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      Poems! Songs! Demands! It’s Not Theater, but It’s … Something

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      Performing-arts protesters locked out by the pandemic have occupied playhouses across France, but drama is not allowed. Cue the “agoras.”Dozens of French theater workers walk into a room and occupy it. What happens next? A month later, not nearly as many performances as you might expect.Since early March, the performing arts sector has been in the grip of protests across France, where cultural institutions have been closed since October because of the coronavirus. After trade union representatives in Paris entered the shuttered Odéon Theater, a movement to occupy playhouses spread rapidly. Even as the country has entered a third lockdown, the occupations have shown no sign of diminishing: The number of venues taken over by artists, workers and students has remained around 100.Choreography on the balcony of the Odéon Theater in Paris on Sunday. The sign reads, “Odéon gagged.”Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesYet with the infection rate rising, the movement finds itself facing difficult options. Protesters can’t be seen to flout restrictions or draw large crowds, so there have been no impromptu plays or theatrical tableaux. The messaging has also been carefully adjusted: Instead of demanding the immediate reopening of cultural venues, the movement is calling for more government support and the withdrawal of changes to unemployment benefits.Yet public actions are needed to rally support. As a result, the occupiers have walked a fine, often awkward line amid art, safety and their political demands.The main point of contact between the protesters and the public has been “agoras,” a form of outdoor assembly halfway between a political rally and an open-mic session. The Odéon has staged daily agoras since early March, and some have drawn hundreds of bystanders; elsewhere, they are weekly or biweekly. Anyone wearing a mask is welcome.What happens at an agora depends on the luck of the draw. Prepared political statements read from smartphones are a recurring feature, with protesters from other economic sectors joining in to detail their own demands. The floor is generally open to anyone who wishes to put two cents in. Poems, songs and the odd flash mob or group improvisation bring a little motion to the proceedings.An art-therapy session at La Colline. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the floor in front of the theater. Elliott Verdier for The New York TimesOn Sunday at La Colline, one of the first Paris theaters to be occupied, a three-hour agora started with an art-therapy session. Protesters and visitors were directed to draw on a large white canvas on the ground in front of the theater. Later, during the open-mic portion, three students recited a poem they had written, starting with the question “What do we live for?” Another participant read a text that employed swans as a metaphor for the current situation, asking the powers that be to “let us fly.”After attending half a dozen agoras, I can say with some confidence that the rewards are slim from an audience perspective. The format is barely even agitprop, as occupiers are trying hard not to do anything overtly theatrical — a necessary compromise, perhaps, yet one that makes for arguably limited visibility.If agoras start to look like actual performances, they are at risk of falling foul of the rules, which preclude all cultural events. Only demonstrations are allowed, and organizers must apply for permission. Some local authorities have been more amenable than others. Last Saturday, the Odéon’s daily agora was forbidden by the Paris prefecture, which declared it a “concealed cultural event.” Agoras were able to resume the next day, but without live music. (In the end, musicians were granted permission to return beginning last Monday.)Then there is the fear of public disapproval. On March 21, an unauthorized street carnival that drew thousands in Marseille prompted widespread condemnation, with some participants now facing legal action. Carla Audebaud, one of the drama students occupying the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France, said in a phone interview that practicing their craft wasn’t the goal. “We’re trying not to make it look like a show,” she said.Drama students occupied the Théâtre National de Strasbourg, in eastern France week. The writing on their backs means “This country forgets, neglects.”Loïse BeauseigneurWhile most theater directors initially welcomed the occupations, the cohabitation has also grown tense during the third lockdown. In a statement over Easter, a coalition of protesters denounced their “self-proclaimed supporters,” saying, “We’re not fooled by some of your maneuvers aiming to make occupiers leave.”At La Colline, students pushed back against plans by the theater to reduce the number of authorized occupiers to six from 30 and limit access to showers and cooking facilities. The playhouse’s director, Wajdi Mouawad, discreetly attended their weekly agora Sunday and denied in an interview that the goal was to quash the occupation. “We’ve had positive tests among the theater’s team, and we decided to stop all rehearsals. We’re going to reduce the technical staff, and we’ve asked them to reduce their numbers, too,” he said, referring to the students.Mouawad added that he was sympathetic to the protesters. “They don’t have to obey us,” he said.Some protesters now wonder whether the focus on occupying physical venues was misguided. There have been attempts at guerrilla theater instead, with unannounced performances in symbolic public spaces. Last Saturday, dozens of topless students, with political slogans painted in black across their chests, popped up in front of the Ministry of Culture in Paris, chanting: “It’s not onstage that we’re going to die.”As with many agoras, the action was streamed live over Instagram, one avenue for protest that is certain not to create viral clusters. Still, the sprawling nature of the occupations around the country has made them difficult to follow even online. On Instagram, there are nearly as many accounts as there are venues, with the biggest drawing only a few thousand subscribers.Drama students at the T2G theater in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, last month. The movement there has focused on building local relationships.Chloé DestuynderIn that sense, the occupations are both everywhere and nowhere. They have energized a profession even as they have drawn tepid responses from the public and the government. Talks are underway between the Ministry of Culture and theater students, but no demands have been met.The effects are likely to be felt over the long term instead, as the movement has been an opportunity to learn and self-organize. At the Quai theater, in the western city of Angers, young actors have devised their own curriculum by inviting professionals to come and share their knowledge.Others have focused on building relationships at the local level. In Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, the students occupying the T2G playhouse have taken to visiting the market weekly to meet inhabitants who have never been to the theater. Some of them now visit the agoras.The group has also asked locals to share their thoughts on camera as a way to collect material that may be used in future creations. “A lot is happening that we’re not seeing right now because we’re right in the middle of it,” Léna Bokobza-Brunet, one of the students, said. “When we’re no longer in this situation, maybe we’ll realize what ties it all together.” In all likelihood, the best pandemic-era political theater is yet to come. More

