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      in Theater

      Chicago’s Victory Gardens Is Again Mired in Turmoil

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      The esteemed Chicago theater’s artistic director is out, and artists and his supporters are upset with the company’s board of directors.CHICAGO — Victory Gardens Theater, a vibrant fixture here since 1974, had long prided itself on being a champion of diversity while also bringing new works to its audiences. In 2001, it received the Tony Award for outstanding regional theater for its role in “contributing to the growth of theater nationally.” The theater was jolted in the wake of the social-justice movement of 2020, when its board triggered protests and the mass resignation of its affiliated playwrights by appointing its white executive director to become the artistic director as well — a decision that was not communicated with the theater’s artists. After an upheaval, the executive director resigned, along with the board president, and by the spring of 2021, Black leaders had been appointed to three key positions: Ken-Matt Martin was named artistic director, Roxanna Conner acting managing director and Charles E. Harris II president of the board.But now, a little more than two years after that rebellion, Victory Gardens Theater is in turmoil again. Last month the Victory Gardens board told the staff that Martin had been placed “on leave” — he said in a recent interview that he had been dismissed — and Conner said she would depart at the end of July.That has led to a new uproar. The playwright Erika Dickerson-Despenza denounced what she described as the board’s “white supremacist capitalist patriarchal values” in a statement announcing that she had rescinded the rights to her play “Cullud Wattah,” about the Flint, Mich., water crisis, with nine days left in its run. Actors’ Equity intervened to ensure that the performers were paid for the canceled shows, saying in a statement: “It is deeply disheartening to see an organization that has very publicly wrestled with institutional racism in recent memory again be perceived as unable to support workers of color without whom Victory Gardens Theater could neither exist nor thrive.”Three resident theater companies that present work at Victory Gardens have pledged not to work there until the artists’ complaints are addressed. And the company’s resident directors and playwrights — a new ensemble brought in by Martin — have signed a petition announcing their departures from the organization and calling for “the immediate resignation of the Victory Gardens’ board of directors.”The theater’s remaining staff members took control of the theater’s Facebook and Twitter accounts in early July to post a statement: “We, the nine remaining full-time staffers of Victory Gardens, in solidarity with the resident artists, demand the immediate resignation of the board of directors and the reinstatement of Ken-Matt Martin as artistic director.”Harris, the board president, has declined to comment on any of these matters, referring to Martin’s situation as a personnel issue and releasing a statement on the board’s behalf.Ireon Roach, left, and Renée Lockett in the Victory Gardens Theater production of “Cullud Wattah,” which the playwright pulled from the theater.Liz Lauren“The Victory Gardens Theater board is grappling with the theater’s future, as are many other nonprofit theaters,” said the statement, which expressed regret over the resignation of the playwrights and the withdrawal of “Cullud Wattah,” and pledged that the perspectives of staff members had been heard. “We are committed to acting in the theater’s best interests in all matters.”During a recent video interview, Martin said he did not know why he was dismissed. “The board informed me that I was being released from my artistic director contract at Victory Gardens with cause,” he said, reading from a statement he later posted on his personal website. “I asked twice in the meeting what was the cause and was not given any.”He said he was asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement and give up all claims on future lawsuits. “I am declining the offer,” he said. “It is vitally important that I be able to speak truthfully about the needs of the artists and staff.”His removal was seen by his supporters as a betrayal, following what some saw as a lack of support for Martin and Conner. Victory Gardens has been without an executive director, the top job at the theater, since 2020, and though a search committee eventually interviewed candidates, the post remains vacant.“As somebody who has worked in the nonprofit sector for a long time and had a pretty close-up view of the relationships between boards and leadership and staffing structures, it seemed like operationally there were a lot of holes, and Ken-Matt and Roxanna were being relied on to plug all of them,” said Marisa Carr, whom Martin invited to join the playwrights’ ensemble in June 2021 and who resigned a year later. She cited creating the operating budget (a task an executive director would likely be involved in) and even cleaning the theater as duties that fell on their shoulders.Martin took the reins at Victory Gardens during the pandemic, and at a time when newly formed groups like “We See You, White American Theater,” a national coalition of theater artists, were demanding that antiracism and significant hiring of people of color become the industry standard. Martin supported such efforts, pushing for a pay equity plan at Victory Gardens.Just over a year later he has now joined a group of Black artistic leaders recently separated from the institutions they had been hired to lead. Elsewhere in Chicago, the House Theater closed its doors this summer after its new artistic director, Lanise Antoine Shelley, had presented just two shows; Jon Carr, the Second City executive producer, left his position in February after 14 months; and Regina Victor, artistic director of Sideshow Theater, resigned on July 20.Circumstances differ from case to case, and it remains unclear why Martin was let go, but some see a pattern, including Lili-Anne Brown, who directed the Victory Gardens production of “Cullud Wattah.” “Put a woman or person of color in charge but don’t support them at all and thereby push them off the glass cliff,” she said.Finances appear to be a flash point in this conflict, especially a proposed real estate deal. Victory Gardens occupies the historic Biograph Theater in Lincoln Park and also owns office space in an adjacent building. The board has been considering selling its office space so it can buy a former restaurant space located within the Biograph building with the aim of consolidating the theater’s real estate and possibly saving money over the long term. But Martin and others objected, saying that the purchase wasn’t supported by a broader plan or capital campaign, and that the money would be better used to repair the theater’s long-faulty heating and air conditioning system, among other needs.These disputes have alarmed theater professionals beyond the immediate Victory Gardens family. David Cromer, a theater director and Chicago native who is now based in New York, said he sent a concerned email to the board expressing his confusion and urging its members to resign “if you no longer wish to facilitate the creation of theater.”“Does a board owe legally an explanation for any of this?” Cromer said in a phone interview. “Probably not. But they have the stewardship of one of the foundational documents of Chicago theater, so what the hell? What answers have they presented?”The playwright Isaac Gomez, who posted the “We Resign” letter from the Victory Gardens playwrights’ ensemble and resident directors on his Medium page, said he has recruited 11 potential new board members while sending emails urging those currently serving to step down. One current member responded that the board intends to “stay the course,” Gomez said. Board members approached for this article referred all questions to Harris and the board’s statement.The board has maintained it is making decisions for the good of the theater, explaining in the statement that its members have “more than 100 years of experience with Victory Gardens, and we know well the delicate balance of managing the artistic well-being of the theater with our fiduciary responsibility.” It added: “We believe wholeheartedly in the powerful work of Victory Gardens Theater and are committed to finding a way to enable it to continue.”Could Victory Gardens survive if the board stays and Martin does not? “No,” Brown said. “I believe almost 2,000 people have signed that petition saying they won’t work there unless the board steps down and Ken-Matt is reinstated. So continue with what? Where are they even going to get the plays?”Dennis Zacek, who served as Victory Gardens’ first artistic director for 34 years, said he also is unsure about the theater’s future. “As far as I can tell, either the theater is going to be dissolved, or they’re going to have someone come to the negotiation table and find a way for these people to communicate with each other,” he said, endorsing the idea of Harris stepping down as board chairman. “It may not be enough, but come on, there must be some good people on that board. He may be a good person, too, but it’s on his watch.”David Kolen, an Actors’ Equity senior business representative who oversees contracts with Chicago theaters, said the union would support its members working in a reopened Victory Gardens Theater as long as it is “a safe and functional workplace.”As for Martin, he said that although he appreciates the unsolicited calls for him to be reinstated, he has decided “that I need to take a break from nonprofit theater administration and would not immediately return if asked.”The issue, he stressed, isn’t about him but the treatment of those who do creative work. “I am not a martyr,” Martin said. “I am not a victim. I am an artist and deserve to treated with respect.” More

