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      How Lisa Laurén’s Artsy Childhood Inspires Her Sought-After Animal Heads

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      When Lisa Laurén gets a request for an animal costume head, she said, “it’s kind of like I’m going on a play date.”Using her imagination, resources and hands, Laurén crafts animal heads that are vivid, colorful and eye-catching.“I’m trying to condense somebody else’s dream and make it into something,” Laurén said from the kitchen of her high-ceilinged apartment on a leafy street near the Spree River in Berlin. A clay fox head covered tightly with foil stood on a large tray, awaiting its next phase of creation.The animal heads are an offshoot of Laurén’s main job as a freelance textile artist, a role that includes painting backdrops for staged productions and helping develop costumes for television, film and theater. She has worked for an array of clients including Netflix, Apple TV+, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Tate Museum in London, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid.Lisa Laurén, a textile designer, creates imaginative animal heads for performers. “I’m trying to condense somebody else’s dream and make it into something.” Laurén has been making animal costume heads for theater, opera and artistic performances since 2011, when the Komische Oper Berlin commissioned her and a close collaborator, Benjamin Tyrrell, to make a set for a staging of Leos Janacek’s 1923 opera, “The Cunning Little Vixen,” in which many characters are forest animals.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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      Taraji P. Henson to Make Broadway Debut in August Wilson Play

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      The actress will star opposite Cedric the Entertainer in a revival of “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” next spring.Taraji P. Henson and Cedric the Entertainer have signed on to co-star in a revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” on Broadway next spring.The production — the play’s third on Broadway since 1988 — will be directed by Debbie Allen.“Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” is a part of Wilson’s Century Cycle, which chronicles Black life in America with one play set in each decade of the 20th century. “Joe Turner” is set in 1911; like most of the plays, it takes place in Pittsburgh.The drama is set in a boardinghouse peopled by migrants from the rural South who are searching, suffering and spiritual. Henson and Cedric will play the couple, Bertha and Seth Holly, who run the boardinghouse.Henson studied theater at Howard University, but her career has been spent in film (“The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”) and television (“Empire”). This will be her Broadway debut as an actor; she was credited as among the producers of a 2023 Broadway play, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding.”Cedric, a comedian who has also worked on television (“The Neighborhood”), has one previous Broadway credit; he starred in a very short-lived 2008 revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo.”Allen, best known as a performer and choreographer, has one previous directing credit on Broadway — she directed a 2008 revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” The “Joe Turner” revival is being produced by Brian Moreland, who previously produced a 2022 revival of Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson,” as well as last season’s production of “Othello.”Moreland said in a statement that the show would open next spring at an unspecified Shubert theater; the rest of the cast has not yet been announced. More

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      Review: A New ‘Wrinkle in Time’ Needs to Iron Out Some Problems

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      Despite a gorgeous score and some fine performances, the musical adaptation of the Madeleine L’Engle classic gets trapped in a time loop.Heather Christian, whose mind-blowing, multidimensional music seems to arrive from a studio deep in the universe, was the obvious and thrilling choice to compose the score for a stage adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time.” After all, the 1962 Madeleine L’Engle novel that the show is based on, a classic of both children’s literature and science fiction, is about a girl’s adventures in hyperspace, and Christian, in works including “Oratorio for Living Things” and “I Am Sending You the Sacred Face,” gives the distinct impression of having made such journeys herself. Certainly she has brought back riches from the far reaches of her ear that few other theater composers would dare to imagine.She does so again with “A Wrinkle in Time,” providing an exhaustingly beautiful score for a show, directed by Lee Sunday Evans, that is otherwise just exhausting. Playing at the Arena Stage in Washington through July 20, and filled with wonders, it features some first-rate performances from a vocally splendid cast but is far too overloaded and unvaried to fulfill its promise.That may be a problem built into the rich underlying material. (Other adapters, notably the filmmaker Ava DuVernay, have not done it justice either.) L’Engle’s plot about Meg Murry’s trek through space to rescue her father is complicated enough, with its witchlike trio of spiritual guides, its good and evil planets and its time warps called tesseracts. But it is much more than that: It is a moral bildungsroman, as Meg, encountering the worst of the world, must mature enough to confront it.The musical’s book, by the playwright Lauren Yee, is faithful to a fault. As in the L’Engle, Meg (Taylor Iman Jones) is an angry and disaffected seventh grader; she is often in trouble at school, especially in math class, for refusing to “show her work.” Two years since her father’s disappearance, she and her brother, Charles Wallace, an intense little genius, have formed a closed circle of support and empathy under the loving eye of their stalwart mother. It takes some daring on Meg’s part merely to allow the circle to open enough to admit one newcomer: a popular boy from school, Calvin O’Keefe.From left, Amber Gray (Mrs. Whatsit), Stacey Sargeant (Mrs. Who) and Vicki Lewis (Mrs. Which).DJ CoreyThere the story might have stalled out as a middle school romance were it not for the arrival of the three witches: Mrs. Whatsit (Amber Gray), Mrs. Which (Vicki Lewis) and Mrs. Who (Stacey Sargeant). It is they who explain how the opportunities of the tesseract might be exploited as a shortcut to finding Mr. Murry in the vast space-time of the universe. The rest of the show is concerned with the search, as the three children “tesser” repeatedly, along the way confronting a force called It that threatens to seduce the world into a coma of complacency.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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      Jordan Roth, a Broadway Big Shot, Is Now Reinventing Himself

