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      LeBron Fandom, and the Making of a Friendship in ‘King James’

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      Rajiv Joseph’s new play, which chronicles the bond between two LeBron James fans over 12 years, is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf in Chicago.CHICAGO — When the actor Glenn Davis talks about his new play, “King James,” he gets some variation on this question: “So, are you playing LeBron James?”Not quite.“I’m 5-10,” Davis said, laughing. “He’s 6-9.”And there’s also this: James, the basketball superstar who broke hearts in Cleveland when he left to play for Miami 12 years ago, is not the protagonist of Rajiv Joseph’s “King James.” Rather, the play, which is having its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theater Company here, tracks the friendship between two young men in Cleveland, Shawn (played by Davis) and Matt (Chris Perfetti of “Abbott Elementary”), over a dozen years.Told in four quarters that span James’s rookie season to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016, “King James,” directed by Kenny Leon, explores how fandom can create a lifelong connection between two people who otherwise have little in common.“Rajiv’s first draft had a lot of basketball in it,” said Davis, 40, a longtime friend of Joseph’s and for whom the role of Shawn was written. “But as each new draft came in, the specifics about basketball began to disappear because Rajiv wanted to make sure this play was about friendship.”“Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them,” said Rajiv Joseph, the playwright.Lyndon French for The New York TimesKenny Leon is directing his first Steppenwolf production, and said he’s cherishing the opportunity to help develop Joseph’s work.Lyndon French for The New York TimesThe play, which is in previews and will open March 13, was originally slated for Steppenwolf’s 2019-20 season before the pandemic forced its postponement. It now arrives at the same time as several basketball-themed TV projects, including Adam McKay’s HBO mini-series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty,” about the team led by Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1980s, and the upcoming Apple TV+ documentary mini-series “They Call Me Magic,” about Johnson’s life on and off the court.In “King James,” Joseph uses James’s career as a window to examine the emotional nature of fandom, and how it can facilitate relationships and increased openness among people, particularly young men.“At least in the sort of heteronormative world in which I grew up, it was a struggle for young American men to communicate emotion,” Joseph, 47, said over coffee at Steppenwolf’s Front Bar before a recent rehearsal. “Sometimes a love of the game is the only way people who have difficulty expressing their feelings are able to articulate them.”Growing up in Cleveland in the 1980s and ’90s, Joseph was surrounded by passionate sports fans.“We were a Cleveland family — we watched the Cavs, we watched the Indians, we watched the Browns,” he said. “And all of our moods fluctuated accordingly.”In the play, LeBron James’s infamous “Decision” announcement looms large for two fans of the Cavaliers.Lyndon French for The New York TimesHe began writing “King James” in the summer of 2017, a year after James had led the Cavaliers to the championship, making them the first Cleveland team to win a major championship in 52 years. He drew from his experience as a Cleveland native inundated with the reactions of friends and family to “The Decision” — a live prime-time special in 2010 in which James, a free agent after seven seasons with the Cavaliers, announced he was leaving his hometown team to “take my talents to South Beach,” as James infamously put it.“I thought this would be an interesting way of exploring my own relationship with LeBron,” said Joseph, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2010 for his play “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo.” (He previously collaborated with Davis on that production, which ran on Broadway in 2011.) “This play is a sort of alchemy of stories I’ve heard, conversations I’ve had with people and the general sense of being a young person in Cleveland Heights and those heightened emotions that come out when you start arguing about sports.”The cast and creative team of “King James” had widely varying basketball knowledge — and loyalties. Davis, who was a high school basketball player in the Chicago area but gave up the sport to pursue a theater career, is a lifelong Bulls fan. Leon, who grew up in Florida, has been a Los Angeles Lakers fan for 35 years. Perfetti, 33, who is from upstate New York, grew up in a home “where there was always some sports game on television,” but he didn’t begin following basketball seriously until about six months ago.They watched James’s announcement together — which was Perfetti’s first time seeing it. But, for Joseph and Davis, the special was a reminder of a milestone moment in the basketball world, one in which every fan remembers where they were and what they were doing when they found out.