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      in Television

      Nichelle Nichols, Lieutenant Uhura on ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 89

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      She was among the first Black women to have a leading role in a TV series. She later worked with NASA to recruit minorities for the space program.Nichelle Nichols, the actress revered by “Star Trek” fans everywhere for her role as Lieutenant Uhura, the communications officer on the starship U.S.S. Enterprise, died on Saturday in Silver City, N.M. She was 89.The cause was heart failure, said Sky Conway, a writer and a film producer who was asked by Kyle Johnson, Ms. Nichols’s son, to speak for the family.Ms. Nichols had a long career as an entertainer, beginning as a teenage supper-club singer and dancer in Chicago, her hometown, and later appearing on television.But she will forever be best remembered for her work on “Star Trek,” the cult-inspiring space adventure series that aired from 1966 to 1969 and starred William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the heroic leader of the starship crew; Leonard Nimoy (who died in 2015) as his science officer and adviser, Mr. Spock, an ultralogical humanoid from the planet Vulcan; and DeForest Kelley (who died in 1999) as Dr. McCoy, a.k.a. Bones, the ship’s physician.A striking beauty, Ms. Nichols provided a frisson of sexiness on the bridge of the Enterprise. She was generally clad in a snug red doublet and black tights; Ebony magazine called her the “most heavenly body in ‘Star Trek’” on its 1967 cover. Her role, however, was both substantial and historically significant.Uhura was an officer and a highly educated and well-trained technician who maintained a businesslike demeanor while performing her high-minded duties. Ms. Nichols was among the first Black women to have a leading role on a network television series, making her an anomaly on the small screen, which until that time had rarely depicted Black women in anything other than subservient roles.In a November 1968 episode, during the show’s third and final season, Captain Kirk and Lieutenant Uhura are forced to embrace by the inhabitants of a strange planet, resulting in what is widely thought to be the first interracial kiss in television history.Ms. Nichols’s first appearances on “Star Trek” predated the 1968 sitcom “Julia,” in which Diahann Carroll, playing a widowed mother who works as a nurse, became the first Black woman to star in a non-stereotypical role in a network series.Ms. Nichols and William Shatner on “Star Trek,” sharing what is believed to be the first interracial kiss on television.CBS via Getty Images(A series called “Beulah,” also called “The Beulah Show,” starring Ethel Waters — and later Louise Beavers and Hattie McDaniel — as the maid for a white family, was broadcast on ABC in the early 1950s and subsequently cited by civil rights activists for its demeaning portraits of Black people.)But Uhura’s influence reached far beyond television. In 1977, Ms. Nichols began an association with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, contracting as a representative and speaker to help recruit female and minority candidates for spaceflight training; the following year’s class of astronaut candidates was the first to include women and members of minority groups.In subsequent years, Ms. Nichols made public appearances and recorded public service announcements on behalf of the agency. In 2012, after she was the keynote speaker at the Goddard Space Center during a celebration of African American History Month, a NASA news release about the event lauded her help for the cause of diversity in space exploration.“Nichols’s role as one of television’s first Black characters to be more than just a stereotype and one of the first women in a position of authority (she was fourth in command of the Enterprise) inspired thousands of applications from women and minorities,” the release said. “Among them: Ronald McNair, Frederick Gregory, Judith Resnick, first American woman in space Sally Ride and current NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.”Grace Dell Nichols was born in Robbins, Ill., on Dec. 28, 1932 (some sources give a later year), and grew up in Chicago. Her father was, for a time, the mayor of Robbins, and a chemist. At 13 or 14, tired of being called Gracie by her friends, she requested a different name from her mother, who liked Michelle but suggested Nichelle for the alliteration.She was a ballet dancer as a child and had a singing voice with a naturally wide range — more than four octaves, she later said. While attending Englewood High School, she landed her first professional gig in a revue at the College Inn, a well-known Chicago nightspot.There she was seen by Duke Ellington, who employed her a year or two later with his touring orchestra as a dancer in one of his jazz suites.Ms. Nichols appeared in several musical theater productions around the country during the 1950s. In an interview with the Archive of American Television, she recalled performing at the Playboy Club in New York City while serving as an understudy for Ms. Carroll in the Broadway musical “No Strings” (though she never went on).In 1959, she was a dancer in Otto Preminger’s film version of “Porgy and Bess.” She made her television debut in 1963 in an episode of “The Lieutenant,” a short-lived dramatic series about Marines at Camp Pendleton created by Gene Roddenberry, who went on to create “Star Trek.”Ms. Nichols appeared on other television shows over the years — among them “Peyton Place” (1966), “Head of the Class” (1988) and “Heroes” (2007). She also appeared onstage occasionally in Los Angeles, including in a one-woman show in which she did impressions of, and paid homage to, Black female entertainers who preceded her, including Lena Horne, Pearl Bailey and Eartha Kitt.At the 15th annual “Star Trek” convention in Las Vegas in 2016, Ms. Nichols was the subject of a panel titled “Tribute to Nichelle Nichols.” Gabe Ginsberg/Getty ImagesBut Uhura was to be her legacy: A decade after “Star Trek” went off the air, Ms. Nichols reprised the role in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and she appeared as Uhura, by then a commander, in five subsequent movie sequels through 1991.Besides a son, her survivors include two sisters, Marian Smothers and Diane Robinson.Ms. Nichols was married and divorced twice. In her 1995 autobiography, “Beyond Uhura: Star Trek and Other Memories,” she disclosed that she and Roddenberry, who died in 1991, had been romantically involved for a time. In an interview in 2010 for the Archive of American Television, she said that he had little to do with her casting in “Star Trek” but that he defended her when studio executives wanted to replace her.When she took the role of Uhura, Ms. Nichols said, she thought of it as a mere job at the time, valuable as a résumé enhancer; she fully intended to return to the stage, as she wanted a career on Broadway. Indeed, she threatened to leave the show after its first season and submitted her resignation to Roddenberry. He told her to think it over for a few days.In a story she often told, that Saturday night she was a guest at an event in Beverly Hills, Calif. — “I believe it was an N.A.A.C.P. fund-raiser,” she recalled in the Archive interview — where the organizer introduced her to someone he described as “your biggest fan.”“He’s desperate to meet you,” she recalled the organizer saying.The fan, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., introduced himself.“He said, ‘We admire you greatly, you know,’ ” Ms. Nichols said, and she thanked him and told him that she was about to leave the show. “He said, ‘You cannot. You cannot.’”Dr. King told her that her role as a dignified, authoritative figure in a popular show was too important to the cause of civil rights for her to forgo. As Ms. Nichols recalled it, he said, “For the first time, we will be seen on television the way we should be seen every day.”On Monday morning, she returned to Roddenberry’s office and told him what had happened.“And I said, ‘If you still want me to stay, I’ll stay. I have to.’”Eduardo Medina contributed reporting. More

