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AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmber Ruffin to Co-Write Broadway Musical ‘Some Like It Hot’The Emmy-nominated writer and performer will work with Matthew López to adapt the comedy for the stage.Amber Ruffin is getting her first taste of Broadway as a co-writer of the musical “Some Like It Hot.”Credit…Miranda Barnes for The New York TimesPublished More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickReview: Shakespeare’s Baddies Convene in ‘All the Devils Are Here’Patrick Page writes and stars in a meditation on the Bard’s villains, moving swiftly through a catalog of characters as if he were a chameleon.Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” filmed at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFeb. 11, 2021Updated 1:00 p.m. ETAll the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainNYT Critic’s PickProspero steps out onto the stage, a sturdy white staff and book in hand. He kneels, opens the book and strikes the stage three times. As the last heavy thud echoes throughout the empty theater, the lights dim to an icy, concentrated glow. This is the magician, and this is his art.But it isn’t actually Shakespeare’s vengeful sorcerer we’re seeing; this is Patrick Page, and when he opens his mouth, it’s not Prospero but Lady Macbeth who speaks, in a jagged whisper. It’s a summoning: “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts.”It’s enough to make you shiver, and fitting for a play called “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain,” an enchanting one-man show full of Shakespeare’s vilest, silliest and most misunderstood characters: the baddies. Produced by the Shakespeare Theater Company at Sidney Harman Hall in Washington, and directed by Alan Paul, “All the Devils Are Here” is a chronological catalog of Shakespeare’s villains — including the lady with stains on her hands that no amount of Purell can get out, and the cuckolding, crown-stealing sibling. Page, who also wrote the script (and is lately known for his performance as another grand villain, Hades, in the musical “Hadestown”), begins with some general context, bringing us back in time to the flimsy villains that showed up in 16th century morality plays and how a young Shakespeare, influenced by such shows and those of his contemporary Christopher Marlowe, first broached the role of the villain in his early works.In the roughly 80-minute production, Page peppers in tidbits about his personal relationship to the texts, like how he remained haunted by “Macbeth” even when he stepped off the stage, along with a few nods to Shakespeare in pop culture — like the imprint of “Hamlet” in “The Lion King” and the echoes of “Richard III” and “Macbeth” in “House of Cards.” Addressing some of the nuances behind the characterizations of these rapscallions and miscreants, Page asks worthwhile questions: Is Iago a sociopath? Does Shylock reflect Shakespeare’s early prejudices, and does Othello later subvert them? Is the jolly old rascal Falstaff not just a fool, but another villain to contend with?In the production, Page blends casual analysis with personal reflections on Shakespeare’s plays.Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyThe production reminded me of another I’d enjoyed recently: the Irish Repertory Theater’s “On Beckett/In Screen,” written by and starring Bill Irwin (and available to stream this month as part of the theater’s Home Winter Festival). Both work in a form that speaks to the audience as not just vessels of the actor’s performance, but also as fellow scholars examining the text with him. I’m a student at heart, one of literature especially, so I count any piece that melds the virtuosity of stage performance with the intellectual rigor of a classroom, minus any didacticism, as a precious night of theater.And yet for Shakespeare stans like myself, the contextual analysis is a touch light, no more than the connective thread between villains. But when we do arrive at those villains — alas! — Page, with his bottomless bass (soon to be set to audio in a Shakespeare@Home production of “Julius Caesar”), seems possessed by such a mastery of his craft, moving teary-eyed through the pain of Shylock and the comic pomposity of Malvolio with such swiftness that it’s like watching a chameleon change hues before your eyes: stupefying, effortless.Does Page have the Weird Sisters casting spells by his side? I don’t think so, but just as well, he has Elizabeth A. Coco’s revelatory lighting, heralding and punctuating his tonal and oratorical shifts. Then there’s Gordon Nimmo-Smith’s exacting sound design, to create an air of mischief and terror, or usher in a scene in a verdant garden or rowdy pub.But it’s Page — looking exceptionally svelte in an all-black ensemble, standing or sitting at a lonely desk and chair onstage while the cameras follow him with a pristine eye and perfect attention — who is the devil, the mage, the usurper.In the final scene, he arrives at Prospero, who ends “The Tempest” rehabilitated and delivers one last monologue to the audience — here, the camera moves to show Page facing the empty theater — denouncing his magical games and bidding us farewell. Page does the same, snaps the staff in half and closes his book onstage.But has the spell really ended, just like that? Hours later, I’m still utterly beguiled.All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the VillainThrough July 28; shakespearetheatre.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater ReviewTheaters Go Digital to Talk About Life (and Death) in the PandemicGerman playhouses are finding innovative ways to forge connections while their doors are closed.Jonny Hoff as Werther and Florian Gerteis as his friend Wilhelm in “werther.live.”Credit…werther.liveFeb. 11, 2021, 4:41 a.m. ETAn interactive thriller about the race for a vaccine. A morbid installation on the stage of a theater no one can visit. A literary classic set during lockdown and narrated through social media posts. This is what theater in Germany looks like in early 2021.Nearly a year after the pandemic first shuttered playhouses in the country, German theatermakers have become increasingly adept at working around virus-related restrictions. Now, instead of the deluge of archival recordings or the broadcasts of productions planned before the pandemic, an increasing amount of digital theater is using technology to address Covid-era concerns.A recent spate of online productions from state-run and fringe theaters have examined contemporary themes of loneliness, isolation, fear of death and our chances for beating the virus. As lockdowns throughout Germany continue to be extended — Berlin has already announced that theaters in the city won’t reopen until after Easter — it’s heartening to see directors and actors finding new ways to forge connections with remote audiences by focusing on contemporary themes, even when taking well-known works as their starting point.Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” from 1774, is one of the foundation texts of German literature. The epistolary novel, about a young artist who kills himself because of unrequited love, catapulted Goethe to fame and jump-started the Romantic movement in Germany. (The book also inspired a rash of copycat suicides). These days, “Werther” is sometimes seen like other classics that are required reading in school: musty, quaint and cloying in its depiction of adolescent passion and confusion.The director Cosmea Spelleken gives Goethe’s Sturm und Drang hero a refreshing update in “werther.live,” an intricately built and skillfully executed production with a live digital run through March 3 that replicates the in-person theatrical experience. This means that the show can be viewed — for a modest 4 euros (about $5) — only when performed in real time by the actors and technical team.Werther chatting with Lotte, played by Klara Wördemann.Credit…werther.live“werther.live” is a successful experiment in subjective storytelling: The audience experiences the plot almost exclusively from Werther’s perspective, via screen recordings from his computer. Over 120 minutes, we follow the novel’s four main characters through their Facebook profiles, Instagram feeds and WhatsApp conversations. Despite the 21st-century interventions, the production remains surprisingly faithful to the plot and emotional tone of the 18th-century original.At the start of the production, Werther (Jonny Hoff), a university student, is glad that he decided to put his academic career on hold during the pandemic. In his free time, he Skypes and chats regularly with his friend Wilhelm (Florian Gerteis), who is studying in France and, the coronavirus notwithstanding, seems to be having the time of his life.Werther, on the other hand, never seems to step away from his computer, let alone leave his room. He e-meets Lotte (the love interest in Goethe’s original) after buying an illustrated book of antique firearms (foreshadowing!) from her on eBay. Then, after some cyberstalking, Werther’s interest in Lotte becomes an infatuation. As they trade text and voice messages and video chat, we experience Werther’s increasing infatuation with a woman he’s never met. Klara Wördemann’s Lotte isn’t cruel or calculating, but she is careless in the way she leads him on. We understand, however, that she does reciprocate his feelings, at least in part. Their video chats are shot through with tenderness, but also sorrow. Of all the theatrical productions I’ve consumed over the past few months from my laptop, “werther.live” is among the most genuinely innovative. A manifesto of sorts posted on its website outlines the creative team’s aesthetic approach. “Filmed stages? Theater monologues in front of webcams? You’ll find none of that here. We believe that digital theater makes a new form of storytelling possible, in which the digital surfaces are actively part of the story.”The same evening as I watched “werther.live,” I downloaded and logged in to Webex, a web-meeting app, to take part in the Nuremberg State Theater’s production of “The Doses,” an “interactive choose-your-own-adventure” by Philipp Löhle about the race for a coronavirus vaccine.The three characters in “The Doses,” a production of the Nuremberg State Theater.Credit…Staatstheater NürnbergIn the video chat room, I gazed around at a mosaic of participants who had punctually joined the meeting. (Others who tried to log in late were refused entry.) A man in a Guy Fawkes mask instructed us to turn off our cameras. One by one, the faces of the roughly 90 audience members vanished. For the next half-hour, we watched as three actors performed, in real time, a high-octane biological thriller that seemed at least partially ad-libbed and contained a healthy dose of humor.In “The Doses,” a researcher, a human guinea pig and a radical anarchist scramble around a lab in search of a coveted vaccine. Each actor is equipped with a camera while navigating the research facility, and Webex’s split-screen format allows us to follow them on their increasingly frenzied quest.The audience, too, gets to play a role, via poll questions that appear onscreen. Should the anarchist enter the lab via the door or the window? (The audience chose the window). Should she disguise herself as a cleaning woman or a cat? (A cat, obviously!) Should the researcher grab the blue or the red vaccine?I’m not certain that the audience always chose wisely, since the short production ended in bloodshed and mayhem. Even so, if all the applause emojis in the chat window after the performance were any indication, the viewers were well pleased.Despite their unusual formats, both “werther.live” and “The Doses” told dramatic stories, however avant-garde their means. In late January, however, Darmstadt State Theater, in southwestern Germany, put together a timely livestream that, on the surface, had little to do with conventional theater.On the main stage of an auditorium, which has been empty for most of the last year, the German artist Gregor Schneider mounted his installation “Dying Room” (“Sterberaum”). First exhibited in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2011, “Dying Room” was conceived by the artist as a sculptural space where a person could die with dignity. Gregor Schneider in the livestream “Dying Room,” from the Darmstadt State Theater.Credit…Benjamin WeberInitially, Schneider said he was looking for a real person to die in the room over the course of the exhibition. He even enlisted a doctor to help him find volunteers. But even for the outré tastes of the European art establishment, the concept was a step too far. Among the general public, it was treated as a morbid publicity stunt.The ubiquity of death over the past year — to date, Germany has recorded over 60,000 Covid-19-related deaths — has provided a more sobering context for “Dying Room.” In Darmstadt, the installation was streamed on the theater’s website for three days and nights, and shot from three angles to give different perspectives on a modest room, with white walls and a herringbone floor, that had been constructed on the stage. In lieu of an expiring subject, Schneider himself provided the performative element: The artist, clad in all black, stayed onstage throughout the more than 70 hours of the livestream. In this new framework, and against the backdrop of the continuing pandemic, it seemed neither tasteless nor sensational, as previous presentations were called. Instead, Schneider succeeded in creating a space for contemplation and stillness that was heightened by his own high-endurance performance. Like “werther.live” and “The Doses,” the livestream showed that art and technology, when ingeniously combined, can respond to our age of solitude and disquiet with an urgency and immediacy more readily associated with live performance.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
These young people are literally the next generation of artists. They have so much to say and so much to give to the world.
