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      The Museum of Broadway Is Open. Here Are 10 Highlights.

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      In Times Square, a 26,000-square-foot space details the history of theater with objects like Patti LuPone’s “Evita” wig, a Jets jacket from “West Side Story” and more.When a Broadway show closes, the next stop for the hundreds of costumes, setpieces and props is often … the dumpster.“The producers often stop paying rent in a storage unit somewhere, which is heartbreaking,” said Julie Boardman, one of the founders of the Museum of Broadway, which opened in Times Square this month.Boardman, 40, a Broadway producer whose shows include “Funny Girl” and “Company,” and Diane Nicoletti, the founder of a marketing agency, are looking to reroute those items to their museum, a dream five years in the making.“We see it as an experiential, interactive museum that tells the story of Broadway through costumes, props and artifacts,” Nicoletti, 40, said of the four-floor, 26,000-square-foot space on West 45th Street, next to the Lyceum Theater.The museum was a self-funded project at the start, Nicoletti said, as they drew from Boardman’s connections to secure meetings with major players in the New York theater industry, including theater owners; the heads of the American Theater Wing, the Broadway League, Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS; and executives from the licensing companies. (Boardman and Nicoletti declined to share the for-profit institution’s budget and early investors. Tickets cost $39 to $49, with a portion of each ticket benefiting the nonprofit Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.)The museum occupies a building next to the Lyceum Theater on West 45th Street.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesOriginally scheduled to open in 2020, the museum was delayed by the pandemic — though that gave Boardman and Nicoletti more time to acquire artifacts, photographs and costumes. A majority of the more than 1,000 objects and photographs on display are loans from individual artists, creators and producers, as well as performing arts organizations like Disney Theatrical Productions and the Public Theater.The space is organized chronologically, starting with Broadway’s beginnings in the mid-18th century and running to productions onstage now. And more than 500 shows are highlighted here in the form of items like a pair of tap shoes from the current revival of “The Music Man” and the arm cast that the actor Sam Primack wore onstage in September during the final Broadway performance of “Dear Evan Hansen.” Several of the rooms were dreamed up by the same set designers who worked on the shows the spaces are devoted to, among them Paul Clay (“Rent”) and Bunny Christie, who designed the recent revival of “Company.”Nicoletti and Boardman said they also wanted to reveal how shows are made, and highlight the roles of costumers, press agents and stage managers. To that end, a first-floor space, by the set designer David Rockwell, takes visitors behind the scenes of the making of a Broadway show.“People don’t realize shows take five, seven, 10 years to put together,” Boardman said.In addition to rotating the items on display in the permanent areas, Boardman said, the museum plans to host two or three special exhibitions each year in a first-floor space that is now devoted to the drawings of the theatrical caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.And as notable Broadway productions end their runs, well, they’ll be ready.“We already have a glove from ‘MJ,’” Boardman said. “And we’re getting a ‘Strange Loop’ usher hat.”Here are 10 highlights from the collection.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesBroadway AIDS QuiltThis quilt, meant to mourn those lost to AIDS and show solidarity with those living with it, was one of the first projects initiated by the organizations Broadway Cares and Equity Fights AIDS. Shows running on Broadway in the late 1980s created handcrafted 7-inch-by-7-inch squares, with much of the work handled by the productions’ wardrobe teams. (Look for the square for the 1984 Terrence McNally musical “The Rink,” which is signed by Liza Minnelli and Chita Rivera, who won a Tony Award for her role the show.)Patti LuPone ‘Evita’ WigYou aren’t likely to see a Museum of Broadway Wigs anytime soon. That’s because wigs are expensive, and they’re often reused, dyed or cut for new productions, said Michael McDonald, a costumes and props curator for the museum. But this one, created for LuPone by the celebrated wigmaker Paul Huntley for the original 1979 Broadway production of “Evita” — and possibly worn on the production’s opening night — was a gift to her. Each of the approximately 100,000 strands was fitted through a minuscule hole, one by one, to create an accurate hairline, resulting in a seamless look. “It’s hard to believe there’s bobby pins, a cap and a full head of her own hair under the wig,” McDonald said as he pointed to a photograph of LuPone wearing it.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York Times‘West Side Story’ JacketThis Jets jacket, worn by the actor Don Grilley, who succeeded Larry Kert, who played Tony in the original 1957 Broadway company of “West Side Story,” hung in a closet for decades. It was given to the museum by Grilley’s widow, Lesley Stewart Grilley. (Don Grilley died in 2017.) “We got lucky,” McDonald said. “There aren’t many costumes still around from the original.”