“It was traumatic,” Joseph said. “But when you watch LeBron from then, you realize he was such a different person than he is now — like we all are. If any of us look back at when we were 25, I bet we’d kind of wince at some of the things we did and said.”“Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon (above left, with Joseph) said, referring to August Wilson. “Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”Lyndon French for The New York TimesThis is Leon’s first time directing at the Steppenwolf Theater. When he was contacted last October, Leon, a Tony-winning director whose most recent Broadway production was “A Soldier’s Play” in 2020, already had about a half-dozen projects in the works, including upcoming Broadway productions of Adrienne Kennedy’s “The Ohio State Murders,” starring Audra McDonald, and a revival of “Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death,” Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 musical. (Leon, 66, is also the co-founder and artistic director emeritus of True Colors Theater Company, which is based in Atlanta.)But he said he jumped at the chance to oversee the production after its previous director, Anna D. Shapiro, resigned as the Steppenwolf’s artistic director in August. (Davis and Audrey Francis, both Steppenwolf ensemble members, replaced Shapiro as artistic directors.)“You don’t get a lot of opportunities to work with a living playwright on a new play that you think is beautiful and will have a great life,” Leon said as he nursed a cocktail after a rehearsal late last month. “The last time was when I worked with August Wilson on his last play, “Radio Golf,” leading up to the Broadway production [which opened in 2007].”The value of having Joseph in the room for rehearsals, Leon said, was that if he didn’t understand a character’s motivations for doing something, he could ask.“A lot of Rajiv reminds me of August,” Leon said. “I can tell him what I feel. Even if I’m hating a moment, he can embrace that and go down the hall and rewrite it.”And there were plenty of nips, tweaks and tucks to the script in the month leading up to the first performance. It was especially helpful, Joseph said, to have Perfetti’s perspective as an N.B.A. outsider in a play with some deeply insider references. (The Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s use of Comic Sans font in his letter to Cleveland fans after James’s departure, in which he lambasted James for his “disloyalty,” gets a shout.)“There’s lots of lines in the play where he was like, ‘Why am I saying this?’,” Joseph said of Perfetti. “And some of those lines were cut because of that.”“King James” plays out in four quarters, from LeBron James’s rookie year to his championship season with Cleveland in 2016. After Chicago, the play will have a run in Los Angeles.Lyndon French for The New York TimesBut audience members don’t need to be basketball fans to understand the larger points. The play’s first quarter, for instance, ends with Matt and Shawn — who to that point had been strangers — making plans to attend a season of Cavaliers games together. The action then picks up six and a half years later, when the two men are best friends.“With my best friend, the first and second quarter in our relationship feels like it went by that quickly,” Davis said. “That’s how it happens, you know?”Though Matt is white and Shawn is Black, Joseph decided not to make race a focal point of the show — at least, not right away. It eventually factors into their reactions to James’s return to Cleveland in the third quarter, but Joseph said that, having grown up in the diverse suburb of Cleveland Heights — where the play takes place — it “just made sense to me, before I even knew what the play would be about, that it would be a Black guy and a white guy.”“I didn’t anticipate any kind of racial tension in the play,” he said. “But the more I thought about what I was writing about, it just comes out and you allow for the story that wants to be told.”Following its five-week run here, “King James,” commissioned by Steppenwolf and the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, will transfer to the Mark Taper Forum there in June, with Davis and Perfetti reprising their roles, and Leon again as director. Both Leon and Joseph are hoping for an eventual Broadway transfer, too.It will be special, everyone involved agrees, to present the show in the city where James currently plays. But Leon said it’s important to remember that “80 percent of the audience will be the same,” referring to the audience members who will not be passionate fans of the local team. “We’re going to try to strike those universal chords,” he said. “That’s what makes the play work. Somebody has to be able to say ‘Oh, that’s how I treat my friend’ or ‘That’s how it was when I didn’t see my mother for 10 years.’”Joseph, who has never met James, said he would be “thrilled” if James were to see the show during its Los Angeles run, which will coincide with the N.B.A. finals.“But, on the other hand, I hope he can’t come because he’s still playing,” he said. More

