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      ‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the Corpses

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘First Love’ Review: Stop and Smell the CorpsesBill Camp stars in JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny streaming production of this Samuel Beckett short story.Bill Camp plays a grizzled disaster of a man in “First Love,” a Theater for a New Audience production. Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANAFeb. 26, 2021, 5:28 p.m. ETPlenty of people enjoy a stroll through a cemetery, even a picnic among the tombstones. A bit of communing with the dead or meditating on mortality: nothing amiss about that.The narrator of Samuel Beckett’s short story “First Love,” though, has other ideas about the pleasures of the graveyard — like lucking upon “a genuine interment, with real live mourners,” or having loads of spots to choose from when he feels the urge to relieve himself.This hard-core eccentric, embodied by Bill Camp, is at his most comically unsettling when he speaks of “the smell of corpses,” and takes a long, savoring sniff.“Humans are truly strange,” he observes a while later in the monologue, by which point we can hardly disagree.In JoAnne Akalaitis’s creepy, funny, dun-colored streaming production for Theater for a New Audience, this grizzled disaster of a man is the kind of weird that makes you lean in to watch.“If theaters opened up tomorrow,” Akalaitis says in a program note, “I wouldn’t do this: This piece is made for Zoom.”So Eamonn Farrell’s unadorned video design frames a small upstairs space in Camp’s house. Jennifer Tipton’s stark, shadowy lighting sands down the edges of time, while Kaye Voyce’s costume design — principally a headlamp and sweater vest — suggests an untended aloneness. (Akalaitis has collaborated on Beckett with Camp, Tipton and Voyce before.)The costume designer Kaye Voyce put Camp in a headlamp and sweater vest.Credit…Peter Cook, via TFANABeckett wrote “First Love” in 1946, the year he turned 40, though he didn’t allow its publication until the 1970s. Its nameless narrator is recollecting his mid-20s, when, shortly after his father’s death, he was summarily chucked out of the family home — a rude jolt, as he’d expected “to be left the room I had occupied in his lifetime and for food to be brought me there, as hitherto.”That reeking entitlement is perhaps his main attribute when he enters what he calls his marriage: a relationship involving initial obsession yet no love on his part.But let’s guess, shall we, that he was devastatingly good-looking then, or especially gifted at sex. Otherwise it is difficult to comprehend why the woman he variously calls Lulu or Anna ever took this tenaciously lazy creature home and waited on him there.He doesn’t have the existential weariness that we associate with Beckett characters; rather, Camp gives him a pouncing intensity. Still, his greatest exertion by far is the impulsive emptying, for his own use, of one of Lulu/Anna’s rooms — a manic scene that Camp enacts with a pile of dollhouse-size furniture.What our narrator keenly, even cruelly, wants is to be left with his thoughts. If he gets mired in them, and he will, that’s OK with him. Just as long as the world does not intrude.First LoveThrough March 1; tfana.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years Since

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Birth of ‘Rent,’ Its Creator’s Death and the 25 Years SinceWith a virtual performance marking the Broadway musical’s anniversary, original cast and creative team members talk about losing Jonathan Larson and carrying on his legacy.Jonathan Larson, left, who wrote the music, lyrics and book of “Rent,” with the play’s director, Michael Greif, in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021Updated 3:04 p.m. ETWhat’s 525,600 times 25?It has been 25 years — or, to use a memorable “Seasons of Love” calculation, 13.14 million minutes — since “Rent” upended Broadway’s sense of what musical theater could be. Jonathan Larson’s rock-infused reboot of “La Bohème” had already generated positive chatter during its Off Broadway rehearsals at New York Theater Workshop. But then came full-throated shouts of disbelief and anguish on Jan. 25, 1996, when, hours after the final dress rehearsal, Larson was found dead in his apartment from an aortic aneurysm. He was 35 years old.His shocking death came right before the start of previews, when a creative team typically makes changes based on audience reactions. After briefly considering whether to bring in a script doctor, the team decided instead to streamline Larson’s music and lyrics as needed.The move paid off. Within weeks, “Rent” had achieved a level of hype that would not be rivaled on Broadway until “Hamilton” almost 20 years later: earning rave reviews (The New York Times’s Ben Brantley said it “shimmers with hope for the future of the American musical”); a Pulitzer Prize for Drama; and a frantic transfer to Broadway, where it ran for 12 years and won four Tony Awards.Members of the original Broadway cast in “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” which will stream on Tuesday.Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopOn Tuesday, New York Theater Workshop will use its annual fund-raising gala to commemorate the show’s silver anniversary with “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love.” The largely prerecorded virtual performance, available to stream through March 6, will feature most of the original cast, who still communicate regularly in a group chat, along with high-profile “Rent”-heads like Lin-Manuel Miranda, Ben Platt, Billy Porter and Ali Stroker.Members of the original production’s cast and creative team discussed the stratospheric heights and ghastly lows of 1996, remembering the gifted young writer who would have been 61 years old today. Here are the lightly edited excerpts.‘We had to do it for Jonathan’NANCY KASSAK DIEKMANN, former managing director of New York Theater Workshop: Jonathan had the kind of health insurance where he could only go to the emergency room, and he had already been once. They told him it was food poisoning or something, and they sent him home. On the day of the final dress rehearsal, he wasn’t feeling well, and he called to say he was going to take a nap. I said to him, “Jon, why don’t you let me make you an appointment and pay for you to see my doctor?” I always wonder what would have happened if he had gone.JAMES C. NICOLA, artistic director of New York Theater Workshop: Everyone felt a degree of ownership and responsibility to do their absolute best on his behalf. It ceased being a job and became a calling.Anthony Rapp, left, and Adam Pascal in rehearsal at the New York Theater Workshop in 1996.