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      Netflix’s ‘High on the Hog’ Renewed for Second Season

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      The show, hosted by the food writer Stephen Satterfield, traces the origins of African American food.“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America,” the Netflix show that explores the roots of African American cuisine, has been renewed for a second season, the streaming service announced Tuesday.Hosted by the food writer Stephen Satterfield, the show is based on “High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey From Africa to America,” a book by the culinary historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris. The first season, which premiered in May, mirrored the first half of the book, tracing the roots of ingredients, like okra from West Africa, and exploring Black foodways in places like Texas.Fabienne Toback, an executive producer on the show, said that the new season would likely explore the second half of Dr. Harris’s book. The show will continue to focus on systemic racism and could explore the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on race and the restaurant industry, Ms. Toback said. Release and production dates are still to be determined.“Part of the reason that we were so attracted to the project is that everyone eats, everyone loves food,” said Ms. Toback, who produced the show with Karis Jagger. Ms. Toback added that “High on the Hog” has opened viewers’ eyes to the history of Black food and the challenging circumstances that brought ingredients to the United States.“Having food to talk about these things has made it for lack of a better word, palatable,” she said.Follow NYT Food on Twitter and NYT Cooking on Instagram, Facebook and Pinterest. Get regular updates from NYT Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      in Television

      Chicago Improv Was Dead. Can New Leaders Revive It?

