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      Tennessee Law Limiting ‘Cabaret’ Shows Raises Uncertainty About Drag Events

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      The measure is part of a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country against drag performances. Many are wondering how it will be applied.NASHVILLE — A bill signed into law this week in Tennessee makes staging “adult cabaret” on public property or anywhere a child could see it a criminal offense. The law forbids performances in those places by topless, go-go or exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who, as the law defines it, provides entertainment that is “harmful to minors.” The word “drag” does not appear in the legislation. And to some legal experts, the description provided in the letter of the law would not apply to drag as they know it. But many in the state are still trying to grasp how the measure will ultimately affect drag events, theater performances that involve drag, and even transgender and gender nonconforming people as they go about their lives.The law is part of a cascade of legislation across the country fueled by a conservative backlash to drag events, which has also spurred protests from far-right groups and threats directed at performers. Now that it is one of the first to succeed, with lawmakers in other states pursuing legislation with similarly ambiguous language, the law has prompted concerns about how it will be enforced and the implications it could have.“The murkiness of this law is causing a lot of people to be on edge,” said Micah Winter, a performer and board member of Friends of George’s, a theater company in Memphis whose shows are often centered on drag.Proponents of the legislation have described it as a way to safeguard children, asserting that drag events can have sexualized language and suggestive performances that may be too mature for younger viewers.“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Republican state senator who sponsored the legislation, said on Twitter.Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee giving his State of the State address in February. Mark Zaleski/Associated PressStill, the legislation figures into a campaign by conservative lawmakers across the country to curb the rights of people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In Tennessee, one proposal would block transgender people from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses, and on Thursday, the same day Gov. Bill Lee signed the adult cabaret bill, he approved legislation that prevents all puberty-delaying treatment, hormone therapies and referrals for transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care in the state.Drag has become more mainstream in Tennessee, as in much of the country. Performers in vibrant costumes that upend gender assumptions could simply be reading a book, promoting acceptance and literacy. Or they might be “reading” — that is, playfully mocking — tourists piled onto buses rolling through Nashville or lip-syncing in variety shows in boozy brunches in Memphis or Chattanooga.“Not one of our performers on this bus has ever shown more skin than a Titans’ cheerleader on a Sunday afternoon,” David Taylor, an owner of the Big Drag Bus Tour in Nashville and bars that host drag events, said in a hearing on the legislation.Legal experts said the equivocal wording meant that the adult cabaret law was not exactly a ban on drag but could still have consequences.“It’s an anti-drag law,” said Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, “because they passed it intentionally to try to chill and prevent people from doing drag, but that’s not really what the law says.”“It should not even touch any drag performances,” she added. But after watching public commentary and a series of legislative hearings debating the merits of the bill, she said, “it’s clear that some people think that drag in and of itself as an art form is obscene and that it should not be viewed by children.”But Ms. Sinback said the parameters set in the legislation should not apply to most drag performances, given that they would have to be considered extremely sexual or violent, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values, and be considered broadly offensive and obscene to a child to warrant charging the performer with a crime.Mr. Johnson said that the law was not meant to target drag performances in general or discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “It simply puts age restrictions in place to ensure that children are not present at sexually explicit performances,” he said in an interview with CNN.Critics said the legislation reflected what many in the gay and transgender community have described as a bleak and dangerous climate in Tennessee, threatening people who are often marginalized and already uniquely vulnerable. The law over medical care has provoked the most alarm. The Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposed the law, saying in a statement that it will “significantly limit our ability to practice to the standard of care established by numerous national medical organizations.”Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is working with other civil liberties groups in mounting a legal challenge to the legislation barring gender-affirming care, said, “This is clearly an effort to villainize us and isolate us because they fear our resilience and our self-love and our collective power.”People protesting against the bill on cabaret restrictions in Knoxville, Tenn., in February. Jamar Coach/News Sentinel, via ReutersTennessee is one of more than a dozen states where conservative lawmakers, focusing on issues of gender and identity, have pursued legislation that explicitly or otherwise seeks to impose restrictions on drag events.Some of the bills would require venues to register as adult entertainment spaces or “sexually oriented businesses,” and others would forbid performances at schools or libraries. A proposal in Arizona would outlaw drag performances within a quarter-mile of public playgrounds and schools.The law in Tennessee has not yet spurred a legal challenge, but activists and lawyers were prepared to start one as they watched to see how it is applied. Those who violate the law will be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for continued offenses.The drag performer Poly Tics attending a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. Bruce Schreiner/Associated PressIn Kentucky, where the State Legislature has advanced a sprawling bill to curtail health care access for L.G.B.T.Q. children, lawmakers had also considered restrictions that included prohibiting what the state classifies as “adult performances” from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship. The legislation was amended on Thursday to limit such performances from taking place in public places or a location where the performance could be viewed by a child — a step that critics of the legislation took as a victory.“This version is much more narrowly tailored to just explicit sexual content,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Kentucky, who acknowledged that much of his organization’s limited energy was focused on challenging the legislation on restricting gender-affirming health care.Compared with other proposals on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that advocates contend will have immediate and damaging impact, the ones that are tied to drag stir worries rooted more in uncertainty.For transgender and gender nonconforming people, who face a heightened threat of violence, some fear the law could be wielded as a tool to further discriminate against them.“The language is vague enough that it leaves it in the hands of each individual jurisdiction to define what counts as a ‘male or female impersonator,’” said Dahron Johnson, who works in community outreach with the Tennessee Equality Project. “They could say I, just going about my daily life, am an ‘impersonator.’”In theater, there is a long history of performance featuring cross-dressing and drag — Shakespeare famously employed male actors to play female roles — and many touring shows feature some variation on the practice: “The Lion King” (a male meerkat, Timon, dons a dress to dance the Charleston), “Hairspray” (the protagonist’s mother is often played by a man in drag) and “1776” (now touring with a new production in which all the male characters are played by female, transgender and nonbinary actors).“Hairspray” and many other theater productions feature drag performances.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re absolutely opposed to any legislation that restricts the rights of our producers to present stories we’ve been presenting for 4,000 years,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and presenters around the country. Ms. Martin said the league is “very concerned” about the legislation under consideration in multiple states.Brett Batterson, the president and chief executive of the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis, said that on Friday, he paused conversations about bringing to Memphis a solo show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” a small, long-running and popular touring production that has played all over America and is performed by a man in drag.“We decided we would pause our discussion to see how some of the language is interpreted,” Mr. Batterson said. “I think the law will be challenged, and we want to see how it plays out.”For now, Friends of George’s was not ready to change any of its plans. “We think it’s outrageous, but we’re forging ahead with our next production in spite of everything,” said Ty Phillips, the nonprofit’s vice president.Yet uncertainty remained. Mr. Winter noted that over the years he has played Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” and the mother in “Hairspray.”“Can I still do that?” he asked. More