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      Erika Dickerson-Despenza Wins Blackburn Prize for ‘cullud wattah’

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      The play is about the effect of the Flint, Mich., water crisis on three generations of women.Erika Dickerson-Despenza quit her last non-theater job in 2019, ready to pursue a full-time career as a playwright in New York. And that career was looking good: she was wrapping up a fellowship at the Lark, starting a residency at the Public Theater, and working on a play inspired by the Flint water crisis.The Public scheduled a staging of that play — her first professional production — for the summer of 2020.You can imagine what happened next.The coronavirus pandemic shuttered theaters across America, and with it, scuttled her debut. But now the play, “cullud wattah,” is being recognized with the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize, a respected annual award honoring work by women and nonbinary playwrights. The prize is a distinctive one — $25,000 for the winner, plus a Willem de Kooning print — and many of its recipients have gone on to great acclaim (among them, the Pulitzer winners Annie Baker, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Marsha Norman, Lynn Nottage, Wendy Wasserstein and Paula Vogel).Dickerson-Despenza, a 29-year-old Chicago native, is thrilled. “It’s a really affirming moment,” she said, “not only for me as an emerging playwright, but also for the way that I am doing my work as a queer Black woman who has intentionally decided to write about Black women and girls.”Her career, like so many others, has been upended by the pandemic. “cullud wattah” is on hold, but a spokeswoman for the Public said the theater still hopes to produce it once it resumes presenting in-person productions.In the meantime, she has been working on a 10-play cycle about the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. The second play in the cycle, “[hieroglyph],” was staged (without a live audience), filmed and streamed earlier this year by San Francisco Playhouse and Lorraine Hansberry Theater. And next week the Public Theater will introduce an audio production of “shadow/land,” the first installment of her Katrina cycle.“I am interested in what we learn, and do not learn, and what history has to teach us,” she said.She said she had been following the news out of Flint for some time before deciding to write “cullud wattah”; for a while, she said, she just made notes about the crisis and posted them on her wall. The play imagines the effect of the water crisis on three generations of women.“I had a wall full of Flint, and I didn’t know what to do with it,” she said. “The play is not so much about Flint, as it is about how an apocalypse makes everything else bubble to the surface.” More

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      A Theater Photographer Senses a Broadway Bloom