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesANTHONY RAPP, who played Mark: From that last dress rehearsal until mid-July, no one missed a performance. It seemed impossible. No one could. I don’t say that to brag. I just think it showed our level of commitment. We had to do it for Jonathan.MICHAEL GREIF, director: One terrible advantage of being in your mid-30s working on “Rent” was that you had a decade of experience of loss. Jonathan’s death made him part of the community he was honoring.ADAM PASCAL, who played Roger: People are often surprised to hear this, but I only knew Jonathan for about four weeks. I was cast in December, and he died in January. I grieved the loss on behalf of his family, who we got to know afterward. But I personally miss him the way the public misses him. I miss the music that never got written.‘We did a lot of cutting’NICOLA: Four of us met the day after Jonathan died — me, Michael Greif, Tim Weil and Lynn Thomson [the dramaturge]. And one thing that came up was, “Should we bring in another composer/writer to finish the job? Is that the choice that has integrity?” But we quickly decided against it.TIM WEIL, musical supervisor: Our idea was, “Let’s do what Jonathan wanted us to do,” even if we couldn’t know exactly what that was.GREIF: We did a lot of cutting. We cut things that we felt Jonathan would agree to or even advocate cutting.RAPP: I think Jonathan was raring to go for the preview process. It would have been very discombobulating and weird for morale to have a foreigner — I mean that artistically, not xenophobically — come in at that point.DIEKMANN: Tim had to step up on the musical side, and he did. He and Michael knew what Jonathan wanted — because, God knows, he was there all the time.WEIL: I still continue to make little bitty changes for new productions, since it has always been tailored to specific performers. I think I’m the only one who has that kind of license.‘Everything was just coming at us’WILSON JERMAINE HEREDIA, who played Angel: Everything was just coming at us, and there was a part of me that was on automatic pilot. The only thing that felt safe and constant was going back on that stage every night. The most stable thing was that it was happening to all of us.DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA, who played Mimi: Today is 12 weeks out from a partial knee replacement for me. And part of me is like, “How did I get here?” But I know exactly how I got here: by playing Mimi eight times a week.RAPP: I have weird little nagging injuries that still bother me from carrying around that video camera for two hours straight.Daphne Rubin-Vega, who played Mimi in the original cast, with Adam Pascal, who played Rodger. Credit…via New York Theater Workshop‘Representation really matters’GREIF: The idealism and openheartedness of the piece, which I was very wary of at the time and found myself guarding against, has had a profound impact on very, very young people. I’m talking 12- and 13-year-olds. And in many ways, “Rent” opened the door to the possibility of the musicals I went on to direct, musicals like “Next to Normal” and “Dear Evan Hansen.”RUBIN-VEGA: Representation really matters, and it was important for a woman who looks like me to be thrust into that ingénue role.PASCAL: It is something that I’m clearly forever connected to. And it is something that is still literally paying the rent. Do you know about Cameo? Earlier today, I did five Cameos where I sang “Rent” songs.NICOLA: I am just now able to hear these songs without any baggage or context — just hear them as musical theater songs. And I’m thinking, “These are really good songs.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When an Actor Calls With a Poem to Share

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookWhen an Actor Calls With a Poem to ShareA Paris playhouse has developed a program of one-on-one “consultations,” delivered by its artists while the theater is closed.The singer Dimitra Kontou performing this week for an elderly patient at the Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 3:31 a.m. ETPARIS — “I am calling you for a poetic consultation,” said a warm voice on the telephone. “It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?”Since March, almost 15,000 people around the world have received a call like this. These conversations with actors, who offer a one-on-one chat before reading a poem selected for the recipient, started as a lockdown initiative by a prominent Paris playhouse, the Théâtre de la Ville, in order to keep its artists working while stages remained dark.It’s free: Anyone can sign up for a time slot, or make a gift of a call to someone. The exchange generally starts with simple questions about the recipient’s life, then ranges in any direction; after 20 to 25 minutes, the actor introduces the poem.As coronavirus restrictions in France stretch on, the program has become such a hit that the Théâtre de la Ville now offers consultations in 23 languages, including Farsi, its latest addition. It has also been expanded to encompass different subjects and formats: Since December, the actors have held consultations at a hospital and at emergency shelters run by the city of Paris.When Johanna White, the comedian who called me, asked how I was doing, I answered honestly. We may tell white lies to reassure loved ones, but there is no reason to skirt the truth with a kind stranger. White and I shared our pandemic coping strategies and talked about the ways in which theater has adapted in the past year.And then White picked my poem: “Incantation,” by the Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz. “Human reason is beautiful and invincible,” she began after a pause.A year into the pandemic, I’ll admit I had my doubts about the healing power of yet another replacement for live performance. Yet when I hung up the phone, I felt a little lighter. White, who has a rich, deep voice, was adept at putting an audience of one at ease, and Milosz’s words held hope.