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      Writing Native American Stand-Ups Into the History of Comedy

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWriting Native American Stand-Ups Into the History of ComedyAn author who specializes in unearthing forgotten figures argues for the importance of Charlie Hill, the first Indigenous comic to appear on “The Tonight Show.”The Oneida Nation comedian Charlie Hill on “The Tonight Show” when Jay Leno was the guest host in 1991.Credit…Gary Null/NBCU Photo Bank, via NBCUniversal, via, Getty ImagesFeb. 16, 2021, 3:08 p.m. ETTo the extent Will Rogers is known today, it’s as the folksy founding father of topical political comedy, the first comic to tell jokes about the president to an audience including the president. Woodrow Wilson apparently could take a joke.What’s often overlooked about the early-20th-century superstar is that he was Native American, a fact centered and explored in Kliph Nesteroff’s new book, “We Had a Little Real Estate Problem: The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy.” Nesteroff doesn’t just map a direct line from Rogers’s Cherokee roots to his political perspective; the author reintroduces Rogers as an altogether modern comic: moody, depressive, with uglier prejudices than his aw-shucks image would indicate.Nesteroff digs into an episode in which Rogers faced a backlash for using a racial slur about Black people on the radio in 1934. This led to denunciations in newspapers, protests and boycotts — with Rogers stubbornly doubling down a year before dying in a plane crash. “That story was scrubbed from history books,” Nesteroff told me in a video interview.In recent years, Nesteroff, 40 and often seen wearing a fedora, has carved out a niche as the premier popular historian of comedy because of his knack for unearthing such forgotten stories.A meticulous collector of showbiz lore, Nesteroff filled his 2015 book, “The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels and the History of American Comedy,” with fascinating detours about obscure figures like Jean Carroll and Shecky Greene. One of his early articles that got attention was a 2010 blog post about Cary Grant’s enthusiasm for LSD. Then relatively unknown, the movie star’s drug use has since made its way into Vanity Fair and even a documentary.“Now I wouldn’t write about it,” Nesteroff said, saying he gets annoyed by histories that keep going over common knowledge: “I want to write about the details people don’t know.”Kliph Nesteroff has become something of a historian of stand-up.Credit…Jim HerringtonHis new book, which darts back and forth in time, is a sprawling look at Indigenous comedians, an overlooked branch of comedy. The book’s title (“We Had a Little Real Estate Problem”) is the punchline to a joke by the unsung hero of this narrative, the Oneida Nation comic Charlie Hill. (The setup: “My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York.”) A contemporary of David Letterman and Jay Leno in the Los Angeles comedy scene of the 1970s, Hill was a handsome performer with superbly crafted jokes who became one of the few famous Indigenous stand-ups. Nesteroff writes that Hill was the first and only such comic on “The Tonight Show.”On his network television debut, on “The Richard Pryor Show,” Hill delivered a tight, five-minute set that skewered Hollywood stereotypes of Native Americans and described pilgrims as “illegal aliens,” likening them to house guests who won’t leave. Hill performed for three more decades and was a stalwart at the Comedy Store (although he barely received any airtime in the recent five-part documentary on the club), inspiring many Indigenous comics. “What Eddie Murphy was in the ’80s for young Black comics, that’s what Charlie Hill did for new young Indigenous comedians in the last 15 years,” Nesteroff said.And yet, while there are many more Native American comics today, including the members of the sketch troupe 1491 that Nesteroff chronicles in his book, mainstream opportunities remain scarce. “When we hear diversity in Hollywood, Native Americans are seldom included under that umbrella,” Nesteroff said. “That needs to change.”His book provides context for an argument about the importance of representation, detailing an exhaustive history of the racism suffered by Indigenous people in popular culture, tracking stereotypes of the stoic, humorless Native American from pulp fiction and animation (which was particularly egregious) to “I Love Lucy” and “Dances With Wolves.”Nesteroff begins his book describing growing up in Western Canada, where images of Indigenous artists, he says, are more common than in the United States. For years he worked as a stand-up comic, and confesses he still misses performing. He got sidetracked after his online posts about showbiz history drew attention. An appearance on Marc Maron’s podcast in 2013 led to his first book deal.Back then, he balked at being called a historian. “That’s what a boring person does,” Nesteroff said, summarizing his previous prejudice rooted in a checkered academic career. (He was expelled from high school for roasting teachers in a speech for school president.) But he has since embraced the term, even saying it’s “his role to educate people,” and he has done so as a talking head on CNN and Vice.Nesteroff still has the instincts of a comic. “I always go for the best story because I am still at heart an entertainer,” he said. “My biggest fear is being boring.”That’s evident from our conversation, which he packs with detail-rich stories and occasional impressions. When asked about his Hollywood neighborhood, he said he didn’t want to reveal it “because of internet fascists,” but immediately started explaining its showbiz history, including a building nearby where an actor from one of the cult director Ed Wood’s movies committed suicide. “People say L.A. doesn’t honor its history, but it’s not true when it comes to residential buildings,” he said. “It’s a status symbol to live in Greta Garbo’s old house. The house from ‘What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?’ was just put on the market.”Nesteroff prefers writing about the past over the present, but they often blur in his books. In “Real Estate,” he describes protests against white actors playing Native American roles dating all the way to the 1911 film “Curse of the Red Man,” which led to meetings between Indigenous delegations and President William Howard Taft that sound remarkably similar to current controversies. In another chapter, Nesteroff recounts an argument between Will Rogers and the journalist H.L. Mencken from the 1920s, about how much harm comedy can do, that could be taken from any number of podcasts today.Nesteroff finds that people are amazed to see history repeating itself — “it blows minds,” he said — but like a comic who knows not to make a punchline too on the nose, he declines to draw a connection with the current day. “I’d rather the reader discover it themselves,” he said, before adding that the echoes are definitely intentional.If there is one consistent theme from his intrepid reporting on the roots of comedy, it’s this: there’s less new under the sun than you think.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Keegan-Michael Key Will Do Anything for a Laugh

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyKeegan-Michael Key Will Do Anything for a LaughHis new 10-part podcast, “The History of Sketch Comedy,” is a surprising and earnest defense of a relatively unsung art form.Keegan-Michael Key in 2018. His new podcast, “The History of Sketch Comedy,” involved a lot of research. “I loved school,” he said, so delving into a subject “kind of lights my fire.”Credit…Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 4:33 p.m. ETThere are people who enjoy comedy, people who are nerdy about comedy and then there is Keegan-Michael Key, an actor and producer whose deep and affectionate connoisseurship of jokes puts him closer to the realm of a jurist or sommelier.On Key’s new Audible-exclusive podcast, “The History of Sketch Comedy,” he plays resident historian, taking listeners on a laugh-laden and discursive journey — from ancient Sumer to 16th-century Rome to Abbott and Costello — in a lighthearted but earnest attempt to demonstrate the enduring power and understated complexity of the art form.For Key, who has spent the half-decade since the end of his award-winning TV show “Key & Peele” zigzagging between interesting projects onscreen and off, the podcast was a labor of love. It was directed by and co-written with his wife, Elle Key, last year. On a recent phone call, he discussed the impetus for the show, performing without a true audience and the role his adoption