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      Jussie Smollett’s Lawyers Dispute Account That Attack Was Staged

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      Under questioning by Mr. Smollett’s defense team, two brothers who say they participated in a fake attack denied suggestions they had lied to avoid prosecution.Jussie Smollett’s lawyers suggested in court on Thursday that two brothers at the center of the case attacked the actor to scare him into hiring them as his personal security, and later, to avoid prosecution, falsely told the police that Mr. Smollett had planned it all as a hoax.The brothers, Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo, have each testified that Mr. Smollett gave them detailed instructions on where and how to mildly attack him in January 2019.“You attacked Jussie because you wanted to scare him into hiring you as security,” said a lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Shay Allen, “so you could go back to L.A. and get paid $5,000 a week, didn’t you?”“No, sir,” Abimbola Osundairo replied.During cross-examination, the brothers, both aspiring actors and fitness aficionados, disputed that and other defense contentions about the attack. During more than 11 hours of testimony, which touched on minute details like Mr. Smollett’s grocery list and workout regimen, they told the court that Mr. Smollett instructed them to yell racist and homophobic slurs at him — and say, “This is MAGA country” — during the attack.During one of the brothers’ testimony, the defense asked for a mistrial, suggesting the judge had misspoken during the proceedings and later asked for the judge to acquit Mr. Smollett. But Judge James Linn ruled against Mr. Smollett in both instances.Thursday was a pivotal day in the trial as the prosecution, whose case relies heavily on the brothers’ credibility, rested after each brother told the jury in detail that Mr. Smollett had knowingly made a false police report about the attack.Abimbola Osundairo, 28, testified on Wednesday that Mr. Smollett, who is gay, dreamed up the scheme because he had been disappointed by what he saw as a muted response from the television studio to a death threat he received days earlier.Abimbola and Olabinjo Osundairo both appear in minor roles in the television show “Empire,” in which Mr. Smollett had starred. Abimbola Osundairo said he had agreed to participate in the hoax because he felt “indebted” to Mr. Smollett for securing him a role as a stand-in on the show, while Olabinjo Osundairo said that, as an aspiring actor, he had agreed because he wanted to “curry favor” with Mr. Smollett.The defense’s efforts to undermine the brothers’ credibility included questions about guns and drugs found in Abimbola Osundairo’s home and accusations that Olabinjo Osundairo had a history of making homophobic comments.Olabinjo Osundairo is not legally allowed to possess a gun because he was convicted of aggravated battery several years ago. But a detective testified earlier in the week that the guns were all Abimbola Osundairo’s and were owned legally and described the amount of cocaine discovered as “very small.”One of Mr. Smollett’s lawyers, Tamara Walker, also cited discrepancies between Olabinjo Osundairo’s testimony and what he had said to the grand jury in the case. He told the grand jury, for example, that he had decided to pour bleach, instead of gasoline, onto Mr. Smollett because he wanted to avoid being seen filling up a gas container on a surveillance camera. In court on Thursday, though, he testified that he had chosen bleach because he thought it would be safer on Mr. Smollett.The brothers remained composed during their sessions on the witness stand even as they were being questioned about several written conversations that Olabinjo Osundairo has had in which he made remarks that the defense cited as homophobic.Olabinjo Osundairo, 30, denied any bias, explained the remarks as mistakes he had made because he was upset and asserted that he had “no hate for anybody.” The prosecution had earlier in the day shown the jury a photo of the brothers at the Chicago Pride Parade in 2015 in which they were dressed as Trojan warriors for a float that centered around the condom brand of the same name.The mistrial request arose from this line of questioning as Judge Linn at one point described Ms. Walker’s questions about Mr. Osundairo’s past comments as “very collateral matters.” She argued, unsuccessfully, that the judge’s remark had discredited a part of the defense argument in front of the jury.A third lawyer for Mr. Smollett, Heather Widell, accused Judge Linn of making “snarling faces” during the defense questioning. The judge objected to Ms. Widell’s characterization and pointed out her own “smiles and frowns.”“There is no mistrial here,” Judge Linn said. “Frankly, I’m stunned you’d consider a mistrial based on that little colloquy.”Jussie Smollett’s trial entered its fourth day as the prosecution wound down its case and the defense challenged the credibility of two brothers who say the attack Mr. Smollett reported was a hoax.Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressEarlier in the day, Olabinjo Osundairo testified that during the attack on Jan. 29, 2019, while his brother and Mr. Smollett were on the ground, he put a noose around Mr. Smollett’s face and made sure to pour the bleach on Mr. Smollett’s clothing, not his skin, to avoid severely injuring him.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      One of Jussie Smollett’s Attackers Tells Court It Was All Staged

