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      in Television

      How to Do a Voice-Over

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      Don’t be afraid to improvise. Avoid saying one line at a time.“It’s not like you’re rolling film — when you’re recording voice, you can fail all you want,” says Eugene Mirman, a comedian and voice actor who plays Gene Belcher, the 11-year-old middle child on the animated television series “Bob’s Burgers,” which debuted in 2011. “That allows for more risk and taking chances and trying different jokes.” Be prepared to say a line dozens of times in a dozen different ways. “You could say lines in an angry, happy, questioning or fun way,” Mirman says. While voicing the character of Gene, Mirman emphasizes a youthful exuberance and optimism and cadence that’s slightly more upbeat than his everyday adult voice.To prepare, try yawning, relaxing your jaw, raising your arms, hitting yourself in the chest, smiling while saying a happy line. Keep a glass of water or tea nearby. Mirman records on his feet; a music stand holds his script. “I stand so I can do the physical actions described,” says Mirman, who works out of a soundproof booth in his home. “If you have to make running noises, you probably wiggle your body in a slight running way mimicking the actions.”Develop relationships with your fellow performers. When you get together, whether in person or online, it helps to chitchat and catch up with one another. Mirman has known his castmates for years (they were hired partly, he says, “because we already knew each other”), and that has fostered the “familial” comfort level needed to go off on ad-libbing tangents. Comedy productions in particular require improvisational freedom. “In the second episode of ‘Bob’s,’ there’s a whole part where Bob is trapped in the wall of their home,” Mirman says. “And Gene starts talking to him about ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’ and how he’s sure Salman Rushdie wrote it. It was just this random thing we improvised, and it actually got used.”Even when following the script or the director’s guidance — whether recording solo or with the cast — try not to just say one line at a time. Make it feel as if you’re responding inside the scene. “You want it to sound like you’re discovering it as you’re saying that thought,” Mirman says. More