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      For Sara Krulwich, who has shot productions for The New York Times for more than two decades, a series of recent assignments hinted at an industry revival.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.On the first evening in April, Sara Krulwich, a New York Times photographer, visited the Kraine Theater in the East Village, where Mike Daisey, an actor and monologuist, was rehearsing a show for which the seating capacity would be limited to 22. The restriction, Mr. Daisey said, reminded him of his earliest days as a performer, when he was thrilled if even a handful of people were in the audience.For about 20 minutes, Ms. Krulwich photographed Mr. Daisey, adjusting her shutter, she later said, to ensure that “the theater lights and my camera were going to talk to each other in a kindly way.”The next day, Ms. Krulwich photographed part of a performance at the Daryl Roth Theater at Union Square. And on Saturday, she shot a 36-minute performance at the historic St. James Theater in Midtown. Those assignments added up to her busiest stretch of theater work in more than a year.Theatrical productions, dormant since last spring, are resuming in New York City, the first tentative steps toward what actors, directors and others hope will be a strong comeback by the fall. And many in the theater world may see Ms. Krulwich’s presence as a reassuring sign.For more than two decades, she has been a Broadway and Off Broadway fixture, photographing about 100 shows a year, a body of work that led to her receiving a Tony Honor in 2018.After a yearlong absence, Ms. Krulwich began photographing performances and rehearsals, feeling her way back into familiar tasks and reflecting on early traces of a theatrical revival, which, she said, mirrored the stirrings of spring.“The blooms are beginning,” she said by phone. “Even if we’re not seeing the full flowering just yet.”Ms. Krulwich joined The Times as a staff photographer in 1979, working for the Metro, National and Sports desks before becoming the paper’s first culture photographer in 1994.At that time, she said, it was common for news organizations to run theater photographs handed out by producers that tended to present reality in the light most favorable to them. Ms. Krulwich, however, wanted to cover theater with the same journalistic approach that the paper employed while reporting on other events.Ms. Krulwich said that her approach was direct, telling producers that theater was looked upon as news inside The Times and should be documented that way. Eventually, she obtained access to almost every production in the city.Over the years, Ms. Krulwich has captured moments that have become a part of theater lore. She photographed developmental work on the Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s masterwork, “Angels in America.” In 1996, she took what is believed to be the last picture of Jonathan Larson, the writer and composer of “Rent,” hours before his death the night before the show’s first Off Broadway preview.Her Tony, in 2018, made her the first journalist recognized for excellence in the theater, an honor given to people, organizations and institutions that have contributed to the industry but are not eligible to win in other Tony categories.Returning to work inside venues she’s accustomed to, Ms. Krulwich said she took delight in seeing people she has known for many years and looked forward to a time when everyone connected to productions will, once again, be able to make a living.“It’s a small group of people,” she said. “Almost an extended family.”The day after photographing Mr. Daisey, Ms. Krulwich wore an N-95 mask and climbed a ladder at the Daryl Roth while shooting about 20 minutes of a performance of “Blindness,” an audio adaptation of the dystopian novel of the same name by the Portuguese writer José Saramago.And then, the following day, at the St. James, she photographed the dancer Savion Glover and the actor Nathan Lane at the 36-minute event they performed in front of a masked audience of 150.It was, noted Michael Paulson, a Times theater reporter, the first time in 387 days that there was activity inside a Broadway house.Ms. Krulwich said the performance was not the same as one that would have taken place before the coronavirus pandemic, but she added that she felt at home back inside the St. James and appreciated the hints of what is to come.“I must say, it felt familiar to me,” she said. “It’s just a little bit. It’s a tiptoe. It’s the doors opening a crack.” More

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      Covid Closed Theaters. But It Also Made Them Accessible.