“Through the phone it can be intimate, because generally you’re isolated,” White, a trilingual voice actor, said in an interview the next day.The comedian Johanna White, who estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people around the world.Credit…via Théâtre de la Ville She estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people, from places including Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Chile and Niger. A man based in Beirut told her about local riots in which he had lost half of a hand; from Mexico, an 85-year-old woman shared her grief about being separated from her 92-year-old lover by pandemic-mandated rules.Consultations involve a great deal of improvisation, White said, including choosing a poem for a person you’ve only just met. “Each of us has our own method,” she added. “I file them by emotions, by feelings.”For the director of the Théâtre de la Ville, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, the idea of individual consultations with actors didn’t come out of the blue. In 2002, when he was at the helm of the northern French theater La Comédie, in Reims, he initiated in-person sessions at a local bar. Passers-by could meet an artist and leave with a poetic “prescription” — a printed version of the poem that was read to them.Last February, he revived the concept at a Paris shopping mall, Italie Deux, where visitors could drop in for a chat between errands — and then the pandemic struck. The Théâtre de la Ville immediately pivoted to phone consultations. “We were ready,” Demarcy-Mota said in a phone interview this month.Other institutions have taken an interest in the program’s popularity. The Théâtre de la Ville has partnered with a handful of European playhouses, including the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and the Orkeny Theater in Budapest, to expand its roster of actors. Additionally, Demarcy-Mota and his team are in the process of holding phone training sessions with around 100 actors from nine African countries, including Benin and Mali, so theaters there can replicate the program.Demarcy-Mota acknowledged that the consultation format didn’t suit all stage actors. “Some were scared. You’re no longer performing while someone else watches: Instead, you’re in the position of listening to someone.” It involves a degree of psychology, White said, but “we’re not psychologists,” she added. “People need to feel that they’ve got a real person with them, that we’re in the same situation.”The Théâtre de la Ville now employs a total of 108 “consultants.” While most are actors, they also include singers, dancers and a handful of scientists, who share their knowledge via “scientific consultations” as part of a program started in December. (These are being offered only in French for now.)Most of the scientific consultations are also individual and take place over the phone, but the Théâtre de la Ville is testing group sessions over Zoom. Last week, I joined one with the astrophysicist Jean Audouze.To explain the relativity of time, Audouze suggested that when we talk via videoconference — that is, over electromagnetic waves — there is an infinitesimal delay between the moment someone speaks and the moment the other hears. “We’re all on our own time,” he said, something to bear in mind, perhaps, the next time a Zoom meeting descends into chaos.While remote sessions are the most virus-averse format, the Théâtre de la Ville also brought back in-person consultations this winter in partnership with public institutions. The Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, was the first to allow performers to come for conversations with staff members and patients. (Several other hospitals are scheduled to follow in the coming months.)Dimitra Kontou entertaining patients at the Charles-Foix hospital.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe actor Hugo Jasienski interacting with the patient Éliane Le Bras.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDimitra Kontou, at the piano, with Simone Gouffe.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesOn a recent afternoon, the actor Hugo Jasienski and the singer and musician Dimitra Kontou went from room to room in a residential care building at the Charles-Foix for elderly patients, known as L’Orbe. As on the phone, each encounter led to a poem or, in Kontou’s case, a song.For some residents, especially those with dementia, the performances were adapted: Instead of asking questions, Kontou sang to them directly, in a transparent mask so they could see her mouth. Still, the music inspired interaction. At one point, a 97-year-old woman, Simone Gouffe, almost rose from her wheelchair and started singing, her voice powerful despite her slight frame.With other patients, the kind of conversations that flow so smoothly on the phone proved tricky to navigate. “What do you enjoy in life?” Jasienski asked one resident, Éliane Le Bras, 88. “Walking,” she said dryly. “But I can’t walk anymore.”Still, Le Bras lit up when the conversation turned to her great-grandchildren, and listened closely to a poem by the early 20th-century writer Anna de Noailles. “It’s nice,” she concluded. “A woman wrote this?”After the visit, Jasienski said that working on the consultations had been a unique experience for him as an actor. “The verdict lands immediately,” he said. “When you go back to the stage, you’ve learned a lot.”And while in some ways the consultations are more impromptu therapy than theater, now has been the right time for artists to embrace social responsibility, Demarcy-Mota said.“We need a new alliance between health care, theater, culture and education,” he said. “It’s time to take care of one another.”Dimitra Kontou’s uniform includes the logo of the Théâtre de la Ville.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      You’re New Here, Aren’t You? Digital Theater’s Unexpected Upside

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeWatch: ‘WandaVision’Travel: More SustainablyFreeze: Homemade TreatsCheck Out: Podcasters’ Favorite PodcastsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyYou’re New Here, Aren’t You? Digital Theater’s Unexpected UpsideCompanies and venues that put work online are finding big, new and younger audiences — but little revenue.Pittsburgh Public Theater has found an audience for streamed shows like “The Gift of the Mad Guys,” an adaptation of O. Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi.”Credit…via Pittsburgh Public TheaterFeb. 