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      in Music

      Kane Brown and H.E.R.’s Genre-Melting Duet, and 11 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by John Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, Ashnikko, Susana Baca and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Kane Brown and H.E.R., ‘Blessed & Free’Listen to the genres crumbling. Is this country? Rock? Trap? R&B? “I don’t hurt nobody, so just let me be,” Kane Brown sings with H.E.R., over slow electric-guitar arpeggios and programmed beats. In a metronomic, electronic grid, human voices still insist, “As long as I’m alive, I’m free.” JON PARELESJohn Mellencamp and Bruce Springsteen, ‘Wasted Days’John Mellencamp, 69, got Bruce Springsteen, 72, to share his song “Wasted Days,” a weary, resolute, guitar-strumming acknowledgment of age. “Who’s counting now, these last remaining years?/How many minutes do we have here?” Mellencamp rasps; “The end is coming, it’s almost here,” adds an even huskier Springsteen. A twangy, broad-stroke guitar solo from Springsteen can’t dispel the looming mortality. Meanwhile Bob Dylan, 80, has tour plans next month. PARELESAshnikko, ‘Panic Attacks in Paradise’“They call me Polly Pessimism, I’m a macabre Barbie”: The more contemplative side of the clangorous pop futurist Ashnikko is jagged, too. Her beautiful new single is warmly paced and driven by soft guitar, a contrast to her best known songs, which tend toward shriek and squeak. But here she’s revealing the hurt beneath the excess, a life spent “hyperventilating under candy skies.” JON CARAMANICATotally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, ‘The Distance’A dreamy but viscous slab of moody house music from the British D.J.-producer Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs, brimming with 1980s futurism and 1990s reluctance. CARAMANICALimp Bizkit, ‘Dad Vibes’Just seemed important to let you know that a Limp Bizkit song called “Dad Vibes” exists. It’s fine but as ambivalent as you might expect — can you really vibe-check dads when the dad is you? CARAMANICASusana Baca, ‘Negra Del Alma’Susana Baca, 77, is a national treasure in Peru, where she’s long worked to preserve and revive elements of Afro-Peruvian folklore. Her take on “Negra Del Alma,” a traditional Andean song from the Ayacucho region, comes from Baca’s forthcoming album, “Palabras Urgentes.” She delivers the lyrics — which speak plaintively of the prejudice often directed at Black Peruvians — in her unwaveringly elegant alto; a marimba mixes with hand drums, bass, flutes and a corps of Peruvian saxophones, letting the rhythm amble ahead. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOSega Bodega, ‘Angel on My Shoulder’Sega Bodega — the Irish electronic musician Salvador Navarrete — jump-cuts amid heaving, mourning and jitters in “Angel on My Shoulder.” The track opens with brusque, distorted bass tones, then switches to an electronic elegy, with an androgynous, filtered voice that considers “children growing older, friends you never knew.” It moves on to double-time percussion, warped choral harmonies, a low-fi piano, a transposition upward: multiple mutations that don’t diminish the sense of loss. PARELESHyd, ‘Skin 2 Skin’Hyd is Hayden Dunham, who first appeared in the hyperpop PC Music collective as QT, the android-like face of a fictitious energy drink. In “Skin 2 Skin,” produced by Caroline Polachek, she toggles between literally whispered verses with sharp rhymes — “acid rain/hurricane” and big, chiming, major-chord choruses, playing with every pop-song reflex. PARELESMonica Martin, ‘Go Easy Kid’Monica Martin, who sang with the group Phox and went on to collaborate with James Blake in “Show Me,” croons like an older sister over a retro, orchestral arrangement in “Go Easy Kid.” There are electronic echoes, just to prove she’s contemporary. But there’s earned wisdom in her voice and words as she offers self-recriminations followed by wide-open encouragement: “Just accept we’ll never know.” PARELESMatthew Stevens, ‘Can Am’The guitarist Matthew Stevens has been a first-call jazz accompanist for the past 10 years, and he’s worked closely with Esperanza Spalding for at least half that time. Embedded in “Pittsburgh,” Stevens’s new album of cozy, solo-acoustic tunes — written and recorded during the coronavirus shutdown — is a reminder of his close working relationship with Spalding. “Can Am” will ring familiar to those who’ve listened to her latest release, “Songwrights Apothecary Lab”: It is the underlying composition on “Formwela 11,” from that album. With a melody almost entirely consisting of ticker-tape eighth-notes, spiraling between harmonic modes, “Can Am” might feel like an athletic workout if not for the gentle control of Stevens’s playing, as graceful and understated as the guitar great Ralph Towner’s. RUSSONELLOCorrina Repp, ‘Count the Tear Drops’It’s a simple guitar waltz; it’s also a mulitracked choral edifice. The songwriter Corrina Repp, working on her own during the pandemic, constructed a meditation that acknowledges how fleeting it might be, but also how moving. PARELESHoly Other, ‘Lieve’Holy Other’s music possesses a universe of haunting drama. On “Lieve,” the cult British producer collages spectral whispers, deep sighs and ghostly stutters. Skin-prickling, cavernous synths expand and echo into nothingness. A lonely sax flutters to the surface. It may have been nine years since he last released music, but Holy Other’s world remains as arresting and impenetrable as ever. ISABELIA HERRERA More

