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      Sandie Crisp, ‘Goddess Bunny’ of the Underground Scene, Dies at 61

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesSee Your Local RiskVaccine InformationWuhan, One Year LaterAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostSandie Crisp, ‘Goddess Bunny’ of the Underground Scene, Dies at 61She became a muse among the Hollywood avant-garde, appearing in movies, music videos and photographs. She died of Covid-19.Sandie Crisp in 2016. She appeared in music videos, movies and stage shows.Credit…Chuck GrantFeb. 4, 2021Updated 6:20 p.m. ETThis obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.Sandie Crisp, a transgender actress and model who, under her stage name the Goddess Bunny, served as a muse to generations of artists, gay punks and other denizens of the West Hollywood avant-garde, died on Jan. 27 at a hospital in Los Angeles. She was 61.Her death was confirmed by Mitchell Sunderland-Jackson, a friend. The cause was Covid-19, he said.For decades, Ms. Crisp was a familiar presence on the sidewalks of Santa Monica Boulevard and in the hustler bars that once lined it, where she dressed like a grungy diva and lip-synced songs by Donny Osmond, Judy Garland and Selena.In the 1980s and ’90s, she became a popular subject for artists who frequented that scene as well as their collaborator. Directors cast her in underground movies, and she appeared in music videos by Dr. Dre and Billy Talent. A nude photograph of her sits in the permanent collection of the Louvre.Her aesthetic, which blended the Hollywood noir of David Lynch with the punk offensiveness of GG Allin and Lydia Lunch, knew few boundaries. For one performance she dressed as Eva Braun alongside a man dressed as Hitler. An audience member leapt to his feet and punched her in the face.“Being able to shock and offend as a way of avoiding co-option by corporate capitalism — she was the muse for people pursuing that sensibility,” said the Canadian filmmaker Bruce La Bruce, the director, most recently, of “Saint-Narcisse” (2020).Ms. Crisp was equally renowned among drag performers, especially those of a rawer sensibility.“If you’re an actual drag queen, you know about the Goddess Bunny,” said Simone Moss, the founder of Bushwig, an annual drag conclave that started in New York and gave Ms. Crisp a lifetime achievement award in 2017. “She’s a part of drag history as much as Divine,” she said, referring to the actress made famous by John Waters in films like “Pink Flamingos.”Sandie Crisp was born on Jan. 13, 1960, in Los Angeles to John Wesley Baima, a lawyer, and Betty Joann (Sherrod) Baima, a secretary.Their child contracted polio, causing limited use of her arms and legs. Doctors prescribed a variety of surgeries and medical devices — Milwaukee braces, Harrington rods — but they caused only further physical damage. She used a wheelchair to get around.After the Baimas divorced, Sandie spent several years in foster homes around Los Angeles, at times subjected to abuse by doctors and at least one foster parent, according to Sandie’s account and that of her half brother, Derryl Dale Piper II.She returned to live with her mother when she was 11, and by 14 she was beginning to present herself as a woman, Mr. Piper said, a turn that brought conflict with their mother, who was deeply religious.Ms. Crisp left home after high school, moving to West Hollywood and joining a small community of punks, artists, homeless teens and hustlers. She made her mark almost immediately. Foulmouthed and dressed in sequined gowns that she often sewed herself, she insisted on being treated like a celebrity. Her penchant for telling wild tales about herself — like how she had appeared in off-Broadway musicals and dated celebrities — only made her more intriguing to her peers.Sandie Crisp was equally renowned among drag performers, especially those who lean toward a raw, edgy sensibility.Credit…Gibson Fox“She was such a visually extreme person,” said the photographer Rick Castro, one of many artists who hired Ms. Crisp to appear in their work in the 1980s and ’90s. “The way she carried herself, like she was a movie star, like old-school Hollywood royalty — she didn’t carry herself like someone who should be ashamed,” he said in an interview.The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      With French Theaters Closed, Puppetry Takes Center Stage

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWith French Theaters Closed, Puppetry Takes Center StageThe art form, usually on the fringes of French theatrical culture, finds itself at a sudden advantage: Puppet shows’ young audiences are still allowed to watch live performances.“Hematoma(s),” directed by Cécile Givernet and Vincent Munsch, uses cutout shapes and shadow lighting to tell a story of childhood trauma. Credit…Cie Espace BlancFeb. 4, 2021, 3:11 a.m. ETPARIS — In December, while French theaters remained shut because of the pandemic, Hubert Mahela was able to perform his latest show a dozen times. The reason? He makes puppet shows for young audiences, who happened to be in school — and in need of entertainment.Puppetry, an art form often looked down on as lowbrow, lo-fi theater, has found itself at an unlikely advantage this winter in France. Primary and secondary schoolchildren are currently the only audience members officially allowed to attend performances here, as long as the local authorities grant permission.