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      Why the Tonys Need an Award for Best Ensemble

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      The playwright Paul Rudnick scripted a delicious red-carpet moment into “In & Out,” his 1997 movie whose comic plot is set in motion by an acceptance speech at the Academy Awards.Before the ceremony, an entertainment reporter played by Tom Selleck snags an interview with a nominated film star, played by Matt Dillon.“Basically, to me, awards are meaningless,” the star says, with a slouching self-righteousness. “I’m an artist, it’s about the work, all the nominees are artists, and we shouldn’t be forced to compete with each other like dogs.”“Well, I hear ya,” the reporter says. “Good point. So then why are you here?”“Case I win!” the star says, and flashes a smile.Showbiz awards are inherently fraught. They’re also inherently tantalizing. That’s why we — artists and audience members alike — get so exercised about who goes home with a statuette. For performers, the investment is obvious: Winning can mean more and better work. And we spectators love to see our tastes confirmed when people we admire get the glory we believe they deserve. So when the Tony Awards are handed out on June 12, we’ll be rooting, as always, for the voters to have gotten it right — and grousing, as always, about who they’ve robbed.Still, I can tell you right now that there will be one egregious omission, a category that needs honoring. One in which cast mates would not have to compete with one another, like dogs or otherwise.There is no Tony Award for best ensemble. And there really ought to be.“Six” is a classic ensemble piece, in that it doesn’t actually want its performers to eclipse one another.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIF THIS CHAOTIC, Covid-stalked Broadway season has taught us anything, it’s that theater is a team sport.In theory, we knew that already: It takes a collection of artists working together to make each show. But during the industry’s fitful comeback — with its pandemic-fueled moods of terror and celebration, defiance and wariness — we knew it in our bones.We knew it each time we opened our programs to find those little paper slips, telling us which understudies were stepping into which roles for which actors who’d tested positive for the coronavirus. We got familiar with the uh-oh reflex those notices evoked in us — a gut-level assumption proved wrong each time we lucked into a wonderful understudy. We got familiar, too, with the relief we felt when we opened our programs to find no substitutes.The 2022 Tony AwardsThis year’s awards, which will be given out on June 12, are the first to recognize shows that opened following the long pandemic shutdown of Broadway’s theaters. Season in Review: Thirty-four productions braved the pandemic to open under the most onerous conditions. Game of Survival: During a time unlike any other, productions showed their resourcefulness while learning how to live with Covid. A Tony Nominee: Myles Frost is drawing ovations nightly on Broadway with his performance in “MJ,” a musical about Michael Jackson’s creative process. The Missing Category: This Covid-stalked Broadway season has made clear that a prize for best ensemble should be added, our critic writes.A cast is a delicate organism, each actor altering the chemistry of the whole. But what ravishing theater a company can create when all its parts work in harmony — the group drawing as needed on the artistry of each member, including those who most nights fill the bench.WHEN A SHOW wins best play or musical, or best revival, the glory goes to the authors — and maybe even more to the producers, who tend to throng the stage. Those categories aren’t really about the casts. If actors win an award, it’s for a star turn.Not every piece is built for those, though — “Six,” for example, whose eight Tony nominations, best musical among them, include none in the acting categories. The show’s conceit as a singing competition would seem to encourage lunges for the spotlight. But “Six” is also a concert, and it makes sense that it succeeds best when its actors work in concert: that is, together.The first time I saw it, in London before it came to Broadway, I realized only afterward that two alternates had been on, one especially strong. But the entire cast had been impressive. It was impossible for me to pick a favorite — because “Six,” a classic ensemble piece, doesn’t actually want its performers to eclipse one another.I’m not arguing for an award limited to ensemble shows, though, or honoring only supporting players, which is another definition of ensemble. What’s needed is a prize for the entire cast of any kind of Broadway play or musical.It’s hardly an unprecedented idea. The Drama Desk Awards recognize an outstanding ensemble: This year, “Six.” As theater Twitter likes to point out, the Screen Actors Guild Awards have ensemble categories, too — though with eligibility for inclusion based on contract and billing. The Tonys could be more encompassing than that.As an adverb in French, “ensemble” means “together.” Which is the only way for actors to achieve the elusive, interconnected oneness of a truly great cast. And a cast that’s brilliant through and through is some kind of miracle.Sharon D Clarke, the star of “Caroline, or Change,” received the musical’s lone nomination for acting, bolstering our critic’s belief in the need for an ensemble award.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBACK IN THE FALL and winter, when I was so obsessed with the Broadway revival of “Caroline, or Change” that I saw it eight times, I would be tempted, on my way home from Studio 54, to send a tweet rhapsodizing over a supporting performance or two.I never did, because whenever I started drafting one in my head, the list always grew too long. I couldn’t possibly mention Arica Jackson as the ebullient singing Washing Machine, and Tamika Lawrence as Caroline’s wry friend, Dotty, without acknowledging the vocal powerhouse Kevin S. McAllister, who played the Dryer and the Bus.Tony Awards: The Best New Musical NomineesCard 1 of 7The 2022 nominees. More