played in his love of comedy.These are edited excerpts from the conversation.When you hear about a celebrity starting a podcast, you generally think of something personality driven, or an interview show with other famous people. You don’t think of an in-depth, 10-part history lesson. What made you want to do this project as a podcast?KEEGAN-MICHAEL KEY Well, one of the things that brought me and my wife, Elle, together is our love of humor and of comedy, even the science of it: What makes a good turn? What makes the joke work? I’m an academically minded person — I loved school. So being able to do research and delve into a subject and turn that around and share with other people is something that kind of lights my fire. For years, Elle has been suggesting that with all of the combined knowledge and passion for this art form that we have, we should figure out a way to share it with others. And when the pandemic started, we used all of our time in quarantine to put it together. Her pitch to Audible was: “If Keegan-Michael Key was a guest lecturer at N.Y.U. doing a 10-week course called ‘The History of Sketch Comedy,’ it would be a very popular class.”Have you always been a student of the history of sketch comedy?KEY That’s something that started in my 20s probably, when I was an undergrad fine arts and acting major [at the University of Detroit Mercy]. I never gave much thought to the history of comedy until I started studying commedia dell’arte. I was like, “Wait a second, you mean there are archetypes? Warner Brothers didn’t just invent the phenomenon of Bugs Bunny? The primary characteristics [of Bugs] have existed for hundreds of years?” When my professor said that, my mind got peeled back. I wrote a paper [in graduate school, at Pennsylvania State University] making a comparison between vaudevillian poster advertisements from the late 19th century and the images that you would see on Greek and Roman friezes from the comedies of Plautus and Terence and Aristophanes, just because that kind of stuff fascinated me.Keegan-Michael Key and Elle Key, who directed the podcast, at the Vanity Fair Oscar party last year.Credit…Danny Moloshok/ReutersHad you done much comedy of your own at that point?KEY Yeah, I think comedy afforded me social currency. You don’t have to be particularly athletic, you don’t have to be super strong and you don’t have to be on the dean’s list to be able to execute a pratfall or tell a funny joke or do a dead-on impression. That was the route that I went as a painfully shy, very skinny kid. That was the only power I knew how to wield. I remember once, when I was a kid, seeing my father, who was this very large, stoic, soft-spoken guy, guffawing at this impression. It was revelatory to me that a person could have that kind of power over somebody who was a thousand miles away, or 10,000 miles away.Did you try and make him laugh yourself?KEY I would try to impress him. If I had gone to see a movie, I would go home to my mom and my dad and act out the movie. Or, if they hadn’t seen a trailer for a movie, I would act out the trailer. Sometimes I would also use that as a kind of pre-Power Point presentation, trying to convince them to let me go see the movie if it was rated R. They were thoroughly entertained, but alas, it did not work.That’s really funny given what you ended up doing for a living, especially all the movie-inspired sketches of the “Key & Peele” show.KEY Exactly. It’s not a surprise at all. Also, I’m adopted; so to say that I spent a lot of time trying to get my parents’ approval is kind of an understatement. I’ve been acting since I was born, you know what I mean? I’ve been putting my tap shoes on for people’s approval for a long time.You chose an interesting starting point for the show, going all the way back to a Sumerian fart joke from 1900 B.C., which I couldn’t believe was real. How did you decide how far back to go?KEY It started with the joke from the film “Airplane.” Lloyd Bridges storms in and he goes: “All right, everybody. I need this piece of information. I need that to happen over there, this to happen over here, and we have to start at the beginning.” And then the guy says to him: “OK. Well, first, there was dinosaurs, and then …” So we actually decided to use that joke as the basis for the beginning. Like, “What would it look like if we start at the beginning? Let’s talk about hieroglyphics.” And then the hieroglyphics brought us to the Sumerians. I think, at our most basic level, the way we captivate each other as human beings is through explaining the journey or the ordeal that one goes through. Literature, cinema, theater — they’re all basically the same at the core, but we express them in a different way.The series begs the question of just what is a sketch. I’m curious how you define it.KEY I think one of the biggest components of sketch is brevity. The modern definition is: premise plus escalation equals sketch, or premise plus escalation equals comedy, which means that a sketch is just kind of an elongated joke that builds on itself. So I was trying to affix that measuring stick to these other pieces of art throughout history. There are lots of scenes in movies and plays where you could move it surgically out of the larger piece, and it could stand as its own piece of comedy. To me, that’s sketch.How did you approach doing all the research for the show? Did you have to brush up on your William Dunlap or your Mathurine de Vallois?KEY Well, a lot of what Elle did is that, as we were putting the structure together, we started to go through history and just say, “What do we know about comedy and where there were comedic performers in history?” Then we just started putting them on the timeline. I discovered through our research about female jesters — was not aware that they existed. There are a lot of wonderful things that I discovered, like the “rural purge” and Beyond the Fringe.Putting all that on a timeline and then being able to kind of zoom out, did it make you see comedy in a different way? Or affirm things you already knew?KEY I think that it probably affirmed things. One of those affirmations was the basics: that people figured out tens of thousands of years ago that it was satisfying to watch someone overcome obstacles to achieve a goal. That is somehow inherent in our programming, to excite us and bring us meaning.Yours is the only voice we hear in the series, and you act out a lot of the sketches you discuss. Was it strange to perform without an audience?KEY Technically speaking, I wasn’t alone: I had Elle in the booth, the engineer and a production assistant. I’d be in the booth looking at them [while performing], and I’d see them start to smile. To me, if I start improvising and I see people start to grin, that’s chum in the water and I’m a great white shark. I’m going to go right the [expletive] off script and do everything in my power to make them burst out in laughter. In certain episodes, you actually hear me talking to Cameron [Perry], the engineer. I go, “Right, Cameron? I mean, it’s a pretty filthy joke, but you’re laughing. Everybody, Cameron’s laughing.”What have you liked most about working in audio?KEY One thing I like is the fact that sometimes it allows you to go bigger. It allows you to be broader, more energetic, because you have to convey something through a microphone. Especially when you’re doing animation work — the figure of what you’re performing with your voice is often so exaggerated that it gives you license to be peculiar or over the top. You can say to the director, “What if I just was like [yodels loudly and cartoonishly]?” And the director will go: “That might work.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Stream These 10 Great Performances by Cloris Leachman

