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      A Theater Serves as a Courthouse, Provoking Drama Offstage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Theater Serves as a Courthouse, Provoking Drama OffstageBlack artists and activists in Birmingham, England, say the city’s largest playhouse has sold out by leasing its auditoriums to the criminal justice system.Before the dispute, the Birmingham Repertory Theater had long been praised for its efforts to engage people of color.Credit…Suzanne Plunkett for The New York TimesJan. 18, 2021BIRMINGHAM, England — One recent Monday, Sarah Buckingham walked into an auditorium at Birmingham Repertory Theater, strode up some steps to a platform and looked out at her audience. She was in full costume, with a wig, and everyone rose to their feet.It might seem like a star’s entrance, but Ms. Buckingham is not an actress; she is a judge, overseeing a criminal trial.Three national lockdowns in Britain, as well as tough social distancing guidelines, have hampered the business of England’s court system this past year, creating a huge backlog of cases. Since July, the country’s courts service has been renting suitable spaces — like theaters, but also conference centers and local government buildings — then turning them into temporary courtrooms.“I believe a large number of you are familiar with this building for reasons unrelated to crime,” Ms. Buckingham told the jury, before the case began. About 30 feet away from her stood Rzgar Mohammad, 34, a delivery driver who was accused of smashing a glass hookah pipe against another man’s head, then hitting him repeatedly with a pole. He was pleading not guilty to a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.Britain’s theaters have been in financial crisis since the coronavirus pandemic forced them to shut last March. Although a few have hosted performances for socially distanced audiences, most have only survived through a combination of crisis grants and layoffs. Given that, the Birmingham theater’s decision to lease space to the courts service is perhaps unsurprising. Another theater, in the Lowry arts complex in Manchester, has been hosting trials since October. The interior of a theater at the Lowry arts complex in Manchester, reconfigured as a court.Credit…Nathan ChandlerTrials have been taking place at the Lowry since October.Credit…Nathan ChandlerBut the move has angered theatermakers in Birmingham, Britain’s second largest city, who claim the courts and the police have historically targeted communities of color, and that theaters should be kept as spaces for creativity. Jay Crutchley, a Black director, said in a telephone interview that the Rep — as the theater is known in Birmingham — had “just endorsed probably the biggest systematic oppressor of Black people in this country.” Young Black men are disproportionately represented in Britain’s prisons, he added, and many people growing up in Birmingham — white and Black — have bad experiences with the police. “I’ve had close friends go through the court system,” he said, “and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been stopped and searched.” The Rep’s decision to host a court was turning the theater into a potential site of trauma, Mr. Crutchley added. “There’s a line for me where ethics gets in the way of money,” he said. On Monday, the theater announced two online meetings to listen to the feedback of anyone concerned about its decision. “We are committed to hearing your thoughts directly,” it said.Birmingham is one of Britain’s most diverse cities — at the time of the last census, in 2011, more than a quarter of its population was Asian, and around 9 percent was Black — and the Rep has long been praised for its efforts to engage people of color. Its latest season would have included several plays by people of color, if coronavirus had not forced its closure. Those included the premiere of Lolita Chakrabarti’s “Calmer,” directed by the Black actor Adrian Lester. Mr. Lester is a trustee of the Birmingham Rep’s board and is also married to Ms. Chakrabarti.But just days after the Dec. 14 announcement that the playhouse would be used to hear trials, Talawa — a leading Black theater company — canceled a scheduled season of plays at the Rep on the theme of “Black joy.” The Rep’s move “does not align with Talawa’s commitment to Black artists and communities,” the company said in a news release. (A spokeswoman for Talawa declined to an interview request for this article.)A 2018 production of “Guys and Dolls” by the Talawa theater company. The company pulled out of a collaboration with the Birmingham Repertory Theater after it leased space to the courts service.Credit…Manuel HarlanThe organizers of More Than a Moment, a Birmingham-based cultural initiative aimed at promoting Black artists, also removed the Rep from its guiding committee.The theater, whose spokesman declined an interview request, said in a blog post that the deal with the courts was needed to secure its financial future. Yet Rico Johnson-Sinclair, the manager of SHOUT, an L.G.B.T. arts festival that holds events at the Rep, said in a telephone interview that the Rep was not in immediate danger and had money to keep running until April. In October, Britain’s culture ministry gave the Rep £1.3 million, about $1.8 million.