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      ‘A New Old Play’ Review: Even the Clown Show Must Go On

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      Qiu Jiongjiong’s absurdist epic of 20th century China is both a movie and a play, both tragedy and farce.Per the title, Qiu Jiongjiong’s magnificently layered historical epic, “A New Old Play,” draws as much from Brecht and Beckett as from cinematic traditions. At once tragedy and farce, it breathes new life into a story as old as civilization.The opening scene is disorienting at first, not least for the film’s protagonist, Qiu Fu (Yi Sicheng), a well-known actor from a Sichuan opera troupe. We meet him when he is old and stooping, in a crumbling mountain village enshrouded by fog. It is China in the 1980s, and the Japanese, the nationalists and the communists have wreaked their havoc in turn. Now two raggedy demons have arrived in a broken-down bicycle rickshaw to cart Qiu off to the underworld.Still, something feels uncanny, demons notwithstanding. The entire mise-en-scène of the film, we discover, is artificial, an assembly of stage props and hand-painted scenery. Qiu has always played the clown, shuffling from scene to scene, a hapless pauper harassed by need and political fashion. Even his wife (Guan Nan) may not miss him when he’s gone. Somehow he, like the film, maintains a sense of humor. Such is life for a poor player.Qiu isn’t keen to leave, but his time is up — as the demons remind him, it’s no use trying to outrun fate. Also, the King of Hell is a fan, and Qiu’s failure to appear would make them look bad.But first, let’s drink and play mahjong in purgatory, where Qiu awaits final passage to oblivion. Absurdities and indignities mount as he reminisces about a life spanning wars and famine, revolution and betrayal. The director’s cleverest trick is having also found joy there.A New Old PlayNot rated. In Mandarin, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 59 minutes. In theaters. More

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      Meat Loaf, Britney and a ‘Cancel Culture’ Musical