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      in Movies

      Marvel Studios Unveils ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’

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      The studio announced news of the film’s release on Saturday at the pop-culture convention Comic-Con International in San Diego.Marvel Studios has unveiled a trailer for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — the long-awaited sequel to its hit film “Black Panther” — which it said would open in cinemas in the United States on Nov. 11.The teaser, screened on Saturday at the pop-culture convention Comic-Con International in San Diego, features several cast members from the first film, as well as a tribute to Chadwick Boseman, who played one of the protagonists, King T’Challa. Boseman, whose image appears on a mural in the teaser, died from colon cancer at age 43 in 2020.The film follows Queen Ramonda (Angela Bassett), Shuri (Letitia Wright), M’Baku (Winston Duke), General Okoye (Danai Gurira) and the elite women warrior group Dora Milaje (including Ayo, played by Florence Kasumba) as they “fight to protect their nation from intervening world powers in the wake of King T’Challa’s death,” the studio said on Saturday in a news release.“As the Wakandans strive to embrace their next chapter, the heroes must band together with the help of War Dog Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) and Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) and forge a new path for the kingdom of Wakanda,” the studio added.The trailer — a visually dazzling glimpse of the future world of Wakanda — is set to a cover of the Bob Marley song “No Woman, No Cry.” Ludwig Goransson, the film’s composer, described it as “an aural first glimpse of Wakanda Forever.”The “sound world” for the film, he said in the statement, was created during trips to Mexico and Nigeria, where he and others worked with traditional musicians to learn about the “cultural, social and historical contexts of their music.”Then, they built a catalog of instrumental and vocal recordings together with those artists, and “began to build a musical vocabulary for the characters, story lines and cultures of Talocan and Wakanda,” Goransson said, adding that the idea was to create “an immersive and enveloping sound world for the film.”The film’s release was announced by the president of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige, who also noted the upcoming release of several other films and shows, including “She-Hulk: Attorney at Law,” starring Tatiana Maslany; “Secret Invasion,” featuring Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn; and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.”Speaking at the Comic-Con event on Saturday, Nyong’o said that it felt “monumental” to return to Wakanda. “The universe of Wakanda is expanding,” she said. “You guys have a lot to look forward to.”Gurira, who plays Okoye, the general of Wakanda’s elite female bodyguards and the head of armed forces and intelligence, said that when she was growing up in Zimbabwe she always looked up to the way America “made superheros onstage and on the big screen.”To the crowd, she added: “You’re taking in that culture, and you’re celebrating it. That, to me, is everything.” More