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      in Television

      Watch These Two New Shows Starting This Week

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      Fall TV is back, and our critic recommends a thoughtful reboot and a new scripted series about reality shows.This is the web version of our Watching newsletter, in which Margaret offers hyper-specific viewing recommendations like these every Monday and Friday. Read her latest picks below, and sign up for Watching here.Dear Watchers,The Emmys were last night. You can catch up on all our coverage here.Have a beautiful week.I want something new.Simone Recasner, left, and Ser’Darius Blain in a scene from “The Big Leap.” Sandy Morris/Fox‘The Big Leap’When to watch: Monday at 9 p.m., on Fox.This new light drama is set behind the scenes of a reality show, also called “The Big Leap,” which means the series gets to have it both ways: We get the contrived but alluring arcs of a reality competition with some of the more earnest, more textured parts of a feel-good scripted show.Scott Foley stars as the scheming producer of a new competition show that casts amateur dancers in Detroit and stages a nontraditional production of “Swan Lake.” (Would watch!) Our heroine is Gabby (Simone Recasner), a young woman who decides to audition for the show and whose dancing dreams were derailed when she had her son right out of high school. Recasner is easily the breakout star of this TV season, so Gabby burns a bit brighter than all the other characters.After the scathing, glorious first season of “UnReal,” I was hoping we’d get more scripted shows about reality shows — it just seems like such a fertile premise, especially given how familiar we as viewers are with the standards and styles of unscripted series. “The Big Leap” is nowhere near as prickly as “UnReal,” but it, too, definitely sees “reality” production as sleazy and manipulative. The difference is that in “The Big Leap,” the overall tone is a sunnier one.There’s a corny predictability afoot, but that didn’t really bother me — that’s a foundational comfort of shows like “So You Think You Can Dance” and “The Voice.” We know what will happen; it’s not the what, it’s the who, and sometimes the when. That can be trickier on scripted serialized dramas, but if you still think the pilot of “Glee” was good (it was), watch this.Uh, something else new, but also sort of less new.Dulé Hill in a scene from the reboot of “The Wonder Years.”Erika Doss/ABC‘The Wonder Years’When to watch: Wednesday at 8:30 p.m., on ABC.Few shows arrive as fully hatched as this reboot of “The Wonder Years,” still set in the late 1960s but this time centering on a Black family in Alabama. Dean (Elisha Williams) just turned 12, the age when “a boy starts smelling himself,” according to grown-up Dean’s narration (provided by Don Cheadle).The show of course feels like “The Wonder Years,” but it also feels a lot like “The Young Rock,” “The Goldbergs,” “Fresh Off the Boat” or “Everybody Hates Chris,” family shows set in the past, maybe with a knowing voice-over from a famous actor, with a habit for communicating sage lessons about growing up. This is on the richer, more dramatic side of the spectrum rather than the strictly comedic one.You already know if you like shows like this; if you do, you will.Also this weekA scene from the final season of “Dear White People.”Lara Solanki/Netflix Two seasons of “Drunk History Mexico” are now on Paramount+.“9-1-1” returns for its fifth season Monday at 8 p.m. on Fox.Season 30 of “Dancing With the Stars” begins Monday at 8 p.m. on ABC.“The Voice” starts its 21st season Monday at 8 p.m. on NBC.“Star Wars: Visions,” an anthology of “Star Wars” anime shorts, arrives Wednesday, on Disney+.The season finale of “Nine Perfect Strangers” arrives Wednesday, on Hulu.The final batch of episodes of “Dear White People” arrives Wednesday, on Netflix.The ninth season premiere of “The Goldbergs” airs Wednesday at 8 p.m. on ABC.The season finale of “The Other Two” arrives Thursday, on HBO Max. So far the show has not been renewed for a third season, which is outrageous — this is the most dazzlingly biting show on TV right now, funny and naughty and great.The season finale of “Holey Moley” airs Thursday at 8 p.m. on ABC.“Law and Order: SVU” returns for its 23rd season Thursday at 8 p.m. on NBC. More

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      in Music

      Songs to Accompany a Dreamy Summer Dinner Party

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      John Cale, Sharon Van Etten, Donavon Smallwood and other creative types make suggestions for an eclectic playlist sure to help set a festive mood.When creating a playlist for a dinner party, it can be useful to think ahead and imagine the end of the night — should things conclude with whiskey and delayed goodbyes on the couch or with dancing into the wee hours? Because music, after all, can not only set the tone but also help determine the entire trajectory of an evening. Where to begin, though? Curating the perfect lineup can feel like a daunting task, and even music obsessives can fall into ruts and benefit from others offering up song suggestions. Recently, we asked a range of artists, musicians and other creative types to do just that, and to share a few tips on putting your selections together. More