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      At Theatertreffen, an annual celebration of the best in German-language performance, music plays a profound, and intelligent, role.HAMBURG, Germany — During the five and a half hours I spent immersed in “Die Ruhe” (“The Calm”), a performative installation that was one of the 10 productions selected for this year’s Theatertreffen, I put a live worm in my mouth, cut off a lock of my hair and held a giant African snail.I also participated in a group therapy session, during which a severe doctor pushed us to share our secrets and fears, and drank bitter mushroom tea (non-psychedelic, I hope), vodka and schnapps.Along with the other 34 ticket holders for that day’s performance in the Altona district of Hamburg, I had checked in as a prospective patient at a fictional facility for people exhausted by modern life.At once intimate and visionary, “Die Ruhe” was far and away the most unusual and daring title in the remarkable first live Theatertreffen since the start of the pandemic. After spending the past two years online, the festival, which celebrates the best in German, Austrian and Swiss theater, came roaring back to life with a wide-ranging and eclectic lineup that highlighted the creativity, resourcefulness and persistence of German-language theater in 2021.Originally staged by the Deutsches Schauspielhaus theater here, “Die Ruhe” was the brainchild of SIGNA, a Copenhagen-based performance collective led by the artist couple Signa and Arthur Köstler, which has specialized in large-scale, site-specific performance installations for the past two decades. SIGNA was previously invited to Theatertreffen, in 2008, with an eight-day performance held in a former rail yard in Berlin. This time around, the installation was too complicated to transfer to Berlin, where all the other Theatertreffen performances have taken place, so in a break with tradition, “Die Ruhe” has been mounted in the former post office in Hamburg where it was originally seen in November.With the other members of my small group, I was guided through a sinister sanitorium whose inhabitants — patients and doctors alike — seemed to have all suffered a psychological collapse. Upon entering the post office, we were welcomed to the institute by being asked to lie down on mattresses on the floor. Shortly afterward, we changed out of our clothing and into the institute’s baggy uniform of gray hoodies and sweatpants.Simon Steinhorst in “Die Ruhe,” which was staged in Hamburg.Erich GoldmannAs I was led with the group through dimly lit corridors and rooms — including a simulated forest filled with damp earth and dry leaves — by a fragile and haunted guide, Aurel, it became clear that the institute was the center of a threatening and shamanistic sect. Over the multiple floors of the post office, SIGNA and its large cast (there’s an almost even number of paying participants and institute members) formulated a holistic worldview for the cultlike institute, complete with an origin story and a rigid creed that its adherents, even the mild-mannered Aurel, were fanatically devoted to: a vision of Edenic return symbolized by becoming one with the forest.Aesthetically, this stylishly designed immersive experience seemed to take inspiration from movies: from recent films of dystopian horror, including Yorgos Lanthimos’s “The Lobster” and Ari Aster’s “Midsommer,” as well as Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch, masters of atmospheric dread. As a marathon plunge into a complex and intricate world, “Die Ruhe” resembled another recent and more infamous project: the scientific institute DAU, devised by the Russian filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky in Kharkiv, Ukraine, between 2009 and 2011, which was recreated in Paris in 2019. Like that controversial performance, “Die Ruhe” contained deeply unsettling elements: a strong, pervasive atmosphere of menace, as well as a demanding (and at times exhausting) format that forced the viewer-participant into disturbingly close confrontations with cruelty, manipulation and violence.Back in Berlin, none of the other Theatertreffen shows I saw came close to “Die Ruhe” in sustained intensity and startling originality, but the productions I caught were of a consistently high caliber, and formally innovative.A scene in Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” an exploration of texts by the experimental Austrian writer Ernst Jandl.Nikolaus Ostermann/Volkstheater One of the lineup’s most striking features was how profoundly, and intelligently, musical many of the shows were. In several of the best plays, live music played a fundamental role in generating a distinctive aesthetic as well as meaning. In thinking so musically about theatrical practice, it seemed that many directors at the festival were pushing against the limits of language.From the hits by Britney Spears and Meat Loaf crooned by the cast of Christopher Rüping’s “Das neue Leben — where do we go from here,” to Barbara Morgenstern’s vast and haunting original score for Helgard Haug’s “All right. Good night,” a hypnotic and mostly wordless production about the 2014 Malaysia Airlines disaster, this Theatertreffen seemed to insist on the primacy of music both to conjure and to enrich intellectual and emotional states.The single most astonishing show on a traditional stage was Claudia Bauer’s “humanistää!,” a surreal and dazzlingly inventive exploration of poetic and dramatic texts by the experimental Austrian writer Ernst Jandl.Bauer is one of Germany’s leading directors, and she created this breathtaking theatrical immersion in Jandl’s playful linguistic cosmos at the Volkstheater in the poet’s native Vienna, which is where I caught the production several months ago. (It remains in the company’s repertoire and is also available to stream on Theatertreffen’s website until September.)In “humanistää!,” 10 works by Jandl attain new vitality through conventional monologues, onstage projections and elaborate vocal performances reminiscent of Jandl’s radio plays. Bauer complements the torrent of highly musical texts with startling visuals and energetic performances that beautifully match the rhythm of Jandl’s sound poems. Eight actors perform vigorous and highly choreographed pantomimes and dances amid Patricia Talacko’s shape-shifting set, which is spectacularly lit by Paul Grilj. Throughout, Peer Baierlein’s propulsive music, performed live, accompanies the performers as both their bodies and their voices twist through Jandl’s linguistic games.Lindy Larsson in Yael Ronen’s “Slippery Slope,” an English-language musical about cancel culture.Ute LangkafelText and music combine in a much more straightforward, yet no less riotous, way in the Israeli director Yael Ronen’s “Slippery Slope,” an English-language musical about cancel culture with infectious songs and foul-mouthed lyrics by the singer-songwriter Shlomi Shaban. When it premiered at the Maxim Gorki Theater in Berlin in November, it was an immediate cult sensation. It’s not hard to see why.The plot, about a disgraced Swedish pop star (Lindy Larsson) trying to stage a comeback, and his protégé (Riah Knight), whose meteoric rise is inversely proportional to her mentor’s fall, is both sordid and deliriously enjoyable.What’s more, the five actors in the show can actually sing — a true rarity at German theaters — and they belt out Shaban’s rousing and cheeky numbers with gusto. For perhaps the first time I can remember, Broadway-caliber musical entertainment has come to a German dramatic stage. (It’s the only production from a Berlin repertory theater at the festival.)Cultural appropriation, political correctness, #MeToo debates and social media trolling are gently skewered in a production that is eye-popping and outrageously glam. At the same time, everything is so loopy and chock-full of schlock that there’s little danger of anyone’s taking offense at this vulgar and punchy musical burlesque. Although its themes are urgently contemporary, “Slippery Slope” handles them with a lightness and wit that are rare in theaters here. I’m glad that the Theatertreffen jury, a high-minded bunch of tastemakers if there ever was one, selected it alongside the festival’s more straight-faced entries. It’s a sign of their belief in theater’s ability to startle, to provoke and, yes, to entertain.TheatertreffenThrough May 22 at various theaters in Berlin, and at the Paketpostamt in Hamburg; berlinerfestspiele.de. More

