Appointments and Executive Changes

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      BAM Taps Former Leader of Its Film Program as Its Next President

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      Gina Duncan, who had been working at the Sundance Institute since 2020, will return to the Brooklyn Academy of Music to lead it out of the pandemic.After a turbulent two years that has forced the Brooklyn Academy of Music to navigate the coronavirus pandemic, budget woes and leadership upheaval, the organization said Tuesday that it was turning to a veteran of its film wing to become its next president, filling a position that was left vacant more than 12 months ago.Gina Duncan, who previously served as BAM’s first vice president of film and strategic programming, has been selected as the organization’s new president, the institution announced. She will take over a multifaceted performing arts behemoth with a $50 million operating budget.Ms. Duncan, 41, who has never held the top job at an arts institution, will be tasked with stabilizing and reinvigorating BAM, an important cultural anchor and incubator known for presenting an eclectic array of cutting-edge artists and performers. Her first day as president will be April 11. She returns after a stint at the Sundance Institute, where she worked as its producing director.“Coming back to BAM feels like returning home,” Ms. Duncan said in a telephone interview. “The other day I went down to see Annie-B’s ‘The Mood Room.’ And it was the first time I had been back in BAM since we all fled our offices in March 2020. And I just was overwhelmed.”“I came back for BAM — the artists, the staff, the audience,” she added. “They’re my people.”The selection makes Ms. Duncan the first person of color to lead the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In choosing her, the academy’s board selected a candidate with whom they were familiar, after previously tapping an outsider in Katy Clark — a violinist-turned-arts-executive — who left BAM after less than six years in January 2021. Ms. Clark’s predecessor, Karen Brooks Hopkins, spent 16 years as BAM’s president, and a total of 36 years at the organization.Ms. Duncan joined BAM’s executive team in January 2017 as an associate vice president for film — a newly created role in which she oversaw the organization’s Rose Cinemas and its repertory film program. Under her leadership, BAM’s repertory programming began to focus more on underrepresented voices in cinema.She was promoted in 2019, with her role expanding beyond film to include responsibility for the organization’s archives and its lectures, classes and discussions; she helped integrate programming across the institution. She also helped move programs online during the early months of the pandemic, officials said.She left BAM in September of 2020 for the Sundance Institute, and now will return after roughly 18 months away.The chairwoman of BAM’s board, Nora Ann Wallace, said in an email that Ms. Duncan’s “leadership skills are immediately evident to anyone who works with her.”“Her ability to inspire a group of people — be it staff, audiences, donors, or our board — is vital to this moment in BAM’s history,” Ms. Wallace said. “The board saw those skills when she was at BAM in her previous leadership role.”Ms. Wallace noted that in addition to her background in film, Ms. Duncan has produced theater and arts-centered community programming for many years. “Gina is a gifted strategist who excels at assessing the bigger picture,” Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Duncan said that her vision for BAM involved ensuring it is “vital and visible across Brooklyn and beyond.” During her initial tenure with the institution, she said, she had worked to ensure that its film program both served local audiences and became part of a “larger national conversation.”“I see an opportunity to do that with BAM across all the different art and rich cultural programming that we present,” she said.When Ms. Duncan’s predecessor, Ms. Clark, left BAM, questions were raised about the housing bonus she had received to purchase an apartment in Brooklyn, which she was allowed to keep when she left the position.Ms. Wallace did not disclose Ms. Duncan’s salary, saying only that her pay is “in line with other performing arts organizations of similar size.” Ms. Duncan’s compensation does not include an apartment or housing allowance, Ms. Wallace said.Ms. Clark’s departure created something of a leadership vacuum at BAM; the board’s previous chairman, Adam Max, died in 2020 and an internal team was appointed to lead the institution temporarily as the pandemic created a crisis for the performing arts. With live performances impossible, BAM was forced to slash its operating budget, lay off some employees and furlough dozens more, cut the pay of top executives and dip into its $100 million endowment for special distributions.Ms. Duncan will have the advantage of taking over at a time when cultural institutions, including BAM, are starting to find their footing again. The academy’s first full season since the start of the pandemic focuses on the artists of New York City.“The industry remains really tenuous,” Ms. Duncan said. But at BAM, she said, she has a “strong foundation to start from.”“An institution is its people,” she said. More

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      Los Angeles Is Changing. Can a Flagship Theater Keep Up?

