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      in Theater

      ‘Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord’ Review: Our Sewing Superhero

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      The first post-shutdown live performance at New York Theater Workshop is almost a debriefing after the crisis we have endured.Before the lights go down at New York Theater Workshop, Kristina Wong gets up from her Hello Kitty sewing machine, where she’s been making a face mask, to deliver some trigger warnings about the solo performance she’s about to give.Her tone is tongue in cheek — she is, after all, a comedian — but her heads-up to the audience is for real, because she’s wading straight into one of the great divides in live theater right now: between people hungry for drama that examines the last 20 months and people desperate for psychic escape from all that.“This show takes place in the pandemic,” Wong says. “I know. I know! Now you get to find out if watching live theater about the pandemic, during a pandemic, is your thing. And because it’s set in the pandemic, there are mentions of death, illness, poverty, mental health stressors, racism, trauma.” A pause, and then she adds one more possible trigger: “The last U.S. president.”Truth be told, I have not been clamoring for theater about dire recent events. And I confess that, en route to Wong’s show, I was feeling particularly ground down by all the barefaced people I’d seen, once again, on the subway.Yet “Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord” turns out to be a spiky comic tonic for just such gloom. Directed by Chay Yew, it’s the first post-shutdown live performance at New York Theater Workshop, and it’s ideally suited as such: almost a debriefing after the crisis we have endured, even though we haven’t reached its end.Wong’s outfit includes a bandoleer with bright spools of thread, which she slings across her chest, and, strapped to her back, a giant pair of scissors.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesDon’t be fooled by the bluster in the show’s title. The tale that Wong tells isn’t truly self-aggrandizing. It’s about the Auntie Sewing Squad, a far-flung group of volunteers she assembled from her home in Los Angeles in March 2020 to make face masks, which were desperately needed then and perilously hard to come by. Selflessness and human connection are dominant themes of this narrative.“Sweatshop Overlord” is also about mothers and daughters and heritage — sewing skills passed down from one generation of Asian American women to the next — and how at a time of horrific anti-Asian bigotry and violence in this country, some of those women harnessed perennially undervalued skills for an urgent common good. Amid corrosive cultural discord, as President Trump and others loudly blamed Asians for the coronavirus, they acted with a kind of ferocious grace.Wong, whose Zoom version of the show was part of New York Theater Workshop’s online programming last May, didn’t mean the Auntie Sewing Squad to last more than a few weeks.“There is a rumor that the U.S. post office will be delivering five masks to every address in America,” she tells the audience, one month into the project, “and that will make us obsolete very soon.”Remember that rumor? “Sweatshop Overlord” is full of little memory jolts like that. Those deliveries never happened, of course, and Wong’s group grew to include hundreds of people — including her own mother — who sewed more than 350,000 face masks for vulnerable communities before disbanding in August 2021.“Is America a banana republic disguised as a democracy?” Wong asks more than once, aghast at what she sees as the government’s failure to protect its citizens from the pandemic threat.Alternating dark humor and wry social commentary with anger, sorrow and fear, she tells the story of the Aunties inside the chronology we all lived through. These were ordinary Americans — many Asian, mostly female — enlisting in a fight for the health and well-being of their country. Sort of like a patriotic war movie in which the hostilities involve a lethal virus and belligerent resistance to mask wearing, and where people under fire volley back with the copious fruits of traditional “women’s work.”To immerse herself in this battle, Wong dons a wonderfully playful action-hero costume by the Tony Award winner Linda Cho. The bandoleer that Wong slings across her chest holds bright spools of thread, not bullets; a jumbo pair of scissors is strapped to her back.Junghyun Georgia Lee’s set has an upstage wall made of surgical masks, which becomes an ideal screen for Caite Hevner’s many projections.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAs vital as her humor is to the tone of the performance, the production design is just as important. The set, by Junghyun Georgia Lee, has an upstage wall made of about 1,400 surgical masks — an ideal screen for Caite Hevner’s many projections — but the real eye-catcher is the candy-colored sewing room laid out before it.The objects there are built on an Alice in Wonderland scale: tomato-shaped pincushions as big as chairs, a gargantuan seam ripper in royal blue, bobbins a giant could use. It feels heightened and hallucinatory, like the first year of the pandemic, but also safe, like a child’s playroom. Amith Chandrashaker’s saturated lighting aids the shift between those moods.“Sweatshop Overlord” sags a bit in its last third, and one moment meant to be solemn is puzzling instead. But Wong is good company and an accomplished storyteller, and she and Yew have made a show that is both heartening and cathartic. Tripping our collective memories of a strange, scary, isolated time, it asks us to recall them together. Which helps, actually.Back out on the street afterward, we’re lighter — and, thanks to the Aunties, imbued with hope.Kristina Wong, Sweatshop OverlordThrough Nov. 21 at New York Theater Workshop, Manhattan; nytw.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