24, 2021Five days after the coronavirus quieted performing arts venues, the Irish Repertory Theater found its voice.It was St. Patrick’s Day, after all — not an occasion to go unacknowledged, even during a pandemic. So the humble nonprofit started posting homespun videos of company members performing Irish-themed songs, poems and monologues on social media.The response was encouraging, and in the 11 months since, the theater has added nine full-length digital productions. A house manager with no video editing experience stitched together the first such effort, a three-person play about a blind woman called “Molly Sweeney,” using video actors shot of themselves on their phones.By the time the theater was ready to attempt a holiday musical, “Meet Me in St. Louis,” it was considerably more ambitious, shipping green screens, tripods, lighting and sound equipment to actors’ homes.Was there an audience for these virtual ventures? Decidedly, yes.Over the course of this pandemic year, 25,000 households have reserved tickets — they are free, but there is a suggested donation — for at least one of Irish Rep’s digital productions (and many of them watch more than one show). That’s double the 12,500 people who buy tickets to at least one of the company’s productions in an ordinary year, when it’s comparatively safe to see live performances while sitting next to strangers.Even more striking: 80 percent of those who have watched an Irish Rep production over the last year are newbies who have never been to the company’s 148-seat theater, nestled in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.“We’re batting down barriers we’ve been wrestling with for decades,” said Frances Howorth, the theater’s director of marketing and digital strategy. “We’ve reached audiences we couldn’t have imagined reaching.”From left, Paul O’Brien, Geraldine Hughes and Ciaran O’Reilly in the Irish Repertory Theater’s virtual production of “Molly Sweeney.”Credit…via Irish RepThe pandemic has, of course, been devastating for theaters, costing lives, jobs and dollars. And many longtime theatergoers find streaming unsatisfying — no substitute for the you-are-there sensory experience.But across the country, and beyond its borders, many theaters say new audiences for their streaming offerings has been an unexpected silver lining — one that could have ramifications for the industry even after it is safe to perform live again and presenters try to return patrons to their seats.“We’ve been excited and somewhat surprised at the eagerness and size of the audience that we’ve uncovered,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, a large New York nonprofit best known for its free Shakespeare in the Park program. The theater, which has streamed both video and audio shows during the pandemic at no charge, has drawn an audience of 700,000 for its digital productions. And while measuring the size of online audiences can be imprecise, the theater has attracted people from every state and 68 countries.“I got a fan letter from Kazakhstan, which is a first for me,” Eustis said.The pattern, although not universal, is widespread. In California, La Jolla Playhouse has seen its audience grow sixfold, from about 100,000 during a typical in-person season, to 640,000 thus far for its digital programming, which included a three-part radio horror show.Christopher Ashley, the theater’s artistic director, said he imagined digital programming would be a less dominant part of his programming post-pandemic, but that because so many people had been interested in watching it, “we’re not going to just shut off that stream.”There are reasons to be cautious about the metrics. The basic tools used by theaters to measure audience can’t determine how many people are watching within a household, and generally don’t reflect how many people watch or listen for just a moment and move on.But many theater executives assert that online theater has brought them a significantly larger audience than they saw in-person, a growth they attribute to price (much of the digital content is free or low-cost); geography (you can check in from anywhere with internet access); and, in many cases, ease (watch at your convenience, with no advance planning).Some of the content is full-length, but much is also bite-size, reflecting online viewing habits. And it comes in many flavors: archival and new, recorded and live, in some cases seeking to capture the feeling of being in Row J, and in others embracing digital theater as a new art form. Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, a nonprofit in New York, has streamed not only plays, concerts and conversations, but also a court transcript reading, a “communal ritual” and, now underway, a 17-part audio series set on the No. 2 train.David Kwong (framed in yellow) with members of the digital audience gathered for his Geffen Playhouse production “Inside the Box.”Credit…via Geffen PlayhouseThere is even money to be made. The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles has earned $2.5 million selling tickets to a series of live and interactive shows featuring magic, puzzles, cooking and a murder mystery. That theater has been quite aggressive — it has held more than 600 live performances since last May, including several scheduled for the convenience of international audiences — and reports that 88 percent of its audience during the pandemic had never been to a show at the playhouse.But digital content, in most instances, generates far less revenue: At the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles, which decided to make most digital programs free to donors and subscribers, streaming has brought in $154,000 during the pandemic, whereas by this time in a normal season, that theater would expect about $23.5 million in box office revenue. Most nonprofit theaters are staying afloat thanks to a combination of philanthropy and layoffs; they say the digital work is not for revenue, but to maintain audience and provide work for artists. Often, theaters must navigate thorny health and labor issues as part of the process.“We started this for our members as a way to keep them close when we had to shut down our stages, and, quite frankly, so they wouldn’t ask us for ticket refunds,” said Kara Henry, the marketing director for the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago.Many of the theater’s longtime patrons greeted the initiative with a shrug, but newcomers were more enthusiastic. Now Steppenwolf has 2,500 digital-only members, who pay $75 for a subscription. “Our virtual-only members are a full decade younger than our traditional members, so obviously that thrilled us,” Henry said.Marya Sea Kaminski, the artistic director of Pittsburgh Public Theater, has been pleased to reach senior citizens by streaming shows to their residential communities.Credit…Ross Mantle for The New York TimesPittsburgh Public Theater not only has seen audience growth, but also has found ways to reach the hard-to-reach: It arranged to stream its productions on the television sets at residential senior communities in western Pennsylvania. “This has been a truly fascinating time to really think about who we are, what is our mission, and to have a lot of important conversations about access and accessibility,” said Marya Sea Kaminski, the theater’s artistic director.Streaming helped TheatreSquared in Fayetteville, Ark., avoid layoffs and persuade three-quarters of its subscribers to renew during the pandemic. The theater has created 10 streaming productions, five of them filmed onstage using safety protocols, including Jocelyn Bioh’s acclaimed “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play,” which has been extended through March 14. (Another play, about Marie Curie, is watchable through that date as well.)