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      in Theater

      Calling All Tap Dance Kids (It’s Not the Acting Kid or the Singing Kid)

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      The challenge of casting the Encores! revival of “The Tap Dance Kid” exposes some of the complications of tap, show business and Black history.If you’re going to stage a revival of the seldom performed but dearly remembered 1983 Broadway musical “The Tap Dance Kid” — as Encores! at New York City Center is doing, Wednesday through Sunday — one of the main challenges is to find someone to play the title role.That character is Willie Sheridan, a 10-year-old boy whose dream is to become a Broadway tap dancer and who has the talent to do it. The performer who plays him has to be like Willie: a young Black boy who can act and sing and tap dance at the center of an old-fashioned musical. And in recent decades that particular combination hasn’t been very common.Some reasons are right there in the show’s story. It’s about a family — an upper-middle-class Black one, groundbreaking for a Broadway musical in 1983 — and the main conflicts are generational. The principal obstacle to Willie’s dream is his father.Hinton Battle in a scene from “The Tap Dance Kid” in 1984.Martha Swope/New York Public Library for the Performing ArtsTo the father, a lawyer, tap is not just antiquated but also shameful, tied to slavery and the racial humiliations from which he has worked to insulate those he loves. To the boy and his dancing uncle and the ghost of his dancing grandfather, tap is beautiful, something to be proud of.This is an argument about the past and progress, and it reflects some of the real-life attitudes that continue to affect the popularity of tap, especially among Black people, and the potential pool of tap dance kids.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie,” Jared Grimes, the choreographer of the Encores! revival, said in an interview.“I knew that it was going to be tough to find a Willie”: Bello and Grimes, rehearsing at City Center. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesDuring auditions, Alexander Bello stood out — for his acting and singing. His tap skills weren’t quite up to the level that Grimes was expecting. “I was not going to settle,” Grimes said. “This show isn’t called Acting Kid or Singing Kid.”But Bello — who once put “Broadway audition” on his Christmas list and is already a Broadway veteran at 13 — was determined to get the part. “I was amazed that almost all the creatives were Black,” he said. “I had never seen a room so melanated and I wanted to be in that room.” And so, while attending school and doing eight shows a week of “Caroline or Change” on Broadway, he squeezed in a month of tap boot camp with DeWitt Fleming Jr. (who plays Willie’s grandfather).“Alex earned that role,” said Kenny Leon, the director of the Encores! production.Bello, here with Trevor Jackson, squeezed in a month of tap boot camp. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesIn certain ways, this was an echo of the 1980s. Danny Daniels — who won a Tony Award for choreographing the original production and who, like most of the original creative team, was white — once told me about the trouble that team had finding a Willie.“I asked the producers, ‘Where are you going to find the Black kids? Black kids don’t tap anymore,’” said Daniels, who died in 2017. “So we put out a call for Black kid tap dancers. Nobody showed up.’”More precisely, nobody showed up who didn’t need tap training. Daniels started a tap boot camp. The first Willie it produced was Alfonso Ribeiro, who soon left for a successful TV career (and later showed off his tap skills as Carlton on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”). Among the many to follow during the show’s two-year run and national tour was Dulé Hill, whose own successful TV career, most recently in “The Wonder Years” reboot, is keeping him too busy to appear in the Encores! revival.Savion Glover in the 1980s Broadway production of “The Tap Dance Kid.” PhotofestAnother Willie was Savion Glover, the tap dance kid who most changed what it meant to be one. Under the guidance of Gregory Hines and older Black tap dancers, Glover became the heir apparent to their tradition in the Broadway shows “Black and Blue” and “Jelly’s Last Jam.”The 1996 show “Bring in ‘da Noise, Bring in ‘da Funk,” which Glover choreographed and starred in, reclaimed tap as Black history, both polemically and rhythmically, and brought it into a hip-hop present that people his age could see as their own. In a monologue, when Glover rejected Broadway styles as “not even tap dancing” but “arms and legs and a big ol’ smile,” he could have been describing Daniels’s choreography for “Tap Dance Kid”: the sequins and high kicks, more razzle-dazzle than rhythm.After “Bring in ‘da Noise” closed, tap on Broadway mostly reverted to its old ways. But Glover, with his unsurpassed virtuosity and more streetwise image, had inspired a generation of young hoofers. While deeply connected to tap’s roots in jazz, they made the form contemporary and pushed it to new technical heights — and largely away from the singing and acting of “Tap Dance Kid.” Among this cohort was Grimes, now 36.Bello, rehearsing with the actor Adrienne Walker.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAs Grimes demonstrated in the 2013 Broadway production “After Midnight,” he is a tap dancer of astonishing head-to-toe ability. But, unlike many Glover inspired hoofers, he also sees himself in the all-around entertainer line of Hines. Alongside his flourishing performing career — he’s in the upcoming Broadway revival of “Funny Girl” — he’s found acclaim as a choreographer of regional productions, including an updated “42nd Street.”Grimes said that he jumped at the chance to revisit “Tap Dance Kid,” which he called “the musical that every tap dancer dreams of getting a hold of.”The context has changed from the early ’80s, and from the late ’90s, too: “When I was coming up,” Grimes said, “if I looked to my side, there were other Black kids that were already tap kings and queens, but now almost none of my students are Black.”Kenny Leon lifting Bello after a rehearsal.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSpeaking for kids today, Bello said tap is the dance style they “are most likely to overlook.”“Because you either think of it as Shirley Temple or as something guys did in the ’70s,” he said. “To other kids, it seems like tap never really modernized, but that’s not true.”Ayodele Casel, a tap dancer of the post-Glover generation whose career has been soaring lately, said that pockets of young Black tap dancers exist but that they don’t necessarily see themselves on Broadway because opportunities have been scarce. Yet, speaking more broadly, she noted the significance of someone like her, steeped in tap culture, being specially hired to handle the tap choreography for “Funny Girl.”“There is still a gap,” she said, “between the actors and singers, who have long been able to get by with tap basics, and the serious tap dancers, who haven’t had much incentive to train in acting and singing. But I think people, artists and producers, are starting to think about tap differently now.”Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAlong these lines, the background of the creative team, more than of the cast, might be the most significant change in the Encores! revival. The music remains the same, by Henry Krieger in a mode similar to his “Dreamgirls.” But Lydia Diamond, who has adapted the book for the Encores! production, has shifted the story from the 1980s to the 1950s — when the lines of racial struggle were more legible and tap was losing its place at the center of American popular culture.“We’re trying to show how something as precious as the history of tap is affecting this family who’s fighting to find a place in the ’50s,” Grimes said. He said that he’s been helping to get more accurate (and Black) tap history into the script and a sense of tap in transition into the choreography.“I want to show tap as storytelling and crazy rhythms,” he said, “but also tip our hat to vaudeville and comedy and what might be seen as what we had to do to get into the door. We can do that with integrity.”Grimes said this after a long day of rehearsal, eager to rehearse some more. “The security guards have to kick me out,” he said. “That’s love, man. I hope that ‘Tap Dance Kid’ will get a whole new crop of people to feel like that about tap.” More