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      The past year left the city’s two most prominent institutions reeling. Now, outsiders are helping to guide the re-emergence of these celebrated comedy centers.CHICAGO — Fourteen months after iO Theater closed its doors because of the pandemic, a move that seemed temporary at the time, the storied improv center looked as though it had been frozen in time, the calendar stuck on March 2020.In front of one stage, chairs were arranged around small round tables covered with a layer of dust. A grocery list in a back room reminded employees to buy more olives and baked potatoes. In the hall, handwritten signs directed audience members where to line up for shows.“This hallway used to be so crowded that I’m sure it was a fire-code disaster,” Charna Halpern, the theater’s co-founder, said as she surveyed the barren corridor recently.In June 2020, Halpern decided that the hallway would stay empty. The theater’s income had plummeted to zero amid the shutdown, bills were piling up and nearly 40 years after she helped start iO, Halpern announced that she was ready to close it permanently.The theater wasn’t the only one in an existential crisis. That same month, performers of color there and at Second City — the two most prominent improv institutions in the city, where the modern version of the art form was born — spoke publicly about their experiences with racism, inequity and a persistent lack of diversity at the theaters.The space at iO Theater is left as it was in March 2020, when it shut down because of the pandemic.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesThen, less than a week apart, both iO and Second City were put up for sale, heightening anxiety among performers who were already worried about improv’s post-pandemic future. Could improv be saved in the city where aspiring comedians flock to learn and perform, as stars like Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert and Keegan-Michael Key had?The short answer is yes. Less than a year after the businesses went on the market, buyers who believe in Chicago improv stepped up. Both are industry newcomers: Second City is now owned by a New York-based private equity firm and iO by a pair of local real estate executives.Decades of history and cultural relevance are part of what made these theaters appealing acquisitions, but after calls for transformational change, a new era of leadership is now grappling with how much of the old improv culture they want to preserve and how much they are willing to give up. At iO, criticism of its lack of racial diversity and equity has gone unaddressed during the theater’s year of uncertainty. And although Second City is back with regular shows and a plan to transform itself into an antiracist company, there is some skepticism among performers and students that this effort at reform will be different than previous attempts (a diversity coordinator has been in place since at least 2002, for example, and a revue with a notably diverse cast ran in 2016, though all the performers of color quit before it was over).“We want it to be good; it’s our home,” said Rob Wilson, an improviser who has been in Chicago’s comedy scene for a decade. “You’re going to give them the benefit of the doubt, but you’re also not going to be afraid to leave if it goes south.”Second City’s New BeginningLast fall, when Jon Carr, an improv veteran, was named Second City’s new executive producer — the company’s top creative role — his peers asked him the same question: “Why did you take that job?”The 62-year-old institution had just been the subject of a deluge of complaints from performers of color, who told stories of being demeaned, marginalized, tokenized and cast aside. As a result, the chief executive and executive producer, Andrew Alexander, abruptly resigned that summer.Still, Carr decided to take the offer, making him the second Black executive producer in the company’s history. (The first was Anthony LeBlanc, who had served in the role on an interim basis after Alexander’s resignation.)Carr told the people who had asked about the job that despite the pressure and inevitable stress it would bring, it presented an opportunity to change a company whose leaders had already pledged to “tear it all down and begin again.”“This is the thing that people will be talking about 40, 50 years from now,” he said. “We have the opportunity to shape that history.”Parisa Jalili, Second City’s chief operating officer.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesJon Carr, Second City’s new executive producer, its top creative role.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesSitting in a booth at Second City’s restaurant in Old Town a week after the company reopened in May, Carr and Parisa Jalili, the chief operating officer who had been promoted amid the criticism, ticked off some of the steps the company had taken to meet the calls for change.It documented the complaints and hired a human-resources consulting firm to evaluate them; it re-evaluated the photos in the lobby extolling mainly white performers and labeled offensive sketches and jokes in its expansive archive; it put into writing what the company is looking for in auditions to try to prevent bias in the process.​​“We were able to do it all quickly because we were much smaller and more agile being shut down,” Jalili said.The company also had to ensure that it survived the pandemic. Online improv classes were made permanent, raising revenue by opening up the potential customer base to the entire globe, rather than to only those who could show up to their sites in Chicago, Hollywood and Toronto. Then, in February, Second City was acquired by a private equity group, ZMC.The deal made some performers even more skeptical that Second City could return better than before. What would it mean for the company to be owned by an investment firm with no track record in comedy?Jordan Turkewitz, a managing partner at ZMC, said in an interview that the firm’s role as an investor was not to dictate decisions or get involved in minutiae; it’s to ask questions, offer advice and financially support the company’s growth.iO Theater, ResurrectedSecond City is holding several live shows a week, but for iO, a reopening is much further out.Many employees are desperate to return, said Scott Gendell, a real estate executive who bought iO last month with his longtime friend Larry Weiner. But there is no clear reopening date on the horizon, he said.Right now, the new owners are taking it slow, interviewing operating partners who will help run the theater and control its creative side.