“Obviously, it’s better to sit down in the theater,” said Martin Miller, the organization’s executive director. “But tell that to a kid in a rural school 100 miles away who might not otherwise have a theater to go to, or to the patron who came for years but can’t leave home anymore home due to mobility issues.”The virtual pivot is not for everyone. In interviews, several theater-lovers around the country expressed screen fatigue, quality concerns and technology woes. “I tried,” said Jonathan Adler, a 42-year-old psychology professor in Massachusetts. “Much of it is quite entertaining, some of it is quite moving, and a bit of it is dreck, but, quite frankly, none of it is theater.”But to others, streaming is a gift — even preferable to live performance. Before the pandemic, Rena Tobey, a 62-year-old freelance educator in New York, subscribed to multiple local theaters; now, citing comfort, sightlines and sound quality, “I will be thrilled to give them all up to watch from home.”Even when theaters resume live productions for live audiences, many are planning to put money behind streaming as part of their offerings. Ma-Yi Theater Company and Dixon Place, both in New York, have invested in studio-quality equipment, hoping for rental income as well as to innovate in their own work.From left, Carly Sakolove, Amy Hillner Larson and Michael West in “NEWSical the Musical,” the first show produced and streamed by the Lied Center for Performing Arts.Credit…via Lied Center for Performing ArtsThat future has already arrived at the Lied Center for Performing Arts in Lincoln, Neb., where socially distanced performances returned in July. The center bought a five-camera system to broadcast work from its theater and has been using it since September. Its spring 2021 season — yes, it has a spring season — will feature Kelli O’Hara, the Silkroad Ensemble and mandolinist Chris Thile, all viewable either in person or online.And the Oregon Shakespeare Festival recently announced a 2021 season that promises both live and virtual productions, including a “Cymbeline” released in episodes over two years. Nataki Garrett, the festival’s artistic director, said the pandemic had expedited her efforts to reach new audiences.“We are providing a door,” she said, “for anybody to enter.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Attend the Tale of ‘Anyone Can Whistle,’ Then and Now

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookAttend the Tale of ‘Anyone Can Whistle,’ Then and NowA sparkling new recording of the 1964 musical makes half the case for Stephen Sondheim’s endlessly inventive score.From left, Maria Friedman, John Owen Edwards, John Yap and Stephen Sondheim working on the recording of “Anyone Can Whistle” at Abbey Road Studios in 2013.Credit…Doug Craib, via JAY RecordsPublished More

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      Douglas Turner Ward: A Lens on ‘Questions That the Country Wasn’t Asking’

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDouglas Turner Ward: A Lens on ‘Questions That the Country Wasn’t Asking’Samuel L. Jackson, David Alan Grier, Phylicia Rashad and others remember the Negro Ensemble Company founder.Douglas Turner Ward waiting to go onstage after the opening night performance of “A Soldier’s Play” in January 2020. Kenny Leon, who led the production, called Ward’s presence and smile up there that night “the greatest experience for me as an American director.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 23, 2021Updated 5:20 p.m. ETDouglas Turner Ward, who died at 90 on Saturday, left a legacy of extraordinary reach.By the time he founded the Negro Ensemble Company in 1967 with Robert Hooks and Gerald Krone, he had already been on Broadway in the original 1959 cast of “A Raisin in the Sun,” playing a tiny role while understudying Sidney Poitier.In the mid-’60s, Ward made a splash with his short satire “Day of Absence” — in which Black actors in whiteface makeup played white characters — and with an essay in The New York Times titled “American Theater: For Whites Only?” He dedicated his career to making sure that the answer was no.Nurturing the talents of Black artists through his company, he watched a remarkable number go on to fame — not least those from his acclaimed 1981 original production of Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Soldier’s Play,” whose cast included Denzel Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and David Alan Grier.This week, company alumni and other colleagues reminisced about Ward and how he shaped the field. These are edited excerpts from the conversations.Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson JacksonNegro Ensemble Company alums; in a joint interviewLATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON He wanted the work of great African-American and Black artists to be as important to the world and to the artists themselves as the dominant culture. And his love of that original Negro Ensemble Company was always first in his conversation about art, because he so respected all of those actors and felt that they represented the best of the best inside the business, period.SAMUEL L. JACKSON He carried, like, four newspapers around with him. Every day. And when we were in rehearsal, he would sit in the back of the theater reading the paper. He would be in the back left corner reading the paper, and then, you know, you’d look up, and by the time you’d finished the first act, he’d be in the middle of the theater reading the paper, and then he’d be in another corner reading the paper, or in the balcony reading the paper. And at the end of rehearsal, he’d come down and give you notes! And we’d be like, “You’ve been reading the paper!” And then we started to find out that he only looked up from reading the paper when there was a bad line reading, or something sounded off.From left, Sophie Okonedo, Denzel Washington, LaTanya Richardson Jackson, Bryce Clyde Jenkins and Anika Noni Rose in a 2014 performance of “A Raisin in the Sun” at the Ethel Barrymore Theater.