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      in Music

      Remembering Greg Tate, Critic and Catalyst

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherGreg Tate, the pioneering critic, died last December at 64. His 1992 anthology “Flyboy in the Buttermilk: Essays on Contemporary America” is a startling document of the innovations taking place in the Black music, film and art of the time, and also a guidebook for a sui generis style of writing that was deeply lyrical on its own terms.Tate’s criticism was political, empathetic and skeptical all at once. It valued exuberant expressiveness along with a mischievous twist, and sought out the most provocative creators and rewarded them with close attention and, when warranted, loving scrutiny.On this week’s Popcast, conversations with two of Tate’s contemporaries about the fertile Black writing and arts scene in New York in the late 1980s and early ’90s, the overlap between creators and critics, and the impression Tate left on his peers and on those who came after.Guests:Michael A. Gonzales, who writes about music and true crime and is the co-author of “Bring the Noise: A Guide to Rap Music and Hip-Hop Culture”Joan Morgan, program director at the Center for Black Visual Culture, N.Y.U. Institute of African American Affairs, and the author of “When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down”Connect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      in Music

      Review: In ‘Intimate Apparel,’ Letting the Seamstress Sing

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      Lynn Nottage’s play about a Black woman in 1905 becomes an opera, with music by Ricky Ian Gordon, that forefronts voices ignored by history.We begin with joyful ragtime, that musical theater fallback for telling Black stories of the early 20th century.But the sound is muffled, distorted. The party is elsewhere in the boardinghouse where our heroine, Esther, a shy, plain woman of 35, sits in her room sewing corsets and camisoles for socialites and streetwalkers. She is too serious and too ambitious to descend to the parlor and cakewalk with the revelers.So is “Intimate Apparel.” In musicalizing Lynn Nottage’s play of the same title, Ricky Ian Gordon, working with a text by Nottage herself, wants more for Esther than a quick dance and a slick tune. A woman so bent on betterment in an age that makes it almost impossible deserves the most serious and ambitious musical treatment available — and gets it in the knockout Lincoln Center Theater production, directed by Bartlett Sher, that opened at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater on Monday.That the play was excellent to begin with was no guarantee of a viable libretto. But looking back on its 2004 Roundabout Theater Company premiere, starring Viola Davis as Esther, you can see that “Intimate Apparel” already had the necessary ingredients for a powerful opera: spine, scope and poetry.The spine remains neatly articulated. The first scene quickly establishes that Esther (Kearstin Piper Brown) has the discipline and drive to make a career of her handiwork; with the savings she sews into the lining of her crazy quilt she plans one day to open a beauty salon. The scene also establishes her pride, as she rejects the last-chance men who come to the parties given by her landlady, Mrs. Dickson.“Pride’ll leave you lonely,” Mrs. Dickson (Adrienne Danrich) warns.We next meet two of her clients, whose lives express in contrasting ways the limitations Esther hopes to escape. Mrs. Van Buren (Naomi Louisa O’Connell) has every luxury a white woman of privilege could want, including the pink silk crepe de chine corset that Esther brings to her boudoir for a fitting. But Mrs. Van Buren, trained only to be a wealthy man’s wife, has no options when her husband loses interest.Though poor and Black, Mayme (Krysty Swann) is likewise at men’s mercy for her few luxuries — which, amusingly, include the same corset as Mrs. Van Buren’s. (“What she got, you want,/What you got, she want,” Esther comments.) Instead of an absent husband Mayme has johns who are often vile or violent, yet she is closer to Mrs. Van Buren than either might like to think.Brown and Arnold Livingston Geis as Mr. Marks, a fabric salesman, in the opera at Lincoln Center’s Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesEsther’s friendship with the women is more than professional but nevertheless circumscribed by class and race. (She has never entered Mrs. Van Buren’s house through the front door, and presumably never entered a brothel at all.) Her third professional friendship is even more delicate. Mr. Marks (Arnold Livingston Geis) sells fabric on Orchard Street, saving the most beautiful bolts for her. Though he is the only man ever to recognize and encourage her gift, he is literally untouchable: an Orthodox Jew.But he is not the only man to flirt with her. Esther is surprised — and then, almost against her will, gratified — to receive a letter from a Barbadian laborer working on the Panama Canal. It seems that George Armstrong (Justin Austin) is looking for a pen pal to counter, with beautiful words, the filth and harshness of his job. As Esther can neither read nor write, she depends on Mrs. Dickson to tell her what George is saying; and then on Mrs. Van Buren and Mayme to forge suitably Cyrano-like replies.I will say no more about the plot except that at the end of Act I Armstrong arrives in New York to marry Esther, who wears an exquisite dress made with fabric she bought from Mr. Marks. If she is not what might have been expected from their correspondence, neither, she gradually realizes, is he. In Act II we learn why.Many plays sewn so tightly unravel completely as they stretch toward their crisis. Not “Intimate Apparel”; with its eye on the big picture, it maintains both its integrity and its tension to the end. Never stinting on detail — or, apparently, period research — Nottage forces the audience to keep sight of the larger pressures pushing all her characters into situations they must eventually escape more explosively.I focus on the story because it is usually the problem with opera, as books are with musicals. Nottage has cut perhaps half of her play to make room for Gordon’s music, and in doing so has made the smart if painful choice to retain only what is most narrowly tailored to the plot and yet most allusive. What we call poetry in opera is not really the verse (though Nottage’s libretto is lightly rhymed where necessary) but the rich texture of everything doing double duty.Courtship by mail: Brown and Justin Austin as George Armstrong.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSo too with Gordon’s lush yet intricate score, which soars into the timeless atmosphere of operatic writing (though he calls his hybrid works “operacals”) while always regrounding us in the specifics of period and character. In numbers like “No One Does It for Us,” repeated choruses do more than ram home lovely melodies; they underline the similarities between Esther and Mayme, who sing it. And it is not for nothing that George’s letter arias from Panama are typically accompanied by a ghostly chorus of other men, as if to question their strange intimacy.None of these smart choices would matter if the performers could not make hay of them, but Sher has assembled and tuned an unusually fine cast of opera singers who can actually act. Brown is especially heartbreaking as Esther — and astonishingly tireless in a huge role. (Chabrelle Williams takes over for the Wednesday and Sunday matinees.) Her scenes with Geis as Mr. Marks are so gentle and rich in subtext you don’t want them to end. But all six leads are terrific, and the ensemble of eight other singers performs dozens of roles, each quickly and perfectly etched.Sher’s staging in the 299-seat Newhouse, on a simple turntable set by Michael Yeargan, is a marvel of constant movement that never feels busy, and the costumes by Catherine Zuber are exquisite even when plain. As always, it is a joy to hear an opera in an intimate space with acoustics so clear and natural — the sound is by Marc Salzberg — that the captions projected on the walls of the set are rarely needed. And though the voices are prioritized in Gordon’s orchestration for two pianos, the presence of the instruments, on platforms above the stage, is not incidental. As played on Friday evening by Nathaniel LaNasa and Brent Funderburk, they seemed to have dramatic roles of their own, representing not only the need of women, especially Black women, for emotional independence, but also the world of 1905 that forbids it.In that sense “Intimate Apparel” — even more as an opera than as a play — is an act of rescue. When Esther tells Mrs. Van Buren, as they write the first letter to George, “My life ain’t really worthy of words,” she means that she isn’t special enough to be made permanent on paper. That isn’t true; as Nottage and now Gordon have shown, she is worthy of even more. She is worthy of music that is finally worthy of her.Intimate ApparelThrough March 6 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, Manhattan; lct.org. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. More

