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      What Opera Singers Gained, and Lost, Performing While Pregnant

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      “It’s adjustable, yes?” Standing in a dressing room in the opera house in Montpellier, France, in May, the soprano Maya Kherani tugged at the waistband of her tiered skirt. A draper kneeling behind her shook out the hem while the costume designer looked on with satisfaction.“We’re lucky,” she said, cupping her hands around the smooth orb of her belly. “It works for the character.”Kherani considered herself fortunate not because she had landed the role of Autonoe, a lead in “Orfeo,” by the Baroque composer Antonio Sartorio. Instead, Kherani, who gave birth on Sunday, was relieved to discover that her costumes in this modern-dress production came with elasticated waists and flat shoes that would make it bearable to sing and act while 32 weeks pregnant.Better yet: The stage director Benjamin Lazar decided to incorporate her pregnancy into the staging, making it the driving force behind her character’s quest to win back her errant lover.“It works dramaturgically really well for my character,” Kherani said in a FaceTime interview from Montpellier. “In my gestures and in the staging, I am referencing the pregnancy. Everyone’s really supportive, which is not always the case.”In most musical professions, pregnant women — not their employers — determine how long they continue to work. When opera singers want to perform pregnant, however, they rely on the good will and skill of a creative team: drapers who add strategic ruching to costumes; stage directors who might change a risky piece of stage business or adapt their concept to include the pregnancy.All too often, though, pregnant singers lose work. And yet opera is a rare business in which pregnancy and childbirth can directly and positively affect the core product — the voice. The science behind the phenomenon is still poorly understood, but it is such a noticeable and common occurrence that it has become something of a truism in opera: After childbirth, the voice seems enriched with warmth, creaminess and depth of color.Kherani found her voice improved after becoming pregnant. “You learn to use a wider base of breath support including the back muscles,” she said, “which I think every singer is trying to access, but I have been forced to.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesChanging bodies, of course, go along with the changing voices. A growing number of women in the industry are speaking out about what they feel are cancellations motivated by their appearance rather than sound. Officially, opera houses say they are concerned about safety. Francesca Zambello, the artistic director of Washington National Opera, said, “As a general rule we are interested in the safety and well-being of all artists working for us.” The Metropolitan Opera said in a statement that “if a pregnant singer wishes to perform, we make sure it is safe for them to do so.”But not all cancellations reflect the wishes of the pregnant singer. The mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke said in a video interview she was removed from a production weeks before opening when the company learned she was pregnant, and that she lost a role at another opera house after her management told the company she would be in her second trimester during the performances. A fellow singer later told her the production would have required Cooke to go down a slide, but Cooke said safety was not mentioned in the cancellation, nor was she consulted.“The industry still views you as their property,” Cooke said. “Your choices are their choices.”Like other singers who were eager to speak about pregnancy and motherhood in opera, Cooke asked me not to name the companies that canceled her contracts. In part, this was because of fear of retribution. But also, as the soprano Kathryn Lewek told me before her last performance in the Met’s recent run of Mozart’s “Magic Flute,” the goal was not to shame or remove certain administrators or directors. “We want to help bring about change,” she said.More than five years after the #MeToo movement sparked an overdue investigation of sexual harassment and misconduct in classical music, the field is buzzing with voices calling for more equity around pregnancy and parenthood. The soprano Julia Bullock, who gave birth to her first child last year, has taken to Instagram to post about performing as a lactating mother. The mezzo J’Nai Bridges publicly shared her decision to freeze her eggs at a time in her career when she is a sought-after Carmen — a notably physical role. Social media is especially vital for singers because so many are freelancers, lacking the organized lobbying power of unions and working much of the year on the road.After a singer gives birth, Kherani said, “All the support and alignment creates a stronger foundation for the breath, and that can result in a richer tone.”Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesOn Facebook, the Momology private discussion groups for mothers in the performing arts are bursting at the seams. The classically trained Broadway singer Andrea Jones-Sojola, who created the first group in 2010, caps membership at 500 for each group to create a cohesive support network. This year, she opened a fifth. Jones said pregnancy-related cancellations are an important thread. “A lot of women were afraid to make it known publicly,” she said. “They were afraid to fight for themselves.”Singers also turn to each other for advice on how to navigate technical challenges during pregnancy. Many report doing their best work in their second and sometimes third trimesters, after symptoms like nausea and fatigue have abated and other physiological changes enhance their vocal power. Much of that power comes from the muscles and tissue singers learn to activate for what is known as appoggio, the internal support they lean on to control the breath flow. For some women, the presence of the unborn baby is like a corset they can push against.Dr. Paul Kwak, an ENT specialist who works with opera singers, said voices are affected by the hypervascular state the body enters in pregnancy as it creates more blood vessels and increases blood flow through tissue. Because the tissue and muscle in the vocal folds can become engorged with that extra blood, he said, “it can change the ways the vocal folds themselves oscillate.” At the same time, changes to the abdominal cavity create pressure on the bottom of the diaphragm. “Some women like it,” Dr. Kwak said, “they feel they have a support there, a shelf to push against.”Lewek, who sang the role of Queen of the Night in “The Magic Flute” through two pregnancies, described the experience as one of adjusting “to the fact that a human is taking up square footage in this very delicate part of my anatomy where I work.” By the second trimester, she said she felt as if she were performing “on steroids.” “Everything was so easy,” she said, “high notes just came shooting out of me.”Many singers said the improvement of the voice after childbirth may be the result of integrating tools used during pregnancy into their vocal technique. “You learn to use a wider base of breath support including the back muscles,” Kherani said, “which I think every singer is trying to access, but I have been forced to.” The changes in her body’s center of gravity also made her hyperaware of her posture, another important factor in singing. After a singer gives birth, she said, “All the support and alignment creates a stronger foundation for the breath, and that can result in a richer tone.”Dr. Kwak said richness was a difficult factor to study scientifically. A singer’s vocal tone, or timbre, is shaped by the tissue in her mouth, tongue, pharynx and face, he said, adding that it was possible this tissue became more supple after pregnancy. But studying its changes during and after pregnancy isn’t easy. “That’s why it’s such a mystery,” he said.Many female singers report doing their best work in their second and sometimes third trimesters, after symptoms like nausea and fatigue have abated and other physiological changes enhance their vocal power.Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesRecovering from childbirth can be traumatic for many singers, who have to reacquaint themselves with a body that has changed most radically in the very area that is the powerhouse of their art. The soprano Erin Morley said she lost 30 pounds in the first week after each of her three deliveries. “I found it much easier to sing during my second and third trimesters than I did during the fourth trimester,” she said, echoing many mothers I asked about their recovery following childbirth.Six weeks after delivering her first child by cesarean, Lewek performed the Queen of the Night at the Met. (Morley sang the role of Pamina, the Queen’s daughter, having just given birth to her third, and the two singers spent their breaks breastfeeding in the same dressing room.) The week before rehearsals started, with her “entire support system slashed in half” by surgery, Lewek was still able to sing only up to a high G, a full octave below what Mozart’s music required.With the help of a physical therapist, she devised a workaround. “I found a diaphragmatic rather than muscular way of supporting staccati in Queen of the Night,” she said, “that, overall, I would never want to sustain my entire singing career. But it got me through that gig and it opened up a new set of skills.” Her tone, too, opened up, after the births of each of her children, when she said she noticed “a blossoming of the tone quality of my voice that now has lent itself to bigger repertoire.”She wondered: “Was it the pregnancies that really changed my voice, or was it the recovery?”Lewek said she was fortunate that she was able to perform her star role in the “Magic Flute” up until being eight and a half months pregnant with her first child. But during that same pregnancy, she was abruptly removed from a different role, shortly after she had shown up to rehearsals with a visible baby bump. Citing safety concerns involving the set, the company urged her to withdraw, she said, even though she felt comfortable with what the production required of her. When the company added financial incentives and promises of a future role, she relented.