Matt Woodhead is not only the author of Who Cares?, but also doubles up as Campaign Manager for the Who Cares Campaign. So when we had the chance to chat with him, how could we possibly say no to someone doing such amazing work for young adults right now?
Who Cares examines the difficulties experienced by young carers in the UK. It’s a co-production between LUNG and The Lowry and was made in partnership with Gaddum, an organisation supporting young carers in Salford. Having toured the country extensively since 2015, it’s now been adapted for radio. It received its premiere on BBC Radio 4 on 9 February, and is now available until 8 March on BBC Sounds here.
Who Cares? Trailer
Hi Matt, first things first then, tell us a little about the play.
Have you not heard of it by now?! Where have you been?
Erm, well, you know, here and there, so sorry we missed the show originally.
Who Cares is a verbatim play that began its life in 2015. It’s adapted from over 100 hours of interviews with a group of incredible young carers from Salford.
In the play, we follow Connor, Jade and Nicole as they juggle the dramas of every day teenage life with caring for a loved one. Adapted from the real words of young carers, it’s heart-warming, real and doesn’t pull any punches.
Lizzie Mounter
Luke Grant
Jessica Temple
So the play’s been around for a while, what’s the reaction to it been?
Ah, it has had so many different lives. It was only supposed to be performed for one night at The Lowry but here we are…six years later!
The show has been performed in schools and youth clubs across the country, as well as having a run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 10,000 people have seen the play and it’s bagged a few awards. 200 young people were also signposted for support when they realised – as a result of watching the play – they might be a young carer.
For me the highlight was performing at The House of Lords. Antonia-Rae, Ciaron, Kerry and Paige (the real young carers involved in the making of the play) made speeches and lobbied decision makers to improve services for young carers across the country. It was really special.
Has the stage version altered much for the radio?
Oh yes, it has been changed to fit the form! Any writer gets a bit nervous when they have to change a script, but once I unclenched by bum, dried my sweaty palms, it was totally fine.
The production has been pieced together beautifully by Toby Swift and it feels really at home on radio. Verbatim theatre has a knack for doing that… In the radio version we also hear from two of the young carers involved in making the show. It’s so cool to think hundreds of thousands of people have now heard their voices. It’s great!!
I also do an introduction at the start of the piece. When we were recording it, the producers wouldn’t let me put on my Radio 4 voice. I was well gutted, coz I had been practicing it all week…
There is now also the Who Cares Campaign; what it’s aim?
YES! The Who Cares Campaign was born from the play. Its aim is to campaign for better services for young carers across the UK. Right now we are launching a Digi Fund. One in three young carers are from low income families and many don’t have access to technology like laptops and phones. These things are vital for young people accessing school work in the pandemic and to help them fulfil their caring role. Through the Digi Fund we are trying to raise £5,000 to pay for young carers to get the digital support they need.
So you believe theatre has the ability to drive real change?
Oh my days – 100%! I’m obsessed (sorry this is my inner nerd speaking now) with this infographic from the Arts Council that shows a study they did with young people. It found that:
When taking part in the arts, children from low income families are three times more likely to get a degree.
Young people who participate in culture are 20% more likely to vote.
(You can find the mentioned infographic here)
Art can change young people’s lives, and soz this is a cliché…
That’s ok, we write reviews, we are partial a good cliché.
These young people are the future. We need to make sure once this pandemic is over we use culture to empower them to make their voices heard.
Has the past year made this an even more vital issue?
Ah, I need to be careful or I’m never gonna get off my soapbox .
Like clichés, we love a soapbox, climb on board…
YES! This lockdown has been so challenging, especially for young carers. At LUNG we have launched a Young Carers Creative Makers group. Each week young carers from Salford, Kent, Cheshire West and North Wales come together with our Engagement Manager / Associate Director Gitika Buttoo to make art.
These young people are literally the next generation of artists. They have so much to say and so much to give to the world. They are all beavering away at the moment making something for Young Carers Action Day on 16 March. It’s going to be really special. I’ve had a preview of some of their work and they are definitely giving all us so-called ‘professional artists’ a run for our money.
Most important question then, how can people support the campaign?