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      Abimbola Osundairo, testifying at Mr. Smollett’s trial on charges of filing a false police report, said “he wanted me to fake beat him up.”Jussie Smollett, frustrated by what he saw as a muted reaction to a death threat he had received in the mail, enlisted a friend in 2019 to stage a fake attack that would grab public attention, the friend testified on Wednesday at the actor’s trial.Abimbola Osundairo, the younger of the two brothers who have said they took part in what they describe as a hoax, said the strange request came after Mr. Smollett showed him an image of a threatening letter he had received. It featured a red stick figure hanging from a noose, a gun pointed at the figure, and the acronym MAGA on it.Mr. Smollett later arranged a meeting with him, Mr. Osundairo said, after sending him a text message in which Mr. Smollett said he needed help “on the low.” At the meeting they discussed how the television studio behind “Empire,” the show they both worked on, was not taking the letter seriously, Mr. Osundairo told the court.“He said he wanted me to beat him up,” Mr. Osundairo said. “I looked puzzled and then he explained he wanted me to fake beat him up.”Mr. Osundairo testified during the third day of Mr. Smollett’s trial on charges he filed a false police report about the attack, a case that largely relies on the accounts of Mr. Osundairo and his brother, Olabinjo Osundairo, who say Mr. Smollett devised the attack.Mr. Smollett has denied staging the Jan. 29 attack and his lawyers have suggested the brothers have fabricated the account to avoid prosecution.“He wanted me to tussle and throw him to the ground and give him a bruise while my brother Ola would pour bleach on him and put a rope around him and then we would run away,” Abimbola Osundairo testified.Mr. Osundairo, 28, said his friendship with the actor started in 2017 and grew to a place where Mr. Osundairo would refer to Mr. Smollett as his “big brother.” Mr. Osundairo said Mr. Smollett had helped him to secure a job as a stand-in for more prominent actors on “Empire,” a gesture that Mr. Osundairo said left him feeling “indebted” to Mr. Smollett. He said he ended up standing in for Mr. Smollett’s character’s love interest on the show.It is unclear whether the prosecutors will also seek testimony from Mr. Osundairo’s older brother, Olabinjo, 30, who also appeared on “Empire” and, though he was not as close to Mr. Smollett, has told investigators he was brought in to assist with the attack. Olabinjo Osundairo is on a list of potential witnesses.Jussie Smollett outside court Tuesday with supporters and family. His defense team has suggested that the Osundairo brothers made up an account of a fake attack while being questioned by the police. Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressThe brothers have told the police that on the day before the attack was supposed to take place, Mr. Smollett drove them around the Streeterville neighborhood of Chicago, where he lived, showing them where he wanted it to occur. The brothers say Mr. Smollett gave them a $100 bill to buy supplies for the attack, including ski masks, a rope and a red hat meant to indicate that the attackers were supporters of former President Donald J. Trump.The special prosecutor handling the case, Daniel K. Webb, said earlier in the trial that on Jan. 29, the brothers waited for Mr. Smollett near the proposed spot — in subzero temperatures — and when the actor arrived, they beat him lightly, put the rope around his neck and poured bleach on him from a hot sauce bottle.The defense has in its opening statement and cross-examination sought to undermine the brothers’ accounts. Mr. Smollett’s lead lawyer, Nenye Uche, called the brothers “self-confessed attackers” and said both men “did not like” Mr. Smollett.Mr. Uche said that a $3,500 check that Mr. Smollett made out to Abimbola Osundairo was for help with physical training for Mr. Smollett’s music video — not payment for helping with the attack as prosecutors contend. (Mr. Osundairo testified that at the time of reported attack he had been helping Mr. Smollett with diet and fitness plans to help him prepare for an upcoming music video, but that he intended to do the work for free because they were friends.)The defense has also said that Mr. Smollett’s text message asking for help “on the low” was in reference to getting herbal steroids from Nigeria, to which the brothers were soon traveling.On Tuesday, Mr. Uche suggested in his questioning of a detective, Michael Theis, who investigated Mr. Smollett’s hate crime report, that the police had not properly looked into accusations that Olabinjo Osundairo had a history of homophobia.Prosecutors sought on Wednesday to blunt that suggested motivation. Abimbola Osundairo was asked whether the fact that Mr. Smollett is gay had affected their friendship, and he said it had not. Mr. Osundairo said at one point that he had visited a gay bathhouse with Mr. Smollett in Chicago.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      Prosecutors: Jussie Smollett Faked Attack After Real Threat Was Ignored

