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      in Movies

      ‘Anonymous Club’ Review: The Joy of Creation

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      The Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett goes on a world tour in this music documentary, and finds that a change is needed.The singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett started out as a DIY artist, home-recording energetic songs communicating knotty feelings. Early in this documentary, written and directed by Danny Cohen, a cheery interviewer leads into a question by saying that it’s not too common to hear artists “singing about panic attacks.” This reflects more on the limited listening experience of the interviewer than anything else, but you get the idea.The images in “Anonymous Club” are pretty conventional for a music documentary, particularly at the start. Barnett’s work blew up commercially after the 2015 release of her album “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.” World tours with a backing band followed: We see trucks being unloaded at stadiums, lighting rigs going up, and electric guitars rocking out with post-punk clamor.At Cohen’s request, Barnett kept an audio diary over several years. In it, she speaks about how the repetition of touring is giving her emotional state a beating. Barnett muses on the contradiction of how, in one performance, she might be “vivid and alive” and in the next “distant,” even though she’s going through the same motions with each show.Because Barnett is shy by nature, and prone to depression and anxiety, touring gets to be a special kind of drag. In public she’s a sport: When a glib German interviewer quotes her lyric “I’m not your mother/I’m not your bitch” and then asks with a grin “who are you mad at?” she doesn’t take the bait.Back at her home in Melbourne, she sits with her depression. Clearly a change is needed. A stripped-down tour with no backing band — and a musical collaboration with the drummer Stella Mozgawa of Warpaint — get Barnett back to the joy of creating. Perhaps not surprisingly, she achieves it in a setting not too different from the one in which she began.Anonymous ClubNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

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      in Movies

      ‘All My Friends Hate Me’ Explores British Social Anxiety

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      The film “All My Friends Hate Me” satirizes anxiety and paranoia among upper-class British millennials. Its writers say they are laughing at themselves most of all.LONDON — Seven years ago, Tom Stourton, 35, received a wedding invitation from two college friends. He was surprised, having drifted apart from the couple. But he attended the event, arriving hung over and sleep deprived from another party the night before.“Over the course of the day, I became increasingly paranoid that I had been invited as a joke,” Stourton recalled in a recent video interview. He feared the groom would reveal the prank during the speeches.Looking back more recently, “it seemed like a funny idea,” he said, “being somewhere where you should be having fun with your friends, but there’s this undertone of something hostile.”The writer, actor and comedian wove this setup into a screenplay with his co-writer, Tom Palmer, also 35. The resulting film, “All My Friends Hate Me,” opens in limited theaters Friday, before coming to streaming platforms later this month.Stourton plays Pete, an anxious, self-involved 31-year-old who corrals a group of college friends to celebrate his birthday in the countryside. Over the course of the boozy weekend, he becomes increasingly worried that they secretly despise him. In a video interview, the film’s director, Andrew Gaynord, described its world as “manor houses and posh people and rolling fields — very British.”For Pete and his “mates,” the equally British social norm of keeping a stiff upper lip conceals contemporary anxieties about class, wealth and privilege. Insecurities are deeply felt but never discussed, and over the course of the weekend, Pete’s mental state starts to unravel. The film is part black comedy, part psychological thriller. “I liked the idea of a guy blowing things out of proportion in his head — and that playing like a horror film,” Gaynord said.Social anxiety like this is one aspect of a constellation of mental health issues impacting young British people, and its effect on young men has been getting more attention in recent years. Twenty