The biggest thing you can do right now is donate to the Digi Fund. Any amount, big or small will change a young person’s life! You can find out more at – https://www.whocarescampaign.co.uk/digi-fund
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Our absolute heartfelt thanks to Matt for taking the time to chat with us. Who Cares? is another example of where theatre is supporting the community in ways far beyond simply putting on a show! Please donate if you can. More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s PickReview: Fathers, but Not Yet Men, in the Prison Drama ‘Shook’Samuel Bailey’s knockout professional debut isn’t so much about the pipeline to incarceration as it is about the toxic masculinity that keeps it flowing.Josef Davies, left, and Ivan Oyik as teenagers in a British “young offenders’ institution” in Samuel Bailey’s play “Shook.”Credit…The Other RichardFeb. 9, 2021ShookNYT Critic’s PickGreat injustice makes great drama, so it’s no surprise that playwrights have been drawn to the epidemic of incarceration among neglected young men.Or should I say the pandemic? “Shook,” Samuel Bailey’s knockout professional debut, diagnoses much the same disaster in Britain as some recent American plays have diagnosed here.But if “Shook” echoes stateside dramas like “Pipeline,” “Notes From the Field” and “Whorl Inside a Loop” in its mash-up of themes, it is so specific to its own milieu that it rings with fresh truth. That milieu is an English “young offenders’ institution,” roughly the equivalent of a juvenile detention center. Three young men — Riyad, Cain and Jonjo — are the offenders in question, though calling them young men is part of the problem. They are teenagers: Riyad and Cain, 16; Jonjo, 17.Andrea Hall, left, as Grace, who teaches parenting lessons to a trio of boys at the institution, including Oyik as Riyad.Credit…The Other RichardStill, they are old enough to be fathers, which is what brings them together, lifeboat-style, for the play. Over the course of six weekly lessons, a woman named Grace (Andrea Hall) introduces the boys to diapering, feeding and CPR while Bailey introduces us to the violent lives they lived outside and the even more violent ones they live while locked up.That structure could easily be a defect; with so much of the action described in retrospect, “Shook” might have felt distant or placid. And it’s true that Grace is given only the most basic demographic information to suggest a life offstage: She’s in her 30s and has a son of her own. But for the most part, the production from Papatango — a London theater dedicated to new plays and early career playwrights — avoids such pitfalls, thanks to propulsive pacing and sharp characterizations in roles that spark with specificity.That’s especially true of Cain (Josh Finan), who talks as if he were spraying ammunition. Both a threat and a cutup, he says he probably has dyslexia, A.D.H.D. and “problems with boundaries,” as if these were impressive battle scars. Hardly able to read and completely unable to focus, he is more interested in getting a look down Grace’s shirt than in learning to care for a son he never sees.A new arrival, Jonjo (Josef Davies), is introduced as Cain’s counterweight: On the rare occasions he does talk, he stutters. After the crime that brought him to the institution — involving, too predictably, a vicious stepfather — he has been forbidden contact with his pregnant girlfriend. The most eager of the trio to practice his parenting skills, but also the one least likely to use them, he is, at first, lost in a stupor of grief.Cain and Jonjo are white; race is more submerged in “Shook” than in typical American plays on the subject. But as Riyad (Ivan Oyik), who is Black, gradually moves to the play’s center, we nevertheless sense the disastrous way racism intersects with ordinary neglect in an atmosphere of toxic masculinity. That he is “clever” at math, and that Grace, also Black, might bring out his potential, is a hoary first-play device. And yet the scene in which she encourages him to apply to college is perhaps the saddest, if not the subtlest, in the play.“This moment in your life, this place here, doesn’t have to define you,” she says, seemingly referring to the unsparing fluorescents and abused walls of the prison classroom. (The grim lighting is by Max Brill and the grimmer set by Jasmine Swan.) But Riyad needs just one glance at the college catalog to know that the happy students and teachers pictured there “ain’t gonna want me.”It would be an even sadder scene, and play, if Oyik, Finan and Davies — all riveting — were not so obviously a decade older than the characters they portray. Perhaps the gap was not as evident during the original Papatango run in 2019. But just as “Shook” was about to transfer to the West End last spring, coronavirus precautions shut down the industry. What the director, George Turvey, has created on film (with James Bobin) is a record of an apparently excellent staging that the camera’s fixed eye cannot flatten no matter how hard it tries.Credit, in part, the vividness of the dialogue, which is naturalistically profane and comically aggressive but also thematically valid. These boys are mouthing off as fast as they can so they will not open themselves to accusations of softness or be caught short by an incriminating insight. Even if they do say something painfully true, they usually toss it off as a joke. When Jonjo asks whether the other inmates’ children ever come for a visit, Cain answers flippantly: “Not me, la. He’ll be in here himself soon enough, like.”Ultimately, “Shook” is less interested in how young men get into the prison pipeline than in how they get stuck there forever. One answer is embedded in the plot: catastrophic fathering. Riyad observes, and the story bears out, that people like Cain, no matter how gentled by proximity to dolls and diapers, are “programmed” to repeat the injuries they’ve suffered at their fathers’ hands. “When it gets hard,” he says, “they get shook and come back to what they know, innit.” He is clever enough to include himself in that fate.American plays about the prison pipeline typically indict its machinery, which, at least theoretically, can be retooled. The much more despairing drama that “Shook” enacts is the one in which the machine isn’t broken it all; it’s a very efficient system of breaking people, and keeping them broken, in order to feed itself. All the Graces in the world can’t undo that damage.ShookThrough Feb. 28; papatango.co.uk.