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      Pop Smoke’s Memory Lives On, and 14 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Xenia Rubinos, Swedish House Mafia, Soccer Mommy and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage.Pop Smoke, ‘More Time’“Faith,” the second posthumous album from Pop Smoke, includes collaborations with Kanye West, Dua Lipa, 42 Dugg, Future and others. But this track, early in the album, is jarring and stark. Not simply because it’s still eerie to hear Pop Smoke rapping with a blend of menace and joy, but because of its chilling beat — produced in part by the rapper’s longtime collaborator Rico Beats, but also in part by Nicholas Britell, who has scored “Moonlight” and “Succession.” It is a familiar trick, these reverberating keys that stand stern sentry, but no less effective for it. Here is a splash of theater more visceral than any radio hit, any pop crossover. JON CARAMANICAXenia Rubinos, ‘Working All the Time’Xenia Rubinos’s “Working All the Time” is only two minutes long, but it’s as intricate as an arduous jigsaw puzzle. There are waves of skittish synths, air horns straight out of a Funk Flex set on Hot 97, a bridge that sounds like the glitchy maximalism of hyperpop, and last but not least, an interpolation of the traditional rumba “Ave María Morena.” Somehow, Rubinos makes sense of all these disparate pieces using her brassy, featherlight voice. Blink and you’ll miss that it’s a workers’ anthem, too: In one verse, Rubinos sings, “You better keep me poor and busy or I’d be a danger.” It’s a warning for those who try to crush the power of the people. ISABELIA HERRERASwedish House Mafia, ‘It Gets Better’I suppose you can absorb this song on the internet, where it is currently available. But the slick return of Swedish House Mafia — the Brobdingnagian kings of mainstream EDM, the clout champions of biggest-room house music — cries out for an open field, a dizzying laser show, a loss of sense of time and place. Hug a friend; the soundtrack of shared mayhem is upon us. CARAMANICAMahalia, ‘Whenever You’re Ready’A brisk, ratcheting, evolving ska-meets-trap beat carries “Whenever You’re Ready” by Mahalia, a British singer whose mother is Jamaican. It’s a semi-breakup song that flaunts confidence instead of pain. The singer is letting him go because he’s angry at her now, but she’s sure he’ll be back: “You won’t be gone for good,” she sings. “No, I’m not worried.” JON PARELESCaroline Polachek, ‘Bunny Is a Rider’Singing about a woman so elusive that a “satellite can’t find her,” Caroline Polachek makes staccato syllables and short phrases bounce all around the beat, working equally as percussion and melody. They’re just a few of the syncopated layers in a playful yet strategic production — by Polachek and her frequent collaborator, Danny L. Harle from the PC Music circle — that juggles whistling, triangle, birdsong and the giggles and gurgles of Harle’s baby daughter. “I’m so nonphysical,” Polachek exults, over the sustained bass tone that cushions the chorus. Nonsense: The song is built for dancing. PARELESSoccer Mommy, ‘Rom Com 2004’“Rom Com 2004” could have been a straightforward indie-rock love song, vowing “Just let me be yours like no one else before” over a march beat, guitar chords and a chorus with a proud leap in the melody. But Soccer Mommy — Sophie Allison — handed over her demo to the producer BJ Burton with instructions, she has said, to “destroy it.” He obliged with glitches, distortion, speed variations and exposed moments — making the song more appealing because it plays hard to get. PARELESTurnstile featuring Blood Orange, ‘Alien Love Call’From the forthcoming Turnstile album, “Glow On,” comes this shoegaze space-soul collaboration with Blood Orange (Dev Hynes). The video compiles mayhem-esque live footage more in keeping with the hardcore band’s usual rhythms, but perhaps this is the meditation before the rage. CARAMANICADave McMurray, ‘Dark Star’Dave McMurray is a longtime Detroit tenor saxophonist with decades of experience in rock, jazz, pop and R&B, mostly as a side musician. But he’s just released his second album for Blue Note as a leader: “Grateful Deadication,” a tribute to the Grateful Dead songbook. His cover of the classic “Dark Star” channels the epically trippy M.O. of a Dead performance: McMurray declares the melody over Wayne Gerard’s twinkling, distorted guitar; eventually, a dug-in backbeat sets in. Then a coolly grooving section opens up, and the saxophonist dishes out a solo that’s laced with greasy Motor City attitude but still takes its time, as if to bask in the California sun. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLOHalf Waif, ‘Swimmer’The songs on “Mythopoetics,” Nandi Rose Plunkett’s new album as Half Waif, suffer and exult in all-consuming love. As “Swimmer” leaps from everyday sensation to all-out devotion and need — “I want to know they can’t take this away from me” — synthesizer arpeggios and vocal harmonies swarm around Plunkett’s ardent voice, like a suddenly racing heartbeat and an uncontainable obsession. PARELESYas, ‘Idea of You’A viscous tar pit of a track — slow, oozing bass tones, sparse drum-machine taps and gaping silences — hints at the difficulty of pulling free from an increasingly destructive relationship. Yas (the songwriter, singer, producer and violinist Yasmeen Al-Mazeedi) sings about being “in love with the idea of you” amid details of mental and physical abuse. The negotiations aren’t quite over; her voice rises to a fragile soprano as she decides, “You think that I want you back — I don’t.” PARELESKoreless, ‘White Picket Fence’Koreless — the Welsh producer Lewis Roberts — swerves between pastorale and rave on “White Picket Fence.” A keening female voice, uncredited and possibly built from samples, floats at first over a stately harpsichord; then fuzzy synthesizers arrive with a pulsing beat under that vocal melody, before it gets stretched and chopped up; then it’s sent back to harpsichord territory. In the video, directed by FKA twigs, club creatures climb out of a futuristic green car alongside a bucolic creek, where fishing ensues; urban artifice meets Nature. PARELESKarol G, ‘200 Copas’To a friend who’s still tearful about her ex, the Colombian songwriter Karol G (Carolina Giraldo Navarro) doesn’t mince words in “200 Copas” (“200 Drinks”); she dismisses the guy with profanities after all the suffering he caused. Yet her 21st-century bluntness gets a traditionalist backing; while the rest of her album, “KG0516,” traverses modern Pan-American pop with all its technological tricks, “200 Copas” is an old-fashioned waltz backed by a few acoustic instruments, nothing more. The lyrics are decidedly impolite, but the predicament she sings about is not new. The new video has her leading a beach-bonfire singalong: solidarity against undeserving men. PARELESTainy and Yandel, ‘El Plan’“Dynasty” is a new collaborative album from Tainy and Yandel, two titans of reggaeton celebrating 16 years of eminence. With its sinister harpsichord, muted marimbas and a piercing dembow riddim, “El Plan” recalls the mid-00s reggaeton that required listeners practice dancing in front of the mirror. It’s all about the thrill of an after-hours dance-floor chase — the electrifying, will-it-or-won’t-it-happen energy of a night at the club. “Estoy esperándote y tú perreando sola,” Yandel says. “I’m waiting for you and you’re dancing alone.” Luckily, he knows he’s at the whim of his partner: “Pero tú dime cuál e’ el plan.” You tell me what the plan is. HERRERAMas Aya, ‘Momento Presente’It is easy to reference folkloric sounds, but have little to offer other than mere nostalgia. The instrumentalist Brandon Valdivia, better known as Mas Aya, escapes this fate masterfully on “Momento Presente.” More than a mere collision of past and present, the track is a study in the power of harnessing ancestral knowledge. Over six and a half minutes, Valdivia braids a skittish footwork beat with a flurry of Andean pan flutes, arpeggiated synths and polyrhythms. Halfway through, the voice of an elder reflects on centuries of protest, a reminder that the work of liberation is part of a continuum. One moment the song is celestial, transporting the listener 40,000 feet into the air. In another it is meditative, urging us into quiet introspection. HERRERAMatt Mitchell and Kate Gentile, ‘Trapezoids | Matching Tickles’In recent years the pianist Matt Mitchell and the drummer Kate Gentile have developed a book of pithy, one-bar-long compositions, which they play with small ensembles under the name Snark Horse. Through intense improvisation, taking equal cues from free jazz and metal, they morph and distend and scramble these little melodic fragments. On Friday, Snark Horse released its first album — a boxed set spanning no fewer than 49 tracks and five-and-a-half hours, mostly recorded at a three-day session in late 2019. “Trapezoids” is a Gentile composition, a crooked and incessant spray of notes, with Jon Irabagon’s saxophone further destabilizing the mix. It’s paired on this track with “Matching Tickles,” a Mitchell piece, which he plays more softly and abstractedly, as if it were the echo of another idea. RUSSONELLO More

