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      Shaw Festival Presents ‘The Orphan of Chao’ and ‘Snow in Midsummer’

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      By presenting “The Orphan of Chao” and “Snow in Midsummer,” the Shaw Festival is helping “the past to smash its way into the modern world.”For 35 years, the Shaw Festival had one central criterion for its programming: Any and all plays had to have been written during George Bernard Shaw’s lifetime.This is not as confining as it sounds. Shaw, after all, was born in 1856 — when Abraham Lincoln was still an Illinois lawyer — and died a few months after Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” hit the comics pages in 1950.Nonetheless, two of the festival’s nine productions this season fall well before that time period. “The Orphan of Chao” and “Snow in Midsummer” are adaptations of perhaps the two best-known plays from the Yuan period of classical Chinese drama, which stretched from 1279 to 1368.“To twin ‘Orphan’ with ‘Snow’ gives our audience the chance to see two very different approaches to legendary material,” said Tim Carroll, the Shaw Festival’s artistic director. “Both pieces, in very different ways, allow the past to smash its way into the modern world.”At the center of this confluence is Nina Lee Aquino, one of the most significant figures in Canadian theater. The festival not only enlisted Aquino to direct “Snow” (her debut there), but also cast her husband, Richard Lee, an actor and fight director, and their 17-year-old actress daughter, Eponine Lee, in both plays.The director Nina Lee Aquino, center, with her husband, Richard Lee, and their daughter, Eponine.Katie GalvinWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Real Women Have Curves’ Musical Plans Broadway Bow Next Year

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      The show, adapted from the play and movie, was first staged last winter at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.A musical adaptation of “Real Women Have Curves,” Josefina López’s exploration of immigrant experiences through the story of a group of Latina women working at a Los Angeles garment factory, will run on Broadway next year, the show’s producers said Thursday.The story began its life as a play, which had an initial production in San Francisco in 1990, and has been staged many times since. In 2002, a film adaptation was released, starring America Ferrera.Directed and choreographed by Sergio Trujillo, the musical was first staged last December and January at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass. It features music and lyrics by Joy Huerta and Benjamin Velez and a book by Lisa Loomer, with additional material by Nell Benjamin.The musical is set in 1987 in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, and focuses on an 18-year-old woman who is torn between staying home to work at the family factory and relocating to New York to enroll at Columbia. In addition to its immigration theme, the show also deals with body image issues.The critic Don Aucoin, writing in The Boston Globe, called the show “outstanding,” but Laura Collins-Hughes, in The New York Times, was less impressed, deeming it “ungainly.”The Broadway run is being produced by Barry and Fran Weissler, the lead producers of the long-running Broadway “Chicago” revival, along with the actor Jack Noseworthy, who is married to Trujillo. In a news release, the producers said the play would open on Broadway in 2025; they did not specify whether it would be during the current Tony Awards eligibility season, which ends in April, or the following season, and a spokeswoman said no further information was available.The musical is being capitalized for $16.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. More

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      Hollywood Is Heading for Broadway (and Off). Here’s a Cheat Sheet.

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      New York’s stages have long drawn talent from Hollywood, but this is shaping up to be an exceptionally starry season. Why? Producers have determined that limited-run plays with celebrities are more likely than new musicals to make money. And some musicals are also hoping big names will help at the box office. Here’s a sampling of stars onstage this season.This Fall★ ON BROADWAY ★Mia Farrowin ‘The Roommate’Farrow, who made her stage debut when she was 18 and had a breakout role in the 1968 film “Rosemary’s Baby,” thought she was happily retired until she read the script for this Jen Silverman comedy about two women with not much in common other than their living quarters. Now, at 79, she’s returning to the stage, opposite the three-time Tony winner Patti LuPone, for what she says may be the last time. Now running at the Booth.★ ON BROADWAY ★Robert Downey Jr.in ‘McNeal’One of Hollywood’s most successful stars, Downey has a bevy of superhero movies under his belt (he played Iron Man) and an Oscar for “Oppenheimer” (he was the antagonist, Lewis Strauss). He’s making his Broadway debut in a new Ayad Akhtar play, portraying a famous novelist with a potentially problematic interest in A.I. Now running at the Vivian Beaumont.Clockwise from top left: Nicole Scherzinger, Katie Holmes, Jim Parsons, Adam Driver and Mia Farrow (center).Photographs via Associated Press; Getty Images; Reuters★ ON BROADWAY ★Daniel Dae Kimin ‘Yellow Face’Talk about meta! This is David Henry Hwang’s play about a play about a musical, sort of. Kim, known for “Lost” and the rebooted “Hawaii Five-0,” portrays a playwright named DHH (get it?) who mistakenly casts a white actor as an Asian character in a Broadway flop inspired by his own protests against the casting of a white actor as a Eurasian character in “Miss Saigon.” Previews begin Sept. 13 at the Todd Haimes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wendell Pierce and Courtney B. Vance on James Earl Jones’s Influence