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      in Television

      Before Jussie Smollett Sentencing, His Supporters Ask for ‘Mercy’

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      A judge must decide whether to send the actor to prison after a jury convicted him last year of falsely reporting that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic hate crime in 2019.Ahead of a sentencing hearing on Thursday, celebrities and racial justice advocates like Samuel L. Jackson and his wife, the actress LaTanya Richardson Jackson; the Rev. Jesse Jackson; and Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., have written letters pleading for leniency for Jussie Smollett, the actor convicted of falsely reporting that he was the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.“Jussie has already suffered,” the Rev. Jackson wrote to the judge handling the case. “He has been excoriated and vilified in the court of public opinion. His professional reputation has been severely damaged.”Mr. Smollett, 39, was convicted of felony disorderly conduct — which carries a maximum of three years in prison — relating to conversations he had with the police just after reporting the attack. But defendants convicted of similar crimes in the past have been sentenced to probation and community service.Many of the letters cite Mr. Smollett’s history of volunteer work, the nonviolent nature of his offense and the reputational damage he had already suffered following charges that the 2019 attack was actually a hoax that he had planned to drum up publicity. Others who have written on his behalf include the actress Alfre Woodard and Melina Abdullah, a founder of Black Lives Matter in Los Angeles.During the trial, the prosecution argued that Mr. Smollett had instructed two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, to attack him near his Chicago apartment building, yelling racist and homophobic slurs at him, punching him hard enough to only create a bruise and placing a rope around his neck like a noose. Both brothers testified against him, acknowledging their role in the incident, which they said had been staged. The actor himself took the stand during seven hours of testimony over two days to deny that he had played any role.Prosecutors have not indicated whether they will push for prison time at the hearing.“It’s the judge who has the total and exclusive authority to impose a sentence,” said Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the Smollett case, has not said whether he will recommend that the actor be sent to prison. Tannen Maury/EPA, via ShutterstockAt the outset of Thursday’s proceeding, Judge James B. Linn is expected to rule on a motion by lawyers for Mr. Smollett, who is best known for his role in the hip-hop drama “Empire,” that seeks to have the conviction thrown out or for the actor to gain a new trial.In papers filed with the court last month, the lawyers argued that Judge Linn displayed a “hostile attitude” toward the defense and acted inappropriately when the defense attempted to present evidence that one of the brothers had made homophobic statements and that the attack on Mr. Smollett, who is gay, could have been motivated by bias.In their motion, the defense lawyers cited an instance in which Judge Linn called a line of questioning about a homophobic comment by Olabinjo Osundairo “very collateral matters.”The defense argued that this comment could have swayed the jury and that the line of questioning was central to their argument that the Osundairo brothers perpetrated a “real attack” against Mr. Smollett “driven by homophobia.” (During testimony, Olabinjo Osundairo repeatedly denied being homophobic.)During the trial, Judge Linn rejected the defense’s request for a mistrial at the time, defending his use of the term “collateral” as simply referring to matters outside the direct facts of Mr. Smollett’s case.As part of their bid for a new trial, the defense also argued that during jury selection, prosecutors displayed a pattern of seeking to dismiss Black potential jurors — resulting in a final group that included one Black juror and a Black alternate.Prosecutors argued in court papers that the accusation of discrimination during jury selection was unfounded and that they had provided “race-neutral” explanations for challenging the inclusion of those jurors.Possibilities for Mr. Smollett’s sentence also include restitution, which, in his case, would likely mean paying the city of Chicago for the money it expended while investigating his hate crime report.In a court filing ahead of the sentencing, a city lawyer and the superintendent of the Chicago Police Department urged prosecutors to ask the court to order Mr. Smollett to pay them more than $130,000, explaining that police officers had “worked around the clock” to find the perpetrators of the attack.“The city is a victim of Mr. Smollett’s crimes because his false reports caused CPD to expend scarce resources that could have been devoted to solving actual crimes,” the filing said. The city currently has a pending lawsuit against Mr. Smollett in which they asked for the same amount of money.In their letter to Judge Linn, Samuel L. Jackson and LaTanya Richardson Jackson said they have known Mr. Smollett since he was a child and later through charitable work. The Jacksons asked Judge Linn for “mercy” and argued that Mr. Smollett “used his celebrity to impact community outreach work,” including to aid people in Flint, Mich., during the water crisis.In his letter, Rev. Jesse Jackson wrote that he worried about Mr. Smollett’s safety in prison as a “well-known, nonviolent, Black, gay man with Jewish heritage.”In making the sentencing decision, the court will consider Mr. Smollett’s criminal history, which involves a single incident from 2007 in California. He was convicted in that case of driving under the influence, driving without a license and giving false information to the police, all misdemeanors. Mr. Smollett was sentenced to probation and community service and was required to complete substance abuse treatment, according to a pre-sentencing report written by a probation officer and filed with the court.The report was based on an interview with Mr. Smollett after his conviction, in which the actor said he had been suffering from “excessive stress,” dealing with financial problems and asking to undergo substance abuse treatment for a few years. Mr. Smollett told the probation officer that he hoped to pursue directing.The actor, who is out of jail on bond, generally declined to discuss the specifics of his case during the interview with the probation officer. But when asked how his family had responded to the ordeal, he said, “They know me, and they know I did not do this.”Asked whether he planned to stay in his apartment in New York City, Mr. Smollet replied, “Everything is up in the air right now.” More