‘Hair’ Military JacketClearly built to last, this red-and-green military jacket was worn by an ensemble member in the original 1968 production of “Hair,” the 2008 Public Theater revival in Central Park, the 2009 Broadway revival and that production’s 2010 transfer to London. But it most likely dates back even further, said McDonald, who received a Tony nomination for designing the costumes for the Broadway revival and loaned the jacket to the museum. “It was likely used in a production of ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ at the Public in the 1960s,” he said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York TimesLittle Red Dress From ‘Annie’The iconic fiery red frock from the 1977 Broadway musical about a little orphan with curly red hair whose pluck and positivity wins the heart of the billionaire Oliver Warbucks (not to mention the audience) is on loan from the Connecticut nonprofit Goodspeed Musicals. (“Annie” originated at Goodspeed Opera House in 1976.) “It’s honestly the most instantly recognizable costume on earth,” said Lisa Zinni, a costumes and props curator for the museum.Meryl Streep’s Broadway Debut CostumeLuke McDonough, the longtime costumes director at the Public Theater, had the foresight to hold on to this one: a floor-length, off-white lacy number worn by a then-little-known actress named Meryl Streep, who made her Broadway debut in the Public’s production of “Trelawny of the ‘Wells’” at Lincoln Center in 1975. (One of her co-stars was another fresh face making his Broadway debut: Mandy Patinkin.)Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesSara Krulwich/The New York Times‘Phantom of the Opera’ Chandelier InstallationEach of the 13,917 glistening crystals in this piece, which were fashioned by the German artist Ulli Böhmelmann into hanging strands, is meant to represent one performance the Broadway production of “The Phantom of the Opera” will have played from its opening on Jan. 26, 1988, through its closing night performance. Though the final show was originally set for Feb. 18, 2023, the production announced Tuesday that it had been pushed to April 16 amid strong ticket sales (Böhmelmann plans to add the necessary crystals). ‘Avenue Q’ PuppetsIn the early days of the 2003 Broadway production of the puppet-filled musical comedy “Avenue Q,” the show’s low budget meant the puppeteers had to put their charges through quick changes. The show initially had only three Princeton puppets — but he had eight costumes — meaning the puppets took a beating from changing clothes multiple times eight shows a week. “Eventually, they had a puppet for every costume,” McDonald said.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAl Hirschfeld Foundation; Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGershwin Theater Set ModelThis scale model, which is just over five feet wide, was designed by Edward Pierce, the associate scenic designer of the original Broadway production of “Wicked,” and took four people seven weeks to build. It includes more than 300 individual characters — and another 300 seated audience members in the auditorium. (See if you can find the Easter egg: a small model of the set model, with the designers — who look like the actual designers — showing the director a future design for “Wicked.”)Al Hirschfeld Etching of Barbra StreisandThe theater caricaturist Al Hirschfeld, who was most famous for his sketches that ran in The New York Times the Sunday before a show opened, created around 10,000 drawings over his 82-year career. But one of his most popular pieces was his 1968 portrait of Barbra Streisand — captured here in a 1975 etching — which he drew on the Sunday before “Funny Girl” opened in March 1964. It depicts Streisand looking into a mirror showing a 1910 photo of Fanny Brice, whom she played in the Jule Styne musical. “For him, a caption was a toe-curling admission of failure,” said David Leopold, the Al Hirschfeld Foundation creative director who curated the special exhibition. “He wanted the drawing to stand on its own two feet.” More

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      Irene Cara, ‘Fame’ and ‘Flashdance’ Singer, Dies at 63

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      Ms. Cara was a child star from the Bronx who gained international fame as the singer of major pop anthems from movies of the 1980s.Irene Cara, the Academy Award-winning singer who performed the electric title tracks in two aspirational self-expression movies of the 1980s, “Flashdance” and “Fame,” has died. She was 63.Her death at her Florida home was confirmed by her publicist, Judith A. Moose, on Twitter on Saturday. Ms. Moose, who did not specify when Ms. Cara died, said her cause of death was “currently unknown and will be released when information is available.”Ms. Cara, a child actor, dancer and singer, was the voice behind two of the biggest movie theme songs of the 1980s. She performed the title track from the movie “Fame” (1980), which followed a group of artsy high school students as they move through their first auditions to graduation.In 1984, she won the Oscar for best original song as one of the writers of “Flashdance … What a Feeling,” the title song from “Flashdance,” which she also sang. The buoyant song also earned Ms. Cara a Grammy Award in 1984 for best pop vocal performance, female, and a Golden Globe for best original song. The movie, like “Fame,” chronicled the aspirations of a young