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    Review: ‘Jordans’ Tackles Race at Work at the Public Theater

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    Alternating between funny and bleak, the Public Theater’s latest production tackles race and the modern workplace.The workplace in “Jordans,” an ambitious but unwieldy new play at the Public Theater, is so white that it’s a bit alarming. I don’t mean to say it’s full of white people (though it certainly is that, too), but rather that the aesthetic of the space itself catches your attention: minimalist, modern, white screens and walls. By the end of the play, however, those bright white spaces will be covered with blood.Jordan (Naomi Lorrain) is the only Black employee at Atlas Studios, a “full-service rental studio and production facility,” as she says to a potential client. She’s the one who answers the phones; she also gets the lunches, collects receipts and calls maintenance. When her boss, Hailey (Kate Walsh), decides the company’s new path to revenue involves appealing to a more “diverse” demographic, she hires a director of culture: a young Black man also named Jordan (Toby Onwumere).Though their white colleagues somehow can’t seem to tell them apart, the two Jordans find themselves at odds: She knows how to “play the game,” even if that means compromising her integrity. He (dubbed “1. Jordan” in the script) imagines another path to success — a Jay-Z level of achievement that he will then put back into the neighborhood. But as Jordan sees an opportunity to advance, the team takes on a brand launch event for a rapper that transforms into a grisly horror-movie scenario.Written by the playwright Ife Olujobi (she/they) in their Off Broadway debut, and directed by Whitney White, “Jordans” feels a little “The Other Black Girl” and a little “American Psycho.” The play tries to make a satire about race in the workplace and then, within that, gender — the differences in how Black men and Black women might act and be treated in a predominantly white workplace. But it’s also largely a grim parable about the terrors of consumer culture, including the commodification and appropriation of Black people.Lorrain, far right, gives a sharp performance as Jordan, an employee so overworked she even does most of the show’s set and prop arrangements. The cast also features, from left, Matthew Russell, Brontë England-Nelson and Walsh.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMany of the targets of the satire feel too obvious: hip influencers, like a twerking white pop star and super-masc energy drink bros; the white boss fumbling through hollow corporate-speak about diversity; the white female colleagues bonding over how unfairly hard they work while their Black female colleague endlessly bustles around in the background.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Theater

      Terry Carter, Barrier-Breaking Actor and Documentarian, Dies at 95

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      He was the only Black actor on “Combat!” and “The Phil Silvers Show,” then made well regarded documentaries on luminaries like Duke Ellington and Katherine Dunham.Terry Carter, who broke color barriers onstage and on television in the 1950s and ’60s and later produced multicultural documentaries on the jazz luminary Duke Ellington and the dancer-choreographer Katherine Dunham, died on Tuesday at his home in Midtown Manhattan. He was 95. His death was confirmed by his son, Miguel Carter DeCoste.Mr. Carter was raised in a bilingual home next door to a synagogue in a predominantly Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn. His best friend was the future jazz great Cecil Taylor. In his first stage role, at 9, Mr. Carter played the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama on a voyage of discovery.And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”While he acted in some 30 television series and movies, Mr. Carter was best known to viewers as Sgt. Joe Broadhurst, the sidekick to Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud (Dennis Weaver) on NBC’s “McCloud” series from 1970 to 1977, and in 21 episodes of “Battlestar Galactica,” as Colonel Tigh, second-in-command of the starship fleet in ABC’s original science-fiction series in 1978-79. (The series was revived for a second run from 2004 to 2009.)Mr. Carter, right, on “McCloud” as the sidekick to Deputy Marshal Sam McCloud, played by Dennis Weaver, left. Mr. Carter appeared on the series from 1970 to 1977.via Everett CollectionWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares82 Views