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      in Theater

      Richard Christiansen, Influential Chicago Theater Critic, Dies at 90

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      His reviews for The Chicago Tribune, and his encouragement of the drama crowd, helped make Chicago one of the country’s leading theater cities.In 1970, as Americans were preparing to mark the first Earth Day, Richard Christiansen, still relatively early in what became a storied career of writing about theater in Chicago, seized the moment to argue that the arts deserved just as much attention as the environment but were unlikely to receive it.“One can actually see the air becoming befouled through pollution,” he wrote in The Chicago Daily News, his employer at the time, “but it is much more difficult to tell when the spirit is withering for lack of nourishment.”Over the next three decades, at The News and then, from 1978 to 2002, at The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Christiansen nourished readers with his drama criticism. He helped make Chicago one of the most vibrant theater towns in the country, not only through his writing but also with the occasional behind-the-scenes nudge.He championed early work by David Mamet and other playwrights, boosted the careers of directors like Robert Falls and highlighted performances by countless actors who would go on to become national names, among them Gary Sinise, Amy Morton and Brian Dennehy. He shined his spotlight on the innovative early efforts of now venerable companies like Steppenwolf and now departed ones like the Famous Door Theater.He was so widely respected that when he retired in 2002, the League of Chicago Theaters Foundation turned its annual gala into “Showtime 2002! A Salute to Richard Christiansen” and filled the evening with scenes from some of his favorite plays.Mr. Christiansen died on Jan. 28 at a Chicago nursing home. He was 90. Sid Smith, a former colleague at The Tribune and his executor, confirmed the death.Mr. Christiansen was not just a big-house critic; from the 1960s on, Chicago was home to theater staged in converted bowling alleys and storefronts and assorted other so-called off-Loop spaces, and Mr. Christiansen eagerly sampled seemingly all of it.Last week, the producer Charles Grippo, in a letter to The Tribune, recalled the time in 1987 when he produced his first show, a revival of Mr. Mamet’s “The Woods,” in just such a space. Mr. Christiansen had called for a ticket, but on the appointed day a blizzard struck. Mr. Grippo decided to proceed with the performance anyway and was pleasantly surprised when Mr. Christiansen braved the storm and turned up at the theater. His enthusiastic review made the show a success.“Christiansen was always honest with his readers,” Mr. Grippo wrote, “but he was never mean. He truly wanted those of us in the Chicago theater community to flourish.”In a 2002 article in The Tribune reflecting on his career, Mr. Christiansen recalled some of those off-the-beaten-trail discoveries, including the night in 1987 when he made his way to “a ramshackle space underneath the L tracks” to see a production by a new company, Famous Door, which went on to considerable acclaim before folding in 2005.“In Chicago, at least,” he wrote, “you never know where the lightning is going to strike, where the talent is going to show itself.”Mr. Christiansen in 2002. Once, after being moved by a production, he wrote, “I had to pull my car over to the side of the street so that I could clear the tears from my eyes?” Afterward, a rave from him was known in Chicago’s theater world as a “pull over.”Charles Osgood/Chicago TribuneRichard Dean Christiansen was born on Aug. 1, 1931, in Berwyn, Ill., west of Chicago, to William and Louise (Dethlefs) Christiansen. He grew up in Oak Park, Ill. In his 2004 book, “A Theater of Our Own: A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago,” the dedication reads, “For my parents, who went to church and to the theater and took me with them.”In a 2004 interview with The Tribune occasioned by publication of that book, he recalled that the first show he was permitted to attend was “Oklahoma!”“Before I was allowed to go, my mother had to make sure there were no dirty words in it,” he said. “I was still able to see it even though it had one ‘damn.’”He graduated from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1953 with an English degree and did a year of postgraduate work at Harvard University, “learning that I lacked a true scholarly bent,” as he summed up that experience. Then came two years in the Army and a trainee position at Time magazine in New York before he returned to Chicago in 1956 and took a job at the City News Bureau, a cooperative news agency that fed the area’s papers.Mr. Christiansen went to work for The News in 1957. He started on the night shift, but by the early 1960s he was writing more and more about the arts — books, television, music. And theater. He left The News in 1973 to edit a new magazine, The Chicagoan, but when it went out of business after 18 months he returned to The News. When that paper went under in 1978, he was picked up by The Tribune.As a critic, Mr. Christiansen was no cheerleader; if he thought a production was bad, he wasn’t shy about saying so. His opening sentence in a 1985 review of a drama called “White Biting Dog” at Remains Theater said simply, “‘White Biting Dog’ shouldn’t happen to a dog.”But if he liked a show, his words could help make the reputations of actors, directors and companies. An oft-cited case in point was his 1983 review of Jack Henry Abbott’s “In the Belly of the Beast: Letters From Prison” at Wisdom Bridge Theater, a production directed by Mr. Falls and starring William L. Petersen, the actor now well known from the television series “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.” Mr. Christiansen wrote of Mr. Petersen’s stage mannerisms and craftsmanship, then said this:“These qualities are admirable in acting, and can be accounted for, but how do I account for the fact that minutes after leaving the theater Thursday night, I had to pull my car over to the side of the street so that I could clear the tears from my eyes?”Afterward, the Chicago theater world was said to refer to a rave from Mr. Christiansen as “a pull over.”Some critics keep a distance from actors, directors and others they write about, but Mr. Christiansen, who leaves no immediate survivors, was known to talk shop with those in the theater world and offer career guidance.In the mid-1980s, for instance, he went to a showcase production of Shakespeare scenes staged by a young director and actress named Barbara Gaines, liked it and invited Ms. Gaines to lunch.“I didn’t even finish my chocolate mousse before he suggested — or rather, informed me — that my next project must be to direct a full-length Shakespeare play,” Ms. Gaines said by email. “And from that fateful day, Chicago Shakespeare Theater as we know it was born.” She is now artistic director of that well-regarded company.The playwright Jeffrey Sweet, who wrote an appreciation of Mr. Christiansen last week for the website American Theater, told of his own experience with the Christiansen guiding hand.“Without telling me he was going to,” he said by email, “he phoned Northwestern University Press and told an editor there, ‘Sweet’s written enough good stuff it’s time for you to publish an anthology.’ And they did. And he wrote the introduction.” More