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      in Movies

      Carol Speed, Vixen of the Blaxploitation Era, Dies at 76

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      In the mid-70s, thanks to two beloved B movies, she had a moment in the spotlight and enjoyed celebrity status in the Black press.Carol Speed, the leading lady of the cult blaxploitation films “The Mack” and “Abby,” who used her sex appeal for poignant drama in one and campy horror in the other, died on Jan. 14 in Muskogee, Okla. She was 76.Her family announced her death in a statement published online. It did not specify the cause.A button-nosed Californian, Ms. Speed became a B-movie headliner in the 1970s playing a demon and a prostitute. For those roles, her fresh-faced prettiness provided a dramatic contrast, making it all the more striking for her to portray a character in the throes of lurid desire or enmeshed in a melancholy plight.The blaxploitation genre — a burst of low-budget movies in the 1970s that starred Black actors and dealt with gritty urban themes — often featured female characters who were forced against their will into danger and squalor. But it also accorded them powers unusual for women in mainstream Hollywood movies of the time. Like blaxploitation’s most famous actress, Pam Grier, Ms. Speed fit that mold.In the horror film “Abby” (1974), she played the title character, a middle-class marriage counselor in Louisville, Ky., who dotes on her husband and sings in the choir of the church where he preaches — until she is possessed by an ancient Nigerian devil known as Eshu. It was the sort of movie where the resident exorcist wears bell bottoms and a luxurious mustache, and where Satan’s playing field lies under a disco ball.Ms. Speed’s smile caused her to scrunch up her face, a seemingly sweet gesture that she turned into a twisted instrument for expressions of lust and violent glee. During one sequence, she toggled back and forth between embodying a distraught loving wife and a demon with super strength.A few months after it was released on Christmas Day, The New York Times called “Abby” among the most financially successful B movies of its time. Yet following a lawsuit from Warner Bros. that accused it of stealing the plot of “The Exorcist” (1973), the movie was pulled from theaters. In the years to come, viewing “Abby” became a rare and sought-after opportunity for fans.Ms. Speed, left, with Terry Carter and Juanita Moore in a scene from “Abby.”Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesMs. Speed appeared in several other blaxploitation movies, most notably “The Mack” (1973), a classic of the genre in which she played the girlfriend and head prostitute of the pimp protagonist (played by Max Julien, who died this month). In the 1970s, Ms. Speed also acted in other low-budget movies and on TV shows, including “Julia” and “Sanford and Son.”“Seems like everywhere I turn I’m getting one offer or another,” she told Jet magazine in 1973.Ms. Speed made frequent appearances in the Black press of that era as a quotable and photogenic celebrity. She was among the “Bachelorettes ’72” featured in Ebony, and she was on the July 1976 cover of Jet, which said she “often has been characterized as a sex symbol.” A photograph of her at a 1975 charity tennis tournament appeared in Jet alongside pictures of Bill Cosby and Aretha Franklin at the same event. Her semi-autobiographical 1980 novel, “Inside Black Hollywood,” was “scandalous” and became “the talk of the town,” according to Jet.Carol Ann Bennett Stewart was born on March 14, 1945, in Bakersfield, Calif., to Cora Valrie Stewart and Freddie Lee Stewart. At San Jose City College, she staged a popular production of “The Bronx Is Next,” Sonia Sanchez’s play about Black revolutionaries. She soon received a scholarship to study at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco.Her career started at a casino in Reno, Nev., where she worked as a backup singer to the pop star Bobbie Gentry.Ms. Speed’s real life had its share of blaxploitation-style drama. While she was filming “The Mack,” her boyfriend was fatally shot in Berkeley, Calif. Around that time, she was struggling to afford her home in Hollywood Hills, trying to support her son, Mark Speed, and throwing another man out of her house. He left, but he took many of her possessions with him — even her bedspread.Then Ms. Speed was cast in the movie for which she would become best known. “Abby took me out of California into a new adventure,” she said in an interview published on a website devoted to William Girdler, the director of “Abby.”“Abby” was among the most financially successful B movies of its time. But following a lawsuit from Warner Bros. that accused it of stealing the plot of “The Exorcist,” it was pulled from theaters. LMPC via Getty ImagesShe is survived by a sister, Barbara Morrison, and a grandson.During the filming of “Abby,” Ms. Speed said, multiple tornadoes tore through Louisville, and a mansion where the cast had attended a lavish party was destroyed. When Ms. Speed appeared on set in her demonic get-up, the generator started malfunctioning.Perhaps she inhabited her role too well. Her colleagues were rattled, Ms. Speed said, adding, “The crew had almost started to believe that I was possessed by the powerful sex-crazed Eshu.” More

