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    Why ‘Tiger King’ Is Not ‘Blackfish’ for Big Cats

    More captive tigers live in backyards, roadside zoos and truck stops in the United States than remain in the wild. This phenomenon is driven by people like Joseph Maldonado-Passage, the star known better as “Joe Exotic” in “Tiger King,” Netflix’s hit documentary series.Before his arrest and conviction, Mr. Maldonado-Passage was a major breeder and seller of tigers and other big cats. He churned out cubs for profitable petting and photo sessions, then disposed of them, legally or illegally, when they became too dangerous for play. Some were sold as pets to private buyers, some went to other roadside zoos for breeding and some simply disappeared.“I call it the breed and dump cycle,” said Carney Anne Nasser, director of the Animal Welfare Clinic at Michigan State University College of Law. The cub petting industry, she said, is “creating a tiger crisis in America,” driven further by widespread animal abuse and a lack of federal oversight.Many of the interview subjects featured in “Tiger King” say the story was presented to them as one that would expose the problem of private big cat ownership in this country, following in the tradition of many conservation-themed documentaries. Some in the film even say Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, the show’s co-directors and co-producers, claimed to be making the big cat version of “Blackfish,” the award-winning 2013 documentary that spurred widespread backlash against SeaWorld.“Tiger King,” however, “is not the ‘Blackfish’ of the big cat world,” said Manny Oteyza, the producer of “Blackfish.”Instead, big cats and the issues affecting them are completely lost in the show’s “soap opera-esque drama,” Dr. Nasser said.“Tiger King” tells the story of Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s rise, from small-time roadside zoo owner to one of the country’s biggest tiger breeders, then his fall as a felon. After being sued by Carole Baskin, a big cat activist and owner of Big Cat Rescue, an accredited sanctuary in Tampa, Fla., Mr. Maldonado-Passage became obsessed with destroying Ms. Baskin and plotted to have her killed.Critics fear that “Tiger King” creates a glamour around tiger ownership, and assigns a folk heroism to the “Joe Exotic” personality that could set back efforts to end the abuse and ownership of big cats.“We’re going to start seeing more selfies with cubs, more people wanting tiger cubs,” said Tim Harrison, a retired police officer and exotic wildlife specialist in Dayton, Ohio. He declined to be interviewed for “Tiger King,” because, he said, “it sounded like potentially it could be a freak show.”President Trump, when asked by a reporter on Wednesday if he would consider pardoning Mr. Maldonado-Passage, said he was not familiar with the case, but that he would “look into it.”When Karl Ammann, a documentary filmmaker whose work has focused on exposing the illegal wildlife trade, was invited to be interviewed for “Tiger King,” Mr. Goode and Ms. Chaiklin pitched the show to him as a chance to expose the plight of wild tigers. But he said the end product lacked any clear conservation message. “To totally ignore such key aspects was a real missed opportunity,” Mr. Ammann said.Mr. Goode and Ms. Chaiklin declined to be interviewed for this story, as did representatives from Netflix.Documentary films about animals and the environment are often lauded for their ability to engage viewers with the natural world and promote positive change.“Blackfish,” said Nancy Rosenthal, founder and executive director of the New York Wild Film Festival, is one of the clearest examples. Following the film’s release, SeaWorld’s stock prices fell and, in 2016, the company announced that it would end its orca breeding program and theatrical whale shows.In some cases, though, documentaries can have the opposite of their intended effect. The Oscar-winning 2009 documentary “The Cove,” about an annual dolphin hunt in the Japanese village of Taiji, sparked international furor.But Megumi Sasaki, director of “A Whale of a Tale,” a documentary exploring the aftermath of the first film, said it also provoked a domestic backlash that invigorated defenders of the Taiji fishermen.“When somebody comes in and says, ‘Hey, what you’re eating is not right,’ it really triggers emotions,” she said. “Everybody in Japan, even people who don’t care about whaling, felt that they were under attack.”What critics of “Tiger King” fear is that the conversation it has sparked, especially around its outlandish characters, might drive a similar dynamic.Mr. Maldonado-Passage, the series’ central character, is currently serving a 22-year prison sentence for 17 counts of wildlife crimes — including trafficking endangered species and illegally killing five tigers — as well as two counts of murder for hire.At his trial, the federal government presented extensive evidence supporting Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s guilt, including a 45-minute recording in which he discussed plans to arrange the murder of Ms. Baskin with an undercover F.B.I. officer.