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#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 storyWorking in TV, Jen Silverman Wrote a Novel. About Theater.“We Play Ourselves” finds a struggling playwright exiled to Los Angeles and obsessing over New York. Then she meets the manipulative filmmaker next door.“The book began as a love letter to the theater,” Jen Silverman said of her debut novel. “But it’s a love letter where you know the dark side.”Credit…Zackary Canepari for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021“Theater only feels like an accomplishment if you’re part of the cult,” a character in Jen Silverman’s new novel, “We Play Ourselves,” says. “The rest of the world thinks we’re all wasting our best years.”The book’s flailing heroine, Cass, an emerging playwright, flees New York after a disastrous opening night. At loose ends in Los Angeles, she drifts toward an unscrupulous filmmaker and the teenage girls in her orbit. Like much of Silverman’s writing, the book balances what Silverman’s colleague, the showrunner Lauren Morelli, praised as a “razor-sharp absurdism alongside a deep reverence for humanity.”Silverman (“The Moors,” “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties”) started the novel in 2018, having temporarily moved to Los Angeles for a stint in Morelli’s “Tales of the City” writers’ room. Most days, she would arrive at her office an hour or two early and sit at her desk, trying to translate theater’s ephemerality into prose. She thinks she could only write the novel, her first, because theater felt so distant, which acted as a kind of deprogramming.“The book began as a love letter to the theater,” she said during a recent video call. “But it’s a love letter where you know the dark side. It’s not an idealized love.”Dana Delany, left, and Chaunté Wayans in Silverman’s “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties,” which had an Off Broadway run in 2018.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn addition to plays, teleplays and now novels, Silverman also writes poems, essays and short stories. (She denies being prolific, which is funny.) Across genres, her style is mutable, her word choice precise, her interest piqued by tales of transformation and how people do and don’t resist it. The director Mike Donahue, a frequent collaborator, said that he admires her work because he never knows the form it will take. “It’s always an entirely new world to try to crack and a new language to understand,” he said.Speaking from the Upper Manhattan apartment that she shares with her partner, the set designer Dane Laffrey, Silverman discussed art, autobiography and what it means for the book to arrive in a world without theater. “It’s hard because I want so desperately to be back in a theater,” she said. “But when I think about hearing somebody three rows behind me cough, like, I feel this cold panic.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How’s your pandemic going?It’s the best pandemic I’ve ever had. I’ve been working on the book. I got galleys for it in April. It felt a little crazy, because the world was on fire and I’m trying to decide between a semicolon and a comma. And I’ve been reading a lot. That’s saving my sanity. Maybe.How did this book come about?I had been writing a different book. But something about being in L.A. and being plunged into a different medium, I longed for theater, like in a visceral, full-body way. And I found that when I would sit down to write, I would just start writing about theater. I ended up calling my editor and saying, “I’m writing a completely different novel. I hope that’s OK.”Do you think that people outside the theater understand theater?What everybody understands is the desire to be transported outside yourself, the desire to experience something larger than you, the desire to be deeply moved. Everybody wants to feel magic in their lives.How autobiographical is the novel?The part that feels really aligned with my personal experience is the way that theater became something so much larger than a career, that it took the place of a spiritual life. Cass longs for it and needs it in a way that was a really personal, active thing for me. But there are a lot of divergences and one of them is Cass’s hunger for visibility and acknowledgment and her desire to be famous. Attention makes me really nervous, to be honest. So I found it really interesting to follow a character who desperately wants to be a public figure and whose sense of self is constructed around what is being said about her.Silverman started the book while working in the writers’ room for the Netflix reboot of “Tales of the City.”Credit…Zackary Canepari for The New York TimesYou’ve written an intense opening night scene. What are opening nights like for you?Like a particular ritual or ceremony that we’ve all agreed to participate in. From the gathering of the crowds to the party. Then there’s a judgment that’s going to come down and what will that judgment be? Depending on whether you’re a writer who reads reviews, that judgment can feel different, but it’s like running a gauntlet.Are the parties fun at least?I’m shy. Crowds scare me. I was not cut out for like a life of extroverts. I try to bring a friend who is an extrovert, and then just watch them thrive in this company of humans.Do you read reviews?I’ve gone back and forth. There was a time when I was like, “I’m not going to read reviews.” Then I was like, “No, there’s a lot to learn, I don’t have to agree with it. But I should learn.” At this point, there are a set of critics that I find really smart, thoughtful, nuanced, complex. I don’t always agree with them. They don’t always say good things about me. But I always want to know what they’re saying.In the novel, the theater world is rife with professional jealousy. Is that your experience?The arts economy in the U.S. is defined by scarcity, because we don’t have government funding. Institutions don’t have a lot of support beyond ticket sales. If you are a woman, queer, an artist of color, it’s very clear that there is a slot and the people who are your community, your collaborators, your family, are also being positioned as your competitors. I don’t think that is good for the arts. I don’t think that is good for the culture.Still, the