Dating and Relationships

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      ‘Modern Love’ Goes Global in New Television Series

      by

      The latest iteration of the “Modern Love” franchise, “Modern Love Tokyo,” begins streaming on Oct. 21.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Daniel Jones, the senior editor of The New York Times’s Modern Love column, remembers when, a dozen years ago, it was just him selecting stories from a stack of nearly a thousand monthly submissions and editing each one for the essay series. “It was kind of lonely,” he said.This week, he has plenty of company. He is in Japan to attend the premiere of the television series “Modern Love Tokyo,” the latest installment in Amazon’s global “Modern Love” franchise. The seven-episode show will begin streaming on Amazon Prime Video on Oct. 21. The episodes are set in Tokyo, feature the work of actors, of directors and of a creative team from Japan, and are based on essays published in the column that were reimagined to make them more familiar to Japanese audiences. (In a “Modern Love” first, one of the episodes will be animated.)“I love that the process includes all these other talented people who are interpreting stories and amplifying emotions, putting in music,” Mr. Jones said in an interview last week. “It’s just exploded the job into a whole new realm.”Since the original “Modern Love” show was released on Amazon in October 2019, three international spinoffs have debuted in three languages: “Modern Love Mumbai,” in Hindi; “Modern Love Hyderabad,” in Telugu; and the Tokyo series, in Japanese. A fourth series, “Modern Love Chennai,” in Tamil, is forthcoming, and a fifth, “Modern Love Amsterdam,” offered in Dutch, is set to be released in mid-December.Mr. Jones reflected on the television franchise’s expansion abroad, on the process of adapting American stories for each series and on the longevity of the Modern Love column. Read the edited interview below.When did the idea to create international versions of the show come about?The original series, set in New York City, came out in 2019, and pretty soon after that, we started talking about other cities around the world where we might be able to do versions of it. Of course, then the pandemic hit, which made everything harder and a little delayed. And so the international versions we began talking about several years ago are just now coming out.What is your role on the series?I’m a co-producer on all the international versions. I see the episodes as they’re being edited; I read the scripts. I try to maintain a sense of what Modern Love is and has been for more than 18 years now, meaning realistic love stories, not sweeping romances. No overt sex or Bollywood plots or anything that would push the boundaries and make it seem outside what the column does. But the people working on this at Amazon Studios know this and get it. In fact, that’s what they value most about these series and what makes the work distinctive in these markets. We’re all on the same page.Also, the Modern Love archive is enormous — it’s 900-some essays at this point. While the teams in different countries who are picking content completely reimagine the stories for their audiences, the shows’ creators often stick close to the plot, so I’m helpful to them if they want a certain kind of story; I know the archive better than anyone. But I’ve been so impressed with the local teams’ approach and research and passion for this project.Daniel Jones attending the “Modern Love Tokyo” premiere. Phoebe JonesHow does the process of adapting an American story for an audience in another country work?For one of the Mumbai episodes, the creative team in Mumbai took an essay about a woman in Brooklyn who had separated from her husband and who was feeling down in every way — she was in bad physical shape, emotionally wrung out. And she now needed to get herself to work by bicycle.She started riding across the Manhattan Bridge, but she didn’t have the stamina to go all the way up, so the story was about the empowerment — both physical and emotional — of building herself back up. It was a very New York story, but when they took it to Mumbai, they made her character a domestic servant in a wealthy family, highlighting the class divide there. There’s a bridge in Mumbai, called the Flyway, that goes from a gritty area to the gleaming city center, and it was the same basic process of her building herself back up. It speaks to the universality of these conflicts — you can get a divorce in Mumbai, and you can get a divorce in Brooklyn. The emotions and struggle and all that can be so similar.All of the versions of the show are available to stream on Amazon Prime in the United States, right?Yes. Now, with the success of series like “Squid Game,” it’s become clear that subtitles are not a barrier. I hope people check out the versions set in the other cities, too.What’s been the most exciting part of working on the international versions?When these teams discover stories that I’d long forgotten about in the archive, and then reintroduce me to them in a new way. It’s great to have other people look at the archive with fresh eyes, find such gems and see how to reimagine them for the screen.What’s next for the “Modern Love” television franchise?Our fifth international series, “Modern Love Amsterdam,” premieres in mid-December. Beyond that, stay tuned, because we have ambitions for all over the world. More