person seeking to express themselves through art, in this case, dance.Ms. Cara was born Irene Escalera on March 18, 1959, in the Bronx. She repeatedly disputed reports about her birth year, at times describing it as in 1964. Her official Twitter account says she was born in 1962. Her mother told The New York Times in 1970 that a young Ms. Cara, already a busy performer, was 11 years old.Her mother, Louise Escalera, was a cashier and her father, Gaspar Escalera, was a musician and worked at a steel factory. Details on Ms. Cara’s survivors were not immediately available.Ms. Cara grew up in New York City and attended music, acting and dance classes as a child and was said to be able to play the piano by ear at age five. She attended the Professional Children’s School in Manhattan, a school for child performers and children studying the arts.As a child, she sang and danced on Spanish-language television. At 13, she was a regular on “The Electric Company,” a children’s show from the 1970s. She was also a member of its band, the Short Circus.She stayed busy, taking roles in theater, television and film, including the title role in “Sparkle,” a 1976 film about a family of female singers in the 1960s that was remade in 2012.Her breakout role was in the movie musical “Fame,” where she played Coco Hernandez, a student at a school modeled after the high school now known as Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. On the film’s soundtrack, Ms. Cara sang the title track, “Fame,” and another single, the ballad “Out Here on My Own.”Both songs were nominated for an Oscar in 1981. The film was nominated for several awards and “Fame” won for both best original song and score.She continued to act and make music into the 1990s, when she was embroiled in a legal battle with her record company over her earnings. She was awarded $1.5 million by a California jury in 1993 but Ms. Cara said she was “virtually blacklisted” by the music industry because of the dispute, People magazine reported in 2001.In recent years, she shared songs from her catalog, including some that had not been released, on her podcast, “The Back Story.”In an episode from July 2019, she spoke about her ballad “As Long as it Lasts,” and said it had similar qualities to “Out Here on My Own,” and explained why she connected to both songs.“Very naked, just vocal and piano and a great lyric and a great story within the lyric, those are the kinds of songs I relate to as a songwriter,” Ms. Cara said. More

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      Britain’s Major Opera Companies Suffer in Arts Spending Shake-Up

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      English National Opera lost its government subsidy, and the Royal Opera House received a 10-percent cut, with funding diverted to organizations outside London.LONDON — English National Opera has for decades been one of the world’s major opera companies. In 1945, it premiered Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes.” In the 1980s, it became the first British opera company to tour the United States. Last year, it started rolling out a new “Ring” cycle that is expected to play at the Metropolitan Opera starting in 2025.Now, that standing is in question.On Friday, Arts Council England, a body that distributes government arts funding in England, announced a spending shake-up. Nicholas Serota, the council’s chairman, said in a news conference that funding for London-based organizations had been reallocated to those in poorer parts of Britain, a process that involved “some invidious choices.”English National Opera was the biggest loser in the reshuffle. It will no longer receive any regular funding from the Arts Council. For the past four years, it received around £12.4 million a year, or about $14 million. The annual grant made up over a third of the company’s budget.Instead, English National Opera will receive a one-off payment of £17 million to help it “develop a new business model,” Arts Council England said in a news release, which could potentially include relocating the company to Manchester, 178 miles north of its current home at the ornate Coliseum theater in London.English National Opera was not the only major company affected by the funding overhaul. The Arts Council also cut funding to the Royal Opera House in London by 10 percent, to £22.2 million a year.In a news release, the Royal Opera said that, despite the cut and other challenges such as rising inflation, it would “do whatever we can to remain at the heart of the cultural life of the nation.”Two other companies that tour productions throughout England, Welsh National Opera and Glyndebourne Productions, saw funding drop by over 30 percent.John Allison, the editor of Opera magazine, said in a telephone interview that the changes were “unquestionably damaging to opera in Britain.” Some innovative small companies had received a funding boost, Allison said, including Pegasus Opera, a company that works to involve people of color in the art form. But, he added, it was still “a very gloomy day.”Britain’s arts funding model is somewhere between the systems of the United States — where most companies receive little government assistance, and raise their own funds via philanthropy, ticket sales and commercial activities — and continental Europe, where culture ministries bankroll major institutions. Arts Council England reviews its funding decisions every few years. This time, some 1,730 organizations applied for