“It wasn’t my decision,” Lewek said, “but my agent said I should grab the offer and run.”Morley said she lost a major role because of concerns she wouldn’t fit through a trap door in the set. And during a later pregnancy she lost a role because it required singing an aria standing on a chair in what would have been her second trimester. “I was really considering making a statement,” she said, “but these were companies I wanted to work with again, and I was very worried that there would be repercussions.” Besides, her contract was paid, which she knew was not always the case in such situations. “It felt kind of like dirty money,” she said. “Like they were paying me so I would not talk.”One singer who went public was Julie Fuchs, after she was booted from a production of “The Magic Flute” two years ago at Hamburg State Opera, where she would have sung the role of Pamina four months into her first pregnancy. When Fuchs announced on social media that she was out of the production, her feed lit up with outrage. Many commentators suggested misogyny was to blame for the company’s decision, although the director, Jette Steckel, was a woman. After arbitration, Fuchs settled with the company under terms that do not allow her to speak about the case.The company said the production’s flight scenes made it unsafe for a pregnant Pamina. “The legal situation for the protection of the expectant mother is clear,” its director of artistic management, Tillmann Wiegand, said in a statement at the time, “and we will never take a health risk, even if only a risky scenic action could take place on the stage.”Kherani at home with her daughter Eila and husband Zaafir.Sam Hellmann for The New York TimesInnovations in set design and technology can make opera stages a risky work environment. Wagnerians are especially likely to find themselves airborne. Morley said she came to an agreement with the Met to bow out of a planned Ring Cycle during her first pregnancy because as one of the Rhinemaidens she would have had to fly in a harness. But when Zambello learned of the pregnancy of a Valkyrie in a Washington National Opera production, she adapted her concept. While the other Valkyries made their entrance by parachute, she had this singer run onstage trailing hers. “I said, ‘OK, you are the nonflying Valkyrie,’” Zambello said. “They were all wearing flight jumpsuits and I said, ‘we’ll just make yours baggier.’”The mezzo Isabel Leonard was in her first trimester when she sang Cherubino in “Marriage of Figaro” at the Met, a trouser role — a male character sung by a woman. A dancer from childhood, she said she wasn’t showing at the time and told no one.Leonard said reconciling the rights of pregnant singers and theatrical standards required a more honest and open conversation. “We are storytellers,” she said. “How far into realism are we going? There has to be a bigger discussion within companies, production by production.”Those channels of communication may open up as more singers enter the administrative suites of opera houses. Bullock, a founding member of American Modern Opera Company, said her organization was looking into formalizing financial support for artists who needed to travel with young children. For a recent tour in Europe, her contract included a per diem, accommodations and travel fare for her infant and designated caregivers.“I can’t really expect that from every arts institution where I work,” Bullock said. “But if you want my presence fully, so that I can really do the job that you’ve hired me to do, this is a part of it.”The soprano Christine Goerke joined Detroit Opera as associate artistic director in 2021. She credits motherhood with propelling her into the dramatic lead roles in Wagner and Strauss she is now known for. “It allowed me to reach into these bigger roles in a way that suddenly felt like that’s where I belonged,” she said of the changes to her voice postpartum.A vocal champion of parents’ rights in opera, she said she recognized the complexity of the situation. “Now that I am on both sides of the desk, I can see the different sides of this. It is difficult to have a pregnant Octavian,” she said, referring to a trouser role in Strauss’s “Rosenkavalier.” However, she continued, “before a snap decision is made, I would like to see conversations between the artist who is pregnant and the director and bring in other people. It may be that you can come up with a different solution.”Many singers said opera houses were beginning to be more attuned to the needs of singers who are traveling with children. They might provide information on local nanny services and playgrounds or retain the services of a pediatrician along with the ENT who is on call in every theater. Lewek said together with other mothers she was preparing a list of best practices to improve equity for pregnant artists and parents in opera houses. She would like to see unilateral cancellations become a thing of the past.“This is not Hollywood. There is another priority why we’re hired to do the job,” she said. “It’s the voice.” More

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      Elton John Warns of ‘Growing Swell of Anger and Homophobia’ in U.S.