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      in Music

      Sam Lay, Drummer Who Backed Blues Greats and Bob Dylan, Dies at 86

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      His distinctive double-shuffle groove, which he likened to “three different drummers playing the same beat,” enlivened records by Howlin’ Wolf and many others.Sam Lay, a powerful and virtuosic drummer who played and recorded with Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy Waters, was a founding member of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and backed Bob Dylan when he went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965, died on Jan. 29 at a nursing facility in Chicago. He was 86.His daughter, Debbie Lay, confirmed the death but said she did not know the cause.Mr. Lay’s exuberant, idiosyncratic drumming was known for its double-shuffle groove, which he adapted from the rhythms of the hand claps and tambourine beats he heard in the Pentecostal church he attended while growing up in Birmingham, Ala.“The only way I can describe it is, you’ve got three different drummers playing the same beat but they’re not hitting it at the same time,” Mr. Lay said in “Sam Lay in Bluesland,” a 2015 documentary directed by John Anderson that took its name from an album Mr. Lay released in 1968.The harmonica player Corky Siegel, a longtime collaborator, said the double-shuffle groove was part of Mr. Lay’s broader ability to do more than keep the beat.“He just made you fly,” Mr. Siegel said in a phone interview. “He wasn’t held back by the concept of groove and time.” He added: “People think he played loud. No, he played delicate, but he used the full dynamic range, and when you do that, and you get to a crescendo, it’s powerful, like a locomotive coming toward you. But with Sam, it was like five locomotives.”After arriving in Chicago in early 1960, Mr. Lay played in bands led by the harmonica player and singer Little Walter and the singer Howlin’ Wolf, with whom he recorded songs that became blues standards like “Killing Floor,” “The Red Rooster” and “I Ain’t Superstitious.”Once, after being fined by Howlin’ Wolf for wearing pants without a black stripe on them, Mr. Lay argued that no one could see his pants behind his drum kit. When their dispute persisted, Mr. Lay pulled a Smith & Wesson gun and held it to Howlin’ Wolf’s face.Mr. Lay left Howlin’ Wolf to join the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in 1963, lured by the prospect of making $20 a gig, nearly three times what he had been earning. Led by Mr. Butterfield on harmonica and vocals, the band — which also included the guitarists Elvin Bishop and Mike Bloomfield, the bassist Jerome Arnold and the keyboardist Mark Naftalin — was racially integrated, a rarity at the time, and bought the blues to a white audience during an intense period in the civil rights movement.Bob Dylan rehearsing for his performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival with, from left, Mike Bloomfield, Mr. Lay, Jerome Arnold and Al Kooper.David Gahr/Getty ImagesThe band played at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965. Hours after their set, Mr. Lay, Mr. Arnold and Mr. Bloomfield were part of Mr. Dylan’s backup band when he stunned the audience by performing an electric set, which began with a bracing version of his song “Maggie’s Farm.”Soon after that, Mr. Dylan asked Mr. Lay to back him on the title track of his album “Highway 61 Revisited.” In addition to playing drums, Mr. Lay played a toy whistle on the song’s memorable opening. (The organist Al Kooper has said he was the one who brought the whistle to the studio).“I blew it and it sounded like a siren,” Mr. Lay told The Chicago Sun-Times in 2004. “Bob said, ‘Do that again.’ So I did it again.”Later in 1965, the Butterfield band’s first album, called simply “The Paul Butterfield Blues Band,” was released. One track, “I Got My Mojo Working,” featured Mr. Lay on lead vocal.An illness caused Mr. Lay to leave the band in late 1965.Samuel Julian Lay was born on March 20, 1935, in Birmingham. His father, Foster, a Pullman train porter who played banjo in a country band, died when Sam was 17 months old. His mother, Elsie (Favors) Lay, cleaned Pullman cars.Growing up, he listened to country music; as a teenager, he took drumming lessons from W.C. Handy Jr., the son of the composer. He dropped out of high school (which ended his dream of trying to run faster than the Olympic champion Jesse Owens) and in 1954 moved to Cleveland, where he worked in a steel mill and started to discover his musical path.One day, he stopped into a wine bar after hearing the sound of a harmonica being played by Little Walter, who asked him to sit in when he learned that he played drums. In the late 1950s Mr. Lay joined the Thunderbirds, a blues and R&B group.When Little Walter was shot, Mr. Lay helped nurse him back to health. Once in Chicago, he joined Little Walter’s band. But he didn’t stay long; he was soon hired by Howlin’ Wolf.Mr. Lay was a slick dresser who wore elaborate capes and hats and carried a walking stick. He styled his hair for a while after Little Richard’s. And he brought his windup eight-millimeter camera to clubs in the 1960s. It didn’t have sound, but he captured images of Little Walter, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Buddy Guy and others onstage.“As soon as Howlin’ Wolf knew that a camera was watching him, you’d think he was possessed in some kind of way,” Mr. Lay said in Mr. Anderson’s documentary.Footage he shot was used in Mr. Anderson’s film and in Martin Scorsese’s 2003 public television series, “The Blues.”In 1966, after he had begun to play with the harmonica player and singer James Cotton, Mr. Lay heard from Muddy Waters that an enemy of Mr. Cotton’s, who had shot him years before, had just been released from jail and was going after him. Mr. Lay rushed to his house, got his Colt .45, drove to the club and prepared to defend Mr. Cotton.But while Mr. Lay waited for the gunman (who never came), his gun went off, he told Phoenix New Times in 1999. He shot himself in the groin.“I’m still recuperating,” he said in the interview.Mr. Lay recording at Blue Heaven Studios in Salina, Kan., a former church, in 2000.Cliff Schiappa/Associated PressIn 1969, Mr. Lay was part of the all-star band, which also included Muddy Waters and Paul Butterfield, that recorded the album “Fathers and Sons.” It reached No. 70 on the Billboard chart.Over the next 50 years, he performed with Mr. Siegel’s ensembles the Siegel-Schwall Band, Chamber Blues and Chicago Blues Reunion, as well as leading his own blues band.But the blues did not pay all of Mr. Lay’s bills. For many years, he moonlighted as a security guard.Mr. Lay was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015, as part of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, and into the Blues Hall of Fame three years later.In addition to his daughter, he is survived by four grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. His wife, Elizabeth (Buirts) Lay, died in 2017. His son Bobby died inn 2019, and his son Michael died last month.Mr. Lay did not lack self-confidence.“I don’t know nobody in the world who can follow a band as good as I can, specifically if it comes to blues and that old-time rock ‘n’ roll,” he said in Mr. Anderson’s documentary.“The secret,” he added, “is paying attention to what everyone else is playing and keeping your eyes open, and your mind.” More