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      in Movies

      The Gag Is: Keke Palmer Is a Movie Star

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      The roads of Universal Studios’ backlots are named for exemplars of the company’s old star system: Kirk Douglas, Jimmy Stewart, Nat King Cole, Gregory Peck. One road is called Louise Beavers Avenue, after the character actor best known for her role in 1934’s racial-passing melodrama “Imitation of Life.” Her first onscreen performance was in the 1927 Universal production “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in which she made an uncredited appearance as an enslaved person at a wedding. When Beavers died in 1962 in her early 60s (her birth year is in question), she had played more than 150 roles, most of them maids, servants, slaves and mammies. At some point, as a show of appreciation, Universal Studios named one of its streets after her.At the corner of Canopy Street and Louise Beavers, Keke Palmer relinquished her head to the hair and makeup artists who rotated around her. Her hairstylist, Ann Jones, tweaked the curls in her short Afro. Assistants and publicists darted in and out of the room. Palmer was enthusiastic yet ambivalent about the hoopla surrounding “Nope,” the writer-director Jordan Peele’s latest film. She was at Universal Studios for the film’s “content day,” doing interviews and filming a behind-the-scenes featurette. “This is probably one of the craziest next-evolution points of my career, doing this movie,” she told me. “And all I want to do is submerge into the wind. You know?” she chuckled. “Because, I don’t even know what could or couldn’t happen after this — what the vibe would be. I ain’t never had that many people look at my work at once.”Keke Palmer with Daniel Kaluuya (left) and Brandon Perea in “Nope.”Universal PicturesShe spoke with rhythmic razzle-dazzle, emphasizing certain words and rendering them magical. To her makeup artist, Jordana David, Palmer said, “I want bold brows, a big lash and a soft lip,” in a stage whisper. She’s like a millennial vaudevillian, right down to her speaking cadence. When she’s excited, she sounds like someone in an old tale about Hollywood who just got off a bus in the big city.But Palmer, 28, is a consummate entertainment veteran. This year marks her 20th year in show business. She was recruited for the 2003 “American Idol” spinoff “American Juniors” — Palmer, cast as an alternate, never made it to air. She went on to a career as a child actor on Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel, starring in three seasons of “True Jackson, VP,” a show about a kid boss, and “Jump In!” a beloved TV movie about hopefuls in a jump-rope tournament. Since then she has done every kind of entertainment job you can imagine: appearing in “Hustlers” (2019) and Ryan Murphy’s camp horror series “Scream Queens”; a stint as a co-host on ABC’s “Good Morning America”; starring on Broadway in “Cinderella”; and recording her own pop/R.&B. albums. Despite her success in adulthood, to some viewers, she is frozen as a child star. Palmer’s leading role in “Nope,” with its auteur director, ambitious narrative and blockbuster projections, seems poised to shift her story.“Nope” is a mystery-thriller starring Palmer and Daniel Kaluuya as sibling horse trainers who are the fictional descendants of the real Black jockey who appears in Eadweard Muybridge’s late-19th-century photos of horses in motion. These photographs, once traced by hand onto glass discs, could be viewed in a device called a “zoopraxiscope” that gave the quickly spinning frames the illusion of motion. The resulting sequences were an early form of moving pictures. The real-life jockey in the photos has never been identified; he and the horse go on galloping, anonymously, forever. His anonymity inaugurates a lasting tension between Black people and the movies: To be in front of the camera means to risk, at worst, cruel caricature and anonymity. “Nope” feels like a refusal of that fate and an elaborate tribute to an enigmatic man Emerald describes as “the very first stuntman, animal wrangler and movie star all rolled into one.”Palmer with Jordan Peele on the set of “Nope.”Glen Wilson/Universal PicturesIn “Nope,” he’s given a name, Alasdair Haywood. His descendants, including Emerald, her older brother, O.J., and their father, Otis Sr. (Keith David), run a horse-wrangling operation and train horses for Hollywood productions on the desert outskirts of Los Angeles. From their ranch, they want to reclaim their family’s centrality to the history of the movies. After Otis dies in a mysterious incident, the siblings discover what they believe is a U.F.O. and decide to film it with a makeshift crew that includes the tech wiz Angel (Brandon Perea). As they try to capture the spectacle on camera — they’re looking for what Emerald calls “the Oprah Shot” that will make them famous — they start to wonder: What is the value of attention?Amid all this, Palmer’s brash Emerald swaggers through the film. In a scene in which Em and O.J. are wrangling on the set of a commercial and she’s giving a safety talk, she digresses and begins advertising her own skills, playing up the fact that she “directs, acts, produces, sings and does craft services on the side.” Palmer improvised that line, showcasing her effortless creativity and indefatigable hustle. “Emerald is a lot like Keke if Keke had never broken through and found so much success when she was younger,” Peele told me. That difference highlights the tightrope so many Black performers — like Muybridge’s Black jockey, like Beavers — walk between renown and oblivion, work and exploitation.