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      Review: In ‘Exception to the Rule,’ Detention Is Sinister

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      Teenagers bond after school in a sort of classroom purgatory. And, where is the teacher?Detention is a drag. For the students in “Exception to the Rule,” it’s also emblematic. Whatever landed them in the after-school slammer, these teenagers were already trapped by forces far beyond their control.They barrel in one after another, their voices ricocheting around the Black Box Theater, where the Roundabout Underground production opened on Wednesday night. In a space no bigger than a classroom, the audience, sitting on three sides, is spitball distance from the bickering, the posturing and revelations of what lies beneath.There’s Mikayla (Amandla Jahava), who balks at her reputation as a bad girl while relishing the attention; the goofball Tommy (Malik Childs), who claims he’s “not tryna holla” at Mikayla while very obviously taking his shot; Abdul (Mister Fitzgerald), who appears guarded and pensive, preferring to keep his head down; Dayrin (Toney Goins), who is quick-tempered but eager for a laugh; and the sweet but tart Dasani (Claudia Logan), whom Dayrin mockingly calls Aquafina (as in the other bottled water brand).Then there’s Erika (MaYaa Boateng), otherwise known as “college-bound Erika,” whose late entrance comes as a shock to the bunch. Upwardly mobile and buttoned-up, she’s what Dayrin calls “the whitest person in a room full of Black people.” What could she have done wrong? And where is the teacher, anyway? They can’t go home until he signs them out.As for the show’s conceit, the playwright, Dave Harris, borrows from both “Waiting for Godot” and John Hughes’s classic portrait of detained and misunderstood youth, “The Breakfast Club.” It’s doubtful that the students’ savior will ever come, and discovering what they’re in for, and what that says about their stations in life, propels the story forward. Throw in a few romantic sparks between opposites, and it’s all a bit too familiar.But what appears at first like a mundane exercise in remedial discipline sours into something more sinister. The P.A. system starts to glitch, no one can tell the time, and bars slide over the window as the school goes into after-hours lockdown (sound is by Lee Kinney). Take away the desks, and the scuffed floors and cinder-block walls could just as easily be the setting of a prison (the set is by Reid Thompson and Kamil James). And the flicker of fluorescents and red glow of the hall suggest a kind of purgatory (lighting is by Cha See).As the kids clash and open up to one another, surreal elements creep up, appearing to represent the systems and obstacles — poverty, redlining, over policing — that can entrap many Black people in rooms like this, and worse. And the students’ back stories illustrate how they try to maneuver against such repression: Dasani has stolen food because she’s hungry; Mikayla made her own too-short skirt out of necessity. (“You think I got money for all that extra fabric? I look sexy on a budget.”)Under the direction of Miranda Haymon, the performances have an exaggerated quality that keeps the characters at a distance, despite the action being in your face. Each one has subtler, more grounded moments, but there’s a heightened sense to their personas that hints they’re stand-ins for broader ideas. Even as the even-keeled Erika, Boateng has an almost mechanical, doll-like carriage that evokes the concept of what it takes to escape social constraints rather than someone with one foot out the door.As in his previous work “Tambo & Bones,” Harris toys with stereotypes about Blackness in order to turn them inside out, pointing to the history, circumstances and motivations behind ways of thinking and behavior. It’s an exercise performed for the benefit of audiences presumed to be in need of instruction, and for some it will no doubt be an eye-opening lesson.But there’s a restlessness inherent to every schoolroom timeout, and to theatergoers being positioned as pupils. What happens once we can see people for who they are and then dig deeper into their contradictions? Understanding how lives are shaped by their limitations, as Harris details here with an ultimately pat sort of logic, is foundational to social justice. But in order to see that there’s more to people than what keeps them in margins, first we may have to set them free.Exception to the RuleThrough June 26 at the Black Box Theater at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, Manhattan; roundabouttheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Broadway Deal Over Rudin Shows Will Limit Nondisclosure Agreements