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyStream These 10 Great Performances by Cloris LeachmanThe Oscar- and Emmy-winning actress was still pushing comedic boundaries in her 90s. Here’s a guide to some of her most fearless and memorable performances.Cloris Leachman (right, with Mary Tyler Moore) was only just hitting her stride when she appeared in the groundbreaking “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a role that earned her two Emmys.Credit…Bettmann, via Getty ImagesJan. 28, 2021, 11:55 a.m. ETOnstage, on television and, finally, at the movies, there was no missing the irrepressible Cloris Leachman, who died on Wednesday at 94. She was an all-purpose entertainer who became best known for her no-holds-barred comedy. But that same openness left room for moments of disarming sensitivity and heart.She was also the rare performer to reach the prime of her career at middle age, with her role as Phyllis Lindstrom in the groundbreaking “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and in her Oscar-winning turn in “The Last Picture Show.” Still decades later, she proved durable enough to cut a rug on “Dancing With the Stars” at age 82 and continued acting into her 90s.Although some of Leachman’s notable roles are currently not available to stream in the United States, like her striking appearance in the 1955 noir classic “Kiss Me Deadly,” most of her major work is easy to sample. While she is perhaps best remembered for her collaborations with James L. Brooks, Mel Brooks and Peter Bogdanovich, Leachman also thrived in voice work for animated films, including two for Studio Ghibli, and seemed willing to push herself to greater comic extremes as she got older. These seven films and three TV series showcase her versatility and moxie.‘The Mary Tyler Moore Show’ (1970-1975)In James L. Brooks and Allan Burns’s groundbreaking sitcom about Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore), a single, independent woman working behind-the-scenes at a Minneapolis TV news program, Leachman’s Phyllis is an agent of chaos, constantly swooping in and upending Mary’s day. Phyllis and her unseen dermatologist husband are landlords to Mary and her best friend, Rhoda (Valerie Harper), and she has a tendency to poke around in their business, upsetting Rhoda especially with her flighty arrogance. Leachman’s appearances are heavily weighted toward the show’s first two seasons, but her performance was enough to score her a couple of Emmys and the spinoff hit “Phyllis,” which ended the same week the flagship show did.Stream it on Hulu. Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV and Vudu.‘The Last Picture Show’ (1971)Leachman (pictured with Timothy Bottoms) won an Oscar for her role in the Peter Bogdanovich film “The Last Picture Show.” Credit…Columbia PicturesLeachman won an Oscar for best supporting actress for her shattering performance in “The Last Picture Show,” embodying the sadness and quiet desperation that pervades Peter Bogdanovich’s elegy for a dying North Texas town. As Ruth Popper, the bored wife of an oafish football coach, Leachman plays a Southern flower that’s dying on the vine until she takes up with Sonny (Timothy Bottoms), a high school senior of limited sexual experience. Ruth seems to know her role in Sonny’s coming-of-age story, but she is nonetheless unprepared for the inevitable conclusion, which Leachman registers as the latest in a lifelong series of disappointments.Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Daisy Miller’ (1974)After following “The Last Picture Show” with “What’s Up, Doc?” and “Paper Moon,” Peter Bogdanovich’s hot streak ended with this troubled adaptation of the Henry James novella “Daisy Miller.” But the film’s reputation has improved over time, buoyed by its serio-comic treatment of a brazen American flirt (Cybill Shepherd) in Europe and her trampling of social mores. Leachman’s role as the young woman’s mother carries some of the timidity of her character in “The Last Picture Show,” but here it’s covered by a nervous chattiness that is scarcely less vulgar and conspicuous in their upper-crust surroundings.Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Young Frankenstein’ (1974)The running gag most associated with Leachman in Mel Brooks’s Universal monster-movie spoof requires little acting on her part, but it speaks to her presence as a severe German housekeeper that all the horses whinny in terror whenever someone utters the name Frau Blücher. Blücher’s roots in the Frankenstein estate in Transylvania are explained in hilariously dramatic fashion later, but in the meantime, her dedication to the mad vision of Dr. Frankenstein (Gene Wilder) and his monstrous creation (Peter Boyle) is unrivaled. She also stands ready to offer Herr Doctor a brandy before he retires for the night. Or some warm milk. Or Ovaltine.Stream it on Starz.‘Crazy Mama’ (1975)Leachman in a rare lead role, in the early Jonathan Demme film “Crazy Mama.”Credit…via Getty ImagesA young Jonathan Demme (“Silence of the Lambs”) hadn’t quite matriculated from the Roger Corman school of filmmaking when he agreed to direct this low-budget Corman production on short notice. But he and a brassy Leachman, in a rare lead role, play the material for all it is worth. Although it was a follow-up to the “Bonnie & Clyde” knockoff “Big Bad Mama,” “Crazy Mama” emphasizes comedy over violent mayhem as three generations of Stokes women, led by Melba Stokes (Leachman), embark on a rolling crime spree from California to their ancestral home in Arkansas. Nothing about the film (or Leachman’s performance) is underplayed, but it has an affectionately rollicking spirit, underscored by a terrific ’50s rock soundtrack.Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.‘Castle in the Sky’ (1986)Throughout the back half of her career, Leachman was a sought-after voice talent in animated films, with vocal turns in films like “My Little Pony: The Movie,” “The Iron Giant” and “Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.” But Leachman also contributed substantive work on English dubs of Hayao Miyazaki’s 2009 fantasy, “Ponyo,” and of his breakthrough film, “Castle in the Sky,” a bewitching steampunk adventure about the search for a floating castle. As Dola, the bossy leader of a band of air pirates, Leachman initially suggests a menacing adversary. But as more is revealed about Dola’s motives, the character’s hidden nobility turns our heroes (and the viewer) around.Stream it on HBO Max.‘Spanglish’ (2004)In the rom-com “Spanglish,” Leachman slung one-liners as the boozy but earnest mother of Téa Leoni.Credit…Melissa Moseley/Sony PicturesOver 30 years after they worked together on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” Leachman and the writer-director James L. Brooks re-teamed for this romantic comedy about the relationship between a wealthy, laid-back chef (Adam Sandler) and a single mother from Mexico who gets a job as the family’s nanny and housekeeper (Paz Vega). Leachman plays the boozy mother of Sandler’s high-strung wife (Téa Leoni), which mostly gives her the opportunity to sling tart one-liners in the middle of a domestic meltdown. But she sobers up long enough toward the end of the film to give her daughter an urgent piece of advice, and Leachman’s motherly earnestness in this moment is as touching as it is unexpected.Stream it on Crackle. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Malcolm in the Middle’ (2000-2006)There are shades of Frau Blücher to Leachman’s recurring and Emmy-winning role as Ida Welker, a comprehensively evil grandmother of vaguely Eastern European descent who occasionally drops in to visit the Wilkersons, irritating and embarrassing them with her nastiness and bigotry. Leachman turned up periodically in episodes from the second season through the series finale in the seventh, and she brought with her an air of toxic, manipulative narcissism that rival Livia Soprano’s. In one episode, she sues her own daughter and son-in-law after slipping on a leaf in their driveway; in another, she reveals all the Christmas presents she has decided to withdraw from the family for minor offenses. Her cartoon villainy suits the tone of this slap-happy sitcom.Stream it on Hulu.‘Beerfest’ (2006)Late in life, Leachman (pictured with Mo’nique) continued to push boundaries, as she did in her role as an enthusiastic former prostitute in “Beerfest.”Credit…Richard Foreman Jr./Warner Brothers PicturesThroughout her career, Leachman was willing to do absolutely anything for a laugh, so she was right at home in this raunchy comedy from the comedy troupe Broken Lizard (“Super Troopers”) about a secret Oktoberfest competition where teams vie for beer-game supremacy. Dressed up like Heidi gone to seed, Leachman plays Great Gam Gam Wolfhouse, who isn’t ashamed to talk about her past as a prostitute or use a piece of summer sausage to demonstrate some tricks of the trade. It’s a minor part that’s intended for shock, but Leachman’s lack of shame is totally disarming, a sharp contrast to the frat-guy boorishness that surrounds her.Stream it on Hulu. Rent it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play, Vudu and YouTube.‘Raising Hope’ (2010-2014)As the dementia-addled “Maw Maw” in this offbeat working-class comedy, Leachman mostly drifts in and out of the background, chain-smoking cigarettes, eating pickles from the jar and sometimes mistaking her great-grandson Jimmy (Lucas Neff) for her dead husband. Only occasionally is Maw Maw lucid enough to notice that her granddaughter Virginia (Martha Plimpton) and Virginia’s screwed-up family are living in her dilapidated house rent-free, raising the daughter Jimmy got from a one-night stand with a serial killer. The role calls on Leachman as a primary source of its sitcom surrealism, relying on her willingness to play embarrassing flourishes to the hilt.Stream it on Hulu. Buy it on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and Vudu.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      On Keegan-Michael Key’s Podcast, a Provocative Case for Sketch Comedy