“We like to say since the moment pictures could move, we had skin in the game,” Emerald says on the set of the commercial. Both meanings of Emerald’s phrase could apply to Palmer; her 20-year investment in showbiz means she has lots of skin in the game, even if people haven’t always noticed the sly virtuosity she has been developing. “I’ve been acting all the years leading up, you know, whether someone watched or not. So it’s interesting, which is also what this movie is about as well — how people are so attracted to a spectacle.”Palmer with William H. Macy in the television movie “The Wool Cap” (2004). At 10 years old, she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her performance.TNT, via Everett CollectionPalmer was born in Harvey, Ill., and raised in nearby Robbins, a small community 30 minutes south of Chicago that was one of the earliest all-Black enclaves incorporated in the state; a 1918 article in The Denver Star heralded Robbins as “the first and only village which will be controlled entirely by Negroes.”Her parents, Sharon and Lawrence Palmer, were actors who met in a drama class at Chicago’s Kennedy-King College in the summer of 1986. Sharon worked on the Kennedy-King drama school’s lighting crew and acted in “The Wiz.” Lawrence appeared in a production of Joseph A. Walker’s “The River Niger,” a play that was first performed by the legendary Negro Ensemble Company. Later, when the Palmers were newly married, the couple worked as professional actors. Eventually, though, they had a small family to raise and put their dreams aside. Sharon Palmer taught drama in high schools and after-school programs. Her husband worked at a polyurethane company.Naturally, Palmer grew up loving show business. At 3, her parents took her to see the musical “The Jackie Wilson Story” at the Black Ensemble Theater, and that show mesmerized her. She would watch her mom sing in church and remix what she’d heard into performances in kindergarten plays. In her book for young adults, “I Don’t Belong to You,” she describes her family watching and studying movies at home (“Claudine,” from 1974, with Diahann Carroll and James Earl Jones, and “Let’s Do It Again,” from 1975, with Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby, for example), essentially providing their own DVD commentary by tracing the trajectory of different actors and directors. Soon Palmer was singing and acting in school productions and auditioning for “The Lion King.” “When we noticed she had talent, then we both were able to help her to learn lines and to understand scripts,” Sharon Palmer told me. “When I would get tired, he would do it, and vice versa. That was a huge advantage for her, that both of her parents were actors.”Palmer and Laurence Fishburne in “Akeelah and the Bee” (2006).Lions Gate, via Everett CollectionPalmer’s steadfastness — she would rehearse lines by herself for hours — signaled to her parents that her dream was worth investing in. Then came the “American Juniors” audition and a role in the 2004 movie “Barbershop 2.” Later that year, Palmer appeared as a neglected child in a television movie, “The Wool Cap,” with William H. Macy. At 10, she was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for that performance, losing out to Glenn Close. To support Palmer’s career, her parents sold their new house, took leave from their jobs and moved the family to Pasadena, Calif. Her breakout role was in “Akeelah and the Bee” in 2006, alongside Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne, in which Palmer played the titular character, an 11-year-old from South Los Angeles who hopes to win the Scripps National Spelling Bee. Akeelah’s intelligence and moxie amid limited circumstances sealed Palmer’s popularity.Palmer told me that ever since she was a child working in the ecosystems of Nickelodeon and Disney, she observed how those networks took the “MGM standard” in finding talent they could use across the board, from sitcoms to movies to music to touring shows. Palmer cultivated her singing and dancing alongside her acting, co-writing and singing the “True Jackson, VP” theme song for Nickelodeon and making singles and music videos for Disney’s “Jump In!” soundtrack. “And so for me, also working in those spaces, that taught me to keep things very business and to just show up, do the job, do the thing, you know, be professional, and go home and then have a life,” she said.Historically, Black Hollywood pioneers found it difficult to leave a set and then have a life. The light of fame also generated the shadow of racial clichés that stalked them. They were given roles that turned their talents into mere content: stereotypical images, like Beavers’s beatific and smiling maids, that circulated outside the theater, long after the projectors went quiet.Palmer with Jamie Lee Curtis in Season 1 of “Scream Queens” (2015).Patti Perret/Fox, via Everett CollectionIn “Nope,” Palmer plays up her unabashed joviality but avoids the specter of minstrel imagery. She plays Emerald as a woman searching for something: In her name, there’s a hint of the colorful capital city in “The Wizard of Oz,” a home for seeking souls; and in the flavor of her portrayal, a glint of “The Wiz.” If Kaluuya is Peele’s Robert De Niro, as the director has said in a recent interview that likened their partnership to that between Martin Scorsese and De Niro, then Palmer, in this first collaboration, might be his Joe Pesci. She brings to her part an emotional maximalism that distills the too-muchness of mundane feelings.Palmer admires multitalented performers like Carol Burnett, Eddie Murphy and Elaine May, whose acts call back to American vaudeville. At their worst, vaudevillians and minstrel performers reinforced anti-Black iconography. At their best, they manipulated stereotypes — the straight man, the fool, the punchline artist — reinhabiting stock characters in order to make us see them anew. You can trace their influence in Palmer’s acting. A scene in which Emerald dances at the Haywood homestead epitomizes her onscreen charm. She cranks up the music on the family’s record player and quite literally tunes out despair, pop-locking with goofiness and fluidity. Emerald’s dancing is juxtaposed with shots of a sinister force skulking outside the house: Emerald is oblivious, and Palmer grounds the moment by performing the opposite of gravitas, endowing her body with a blithe buoyancy.Pop-locking is the perfect move for an actor like Palmer: It simulates a human body’s attempt to function within restraints, and the restraint is what produces the dance’s elegance. If Emerald dancing amid disaster is not a snapshot of the function of Black art in