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      Kirill Serebrennikov Is Fired as Director of Gogol Center

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMoscow Fires Theater Director, Adding to Fears of a ClampdownThe director, Kirill Serebrennikov, is known for productions with thinly veiled criticism of the Russian government. His contract at the Gogol Center was not renewed.Kirill Serebrennikov in 2018. “Make sure that the theater remains alive,” he wrote in an Instagram post announcing his firing.Credit…Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSophia Kishkovsky and Feb. 9, 2021One of Russia’s most prominent theater directors has been fired, a move widely seen as an attempt to clamp down on artistic freedom in the country.The director, Kirill Serebrennikov, who led the Gogol Center in Moscow, said on Tuesday in an Instagram post that the city’s culture authorities had told him that his contract would not be renewed when it expired on Feb. 25.“The Gogol Center as a theater, and as an idea, will continue to live,” Serebrennikov wrote, “because theater and freedom are more important, and therefore more tenacious, than all kinds of bureaucrats.”Serebrennikov was appointed head of the Moscow theater, which receives city funding, in 2012, and he transformed it into one of Europe’s most vibrant playhouses. His productions often contained thinly veiled criticisms of life under President Vladimir V. Putin, and sometimes featured nudity and sexual imagery that ran contrary to the Russian government’s promotion of family values.Serebrennikov’s work was nonetheless embraced by elite Russian arts organizations. In 2017, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow staged a ballet about the life of Rudolf Nureyev, which Serebrennikov directed. The production, which highlighted the dancer’s homosexuality, prompted much speculation. (Endorsing homosexuality is a crime in Russia.)But the backing of such institutions was not enough to stop the authorities from targeting the director. In 2017, Serebrennikov was put under house arrest after being accused of embezzling more than $1 million in state funding from the Gogol Center. He continued working from his Moscow apartment, directing a movie selected for the Cannes Film Festival and operas in Zurich and Hamburg, Germany. His case also attracted the attention of Western artists and human rights groups.Last June, Serebrennikov was sentenced to three years probation and a $11,000 fine.His firing comes as Russia cracks down on political opposition in the country following widespread demonstrations in support of Aleksei A. Navalny, Putin’s most prominent critic. Last week, Navalny was sentenced to over two years in prison.Several artists were detained during those protests, including Oxxymiron, a popular rapper, and members of Pussy Riot, the political arts collective.Serebrennikov’s firing had been expected, after an article published last week by TASS, the state news agency, quoted an anonymous source in the Culture Ministry saying that Serebrennikov’s contract would not be renewed. Prominent figures in Russia’s theater world intervened to try and stop it: On Sunday, the Association of Theater Critics sent an open letter to City Hall in Moscow calling for Serebrennikov to remain. “The Gogol Center is impossible without Serebrennikov,” it said, adding, “Moscow in the 2020s is impossible without the Gogol Center.”“What is happening today in Russia as a whole, and in its cultural space, is a very sad picture, with less freedom and more violence by the authorities,” Ludmila Ulitskaya, the internationally acclaimed Russian novelist, said in an email. “My honor and respect to Kirill Serebrennikov,” she added. “He is a worthy representative of Russian culture.”Theater figures outside Russia also condemned the move. “This is a clear message that artistic freedoms are being reduced to zero,” said Thomas Ostermeier, artistic director of the Schaubühne theater in Berlin, which has hosted Serebrennikov’s productions on tour.Neither Serebrennikov, nor a spokesman for Moscow’s culture department responded to requests for comment.Ostermeier said he feared that the Moscow authorities would bring in an outsider to lead the Gogol, and that their choice would turn it into a “boring, safe, conventional space.” But Russian state media reported on Tuesday that Aleksey Agranovich, an actor and director from within the company, would take charge. A spokesman for the theater did not respond to a request for comment.Marina Davydova, a theater critic, said in an emailed statement before Agranovich’s appointment that an internal candidate would be best the solution as they could “preserve the theater, its troupe and its top ranking repertoire.”“Life is still buzzing here,” she said, “and artistic, creative achievements are possible.”Serebrennikov’s Instagram post did not say what he planned to do next, but it did contain a message to his colleagues at the Gogol Center and his many fans. “Try to make sure that the theater remains alive,” he wrote. “You know what needs to be done.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity Officer