“We can’t just work through video, with no audience,” Mahela said in a recent interview. “It was such a joy to know that it’s possible to be careful and keep going.” He took his one-man show “Lisapo Ongé!,” in which he re-enacts a tale from his native Congo with expressive hand-held puppets, to schools in Fontenay-sous-Bois, a suburb of Paris, and in the northern city of Amiens.The situation for French puppeteers is bittersweet. While it constitutes a return to their roots, as children remain their most faithful fans, many of them have worked hard to position the form as more than family-friendly fare. In France, high levels of public funding for the arts helped puppetry make the transition, in the second half of the 20th century, from a craft passed down in family circles to a well-established sector of the performing arts.Puppetry even has a capital of sorts in France: Charleville-Mézières, a former metallurgy stronghold near the Belgian border. It hosted the first World Puppetry Festival in 1961 and became home to the International Institute of Puppetry two decades later.In 1987, a puppetry school, the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts de la Marionnette, or ESNAM, opened. While it admits only 15 students every three years, some of puppetry’s biggest names honed their craft there, including the American artist and director Basil Twist. Other training institutions have opened internationally, but in a recent interview at the Opéra Comique in Paris, Twist said he still considered his alma mater “the top school in the world” for the art form.Hubert Mahela performing his one-man show “Lisapo Ongé!” In it, he re-enacts a tale from his native Congo.Credit…Corentin Praud“France has an enormous network of cultural institutions, one of the largest in the world, so puppetry was able to carve a niche within it,” the school’s director of pedagogy, Brice Coupey, said in a phone interview.The puppeteer Grégoire Callies had a front seat for that development. From 1997 to 2012, he directed the first National Dramatic Center devoted to the form, in Strasbourg. He is currently at the helm of the Théâtre Halle Roublot in Fontenay-sous-Bois, where he set up Covid-averse performances by several artists in schools, including Mahela’s “Lisapo Ongé!”“What’s good about the world of puppetry is that most productions are nimble, they can go everywhere,” Callies said at his theater recently. “While theater productions have a hard time coming up with big tours, there is always a possibility to work.”That much was clear from “Les Plateaux Marionnettes,” a closed showcase for programmers and journalists hosted at the Théâtre Halle Roublot in late January. Over one day, five artists and companies presented short productions, most of them new. Alongside Mahela’s “Lisapo Ongé!,” multiple branches of puppetry were represented. In “Hematoma(s),” directed by Cécile Givernet and Vincent Munsch, cutout shapes and shadow lighting were elegantly woven to tell a story of childhood trauma. With “The Forest Doesn’t Exist,” Kristina Dementeva and Pierre Dupont, who graduated from ESNAM in 2017, brought an absorbing sense of Beckettian absurdity to the musings of two sock animals.Dementeva, who started working with inanimate objects in her native Belarus, moved to Charleville-Mézières from the Belarusian capital, Minsk, to attend ESNAM. “The school is very famous among puppeteers abroad, and it’s free,” she said. “Belarus has a great underground puppet scene, but there are many more companies in France, and more public support.”Yet in a country where sophistication is a point of pride, puppet theater remains on the fringes of the biggest venues and festivals. It has earned backing from major figures over the years, including the director Antoine Vitez, who had plans to fold puppetry into the missions of France’s premier stage troupe, the Comédie-Française, when he died in 1990. Still, Callies believes puppetry hasn’t managed to achieve the same level of recognition as hip-hop dance or circus, two art forms that channeled contemporary dramaturgy to bridge the gap with highbrow genres.Kristina Dementeva and Pierre Dupont in “The Forest Doesn’t Exist,” which features two sock animals. Credit…Louis Cadroas“One of the tragedies of puppetry is that the artists who want to make it erase the word ‘puppet.’ They leave it behind,” Callies said, pointing to its reputation as a childish form of expression. “It’s a French neurosis, because if you go to Germany or Italy, adults also attend puppet theater shows.”On the flip side, some puppeteers who have moved toward contemporary theater suggest that French puppetry remains fairly conservative. The renowned stage director Gisèle Vienne, who graduated from ESNAM in 1999, said in a phone interview that her work — which is geared toward adults, with complex subject matter — was mostly embraced by dance and theater artists at the time. In 2007’s “Jerk,” she even explored the darker side of puppetry’s reputation (from schizophrenic toymakers to murderous puppets) in popular culture.