subsidies, requesting a total £655 million a year — far more than the organization’s £446 million budget.So, some cuts to English National Opera and the Royal Opera House were expected. Britain’s government has long stated a desire to divert arts funding from London to other regions, in a policy known as “leveling up.” In February, Nadine Dorries, the culture minister at the time, ordered the Arts Council to reduce funding to London organizations by 15 percent. The move would “tackle cultural disparities” in Britain, she told Parliament then, “and ensure that everyone, wherever they live, has the opportunity to enjoy the incredible benefits of culture in their lives.”Serota, the Arts Council chairman, said in a telephone interview that the body had not targeted cuts at opera companies specifically. “We’re still going to be investing more than £30 million in opera a year,” he said, highlighting boosts to regional organizations including the Birmingham Opera Company, English Touring Opera and Opera North.The Arts Council slashed grants for several major London theaters, too. The Donmar Warehouse lost its funding entirely, as did the Hampstead Theater and the Barbican Center. The National Theater saw its funding drop by about 3 percent, to £16.1 million per year from £16.7 million.At a time when the Bank of England says that Britain is facing a multiyear recession, even relatively small cuts will raise huge concern for arts organizations. Sam Mendes, the director of “1917” and “American Beauty,” who was the Donmar Warehouse’s founding artistic director, said in a news release that “cutting the Donmar’s funding is a shortsighted decision that will wreak long lasting damage on the wider industry.” The theater, he added, “is a world renowned and hugely influential theater, and the U.K. cannot afford to put it at risk.”Serota said he was “confident” that the Donmar would be able to find alternative sources of funding. “But I know,” he continued, “that’s an easy thing to say.” More

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      One More Project for David Geffen: Building His Legacy

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      In Los Angeles, you can wander through Judy Baca murals at the cavernous Geffen Contemporary at MOCA, view “Beetlejuice” at the sphere-like David Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum, watch “The Inheritance” at the Geffen Playhouse, and follow the progress of the new David Geffen Galleries, a striking work of architecture that will span Wilshire Boulevard, at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.New York now has not one but two David Geffen Halls: an academic building at Columbia Business School and the remake of the Lincoln Center home of the New York Philharmonic, which reopened this month after a $550 million renovation that he jump-started with a $100 million gift.At 79, Geffen, the entertainment magnate, has planted himself into the pantheon of leading American philanthropists. He has handed out $1.2 billion over the past 25 years to museums, theaters, concert halls, universities and medical centers, according to the Geffen Foundation, and pledged to “give every nickel away” of a fortune estimated to be $7.7 billion. As a result, Geffen has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction that is enlivening cities as the nation emerges from the coronavirus pandemic.“When you need a gift of this scale, there aren’t many people who are doing what David is doing, which is investing big-time in the cultural infrastructure of major cities — New York, Los Angeles,” said Michael Govan, the head of LACMA, who spent a year convincing Geffen to give $150 million toward the galleries there that will bear his name.Geffen’s gifts are often contingent upon naming rights. When Avery Fisher Hall was renamed for him in 2015, 61 signs and maps around Lincoln Center were changed. Brian Harkin for The New York TimesGeffen is hardly some modern-day version of Andrew Carnegie, who made his fortune from steel and financed one of the great waves of philanthropy in the nation’s history. He is an openly gay entertainment mogul whose life, romances, yacht, mansions, art acquisitions, business deals, celebrity adventures and political engagement with, in particular, the Clintons and Barack Obama make him as engrossing a character as anyone in Hollywood.It’s hard to imagine, for instance, Carnegie dating Cher or Marlo Thomas when he was young, which Geffen did; comforting Yoko Ono at the hospital the night that John Lennon was assassinated, which Geffen did; watching Joni Mitchell in his apartment when she wrote “Woodstock,” which Geffen did; or working with Janis Joplin, the Doors and Peter, Paul and Mary, which Geffen did.The Reopening of David Geffen HallThe New York Philharmonic’s notoriously jinxed auditorium at Lincoln Center has undergone a $550 million renovation.Reborn, Again: The renovation of the star-crossed hall aims to break its acoustic curse — and add a dash of glamour.Who Is David Geffen?: The entertainment magnate, who jump-started the renovation, has become avidly sought by culture and education leaders looking to finance a wave of new construction.San Juan Hill: Etienne Charles’s composition for the reopening of the hall honors the Afro-diasporic musical heritage of the neighborhood razed to build Lincoln Center.Expert Assessment: Right after the reopening our critic wrote that the renovation had a mightily improved sound. In the weeks