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      in Music

      ‘Different Way of Fighting’: Lyrics Are the Weapons of All-Women Roma Band

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      Many Roma women face pressures to marry young and take on traditional gender roles. Pretty Loud, a hip-hop group from Serbia, wants girls to decide for themselves.Laetitia Vancon and BELGRADE, Serbia — The members of Pretty Loud, possibly the world’s first all-Roma female hip-hop group, don’t write saccharine love songs.Their lyrics focus instead on the pains Roma women experience: marrying and having children too young, feeling like second-class citizens and not finishing high school.“Don’t force me, Dad, I’m too young for marriage,” the six members, who hail from Serbia and are in their midteens to late 20s, sing in one song. “Please understand me, or should I be quiet?” they rap in another. “No one hears when I use my Roma girl’s voice.”Persecuted for centuries, many Roma people in Europe — the continent’s largest ethnic minority — live in segregated communities with limited access to amenities and health care. Women and girls also face gender expectations like being wives and mothers at a young age, which some say cause stress and isolation.The six members of Pretty Loud are in their midteens to late-20s.The group’s youngest members, Elma Dalipi and Selma Dalipi, 15, who are twins, are still finishing high school.“They are taught when they grow up that they will get married, cook and raise kids, but we want to change this,” Silvia Sinani, 24, said of Roma girls, adding that such expectations made it hard for women and girls to finish their educations.One of the band’s goals is to show there is another way. “We want every girl to decide for herself,” Ms. Sinani said.The women of Pretty Loud are hoping their music, authenticity and visibility as performers — already rewriting social conventions in their community in Belgrade, the Serbian capital — can help women and girls elsewhere find their own voices. Formed in 2014, Pretty Loud has danced, sung and rapped on stages across Europe.“It is a different way of fighting,” said Zivka Ferhatovic, 20. “We fight through the music and songs.” Zivka Ferhatovic, left, and Dijana Ferhatovic, members of Pretty Loud, in their house in the Belgrade neighborhood of Zemun.“It is a different way of fighting,” Zivka Ferhatovic, 20, a band member, said of her activism. “We fight through the music and songs.”She added that the group wanted its fusion of traditional Roma music and Balkan hip-hop to confront the everyday realities of many Roma women — be it domestic abuse, sexism or racial discrimination. In one song, they warned that marrying someone abusive would not bring happiness. In another, they addressed their experiences of discrimination. Music was an obvious medium for the band’s members to express themselves and to continue celebrating the signature sound of Roma music.“We grow up with music for when we feel bad and when we feel happy,” said Zlata Ristic, 28. “I sleep with music. I can’t live my life without music.”When she’s performing, Ms. Ristic, said, “I feel like the strongest woman in the world.”Pretty Loud began as a project of GRUBB, an organization running educational and artistic programs for Roma youth in Serbia. On a summer afternoon, they rehearsed for a performance in front of the distorted mirrors at GRUBB’s center in Zemun, a neighborhood in Belgrade where many of the city’s Roma people reside.Pretty Loud began as a project of GRUBB, a center in Zemun, a neighborhood in Belgrade where many of the city’s Roma people live.“We grow up with music for when we feel bad and when we feel happy,” said Zlata Ristic, 28, “I sleep with music. I can’t live my life without music.”Fearing social stigma, the band’s members were initially reluctant to write songs and perform. But others involved with GRUBB helped them to focus their writing and performance on personal experiences.Over time, they grew more comfortable with the idea of melding the personal with the artistic. One performance used a silk sheet with a red spot to theatrically recreate the ritual of inspecting sheets after a wedding as a way of “proving” the bride’s virginity.“It became very poetic,” said Serge Denoncourt, a professional artistic director and longtime volunteer who said he encouraged them to explore the power of art. “They understand there you can talk about anything if you have a way to talk about it.”Now, Pretty Loud’s songs signal a unified hope: to represent Roma women in a modern world free of racism and sexism.A tourist in the Zemun area of Belgrade asking a group of Roma musicians to play for him. Raising her son was like having a “baby doll,” Ms. Ristic said. “We grew up together.” “The whole point of the music is to help them use their voice, not to speak for them,” said Caroline Roboh, a founder of GRUBB. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Pretty Loud’s own community, where members have become role models, a point of pride for them.“Little girls, they come to me and say: ‘Bravo, I want to be like you one day,’” Ms. Sinani said.Even outside their circles, they are amassing supporters who say the group is sending a modern message that Serbia needs to get behind.“Their energy breaks through the walls and spreads love,” said Joana Knezevic, a Serbian actress who watched a recent Pretty Loud performance. “They are women who have something to say.”It is a message that Ms. Ristic, who brings a cheerful energy to the group’s dynamic, learned early on. At 16, she got married and, soon after, pregnant. When the union broke down and she confronted being a single mother, Ms. Ristic became depressed. Raising her son, who is now 11, was like having a “baby doll,” she said. “We grew up together.”Zivka Fahratovic on a youth program on TV Pink in Belgrade. Outside their circles, members of Pretty Loud are amassing supporters who say the group is sending a modern message that Serbia needs to get behind.When Zivka is not studying or helping her grandmother at home, she is a teacher at GRUBB. The organization runs education and artistic programs, working predominantly in Serbia with Roma children and young people.Now, she wants to set an example for women who are unhappy in their marriages, even if they fear raising children alone.“I know when they are divorced, they think their lives stop,” Ms. Ristic said of women. “But I want to show they can continue with their dreams.”It is sometimes a difficult balancing act for members of Pretty Loud, who are trying to live the messages they preach. Some work at Grubb while holding other jobs; others, like the group’s youngest members, Elma Dalipi and Selma Dalipi, 15, are still finishing high school.“We’ve had numerous offers for marriage, but we never accepted any,” said Zivka Ferhatovic of her and her sister, Dijana Ferhatovic, 19. Their determination to finish school is supported by their grandparents and has a personal motivation — they believe their mother, who had her children young, ultimately left the family, in part, because she married too early.“We know the pain,” Zivka Ferhatovic said.After one of Pretty Loud’s most recent performance, the cheers made Dijana Ferhatovic’s chest tighten, she said. “We’re really doing something,” she added, though she called it a small step.Her sister disagreed. “How can you say it’s small?” Zivka Ferhatovic said.The coronavirus pandemic has slowed the band’s activity, and existing inequalities left Roma people in Europe particularly vulnerable to it. (Many of Pretty Loud’s members contracted Covid-19.)Over the summer, as borders reopened in Europe, Pretty Loud again took to stages: to cheers at a United Nations event celebrating refugees, under blue lights in Slovenia, at an audition for a Croatian talent show. And the bandmates have more dreams: of making a real demo for an album, performing in Times Square, writing a book about their lives — perhaps even entering politics.Though not yet household names or able to make a living solely from their music, the band is beginning to attract wider European attention. Earlier this month, a video of their successful audition for that Croatian talent show drew 120,000 views.Ms. Ristic, now a dance teacher at GRUBB, wants to grow her followings on TikTok and Instagram, where she posts Pretty Loud performances. Though it has exposed her to racist and sexist comments, she won’t stop posting, she said.“I don’t delete them because it’s not my shame,” she said, adding: “This is how people treat us. I want to show why we fight.”Pretty Loud members watching a recording of their performance after a show in June in Belgrade. Their songs signal a unified hope: to represent Roma women in a modern world free of racism and sexism.Most of the members of Pretty Loud said there was still room for romantic love, children and marriage in the future — so long as they get to choose when.In the future, Ms. Ristic wants to try just about everything: getting her license and then driving a truck while smoking a cigarette, making music with Serbian artists and raising her son, she said, with strong Roma role models so he grows up respecting women.Most of the members of Pretty Loud say there is still room for romantic love, children and marriage in the future — so long as they get to choose when. But after one marriage, Ms. Ristic has seen enough.“I make my own way forward for me, alone. It’s very hard, but I will try,” she said. “I don’t need husband. I want only fun.”Formed in 2014, the group has danced, sung and rapped its way from rookie status to being featured at events across Europe.Laetitia Vancon More