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      ‘1 + 1’ Review: She Just Wants to Be His Plaything

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      Stale views of gender dynamics power Eric Bogosian’s play about an aspiring actress caught in the clutches of a duplicitous man.The actor and playwright Eric Bogosian blazed a career on Off Broadway stages in the 1980s and ’90s by mucking around in mankind’s basest instincts. In plays like the 1987 Pulitzer Prize finalist “Talk Radio,” about a self-destructive shock jock, and in monologue collections including “Drinking in America,” Bogosian dared audiences to face the darkest recesses of masculinity even as he compelled them to recoil. But his latest play is more likely to induce a cringe.As the title might suggest, Bogosian’s schematic three-hander “1 + 1,” which opened at the SoHo Playhouse on Wednesday, is a kind of thought experiment. First performed in 2008, and now receiving its Off Broadway premiere in a co-production with The Black Box, “1 + 1” asks what happens when a man encounters a woman who embodies his most obvious fantasies and fears. The answer seems to be that desire is a source of weakness that makes the man into a fool. And the woman who is destroyed in the process? Consider her collateral damage.Phil (Daniel Yaiullo) is the type who orders steak alone at lunch in Los Angeles, which is how he meets Brianne (Katie North), an aspiring actress waiting tables, a job she calls “something I have to do while I’m waiting for my life to begin.” He says he’s a photographer; she asks if he does headshots. Soon they’re back at his place, where he offers her a joint, asks whether she’s ticklish and persuades her to pose nude. “You’re such a tough cookie,” he coos, inaccurately, as she proves both impossibly gullible and exceptionally game.They rapidly escalate to producing internet pornography and smoking crack, but Phil’s exploitation of Brianne is all too easy: She comes across as little more than a ventriloquist’s doll responding in kind to the men she attracts, including her manager at the restaurant, Carl (Michael Gardiner), who fawns over her and is standing by when her relationship with Phil inevitably goes south. Fast-forward five years, and Phil is sitting pretty with an office job, expecting a son with his wife, while Brianne’s life is in shambles. This is the part where she pivots from pinup and good-time girl to a family man’s worst nightmare.Despite the play’s overload of clichés, it’s possible to imagine a production of “1 + 1” that takes into account the dramatic shift in public consciousness about gendered power dynamics over the past 15 years, but the director Matt Okin resists applying much of that hindsight. North’s performance chafes in vain against the material’s ick factor, to curious and frustrating ends. Brianne purrs and preens even as she expresses skepticism, and whines and demurs when she might bare real claws.At least one part of the equation seems to hold: Lechery does make monsters and mincemeat of men, even if the ones depicted here face few consequences. But to imagine a woman who wants little more than to be desired and consumed is a stale and hollow provocation.1 + 1Through March 19 at the SoHo Playhouse, Manhattan; sohoplayhouse.com. Running time: 1 hour and 45 minutes. More

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      ‘Hercules’ Review: An Underpowered Hero in a Far From Perfect Package