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      in Television

      Jussie Smollett Sentencing Is Set for March 10

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      A judge in Chicago on Thursday set March 10 as the date on which the actor Jussie Smollett will be sentenced following his conviction in the filing of a false police report in which he claimed to have been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.A jury found Mr. Smollett guilty last year of five counts of felony disorderly conduct related to the false report; he was acquitted on another similar count. On Thursday, Mr. Smollett, formerly an actor on the Fox music-industry drama “Empire,” and his lawyers remotely attended his first court hearing following the conviction.Mr. Smollett, who was released on bond after his conviction and attended the brief hearing from New York, told the judge he would show up in person for his sentencing.In January 2019, Mr. Smollett reported to the police that two assailants had beaten him, yelled racist and homophobic slurs at him, placed a rope around his neck and poured bleach on his clothing in an early morning assault.Two brothers, Abimbola Osundairo and Olabinjo Osundairo, who the police determined to have been the assailants, later told the jury at trial last year that Mr. Smollett had directed them to carry out the attack.Prosecutors argued that Mr. Smollett’s account was a hoax orchestrated for publicity.Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, has said his client plans to appeal the verdict. Mr. Smollett, who testified during the trial, maintained he was the victim of a real attack. His lawyers argued that the Osundairo brothers were liars who had attacked Mr. Smollett to scare him into hiring them as bodyguards, and who concocted a story to avoid prosecution themselves.Mr. Smollett’s conviction carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.Daniel K. Webb, the special prosecutor who handled the case, has not yet indicated whether he would make a recommendation of prison time to the judge but has emphasized how serious he thought the case was, saying after the conviction that Mr. Smollett was “not repentant at all.”Some experts said they would find it surprising if Mr. Smollett were to be imprisoned because he was convicted of the lowest level felony offense and has no prior felony convictions. Mr. Uche said last month that he had “never seen a case like this where the person got jail time,” adding that he believed Mr. Smollett would be vindicated on appeal. 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 Television