“We’re being very delicate and very cautious about reopening because you don’t want to crash and burn,” Gendell said.Gendell is the type of lifelong Chicagoan who can’t stand seeing the city’s trademark businesses shut down (“I’m still ticked off that Marshall Field’s went away,” he said). When he heard that Halpern had put iO up for sale, he and Weiner decided to buy it to preserve what they view as an important cultural institution.But some performers are interested less in an iO preserved in amber from 2020 and more in an iO that embraces radical change when it comes to diversity.The new iO owners are searching for operating partners.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesFor now, the theater is dark.Lawrence Agyei for The New York TimesOn June 9, 2020, five improvisers who had taken classes or performed there posted a petition calling on the theater to address entrenched problems of institutional racism. They told The Chicago Tribune of “bungled or inadequate past efforts at diversity, an unwelcoming attitude to performers and students of color, and problematic behavior by staffers.”.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-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;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-w739ur{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-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.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-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 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:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The five improvisers pledged not to perform at iO until its management met a series of demands, including hiring a diversity and inclusion coordinator.The next day, Halpern sent a note to the protesters offering a broad and earnest apology for the institution’s “failings.” But just over a week later, Halpern announced that iO was shutting down, frustrating performers who thought the theater was on the verge of substantial change. Halpern said the reason was the financial implications of the pandemic — not the protests.Gendell said he was not ready to outline a plan for addressing these concerns before they brought on an operating partner but said that they were searching for partners in “diverse communities.”“We’re fair-minded people, and I have confidence in my value system,” he said.Performers Choose Their Own PathsIf iO and Second City want to fix the problems that have plagued them for decades, both institutions will need to convince comedians of varied backgrounds that they are places worth returning to.In June 2020, as the stories of discrimination became public, Julia Morales, a Black Puerto Rican comedian who had performed at Second City and iO for years, thought to herself, “These theaters have really disappointed me. Do I want to go back to this?”Her answer was to create something new. She scrounged up less than $2,000 and started Stepping Stone Theater, a nonprofit that she imagined would focus more on supporting performers of color and less on the bottom line. It is one of a few new improv ventures that have sprung up in the city in the past year.So far, Morales has chosen to maintain some ties with Second City. In May, she was onstage improvising in the company’s first post-pandemic program, and next month, her group and Second City are collaborating on a show. Even though the theater had disappointed her, she said, she didn’t think the way forward was to shut it out.Others, like the comedians Shelby Wolstein and Nick Murhling, have left Chicago to find opportunities in Los Angeles or have given up on big comedy institutions altogether. And some who have chosen to stay are unconvinced that there has been substantial change.“I won’t trust it until I see it for myself,” said Kennedy Baldwin, who started last month in a Second City fellowship that offers tuition-free training to a diverse group of actors and improvisers.Second City is now holding several shows a week.Jermaine Jackson Jr. for The New York TimesAmong performers who are intent on seeing the institution change, it is crucial to diversify the audience as well, which tends to skew older and whiter. These performers aren’t thrilled with the new ticket pricing system, which Second City started testing shortly before the pandemic.The system, called dynamic ticket pricing, calculates prices based on the time of the show and number of tickets left. The cheapest tickets cost $25 each, but with growing interest in the return of live theater and lower-than-usual ticket inventory because of the pandemic, they can run much higher. This Saturday, tickets for the 7 p.m. shows are about $90 each.Some performers worry that raising ticket prices will help maintain the status quo.“How can I make this a show that makes people feel included and have an audience that reflects how we look?” asked Terrence Carey, a Second City performer who is Black.A spokeswoman for Second City, Colleen Fahey, said the ticket pricing model is helpful in allowing the company to recoup revenue after a 14-month shutdown. She added that customers still have access to cheaper tickets.At iO, Olivia Jackson, one of the creators of the petition, said she was eager to meet with the new owners to discuss the issues her group raised. After that, she would determine whether to return to iO. If she decided against it, she could always turn to one of the newer, scrappier operations.“There are so many insanely talented people in Chicago who really love improv,” she said. “Chicago improv will be OK.” More