    • 138 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      Billy Eichner Wrote Himself Into the Romance He Wanted With ‘Bros’

      by

      When he was still figuring out who he was as a gay man, Billy Eichner found himself at the movies. As a college student in Chicago, he caught “Jeffrey” and “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss” at the Music Box. Later, after a move to New York, Eichner watched films like “All Over the Guy,” “The Broken Hearts Club,” and “Another Gay Movie” at the Quad.“Some of them were great and some of them were a little less great,” he said, “but I always ran to see them because I had a hunger to see our stories onscreen.”Now it’s Eichner who gets to star in one of those stories. In “Bros,” which Universal is releasing in theaters on Friday, Eichner plays Bobby Leiber, a cynical Manhattanite who is surprised to find himself falling for Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), an affable jock. With most romantic comedies, the question is whether the central couple will ever get together, but these modern gay men quickly tumble into bed with each other (and sometimes with guest stars). Here, the conflict arises from whether they’ll actually stay together, since Aaron can be aloof and Bobby has never dated someone who’s such a … well, bro.Though Eichner became famous for loudly haranguing passers-by about pop culture on his series “Billy on the Street,” in real life, the 44-year-old comic actor is low-key and thoughtful. He hopes that “Bros,” which he co-wrote with the director Nicholas Stoller (“Forgetting Sarah Marshall”), will demonstrate that he’s capable of much more than just bellowing.“I think until very recently, if Hollywood was willing to put a gay character in anything, it was often to be some version of a live-action cartoon,” Eichner told me recently over dinner in Los Angeles. “But with ‘Bros,’ one of the things that excites me the most about it is I get to be a real, multidimensional person.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.Eichner in a scene from “Bros,” with, from left, Dot-Marie Jones, Ts Madison, Miss Lawrence and Eve Lindley.Nicole Rivelli/Universal PicturesAt what point did you decide to call this film “Bros”?Very early on. One of the initial inspirations for the movie was this “Billy on the Street” segment I did with Jason Sudeikis called the “Bro Lightning Round.” where I dropped my normal “Billy on the Street” persona and did a different character. It was this very bro-y guy, and I would ask [a passer-by], “Hey bro, is masculinity a prison?” and the guy would say, “Yes,” and we’d all cheer. A gay friend of mine said to me, “You were kind of hot in that segment, when you talked like that. You should dress like that more often.” He was half-joking but half-not.Inside every joke, there’s a kernel of truth.One hundred percent, and I could tell. I said to him, “Are you saying I should have a completely different voice and dress like a completely different person in order to seem sexually attractive to you?” I always thought there was something there to further explore about gay men, at least those of my generation — I can’t speak to the younger ones, I don’t think they’re as focused on this issue of masculinity. But I told Nick that anecdote, and that’s when the idea of calling the movie “Bros” came to me. I liked the irony of it, that this big mainstream gay rom-com would be called “Bros,” but also when people see the movie, they’ll realize it actually is tied into one of the themes.How would you define that theme?That the gay male community, or at least parts of it, put a certain type of jocky, all-American masculinity on a pedestal. I think that for gay men of my generation, it was less of an issue to simply be gay — many of us were OK with that, for the most part — but we wanted to be masculine, and we were attracted to this very old-fashioned sense of masculinity. And although things are definitely changing for the better, a lot of that stuff is still ingrained in us.What’s your own journey been like with masculinity?Complicated. When I was in my 20s, you would go to the gay bar with your friends and we always talked about how we’re gay, but we’re not that gay. I remember my father saying that to me as if that was a good thing.Meaning you presented more masculine?Right, that I was presenting as more “straight-acting,” which is an outdated term, but that’s what we used to use all the time. Then an interesting thing happened when I started to perform live onstage: I was more flamboyant. It’s like I leaned into the opposite extreme, but that wasn’t a premeditated choice, it’s just what came out when I started to develop what eventually became the “Billy on the Street” persona.Eichner’s loud “Billy on the Street” character opposite Sarah Jessica Parker.TruTVWas there a freedom in leaning into that side