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      “We seem to be going backwards,” the pop superstar warned as he lamented the curtailing of L.G.B.T.Q. rights in the United States, particularly in Florida.The British pop superstar Elton John lamented the “growing swell of anger and homophobia” in the United States and described several laws recently passed in Florida that curtail L.G.B.T.Q. rights as “disgraceful.”“It’s all going pear-shaped in America,” John, a longtime leader for gay rights and visibility, said in an interview published Tuesday in Radio Times, in which he pointed to a rise in violent incidents and recent legislation curtailing rights. “We seem to be going backwards. And that spreads. It’s like a virus that the L.G.B.T.Q.+ movement is suffering.”More than 520 pieces of such legislation have been introduced in over 40 states this year, a record, according to the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.“I don’t like it at all,” John said, referring to the increasingly hostile climate. “It’s a growing swell of anger and homophobia that’s around America.”John, 76, will headline Glastonbury, Britain’s biggest music festival, on Sunday, as his lengthy final tour, Farewell Yellow Brick Road, heads toward its finale in Stockholm on July 8. The tour, which will have had over 330 dates, began in 2018 but was interrupted by the pandemic as well as John’s hip surgery.As he prepared to perform at Glastonbury, the last British date on the tour, John said that he did not know if the rising anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiment is as prevalent in Britain. “I don’t know if it’s around Britain, because I haven’t been here that much,” he said.But he called the scandal around the prominent British news anchor Phillip Schofield — who recently resigned after admitting he had a relationship with a younger man — “totally homophobic.”“If it was a straight guy in a fling with a young woman, it wouldn’t even make the papers,” John said.In the interview with Radio Times, John said he might eventually be open to doing a residency after his farewell tour ends, “but not in America.” That, his representatives said, is for the same reason that he had decided to stop touring: He wants to spend more time with his husband and children, who live in Britain.Last year, John — who objected to his songs being played at rallies for former President Donald J. Trump — performed at the Biden White House. “I just wish America could be more bipartisan,” John said as he sat at his piano. After his set, President Biden awarded John the National Humanities Medal. More

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      in Theater

      What Did Michael Arden Say at the Tony Awards?

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      Michael Arden, a three-time Tony nominee, won his first Tony Award for his direction of the Broadway revival of “Parade,” the 1998 musical about the lynching of Leo Frank by an antisemitic mob.Arden, who had previously been nominated for revivals of “Once on This Island” and “Spring Awakening,” won acclaim for what Jesse Green, the chief theater critic for The New York Times, praised as a timely and gorgeously sung revival.With Ben Platt and Micaela Diamond cast as Leo and Lucille Frank, Arden tilted a musical about a horrific miscarriage of justice to more strongly emphasize the love story playing out between husband and wife.“‘Parade’ tells the story of a life that was cut short at the hands of the belief that one group of people is more or less valuable than another and that they might be more deserving of justice,” he said in accepting his award. “This is a belief that is the core of antisemitism, of white supremacy, of homophobia, of transphobia and intolerance of any kind. We must come together. We must battle this. It is so, so important, or else we are doomed to repeat the horrors of our history.”Arden went on to recall how he had been called a homophobic slur — “the F-word,” he said — many times as a child. And he drew raucous cheers as he reclaimed the slur, making clear that he was now one with a Tony. “Keep raising your voices,” he said.One of the production’s most talked-about features is Platt’s wordless presence onstage during the entire 15-minute intermission. Arden recently told Michael Paulson that he “wanted to challenge the audience, when they’re getting their cocktail or texting their friends or talking about what they’re having for dinner, to look back and see Ben onstage, and to get a sense that while the world was turning, this man was sitting in a prison cell.”In taking home his first Tony, Arden won a directing category that included Jessica Stone, who directed the beloved new musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” and Casey Nicholaw, whom some saw as a contender for “Some Like It Hot.” More

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      in Movies

      Jessie Maple, Pathbreaking Filmmaker, Is Dead at 86