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      Before 2020, theater often felt inaccessible to me, a luxury for those who were more able-bodied or lived in certain cities. Now I’m obsessed.I have never lived in either London or New York, and thus have next to no experience with the hotbeds of English-speaking theater. Though I frequently travel to those cities, and social media posts of friends with their Broadway Playbills tantalize me, I live with an illness that makes it difficult to remain upright. That makes theater a tough experience: The first time I saw “Hamilton,” after I left the Richard Rodgers Theater I was too sick to remember most of what had happened. It was only through luck that I was well enough to see the musical a second time while on book tour, as well as Andrew Scott’s award-winning London performance in “Present Laughter.” Each was exhilarating, but I was always painfully aware of my body. On other occasions, a sudden flare of symptoms could force me to leave or to forfeit a pricey ticket on the week of a performance. When the pandemic forced the theater world into survival mode last spring, theaters had to figure out how to produce shows for homebound audiences. The Old Vic, where I saw “Present Laughter” the year before, featured Covid-friendly plays in which one actor, or two socially distanced actors, performed for the cameras. I watched “Three Kings” and “Lungs” while in bed — a disability-friendly arrangement — and was able to view the stage from different perspectives thanks to those cameras. Though “Three Kings” and “Present Laughter” each star Andrew Scott, the cameras’ close-ups showed off his face in a way that I was unable to witness from the cheap seats. I saw the dangerous curl of his smirk as he transformed from an innocent child to his drunken, miserable father, without adjusting his makeup or costume. I was able to admire that all the more in spotting the details that streaming theater illuminated.Spurred on by the Playbill newsletter, I became obsessed with watching as much theater as possible under these new, more accessible conditions. I saw plays and readings in which the actors recorded themselves at home, using Zoom and Skype, technology that has often been associated with remote work and learning. Many people have become allergic to Zoom as a result of overuse, but as a tool, Zoom and its ilk are able to control what the viewer sees in a way different from typical stagecraft. When streaming Will Arbery’s play about conservative Catholicism, “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” a Pulitzer finalist, I am allowed an intimacy with the characters that even able-bodied, front-row ticket holders would not ordinarily be able to witness, as the performers come in and out of darkened Zoom squares from their apartments. When Justin says, “I just think proximity to L.G.B.T. is a threat to Christian children and families,” his face is lit in part by a dangerous light that isn’t simply the glow of my laptop screen. Every microexpression and ounce of fidgety wariness that his friend Kevin expresses in turn (“But why can’t we meet it, engage with it — ”) is up close as well. They aren’t in each other’s spaces, but over Zoom, they are in mine. Each square’s unique lighting conceals their apartments, emphasizing the actors; I might as well be with them in the wooded darkness.Zoom and its ilk are able to control what the viewer sees in a way different from typical stagecraft.Acting “at” a screen exposes the idiosyncrasies involved in at-home performance: Oscar Isaac and Marisa Tomei arguing while readjusting their AirPods in “Beirut”; Jesse Eisenberg drinking from a glass of green juice, his character aggravating everyone around him in “The Spoils,” which he wrote. These moments remind me that the actors involved, who can otherwise feel Hollywood-larger-than-life, aren’t exempt from muddling through our international tragedy. Some of my favorite moments from these performances were immediately before and after the actual readings, when the actors were so clearly themselves. Eisenberg gave a self-effacing description of the play at the start — making it all the more exhilarating to see him enter its first scene shouting bombastic profanity.Not all streaming theater has been over Zoom or Skype. London’s National Theater made use of its archival recordings to create National Theater at Home, where, for a fee, viewers can stream “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” “The Cherry Orchard” and other renowned plays on demand. I became captivated by the professionally shot recording of “Angels in America,” which I’ve repeatedly rewatched — a story of a plague, viewed during another plague. “Proshot recordings,” which are filmed during a play’s standard run, mimic the typical theatergoing experience. While I am grateful for the chance to watch full-fledged performances, with sets and all, plays seen this way feel less immediate than the readings that have, by necessity, seized upon a new medium.Before 2020, I had never before thought to explore theater beyond one or two plays, considering it a luxury for those more able-bodied or in certain cities. Watching plays on a computer screen isn’t a traditional experience, but it gives access to a type of storytelling for thousands who may never be able to enjoy it otherwise. Our theater houses will open again, and I’ve vowed to take advantage of opportunities to visit them when the time comes. I admit, though, that I will miss the versions that I’ve been able to see at home — versions that will very likely be lost when the world reopens and the desire to be shoulder to shoulder sends theatergoers back to Broadway again.Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and an essayist whose books include the New York Times best-selling essay collection “The Collected Schizophrenias.” More

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      LA Stage Alliance Disbands After Awards Ceremony Blunder