of yourself?I guess there was. I think it was a bit of a [screw you] to what I was observing in gay men at the time. Also, I know I’m so loud and outgoing onstage or on camera, but I can be very shy. At gay bars in my 20s, I was known as the quiet one who stood next to my best friend, who was extremely social and gorgeous. He would bring his gay friends to see my live show, where I was so outrageous, and they would look at me like, “Who is that person?”So how do you reconcile those extremes?The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but I struggled with it. I remember being in Provincetown once, when “Billy on the Street” had been on TV for a few years, and a guy came up to me and said, “Hello, I’m a fan.” And I was talking to him for a while and he said, “Oh, I guess you’re really gay on TV but you’re not in real life?” That was such a confusing moment, but it stuck with me. In a way, you do start to question which is the real you.Do you think he wanted you to be more performative?Yes, and I do think that’s a little silly, because I’m clearly playing a character. I’ve sat down with journalists sometimes and they’d be disappointed that I was just normal and I wasn’t coming at them and shouting. They wanted the character, and I would always say, “Do you think Sacha Baron Cohen shows up as Borat?”There are some comedians who are always on, who never drop the act.I would rather die than be that way.“Bros” has an almost entirely L.G.B.T. cast, but your director, Nick Stoller, is straight. Was there ever a conversation about whether a gay person should direct it?This was five years ago, and I think the culture and the industry have evolved a lot since then. If we were making the movie now, would the studio maybe insist it was a gay director? It’s possible, but the project started with Nick emailing me and saying, “I love your work. Do you want to write a gay rom-com with me and you can star in it?” I’d never written a movie before, I’d never even had a large supporting role in a live-action movie, and he’s made many movies. I was confident that he could walk me through all of that and protect my vision.I do love working with gay people. I’m writing my next project with Paul Rudnick, and Greg Berlanti is producing it. But at the same time, I love that Judd [Apatow, a producer of the project] and Nick and I made this movie together. I love the idea that we could make a movie that has three raunchy sex scenes, two of which are orgies, but it still has this Nora Ephron glow.To what extent is this film drawn from your own dating life?The inspiration for it came from an experience I had in real life, but I’ve never had a relationship like the one Bobby and Aaron have in the movie.“I love the idea that we could make a movie that has three raunchy sex scenes, two of which are orgies, but it still has this Nora Ephron glow,” Eichner said.Ryan Pfluger for The New York TimesWhat was that real-life experience?For the vast majority of my life, I always prided myself on not needing a boyfriend. I always silently judged friends that I thought were codependent, and then in 2015, I met a guy and instantly felt a really strong connection to him. He was really smart, a little aloof and emotionally unavailable — which, of course, makes you want them even more.Overnight, I went from a person who never needed anyone to being completely obsessed, dying to star in a Hallmark Christmas movie with this guy. I remember being out to dinner with some very close friends around that time, telling them that I was just obsessing over this guy and I couldn’t tell how he feels, that we hooked up but I can tell that he’s not into it. All these things were driving me insane, and my friends looked at each other and they said, “Wow, Billy has feelings,” and they all laughed. Literally, that could be in “Bros.” And then a year and a half later, after trying any which way to convince this person to date, I finally got over it.How long was your longest relationship?Oh, boy. I dated someone for two and a half years, but that ended in 2003, a really long time ago. After that, I was very much like Bobby Leiber — I loved my work and it was hard to get this career off the ground, so I put all my energy into that. The experience I had with that guy in 2015 really shifted my focus for the first time, and after that, my walls went right back up. But even though it didn’t work out, it taught me not to ignore these other parts of my life.When I’m watching “Bros,” and the guys start becoming more romantic and intimate … well, everyone can make fun of me for saying this, but I get swept away by it, too. Especially at those first screenings, I remember thinking, “Wow, those guys in the movie are so happy.” Then I was like, “Why is the fictional version of me happier than I am?”A lot of rom-coms end with the first kiss. You never saw Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks have sex …God, I wish they would have!