      At Sundance, Two Films Look at Abortion and the Jane Collective

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      In the years leading up to Roe v. Wade, a Chicago group helped thousands of women obtain the procedure safely. A documentary and a feature tell their story.Judith Arcana was 27 and recently separated from her husband when she began driving women surreptitiously for safe — but illegal — abortions. The year was 1970, she was an out-of-work teacher on the South Side of Chicago, and she was spending her days counseling women in need.“I don’t think we were crazy,” said Arcana, now 78. “I don’t think we were stupid. I think that we had found something that was so important, so useful in the lives of women and girls.”“We were radicalized in the arena of women’s bodies,” she said. “We knew that what we were doing was good work in the world. And we knew that it was illegal.”Arcana was part of the Jane Collective, a disparate, rotating group of women who ensured safe abortions for thousands of women in Chicago between 1968 and 1973. Despite the law, women were still getting abortions. But they were often performing them on themselves and winding up in the hospital, or paying the mob with no guarantee of survival.During these years, because of Arcana and other women, if you lived in Chicago and needed help, you could call a number and talk with a woman who would offer a safer alternative. Members of the collective provided counseling and arranged the procedures, which they eventually administered — 11,000 all told during that period. But then in 1972, Arcana and six other members of the group were arrested, each charged with 11 counts of abortion or conspiracy to commit an abortion with a possible 10-year sentence for each charge. Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court decision issued in 1973, saved them all.Mugshots of members of the Jane Collective who were arrested in 1972. HBONow, close to 50 years later, members of the collective are sharing their stories in a pair of movies at the Sundance Film Festival, which begins Thursday: the HBO documentary “The Janes”; and a fictionalized account titled “Call Jane,” starring Elizabeth Banks and Sigourney Weaver, and looking for distribution.The movies are debuting at a particularly crucial time for abortion rights. The Supreme Court heard arguments in December over the legality of a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks; it is expected to issue a decision this summer. Should the court uphold the law, the ruling would be at odds with Roe v. Wade, which declared abortion a constitutional right and forbade states from banning the procedure before fetal viability (23 weeks). The Sundance filmmakers make no secret that they support abortion rights but say they want their work to show the complexity of the subject.In “Call Jane,” Banks plays Joy, a mother and housewife who seeks out an illegal abortion after learning that her pregnancy is life-threatening — her attempt to secure one legally having been denied by an all-male hospital board. The movie’s director, Phyllis Nagy (whose credits include the screenplay for “Carol”), said she wished she could show it to the Supreme Court’s conservative justices. “I would sit there and say, ‘Now, talk to me,’ and it wouldn’t make any difference, probably,” she said. “But artists need to start having the kinds of political conversations with society that aren’t didactic,” she added. “Nothing else has worked.”Elizabeth Banks in “Call Jane,” about a woman trying to terminate a life-threatening pregnancy. Wilson Webb, via Sundance InstituteThe makers of “The Janes” hope those with differing views will allow themselves a look at life before Roe v. Wade. “This is a glimpse at history; I don’t think it’s an advocacy film,” said Tia Lessin, who directed with Emma Pildes, whose father used to be married to Arcana. Arcana’s son, Daniel, and Pildes are producers on the film. Lessin added, “It’s a real life story about what happened and the lengths that women went to to have abortions and to enable other women to have abortions.”“Do I hope that people’s takeaway will be ‘let’s not go back there’? Sure. But I really hope it moves people to engage in conversation. Love the film, hate the film,” she said before Pildes jumped in: “Talk about the issue.”And there is plenty to discuss.The Jane Collective was formed when a college student, Heather Booth, now 76, received a desperate call from a friend looking for an abortion. Booth, active in the civil rights movement, found a doctor willing to help and passed along the information. “I made what I thought was a one-time arrangement,” she said in an interview. Soon another woman called. Then another. Booth found herself negotiating fees and learning the intricacies of the procedure so she could counsel women. After a few years, Booth, by then a mother working on her graduate degree at the University of Chicago, recruited others to fulfill the growing need.“I was working full time. The number of calls were increasing. It was certainly too much for one person,” she added.Marie Leaner, now 80, was raised Roman Catholic and taught to believe that abortion was a sin. At a community center on the West Side of Chicago, she ran a program for teenage mothers. “I just thought it was atrocious that these women didn’t want to carry the babies but they felt this was their punishment for being in love or being sexually involved with someone,” she recalled. “I decided I wanted to do something about it.”She offered up her apartment for the procedures and occasionally held the hands of the women who came through. As one of the few Black women in the group, she said, “I knew that Black and brown people wouldn’t partake of the service if they couldn’t see themselves involved in it.”The State of Abortion in the U.S.Card 1 of 5Abortion at the Supreme Court. More