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      in Television

      Gadsby and Netflix Employees Pressure Executive Over Dave Chappelle Special

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      Tensions at Netflix continued to flare on Friday, 10 days after the release of a special by the comedian Dave Chappelle that critics inside and outside the company have described as promoting bigotry against transgender people.Early on Friday, a Netflix star criticized the company and Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive, in a stinging social media post. Later in the day, Netflix said it had fired an employee for sharing documents related to Mr. Chappelle with a reporter, and Mr. Sarandos fielded pointed questions from employees during a companywide virtual meeting.In a rare public rebuke, the Australian comedian Hannah Gadsby upbraided Mr. Sarandos by name for his defense of Mr. Chappelle. Ms. Gadsby, whose 2017 Netflix special, “Nanette,” earned an Emmy and a Peabody Award, is the most prominent entertainer to criticize Mr. Sarandos and Netflix, which she referred to in an Instagram post as an “amoral algorithm cult.”Mr. Sarandos and Netflix’s other co-chief, Reed Hastings, have been unwavering in their support of Mr. Chappelle, who signed a lucrative multiyear deal with the company in 2016 and has won Emmys and Grammys for his Netflix work. In a note this week, Mr. Sarandos countered the arguments of Netflix staff members who had suggested that Mr. Chappelle’s special, “The Closer,” could lead to violence against transgender people, writing that he had the “strong belief that content on-screen doesn’t directly translate to real-world harm.”Mr. Sarandos, who joined Netflix two decades ago and became its co-chief executive last year, also said that the company would go to great lengths to “ensure marginalized communities aren’t defined by a single story.” He cited inclusive Netflix programs like “Sex Education” and “Orange Is the New Black” as well as Ms. Gadsby’s specials, which also include “Douglas,” released in 2020.In her social media post on Friday, Ms. Gadsby, who is a lesbian, objected to the executive’s references to her in his defense of the company and Mr. Chappelle’s special.Hannah Gadsby, whose Netflix specials were critical and popular successes, called the company “amoral” in a social media post on Friday.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“Hey Ted Sarandos!” Ms. Gadsby wrote. “Just a quick note to let you know that I would prefer if you didn’t drag my name into your mess. Now I have to deal with even more of the hate and anger that Dave Chappelle’s fans like to unleash on me every time Dave gets 20 million dollars to process his emotionally stunted partial world view.”She continued: “You didn’t pay me nearly enough to deal with the real world consequences of the hate speech dog whistling you refuse to acknowledge, Ted.”Netflix declined to comment on Ms. Gadsby’s remarks.At a virtual company meeting that started at 10 a.m. Pacific time on Friday, Mr. Sarandos replied to a series of tough questions from employees, who asked about Mr. Chappelle’s special and how the company had responded to criticisms of it, according to three people with knowledge of the gathering. The event became emotional when several employees were persistent in their questioning of Mr. Sarandos and his support for someone who they feel engages in hate speech, the people said.After the meeting, Netflix said in a statement that an employee had been fired for sharing internal documents pertaining to Mr. Chappelle with the press.“We have let go of an employee for sharing confidential, commercially sensitive information outside the company,” the statement said. “We understand this employee may have been motivated by disappointment and hurt with Netflix, but maintaining a culture of trust and transparency is core to our company.”The documents included private financial information regarding Mr. Chappelle’s Netflix specials that were published this week by Bloomberg, according to a person with knowledge of the termination. The documents included the costs for the specials — $24.1 million for “The Closer” and $23.6 million for Mr. Chappelle’s previous special, “Sticks & Stones” — as well as an internal metric that determines the value of the specials relative to their budgets.Such data is available to Netflix staff but rarely made public. The appearance of the statistics in a published article is a further sign of how deep the schism is between some Netflix employees and company leadership.Several organizations, including GLAAD, which monitors the news media and entertainment companies for bias against the L.G.B.T.Q. community, have criticized Mr. Chappelle’s special as transphobic. A group of Netflix workers has planned a walkout for next week in protest.Nicole Sperling More