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesLATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON We stayed in touch with Doug. When I was doing “Raisin,” he was one of the first persons I saw when we came off the stage.SAMUEL L. JACKSON I remember when I was doing “Shaft,” he just walked into my trailer one night.LATANYA RICHARDSON JACKSON Yeah, he kept up with his people now. He would find you.SAMUEL L. JACKSON Sometimes when people pass, you can actually feel the hole in the universe. This is one of those.Robert HooksA founder of the Negro Ensemble CompanyWe bonded on the road with “A Raisin in the Sun.” Douglas got to play the Sidney Poitier role, Walter Lee [Younger], which was a role he had understudied from the very beginning.He was a highly intellectual man. Read all the time about everything. I was not into politics at all. But by the time we closed “Raisin in the Sun,” I was a politico. We talked politics all the time. We talked about Black art.His whole sense of humor as it relates to his writing was classic. He proves it, of course, in “Day of Absence,” when all the Black people disappear from this Southern town. It’s just hilarious. But the white folks that were laughing, their heads would roll down the aisle because that’s the kind of humor Douglas wrote: scathing, scathing stuff.Of all the men that I’ve ever met in my life, he was the greatest influence. My father died when I was 2. But when I met Douglas Turner Ward, I had a father and a brother.Phylicia RashadNegro Ensemble Company alum; in a written statementDouglas Turner Ward was a “salt of the Earth” person who brought those sensibilities to the art of theater. He was daring. He was bold. He was honest. He was kind. He made room for many theater artists. He even created space.Phylicia Rashad in the play “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” at the Broadhurst Theater in 2008. She said of Ward: “He was daring. He was bold. He was honest. He was kind.”Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWoodie King Jr.Producing director and founder of New Federal TheaterHe was touring in “A Raisin in the Sun,” and they came to the Cass Theater in Detroit, and I went down to see the play and waited around. Then I walked them back to the hotel, and we talked. I showed up the next night and the next night. Finally they said, “When you get to New York, man, we can talk all the time.” I said, “Well, while you’re in Detroit for these two weeks, can I come back tomorrow?” So that was my first encounter with Douglas Turner Ward.Two weeks later, I saw Sidney Poitier in “The Defiant Ones.” These two dark-skinned actors sort of like put a stamp on the acting profession. That’s what I wanted to be. It seemed possible. Absolutely possible.Sade LythcottChief executive of National Black Theater, founded by her mother, Barbara Ann TeerDouglas and my mom grew up together, artistically. It was such a seminal moment in our country, the mid-1960s. It was the birth of Black consciousness. And “Day of Absence” was such a seminal work. My mom was in it. And that was such a metaphor for so much of their relationship: the support onstage and behind the stage to do something that felt revolutionary and felt accurate in the telling of our stories, and that that could be the revolution — Black stories in the way that Douglas wrote that. From our lens, the questions that the country wasn’t asking.David Alan Grier, second from left, facing Nnamdi Asomugha in “A Soldier’s Play,” in 2020. Grier was also in the original 1981 production of the Charles Fuller play, with Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDavid Alan GrierNegro Ensemble Company alum Growing up in Detroit, I read about the Negro Ensemble. My parents took me to see a road company of “The River Niger.” These were artistic heroes to me, and specifically Douglas Turner Ward. When I went into the company of “A Soldier’s Play” [in the original production], I auditioned for him. I was really nervous, and he directed and put me in.I was in town to do “Race” back in 2009, and I ran into Doug in a restaurant we used to hang out in. He came over and he said, “I really want to congratulate you on all of your success on television and in film. But please, you guys” — meaning me, Denzel, Sam Jackson, not to put myself on their level, but we were all in the play together, that was our connection — he said, “Don’t forget the theater, man. Always come back. We need you here, and the theater needs you here.”Sometimes those words, those moments of mentorship, mean and resonate so much and so deeply.Kenny Leon, with the microphone, thanked Douglas Turner Ward, second from left, and Charles Fuller, third from the left, on opening night of “A Soldier’s Play” last year.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKenny LeonDirector of the Broadway production of “A Soldier’s Play,” in 2020The greatest experience for me as an American director was when the curtain went down that opening night, for me to call Douglas Turner Ward and Charles Fuller on that stage. To have Doug come up there and have him smile like that.Hattie WinstonA founding member of the Negro Ensemble CompanyDouglas Turner Ward is responsible for — and I say this without hesitation — the careers of not only Sam and LaTanya and Denzel and myself, but Phylicia Rashad, Debbie Allen, Charles Weldon, Adolph Caesar came through there. Not just actors, but costume designers, set designers, directors.Michael Schultz directed our very first production at the company, a play called “The Song of the Lusitanian Bogey” that was written by Peter Weiss, who was a German playwright who was a friend of Doug’s. It was all about colonialism in Africa. With that play, N.E.C. was chosen to represent the United States of America in the international theater festival in London. That was monumental.So Douglas Turner Ward, he’s in my heart, and he will always be in my heart. He’s responsible for me being who I am. It all came from Doug. We’re his children.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Douglas Turner Ward, Pioneer in Black Theater, Dies at 90