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      in Theater

      The First Play Returning to Broadway Is Doing Things Differently

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      Anna Martin and Phyllis Fletcher and After the opening night performance of “Pass Over,” hundreds gathered for a block party. The playwright, Antoinette Nwandu, spoke to the crowd from a balcony above the theater marquee.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesThis episode contains strong language.Antoinette Nwandu’s “Pass Over” made its Broadway debut this week. Drawing on “Waiting for Godot” and the Book of Exodus, the play follows two Black men trapped on a city block — both by existential dread, and by the fear of being killed by police.But Broadway audiences won’t see the play’s original ending, which featured the death of one of the main characters.“I no longer wanted to work on a play that ended with the murder of a Black man,” said Nwandu, who rewrote the final scene. “I want to focus on life.”Nwandu’s play was the first to debut on Broadway since theaters closed their doors in March of 2020 and the first since a coalition of theater artists of color demanded change from the theater ecosystem in America.Nwandu spoke with the theater reporter Michael Paulson about the changes she is personally bringing to theater, and her hopes for the industry — still grappling with the pandemic — as the curtains rise again.“Thank you for celebrating Black joy!” Nwandu told celebrants at an afterparty on West 52nd Street, outside the theater. Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesAudience members in masks react after the curtain call.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesTheatergoers gave a standing ovation to the three actors: Jon Michael Hill, left, Namir Smallwood and (unseen) Gabriel Ebert.Jeenah Moon for The New York Times More

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      in Movies

      Arthur French, Negro Ensemble Company Pioneer, Dies at 89

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      He more or less stumbled into a career as an actor, but it proved to be a long and prolific one, on film, on television and especially on the stage.Arthur French, a prolific and acclaimed (if relatively unsung) actor who was a founding member of the Negro Ensemble Company, died on July 24 in Manhattan. He was 89.His death, in a hospital, was announced by his son, the playwright Arthur W. French III, in a post on Facebook.Mr. French more or less stumbled into his theatrical career. After abandoning early plans to become a preacher, he aspired to be a disc jockey, but when he showed up at the D.J. school he had hoped to attend, he found that it had closed after bribery investigations began into the radio payola scandal of the late 1950s.Fortunately, the Dramatic Workshop, where Lee Strasberg and Stella Adler taught, was located in the same building, and Mr. French signed up for classes. He was coached by the actress Peggy Feury; he caught the attention of Maxwell Glanville’s American Negro Theater; and his career as a supporting actor was born.Mr. French made his professional debut Off Broadway in “Raisin’ Hell in the Son,” a spoof of Lorraine Hansberry’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” at the Provincetown Playhouse in 1962. Three years later he appeared in Douglas Turner Ward’s “Day of Absence,” which spawned the Negro Ensemble Company. He first appeared on Broadway in Melvin Van Peebles’s musical “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death” in 1971.“That’s when I decided to quit my Social Service job,” he said in a recent interview with the arts journal Gallery & Studio. He had been working days as a clerk with New York City’s welfare department.Mr. French appeared in Broadway revivals of “The Iceman Cometh” (1973), “Death of a Salesman” (1975) and “You Can’t Take It With You” (1983). His films included Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X” (1992) and “Crooklyn” (1994). Among his many television appearances were three episodes of “Law & Order,” two of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and one of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent.”Reviewers often called attention to his sonorous voice and the civility of his performances; his notices in The New York Times were consistently positive. Reviewing his portrayal of Bynum, a “conjure man,” in a 1996 revival of August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” at the Henry Street Settlement, Vincent Canby called it “a variation on the seer, sometimes the idiot savant, who turns up with regularity in Mr. Wilson’s work but never as fully realized as the character is here.”When Mr. French was seen in “Checkmates” at the same theater that year, Lawrence Van Gelder wrote in The Times, “The real treats are Ruby Dee and Arthur French as the Coopers, gifted old pros who tickle the funny bone and touch the heart.”He occasionally directed, most recently a 2010 production of Steve Carter’s 1990 play “Pecong,” a retelling of the Medea story set in the Caribbean, at the Off Off Broadway National Black Theater.Mr. French taught at the HB Studio in New York. He received an Obie Award for sustained excellence of performance in 1997 and a Lucille Lortel Award for his supporting role in August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” in 2007. In 2015, he was awarded a Paul Robeson Citation from the Actors’ Equity Association and the Actor’s Equity Foundation for his “dedication to freedom of expression and respect for human dignity.”Mr. French, right, with Frankie Faison in the Signature Theater Company’s 2006 production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running.” Mr. French won a Lucille Lortel Award for his performance.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesArthur Wellesley French Jr. was born on Nov. 6, 1931, in Harlem to immigrants from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines in the Caribbean. His father, a former seaman, died young; Arthur himself survived a bout with asthma. His mother, Ursilla Idonia (Ollivierre) French, was a garment workers’ union organizer, and Arthur helped her earn extra money by embroidering material she took home.His mother encouraged him to take music lessons, which led to a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. He attended Morris High School in the Bronx before transferring to the Bronx High School of Science; after graduating, he attended Brooklyn College.In 1961, he married the singer Antoinette Williams. She died before him. In addition to their son, he is survived by a daughter, Antonia Willow French, and two grandchildren.In the Gallery & Studio interview, Mr. French was asked what he had learned about himself during his 50-year career.“I like the world of fantasy,” he replied. “And my father told me, ‘Learn something so well that you won’t have to lift up anything heavier than a pencil.’” More