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      A new production of the Disney musical at the Paper Mill Playhouse falls short of inspiring awe.It always puzzled me why it’s taken so long for “Hercules,” arguably Disney’s most Broadway-ready animated film musical, to get a proper staging. Sure, it’s got lightning-hurling gods and thunderous titans running amok, but if the omnipotent entertainment company can make nannies and carpets fly onstage, it can certainly find a way to bring to life the myth of Zeus’ mortal son, whose daring deeds, its song “Zero to Hero” goes, make great the-a-ter.The Public Theater figured out a scrappy, low-budget way through its Public Works program in 2019: Alan Menken’s hit-after-hit score, with lyrics by David Zippel, handled the razzle-dazzle and Kristoffer Diaz’s book retooled the 1997 film’s story to focus on the importance of community.Now comes a sloppily revised iteration written by Kwame Kwei-Armah, the artistic director of the Young Vic theater in London, and the composer Robert Horn at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, N.J. The story still follows the attempts by the earthbound Herc (Bradley Gibson) to achieve hero status in order to regain access to Mount Olympus after his spiteful uncle Hades (Shuler Hensley) strips him of his immortality shortly after birth. He still falls for the not-quite damsel-in-distress Megara (Isabelle McCalla), despite his trainer Phil’s (James Monroe Iglehart) advice, and to the accompanying tune of a quintet of soulful Muses.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.But while the Public’s version took its cues from a post-2016 society and earnestly questioned what it meant to be a hero — its Grecians hungry for affordable housing and stable social programs rather than a strongman to save the day — Lear deBessonet returns to direct a production that is surprisingly drab and lifeless.DeBessonet’s transitions are clunky and ineffective. Emilio Sosa’s costumes look borrowed, lacking godly luster above (Zeus and Hera are out of a Nativity scene) and classical taste below (mostly leggings and tunics, and an unconvincing toga for Hercules). Chase Brock and Tanisha Scott’s choreography can be bested by most cheer squads. With its towering Doric columns, Dane Laffrey’s set actually inspires some awe, but only when Jeff Croiter’s uneven lighting design makes it visible.Menken and Zippel’s original songs (“I Won’t Say (I’m in Love),” “The Gospel Truth,” among others) remain undeniable treasures, taking divine cues from gospel, but are blandly arranged by the five people credited with the score’s presentation, which has a blurry sound that may as well come from a backing track. The new material is less exciting, but at least orchestrated with a bit more ingenuity.The Muses (Tiffany Mann, Anastacia McCleskey, Destinee Rea, Rashidra Scott and the luminous Charity Angél Dawson) mine much-needed melismatic oomph from the material, but, aside from McCalla’s magnetic performance, they stand alone in that regard. The production’s biggest names, Hensley and Iglehart, passively traipse on and offstage.And as the near-superhuman wonder boy, Gibson’s uneasy stage presence results in stilted line readings and an unconvincing performance. Granted, his role — the title one, mind you — is barely a character here; a written characterization that’s hyper-infantilized even by Disney standards.The show is also rife with uncaring gaffes — an obviously Gucci-inspired tracksuit Phil wears is as incorrectly Italian as a joke about a local Times New Roman newspaper. Are the Muses, as they insipidly joke, our “literal Greek chorus” and thus the only ones able to break a fourth wall, or are those townspeople and, at one point Meg, also sometimes involving the audience?Everything from plot points to character beats unfold with little significance or cohesion, and the whole production feels under-rehearsed, underwhelming, and unimportant. How far we’ve fallen from Olympus.HerculesThrough March 19 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, Millburn, N.J.; papermill.org. Running time: 2 hours and 30 minutes. More

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      Review: Holding Hands With the Homeless, in ‘Love’