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      in Music

      A Blackface ‘Othello’ Shocks, and a Professor Steps Back From Class

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      Students objected after the composer Bright Sheng showed the 1965 film of Laurence Olivier’s “Othello” to his class at the University of Michigan.It was supposed to be an opportunity for music students at the University of Michigan to learn about the process of adapting a classic literary text into an opera from one of the music school’s most celebrated professors, the composer Bright Sheng.But at the first class meeting of this fall’s undergraduate composition seminar, when Professor Sheng hit play on the 1965 film of Shakespeare’s “Othello” starring Laurence Olivier, it quickly became a lesson in something else entirely.Students said they sat in stunned silence as Olivier appeared onscreen in thickly painted blackface makeup. Even before class ended 90 minutes later, group chat messages were flying, along with at least one email of complaint to the department reporting that many students were “incredibly offended both by this video and by the lack of explanation as to why this was selected for our class.”Within hours, Professor Sheng had sent a terse email issuing the first of what would be two apologies. Then, after weeks of emails, open letters and canceled classes, it was announced on Oct. 1 that Professor Sheng — a two-time Pulitzer finalist and winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant — was voluntarily stepping back from the class entirely, in order to allow for a “positive learning environment.”The incident might have remained just the latest flash point at a music program that has been roiled in recent years by a series of charges of misconduct by star professors. But a day before Professor Sheng stepped down, a long, scathing Medium post by a student in the class rippled across Twitter before getting picked up in Newsweek, Fox News, The Daily Mail and beyond, entangling one of the nation’s leading music schools in the supercharged national debate over race, academic freedom and free speech.To some observers, it’s a case of campus “cancel culture” run amok, with overzealous students refusing to accept an apology — with the added twist that the Chinese-born Professor Sheng was a survivor of the Cultural Revolution, during which the Red Guards had seized the family piano.To others, the incident is symbolic of an arrogant academic and artistic old guard and of the deeply embedded anti-Black racism in classical music, a field that has been slow to abandon performance traditions featuring blackface and other racialized makeup.The Olivier “Othello,” from 1965, was controversial even when it was new; the critic Bosley Crowther expressed shock in The New York Times that the actor “plays Othello in blackface.” Warner BrothersIn an email to The New York Times, Professor Sheng, 66, reiterated his apology. “From the bottom of my heart, I would like to say that I am terribly sorry,” he said.“Of course, facing criticism for my misjudgment as a professor here is nothing like the experience that many Chinese professors faced during the Cultural Revolution,” he wrote. “But it feels uncomfortable that we live in an era where people can attempt to destroy the career and reputation of others with public denunciation. I am not too old to learn, and this mistake has taught me much.”Professor Sheng, who joined the Michigan faculty in 1995 and holds the title Leonard Bernstein Distinguished University Professor, the highest rank on the faculty, was born in 1955 in Shanghai. As a teenager during the Cultural Revolution, to avoid being sent to a farm to be “re-educated,” he auditioned for an officially sanctioned folk music ensemble, and was sent to Qinghai province, a remote area near the Tibetan border, according to a university biography.After the universities reopened in 1976, he got a degree in composition from Shanghai University, and in 1982, he moved to the United States, eventually earning a doctorate at Columbia University.His work, which includes an acclaimed 2016 opera based on the 18th-century Chinese literary classic “Dream of the Red Chamber,” blends elements of Eastern and Western music. “When someone asks me if I consider myself a Chinese or American composer, I say, in the most humble way, ‘100 percent both,’” he said earlier this year.The Olivier film was controversial even when it was new. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Bosley Crowther expressed shock that Olivier “plays Othello in blackface,” noting his “wig of kinky black hair,” his lips “smeared and thickened with a startling raspberry red” and his exaggerated accent, which he described as reminiscent of “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” (To “the sensitive American viewer,” Crowther wrote, Olivier looked like someone in a “minstrel show.”)Professor Sheng, in his emailed response to questions from The Times, said that the purpose of the class had been to show how Verdi had adapted Shakespeare’s play into an opera, and that he had chosen the Olivier film simply because it was “one of the most faithful to Shakespeare.” He also said that he had not seen the makeup as an attempt to mock Black people, but as part of a long tradition — one that has persisted in opera — which he said valued the “music quality of the singers” over physical resemblance.“Of course, times have changed, and I made a mistake in showing this film,” he said. “That was insensitive of me, and I am very sorry.”But to the students — for some, it was their very first class at the university — it was simply a shock. “I was stunned,” Olivia Cook, a freshman, told The Michigan Daily, adding that the classroom was “supposed to be a safe space.”Bright Sheng’s work includes an acclaimed 2016 opera based on the 18th-century Chinese literary classic “Dream of the Red Chamber,” which was performed at the San Francisco Opera in 2016.Jason Henry for The New York TimesA week after the video was shown, Professor Sheng signed on to a letter from six of the composition department’s seven professors, which described the incident as “disappointing and harmful to individual students in many different ways, and destructive to our community.” He also sent another, longer, apology, saying that since the incident, “I did more research and learning on the issue and realized that the depth of racism was, and still is, a dangerous part of American culture.”Professor Sheng also cited discrimination he had faced as an Asian American and listed various Black musicians he had mentored or supported, as well as his daughter’s experience performing with Kanye West. “I hope you can accept my apology and see that I do not discriminate,” he wrote.That apology provoked fresh outrage. In an open letter to the dean, a group of 33 undergraduate and graduate students and nine staff and faculty members (whose names were not made public) called on the school to remove Professor Sheng from the class, calling his apology “inflammatory” and referring to an unspecified “pattern of harmful behavior in the classroom” which had left students feeling “unsafe and uncomfortable.”(“In retrospect,” Professor Sheng wrote in his email to The Times, “I should have apologized for my mistake without qualification.”).css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-16ed7iq{width:100%;display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;-webkit-box-pack:center;-webkit-justify-content:center;-ms-flex-pack:center;justify-content:center;padding:10px 0;background-color:white;}.css-pmm6ed{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-align-items:center;-webkit-box-align:center;-ms-flex-align:center;align-items:center;}.css-pmm6ed > :not(:first-child){margin-left:5px;}.css-5gimkt{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:0.8125rem;font-weight:700;-webkit-letter-spacing:0.03em;-moz-letter-spacing:0.03em;-ms-letter-spacing:0.03em;letter-spacing:0.03em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#333;}.css-5gimkt:after{content:’Collapse’;}.css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;-webkit-transform:rotate(180deg);-ms-transform:rotate(180deg);transform:rotate(180deg);}.css-eb027h{max-height:5000px;-webkit-transition:max-height 0.5s ease;transition:max-height 0.5s ease;}.css-6mllg9{-webkit-transition:all 0.5s ease;transition:all 0.5s ease;position:relative;opacity:0;}.css-6mllg9:before{content:”;background-image:linear-gradient(180deg,transparent,#ffffff);background-image:-webkit-linear-gradient(270deg,rgba(255,255,255,0),#ffffff);height:80px;width:100%;position:absolute;bottom:0px;pointer-events:none;}.css-1jiwgt1{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;margin-bottom:1.25rem;}.css-8o2i8v{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-8o2i8v p{margin-bottom:0;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}On Sept. 30, a senior in the class, Sammy Sussman, posted the long Medium essay, outlining what he saw as Professor Sheng’s “disregard for students” (which, he wrote, included walking out in the middle of Mr. Sussman’s audition for the program several years earlier). Mr. Sussman, who in 2018 was the first to report allegations of sexual misconduct against another music faculty member, Stephen Shipps, also linked the case to what he said was a broader failure of the university and the classical music industry to hold prominent figures to account.After Mr. Sussman posted a link to the essay on Twitter, it was retweeted by another composition professor, Kristin Kuster, who cited the need for “conversations about pedagogical racism and pedagogical abuse,” and tagged a number of musicians, as well as the Pulitzer Prize board and the MacArthur Foundation. (Both Mr. Sussman and Professor Kuster declined to comment on the record.)Some accused the students, and the school, of overreacting. In an article in Reason, Robby Soave, an editor at the magazine, argued that Professor Sheng’s apology “ought to have been more than sufficient” and argued that he now deserves an apology himself.“The University of Michigan is a public institution at which students and professors deserve free speech and expression rights,” he wrote. “It is a violation of the university’s cherished principles of academic freedom to punish Sheng for the choices he makes in the classroom. Screening a racially problematic film in an educational setting is neither a racist act nor an endorsement of racism.”A spokesman for the university, Kim Broekhuizen, confirmed that the incident had been referred to the university’s Office of Equity, Civil Rights and Title IX for investigation, but emphasized that Professor Sheng had stepped down from the class voluntarily, was still teaching individual studios, and was scheduled to teach next semester.“We do not shy away from addressing racism or any other difficult topic with our students,” Ms. Broekhuizen said in an email to The Times. But “in this particular instance, the appropriate context or historical perspective was not provided and the professor has acknowledged that.”Some scholars who teach blackface traditions questioned the quickness of some to denounce the students, or to mock their insistence on contextualization as a demand for “trigger warnings.”“Gen Z is unbelievably right on when they say, ‘If you’re not going to give us the context, we shouldn’t have to watch it,’” said Ayanna Thompson, a Shakespeare scholar at Arizona State University who has written extensively on Shakespeare and race.Professor Thompson, the author of the recent book “Blackface” and a trustee of the Royal Shakespeare Company, declined to comment on the details of Professor Sheng’s case. But she said that when it comes to “Othello” and blackface minstrelsy, the connections aren’t incidental, but absolutely fundamental.Contrary to widespread belief, she said, blackface wasn’t an American invention, but sprang from older European performance traditions going back to the Middle Ages. And it was at an 1833 performance of “Othello” featuring a blacked-up actor that T.D. Rice, the white American performer seen as the father of minstrelsy, claimed to have been inspired to get up at intermission and put on blackface to perform “Jump Jim Crow” for the first time.“Whenever you’re teaching Shakespeare, period, the history of performing race should be part of the discussion,” Professor Thompson said. “Everyone has a responsibility to give the full history.” More