percent of men in Britain aged 16 to 29 are likely to experience some form of depression, according to a recent report from the Office for National Statistics. The BBC recently announced a new documentary about men’s mental health, which is centered on the singer James Arthur, and, in Arthur’s words, “our reliance as a nation on anti-depressants.”In 2019, Prince William helped introduce a campaign, Heads Together, to tackle stigma around mental health. Last year, his younger brother, Prince Harry, discussed his own struggles in “The Me You Can’t See,” a documentary series for Apple TV+ that he co-produced with Oprah Winfrey.When they were writing the script, Palmer and Stourton wanted to make sure they were depicting anxiety authentically within this wider cultural context. So Palmer consulted with the author Olivia Sudjic, whose 2018 book, “Exposure,” discusses modern anxiety. According to Sudjic, millennials, in particular, can be on high alert, policing their own behavior. In a recent video interview, she described this anxiety as a “ripple effect” of “paranoia around ‘cancel culture’ and vigilance online” that afflicts a generation of adults who grew up on the internet.Pete (Stourton), left, and Archie (Graham Dickson) both struggle with fragilities in the film.Super LtdBut in the four years since “Exposure” was published, the ways that anxiety is discussed have shifted, Sudjic said. Before the pandemic, there was a “stigma,” she said, around being open about your mental health issues if your life looked more comfortable than other people’s. Then, during Britain’s lockdowns, even the wealthy struggled. Since then, it’s become more “OK to talk about mental health even if you feel like you’re very privileged,” she said.In “All My Friends Hate Me,” which was filmed in late 2019, the discomfort of acknowledging your own wealth and privilege needles the characters, a familiar thread in much of Stourton and Palmer’s work. The pair met at Eton College, an elite all-boys boarding school known for educating princes and prime ministers. After university, they formed the comedy duo “Totally Tom,” and in 2010, a YouTube video they made went viral. In it, Stourton plays a student at the University of Bristol, or as Palmer put it to The Spectator newspaper, a “posh buffoon” trying incredibly hard to be cool. The following year, they were nominated for best newcomer at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a show directed by Gaynord, who the pair had met on the British comedy circuit.The character of Pete is a continuation of these themes.“They’re sort of fair game, aren’t they?” Palmer said in the video interview, referring to “posh people.” The pair wrote the film with a focus on trying to make fun of themselves, Stourton said.Gaynord, however, comes from a different background. “I grew up in a council house,” he said. “My mum’s a cleaner, my dad’s a taxi driver, in Manchester. My school wasn’t particularly good.” What he and “the Toms” had in common, he said, was a tendency toward anxiety and overthinking.Material circumstances are at the root of the “existential dread” plaguing many young British men, according to Alex Holmes, the author of “Time to Talk: How Men Think About Love, Belonging and Connection.”In a recent video interview, Holmes described turning 30 as “the benchmark age where everything has to change dramatically.” Not meeting certain milestones — like acquiring a mortgage, getting married and starting a family — can lead men to a lot of anxiety around a “feeling of catching up,” he said.In “All My Friends Hate Me,” Pete finds himself in his friend’s parents’ house, drinking his friend’s parents’ whiskey. As the weekend goes on, his friends also mock him in a scathing “comedy roast” that Pete finds deeply unfunny. It’s a nod to the cruel humor Stourton was surrounded by as a student, which was really “a way to get one up on someone, so the jokes don’t end up being angled toward you,” he said.The infantilizing nature of the weekend becomes an additional source of stress for Pete, as does the presence of Harry (Dustin Demri-Burns), a new addition to the group, and his ex and current girlfriends. The film finds comedy in the tension between the intensity of Pete’s suffering at all this and the possibility it’s all in his head.“It’s particularly funny,” Stourton said, “watching the white privileged man experiencing being gaslit.”After all, “he doesn’t have any real problems in his life,” Gaynord said. “I think it’s quite cathartic to laugh at that.” More