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      Alexander Zeldin’s heartbreaking play set in a temporary housing facility retunes our attention from the big picture to the small accommodations.Whether with a gun, a mastermind or a monster, most thrillers thrill by invoking the specter of death: Who’s going to die and how? But “Love,” which opened on Tuesday at the Park Avenue Armory, keeps the audience ears-up anxious for 90 minutes without recourse to any of that. Its most alarming prop is a coffee cup, accidentally purloined, and what passes for a mastermind is a housing bureaucracy that’s evil only in its inefficiency. No one dies, yet the emotional threat level is off the charts and peculiarly personal. Call it a moral thriller: The monster is us.And make no mistake, “Love,” written and directed by Alexander Zeldin, implicates its audience. Quite literally in some cases: About 75 of the 650 seats in the Armory’s vast Drill Hall are placed onstage with the set, which represents the dingy common room of a temporary housing facility. At times, the characters, who are residents of that facility, will glance suspiciously at us ticket holders, as if we too were unhoused residents, and might have stolen a sandwich. Other times they sit among us or, at one point, reach out for solace.Yet even though “Love” is the middle play in a trilogy called “the Inequalities,” there is very little preachy or overtly political about it. The characters certainly have no time for treatises; each is desperate, for different reasons that add up to the same one, to get out of the facility as soon as possible. Colin, an unemployed man in his 50s, and his mother, Barbara, teetering on the edge of senility, have lived in Room 4 for nearly a year, trying to fend off impending indignity. This even though, as a new resident named Emma insists, “it’s six weeks maximum by law.”Emma, too, has a deadline: Very pregnant, she does not want to give birth before finding a proper home. She is naïvely confident that her stay in Room 5 — along with her partner, Dean, and Dean’s two children from a previous relationship — is temporary.The arrangement seems fine for the girl, Paige, who is still young enough at 8 not to mind much her bleak and reduced surroundings; she’s more interested in rehearsing the school Christmas pageant. But for her 12-year-old brother, Jason, the sudden change of circumstances — the family could not afford a sudden rent hike where they’d been living — comes at a time when external disappointment finds too much fuel in the onset of garden-variety adolescent dismay.Naby Dakhli, left, and Hind Swareldahab in the play. They discover a common language in Arabic, and erupt in conversation, becoming real to themselves and thus to us, our critic writes.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat “Love” — first performed in London in 2016 and seen across Europe since then — is in fact set at Christmastime, with a few decorations and the promise of mince pies, is (aside from some unnecessarily scary sounds between scenes) the play’s only obvious heart-clutcher. Still, it’s apt: Dean is, after all, an out-of-work tradesman, and the promise of a late-December baby puts us in mind of injustice as old as the Bible.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.So do the other two residents we meet, both apparently refugees. Tharwa, from Sudan, and Adnan, from Syria — played by Hind Swareldahab and Naby Dakhli — are mostly silent in the presence of the native-born English characters, and are thus misunderstood or suspected of vague wrongdoing. Only when they discover a common language in Arabic and erupt in conversation that we get the joy of, if not the gist, do they become real to themselves and thus to us.Merely remaining real — surviving the deprivation of home and privacy that most of us take for granted — is here a kind of victory. But just as Zeldin isn’t interested in stripping the dignity from his characters any further than the system has done already, he also refuses to sanctify them.Yes, there are acts of kindness (Barbara offers Paige a gift), moments of unexpected diversion (Adnan watches “Billy Elliot”) and simply ordinary observations of family life (Paige is thrilled by Colin’s constant cursing). The play’s title is neither an irony nor a plea; it’s an emotion that survives as a lullaby sung over a cellphone or a casual nickname or a serious declaration of commitment.But if the system were not dehumanizing there would be no drama; without its broken trust, no betrayals. For Dean (Alex Austin), the betrayal is bureaucratic; to advance in line for housing he must get a new job, but waiting in lines is a full-time job itself. For Barbara (Amelda Brown), the betrayal is physical and mortifying. For endlessly practical and even-tempered Emma (Janet Etuk), it’s the constant scraping down of patience that finally results in a crushing act of unsympathy.Alex Austin and Janet Etuk as a couple who are new to the facility, and hoping to find a new home before their baby arrives.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat these expressions of systemic despair feel so specific and personal is no accident. Zeldin developed “Love” in a series of workshops that included families who had experienced homelessness. (Swareldahab had never been in a theater before joining one of them.) The set and costume design, both by Natasha Jenkins, have the same feeling of lived-in authenticity: Your eye notes the stray single sneaker, abandoned on the roof of the shared bathroom, and the barely translucent windows scrunched high up in the corners of the room as if they too are trying to escape.Yet despite this and Marc Williams’s aptly harsh lights, which remain lit above the audience when they’re lit above the stage, “Love” is shaped by the poetics of drama as opposed to the logic of documentary. The characters are too particular to be placards, filled by the cast with so much subtext you’d think they would burst. And perhaps they do; among the uniformly excellent actors, Brown, as Barbara, stands out for her devastating portrait of dementia, Queen Lear in a shelter instead of on a moor.But unlike Lear she is a mother; Colin, though often rough and gross, is in Nick Holder’s wonderful portrayal surprisingly babyish and dainty underneath. Tharwa is a mother, too, but for reasons we don’t quite know, she is, as the script says, “without her children.” And Emma will be a mother any day. Together, the three women give “Love” a spine that would keep it standing as drama even if the armature of enforced homelessness were one day, thankfully, dismantled.I say “enforced” because bureaucracies are man-made and, with sufficient political will, reformable. We can sit around and argue that. Meanwhile, about 274,000 people are without homes in England, and about twice as many in the United States.Though “Love” is a great piece of theater — funny, beautifully staged, and with the kind of excitement that retunes your attention to tiny heartbreaks instead of just huge ones — I couldn’t help but wonder why it was easier to engage the subject inside the Armory than on Park Avenue. (There were several homeless people on the subway I took home.) When one of the characters reaches for audience members’ hands, they freely give it. How freely outside?LoveThrough March 25 at the Park Avenue Armory, Manhattan; armoryonpark.org. Running time: 1 hour and 30 minutes. More

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      ‘We’ve Experienced the Stories We’re Telling’: ‘The Jungle’ Is Back.