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      LOS ANGELES — For 55 years, the Center Theater Group has showcased theater in a city that has always been known for the movies. Its three stages have championed important new works — “Angels in America,” “Zoot Suit” and “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992,” to name three of its most acclaimed offerings — while importing big-ticket crowd pleasers from Broadway (coming this spring: “The Lehman Trilogy”).But this Los Angeles cultural institution is at a crossroads as it goes through its first leadership change in 17 years, and confronts questions about its mission, programming and appeal in a changing city, all amid a debilitating pandemic.Michael Ritchie, the organization’s artistic director, announced last summer that he would retire nearly 18 months before his contract ended in June 2023; he stepped down at the end of the December, citing the need for the organization to move in a new direction in response to social changes and debate about the theater’s future. The organization, which is a nonprofit, is using the transition to consider how to adjust to what is sure to be a very different post-Covid era — a sweeping discussion that theater administrators said would involve some 300 people, including its board of directors, staff, actors, director and contributors.“At the age of 50, you start to think about the next chapter,” said Meghan Pressman, the managing director of the Center Theater Group. “There’s so much happening now. Coming out of a pandemic. Coming out of a period of a racial crisis. Years of inequity.”“We are no longer your mother’s C.T.G. anymore,” she said.The obstacles are considerable.The Ahmanson Theater, in downtown Los Angeles, had to cut short a run of “A Christmas Carol” in December.Ryan MillerLike theaters everywhere, Center Theater Group — the Ahmanson Theater and the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center downtown, and the Kirk Douglas Theater 10 miles to the west in Culver City — is grappling with empty seats, declining revenues and the coronavirus. The Ahmanson cut short a run of “A Christmas Carol” with Bradley Whitford in December, canceling 22 performances after positive coronavirus tests in the cast and crew at the height of what in a normal year would have been a holiday rush.The cancellation cost the Center Theater Group $1.5 million in lost revenues, including ticket returns. That came after the organization was forced to make millions of dollars in spending cuts over the course of the pandemic, cutting its staff to 140 this season from 185 and reducing its annual budget to $47 million for this fiscal year, $10 million less than the budget for the fiscal year before the pandemic.And the theater group is struggling to adjust to sweeping reassessments of tradition that have emerged from social unrest across the country over the past two years. It was reminded of this new terrain by the uproar that greeted the announcement of a 2021-22 season for the Taper and the Douglas, 10 plays that included just one by a woman and one by a transgender playwright. Jeremy O. Harris, the writer of “Slave Play,” which was on the schedule, announced that he would withdraw his play from the season before agreeing to go forward only after the Taper pledged to program only “women-identifying or nonbinary playwrights” next season.The Center Theater Group has been a hugely influential force in Los Angeles culture since the Mark Taper Forum, above, and the Ahmanson opened in 1967 at the Los Angeles Music Center.Tom BonnerThe Center Theater Group has been a hugely influential force in Los Angeles culture for decades.It “is still the flagship theater company of L.A.,” said Stephen Sachs, the co-artistic director of the Fountain Theater, an influential small theater on the East Side of the city. “I think it’s at a moment of reckoning, like everything that is theater in Los Angeles. The C.T.G. is the bar that we compare ourselves to. They set a standard for L.A., not only for ourselves but for the country.”The Music Center, the sprawling midcentury arts complex on top of Bunker Hill, across from Frank Gehry’s billowing Walt Disney Concert Hall, is at the center of cultural, arts and society life in Los Angeles. The project was driven by Dorothy Buffum Chandler, the cultural leader who was the wife and mother of publishers of the Los Angeles Times, and also houses the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, which was the site of the Academy Awards off and on from 1969 to 1999. “Before the Music Center, it was really a cultural wasteland,” Marylouise Oates, who was the society columnist for the Los Angeles Times in the late 1980s, said, referring to the city.Theaters across the country are struggling to find the balance between pleasing and challenging their audience as they confront declining ticket sales and the threat of competition in the form of a screen in a living room. Theater here has also long existed in the shadow of Hollywood, to the annoyance of those involved in what is by any measure a vibrant theater community.“I don’t see how anyone can say it’s not a theater town,” said Charles Dillingham, who was the managing director of the Center Theater Group from 1991 through 2011.The Kirk Douglas Theater, in a former movie palace in Culver City, opened in 2004.Craig SchwartzFor its first 40 years, the theater group’s personality — adventurous and daring more often than not — was forged by Gordon Davidson, who was recruited by Chandler to be the first artistic director at the Taper. He was of a generation of force-of-nature theater impresarios, like Joseph Papp in New York and Tyrone Guthrie in Minneapolis.“I could not have created ‘Twilight’ anywhere else,” said Anna Deavere Smith, the playwright who wrote and acted in “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” at the Taper. “I’ll never forget Gordon sitting down, taking out his buck slip and saying, ‘What do you need?’”The Taper opened with the “The Devils,” by the British dramatist John Whiting, about a Catholic priest in France accused of witchcraft by a sexually repressed nun. The subject matter caused a rustle, but Chandler, who died in 1997, stood by Davidson.“She wasn’t always happy,” said Judi Davidson, who was married to Gordon Davidson, who died in 2016. “She said, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. You tell which plays I should come to and which plays I shouldn’t come to.’ ”The Taper staged “Zoot Suit,” by Luis Valdez, in 1978, a rare production of a work by a Latino writer, which went on to Broadway; as well as a full production of both parts of “Angels in America,” by Tony Kushner, in 1992, before it moved to Broadway. “I could not have created ‘Twilight’ anywhere else,” said Anna Deavere Smith, the playwright who wrote and acted in “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” at the Taper.Jay Thompson In recent years, the theater has come under criticism for too often catering to an older audience hungry for the comfort of familiar works. Still, under Ritchie, who declined a request for an interview, it presented the premieres of acclaimed works, including “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo,” which had its world premiere at the Douglas before moving to the Taper.Harris, the writer of “Slave Play,” said the Center Theater Group had responded quickly when he objected to the overwhelmingly male lineup of writers. “When I raised my issues and pulled my play, they didn’t act defensively,” Harris said. “They acted. Other places would have let the play move on and figure out a way to blame me.”The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 4Omicron in retreat. More