… but in “Bros,” sex happens early and often. Did you have an idea about how you wanted it to be portrayed?I think sex can be very funny. Maybe not in Nora Ephron movies, but in Judd Apatow movies, there’s nudity and raunchiness that’s played for laughs and can also be really poignant. I love “Borat,” and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed harder in a movie theater than that scene where Sacha Baron Cohen and that naked guy are wrestling. The audience was really falling out of their seats laughing.Do you think part of the reason they laughed is because they found the mere idea of male nudity to be funny?Maybe it was shocking to them that Sacha was willing to go there, but I did think to myself, “Well, if they can do that, then 15 years after ‘Borat,’ we can certainly do this.” It’s also on-story for the characters in “Bros”: They’re trying to keep up this masculine persona even when they’re intimate, and they’re both fighting so hard against being vulnerable with each other. I just saw no reason not to do it. If it shocks people a little, well, I grew up with Madonna. I like to be a little shocking, a little provocative. I really never cared about being for everyone.Your character is insecure that he’s not enough of a jock, but you’re pretty fit, Billy. Do you feel pressure to look a certain way?I work out, I exercise, but I don’t consider myself a jock by any means. I never really played sports.Eichner with Luke Macfarlane as his love interest in “Bros.”Nicole Rivelli/Universal PicturesWhen gay men call themselves jocks, I don’t think it has anything to do with sports.No, of course it doesn’t. But I do feel that pressure, and that’s part of being a complicated human being. You can criticize people who are trying to conform to that look and be buff — you can know intellectually that this is a ridiculous thing to pursue — and also, at the same time, you can want to actually be part of that convention. Look, it’s complicated. As Madonna once said, “Life is a paradox.”It’s interesting to go back and read old interviews with you because once you started working out and became fitter, every profile mentions it.On Vulture, bless their hearts, I remember waking up one day and seeing an article that my publicist did not pitch that said, “When did Billy Eichner become hot?” It’s an odd thing. I’ve seen tweets saying that I’m too hot to play the role, and tweets saying I’m too ugly to play the role. Literally in the same breath, “Oh, how could Billy be playing the nerdy guy that no one wants when he’s so fit?” and guys saying, “There’s no way Billy could pull Luke Macfarlane.”How much of a say did you have in the film’s marketing campaign?Ultimately, Universal makes those calls. I’m not someone who’s constantly starring in three movies a year, so they knew that this was a first for me personally and they wanted to make sure that I felt comfortable with everything. But they did initially present a poster for the movie that had Luke and I in tuxedos, like we were having a gay wedding.Like you guys were a wedding topper?Exactly. I did politely push back on that and I said, “Guys, I know that we have a movie to sell here, but this is not a gay wedding movie. In fact, on multiple occasions, my character specifically talks about how he doesn’t want to get married.” Then almost overnight, they were like, “Well, what about this?” And it was the picture of us grabbing each other’s asses. I said, “Oh, wow. Yeah, that’s great.” Then I got a scare, I was like, “That might be too far,” and they said, “No, we love it. It’s bold, like the movie. Let’s be unapologetic.”How will you measure the success of this movie?I want the people who see it to laugh a lot and to be moved. A lot of what we get in movie theaters and even on TV to a certain degree is cynical and dark and gritty, but “Bros” is about the good things in life. It’s about love and sex and romance. That’s something that I think is lacking in a lot of our lives — it certainly has been lacking for a good part of my adult life, and I don’t want it to be. I think movies like this are a reminder that we shouldn’t ignore those things.Ben Stiller came to the premiere in New York, and he looked at me like, “Wow! I’ve never seen anything like that.” Meaning the movie and the sex scenes. We premiered the trailer on Jimmy Kimmel and he watched an advance screener of it, and he said to me, “Wow, is it really like that?” I think for us as gay people, we’ve lived these lives, but for straight audiences, it is a bit eye-opening. And that’s good, because that’s why we go to the movies — not only to be entertained, but to develop a richer understanding of who we are and who other people are. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Loving Highsmith’ Review: The Patricia You Didn’t Know