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      The two actors talk about how the stage and screen great was a one-of-a-kind inspiration to them, and many others.James Earl Jones had already made a lifetime impression on Wendell Pierce by the time Pierce patiently waited in a receiving line to meet Jones after his opening night performance of August Wilson’s “Fences” nearly 40 years ago.Years earlier, Jones had mesmerized Pierce in the 1970 film “The Great White Hope,” embodying integrity, creativity and dignity in the role of the boxer Jack Jefferson. The performance inspired a teenage Pierce as he began his studies at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts. That, he decided, was the type of actor he yearned to be.Pierce told Jones of his impact. “Are you an actor?” Pierce recalled Jones asking in his barreling baritone of a voice. Delighted to learn that he was, Jones discussed how he enjoyed the night, but was glad it was over. There was shared energy between the actors and audience except the hole where the critics sat stoic and unmoved. They wouldn’t be there after opening night.“Now that it’s over, there won’t be that hole there,” Jones said. “People can just respond to the play. That’s the great thing about doing theater. It’s that energy between the audience and the performance. Don’t you find that?”It’s a moment Pierce cherishes after carving his own impactful career by starring in television shows like “The Wire” and “Treme” and on Broadway in “Death of a Salesman.”“I knew I was part of a collective whole of the people who had seen it that would have this unique, seminal experience that would be something that you had to be there to see,” Pierce said. “And I feel privileged that I was a part of that very few, especially in theater performances with Mr. Jones, that got to see it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler Are Star Crossed in Central Park

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      On a morning in mid-August, a breeze stirred Central Park’s midsummer leaves. Children skipped, dogs lolloped, a bunny peeked out from a hedge near the Great Lawn while a nearby saxophone ruined “Isn’t She Lovely.” It was a very nice day to fall in love.The actors Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler were there, hiking up to Belvedere Castle and then down to the Shakespeare Garden. Connor, 20, and Zegler, 23, don’t plan to fall in love. But the next day, at rehearsal, in Brooklyn they would discover how to make the characters they play fall desperately, terribly in love.As the stars of the “Romeo + Juliet” that opens on Broadway on Oct. 24, they will die for love, they will die for each other, eight times a week. Both are making their Broadway debuts and both have the not exactly enviable task of making a 16th-century play with (apologies for centuries-old spoilers) a famously grim ending feel breath-catchingly new and vital.Daunting? Not at all.“It should be fun,” Connor said, not without some anxiety. Zegler gave him a sardonic look. “It will be fun,” he said. Connor, a British star of the Netflix teen romance “Heartstopper,” and Zegler, an American who made a thrilling film debut in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” had never met until March, shortly after they each agreed to star in the revival, dreamed up by the Tony-winning director Sam Gold, with music by Jack Antonoff. They had been offered the roles separately, without the benefit of a chemistry read. That spring day, Gold brought them to Circle in the Square Theater, where previews will start Sept. 26, then bought them cups of coffee at the Cosmic Diner.Kit Connor, right, on the Netflix series “Heartstopper” opposite Joe Locke.Teddy Cavendish/NetflixWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Was James Earl Jones an EGOT Winner? It’s Complicated.

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      The actor won just about every award he could — but his Oscar was an honorary one. Is that enough for an EGOT?When James Earl Jones died on Monday, some headlines called the prolific actor — known for his deep, mellifluous voice — an EGOT winner. But whether he’s really in the elite club isn’t so clear.Jones performed in scores of plays, some 120 movies and on nearly 90 television shows. And he was rewarded with Emmys, Tonys, a Grammy, an Obie (for Off Broadway productions), a National Medal of Arts, Kennedy Center honors and an honorary Academy Award.James Earl Jones with the Tony Award he won in 1969 for Best Dramatic Actor in “The Great White Hope,” with Lauren Bacall, who presented it to him.Bettmann Archive, via Getty ImagesBut the honorary Oscar might not be enough for the exclusive EGOT club — the playful acronym for winning an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony. There has long been a debate over whether honorary or noncompetitive awards count toward EGOT status.Back in 2011, Jones won the honorary Oscar, a lifetime achievement award that comes with the famous Oscar trophy and has been given to the likes of Mel Brooks, Sophia Loren, Spike Lee and other Hollywood luminaries. Not enough, The Los Angeles Times proclaimed.“While Jones already has an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony, to complete the EGOT cycle, winners have to actually win each award, and honorary awards do not count,” according to the newspaper.James Earl Jones holds up the two Emmy Awards he won in 1991.ReutersAccording to Billboard, “most EGOT experts don’t count noncompetitive awards” because “the whole point is to have won the awards in competition.”The New York Times has noted in its reporting on EGOT recipients that “there are hazy areas of eligibility, such as lifetime achievement awards.”Only 21 people have won a competitive EGOT. The list includes Rita Moreno, Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, Whoopi Goldberg, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Viola Davis and Elton John.Even if an honorary win doesn’t quite count, Jones still finds himself in good company. Other honorary EGOT winners include Barbra Streisand, Harry Belafonte, Quincy Jones and Liza Minnelli. More