America, I don’t know what is. Close-ups on Palmer’s face show her mix of Kabuki theatricality and understated grace. This is her trademark. “She’s able to capture joy in a really natural way,” Kaluuya told me.Palmer (second from right) with Lili Reinhart, Jennifer Lopez, and Constance Wu in “Hustlers” (2019).Barbara Nitke/STX Entertainment, via Everett CollectionHer effervescence is straightforward and contagious: You smile when she does. That’s not to say that she lacks subtlety; Palmer, who likens dialogue to music, infuses her lines with rhythm and verve and the delicacy required of a great jazz scatter riffing on — and stylistically ripping up — the American songbook. “Keke is a brilliant improviser,” Peele said. Kaluuya concurred: “She’s amazing off-top.” In “Nope,” she swings and swerves.Back on Beavers Avenue, it was lunch time in Palmer’s dressing room. We sat on the floor and took our high heels off, getting comfortable for the first time all day. Before we started the interview, Palmer turned to me and apologized, because she needed to send an email before we began our chat. As we sat in silence, the din of the lot sometimes filtered in, and then, distracted by a production assistant’s or publicist’s voice, I chanced a glance Palmer’s way. Her face was illuminated by the glow of her laptop screen, and I saw her adjust her expressions subtly, from sweet mien to the mean mug of deep concentration, as she typed. She had the elegance, flip-book flamboyance and heightened physicality of a silent-film star. Then, Palmer finished her email, turned to me with GIFy ebullience and began the performance of being famous again. She told me: “I’m usually, more often than not, around energy that needs me to sustain it. Like, not needs me, but expects it. That’s maybe the better word.”With some of the characters she has been given — including a hackneyed character in Peele’s “Key and Peele” sketch show known as Malia Obama’s “Anger Translator” — it’s possible to think of Palmer as a version of vaudeville-era performers like Nina Mae McKinney or Ethel Waters, upgrading thin material. I have a feeling that Palmer’s pop-lock will be turned into a GIF, like many bits from Palmer’s public performances. In a viral one, she is a guest on “Late Night With Seth Meyers.” Palmer turns to the audience, contorts her mouth stagily and says her famous tagline, “But the gag is …” She states a premise and then comically refutes it with a haughty-voiced explanation: “I just sent my ex-boyfriend 100 text messages and he didn’t reply,” she said, “but the gag is he still loves me.”In a way, Palmer’s appearances in popular memes and funny GIFs makes her a kind of descendant of the unnamed jockey in the Muybridge photos or of Beavers. GIFs encapsulate emotional reactions, broadening and flattening real feelings and impulses so that others can make use of them. Pluck a GIF of the “Real Housewife” NeNe Leakes and you are momentarily manipulating her image, along with all the racist assumptions (sassiness, bullying, sexual availability) that accrue to a Black woman’s body. Some critics have asserted that they allow Black women’s likenesses to become too easily appropriated and used as shorthand — even calling it “digital blackface.” But Palmer embeds her caricature with awareness of how it will be used. She injects some knowingness into the image, winking at those who would pass it around in God-knows-what fashion. She pushes up against the limits of images from the inside, resisting exploitation, digital and otherwise.Djeneba Aduayom for The New York TimesPalmer has written about choosing her roles carefully, not taking everything offered to her despite her ambition. I wonder if this factored into her decision to appear in “Nope,” which is a movie partly about refusal. It will not let the Black jockey become a footnote, a trivial presence in photographic history, without commenting on the loss and attempting to reclaim him. The film puts her in a lineage of Black actors and filmmakers who have done their own version of this kind of work. Think of Oscar Micheaux’s melodramas featuring middle-class strivers, which were meant to counteract minstrel characters; the Blaxpoitation films that turned stereotypes of violent, oversexualized Blackness on their heads; or the filmmakers of the L.A. Rebellion who made poetic departures from traditional depictions of Black people.Palmer’s performance in “Nope” is its own act of resistance, casting a different light on how her likeness and expressivity might circulate in our culture. She enlivens the screen, exuding a deep sensitivity. Playing against Kaluuya’s stoic, quietly grieving O.J., Palmer evokes other ways to register grief. She bargains with her brooding brother and herself, joking and glad-handing through scenes. She grooves and puffs a vape pen to get through her depression. She moves on, and on, and you get whipped up in the tornado of her personality just as storm clouds drift on the ranch’s horizon. Like an outstanding improviser, Palmer says both “yes, and” (the improv credo) by bustling with a trouper’s brio, and “no,” resisting the blotting of Black subtlety and subjectivity. In this movie, when her character says, “Yeah, nah,” and runs away, that negative response works on multiple levels. Her role in “Nope” allows her to be what Louise Beavers couldn’t be: a Black woman in Hollywood whose skin is not mere spectacle.At the end of her work day, on another stage, Palmer recorded ads for Universal Studios theme-park rides, networks like E! and foreign markets. The sound bell rang one final time, and black-clad crew members dispersed. “All right, that is a cut, and that is a wrap on Keke Palmer,” the stage manager said, and everyone cheered. Palmer shimmied in place, doing air guns with her hands, eventually blowing one out and finally breaking character.Niela Orr is a story producer for Pop-Up Magazine and a contributing editor at The Paris Review. She will be a story editor for the magazine starting in August. Djeneba Aduayom is a photographer whose work is informed by her various cultural backgrounds and her past work as a performer. She is based in Southern California. More