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      Performers and stage managers were released from agreements they signed to work on four shows that were produced by Scott Rudin after their union, Actors’ Equity, filed complaints.Performers and stage managers will be released from the nondisclosure agreements they signed to work on four Broadway shows connected to the producer Scott Rudin under a settlement between the Broadway League and Actors’ Equity Association.The union said that the two parties had agreed that, going forward, producers would no longer require actors or stage managers to sign such agreements unless approved by the union, which might sign off on them in limited circumstances to protect things such as intellectual property or financial information. The League declined to comment.The settlement arises from a labor dispute that began last year, when Rudin, long one of the most powerful producers on Broadway, was facing accusations that he had behaved tyrannically toward a variety of people who worked with him, prompting an Equity stage manager to alert the union to the nondisclosure agreements required by some Rudin shows.Last spring, the union asked Rudin to release employees from the nondisclosure agreements, and in January, the union filed a pair of unfair labor practice complaints with the National Labor Relations Board regarding “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “West Side Story,” both of which were at the time produced by Rudin.The union argued that nondisclosure agreements illegally restricted worker rights. Its complaints were initially filed against Rudin and his general manager; in recognition of the fact that Rudin is not currently actively producing on Broadway or in Hollywood, and last year resigned as a member of the Broadway League, the complaints were expanded to include the Broadway League, which is a trade association representing producers.The union said it has since learned that nondisclosure agreements were being used by four recent Broadway productions, including not only “Mockingbird” and “West Side Story,” but also “The Iceman Cometh,” on which Rudin was a lead producer, and “The Lehman Trilogy,” on which Rudin was among the lead producers.The union withdrew the National Labor Relations Board complaints earlier this month, after reaching a settlement agreement with the League. According to a copy of the settlement agreement, the League has agreed to release from confidentiality, nondisclosure and nondisparagement agreements any actor or stage manager who signed such an agreement with the four recent productions. (The agreement does not affect workers in Rudin’s office, many of whom were required to sign detailed nondisclosure agreements as part of their employment contracts.)The settlement comes at a time when nondisclosure agreements in many workplaces have come under increasing scrutiny.“Exploitation feeds off of isolation,” said Andrea Hoeschen, the union’s general counsel. “There is no stronger tool for an abuser or a harasser, no matter the setting, than silence.”It is not clear how frequently nondisclosure agreements are used on Broadway.“We intend to tell our members broadly about this settlement, and if they are asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement, we are going to push back on those as violative of our members’ rights,” Hoeschen said. More

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      Interview: Is It A Film? Is It A Play? No It’s the Adaptation Game

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      The Adaptation Game with Sam Briggs and Maddie Gray

      Those of you keeping up with what we are up to here at ET will have hopefully seen (and listened) to our recent podcast recording with the team at Chewboy Productions, where they told us all about the upcoming ChewFest. And you will have also seen the recent interview with Gutter Street, one of the companies putting on a night at the festival.

      But in our continuing attempt to become the unofficial publication of choice for ChewFest, we didn’t want to stop at just those two interviews. Which led us to The Adaptation Game. A joint venture between Visability Film Festival and Yellow Hat Productions, it is described as an evening of transmedia storytelling, an integrayion of film and theatre, breathing new life into some of their favourite films of the past two years by adapting them for the stage!

      No, we wasn’t too sure what transmedia storytelling was either, so what better way to find out more than by asking those behind it. It was our pleasure then to catch up with Sam Briggs, writer and co-director for Visability Film Festival, and Maddie Gray, DIrector and co-founder of Yellow Hat Productions.

      What exactly can we expect from an evening of “integrated film and theatre”?

      SB – The fantastic thing about an evening of integrated film and theatre is that you’ll be getting award winning short films and bold new theatre presented side by side. In the case of The Adaptation Game this means watching the short films Bulldog, Glaucon, and To The Dusty Sea, immediately followed by a new chapter in their stories presented as stage adaptations. A ‘remix’ of the stories, if you like, but told in a new medium, live in front of you.