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyOn Keegan-Michael Key’s Podcast, a Provocative Case for Sketch ComedyThe 10-part series mixes history, memoir, analysis and performance to show how classic scenes can be revived just as classic theater is.Keegan-Michael Key as a substitute teacher in a sketch from “Key & Peele.”Credit…Comedy CentralJan. 27, 2021Updated 5:18 p.m. ETWhat if the most impressive post-sketch show career belongs to Key, not Peele?Sure, it’s a hot take, but hear me out. Jordan Peele followed the Comedy Central hit “Key & Peele” by merely becoming one of the greatest film auteurs of his generation, whereas his partner, Keegan-Michael Key, took a more varied route, stealing scenes in “Hamlet” at the Public Theater and improvising bits on Broadway, singing in a movie musical, starring in a comedy series, doing prolific voice work in blockbuster movies, hosting a game show and being an absolutely stellar talk-show guest (his conversations with Conan O’Brien are hilarious). Measured by diversity of work and bounty of laughs, Key stacks up well, particularly after his new project, the Audible podcast series “The History of Sketch Comedy,” is released on Thursday.The title doesn’t do it justice. Directed and co-written with his wife, Elle Key, “The History of Sketch Comedy” is far more eccentric, funny and personal than an Intro to Comedy class, although it is that, too. His 10 half-hour or so episodes cover thousands of years from the ancient Sumerians (who kicked comedy off with a fart joke) right up to Tim Robinson’s Netflix show “I Think You Should Leave.”But this comedy nerd history is filtered through memoir, with Key relating stories of his budding fandom, training and rise from improv comic to television sketch artist. He follows talk about comedy from Aristophanes by saying he grew up “a chariot” ride from Greektown in Detroit.Along the way, he pauses to offer the kind of practical tips you might find in MasterClass videos. “If you are an actor in a comedy, you should be trying to make the crew laugh,” he instructs in the ninth episode. Key explains concepts taught in comedy schools like “heightening” or “the game of a scene,” and also breaks down the four main comedy-character archetypes, dating to the commedia dell’arte. Demystifying the art, he provides if not a formula, then a road map.Yet the most ambitious role he plays is not as a comedy mentor or amateur historian, but as a performer. The heart of this series, an odd genre hybrid that reminds me of Al Pacino’s documentary “Looking for Richard,” is in the sketches. Instead of relying on tape from “Saturday Night Live,” “In Living Color” or any other beloved shows, Key performs them all himself, setting them up, playing all the parts.It’s a feat to pivot from analysis to performance, let alone between Abbott and Costello and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It’s also a risk. Can jokes from “Chappelle’s Show” still work if you take out Dave Chappelle? And considering the reputation that comedy doesn’t age well, will old sketches still make audiences laugh?They certainly crack up Keegan-Michael Key, who pairs a fan’s gushing enthusiasm with the skilled craftsmanship of a seasoned pro who knows that laughter can be contagious. Obviously, there’s no way a podcast is going to prove that Sid Caesar’s physical comedy is unmatched, as Key argues, but it can make a strong case for Bob and Ray’s “Slow Talkers of America” routine. Key’s version of this classic, built on the frustration of a conversation with a man who takes extremely long pauses, is absolutely hilarious.Key is generally a faithful interpreter, but his goofy, ingratiating sensibility inevitably offers a new take, warming up, for instance, the chilly absurdism of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” In his final episode, Key is particularly persuasive championing what he considers the pinnacle of the art form: The audition segment in “Mr. Show,” the great, innovative sketch series by David Cross and Bob Odenkirk, that hinges on an elegantly simple premise about the misunderstanding of when a scene begins. What makes Key such a superb interpreter is how alert he is to the subtle choices, the minor variations, that build pace and spin a setup into something dizzyingly funny.Key delights in witty, formally inventive comedy, which shows up in his very fine discussion of British humor in the sixth episode. Along with the obvious examples — Python, “Beyond the Fringe” — he lavishes attention on an early 1970s TV show less well known in America called “The Two Ronnies,” which builds a whole sketch on misunderstanding names. He then explains how a famous sketch he did on “Key and Peele” about a substitute teacher shares the same tactic. It isn’t the only time he uses his own experience to illuminate older work.Eddie Murphy, right, doing a Stevie Wonder impression alongside the music star on “Saturday Night Live.”Credit…Anthony Barboza/Getty ImagesThere’s a poignancy to him remembering the first time he heard his stoic father laugh. Seeing him break up at Eddie Murphy doing a Stevie Wonder impression with Wonder at his side on “Saturday Night Live” made such an impression that Key described it as “the beginning of my sketch-comedy path.” His enthusiasm can veer into cloying dad humor, but his delight in forgotten artists is infectious.It’s questionable whether Timmie Rogers belongs in this podcast (he’s more of a stand-up), but it’s still exhilarating to hear Key doing the mid-20th-century act of this trailblazer, the first comic to headline the Apollo and star in an all-Black variety show on network television, “Uptown Jubilee.” Rejecting vaudeville stereotypes and racist conventions like blackface, Rogers transitioned from a musical double act into a politically wry solo performer, making him a founding father of stand-up. Compared with fellow comic revolutionaries like Lenny Bruce and Mort Sahl, Rogers tends to get short shrift in accounts of that era. But in performing his old catch phrase (“Oh, yeah!”), Key doesn’t just pay tribute. He offers a reintroduction.“The History of Sketch Comedy” keeps an eye on comprehensiveness, including quick histories of burlesque and vaudeville as well as the Broadway revue (“a vaudeville show dressed in a tuxedo”). The podcast goes out of its way to name-check a dizzying number of television shows. So it feels churlish to single out an omission, but the absence of Tim and Eric stands out because their aesthetic is so influential, including on shows “History” examines, like “Portlandia.”And yet, one comes away from this series not just entertained and informed, but also convinced. It has an argument, even if it doesn’t overtly state it. Sketch is a rich, deceptively intricate art, even if part of its power is in its simplicity. Fart jokes endure for a reason. In creating a de facto canon, Key proves that the best examples of sketch comedy can be triumphantly revived like classic works of theater. To put it succinctly, a necessity for the form: If Rodgers and Hammerstein, why not Nichols and May?AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Chris Rock Re-edits a Special, and the Result Is Fascinating