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Metropolitan Opera Hires Its First Chief Diversity OfficerMarcia Sells has been brought on to rethink equity and inclusion at the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Marcia Sells, who has been hired as the first chief diversity officer in the Metropolitan Opera’s history.Credit…Eileen BarassoJan. 25, 2021Updated 1:32 p.m. ETMarcia Sells — a former dancer who became an assistant district attorney in Brooklyn and the dean of students at Harvard Law School — has been hired as the first chief diversity officer of the Metropolitan Opera, the largest performing arts institution in the United States.Her appointment, which the Met announced on Monday, is something of a corrective to the company’s nearly 140-year history and a response to the Black Lives Matter demonstrations that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. It’s also a conscious step toward inclusivity by a major player in an industry in which some Black singers, including Leontyne Price and Jessye Norman, have found stardom, but diversity has lagged in orchestras, staff and leadership.Since last summer, cultural institutions across the country have made changes as the Black Lives Matter movement drew scrutiny to racial inequities in virtually every corner of the arts world. The Met was no exception: The company announced plans to open next season with Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” its first opera by a Black composer, directed by James Robinson and Camille A. Brown, who will become the first Black director to lead a production on the Met’s main stage. It also named three composers of color — Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson — to its commissioning program.But to make broader changes at the Met, an institution with a long payroll and a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, the Met is turning to Ms. Sells. As a member of the senior management team, she will report to Peter Gelb, the general manager. The human resources department will be brought under her direction, and her purview will be broad: the Met in its entirety, including the board.“Sometimes horrible events like the killing of George Floyd catalyze people, and they realize this is something we need to do — at the Met and across the arts,” Ms. Sells said in an interview about her plans to make the Met a more inclusive company that values the diversity of its staff and the audiences it serves.Mr. Gelb described Ms. Sells as an “ideal” candidate. “Not only does she have a history of accomplishment, but she also has a knowledge of the performing arts, having been involved in them herself,” he said in an interview. “And she loves opera, which is definitely a plus.”Ms. Sells began dancing as a 4-year-old in Cincinnati, an arts-rich city where she found herself both onstage and in the audience of the storied Music Hall, and where she saw a young Kathleen Battle sing as a student at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.“It had been part of my growing up to experience art,” she said.She later joined Arthur Mitchell’s company, Dance Theater of Harlem, then remained in New York to attend Barnard College and Columbia Law School. Ms. Sells described herself as “an affirmative action baby,” and said that as both a dancer and a law student she had encountered racism, both overt and insidious, that made her feel unwelcome.Ms. Sells recalled, for instance, a judge in the mid-1980s who told her that witnesses had to wait outside the courtroom. She said that she was actually an assistant district attorney, and he replied, “Wow, things have changed.”Diversity has been at the fore of her work as an administrator — at places including Columbia, the N.B.A. and eventually Harvard Law, where she has been the dean of students since 2015. Her mandate at the Met won’t be too far from that of Harvard, another institute often perceived as elite to the point of exclusivity.