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      in Television

      'Euphoria' Is Hard to Watch. Why Can't Viewers Look Away?

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      It’s one of the most popular shows on television right now. But sometimes even the fans need to calm down after an episode.Every Sunday around 9 p.m., Maddie Bone and her five roommates, all in their 20s and 30s, dim the lights in their Brooklyn apartment, fire up the projector and turn on HBO Max — with subtitles, just in case the J train rattles by. They also brew a pot of Sleepytime tea, not to help them drift off but to keep their nerves at bay while they watch the heart-racing fever dream that is “Euphoria.”“We choose not to drink during it,” Ms. Bone, 26, said. “You need something that deeply relaxes you.”After all, rare are the moments of peace in the show, a daring ensemble drama about teenagers pushing the limits in a Southern California suburb. Most episodes include some mix of bad sex, graphic violence, gratuitous nudity, copious consumption of drugs and alcohol and unsparing depictions of addiction. For the viewer, feeling stressed, anxious or restless while watching comes with the territory.had me STRESSED #EuphoriaHBO #euphoria pic.twitter.com/fBP3uRw6ZQ— ☂️☂️ (@wetsockera) February 7, 2022
      “I think there is a lot of stress/anxiety that goes hand in hand with watching ‘Euphoria,’” Adhya Hoskote, a 20-year-old from San Jose, Calif., wrote in a direct message on Instagram. “Personally I know my anxiety is not the same as those who have had firsthand experience with addiction or friends or family struggling with addiction, but it can be hard to watch at times.”Ms. Hoskote said she has to take breaks while watching. But like the millions of other people who keep up with the show, she always comes back.The show, written and produced by Sam Levinson, presents a stylized portrayal of young people in the throes of addiction, grief and betrayal. Every story line is its own miniature trauma plot.Zendaya, the show’s star and one of its executive producers, issued a content warning ahead of the Season 2 premiere: “This season, maybe even more so than the last, is deeply emotional and deals with subject matter that can be triggering and difficult to watch,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “Please only watch if you feel comfortable.”Viewers have also noted the intensity of this season. “You’re just anxious for an hour straight,” said Merna Ahmed, 21. “When you’re watching a horror movie or listening to something that’s super high adrenaline, you keep listening because you want to know what’s going to happen. You just can’t look away.”This season’s sixth episode, which aired on Feb. 13, drew in 5.1 million viewers, according to HBO, despite premiering during the Super Bowl (which had an audience of 112.3 million).“Euphoria” follows in the footsteps of teen dramas such as “The O.C.,” “Skins” and “Degrassi” (the cast of which included a young Drake, who is now an executive producer on “Euphoria”) in its approach to coming of age. But “Euphoria” has stood out for its willingness to push to extremes alongside its aesthetically pleasing imagery.We look on as Zendaya’s character, Rue, relapses and collapses into her addiction to opiates, torching bridges with people she claims to love and physically destroying her home. We watch as robberies take place, guns are cocked and drivers speed haphazardly while taking swigs from beer bottles.Zendaya as Rue in “Euphoria.”HBOIf that sounds unpleasant — agonizing even — it hasn’t stopped people from tuning in.Ms. Ahmed, who lives in New Brunswick, N.J., keeps up with “Euphoria” for social reasons; she loves discussing the drama with her friends and seeing memes about the show on Twitter. But she is also holding out hope that the characters, even those in the deepest trenches, will eventually be redeemed.“I was thinking about why we keep watching when it’s so agonizing. For me, at least, I think it’s because you want to see these characters reach redemption,” she said. “You want to see where it ends up for them and root for them.”Philip Cadoux, 23, who watches with friends every week, loves the show’s colors, costumes and acting. He is also pulled in by empathy, as he knows people who have struggled with addiction.“It’s like an intense dramatization of things we all experience. They’re very relatable characters, but the things that they go through are just amped up to an 11,” said Mr. Cadoux, who lives in Brooklyn. “I don’t relate to Rue, but I relate to her sister or mother.”Apart from the aesthetics and award-winning acting, mental health professionals agree that the show can be relatable.“There is a parallel process between the characters they’re watching onscreen and viewers’ own willingness and ability to adapt to the pandemic,” Sabrina Romanoff, a clinical psychologist in New York, wrote in an email. “Viewers are watching various stories unfold that center on the question: Would you do whatever is necessary to get what you want?”She also attributes the show’s success to a phenomenon she calls “doom watching,” a cousin of doomscrolling, consuming bad news ever-present via our phones. While “doom watching,” people watch intense shows that feed off their own anxieties, especially at night when other distractions might not be as readily available. She sees it as a method of projection, specifically “projecting the personal fears and stressors of oneself to the collective group or external and fictionalized television characters.”But it’s not all doom and gloom. Dr. Romanoff also believes the show can serve as a vehicle for education and understanding.“The show does a good job at showcasing mental health, addiction struggles and how people address this through self-medication,” she wrote. “The show has important implications when it comes to increasing awareness and empathy for addiction, mental health, sexuality and relationships. It encourages important conversations and self-reflection.”Mary Kay Holmes, a 46-year-old writer and parent of two teenagers, taps into that school of thought. Every week, she watches the show alongside her 17-year-old daughter (her 15-year-old opts to watch it alone, finding it “cringe” to watch with parents).Ms. Holmes and her daughter both enjoy the show as a source of entertainment first and foremost (she’d be watching it even if she didn’t have kids), but as a mother, she often utilizes “Euphoria” as a mechanism to have informal conversations with her children about drug use, relationships, toxic masculinity, gender and sexuality.“It’s a hard show to watch, but there’s a lot of good stuff that comes up,” Ms. Holmes said. “I think in my house, we’ve used television a lot to bring up conversations and talk about things, and I know that’s probably not the norm for a lot of families, but I try to keep up with what my kids are consuming, as opposed to restricting it.”But the main reason most viewers seem to return is that the show holds their attention: with its eye-catching fashion and makeup, its stunning visuals and the twists and turns that keep people talking.“I definitely watch it for the drama. I don’t have a lot of drama in my life right now because I work from home, and I’m pretty emotionally solid right now,” Ms. Bone said. “However, I love to be able to hash out some of the plotlines with co-workers, friends, passers-by, someone I meet at the bodega. It’s these things that we can really latch on to.” More