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      ‘We’ve Experienced the Stories We’re Telling’: ‘The Jungle’ Is Back.Five years after its American premiere, the acclaimed play about migrants eking out lives in an encampment returns with a mix of new and original cast members.Clockwise from top left, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Mylène Gomera, Mohamed Sarrar and Ammar Haj Ahmad. Hesmondhalgh and Gomera are new additions, while Sarrar and Haj Ahmad are reprising their roles.Sara Messinger for The New York TimesMarch 2, 2023At the Afghan Cafe, the smell of fresh dough, soft and earthy, lingers as the bread makes its way to the oven. Boxy televisions with old Bollywood films on a loop perch in the corners where the walls meet the ceiling. The floor is hardened mulch, the menu handmade. And all the patrons are a long, long way from home.“The Jungle” — an immersive play about the residents of a makeshift migrant camp in Calais, France — is back at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, where it had its American premiere in 2018. As the story unfolds against the backdrop of the improvised cafe, the audience meets characters from Eritrea, Syria, Sudan, Iraq and Iran, who describe their harrowing journeys while confronting treacherous living conditions and impending eviction.When “The Jungle” last ran in New York (the critic Ben Brantley called it a “thrilling drama” and “a work of absorbing theater”), President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban had virtually blocked citizens of many predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States, which meant three of the actors nearly didn’t make it to the stage. This time, the production — featuring a mix of new and returning actors, many of whom are former refugees themselves — hoped for a smoother entry. Julie Hesmondhalgh, who portrays Paula, a do-gooder English volunteer dedicating her life to the women and children of the camp, and Mylène Gomera, who plays Helene, a Christian Eritrean traveling solo, are new to the company; Ammar Haj Ahmad returns as Safi, the show’s Syrian narrator, along with Mohamed Sarrar as Omar, a Sudanese refugee.But the return to the Brooklyn set has been a bumpy one.“We obviously had some trouble last time, but we did find a way to get here in a sort of timely manner,” said Justin Martin, who directs the play with Stephen Daldry. “This time, we’ve actually found it a bit more difficult.”Once the show was scheduled for 2023, the visa problems began anew. Applications dragged on without explanation. One of the original cast members, Yasin Moradi, a Kurdish martial artist from Iran, is still waiting for his visa in London.Others encountered obstacles upon arrival in the United States. Gomera, who is originally from Eritrea, was held at the airport for questioning.“It took me a couple of days to let it go and shake it off,” she said.Yasin Moradi, a returning cast member, sits in London awaiting his visa.Sara Messinger for The New York TimesThe American political context may have shifted, but war, natural disaster and economic collapse continue to displace communities around the world — and the story of desperate people seeking safe harbor still resonates.“When does a place become a place?” Safi asks at the end of the first act. “When does a place become a home?”More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.We spoke with five cast members about their connections to the show and where they find a sense of home. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Ammar Haj AhmadI am from Syria, and I am British, but none of it, to be honest, means anything. And maybe it’s corny to say, but it’s the truth. I am context, and I am human.Home for me now is people. After what happened to Damascus, I don’t have the same relationship to places. Anything you build you can lose. Sometimes safety comes from attitudes and thoughts. That’s where home is for me, when someone is kind in nature and has the appetite to understand.It can be tricky sometimes, because I am performing and people are clapping, and my sisters are sleeping in cars in southern Turkey — the center of the earthquake.The last time I was here, I didn’t enjoy any minute of it aside from the time I spent onstage. But I couldn’t wait to come back. The cast are amazing and the audience is there around you. There is always the potential for it to be magical.Mylène GomeraI’m Eritrean. As cliché as it sounds, I’m really a global nomad on so many levels. The role I play, Helene, is essentially my story, my route. It’s such an honor to be a voice for Eritreans, especially Eritrean women. The responsibility I feel is immense.The intention is never to leave your country. That’s what gets lost. And you figure out that it isn’t necessarily better, but it is safer. There is a constant battle of: Am I in a better place now?To be in New York, to be onstage, to have come this far, to have no connections to the industry, to come from a tiny village in Eritrea — I’m constantly asking myself how this happened.I’m new to the company, but I feel right at home. We’re all taking care of each other; this play requires that. We’ve experienced the stories we’re telling.The Afghan Cafe on the set of “The Jungle,” which integrates the audience with the cast, features catwalk-like runways throughout the makeshift restaurant.Teddy WolffMohamed SarrarI am one of the people who lived in the Jungle in Calais. I lived it in reality, and now I’m doing it again. I’ve moved on, but I go back in my mind to show others what it was like there.My homeland is Sudan. I fled when I was 25 because of what was happening in Darfur. I fled violence and evil.Sometimes, onstage, the tears come, because it’s not just about me, it’s about all of the people who are still working to come, who can’t leave.Julie HesmondhalghI’m U.K. born and bred. I come from a working class family in the north of England and I live in Manchester now, which is a city that is traditionally a city of protest and radicalism.Back in my history there is Irish heritage, so with that always comes immigration and prejudice, for sure, but my connection to refuge and migration is purely as an activist. Let’s put it this way: It wasn’t me who was taken into a side room to be interviewed.There’s always a crisis of refugees, and you have to ask the question, “Why?” And racism has to be part of that conversation. That’s why this play is so important: because it takes you right to the refugee stories, which we hear in a really real and personal way. And that’s where art steps in.It’s an honor to play this role. I wanted this job more than any job I’ve ever wanted before. Yasin MoradiI am originally Kurdish from Iran. I am still in my home in London, unfortunately. It’s been a long process.I thought with Biden in office, we would go to the U.S. more easily, but it seems like it’s harder than before. I am the only person who has been here for three weeks waiting without any explanation. No one is forced to leave their land unless it is unsafe. I lived in the Jungle in 2015 for six weeks. We Kurdish people, we don’t have anywhere.The more people see this play, the more sympathy people have. It is hard to hate someone when you hear their story or laugh at their joke.I am not there, but my heart is with them. More

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      ‘Funny Girl’ Starring Lea Michele to Close Labor Day Weekend