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      Hollywood Glamour Is Pandemic-Proof at the Polo Lounge

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      LOS ANGELES — Hollywood is down in the dumps. Oscar hopefuls like “King Richard,” “Nightmare Alley” and “West Side Story” have sputtered, and everyone knows that, studio spin aside, the Omicron variant is only partly to blame.What about those stunning Spider-Man grosses? Sure, great, whatever — another superhero hit. It doesn’t change the fact that one storied studio, 20th Century Fox, vanished in 2019 and another, the venerable Warner Bros., is slashing theatrical output by almost half. Unless regulators do something unexpected, Amazon will soon swallow Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Streaming services are ending a moviegoing era.“It’s over,” a glum film executive said at a holiday fete. “TV won.”But there is at least one place where Hollywood feels undiminished. Step into the 88-year-old Polo Lounge — as a deluge of film V.I.P.s have done lately, defying a lingering boycott over its owner, the sultan of Brunei, and his enacting of Shariah law in his country — and return to a time when movies indisputably commanded the culture. Outside the Beverly Hills Hotel, which houses the Polo Lounge, change is washing through moviedom with terrifying speed. (Hollywood’s prize system, long a crucial promotional platform, is crumbling, with the near-abandonment of the Golden Globes on Sunday as only one example.) Inside the clubby Polo Lounge, however, very little has changed in decades.It might as well be 1937, when Marlene Dietrich, wearing long gloves, could be seen dispassionately smoking a cigarette at the bar, her mink slung over a stool. “It’s one of the last surviving links to a time when movies still mattered,” said Terry Press, a former president of CBS Films and longtime patron.What better place for Hollywood heavies to gather for what amounts to group therapy? And, perhaps, plot a counterattack.As of early December, Polo Lounge revenue for the year was roughly 10 percent above the same period in 2019.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesRegular visitors in recent months have included David M. Zaslav, the chief executive of Discovery, which is merging with Warner Media; Brian Robbins, the new kingpin at Paramount Pictures; Toby Emmerich, Warner’s movie chairman; Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent; and Jeffrey Katzenberg, a former studio chief who remains a formidable Hollywood string-puller.Mary Parent, who produced “Dune” as vice chairman of Legendary Entertainment, and Casey Bloys, who reigns supreme at HBO and HBO Max, have conducted business there in recent months. Power lunchers have included Emma Watts, Paramount’s former production chief; Reginald Hudlin, an Oscar-nominated producer and director; and Lorne Michaels, the creator and executive producer of “Saturday Night Live.”Not long ago, Jimmy Fallon, dutifully wearing a face covering, stood next to the grand piano on a Friday night and belted out “Sweet Caroline.” Jennifer Lopez and Jennifer Lawrence have been spotted. Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson dropped in for a bite the day after Christmas. Caitlyn Jenner had tried but was asked to leave for ignoring the dress code. (No “ripped denim.”)As of early December, Polo Lounge revenue for the year was roughly 10 percent above the same period in 2019, according to Edward Mady, the hotel’s general manager. He added that the Polo Lounge had recently been receiving about 150 calls a day for reservations, with roughly 75 requesting one of nine patio booths.