“The Department of Justice remains steadfastly confident that the court record, evidence and trial testimony fully supports the correctness of the jury’s verdict,” said Timothy Downing, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.The social media reaction to “Tiger King,” however, highlights the sympathetic interpretation of Mr. Maldonado-Passage that many viewers took away from the series.Hashtags such as #FreeJoeExotic and #JusticeforJoe have trended on Twitter and other social media platforms, which suggests many viewers believe he was framed in the murder for hire charges. Mr. Maldonado-Passage is “ecstatic” about “Tiger King’s” reception, Mr. Goode said in an interview with The Times.“I don’t know why anyone would side with someone who puts animals in a cage and then walks up and shoots them,” said James Garretson, who worked with federal authorities to gather evidence used to prosecute Mr. Maldonado-Passage. “People are just in a frenzy right now.”In the interest of entertainment and narrative arc, some documentary directors may find it acceptable to depart slightly from reality or to influence the participants’ actions, words or looks, said Steven Cantor, a documentary filmmaker.“Just because it has the word ‘documentary,’ doesn’t mean that everything in it has to be 100 percent truthful,” he said. “Certain stories you can enhance and not feel like you’re doing anything deceptive.”But critics of “Tiger King” assert that Mr. Goode and Ms. Chaiklin’s license went too far, at times taking quotes and shots out of context, presenting inaccurate information as fact and jumbling timelines.This problem, they say, was pronounced in the series’ portrayal of its other main character — and Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s intended victim — Ms. Baskin. She and other advocates are leading efforts to ban cub petting and phase out private big cat ownership through a bipartisan bill currently under review in the House.Ms. Baskin has been inundated with attention since the documentary’s release, she said, much of it hate mail and death threats. Mr. Maldonado-Passage’s fans have set up a dozen Facebook events threatening to storm Ms. Baskin’s sanctuary.Some of the animus toward Ms. Baskin might result from choices the filmmakers made in their storytelling. For instance, Ms. Baskin and other critics assert that footage was edited to imply that the animals Ms. Baskin cares for are kept in small, squalid cages. (In fact, the smallest enclosures on her property are 1,200 square feet, a size considered humane by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries for the species that live in them. )These and other editorial decisions, according to Michael Webber, director of “The Elephant in the Living Room,” a documentary about exotic animal ownership, have the effect of making Ms. Baskin and her sanctuary appear “equally bad” as Joe Exotic — a narrative that Mr. Maldonado-Passage has promoted for over a decade.“They present a false narrative that people like Carole Baskin who have legitimate sanctuaries are no different than Joe Exotic,” said Mr. Webber, “which could not be further from the truth.”Court testimony also revealed that Mr. Goode and Ms. Chaiklin paid Mr. Maldonado-Passage and other sources. Unlike the makers of reality television, who regularly compensate participants, documentary filmmakers traditionally do not pay sources, Mr. Oteyza of “Blackfish” said.Ms. Chaiklin told the Los Angeles Times that she and Mr. Goode only paid sources for life rights, archival and personal footage and licensing locations — not for interviews.“Categorically, we do not pay people for interviews,” Ms. Chaiklin said.But six people interviewed for the film — including John Finlay and Mr. Garretson, both major figures in the story — claimed that they were paid hundreds to thousands of dollars in cash.Jeff Johnson, a former friend of Mr. Maldonado-Passage who runs a popular Joe Exotic watchdog group, said that Mr. Goode “flat-out told me he needed me to text him some stuff, send some pictures, so he could legitimize why he was paying me.”“Tiger King” is the product of a quickly changing film industry, one in which the lines between documentary and fiction are blurring.“It’s all getting mixed up: documentary, entertainment, reality TV,” said Marcia Rock, a documentary filmmaker and director of the News and Documentary Program at New York University. She added that because of the financial incentives provided by some streaming outlets, “producers are seduced into going in that direction.”As successes of shows like “Tiger King” potentially encourage more programming that blurs the lines between documentary and reality television, some filmmakers worry about the social toll this could take.“I believe film and TV are the most powerful medium there is,” said Glen Zipper, a documentary producer and writer. “If we’re delivering something to you that is factually inaccurate — particularly when it has to do with something that is critically important — that ultimately could be quite dangerous.” More