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDouglas Turner Ward, Pioneer in Black Theater, Dies at 90A founder of the Negro Ensemble Company in New York in the 1960s, he was outspoken about limited opportunities for fellow Black actors and directors.Douglas Turner Ward, right, in 1971 with the director and producer Michael Schultz on the set of the play “The Sty of the Blind Pig.”Credit…Edward Hausner/The New York TimesFeb. 22, 2021Douglas Turner Ward, an actor, playwright and director who co-founded the celebrated Negro Ensemble Company, a New York theater group that supported Black writers and actors at a time when there were few opportunities for them, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 90.The death was confirmed by his wife, Diana Ward.Mr. Ward was establishing his own career as an actor in 1966 when he wrote an opinion article in The New York Times with the headline “American Theater: For Whites Only?”“If any hope, outside of chance individual fortune, exists for Negro playwrights as a group — or, for that matter, Negro actors and other theater craftsman — the most immediate, pressing, practical, absolutely minimally essential active first step is the development of a permanent Negro repertory company of at least Off-Broadway size and dimension,” he wrote. “Not in the future … but now!”The article got the attention of W. McNeil Lowry, the Ford Foundation’s vice president of humanities and the arts, who arranged a $434,000 grant to create precisely the kind of company that Mr. Ward was proposing. Thus the Negro Ensemble Company was born, in 1967, with Mr. Ward as artistic director, Robert Hooks as executive director and Gerald S. Krone as administrative director.The company went on to produce critically acclaimed productions, among them Joseph A. Walker’s “The River Niger” (1972), which won the Tony Award for best play in 1974 and was adapted for film in 1976. Mr. Ward not only directed the play but also acted in it, earning a Tony nomination for best featured actor in a play.Other notable productions by the company included Samm-Art Williams’s “Home” (1979) and Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “A Soldier’s Play” (1981), about a Black officer investigating the murder of a Black sergeant at a Louisiana Army base during World War II, when the armed forces were segregated. The cast included Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson. (It, too, was adapted for film, as “A Soldier’s Story,” in 1984.)Frank Rich of The Times called the production, directed by Mr. Ward, “superlative.” (The play was revived last January on Broadway, starring Blair Underwood, before being forced to close because of the pandemic.)The Negro Ensemble Company became — and continues to be — a training ground for Black actors, playwrights, directors, designers and technicians. Many of the troupe’s actors over the years went on to become stars, among them, in addition to Mr. Washington and Mr. Jackson, Angela Bassett, Louis Gossett Jr. and Phylicia Rashad.Mr. Ward, right, in 1967 with the ensemble company co-founder Robert Hooks. They started the troupe that year with a grant from the Ford Foundation, setting up headquarters at St. Mark’s Playhouse in the East Village.Credit…Don Hogan Charles/The New York TimesThe company, and Ford’s contribution, won immediate praise after its founding. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said the grant represented “a magnificent step toward the creation of new and greater artists in the community,” and Roy Wilkins, the executive director of the N.A.A.C.P. at the time, said the foundation had “recognized the potential in the Negro theater” and the talent of “hundreds of actors and entertainers who have struggled individually.”The company began racking up Obie, Tony and Drama Desk awards and recording firsts. In 1975, the Times critic John J. O’Connor acknowledged the historical significance of a “superb” television production of Lonne Elder III’s play “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,” set in 1950s Harlem. “The event marks the debut of a major Black theater organization, the Negro Ensemble Company, on American network television,” he wrote.Mr. Ward starred with Rosalind Cash in 1975 in the well-received ABC television movie adaptation of the play “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men.” Credit…Bert Andrews/ABC, via Getty ImagesThe company enabled Mr. Ward to solidify his own career as an actor and director.“I love acting for the communal thing — you know, working with people,” he said in an interview with The Times in 1975. But directing, he added, “sort of happened to me.”“I never had any intention of functioning as a director,” he continued, “but as the artistic director of the company, I choose the plays, and if I can’t find someone to direct them for us, I do it myself.”One of the first plays he directed was Richard Wright and Louis Sapin’s “Daddy Goodness” (1968), about a town drunk in the rural South who falls into such a stupor that his friends think he is dead.In an interview, Mr. Fuller said, “Doug is the only director I have worked with that could read any play and know whether its story line and characters would ‘work’ onstage.”The Negro Ensemble Company was not immune to criticism, however. The founders were criticized early on for setting up their headquarters at the St. Mark’s Playhouse in Manhattan’s East Village rather than at a theater in Harlem, and for appointing a white administrator, Mr. Krone. (He died last year at 86.)Mr. Ward, front left, on opening night of a revival of “A Soldier’s Play” in New York last January. He shook hands with the play’s author, Charles Fuller. Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesRoosevelt Ward Jr. was born on May 5, 1930, in Burnside, La., to Roosevelt and Dorothy (Short) Ward, impoverished farmers who owned their own tailoring business. His family moved to New Orleans when he was 8, and he attended Xavier University Preparatory School, a historically Black Roman Catholic institution.Mr. Ward was admitted to Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1946, then transferred to the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where he studied politics and theater. He quit college at 19 and moved to New York City, where he met and befriended the playwrights Lorraine Hansberry and Mr. Elder.In the late 1940s, Mr. Ward joined the Progressive Party and took to left-wing politics. He was arrested and convicted on charges of draft evasion and spent time in prison in New Orleans while his case was under appeal. After his conviction was overturned, he moved back to New York and became a journalist for the Communist Party newspaper The Daily Worker.He also began studying theater, joining the Paul Mann Actors Workshop and choosing the stage name Douglas Turner Ward, in homage to two men he admired: the abolitionist Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner, who led a revolt against slavery.One of Mr. Ward’s first acting roles was in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh” in 1956 at Circle in the Square in Manhattan; another was as an understudy in Ms. Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun” on Broadway in 1959, with Sidney Poitier and Claudia McNeil in the lead roles.He also began developing as a playwright. In 1965, an Off-Broadway double-bill production of his satirical one-act comedies “Happy Ending” and “Day of Absence” became a hit, bringing him a Drama Desk Award for outstanding new playwright. Surviving a transit strike, the production ran for 15 months.Mr. Ward had lead roles in many plays, including “Ceremonies in Dark Old Men,” for which he won the Drama Desk Award, and “The Brownsville Raid,” about an incident of military racial injustice in a Texas town. Clive Barnes, reviewing “Brownsville” for The Times, wrote “Ward, who, to be frank, I usually admire more as a director than an actor, has never been better.”Among his many awards and honors, Mr. Ward received the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award. In 1996, he was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.He continued to write into his later years. Last March, he published “The Haitian Chronicles,” a series of three plays that he had been working on since the 1970s, all centered on the Haitian Revolution, which threw off colonial rule in the early 1800s. His wife said that he had considered the project his magnum opus and that she and others were hoping to have the plays staged in New York with alumni from the Negro Ensemble Company.In addition to Ms. Ward, whom he married in 1966, he is survived by their two children, Elizabeth Ward-Cuprill and Douglas Powell Ward, and three grandchildren.At the Negro Ensemble Company, Mr. Ward often played matchmaker in connecting actors to roles, seeking out opportunities for people whom he knew had not been getting much work.“Doug never saw N.E.C. as a place to feature himself,” the playwright Steve Carter, who was a production coordinator for the company, said in a phone interview for this obituary in 2017. “He was always looking for new people.”Mr. Carter, who died last year, said Mr. Ward had been known for his willingness to step into any role in which he was needed. He recalled in particular a 1972 production of “A Ballet Behind the Bridge,” by the Trinidadian playwright Lennox Brown. With the actor Gilbert Lewis unable to appear one evening, Mr. Ward was hastily summoned to fill in.“Doug went on with script in hand,” Mr. Carter said. Then Mr. Ward actually injured his hand on the set and began bleeding profusely, but he refused to go to the hospital until he had finished the show.“He would always do what was necessary for N.E.C.,” Mr. Carter said.Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Ex-Artistic Director of Greece’s National Theater Held After Rape Arrest Warrant

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyEx-Artistic Director of Greece’s National Theater Held After Rape Arrest WarrantThe case of Dimitris Lignadis is the most high-profile among the numerous directors and actors to have been named in a torrent of accusations that have rocked the Greek arts world.Director Dimitris Lignadis reciting a poem on the balcony of National Theater in Athens on World Poetry Day in 2016. Mr. Lignadis has been accused of sexual abuse and harassment and charged with rape.Credit…Giorgos Georgiou/NurPhoto, via Getty ImagesFeb. 20, 2021, 2:59 p.m. ETATHENS — The Greek police on Saturday evening arrested the former artistic director of the country’s prestigious National Theater, who has been the target of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment that have buffeted the Greek arts world over the past weeks.Dimitris Lignadis turned himself in at the Athens police headquarters shortly after being informed that a warrant had been issued for his arrest on rape charges, his lawyer, Nikos Georgouleas, said in a text message. Speaking later outside police headquarters, where his client was being held, Mr. Georgouleas said his client denied the charges.“Everything that is being heard, he denies,” the lawyer said.Mr. Lignadis is the most high-profile among the numerous directors and actors to have been named in a torrent of accusations that have rocked the Greek arts world. And the charges against him are among the most serious. He resigned from his post at the National Theater earlier this month after reports emerged suggesting that he had sexually harassed young actors, which he furiously denied. After his resignation, more reports emerged, alleging more serious abuse.Mr. Lignadis in 2019.Credit…Efi Skaza/Eurokinissi, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThe upheaval in Greece’s arts world has come after an Olympic sailor, Sofia Bekatorou, accused a top sailing official last month of sexually abusing her in 1998. Her charges represented the first high-profile accusation of sexual assault and abuse of power in Greece since the #MeToo movement swept the world, bringing down powerful figures in sports, the media and beyond.On Friday, Greece’s culture minister, Lina Mendoni, said she had asked the country’s Supreme Court to investigate a barrage of accusations of sexual assault, primarily those involving the abuse of minors.In her remarks, Ms. Mendoni underlined the need for “catharsis” in Greece’s cultural sector and said that sexual abuse, particularly against minors, must not go unpunished.The unfolding scandal has fueled a vehement political fight in Greece. Ms. Mendoni’s detractors blame her for appointing Mr. Lignadis to the National Theater in 2019. Defending her ministry’s actions, Ms Mendoni said that neither she nor the country’s prime minister, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, had known Mr Lignadis “personally,” and knew him only as an actor.“Mr Lignadis is a dangerous man, but that has emerged now,” the minister said. She said she felt “deceived” by him.“With deep acting talent he tried to convince us that he had nothing to do with all this,” Ms Mendoni said, referring to the accusations of abuse.Mr. Mitsotakis, the prime minister, also referred to the mounting number of accusations of sexual abuse and harassment in the Greek performing arts during a televised meeting with President Katerina Sakellaropoulou on Friday.“The sexual abuse of minors is the most abhorrent version of this phenomenon,” Mr. Mitsotakis said at the meeting. “In the public dialogue that has fortunately begun we must achieve the greatest possible political and social consensus if we are to tackle the problem,” he said.Greek prosecutors are expected to start summoning witnesses next week for their broader inquiry into allegations of abuse and harassment in the Greek arts world, starting with the head of the country’s actors’ union, Spyros Bibilas, who said the union has been deluged with complaints by actors reporting alleged abuse.In a statement issued after Mr Lignadis’ arrest on Saturday, Greece’s Justice Ministry said that judicial authorities “will do whatever is necessary in order to ensure everything comes to light on this very shady case and for justice to be done.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More