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      in Television

      Taurean Blacque, Actor Best Known for ‘Hill Street Blues,’ Dies at 82

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      He received an Emmy nomination for his work as Detective Neal Washington, a character he strove to portray as something other than “that hip, jive Black man.”Taurean Blacque, the actor best known for his Emmy-nominated performance as a detective on the critically acclaimed NBC drama series “Hill Street Blues,” died on Thursday in Atlanta. He was 82.His family announced the death in a statement. It did not specify a cause, saying only that he died after a brief illness.Mr. Blacque, who began his career as a stage actor in New York, had several television appearances under his belt when, in 1981, he landed his breakthrough role: the street-smart Detective Neal Washington on “Hill Street Blues,” which drew praise for its realistic portrayal of the day-to-day reality of police work and was nominated for 98 Emmy Awards in its seven seasons, winning 26.The part of Washington, Mr. Blacque later recalled, was sketchily written, and it was his choice to play the character as quiet and reflective. “I think the original concept was that hip, jive Black man, you know,” he told TV Guide. “But I wanted to turn it around a little, give him some depth, not get into that stereotype.”Mr. Blacque was nominated for a 1982 Primetime Emmy for best supporting actor in a drama series, but he lost to his fellow cast member Michael Conrad. (All the nominees in the category that year — the others were Charles Haid, Michael Warren and Bruce Weitz — were members of the “Hill Street Blues” cast.)“Hill Street Blues” ended its run in 1987, and two years later Mr. Blacque starred with Vivica A. Fox and others on the NBC soap opera “Generations.” Probably the most racially diverse daytime drama of its era, “Generations” dealt with the relationship over the years between two Chicago families, one white and one Black. Mr. Blacque played the owner of a chain of ice cream parlors.He later moved to Atlanta, where he was active on the local theater scene, appearing in productions of August Wilson’s “Jitney,” James Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner” and other plays. He was also involved in the National Black Theatre Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C.Taurean Blacque was born Herbert Middleton Jr. on May 10, 1940, in Newark. His father was a dry cleaner, his mother a nurse.He graduated from Arts High School in Newark but did not decide to pursue an acting career until he was almost 30 and working as a mail carrier. He enrolled at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York in 1969 and, he told USA Today, “Once I found out that acting was my niche, I poured all my energies into it.”He said he chose the stage name Taurean Blacque (Taurus was his astrological sign) in part as a way to get casting directors’ attention. Eventually, after several years of paying dues, he did.Work in community theater in New York led to roles with the Negro Ensemble Company and eventually to Hollywood, where he landed guest roles on “Sanford and Son,” “Taxi,” “Charlie’s Angels,” “The Bob Newhart Show” and other TV series before being cast on “Hill Street Blues.”In addition to being an actor, Mr. Blacque, who had two biological sons and adopted 11 other children, was an adoption advocate. He was the spokesman for the Los Angeles County adoption service. In 1989, President George Bush appointed him the national spokesman for adoption.Mr. Blacque’s survivors include 12 children, 18 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.The Associated Press contributed reporting. More

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      in Music

      Baltimore Symphony’s New Conductor Breaks a Racial Barrier

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      Jonathon Heyward is the first person of color to be the orchestra’s music director in its 106-year history.For decades, the 25 largest orchestras in the United States have been led almost exclusively by white men.That is going to change. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra announced on Thursday that it had chosen Jonathon Heyward, a rising African American conductor, as its next music director. He will begin a five-year contract in Baltimore at the start of the 2023-24 season.Heyward, 29, who grew up in Charleston, S.C., the son of an African American father and a white mother, will be the first person of color to lead the orchestra in its 106-year history. In an interview, he said that he would work to expand the audience for classical music by bolstering education efforts and promoting underrepresented artists.“This art form is for everyone,” he said.Heyward will succeed Marin Alsop, the first female music director of a top-tier American orchestra, whose tenure in Baltimore ended last year. His appointment comes amid a broader reckoning in classical music over severe gender and racial disparities.The choice to hire Heyward is a milestone for Baltimore, where Black residents make up more than 60 percent of the population.“We are inspired by his artistry, passion and vision for the B.S.O., as well as for what his appointment means for budding musicians who will see themselves better reflected in such a position of artistic prominence,” Mark Hanson, the orchestra’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.Heyward, who is the chief conductor of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie in Germany, has garnered a reputation as a sensitive and charismatic conductor. His appointment comes at a challenging time for orchestras, with many ensembles, including Baltimore’s, struggling to win back arts patrons because of the pandemic — a crisis that has exacerbated long-term declines in ticket sales and forced arts groups to look for new ways to reach audiences, including through livestreaming.The Baltimore Symphony recently announced that it would cut 10 concerts from its coming season at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, its longtime home, amid tepid ticket sales. Attendance in Baltimore during the 2021-22 season averaged at 40 percent of capacity, down from 62 percent in 2018-19.Heyward said that he was confident audiences would eventually return, and added that he would work to make the orchestra more relatable by programming a wider variety of works, featuring a greater diversity of performers and moving some concerts away from traditional venues.“It’s simply a knack of being able to really understand what the community needs and listening to what the community needs and then being able to get them in the door,” he said.Although Heyward has been based in Europe for much of his career, he has started to appear more frequently in the United States. Last spring, he led several concerts in Baltimore, including the orchestra’s first performance of Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15, as well as a benefit concert for Ukraine. He is scheduled to appear with the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra at Lincoln Center in early August, leading a program that features the violinist Joshua Bell.In 2017, when Heyward was 25, he was widely praised for a series of performances with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, when he substituted at the last minute for an ill conductor. That program included a premiere by the composer Tania León, as well as works by Stravinsky, Glinka and Leonard Bernstein.“He knew when to lead and when to follow, effortlessly balancing his roles as a natural showman and sensitive collaborator in service to the music,” the critic Rick Schultz wrote in The Los Angeles Times.The conducting field has long struggled with a lack of diversity. In recent years, there has been only one Black music director in the top tier of American orchestras, and just a handful of leaders have been Latino or of Asian descent.With turnover expected soon at several major orchestras, there are signs of change. This season, Nathalie Stutzmann takes the podium at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. She will be only the second woman to lead a top-tier American orchestra.Heyward will also be among the Baltimore Symphony’s youngest leaders. He began studying cello at 10. A graduate of the Boston Conservatory, he later served as an assistant conductor of the Hallé Orchestra in England, under its longtime music director, Mark Elder.Heyward said that his own experience of falling in love with classical music had convinced him of its enduring appeal.“If a 10-year-old boy from Charleston, South Carolina, with no music education background, with no musicians in the family, can be enamored and amazed by this, by the best art form there is — classical music — then I think anyone can,” he said. “I plan on trying to prove that in many, many ways.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Aftershock’ Review: A Moving Ode to the Black Family