“If they’d been transparent and said, ‘We need to do this or we’re going to go under and they’ll be no more Birmingham Rep,’ I think the Black community would have been more forgiving,” Mr. Johnson-Sinclair said. “But I still don’t think it’s the right course of action.”In interviews outside the theater, six Black passers-by expressed divergent views about the situation. Three said they understood the complaints, but were supportive of the theater becoming a court. “What else can they do to survive?” said Elliot Myers, 30, the owner of a marketing agency. “Needs must,” he added. Credit…Suzanne Plunkett for The New York TimesBut three were opposed. “I know they’re desperate for money, but surely we can find another way?” said David Foster, 47, a street cleaner. Philip Morris, 37, a barber said, “You don’t want to be going to the theater thinking, ‘Court system.’” He added that the theater would be “just more for the European white now.”In the makeshift courtroom on Monday, the proceedings did sometimes have the air of a theatrical courtroom drama. Mr. Brotherton, the prosecution’s lawyer, outlined his case, then showed the jury a video capturing part of the incident. Everyone paid rapt attention. But in real life, trials unfold at a less than gripping pace. Just as things were getting exciting, the judge stopped the proceedings for lunch and so clerks could find an interpreter for one of the witnesses. But when everyone returned to the auditorium, the interpreter was still nowhere to be seen. The lawyers spoke among themselves, marveling at the lighting rig above.After another 50 minutes, the interpreter still hadn’t arrived, unable to find the theater. It was the type of event that delays many court proceedings in Britain, even outside a pandemic.“All right, I’ll admit defeat,” Judge Buckingham said after learning the news. She called the jury back into the room, and sent them home for the day. The 12 men and women shuffled out, stage right, but with little sense of drama or spectacle. AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Philip J. Smith, a Power on Broadway, Is Dead at 89

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesVaccine InformationF.A.Q.TimelineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose we’ve lostPhilip J. Smith, a Power on Broadway, Is Dead at 89As head of the Shubert Organization, he was one of New York City’s most influential real estate and cultural entrepreneurs.Philip J. Smith in 2008. He was the hidden hand on Broadway, negotiating booking contracts with producers and labor contracts with theatrical unions in a multibillion-dollar industry.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesPublished More

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      Will Averno Become a 'Marvel Universe' for Musicals?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA ‘Marvel Universe’ for Musicals? Meet the Makers of AvernoThe shows have not been staged, but three concept albums are at the center of a sprawling fictional world created largely by teenagers.“If this was just 150 unrelated artists working together, it would just be a cool collage without internal integrity or structure,” said Morgan Smith, who oversees the Averno storylines.Credit…Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesJan. 15, 2021The start of the musical partnership between Morgan Smith and Sushi Soucy may not have been very Rodgers and Hammerstein, or even Pasek and Paul, but it certainly was very 2020.“This past summer, Morgan and I became mutuals on Instagram and TikTok,” Soucy, 18, said in a video conversation from Savannah, Ga. Direct messages followed, then an invitation from Smith, 21, to collaborate on a show. An outline was hashed out via Google Docs.Just a few months later, Broadway Records on Friday released the resulting concept album, “Over and Out,” about the relationship between Nova and Solar, college students who first connect by walkie-talkie, then must navigate the pressure of meeting face to face.It’s no secret that shows like “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Hadestown,” “Be More Chill” and, of course, “Hamilton” have developed passionate online followings. But for new musicals like “Over and Out,” fandom and social media are not an aftereffect — they are baked in.“Over and Out” is part of a series of musicals set in the fictional township of Averno and follows last year’s “Willow,” which Smith wrote with 16-year-old August Greenwood. That story deals head-on with acceptance and mortality as it tracks the parallel trajectories of two couples — Cassia and Grace, Adelaide and Beatrice.In a few months, the label plans to add a third recording, “Bittersummer,” to its catalog, where the Averno releases — concept albums of shows that have yet to be produced — will sit next to cast recordings from Tony-winning productions.