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      in Music

      Rolando Villazón Returns to the Met Opera in Mozart's “Magic Flute”

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      Rolando Villazón, a onetime star plagued by vocal issues, is returning to the house after eight years for “The Magic Flute.”It was deep into Julie Taymor’s playful production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” at the Metropolitan Opera. Darkness had fallen onstage; the hero, Prince Tamino, and Papageno, the cheeky bird catcher, were lost.“Papageno,” Matthew Polenzani, who sings Tamino in the abridged, English-language, family-friendly “Flute” that opens the holiday season at the Met on Friday, called out at a recent rehearsal. “Are you still with me?”As he rotated past on a set piece, the tenor Rolando Villazón, wearing Papageno’s lime-green long johns and backward baseball cap, answered in accented English, “I’m right here.”Coming from Villazón, there was a note of defiance in saying that on the Met’s mighty stage. Though he was once one of the company’s brightest young stars, Friday marks his first performance there in eight years. Many — him included — assumed he would never appear at the Met again.Villazón, 49, in rehearsal for “The Magic Flute.” In the mid-2000s he was one of the Met’s brightest rising stars.Jonathan Tichler/Met Opera“We can call it a roller coaster,” Villazón, 49, said in an interview. “A very bumpy career.”Plagued for much of the past 15 years by vocal problems and mental fears, Villazón lost his consistency and his nerve. “Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager. “At least at the Met. He had some vocal setbacks and disappeared from our radar.”Villazón had reconciled himself to the end of his career, but during the pandemic he stumbled across a new approach to singing — and now believes he isn’t yet finished. Returning to the Met as Papageno, a role almost always sung by a lower voice, might still appear to be an admission of weakness: a tenor losing his high notes and scrambling to the safety of baritone territory.Not so fast.“I’m not a baritone,” Villazón said, noting that Mozart wrote the part for Emanuel Schikaneder, the “Flute” librettist, who was a famed actor and impresario but far from a traditional opera singer. “There are some low notes that aren’t really for a tenor, like B flat. But they’re mostly in the harmony. The lowest when he sings alone is a C, which is very central.”“Everything fell apart for him,” said Peter Gelb, the company’s general manager. “At least at the Met.”George Etheredge for The New York TimesIt’s true, though: When Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, asked him to sing Papageno for a recording in 2018, Villazón at first demurred. “I mean, in terms of the character, I love the character,” he said, “But, of course, baritone role, ta ta ta. …”In other words, people might take his casting as an admission that the voice that had brought him celebrity was in permanent retreat. It was a fear he soon got over.“To be honest,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I am worried about what people think.”This is still a course few would have predicted when he rose, in the early 2000s, as a lyric tenor, boyish and ardent in “La Bohème,” “Rigoletto,” “La Traviata” and “L’Elisir d’Amore” — even if there was always a duskiness to his tone, allowing him to be convincing in, for example, the heavier title role of Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” A 2005 profile in The New York Times observed that Villazón was being compared to Plácido Domingo, at whose Operalia competition Villazón got his big break in 1999.“The voice, at this early stage,” the Times profile said, “weighs in on the light side but is tinged like Mr. Domingo’s with the dark shading of a baritone.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-m80ywj header{margin-bottom:5px;}.css-m80ywj header h4{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.5625rem;margin-bottom:0;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-m80ywj header h4{font-size:1.5625rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}That summer, Villazón and Anna Netrebko, also fast-rising at the time, created a sensation in Willy Decker’s spare, vivid staging of “La Traviata” at the Salzburg Festival in Austria, and were swiftly anointed opera’s next onstage power couple.