      by

      A new documentary makes the case that under her hardened exterior, the novelist Patricia Highsmith was a longing romantic.“Loving Highsmith,” a constrained documentary by the filmmaker Eva Vitija, tries to make the case that author Patricia Highsmith was prodigious in both writing and romance.When Highsmith died in 1995 at the age of 74, she left behind several lifetimes-worth of words, according to her biographer: 22 novels, including the best-sellers “Strangers on a Train,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” and “Carol” (originally titled “The Price of Salt”), plus over 200 unpublished manuscripts and over 8,000 pages of personal journals.Her handwritten entries, snippets read aloud here by the actress Gwendoline Christie, burn with the grievances — class, racial, familial, romantic, professional — that fed her fictional characters’ homicidal impulses and the public’s image of Highsmith as a coldblooded loner who preferred the company of her pet snail, Hortense. Even her sometime publisher called her “a mean, cruel, hard, unlovable, unloving human being.”Such comments are not included in Vitija’s tale, which is intended to be a counterpoint. “Loving Highsmith” reveals Highsmith’s squishy bits under her shell, the dalliances she tucked into her diaries during an era where queer women like her exited the subway one stop early, lest strangers suspect they were headed to a lesbian nightspot.Highsmith was something of a playgirl, Vitija finds, an assertion confirmed by several former girlfriends interviewed in the documentary who recall the novelist partying with David Bowie in Europe or outfitting herself in men’s wear and grandly buying a round for the bar. Most of her exes’ memories stop short of being psychologically insightful. Strung together, however, these tender confidences shape an outline of a woman who never trusted anyone with her heart. Again and again, Highsmith’s craving for connection is thwarted by her competing desire to be an emotionally invulnerable workaholic.The film builds its conception of Highsmith selectively from her mercurial notebooks, highlighting excerpts that support its argument that her lovelorn disappointments drove her into isolation (“I am the forever seeking”) while omitting those that conflict (“One situation — one alone, could drive me to murder: family life, togetherness”).To make her adventures feel alive, the editor Rebecca Trösch stitches clips from Highsmith’s Hollywood adaptations alongside recently shot B-roll of glitter-strewn drag shows. Slow-motion footage of a cowboy roping a baby steer is paired with Highsmith’s turn to gay conversion therapy in a failed attempt to please her conservative Texan family, particularly her mother, Mary, a figure as cruel as any character she imagined.It’s hard to imagine the author herself would have approved of the documentary’s flowery narration and sentimental acoustic score. More impactful is the realization that Highsmith’s chilliest calculation was correct: She’d inspire more acclaim — and less moral outrage — exposing her murderous hatreds than her strangled loves.Loving HighsmithNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 23 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 63 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      How to Find the One

      by

      Listen and follow Modern LoveApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon Music“That film sequence was like a portal into an alternate universe, where a brown girl could date a white guy and still be at peace with her family.”Brian Rea[What’s the most unusual place you have ever gone on a date? Tell us your story, and you may be featured in a future episode. Visit nytimes.com/datestory for submission details.]When Meher Ahmad first saw the movie “Bend It Like Beckham” as a young girl, she was transfixed. Watching the main character, an Indian woman who looked like her, kiss her white soccer coach, she saw a vision of her own romantic future. While she felt pressure from her family and her culture to be with a Pakistani boy, the movie opened up the lanes of her attraction — from white boys to, eventually, “anything but brown men.”As Meher grew older, though, her thinking started to shift. Today, we share her story about how she found “the one.”Then, our host, Anna Martin, discusses a trend that is all over TikTok: romantic manifestation. She speaks with Laura Pitcher, a contributing writer for The New York Times, about how people are manifesting their ideal partners — and why the spiritual practice is so appealing to Gen Z.[What’s the most unusual place you have ever gone on a date? Tell us your story, and you may be featured in a future episode of the podcast. Visit nytimes.com/datestory for submission details.]Hosted by: Anna MartinProduced by: Julia Botero, Hans Buetow and Elyssa DudleyEdited by: Sara SarasohnExecutive Producer: Wendy DorrEngineered by: Dan PowellTheme Music: Dan PowellEssay by: Meher AhmadRead by: Soneela NankaniFounder, Modern Love: Daniel JonesEditor, Modern Love Projects: Miya LeeSpecial thanks: Mahima Chablani, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Julia Simon, Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolnick, Ryan Wegner and Anna Diamond at Audm.Thoughts? Email us at modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Modern Love Podcast: First Love Mixtape, Side B

      by

      Listen and follow Modern LoveApple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherWhat’s the song that taught you about love as a teen?Brian ReaWhen we asked this question at the start of the season, the responses came pouring in. We heard from present-day teens streaming their anthems on repeat, and we heard from listeners who have been with their partners for over 50 years. There were stories of jazz and rap, adrenaline rushes and loneliness, and many lessons in matters of the heart. (“Don’t let your friends choose your boyfriends,” Amy from St. Louis said.)On our season finale, we share more of these songs and stories. Then, we fast-forward to an essay about the end of love. After more than 50 years of marriage, Tina Welling decided that she wanted a divorce — a decision that turned out to be liberating.Thank you to all of the listeners who sent us their teenage anthems. We’ve compiled them into one glorious Spotify playlist. Take a listen below.Hosted by: Anna MartinProduced by: Hans Buetow, Julia Botero, Anna Martin and Mahima ChablaniEdited by: Sara SarasohnExecutive Producer: Wendy DorrEngineered by: Elisheba IttoopOriginal Music: Hans Buetow and Dan PowellTheme Music: Dan PowellEssay by: Tina WellingRead by: Suzanne TorenFounder, Modern Love: Daniel JonesEditor, Modern Love Projects: Miya LeeSpecial thanks: Mahima Chablani, Renan Borelli, Jeffrey Miranda, Julia Simon, Lisa Tobin, Sam Dolnick, and Ryan Wegner at Audm.Thank you to so many listeners who shared their teenage songs and stories, including Kate Mitchell, Ankit Sayed, Helen Coskeran, Michal Vaníček and Sara Molinaro.Thoughts? Email us at modernlovepodcast@nytimes.com. More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      Taylor Swift and Tyler, the Creator Excavate Old Love