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      in Theater

      Former ‘Hamilton’ Cast Member Files Discrimination Complaint Against Show

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      In the E.E.O.C. filing, the actor, who is nonbinary, describes being retaliated against after requesting a gender-neutral dressing room, among other claims. The show denies the allegations.A former “Hamilton” cast member filed a federal workplace complaint against the show on Wednesday, alleging that the show had retaliated and refused to renew a contract after the actor had requested a gender-neutral dressing room.In the complaint, filed with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, lawyers for the former cast member, Suni Reid (who prefers the pronouns they/them), said they were sidelined and eventually let go in September after requesting a gender-neutral space at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles where “Hamilton” was playing.In the 28-page complaint, Reid, a Black, nonbinary performer who has performed with the New York, Chicago and Los Angeles productions of “Hamilton” since 2017, outlined several other instances of discrimination and harassment by cast members and management over the years, including episodes in which Reid said they were physically threatened or intentionally and repeatedly misgendered.The complaint said Reid eventually intends to pursue legal claims in federal court. Filing a charge of discrimination and retaliation with the E.E.O.C. is a precursor to filing such a lawsuit.“Publicly, ‘Hamilton’ is a beacon of diversity and appears committed to causes seeking social justice and harmony,” Reid’s lawyers, Lawrence M. Pearson and Lindsay M. Goldbrum, said in a statement. “Behind the curtain, however, the Company’s management will force out a Black, transgender cast member simply because they stood up for themselves and advocated for a more equitable workplace, and therefore called that public image into question.”“We look forward to upholding Reid’s rights and hope this is a wake-up call for the theater industry about the systemic inequities that persist even at its greatest heights,” the statement continued.In its own statement, “Hamilton” said Wednesday that Reid had been “a valued cast member” for years and said the show had “offered them a contract to return to ‘Hamilton’ with terms responsive to their requests.”“We deny the allegations in the Charge,” the show said. “We have not discriminated or retaliated against Suni.” During the shutdown, it added, “we have given Suni direct financial support, paid for their health insurance, and paid for their housing. We wish Suni well in their future endeavors.”Reid has performed in the ensemble as well as in roles such as Aaron Burr, George Washington, Hercules Mulligan/James Madison, and Marquis de Lafayette/Thomas Jefferson, according to the complaint.It comes as Broadway and touring shows are working to find their footing following a lengthy pandemic-related shutdown. Earlier this summer, as several shows like “Hamilton” were preparing to restart, some of the most powerful players on Broadway signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices.But Reid’s complaint paints a picture of a toxic workplace environment at “Hamilton” that stretched from coast to coast.Reid was cast in the Broadway production of the show in 2017 and met hostility from the start, according to the complaint. Reid eventually requested a transfer from the Broadway production and started with the Chicago company of “Hamilton” in March 2019, according to the complaint, and came out publicly as transgender and gender-nonconforming. They were constantly misgendered by co-workers, “at times in a pointedly hostile or callous manner,” according to the complaint.By 2020, Reid had begun rehearsals for the Los Angeles company, but never was able to to join the Los Angeles cast in performance because of the shutdown, the complaint said.In May, Reid was presented with a contract renewal for “Hamilton.” Around that time, they asked their agent, Michele Largé, to request a gender-neutral dressing room at Pantages that Reid and others could use. “Hamilton” officials then raised concerns about posts Reid had published on social media describing racial equity issues on the show, according to the complaint.The show would eventually agree to set up gender-neutral dressing spaces in every “Hamilton” theater. But in the fall, after Reid’s lawyers informed the show that they had legal claims of discrimination, the show told Reid’s lawyers that it was “no longer open” to having Reid perform in “Hamilton,” and that “renewal of their contract was no longer an option,” the complaint said. More

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      in Movies

      Pauli Murray Should Be a Household Name. A New Film Shows Why.

