The actors lived together in a pandemic bubble and were tested for the virus three times a week, using masks, partitions, and distance to stay safe while performing. The show, presented by the Berkshire Theater Group, was outdoors, under a tent; the audience was just 50 people, all of whom were subjected to temperature checks, were required to wear masks, and were socially distanced from one another.Plus: The front row was 25 feet from the stage. More
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.INDIANAPOLIS — Bryan Fonseca, a leading theater producer in Indianapolis who challenged audiences with cutting-edge plays and was one of the city’s first impresarios to stage a show during the coronavirus pandemic, died there on Sept. 16. He was 65. The cause was complications of Covid-19, a spokeswoman for the theater said.Mr. Fonseca co-founded the Phoenix Theater in 1983 and led it for 35 years. It was a home for productions that might never have found a place on the city’s half-dozen more mainstream stages. His stagings shows included Terrence McNally’s exploration of a group of gay men, “Love! Valour! Compassion!” — which attracted picketers — “Human Rites,” by Seth Rozin, which deals with female circumcision, and unconventional musicals like “Urinetown” and “Avenue Q.”He left the Phoenix Theater in 2018 after a dispute with the board and started the Fonseca Theater Company, a grass-roots theater in a working-class neighborhood on the city’s west side. The company champions work by writers of color and has a largely nonwhite staff.Mr. Fonseca was committed to diversity because he believed that it made his productions stronger, Jordan Flores Schwartz, his company’s associate producing director, said. “He was a force for good in the lives of many, many people,” she said.At times, Mr. Fonseca said, his choices were “too controversial for the leaders of this conservative community,” and cost him corporate and foundation sponsors. He did not care. “His personal mission was to bring diverse work to Indianapolis, because he firmly believed we deserved that, too,” Ms. Schwartz said.After the pandemic closed theaters across the country in March, Mr. Fonseca brought live performance back to Indianapolis in July with a socially distanced production — in the theater’s parking lot — of Idris Goodwin’s “Hype Man: A Break Beat Play,” which centers on the police shooting of an unarmed young Black man.“He always believed theater had the power to unite people,” Ms. Schwartz said. “He wanted to be part of the conversation around the Black Lives Matter protests.”Mr. Fonseca took precautions — audience members were required to wear face coverings, and actors performed far apart from one another — but “Hype Man” was forced to close a week early when one actor developed an upset stomach, chills, sweats and a tight chest. He was tested for the virus, but the theater declined to divulge the results, citing privacy reasons.“We won’t put anyone — actors, crew, volunteers and, most importantly, you — at risk,” Mr. Fonseca wrote to his audience in a Facebook post announcing the cancellation. A month later, the theater returned with a second outdoor production, Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm’s “Hooded, or Being Black for Dummies,” which concluded on Aug. 30.Mr. Fonseca was quoted as saying in The New York Times in July that it was important to find ways to stage theater during the pandemic. “We’d rather go down creating good theater than die the slow death behind our desks,” he said.He became sick in August, Ms. Schwartz said, but it was unclear how he contracted the virus. He died at an Indianapolis hospital.Bryan Douglas Fonseca was born on Oct. 10, 1954, in Gary, Ind., to Manuel and Aggie Fonseca. His father was a railroad worker, his mother a homemaker. After graduating from William A. Wirt High School, Mr. Fonseca became the first in his family to attend college, studying sociology and theater at Indiana University Northwest in Gary, where he also started a storefront theater. He moved to Indianapolis in 1978. He received his bachelor’s degree from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis.He is survived by his father; his brothers, Kevin and Bob; and a sister, Hollye Blossom.Mr. Fonseca had a penchant for loud shirts, authentic Day of the Dead art, puppies, the music of John Prine and Christmas music (which he felt could start in as early as August). He was also a taskmaster, Ms. Blossom said.“If you were going to be in a play with him, you were going to work,” she said. “But after he got done yelling, everyone would go out for tequila together.” More
I’m an Asian television writer who has been extremely lucky in working fairly consistently since my first gig. I’m now in a position where people reach out to me to develop new projects. When these projects feature a Black lead character, is it ethical for me to pursue these opportunities?As an Asian (and a woman), I’ve definitely experienced my fair share of racism and discrimination, and I can write authentically about that experience. But I’m “just” Asian, and I may be taking a job from a Black writer. Or because it is Hollywood, it’s more likely I’d be taking the job from a mediocre white dude, which, ethically, I feel just fine about. If any of these projects got off the ground, I’d be able to create a lot of opportunities for other BIPOCs, but again, it’s Hollywood, so who knows how likely it is the project would ever get to that stage. The