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      in Movies

      Kamau Bell: Bill Cosby Is Key to Understanding America

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      When W. Kamau Bell was growing up, Bill Cosby was the “wallpaper of Black America” and an inspiration, Bell said in a recent interview. Bell’s new documentary, “We Need to Talk About Cosby,” surveys the star’s long career and cultural impact, as well as the accusations of sexual assault that culminated in his conviction, on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, in 2018. Cosby was freed from prison in June 2021 after an appeals court ruled that his due process rights had been violated.The four-part documentary — which premieres on Showtime on Sunday — consists of clips from his shows and standup act, conversations with women who accused Cosby and a parade of other interviewees who try to process the Cosby story and his legacy.As a comedian and host of shows like CNN’s “United Shades of America,” Bell said he has become known as a guy who is willing to have difficult conversations. But the one about Cosby was tougher than most, generating criticism from both sides: Some Cosby accusers didn’t talk to him because they didn’t want to be part of a project that includes Cosby’s achievements. At the same time, Bell said, he has been accused of tearing down a Black role model when he could be examining white transgressors instead.Last week, Cosby criticized the project through his spokesman, Andrew Wyatt, who added that Cosby continues to deny all allegations against him. Wyatt also praised Cosby’s work in the entertainment industry. “Mr. Cosby has spent more than 50 years standing with the excluded,” he said in a statement.As a reporter who covered Bill Cosby’s trials for The New York Times, I am familiar with the accusations against him. But the documentary sets those accusations in a deep context of American culture and Cosby’s career.Recently I spoke to Bell by video call about making the series, and about his belief that Cosby’s story is a story about America. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.Hi Kamau. How are you doing?[Laughs.] You’ve covered this story a lot, so I think you probably have some sense of how I’m doing. And then add Black into it.You’ve described to me the trepidation you felt about getting involved in something that had the potential to be “toxic.” What do you mean by that?We reached out to people, and we got so many “no”s so quickly. At the time, he was still in prison, and I thought, Oh maybe we can finally have the productive Bill Cosby conversation. But with every note I got from people who were really doing well in show business, what I’m hearing is, “This is a bad idea.” Not that they would say that outright, but the feeling was, No, I don’t want to touch that. Maybe they didn’t want to touch it with me, but I think generally they don’t want to touch it.Why would they say that?I mean specifically for Black people, whether you were involved indirectly or not, it’s hard to have a productive conversation about Bill Cosby without frustrating some of your audience who still wants to support him, whether they believe he did these things or not..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How did the idea for the documentary come about?The idea came very naturally in a conversation with [Boardwalk Pictures Production]. I liked their work, they liked my work, and we started talking about comedian documentaries. Generally, there are not enough great comedian documentaries, and then through that conversation it was, “Could you do one about a comedian who has fallen?” There are any number to hold up, but Bill Cosby was the one we talked about. And I’ve been thinking about this Bill Cosby conversation for years.What did you hope to achieve?When I started making it, as we say in the doc, he was in prison. It sort of felt like the Bill Cosby story was, in large part, over. So maybe now we can have the conversation, and it’s a conversation I was already having in my head and with other people. Seeing people online trying to have it, the conversation wasn’t happening in a productive way.We have to learn something from this. If we don’t have the conversation, I don’t think we’re going to learn. The guy that I believed he was when I was growing up and when I was a young adult — that guy would want me to learn something from this.So on some level, your example, Bill Cosby, led me to try to figure this out.So what did you figure out?[Kierna Mayo, the former editor in chief of Ebony magazine] said something to the effect of, “Bill Cosby is key to understanding America.” To me, that’s what this is about.There are two runaway forces of oppression in America: One, how we treat nonwhite people. The other is how we have treated women through the history of this country. And if you look at Bill Cosby’s career, you can see things he did that makes this better and makes this worse. I believe there’s a lot to learn there.Kierna Mayo, the former editor in chief of Ebony, is among the interviewees who try to process the Cosby legacy in “We Need to Talk About Cosby.”ShowtimeYou use a timeline device in a powerful way that allows you to talk about the highlights of his career and also locate the timing of the accusations against him.I don’t like when documentaries tell some personal story but they don’t connect to history. Because you want to know what was happening when that happened — that helps give us the sense of why this is even more interesting.It doesn’t make sense to talk about Bill Cosby as if he was a solo man in the world. You have to really see how the boys-will-be-boys culture of Hollywood, specifically in the ’60s, invites a kind of behavior that allows predators to hide.It also lays this timeline of his career, the timeline of America and the timeline of the accusations on top of each other, which helps you see them in a new way.You raise the question about who else knew at the time about the accusations against Cosby, but you don’t come up with many specific answers. Did you try to talk to senior figures in the industry?Yeah. but we didn’t have access to any of those people. And I’m not an investigative journalist, so there’s a point at which I have to accept that I’m here to take all that we know and start to figure out what were the circumstances through which this went down.Ultimately, the bigger thing is it’s clear that the industry overall is not doing a good job, and the people who run the industry are probably still not doing the best job they can do. That’s the bigger issue to me.At times, it seems that the “We” in “We need to talk about Cosby” refers mainly to a Black audience. Are there some complexities of the Cosby case that are particular to Black people?I would say the “We” is those of us who feel connected to Bill Cosby. Now it just so happens that a lot of those people are Black people. But let’s be clear: He was America’s dad, not Black America’s dad. He was universal. Everybody who worked on this, no matter what their race was, if they were of a certain generation, they were like, “Yeah, I watched that show and felt like I was part of that family, too.”Even this interview is complicated: For a lot of people, I will be tearing down a Black man in a white newspaper in front of a white man. And the question is, why isn’t this interview about Harvey Weinstein, or Trump, or other people who have had allegations of sexual assault? Those are the questions that are coming at me now on social media — like, why this man?What do you say to your detractors?I learned long ago you can’t win those battles on social media, so I’m sort of allowing them to happen. I’m going to handle it by talking to you and other outlets, and by making sure I talk to Black press outlets, places where maybe those people will go. But I don’t think there’s any resolving it. If those people watch it, they will learn it is a more nuanced conversation than I think they believe it is.This is another trite thing to say, but we have to be on the right side of history here. Can this be an opportunity for a large percentage of this country to actually work to make the system and structures better, from the highest levels of show business and corporate America, through working-class America, all the way down to how sex education is taught in schools? There are so many levels of this — those of us who want to be on the right side of history have to do the work to rebuild these systems. You ask many times in the documentary, “Who is Bill Cosby now?” Did you come to a conclusion yourself?Somebody who has always taught us about America and is still teaching us about America, even if it’s in ways he does not want to. And it is very important for us to learn all of the lessons of Bill Cosby if we’re actually going to be a better society.Also embedded in that, and it’s hard to say it, but in the greater context: [Cosby is] one of the key figures for Black America and America in the 20th century. And one of the greatest standup comedians of all time. And the creator of one of the best sitcoms of all time. And, throughout a lot of his career, an advocate for Black excellence. But if you want to engage with that, you have to engage with the other stuff.Cosby was released from prison before you finished the documentary. How did his release change things?I didn’t want this, but it gave it a more immediate feel — this is an active situation again. He’s out in the world again, which means all the defenders are out there in the world again and feel emboldened. So it feels both more important to tell this story and scary to tell this story, because people are invested in protecting him.The most valuable conversation to me isn’t the film — it’s the conversation that we all have after we watch the film. No matter what you think about Bill Cosby’s story, it is critical that we create a society that treats survivors of sexual assault better. More