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      Black mothers are dying from childbirth at alarming rates. A new documentary explains why.There’s no getting around just how terribly sad it feels watching “Aftershock,” the new documentary from the directors Paula Eiselt (“93Queen”) and Tonya Lewis Lee. After all, it spotlights the tragic deaths of two Black mothers in New York City who died from childbirth-related complications — Shamony Gibson, in 2019, and Amber Isaac, in 2020 — leaving behind young children, partners, families and communities gutted by grief.But alongside the despair, there is also light in this documentary. Gibson’s partner, Omari Maynard, and her mother, Shawnee Benton Gibson, a medical social worker with a background in reproductive justice activism, had been mourning their loss for a year and a half when Maynard reached out to the newly bereaved partner of Isaac, Bruce McIntyre. The two men soon banded together with Benton Gibson and others to organize for change.Eiselt and Lee successfully put a human face on the now widely reported crisis of Black maternal deaths, which allows them to unpack the underlying factors that have led to the crisis without bogging down the narrative in a deluge of statistics. Yet scenes with the main subjects sometimes feel more staged than vérité, and the audience walks away wishing we knew them better as people.Still, the images of Maynard and McIntyre parenting their children in the midst of grief and outrage, and expressing vulnerability as well as strength, act as a powerful counternarrative to pervasive stereotypes about absentee Black fathers. “Aftershock” is a moving ode to Black families in a society where too many forces work to tear them apart.AftershockNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More

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      in Music

      Angel Blue Withdraws From Opera, Citing ‘Blackface’ in Netrebko’s ‘Aida’

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      The American soprano Angel Blue said she would not appear at the Arena di Verona after the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko and other performers wore dark makeup in its production of “Aida.”A leading American soprano, Angel Blue, announced this week that she was withdrawing from her planned debut at the Arena di Verona in Italy to protest its use of “blackface makeup” in a production of Verdi’s “Aida” that starred the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko.“The use of blackface under any circumstances, artistic or otherwise, is a deeply misguided practice based on archaic theatrical traditions which have no place in modern society,” Blue, a Black soprano with a growing international career, said in a statement on social media, adding that she would withdraw from her upcoming performances in “La Traviata,” another Verdi opera. “It is offensive, humiliating and outright racist. Full stop.”Many leading opera companies, including the Metropolitan Opera in New York, have only recently stopped the practice of having white singers darken their skin with stage makeup to perform the title roles in “Aida” and “Otello,” long after minstrel shows, blackface roles and other types of performances that rely on makeup that echoes racist caricatures disappeared from many stages. But the practice is still common in parts of Europe and Russia, and Netrebko has been a vocal proponent of wearing dark makeup.In an interview on Friday, Blue said she was disturbed when she saw photos of the production, including some that showed dancers and singers in dark makeup, circulating on social media on Monday evening while she was in Paris for another performance.“I was shocked; I just felt really weird in my spirit,” she said. “I just felt like I couldn’t go and sing and associate myself with this tradition.”Netrebko, who is trying to rebuild her career after losing a number of engagements following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine because of her history of support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, posted photos on her Instagram this week showing her in extremely dark makeup and braids as she sang the role of Aida, an Ethiopian princess, in Verona.One of the photos the soprano Anna Netrebko shared on Instagram of the makeup she wore in a production of “Aida” at the Arena di Verona in Italy.Soon, Netrebko’s Instagram page was flooded with more than 1,000 comments, with many people denouncing her for using makeup that they said was racist and recalled blackface. She was not the only one in “Aida” who had darkened her skin: Some of her co-stars performed in the dark makeup, as did a different cast that appeared in the opera when it opened last month.A spokesman for Netrebko did not respond to a request for comment on Friday. Netrebko has been a vocal defender of the practice, arguing that it helps maintain the authenticity of centuries-old works. When the Met tried to stop her from using makeup to darken her skin during a production of “Aida” in 2018, she went to a tanning salon instead. In 2019, appearing with dark makeup in a production of “Aida” at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, she wrote on Instagram, “Black Face and Black Body for Ethiopian princess, for Verdi greatest opera! YES!”The Arena di Verona noted in a statement that it had been performing this production of “Aida” for two decades, and that it was well known when Blue agreed to appear this summer.“Every country has different roots, and their cultural and social structures developed along different historical and cultural paths,” it said in a statement. “Sensibilities and approaches on the same subject might widely vary in different parts of the world.”It added: “We have no reason nor intent whatsoever to offend and disturb anyone’s sensibility.”While Netrebko has not addressed the recent controversy, her husband, the tenor Yusif Eyvazov, who also appeared in the production of “Aida” in Verona, lashed out at Blue. In a social media post, he called Blue’s decision “disgusting,” and questioned why she had not withdrawn last month when “Aida” opened, with a different cast that also used dark makeup. (That cast included the Ukrainian soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska as “Aida.”)Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, where Eyvazov is a regular performer, sent a letter to Eyvazov on Friday calling his remarks “hateful,” according to a copy of the letter obtained by The New York Times.“There is no room at the Met for artists who are so meanspirited in their thinking,” Gelb wrote in the letter.Gelb, who cut ties with Netrebko this year because of her previous support for Putin, said in an interview that he had not yet decided whether he would penalize Eyvazov. “We’re considering what steps we might take,” he said.Blue said her decision was not personal, and that she was not targeting Netrebko or her husband.“My decision doesn’t have anything to do with them,” she said in the interview. “My decision has to do with my convictions,” she added, saying that she had felt moved to take a stand against “something that is hurtful to people who look like me.”Blue said she hoped that more opera houses would eliminate blackface as they work to bring diversity to the stage.“In order to keep opera relevant in today’s society, there’s no place for blackface,” she said. “I felt hurt by what I saw because I feel like that’s a tradition that they’re trying to hold onto that hurts people.”Eyvazov’s manager said he was unavailable for comment on Friday.The decision by Blue, who has become a favorite at the Met Opera in recent seasons and who appeared this summer at the Paris Opera in Gounod’s “Faust,” was praised by many fellow singers and American opera executives.The revival of “Aida” in Verona is among Netrebko’s first staged opera engagements since her return to performing in late April as she tried to repair her career after being shunned in the United States and parts of Europe for her ties to Putin. More