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      The actress, whose star turn in the Broadway musical has reversed its flagging fortunes, will stay with the show to the end.A Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” that was battered and boosted by offstage drama will finish its roller-coaster ride over Labor Day weekend, the show’s producers announced on Thursday.The production — the first revival of a musical long deemed unrevivable because of the long shadow of its original star, Barbra Streisand — has been among Broadway’s best-selling shows ever since Lea Michele, of “Glee” fame and then flak, stepped into the title role.Michele, whose can’t-miss voice and can’t-turn-away comeback story have turned her tenure into the talk of the town, will have spent a year in the role: Her first performance was Sept. 6, 2022, and her final performance will be Sept. 3, 2023. She replaced Beanie Feldstein, whose comedic chops, according to critics, were not matched by the vocal range required for the role.Michele has essentially single-handedly reversed the show’s fortunes, which had been flagging until she joined the cast. The show’s grosses more than doubled when she stepped into the role, and plunge whenever she is out. (Last week, when she and her co-star, Ramin Karimloo, were on vacation, the show’s grosses dropped by a staggering $950,000, to 50 percent of what they had been the previous week.)Critics have gushed. In The New York Times, Jesse Green described Michele as “a missile: a performer who from her first words (‘Hello, Gorgeous’) shoots straight to her target and hits it.” In the Los Angeles Times, Charles McNulty wrote “Lea Michele is delivering a tour de force for the ages.”More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Her run in the show has been all the more compelling because of its back story: On “Glee,” Michele played a character who idolizes Streisand, sings songs from “Funny Girl,” and then lands the starring role in a fictional revival. Michele, in a life-imitates-art sense, seemed destined to take on the role on Broadway, particularly since the real-world revival was being directed by Michael Mayer, who played a significant role in Michele’s career by casting her in her breakout role, in “Spring Awakening,” when she was still a teenager. But by the time the “Funny Girl” revival rolled around, Michele had been denounced on social media after being accused of behaving poorly toward her television castmates, and the production turned instead to Feldstein, a well-liked star of “Booksmart.”The “Funny Girl” revival opened last April, but critics were generally underwhelmed by Feldstein’s performance, and sales had begun to droop by summer. That’s when Feldstein left, and Michele arrived, creating a high-stakes spectacle for a show in need of a jolt and an actress in need of a new narrative. “This was a make-or-break moment for Michele’s career,” McNulty wrote.Michele’s performance has thrilled audiences, and, once she arrived, the show recorded a cast album. She has tirelessly promoted the show, dancing at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, kvelling over a letter from Streisand on “Late Night With Seth Meyers,” playing charades with Jimmy Fallon on “The Tonight Show.” In interviews, she has deployed a combination of charm, contrition and humility.The producing team, led by Sonia Friedman, offered no explanation for the decision to close, and a spokesman had no comment. But it has been widely expected within the industry that once Michele’s tenure was over, the show would end its run. That is not particularly unusual for star-driven musical revivals: “Funny Girl” will have outlasted the recent revival of “The Music Man,” for example, which ran for 13 months and closed with the departures of its big draws, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster.The show’s four lead performers — Michele, Karimloo, Jared Grimes and Tovah Feldshuh — have all agreed to stay through Sept. 3, the producers said. But Karimloo will take a leave from June 27 through July 17 to star in a production of “The Phantom of the Opera” in Italy.It remains unclear whether the “Funny Girl” revival will recoup its $16.5 million capitalization, and a spokesman also had no comment on that. But the show has been selling strongly — grossing between $1.8 million and $2 million per week through January and February, which are soft months for Broadway — and the closing announcement could boost sales further. (The show has also had the highest average ticket price on Broadway: $204.55 during the week that ended Feb. 19.)The producers said that they plan a North American tour that will begin in September, the same month as the Broadway closing, starting in Providence, R.I. The tour casting has not been announced. More

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      Review: ‘Public Obscenities’ Pushes Far Beyond One Field of Study

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      The new work from Shayok Misha Chowdhury creates a strong enough center for the rest of its disparate parts to hold, and leaves the audience craving more.It is a testament to Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s gifts as a writer that he is able to evoke as many themes, histories and possibilities as he does in “Public Obscenities,” and leave his audience not dazed or frustrated, but longing for even more. Truthfully, the work might best unfold as a mini-series, a longer medium where his interests can find proper room to breathe.Running just under three hours, the play’s premiere production at Soho Rep, in Lower Manhattan, is both too long for one cohesive sitting, even with an intermission, and too short to tidy up all the threads at which it pulls. But, co-presented by the National Asian American Theater Company and directed by Chowdhury with a swooning hypnotism reminiscent of the best works of neorealism, it creates a strong enough center for the rest of its disparate parts to hold.To be fair, Chowdhury winks at the impossibility of successfully wrapping up all his concerns in a terrific quip from Choton (Abrar Haque), a Bengali American student who had returned to his native Kolkata, India, for a vaguely defined academic project. At the Ph.D. level, he explains, fields of study — English, anthropology, performance, gender, cinema — all start to look and feel the same.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.Along with his non-Bangla-speaking cinematographer boyfriend, Raheem (Jakeem Dante Powell), Choton hopes to interview queer locals found on the hookup app Grindr. To what end, exactly, is uncertain, but it does allow Chowdhury to explore the difficulties of mixing business, pleasure and personal experience in the precarious quest to analyze subcultures defined by their marginalization. Their own relationship dynamic is called into question as Choton and Raheem set up a joint Grindr account, and Haque and Powell navigate these burdensome complexities with touching humanity and intelligence.Their study also provides an excuse for a scene-stealing interview subject to come into the picture, played by the transgender activist Tashnuva Anan with a liveliness and self-assurance made for public adoration. Anan’s character, Shou, identifies as kothi, a native Indian gender similar to an effeminate man and, through Shou, Choton confronts his feeling of alienation from his compatriots’ queer scene.Apart from a later foray into a nearby river, he does this from his late grandfather’s house, now kept by his aunt (Gargi Mukherjee), her online billiards-addicted husband (Debashis Roy Chowdhury) and their housekeeper (Golam Sarwar Harun). With their colorful side stories and performances, these three build out a world unconnected to the young couple’s mission, which is also thrown off-balance through the discovery of an undeveloped film reel inside the deceased patriarch’s camera.This abundance of plot (is it too late to mention Shou’s street-smart friend, played by NaFis?) should come closer to overwhelming the production, but Chowdhury’s cinematic direction — aided by title credits screened onstage by Johnny Moreno (who also turns the space into a serene riverbank), Barbara Samuels’s transitional lighting and Tei Blow’s inventive sound design — keep things steadily afloat. And the sunny one-room set, by dots, a scenic-design collective, is ravishing in its simplicity and use of soft canary yellow (and burning incense).This expansive production casts a wide net, yes, but one kept from being spread too thin by a uniformly excellent cast and the deliberate pacing of a confident playwright. Chowdhury also accomplishes the not-insignificant task of successfully writing a bilingual play, with some of the Bangla dialogue translated via supertitles and some left to nonspeakers’ imagination.If the play ends with some unfortunately unanswered questions, its conclusion is a hopeful, not frustrating, one. Chowdhury is a writer with great promise who, with “Public Obscenities,” may have found himself on the brink of greatness.Public ObscenitiesThrough March 26 at Soho Rep, Manhattan; sohorep.org. Running time: 2 hours and 50 minutes. More