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      During opening arguments in the actor’s trial, the prosecution said Mr. Smollett staged a hate crime because his workplace did not take a death threat seriously enough.The actor Jussie Smollett made himself the victim of a staged hate crime in 2019 to draw the attention of his colleagues on the television show “Empire” after he decided they had failed to take an earlier written threat seriously, a prosecutor said in a Chicago court on Monday. Dan K. Webb, the special prosecutor, laid out what he saw as Mr. Smollett’s motive in opening arguments of the actor’s trial on criminal charges that he lied to the police when he reported he had been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack.In January 2019, Mr. Webb said, Mr. Smollett received an anonymous “actual hate letter,” which included a homophobic slur and a drawing of a stick figure hanging from a tree. The letter included the acronym “MAGA” made of cutout newspaper and magazine letters, he said, a reference to former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign slogan. Law enforcement has not been able to determine who sent the letter, Mr. Webb said.“Therefore, he devised this fake hate crime to take place so that the ‘Empire’ studio would take this more seriously,” he said of Mr. Smollett, “because this fake hate crime would get media attention.”Nearly three years ago, when Mr. Smollett reported that he had been assaulted, he was primarily known for “Empire,” a drama in which he played a son vying for control of his father’s music empire. He later lost that role after being indicted on charges that he had lied to the police, who concluded that he had paid two brothers to stage the attack. After a drawn-out and tumultuous legal process, the trial began at the Leighton Criminal Courthouse in Chicago with the selection of 12 jurors and three alternates. Mr. Smollett arrived at the courthouse Monday morning, clutching the arm of his mother, Janet Smollett, and sat with several family members as the opening arguments began.Mr. Smollett is standing trial on six counts of felony disorderly conduct associated with the reports he had made to the police. The grand-jury indictment asserts he had “no reasonable ground for believing that such an offense had been committed.”When his account of being attacked on a late-night run to pick up a tuna sandwich became public it struck a chord in a politically divided nation confronting the persistent threat of racism. The actor told the police his attackers poured bleach on him, placed a rope around his neck and yelled, “This is MAGA country.”Lawmakers, activists and celebrities reacted furiously to the incident, but the dialogue shifted abruptly in February 2019, when the police told the public that Mr. Smollett had paid two men $3,500 to stage the attack. The police said they had a copy of the check as well as phone records showing that Mr. Smollett spoke to the brothers before and after the alleged attack took place.Comedians used the story as a punchline. Mr. Trump said it was a smear on his supporters, while liberal politicians condemned it as a disservice to victims of hate crimes.“I’m sad, frustrated and disappointed,” Vice President Kamala Harris, who was a senator and presidential candidate at the time, wrote on Twitter. “When anyone makes false claims to police, it not only diverts resources away from serious investigations but it makes it more difficult for other victims of crime to come forward.”But Mr. Smollett has maintained his innocence, pleading not guilty to the charges and insisting the attack happened just as he described.“They won’t let this go,” Mr. Smollett said in an Instagram interview last year. “There is an example being made, and the sad part is that there’s an example being made of someone that did not do what they’re being accused of.”Initially, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office dropped the felony charges against the actor, saying that Mr. Smollett had forfeited his $10,000 bond and explaining that he was not a threat to public safety and had a record of service to the community. Chicago’s police superintendent at the time, Eddie Johnson, and its mayor, Rahm Emanuel, suggested Mr. Smollett was getting special treatment because of his celebrity status.Kim Foxx, Chicago’s top prosecutor, stood by the decision.“Yes, falsely reporting a hate crime makes me angry, and anyone who does that deserves the community’s outrage,” Ms. Foxx wrote in a Chicago Tribune op-ed after her office dropped the charges. “But, as I’ve said since before I was elected, we must separate the people at whom we are angry from the people of whom we are afraid.”In the months that followed, much of the discussion surrounding the case focused on how prosecutors had handled it.Ms. Foxx had recused herself from overseeing the case to avoid any perception that she had a conflict of interest after disclosing that she had communicated with Mr. Smollett’s representatives when he was still considered a victim. She delegated it to a deputy, but text messages later showed that Ms. Foxx had remained closely engaged with the case, expressing concern to a colleague that the office was treating the actor too harshly.Later in 2019, a judge appointed Mr. Webb as a special prosecutor to review whether Mr. Smollett should be recharged and to assess whether there had been any misconduct in the way the case was managed by the state’s attorney’s office.Mr. Webb renewed charges against Mr. Smollett in February 2020. He later determined that the state’s attorney’s office had not violated the law, but did abuse its discretion in deciding to drop charges and put out false or misleading public statements about why it did so.Understand the Jussie Smollett TrialCard 1 of 5A staged hate crime? More