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    Closed Theaters Are Nothing New. The Good News Is, They Reopen.

    LONDON — We live in unprecedented times — or so they tell us. The coronavirus lockdown, which began in Britain on March 23, has led to the cancellation of all theater performances through May 31, at least. What happens after remains to be seen.But this is hardly the first time the city’s playhouses have been closed: During Shakespeare’s time, and then again during World War II, to name two examples, they shut their doors in response to different calamities. But they reopened in due course, affirming a heartening capacity for cultural rebirth that speaks ever more urgently to us today.The plagues of the Shakespearean age did not allow for the contemporary comforts of social media or Zoom, but an artist’s need to create continued then as it surely is doing now: Shakespeare kept busy writing, retreating to the insular world of poetry and the comfort of home.His theater, the Globe, not subject to the health and safety requirements of the modern age, was a vector for contagion, not to mention inflammation: It burned down in 1613 and was rebuilt, only to be shut three decades later by the Puritans, who represented an obstacle to performance of a censorious rather than viral sort. That edict was eventually lifted in 1660 when the high spirits of the Restoration ushered in a new theatrical age.With the Globe shut, Shakespeare made a virtue of necessity. “King Lear” is often cited as a post-plague milestone whose unsparing view of the world was surely rooted, at least in part, in the uncertainty of the years when it was written: Adrift on the heath, its title character decries “the times’ plague, when madmen lead the blind.”Centuries later, London theaters faced a more visibly brutal onslaught in the form of the Blitz. The Luftwaffe’s bombing campaign began in 1940 and carried through to the following spring. The effect on the city’s playhouses was immediate. Out of 22 West End theaters offering shows on the first night of the Blitz, only two were still open the following week — among them the legendary Windmill Theater.London’s equivalent to the Moulin Rouge in Paris, the Windmill kept going throughout the war, its continuity in the face of adversity inspiring a 2005 movie, “Mrs. Henderson Presents,” starring Judi Dench, and, in 2016, a West End musical of its own.The bombs that fell across London’s theater land damaged some playhouses more than others. The Queen’s Theater on Shaftesbury Avenue (now called the Sondheim) remained shut for almost 20 years.“The artist’s lot is not a happy one at present,” opined a 1941 editorial in the trade newspaper The Stage, pointing to “unemployment, uncertain duration of engagement, and food-rationing difficulties” as problems that theater people faced.Those concerns are being echoed today, as a profession accustomed to living from job to job wonders how it will survive a prolonged pause. The British government has announced financial measures and cash grants to help small enterprises, including theaters, and a plan is afoot to pay self-employed people 80 percent of their earnings, up to 2,500 pounds, or about $3,000, a month. But those gestures, however welcome, will not allay the anxiety felt by the theater professionals encountered on social media who were appearing on the West End a month ago and are now applying for jobs in grocery stores — a growth industry in Britain, as it is elsewhere.It’s impossible not to feel deeply for those whose livelihoods hang in the balance. It’s rare these days for an artist to be in the position of Shakespeare, who enjoyed not just the royal patronage of Queen Elizabeth I and then King James I, but also of various nobles who facilitated and supported his work.And so, surveying a diary full of crossed-out events, I yearn for what is not to be: next week’s deferred opening of Timothée Chalamet’s London stage debut in “4000 Miles” at the Old Vic, or the enticing “Jack Absolute Flies Again.” This joint authorial riff from a seasoned playwright, Richard Bean, and a fine actor, Oliver Chris, on Sheridan’s 18th-century comic classic “The Rivals” was due any minute at the National Theater.Instead, my email inbox is bulging with notices of new writing initiatives inspired by the pandemic, alongside online readings, cabarets, virtual opening nights, and all manner of attempts to keep the cultural conversation alive during lockdown. (The public is doing its bit, too: One family on lockdown came together to deliver a very sweet rendition of the song “One Day More,” from “Les Miserables,” which quickly became a social media sensation.)The goal, of course, is to keep writers writing and actors busy until we can all reconvene inside those auditoriums that have weathered the financial storm. On the one hand, the musicals-heavy West End will probably reopen without the volume of tourists it needs to keep many of the tried-and-true hits going. The nonprofits, from the National Theater down, will have to live ever more by their wits, relying on individual largess to top-up government funding. Already, many of the state-subsidized theaters are asking patrons whose performances have been canceled not to take a refund, and to think of it as a donation.But can’t we also draw inspiration from the past as we face a parlous present? Plague was not just a one-time event for Shakespeare, who at a minimum would have confronted it in 1592 and then again in 1603, yet he emerged creatively enriched by the travails. In our own time, the AIDS crisis inspired works as momentous as Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” revived just a few years ago at the National Theater, and there’s every reason to anticipate a chorus of voices giving shape and sense to this confounding moment. (Caryl Churchill is just one playwright whose maverick intelligence must be brimming over with possible responses.)And if there’s a lesson to be learned from the shutdown of the Blitz, it lies in the British public’s enthusiasm for the work put before them. Stories abound of performances interrupted by air raids, in which the audience could have left, but didn’t, while playwrights like Terence Rattigan and Noël Coward responded with career-defining work to meet the public’s appetite.By 1944, when the end of the war was in sight, The Stage had moved on from its fearful editorial line to extol Britain’s theater as “an essential part of our imaginative life.” No virus is likely to alter that. More