that followed his feelings became more complicated.His skill at spotting up-and-coming musical talent (Jackson Browne; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; Guns N’ Roses), producing hit movies (“Risky Business” and “Beetlejuice”) and backing Broadway shows (“Dreamgirls” and “Cats”), and his work building record labels and movie studios has made him one of the wealthiest people in America. He has homes in New York, Los Angeles and East Hampton for when he is not entertaining boldfaced friends (think Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey) on his yacht, the Rising Sun. He once startled a dinner of journalists in Washington by disclosing that he had not flown on a commercial airplane since the late 1970s; that night he took a private jet back to Beverly Hills.Geffen is hardly shy about his philanthropy, as can be seen by the growing list of institutions bearing his name, including the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, which his gift made tuition-free. (“I don’t agree that the best giving is anonymous,” Geffen once told Fortune. “We should be examples to our friends and communities. I should be an example to young, gay kids.”) But he is, in his own way, low key about it — he declined an invitation to speak at the gala celebrating the opening of Geffen Hall this past week, and seemed reluctant to stand when he was acknowledged from the stage.The lobby of the revamped hall.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesAnd he is not like other wealthy donors, who can range from hands-on to micromanaging when it comes to projects bearing their names. “They want to check the carpet designs,” said Deborah Borda, the head of the New York Philharmonic. By contrast, the gala was the first time Geffen saw the redone hall bearing his name; he never joined the hard-hat construction tours that Lincoln Center gave to dignitaries over these past two years.“David said, ‘I want to leave this in your hands: I don’t need any input on the selection of the architect and driving the design,’” said Katherine G. Farley, the chair of the board of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, recounting her conversation with Geffen when she asked him for money to rebuild what was then called Avery Fisher Hall. “He kept repeating, ‘Make sure you do something great.’”Geffen, who declined a request for an interview, looks for transformative cultural projects that are struggling for credibility and financing, according to friends and associates. His contributions cover just a portion of the total cost — $100 million toward the $550 million Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center; $150 million toward the $750 million Geffen Galleries at LACMA — and are designed to goad other donors, while establishing Geffen as the primary patron.“He’s making big bets,” said Marie-Josée Kravis, the chairwoman of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, to which he donated $100 million toward a three-floor David Geffen Wing in 2016. “They’re transformative. It’s not incremental.”His gifts are usually contingent on naming rights. Lincoln Center agreed to a $15 million payment to the Fisher family to relinquish its naming rights so the center could promise Geffen that his name would remain on the hall in perpetuity. Although some argued that the naming rights should have commanded a higher price, Farley said, “Without his gift, there is no question that would not have happened.”By contrast, when David H. Koch, the oil-and-gas billionaire, gave $100 million in 2008 to renovate what had been called the New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, it came with the provision that the theater could be renamed for a new donor after 50 years.Arianna Huffington, the founder of The Huffington Post and a longtime friend of Geffen’s, said that “the arts have basically dominated his life,” and that they are what motivated his philanthropy.“I personally have very little patience for people who question why anybody gives — as long as they give,” she said.Geffen took a hands-off approach to the renovation, and never stopped by for a hard-hat tour when it was a construction site.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesGeffen has become more reclusive in recent years, first visiting the Geffen Theater at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles this month — a year after its red-carpet opening. He temporarily shut down his Instagram account at the start of the pandemic after he came under fire for posting a photo of his yacht floating in safe seclusion. “Isolated in the Grenadines avoiding the virus,” he wrote. “I’m hoping everybody is staying safe.”Geffen is a college dropout who grew up in Brooklyn, where he attended New Utrecht High School. After creating Asylum Records — where he signed Joni Mitchell and Bob Dylan — in 1971, he sold it two years later to Warner Communications for $7 million. He founded Geffen Records in 1980; he would sell that a decade later to MCA for $550 million in stock, which increased in value significantly when Matsushita then bought MCA. He co-founded, with Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks SKG in 1994, and left the company in 2008.Geffen can be combative in his business dealings, and he lamented the “shameful” lack of support by New York donors in 2017 when Lincoln Center and the Philharmonic went back to the drawing board with plans to rebuild the hall, in part because it was growing too costly. Just after the move to rethink the New York project was announced, LACMA announced Geffen’s $150 million gift — timing that appeared to send a message, though officials said the gift had long been in the works.Associates said that Geffen’s background in business and culture, and particularly music, drives his philanthropic choices.