“What boycott?” Mr. Mady said.In 2014, Mr. Katzenberg, Jay Leno, Ellen DeGeneres, Elton John and others led an entertainment-industry boycott of the property after its owner, the sultan of Brunei, imposed Shariah law in his country, making gay sex and adultery punishable by stoning. Hollywood mass-shunned the Polo Lounge, which was at first deserted and then bounced back as a popular spot for Beverly Hills Ladies Who Lunch. (“Betsy! Betsy!”)The restaurant has a large outdoor dining area filled with Brazilian pepper trees, roses bushes and magenta bougainvillea.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesBy 2017, many luminaries had returned. The entertainment industry enjoys a public snubbing, but it also has a short attention span. President Trump, elected in 2016, prompted outrage on so many fronts in liberal Hollywood that remembering to be mad at the Polo Lounge was difficult.And people wanted their salads. The most popular one at the Polo Lounge is the McCarthy, famous for its price ($44) and for being chopped so finely that one could almost drink it with a straw.A-listers may have returned, but none were eager to be quoted in this article. An email to Mr. Katzenberg, for instance, was forwarded to a spokesman, who responded, “He is actually unreachable on vacation at the moment so won’t be able to participate.” Others declined because they did not want to make themselves a target for activists. Several cited the awkward optics — cooing over an ostentatious watering hole at a time when more studio layoffs are on the horizon.Protesters have not given up. In 2019, George Clooney wrote an opinion piece calling for an expanded boycott. (He did not respond to a query on whether his position had changed.) In October, one of the most ardent proponents of a boycott, James Duke Mason, wrote a new letter to the sultan, Hassanal Bolkiah, demanding the revocation of his kingdom’s “draconian laws.”“The boycott has been and still is firmly in place,” Mr. Mason said by phone. “It’s a matter of values. Is your McCarthy Salad really more important than human rights?” Mr. Mason added that he and several associates intend to redouble their campaign against the hotel and its sister Dorchester Collection properties in 2022. (Mr. Mason comes from a show business lineage; his parents are Belinda Carlisle and Morgan Mason, a former agent and producer.)Dorchester Collection, the London-based hotel company owned by the Brunei Investment Agency, responded with a statement: “We operate autonomously and embrace our longstanding values of inclusivity and belonging.”Pepe De Anda, the director of Polo Lounge, started working at the restaurant in 1986.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesIn some ways, the Polo Lounge is perfectly positioned for life during the pandemic. It has a large outdoor dining area adorned with Brazilian pepper trees, roses and magenta bougainvillea. Studio offices have been mostly closed since March 2020, so moguls who would normally conduct business meals on their lots have needed a place to go; many live within walking distance. Mr. Zaslav has been intermittently staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel; he is renovating a historic estate four blocks away.The Los Angeles power-restaurant scene has also been shaken up. Chateau Marmont closed its restaurant to the public when the pandemic started. (It has also had boycott issues.) The Palm was sold, prompting the departure of its charismatic torchbearer, Bruce Bozzi. For some, the Peninsula still has the stench of Harvey Weinstein, who, his accusers said, used the cover of work meetings there to sexually harass and assault women.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      A Conductor Considers Her Future