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      When Clothes Fly Off, This Intimacy Coordinator Steps In

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      It takes a lot of people to make a movie. You’ve got the director for overall vision, the gaffer on the lights, the set decorators to add texture to the film’s world, and the costume designers to envision the actors’ looks.And when those costumes come off and things start to get a bit steamy? That’s where Jessica Steinrock comes in.Ms. Steinrock is an intimacy coordinator — or intimacy director, when she’s working on theater and live performance — who facilitates the production of scenes involving nudity, simulated sex or hyper exposure, which she defines as “something someone might not otherwise uncover in public, even if it’s not legally nudity.” Much like a stunt coordinator or a fight director, she makes sure that the actors are safe throughout the process, and that the scene looks believable.The role has come to prominence in the last five years. As the entertainment industry reeled from the litany of abuses brought to light by the #MeToo movement, many productions were eager to publicly demonstrate their commitment to safety. Hiring an intimacy coordinator was one way to do that.“A lot of places were really excited about the possibility of this work and being ahead of the curve — showing that their company cared about their actors, cared about consent,” Ms. Steinrock said in a Zoom interview from her home in Chicago.Ms. Steinrock — who has worked on projects including the critically acclaimed Showtime survival drama “Yellowjackets,” Netflix’s teen dramedy “Never Have I Ever” and the Hulu mini-series “Little Fires Everywhere” — has been involved in intimacy coordination since its early days. The industry took off thanks in large part to the highly publicized work of the intimacy coordinator Alicia Rodis on the HBO show “The Deuce” in 2018. At that time, Ms. Steinrock, whose background is in improv comedy, was working on a master’s degree in theater at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, focused on navigating questions of consent in that space.“In the improv world, I was picked up a lot or kissed or grabbed, or jokes were made about me that I didn’t consent to,” she recalled in a TikTok video. “And I was really curious if there were ways to navigate that better.”Jessica Steinrock explains to students in an intimacy and consent performance workshop at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, how the acronym CRISP describes how to give and receive consent.Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Steinrock uses a range of modesty garments and barriers, including pouches, pads and strapless thongs, to keep actors safe when performing intimate scenes.Mary Mathis for The New York TimesThe issue was particularly thorny in improv, which is grounded in a philosophy of accepting and building on whatever your scene partner gives you.“You got placed in these uncomfortable or even harmful positions because the whole culture is ‘yes, and … ,’” said Valleri Robinson, the head of the university’s theater department, who advised Ms. Steinrock on her master’s degree and Ph.D. “It really started to come to the foreground for her that this was a problematic way of creating art.”Ms. Steinrock and Ms. Rodis met through Ms. Steinrock’s then-boyfriend, now husband, who is a fight director. Ms. Rodis recognized a kindred spirit, with all the makings of a great intimacy coordinator, in Ms. Steinrock. She mentored Ms. Steinrock on her first gig: a 40-person orgy on the TNT show “Claws.” “She was thrown into the lion’s den, and she absolutely smashed it,” Ms. Rodis recalled.Ms. Steinrock quickly rose to become a leader in the burgeoning field, and she now dedicates much of her time to educating people about it. In April 2022, she started her TikTok account, which now has more than 700,000 followers. In her videos, she critiques “spicy” scenes on TV shows (her current favorites include “Bridgerton,” “Sex Education” and “House of the Dragon”); breaks down how such scenes are filmed; and answers frequently asked questions about her work, such as “What do you do if an actor gets an erection?” or “If two actors are in an offscreen relationship, do they still have to follow the same protocols?” She’s not just demystifying her job, but also engaging people in broader conversations about intimacy and consent.The role of the intimacy coordinator can be a tricky balancing act between choreography and care, and Ms. Steinrock brings an academic grounding in feminist and performance theory to the work, coupled with innate people skills.“She’s very patient,” said Karyn Kusama, a director and executive producer on the Showtime drama “Yellowjackets,” who worked with Ms. Steinrock on the show’s pilot. “She listens. She’s looking to the actor to take the lead in terms of … what will make them feel most cared for.”Melanie Lynskey, as Shauna, and Warren Kole, as Jeff Sadecki, in an episode of the Showtime survival drama “Yellowjackets.” Ms. Steinrock worked on the show’s pilot, including on a scene where Shauna masturbates while looking at a picture of her teenage daughter’s boyfriend.Kailey Schwerman/ShowtimeThe pilot of “Yellowjackets” includes several intimate scenes, including one where two high schoolers, played by Sophie Nélisse and Jack Depew, have sex in a car, and another where a housewife, played by Melanie Lynskey, masturbates. Having Ms. Steinrock on set for those scenes was vital, Ms. Kusama said.As a director, Ms. Kusama said she has always felt a deep empathy with how vulnerable actors are in these scenes and makes a point to check in. But even if she poses a question, it can be hard for an actor who is uncomfortable to respond honestly knowing how much is on the line. An intimacy coordinator, as a neutral party, is more likely to get an honest answer.