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      The organization that runs the annual competition honoring theater work in Los Angeles imploded after it misidentified an Asian-American actor.Jully Lee, an actor and director, had a bad feeling about this year’s Ovation Awards, the annual competition honoring stage work in greater Los Angeles. She was a voter who had never been told when the ceremony would be, and she learned she was a nominee only when she was given 48 hours to submit a pretaped acceptance speech for use in the event that she won.She watched anyway.What she saw was not good. The awards ceremony, streamed online last week, showed a picture of a different Asian-American actress when announcing her category. And it mispronounced her name.Lee laughed, reflecting a lifetime of trying to be a good sport. But her boyfriend grabbed a screenshot, and posted it on social media, and he was not the only one.The reaction was swift, and furious, as long-simmering frustration over the functioning of the LA Stage Alliance, which administers the awards, combusted with the pain and anger of an Asian-American community devastated by a wave of anti-Asian violence.Forty-six theaters resigned from the alliance — about a third of its members. And on Monday, the organization, which for nearly a half-century had been the main coalition for a sprawling theatrical ecosystem in the nation’s second largest city, announced that it was disbanding.“It is with deep regret that the board of governors has unanimously decided to cease all operations,” the group said in a statement posted on social media.The rapid implosion was precipitated, most recently, by East West Players, the Asian-American theater that co-produced “Hannah and the Dread Gazebo,” the play in which Lee performed. (In another slight, the Ovation Awards attributed the production only to the Fountain Theater, saying it would not credit co-producers.)The morning after the ceremony, Snehal Desai, the producing artistic director for East West Players, announced that his theater was revoking its membership in the alliance, and urged others to do the same.“I felt like I needed to make a strong statement, because we were paying to be part of this organization that was diminishing us,” Desai said. “And I did call on other theaters to join us, because I wanted more than statements of support. Statements don’t do anything.”Many of the region’s theaters, which had been speaking up in support of diversity, equity and inclusion, first in response to the unrest over racial injustice last summer, and then again in response to hate crimes this spring, followed suit.“This was an inexcusable, terrible, unfortunate act, but it was also emblematic of a bigger failure of the LA Stage Alliance in the past few years,” said Danny Feldman, the producing artistic director at Pasadena Playhouse, who said the organization’s inadequacy had become more clear during the pandemic. “They lost the confidence of the community, and this was the tipping point.”The LA Stage Alliance was a nonprofit, dating back to 1975, that sought to support theater in Los Angeles. In addition to overseeing the Ovation Awards, it maintained onStage:LA, a website with listings and ticket discounts and published a digital arts magazine called @This Stage.Last summer the organization furloughed its staff; emails to the executive director, Marco Gomez, were answered by a publicist, Ken Werther, who said the leadership was declining to make any further comments.Lee, in an interview on Monday, said she was uncomfortable being seen as the face of the controversy, but also upset about the events that had transpired..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-rqynmc{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.9375rem;line-height:1.25rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-rqynmc{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-rqynmc strong{font-weight:600;}.css-rqynmc em{font-style:italic;}.css-yoay6m{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-yoay6m{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-1pd7fgo{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1pd7fgo{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-1pd7fgo:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1pd7fgo{border:none;padding:20px 0 0;border-top:1px solid #121212;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-1pd7fgo[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I was trying to be brave, and trying not to make it a big deal,” she said. “But then, reading all the posts — all the anger and pain that was being expressed — I had to acknowledge that this is angering and painful and hurtful. And there have been so many attempts to try and get the LA Stage Alliance to be more inclusive, and they’ve largely been ignored.”Deaf West Theater, the nation’s leading sign language theater, sought unsuccessfully to have this year’s Ovation ceremony interpreted for the deaf. “All of these oppressions go hand in hand,” said DJ Kurs, the theater’s artistic director. “We are all fighting the same fight, and we are fighting it together.”Los Angeles has a robust theater community that is often overshadowed by the city’s film and television industries, and includes not only a handful of big-budget nonprofits, but also a large number of small organizations, many of which were facing financial stress even before the pandemic.Throughout the pandemic, 65 of the “intimate theaters” have been meeting collectively as Alternative Theaters of Los Angeles to compare notes and support one another.Gary Grossman, an organizer of the group and the producing artistic director of Skylight Theater Company, called the collapse of the stage alliance “the right outcome.”“They have not represented the community,” he said. “It needs to be rethought from the ground up.”A variety of Los Angeles theater industry leaders interviewed Monday said the stage alliance was already in trouble financially before the latest conflagration, and its future had seemed uncertain throughout the pandemic.And several described a number of grievances with the organization, citing insufficient diversity in its leadership and programming, an ineffective response to the pandemic, high membership dues that made it harder for some theaters to participate, and a “pay to play” system in which theaters were supposed to pay a fee for each production they wanted considered for an award.“There’s been a fraught relationship from the perspective of most theater companies,” said Meghan Pressman, the managing director and chief executive at Center Theatre Group, which is the biggest of the Los Angeles nonprofits. Pressman said many theater administrators have already begun talking about what happens next.“I do think the community can come together to craft what we need in an organization,” she said. “And I don’t know if these awards will continue, but I feel strongly that some awards should, because it’s an important way to celebrate the theater community.” More

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      ‘Underneath the Freeways of Los Angeles’ Review