“He seemed,” Gelb said, “to be the most exciting tenor in 2005, ’06.” In 2007, Villazón and Netrebko were the stars of a gala celebration of the Met’s 40th anniversary at Lincoln Center.George Etheredge for The New York TimesGeorge Etheredge for The New York TimesBut while Netrebko’s career continued to skyrocket, calamity struck Villazón: He began to crack on some high notes, a tenor’s lifeblood. Cancellations piled up, including a Live in HD broadcast of “Lucia di Lammermoor” from the Met alongside Netrebko.A cyst was eventually discovered inside his vocal cords; after a delicate operation in 2009, he couldn’t speak for some time, let alone sing. He gingerly re-emerged on opera and concert stages, including a Met run of “Eugene Onegin” in 2013. (“Despite some initial cautiousness in the first act, in which he sometimes sounded underpowered,” the Times review said, “he sang with confidence and poise.”)“It was for me very important to reestablish myself, to reposition as a tenor,” Villazón said. But the long period of uncertainty and tweaks to his technique had left their mark, and he began to lose confidence in himself and his instrument.“Around 2015, 2016, that’s when I started to develop stage fright, because I was afraid of getting something else,” he said. “I was hitting nine out of 10 high notes. When you are in this business, and at this level, you hit 10 out of 10. They might not be all beautiful, but you hit all of them. If you’re not hitting one of those 10, you start thinking, Is this the one? And then you start hitting eight out of 10, and seven out of 10.”He worked with sports coaches, and tried taking a small amount of anti-anxiety medication before performances. That helped with his fear, but took away the internal fire that he felt fueled his best work.“How do I stop it being hell to go on and perform?” he recalled thinking. He re-embraced the Baroque repertory that he had done earlier in his career under the conductor Emmanuelle Haïm, moving away from the high notes that had turned perilously unreliable. Then he developed what he called “uncomfortable sensations,” even in the middle of his voice.With a breakthrough during the pandemic, Villazón believes he has mastered some of the vocal problems that have plagued him.George Etheredge for The New York TimesIn 2017, 10 years after headlining the Met’s 40th-anniversary gala, Villazón dropped out a few days before his appearance at its 50th. He felt basically done: “I thought, Let me reach 50 and I can call it quits as a singer.”It helped that singing wasn’t all he was doing by that point. He had some success as a television personality, was directing productions and had been named the artistic leader of the Mozartwoche festival in Salzburg. He had even started writing novels.But he wasn’t yet ready to give up performing entirely, and discovered that acid reflux was causing his new round of problems. He had another operation, at the end of 2018, and slowly his vocal steadiness, though not his high notes, came back.Then, practicing during the pandemic, he hit a note — an F — and immediately knew something had shifted in the way he produced sound. Working with coaches, he revised his approach to his voice; even some of his older, higher-flying roles felt possible again.“The way it feels, I’m entering the greatest moment of my career,” he said. “I have no ambitions. I don’t need to achieve, professionally, anything else. It’s all artistic achievements.”So his coming seasons will include Mozart’s Tito and Idomeneo; Edgardo in “Lucia”; even Loge, the trickster fire god in Wagner’s “Das Rheingold,” which Villazón was working on when he had his pandemic breakthrough.“I certainly plan to sit with him and discuss other roles with him,” Gelb said. “I don’t want this to be a drive-by appearance. But it’s up to him, and what he feels comfortable with.”Papageno, then, is hopefully not the beginning of the end for Villazón, but a delightful lark — a part for which he doesn’t feel the need to apologize, and on which he can lavish his fascination with the figure of the clown.“They never lose, they never die, and they never quit,” he said. “The clown goes on.” More