“The world of puppetry told me that what I was doing wasn’t puppetry,” Vienne said. “It’s a really extraordinary medium, but I have found that the most powerful puppet-based experiments happen in the field of contemporary art.”Yet there are signs that younger puppeteers are hungry to break down the remaining barriers between their craft and mainstream theater. The profession itself is changing. “It used to be very masculine. There are a lot more women now, who do very interesting work,” Callies said.The productions presented as part of “Les Plateaux Marionnettes” tackled ambitious themes, from family violence to forgotten female figures from world history (in a spirited workshop presentation by Zoé Grossot, another ESNAM graduate). The climate emergency is also a recurring concern among ESNAM’s students, according to Coupey: “Some refuse to work with polluting materials.”At the Théâtre Halle Roublot, the sheer pleasure of watching live theater came with a sense of safety. With no more than three performers onstage at any point, and precautions including masks and social distancing, the risk of spreading Covid-19 seemed as limited as it may ever be inside an auditorium.“We can even afford to work on a play with 20 characters, because we don’t need 20 actors,” Givernet, the co-director of “Hematoma(s),” said with a laugh after the show. Lowbrow or not, puppets are well suited to this moment.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub Dreams

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Shakespeare Villains and Hot-Tub DreamsPatrick Page looks at bad guys, Steven Carl McCasland gives us literary women, and Jill Sobule mines her own history, including the dreaded seventh grade.A still from “The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral,” from The Neo-Futurists, a Chicago performing-arts group. Credit…via The Neo-FuturistsFeb. 3, 2021Updated 2:17 p.m. ETDark and wintry days, cold nights: February is the perfect time to cuddle up with some so-called chiller theater.Toxic squares: Travis Schweiger and Chelsea J. Smith, top, and Neal Davidson in Stephen Belber’s “Tape.”Credit…via The Shared ScreenLet’s start with Stephen Belber’s “Tape,” which begins with a character shoveling coke up his nose and goes on from there. In this 2000 play (adapted into a Richard Linklater movie), the friends Vince and Jon have a relationship so toxic, it could qualify as a government cleanup project. Their reunion starts with the needle in the red, then really skids off the rails. The Shared Screen company has devised its production as a live video call. Feb. 5-20; thesharedscreen.com.Stay on the line for the Keen’s company benefit reading of Lucille Fletcher’s radio thriller “Sorry, Wrong Number,” from 1943, about a bedridden woman who is being targeted by killers — her phone is her only connection to the outside world. Marsha Mason leads the cast and Nick Abeel handles the live Foley effects. (Feb. 15 at 7 p.m.; keencompany.org.)Patrick Page in “All the Devils Are Here.”Credit…via Shakespeare Theater CompanyFinally, Patrick Page, Broadway’s favorite basso profundo, wrote and performs a solo look at theatrical bad guys in Shakespeare Theater Company’s “All the Devils Are Here: How Shakespeare Invented the Villain.” Page knows a thing or three about the subject: He has played Iago in “Othello,” Hades in “Hadestown,” the Comte de Guiche in “Cyrano de Bergerac,” the Grinch in “Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!” and the Green Goblin in “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” Feb. 4-July 28; shakespearetheatre.org‘The Infinite Wrench Goes Viral’The Neo-Futurists, based in Chicago, have turned their showcase of very short plays — or thought experiments, or whatever you want to call these bite-size works — into a successful weekly virtual show. Some are animated; others are performed by live actors. One was 14 seconds long; most are around two or three minutes. The only rule seems to be that you never know what’s next. A Patreon subscription buys a 30-play show delivered on Sunday nights, with an average of 10 new plays a week. neofuturists.orgJill Sobule’s hot-tub time machine“F*ck7thGrade,” from the singer-songwriter Jill Sobule, may be a concert shot in an improvised drive-in, but this autobiographical show has impressive theatrical bones: Liza Birkenmeier (“Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”) wrote the book, Rachel Hauck (“Hadestown”) designed the set and Lisa Peterson (“An Iliad”) directed for City Theater, in Pittsburgh. Now the question is: Will Sobule and Robin Eaton’s musical adaptation of the movie “Times Square” ever get a full production? Through June 30; citytheatrecompany.orgIn “Little Wars,” clockwise from left: Catherine Russell, Linda Bassett, Juliet Stevenson, Debbie Chazen, Sophie Thompson, Natasha Karp and Sarah Solemani. Credit…John BrannochDinner with Gertrude and LillianCaryl Churchill’s “Top Girls” engineered a meeting between female historical figures. “Little Wars,” Steven Carl McCasland’s new play, also sticks with literary heroines. When a dinner party includes Lillian Hellman (Juliet Stevenson) and Gertrude Stein (Linda Bassett, wondrous in “Escaped Alone” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music), the conversation could get interesting. Through Feb. 14; broadwayondemand.comFor your ears onlyL.A. Theater Works specializes in audio theater with startlingly good casts, and its impressive catalog keeps growing. The latest offering is Hannie Rayson’s eco-minded “Extinction,” with a cast that includes Sarah Drew and Joanne Whalley. Hankering for the days of before? Check out the last two productions Theater Works recorded in front of a live audience, early last year: a commissioned adaptation of “Frankenstein” by Kate