      MG – A night at The Adaptation Game aka an evening of integrated film and theatre will bring you an exciting and eclectic mix of the mediums of film and live performance. Visability Film Festival have chosen three award winning short films and together with multidisciplinary arts company Yellow Hat Theatre have adapted them for the stage.

      So we’ll be watching the short film and then a theatre piece will follow on? Will it be taking just the theme or be almost as an extension of the short film?

      MG – Each theatre piece will take a different approach to the process of adaptation and the theatre performances will be an expansion and further exploration of the themes and ideas in the films. They exist within the world of the films and as standalone works. We didn’t want to take a literal and formulaic approach to the adaptations but instead found ways to bring out the situations, ideas and characters exploring events post-films.

      SB – For example, the play Caved In, will involve a character from the experimental film, Glaucon, watching his own death on screen and coming to terms with it. Buckle up.

      Is this something you’ve done before, or something you’ve wanted to try out for a while now?

      SB – We were really fortunate to be asked to be a part of Chewfest. Having had great success during the first two years of Visability Film Festival, the question instantly became ‘how can we do something different?’ for what would be our 3rd edition. I’ve been fascinated by Adaptation Theory since studying Adaptation and Transmedia Storytelling as a creative writing module at UEA some years ago. I instantly thought of Yellow Hat Productions and their theatre expertise to help me get this fresh new idea off the ground.

      MG – We were very excited when Visability film festival came to us with this idea as it sounded right up our street. We’re buzzing to host a night alongside them as part of Chewfest. This is our first venture as a company, but as freelance creatives, working in the theatre industry adapting and devising work inspired by original material is very much something we’ve done before and something we love doing.  Working across medias was an exciting prospect for us as our background lies mostly in theatre and we were intrigued to find out how we could explore the essence of these wonderful short films and transport them into a live theatrical space 

      And how have you selected the three short films that we’ll be seeing?

      SB – Visability Film Festival has been blessed to have some truly outstanding films submitted over the past two years. Between them, the three films we’ve chosen have played at huge BAFTA-qualifying festivals, including Norwich Film Festival and Manchester International Film Festival, as well as winning several awards at our own festival. At Visability, we like to focus on films that have the potential to bring about meaningful social change. Through its re-evaluation of the stereotypes surrounding UK rough sleepers, the short film Bulldog was instantly high on our list of films to adapt. 

      MG – We’ve been fans of Visability Film Festival since its inception and when Sam brought us a selection of the award winning shorts it was a difficult choice.

      We also share a passion for creating work for social change so choosing our first short Bulldog, an exploration around the stereotypes of rough sleepers seemed a no brainer. The style and the rhythm of the piece plays such an instrumental role in the overall effect and really makes an audience question their held beliefs and prejudices. We were excited to see where that would take us as we moulded these ideas for the stage.

      To The Dusty Sea, an animated short exploring the relationships of a family in turmoil was also a very easy choice as it is both incredibly beautiful and moving and offers such rich material to work from. 

      Finally Glaucon, an experimental mask work piece inspired by Plato’s Republic and allegory of the cave was a clear choice as the style was so different to most of what we had seen before. It really creates an otherworldly atmosphere and brings an audience right down into the cave with it.

      We wanted all the films to come from different genres and explore varying ideas and themes whilst also complimenting each other as a whole collection.

      SB – Really we’re just grateful that each filmmaker agreed to hand over their babies to us so that we could tell the next chapter in the amazing stories they started.

      Is the plan to enhance the original short films, or to make us view them in alternative ways?

      SB – Both! It’s important for us as creatives that these new plays hold up on their own. But at the same time, by being performed alongside screenings of their original films, we actively want to encourage audiences to feel as though the pieces are in constant conversation and open for reinterpretation.

      MG -Absolutely, both. We’ve taken the short films as starting blocks for our theatrical work so as to keep the essence of the short but freedom for us to play and explore with character, situation and idea. We hope that seeing these works side by side adds a whole extra dimension to each.

      What made you want to take part in ChewFest? Is this type of event good for experimenting and putting your work in front of new audiences?

      SB – Exactly that. We’ve been massively grateful for the success of Visability in its first two years but are constantly on the lookout for something new that we can do with it. Chewfest has given us that opportunity. 

      MG – This kind of platform is perfect for emerging creatives to test out new work and new ways of collaborating and experimenting. We are very grateful to Chewboy Productions and Visability Film Festival for providing the opportunity to do that. We’ve been fans of Chewboy for a while and having the opportunity to be a part of their next project is super exciting. We can’t wait to see what the other companies taking part bring to the table! 