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      The lawyer, activist and minister made prescient arguments on gender, race and equality that influenced Thurgood Marshall and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.When the lawyer, activist, author and educator Pauli Murray died in 1985 at the age of 75, no obituary or commemoration could contain all of her pathbreaking accomplishments. A radical and brilliant legal strategist, Murray was named a deputy attorney general in California — the first Black person in that office — in 1946, just a year after passing the bar there. Murray was an organizer of sit-ins and participated in bus protests as far back as the 1940s, and co-founded the National Organization for Women. Murray was also the first Black woman to be ordained an Episcopal priest. In 2012, she was sainted.Murray has been saluted in legal, academic and gender-studies circles, and in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But her overarching impact on American life in the 20th and now 21st centuries has not been broadly acknowledged: the thinking and writing that paved the way for Brown v. Board of Education; the consideration of intersectionality (she helped popularize the term “Jane Crow”); the enviable social circle, as she was a buddy of Langston Hughes and a pen pal of Eleanor Roosevelt, and worked on her first memoir alongside James Baldwin at the MacDowell Colony in the first year it allowed Black artists.Murray was devoted to feminism and the rights of women even as, it turned out, she privately battled lifelong gender identity issues. She should be a household name on par with Gloria Steinem or Ruth Bader Ginsburg, both of whom cited her work often. Instead Murray is an insider’s civil rights icon.Now a documentary, “My Name Is Pauli Murray,” aims to introduce Murray to the masses. Made by the same Academy Award-nominated filmmakers behind the surprise hit “RBG,” it uses Murray’s own voice and words as narration, drawn from interviews, oral histories and the prolific writing — books, poems and a collection of argumentative, impassioned and romantic letters — that Murray meticulously filed away with an eye toward her legacy. And the film arrives at a moment when the tenacious activism of people of color, especially women, is being re-contextualized and newly acknowledged, at the same time that many of the battles they fought are still raging.This is especially true for Murray, whose views on gender, race, sexuality and equality were generations ahead of their time. In 2020, the A.C.L.U. won an anti-discrimination case that built on Murray’s work. “She challenged racism, sexism, heterocentricism, colorism and elitism,” Anita Hill, the lawyer and educator, wrote in an email. “It has taken me 20 years to discover the extraordinary breadth of her contributions to law and social justice.”When the directors Betsy West and Julie Cohen decided to pursue a documentary about Murray, the first interview they booked, in 2018, was with Ginsburg, whose work had introduced them to the weight of Murray’s achievements. In the film, Ginsburg smilingly calls Murray “feisty.” Roosevelt, Murray’s longtime friend, chose “firebrand.” The more the filmmakers learned, the more astounded they were that Murray was not better known.“We just thought, why didn’t anybody teach us about this person?” West said.“We really think of this documentary as the beginning of the conversation,” Cohen added. “This is a starting point, because there’s so much to say.”Laverne Cox and Chase Strangio in a scene from the documentary. Strangio credited Murray’s work with laying the groundwork for an A.C.L.U. case against L.G.B.T.Q.  discrimination.Amazon StudiosIn some ways, the central tension of Murray’s life was the degree to which Murray’s ideas were dismissed, and her unyielding belief that they would eventually be accepted. Murray’s law school thesis strikingly argued against “separate but equal.” A decade later, Thurgood Marshall borrowed from its framework to win Brown v. Board before the Supreme Court. “What I say very often,” Murray quips in the film, under a broad, impish smile, “is that I’ve lived to see my lost causes found.”Though she lived humbly, Murray, who called her preferred method of persuasion “confrontation by typewriter,” was long aware of her own exceptionalism. She published a memoir in 1956 about her family’s complicated, multiracial history, and held teaching positions across the country and in Ghana, advancing views on how to attain equity. But each step toward a broader audience, a bigger platform, was hard-won. Like Hill, Murray was a professor at Brandeis University — but Murray had to fight for tenure, the documentary shows, even though she was the first Black person to receive Yale Law School’s most advanced degree, doctor of juridical science.In 2017, Yale named a residence hall after Murray, but Hill noted that when she herself was at Yale Law in the late 1970s, she couldn’t recall Murray’s name even being mentioned. “I chalk the near erasure of her contributions as an activist, author, scholar — of law, African studies, African American studies, and gender studies — to sexism and racism combined and separately,” Hill said.Murray was a nomad. She went “wherever her cause took her,” said Karen Rouse Ross, her great-niece. After college, Murray, who often dressed androgynously, hopped trains, then joined the labor movement. Settling into life as an itinerant activist and lawyer, Murray transported enough books and papers to fill floor-to-ceiling shelves and a wall of filing cabinets. In her 70s, living in an apartment in Baltimore, Murray kept up the habit of typing away on her Remington into the wee hours, books piled on the floor. “She had a white coffee mug like you would get at a diner somewhere, constantly filled with black coffee, and she smoked unfiltered cigarettes,” Ross said. “That’s who she was, all night long.” When Murray’s papers were donated to Harvard, they filled 141 boxes.Talleah Bridges McMahon, a producer of the film, was shocked when she started sorting through them. Instead of the drafts of speeches and other public-facing documents she thought she’d find, there was a trove of private correspondence between Murray and her inner circle, including doctors. “There were complete conversations,” she said, and decades of journals. Some had pages ripped out or words blacked out. “These are curated records,” McMahon said. “The more I saw that, the more I understood that everything we were seeing is what Pauli wanted people to see.”Murray’s great-niece Karen Ross, left, the producer Talleah Bridges McMahon, the filmmakers Julie Cohen and Betsy West and Ross’s daughter, Kyrah Boyce. Amazon StudiosThat included Murray’s nearly lifelong sense of being misgendered. Among the letters were those to doctors imploring them for help. “My life is unbearable in its present form,” she wrote, according to the film. Murray sought out hormone treatment, which was denied, and even underwent exploratory surgery because she was convinced (wrongly) that she had undescended testes.But this anguish was largely hidden. Murray’s romantic life also existed almost entirely behind closed doors; even some family members were not aware of her relationships. She never lived with her longtime partner, Irene Barlow, whom she met at a law firm where both worked. But the letters show a deep connection and a sense of playfulness around their secret love: They used code names, and Barlow sometimes signed her missives “007,” with the 0s drawn as eyeglasses.As private as Murray was, “there was a certain faith or trust that we would eventually understand what was happening,” McMahon said.Some activists in the film use “they” pronouns for Murray because even though that language wasn’t in use then, it opens up possibilities for Murray’s identity and preferences now. “I do think it’s important to not confine Pauli to the time Pauli was living,” McMahon said.Family members, including Ross, the executor of Murray’s estate and founder of the Pauli Murray Foundation, use she/her pronouns for their relative; Murray used them, too. Born in 1910 as Anna Pauline, Murray later chose the neutral nickname Pauli — another moniker the filmmakers rely on. In this article, The New York Times is using Murray’s name as much as possible, and adhering to the family’s choice for pronouns.Some scholars feel that it was Murray’s sense of in-betweenness that shaped her then-radical thinking about the intersection of race, gender and more. It helped ignite the realization that race and gender norms are socially constructed, and “made her increasingly critical of boundaries,” as one biographer, Rosalind Rosenberg, says in the film.For Murray, there was an urgent need to be understood in all she encompassed. “Most of her life was, ‘You will see me, you will hear me!’” Ross says in the film. Some of that fervor, Ross added in an interview, shifted after Murray made the surprise decision, late in life, to become an Episcopalian priest. Murray’s focus moved from agitating for change, to listening for healing.But Murray remained committed to creating equality: Preaching in Baltimore, she had a service full of girls as acolytes, which was not typical then. She would say to them, “Ladies, are we living up to our full potential?” her niece recalled. “That was very important to her, that she inspired other women to be all that they could be.”For the filmmakers and others who followed in Murray’s footsteps, that legacy shone brightly. “I think of her courage in the face of disappointments,” Hill said, quoting a line from Murray’s poem “Dark Testament”: “Hope is a song in a weary throat.”“Even though Murray knew that the odds were often against her success, she kept fighting for what she believed was right,” Hill continued. “It takes a lot of courage to be hopeful.” More

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      in Music

      Top Orchestras Have No Female Conductors. Is Change Coming?