      by

      Mitski moved to Nashville. She’s not quite sure why, because she didn’t really know anyone there, but she liked how specifically weird it was — a town with stories. A local businessman had recently died and left his substantial estate to his Border collie. Bachelorette parties were a surreal and ever-present cottage industry: “There’s always a woman crying on the street and five other women in matching T-shirts comforting her,” as Mitski put it to me. “It feels like such a good place to observe the human condition.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In Clare Barron’s ‘Shhhh,’ Staging a Memoir of the Body

      by

      The playwright directs and stars in her new play for Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2. It’s less a traditional narrative and more of a series of flirtations with discomfort.To get to your seat, you walk past someone’s toilet, stationed next to their sink, above which their pill bottles sit on a shelf.It’s hard to get more intimate than that.And yet that’s exactly what “Shhhh” manages to do. The new play, written by, directed by and starring Clare Barron, is explicit and occasionally uncomfortable, but all for the right reasons.Arnulfo Maldonado’s exquisite set design for the show, which opened on Monday at Atlantic Theater Company’s Stage 2, truly makes the space feel as if it were an apartment transformed into a theater rather than the reverse. There’s that bathroom stage left. And in a corner, partially obscured by a wall, a mattress lies on the floor, the sheets tousled on top. Candles and hanging string lights create a seductive atmosphere, but the industrial-looking metal rolling carts add a cool edge. And the audience members in the first few rows sit on cushions on the floor, extending the cozy vibe.“Shhhh” begins with Sally (named Witchy Witch in the program, and performed by Constance Shulman) recording an ASMR meditation. The sound of it is unsettling. Shulman’s signature rasp seems to envelop the space as she narrates what she’s doing — she talks about the Lysol wipe she’s using as we hear the sound of the cloth moving, amplified by a mic, and she taps her nails against a ceramic cup, telling us it’s full of lavender tea. She speaks slowly, stretching the syllables of each word so far they could reach from the theater, in Chelsea, to the East River. (The sharp sound design is by Sinan Refik Zafar.)Sally, a postal worker, says her job makes her feel close to people, even though that intimacy isn’t real. She goes on a so-so date with Penny (Janice Amaya), a nonbinary person who shares that they feel most comfortable and in control of their body during sex parties.Sally’s sister is Shareen (Barron), a playwright with a lot of “health stuff” who has a codependent and often consensually iffy sexual relationship with a male friend, Kyle (Greg Keller).And Francis (Nina Grollman) and Sandra (Annie Fang) are, well, two random young women who talk about body agency and consent in a pizza shop as Shareen, sitting at another table, silently listens.Barron and Greg Keller in the play. Arnulfo Maldonado did the set design.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Shhhh!” doesn’t have a traditional narrative; there’s no antagonist, and there’s not much of a sense of causality across scenes. The work itself has the feel of a series of flirtations: discomfort, assaults, insecurities and sorrows are spoken about and alluded to, but not detailed. We don’t get back stories or explainers. We just get the way these people speak and move and touch in relationship to one another. It’s telling that most of the sex acts mentioned are ones of penetration and discharge but much less often about the simple delicacies of a caress, or a kiss.The conversations these characters have are visceral: They talk of gushing wounds, feces-covered sheets, body fluids of all flavors. Though this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone familiar with Barron’s works, which include “I’ll Never Love Again” and the Pulitzer Prize finalist “Dance Nation.” She’s made a specialty of writing what are essentially staged memoirs of the body. Barron rarely opts for the romantic idea of pleasure, instead examining pleasure tied to physical violence and emotional manipulation, shame, self-esteem and trauma. The whole production aches with an unspoken loneliness.That ache comes through in Barron’s direction, but also in the performances, led by Barron herself, who sheaths Shareen in a delicate melancholy. Her gaze seems to drift off into the distance serenely but without satisfaction. She seems unsteady. And yet her somberness also belies a ferocious hunger; throughout the show Shareen plays with her food, pressing her fingertips into the scraps, crumbs and flakes on her plate or table and bringing them to her mouth, almost compulsively. The characters move self-consciously — in the way they recline or cross their legs — and seem to traverse the distances that separate them cautiously, as if wading through a river to the other shore.Keller is believable as the guy friend who soon realizes he may have to hold himself accountable for some questionable bedroom behaviors, and Grollman, Fang and Amaya, who get to wear the show’s most eclectic fashions (the satisfyingly offbeat costume design is by Kaye Voyce), give top-tier performances in small roles. Shulman is less convincing as Shareen’s older sister, supposedly by only two years, despite the nearly 30-year age gap between the two actresses. Shulman’s monotone drawl is a comic novelty at first, helping many of the jokes land, but this delivery, dry as a dust storm in the desert, becomes tiresome.Nina Grollman, left, and Annie Fang in a powerful scene at a pizza shop.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe other issue is the show’s erratic pacing. A Looney Tunes-esque chase scene and a mystical ritual both feel interminable. While other scenes are too short, and characters lack depth. Amaya has a sparky energy, but their character is less developed in relation to the others. And the characters of Francis and Sandra speak in only one scene, in the pizza shop, though the dialogue is incredibly compelling: candid exchanges about what it’s like to be a woman in a world of modern dating, and romantic metaphors about isolation and desire. I could’ve watched an entire show of this conversation.I went into this show expecting the grotesque and perhaps even the gratuitous, especially once I passed a sign in the theater warning the audience about the nudity and the play’s content. Nothing triggered me or offended me, not even Shareen’s description of her diarrhea or the sight of a used DivaCup. (I can’t say the same for everyone else, particularly the three audience members who shuffled out early in the show, never to return.)But then there was one moment that got to me, when Francis and Sandra are talking about the ways the men they’ve dated have manipulated their way to getting what they want, like unprotected sex. As Francis recounted a drunken negotiation she had with a guy, my body stiffened. The exchange was so familiar; it made me recall my own sticky encounter with a date.While that moment in the show may have made me feel uncomfortable, I was also grateful for the scene, and even the thorny feeling it inspired — theater should sometimes cause us discomfort. After all, the greatest intimacies we can hope for, as audience members, are those we build between our seats and the stage.ShhhhThrough Feb. 20 at Atlantic Stage 2, Manhattan; atlantictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in Music