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      in Television

      For Sutton Foster, Crochet Is a Survival Tactic

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      Sutton Foster is finishing up a 15-week run at the Barbican as Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” a role for which she won a Tony a decade ago, and she is preparing to return to Broadway later this year to co-star with Hugh Jackman in “The Music Man.”But before we got into all that, she wanted to show off a washcloth.“They didn’t have any washcloths here in the flat,” Foster said during a video interview from London last month, “so I was like, ‘Well, I’ll make some!’” She plans to give them as Christmas presents.When she isn’t performing onstage or onscreen (recently as one of the stars of the television series “Younger”), there is a decent chance that Foster is crocheting, cross-stitching, baking, drawing or gardening, hobbies she explores in her new essay collection, “Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life,” which Grand Central will release on Tuesday.The chapters are craft-themed, but this book is not all about Mod Podge and Jo-Ann Fabrics. Foster, 46, writes about how keeping her hands busy has helped her cope with the stress and pressure of her career and the ups and downs of a life in which she didn’t always get what she needed from her family, loved ones or colleagues.“Hooked” is out on Oct. 12.“Anxiety runs in my family — in me,” she writes. “I am the daughter of an agoraphobic mother. I make a living as a performer. It’s complicated. And yet, if I’m feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I crochet, or collage, or cross-stitch. These hobbies have literally preserved my sanity through some of the darkest periods of my life.”There are light moments, like when we learn that Foster crocheted an octopus toilet-paper-roll cover as a wedding gift for her “Younger” co-star Hilary Duff. But these are balanced with heavier revelations, such as when Foster writes about the baskets she cross-stitched for her mother as a means of escaping toxic cast dynamics early in her career.She opens up about snowman-shaped holiday cookies she baked with the family of her first husband, Christian Borle, and the floral blanket she pieced together, one “granny square” at a time, when that marriage ended. She describes drawing interconnected circles with paint pens while undergoing fertility treatments, and the striped baby blanket she crocheted while waiting for her daughter’s birth mother to go into labor.Foster taught herself how to crochet when she was 19, and estimates that she has eight to 10 projects going at a time. She has a yarn dealer who shipped three boxes of Lion Brand supplies to London, then flew over to see “Anything Goes.” (You know what a big deal this is if you’ve ever been a novice in a certain kind of a yarn store, where customers tend to be sorted into varsity, junior varsity and invisible.) Sometimes Foster works from a book or consults YouTube for assistance, but she also creates her own designs.Foster said she has crafted many evenings of song, so she brought the same approach to writing her book: “You’re taking a reader on a journey, like taking an audience on a journey.”Ellie Smith for The New York TimesGrowing up in Georgia and, later, Michigan, Foster got her start, like many thespians of her generation, in a community production of “Annie.” After performing in national tours of “Grease” and “Les Misérables,” she appeared in Broadway productions of both shows, as well as “Annie” and “The Scarlet Pimpernel.” In 2002, she won her first Tony for “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Like her perennially cheerful “Younger” character, Liza Miller, Foster was a bundle of can-do energy and enthusiasm, until our conversation turned to her mother. Then she spoke slowly, eyes closed, choosing each word painstakingly.Helen Foster’s health began to decline when Sutton and her brother, Hunter, were teenagers. She had a fraught relationship with Sutton and stopped speaking to Hunter for close to a decade; the siblings’ connection with their father suffered as a result. Since Helen Foster’s death in 2013, Sutton and Hunter have enjoyed a new chapter with the man known as Papa Bob, and “Hooked” includes his tips for growing the perfect tomato. (No. 9: “Pick the tomatoes when they’re near ripe but not quite ripe, so others can grow.”)“Crafting was the way I could tell my mother’s story that felt most authentic to me,” Foster said. “A way to weave, pun intended, all the facets of my life together in a way that felt true to me today.”In the book, she takes readers inside the squalid house in Florida where her mother spent her final years. “I flipped on the light and gasped,” she writes. “All of her windows had been blacked out with black garbage bags, secured to the walls with duct tape.” Her mother had been bedridden for months, refusing to seek medical treatment: “That explained the bedpan and pee pads on the floor next to her bed.”In “Younger,” Foster plays a 40-year-old empty-nester who lands an entry-level publishing job — and a whole new life — by pretending to be a millennial.Nicole Rivelli/CBS“It was mental illness that was never treated, never dealt with,” Hunter Foster said in a phone interview. After mentioning that he spends as much time as possible outside, he added, “I don’t allow myself to sleep past a certain time because my mom stayed in bed half the day.”His and his sister’s relationship with their mother is likely to surprise some readers, Sutton Foster said. “It’s a part of our story that people don’t know. It’s this underbelly: my mother’s illness and protecting her and being afraid of her. No one talked about it, and there’s this freedom now.”Behind her on the wall was a framed poster that said “Breathe.”Foster wrote “Hooked” with Liz Welch, who has collaborated on best sellers by Malala Yousafzai, Elaine Welteroth and Shaun King. “Sutton is a Broadway musical actress, my mother was a Broadway musical actress. Sutton’s an adoptive mother, I’m an adoptive mother. Honestly, I think we’d be friends anyway,” Welch said. “Crochet was the perfect metaphor for holding oneself together, taking all these different threads of her incredibly interesting, not-what-you’d-expect life.”Suzanne O’Neill, a vice president and executive editor at Grand Central, said: “One thing that’s very hard for people who are writing memoirs to do is to excavate their stories, and Sutton was game for it, even if there were moments that were hard. She wanted the book to be excellent. She dove into it. It was a piece of art for her, and she worked really hard to make it the book it is.”In “Hooked,” Foster recalls being 16, mesmerized as her idol, Patti LuPone, belted out “Being Alive” on TV. “There was something simultaneously terrifying and thrilling about her confidence,” she writes. Her mother, who had recently stopped driving and grocery-shopping, said, “You can do that.”Foster, center, won a Tony for her performance in “Thoroughly Modern Millie.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesShe later met LuPone, who also played Reno Sweeney in “Anything Goes,” and LuPone inspired one of Foster’s favorite collages: a colorful confection of craft paper on plywood, spelling out BADASS.“She’s a beautiful creature,” LuPone said of Foster. “She exudes a very positive light. We’re drawn to tortured souls, just to find out why they’re tortured. And we’re also drawn to the light, and the light is much more nourishing. You see somebody onstage that makes you feel better. That’s Sutton.”Foster is set to open “The Music Man” in December, playing Marian Paroo opposite Jackman as Harold Hill. But before she embarks on more soul-soothing craft projects backstage at the Winter Garden Theater, she will have time to settle into the Orange County farmhouse she moved into last spring with her husband, Ted Griffin, a screenwriter, and their 4-year-old daughter, Emily.She plans to bring at least one piece of her past into this next phase of life: a cross-stitched scene depicting baskets of various shapes and sizes that she made for her mother. For years, the piece hung in the front hallway of her parents’ house and was a stabilizing presence during difficult visits.Foster recently collected the baskets from her father’s basement. “I have them now,” she said. “They’ll go in the new house.” More