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyChris Rock Re-edits a Special, and the Result Is FascinatingWith “Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut,” the comic effectively erases the stamp of the original director, Bo Burnham, and turns in a less intimate show.The comedian served as the director of the new version of “Tamborine.”Credit…NetflixJan. 12, 2021Updated 7:13 p.m. ETIn film, directors have all the power, less so in theater. But they are omnipotent compared with the director of the stand-up special, who, to borrow a metaphor from Chris Rock’s already essential 2018 special, “Tamborine,” has not traditionally led the band so much as stood on the side and played the tambourine.But in recent years, directors’ status has shifted, becoming more like bass players or even drummers, in part because of specials like “Tamborine,” directed with style by the innovative comic Bo Burnham. His auteur vision didn’t just showcase Rock in concert. It engaged and interpreted his work, sharpened its focus, while applying distinctive aesthetic flourishes.“Total Blackout: The Tamborine Extended Cut,” released on Netflix on Tuesday, will be fascinating for comedy nerds, not just because it adds new jokes, with almost 40 minutes of extra material from arguably the greatest living comic. It also represents a key turning point in the balance of power between comic and director, with Rock reclaiming control. He effectively erases the stamp of the director, even replacing Burnham in the credits with his own name, and produces a new special with most of the same shots, whose differences are subtle but significant.“Extended Cut” has more jokes, longer setups and more mess. Rock, who has himself directed features, even introduces a part where he misspeaks in setting up a joke, saying “bullies rule the world” when he means “nerds.” Burnham’s slick cinematic flourishes are taken out. Gone is the triple repetition, along with quick-cutting camera angles, of the first three words of the opening joke. (“You would think that cops would occasionally shoot a white kid, just to make it look good.”)But the most important contrast is in the comic’s discussion of his own infidelity. Until “Tamborine,” Rock was known as a social commentator who mostly kept his private life at a distance. But addressing his divorce and his responsibility for the failure of his marriage, Rock made the most vulnerable, introspective comedy of his career. Burnham was clearly drawn to this aspect of the set and focused on it. This material, including jokes about marriage, divorce and sex, takes up about half of the special, as opposed to around a third of the extended version.When Rock confessed his mistakes, Burnham moved into a rare close-up. And he stayed on the star’s face, with no cutaway shots, as Rock talked about cheating on his wife. When the crowd chuckled, Rock looked grave, emphasizing that he wasn’t proud. He said he knew what people were thinking: “What is wrong with men?”On this line, Burnham did something dramatic: He shrank the frame even more, moving in on Rock like a microscope, so close to him that it obscured part of his head. It’s an aggressive move, and one that both underlines the question of what is wrong with men and broadens it, giving this personal story a new weight, especially since it came out just months after the Harvey Weinstein exposé and inevitably evokes the #MeToo movement.A year later, Kevin Hart released a special, “Irresponsible,” in which he also discussed cheating on his wife. He was more oblique, briefer in his contrition, and the special cut away from him after a joke to show the crowd laughing. Whereas Burnham kept the audience out of it, “Irresponsible” took a more ingratiating route, with a shot that indicated it was OK to laugh before keeping things moving.Rock’s extended version remains tougher-minded but moves closer to this posture. He removes the extreme close-up, which, along with its role in drawing attention to the material, is something of a signature Burnham shot. He used it at the start of his direction of Jerrod Carmichael’s game-changing special “8” — whose filmic aesthetic inspired Rock to hire him. In place of that touch, Rock adds a new shot, a mouse-eye view of the star from the front of the stage partly obscured by what appears to be a member of the audience. This new angle looks up at a performer, in awe.What sticks with you in the original is the setup — the admission of cheating with three women and the specificity of the confession. In the extended cut, it’s the punchline, as Rock anticipates the audience response and contrasts the shock from women with the more blasé response of men. (“Three? That’s it? Just three?”) It’s the same joke, but the direction changes the effect.The original version of the special moved in on Rock like a microscope.Credit…NetflixThe new version is a more conventional, if unvarnished, stand-up production, but it also may be truer to the experience of the concert. As someone who saw the first theater show in 2017 on the tour that resulted in this special, I was happy to experience certain jokes again, many of which zero in on the economic angle of a hot-button issue, like his take on how “prices are the new Jim Crow.” He goes on to explain, “The Four Seasons hotel does not say, ‘No Blacks allowed.’ But a $4,000 a night hotel suite sure does.”Rock’s diagnosis of police brutality also returns to money when he says cops are poorly paid “and you get what you pay for.” The streamlined cut emphasized the personal, but the extended version is a reminder that Rock has always been a materialist alert to how the bottom-line colors almost every issue.In a departure from the swaggering, pacing Chris Rock in his big-room shows, Burnham emphasized intimacy in the quiet, jazzy open that showed us the back of the comic’s head waiting for the show to start, observing. The extended cut dispenses with this image of the solitary Rock and adds celebratory scenes hanging out with other comics. We see Eric Andre, Dave Chappelle and Arsenio Hall. The new version is also more straightforward about his fame. Rock places clips of appearances on talk shows he did to promote the special as a way to flesh out certain jokes.This new version does not erase the old one, which remains on Netflix, but it will supplant it for many fans. So while both are worthwhile, if you are going to watch one, my recommendation is to go with the original. It’s more stylish, ambitious and unusual. And its direction represents a step forward for the art, one that inches the special closer to the status of feature films.Stand-up comedians are often control freaks. It’s part of why they go into a job where you not only write your lines, but also deliver them. There are real benefits to this kind of control, but there is also virtue in collaboration, particularly for work that aims for more thematic, aesthetic and narrative complexity.The audience wants comedy that feels most authentic to the animating vision of the artist. But that is not the same thing as work done without filters or assistance. Sometimes you need other voices to help you be the best version of yourself.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      When Is a Comedy Special Also a Corporate Synergy Message?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyOn ComedyWhen Is a Comedy Special Also a Corporate Synergy Message?Two year-end shows from Amazon and Netflix deliver some laughs, yes, but also serve as veiled ads for the streaming services themselves.Samuel L. Jackson in “Death to 2020,” a new Netflix comedy special.Credit…Saeed Adyani/NetflixDec. 30, 2020, 11:00 a.m. ETAt the start of “Death to 2020,” a reporter played by Samuel L. Jackson sits alone in an abandoned office listening to a disembodied voice explain he’s looking back at the past year. “Why would you want to do that?” Jackson responds, with an additional curse for emphasis.The question haunts the next hour. One reasonable answer is that hearing Samuel L. Jackson swear is one of the finest pleasures in popular culture. Another: Where else are you going to go for some new jokes by famous people right now? The last week of the year is traditionally rich with live comedy events, but the pandemic has sidelined beloved annual shows from Sandra Bernhard and Dave Attell. Two streaming services have tried to fill the void by creating their own new genre. With talent-rich one-off specials, “Death to 2020” (on Netflix) and “Yearly Departed” (on Amazon) are comedy’s answer to journalism’s year-end lists.“Death,” slickly produced by Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones, the pair behind “Black Mirror,” is a fake documentary starring a fantasy team of actors, while “Yearly,” a more stripped-down affair hosted by Phoebe Robinson, imagines a funeral for things lost in 2020 attended by a cast of superb female comics. But both conceits are essentially thin pretexts to throw a bunch of jokes together recapping recent news under socially distanced conditions. Some of the bits are solid, others aren’t. But they never add up to more than fine diversions.