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      This interactive play gives voice to marginalized people, while also asking its audience to mistrust them.Cities bury their histories beneath them, though the past persists in plain sight. Here in New York, Wall Street whispers of a long-ago barrier, Canal Street commemorates forgotten waters, and Madison Square Garden, which has no garden, conjures former pleasure centers.Los Angeles has its own history — of dreams, disaster and displacement — and a talent for paving over it. “Underneath the Freeways of Los Angeles,” an immersive show from the Echo Theater Company, summons a particular incident: the construction of the East Los Angeles Interchange, perhaps the busiest freeway interchange in North America. To build it, the city razed portions of Boyle Heights, a multicultural enclave. In an infrastructure decision that would shatter any Jane Jacobs fan, urban planners ran a particular stretch of freeway above and through the lagoon of Hollenbeck Park.“Underneath the Freeways,” written by Matthew Paul Olmos and directed by Michael Alvarez, takes place in 1960, the day after two bodies were discovered floating in that lagoon, in the shadow of the concrete piers. The victims, a young white man and a younger Latina woman, had both experienced blunt force trauma. (The murders are fictional.) The audience, divided into breakout rooms, is tasked with solving the crime. Serially, the groups question a quintet of suspects — an artist, an activist, a mother, a drifter, a freeway-system employee. During each interrogation, participants try to discern intentions and disprove alibis.Hollenbeck Park, in Los Angeles, is at the heart of the play.via The Echo Theater CompanyA day before the show, participants received prompts asking them to imagine themselves in the world of the play. “Whom do you associate with?” one document reads. “What neighborhood do you live in? What are your political beliefs?” Costumes are encouraged, it adds, though not required. As my performance began at 10:30 p.m. (blame a West Coast curtain time) and putting on fancy clothes for late-night events is something I gave up, willingly, once I had children, I kept my sweater and leggings. I was still briefly mistaken for a suspect. “No,” I stammered when a participant began to question me. “I’m just a person.”But was I? Was anyone? Because the play borrows structural elements from murder-mystery dinners and role-playing games, many audience members, playing the roles they had assigned themselves, treated “Underneath the Freeways” as a game that needed winning. Many attendees questioned the suspects aggressively. And when certain characters offered narratives of loss and dislocation, their stories were answered with distrust rather than deep listening. (Me? I couldn’t get a word in, though I did put a question about the particulars of the blunt force trauma in the chat.)I often felt uncomfortable within my breakout room. Had we not all lived through last summer? Did we really want to playact police-like interrogators? Could we not meet these characters with empathy? I don’t mean to scold the audience; the more relentless participants did what “Underneath the Freeways” asked of them, which points to a schism at the heart of the play. Olmos and Alvarez want to give voice to marginalized people, but they also ask us, explicitly, to distrust those voices.“Keep them talking,” a strict woman (Amy K. Harmon) says in the opening scene. “Notice if they slip up. Notice what they’re trying to avoid.”Experiencing “Underneath the Freeways,” I thought of another immersive show, “Rio Records,” which I’d seen in January. That piece was also inspired by a dark chapter in Los Angeles’s history of civil engineering: the paving of the Los Angeles River. “Rio Records” was messy, inchoate and all over the (city) map. But it met its subject with generosity and invited generosity in return. “Underneath the Freeways,” on the other hand, demands suspicion and rewards it.The East Los Angeles Interchange is a marvel of engineering. It is also a deeply dehumanizing structure. And even as “Underneath the Freeways” wants to excavate the stories that underlie those piers, it is dehumanizing, too.Underneath the Freeways of Los AngelesThrough April 26; echotheatercompany.com. More

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      Broadway Reopened. For 36 Minutes. It’s a Start.