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      in Movies

      In ‘Mr. Corman,’ Joseph Gordon-Levitt Looks Inward and Asks, ‘What If?’

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      For his new Apple TV+ comedy series, Gordon-Levitt imagined what his life might have been like if he hadn’t been so lucky. “It’s probably the most me-ish thing I’ve ever made.”Joseph Gordon-Levitt is the first to admit he’s had it pretty good. He has had a wildly successful acting career on stages and screens spanning over three decades. He sings, dances, writes and directs, and he does a decent Nirvana cover. He has a wife and two kids and he hardly seems to age. More

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      in Music

      Meditation Apps Want Us to Chill Out. Musicians Are Happy to Help.

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      Music and mindfulness have become increasingly linked during the pandemic, and artists like Erykah Badu, Grimes and Arcade Fire are teaming with tech companies to make it happen.When Erykah Badu creates a new song, she begins with instruments that are usually treated as accessories, like singing bells, shakers, mallets and tuning forks. It’s been that way since “Baduizm,” the vocalist and producer’s 1997 debut.“What draws me in, and you and anyone else, is that those frequencies and tones connect with our organs and cells,” she said from her home in Dallas. “You are able to cancel out certain ailments. You’re vibrating the molecules apart.”Badu is a longtime believer and practitioner in what she calls the healing arts. She became a doula in 2001 and a reiki master in 2006. For her latest journey, she constructed a 58-minute instrumental piece of “new age ancient futuristic medicine music” for the meditation app Headspace. Released as part of the company’s Focus Music series, it’s a gently undulating wave, occasionally punctuated by deep reverberations of bass.“I feel like life is a process of healing after healing after healing,” said Badu. “Anything I make is going to reflect that.”Badu’s composition is part of the ever-expanding swirl of music and mindfulness that’s only grown stronger during the pandemic. With no dance floors or concert halls to fill, many listeners turned toward gentler, unobtrusive music to help quiet their restless minds. In response, artists who might not have publicly ventured into this sometimes esoteric terrain now feel emboldened to do so.John Legend is Headspace’s chief music officer. In that role, he inaugurated the app’s monthly Focus Music project.Jorge Guerrero/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesLast September, Diplo released his first ambient album, “MMXX,” while in early May, Sufjan Stevens put out a five-volume collection of keyboard music called “Convocations.” Alicia Keys recently conducted a 21-day “meditation experience” with Deepak Chopra that is available through his meditation app website.Though new age artists have released music for meditation on cassette and CD for decades, now tech companies have become happy to financially support musical experimentation that meshes with their own goals. Over the past 15 anxious and uncertain months, wellness apps have grown flush with new subscribers looking for different experiences. In the past, musicians might align themselves with initiatives connected to Vans, Red Bull or Toyota — powerful brands willing to use their deep pockets to gain credibility with young consumers. Now, mindfulness apps are playing a similar role, offering artistic opportunities at a precarious moment for the music industry.Headspace wanted to develop more music that helps people concentrate on a task, and last August the company announced the appointment of John Legend as its chief music officer. Legend inaugurated the monthly Focus Music project with a licensed playlist of mellifluous jazz tracks. In addition to Badu’s contribution, subsequent installments have featured original, vocal-free pieces by artists including the acclaimed movie-score composer Hans Zimmer and the rock band Arcade Fire.“Musicians have always been about, can they evoke a particular frame of mind through a song or a sound,” said William Fowler, head of content for material that appears within the Headspace app. He noted that Focus Music arrived “in a year where musicians who had other plans found themselves with time for a project like this,” giving the company access “to people that otherwise might be doing other things.”In March 2019, Moby debuted “Long Ambients Two,” an album of extended compositions intended to help listeners fall asleep, exclusively on Calm, which started as a meditation app. Afterward, the company got inundated with inquiries from other musicians. Calm had limited experience with this world, and hired Courtney Phillips, the former director of brand partnerships at Universal Music Group, to become its head of music and grow its library.She has continued the streaming premieres, but also commissioned artists like the country star Keith Urban and the genre-twister Moses Sumney to create original tracks. Calm also released a series of hourlong “sleep remixes” of songs by Universal artists, including Post Malone’s “Circles” and Ariana Grande’s “Breathin.”