question is: Where do I, as an Asian, fall in this movement? I don’t want to be a tool of white supremacy, but visibility is important for my community too. Name WithheldGiven that you don’t control who will get the jobs you decline, you have no reason to think that avoiding projects with Black leads will result in their being handed to a Black writer. The usual pattern could be that you’ll be offered such a job after Black candidates have passed on it. Most shows, as you indicate, never get out of development. If you’re really good at your job, though, your writing could make it more likely that a project actually goes into production — creating more opportunities for Black actors, staff writers, filmmakers, animators and so on. The point is that you can’t predict what the net effect of an individual self-denying ordinance would be.There’s another issue to weigh — call it identity expertise. You could worry that, if you’re not Black, you’ll get things wrong about a Black character. (I’m talking about one in a narrative setting that aims for some measure of social realism; I’m not talking about a Black Mandalorian.) This can be a legitimate concern, although there are many kinds of Black characters, and Black writers, too, can certainly make a mess of them, because of the way gender, class, sexuality and the like shape experience as well. Or simply because they’re lousy writers. The same goes, I’m sure you’ll agree, for the many kinds of Asian characters.To be sure, what’s sought, in the guise of expertise, is often something else: Call it an identity permit. Esi Edugyan’s “Washington Black,” whose title character escapes slavery in 1830s Barbados, is a marvel of craft, research and imagination. The author is from Calgary, of Ghanaian parentage, and we’d be succumbing to racial primordialism — not to mention disserving her accomplishment — if we supposed that her being Black gave her expertise about the world of her novel; she put in the work. (And there are plenty of terrific white characters in the novel, too.) An identity permit, then, doesn’t need to be cashed out by experience. Conversely, if you lack an identity permit, putting in the work might not matter: A white woman of my acquaintance wrote a deeply researched novel set in early 19th-century America with a Black protagonist; despite the success of her previous novels, her publisher wouldn’t touch it.Questions about the way who you are might affect what you write are hardly new. “Fat men do not write the same kind of books that thin men write; the point of view of tall men is unlike that of short men,” the narrator who opens a 1947 novel tells us. But the novelist, far from endorsing the sentiment, was having fun with it. The narrator is a white, 65-year-old bachelor who dislikes the company of women; his creator was a married Black woman in her 30s.Which brings us to another tricky feature of the identity permit: Even as it grants access to some terrains, it can deny access to others. Ann Petry’s 1946 novel, “The Street,” set in a Black neighborhood in Harlem, was a huge best seller. Her next novel — the one I just quoted from — followed a group of white characters in a Connecticut town very like Old Saybrook, where the solidly middle-class author was born, raised and spent most of her life. Despite decent reviews, “Country Place” was, commercially speaking, a dud. Petry was a native in Old Saybrook, something of an interloper in Harlem. All the same, readers took her racial identity to mean that she understood Black people but not white people.Even in situations where identity expertise might be real and relevant, it doesn’t justify having only Black writers on projects with Black protagonists, any more than it would justify having only white writers when the main characters are white. So long as you’ve got a good ear and a supple imagination, the rule is: What you don’t know, you can work up. We don’t want an approach in which writers and characters must match up, one to one, in their racial or ethnic identities. That way lies a system in which Shonda Rhimes doesn’t get to write a series centered on the white surgeon Meredith Grey; in which George Eliot (being neither male nor Jewish) doesn’t get to tell the story of Daniel Deronda. Pretty soon, all storytelling would be confined to autofiction.Clearly, that’s not the world where you work or a world where you’d want to work. The projects you’d be considering surely involve the exercise of imagination. And then, because television series are typically crafted in writers’ rooms, characters and story lines can be a product of dialogue among people of lots of different identities. Rather like life, no?I reside on a predominantly white street in Richmond, Va. Recently, a neighbor whom I do not know personally started to fly a Confederate flag from his porch. This comes during a time of public reckoning and removal of the city’s iconic Confederate statues, and its arrival on our street was met with immediate outrage by my family and our neighbors. My initial reaction was to let this obviously angry, bigoted man fly his flag and to stay away, lest he come after me and my young family. But my husband argued that we cannot sit idly by in the face of overt racism. He pointed out that our son’s best friend, who is Black, comes over for regular play dates, and he should not be subjected to this. He voiced concerns that our silence conveys implicit agreement with racism. I am persuaded, but now I am not sure what our