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      Susanna Mälkki is at the top of her field as major American orchestras search for their next music directors.HELSINKI, Finland — It was late morning recently, not long after sunrise, as members of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra unwrapped their scarves, unpacked their instruments and settled in for rehearsal at the Musiikkitalo concert hall here.The orchestra’s chief conductor, Susanna Mälkki, walked in from the wings, stopping to banter with players as she made her way to the podium. Once there, she removed her medical mask with a feigned look of relief and raised a baton. With no words and barely a pause, a Lamborghini going from zero to 60 in the blink of an eye, the orchestra launched into the galloping grandeur of Szymanowski’s Concert Overture.Mälkki’s rehearsals tend to unfold like this, with seamless shifts between cordiality and efficiency. A former orchestral cellist, she understands the value of concision in a conductor and precisely articulates what she wants. With results: Her performances often strike a remarkable balance of clarity and urgency, whether shepherding a premiere or reinvigorating a classic.The classical music field has taken notice. At 52, Mälkki is one of the world’s top conductors, widely sought between her appearances in Helsinki and with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, of which she is the principal guest conductor. And with openings on the horizon at major American orchestras — especially the New York Philharmonic, which she leads at Carnegie Hall on Jan. 6, and which is searching for a music director to succeed Jaap van Zweden in 2024 — her name is on leading wish lists.“I’m counting my blessings, that I get to work with all these orchestras,” Mälkki said during a series of interviews this fall. “Any speculation — there’s no need for that.”She is aware of the eyes on her, and of the pressure to appoint women in the United States, where there are currently no female music directors among the largest 25 orchestras. (Nathalie Stutzmann takes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s podium next year.)“My standpoint has always been that since I do not wish that my gender is something that is held against me, I also shall not use it to benefit from it,” Mälkki said, adding, “Music, with the capital M, remains its own independent entity — and that, for me, is the best part.”Her work, she said, should speak for itself. And it does: “Susanna has to be at the top of anyone’s list,” said Chad Smith, the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s chief executive.Mälkki leading the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, where she is the chief conductor, in early December.Maarit KytöharjuBorn in Helsinki in 1969, Mälkki has almost always led a life that revolved around music. She played multiple instruments as a child but settled on the cello, rising to become the principal cellist of the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra in her mid-20s. But she also studied conducting and longed to move into that field, which would have been virtually unthinkable for a woman when she was growing up.Among the first major conductors to see Mälkki wield a baton was her compatriot Esa-Pekka Salonen, at a workshop in Stockholm. “He came to me afterward,” she recalled, “and, unbelievably, he said, ‘You look like you’re in the right place.’ So, if you get rotten tomatoes thrown to you later, you can still think, ‘Well, you know, maybe I’m doing something right.’”In 1998, she made the leap to full-time conducting and gave up her post in Gothenburg, where the orchestra’s manager told her, “I’m sure you’re very talented; it’s just a pity that you can never become anything.”Mälkki said the remark was so hurtful that “for years I couldn’t even tell people about it. But again, it comes back to the music, because I was not thinking of myself; I was thinking of all the things I wanted to do with the music.”She first made a name for herself in contemporary repertory, and moved to Paris to serve from 2006 until 2013 as the director of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the group founded by Pierre Boulez. (She still lives there, while also keeping an apartment near the Helsinki waterfront, where she likes to go for restorative walks.)“Those years of all those world premieres — it was an incredible school,” she said. “My brain was overheated many times, but it was actually a really fantastic way to learn the craft, because you have to be able to read your score and organize the rehearsals so that the musicians understand what their part is in the big context.”From left, the singer Fiona McGown, the composer Kaija Saariaho and Mälkki preparing Saariaho’s opera “Innocence” in France.Jean-Louis FernamdezIn 2016, Mälkki became the first female chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic. She had made guest appearances with the orchestra before, but this was a homecoming that felt, she said, “like the chance to make a contribution to Finnish music life after the fantastic education I had received.”Her players now included old classmates from the nearby Sibelius Academy, the prestigious school that has produced other conducting luminaries, such as Salonen, as well as emerging talents like Santtu-Matias Rouvali and Klaus Mäkelä.That same year, Mälkki was named the principal guest conductor in Los Angeles, at an orchestra she had first led in 2010. The ensemble had not had a principal guest since Michael Tilson Thomas and Simon Rattle, then rising stars, in the 1980s. But the players liked her, and she was invited back repeatedly after her debut.At the time, the orchestra was run by Deborah Borda, who is now the New York Philharmonic’s chief executive. Mälkki had made an impression with her “very deep connection to the music,” Borda recalled recently.