book makes theater seem very sexy. Is it?It can be. What interests me is that it’s a really intimate place. No matter your role, you are performing essentially a mind meld in a really rarefied, intensified environment. Some of my closest friends, people who are family, are people I met doing shows.Cass has a nemesis in Tara-Jean, a younger playwright. And she falls for a TV star and an elegant director. Are these based on real people? Did you worry that readers would think so?I did have a moment of real anxiety about it. It is very much fiction. I had theater friends read it. A few of them actually called me after and they were like, “I didn’t know you knew this person.” But each of them had a different person. I’ve heard five different theories for who Tara-Jean is.What does it mean to have this novel arrive in a world largely without theater?I have no idea. I thought it was a different world that the novel was going to be entering. For myself, I have dreams almost every other night about theater. Sometimes it’s my play; most of the time it’s somebody else’s play. Sometimes the dream is really good. And sometimes, I have this feeling of like, “Wait a minute, aren’t we in a pandemic? Where’s my mask?” But because my longing for theater is such a big part of my life, I’ve been really enjoying reading about theater. I hope that this book can be that for other people.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
#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 storyTo Love, Honor and Co-Star: Making Room for Two on ZoomHiring couples to act together allows us to see two people in one virtual space. For the couples themselves, though, it can feel like “there’s no escape.”Michael Urie, left, and Ryan Spahn have acted together in one short play during the pandemic. Spahn also handled the camera for Urie’s performance of “Buyer & Cellar” from their apartment.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Last fall, the actor Jason O’Connell agreed to star in a new production of “Talley’s Folly,” Lanford Wilson’s wistful two-hander, for Syracuse Stage. The other hand? His wife, Kate Hamill. While they would film the piece in an empty auditorium, they would spend much of their rehearsal time at home, on Zoom. So much for leaving your role at the stage door.“There’s no escape,” O’Connell said, mostly joking. “There’s no time apart, there’s no breather. There’s no one to complain to about my co-star.”Since March, when theater began to pop up online, savvy producers have looked for Zoom box workarounds and ways of generating the intimacy that only actors sharing the same airspace can provide. A Covid-19 friendly solution: Hire cohabiting couples to perform opposite each another — on sofas, in bedrooms and on the occasional closed stage — with no grids or time lags intervening.That explains how viewers saw two Apple family siblings — Maryann Plunkett’s Barbara and Jay O. Sanders’s Richard — quarantining together in the latest Richard Nelson trilogy, with their West Village apartment subbing for Barbara’s Rhinebeck house. Cohabiting actors also enabled a surprising scene in Sarah Gancher’s “Russian Troll Farm.” Having spent the play on separate screens, the disinformation workers Greg Keller and Danielle Slavick suddenly leapt into the same box and then into bed.Some of these couples have acted together for decades; others have almost never shared a marquee. None of them could have predicted that they would be turning their homes into theaters and reassuring the neighbors that the bloodcurdling shrieks are just a work thing.The New York Times spoke to six theater couples about acting together while living together. These are excerpts from the conversations.Kate Hamill and Jason O’ConnellTogether eight yearsJason O’Connell, left, and Kate Hamill in the Syracuse Stage production of “Talley’s Folly.”Credit…via Syracuse StageHow they met At the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, through a mutual friend. They married in January 2020 and had planned to honeymoon last summer.Pandemic project “Talley’s Folly”Have you worked together much?O’CONNELL We worked together on Kate’s first play, “Sense and Sensibility.” We did “Pride and Prejudice.” Then I wrote an adaptation of “Cyrano” that I directed her in.HAMILL We know lots of people who have a professional/personal divide, but we really don’t.How has working from home been?HAMILL We’re both workaholics. We’ve had to adjust to a slightly different pace of life. Like, “Do we have any hobbies?” After we got done with our first Zoom rehearsal of “Talley’s Folly,” we turned off the camera and we both started crying because we had missed that part of our lives.O’CONNELL It was very, very special, but also bittersweet.HAMILL In the pandemic, as a couple, you either come out of it, like, “Wow, this is really strong and great,” or “Oh no. I’m glad we like each other.”Greg Keller and Danielle SlavickTogether 14 yearsDanielle Slavick, left, and Greg Keller in “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy.”Credit…via TheaterWorks HartfordHow they met At the National Theater Conservatory in Denver, Colo. “We had a talk in the library once about death,” Keller said.Pandemic project “Russian Troll Farm”Have you worked together much?SLAVICK We’ve done a bunch of workshops and readings and stuff, but only one other production together, Sheila Callaghan’s “That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play.”KELLER Nobody’s wanted to bring the passion that is our relationship onto the stage.How has working from home been?SLAVICK Exciting. But also daunting. I was still breastfeeding during rehearsals and I was also pregnant, so I was very nauseous. Having people be part of your home life was just kind of vulnerable. But you’re, like, my favorite actor. So I just liked the opportunity to talk with you and listen to you in that medium.KELLER I’m blushing over here.SLAVICK There was so much equipment! It took over our apartment.KELLER A new couple with a kid moved in. They would hear us screaming at each other, her having fake orgasms.SLAVICK I actually stopped them in the hall and let them know that they don’t need to call the police.Crystal Dickinson and Brandon J. DirdenTogether 21 yearsBrandon J. Dirden, left, and Crystal Dickinson in “The New Math”Credit…via The 24 Hour PlaysHow they met In graduate school at the University of Illinois. “I will never