obligation is. My husband did walk over to ask this man what his intention was in flying the flag. He became irate and said, “Because I have a right to!” Do we, the other 20-plus neighbors, sign a petition or put a sign in his yard or in some other way call attention to his racist flag to let it be known that he is not supported? How do we lead by example — but not fan the fires of hate — and teach our children not to sit idly by? Name Withheld“Because I have a right to” isn’t a reason for doing something; rights are worth having because they enable us to do things we have other reasons to do. If Johnny Reb has the right to fly the flag — which is, let’s be clear, an inherently expressive act — you also have the right to plant a large sign on your lawn saying “I Think My Neighbor’s Flag is Racist.” What we have a right to do and what it makes sense to do are different things. The difficulty is that he’s already on the defensive. He doubtless knows that people view him as a racist, and whether or not he accepts that attribution, conversation on this topic isn’t likely to get very far or go very well. Still, you could try asking people who do know him to talk to him. They could ask him what message he meant to send, and then point out that, unless he intended to convey approval of a long history of racism, his message isn’t getting through. I’m doubtful this will produce a reasoned response, but you don’t know until you try.If his flag stays up, you should exercise your rights, too, to ensure that his flag doesn’t set the tone for the neighborhood. Why don’t you and your other neighbors identify a sign or symbol of your antiracist commitments and display it on your porches or lawns? Make sure it’s something whose meaning is clear. That way, he won’t have to walk over to ask you why you did it. More
130The number of remote live feeds installed in over 20 cities around the world in order to virtually gather over a hundred nominees. “It’s like 130 sports matches at the same time,” Ian Stewart, one of the show’s executive producers, said ahead of the ceremony. “Get your head around that fact. Each one of those is coming from people’s homes, hotels and backyards.”The video quality ranged from high to low, but there were few technical glitches. More
Jerry Harris, the breakout star of the Emmy-winning Netflix series “Cheer” who was arrested last week and charged with producing child pornography, will remain in custody, a court decided on Monday. His lawyer waived both his detention and preliminary hearings at a 10-minute hearing in a federal court in Chicago.Mr. Harris, who dialed into the hearing by phone, was represented by three lawyers, who appeared in person in the courtroom. His lead lawyer, Todd Pugh, asked the judge to postpone a decision about whether Mr. Harris will be released on bond, saying he did not yet have a plan for where Mr. Harris could stay if he were released.The judge, Sunil R. Harjani, asked Mr. Harris if he understood that his lawyer was waiving his right and that he would be in custody until a plan is in place, at which time he could ask the court to consider releasing him on bond.Mr. Harris said he understood.Judge Harjani ordered that Mr. Harris remain in custody in Chicago until a next hearing, which had not been scheduled.In an interview with law enforcement officials last week, Mr. Harris, 21, admitted to exchanging sexually explicit photos on Snapchat with at least 10 to 15 people he knew were minors, having sex with a 15-year-old at a cheerleading competition in 2019 and paying a 17-year-old to send him naked photos.Two 14-year-old twin brothers also filed a lawsuit against Mr. Harris in Texas last week that accused him of online and in-person harassment that lasted more than a year, beginning when the boys were 13 and Mr. Harris was 19. That, USA Today first reported, led to an initial criminal investigation.Mr. Harris has been held in custody since Thursday.John C. Manly, a lawyer representing the family of the brothers who are suing Mr. Harris, said in an interview on Monday that he supports the government’s decision to keep Mr. Harris detained. “Mr. Harris, in my opinion, is a clear and present danger to children,” said Mr. Manly, who focuses on representing victims of sexual abuse. Production of child pornography carries a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison and a maximum of 30 years.Lawyers for Mr. Harris left the courtroom without commenting.Robert Chiarito contributed reporting from Chicago. More
“She’s younger than Baby Yoda and she already has an Emmy,” Jimmy Kimmel said after a visibly shaken Zendaya, 24, became the youngest Emmy winner for best lead actress in a drama for her role as Rue on HBO’s “Euphoria.”The breathless actress, who was surrounded by a semicircle of teary-eyed supporters and wearing a crystal bandeau top with a billowing black-and-white polka-dot skirt, clearly had not prepared an acceptance speech.“This is pretty crazy,” Zendaya said as she clasped her hands over her statuette, as though hardly daring to believe it was real.[embedded content]The Disney-actress-turned-drama-star beat out the decades-older counterparts Jennifer Aniston, Olivia Colman, Sandra Oh and Laura Linney to claim the crown — not to mention the incumbent winner, Jodie Comer, who set the record last year when she won for “Killing Eve” at age 26.“Thank you to all of the other incredible women in this category,” Zendaya said. “I admire you so much.”“Euphoria,” a drama series created by Sam Levinson about high-school students who navigate love, sex, drugs and identity conundrums, premiered on HBO in June 2019. It received six nominations this year, though Zendaya’s was the only one for acting. HBO announced last year that the series had been renewed for a second season.The actress said she was inspired by others her age who were working to make a difference in the world. “I just want to say that there is hope in the young people out there,” she said. “And I just want to say to all our peers out there doing the work in the streets: I see you, I admire you, I thank you.” More