“Obviously, they’re early stage, which you don’t normally get,” said Van Dean, the label’s president and co-founder. “But I think it’s interesting for people to see the process, because maybe in a few years there’s a next iteration that shows you how far it’s come. It’s easier to do that in a digital paradigm.”A map of the fictional town of Averno, the center of a trio of concept albums by young creators.Credit…Alicia SelkirkIf you are not a teen, or the parents of one, chances are good you have not heard of Averno, the setting of a sprawling, cross-platform universe over TikTok (125,000 followers), Instagram (47,000 followers), Spotify (1.4 million streams), YouTube, Twitter and Tumblr.It encompasses podcasts, livestreams, novels and short stories, TV and film scripts, an extensive alternate-reality game and, yes, musicals — all at different stages of completion.Smith (who, like most people quoted in this article, uses they/them pronouns, reflecting the project’s queer and nonbinary inclusiveness) came up with what would turn out to be the roots of Averno at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop in 2018. The multiverse fully metastasized in 2020, when people were at home with time on their hands.The general vibe is drenched in the supernatural. The Averno logo, for example, is a ram’s skull, which at first seems a bit grim but makes conceptual and aesthetic sense when Smith, a New York University senior, starts listing such influences as the novels “We’ve Always Lived in the Castle” and “American Gods.”The mood: “Very like Stephen King/‘Welcome to Night Vale’/‘Twin Peaks’/‘Bridge to Terabithia.’”Fan art is abundant and volunteers help with organizing, but Smith sets the world’s parameters. “The running rule is, if I didn’t make it or decide on it, it’s not canon,” they said. “Just because I have a very specific set of aesthetics and questions and themes — it’s what makes Averno feel cohesive. If this was just 150 unrelated artists working together, it would just be a cool collage without internal integrity or structure.”Artists and animators contribute to the project, as in this image of the characters Solar and Nova, on separate rooftops, from the show “Over and Out.”Credit…Melissa van Dijk-Allen“Willow” and “Over and Out” are not Smith’s first foray into musical theater. With the composer Mhairi Cameron, they wrote “Oceanborn” and presented it at the 2019 Rave Theater Festival — The New York Times called the show “confident” and “sweeping,” with a “gorgeous score.”Smith pitched “Bittersummer” to Broadway Records last spring, but pandemic logistics delayed its release, so “Willow” and “Over and Out” ended up coming out first.“I became quite fond of the work that Morgan and their team were doing,” said Dean, who mentioned he is looking into potential physical stagings in the future. “One of the things that attracted me is that nobody’s ever tried to create a Marvel Universe for theater, for musicals. Each piece may have its own trajectory but it’s all kind of tied together.”Music is a major component of Averno, but Smith tends to see it as serving a bigger goal. “I’m not really interested in musicals,” they said, “I’m interested in telling stories that use music to further an emotion. I’m not trying to write the perfect Broadway standard — I’m trying to tell the best story I can.”There are connections to the mainstream and Broadway, however, besides a record label or Christy Altomare, from “Anastasia,” performing a reprise of “How to Let Go” on the “Willow” album.When they worked on that project, for example, Greenwood, a resident of Charleston, S.C., who cites William Finn as their favorite composer, recalls that Smith would say: “We need an opening, we need an ‘I want song’ sung by this character, we need all the different types of Broadway songs.“I’m very imagery-based,” Greenwood continued, “so Morgan would be, like, ‘It needs to feel like a summer day’ and it would click in my brain and I would go off and write the lyrics and the music together.”Soucy’s experience reflects a similar, refreshing lack of hand-wringing. “When I was around 12, I decided that I was going to write a song in the shower, and I did,” said Soucy (favorite composer: Stephen Sondheim; favorite show: “Sweeney Todd”) from their home in Savannah. “I remember thinking to myself, ‘This is easier than people make it out to be.’ And so I just started writing musicals. There’s a large community of friends who casually write musicals on the weekends,” they added with a laugh.A summer 2020 gathering of Averno creators, from left: August Greenwood, Nalah Palmer, Janeen Garcia, Richard Eyler, Rachael Chau, Jasmine Aurora and Morgan Smith.Credit…Shepherd SmithOn both concept albums, lyrics set against intimate folk-pop arrangements capture with understated efficiency the angst of feeling alone and misunderstood when you are trying to find yourself: “The rest of the world/got a manual guide/to being the way that they are,” Janeen Garcia sings in “Ketchup” from “Over and Out.”Not having a manual guide, however, can make you resourceful. “I really like how they are independent with it,” Bug Curtis-Monro, a 13-year-old fan in Liverpool, England, said of the Averno creators. “A lot of people would have to seek out … I know this sounds bad, but, like, more professional help.”Smith displays a FaceTime screenshot that shows fellow Averno creators.Credit…Caroline Tompkins for The New York TimesWhile wunderkinds are not new in pop — Taylor Swift and Billie Eilish are just some of the latest examples — young people speaking to and for each other is a fairly recent phenomenon in musical theater. And it is essential to Averno.“The fact that we are basically the same people means that we’re able to connect,” said Elodie Prigent, a 17-year-old who has followed Smith’s work since “Oceanborn” and now helps out with Averno’s social-media channels. “We know how they feel because we are them.”Such self-sufficiency may partly be in response to being asked to jump through hoops, or risk being ignored for who you are. Gatekeepers — largely, let’s face it, middle-aged white men — have been known to dismiss the teen girls or nonbinary folks who happen to form the core audience and creative teams of Averno.“I’m 21 but people still have trouble taking me seriously sometimes, which I get,” Smith said. “I’m really hoping in the upcoming year that producers and publishers start seeing the market. Clearly we have a standing audience, and our merch sales are growing excellently.”Greenwood senses a change in the musical-theater establishment’s receptiveness to the virtual realm — and is glad it’s happening.“For a while nobody really listened to people who were super-young and were just going on about their musicals online,” they said. “But now I think producers see that these can be successful. They are finally, in quarantine, realizing that it’s a really good way to get new work.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Siegfried Fischbacher, Magician of Siegfried & Roy, Dies at 81

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storySiegfried Fischbacher, Magician of Siegfried & Roy, Dies at 81Mr. Fischbacher’s death came months after that of Roy Horn, his partner in one of the most spectacular shows in Las Vegas history.The illusionist Siegfried Fischbacher in 2008. Together, he and Roy Horn captivated Las Vegas audiences for decades.Credit…Mark Sullivan/Getty Images for CineVegasRichard Sandomir and Jan. 14, 2021Updated 6:30 p.m. ETSiegfried Fischbacher, the German-born magician who was half of Siegfried & Roy, the team that captivated Las Vegas audiences with performances alongside big cats, elephants and other exotic animals, died on Wednesday night at his home in Las Vegas. He was 81.The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his publicist, Dave Kirvin. Mr. Fischbacher’s longtime partner in the production, Roy Horn, died of complications of Covid-19 in May at 75.For a time, the team’s name was all but synonymous with Las Vegas show business, with spectacular performances that combined smoke machines and white tigers, lasers and elephants, sequined costumes, snakes and illusions of metamorphosis.Their long-running production at MGM’s Mirage hotel and casino was one of the most lavish and successful in Las Vegas history.Mr. Fischbacher, left, and Roy Horn with Mantecore, the tiger that mauled Mr. Horn in 2003.Credit…Peter Bischoff, via Getty ImagesThe pair’s show ended in October 2003, after Mr. Horn was mauled by a 400-pound white tiger named Mantecore, which dragged him offstage before a stunned capacity crowd of 1,500 at the Mirage.The attack left Mr. Horn with lasting damage to his body. After he spent years recovering, the team made one final appearance, with Mantecore, at a benefit performance for the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health in Las Vegas in February 2009. They retired from show business in 2010.Mr. Horn, left, and Mr. Fischbacher in New York in 1987 with the rare white tigers Neva, left, a female, and Vegas, a male.Credit…Scott Mckiernan/Associated PressMr. Fischbacher and Mr. Horn, who were domestic as well as professional partners, kept dozens of exotic cats and other animals in the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat, a glass-enclosed, tropically forested habitat at the Mirage; at Jungle Paradise, an 88-acre estate outside town; and at Jungle Palace, their $10 million Spanish-style home in Las Vegas.“From the moment we met, I knew Roy and I, together, would change the world,” Mr. Fischbacher said in a statement after Mr. Horn’s death. “There could be no Siegfried without Roy and no Roy without Siegfried.”The two performers amazed Las Vegas audiences over four decades with stage extravaganzas that blended Mr. Fischbacher’s mastery of illusion and Mr. Horn’s preternatural ability to train and communicate with white tigers, lions and other animals.In their lavish shows, an elephant would vanish, a white tiger would turn into a beautiful woman, a tiger would appear to levitate over the audience and Mr. Horn would become a snake.The success of Siegfried & Roy’s show paved the way for more spectacular ones in Las Vegas.