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      in Theater

      Joaquina Kalukango and Amanda Williams on Creative Freedom

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      The “Slave Play” actress and the Chicago-based artist discuss generational gaps, success and the art that brought them each acclaim.What does it mean for an artist to be free? And what does that freedom look like for a contemporary Black artist? Amanda Williams has recently been asking herself these very questions. A Chicago-based visual artist who trained as an architect, Williams, 47, is known for her pieces exploring the nuances of color, both racial and aesthetic. Her breakout work was “Color(ed) Theory,” a 2014-16 series in which she painted eight condemned houses on Chicago’s South Side in vivid, culturally coded shades, such as “Ultrasheen,” a dark turquoise that matches the hue of a Black hair-care product, and “Crown Royal Bag,” a purplish pigment that mirrors the packaging of a popular whisky.In a 2018 TED Talk, Williams discussed how we perceive color — specifically, how our perceptions are determined by context. One example, she said, was redlining — federal housing maps from the 1930s marked neighborhoods inhabited by Black Chicagoans as red, contributing to policies that prevented many residents from securing loans — which weaponized color and resulted in underinvestment. When the actress Joaquina Kalukango, 32, heard the speech, she was awe-struck. Kalukango is no stranger to powerful works of art: Last year, she received a Tony nomination for best leading actress in a play for her work in Jeremy O. Harris’s searing, passionately debated drama “Slave Play,” which is set on a plantation and follows a trio of modern-day interracial couples whose relationships are stymied by conflicting views on race.One rainy morning in October, Kalukango met Williams at the latter’s studio in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood. Kalukango was days away from starting a Chicago run of “Paradise Square,” a musical about the 1863 Manhattan draft riots, in which Irish immigrants turned on the Black neighbors with whom they’d previously peacefully coexisted. (It’s headed to Broadway early next year.) Meanwhile, Williams is expanding on “What Black Is This, You Say?,” an ongoing, multiplatform series of abstract paintings inspired by cultural touchstones and observations related to the Black experience that she showed at Art Basel in Miami Beach this month.Amid laughter, Williams and Kalukango talked generational differences, the desire to be “regular” and the blurry line between artistic genius and madness.AMANDA WILLIAMS: Twenty twenty was a mess. I was contemplating Kool-Aid [the subject of one of her latest paintings] and laughing about it, and then the whole world was like, “How are you feeling about being Black, segregation and systemic racism?” People were like, “I want to help, right this minute.” I thought, “I don’t know how I feel right now. I was actually doing something else, and now I’m going to cry.” It’s a little easier now. We’re farther away from it. How did that feel for you?JOAQUINA KALUKANGO: It’s interesting, because “Slave Play” opened [on Broadway in October 2019] before the country had its racial awakening. There was a lot of aggression toward our production. There was a lot of pushback, specifically within the Black community. [Some who had seen the play, and many others who hadn’t, found it offensive in its use of antebellum role play and inappropriately sexually graphic; one online petition calling for the show’s shutdown referred to it as “anti-Black sentiment disguised as art.”] But after audiences saw the show, there was so much conversation. On the streets, people would come up to me and talk about it. That was affirming. It was also exhausting. The greatest thing that helped me was when we had a “Black Out” night — the audience was all Black. I heard the show in a different way: It was funny. There was this release of Black people finally being able to feel like this show was for them, as opposed to sitting next to someone and wondering, “Why are you laughing at this?” How can we get Black people to feel free regardless of who’s sitting next to them? How can we fully enjoy ourselves in situations and experience art without feeling like other people are watching us? It’s always a struggle.Kalukango in “Slave Play” at the Golden Theater in New York City, in September 2019.