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      Jordan Roth, the scion of a New York real estate fortune, a convention-challenging fashionista and a social media habitué, spent 15 years as a Broadway macher, running one of the big three theater landlords. He programmed hits like “The Book of Mormon” and “Hadestown,” nurtured plays and musicals in development, and joined the theater industry’s inner circle at its cloistered confabs, all the while showing up at openings in increasingly fabulous couture.But it’s fairly obvious to anyone watching Roth’s evolving public persona that he’s been looking for a new adventure.He has sold most of his stake in Jujamcyn, the company through which he owned five Broadway theaters, and he has dialed back his theater producing.Jordan Roth rehearsing what he’s calling a “narrative fashion performance” in a black box studio in Brooklyn.Now he is moving on to a different stage, combining his love of fashion, his hunger to perform, and his taste for storytelling. He is pursuing “narrative fashion performance,” and he plans a debut on July 10 at the Louvre in Paris.“I worked for a long time facilitating other people’s creativity, and that was very meaningful and very fulfilling, but I started to miss my own,” Roth, 49, told me during a rehearsal break at a black box studio in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood.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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      What to See in London Theaters This Summer

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      A handpicked guide for visitors (and residents), including classic drama, musicals, new plays and shows for children.The London stage is, as ever, bustling with an array of shows to satisfy all tastes. Starry plays and revivals jostle with high-profile musicals, both new and revivals, new drama and children’s theater.Here’s a guide to some of the enticements of the coming months, presented with an awareness that just as London contains multitudes, so, too, does its theater.Shows With Star PowerRosamund Pike, center, in rehearsals for “Inter Alia,” which begins previews July 10.Manuel HarlanInter AliaRosamund Pike has made her name onscreen in films like “Gone Girl” and “Saltburn” and returns to the stage to head the new play from the team behind the London and Broadway hit “Prima Facie.” Like that play, Suzie Miller’s “Inter Alia” is set in the legal profession, with Pike as a prominent London judge, though unlike its solo-performer predecessor, “Inter Alia” features a supporting cast, led by Jamie Glover. The show is just one of several National Theater titles vying for playgoers’ attentions this summer: Others include the return of Michael Sheen in “Nye” and the West End transfer of Beth Steel’s “Till the Stars Come Down.”Runs July 10 through Sept. 13 at the National Theater.GiantThe accolades have been pouring in for the onetime director Mark Rosenblatt’s Olivier Award-winning debut play, which recalls an episode in the career of the author Roald Dahl. John Lithgow is in career-best form as Dahl, who has written a book review that is widely seen as antisemitic and refuses to reign in his language. Aya Cash and Elliot Levey do standout work playing his publishers; Nicholas Hytner is the characteristically adroit director. More

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      Diana Oh, Passionate Voice for Queer Liberation in Theater, Dies at 38