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      in Music

      The Tao of Snoop Dogg

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      Nearly 30 years after emerging as a profane gangster rapper from Long Beach, Calif., Snoop Dogg has transcended his hip-hop roots and become culturally ubiquitous.Here he is in the new Addams Family movie. There he is on a Corona commercial. He has a show with Martha Stewart on VH1 and an investment fund, and is still releasing new music.Celebrities who cross genres can risk diluting their brand, spreading themselves too thin or alienating the core fans who propelled their rise to fame. Snoop has so far managed to avoid these pitfalls while, in crucial ways, remaining relentlessly on message.Zooming from his compound in Los Angeles, he smoked an enormous blunt while discussing how he went from a shy musician to a multiplatform entrepreneur with several new ventures in the burgeoning cannabis industry.To the brands he endorses, including Corona, Beyond Meat and Bic lighters, he is a gregarious spokesman. Yet Snoop has strong feelings about what he says is persistent racism in the business world, and is uninhibited in his critique of the status quo.This interview was condensed and edited for clarity.How have you managed to stay relevant for so long?The easiest thing you can do is just do you. I felt like doing me would be the easiest path to me remaining relevant in the industry. It’s originality and uniqueness. I just try to do me.OK. At what point did you think your career was going to be about more than just music?Probably after I did the “Murder Was the Case” movie. In the beginning, I wasn’t comfortable on camera. I was kind of shy. But once I got to that stage, as far as to be able to shoot a movie that I asked for, that I wanted to be a part of, and it came to life — it was fascinating to me.How did you overcome that shyness?Success and practice. The more success you have and practice you have, the more familiar you become with it. Either love it or hate. I love what it do for me and I love what it do for other people when they see me onscreen. It’s a feeling of joy when people understand it and they get it.How did you think about building out a career beyond music?We weren’t into branding or any of that at first. We were just into making good music and trying to be the dopest [expletive] in the world. My branding and my business came when I was able to go to No Limit Records with Master P, and be under his guidance and his tutelage and his wisdom. He taught me how to be a better businessman, how to be more than just a rapper, but to be about my business. It’s called show business. I had mastered show. But Master P showed me how to master the business.Who were your mentors besides Master P?Dr. Dre. Definitely Puffy. Russell Simmons. Guys like that, that were in my field but were able to jump outside of it and become bigger.I’m not really somebody that likes taking information from people. I’m more about: We trading game, chopping it up, bettering each other, giving information on how my business is going, how your business is working, how I see it from the outside looking in.I got a lot of relationships. Quincy Jones and Charlie Wilson are like uncles to me, where they shape and mold the lifestyle of Snoop Dogg, not just the business. What you learn about being a better person from somebody is more important than what you learn business-wise or career-wise.How did you make sure you had honest brokers around you as you were getting involved in new ventures?Sometimes you have to have the wrong people around you to know what the wrong people around you look like and what they act like. My experience came from having the wrong people in my business, to where they didn’t benefit me or didn’t teach me anything.A lot of people say don’t mix family and business, but you recently hired your wife as your business manager.Why not? You got to have people in your life that understand you, and understand business. She’s been my best friend for like 35 years, so she understands everything about me and how I get down. I don’t trust nobody like I trust her. At the end of the day, if something was to go wrong with me or if I wasn’t able to do it anymore, I know that everything would be in the right hands, and things would continue to run just like an operation.How do you think about which brands you want to work with these days?It’s got to be fun. And it’s going to make funds. So long as the word “fun” is involved, it’s cool.Do you consider potential partners through any moral or ethical lens?I think about all of it. I don’t want to associate myself with people who don’t have a like mind as me, just like they don’t want to associate themselves with me if I don’t have the same mind as them. Companies that get down with me know how I get down. They know the extracurricular things that I do. They know the things that I do in the hip-hop world and in the business world.They have to accept all of that when you’re dealing with Snoop Dogg. That’s the way I branded myself, to where when you get Snoop Dogg, you get all of it. It’s just, what version did you pay for? Did you pay for the version with the kids, the G-rated Addams Family movie? Or did you pay for the rated-R Snoop Dogg, the one the adults like? Which one did you pay for?“I helped make this business famous before it became legal.”Maggie Shannon for The New York TimesBack when you started making music, did you ever imagine how big the legal cannabis market would get?No. Not as many times as I went to jail for it. And it’s still on my criminal record. I don’t understand how it could go from being the most hated, the most vicious thing that you could do, to now everybody’s capitalizing off of it, and they’re leaning toward a demographic that can prosper off of it, as opposed to the demographic that created the business.We should be able to have some of our people — that look like me — as executives, as C.E.O.s, as platform owners. You know, the top of the chain, not just the spokesperson or the brand ambassador. We need to be the brand owners.Is that part of the reason you’re involved in the business?I helped make this business famous before it became legal. The forefathers were the ones before me. The jazz musicians, the Bob Marleys, the Cheech and Chongs, the Willie Nelsons. All of those guys laid the foundation down. I just continued what they were doing and put a little bit more spice on. I’m still paying respect to them, and knowing that this is a love branch. Cannabis, marijuana, whatever you want to call it, is all about love and bringing people together.Is the issue of trying to close the Black wealth gap something you’re thinking about beyond the cannabis industry?That’s why I’m trying to be one of those examples, of someone who creates his own everything, owns his own everything, and has a brand strong enough to compete with Levi’s and Miller and Kraft and all of these other brands that have been around for hundreds of years. That’s what I want the Snoop Dogg brand to be.Do you think the platforms like Apple and Spotify are treating artists fairly?I just don’t understand how you only get this little bit amount of money per stream. I just don’t understand the dynamics of those numbers, and how they can create these systems without Black people up top, while Black people are the ones generating the most money from these systems through the music. So I’m just trying to figure out when they’re going to cut us in in the beginning, as opposed to always letting us be the ones who get it to a point where these platforms can sell for billions of dollars, and then the Black people that made it famous get nothing.Just like the TikTokers. All of the young Black content creators on TikTok have boycotted because they see that when they do the dances they don’t get the attention or the money. But as soon as the white dancers do it, it’s the biggest [expletive] in the world and they on Jimmy Fallon. That’s not fair. It’s not cool to just keep stealing our culture right in front of us and not include us in the finances of it all.We need to be involved early. They always cut us out. They call Snoop after they got their companies up and are like, “Hey, Snoop, you want to be a brand ambassador?” I want some equity. Give me a piece of the pie. If I can’t get no equity, [expletive] you and your company.We’re seeing more of that with athletes like Kevin Durant and Steph Curry, who are making investments in start-ups.Right, because they understand that they got to get it. I mean, you would think that those businesspeople up top would say: “You know what? It’s time to change the world. We’ve got to stop treating Black people like they’re less. They’re always the ones who do the hard work, the groundwork, but we never cut them in.”Like, why don’t we have an owner in an N.F.L.? That’s just racist. Period, point blank. We need to own an N.F.L. team. We got one half-owner in the N.B.A., Michael Jordan. But the whole league is 90 percent Black. So we still the slaves and they still the masters.That’s why in the music game, we took the initiative to say, [expletive] that. We’re the masters, and we own our masters. We’re going to negotiate with you the way we think it should be. We changed that industry years ago, with our mentality of having our own labels. More