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesA.W.: I’ve thought a lot about the freedom question. Take Kanye West. He’s obviously experiencing some mental health issues. But also, he has a level of mastery and talent that borders on complete freedom. He says inappropriate things, and maybe he doesn’t even understand what freedom is. But if you’ve ascended beyond practically any other brown human you’ve ever met, and you can buy Wyoming, isn’t that free? [West has purchased two huge ranches there.] He just does what he wants. [For the listening party for “Donda,” his recent album named after his mother, who died in 2007,] Kanye was like, “I’m going to recreate my mom’s house in [the Chicago Bears stadium] Soldier Field.” Everybody was confused. But I thought, “This could be a mental moment, but it’s also pure creativity.” Every artist who you might say is the most free, in terms of pushing their craft to the edge, is always called crazy.J.K.: Did anyone tell you, early in your career, that you had to work within certain boundaries? Did you feel pressure to be a certain type of artist?A.W.: I trained as an architect [at Cornell University]. My parents were in a panic that I might be an artist. They were like, “Artists who make money are called architects.” In a sense, that was a boundary. Then, I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area right at the height of the dot-com boom. The economy was great. Projects were bountiful; jobs were plentiful. I was able to live out this architectural career that I thought would take 30 years in five or six. Then I had a boss who said, “If you could be doing anything in the world right now, what would it be?” She thought I was going to say, “Taking over your company.” And I said, “Painting.” She encouraged me to try it. And the Bay Area lent itself to that. Everybody had an idea. Google was born when I lived in the Bay. That kind of environment helped me take the leap.If I had to do it again, I wouldn’t. I’d be like, “What if it doesn’t work? How am I going to eat?” But back then, I was just like, “Oh, I’ll eat some avocados, it’s California.” There’s no moment I remember when somebody said I couldn’t do it. Well, I’m sure there was, but I blocked it out. My friend and I were just talking about how our generation tended to dismiss racist comments or sexual advances. We just kept moving. Your generation does not tolerate nonsense. Is that how it feels?J.K.: Definitely. The new show I’m in, “Paradise Square,” is a musical that has been in development for a long time. There was always a struggle to figure out whose lens the story should be told through. Now, it finally centers around this free Black woman in New York who owned a bar in 1863 [Nelly Freeman, the role Kalukango is playing]. We have an E.D.I. [equity, diversity and inclusion] person who talks about terminology. One day in rehearsal, an assistant said, “Joaquina, we’re not going to say the L-word in this sentence.” I was like, “ ‘Let’? ‘Listen’? ”A.W.: Which “L”?J.K.: It was “lynch.” I said, “What? We’re just not going to say this?” But the idea was, we don’t have to say that word until it’s absolutely necessary. I thought, “Well, this is a whole new way of being, even for me. That word doesn’t bother my spirit, but it’s bothering other people’s spirits.” It’s a different world from when I was growing up in Atlanta.Loren ToneyA.W.: How does that impact your craft? Does it trip you up to have to be mindful of words in a way that maybe you hadn’t been before?J.K.: We’re all more careful. Everyone’s fragile. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic, and so many issues have come up for so many people. We’re all giving each other a lot of care and grace in this new era that we’re trying to build, this new era of theater we’re trying to make. But it’s a bit of a struggle, I’ll be honest. When you do work that’s specifically about a very troublesome time — and if you look at the Jan. 6 riot [at the U.S. Capitol], it’s similar to the draft riots — you can’t sugarcoat it. You can’t run away from it. It’s always a balance of, how do you tell a story without traumatizing our community?T: When did you first encounter each other’s work?J.K.: I first saw Amanda’s work in her TED Talk.A.W.: Oh my God. I had wondered, how did you find out about me? How do you know who I am?J.K.: I had such a visceral reaction to “Color(ed) Theory.” All of it was so much a part of my life, my childhood. Plus, I just love colors. How did you get that concept? What inspired you?A.W.: I grew up on Chicago’s South Side and crossed town every day to go to school. Chicago segregation, coupled with the city’s grid, is perfect for systemic oppression because it sets boundaries, and then we mentally reinforce them. I was hyperaware of color all the time, as in race, thinking, “That’s a Mexican neighborhood.” “Chinese people are there.” “White folks do this.” Things like that. And I’ve loved [chromatic] color since birth. Then I learned about color in an academic setting.One summer, while [I was] teaching color theory, a friend joked, “They pay you money to teach people what? Red and blue is green?” I said, “No, color theory is a whole science.” She said, “You know colored theory.” We laughed and I left it alone. A week or two later, I thought, “I do know colored