“Death to 2020,” which lists no fewer than 18 writers, presents an array of talking heads, all caricatures, quipping about a highlight reel of news events: Tom Hanks getting Covid-19, Trump talking about injecting bleach, Biden in the basement and more of the greatest hits. There isn’t a strong perspective here outside of ugh, this year, can you believe it? And there’s fun to be had with these performances, including Hugh Grant playing a foppishly pretentious academic with impeccable condescension.Phoebe Robinson is the host of “Yearly Departed,” on Amazon.Credit…Nicole Wilder/Amazon StudiosGrant, who has aged into a masterful player of villains, always begins in seriousness before veering into dumb absurdity. Describing the fires that ravaged many parts of the world early in the year, he states: “It left these areas utterly inhospitable,” before pausing for the punchline: “Even to Australians.” Then there’s: “People think democracy is permanent and unchanging,” he says. “In truth, it’s something you must perpetually nurture like a woman. Or a professional grudge.”Many of the actors don’t play new characters so much as version of ones that have been popular elsewhere. As Dr. Maggie Gravel, Leslie Jones alternates between abrupt rage and pleading lustfulness. And in a turn that will delight fans of “The Comeback,” Lisa Kudrow turns a pathologically lying White House aide into hilarious cringe comedy.My favorite is Cristin Milioti’s Kathy Flowers, the ultimate Karen, whose series of monologues add up to the closest thing to a fleshed-out character arc here, starting in placid suburban normalcy before the internet radicalizes her, shifting into eye-bursting, conspiratorial madness. It’s silly sketch comedy performed with the commitment of an elite actor. More often in this special, the joke takes precedence over character, and the monologues have the feel of a collection of punch lines doled out like cards at a table.“Yearly Departed” also looks back in anguish, but instead of actors playing types, standup comics act as eulogists, taking turns at a lectern to pay their respects. Tiffany Haddish bids farewell to casual sex, and Natasha Rothwell speaks about giving up on “TV cops.” Everyone appears to be together, watching each other, but they were all filmed separately and cut together with reaction shots. The resulting feel is oddly uncanny.Not only are there seasoned stars like Sarah Silverman, but they mix in some new breakouts like Ziwe Fumudoh and up-and comers like Patti Harrison, who delivers one of the funniest, most acutely observed eulogies on the obsolescence of “rich girl Instagram influencers.” With mock poignancy, she asks: “Who could forget your surface-level love for photography, which you tried to get people to call ‘memory remembering,’ a term you coined.”The guest “eulogists” include Patti Harrison mourning the loss of “rich girl Instagram influencers.”Credit…Nicole Wilder/Amazon StudiosThe comic Natasha Leggero has a sharp set on the death of her desire to have kids, where she speaks for many parents during the pandemic saying: “I love my daughter, but I love her in the same way I love LSD. In microdoses.”Along with the stand-ups, some actors made cameos including Sterling K. Brown, laying on the floor to illustrate the span of six feet, along with Rachel Brosnahan, perhaps to remind you that “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” can be seen on Amazon. Her flat set about the death of pants is a reminder that playing a stand-up is not the same as being one. “Yearly” is hit or miss, but so are most stand-up sets at clubs, and by showing us a well-curated collection of female talent, there were more good jokes than in “Death to 2020.” And fewer stale ones.And yet watching both these shows repeatedly bemoan the miseries of the past year, I couldn’t help but think how the streaming services producing them actually did very well. Just as the pandemic has disproportionately hurt marginalized and disadvantaged groups, it has devastated small theaters and clubs while benefiting digital behemoths.That Jeff Bezos made $90 billion during the pandemic goes unmentioned on Amazon’s “Yearly Departed.” And while the script for “Death to 2020” points out how people stuck at home during lockdown spent more time on Netflix, name-dropping the reality shows “Love Is Blind” and “Floor Is Lava” amid the tragic news events makes you wonder if this was self-mocking comedy or corporate synergy? Spoiler alert: It’s both.In our ever more consolidated culture, where product placement is the norm and only a few companies produce the vast majority of large-scale entertainment, Netflix covers all the bases, pumping out escapist content for an audience stuck at home, then poking fun at themselves for doing it. “Death to 2020” was billed as a departure for the creators of “Black Mirror,” a comedy instead of a haunting vision of technology gone awry. And yet, seen from a different angle, it might be their darkest dystopian production yet.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      5 Things to Do This Christmas Weekend

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyweekend roundup5 Things to Do This Christmas WeekendOur critics and writers have selected noteworthy cultural events to experience virtually.Dec. 24, 2020, 11:03 a.m. ETTheaterLet Them Entertain You, Pandemic-StyleTelly Leung, with Joe Goodrich on piano, in a number from “Sondheim Unplugged,” which premieres on Saturday.Credit…Ordinary SundayIn the fantasy version of a December evening, we would sweep in off West 54th Street, down the staircase and into the cozy, enveloping glamour that always makes Feinstein’s/54 Below feel like it’s ready for its close-up. We would slide into a booth and order a little something lovely. Then the long-running cabaret series “Sondheim Unplugged” would begin — one more shimmering perk to spending the holidays in New York.Happily, the pandemic version of “Sondheim Unplugged” is quite nice, too: elegant, consoling, peppered with deadpan humor. Shot on five cameras and streaming on Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern time (and then available on demand from Sunday to Jan. 9), it’s an hour of Sondheim hits and obscurities, sung by Broadway performers, with only piano for accompaniment. High points include Telly Leung’s heartstring-plucking “Being Alive,” Lucia Spina’s seethingly angry “Could I Leave You?” and T. Oliver Reid’s exquisitely regretful “Good Thing Going.” Tickets to access the performance are $25 at 54below.com. Pour a glass of something bubbly and enjoy.LAURA COLLINS-HUGHESDanceEnding 2020 CalmlyA scene from Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s film “The Last Moon in Mellowland,” which is streaming until Dec. 31.Credit…Jordan Demetrius LloydIf you need a respite from holiday activities, or some space to reflect on the past year, consider spending time with Jordan Demetrius Lloyd’s dreamy, entrancing short film “The Last Moon in Mellowland.” Lloyd, a Brooklyn-based dance artist, transitioned into making work for the screen when theaters shut down in March. Part of Issue Project Room’s “soft bodies in hard places,” a series organized by the curator Benedict Nguyen and timed to planetary events (like a new moon or a solstice), “Mellowland” draws the viewer into a 20-minute meditation that loosely traces the arc of a day. Lloyd describes this world as a place that “viewers already remember,” and there is a calming familiarity in its rhythms and repetitions, as the camera rests on a spinning ceiling fan or two dancers at the ocean’s edge.With performances by Lloyd, Breeanah Breeden, Ariana Speight and Demetries Morrow, and dramaturgy by Stephanie George, the film, which was released in November, is available free through Dec. 31 at issueprojectroom.org/event/last-moon-mellowland.SIOBHAN BURKEGospelAn Empty Hall Full of SpiritThe Harlem Gospel Choir will perform a livestream from Sony Hall on Friday.Credit…Simone di LucaOn the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday next month, the Harlem Gospel Choir will celebrate 35 years as one of the country’s leading contemporary gospel groups, and a globally recognized ambassador for the genre. During any normal year the choir would do a world tour at least once, and whenever it wasn’t on the road, the group would play a Sunday brunch each week at Sony Hall near Times Square, joined by a full band, bringing the sounds of praise to a mix of devotees and tourists.The group will return to (an empty) Sony Hall on Friday for the first time since March, for a special Christmas Day performance at 5 p.m. Eastern time, doing its part to sustain the spirit of communion at a social distance. Tickets to view the livestream cost $25 and can be purchased at sonyhall.com. Archived video of the performance will remain available to ticket holders through Jan. 1.GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOKIDSShe’s Got the BeatClockwise from top left, Emily Lang, Alexis Aguiar, Cassandra Barckett, Brian Criado, Lexy Piton and Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart in the Amas Musical Theater production of “Hip Hop Cinderella,” which is available on demand until Jan. 31.Credit…Jim RussekForget magic and fairy godmothers. The title character of “Hip Hop Cinderella” needs rap and rocket science.Charmingly played by Alexis Aguiar, she masters both in this 35-minute space-age adaptation, which streams on demand