McAll, starring Stacy Keach as the creature; and Qui Nguyen’s semi-autobiographical “Vietgone,” inspired by his Vietnamese refugee parents, and directed by Tim Dang. latw.orgSigned, sealed and, eventually, deliveredTheater — or something companies are calling theater — by mail is alive and well. Ars Nova’s “P.S.” project has been going on since November; the second season of the Artistic Stamp company’s epistolary project is underway, with a third beginning soon; and next month, Arena Stage is starting “Ken Ludwig’s Dear Jack, Dear Louise: Love Letter Experience.”The most ambitious initiative yet may well be Post Theatrical, which encompasses 13 “mail-based theatrical experiences” from companies in the United States, Lebanon and Hong Kong. Through June 30; posttheatrical.org‘Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet’/‘Yorick, the Story of Hamlet’Remember Yorick, the jester whose skull plays a big part in “Hamlet”? He takes center stage in Francisco Reyes’s solo with puppets “Yorick, la Historia de Hamlet”/“Yorick, the Story of Hamlet,” presented by the Los Angeles contempory-arts center Redcat. American audiences may know Reyes from his role as Orlando in the Chilean movie “A Fantastic Woman.” In English with Spanish subtitles. Feb. 12-14; redcat.orgWith songs in their heartIf you’re wondering about the back story to the French song in that Allstate commercial, it’s “Non, je ne regrette rien,” made famous by Edith Piaf. And if you missed the biopic “La Vie en Rose,” head over to Raquel Britton’s docu-concert “Piaf … Her Story … Her Songs,” brought to us by Broadway’s Best Shows and the Actors Fund. Feb. 15-18; actorsfund.orgFor tunes in English, turn to Theater Forward, an organization that supports regional theater, which will offer performances by Jason Robert Brown, Kate Baldwin, George Salazar, Anika Noni Rose, Shaina Taub, Branden Noel Thomas, Taylor Iman Jones and the Bengsons for its annual benefit. Feb. 8; theatreforward.orgDavid Glover in “Kyk Hoe Skin die Son.” Credit…Dion Lamar MillsClubbed Thumb’s Winterworks festivalThis enterprising New York company is best known for Summerworks, a festival of new plays that has provided a launchpad for favorites like “What the Constitution Means to Me” and “Tumacho.” Now, Clubbed Thumb is opening up its developmental showcase, Winterworks, to a wider audience on platforms like YouTube, Instagram and Twitch. The shows open at regular intervals throughout February, with several livestreaming before going on-demand for a limited time. The programming is director-driven, so there should be some interesting innovations. In “Kyk hoe Skyn die Son [Look at How the Sun Shines],” for example, Keenan Tyler Oliphant writes a letter live and on-screen, while artists reimagine his memories. Other participants include Leonie Bell and Michaela Escarcega. clubbedthumb.orgTechnology and its discontentsThe Studios of Key West has wrangled quite the cast for Drew Larimore’s new play, “Smithtown,” which deals with the impact of technology on our lives and is made up of four interconnected monologues, read by Michael Urie, Ann Harada, Colby Lewis and Constance Shulman. Feb. 13-27; tskw.orgA scene from “Today Is My Birthday,” with, from left, Emily Kuroda, Eric Sharp and Katie Bradley.Credit…via Theater MuTech is integrated into the very fabric of Theater Mu’s multicamera capture of “Today Is My Birthday,” by Susan Soon He Stanton, a staff writer on the HBO hit “Succession.” This Twin Cities company focuses on the Asian-American experience. And Stanton’s narratively inventive play, about a young journalist (Katie Bradley) who has fled New York to return home to Hawaii, is told through phone calls, voice mail messages and even intercom. Feb. 6-21; theatermu.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bringing Stages to Storefronts in a Theater-Hungry City

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyExit InterviewBringing Stages to Storefronts in a Theater-Hungry CityMiami New Drama gave audiences a window on the “Seven Deadly Sins” when it took over part of a pedestrian mall for a production. Michel Hausmann, the artistic director of Miami New Drama, waves to passers-by from inside one of the storefronts where his company presented “Seven Deadly Sins.”Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021MIAMI — As the final performance of Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins” ended Sunday night, the actors streamed onto Lincoln Road, thanking the company’s artistic director, Michel Hausmann. They had spent months performing separately, inside adjacent vacant storefronts on this South Beach pedestrian mall, to an audience that watched and listened from a distance.Whooping and hugging each other, they gathered around the gregarious Hausmann at the outdoor bar lit by a neon “Purgatory” sign. They continued celebrating, even as the glowing red signs, reading “Lust” “Greed” “Wrath” and more, flickered off and the block turned dark.The pandemic closed the city on March 13, the eve of the opening of Miami New Drama’s first musical. To keep the 5-year-old company going, Hausmann, who is from Venezuela, commissioned seven notable playwrights — five Latino or Latina, two Black — to write short works that would fit under the “Seven Deadly Sins” rubric.They included Aurin Squire, who imagined sloth as a white woman claiming Black identity. Carmen Pelaez envisioned pride as the arrogant statue of John Calhoun, an outspoken defender of slavery, challenging the crowd that is pulling him down. Moisés Kaufman, who co-founded New Drama with Hausmann, portrayed greed by way of a brother and sister clashing over their father’s will.Six of the plays, all with either one or two actors, were staged in glassed-in storefronts, the seventh in the loading dock of the Colony Theater, the company’s regular home on Lincoln Road.Guides led audience groups of 12 from store to store, where they listened to the actors over iPods Velcroed to their bright red, socially distanced chairs.Audience members watch as the actress Jessica Farr performs in the “Lust” section of “Seven Deadly Sins,” written by the playwright Nilo Cruz.