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    Bernie Sanders Makes His First Post-Dropout Appearance on ‘The Late Show’

    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. If you’re interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox.Bye Bye BernieBernie Sanders announced the end of his presidential campaign on Wednesday, addressing supporters in a live-streamed speech from his home. Sanders later appeared on “The Late Show,” where he told Stephen Colbert he hopes to work with Joe Biden to defeat Donald Trump.TONIGHT: In an exclusive interview with @StephenAtHome, Sen. @BernieSanders shares how he can work together with Joe Biden to defeat President Trump in November. #LSSC pic.twitter.com/AmVjm0k8o1— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 9, 2020
    “What I said from the first day that I announced my intention to run for president, I will do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump is not re-elected,” Sanders said.“Bernie Sanders is saying Bernie Sanders can’t win? Man, he is going to catch hell from Bernie Sanders supporters.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“I guess during a pandemic crazy ideas like Medicare for all just don’t resonate.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“He’s pushed Medicare for all into the mainstream, he’s shined a light on income inequality, and how corporations have used money to rig the system in their favor. And he showed us all that it’s OK to use our outdoor voice indoors.” — TREVOR NOAH“He made the announcement from his home in Vermont, where he has been holed up for weeks, obviously, without the benefit of a haircut.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“[imitating Bernie Sanders] Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get Michael J. Fox back to 1985.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Within a few minutes of this news breaking, this is what was trending: ‘RIP Bernie.’ And you know, when you’re in the middle of a pandemic talking about a 78-year-old man, maybe choose your hashtag a little bit more carefully.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“Give Bernie credit, though — he held on for longer than your mother on the phone. Even after you thought it was over, had a few more ideas to share.” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Punchiest Punchlines (Fear Leader Edition)“The president is not a cheerleader. The president is a quarterback. Tom Brady doesn’t pull everybody into the huddle and say ‘OK, bring it in guys. All right, I’ve got a theory that in a couple of months when it gets warmer, the other team is just gonna go away like a miracle. Ready? On three: do nothing!” — STEPHEN COLBERT, on Trump saying he is a “cheerleader for the country”“Give me a B! Give me an S!” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He’s more of a fear leader than a cheerleader.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“He is so ready to move on from this. He tweeted today: ‘The horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten.’ No. It should not be. Forgotten. We need to remember so the next time it happens, we’re prepared for it. Also, is this how we handle tragedies now? What happened to ‘never forget?’ We went from ‘never forget’ to ‘fuhgetaboutit!’” — JIMMY KIMMELThe Bits Worth WatchingSamantha Bee staged her own shed-based version of Vogue’s 73 questions on this week’s “Full Frontal.”What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightComic Tig Notaro will pop up on Thursday’s “Conan.”Also, Check This OutLaughter might not be the cure, but it’s said to be the best medicine. Check out 10 of the best comedies on Netflix right now. More