on Stellar through Jan. 31. (Tickets are $15-$25.) Presented by Amas Musical Theater in association with HipHopMusicals.com, the show still pits Cinderella against a scheming stepmother (Lexy Piton) and stepsisters (Cassandra Barckett and Emily Lang), but the prize isn’t a royal marriage. Instead, a prince (Jamiel Tako L. Burkhart) intends to crown the winner of a hip-hop ball and rap contest. With the help of her loyal robot (Brian Criado), Cinderella, a.k.a. Ella C, just might get the galaxy’s groove back.Conceived by Linda Chichester and David Coffman and directed by Christopher Scott, this production incorporates clever graphics and even a little space shuttle footage. The show, which features a book by Scott Elmegreen and music and lyrics by Rona Siddiqui, will also amuse adults when the stepmother makes a familiar-sounding complaint: “That competition was rigged!”LAUREL GRAEBERComedyThe Ultimate Kosher ChristmasJudy Gold will headline Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, which will livestream on Zoom and YouTube Live Friday through Saturday.Credit…M. Scott Brauer for The New York TimesFor the first time in its 28-year history, Kung Pao Kosher Comedy, a.k.a. “Jewish Comedy on Christmas in a Chinese Restaurant,” is online, which also means you needn’t go to San Francisco to enjoy the shows.The headliner is Judy Gold, who appears regularly on “The Drew Barrymore Show” and published a book this year, “Yes, I Can Say That: When They Come for the Comedians We Are All in Trouble.” Also performing is Alex Edelman, whose piece about attending a neo-Nazi meeting in New York, “Just for Us,” earned him a nomination for best show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2018.Kung Pao Kosher Comedy’s founder, Lisa Geduldig, hosts the events, which air on Zoom and YouTube Live at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday and Friday, and at 5 p.m. on Saturday. Tickets to access the broadcast are $25-$50 and available at cityboxoffice.com.SEAN L. McCARTHYAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      The Breakout Stars of 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Breakout Stars of 2020Here are the 12 stars and trends that managed to thrive and shine in an impossible year.Clockwise from bottom left: Sarah Cooper, Maria Bakalova, the hand of the artist Salman Toor, Jonathan Majors and Radha Blank.Credit…Clockwise from bottom left: Lacey Terrell/Netflix; Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York Times; Peter Fisher for The New York Times; Adria Malcolm for The New York Times; Douglas Segars for The New York Times Dec. 23, 2020Updated 7:44 a.m. ETWhile plenty of us felt trapped this year, wandering through the same spaces and talking to the same people, it was the artists and entertainers who kicked open windows to new sights, sounds and experiences. Yes, the pandemic dealt a significant hit to the culture world, but nothing could derail its creativity. So, despite the limitations, stars in a variety of disciplines managed to thrive and shine, and by doing so, made a difficult year more tolerable for most everyone. Here are 12 artists and trends who gave us a fresh perspective in 2020.Radha Blank wrote, directed and starred in the autobiographical satire “The 40-Year-Old Version.”Credit…Douglas Segars for The New York TimesFilmRadha BlankRadha Blank was the hero many of us needed in 2020, when the concept of time got an overdue interrogation. In her autobiographical satire “The Forty-Year-Old Version,” which was on Netflix, she portrays a playwright who — refusing to believe that her dreams have an expiration date — pivots to rap as a grown woman. Like her character, Blank, who grew up Brooklyn, is a 40-something playwright who knows what it’s like to fight to elevate her voice.And elevate it she did. She wrote, directed and starred in the film, her first feature, a New York Times Critic’s Pick that A.O. Scott called “a catalog of burdens and also a heroic act of unburdening.”In “I May Destroy You,” Michaela Cole explores sexual assault, truth, revenge and trauma; she also created the HBO series.Credit…Natalie Seery/HBOTelevisionMichaela CoelMichaela Coel may have created the most important TV show of 2020: “I May Destroy You.” The series, which premiered on HBO in June, is inspired by Coel’s own experience with sexual assault, and in it, she deftly plucks apart ideas around truth, revenge, anxiety, trauma and fear.Coel, a 33-year-old British-Ghanaian writer and actor, plays a writer who is drugged and raped in a bathroom stall. The assault leaves her traumatized and grappling with hazy, fragmented memories. “Coel brings a superb discipline to the portrayal of distress,” wrote Mike Hale, a TV critic at The Times.In a critic’s notebook, Salamishah Tillet, a professor and contributing critic at large for The Times, noted that the show could be considered “part of a larger cultural trend in which Black women’s experiences with sexual assault are appearing with greater frequency and treated with more sensitivity.” (She pointed to the documentary “Surviving R. Kelly” and TV shows like “Queen Sugar,” “The Chi” and “Lovecraft Country” as examples.)“By offering multifaceted endings,” Tillet went on, “Coel gives victims of sexual assault, particularly Black women who have survived rape, some of the most radical and cathartic moments of television I have ever witnessed.”ComedySarah CooperSarah Cooper, 43-year-old comedian, made her mark in 2020 by pantomiming the words of President Trump in viral videos that have been viewed tens of millions of times across social media. Jim Poniewozik called her first Trump lip-sync, “How to Medical,” a “49-second tour de force” and said Cooper was helping to develop “a kind of live-action political cartooning.”“Cooper’s Trumpian drag is partly a caricature of performative masculinity,” Poniewozik wrote.The success of her videos helped land Cooper a Netflix special, “Everything’s Fine,” directed by Natasha Lyonne. “This special shows that she can do much more than lip-sync,” Jason Zinoman, a comedy columnist at The Times, said of the production. “She has a promising future as an actor in television or movies.” She currently has a show in the works for CBS.Maria Bakalova, the Bulgarian actress who plays Borat’s teenage daughter in “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm.” Credit…Elizabeth Weinberg for The New York TimesFilmMaria BakalovaIt’s no easy feat to stand out next to the unabashed actor-prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, but Maria Bakalova, a 24-year-old from Bulgaria, was riveting as the teenage daughter of his Borat character in his most recent mockumentary film. As the culture reporter Dave Itzkoff put it in The Times: “Sacha Baron Cohen may be the star of ‘Borat Subsequent Moviefilm,’ but it is Maria Bakalova who has emerged its hero.”Her performance also grabbed headlines for an edited scene involving President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, who is seen putting his hands down his pants in a hotel room, where Bakalova, impersonating a TV journalist, is interviewing him. He later denied any wrongdoing.About the opportunity to star in a major American film, Bakalova said: “I will be really grateful to Sacha for giving this platform to an Eastern European, to play a strong and complicated character who’s not just one thing.”Adrienne Warren was nominated for a Tony for her starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.” Credit…Molly Matalon for The New York TimesTheaterAdrienne WarrenAdrienne Warren’s starring role in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical” earned her a Tony nomination in October for best actress in a musical. But it was her vocal and steadfast stand on racial injustice, including in the arts world, that brought Warren, 33, more deeply into one of the most urgent conversations of 2020. In an impassioned, impromptu speech this summer — during the Times event Offstage: Opening Night on the subject of being Black on Broadway — she questioned whether she even wanted to continue performing as part of an institution that didn’t stand up for people like her.