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      in Music

      In 'Black No More,' the Evolution of Black Music, and a Man’s Soul

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      The new show “Black No More,” inspired by a 1931 satirical novel about race relations, has “the point of view of people who are very much products of now.”A Black man in New York City, during the Harlem Renaissance, is hoping for a life without bigotry. This is Harlem after all, a Black enclave, the epicenter of culture and creativity. Here, he’d have an easier time in getting along.Or so he thought. He soon learns that utopia is an illusion, that racism prevails no matter the location. In the North, he discovers, the racism is subtle: He’s somehow not the right fit for his job, though his supervisor, a white man, says he’s doing well. Others think he’s too uppity, so he is let go.Distraught, he undergoes a procedure to turn himself white and retreats to Atlanta. There he sees how prejudiced whites speak of Black people when they aren’t in the room: The “n” word is tossed around with the hard “-er.” He soon realizes that his new skin tone can’t save him, either. The life he wants means nothing if he loses his soul along the way.This is the plot of “Black No More,” a new musical presented by the New Group and inspired by George S. Schuyler’s 1931 novel of the same name. The show, an expansive, Afrofuturistic take on race relations in America now in previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center in Manhattan, is set against an equally vast arrangement of jazz, gospel, R&B, hip-hop and reggae meant to connect the past and present. By using older and newer styles of music, coupled with the protagonist’s struggles to rise above the same discrimination endured today, the show explores how little race relations have progressed.Jones, far right, working on the show’s choreography with cast members, including Lillias White, center.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesAnd it almost didn’t see the light of day.The screenwriter John Ridley, who wrote the show’s book, was inspired to adapt the story after reading Schuyler’s novel over a decade ago, before he’d written his Oscar-winning adaptation of “12 Years a Slave.” “I read it and was really taken with the wit and unbridled satire,” he said. “So much of the writing was timely and timeless and painful and painless.”He initially wrote it as a screenplay in 2013, but couldn’t get financing for a sci-fi-inspired film about Black existence. Someone suggested trying to have it produced as a play, but that also proved to be a tough road. Of the stage directors he reached out to, Ridley said that Scott Elliott, the artistic director of the New Group, was the only one who expressed interest. He read the novel and thought it would work best as a musical. “It had the possibility to be an amazing theatrical satire, but with humanity in it, with real people, not like ‘wink-wink satire,’” Elliott said.There was just one problem: Ridley didn’t like musicals. “I was like, ‘Well, yeah, but that’s OK,” Elliott said. “Let’s go on this journey together and see what happens.” Ridley’s view on musicals changed after meeting with Tariq Trotter, better known as Black Thought of the Roots, and seeing “Hamilton.” He said that show convinced him that musicals can be vehicles for sending a strong message.They enlisted Trotter, who wrote the lyrics and developed the music with Anthony Tidd, James Poyser and Daryl Waters, and the Tony-winning choreographer Bill T. Jones. Jeffrey Seller, the lead producer of “Hamilton,” owns the commercial rights. And with all the star power (Broadway veterans, including Brandon Victor Dixon, Lillias White and Ephraim Sykes), it seems “Black No More” could very well be destined for Broadway.John Ridley with the show’s associate director Monet during a recent rehearsal. Marc. J. FranklinAmong other themes, the show holds up a mirror to those in the Black community who aspire to whiteness. The protagonist, Max Disher (played by Dixon), decides to lighten his skin after meeting a white woman, Helen Givens (Jennifer Damiano), in the Savoy Ballroom during a night out. That he’d be willing to sacrifice his identity after a chance encounter with the woman is a longstanding critique of some Black men: No matter how much they’re supported by Black women, they still see dating white women as the ultimate societal prize.The musical also delves into the internal baggage that comes with Blackness, the weight of external pressure applied by those who look like you but don’t know your circumstances. How do you stay true to yourself without disappointing your peers? And what does it mean to be real Black anyway?“For me, the lesson to be learned is that there is a cost,” Dixon said. “There is a cost to the choices we force each other to make to become happy, accepted members of society. It’s time for us to re-examine those costs. Is this the construct in which we can really rise and grow and evolve as a human population?”