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      Mx. Oh’s politically provocative and often playful works, including the Off Broadway production “{my lingerie play},” asserted the right to be oneself while having fun.Diana Oh, a glitter-dusted experimental artist-activist whose theater works intertwined political provocation with profound compassion in rituals of communion with audiences, died on June 17 at their home in Brooklyn. Mx. Oh, who used the pronouns they and them, was 38.The death was confirmed by Mx. Oh’s brother Han Bin Oh, who said the cause was suicide.A playwright, actor, singer-songwriter and musician, Mx. Oh created art that didn’t fit neatly into categories. Mx. Oh was best known for the outraged yet disarmingly gentle Off Broadway show “{my lingerie play},” a music-filled protest against male sexual violence; it was performed in a series of 10 installations around New York City.A concert-like play — with Mx. Oh singing at its center — “{my lingerie play}” percolated with an angry awareness of the ways restrictive gender norms and society’s policing of sexual desire can leave whole groups vulnerable. It was an emphatic and loving assertion of the right to be oneself without worrying about abuse.“I was born a woman, to immigrant parents,” Mx. Oh said in the show. “That’s when my body became political. That’s when I became an artist.”Mx. Oh’s Infinite Love Party, which the Bushwick Starr theater in Brooklyn produced in 2019, was not a show but rather a structured celebration with a sleepover option. It was a handmade experience, including music and aerial silks, designed to welcome queer people, people of color and their allies.Mx. Oh in The Infinite Love Party, which was not a show but rather a structured celebration with music.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMx. Oh in 2019 during The Infinite Love Party, which had a sleepover option.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesWe 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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      Rachel Zegler’s Balcony Scene in ‘Evita’ Has London Talking

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      Crowds are converging outside the London Palladium to watch Rachel Zegler sing “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” from a balcony — while paying theatergoers inside see it on a screen.One recent afternoon, I arrived at the London Palladium to a disappointing scene: The West End’s most talked-about seats were already taken.Outside on the street, not far from the theater’s grand entrance, two men had perched themselves on the seats — actually piles of cardboard awaiting recycling — to get a perfect view of a scene that has London’s theater scene buzzing.In a few moments, Rachel Zegler, the actor playing Eva Perón in a revival of “Evita” at the Palladium, would appear on a balcony and belt out “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” the show’s signature song, to the hundreds of musical lovers, celebrity spotters and confused tourists gathered below.Members of the public watching Rachel Zegler’s balcony performance on the street outside the London Palladium.Jeremie Souteyrat for The New York TimesThe audience inside, some of whom had paid 240 pounds, about $327, for seats that weren’t made out of trash, would be watching her on a big screen.Adam McCollom, 41, an academic who had scored a spot on one of the cardboard perches, said that Zegler’s street scene was apt for a musical about Perón, the wife of Argentina’s socialist president’s who was adored by the working classes. “Here I am, the pleb on the bins, about to clap the woman who’s paid billions,” he said.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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      Lynne Meadow, Who Led Manhattan Theater Club for 53 Years, Is Stepping Down

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      Lynne Meadow was just 25 when she took a job running the Off Off Broadway Manhattan Theater Club. Now the nonprofit is a major player on and off Broadway.Lynne Meadow, the last of the long-serving artistic directors who for decades led the four nonprofits with Broadway theaters, plans to step down from her current position, she said in an interview.Meadow, 78, has served as artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club since 1972, and by her own count has produced or presented more than 600 shows, making her one of the most prolific and successful figures in the American theater. Among the successes: the repeatedly extended Lynn Nottage play “Ruined,” which won a Pulitzer Prize for drama in 2009, and Jonathan Spector’s “Eureka Day,” which won a Tony Award earlier this month.She said she will stay with the organization as an artistic adviser, but that a search for a new artistic director is already underway.Her move will follow that of André Bishop, whose 33-year run leading Lincoln Center Theater ends next week; Carole Rothman, who in 2023 ended a 45-year tenure atop Second Stage Theater; and Todd Haimes, who died in 2023 after running Roundabout Theater Company for 40 years.The departures mean that, after decades of constancy, a new generation of leaders will oversee the nonprofit presence on Broadway. These institutions, which together control six of the 41 Broadway theaters, over the years have been an important ballast for the industry, preserving a place for new plays, risky work and large-orchestra musical revivals during periods when those types of projects have been less appealing to commercial producers.“I’m doing this because I feel that the timing is right to do this — there are things that I want to do,” Meadow said. “I’m not tired, and I’m not bored, and I’m not depressed, but I’m excited for Chapter 2.”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