“The last thing on my mind right now is me going back to Broadway,” Warren said. But in an interview with The Times after her nomination, she said, “I know this is what I’m supposed to do, but the question is whether I want to do it at the address I’ve been doing it.”As for what a dream role might look like for her in the future: “I want to make sure that I’m telling stories that represent me as a Black woman and also push the needle forward in ways that resonate with people, both in this nation and abroad,” she said.Jonathan Majors made a mark in both HBO’s “Lovecraft Country” and the Spike Lee drama “Da 5 Bloods.”Credit…Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesTelevisionJonathan MajorsJonathan Majors isn’t afraid of pain, and that may just be his secret to success. “I’m willing to hurt more,” he told Alexis Soloski in The Times over the summer. “It doesn’t bother me.”The 31-year-old star had a big year doing just that to great effect onscreen, as a Korean War veteran in the supernatural HBO thriller “Lovecraft Country,” set in 1950s Jim Crow America, and the son of a Vietnam War veteran in “Da 5 Bloods,” Spike Lee’s drama for Netflix that was named a Critic’s Pick in The Times by A.O. Scott.“Emotions in the men in my family run deep,” Majors told Soloski — who described him as “an actor of precision and intensity.” When asked if acting gave him a place to put those big emotions, he said: “With acting, it was almost like I was in a corridor, and it just appeared to me and said, ‘Go that way, son.’ I didn’t get in trouble once I started acting. I had a place to put the energy, to put my focus.”The artist Christine Sun Kim performing in American Sign Language at the Super Bowl in Miami in February.Credit…A J Mast for The New York TimesArtChristine Sun KimIn February, just minutes ahead of the Super Bowl in Miami, the artist Christine Sun Kim stood at the 40-yard line performing in American Sign Language as Yolanda Adams sang “America the Beautiful” and Demi Lovato sang the national anthem.“As a child of immigrants, a grandchild of refugees, a Deaf woman of color, an artist and a mother, I was proud to perform,” she wrote in an Op-Ed for The Times afterward. But because only a fraction of her performance was aired, she called the experience “a huge disappointment — a missed opportunity in the struggle for media inclusiveness on a large scale.”“Being deaf in America has always been political,” she wrote.Kim, 40, who was born in California and is now based in Berlin, has spent years channeling this perspective into her art. At the Whitney Biennial in New York last year, she exhibited hand-drawn charcoal drawings from her “Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World,” and in 2013, the Museum of Modern Art selected her for its exhibition “Soundings: A Contemporary Score,” dedicated to sound art.“I want people to start thinking about what deafness means,” she told Vogue this year, “and maybe that will reduce the stigma and society will be more inclusive of people with disabilities.”MusicVerzuzYou could call it a battle, a face-off, a showdown. But Verzuz is also something else entirely: a pandemic pivot, cutting right to the very core of quarantine entertainment by combining livestreaming and nostalgia while filling a hole left by canceled live shows and shuttered clubs.Since April, Verzuz, the creation of Swizz Beatz and Timbaland, has streamed over 20 battles. Each one has brought together two hip-hop or R&B heavyweights: Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Gucci Mane vs. Jeezy, Babyface vs. Teddy Riley, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, Ludacris vs. Nelly, to name a few. Millions of people have tuned in.Initially, Verzuz was streamed on Instagram Live. In July, Verzuz and Apple Music announced they’d struck a partnership which allowed the videos to be viewed live and on-demand on that platform, too.Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The Times, called the events staples of this era and “less battles in the conventional sense than choreographed chest-puffing combined with bows of respect.” To that point, there is no winner winner. As Swizz Beatz told ABC News: “The people won, the culture won, the music won.”The artist Salman Toor has his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” up at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Peter Fisher for The New York TimesArtSalman ToorThe painter Salman Toor was about to have his first solo museum show, “How Will I Know,” at the Whitney Museum of American Art early this year when the shutdown thwarted the whole thing. He took it pretty well. “My first reaction was, thank God,” he told The Times in June. “I’m not a social animal.” But disappointment inevitably crept in as he realized the exhibition might never happen.Thankfully for him and fans of figurative and queer art, the show eventually did go up at the Whitney, where it will appear through April. And that’s only the start for Toor. Over the summer, he joined the gallery Luhring Augustine, which will open an exhibition of his work in the next few years.Toor, 37 — who was born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan, and moved to the United States in 2002 — primarily depicts gay men of South Asian descent. In The Times, the writer Ted Loos described Toor’s contemporary settings: “iPhones appear here and there, the glow emanating from them emphasized with bright lines.” Toor said that he aspired to represent “what this new free space is like,” referring to living an openly queer life. In Pakistan, gay sex is illegal. “People are curious to know what it means to have the freedom of so much choice, and what is the nature of that freedom and what is the cost of that.”TheaterElizabeth StanleyUp against Adrienne Warren for that Tony is Elizabeth Stanley, who was nominated for her gutting performance as Mary Jane — “a brittle tiger mom suppressing secret trauma,” as Jesse Green, a theater critic for The Times, put it — in “Jagged Little Pill,” based on Alanis Morissette’s smash album from 1995. When Broadway shut down, Stanley, 42, did not take too long before shifting her energy toward digital performances.In April, she told Deadline that she’d already been wondering about what else she could do during the pandemic: “How can I twist to this and find something new and exciting out of this time?”What came of that question epitomized what much of theater looked like in 2020: creating new digital spaces for live performance.In April, she delivered a jaw-dropping rendition of “The Miller’s Son” from “A Little Night Music,” for the acclaimed event “Take Me to the World: A Sondheim 90th Birthday Celebration.” In June, she sang her wrenching rendition of “You Learn,” from “Jagged Little Pill,” for an Opening Night Times event on the future of Broadway. On Dec. 13, Stanley and her “Jagged Little Pill” co-stars reunited for “Jagged Live In NYC: A Broadway Reunion Concert.”Kali Uchis performing in Atlanta in 2018. She recently released the album “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).”Credit…Paul R. Giunta/Invision, via Associated PressMusicKali UchisIn 2018, Kali Uchis released a debut album titled “Isolation.” Clearly she was ahead of her time. In November, the Colombian-American artist — with a moody, seductive, dance-inducing style — dropped her second studio album, this time predominantly in Spanish, “Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Demonios).” (Its lead single, “Aquí Yo Mando,” features the up-and-coming rapper Rico Nasty.) The album “goes genre-hopping and era-hopping, from romantically retro orchestral bolero to brittle reggaeton,” Jon Pareles, the chief pop music critic of The Times, wrote this month.Having grown up between Colombia and the D.C.-Maryland-Virginia area, Uchis, 26, had many inspirations and influences, she told Interview magazine. “The last thing I ever want to do is be a predictable artist. I love that my fans never know what to expect when I drop a song.”DanceThe Year of the SoloIt wasn’t just that the coronavirus put an end to live performance in March. The need for social isolation uprooted every part of what gets a dance onto a stage: Suddenly, there were no more classes, no more rehearsals. How to fill that void? The solo.This solitary form has provided an outlet for frustration, for sadness and even for euphoria as dance artists continue to find meaning through movement. It’s true that some attempts have been sentimental and aimless, but much good has emerged from it, too. Instagram, from the start, illuminated these explorations in a steady stream of posts; choreographers worked with dancers remotely to create films in which the body could be fearless and free. “State of Darkness,” Molissa Fenley’s 1988 solo revived for seven dancers, was a glittering, harrowing reminder of the achievement that comes from strength, both internal and external.One of its interpreters, the dancer Sara Mearns, said that she saw herself as “someone that has gone through really, really hard times, but then in the end has come out stronger and on top.” Yes, dance and dancers are suffering right now. But the solo has given it — and them — a powerful voice. — Gia Kourlas, dance critic for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More