“It’s not just that you want to get it right,” Ms. Sells said. “There are a lot of eyes on you, but it’s a huge opportunity to show the way, as well as learn from other organizations that don’t have as big a name, are not as well known, and help shine a light on that work and on them.”She plans to start at the Met in late February. Among her early tasks will be to conceive a diversity, equity and inclusion plan that could be implemented across hiring, artistic planning and engagement; she will also examine structural inequities at the Met, and work with the marketing and development departments to broaden the company’s audience and donor base.The Met has been shut down because of the pandemic since last March, and most of its workers have been furloughed without pay since April. It is facing a major labor dispute with its unions, as well as more than $150 million in lost revenue from the theater’s closure. But Mr. Gelb said that the company hopes to receive assistance for diversity-related costs from foundations.What those costs are will become clearer as Ms. Sells settles into her new job. She said that she was ready, and motivated by the company’s recent recognition “of how structurally or historically the Met has not felt welcoming to people of color” and the range of possibilities for change.“I truly believe,” Ms. Sells said, “that this is the Met’s moment.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Former Youth TV Star on a Mission to Transform the BBC

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Former Youth TV Star on a Mission to Transform the BBCJune Sarpong has been a familiar face on British screens for two decades. Now, she’s in charge of bringing greater diversity to the country’s public broadcaster.June Sarpong, the BBC’s director of creative diversity, says the broadcaster has been “incredibly successful in terms of what you see, but in terms of below the line, behind the camera, certainly not.” Credit…David M. Benett/Getty ImagesJan. 6, 2021LONDON — When June Sarpong was 21 and an up-and-coming presenter on MTV in Britain, she walked past a newsstand and saw a magazine in its racks. On the cover was a story about successful women at the music station.She grabbed a copy, only to discover she wasn’t featured. Sarpong — who is Black — hadn’t been asked to go along to the cover photo shoot with her white colleagues, even though she was the co-host of one of the station’s most successful shows. She wasn’t mentioned in the article.“It was heartbreaking,” she recalled in a recent interview.Soon, viewers noticed her absence too, and started calling MTV to ask why she had been left out. “It was this real teachable moment for the network,” Sarpong said.Now 43, Sarpong is still trying to improve the diversity of British television — just at a much larger, and more politically fraught, level. In November 2019, she was named the BBC’s director of creative diversity, a high-profile role in which she is responsible for making Britain’s public broadcaster more representative of the country.In recent months, she has announced her first policies to achieve that. Beginning in April, all new BBC television commissions will have to meet a target requiring 20 percent of jobs offscreen to be filled by people of color, disabled people or those from lower socioeconomic groups.She has also secured 100 million pounds — about $136 million — of the BBC’s commissioning budget for new, diverse programming over three years. (The total commissioning budget is over £1 billion a year.)Sarpong speaking at the release of her first report in her new role last month.Credit…Hannah Young, via BBCAt first glance, the BBC might already seem to be making strides. Some of its biggest shows last year were led by and focused on people of color, such as Michaela Coel’s “I May Destroy You,” about a Black woman confronting hazy memories of a rape, and Steve McQueen’s “Small Axe” series of films about Black British history. The BBC has also beaten an internal target, set before Sarpong took up her job, for people of color to make up 15 percent of its on-air talent.Away from the spotlight, however, Sarpong said, the picture was far less encouraging. Last month, Sarpong issued her first major report in her new role, highlighting some of the challenges ahead.“The BBC has been incredibly successful in terms of what you see,” she said, “but in terms of below the line, behind the camera, certainly not.”The job also places Sarpong at the center of a political battlefield. The BBC is funded by a compulsory license fee for all television owners, and, though less ubiquitous than it once was, the corporation plays an enormous role in national life, with dominance in everything from online news to toddler cartoons to orchestral music. The average British person spends well over two hours a day with BBC output, according to an estimate by an official regulator.It is also, increasingly, a political punching bag. Over the past year, conservative politicians have repeatedly criticized the organization, claiming that it was promoting a “woke agenda,” including when it proposed omitting the lyrics to jingoistic songs traditionally performed at an annual classical concert.Left-wing commentators have been equally critical, especially when a story emerged