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      She was believed to be the first Black woman to produce, write and direct an independent feature film. She also broke ground as a union cinematographer.Jessie Maple, who built careers as a camerawoman and an independent filmmaker when Black women were almost nonexistent in those fields, and who then left meticulous instructions for later generations to follow in her footsteps, died on May 30 at her home in Atlanta. She was 86.Her death was confirmed by E. Danielle Butler, her longtime assistant and the co-author of her self-published 2019 memoir, “The Maple Crew.”Director and camerawoman were just two of Ms. Maple’s many jobs. She also worked as a bacteriologist; wrote a newspaper column; owned coffee shops; baked vegan cookies; and ran a 50-seat theater in the basement of her Harlem brownstone.Ms. Maple had been writing a column called Jessie’s Grapevine for The New York Courier, a Harlem newspaper, when she moved to broadcast journalism from print in the early 1970s because she wanted to reach more people.After studying film editing in programs at WNET, New York’s public television station, and Third World Cinema, the actor Ossie Davis’s film company, and working as an apprentice editor on the Gordon Parks films “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972) and “The Super Cops” (1974), Ms. Maple realized that she yearned to be behind the camera.In 1975 she became the first African American woman to join New York’s cinematographers union (now called the International Cinematographers Guild), according to Indiana University’s Black Film Center and Archive, which holds a collection of her papers and films. But, she said, the union banned her after she fought to change rules that required her to complete a lengthy apprenticeship.“If I had waited, I never would have become a cameraperson,” Ms. Maple told The New York Times for a 2016 article about women who broke barriers to work on film crews. “So I took ’em to court.”Ms. Maple with cast members on the set of her second feature film, “Twice as Nice,” the story of twin sisters who are college basketball stars.Black Film Center Archive, Indiana University, BloomingtonShe sued several New York television stations for gender and racial discrimination in the mid-1970s, and she won a lawsuit against WCBS in 1977 that earned her a trial period with the station. That blossomed into a freelance career there and at the local ABC and NBC stations.Ms. Maple wrote that she faced crew members who did not want to work with her and nasty whispers, sometimes quite audible, behind her back. But she persevered, even when she got assignments that felt especially difficult — for example, flying in a helicopter to get aerial footage on a near-daily basis even though she had motion sickness.In 1977 Ms. Maple wrote about her experiences in “How to Become a Union Camerawoman,” a detailed guide to succeeding in a forbidding industry.But as TV news moved from film to video, Ms. Maple decided that she would rather become an independent filmmaker, with complete control of her work. She made short documentaries with Leroy Patton, her husband, including “Methadone: Wonder Drug or Evil Spirit?,” before turning to features.Ms. Maple said she wanted to shoot films about issues that were important to her community.“I want to tell the stories about things that bother me which may not otherwise be told,” she wrote in her memoir. “I strive to use the resources that are around me. Most importantly, I work to give voice to my people and the challenges we face.”According to the Black Film Center and Archive, Ms. Maple was the first known African American woman to produce, write and direct an independent feature film. That film, “Will” (1981), followed a former college basketball player struggling with addiction (played by Obaka Adedunyo) who takes in a 12-year-old boy to prevent him from developing a habit of his own. Loretta Devine, in her first film role, played Will’s significant other.Ms. Maple said she wanted to shoot films in her community about issues that were important to it. “I work, she said, “to give voice to my people and the challenges we face.”Black Film Center Archive, Indiana University, BloomingtonMs. Maple’s second feature, “Twice as Nice” (1989), was the story of twin sisters, both college basketball standouts, who are preparing to take part in a professional draft. The movie starred Pamela and Paula McGee, twins who won back-to-back N.C.A.A. basketball championships at the University of Southern California but were not professional actors.In 1982 Ms. Maple and Mr. Patton opened a theater to show “Will” and other independent films in the basement of their brownstone on 120th Street in Harlem. They called it 20 West, billed it as “the home of Black cinema” and featured movies by up-and-comers like Spike Lee. They closed it about a decade later — because, she said, she wanted to focus more on her own films.Ms. Maple’s films have achieved greater recognition in recent years than they did when they were released. In 2015 the Museum of Modern Art screened “Will”; that same year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (now Film at Lincoln Center) showed both her features as part of a series called “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986.”Ms. Maple in 2016. A year earlier, her films had been shown at both the Museum of Modern Art and Lincoln Center.Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesMs. Maple was born on Feb. 14, 1937, in McComb, Miss., about 80 miles south of Jackson, the second oldest of 12 children. Her father was a farmer, her mother a teacher and dietitian.Her father died when she was 13, and her mother sent her and many of her siblings to the Northeast, where she went to high school.After high school she studied medical technology and then started working in bacteriology. She eventually ran a lab at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and Medical Center (now part of New York University’s hospital system) in Manhattan while the hospital administration searched for a permanent replacement because, she wrote, she did not have a Ph.D. She was credited with leading the preliminary identification of a new strain of bacteria; on her lunch breaks, she joined other, lower-paid workers who were trying to organize.It was a steady, well-paying job, but Ms. Maple, who was married and had a young daughter, tired of the work and left bacteriology in 1968 to pursue journalism. She was on assignment for a magazine in Texas when she met Mr. Patton, a photographer for Jet and Ebony magazines who lived in Los Angeles, and they developed a bicoastal relationship.Ms. Maple had separated from her husband; Mr. Patton was still living with his wife. In time they divorced their spouses and married, and Mr. Patton moved to Manhattan. (Ms. Maple was sometimes billed as Jessie Maple Patton in her film work.)Ms. Maple is survived by her husband; her daughter, Audrey Snipes; five sisters, Lorrain Crosby, Peggy Lincoln, Debbie Reed, Camilla Clarke Doremus and Stephanie Robinson; and a grandson.Ms. Maple worked relentlessly to accomplish her dreams. She supplemented her income through ventures including two Harlem coffee shops she ran with Mr. Patton and a line of vegan cookies she made in the 1990s, which were eventually available at retailers on the East Coast.“I was too busy doing the work to slow down,” she wrote in her memoir. “I’d like to believe that my efforts have paved the way for the people behind me to work just as hard but struggle a little less.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘Maestra’ Shows the Power of Women on the Concert Podium

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      The director of “Maestra,” Maggie Contreras, discusses making the documentary and the challenges faced by women in classical music.“Girls can’t do that.”That’s what 9-year-old Marin Alsop was told by her violin teacher when she expressed interest in a conducting career. Today, she’s one of the world’s best-known conductors, and she remembers that exchange in a scene from “Maestra,” a documentary directed by Maggie Contreras that’s premiering at the Tribeca Festival, which runs Wednesday to June 18 in New York City.The documentary spotlights a profession — conducting — which historically has all but excluded women. It tracks five candidates vying for the top prize in La Maestra, a female conducting competition co-founded in 2019 by the French conductor Claire Gibault, and held in Paris every two years.In the film, Ms. Contreras, 39, a documentary producer making her directorial debut, delivers an up-close-and-personal portrayal of the contestants as they rev up for a competition whose judges include Ms. Alsop and Ms. Gibault. The five contestants profiled in the film were from France, Germany, the United States, Greece and Poland.In a recent video interview, Ms. Contreras recalled the making of the movie and the challenges faced by women on the concert podium. The following interview has been edited and condensed.How did you find out about La Maestra?During the pandemic, on National Public Radio — where I get a lot of my ideas. My fellow producer Neil Berkeley heard it as well, and said, ‘Do you think you should direct this one?’ And I said, ‘Sure.’ It made perfect sense. The classical music world is a world I’ve been tangentially tied to.The conductor Zoe Zeniodi is shown in the documentary eating a boiled egg in the tiny kitchen of an Airbnb in Albuquerque. The filmmaker believes the scene will shatter preconceived notions about the profession.How so?I grew up with classical music in my house at all times. Pop music was not something my family listened to. For better or for worse, I wasn’t exposed to what was on the radio.Growing up in Tucson, Ariz., whenever there was a free concert of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra in the park, my mom would make sure we went. My head was in the pit, wanting to talk to the timpani player. The Boston Pops was a concert series on PBS when I was growing up, and I was obsessed with the conductor John Williams. When you asked me as a kid what I wanted to be when I grew up, John Williams was my answer. I would wave the wooden spoon wanting to be him. I didn’t have a Marin Alsop to name.What was it like raising money for your documentary?Everyone was always excited about this film. They loved it from the moment they pressed play on our teaser. But there was always this barrier to committing. We almost stopped production twice, and didn’t have the financing to go to Paris until about three and a half weeks before the competition. In that time, we pulled together a 16-person crew to follow those women around.Our film is a microcosm of what society needs to be. Throughout the process of making this film, men in privileged positions said: “Hey, you should do this.” David Letterman gave us our first amount of money. He happens to be a classical music fan who wants to use his money to make things that are good for the world. The man who is now the executive producer is a banker in Washington, D.C.How did you choose the five women?I chose them out of 14, somewhat haphazardly, because the pandemic was on and I couldn’t go to all countries. I am a firm believer that if you put anyone under the microscope of a lens, they are going to be interesting. You’re going to find a story about them.How important was it that you were a woman making this movie?I don’t think I’m ever going to be the filmmaker who chases social issues. The feminist themes that are critical to this story and critical to our societal conversations are a byproduct of audiences being sucked in by the