The field of Emmy nominees is more diverse than it has been in previous years, but a number of prominent actors, writers and producers say Hollywood can do more, a message they put across in a 60-second commercial that aired on ABC during the annual awards ceremony on Sunday.Billy Porter, Daniel Dae Kim, Jamie Chung, Isis King and Lin-Manuel Miranda are among those featured in the ad from the Alliance for Inclusive and Multicultural Marketing, an arm of the Association of National Advertisers trade group.“You act as if bias does not exist,” says Mr. Kim, who left the CBS police procedural show “Hawaii Five-O” in 2017 amid reports that he and an Asian-American co-star would be paid less than their white co-stars.“We are more than a splash of color on your white canvas,” says Mr. Porter, who last year became the first openly gay man to win an Emmy for best actor in a drama for his role in the FX show “Pose.”“We’re not your quota,” said Ms. King, who in 2008 became the first transgender woman to appear on “America’s Next Top Model.”A third of this year’s Emmy nominees in acting categories are Black, while performers of color make up 37 percent of the total, an increase from prior years, according to an analysis by The Los Angeles Times. But the writer, actor and director John Leguizamo said he would sit out the awards, telling Yahoo Entertainment that the absence of Latino representation in major categories and in Hollywood story lines amounts to “cultural apartheid.”The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is hoping to avoid similar accusations: This month it announced that films must meet certain diversity standards to qualify for a best picture nomination at the Oscars.Not all of the recent calls to eradicate bias in Hollywood have been well-received, including a public service announcement this summer from ITakeResponsibility.org. The group, working with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, recruited Aaron Paul, Kesha, Kristen Bell and other white entertainers to pledge that they would fight racism in a black-and-white video.The spot drew comparisons to the widely criticized “Imagine” singalong orchestrated this spring by the actress Gal Gadot. Viewers demanded that the video’s participants prove their commitment by marching in protests or donating to civil rights groups. More
From a scorched envelope — “to burn off all the germs,” he said — Jimmy Kimmel virtually presented Catherine O’Hara with her first Emmy Award for acting.In a sequined black dress and matching mask, O’Hara accepted her statuette for best lead actress in a comedy for her role as Moira Rose on “Schitt’s Creek.” It was O’Hara’s second Emmy of her career.“This is so cool.” she said. “I will forever be grateful to Eugene and Daniel Levy for the opportunity to play a woman of a certain age — my age — who gets to fully be her ridiculous self.”[embedded content]The 66-year-old Toronto-born actress was nominated last year in the same category (Phoebe Waller-Bridge of “Fleabag” claimed the statuette). In 2010 she was nominated for best supporting actress for the HBO mini-series biopic “Temple Grandin” (O’Hara played the animal husbandry expert’s aunt, opposite Claire Danes).She previously won a prime-time Emmy in 1982 for writing on “SCTV,” the influential Canadian sketch comedy show. (She impersonated everyone from Lucille Ball to Maggie Smith.) She has received six nominations in her 45-year television career, three for writing and three for acting.“Schitt’s Creek,” which wrapped up its six-season run in April, began in 2015 on CBC in Canada and Pop TV — it got a boost in popularity when Netflix started carrying it in 2017. The show was nominated for 15 Emmy Awards for final season, including for best comedy.O’Hara’s “Schitt’s Creek” castmates also won a trio of acting awards: Eugene Levy for best lead actor, Annie Murphy for best supporting actress and Daniel Levy for best supporting actor.The quirky Canadian comedy follows a once-wealthy family who, after being bankrupted by a shady business manager, must move to a small town the father bought for his son as a gag gift. After being shut out of the Emmys for its first four seasons, the show broke through last year with its first nominations — four in all, including one for best comedy — though it didn’t win any.O’Hara’s Moira is a fan favorite, beloved for her over-the-top personality and who-knows-where-that-came-from accent. But the washed-up former soap star isn’t just a meme mainstay — she is the unlikely emotional heart of the series.Last month, O’Hara told The Times that she already missed playing the wig-obsessed diva. “Moira’s way more interesting than I am,” she said. “And the fun thing about her was that she was an actor, so I could, once in a while, get to perform or get to do an accent. Once you’ve had that in your life, it’s really hard to give up.” More