      And do you see the short plays themselves ever taking on their own life away from the film, or do you imagine they would always need to play together?

      SB – The hope is that by playing them together with the films we’re offering audiences something new and original. Each play definitely has the potential to stand alone and be developed further, but for me, the uniqueness of our interdisciplinary approach is what makes them so exciting.

      MG – Each theatre piece, despite being able to stand alone is intrinsically tied to the short films they were inspired by. I think there is certainly potential for these pieces to develop further independently but I think watching them alongside the films will be so much more impactful and interesting. 

      What else do you have planned after your participation in ChewFest?

      SB – This year it seems like Visability have been moving into unchartered waters at every turn. Recently we’ve been accepting applications for the VFF Short Film Fund. This is our way of giving back to filmmakers and supporting the emergence of new and exciting work that seeks to utilise film as a tool for positive societal change, by offering funding to filmmakers whose work we love. MG – Here at Yellow Hat Productions we are getting into the swing of things as we navigate the waters of company life. Our debut play Still Alive Mate by Theo Toksvig Stewart was due to premier at the Vault festival in January 2022, which was sadly postponed due to Covid 19. So we are busy working behind the scenes to bring back this much anticipated show. In the summer we are filming our first short film and are currently developing a podcast. 

      Our thanks to Sam and Maddie for the time to chat to us.

      The Adaptation Game plays as part of ChewFest on Tuesday 24 May. The festival runs from 23 – 29 May at Lion and Unicorn Theatre.

      Tickets and details of all the evenings can be found here. More

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      Review: ‘Golden Shield’ Is an Exercise In Miscommunication

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      Anchuli Felicia King’s play about an internet firewall belongs to multiple genres all at once.In “Golden Shield,” which opened Tuesday at the Manhattan Theater Club, a blowhard executive at a tech company comes up with a way to build a more effective firewall: decentralize it into multiple checkpoints.This appears to also have been the strategy of the young Thai-Australian playwright Anchuli Felicia King, whose show belongs to multiple genres all at once: It is a legal drama, a romance, a story of sibling estrangement, and a cautionary tale about technology and the cost of political activism. “Golden Shield” is a lot to chew on and somehow it is not filling.The director May Adrales nimbly steers the production, which goes back and forth between 2006 and 2016 as we follow a class-action lawsuit by eight Chinese dissidents against the fictional ONYS Systems, an American company, led by the aforementioned tech bro, Marshall McLaren (Max Gordon Moore), contracted by the Chinese government to build a system filtering problematic internet content — the Golden Shield of the title. (The case borrows elements from real-life ones against Yahoo and Cisco.) Julie Chen (Cindy Cheung), a Chinese American partner in a law firm, leads the charge on behalf of the plaintiffs.Besides Marshall, Julie clashes with her younger sister, Eva (Ruibo Qian), whom she has hired as a translator because Eva has a better command of Mandarin. Julie says she picked her sister because she wants “someone I trust over there,” but the two women can’t stand each other, let alone trust each other. Eva won’t even tell her sibling how she makes a living, only specifying that “it’s not illegal.”Julie is a little slow on the uptake, and it’s a safe bet most audience members will be way ahead of her. She also appears to be terrible in court (I kept mentally interjecting “Objection!”) and flusters easily. “Where the [expletive] am I gonna get a Mandarin translator in Dallas?” Julie wonders after finding herself in a bind in the city where the trial is taking place. Where, indeed, could she possibly locate this unicorn in a huge agglomeration with enough corporate headquarters to sustain a cottage industry of specialized translators?The show’s main concern is communication, or rather miscommunication, an idea it incorporates in its very fabric with the Translator (Fang Du), an omniscient character who hovers on the periphery of the action. At regular intervals he volunteers context, explains what is spoken and verbalizes what is not — he essentially dispenses audio footnotes.At worst, which is most of the time, the Translator spells out the obvious, ruining the silences, allusions and, yes, lies that undergird many conversations, and by extension theater. It’s as if someone were filling in the blanks in a Pinter play. A little after Eva tells an Australian nonprofit employee named Amanda (Gillian Saker, in an unfortunate wig that looks as if the 1970s had crash-landed on it) that they could make out in the women’s room, for example, Amanda coyly announces, “I feel a sudden and overwhelming urge to powder my nose.” The hint is none too subtle, and yet the Translator immediately informs us that she means, “Meet me in the bathroom.”At best, which is not nearly enough, the Translator sneaks in insights that are tantalizingly thought-provoking, as when he steers a conversation between Marshall and a Chinese official, or says that his job “is not really to translate but to interpret. Not to transmit truth to truth but to give you informed approximations.”A wealth of possibilities lies in the difference between these two words, but “Golden Shield” is more interested in histrionics than in how approximations can get close to the truth, or at least a truth.Golden ShieldThrough June 12 at City Center Stage I, Manhattan; manhattantheatreclub.com. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      ‘Will You Come With Me?’ Review: Love in the Age of Revolution