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    What’s on TV Thursday: ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ and ‘Shaq Life’

    What’s StreamingNEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS (2020) Rent on Amazon, Fandango Now, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. A teenager goes on a subtly perilous journey to terminate her pregnancy in “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” the latest feature from the filmmaker Eliza Hittman. The movie follows Autumn (Sidney Flanigan), a 17-year-old who can’t get an abortion in her central Pennsylvania hometown without parental permission, which isn’t in the cards for her. So she takes a bus to New York, where she can have the procedure without permission. But the city presents its own host of challenges. Manohla Dargis called the movie a “low-key knockout” in her review for The Times. “Hittman is telling a story,” Dargis added, “but she’s also making a quietly fierce argument about female sovereignty.”DOLITTLE (2020) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. This most recent reimagining of the children’s literature character Doctor Dolittle was a bit of a box-office dud, but young viewers stuck at home may be able to get an escapist thrill from it. “Dolittle” casts Robert Downey Jr. as the animal-whispering doctor, first dreamed up a century ago by Hugh Lofting. This reboot gives Dolittle a tragic back story, and has him in seclusion when the plot kicks off. His solitude doesn’t last: The doctor is soon called upon to aid Queen Victoria (Jessie Buckley), who has been poisoned by a substance whose cure — inconveniently or conveniently, depending on your appetite for swashbuckling — can only be retrieved by sailing to a distant, exotic land. Don’t expect to feel fully on board: In her review for The Times, Manohla Dargis called the movie “a dreary, overextended yawn.”What’s on TVSHAQ LIFE 9 p.m. on TNT. “Look, I’m not one to be narrating TV shows,” Samuel L. Jackson says while narrating this TV show. “But when Shaq calls, I answer.” See Shaquille O’Neal sniff a scented candle, toss pizza dough, buy shoes, D.J. and more in this new reality series, which gives Shaq’s admirers a window into his remarkably busy life as a retired professional basketball player — and an opportunity to live vicariously through him. Sprinkled throughout are pieces of insight from Shaq, who in the first episode gives a young man advice on attending an eighth-grade dance. “Listen,” he says. “If the dance starts at 8, show up at 8:15.”ZOMBIELAND: DOUBLE TAP (2019) 7:20 p.m. on Starz. Rotten flesh and nostalgia fly across the screen in “Zombieland: Double Tap,” the latecomer sequel to 2009’s “Zombieland.” Like the first movie, this violent comedy sees Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone butchering the undead in creative ways — this time with the help of Rosario Dawson, Luke Wilson, Zoey Deutch and other newcomers. “The whole movie is very 2009,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, “which is amusing and puzzling and possibly kind of a relief, given what ‘very 2019’ might look like.” More

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    What’s on TV Wednesday: ‘Parasite’ and ‘Modern Family’