“Black No More” begins amicably, with a flurry of Black and white ensemble dancers gliding in unison across the stage, surrounding a barber’s chair used for the skin-altering experiment. Out walks Trotter, who plays Junius Crookman, the doctor performing the procedure. He paints Harlem as a deceptive place where dreams don’t always come true. “You’ll find all things … both high and low,” he says in his opening monologue. “Here where every Black baby must try to grow.”The music of “Black No More” largely fits this era, smoothly transitioning from swing jazz to big band to soul. Some of the verses have a rap lilt to them — Trotter, after all, is the lead vocalist of the Roots — but his writing here explores a broad range of musical textures, conjuring old Harlem while conveying music’s full spectrum. After Max becomes white, the music becomes softer and more delicate, sounding almost like bluegrass or folkish in a way. Near the end of the show, two white women sing over what sounds like an R&B track, a genre typically associated with Black women. “Black No More” is full of this sort of cross-pollination.“I’ve always been very big on allowing the universe to sort of write the songs, allowing the material to work itself out,” Trotter said. “These songs represent the different elements of Black music. What we arrived at is something that feels like an education in the evolution of Black music, which, at its core, would be the evolution of American music.”Tamika Lawrence and Brandon Victor Dixon during a dress rehearsal.Douglas Segars for The New York TimesThe Harlem Renaissance is widely seen as an artistic movement in which Black creators like Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston and Duke Ellington made landmark work. Indeed, the Renaissance helped change how Black people were viewed culturally; from it came a new, fearless creative generation. Yet the Renaissance had its detractors. Some said the literature only catered to whites and the Black middle-class. Even one of Harlem’s most famous establishments — the Cotton Club — was only for whites. “Black No More” demystifies Harlem as a mecca by wrapping its arms around it, wiping off the glitter while celebrating its charm.“The show, in my mind, is a critique of a critique,” said Jones, who is also choreographing the new Broadway musical “Paradise Square.” “We’re trying to make a musical about a historical novel, but with the point of view of people who are very much products of now. For God’s sake, we are post-George Floyd.”“Black No More” was originally slated to premiere in October 2020. But then the pandemic shut down theaters, forcing shows to postpone or cancel their runs. And in May 2020, Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by the police officer Derek Chauvin. Protests ensued. Coupled with outcries over the deaths of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, these rebellions felt different. The precinct in which Chauvin worked was burned. In New York City, protesters and law enforcement regularly clashed, intensifying the already-strained relationship between certain residents and the police.Near the end of “Black No More,” over an aggressive rap beat, a white antagonist asserts that Black lives don’t matter, a perceived reference to the modern-day Black Lives Matter movement. Within the context of the musical, he’s upset that his sister got involved with a Black man. Yet the subtle nod acknowledges the cloud of George Floyd hanging over this musical.“We just happen to be in a space where certain audiences are ready to receive what we’re trying to say, as opposed to pre-2020,” said Tamika Lawrence, who plays Buni Brown, Max Disher’s best friend. “There are certain cultures in America — white cultures, specifically — that I think are now ready to have tough conversations and ready to see this kind of art.”Trotter concurred. “I think some people may take offense,” he said. “Some people may be appalled, some may take it as a challenge to widen their scope, to tear some of the bandages off these bullet wounds that we deal with as a society.”“Black No More” is presented with the hope that Black and white people can find common ground somewhere. That we can at least see one another’s differences and be respectful of them.Just don’t do something drastic like change your skin color. As the musical teaches us, the grass isn’t greener.“What it says is, ‘Look at yourself, take a look at where we are, take a look at where we’ve come from, how far we’ve come and how far we still have to go,” Trotter said of the show. “It speaks to a commonality that we all share as humans, as people, as inhabitants of this planet. I don’t think we’re ever going to exist in perfect harmony, but I think there’s a possibility for us to coexist in peace.” More