“He comes from the music business,” said David Bohnett, another philanthropist based in New York and Los Angeles. “You grow up around music, you grow up around entertainment, it just seems logical that you are going to put your name on theaters and music halls and museums.”Some say it helps explain his hands-off approach to the projects he supports. “He’s made a career out of respecting artists and understanding what artists need,” said Henry Timms, the president of Lincoln Center. “And I think that’s the same context for this — he’s not assuming he can do this job better than the architects.”Geffen is intimately involved in deciding what projects to support. “He is a very engaged philanthropist and is involved in every funding decision made at the foundation,” said Dallas Dishman, the executive director of the Geffen Foundation, to which Geffen is the sole contributor.As he approaches his 80th birthday, and with over $7 billion left, Geffen is contemplating his mortality and his legacy, his friends say. Yet on Wednesday night in New York, when he finally rose from his chair at the gala marking the opening of the latest building bearing his name, he seemed taken aback by the intensity of the applause. He just smiled slightly and sat down, without saying a word.“He doesn’t reveal himself very much,” said Kravis, of the Museum of Modern Art. “He just gives. I respect his search for privacy and I’ve never pushed him on it.” More

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      Apollo Theater’s Longtime President Will Step Down

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      Jonelle Procope, who transformed the Harlem organization from a struggling nonprofit to an internationally recognized cultural center, will leave in June after two decades in the role.Jonelle Procope, who has served as the president and chief executive of the Apollo Theater in Harlem for nearly 20 years, will step down in June, the theater announced on Tuesday.“The Apollo is in such a strong position now — financially stable, with all the pieces in place for the future,” said Procope, who has led the nonprofit since 2003 after joining as a board member in 1999. “It’s a great time for the next leader to be able to step in and take the Apollo into the future.”Procope has overseen a transformation that has taken the theater from a struggling nonprofit to the largest African American performing arts presenting organization in the country. On Tuesday, the Apollo also announced it had raised $63 million in a capital campaign to fully renovate the 108-year-old building, as well as to support new 99- and 199-seat performance spaces that will be managed by the Apollo at the nearby Victoria Theater and are scheduled to see their first audiences in fall 2023.The renovation of the Apollo Theater is scheduled to begin in spring 2024, with the first cultural programs taking place in spring 2025. Along with a new lobby cafe and bar that will be open to the public, plans include added and upgraded seating, new lighting and audio systems and updates to the building’s exterior.“It was really important for me to complete — or nearly completely reach — that goal before I decided to make the transition,” Procope said of the capital campaign.Over her two decades at the Apollo, Procope, 70, carried out a long-term plan for the restoration and expansion of the theater. She grew the organization’s community and education programs, which served more than 20,000 students, teachers and families each year before the coronavirus pandemic.Procope said she was most proud of the relationships the theater forged with cultural partners such as the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates. His 2015 book “Between the World and Me,” which explores racial injustice in America, was adapted into a communal performance that had its world premiere at the theater in 2018.Another one of those partnerships was a planned revival of Charles Randolph-Wright’s play “Blue,” which was canceled because of the pandemic; it was set to star Leslie Uggams and Lynn Whitfield with direction by Phylicia Rashad. Procope said that the Apollo was hopeful the production would still happen, but that no plans had yet been made.Charles E. Phillips, the chairman of the Apollo’s board, said a search committee would be formed this fall to begin a national search for Procope’s successor, noting that it would be no easy task.“It’s hard to find leaders like Jonelle who are so consistently good for so long,” Phillips said. “She almost single-handedly turned the Apollo around.” More

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      Michael R. Jackson and Jacolby Satterwhite on Making Art in a Shifting Culture