    What’s StreamingPARASITE (2019) Stream on Hulu; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. The South Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho won an armful of Oscars for “Parasite,” a comedic thriller that this year became the first film not in English to earn the Academy Award for best picture. The movie takes aim at social stratification: Set in South Korea, it centers on a poor family whose members begin working for a wealthy one. Their story, first comic, then shocking, involves tutoring, deception and pizza. In her review for The New York Times, Manohla Dargis called the film “brilliant and deeply unsettling.” She wrote that Bong “creates specific spaces and faces — outer seamlessly meets inner here — that are in service to universal ideas about human dignity, class, life itself.”THE KILLING OF A SACRED DEER (2017) Stream on Netflix; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. For another whirligig story in which a well-off family’s life is upended, see this stylized thriller from the Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. Nicole Kidman and Colin Farrell star as married doctors whose world is rattled by a young man named Martin (Barry Keoghan), who seeks revenge for an incident that happened years before. Lanthimos “is less interested in moral shock therapy or social criticism than in aesthetic estrangement,” A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. “‘Sacred Deer’ feels like a dark, opaque bit of folklore transplanted into an off-kilter modern setting.”ONWARD (2020) Stream on Disney Plus; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Two elves trade the quiet, suburban life for an epic quest in “Onward,” the latest offering from Pixar. Those elves — Ian (voiced by Tom Holland) and Barley (Chris Pratt) — are brothers living in a post-fantasy world, where magic has been largely supplanted by technology. When their mother (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) gives them an enchanted staff that has the power to bring their dead father back to life (for a limited time only), the pair jump at the opportunity. The spell only half-works: They manage to summon their dad, but only from the hips down. Bringing back his upper half will require them to trek through their land of pixies and other mythical creatures in search of more magic. “Ian and Barley’s journey plays as disappointingly routine, a checklist of mechanically foreshadowed heart-to-hearts and lessons learned, leavened by the occasional offbeat sight gag,” Ben Kenigsberg wrote in his review for The Times. Still, Kenigsberg wrote, the filmmakers “have clearly had fun imagining a milieu with belligerent biker sprites and cops who are centaurs or Cyclopes.”What’s on TVMODERN FAMILY 9 p.m. on ABC. After 11 seasons, Christopher Lloyd and Steven Levitan’s three-family sitcom will come to a close, with an hourlong series finale. Before that, at 8 p.m., ABC will air “A Modern Farewell,” a documentary about the show’s behind-the-scenes life. The fact that the show is itself a mockumentary should make that documentary feel quite meta. More

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    One Theater Tries an Alternative to Cancellation: An All-Audio Season.

    The Williamstown Theater Festival has been grappling with the same dilemma facing every performing arts organization during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic: Public health concerns have made it difficult to imagine — or plan — an ordinary summer.But the prestigious nonprofit, known for an annual summer season that for decades has drawn a stream of A-list artists to Western Massachusetts, determined not to simply join the parade of cancellations this year.So, in a bold attempt to salvage its shows, the festival is taking an unusual step: it has decided to develop, rehearse, and record all seven of its planned productions and release them in audio form on Audible.The productions — which include the world premiere of a new musical — will feature the same performers that would have appeared onstage, including Dylan Baker, Kate Burton, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Chlumsky, Carla Gugino, Audra McDonald and Taylor Schilling.“This felt like the only way forward,” said Mandy Greenfield, the festival’s artistic director. She said she had proposed the all-audio season “in my panic and passion for not allowing the devastation of this moment to silence artistic voices.” More

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    The Obie Awards Go Online. The Money Saved Goes to Artists.