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      in Movies

      The Black List, Founded in Hollywood, Expands Into Theater

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      The Black List, an effort to boost the careers of undiscovered writers by drawing attention to high-quality unproduced scripts, was formed 17 years ago with a focus on Hollywood. Now the organization is looking to extend its work into theater.The project’s leadership announced Tuesday that it would begin inviting playwrights and musical writers to share their work with gatekeepers in the theater, film and television industries, with the goal of helping them find representation, get feedback and land productions in the theater world or jobs in the film and television world.Four well-regarded nonprofit theaters, Miami New Drama in Florida, the Movement Theater Company in New York, Victory Gardens in Chicago and Woolly Mammoth in Washington, have each agreed to commission a new play or musical from a writer whose work surfaces through the project. The commissions are $10,000 each.“Our fundamental belief is that there’s a lot of amazing playwrights whose opportunities don’t befit their talents,” said Franklin Leonard, who founded the Black List. “If we can rectify that, that’s something we should do.”The Black List started as an annual survey of scripts that Hollywood executives liked but hadn’t turned into films, and the organization says that 440 of those scripts have since been produced. Then the Black List added a for-profit arm that allows writers to post scripts online to bring them to the attention of industry professionals, and which also allows writers, for a fee, to seek script evaluations from readers who work in the industry.(Evaluations cost $100, of which $60 goes to the reader.)Leonard said he and Megan Halpern, the Black List executive spearheading the theater expansion, have been talking with theater industry leaders for months about the idea of broadening the Black List’s scope, with the goal of helping undiscovered playwrights and musical theater writers find work in theater and, possibly, also in film or TV.“What we’ve heard is that people want to find new playwrights, but the reality of wading through the slush pile is insurmountable,” he said. More