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesActors performed inside the storefronts while audience members listened on headphones.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York Times“Seven Deadly Sins” was extended twice, selling out for most of its two-month run. According to Actors Equity, “Seven Deadly Sins,” produced at a cost of $580,000, was the biggest live professional theater production in the country at the time, employing 100 theater workers, from stage crew to designers and actors. And thanks to meticulous precautions — including individual dressing room/rehearsal spaces — no one got sick.On the phone the morning after the show wrapped up, Hausmann reflected on the inspiration for the production and why it mattered. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How did you feel seeing this show end?I cried when we couldn’t extend again. Then I made my peace with it. I feel like we pulled off a miracle. Not only artistically, but that the health protocols worked.How did you come up with the idea?I was extremely pessimistic when the pandemic hit. I’m normally an optimist. But I understood what we were facing was an unprecedented disruption. I’d been thinking for years about the empty storefronts on Lincoln Road. I was packing my office knowing I wouldn’t return for a very long time, and it hit me walking to my car and looking at those storefronts and boom! I saw the actors inside, the audience outside.“Although this is literally 40 paces from our door,” Hausmann said of the storefront experiment, “it was like producing on the moon.”Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThen I had the good and bad fortune of breaking my knee and wrist riding my bike. I spent weeks in bed. It was a quarantine inside the quarantine. My escape was imagining what I could do with the storefronts. I borrowed Thornton Wilder’s idea of doing 10-minute plays around the seven deadly sins, and a production in Venezuela in 1974 that commissioned different authors.Then what?My first call was to Dan Gelber, the Mayor of Miami Beach. I told him we have this crazy idea that is impossible to pull off without the support of the city. He said, “We’re all in.”What were you worried about?Everything. We’ve become pretty good at producing shows inside the Colony Theater. Although this is literally 40 paces from our door it was like producing on the moon. We had to create seven different theaters — lighting, sound, sets. It was uncharted territory.Any surprises?We had an incident before we opened where a man who I assume was a white nationalist was so offended by the Calhoun set that he threatened to bomb not only that storefront, but the Colony. He made that threat in a credible way. Twenty minutes later the whole block was taken over by police. That’s frightening, but that’s what theater should do. Theater needs to be political.Digital programs for the show were scannable.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesOne of the staff members who guided attendees to their seats, and from show to show.Credit…Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesHow did Covid-19 protocols shape the process?We had to have three negative tests before we were even allowed to be outdoors together. After that we had to have two negative tests every week. I got very good at it — now I can share important tips. Breathe in while the swab is going in.You’ve always produced theater with a political dimension. How did that enter here?I gave the playwrights a broad mandate: Pick your favorite sin and write a 10-minute play with one or two actors. What they brought back was a look at American society through the seven deadly sins. We helped process what it means to live in America in the year of the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and political reckoning.Given everything else going on, why was it important to stage live theater this year?I felt a great sense of responsibility to the theatrical ancestors who figured out how to do theater in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, during apartheid in South Africa, in the living rooms of dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. To keep the flame alive.I felt an even bigger responsibility to our local artists. We never furloughed anyone. We employed a hundred people for the setup of the play and 60 professional actors and techs for the almost three months we were rehearsing and performing. Even if the play had had no artistic merit, that for me is dayenu. [Hebrew for “It would have been enough.”]What else did you learn?It’s liberating to understand we are in the business of live storytelling. The possibilities are really endless.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Blood Meal’ Review: Just Us, Locked Down in a Dollhouse