      Vicente Fernández Knew His Way Around Your Broken Heart

      by

      First breakups. Final goodbyes. For generations, Mr. Fernández, who died on Sunday, provided a soundtrack for moments of anguish and heartache, and a pathway to healing.After four years of dating, this is what it came to for Art Castillo: sitting alone in his blue truck in Waco, Texas, listening to his girlfriend on speaker. Long distance wasn’t working, she told him. She had found another man. The relationship was over.“I hanged up and put Vicente Fernández on,” said Mr. Castillo, 30. He played “La Cruz de Tu Olvido,” in which Mr. Fernández bellows, “As I looked at the evil in your eyes, I understood that you have never loved me.” He played it louder, again and again, until he was done crying.“With his songs,” Mr. Castillo said, “you just feel it inside you.”For generations, Mr. Fernández’s often sorrowful songs have served as a balm for the heartbroken. Over a career that spanned six decades, Mr. Fernández, the Mexican ranchera superstar who died on Sunday at 81, recorded hundreds of songs and dozens of albums, singing of unrequited love, scornful partners and tarnished romance.In that time, Mr. Fernández, known to millions as Chente, became a beacon for the brokenhearted, a man to listen to when love has gone awry and all you want — besides, perhaps, some tequila — are plucky guitars, harmonized horns and someone to give voice to your most intimate feelings.“For a lot of people with Mexican descent, his voice is home,” said Rachel Yvonne Cruz, a professor of Mexican American studies and a music specialist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.That explains why so many people, mostly Latinos, turn to him when they are down, she said.“When Vicente Fernández sang, he expressed all of those emotions that we keep held inside: that silent cry, that silent scream that’s happening when you’re heartbroken, when you just cannot anymore,” Dr. Cruz said. “And when you listened to him, you were able to have that release that you needed.”Who broke Mr. Fernández’s heart? That remains a playful mystery among his fans. He married María del Refugio Abarca Villaseñor when he was in his early 20s, and the two stayed together until his death.But however and whenever his heartbreak occurred, his fans say, his anguish came through in his lyrics.Tu boca, tu ojos y tu peloLos llevo en mi mente, noche y día“Your mouth, your eyes and your hair, I carry them in my mind, night and day,” Mr. Fernández sings in “Las Llaves de Mi Alma.”Por tu maldito amorNo puedo terminar con tantas penas“Because of your damn love, I can’t bring an end to so much shame,” he roars in “Por Tu Maldito Amor.”En un marco, pondré tu retratoY en mi mano, otra copa de vino“In a frame, I will put your portrait, and in my hand, another glass of wine,” he croons in “Tu Camino y el Mío.”That was the song that helped Fernanda Aguilera.“I had been with someone since, I guess, high school, and then you think, ‘Well, this is going to be my person,’” said Ms. Aguilera, 27, of San Antonio. But when college came and they went their separate ways, she realized that the relationship “was just an illusion in my head.”She played “Tu Camino y el Mío” (“Your Road and Mine”), and recalled thinking: “This is exactly how I feel, but I could just never find the words. And it’s like he put the words together for me.”On a cool March night in Oxnard, Calif., a brokenhearted Jaime Tapia grabbed some beers, invited a friend to his house and put on a Vicente Fernández playlist. Mr. Tapia was 19. He and his girlfriend of four years had decided to cut off their relationship earlier that night.Mirroring the way Mr. Fernández had dealt with heartache in the movies (mostly with alcohol, a somber stare into the middle distance and buddies who reassure him he will be OK), Mr. Tapia and his friend kept the beers coming as they sat on the hoods of their cars.