      in Music

      A Pathbreaking Singer Arrives at the Met, With Pearls and Tattoos

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      Dav­óne Tines, who stars in the oratorio “El Niño,” is challenging traditions in classical music and using art to confront social problems.The bass-baritone Dav­óne Tines, wearing Dr. Martens boots, a sleeveless black shirt and six vintage pearl rings, stood on a rehearsal stage at the Metropolitan Opera in Manhattan the other day and began to sing.“My soul’s above the sea and whistling a dream,” he sang, a passage from the Nativity oratorio “El Niño” by John Adams, in which Tines makes his Met debut this month. “Tell the shepherds the wind is saddling its horse.”Tines, 37, known for his raw intensity and thundering voice, has quickly become one of classical music’s brightest stars. He has won acclaim for performances of Bach, Handel and Stravinsky, and he has helped champion new music, originating roles in operas like Adams’s “Girls of the Golden West” and Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones.”Tines has also used his art to confront social problems, including racism and police brutality. In 2018, he was a creator of and starred in “The Black Clown,” a searing rumination on Black history and identity inspired by a Langston Hughes poem. In 2020, he released a music video after the police killing of Breonna Taylor, calling for empathy and action.During a rehearsal break at the Met, he described his art as cathartic, saying his aim was to “pick apart the complicated, contentious existence that is knit into the American landscape.”“It’s a blessing to be a performing artist because you get an explicit place to put your feelings,” he said. “It’s the blessing of having a channel.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 138 Shares81 Views

      in Television

      ‘A Different World’ Hits the Road to Help Historically Black Colleges

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      The beloved series was set at a fictional historically Black university. Now, cast members have reunited to visit and support real-life schools.Picture a pampered socialite ostentatiously putting her generational wealth on display. Or an outspoken teenage activist leading a climate change protest. Or a charismatic opportunist luring people into his latest scam.These descriptions apply equally to characters from “A Different World” — a sitcom that ran from 1987 to 1993 — and to today’s social media influencers. So it’s little wonder that the show, which streams on Amazon and Max, resonates with Gen Z.The series began as a spinoff of “The Cosby Show” centered on Denise Huxtable (Lisa Bonet), and it became a hit in its own right.“A Different World” broke ground by giving high visibility to an ensemble of aspirational Black young adults, following an eclectic cross-section of coeds attending Hillman College, a fictional historically Black university. There they dealt with typical collegiate growing pains — studying, partying, falling in love and stumbling into adulthood — and also with more serious subject matter, including racism, domestic abuse, gun violence, homelessness and mental health struggles.“These things mattered, and these are issues which are still relevant today,” said Darryl M. Bell, who played the Hillman huckster Ron Johnson.Now, more than three decades after the series finale, Bell and other core cast members, including Charnele Brown, Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Dawnn Lewis, Cree Summer and Glynn Turman, have reunited for a campus tour of historically Black colleges and universities. Their mission is to raise awareness and enrollment for such institutions, to establish a “Different World” scholarship fund and, of course, to give newer, younger fans a chance to see their parents’ hand-me-down TV idols in person.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares106 Views

      in Music

      How the Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt Became a Chronicler of Black Jazz History

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      Inspired by the drummer Arthur Taylor’s “Notes and Tones” collection of interviews with fellow musicians, Pelt started his own book series, “Griot.”The trumpeter Jeremy Pelt was sitting on his couch, browsing YouTube, when he decided to become an author.It was 2018, and Pelt, by then a fixture on the New York jazz scene for two decades, came across a 1994 interview with the jazz drumming great Arthur Taylor, conducted by a fellow percussionist, Warren Smith. “It could have been ‘Batman,’ or something,” Pelt recalled during a recent conversation in his Harlem apartment. “It was like an hour and 45 minutes, I remember, and I just was transfixed the whole time.”Pelt was especially taken with a section where Taylor discussed “Notes and Tones,” his landmark book of musician-to-musician interviews, first self-published in 1977 and later reissued more widely. In it, giants like Miles Davis, Nina Simone and Max Roach spoke with often bracing candor about race, the music business, their feelings about the term “jazz” and more. Pelt had first come across the book more than 20 years earlier at the Berklee College of Music library.“This is way before internet and all that,” he said, so listeners had no idea what their musical heroes’ “comportment was, how they sounded, anything. So what you have is these words that gave you this peek into their personality.”Pelt often found himself wishing for a sequel. Taylor noted in the 1993 paperback edition that he had recorded more than 200 interviews and intended to publish a follow-up; two years later, he died at 65. Watching the conversation between Taylor and Smith, Pelt made a resolution: “After wondering how come somebody hasn’t done such and such, I said, you know what? I’m going to go ahead and do it.”He started conducting interviews with elders, peers and younger artists, accelerating during the pandemic, when it was easy to reach musicians via Zoom. In 2021, he self-published the first volume of “Griot,” settling on that title after seeing the term — meaning a West African storyteller-musician who passes down the oral history of a tribe — in an old social-media handle used by the bassist Buster Williams. “I looked it up, and that’s when it hit me,” Pelt, 47, said. “That’s exactly what this project is, is really passing down the culture. It’s these stories.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 150 Shares183 Views