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      in Theater

      How to Undress Someone Quickly

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      Don’t start frantically grabbing at someone’s garments; trust is key. Let the person you’re disrobing do some of the work. “Wear kneepads, there’s lots of kneeling involved,” says Lacie Bonanni, 36, who works as a so-called dresser, a theatrical worker who helps actors into and out of their costumes. Bonanni got her start on Broadway 11 years ago on a show called “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” which involved stripping off a multitude of skintight bodysuits. Although Bonanni’s husband occasionally jokes about her taking people’s clothes off for a living, her skills don’t necessarily translate outside the theater, where the focus of undressing is never singularly speed and where sometimes fumbling is part of the fun. During a show, it’s not uncommon that a complete costume change, including mask and shoes, needs to happen in less than 30 seconds.Let the person you’re disrobing do some of the work. Bonanni tends to go for the bottom half of the body and lets the actor undress up top. At first, you both might stumble, reach for the same garment simultaneously, bump heads even. You’ll get faster as you become more familiar with clothing and bodies. By the time a show opens, costume changes should feel like a choreographed dance.Undressing happens mostly in a theater’s darkened wings and backstage. “Wear a headlight,” says Bonanni, who learned the craft from her mother, a longtime dresser on shows like “Rent” and “Fiddler on the Roof.” Costumes get what wardrobe people call “quick rigged,” which mostly means replacing buttons with Velcro. Some garb is unavoidably time-consuming. “A corset is the thing you’re dreading,” Bonanni says. Once you’ve got a person’s clothing off, toss it into a basket to be sorted and cleaned later. Unless, of course, you’re required to put the same outfit back on, as Bonanni had to do repeatedly for the musical “Groundhog Day.” In that case, keep it organized and lay it out in such a way so that the sweat can dry. Backstage is often hectic and crowded; don’t start frantically grabbing at someone’s garments or you’ll exacerbate their nervousness and discomfort. The person needs to trust you. “You want them to feel like they’re in a safe space,” Bonanni says. More