theory.” I spent another few years making sense of it. It seemed so juicy. I started to think, “What things make you think of the color first?” There’s a story I told in the TED Talk: I met a gentleman who grew up near the “Crown Royal Bag” house. He thought the purple house meant Prince was coming. Even after I told him about my art, he said, “You wait and see. Prince might show up and perform right here.” Suddenly, he had hope for that vacant lot, in a way that maybe he didn’t before. To me, that was success.J.K.: It was brilliant.A.W.: At first, I wasn’t as familiar with your work, but when I started to look into it, I was like, “How could I have missed all of this? These are the exact same things I’m thinking and talking about.” I’m excited about how we translate these thoughts across mediums — theater, performance, music, architecture, sculpture, writing.Williams’s “Color(ed) Theory: Pink Oil Moisturizer” (2014-16).Amanda WilliamsWilliams’s “Color(ed) Theory: Crown Royal Bag” (2014-16).Amanda WilliamsT: You both have long been working artists, but your breakout pieces — “Slave Play” and “Color(ed) Theory” — made you famous. Has that affected your work? Do you feel an added responsibility now?J.K.: An actor starts off auditioning for nearly everything. We’re told “no” 99 out of 100 times. Initially, the roles I took were just what ended up coming to me. But I also believe that what’s for you is for you. When you’re on a path that you’re aligned with, more things start coming your way. Now I am adamant that Black women see many facets of ourselves, that we are depicted with a wide gamut of emotions: the unflattering and unraveling parts but also joyful and loving, peaceful and gentle. I want it all for us, at every possible moment. I’m trying to ensure I show Black women as full human beings — not stereotypes, not archetypes. We’re not strong all the time. Yes, our ancestors had to survive, but there was always joy in the midst of all that pain.A.W.: You also have to give yourself permission to be an artist. That’s hard because there is a burden. You know how few people have the same opportunities, so you always want to make sure you’ve done justice. At the same time, you have to take the pressure off. Our society thinks about the home run, the slam dunk — the idea that each thing you do must be better than the last. But if you look at any creative being’s full oeuvre, there are ups and downs. Artists have to continue to understand themselves and improve their craft for themselves. It makes me think of this great artist Raymond Saunders, who lives in the Bay Area. He taught an advanced painting class, and I was teaching at the same school, so he invited me to his class. I went — and the students were eating handmade pastries from this beautiful boutique in Berkeley or something. I’m like, “What is this?” And they’re like, “He told us he can’t teach us how to paint, he can teach us how to live.” It was mind-blowing. Maybe we don’t have to nail it every single week of every year. Maybe we just nail it every five years. Maybe we can sleep one of those years.J.K.: I always think, “Do we ever have the space to be mediocre and figure things out?” I don’t want to be Black girl magic every day. Sometimes I want to be regular. Just regular Black. [All laugh]A.W.: Regular Black. I’m going to make a painting based on that.T: How do you two define success right now?A.W.: Just being the best me. I don’t worry so much if my work is well received or if it garners accolades. That sounds so cheesy. My husband jokes, “Well, that’s nice to say after you’ve gotten the accolades.” [All laugh]J.K.: I love originating and creating new roles. For me, success is knowing that there are girls coming up who can use work I’ve done as audition pieces for colleges. In “Slave Play,” my character, Kaneisha, has a 10- or 15-minute monologue. She takes up space for almost the entire last act. I’d never seen anything like it onstage before. For a long time, it was hard to find material or scene work that included multiple Black characters. It was hard finding those plays [when I studied at the Juilliard School]. It’s all about the next generation for me. If at any point I can make someone feel more free, more confident in their abilities, that’s the win.This interview has been edited and condensed. More

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      in Music

      R. Kelly to Face Another Trial in Chicago, Next August

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      The R&B star was convicted last month in Brooklyn of sex trafficking and racketeering charges after decades of sexual abuse allegations.R. Kelly, the R&B superstar who was convicted last month in Brooklyn on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, has been scheduled to stand trial again starting on Aug. 1 in Chicago.In this case, Mr. Kelly faces charges that he produced child pornography, enticed children into sex acts and that he and two former employees conspired to fix his 2008 criminal trial in Illinois by paying off witnesses and victims in an effort to get them to change their stories.Judge Harry Leinenweber of U.S. District Court set the date of Mr. Kelly’s trial for three months after he is scheduled to be sentenced in