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      At the largest American ensembles, one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres, a shift might be on the horizon.For years, they have worked their way to the top of the classical music industry. They have confronted stereotypes that they are too weak to lead. They have shared advice about how to deal with sexist comments and even how to dress.Now a group of women could be on the cusp of breaking barriers in one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres: the male-dominated world of orchestral conducting.In the history of American orchestras, only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month. Her departure has ushered in an unsettling era for the country’s musical landscape. Among the 25 largest ensembles, there are now no women serving as music directors.Only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier American ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month.Schaun Champion for The New York TimesAlsop, 64, said in an interview that she was surprised the statistics remain “so shockingly brutal.” When she assumed the top spot in Baltimore in 2007, she expected more women would soon be appointed at other orchestras.They never were. Instead, she said, she met resistance when she tried to bring in more women as guest conductors.Alsop said she feels the current moment could be different, since the #MeToo movement and a broad reckoning over severe gender and racial disparities in classical music are putting pressure on arts leaders.“I hope that we’re past the tipping point,” she said. “It feels that way. But I’ve been naïve in believing that before.”For women in conducting, there are reasons to be optimistic. Administrators at major ensembles in cities like Atlanta, Minneapolis and Cincinnati, as well as Baltimore, are vowing to ensure that women are serious contenders.The Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki is considered a serious contender for a major American position.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSo is Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who leads the City of Birmingham Orchestra in England.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesSearch committees are looking at a mix of established artists and rising stars, according to interviews with 20 committee members, administrators, players and conductors.Among the most frequently mentioned names are Susanna Malkki, 52, the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, 35, who leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain.Mark Volpe, the former president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said that while “progress has been painfully slow,” orchestras were likely to appoint more women over the next several years.“People respond to pressure,” he said. “There is heightened awareness of the imperative to be more inclusive.”Women are winning plum jobs as assistant and guest conductors, typically steppingstones to prestigious posts. Eun Sun Kim has just begun her tenure at the San Francisco Opera, becoming the first woman to serve as music director of a major American opera house.“You’re going to see an acceleration,” said Deborah Borda, the New York Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, who also serves as chairwoman of the jury at La Maestra, an international conducting competition for women. “The foot is on the gas.”The German conductor Ruth Reinhardt, 33, a former assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, said, “My generation is maybe the first one who got equal opportunities to develop and grow.”Still, she said she feels there is a perception that there is only space for a small number of women to rise. “We have thousands of male conductors, and there’s good male conductors and bad male conductors and everything in between,” she said. “There should be a right to have just as many women conductors.”Jeri Lynne Johnson leading the ensemble she founded, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra.Ed A. Kennedy IIIRuth Reinhardt leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia ElzafonOpenings loom: Roughly a third of the music directors at the top 25 largest orchestras in the United States are planning to step down over the next several years. That includes veterans like Louis Langrée, 60, at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, 60, at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The contract of Riccardo Muti, 80, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ends in 2022. Baltimore’s podium is currently empty, and at the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska, 68, is stepping down after the coming season. There are current or coming openings in Indianapolis, Kansas City and Salt Lake City.But some women describe an uphill battle. They continue to face stereotypes that only men can serve as maestros. They also grapple with the perception that they do not have enough experience to lead elite ensembles. This can lead to a paradox: While top orchestras demand their conductors be seasoned, particularly if they’re going to appear on prestigious subscription series, it is hard to get that experience if you do not already have it.Jeri Lynne Johnson, the founder and artistic director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in Philadelphia, said that earlier in her career orchestras turned her down for conducting positions because they said she was not what audiences expected a music director to look like.Johnson, who is Black, said she felt ensembles seemed more willing to take chances on young men than young women. While the average age of music directors skews older, American orchestras have shown a willingness to hire charismatic young men, such as Gustavo Dudamel, who was named to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007, when he was 26. Yannick Nézet-Séguin was 35 when he was hired by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010; Andris Nelsons, 34 when he was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2013.“Female leadership is more necessary now than it ever was,” Johnson said. “We need to allow the insight and perspective of someone who has been kept out of the halls of power, to create more inroads for other people.”Across 174 American ensembles of all sizes, about 9 percent of music directors were women in 2016, the last year for which data is available, according to the League of American Orchestras. Experts say a lack of role models has contributed to gender disparities in conducting. Orchestras also have historically given women fewer opportunities to lead ensembles as guests, making it difficult for them to practice and to build relationships with administrators and players.Xian Zhang is the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Cherylynn TsushimaDalia Stasevska leading the First Night of the BBC Proms earlier this summer.Chris ChristodoulouThe talent pool has widened in recent years. Competitions, master classes and fellowships geared toward women have become more popular. Veteran conductors like Alsop and JoAnn Falletta, the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in New York since 1999, have started programs to mentor rising artists.Falletta, 67, said she helps women navigate a variety of issues, including what to wear while conducting and how to build trust with boards of directors dominated by men.“You have to find your own authority,” she said. “You don’t have to imitate anyone. You don’t have to be like a Toscanini. That actually doesn’t work anymore, to be a conductor with totalitarian power.”Orchestra leaders say they are working to include more women and people of color on hiring committees — a critical step, they say, in ensuring that female candidates are fairly considered.Jonathan Martin, the president of the Cincinnati Symphony, said he believed systemic discrimination in orchestras had kept women from attaining music director posts for decades. He said he rejected the idea that women have only in recent years gained enough experience to be considered for positions at large ensembles.“It was an issue of opportunity,” he said. “It was never an issue of talent.”A lack of diversity among board members has contributed to the dearth of female conductors, many say. Across the industry, boards are about 58 percent male and 92 percent white, according to the League of American Orchestras.Jeannette Sorrell started her own ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, a Baroque orchestra based in Cleveland, in part, she said, because she encountered bias while trying to navigate a traditional career. She said a lack of diversity on boards is a major obstacle.“A lot of orchestras are still led by boards of directors who see their role as the guardians of tradition,” said Sorrell, 56. “That is a very important role for a board, but it’s not the only role.”Orchestras, hoping to expand the pool of experienced, viable candidates for when vacancies arise, have made an effort in recent years to appoint more women as assistant conductors and guests.At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, leaders say change will come only when women are allowed to build long-term relationships with orchestras. Of 40 young conductors who have participated in the Philharmonic’s conductor fellowship program since 2009, about a quarter have been women.Lina González-Granados is among the rising conductors creating buzz.Chris LeeGemma New is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia Elzafon“Conducting doesn’t happen overnight,” said Chad Smith, the Philharmonic’s chief executive. “There’s a lag time here, which is something we’re all struggling with.”Malkki, who serves as the Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor, said orchestras sometimes focused too much on hiring charismatic figures instead of those with solid technical abilities.“Some artists are just put aside because they are not glamorous enough,” she said. “There is talent, and if we give the dedicated people opportunities, then these people will also grow into greater artists.”While search committees at many orchestras are just beginning to convene — Cincinnati announced the members of its panel on Sept. 2 — the wish list for some includes stars like Malkki and Grazinyte-Tyla.Other frequently mentioned names include respected artists like Sorrell; Barbara Hannigan, 50, a Canadian soprano and conductor; Anna Skryleva, 46, a Russian who leads the Theater Magdeburg in Germany; Debora Waldman, 44, the director of the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence in France; the Australian conductor Simone Young, 60; and Xian Zhang, the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Up-and-coming conductors like Reinhardt; Karina Canellakis, 40, the chief conductor of Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; Elim Chan, 34, the chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra; Lina González-Granados, 35, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s conducting fellow; Gemma New, 34, a New Zealand-born conductor who is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, 36, the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the Austrian conductor Katharina Wincor, 26, are also creating buzz.While it may take several years for widespread change to come, some women say they are already noticing a shift. They are getting more invitations to appear with top orchestras, and they say their fan bases are widening.Speranza Scappucci, 48, an Italian conductor who is rising in the opera world, said ensembles should move swiftly.“There are some really amazing women out there,” she said. “I look at it and I think, ‘Wow, it’s 2021. What are we waiting for?’ ” More