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      Set around protests in Istanbul that began in 2013, this play follows a couple as they circle, approach and retreat from each other over the years.In May 2013, a sit-in over the demolition of Istanbul’s Gezi Park gave rise to a nationwide movement after police intervened with tear gas and water cannons. Protests rocked Turkey for months as a flood of grievances against the government boiled over into the streets.Love in the age of revolution is the time-honored subject of “Will You Come With Me?” — a diaristic two-hander by the playwright Ebru Nihan Celkan that opened at MITU580 in Brooklyn on Monday night. Translated from Turkish by Kate Ferguson, the PlayCo production aims to put viewers on the ground of the Gezi Park conflict and into the hearts and heads of two women brought together and torn apart during its turmoil.The story begins with Umut (Layla Khoshnoudi) recording a video message for a distant lover on the occasion of their first anniversary, though it seems the pair has most often been apart. “They cut down the tree where we had our first kiss,” Umut says in a park like any other, her image projected on translucent panels angled around the black-box theater. We watch the screen as her friend behind the camera is arrested mid-shoot.Next it’s 2018, and Umut is awake in bed, wondering how long she’s been afraid of the dark. We meet her lover, Janina (Maribel Martinez), on the other side of the stage in Berlin, preparing to visit Umut in Istanbul. Later we learn that the two met while Janina was there on business, and she wants to bring Umut back to Berlin to live with her. Hasn’t Umut had enough of civil unrest? The two circle each other, dictating their experiences as if to bridge the distance between them and create a record for posterity.“I’m going to get her,” Janina says. “No more counting the days, the minutes, the seconds.”The bench where they fell in love sits center stage, beside a path cut through green turf that covers the floor. The peaceful artifice of the set design by Afsoon Pajoufar belies the strife Umut describes unfolding around her in Istanbul. Sound design by Avi Amon summons crowds and confrontation, while stark spotlights from the lighting designer Reza Behjat capture Umut’s disquiet and isolation.Scenes flip forward and back through time, like the ripped-out pages of a journal. If separation charges Umut and Janina’s fondness for each other, their reunion is marked by ambivalence. Khoshnoudi and Martinez are best when they’re in dialogue, working off each other with sincerity and grace. Unfortunately, the two characters don’t interact until nearly halfway through the 80-minute play, when we flash back to their dreamy first meeting and forward to the tensions that have arisen between them since.In a set designed by Afsoon Pajoufar, images are projected on translucent panels at either side of the black-box theater. Julieta CervantesThere’s a persistent sense of disorder to “Will You Come With Me?” that suits its formal experimentation, colliding the illogic shuffle of memory with documentary style. But even with supertitled dates between scenes, the chopped-up timeline is hard to follow. And the action, which is almost entirely described rather than enacted, can feel frustratingly opaque. Those unfamiliar with even a broad outline of the Gezi Park protests won’t find their impetus or consequences detailed here.Celkan is more interested in the sensory richness of love and civil disobedience, in hearts that heave “like a pair of bellows,” or eyes that “glow like embers” one minute and burn with tear gas the next. That poetry survives translation, and its focus on imagery is well complemented by projection design from Stefania Bulbarella and Dee Lamar Mills. But the production from the director Keenan Tyler Oliphant can’t fully theatricalize a text so weighed down by narration.If “Will You Come With Me?” wants to posit love as an act of resistance, it’s not exactly clear what gets in the way of it here. The social uprising makes for a chaotic backdrop, but its forces don’t seem to be what drives the pair apart. The play feels like a kind of battle-logue, of two people trying to escape themselves for each other and bend the arc of history. It’s a valiant effort at a worthy endeavor, even if the execution is a blur.Will You Come With Me?Through June 5 at MITU580, Brooklyn; playco.org. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. More