the Brooklyn case, where he faces 10 years to life in prison after a jury found him guilty of all nine counts against him, including eight violations of an anti-sex trafficking law known as the Mann Act. The Chicago trial has been postponed several times because of the pandemic and the Brooklyn case.The federal charges in Chicago came six months after Mr. Kelly, 54, became the focus of scrutiny from law enforcement following the release of the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” which included testimony from several women who accused the singer of abuse dating back to the 1990s.The conviction in Brooklyn was Mr. Kelly’s first criminal punishment despite a long history of sexual abuse allegations.In 2008, Mr. Kelly was tried in Illinois on 14 counts of child pornography and was ultimately acquitted. According to the federal indictment in the Chicago case, which was filed in July 2019, Mr. Kelly and others paid a witness about $170,000 in 2008 to cancel a news conference at which he planned to announce that he possessed video evidence of Mr. Kelly engaging in sex acts with minors. The indictment also alleged that Mr. Kelly instructed his victims to deny to a grand jury a sexual relationship with the singer.Mr. Kelly’s acquittal in 2008 allowed his music career to flourish, and at the trial in Brooklyn, witnesses said his escape from a conviction emboldened him, describing his behavior as increasingly more disturbing in the following years.Mr. Kelly will later face state sex crime charges in Illinois and Minnesota. 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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      Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago Names New Artistic Directors

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      Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis, both ensemble members, will be the first pair to lead the company in its history.Steppenwolf Theater Company, an ensemble in Chicago with a track record of premiering critically acclaimed works that land on Broadway, announced its new artistic leadership on Thursday, and for the first time in the company’s decades-long history, that means two people, not one.The ensemble members Glenn Davis, who is best known in New York for starring in “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” alongside Robin Williams on Broadway, and Audrey Francis, who co-founded a Chicago acting conservatory, will both serve as artistic directors, the company said. Davis, who is Black, is the first person of color in the company’s history to be in the role.In an unusual process for a theater company, the ensemble voted to appoint Davis and Francis in an election, after the pair put themselves forward as a team.The new leadership structure comes at a transitional time for Steppenwolf: This fall, it plans to open a new $54 million addition to the company’s headquarters in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood, which will include a 400-seat theater-in-the-round and a floor dedicated to education. The debut will coincide with the company’s return to live performance — with Tracy Letts’s “Bug” in November — after a 20-month pandemic shutdown.“The ensemble has always been the heart and soul of Steppenwolf,” Davis said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “As the company has grown so, too, has the ensemble, now reflecting a diversity of backgrounds, experiences, and passions.”The current artistic director, Anna D. Shapiro, who has led the ensemble since 2015, announced in May that she would be resigning at the end of August, which coincides with the completion of her second three-year contract. Shapiro’s resignation came shortly after two people of color who have worked with the theater shared grievances about the institution that were published on the website Rescripted.Lowell Thomas, a video producer at Steppenwolf, resigned in April, accusing the company of burying “claims of harassment, racism, and sexism to avoid accountability and real change.” And Isaac Gomez, a playwright who worked with the theater, said he considered pulling one of his plays from the company’s programming because of Thomas’s departure.At the time of her resignation, Shapiro told The Chicago Tribune that the timing of her announcement was unrelated to the published accounts, saying, “There’s not a theater in this country worth its salt that is not dealing with these questions of systemic racism and trying to look at its culture.”In a statement about the new leadership, Eric Lefkofsky, the chairman of Steppenwolf’s board of trustees, said that Davis and Francis’ different backgrounds would lead to a “more comprehensive worldview in decision making.”Steppenwolf — which employs a 49-person ensemble and operates programming for teenagers and educators — has a history of producing works that draw national recognition and transfer to New York stages.In 2007, Shapiro directed the premiere of Letts’s play “August: Osage County.” Letts, who is a Steppenwolf ensemble member, also debuted a recent play, “The Minutes,” at the Chicago theater; the show’s Broadway run was interrupted by the pandemic. And the second Broadway show to reopen this summer, “Pass Over,” a play about two Black men