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      in Music

      Debbie Gibson Is Not Going to Get Stuck in the Past

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      The pioneering pop singer on her beauty and wellness journey.Debbie Gibson, the pop singer who shot to fame in the late 1980s with “Electric Youth,” is still making new music. She has an album out in August, “The Body Remembers,” her first in 20 years, and is performing in Las Vegas (at the Venetian) to boot. “Electric Youth” may have influenced fashion (her signature headwear) and beauty (Electric Youth perfume) for a certain generation, but Ms. Gibson, 50, is living firmly in the moment. “I never stay back in the day because today is today, and that’s how I approach life,” she said. Here, her current take on beauty products and wellness regimens.She’s a Morning PersonI joke that I if I was not in entertainment, I would be a farmer. I’m down with the sun and up with the sun. I did half the vocals of my new album by 5 a.m. in my nightgown. I do try to linger in bed with my dogs, three boy dachshunds. That snuggle time with puppy kisses for me is everything.I need breakfast within a half-hour of waking up. I’m a basic eggs, orange juice and coffee person. On a decadent day like today, it’s an almond croissant.Mad Scientist Skin CareI’m kind of a mad scientist with my skin regimes. I do what I need on that day. I love micellar water for cleansing. I just got the Soap & Glory Triple Action Jelly Eye Makeup Remover. I also have this Tarte Knockout Tingling Treatment. It’s got glycolic in it. It really wakes my skin up. I also love the Tatcha brand — the deep cleanse and the moisturizer.Basically I try to use fragrance-free lines now. My life really took a turn 10 years ago when I got Lyme. I started to have chemical sensitivities I never had before. My skin especially reacts to sunscreen. Now I use the Derma-E Sun Defense Mineral Oil-Free baby sunscreen.I have this Biossance Squalane + Glycolic Renewal Mask, and yesterday I got this Youth to the People Superclay mask at Sephora. I also love oils on my face. I live in Las Vegas, and it is so dry here — my hair won’t even grow past a certain point now. I have several oils that I rotate. I use the Farsáli Rose Gold Elixir. I also have the Tarte Maracuja Oil. I used to go for a super-matte look — I was a Broadway girl. It was my pasty New York era. Now I’m a glowy skin and makeup person.Glow OnI use multiple bases. Here I’m a mad scientist again. I have a Make Up For Ever stick, and I have the Ultra HD liquid base. I have some discoloration, some melasma on my jawline. I have to go a little heavier there. I love the L’Oréal Miracle Blur for my forehead lines. Obsessed. I don’t like a lot under my eyes — it brings out my lines if I’m tired. Sometimes I’ll use the Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood Flawless Filter and blend it into my base. I love a highlighter by Melt Cosmetics — it’s a peach color and so pretty.I used to do a lot of contour under my cheekbones, but not anymore. I like my cheeks to show through my makeup now. Another go-to is my Lime Crime trio of highlighters. There’s a glowy pale peach that I love. I love all my glow!I use the Urban Decay waterline pencil and the 24/7 pencils. I line the inside top of my eye with a darker color and a lighter color on the top lash line. I like the look of a liner inside my lower lashline, but it irritates my eyes. If it’s a “I’m going to suffer for beauty” kind of day, that’s what I do.I have the Huda Beauty Rose Gold eye shadow palette. My favorites are the Fling and Rose Gold colors. I love the Stila Glitter & Glow eye glitter in Diamond Dust. I saw this brand Dear Dahlia on Instagram, and now I use their liquid shadow Paradise Shine Eye Sequins in Muse. I also have Fenty Beauty sheer white shimmer that you can put on top of your whole lid. I just love shimmer, shimmer, shimmer.My brows have gotten so thin. If you’re a young girl out there, and you’re going through a breakup, don’t take it out on your brows. I remember the tweezing session that changed my life. I have a sandy/taupe brow powder.I’m a lash fanatic. Lashes are the best! I immediately feel like a pop star if I put some lashes on. I use high-end lashes and pharmacy lashes. I have Ardell Wispies and I love Velour, which are at Sephora. If I’m going onstage, I’ll double up lashes. For mascara, I’m into good old Maybelline Great Lash. Then there’s Too Faced Better Than Sex mascara if I want more. That’s a fun one.I just bought two Pat McGrath lip glosses I’m so excited about. I like to do MAC Spice liner and a gloss on top. MAC also has this nude lip pencil color that’s like a nudish Brigitte Bardot liner that I love, too.Hair IssuesAge doesn’t matter for me in a lot of areas, but at 48 my hair started to change in texture. Now I’m 50. There’s gray in my hair — I have base and highlights. Twice in my life I got bonded extensions, and within 48 hours I had them removed. At the end of the day, I just like to feel natural. There are so many other ways to turn on the glam. I need a great wig in my life.I love Keranique Scalp Stimulating Shampoo. It has a mint scent. I alternate that with Desert Essence Fragrance-Free Shampoo, which is super gentle. I also have Original Sprout Leave-In Conditioner. And my manager just turned me onto the K18 hair mask. I also use the Philip B. Detangling Toning Mist.But my favorite thing to do, my kitchen hack, is to use avocado oil cooking spray in my hair. I spray my hands and do a piece-y thing at my ends. It gives it such an amazing texture.Making Peace With LinesI had gotten Botox twice in my 30s, and then the third time I did it — I think I was around 40 — I got this horrible reaction. I think it’s because I didn’t know then that Lyme was on board, and my body couldn’t handle it. I’ve accepted the fact that if you’re an expressive person, you’re going to have lines and flaws. I celebrate it all at this point. I’m not going to jeopardize my health just so I can freeze some lines.Diet PuzzlesFor a long time, I was scared of food because of Lyme. I didn’t know much then. I had to do food allergy and sensitivity tests. I was super, super strict, eating organic proteins, veggies and low glycemic fruits. I’m happy to say I know what works for me now. I’ve built my body back up to the point where nothing is going to take me completely down.I’ve been working with a dietitian since I was 17. I referred her to Janet Jackson and Paula Abdul. She’s amazing — Lisa Giannini. She has so many great tricks, and she’s very into gut health. It’s about learning your own health and diet puzzle.Learning to RelaxI used to do three-hour workouts before a dance rehearsal! I was like an Olympic athlete. Since Lyme, I do just enough movement to be fit, but I can’t use up all my reserve. I did get a Peloton, and I do love it so so much. I also have an elliptical machine, and I do my own made-up version of a workout with light weights and a Pilates ring. And I do a whole lot of walking with my dogs.I try to do things that feel flowy. I discovered Kundalini yoga from this woman on YouTube, Sat Dharam Kaur, who does these amazing breathing exercises. I used to be addicted to that super-sore, I-can’t-walk-the-next-day feeling. It did me a lot of damage. I’m a more-is-more kind of person, but my body is, like, “Sorry, you have to learn moderation.”I think everybody has a journey — we all have edges we’re trying to contain — but I think one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is that I’m not people-pleasing anymore. I have no problem saying I need to take a self-care day. More