claiming that the broadcaster had barred employees from attending Black Lives Matter protests or Pride marches. (The BBC said its rules had been misinterpreted.).Sarpong said she’d gotten “a few more gray hairs since starting” her role, but added, “Whatever criticism I get is worth it, as there’s a bigger mission here.”Sarpong, center, in 2017 on “Loose Women,” a British discussion show akin to ABC’s “The View.” She was an occasional contributor for over a decade.Credit…Ken McKay/ITV, via ShutterstockSarpong was born in east London to Ghanaian parents. She spent her early years in Ghana, until a coup forced her parents to flee back to London, where she lived in public housing.As a teenager, she was involved in a car accident that left her unable to walk for two years, she said. While she was in the hospital, she watched Oprah Winfrey on television and it made her realize she could work in TV, she added. Her school reports had always said she “must talk less,” Sarpong said. “I remember watching Oprah thinking, ‘Oh my God, you can be paid to talk!”Sarpong soon got an internship at Kiss FM, a radio station specializing in dance music. She turned up wearing a neck brace, and recalled what it was like to have to explain her accident to every person she met.Sarpong at an awards ceremony organized by the men’s magazine Maxim in 2001, when she was making her name as a youth TV host.Credit… William Conran/PA Images, via Getty ImagesHer rise from that small role, then MTV, was swift. Sarpong became a youth TV star in Britain after moving to a more mainstream network, Channel 4, where she presented a popular weekend show and interviewed the likes of Kanye West and Prime Minister Tony Blair. She was known especially for her laugh — “An irresistible elastic giggle,” according to The Guardian.But she hit problems when she tried to move further up the TV ladder, she said. She went to meetings about “shiny-floor shows,” a reference to big Saturday-night entertainment programs, but was told their audiences weren’t ready for a Black host, she said. She moved to America, and, increasingly, into activism.Friends and acquaintances of Sarpong said in telephone interviews that she has the character to change the BBC. “They’ve actually hired an attack-dog who will not let go,” said Trevor Phillips, a former TV news anchor who was also the chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission, in a telephone interview.Lorna Clarke, the BBC executive in charge of its pop music output, described her as charming, but firm. “I’ve seen her in action here and it is impressive,” she added. “She’s there saying, ‘We can do this, can’t we?’”Some of the BBC’s critics say the most alarming area in which the corporation lacks diversity is not in terms of race, sexuality or disability, but in the political outlook of its staff. Ministers in Britain’s Conservative government, and others on the right, have used the language of diversity in criticizing what they claim is the BBC’s liberal bias, with the culture secretary, Oliver Dowden, saying the broadcaster needed to do more to reflect “genuine diversity of thought.”Simon Evans, a self-described right-leaning comedian who sometimes appears on BBC radio shows, said in a telephone interview that the BBC’s comedy output was dominated by left-wing views. “You have to get people in who have diversity of opinion, and views, and skin color as well,” Evans said. “That will crack the ice cap over the culture of the organization,” he added.Sarpong said diversity of opinion at the BBC would increase if her policies succeeded. “If we’re doing our job, you will have that,” she added.Hosting a 90th birthday concert for Nelson Mandela in London’s Hyde Park, 2008.Credit…Gareth Davies/Getty ImagesSarpong has mingled with stars throughout her career, but she said she’d also gone to every corner of Britain while making TV shows. She knew what made the British people tick, she said, and that would help her succeed. “You’ve got to be looking at how to bring the majority along with you,” she said, and convince them that diversity isn’t a zero-sum game where one group benefits at the expense of others.“Everybody has their role to play, and it’s very important to know what your role is,” Sarpong said. “I’m very clear about what mine is.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stéphane Lissner on Guiding Italy's Oldest Opera House Through a Pandemic and Beyond

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Man Guiding Italy’s Oldest Opera House Through the PandemicAfter warring with powerful unions in Paris, Stéphane Lissner has moved to Naples to run the Teatro di San Carlo.Stéphane Lissner in the auditorium of the Teatro di San Carlo, which is presenting its first staged production of the season.Credit…Francesco SquegliaBy More