“Just dozing off, looking at the stars,” he said. He was lonely and drunk for the first time in his life.“A lot of the songs that Chente talks about are about breakups, being in a cantina, stuff like that,” Mr. Tapia said. “So even though you feel sad at the time, you felt good that you were bonding with a buddy and that you weren’t by yourself.”Ranchera music “can be thought of as a sung exposition of one’s most honest emotions,” said Mónica Fogelquist, a professor of practice in mariachi and ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin.“In Mexican culture, men are supposed to be strong, valiant, proud and void of any sentiment,” she said. “They don’t cry, and they don’t express vulnerability, including heartache. However, through music, all the unexpressed or prohibited emotions are free to come out.”People have used Chente’s romantic tunes to try to win back an estranged partner through serenatas, a musical message of love delivered by a mariachi band in front of a lover’s window — a tradition that Mr. Fernández popularized in films.“It’s pretty popular; we’ve been hired a couple times to help win that person back,” said Giovanni Garcia, who manages the band Mariachi Estrellas de Chicago. He added, “There’s been a couple of times where they’ll tell us, ‘Oh, I’m in the doghouse right now and hoping this will help me.’”Sometimes it works, he said. Often, it doesn’t — even if the band plays one of Mr. Fernández’s songs.Someone tried it on Laura Figueroa once. It did not end well.A mariachi band knocked on her door in Chicago. Her little brother let them inside, and the musicians marched through the kitchen and into her bedroom. She was 22 at the time.“I’m sitting there looking down at the floor like, ‘Oh my God, there’s literally a mariachi in my house,’” said Ms. Figueroa, now 39. She does not believe the band played Chente, and in any event she did not take her former lover back.Jesus Gutierrez, 37, of Chicago said his father used to sing “Hermoso Cariño” (“Beautiful Darling”) by Mr. Fernández to his mother, Juana, when they were dating in Guanajuato, Mexico. She used to be embarrassed when telling the story, Mr. Gutierrez said, because his father, Nicolas, was “not a good singer.”But perhaps it worked, he said, because they married, had children and listened to ranchera music together for decades. She saved nearly all of her Chente vinyl records and screamed every word of his heartbreaking songs at his concerts, her son recalled.In 2019, Juana Gutierrez died, and Chente’s songs came to represent a new type of heartbreak for Mr. Gutierrez. He said he couldn’t play some of his mother’s favorites anymore because “it’s too much.”But on Sunday, when he heard Mr. Fernández had died, he knew right away how he would spend his evening: the same way he and so many others had gotten through their first breakups and final goodbyes.He scrolled through his playlist until he found “Hermoso Cariño.”Precioso regaloDel cielo ha llegadoY que me ha colmado de dicha y amor“Precious gift, from heaven it has come,” Mr. Fernández sang. “And that has filled me with happiness and love.” More