“She’s very passionate, but it’s a quiet passion, a quiet charisma,” Borda added. “It’s stunning: More than an outward manifestation, this is like a flower that opens.”During a rehearsal in Los Angeles in October, Mälkki was, as in Helsinki, amiable and assertive. Carolyn Hove, the Philharmonic’s English horn player, described Mälkki as “100 percent prepared” by the time she arrives at the podium, and that “when a conductor is really efficient, it just makes our jobs so much more fun.”While running through Scriabin’s “Le Poème de l’Extase,” Mälkki gestured to sections of the ensemble but also let her gaze shift upward. (“Some people listen with their eyes closed,” she said, “and I guess my way of looking up is the same, that I want to free my ears.”) All the while, she kept notes in her head that she rattled off as soon as the playing stopped.Those notes were thorough, and crucial, as the orchestra rehearsed for the American premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Vista,” a piece dedicated to Mälkki, who is a leading navigator of Saariaho’s idiosyncratic sound world. “I always trusted her, and she understands my music,” Saariaho said in June, shortly before Mälkki conducted the world premiere of her opera “Innocence” at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in France.Over the past two decades, their relationship has developed to the point where, Saariaho said, “we don’t need to verbalize very much.” When “L’Amour de Loin” arrived at the Metropolitan Opera in 2016, Saariaho insisted that Mälkki conduct it. (She will return to the Met to conduct Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” this spring.)Mälkki’s specialty in living composers like Saariaho is one of the reasons she was brought to Los Angeles, Smith said. “The other part,” he added, “was just the way she thinks about programming, which is unique.” He used that October concert as an example: opening with “Vista,” followed by Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and the “Poème.”Mälkki rehearsing a program of works by Saariaho, Tchaikovsky and Scriabin with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in October.Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“On paper those things are not related to each other, but there’s this remarkable thread that goes from the Kaija through the Scriabin,” Smith said. “You experience it as a listener, as a musician. It informs the way each piece is played.”Mälkki continues to learn new works — “little by little,” she said. “Some young people want to do the Mahler right away, and we know many of those, whilst I actually waited quite a long time because I wanted to make sure that I had all my tools.”Some composers, she added, demand maturity — like Bruckner, whose symphonies she is studying now. And, experienced in 21st-century operas by Saariaho and Unsuk Chin, she is looking back toward Wagner.“It’s just quite extraordinary to think that there’s all this repertoire,” she said, “and I could actually just keep exploring that endlessly.”The question is what comes next. The Helsinki Philharmonic recently announced that Mälkki would step down in summer 2023 and become the orchestra’s chief conductor emeritus. A mix of symphonic and opera appearances will follow. Where or whether a music directorship fits into that is anyone’s guess.Borda, the chief executive of the New York Philharmonic, said that a list of candidates for her orchestra’s opening is “always going” in her head. But, she added, “you cannot rush one of these searches,” and at any rate she is more focused at the moment on the renovation of David Geffen Hall, which is set to be completed by fall 2022.Though the orchestra has never had a female music director, Borda added that she is “not striving to demonstrate a social agenda in this appointment.”“We are striving to make the right choice,” she said. “It’s a chemical equation. There has to be combustion, no matter what. Even if you have social goals and aims, you have to, in working with the musicians and the board, make sure that it’s the best person for the job.”There’s also the matter of whether Mälkki would want it.“I think this is a question that will be carefully thought about if it comes up,” she said with diplomatic care. After a pause, Mälkki continued: “There are all sorts of things to be considered, and it would be wrong to choose something just for the prestige of it. It’s ultimately a choice of artistic fulfillment. We’ll see.” More