story, of being superentertained.Could a man have directed this, persuaded the five women to open up and express themselves as quickly as I was able to? I would question that, and would like to think not. This is why representation is so important when it comes to nonfiction storytelling. There was a sense of safety. I was sitting there with a camera in people’s bedrooms while they slept.In one of my favorite scenes, you see the conductor Zoe Zeniodi in the tiny little kitchen of a crummy Airbnb in Albuquerque eating a boiled egg. There are these preconceived notions about what a conductor’s life looks like, and the reality is the exact opposite. Conductors are eating boiled eggs in a very inexpensive Airbnb.Maggie Contreras, a documentary producer whose film “Maestra” is her first venture into directing.Ryan MusickHow did it feel to shine the spotlight on one of the most sexist artistic professions of all?When I was first pitching this project, my attitude toward it was: I am reluctantly telling a story about yet another glass ceiling that needs to be broken. The concept of having to break glass ceilings in 2023 is boring to me. I don’t want to have to be telling these stories, but they’re there to be told. I hope I never have to tell another one.Your movie is more about women than about female music makers. Why?Because if I need to fight against this world that isn’t accessible in the first place — if someone is going to say, “I’m not too sure my viewership is going to be into classical music” — then I have to make it as accessible as possible.It was very important for me to strip down the stereotypes of what a conductor is: the image of that authoritarian character belittling the musicians, who are quaking in fear and reverence. Women are not only having to step into that role, but also having to figure out how to get rid of that stereotype.What would you like your film to achieve?I want people to hire these women. I want all five of these women to not stop working. And I’m hoping that people can walk away from the film with the ability to answer the question: “What does a conductor do, anyway?”For me, I hope that people now see me as an individual artist, instead of a producer in relation to other artists. I hope my next film will not be as difficult to finance as this one: that for the next story that I want to tell, I’ll have the support behind me, because now I’m not a first-time director anymore. More

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      in Movies

      Women Directors Make Progress at Tribeca Festival

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      In a milestone, women outnumber men this year as directors at the Tribeca Festival. Three of them shared their paths to the director’s chair.For the director Olivia West Lloyd, it was good, old-fashioned networking that earned her the chance to make her first feature, “Somewhere Quiet.” With no film school on her résumé, she took every bottom-rung job she could get on a production set, and then connected with other peers on their way up, building a team ready to seize the moment when the opportunity to make a movie together came around.Gabriella A. Moses, whose first directing feature is “Boca Chica,” credits the film industry itself, and her participation in fellowships designed to give women and other newcomers a leg up, for getting noticed by the “right people” who offered the chance to helm the project.Maggie Contreras, the director of “Maestra,” said that she got her break from male colleagues who had already found success in the movie business and decided to give a woman they trusted a chance. Now she is making it a no-excuses priority to bring other female filmmakers along.No matter how women are getting the chance to direct these days, the sentiment that they need to lead a new generation of female filmmakers seems to prevail. All three directors, whose films are showing at the Tribeca Festival, gave key jobs — as producers, writers, designers and editors — to other women.The momentum to put more women in top positions manifests itself in a milestone this year. For the first time, the festival, which runs Wednesday to June 18 in New York City, will have more women than men vying for prizes. A considerable 68 percent of all competition films were directed by women, according to the festival.Jennifer Kim in a scene from “Somewhere Quiet,” a thriller directed by Olivia West Lloyd. Her character, Meg, is trying to readjust to normal life after a heinous abduction.Conor MurphyThat is not to say that women have achieved parity in the industry overall. Female directors remain far behind men at the top, according to a study published in January from the Inclusion Initiative at University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Male directors outnumbered women 11 to 1 when it came to the 1,500 highest-grossing films from the last 16 years.Stacy L. Smith, who founded the Inclusion Initiative and led the study, called that tally “abysmal.”“It doesn’t reflect the proportion of women and girls in the U.S. population nor in the world,” she said. “It’s not related to the proportion of girls and women studying in higher education. And most certainly, it doesn’t represent or reflect the number of girls and women enrolled in film school around the country.”Ms. Smith said the problem was with film company executives who failed to see women as viable directors on high-profile, big-budget films — particularly action films, which tend to do best at the box office. The playing field was more even on smaller projects, she added, and those are what make it to the rosters of film festivals, such as Tribeca.