“Cirque du Soleil came in, you know, and Steve Wynn started that concept of Cirque in Las Vegas,” Mr. Fischbacher told Las Vegas Weekly in 2013. “The same thing that we inspired, Cirque du Soleil, inspired him.”Mr. Fischbacher was born on June 13, 1939, in Rosenheim, Germany, to Martin and Maria Fischbacher. At age 8, he became fascinated with magic when he saw a book on the subject in the window of a local store. It cost only five marks, but his mother would not give him the money; he claimed to have a found a five-mark note on a street and bought the book.When he performed a trick in which a coin vanished in a glass of water, his father praised him. “For me, having been brought up in a strict Bavarian way, it was the first time my father ever acknowledged me,” he is quoted as saying in his online biography.He was inspired by a German magician named Kalanag, whose show, Mr. Fischbacher said, was “one of the most exciting events in my life.”He left home at 17, working first as a dishwasher and bartender at a small hotel in Lago di Garda, Italy, then as a steward on the Bremen, a German cruise liner. The captain of the Bremen saw him perform magic for the crew and suggested that he perform for the passengers.He met Mr. Horn on the Bremen in 1957. Mr. Horn was a cabin boy with a love of animals who had smuggled his pet cheetah, Chico, onto the ship. They struck up a friendship, and Mr. Fischbacher asked Mr. Horn to help out with his magic act.“I did the usual thing: rabbit out of the hat and birds and so on,” Mr. Fischbacher said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” in 2003, five days after Mr. Roy’s accident. “Afterwards, I said, ‘What do you think?’ And he said, ‘Can you do what you did with a rabbit with a cheetah?’”“I didn’t know he had a pet cheetah at the time,” he added, “and I said, ‘Anything is possible.’”In 1964, five years after they started working together, they were playing nightclubs in Germany and Switzerland. When they performed at a charity benefit in Monte Carlo in 1966, Princess Grace of Monaco raved about them, giving their career a boost.As their act became more extravagant with the addition of more illusions and animals, Siegfried & Roy were booked into nightclubs throughout Europe. They made their debut in Las Vegas at the Tropicana in 1967, then moved on to headliner status at the Stardust in 1978 and the Frontier, where the marquee billed them as “Superstars of Magic.”Steve Wynn, who built the Mirage, signed them to a five-year, $57.5 million contract in 1987, three years before the hotel and casino opened. The deal included building a theater to Siegfried & Roy’s specifications. Mr. Wynn quickly cashed in on his expensive bet when they began to sell out immediately. They grossed an estimated $30 million in 1990 (about $60 million in today’s dollars).They were “the single most successful entertainment attraction in Las Vegas history,” Mr. Wynn was quoted as saying on the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2019.“Thirty years, 48 weeks a year, capacity business,” he added.Their act ended abruptly on Oct. 3, 2003 with the mauling of Mr. Horn after 5,750 performances at the Mirage. During their performance, he stumbled onstage — both he and Mr. Fischbacher said he had probably had a stroke — leading Mantecore to grab him by the neck and drag him offstage, causing an extreme loss of blood.Mr. Horn believed the tiger, sensing he was ill, was trying to protect him. Immediately after, Mr. Horn is said to have asked that no harm come to Mantecore. (The tiger was unharmed, and died 11 years later.)Mr. Fischbacher is survived by his brother, Marinus, and his sister, Margot, a Franciscan nun who goes by Sister Dolore.Speaking to Larry King in 2003, Mr. Fischbacher talked about the connection that he and Mr. Horn had with their audience, some of whom came hundreds of times.“I’m OK,” he said. “I’m good. I love my audience. I love the audience like Roy loves the animals, and this combination together, it worked, you know.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A Playwright’s New Subject: Her Husband, the Pandemic Expert