“Societally, sex is really hard to talk about,” Ms. Steinrock said. Her role is to “create more pathways of communication,” she explained, so the actors feel safe discussing any issues, big or small, that may come up.Having an intimacy coordinator doesn’t just create a safer environment, Ms. Kusama said: It also makes for better, sexier art.“It demands that you take responsibility for your story with the actors, that you actually say, Yeah, we’re depicting sex and here’s what it needs to mean — i.e. it needs to mean something,” she said. “And conversely, I can say to an intimacy coordinator, ‘You know, it feels like I’m watching two people peck each other on the cheek, and there’s zero heat here.’”This is where the choreography piece of Ms. Steinrock’s job comes in: She can offer ways to use breath or adjust positions to make a scene more evocative.Ms. Steinrock and her husband, Zev Steinrock, an associate theater professor, demonstrate an example of consensual touch. Mary Mathis for The New York TimesIn just five years, intimacy coordinators have become a vital part of the entertainment industry. HBO has required them on all of their productions since 2019 (Ms. Rodis oversees their program). At this point, Ms. Kusama said, it’s hard for her to imagine signing on to a project with intimate scenes without one.The discipline’s explosive growth has meant that coordinators have had to create standards in real time — like building the tracks of a roller coaster as it shoots into the air. “We have to first define this role and agree on what it is,” Ms. Steinrock said. “That’s Step 1 of building a new profession. And then we have to define what being qualified for that role looks like.”In 2020, Ms. Steinrock, Ms. Rodis and another intimacy director, Marie Percy, formed Intimacy Directors and Coordinators, with Ms. Steinrock at the helm. She had never been a chief executive before, but she taught herself on the job, quickly growing I.D.C. into the leading training and accreditation organization in the field. Its four-level program includes a mix of virtual and in-person classes. It is the only organization to offer certification for both intimacy coordination and direction, and it also runs workshops for other artistic professionals, such as actors or directors, who want to bring these practices into their work.“Jessica has created the accountability structures so that we can say: ‘This is what our certification means. Here’s all the education behind it. Here are the equitable practices we have, and here’s the accountability we have to these artists,’” Ms. Rodis said.Two students practice giving and receiving consent to touch each other during a workshop taught by Ms. Steinrock, who sees education as essential to IDC’s mission to “create a culture of consent in which intimate stories can be told with safety and artistry.”Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Steinrock sees advocacy for these standards as a key part of I.D.C.’s mission. She was part of a working group organized by the Screen Actors Guild to establish new safety standards for intimacy, which were published in 2020; in 2022, the union launched a registry of vetted intimacy coordinators and announced that it would create a pathway to union membership for these professionals.“Intimacy coordinators are not a panacea for an industry that has historically abused its actors — and, frankly, historically abused most of the people in it,” Ms. Steinrock said. But integrating them into productions is a clear step that institutions can take, as part of a broader commitment to safety and equity.For Ms. Steinrock’s part, that commitment also includes working to diversify intimacy coordination. While it is a rare female-led discipline in an industry dominated by men, it is still predominantly white and straight — one of the pitfalls of a young profession that has largely relied on word of mouth to grow.Ultimately, the hope is that intimacy coordination becomes standard across the entertainment industry, and “that it helps us see each other and the role of sex in our lives differently, as something richer and more filled with possibility,” Ms. Kusama said.“Ultimately, I serve as a place where folks can come to ask questions that are otherwise very difficult to ask,” Ms Steinrock said, “and to make sure that they have someone who can advocate for them, especially if they’re feeling uncertain about how to advocate for themselves.”Mary Mathis for The New York TimesMs. Robinson has been excited to see her former student bring these issues out into the open. “She’s enhancing our vocabularies and giving us pathways beyond the industry to address these topics that people find so difficult,” she said. And while much of that awareness has happened via TikTok, Ms. Robinson also noted that Ms. Steinrock’s dissertation had been downloaded more than 700 times — another sign of just how much interest there is in this area.Inviting people to re-examine how sex works in the media they consume, Ms. Steinrock said, could improve the way they approach sex in general.“Media is so many people’s first experience with intimacy,” she said. “And when we care about how things are made, it starts conversations about how things are operating in other spaces, and I think that can have a huge impact as to what people expect in their day-to-day lives.” More