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      Before a masked, distanced and virus-tested audience of 150, the dancer Savion Glover and the actor Nathan Lane performed, celebrating theater and testing safety protocols a year after the pandemic caused theaters to close.Three hundred and eighty-seven days after Broadway went dark, a faint light started to glimmer on Saturday.There were just two performers — one at a time — on a bare Broadway stage. But together they conjured up decades of theater lore, invoking the songs and shows and stars that once filled the grand houses in and around Times Square.The 36-minute event, before a masked audience of 150 scattered across an auditorium with 1,700 seats, was the first such experiment since the coronavirus pandemic caused all 41 Broadway houses to close on March 12, 2020, and industry leaders are hoping it will be a promising step on what is sure to be a slow and bumpy road to eventual reopening.Mr. Glover, a renowned tap dancer, performed an improvisational song-and-dance number in which he seemed to summon specters of productions past.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe dancer Savion Glover and the actor Nathan Lane, both of them Tony Award winners, stood in for a universe of unemployed artists and show-starved fans as they performed a pair of pieces created for the occasion.Mr. Glover, a renowned tap dancer, performed an improvisational song-and-dance number in which he seemed to summon specters of productions past. He walked onstage, removed the ghost light that by tradition is left on to keep spirits away from an unoccupied theater, and began to sing lyric samples, accompanied only by the sound of his bright white tap shoes. “God I hope I get it,” he began, citing the yearning theme of “A Chorus Line.”And from there, he was off, quoting from “The Tap Dance Kid,” “Dreamgirls,” “42nd Street” and other shows that he said had influenced him, often celebrating the urge to dance, while also acknowledging the challenges of the entertainment industry. (“There’s no business like show business,” he sang, before adding, “Everything about it is eh.”) He also made a pointed reference to Black life in the U.S., interpolating the phrase “knee-on-your-neck America” into a song from “West Side Story.”“I was a little nervous, but I was elated, and happy, and there was nostalgia, and I was sentimental — it was everything,” he said in an interview afterward. “And I felt very safe. I want to be rubbing elbows and hugging — we’re looking for that eventually — but there’s no more safe place than right in the middle of that stage.”Mr. Lane, a three-time Tony winner, performed “Playbills,” a comedic monologue written for the occasion by Paul Rudnick.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMr. Lane, one of Broadway’s biggest stars, performed a comedic monologue by Paul Rudnick, in which he portrayed a die-hard theater fan (with an alphabetized Playbill collection) who dreams (or was it real?) about a parade of Broadway stars, led by Hugh Jackman, Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald, arriving at his rent-controlled apartment and vying for his attention while dishily one-upping one other. (“Have you ever heard of a little show called ‘Evita’?” Ms. LuPone, Broadway’s original Eva Perón, asks Mr. Jackman, to which he retorts, “I loved the movie with Madonna,” at which point Ms. LuPone grabs a steak knife.)In an interview after the event, Mr. Lane said: “These are baby steps toward a real reopening. It’s a way of signaling to everyone that we’re coming back.”And did he feel safe? “I felt as safe as anyone who has been vaccinated and tested 123 times,” he said. “I’ve been swabbed. I’ve been hosed down. There were a lot of precautions and protocols, so yes, I felt safe.”The event’s safety measures included the limited audience, mandatory masks and socially distanced seating. Plus, all attendees were required to show proof of a negative coronavirus test or a completed vaccination regimen and to fill out a digital questionnaire attesting to an absence of Covid-19 symptoms or recent exposure; attendee arrival times were staggered; there was no intermission, food or drink; and although bathrooms were open, attendees were encouraged to use a bathroom before arriving to reduce potential crowding.The 150 attendees sat spaced apart in the 1,700-seat theater, and had to provide proof of a negative coronavirus test or a completed vaccination regimen in order to enter.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe St. James, a city historic landmark built in 1927, was chosen in part because it’s big — one of the largest theaters on Broadway — and empty. The theater also has a modern ventilation system, which was installed when the building was expanded in 2017, and its air filters were upgraded during the pandemic in an effort to reduce the spread of airborne viruses.The theater’s owner, Jordan Roth, teared up in the lobby before the event, moved by the moment. “It’s the first step home — the first of many,” he said. “This is not, ‘Broadway’s back!’ This is ‘Broadway is coming back!’ And we know it can because of this.”The event, while free, was by invitation only, and the invitations went mostly to workers for two theater industry social service organizations, the Actors Fund and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Among them was a Broadway Cares volunteer, Michael Fatica, who is an actor; he was in the ensemble of “Frozen,” which was the last show at the St. James, and which has announced that it will not reopen on Broadway. “They were fantastic,” he said afterward. “And it’s incredible that people are performing. But it’s so far away from commercial theater, and tens of thousands of actors are still out of work.”The event was also a chance to bring back the theater’s employees. Tony David, a porter, was there wearing his black suit and a tie and hat with the logo of the Jujamcyn theater organization, plus latex gloves and a face shield over a mask. “It’s nice to be back and doing something,” he said. “Hopefully this is the beginning.”Jordan Roth, left, the theater owner, greeted the event’s director, Jerry Zaks. “It’s the first step home,” Mr. Roth said of the show. “The first of many.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe event was directed by Jerry Zaks, a four-time Tony winner, who over the years has both acted and directed at the St. James. “This has been the longest I have not been inside a theater in 50 years,” he said. “I don’t want to sound giddy, but I’m excited, and I feel like a kid. There is a pulse — it’s faint, but there is one, and it augurs well for the months ahead.”The performance was sponsored by NY Pops Up, which is a partnership among the state government, the producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal and the artist Zack Winokur. Empire State Development, which finances the state’s economic development initiatives, has set aside $5.5 million from its marketing budget to pay for 300 performances through August; the purpose, the state says, is to lift the spirits of New Yorkers and to jump-start the entertainment industry.The organizers said they would confer on Monday morning about lessons learned from the Saturday event, and they anticipate nine other programs in Broadway houses over the next 10 weeks. But most producers expect that full-scale plays and musicals will not return to Broadway until the fall; commercial theater producers have said they do not believe it is financially feasible to reopen at reduced capacity, and the state is hoping to increase occupancy limits and reduce restrictions over time.“I don’t have a crystal ball — none of us do, but we have shows scheduled to reopen in September, October and November,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League. Ms. St. Martin, who attended the Saturday event, said the Pops Up performances could be helpful steps toward reopening.“It will give the health department the opportunity to see how the theaters work, and hopefully to learn what it will take for us to be declared OK to open at 100 percent,” she said. “And it’s also a great opportunity to remind us all of what makes New York so special.” More

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      Review: Live Theater Returns, With Mike Daisey and His Beefs