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      Williamstown Theater Festival Tries to Weather the Storms

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      The annual summer festival in Massachusetts has tried to adapt amid the pandemic and calls for more diversity onstage.I hate getting caught in the rain. But lately, with the mercurial weather and my new dog-walking schedule, I’ve found myself caught in bright sun showers, swampy mists and downright tempests. In my humble opinion, rain is nothing to sing about — Gene Kelly be damned.After a sunny bus ride to Williamstown, Mass., walking with a pup, a tote and a backpack, I was caught again — soaked down to the soles of my Converse. Roughly 15 minutes later the skies settled as suddenly as they had erupted. It’s a problem the Williamstown Theater Festival, which I was attending for the first time, has had to contend with all summer. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, the usually indoor festival has tried to adapt with three outdoor productions. But the area has received an above-average amount of rainfall this season, disrupting these plans and leading the festival not to open its shows for reviews from critics.Adaptation, how the festival has successfully or unsuccessfully readjusted to the climate and the politico-cultural climate (namely the pandemic and the protests), was the theme of my weekend.One of the first sights I saw on my damp walk from the bus to the hotel was of a Black woman on a stage: delightful. This was an outdoor rehearsal for one of three 30-minute plays curated by the playwright-director Robert O’Hara for “Celebrating the Black Radical Imagination: Nine Solo Plays.” In “The Master’s Tools,” cleverly written by Zora Howard (“Stew”), a Black enslaved woman named Tituba (a wonderfully devilish Rosalyn Coleman), like the victimized slave from Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” recounts a treacherous storm that led to her mother’s decapitation. A storm is a “great equalizer,” she says, describing how nature howls “like it’s in heat” and how the trees shake “as though possessed.”It made me glance up to the sky again from my seat on the front lawn of the ’62 Center for Theater and Dance, where the production was presented. A clamshell arched over the stage where Tituba told her story. Just a few minutes before she stepped onstage, ushers had handed out rain ponchos to the audience; the forecast had predicted afternoon rain.Rosalyn Coleman in Zora Howard’s “The Master’s Tools.”Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisThe rain never came. But by that point the audience, who sat on the lawn without any covering, had already been exposed to the vicious midday sun for an hour while watching the two other short solos, all directed by Candis C. Jones, that were being featured in the last week of the anthology production’s run: “Mark It Down” by Charly Evon Simpson, and “The Last……(A Work in Progress),” by Ngozi Anyanwu.In “The Last,” a queer Black man (Ronald Peet) reflects on a relationship, reeling from his isolation — a literal quarantine — and sense of loss. And in “Mark It Down,” a Black woman (Naomi Lorrain) takes account of her grief over her grandmother’s death during the pandemic.These works by Black playwrights were another way the festival reacted to the moment — not to the coronavirus, but to the recent calls for more diversity onstage. But when the plays were taken within the context of the community where they were being staged, there was a disconnect. My mother, who had joined me, and I barely saw any Black people in town all weekend, with the exception of the festival’s Black cast members. What’s the point of producing new work about Blackness in America if there’s not a more concerted effort to attract Black audiences to receive it?I asked the same question when I attended the experimental “Alien/Nation,” from the director Michael Arden and his company, the Forest of Arden. An immersive experience, “Alien/Nation,” written and devised by Eric Berryman and Jen Silverman, begins as a walking tour through the Williams College campus. (There’s also a version by car.) The audience is split into groups of about eight, and each group is led, via an app, along a path dotted with performers who act out bite-size, dance-heavy scenes about real events that happened in Western Massachusetts and beyond in 1969.Not only does this first act — mostly about Black student protests at Williams College — ring out as particularly relevant right now, but so does the second, which takes place at a Covid-19 vaccination center. The third, which includes an odd but beautiful reproduction of the moon landing and a planetary fashion show, makes a sloppy effort to tie the ending back into the racial themes of the beginning.“Alien/Nation” is an immersive theatrical experience that takes audiences on a walking tour through Williamstown, Mass.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisWhile some parts of the production connect (the site-specific format, the wondrously fluid synchronized choreography of Jeff Kuperman and Eamon Foley), others show how the festival’s attempts to adjust to an innovative, pandemic-friendly experience failed. The complicated tech — audience members need to download an app, and must forfeit their driver’s licenses in exchange for earbuds — was prohibitive to many, myself included. The app didn’t work well, the tour ate up more than half my data, and my audio kept going in and out. And the first part of the lengthy production, which one of the company members described, understatedly, as “a little bit of a walk,” wasn’t very accessible, especially given the ample hills of the Williams campus. (“This is too much for someone my age,” my 56-year-old mother testily complained to a company member. “Especially for someone who had a hip replacement.”)And, again, when looking at the makeup of the audience, my mother and I appeared to be the only Black people attending a play about Black civil rights and political action.It was my final show of the weekend, however, that best captured the festival’s attempts to adapt theater in unpredictable circumstances. With a book by Daniel Goldstein and music and lyrics by Dawn Landes, “Row,” directed by Tyne Rafaeli, is staged on wooden platforms in the beautiful reflecting pool at the Clark Art Institute.This musical was inspired by Tori Murden McClure’s memoir “A Pearl in the Storm,” about her effort to become the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic. By presenting “Row” outside at the Clark, the festival uses a local setting (the gorgeous views) to present a tale of resiliency. Led by Grace McLean as Tori with a soaring voice (best showcased in the cascading bellows of the classic-rock-inspired “Drowning”), the show intercuts Tori’s narrative account of her journey with scenes from her past. Her story — acting out, growing up in a difficult home, then finding herself in a fight against nature — hits many familiar notes but is still novel, if only for the site-specific setup and the fact that her quest really happened a mere 22 years ago.Grace McLean as the first woman to row solo across the Atlantic in “Row” at the Clark Art Institute.Joseph O’Malley and R. Masseo DavisBut the show has also been plagued by the poor weather, and some of the sound crew walked off the job one night, complaining of unsafe and unsatisfactory working conditions in the rain. In switching gears to deliver outdoor theater, the festival has been able to step up during a challenging time for the performing arts, but it has struggled to manage the logistics.“Bad weather’s on the way,” Tori says at one point in the show. During her long, treacherous time at sea, she constantly has to acclimate to the conditions in order to survive.The same could be said of theater during the pandemic; easier said than done.The morning after I returned from Williamstown, I got caught in the rain yet again. I’ve started wearing my rain boots, I just got a new raincoat, and at Williamstown I bought a blue rain poncho just in case. I’d rather be prepared for any bad weather on the way — not just run for cover.RowThrough Aug. 15 at the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Mass.; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours.Alien/NationThrough Aug. 15 in Williamstown, Mass; 413-458-3253, wtfestival.org. Running time: 2 hours and 25 minutes. More