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyA Playwright’s New Subject: Her Husband, the Pandemic ExpertProlific and widely-produced, Lauren Gunderson didn’t have to look far to create “The Catastrophist,” a play about risk that’s both timely and personal.The playwright Lauren Gunderson, right, with her husband, Nathan Wolfe, an expert on pandemics and the subject of her new play “The Catastrophist.”Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesJan. 14, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETSAN FRANCISCO — Confined by the pandemic to her three-story Victorian home, Lauren Gunderson did not have to go far to find inspiration for her latest play. He was one room away, in the home office next to hers on the top floor.Over Rombauer chardonnay (for her) and a vodka tonic (for him) she set her phone down, opened the voice recording app and interviewed Nathan Wolfe, her husband of eight years. The transcripts of those conversations are the basis of “The Catastrophist,” her new solo play that was filmed on a stage near San Francisco in December and will premiere as “cinematic theater” later this month.With the exception of Shakespeare, Gunderson has been the most produced playwright in the United States in recent years, according to a tally by American Theater magazine.Wolfe has his own claims to stardom, albeit of the more academic variety. He is an expert on plagues who warned presciently about the risks of a big pandemic years before the word became such an everyday, and despised, piece of vocabulary. (“This is Nathan Wolfe,” read the cover headline on the summer issue of Wired magazine. “We should have listened to him.”)The founder of a company that models the risk of epidemics, Wolfe speaks with a measured cadence, as if an algorithm had carefully selected the words. Asked how he plans his own activities, his answer would not be out of place in a World Health Organization news release: “We are not going to take any risks that are unnecessary because it’s not socially responsible and it’s not individually responsible.”Gunderson is colloquial and effervescent, speaking in metaphors that could be slotted into her next play. She tends to interrupt her husband to add some color to his gray sentences. “We all feel afloat, adrift. Where is the land? What do we stand on?” she said, summarizing our collective psychological response to the pandemic.Gunderson’s long list of works includes many that spotlight the lives of scientists, some well known, some obscure. This piece — which was commissioned by the Round House Theater in Bethesda, Md., and the Marin Theater Company in Mill Valley, Calif., where Gunderson is playwright in residence — is of course more intimate.That’s not to say she didn’t go in well aware of the pitfalls in basing a play around the life of her spouse, including hagiography. “Truly never been more terrified of writing anything than writing this,” Gunderson announced on Twitter.She, and they, will quite literally live with the consequences. “The Catastrophist” will be available for streaming from Jan. 26 through Feb. 28.“My job is to look at people’s complexities and faults, and failures and betrayals,” Gunderson said on a recent afternoon, seated in her backyard next to her children’s trampoline. Her voice was muffled by a paisley face mask. “To turn that kind of eye to my husband, who I love, is bracing. It was way harder than I thought.”William DeMeritt in tech rehearsal during filming of Lauren Gunderson’s play “The Catastrophist.”Credit…via Marin Theatre CompanyGunderson’s “The Half-Life of Marie Curie” is streaming through Jan. 17 from TheaterSquared in Arkansas. Her previous subjects include Émilie du Châtelet, an 18th-century French mathematician and philosopher, and Olympe de Gouges, a French playwright and early women’s rights activist.None were able to peer over her shoulder as she worked. “They are all dead, so they can’t fact check me,” she said. Gunderson said she hadn’t considered writing about her husband until Jasson Minadakis, the artistic director of the Marin Theater, sent her a text proposing the idea. Her initial thought: “No, no — no!”But she came to believe that her husband would be a good vehicle to talk about the pandemic. Minadakis would direct.“The Catastrophist” tells the story of Wolfe’s upbringing by a father who, along with other relatives, shares a particular medical vulnerability. It follows his quest as a virus hunter whose early career was spent in Africa and Asia looking for clues to the next major pandemic.In past science-related works, Gunderson has not hesitated to be educational as well as entertaining. And the Wolfe character’s disquisitions in “The Catastrophist” can have the feel of a National Geographic documentary. “We have only a minor sliver of knowledge of the viral world,” he says. “Viruses are the most abundant life-forms on the planet.”But at its heart “The Catastrophist” is a personal story about risk and mortality. And at a time when so much in our lives is disrupted or simply just canceled, part of Gunderson’s mission was to open a discussion about how we anticipate and deal with future risks.In one particularly explanatory scene Wolfe delves into the concept of the micromort — a measurement of the likelihood of death from a particular activity.Skydiving, at 8 micromorts per jump, is safer than a ride on a motorcycle at 10 micromorts, he tells us. Attempting to climb Mount Everest: 39,000 micromorts. His character admits that he is drawn to adventure sports, more so than his wife.