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘Blood Meal’ Review: Just Us, Locked Down in a DollhouseCleverly edited and darkly funny, the latest Theater in Quarantine show finds a nervous couple afraid to go out or let anyone in. Sound familiar?Lee Minora, left, and Joshua William Gelb in Scott R. Sheppard’s “Blood Meal,” which is shot and edited live with the actors in different settings.Credit…Katie Rose McLaughlin, via Theater in QuarantineFeb. 2, 2021The bugs have made Sam and Lindsay prisoners of their own home. To battle the invasion, the couple live in bare rooms, the furniture wrapped in plastic. They don’t leave the house and don’t welcome anybody in, either: They refuse entry to Girl Scouts selling cookies and after drinks with friends on the porch — in the middle of winter — they throw their clothes in garbage bags.Any resemblance to a certain pandemic is entirely not coincidental, and in just 32 minutes Scott R. Sheppard’s darkly funny new play, “Blood Meal,” captures our zeitgeist with satirical accuracy.What makes the show even zeitgeistier is that it is the latest salvo from the prime purveyor of inventive stagecraft in the age of Covid: Joshua William Gelb and Katie Rose McLaughlin’s Theater in Quarantine.For the past 10 months, the pair have turned a small closet in Gelb’s apartment into a performing space that has hosted everything from an “expressionistic musical portrait” of Mother Teresa (“I Am Sending You the Sacred Face”) to an adaptation of a Polish science-fiction story (“The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy”).In creating Theater in Quarantine, Gelb (with Minora) has shot many pieces from a closet in his apartment.Credit…Katie Rose McLaughlin, via Theater in Quarantine“Blood Meal” ups the ante: Gelb (who directed and plays Sam) and Lee Minora (Lindsay) are performing live from separate closets — hers was built in the basement of La MaMa. The magic of technology brings the actors together so Sam and Lindsay can have sex and share a bath. We even watch them move about a cross-section of their home, as if it were a dollhouse. (Gelb and Stivo Arnoczy did the video design; Alex Hawthorn was responsible for the software that synced the action.)The setting itself creates a strange combination of the mundane and the surreal that perfectly suits Sheppard’s sensibility. He co-wrote the Off Off Broadway hit “Underground Railroad Game,” about children and adults re-enacting slavery scenarios, and last June contributed “Topside,” a claustrophobic, unsettling play inspired by the Donald Barthelme nuclear-cloud short-story “Game” to the growing Theater in Quarantine catalog.The zippy “Blood Meal,” which is free on YouTube, is an even better piece than “Topside” because it so skillfully maps a familiar world where an invisible danger lurks everywhere. McLaughlin’s matching costumes for Lindsay and Sam, black with red accessories, make them look like two mimes flailing in paranoid domesticity at the end of the world.Sam is at the end of his rope and desperately wants to believe the infestation has run its course so they can get back to normal and maybe even stop sleeping in the kitchen.Editing technology allows the viewers to watch Minora and Gelb, being filmed separately, take a bath together.Credit…Katie Rose McLaughlin, via Theater in QuarantineLindsay has a more jaundiced attitude. “If we are serious about fighting these bugs, we must always doubt that we are free of them,” she tells him. “Do you understand that? It’s about doubt.”But she starts having the wrong kind of doubt as she increasingly suspects Sam of surreptitiously meeting people outside. Her nagging suspicions and his equivocations drive a wedge in the heretofore united couple. Eventually, Sam pleads for Lindsay to join him in an escape: “Let’s get in the Jetta and take the mountain,” he pleads. “Let’s drink black Manhattans and cuddle like bobcats.”Watching this live play on a screen, at a remove, it’s hard not to think, “Can I come too?”Blood MealOn the Theater in Quarantine YouTube pageAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall Apart

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAn AppraisalCicely Tyson Kept It Together So We Didn’t Fall ApartA wonder of poise and punch, the actress dared to declare herself a moral progenitor, taking on roles that reflected the dignity of Black women.In “Sounder,” from 1972, Cicely Tyson is often transfixing in her stillness.Credit…20th Century Fox, via Getty ImagesJan. 29, 2021Updated 4:44 p.m. ETHow odd to celebrate someone for not being who we’ve been programmed to expect. But American entertainment worked hard on the mold that Cicely Tyson refused to fit. So, really, what we’ve been saluting all these decades was historic defiance. She died on Thursday, at 96, just after the release of “Just as I Am,” a juicy, honest, passionately Cicely memoir. (“Well, child, I’ll tell you: my mouth fell open like a broken pocketbook.”) And on the opening pages resides the truth about why, as a performer, she was the way she was.