    The Obie Awards, an annual ceremony honoring the best New York theater work performed Off and Off Off Broadway, will go virtual this year, forced online by the coronavirus pandemic that has caused the cancellation of in-person gatherings.That’s not much of a surprise — almost all performing arts events this spring have been scuttled for public health reasons.But here’s a twist: The awards’ organizers will give the money that would have been spent on an in-person event to artists whose plays could not be staged because of the outbreak.“The judges felt very strongly that we needed to honor the great work that occurred, and to pay homage to what had not,” said Heather Hitchens, the president of the American Theater Wing, which presents the Obies with The Village Voice. “The virtual ceremony will celebrate what was, and offer relief grants to celebrate what might have been.”The awards, given out annually since 1956, with informal categories determined each year by judges, will honor an abridged season: shows that opened between May 1, 2019 — the start of the season — and March 12, 2020 — the day that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo banned large gatherings to slow the spread of the virus. The in-person ceremony had been scheduled for May 18; the date for the virtual ceremony has not been determined, but the hope is that it will be at around the same time, and will feature awards and performances.The panel of judges is being led by the scenic designer Rachel Hauck, who won a Tony Award last year for “Hadestown,” and the choreographer Sam Pinkleton, a Tony nominee for “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812.”The Wing estimates that more than 90 Off and Off Off Broadway shows were shuttered by the pandemic. Hitchens said that the Wing had cobbled together $250,000 — some intended to finance the in-person ceremony, and some raised from donors including the Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust and the production company No Guarantees — to give to people working on shows that were canceled or postponed. “The idea is $500 per artist until the funds run out,” she said.The Wing, a theater advocacy organization founded in 1917 and best known for founding and co-producing the Tony Awards, said it would also make small gifts to regional theaters and offer virtual master classes as part of its response to the pandemic.The decision by the Obies is only the latest in a series of changes to theater awards ceremonies this year. The Olivier Awards, which honor theater in London’s West End, were scheduled to take place last Sunday but were replaced by a broadcast featuring highlights of previous ceremonies; the Oliviers hope to honor 2020 awards winners in the fall. The Tony Awards, which honor Broadway plays and musicals, have been indefinitely postponed, and it is not clear whether there will be an awards ceremony this year or a noncompetitive celebration of the industry.Smaller awards ceremonies have chosen a variety of responses — the Lucille Lortel Awards, which also honor Off Broadway work, will hold a virtual ceremony, while the Chita Rivera Awards, which honor theatrical dance, were postponed from spring to later in the year. The Jimmy Awards, which honor high school musical theater performers, have been canceled. More

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    What’s on TV Tuesday: ‘Schitt’s Creek’ and ‘What You Gonna Do’

    What’s on TVSCHITT’S CREEK 8 p.m. on Comedy Central, Logo and Pop TV. Last week, the first half of this Canadian sitcom’s series finale brought viewers to tears. (Spoiler alert!) The four members of the Rose family prepared to leave the motel behind. Moira (Catherine O’Hara) and Johnny (Eugene Levy) are off to Los Angeles; Alexis (Annie Murphy) is heading to New York and David (Daniel Levy) and Patrick (Noah Reid) are staying in the titular town to build a new life together. In the second half of the finale, which will also air on Comedy Central and Logo, rain threatens to ruin David’s wedding day, but the family is there to lift his spirits. In an interview with The New York Times, Daniel Levy, one of the show’s creators, said the series can do without grand gestures at its end. Fans “don’t need a huge fireworks display,” he said. “They just want to know that the characters are going to be OK.” A documentary special on the making of the final season follows at 8:30 p.m.THE LAST O.G. 10:30 p.m. on TBS. When we last saw Tray (Tracy Morgan), the former convict at the center of this comedy series, he was in disarray after his food truck went up in flames. Now he’s ready to move out of his mother’s house and get back on his feet. In this third season premiere, Tray searches for a place of his own in his newly gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood and seeks advice from an old-timer (Mike Tyson) on how to move on from his checkered past. Other guest stars making an appearance this season include J.B. Smoove, Marla Gibbs and Katt Williams.What’s StreamingWHAT YOU GONNA DO WHEN THE WORLD’S ON FIRE? (2019) Rent or buy on Amazon, FandangoNOW, Google Play, iTunes and Vudu. This documentary weaves four stories together to paint a portrait of the troubles plaguing African-Americans in the South, mainly in New Orleans. There’s a teenager teaching his younger brother how to defend himself as shootings become a regular occurrence; a bar owner struggling to keep her business afloat; a group called the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, which protests police violence against young black men, and a chief with the Mardi Gras Indians who is working to keep the tribes’ cultural heritage alive. Ben Kenigsberg named the movie a Critic’s Pick in his review for The Times. “Although the people in the film may have been let down by institutions,” he wrote, “they draw strength from one another.”TERRACE HOUSE: TOKYO 2019 — 2020 Stream on Netflix. If you’re searching for a quiet escape from coronavirus news, this Japanese reality series will do the trick. Back for Part 3, the show follows six young men and women living in a glamorous house in Tokyo. In the first episode, Haruka tells Peppe whether or not she will take him as her beau, and Ruka shares some personal news. More