“I promised her I’d never do anything over 200 micromorts,” he says.And at the risk of giving away too much, Gunderson, in “The Catastrophist,” explores how a man who spends his life calculating risk can do such a lousy job of assessing it for himself. “The playwright in me had to push all the buttons and unlock all the secret drawers,” Gunderson said of writing about her husband.   Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesPerhaps inevitably for a play written in the throes of a plague there is a meta aspect to the work. Gunderson’s life in the pandemic was tightly intertwined with writing about it.San Francisco, like so many other cities, has been shaken and transformed since March. Tents sheltering homeless people have proliferated on the streets. Property crimes and drug overdoses have soared. Restaurants have closed, many forever.But from a purely medical standpoint, San Francisco appears to have beaten the odds. Its rate of deaths from the coronavirus, 27 per 100,000 people, is less than one quarter the national average. In the balancing act that we all face, the city has chosen safety and caution over economic continuity and normality.Gunderson was cloistered for much of the spring, starting in March when San Francisco and neighboring counties became the first in the nation to order residents to stay at home. She has bought her groceries online since; social interaction outside her family has been limited to a few walks with friends and sparsely attended birthday parties in the backyard for her two children, who are 6 and 4.But as a writer, Gunderson said, she was not handcuffed.“I’ve had the freest mind I’ve had in several years,” she said. “The deadlines evaporated.”“The play,” she added, “came out of that space.”That’s not to say putting it on has been easy.It was filmed the first week of December in the empty Marin Theater, across the Golden Gate Bridge. The crew included a woman whose job was to make sure the director stayed socially distanced from the camera operators; to provide hand sanitizer, gloves and other protective equipment; and to administer coronavirus tests. The tests were so expensive that the crew was forced to cut the filming from two weeks to one.“We were all building the boat as we were sailing it,” Gunderson said.William DeMeritt, a Shakespeare specialist whom she recruited to play her husband, flew in from New York and then worked from an auxiliary apartment near the theater, a mother-in-law unit owned by one of its patrons.“I rehearsed remotely from that little apartment with everyone else on a little Zoom screen,” DeMeritt said.The filming was done with only half a dozen crew members, each of whom was allowed access to a discrete space in the theater. It was shot in snippets, a novelty for a crew accustomed to works’ being performed from beginning to end.Gunderson watched from home via livestream.DeMeritt, who in pre-pandemic days had roles in “Shakespeare in Love,” “The Merry Wives of Windsor” and a handful of television shows, said he hopes the production inspires an industry that has been walloped by the virus. Anything, he said, to help theater survive the pandemic.He met Gunderson several years ago at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and they have kept up a friendship. After agreeing to take the part in “The Catastrophist,” he met with Wolfe and Gunderson on a hike in the Marin headlands, the steep ridges and canyons not far from the Golden Gate that afford wondrous views of the Pacific Ocean.But DeMeritt said the character he portrays has somewhat rougher edges than Wolfe the man, a tendency toward knowing-it-all that the director, Minadakis, encouraged, in part as a contrast to the personal vulnerabilities revealed in the script.“Lauren was able to put in some of Nathan’s less fabulous character traits because she knows him so intimately,” Minadakis said.“I had to encourage Bill to not get up there and play a hero,” he added, “but to play a very human individual who has pride and who has ambition.”Wolfe as a child with his father, Chuck Wolfe, a doctor who inspired his career path.Credit…via Lauren GundersonWolfe has become well known as a scientist whose warnings about the impact of a potential pandemic went unheeded.Credit…Cayce Clifford for The New York TimesWolfe has watched Zoom rehearsals and doesn’t seem bothered by the portrayal.“The play does a great job of showing the mildly irritating features of my personality,” he said in his backyard, before rushing off to take a call. “It’s an honest critique. We all have failings.”Gunderson said the play was a gift to their marriage. She, a master of words, learned more about her husband’s world of numbers and risk.And she’s confident she struck the right balance in writing about him.“The partner in me wanted to make my partner safe and happy and comforted,” she said. “The playwright in me had to push all the buttons and unlock all the secret drawers and make a mess.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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