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      Disney Hires Geoff Morrell to head P.R. and Government Relations

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      The Walt Disney Company has found a new image protector and polisher: Geoff Morrell, 53, who helped the fossil fuel giant BP brighten its reputation after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster and who served as the Pentagon’s press secretary during the Iraq war.Bob Chapek, Disney’s chief executive, announced the hiring of Mr. Morrell as chief corporate affairs officer, a newly created job, on Tuesday. The position will combine several global functions — communications, public policy, government relations, corporate social responsibility and environmental issues — that previously had been distributed between Disney departments.Mr. Morrell faces many challenges. Disney is going through a choppy regime change: Mr. Chapek became chief executive last year, but his well-liked predecessor, Robert A. Iger, has remained as executive chairman. (He leaves for good on Dec. 31.) The company is also trying to transform itself into a streaming titan while dealing with a shift in the country’s culture: Its family-friendly brand is meant to be for everyone, but neutrality in today’s hyperpartisan world is almost impossible.Mr. Morrell’s hiring, first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, ends a guessing game about who Mr. Chapek would select to succeed Zenia B. Mucha, who announced her retirement as Disney’s chief communications officer in July. Among other duties, Ms. Mucha, 65, commanded Disney’s 500-person global media relations team for 19 years.Mr. Morrell will relocate to Los Angeles from London, where BP is based. He will start at Disney at the end of January. “Few companies are as beloved as Disney, and I am committed to doing everything I can to make sure it remains that way,” Mr. Morrell said.In a memo to BP employees on Tuesday, Bernard Looney, BP’s chief executive, cited the “modernization” that Mr. Morrell brought to the company’s communication efforts. “He helped me change the tone of the corporate voice so that it is hopefully now much more human,” Mr. Looney wrote. Mr. Morrell most recently served at BP as executive vice president of communications and advocacy.Early in his career, Mr. Morrell was a reporter at ABC News, which is owned by Disney, serving as a White House correspondent from 2004 to 2007. He left journalism in 2007, when he joined the Pentagon during the Bush administration, serving as chief spokesman for Robert M. Gates, the defense secretary, and the U.S. military.“I trust this guy to do and say what I want,” Mr. Gates wrote of Mr. Morrell in his 2014 memoir, “Duty,” while recounting how he had fought to keep him as Pentagon spokesman when President Barack Obama took over in 2009. Mr. Morrell, he wrote, was “one of the handful of people I could count on to criticize me to my face, to tell me when I had given a poor answer to a question, to question my patience (or impatience) with others in the Pentagon, and to question a decision.” More

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      American Ballet Theater Taps Beyoncé Associate as Chief Executive

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      Janet Rollé, general manager of Beyoncé’s entertainment firm, will lead the dance company as it works to recover from the pandemic.A leader of Beyoncé’s business empire will serve as the next chief executive of American Ballet Theater, the dance company announced on Tuesday.Janet Rollé, general manager of Parkwood Entertainment, Beyoncé’s media and management company, will in January assume the role of chief executive and executive director of Ballet Theater, one of the nation’s most prestigious ballet companies. Rollé, 59, who is Black, will be the first person of color to lead the company.In a statement, she said she would seek to “preserve and extend the legacy of American Ballet Theater, and to ensure its future prosperity, cultural impact and relevance.”“To come full circle and be in a position to give back to the art that has given me so much is a source of unbridled and immense joy,” said Rollé, who has long had an interest in dance and was 8 when her mother, an immigrant from Jamaica, took her to her first class.Rollé will face several immediate challenges, including helping Ballet Theater recover from the turmoil of the pandemic, which resulted in the cancellation of two seasons and cost the company millions of dollars in anticipated ticket revenue and touring fees. The pandemic has brought fresh urgency to the company’s efforts to attract new audiences and expand its pool of donors.The company is also searching for an artistic director to replace Kevin McKenzie, who plans to leave next year after three decades in the position.Andrew Barth, chairman of Ballet Theater’s board, said Rollé’s experience in marketing and strategy would be an asset. She has spent most of her career in the media sector, holding senior positions at CNN, Black Entertainment Television and AOL. She also sits on the board of BuzzFeed.“She is brimming with ideas to lead A.B.T. into the next decade, all while respecting Ballet Theater’s history and legacy,” Barth said.Rollé succeeds Kara Medoff Barnett, who stepped down earlier this year to take a role at First Republic Bank. More

