show on the road, hosting it at Largo in Los Angeles and at the Sundance Film Festival.“All these people over the years, they wanted to be interviewed by her,” her father said. “And she shot for the moon. She really thought she could get anybody. She thought she could get Barack Obama. She didn’t get him, but she wasn’t shy about trying.”In addition to her father, Ms. Lazarus is survived by two brothers, Ned and Benjamin; her mother; and her stepmother, Bonnie Walter.In 2019, Ms. Lazarus took a break from her talk show. She had learned she had breast cancer in 2014 and underwent chemotherapy for years. She also wanted to finish a book of personal essays she was working on. As the pandemic took hold of life in New York, Ms. Lazarus spent her time at her apartment in Prospect Heights, writing in the company of her cocker spaniel, Lady.Ms. Lazarus at Joe’s Pub in 2016. “It was sort of a crime she didn’t have her own TV show,” Lin-Manuel Miranda said.Credit…Abel Fermin/ShutterstockMs. Lazarus always hoped her show might get picked up by a network or streaming service, and she was vocal about the gender disparity among late-night television hosts.“Showbiz has notoriously rewarded those who fail upwards,” she told Out magazine in 2018. “If and when Hollywood is ready for a talk-show host with chops, chutzpah, humor, no cavities and a genuine moral compass, will you tell them where to find me?”In her Times interview, Ms. Lazarus was asked what her own dream job was. She answered definitively.“What I do right now,” she said. “Hosting a talk show. I found mine, but it wasn’t intentional.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Sesame Street Creates New Muppets for Rohingya Refugees

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeHoliday TVBest Netflix DocumentariesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘R’ is for Rohingya: Sesame Street Creates New Muppets for RefugeesNoor and Aziz are Rohingya Muppets who will feature in educational programming that will be shown in refugee camps.A child in a Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh and Grover the Muppet in 2018.Credit…Ryan Donnell/Sesame WorkshopDec. 19, 2020, 2:03 a.m. ETBANGKOK — Six-year-old twins Noor and Aziz live in the largest refugee camp in the world. They are Rohingya Muslims who escaped ethnic cleansing in their native Myanmar for refuge in neighboring Bangladesh. They are also Muppets.On Thursday, the Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs the early education TV show “Sesame Street” and operates in more than 150 countries, unveiled Aziz and Noor as the latest Muppets in their cast of characters.The twins will appear with Elmo and other famous Muppets in educational programming about math, science, health and other topics that will be shown in the camps.They will speak Rohingya, the language of a group of people that the Myanmar authorities have refused to recognize as a legitimate ethnicity. Elements of Sesame Workshop’s curriculum will be dubbed into Rohingya.“They are among the most marginalized children on earth,” said Sherrie Weston, the president of social impact for the Sesame Workshop, who traveled to the Rohingya refugee camps several times to help formulate the Muppet twins’ characters and story lines. “For most Rohingya children, this will be the very first time that characters in media have looked like them, have sounded like them, and really reflect their rich culture.”More than half the residents of the Rohingya refugee settlements in Bangladesh are children. Many suffered trauma after security forces in Myanmar forced them out of their villages, murdering some of their fathers and raping their mothers.A survey by Doctors Without Borders, released in the wake of a brutal campaign in 2017 that compelled more than 750,000 Rohingya to flee the country in the span of a few months, found that at least 730 children below the age of five were killed from late August to late September of that year.The legacy of violence lingers in Bangladesh and has been incorporated into the Muppets’ histories. Noor, one of the Muppet twins, is scared of loud noises, just as many Rohingya children are today, as gunfire resounds in their memories.The Sesame Workshop has long sought to champion diversity and social justice. Muppets and their young playmates on Sesame Street have had autism, H.I.V. and Down syndrome. They have been homeless and struggled with the stigma of having an incarcerated parent. An Afghan Muppet exemplified the importance of educating girls.The muppets Noor and Aziz are Rohingya Muslim and new characters in the Sesame Street cast. Credit…Sesame WorkshopNoor and Aziz, as conceptualized by Sesame Workshop, are playful and get along well. Aziz, a boy, helps the family with household chores and is steeped in the Rohingya tradition of storytelling. Noor, a girl, is confident and loves learning. The programming chose to depict them specifically as twins so that they would able to play together as a girl and a boy in a way other siblings in this traditional Muslim community might not be able to as easily.“By modeling girls and boys being equal, by having characters that love to learn, it is important that we’re not only inspiring young girls, giving them a sense of possibility that they may not have had, but that we’re showing little boys that girls can have equal roles and responsibilities,” Ms. Weston said.The programming depicts the Rohingya Muppets as living in a vast warren of tent shelters where more than a million mostly stateless people have been crammed with little hope of returning to Myanmar. United Nations officials have suggested that their exodus bears the hallmarks of genocide.Life in the Rohingya refugee camps can be far harsher than what Noor and Aziz’s back stories suggest. Girls, who are often kept from school, tend to get married before they reach adulthood to ease the financial burden on their families. This year, hundreds of Rohingya girls spent months at sea in overloaded fishing vessels trying to get to Malaysia, where they had been promised as child brides to Rohingya men laboring as undocumented workers. Dozens died during the journey.On Friday, in Kutupalong, the biggest of the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh, Ajmat Ara, 8, shook her head when asked whether she knew of a furry collection of characters called the Muppets. Unlike many girls, she is lucky and goes to a school run by an educational charity.“We’re learning English and Burmese in school,” she said, before running off to play.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More