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      Broadway Power Brokers Pledge Diversity Changes as Theaters Reopen

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      To address Black artists’ concerns, the pact calls for forgoing all-white creative teams, renaming theaters for Black artists and establishing diversity rules for the Tonys.Fifteen months after the George Floyd protests called renewed attention to racism in many areas of society, some of the most powerful players on Broadway have signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters reopen following the lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.The agreement commits Broadway and its touring productions not only to the types of diversity training and mentorship programs that have become common in many industries, but also to a variety of sector-specific changes: the industry is pledging to forgo all-white creative teams, hire “racial sensitivity coaches” for some shows, rename theaters for Black artists and establish diversity rules for the Tony Awards.The document, called “A New Deal for Broadway,” was developed under the auspices of Black Theater United, one of several organizations established last year as an outgrowth of the anger Black theater artists felt over the police killings of Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Black Theater United’s founding members include some of the most celebrated performers working in the American theater, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Wendell Pierce, Norm Lewis and LaChanze.The signatories include the owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theaters — commercial and nonprofit — as well as the Broadway League, which is a trade organization representing producers, and Actors’ Equity Association, which is a labor union representing actors and stage mangers. Their pledges are not legally enforceable, but they agreed to “hold ourselves and each other accountable for implementing these commitments.”The document was negotiated at a series of virtual meetings that began while theaters were closed because of the pandemic; the changes are being announced as two Broadway shows have begun performances this summer, with 15 more planning to start, or restart, in September.“We convened all of the power players in our industry — the unions, the theater owners, producers and creatives — and had conversations about changing habits, structures and creating accountability,” said the director Schele Williams. “We knew that before our theaters robustly started opening in the fall, everyone deserved to know who they were in the space, and how they would be treated, and that’s something none of us have known in our careers.”One of the key changes being called for is that creative teams — which include directors, writers, composers, choreographers and designers — should be diverse. A section signed by directors and writers vows to “never assemble an all-white creative team on a production again, regardless of the subject matter of the show,” while a section signed by producers says, “We will make best efforts to ensure true racial diversity on all future productions.”The meetings, which started in March, were funded by the Ford Foundation and facilitated by Kenji Yoshino, director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University School of Law. “Everyone came in ready to make change,” the producer David Stone said.Among the changes that will be most visible to the general public: The three big commercial landlords on Broadway — the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organizations — each pledged that at least one theater they operate would be named for a Black artist. Jujamcyn already operates the August Wilson Theater, the only Broadway house named for a Black artist.“This is a movement that is going to make change, and we’re happy to be part of it,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The document’s signatories are committing to changes that would affect many aspects of the theater business, from casting to hair care. But Broadway is a highly unionized work force, and the only labor unions that signed the agreement are those representing actors, stage managers, makeup artists and hairstylists.That leaves some conspicuous gaps — there is pervasive concern about low levels of diversity among Broadway stagehands, musicians and design teams, for example — and the leadership of Black Theater United said that although the group has endorsements from individuals working in those areas, it will continue to work to win more organizational support for the document.The actor NaTasha Yvette Williams said that she expected more groups to embrace the calls for change. “It’s only a matter of time before they come around,” she said.The director Kenny Leon acknowledged frustration that his own union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, was not a signatory. “I am disappointed that my directing union hasn’t signed on yet,” he said. “But as a Black member of that union, I’m going to keep fighting for that.”The executive director of the union, Laura Penn, said the organization was “deeply committed to the principles” of the agreement, but opted not to sign because much of it is “beyond the scope of the union’s purview.”Jeanine Tesori, a composer, said she is hopeful that the variety of professions represented in a show’s music department will jointly commit to creating more opportunity in what can be a tough area to break into. “We have to invite newcomers in,” she said.The signatories pledged to create a new, mandatory, industrywide training program for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging. And, with an eye toward further diversifying the industry, they also committed to “mentoring and sponsoring Black talent in our respective fields on an ongoing basis.”“Everybody has a Black Lives Matter statement out,” said the actress Allyson Tucker. “The words are no longer enough. What is the action?”Among the other commitments: remove “biased or stereotypical language” from casting notices; insist on diversity riders prioritizing inclusivity as part of director and author contracts; search more widely for music contractors, who are the gatekeepers to orchestra staffing; and abolish unpaid internships. “Internships had a reputation of being for people who could afford to not be paid any money,” said the actor Darius de Haas.The signatories also commit to “sensitivity” steps for shows dealing with race. “For shows that raise racial sensitivities, we will appoint a racial sensitivity coach whose role is akin to an intimacy coach,” the document says. And separately, it says, “While acknowledging that creatives can write about any subject that captures their interest or imagination, we will, when writing scripts that raise identity issues (such as race), make best efforts to commission sensitivity reads during the drafting process to assist in flagging issues and providing suggestions for improvement. Playwrights and/or those individuals or entities with contractual approval rights will retain creative control to accept or reject the sensitivity reader’s recommendations.”“We have to tell difficult stories,” Schele Williams said. “But we also must take great care.”The document does not detail what kinds of diversity rules the group is seeking for the Tony Awards. But the actor Vanessa Williams said the document’s call for diversity “requirements for Tony Award eligibility” was inspired by new rules for the Academy Awards that will require films to meet specified inclusion standards to qualify for a best picture nomination. More