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      in Music

      Elza Soares, 91, Who Pushed the Boundaries of Brazilian Music, Dies

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      She rose from a favela in Rio to samba stardom in the 1960s. But her career was later overshadowed by an affair with a famous soccer player that became a national scandal.Elza Soares, the samba singer whose meteoric rise from the favela to stardom was later eclipsed by a scandalous affair with one of Brazil’s most famous soccer stars, died on Thursday at her home in Rio de Janeiro. She was 91.Her death was announced in a statement on her official Instagram account, which added that she “sang until the end.”With fine features that led to comparisons with Eartha Kitt and a rough voice that was reminiscent of Louis Armstrong, Ms. Soares became one of the few Black women singers in Brazil to be featured in films in the 1960s and on television in the ’70s.Her first album, “Se Acaso Você Chegasse” (“If You Happen to Stop By”), released in 1960, introduced scat singing into samba. Her second, “A Bossa Negra” (1961), was conspicuously lacking in bossa nova. Instead, it featured the kind of samba popular in the favelas, thus reclaiming the African roots of a sound whose international success stemmed from taking away samba’s drums and adding complex jazz harmonies.As her fame grew, she remained true to her roots. “I never left the favela,” she liked to tell reporters, and she often finished shows thanking audiences for “every scrap of bread that my children ate.”Such talk was almost unheard-of in the 1960s in Brazil, where — despite a yawning gap between rich and poor, and despite a larger Black population than any other country outside Nigeria — publicly discussing issues of poverty and race was considered inelegant.RCA Records declined to offer her a contract after learning that she was Black, and she spent years singing in Copacabana nightclubs before being signed to Odeon Records in 1960, where she began a long recording career subtly — and sometimes not so subtly — pushing the boundaries of Brazilian music.But by the 1980s, she was perhaps better known as the wife of the soccer star known as Mané Garrincha — considered in Brazil to be second only to Pelé — than for her music. When Garrincha left his wife and eight children to marry Ms. Soares, it was a national scandal. She was widely disparaged and labeled a home wrecker. Angry fans pelted their house in Rio with stones and even fired shots at it.Ms. Soares and the soccer star known as Mané Garrincha in an undated photo. When he left his wife and eight children to marry Ms. Soares, it was a national scandal.Associated PressIt wasn’t until the early 2000s, long after the death of her husband, that Ms. Soares staged an unlikely comeback, embracing younger composers and producers who were just beginning to discover her music. Her new songs were even more direct than her earlier ones in addressing social issues, openly advocating for the rights of Black people, gay people, and especially women.Elza Gomes da Conceição was born on June 23, 1930, in Rio de Janeiro’s Padre Miguel favela. Her mother, Rosária Maria da Conceição, was a washerwoman; her father, Avelino Gomes, was a bricklayer who played guitar and liked samba music.Her father forced her to marry Lourdes Antônio Soares when she was 12; by the age of 21, she was a widow and the mother of five.She said it was a desperate need to buy medicine for a sick child that led her to take a chance singing at a popular radio talent show when she was 15. She showed up in pigtails and a dress, borrowed from her mother, hemmed in with safety pins. She was nearly laughed offstage until the show’s host, Ary Barbosa, asked her what planet she had come from. She disarmed him with her reply: “The same planet as you — Planet Hunger.”“At that moment everyone who was laughing sat down in their seats and everyone was quiet. I finished singing and he hugged me, saying, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, at this exact moment a star is born,’” Ms. Soares said in a 2002 television interview.Her singing career took off, leading to appearances in movies and on TV. She was one of the few Black Brazilian women to rise to stardom at the time.Her career, however, was soon overshadowed by her fiery love affair with Manuel Francisco dos Santos, known as Garrincha. Their romance began at the 1962 World Cup in Chile, where she was representing Brazil as an entertainer, and where her career might have taken a very different turn: She also met Louis Armstrong, who invited her to tour the United States with him, but she chose instead to follow her heart and return to Brazil with Garrincha. That move would have disastrous repercussions.Harangued by the public and the press, the couple were forced to move to São Paulo and eventually to Italy, where they spent four years. They married in 1966.Ms. Soares was pregnant with their son, Manoel Francisco dos Santos Júnior, when the couple returned to Brazil in 1975. By that time, Garrincha’s alcoholism was becoming a serious problem. He had been driving drunk in 1969 when he had an accident that killed Ms. Soares’s mother. He beat Ms. Soares, who became known for visiting bar owners to implore them not to serve her husband. But her efforts proved futile; Garrincha died of cirrhosis in 1983.When their son died in a car accident in 1986 at age 9, Ms. Soares was devastated and left Brazil. She spent several years in Los Angeles, trying in vain to launch an international career.She credited the Brazilian singer-songwriter Caetano Veloso with helping her return to music when she was ready to give up, by featuring her on his 1984 album, “Velo.”But her output was spotty throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and it wasn’t until 2002 that she regained her stride, connecting with composers and producers from São Paulo’s samba sujo (“dirty samba”) scene to record the album “Do Cóccix Até o Pescoço” (“From the Tailbone to the Neck”), which was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award.In 2016, her “A Mulher do Fim do Mundo” (“The Woman at the End of the World”) won a Latin Grammy for best Brazilian popular music album.Ms. Soares is survived by her children, Joao Carlos, Gerson, Dilma and Sara, and by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Her son Dilson died in 2015.She continued to find success with younger audiences in the new century, working tirelessly as she approached 90, exploring musical styles including electronic dance music, punk rock and free jazz, and recording albums that fearlessly addressed social issues.The title of her album “Planeta Fome” (“Planet Hunger”), released in 2019, referred directly to how her career got its start on the radio talent show that would forever change not only her life but the course of Brazilian music. More