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      Critic's Pick: 'Seize the King,' Harlem Theater's 'Richard III'

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      It’s a tale that Will Power intends as cautionary, with cycles of history and human violence in mind.Have you been ravenous, lo these many shutdown months, for the layered richness of live theatrical design? The Classical Theater of Harlem has just the thing to sate your hunger.Ambitious design is one of the hallmarks of this company, and it is an absolute joy to encounter it again in such fine form in Will Power’s “Seize the King,” a contemporary verse spin on “Richard III,” in Marcus Garvey Park.The brothers Christopher and Justin Swader, old hands at transfiguring the utilitarian stage of the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, frame Carl Cofield’s production with a set that is both monumental and minimalist, aglow with Alan C. Edwards’s canny lighting. In the gathering dusk, we gaze on its stony surfaces and square-edged sconces, and enchantment begins even before the show does.It’s a strange word, enchantment, to apply to the story of a duke so hellbent on his own sovereignty that he will murder the 12-year-old nephew who stands in his way — a tale that Power intends as cautionary, with cycles of history and human violence in mind.“The evil in men always resurfaces,” a narrator (Carson Elrod) warns at the start, as the stage walls fill with Brittany Bland’s projections of slave ships and war.Yet there is something inherently spellbinding right now about sitting outdoors in the dark with other humans, and the occasional blinking firefly, watching a performance unfold with doubling and dance.Alisha Espinosa plays Lady Anne, who marries Richard with close to no illusions after he courts her brazenly in her bath. Richard TermineI caught the first preview of the run, since the previous night’s show had been rained out. Because of that, some performances may have been a little tentative. So when I tell you that Ro Boddie, as Richard, lacks the charisma of a scheming antihero who seeks to draw us into his confidence — well, he may grow more comfortable in the role.The same applies to Alisha Espinosa as Edward V, the young heir to the throne, who needs to but does not bruise our hearts. She makes a far better fit as the calculating Lady Anne, who marries Richard with close to no illusions after he courts her brazenly in her bath — a makeover of one of the tackiest wooing scenes in Shakespeare. Kudos, by the way, for the costume designer Mika Eubanks’s neat trick of having Anne’s outfit in that tub scene stand in for frothy bubbles.This production is more adept overall at conveying the play’s humor than its heft: the waste of innocent lives in service of vain rulers, the need for vigilance against the resurgence of the vanquished.Yet the other three principal actors (Andrea Patterson, RJ Foster and Elrod), move easily between comedy and woe, and deliver Power’s complex verse with remarkable clarity. Especially in the scenes they share, they are fun to watch.Dance, a regular feature of Classical Theater of Harlem productions, is used here to extraordinary effect. Choreographed by Tiffany Rea-Fisher with her customary grace, it is woven more deeply than usual into the storytelling — as when we watch the death of the old king, Edward IV, enacted wordlessly — and into the mood of the performance. (Music is by Frederick Kennedy, who also did the very effective sound design.)Dance, a regular feature of Classical Theater of Harlem productions, is used to extraordinary effect. Richard TermineIt is impossible to fully separate the art of theater-making in this chrysalis-shedding moment from the relief we feel simply to be experiencing it. So I will tell you that I felt full in an unexpected way after “Seize the King.” To which, incidentally, admission is free.It was not perfect, and it did not have to be. It was live, it contained multitudes of beauty, and it felt like luxury.Seize the KingThrough July 29 at the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      Tyler, the Creator, an Insider Forever on the Outside