trapped by existential dread, had its premiere at Steppenwolf, and two of the company’s ensemble members will appear in the Broadway version.Davis, an actor and producer, joined the ensemble in 2017, appearing in plays like Bruce Norris’s “Downstate” and Tarell Alvin McCraney’s “The Brother/Sister Plays.” In February, he will star in Steppenwolf’s “King James,” a play by Rajiv Joseph about LeBron James that was scheduled to have its debut in June 2020, then was delayed.Francis, who also joined the ensemble in 2017 after attending its acting residency in 2004, has performed in 10 productions with the company, including Clare Barron’s “You Got Older” and Rory Kinnear’s “The Herd.” Francis co-founded the conservatory Black Box Acting and works as an acting coach for entertainment companies like Showtime and NBC.In a statement, Francis said that one of their objectives as leaders will be to “re-examine how we support artists on and off stage.”“We are inspired by the changes we see in our industry,” she said, “and aim to redefine how artists are valued in America.” More

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      Chicago Comedy Institution iO Theater Will Reopen After Sale

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      The storied improv center closed under the financial strain of the pandemic, but a buyer has purchased both the building and the brand.More than a year after it was announced that the Chicago improv mainstay iO Theater was closing permanently because of the financial strain of the pandemic, the theater’s building and brand have been sold to local real estate executives, the institution’s founder said Monday.Charna Halpern, who started iO four decades ago, said the theater would reopen under the ownership of Scott Gendell and Larry Weiner, who both run real estate companies in the Chicago area. The closure of the theater — which played a crucial part in the careers of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Stephen Colbert — was a major loss for the city’s community of improvisers, many of whom studied, performed and socialized there.“It’s a huge relief that this thing I’ve been working on for 40 years is going to continue,” Halpern said.In a statement, Gendell and Weiner, who describe themselves as lifelong friends, said that they planned to “continue the cultural gem that is this iconic theater.”In June 2020, three months into the pandemic, Halpern announced that she was closing iO for good, saying that the pressure of mounting bills, without any income during the shutdown, had become untenable. “At this point in my life, I can’t continue the struggle to stay open,” Halpern said then.The announcement came at the same time that performers associated with iO called for major efforts to improve diversity and equity there. In a petition, they said they would refuse to perform at iO unless its leadership met a series of demands: they asked Halpern to “publicly acknowledge and apologize for the institutional racism perpetuated at iO,” as well as hire a diversity and inclusion coordinator.About a week after the petition was published and Halpern had agreed to work toward meeting the demands, she announced that iO would close for good, stunning performers. She said in an interview this May that if iO had been on better financial footing, she would have met with the protesters and addressed their concerns, but that she could not do so when the theater’s prospects were so bleak.In the months since Halpern put the building, at 1501 North Kingsbury Street, on the market, her hopes that someone would step in to save the institution brightened and flickered out again and again. She said recently there had been at least three interested buyers, including a Hollywood talent agency. At one point she contemplated reopening the theater herself, but a leaky roof introduced another financial roadblock, she said.For the time being, the closed theater appears frozen in time, with signs pointing audiences where to line up for shows that were scheduled for March 2020.Now, the task of making the theater’s four stages operational again will be up to the new owners, whose deal was finalized last week, Halpern said. She declined to disclose the price. With this sale, as well as that of another storied comedy theater, Second City, Chicago’s improv scene looks very different than it did a year ago. Second City had faced its own accusations of institutional racism and calls for reform, and new leaders there pledged to “tear it all down and begin again.” In February, it was sold to a private equity group, ZMC, run by Strauss Zelnick, and in May it resumed live performances.Though it is unclear when iO will reopen, the sale will help the city become a comedy “mecca” again, Halpern said, after months of darkened theaters. For Halpern, who has run the theater from the beginning and — along with her partner Del Close — helped transform improvisation from a marginal art form into a bustling business, it is unclear what her role will be going forward, though she says, “I’m happy to return in some capacity if they want me.”“The other day I turned over the keys,” she added, “and when they walked me out and said, ‘Thank you, Charna,’ it was the first time I cried. It really hit me.” More