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      The monologuist appeared onstage, indoors, in front of a real audience, on the first day possible. Maybe he shouldn’t have rushed.Mike Daisey has been a monologuist for more than 20 years. Not continuously — though it has sometimes felt like it.So his disappearance from the stage during quarantine was an especially vivid marker of the pandemic’s devastating effect on live theater. Likewise, his re-emergence in a new show, which popped up on Friday night like a bud in early spring, signifies the beginning of a long-hoped-for renewal.But what will that renewal be like?On the evidence of the 90-minute monologue Daisey performed in front of an actual audience at the Kraine Theater in the East Village, it will be — at least at first — a hasty and hazy affair with redeeming glints of brilliance.The haste is to be expected: Daisey was eager to be the first actor back onstage on the first day permitted by new state regulations. That was Friday, when plays, concerts and other performances were allowed to resume at reduced capacity, with the audience masked and distanced. At the 99-seat Kraine, that meant a sellout crowd of 22; to accommodate others — in all, 565 tickets were sold — the show, produced by Daisey and Frigid New York, was also livestreamed.That’s how I saw it; for additional safety, the Kraine requires all in-person audience members to show proof of vaccination, and I have not yet been jabbed. (One unvaccinated couple was turned away.) But even watching remotely, I was tickled by the familiar old sounds of people settling into their seats, and the sight of their heads silhouetted against the blue light of a stage awaiting action.The show quickly dispelled those good feelings. Daisey has never been what you’d call a feel-good performer; he usually has a beef, and it’s often overcooked. In “21 Dog Years,” his breakthrough, the beef was with Amazon, where he’d once worked. In “How Theater Failed America,” it was the corporatization of entertainment that, he argued, had ruined theater as a building block of community. And in “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” it was, somewhat infamously, the Chinese supply chain that feeds our iPhone addiction.Daisey’s new show lacks the invigorating animus supplied by such adversaries. If it has a beef, it is with the pandemic itself: a foe of little inherent dramatic interest. (A virus is no Iago.) At the same time, the pandemic is still too present to be fully fathomed, as Daisey’s title admits with a shrug: “What the Fuck Just Happened?”Daisey’s performance was among the first live indoor shows allowed under new state regulations.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIt doesn’t help that after an amusing public-address introduction — “The management regrets to inform you that the role of Mike Daisey will be played by Mike Daisey” — he begins, sitting as usual at a simple table with a glass of water and a pad of notes, by telling a seemingly sitcom tale about a bedbug infestation that he and his girlfriend endured in late 2019. Getting rid of the insects involved hiring a company to heat his apartment to 180 degrees for five hours.The bedbug gambit is ironic; Daisey uses it to suggest how unprepared he and everyone else were for the worse disruptions that would come in 2020. Unfortunately, the “worse” is not fleshed out except in trivial ways that have the effect of deflating yet centering Daisey himself. The apartment in which he and his girlfriend are stuck “in captivity” is so small, he tells us, that he must work on the deck, sometimes in the rain. They have to learn to plan and make their own meals, something people move to New York specifically not to do.Small talk has rarely seemed smaller. And even as the story grows to include Daisey’s delivering food in the spring, cheering the Black Lives Matter demonstrations in the summer and phone banking for the November election — all admirable — he somehow winds up the star in each case. His self-deprecation is only a kind of chamois, polishing his brass.For a monologuist, that’s a professional hazard. (He calls his calling “an exercise in mansplaining.”) But in previous works, Daisey has managed to use himself as a lens; here he is more of a mirror, reflecting his own obsessions, disappointments and, it has to be said, thin skin. Apparently, he is an underappreciated giant in a world of straw men.In this self-promoting mode, I find him no more (or less) interesting than an old college chum who corners you at a party and doesn’t notice your eyes glazing over. In his social-critic mode — sniping at obvious targets like Donald J. Trump, whom he has pilloried elsewhere — I find him unexceptional; is it so revealing to refer to the ex-president’s last day in office as “Garbage Day”? As he feels his way through the sweaty dark toward a theme that just isn’t there, you begin to wonder whether his apartment ever cooled off.But in his oracular mode, which though built on the bedbug story at the start doesn’t arrive until the end, he is outstanding. Connecting Covid-19 not only to ecological disaster but also to the pandemic of racism, he finally aims at antagonists worthy of his rhetorical big guns.In language that is burnished and implacable — and, it seemed to me, less improvised but more alive than the rest of the show — he says that though the “plague was not a gift” it was an opportunity, a “dress rehearsal.” Noting that there’s “no vaccine for fascism,” he calls for a “refining fire” that will burn out the hate in our system.These were startling and stirring words, the kind that hogtie your attention. They are worth having Daisey, and live theater, back for. Perhaps by the time he repeats the show, on May 9, there will be less of him and more of them.What the Fuck Just Happened?Repeated on May 9 at the Kraine Theater, Manhattan; frigid.nyc. More