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      His new album, “Call Me if You Get Lost,” is both an embrace of hip-hop tradition and a swerve into new emotional terrain.In January of last year, Tyler, the Creator’s “Igor” won the Grammy Award for best rap album. Speaking to the press backstage, he expressed frustration at the narrow ways in which Black artists are celebrated at the Grammys, calling his nomination in the rap category, for a deeply musically diverse album, “a backhanded compliment.”But the attention focused on that comment overshadowed what he’d said onstage when he received the award, which was that he was grateful for his fans’ support, because, he confessed, “I never fully felt accepted in rap.”Blockaded on both sides, Tyler nevertheless emerged victorious, an acknowledgment of the sheer force of the vision he’d built for a decade as the de facto macher of the Odd Future crew. It was also a testament to the way he harnessed the power of the internet and built a vision from whole cloth, selling it to millions without much intersecting with the systems constructed to do that.Still, the exclusions sting a little. And the boisterous, sometimes scabrous, and persistently energetic “Call Me if You Get Lost” — currently the No. 1 album in the country — is the logical rejoinder to both of those obstacles. It’s as thoroughgoing a rap album as Tyler has released — rarely has he been this keen to flaunt his bona fides. But it also demonstrates the pop potential of Tyler’s now-signature approach to hip-hop, the way his post-Pharrell embrace of chords and melody is in fact in conversation with 1960s pop, French chanson, and acoustic soul and funk. A tauntingly good hip-hop album, or a rewiring of pop DNA: “Call Me if You Get Lost” has it both ways.First, the bars. Part of the chasm separating Tyler from the rest of the genre (in perception, at least) is how he has in the past sometimes downplayed his lyrical skill in favor of musical experimentation. When he leans in to rapping, as he does on this album, it’s still a refreshing jolt.“Call Me if You Get Lost” is Tyler’s sixth album.Mostly, he’s preoccupied with the lifestyle that success has afforded him, but even though the subject matter can be repetitive — there’s lots of Rolls-Royce mentions, lots of discussions of passports — he delivers them with the shock of the new. “Y’all don’t understand, fish so fresh that you could taste the sand,” he boasts on the lush “Hot Wind Blows.” On the gloomy and stomping “Lumberjack,” he emphasizes the depth of his independence: “I own my companies full, told ’em to keep the loan.”The album is structured in the manner of one of DJ Drama’s essential mid-2000s Gangsta Grillz mixtapes, with Drama himself barking over each track, weaving in between Tyler boasts. Tyler’s resuscitation of an aesthetic that was likely formative to him is both a calculated nod to the hip-hop community that couldn’t quite place him early in his career, and also a tweak to the puffed-chest energy of that era. The frictive juxtaposition of Drama shrieking “Gangsta Grizzzzillzzzz” while Tyler is speaking about keeping picnic blankets in the car — it’s both homage and disruption.That’s how Tyler approaches his production here, too. “Lumberjack” is built on an ominous sample from the horrorcore pioneers Gravediggaz, and “Wusyaname” flirts with 1990s R&B with a sample from H-Town’s “Back Seat (Wit No Sheets).” Tyler is also eager to display how seamlessly he can integrate some of contemporary hip-hop’s signature vocalists, whether it’s the unrelentingly grimy 42 Dugg (“Lemonhead”) or the sweetly tragic YoungBoy Never Broke Again (“Wusyaname”). And he extracts startlingly good guest verses from his elders: Pharrell Williams (“Juggernaut”) and Lil Wayne (“Hot Wind Blows”).A tauntingly good hip-hop album, or a rewiring of pop DNA: “Call Me if You Get Lost” has it both ways.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThere’s a second, parallel narrative at play, too, on “Call Me if You Get Lost,” which in places reads like two separate albums born of the same circumstances tugging at each other — one about how carefree and privileged Tyler’s success has made him, and the other about how all of those spoils don’t add up to much without love.The eight-and-a-half minute long “Wilshire” is where the two collide. It’s a startling narrative about coveting a person who you can’t have (because they’re in a relationship with one of your friends) that reads as many things: an elegantly drawn story, a gut-kick emotional excavation, a track with boom-bap urgency tempered by wandering-in-space effects. Tyler lingers over feeling here, and it’s affecting and surprising: “They say, ‘Bros over hoes,’ I’m like, ‘Mm, nah, hey’/I would rather hold your hand than have a cool handshake.”He picks up the theme on the far tougher and more frenetic “Corso”: “My heart broken/Remembered I was rich so I bought me some new emotions/And a new boat ’cause I’d rather cry in the ocean.”These intersections of cocksureness and anxiety are this album at its best. (Fittingly, the title “Call Me if You Get Lost” reads either as a statement of generosity or a plea, depending on your lens.) Songs like the less emotionally ambiguous “Sweet / I Thought You Wanted to Dance” are generally less impactful — Tyler thrives on discord.A decade ago, discord was the fullness of his message. He was, by turns, a troll, an antagonist and at points outright offensive. He revisits that era on the raucous “Manifesto,” the most unexpected turn on this album: “I was canceled before canceled was with Twitter fingers/Protesting outside my shows, I gave them the middle finger.”But Tyler is older now (30, to be precise). On the back of those controversies, he built an idiosyncratic empire that belonged to no scene (maybe because no scene would have him). “Manifesto” is the rare moment in his catalog where Tyler expresses anxiety or regret about how he once presented to the world. But he also remains obstinate. Rapping about how the expectations of speaking out politically leave him vexed, he reverts to his old perspective.“I feel like anything I say, dog, I’m screwing [expletive] up,” he says, “So I just tell these Black babies, they should do what they want.” The lesson is that there was no lesson.Tyler, the Creator“Call Me if You Get Lost”(Columbia) More