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      in Theater

      The Return of Live Theater

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      As productions and festivals reopen this summer, it will be nice to experience some drama outside of our own.As vaccinations and an announcement by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have caused many to reduce their mask use, live performances are slowly returning. While Broadway’s official return is not until September, Radio City Music Hall will reopen on June 19 to host the final night of the Tribeca Film Festival (guests must be vaccinated). And across the New York, venues like the Park Avenue Armory and St. Ann’s Warehouse are already experimenting with socially distanced outdoor performances to resuscitate live theater with caution.Last year saw a blanket cancellation of summer stock theater festivals, but this season they’re coming back, albeit with some adjustments. The Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts will stage all its shows outdoors, while the Utah Shakespeare Festival will require masks and offer concessions outside only. So while the summer arts season won’t look quite like 2019, theater lovers are about to have a welcome awakening.‘Ring of Fire’ at the Rocky Mountain Repertory TheaterThis theater in Grand Lake, Colo., is holding its 2021 season indoors, and will open with the Johnny Cash jukebox musical, “Ring of Fire,” which debuted on Broadway in 2006. The musical, which will feature Cash classics like “I Walk the Line” and “Folsom Prison Blues,” begins a season that runs through September and will include “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” and “Little Shop of Horrors.” Starts June 4, $45; rockymountainrep.com.“Outside on Main: Nine Solo Plays by Black Playwrights” at the Williamstown Theater Festival This esteemed Berkshires festival has minted many a future star and premiered Broadway-bound shows like the Bradley Cooper-headlined production of “The Elephant Man.” When it returns for an in-person season, the debut show will be the world premiere of “Outside on Main,” which is directed by Wardell Julius Clark, Awoye Timpo and Candis C. Jones, and guest curated by the playwright Robert O’Hara. Each performance will consist of three 30-minute plays, all written by Black writers for actors of color. Season starts July 6, festival tickets are $100 each and will go on sale June 22; wtfestival.org/shows-events/.“Pericles” at the Utah Shakespeare FestivalThis Shakespeare festival, part of Southern Utah University in Cedar City, will open its 60th-anniversary season with “Pericles.” Also featured this season, which runs from June until October, will be Shakespearean classics like “Richard III” and “The Comedy of Errors,” as well as a few ventures off theme with “Pirates of Penzance” and “Ragtime.” Season starts June 21, tickets start at $9; bard.org.“The Magic Flute” at Glimmerglass FestivalThis opera institution in Cooperstown, N.Y., will move shows from its traditional theater to a newly designed outdoor space. The season begins with a new take on “The Magic Flute,” but what looks to be the gem of the festival is “The Passion of Mary Cardwell Dawson,” a world premiere starring Denyce Graves about the life of the founder of the National Negro Opera Company in 1941. Season starts July 15, tickets start at $80 for a socially distanced square accommodating up to four; glimmerglass.org.“A Thousand Ways (Part Two): An Encounter” at the Public TheaterIn December, New York’s Public Theater debuted the socially distanced piece “A Thousand Ways (Part One): An Encounter,” which connected the audience via telephone line. Created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone of the Brooklyn theater company 600 Highwaymen, “Part One” was the first of a trilogy, and now in-person participants can experience “A Thousand Ways (Part Two).” In this experimental work, attendees will be paired together and follow directions to create a private work. June 8-Aug. 15, $15; publictheater.org.“What to Send Up When It Goes Down” from BAMThe playwright Aleshea Harris’s monumental work, which debuted Off Broadway in 2018, bears witness to the epidemic of Black death from racist violence. With a permeable border between the audience and the actors, the play will allow for an emotional experience of discussion and healing. The production is being presented by BAM and Playwrights Horizons, in association with the Movement Theater Company.Check the website for the opening date in June; bam.org. More