“We’re a tech company, so we love to look at: What are people coming here for? What do they want?” Phillips said. “Piano is the most popular genre of all time, according to Calm, so I want to make sure that I’m offering a variety of different piano music for people. And at the same time, I want to work with artists and be like, let’s do something that maybe people don’t expect.”Endel, the Berlin-based tech company, has developed an approach toward fostering mental health through music that embraces European sophistication. Instead of the bright colors and feel-good iconography of its competitors, its app is strictly black and white with a minimalist interface. Oleg Stavitsky, the company’s chief executive, is an avowed music obsessive who during our video interview proudly pulled out his Laurie Anderson and Ornette Coleman albums. He said he got interested in delving deep after mining his parents’ vinyl collection.“Once you start digging you inevitably end up at Brian Eno at some point,” he said, referring to the producer and composer responsible for several of ambient music’s landmark works.Moses Sumney has been tapped to create original tracks for Calm.Rich Fury/Getty Images For CoachellaCalm has also released “sleep remixes” of songs by artists including Ariana Grande.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhile the music on most meditation apps either loops or has predesignated start and finish points, Endel’s output is more dynamic. The company developed an algorithm that it says considers factors like time of day, weather and a person’s heart rate to deliver an individualized sonic experience each time.The neoclassical composer Dmitry Evgrafov is one of Endel’s co-founders, and he provides the original stems of music that the artificial intelligence incorporates, but naturally those within the company got curious about what would happen if the source material came from other artists. Grimes devised the sleep aid “AI Lullaby,” and Endel recently released a productivity piece called “Deep Focus” from Plastikman, the minimal techno alias of the D.J. and producer Richie Hawtin.“When we’re talking to a lot of these artists, either they have been thinking about doing something like this, or they have already been doing something like this,” Stavitsky said. “They are looking for low risk and interesting ways to put that content out there.”Hawtin enrolled in a series of Transcendental Meditation classes shortly before the pandemic engulfed Western Europe, where he resides. Now twice a day he takes 20 minutes to repeat his mantra. Those experiences remind him of a D.J.’s ability to guide and almost hypnotize a receptive crowd. “For all its beauty, the techno and electronic dance music community has been on this hamster wheel for so many years,” Hawtin said. “This has been a real introspective moment to reconnect to the music, the machines and alternative ways of thinking and producing.”Other artists arrived at meditation music during America’s last moment of financial uncertainty, in 2008. Trevor Oswalt, who releases music as East Forest, spent the early 2000s playing in bands in New York City, hoping to get signed. Then came the recession. “Things were falling apart externally, and that reflected in my internal life too,” Oswalt said from his current home in Southern Utah. “It was pushing me into finding alternatives.”He began making instrumental music to help him during his own meditation practice and to mentally prepare himself before taking psilocybin. Eventually he put out the music for the public. Since 2011, he’s averaged at least one new album a year, including a 2019 collaboration with the spiritual teacher Ram Dass, who died that December. Years ago Oswalt created music for apps like Happy and one developed by the yoga and meditation instructor Elena Brower. He’s since become involved with apps like Wavepaths, Mydelic and Field Trip, which are designed to assist during psychedelic therapy sessions.Oswalt seems amused by the recent influx of artists creating music for mindfulness apps, comparing it to asking a painter trained in realism to make something abstract. He believes they might have the skills to pull it off, but they lack the experience to really know what they’re doing. But he respects the musicians’ willingness to give it a try.“It’s pretty clear on the face of things that we’re going through a major shift as a civilization, and that shift has to do with letting go of ways that aren’t working,” he said. “It’s sort of like you burn the fields, you have to do that to fertilize the soil.” More

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      in Television

      ‘In Treatment’ Is Back. How Does That Make You Feel?

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      Pandemic tensions led HBO to make a new version of the therapy drama, which stars Uzo Aduba and aims to reduce stigmas about mental health care.The writer Jennifer Schuur (“My Brilliant Friend,” “Unbelievable”) has seen the same therapist every week for 17 years. “It is one of the most significant relationships of my life,” she said. Sometimes friends and family question that longevity. More