      in Music

      Margaret Tynes, Soprano Who Soared in Verdi and Strauss, Dies at 104

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      Because there were few opportunities for Black singers in the U.S., she became a powerhouse in Europe, performing in operas like “Tosca” and “Carmen.”Margaret Tynes, an American soprano who was acclaimed in Europe but neglected in the United States at a time when Black singers were newly breaking into the operatic world, died on March 7 in Silver Spring, Md. She was 104.The death was confirmed by her nephew Richard Roberts, who said Ms. Tynes died in a nursing home.In the 1960s and ’70s Ms. Tynes, with her incendiary, full-throated voice, in roles like Aida and Salomé, sang at opera houses in Vienna, Prague and Budapest, earning high praise on the continent — “an exceptional voice, intense in every coloring, vibrant and dramatic,” Milan’s Corriere della Sera newspaper wrote — even while U.S. critics were cooler. The Süddeutsche Zeitung of Munich wrote of her performance in Benjamin Britten’s “The War Requiem” that “What Britten expects of a woman’s voice can only be achieved by a singer of Margaret Tynes’s caliber.”But she did not make her Metropolitan Opera debut until 1974, when she was 55, in a run of three performances as the title role in Janacek’s “Jenufa” that began and ended her career there.Ms. Tynes, right, in 1957 with Joya Sherrill and Duke Ellington when they recorded “A Drum Is a Woman,” for which Ms. Tynes gained a measure of American fame.Everette CollectionMs. Tynes grew up in the segregated South and gained a measure of American fame in the 1950s, recording “A Drum Is a Woman” with Duke Ellington, singing heartfelt renditions of “Negro Spirituals” on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and appearing with Harry Belafonte in the musical “Sing, Man, Sing.” She also sang at the funeral of the musician W.C. Handy and toured the U.S.S.R. with Mr. Sullivan’s show in 1958.Her breakthrough in opera, the genre that defined her career, came in Europe in 1961, when she sang Salomé in Luchino Visconti’s production at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Time magazine described her as “moving about the stage with catlike grace, her rich, ringing voice zooming with ease through the high, precarious lines,” and as a “girl with veins of fire.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 88 Shares91 Views

      in Music

      Why Is Cardi B Fighting With Raymonte?

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      The rapper exchanged heated remarks with the social media personality Raymonte Cole after he suggested that her skin color was the reason brands consider her “marketable.”The rapper Cardi B found herself embroiled in a sharp back-and-forth with a social media personality this week after he brought up her social class, upbringing and skin color. A quarrel soon erupted over colorism and questions of who gets to profit over which public affect.Of course, Cardi B isn’t one to shrink from a fight, and it wasn’t even the first spat this year to involve a high-profile rapper. But the argument is notable for the difficult issues it broached having to do with colorism — the way prejudice can vary based on someone’s skin color, and how it can lead to stereotypes and differential policing of behavior.Here’s what we know about the charged exchange.What happened?In a TikTok video posted on Wednesday, the social media personality Raymonte Cole lamented being labeled too “ghetto” to be marketable while someone like Cardi B is still able to claim social status and brand deals.“What bothers me as a Black person, you guys say that I’m ghetto,” Mr. Cole said in the video, which he has since removed from his TikTok account. But Cardi B, he said, “is very, very ghetto. She’s way ghettoer than me.”The rapper fired back on X on Wednesday afternoon. “It’s crazy because when I became famous people said I’m ghetto,” she wrote.“To this day no matter what I accomplished I still get called a stripper all because I’m from the ghetto,” she continued. “People misinterpret me because apparently I’m LOUD AND GHETTO.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      Alice Randall Made Country History. Black Women Are Helping Tell Hers.