“My art had to both mirror the times and propel them forward,” she writes. “I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people — to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity.” Tyson made this vow in 1972, a few years after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., at the dawn of the so-called Blaxploitation filmmaking boom that didn’t fulfill her. No hookers, no servants, no big bad mamas. Which meant that, for a woman dependent on an industry that trained its patrons to overlook a beauty as singular and angular and walnut-brown as hers, she’d essentially declared a hunger strike.Alas, she would not be playing the most daring, out-there characters. And let’s face it: the great parts were always headed to someone whiter anyway. The more audacious move was to declare herself a moral progenitor, to walk with her head high so that Denzel Washington might become a man on fire and Viola Davis could learn how to get away with murder.Tyson had a remarkable physical presence, someone sculpted as much as born. Her body was dancer lithe. She seemed delicate. But only “seemed.” She was delicate the way a ribbon of steel holds up its part of a bridge. The deceptive nature of her fineness was right there in the name. Cicely Tyson. Poise and punch.Her mouth comprised an overbite, protruding front teeth and two full lips. The words she spoke brought with them a little extra breath, which, in turn, gave her an everlasting lightness that made us lean toward her so we wouldn’t miss whatever truth she was about to tell. She didn’t write the scripts, yet she never seemed to waste a word. How? And the way she spoke: with the erudite diction fragrant of both old showbiz and old Harlem. No Black woman had ever performed this reliably with this much elegance and surety. Of course, the mold being what it was, nobody had ever asked a Black woman to do any such thing. (Diahann Carroll appeared to be her sister in dignity.)In a scene from “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” the title character, played by Tyson, fights segregation by drinking from a fountain reserved for white people.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesTyson was a peculiar kind of famous. I was never told of her importance. I just knew. Everybody knew. This woman was somebody. She looked sainted, venerated — at 29, 36, 49 and 60. Even in anguish. It’s possible that happens once you’ve played a 110-year-old formerly enslaved woman in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and after you’ve played Kunta Kinte’s mother. Or maybe those roles happen because you radiate venerability.She could act with her entire head yet scarcely move it at all. That’s her in most of “Sounder,” transfixing in her stillness. “Sounder” itself is a quiet, Depression-era movie, from 1972, built around Louisiana sharecroppers named Nathan and Rebecca Morgan, their three children and the family dog, Sounder. It’s foolishly lit. The night scenes are brightened by lanterns, which wouldn’t be my first choice for a movie with this much brown skin. Tyson spends a few scenes under a big straw hat that hides half her face.For lots of actors this would be death, because they’re too vain to stand for it or lack what it takes to overcome that kind of obscurity. For that sort of actor it’s all in the eyes. Over four decades of watching this woman work, I discovered that her technique rarely relied on her eyes, although they could glitter and dance. Tyson was another sort of actor: a life force. She emanated and exuded: hurt, warmth, joy, suspicion, fear, hauteur, love — an ocean of love.“Sounder” is a quiet movie set in Louisiana; from left, Paul Winfield, Yvonne Jarrell, Cicely Tyson, Kevin Hooks and Taj Mahal. Credit…20th Century Fox, via Everett CollectionCICELY TYSON WAS known to all people. But in Black homes, Tyson epitomized “household name.” A fixture even more than a star, either way an illuminant. A natural resource, a wonder, a font, a dream, a beacon. What other actor worked with such clear purpose, vocation and seriousness on the one hand and with a devastating smile on the other? Tyson knew what she represented. An honorary Oscar, three Emmys, a pile of Emmy nominations and a Tony all came her way. Just as fittingly for a woman who willed herself to matter, so did eight N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards.One of those was for playing Marva Collins in “The Marva Collins Story,” a pat yet ultimately astonishing Hallmark Hall of Fame production that CBS aired in 1981. Collins taught at a Chicago public school that the movie turns into a zoo everywhere but inside her classroom. It’s quintessential Tyson. The school system’s bureaucracy and low expectations inspire Collins to open a private school in the upstairs unit of her house. When a white teacher all but calls her uppity, Marva treats her to a death stare and says, “I dress the way I do, Miss Denny, because I happen to believe my children deserve a positive image.” Tyson is loose and charming and sharp; married to a carpenter played by Morgan Freeman; romantic, funny, unflappable and — thank the lord — well lit, the teacher of parents’ dreams, the actor this country needed in more slam-dunk roles just like this.Tyson plays a Chicago public school teacher married to Morgan Freeman’s character in “The Marva Collins Story,” from 1981.Credit…CBS, via Getty ImagesConsider the parts she could have played if the movies were fairer. Consider what we’d be saying now if her standards were lower. How’s that for fairness?I often got the sense that Tyson was hanging on to a little something, perhaps for herself, which, in turn, compelled us to hang on more tightly to her. In “Sounder,” after a judge sentences Nathan