forget seeing her for the first time,” Dirden said. “This gale force coming straight at me.”Pandemic projects “New Math,” as part of the 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues; “Lessons in Survival”Have you worked together much?DICKINSON The first show we did was “Angels in America.” Brandon was Belize and I was the angel.DIRDEN We work together maybe every other year. It actually helps the relationship. We can’t be too mean to each other, because we’re probably going to have to work together pretty soon.How has working from home been?DICKINSON The 24 Hour Plays reached out to us. I told Brandon, “We’re doing it. You’re going to do one and I’m going to do one. Because we’ve got to do some art.” So we did and I told them, “That was great. Brandon and I should do one together.’” Two weeks later, they were like, “We want to take you up on that.” And I was like, “How are we going to home-school?” We told our playwright, “You have to incorporate our kid.” Which turned out to be fun. Though we did almost kill each other for about five seconds.DIRDEN Chase [their son] was the best part of the process. He took direction very well.Michael Urie and Ryan SpahnTogether 12 yearsUrie and Spahn in Talene Monahon’s short play “Frankie and Will.”Credit…via MCC TheaterHow they met Friends set them up. “We had plans to see ‘Doubt,’” Urie said. “Very romantic.”Pandemic projects “Nora Highland,” “Buyer & Cellar,” “Frankie and Will”Have you worked together much?URIE Most recently, “Hamlet,” which we did in Washington, D.C. We’ve also worked together on some movie projects. Ryan and Halley Feiffer wrote “He’s Way More Famous Than You,” which I directed.SPAHN That was when we learned how to collaborate. We turned our apartment into the production office.How has working from home been?SPAHN Jeremy Wein does Play-PerView. He reached out. I had never even heard of Zoom. I had this two-hander, “Nora Highland.” Michael and Tessa Thompson did it live online.URIE There was no audience, but it felt something like theater, because it was live.SPAHN We would talk about the hunt for that feeling of opening-night jitters.URIE “Buyer & Cellar,” which we did in our living room, had exactly that. It was a big old comedy put together right before you. Ryan was the director of photography.SPAHN After that one, we did a short play Talene Monahon wrote, “Frankie and Will.” Our dog was in it. And we have a cat, so we had to animal wrangle. It gave us something to put our manic, terrified, and laser-focused energy into.Jennifer Byrne and Timothy C. GoodwinTogether four yearsJennifer Byrne, left, and Timothy Goodwin at home with their dog, Awesome.Credit…Timothy C. GoodwinHow they met During a production of “Shear Madness” in Fort Myers, Fla. “We had a start-over first date in New York City,” Byrne said.Pandemic project “Singles in Agriculture”Have you worked together much?BYRNE We never work together. I’m in musical theater and Tim is into plays and film and TV. Our paths for auditions rarely cross.How has working from home been?BYRNE Ken Kaissar and Amy Kaissar, the artistic directors of Bristol Riverside Theater, were looking for acting couples quarantining together. They hit us up by email and Ken found “Singles in Agriculture.” We did a Zoom cold read and it was our rhythm, it was our energy. It felt right.GOODWIN Usually you can leave work at work. But the space that we sleep in is also our rehearsal space and our performance space. We have a nice lighting set up. But as soon as the rehearsal is over we tear it all down.BYRNE We literally open the blinds, we open the windows and we shut the door so that it gets super cold in the bedroom. Almost like starting over.Maryann Plunkett and Jay O. SandersTogether 32 yearsClockwise from lower left: Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett as two of the Apple siblings, along with Laila Robin, Stephen Kunken and Sally Murphy in “What Do We Need to Talk About? Conversations on Zoom.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow they met On the set of “A Man Called Hawk,” a spinoff of “Spenser: For Hire.” “Our first kiss was on film,” Sanders said.Pandemic project The Apple Family Plays’ pandemic trilogyHave you worked together much?SANDERS Countless reading and workshops. And some small film things.PLUNKETT Because of the Rhinebeck panorama [Richard Nelson’s sequence of Rhinebeck-set plays], it feels like we’re working together all the time. We like to work together.How has working from home been?PLUNKETT With the Zoom plays, we’re sitting side by side. It’s the utmost in trust, and playfulness, knowing that I’m looking into Jay’s eyes, but I’m also looking into the character’s eyes. Shoulder to shoulder, captured in a little tiny box, there’s no room for faking it.SANDERS I used to dream about this, when I was a young actor, finding someone who could be a partner, who could be at the same level. It’s a very rare relationship that we’re fortunate to have. We appreciate it every day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘He Missed Nothing’: Nathan Lane, Chita Rivera and Others on Joe AllenThe man was taciturn, but his Theater District restaurants were like Broadway clubhouses. Even the posters of flops were placed with affection.The restaurateur Joe Allen at his 75th birthday celebration in 2008, with Chita Rivera.Credit…Jason WoodruffLaura Collins-Hughes and Feb. 9, 2021For more than 50 years, until his death on Sunday at 87, Joe Allen was Broadway’s perfect foil. A reserved man amid all the bright lights and look-at-me brashness of Manhattan’s Theater District, he created three landmark restaurants — the original Joe Allen, the more elegant Orso and the intimate Bar Centrale — where stage stars and up-and-comers alike could mingle and unwind.When he opened Joe Allen in 1965 on the block of West 46th Street that came to be known as Restaurant Row, theater people quickly adopted it for its comfortable feel. And as several said by phone and email this week, they didn’t hold it against him that posters from failed Broadway shows wound up on his fabled flop wall.Institutions now, though currently closed by the pandemic, the restaurants are expected to return, though, as is true of Broadway itself, there is no certain date.In the meantime, some regulars reminisced about Allen and the places he made. These are edited excerpts.Nathan LaneActorI was fond of Joe, but I didn’t know