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      in Music

      Dale Clevenger, Chicago Symphony’s Fearless Horn Master, Dies at 81

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      Mr. Clevenger, who played his notoriously treacherous instrument with daring, was an anchor of the Chicago orchestra’s famed brass section for 47 years.Dale Clevenger, whose expressive, daring playing as the solo French horn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra for 47 years made him one of the most respected orchestral instrumentalists of his generation, died on Jan. 5 at a hospital near his home in Brescia, Italy. He was 81.The cause was complications of Waldenstrom’s disease, a form of lymphoma, his family said.Mr. Clevenger was a pillar of the famed Chicago brass section, which has long been renowned as an unrivaled force for its clean, majestic sound, fearless attacks and sheer might. Working with his equally enduring fellow principals, Adolph Herseth on trumpet, Jay Friedman on trombone and Arnold Jacobs on tuba, Mr. Clevenger helped shape that section into the envy of the orchestra world, and the joy of its conductors.In a statement, Riccardo Muti, the orchestra’s music director, called him “one of the best and most famous horn players of our time and one of the glories of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.”Mr. Clevenger’s willingness to take risks on his notoriously treacherous instrument, and his ability to surmount those risks seemingly with ease, were symbols of the brash quality of his orchestra. He was a technical virtuoso, but he was also capable of producing an enormous range of colors on his instrument, Mr. Muti’s predecessor, Daniel Barenboim, said. He was also a frequent chamber music partner and soloist.The Chicago ensemble was already full of idols when Mr. Clevenger joined in 1966, but Mr. Herseth and Mr. Jacobs were inspirations for him, both for their excellence and for their longevity.When the Boston Symphony offered Mr. Clevenger a post in the mid-1970s, he asked his mentors if they intended to perform in Chicago for as long as they physically could. They said yes. He resolved, he later recalled, that “as long as they were in the orchestra, there is nothing that would lure me away from Chicago.” Mr. Herseth went on to be principal for 53 years, Mr. Jacobs for 44.Mr. Clevenger was, however, a more versatile musician than that might imply. For 17 years he had a regular Tuesday-night date playing jazz with a group called Ears, which he said made him a stronger orchestral player. “Within the confines of symphonic structure,” he said in 1978 about the lessons he learned from improvising, “I can make music in a more relaxed, freer way.”Jazz was a side gig, but Mr. Clevenger was serious about leaving his seat on the stage to stand on the podium. “My dream is eventually to become a respected conductor of a major orchestra anywhere in the world,” he told The Chicago Tribune in 1986. That was not to be, but he did direct the Elmhurst Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble in the Chicago suburbs, from 1981 to 1995.The Chicago Symphony’s horn section in the late 1970s. From left, Frank Brouk, Richard Oldberg, Norman Schweikert, Mr. Clevenger and Daniel Gingrich. Robert M. Lightfoot II/Chicago Symphony Orchestra Michael Dale Clevenger was born on July 2, 1940, in Chattanooga, Tenn., the third of four children of Ernest Clevenger, a sawmill manufacturer who was briefly the president of the Chattanooga Opera Association, and Mary Ellen (Fridell) Clevenger, a homemaker. He started learning piano at age 7 and went to concerts with his father.“I kept my eye on this shape of metal, which was the French horn,” Mr. Clevenger recalled of attending those concerts in a video interview for Abilene Christian University in 1984. “I was infatuated with the way they looked. The more I looked, the more I became infatuated with the way they sound. I had a dream, a vision, to play one of those things.”Unable to afford a horn, Ernest Clevenger bought his 11-year-old son a trumpet instead, but Dale persisted. At 14, after making do with a school instrument for a year, he had his own horn, and his life.Mr. Clevenger performed in the Chattanooga Symphony and the Chattanooga High School band, under the bandmaster A.R. Casavant, who played him records of the Chicago Symphony during his lunch hour.He enrolled at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1958 to study with Forrest Standley, the principal of the Pittsburgh Symphony.After graduating in 1962, he freelanced in New York, joined Leopold Stokowski’s American Symphony Orchestra and spent a year as principal of the Kansas City Philharmonic.He failed his first audition with the Chicago Symphony, in May 1965, but succeeded at a second, in January 1966. On his first week on the job, he was a soloist in Frank Martin’s Concerto for Seven Wind Instruments, Timpani, Percussion and String Orchestra.“For his initial time out,” The Chicago Tribune reported, “he seems a capable addition to our superb first chair lineup.”The Martin concerto was recorded and later released. As well as appearing countless times on record as an ensemble player, Mr. Clevenger was a soloist on several later Chicago Symphony recordings, including a glowing account of Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings under Carlo Maria Giulini and a disc of Strauss concertos that won a Grammy in 2002. Mr. Clevenger also set down Haydn and Mozart concertos with the Franz Liszt Chamber Orchestra, and earned a further Grammy for the quintets for piano and winds by Beethoven and Mozart, sharing the bill with the Chicago principal clarinet Larry Combs (a fellow jazz player on Tuesday nights), two members of the Berlin Philharmonic and Mr. Barenboim.The composer John Williams wrote a concerto for Mr. Clevenger. Mr. Williams conducted its premiere with the Chicago Symphony and Mr. Clevenger in 2003. Todd Rosenberg /Chicago Symphony Orchestra In his final years in Chicago, music critics began raising questions about whether Mr. Clevenger was performing up to his usual standards. In 2010 Andrew Patner, writing in The Chicago Sun-Times, called for him to place “a cap on a unique orchestral career that should be noted for its many triumphs and not a late struggle against time.”Mr. Clevenger retired from the orchestra in 2013 and joined the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University. He had also taught at Northwestern and Roosevelt Universities.Mr. Clevenger married Nancy Sutherland in 1966; they divorced in 1987. Alice Render, a hornist and sometime section partner in the Chicago Symphony, became his wife that year; she died in 2011. He married Giovanna Grassi in 2012. She survives him, as do a son, Michael, and a daughter, Ami, from his first marriage; two sons, Mac and Jesse, from his second marriage; a sister, Alice Clevenger Cooper; and two grandchildren.Mr. Clevenger, for whom John Williams wrote a concerto in 2003, always maintained that the purpose of his playing was to delight.“I realize that I have been given a gift, by God, to make music, to perform music, and to give people joy,” he said in the 1984 video interview. “I have the pleasure, the privilege, of making people happy — and in doing so, making my own self happy.” More