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the playwright behind “A Strange Loop” and the visual artist.Although the playwright Michael R. Jackson, 41, and the visual artist Jacolby Satterwhite, 36, work in different genres, they have some things in common. Both are queer Black New York-based artists who address trauma, secrets and stigmas. And both have spent most of their careers feeling overlooked and misunderstood. “As the Black gay man in the room,” said Satterwhite, “I was seen as some sort of weird exception and dismissed.”Yet since the summer of 2020 and its global protests against racial discrimination and violence, both men have been enthusiastically embraced by the public. “A Strange Loop,” Jackson’s meta-musical about a queer Black man trying to write a musical, won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, making its author the first Black writer to win the award for a musical. The production moved to the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway two years later and was nominated for 11 Tony Awards, including that for Best Musical (which it won). Next spring, Jackson’s new musical, “White Girl in Danger,” set in the world of a fictional soap opera town called Allwhite, will open off Broadway. The playwright was born and raised in Detroit and spent nearly 20 years on “A Strange Loop,” taking a variety of jobs to support himself, including as an usher at “The Lion King” on Broadway.Satterwhite, whose work has been shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Whitney Museum of American Art, hopscotches across mediums — photography, performance, painting, 3-D animation, writing — to create art that raises questions about self-mythology and expression, consumerism, labor, visual utopia and African rituals. His practice defies easy categorization. This year, the South Carolina native has been building multimedia installations around the world, including at the Format music and art festival in the Ozarks, the Front International triennial in Cleveland, the Munch Triennale in Oslo and the Okayama Art Summit in Japan.The two artists met in August for a conversation at Satterwhite’s studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, to discuss their experiences in a shifting cultural landscape.Jaquel Spivey in Michael R. Jackson’s musical “A Strange Loop” at the Lyceum Theater in New York City.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJACOLBY SATTERWHITE: On the night “A Strange Loop” premiered, I had a lot of projects going on and wasn’t able to make it but, three times a week, someone would approach me about it. I went in a little skeptical and thought, “I’m probably going to see something that is asymmetrical to my experience.” But what was so great about it was that it encapsulated all the things that make me who I am as an artist and how I feel as a creative producer in an art world that has shifted seismically between 2003 and now.I was in the room before we all got a seat at the table, and I experienced all kinds of resistance among white peers, as well as my own Black colleagues who have a heteronormative stance.MICHAEL R. JACKSON: I think part of the reason a lot of people connect with the show is because this piece contains almost 20 years of thought. I started working on it when I was about 23 and, even though I rewrote it, it still captures whole periods of time of Black gay thinking, feeling and living and reflecting. There’s a lot that one can grab on to.J.S.: I went to see the show with my boyfriend, who is not in the art world or a creative industry. There are times when I struggle to communicate why I am the way I am, and I’ve said things that were a bit niche and esoteric to him with regard to my experience. And there were moments during the show when he looked at me, because the scenes illustrated exactly what I said to him.M.R.J.: In a weird way, the show demonstrates my inherent outsider status that makes me incompatible with being in a relationship. That could be wrong — I could be overdramatizing — but that’s one of the loops in my life.J.S.: Before I started dating this person, I had this “I am meant to be alone” militancy. And honestly, I do feel like I have more agency when I’m alone, because I have an obsessive practice that requires me to be extremely selfish to execute. I don’t have assistants. I’m a computer animator, a painter and an experimental filmmaker, and it requires a certain kind of loneliness.M.R.J.: Yeah. One important lesson I learned about myself during the pandemic was that my instinct is far more “I” than “we.” I’ve always thought of myself as a collectivist, and it’s not that I’m not sympathetic to groups but, if I track my own actions and choices, it was always me: whether it’s me against my family, me against other Black folks, me against white folks. Whatever group it was, I always had to find a way to soldier through the group within my own “I.” J.S.: I actually share a similar sentiment. As a person who grew up with childhood cancer — twice — had chemo and was isolated from a schizophrenic mother who was in a mental hospital, I’ve always felt everything about my identity was broken. So in order to survive, I found solace in my artistic ambitions.Exploring niche illegibility and abstraction as a Black artist is radical and unpopular, and it was one thing that people scoffed at for my whole career. But the boldness to commit to something that’s illegible and unpopular is rewarding, and it actually has more impact on the collective “we.” M.R.J.: My next musical, “White Girl in Danger,” is very much about the “we.” Now there’s a relationship between the “I” and the “we,” but the world is going, “Representation! Representation! Representation!” I’m like, “What is that?” That doesn’t feel true. I mean, you’re putting up what you want to see, and that’s fine. But then you want to try to sell that back to me, and I’m not giving you my money for that. That’s what I find troubling about [the focus on] representation, which is dissonant with what a lot of our culture has been saying for a couple of years.J.S.: Well, capitalism got in the way, and now you have banks saying, “We have money for trans visibility and we create safe spaces at our A.T.M.s,” or whatever.  