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      In “My Black Country,” the musician and author who cracked a Nashville color barrier is telling her story — and hearing her songs reimagined.The country singer Rissi Palmer could not understand why Alice Randall was emailing her.By fall 2020, when Palmer received the message, Randall was a Nashville institution, not only the first Black woman to write a chart-topping country hit but also a novelist whose books undermined entrenched racial hierarchies. Palmer herself was no slouch: “Country Girl,” her 2007 anthem of rural camaraderie, had been the first song by a Black woman to infiltrate country’s charts in two decades. She had just started “Color Me Country,” a podcast exploring the genre’s nonwhite roots and branches.But 11 years earlier, Palmer had fled Nashville, hamstrung by contract disputes, with “my tail between my legs,” she recalled recently in a video interview from her North Carolina kitchen.Randall, however, was very interested in Palmer — and her history. Working as a writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt University, she had urged the school’s Heard Libraries to acquire Palmer’s archives: notebooks, sketches, a dress worn during her Grand Ole Opry debut.“I’ve been in this business since I was 19. I made the charts when I was 26. I’ve had these items the whole time,” said Palmer, 42. “No one has ever called me and said they had value, until Alice. There are more important people, but she saw value in me.”Randall also saw something of herself — and a glimpse of gradual progress — in Palmer. After breaking a Nashville color barrier when her treatise about being an overworked mother, “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl),” became a 1994 hit for Trisha Yearwood, Randall quit writing country songs.In her book “My Black Country,” which shares its name with her new compilation, Randall posits a sharp rejoinder to the standard country origin story.Arielle Gray for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 125 Shares104 Views

      in Music

      Beyoncé’s ‘Cowboy Carter’ Is a Vivid Mission Statement. Let’s Discuss.

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      The pop superstar teased a move to country, then tackled so much more. Three critics and a reporter explore her new album’s inspirations, sounds and stakes.BEN SISARIO I don’t usually say this about news releases, but since Beyoncé says so little about the making of her art, the “Cowboy Carter” announcement was intriguing for noting that “each song is its own version of a reimagined Western film,” and that Beyoncé screened movies while she recorded, including “Urban Cowboy,” “The Hateful Eight,” even “Space Cowboys” (?!).My first reaction to hearing the album was surprised gawking at its range of genre and sound, after she head faked us all into perhaps more limited expectations of “country.” (Of course we should have known better.) Viewed only as a genre-hopping exercise, “Cowboy Carter” might be a confusing jumble. But the film frame puts narrative and character at the center of her message, and with that everything came into clearer focus for me.As a heroine, Beyoncé makes a big, bold statement of her quest in “Ameriican Requiem,” taking on nothing less than American history. She finds villains in Jolene and (ahem) the Grammys. Songs like “II Most Wanted” and “Levii’s Jeans” could be plot-break montages while our conquering cowgirl hangs with some sidekicks she meets along the way. By the final reel she’s recapitulating her complaints and declaring herself the victorious leader of a grand resistance (“We’ll be the ones to purify our fathers’ sins”).SALAMISHAH TILLET I’ve listened to the album so many times now — on a plane, in a spin class, and, as I think she intended, while I drove on the highway (sadly, 280, not the 405). Yes, Ben, she has gone big here! But, instead of longing for some lost past, she is taking on “History” — musical and American — with, as we say in academia, a big “H,” or those big narratives about identity, belonging and discrimination.I almost missed those lyrics, “Whole lotta red in that white and blue, ha/History can’t be erased, oh-oh/You lookin’ for a new America” because I was too busy Proud Marying, jerking and twerking to “Ya Ya.” I think that might be the point — it is as if she saying, “The times are so desperate, I am going to use all the vocal gifts and genres at my disposal to bring the country together and show you how good I am at doing them (again)!”Beyoncé onstage with the Chicks performing “Daddy Lessons” at the 2016 Country Music Association Awards.Image Group LA/ABC, via Getty ImagesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More