to a year of hard labor, the film cuts to Rebecca, seated in the rear of the court surrounded by her children and two friends. Rather than wail, she just looks on in solemn comprehension, a hand supporting her head. Of course, she’s devastated; the marriage is strong. But in that moment, what you see Tyson performing is resolve, strategy. She knows that she now has to do the farming — the sharecropping — on her own. The moment hits you harder for all that Tyson doesn’t do. Poise, punch.She rarely broke down. She never cracked up. She held it together, lest the rest of us fall apart. “Marva Collins” was as close as Tyson ever got to her wits’ end. And even then: she was losing it for her people. There were other exceptions. The scene in “Sounder,” say, in which Nathan, freshly sprung from that labor camp, hobbles up to the road as she runs a 100-yard dash toward him, tears flying from her face, her arms flung open. This is no way to run a dash. Instead, she invented a run powered not by muscles at all but entirely by heart. That sprint goes in the national registry of great American movie shots. And how about when ancient Miss Jane takes that drink at the “white only” fountain? You can show that to a Martian and he’d wipe the water from his mouth.Tyson knew her place. It was in our movie palaces and living rooms, but also at Black families’ kitchen and dining room tables, an emblem of her race, a vessel through whom an entire grotesque entertainment history ceased to pass because she dammed it off; so that — in her loveliness, grace, rectitude and resolve — she could dare to forge an alternative. She walked with her head high, her chest out, her shoulders back as if she were carrying quite a load that never seemed to trouble her because she knew she was carrying us.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘The Poltergeist’ Review: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Madman

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s Pick‘The Poltergeist’ Review: Portrait of the Artist as a Young MadmanA breakneck performance by Joseph Potter as an embittered former prodigy carries this unnerving monologue from Philip Ridley.Joseph Potter as a once-promising artist in Philip Ridley’s darkly comic play “The Poltergeist.”Credit…Matt MartinJan. 29, 2021The mind of a neurotic artist is a terrifying place to be. Trust me, I know: I’ve had a 30-year residency in one, and it’s no picnic.Still, the artist at the center of “The Poltergeist,” a new solo play by Philip Ridley presented by Tramp and streaming courtesy of London’s Southwark Playhouse, functions on a whole different level. As a teen, Sasha (Joseph Potter) was dubbed a prodigy thanks to his large-scale murals. He was going to be a star, but now, years later, he’s a nobody, self-consciously making smudged watercolors and sketches that he immediately declares worthless.It’s hard to focus on your next masterpiece when you have something permanently stuck in your craw. Sasha prattles through an interior monologue of such unrelenting vitriol about himself, his art and the world around him that he seems hollowed out, a black hole masquerading as a person.When he and his supportive boyfriend, an actor named Chet, go to a niece’s birthday party, Sasha barely manages the smiles and chat and cake. He pops too many painkillers and hardly veils his resentment for his brother and sister-in-law. He trashes the house when no one is looking. He grows more riled up as casual conversations veer closer to the topic of his artistry and the reason he never lived up to his promise. (No spoilers here, but it involves a familial act of betrayal.)Ridley, a screenwriter and playwright (“The Pitchfork Disney,” “Mercury Fur”), regularly trades in a brand of tragicomedy that’s like a blackout on a winter night: acutely dark.“The Poltergeist” is airtight, if not claustrophobic. It almost entirely happens at that one birthday party, with Sasha re-enacting every conversation he has with other guests, rapidly interjecting his own thoughts. The playwright meticulously unwraps his psychology, interrupting the churlish commentary with lush and tender descriptions of color, like the “magenta, crimson lake, viridian, burnt sienna, cinnabar green” he’s putting to use in a painting.All this makes Potter’s job, alone on a bare stage for 75 minutes, tough. He is riveting to watch, full of breakneck energy and Olympian-level verbal agility, especially when he pingpongs from one character to another.This perfectly captures the manic mechanics of Sasha’s brain, but “The Poltergeist” sometimes moves so quickly that things become a garble. Part of the issue is Wiebke Green’s direction, which paces the show like an emotional roller coaster that rises and falls in predictable intervals, without surprise.It goes like this: a barrage of gripes and observations from Sasha, followed by long pauses when he lets deeper feelings finally catch up to him. Some pearls of comedy in the script get left by the wayside, though the emotional conclusion is rich and gratifying.Despite its occasional muddle, “The Poltergeist” is gripping from start to finish, one of the most visceral immersions inside a disturbed character’s mind I’ve ever seen. I’ll happily Airbnb there, especially if Ridley is my host. But I’m giving back the keys when it’s over.The PoltergeistThrough Feb. 28; southwarkplayhouse.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More