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      in Theater

      Changing of the Guard at Williamstown Theater Festival

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      Mandy Greenfield has resigned and Jenny Gersten will be interim artistic director. The festival gave no reason for the move, but it follows complaints about working conditions.The artistic director of the prestigious Williamstown Theater Festival has stepped down after complaints by some employees about working conditions there.The festival said Monday that Mandy Greenfield, who has been the artistic director since 2014, had resigned late last month. Jenny Gersten, who had led the festival from 2010 to 2014, will return as interim artistic director during the search for a new leader.The summer festival, which runs in the Berkshires region of Western Massachusetts and has traditionally relied in part on a pool of young seasonal workers, did not offer a reason for the change of leadership. But it follows a pair of reports in The Los Angeles Times detailing concerns by employees — sound crew members who objected to working outdoors, on a show set in a reflecting pool, during rainy weather, and former employees, many of them onetime interns, who expressed other safety concerns.The festival said in a news release that the leadership change “will ensure a future vision that not only expands on the Festival’s well-respected legacy, but one that is accountable, safe and equitable for all.”In a statement, Greenfield said that her “goal as artistic director was to swing for the fences, make art and try to improve and evolve every day.”“In 2019, I declined to renew a multiyear contract offered to me by the Festival; while flattered to be asked to continue, I agreed instead to stay on for two years, on a year-to-year basis,” she said. “I also publicly committed to leadership transition as I deeply believe, influenced by the British tradition, that theatrical institutions must empower new, diverse leaders in regular, shorter intervals than is the custom in the United States.”Jenny Gersten, who had led the festival from 2010 to 2014, is returning as interim artistic director.Stewart Cairns for The New York TimesGreenfield’s tenure featured a notable number of artistic successes, including Broadway transfers for “Grand Horizons,” “The Sound Inside,” “The Rose Tattoo,” “Fool for Love” and “Living on Love,” as well as multiple Off Broadway transfers.Gersten has held a variety of positions in the theater world. Currently, she is producer of musical theater at New York City Center, and is a line producer of “Beetlejuice,” which is returning to Broadway next spring. She plans to continue in both of those roles. More

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      in Movies

      Dawn Hudson, the C.E.O. of the Motion Picture Academy, will step down in 2023.

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      Dawn Hudson, the chief executive of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, is beginning a long goodbye from the job she’s held since 2011.The academy announced Monday that Ms. Hudson, 65, will step down at the conclusion of her current contract. It expires at the end of 2023.In recent years under Ms. Hudson, the Academy has moved aggressively to expand and diversify its membership, a response to the #OscarSoWhite controversy that arose in 2015 after the group nominated only white actors for the Oscars. Since then, the Academy has swelled to 9,362 voting members from 6,446, 33 percent of whom identify as women and 19 percent coming from underrepresented communities. (When Ms. Hudson came aboard, Oscar voters were 94 percent white and 77 percent male.)Ms. Hudson was also integral in the opening of the Academy Museum, which debuted last month after a nearly decade-long slog and budget overruns that totaled close to $100 million.“Dawn has been, and continues to be, a groundbreaking leader for the academy,” the academy’s president, David Rubin, said in a statement. “The diversity and gender parity of our membership, our increased international presence, and the successful opening of a world-class Academy Museum — a project she revived, guided and championed — are already part of her legacy.”Ms. Hudson’s successor will face big challenges. As with all awards shows, the academy has seen the viewers for its annual telecast — which through its licensing deal with ABC generates the majority of the organization’s operating budget — decline precipitously over the years. This year brought a new nadir of only 10.4 million viewers, a decline of 56 percent from 2020. In 2012, the first year of Ms. Hudson’s tenure, 43 million people watched the show, with Ellen DeGeneres as the host.The academy said it would begin looking for Ms. Hudson’s replacement shortly and “she will have a vital role in the transition.” More