M.R.J.: You saying that has me thinking about [the 1990 documentary about New York City drag culture] “Paris Is Burning.” What’s actually been most interesting to me, but doesn’t get talked about, is that the group of people in that documentary — and so many more who weren’t in it — were imitating an imitation of an imitation in the Reagan era. All these people in the 1980s were reorienting because of the actual politics of the time, and the things that led to this era of excess and austerity. When I look at these queens, they want to be fictional characters. That has always been a beautiful dissonance.I went to the National Museum of African American History & Culture [in Washington, D.C.,] for the first time recently and found it fascinating. We start in the 1400s with the slave trade and then there’re all these moments in history where people are fighting bitterly to be free. Then in the 1960s and ’70s, it got real hot with the Black Panthers and all these radical groups starting to collaborate, and the government is like, “We have to break that up.” The Panthers are gone and suddenly we’re in the ’80s and it’s Oprah, Bill Cosby, superstars everywhere.An installation view of Jacolby Satterwhite’s “at dawn” (2022) at JSC Berlin. Shown here is Satterwhite’s “Birds in Paradise” (2019), a two-channel HD color video and 3-D animation with sound.Photo: Alwin Lay. © Jacolby Satterwhite, courtesy of the artist and Mitchell-Innes & Nash, New YorkIt seems like the powers that be realized that, to keep the world order, they had to deliver these fantasies to people to confuse them and get them off the scent. And honestly, looking at today, a lot of that stuff’s only continued, and now people have taken those fantasies and pumped them into this idea of radicalism. Within that there’s stuff that’s real, and then there’s stuff that’s not real. But you can’t tell it apart unless you look at it with hard eyes.J.S.: My whole existence is that era. My mom named me after a character from [a spinoff of the 1980s soap opera] “Dynasty.” She was obsessed with Republicans and the Middle East, so my middle name is Tyran [a reference to Tehran]. This was down to her schizophrenia. She made 10,000 schematic diagrams of common objects in the house that she was trying to submit to the Home Shopping Network to get invented. She became so obsessed with imitating and copying the infection of capitalism — it ended up shaping me as a human being, and my artistic pursuit. And it’s interesting to see how my peers don’t even know what they’re imitating now.M.R.J.: For me, that raises the question of who my people are. I started this conversation by saying that I’ve been having complex feelings, and that’s part of it. I thought I knew who my people were, but now I find myself feeling a bit alone.I keep watching the movie “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” (1978) because the idea of pod people resonates with me — this idea of people who’re doing the same thing and trying to get you to be like them. There’s something in me saying, “I can’t trust anyone, because they might pull me into some pod people stuff — I’ve been a pod person before. And it sounds like paranoia, but I also see how people are inconsistent because I see how I can be inconsistent. When I look at other people not recognizing how they can be inconsistent, I worry how we can progress in this self-deluded world that’s constantly having ideas delivered to you from culture, politics, whatever, that’re purposely trying to keep you uninformed and confused.J.S.: I’ve always welcomed erasure and am constantly trying to shift skins. I had a traveling museum survey that started at Carnegie Mellon [in 2021] and, when I went to that survey, I almost cried. I saw a whole room of works from seven years ago that were completely out of context for the person I am today. But they were a part of me. I’m going to spend another seven years making something that represents the stage I’m in now, and those works will have a conversation with each other. What I’ve learned to do is be messy: There’s no such thing as mistakes, because everything can be recontextualized.M.R.J.: The tricky part of it is when other people try to hold you to what you said as evidence in the court of public opinion, [assessing] whether or not you’re a hypocrite.Social media culture has become so horribly linked to what art and entertainment are being made, how they’re viewed and how they’re produced. So much of my voice as a writer was developed on social media and specifically Facebook. That box that said, “What’s on your mind?” I took that as a personal challenge; I have a catalog of every thought I’ve ever had. Sometimes I’ll cringe because I don’t know who that person was, but it was part of my development.J.S.: I mean, the world’s in pain, especially after the pandemic, where lots of jobs were lost and isolation caused a lot of mental illness. We’re in the revenge generation. [But] that doesn’t leave room for artists to grow. We’re eradicating problematic people as if the person who’s throwing the stone isn’t problematic. But everyone is.This interview has been edited and condensed. More