him very well. In the beginning he was someone slightly mysterious to me, rarely seen, like Garbo. Every once in a while I’d spot him at the end of the bar, sipping a glass of red wine, and I’d just wave and smile because I was too intimidated to talk to him. He seemed to have a look in his eyes that said, “This better be important.”It wasn’t until Bar Centrale opened and I would go there after a show and if I was by myself I would sometimes sit at the bar near him and we would chat and have a few together. He was very charming, very low-key and amusingly deadpan in his delivery. I realized he was probably just as shy as I was, but he was certainly someone who had seen it all. Hell, he even dated Elaine Stritch. There should be some kind of Congressional Medal for that. But he dated Chita Rivera as well, so I guess that was his reward.Chita RiveraActorPeople saw him in his restaurants and he seemed cold, I guess, some people would think. Well, I knew him when Alice used to follow him around. Alice was his dog. It was just so sweet. My daughter said today, “Now he’s with Alice.” Just thinking about it makes me tear up.Joe and I went out together during “Chicago.” It was before he was married. He was just the warmest, the most reliable, the sweetest person who wrote the most beautiful love letters a girl could ever want. I saved them.There are just some people that you never, ever think are not going to be around. Joe was one of those people.Donna McKechnieActorI first met him when I was in, I think it was “Promises, Promises.” Yeah, ’69. He was very protective. Especially of a young woman coming in alone, which a lot of people did. I went there alone all the time. And this is before the women’s movement. It was a safe place.Justin Ross CohenCast member, original production of “A Chorus Line”I grew up in Brooklyn — my mother kept me out of school every Wednesday to see a matinee. One show was “Applause” [which included a scene at the restaurant], so I had an awareness of Joe Allen’s, the whole essence of it, long before I started going there.In 1976, I applied for a house account. When you did, you were given a piece of paper with a form: Name, Company, Position. For Company I put “A Chorus Line.” For Position, fifth from the left. He got a big kick out of that. It was a big deal! I can’t tell you the number of people who were refused. At 22, I was like, “I have arrived!”I had the good fortune to go from hit to hit for a while. Then I was in a show called “Got Tu Go Disco.” It was a nightmare. It was such an honor to give Joe that poster to put on the wall.The poster for “Got Tu Go Disco,” a short-lived 1979 musical, in a place of “pride” at Joe Allen’s namesake restaurant.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesKelli O’HaraActorI remember, more than once, coming in to meet someone for dinner before or between shows, and the back little room would be empty except for Al Pacino sitting by himself at a round table, facing the restaurant, having his meal. It really did feel like something out of “The Godfather.”I have also looked at the posters on the wall (oh, the dreaded wall) over and over again. I don’t think I’m up there, although I’ve certainly been in flops, so I could be wrong. But I have, admittedly, razzed my friend Will Chase after seeing his “High Fidelity” prominently displayed. But it’s really a badge of honor to be up there. Working in this business for any length of time means one will have gone through flops, and if we are still standing, that says something. We might as well celebrate it.Patrick PageOriginal cast member, “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”At first he said “Spider-Man” would probably be up there. But then the show ran for three years. Joe Allen was a member of the Broadway community, not just a restaurateur. I remember him saying that any show that runs for three years and provides employment for that many people, it can’t be a flop.The post-theater crowd at Joe Allen, dining under posters of Broadway flops that include “Rockabye Hamlet” and “Lolita.”Credit…Robert Stolarik for The New York TimesJudith Ann AbramsProducerI went to every restaurant he had. Once, Elaine Stritch and I were in London and we decided to go fly to Paris to have a hamburger one night [at his restaurant there]. In my will, I left one of my friends $5,000 to have a celebration at Joe Allen’s. That’s how addicted I am to it.Thank God I don’t have a poster hanging anywhere. That’s my biggest achievement. I have two Tonys, three Oliviers, and no poster at Joe Allen’s.Steve GuttenbergActor named Best Supporting Regular in the 2015 “Joey Awards”Joe Allen’s is to actors what the Veterans Administration is to the military — a safe and welcoming home for our profession. My New York life consisted of three to four meals a week in the esteemed eatery, finding safety as the posters for Broadway bombs kept me in their watchful sights.Daryl RothProducerI didn’t really know him, but Orso was my favorite restaurant, not only in the Theater District but everywhere. I was really an Orso fan more than Joe Allen’s.I have one on the wall. It’s “Nick & Nora,” which was one of the first Broadway musicals I was ever involved in. For everybody that has a wall poster, it’s a very good reminder of how humble we have to be in this industry. It makes me smile in a funny way, because that’s the lesson: Every time out of the gate, with any new production, you have a chance to be on that wall, you know? You hope you’re not.But I thought he turned something that was so sad and hurtful into a way of looking at the nature of this business — that these are the things that happen. It is almost a rite of passage, in a way.But I’m not sure if that isn’t why I liked Orso better.Joel GreyActorHe was one of my favorite people ever in the theater. He knew everybody from the beginning to the end, the scenic design to the understudies.He used to have a jukebox in there with all the shows that were on Broadway that year and the year before and the year after. And everybody went there, from every show. You’d see everybody you loved.He was very sharp. He missed nothing. He just was a great lover of the theater, and had a kind of air about him of watching over everything and not saying a word. Except when everybody left, and he’d had a few. Then he would tell you plenty of stuff.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More