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      James Earl Jones’s Rich Career in Theater: ‘Othello,’ ‘The Great White Hope’ and More

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      The world will remember James Earl Jones, who died Monday at the age of 93, for his contributions to film, some of which are secure in the pop-culture canon.New York, however, will remember Jones for his contributions to theater, for which he received three Tony Awards (including one for lifetime achievement in 2017) and, in 2022, a rare distinction: the renaming of a Broadway theater in his honor.Jones once recalled that when he moved to New York to study acting, in 1957, his father, Robert Earl Jones (himself an actor), took him to live performances. In rapid succession, the young man saw the opera “Tosca,” the ballet “Swan Lake,” the musical “Pal Joey” and the drama “The Crucible.” This wide range may help explain Jones’s own rich, startlingly diverse stage career.For years, the actor deftly navigated oft-produced classics, head-scratching experimental theater, searching new works by major contemporary playwrights and, later in his career, popular dramas and comedies. Jones made his Broadway debut in the late 1950s but throughout the 1960s and ’70s, he also appeared in smaller venues. In 1961, for example, he was in the Living Theater’s avant-garde, resolutely countercultural production of “The Apple.” In 1965 he won an Obie Award for his performance in Bertolt Brecht’s “Baal” and also appeared in Georg Büchner’s “Danton’s Death” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. In the 1970s, he was Hickman in “The Iceman Cometh,” and in the 1980s he starred in two dramas by the South African playwright Athol Fugard — all three on Broadway.Here are five productions that reflect Jones’s astonishing range and his commitment to the theater.1961‘The Blacks’A cast of unknowns that included Jones, Cicely Tyson, Maya Angelou, Roscoe Lee Browne and Louis Gossett Jr. appeared in this explosive work by the French writer Jean Genet. An experimental take on power and oppression in which some of the Black actors wore white masks, “The Blacks” had its New York premiere in 1961 at St. Mark’s Playhouse in Manhattan’s East Village. In just over a week, Howard Taubman of The New York Times wrote not one but two raves about the production, praising it as “one of the most stimulating evenings Broadway or Off Broadway has to offer” and deeming it an event “on any level that matters.”1964‘Othello’We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Lincoln Center Theater Chooses Lear deBessonet as Artistic Director

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      DeBessonet, currently the artistic director of Encores!, will work alongside Bartlett Sher, who will serve as executive producer.Lincoln Center Theater, a leading nonprofit theater with a long track record of producing luxe Broadway musical revivals as well as contemporary plays, has chosen new leadership for the first time in more than three decades.The theater’s next artistic director will be Lear deBessonet, 44, a stage director who specializes in musical revivals as the artistic director of the Encores! program at New York City Center. DeBessonet will succeed André Bishop, who has led Lincoln Center Theater since 1992, most recently with the title of producing artistic director; he is retiring in June.DeBessonet will work with Bartlett Sher, 65, a Tony-winning director who is a resident director at the organization, and who will now assume the title of executive producer. DeBessonet will select and oversee the theater’s shows and its day-to-day operations; Sher will focus on strategic planning, fund-raising and global partnerships. They will both report to the board’s chairman, Kewsong Lee.In an interview, DeBessonet said that “there is no greater job I can imagine” than running Lincoln Center Theater. “The American theater is the great passion of my life,” she said. “I’ve wanted to be a director and to run a theater since I was a 5-year-old in Baton Rouge.”The changes come amid a tidal wave of turnover throughout the American theater, prompted by a variety of factors, including the retirements of many regional and Off Broadway theater pioneers, as well as the ousters of some leaders who lost support. Across the industry, leaders are facing a new reality: These jobs have become increasingly challenging as nonprofits face rising costs, dwindled audiences, pressures to feature programming that advances social justice but also sells tickets, and changing entertainment consumption habits.Bartlett Sher, who has been directing at Lincoln Center Theater for two decades, will become the nonprofit’s executive producer. Cindy Ord/Getty Images For Tony Awards ProWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More