“I think that many of the institutes and film festivals have really started a concerted effort to think more critically about how they select, and who the committee is for selecting films, because we know that is where bias comes in,” she said.But the news from Tribeca suggests that a more equitable future is possible, particularly because its roster relies heavily on newcomers likely to continue creating films.How any woman makes it to the director’s chair is a personal story, of course, that starts with her own skills and ambition, but the aforementioned directors show how some women have cut a path and did it across genres.Ms. Lloyd carved out a niche in the horror/suspense category, where relatively few women are working. “Somewhere Quiet” is a tense, claustrophobic thriller set in a remote cabin in the woods. Viewers are kept guessing whether the tormented lead character Meg (Jennifer Kim) will make it out alive.“I love horror,” said Ms. Lloyd, who also wrote the screenplay. “I have since I was a teenager.”Ms. Lloyd, who has carved out a niche in horror and suspense, also wrote the screenplay for “Somewhere Quiet.”Emma HannawayShe said she believed that getting the film made was “fated in a way.” The deal was cut during the coronavirus pandemic when projects with small casts and closed locations were in demand. But she also had the pieces in place to make it happen.During her stints as a production assistant, she bonded with Taylor Ava Shung and Emma Hannaway, who were building careers as producers. “We would just talk at length about movies, and how we wanted to make movies, and what we would prioritize when given the opportunity,” Ms. Lloyd said.They were ready to go when they saw an opening, tapping their own advice network that included the producer Mollye Asher, whom they met assisting on the Oscar-winning film “Nomadland,” and her partners, Derek Nguyen and Mynette Louie.“They were super helpful in just introducing us to other production companies and getting us in touch with various people who could actually come on and make the movie,” she said.Ms. Moses’ first feature took her in a different direction, to the Dominican Republic, for “Boca Chica,” a drama about 12-year-old Desi (Scarlet Camilo), who works in her family’s beachfront restaurant but dreams of becoming a singer. The film’s intimate moments and lively music underscore its exploration of issues like human trafficking and sex tourism.Scarlet Camilo in “Boca Chica,” which features a Spanish-language script.Selene FilmsThe director had other plans for her career, envisioning herself writing and directing her own movies. To get there, she attended the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University and began seeking mentorships designed to bolster young filmmakers. She received support from the Sundance Institute, New York Women in Film & Television, and others.In 2018, she participated in the Tribeca Institute’s Through Her Lens program for rising female filmmakers and used its resources to make the short “El Timbre de Tu Voz.” After completing that project, she began lining up what she assumed would be her first feature, a story she wrote called “Leche.”But her early work came to the attention of the producer Sterlyn Ramírez, who approached her about directing “Boca Chica,” which featured a Spanish-language script written by Marité Ugas and Mariana Rondón.“It was actually through this institute, and the never-ending grant-writing and fellowships, that the producer on ‘Boca Chica’ found me,” she said.Accepting the job was a tough decision. Ms. Moses’ mother is from the Dominican Republic, but Ms. Moses herself was born in the United States and her own Spanish was lacking. Still, the movie’s themes echoed her own artistic goals and she decided “to go along for the ride.”“It was a sink-or-swim situation where I was like, ‘OK, it’s hard to make your first feature no matter what. It’s going to be even harder to do it in another country and not in your mother tongue. And it’s going to be deeply personal and probably more emotional than anything to do it in your mother’s country,’” she said.With her first feature making the cut at Tribeca, she is turning her attention back to “Leche.”A still image from “Maestra,” a documentary about female orchestra conductors directed by Maggie Contreras.Isabelle RazavetWith “Maestra,” Ms. Contreras stepped sideways into directing. She had worked extensively as a producer, collaborating with the documentary maker Neil Berkeley. She first took him the idea of directing a film about an international competition for female orchestra conductors after hearing a report about it on NPR.Mr. Berkeley surprised her by suggesting that she direct it herself. “It was as simple and profound as that,” she said.The job came with challenges. She saw her own situation as a first-time director mirrored in the women competing for a spot on the podium: They were trying to break into a profession historically dominated by men. She decided she needed to pass on the baton, so to speak, to other women.“From Day 1, I said we would have at least 80 percent women behind the cameras making this film,” she said.Ms. Contreras put together a female-led crew for “Maestra.”Ryan Musick“Maestra” follows the several conductors leading up to the charged competition, with interviews in the United States, France, Poland and Greece. In some of those places, it was difficult to find female workers, Ms. Contreras said. With a tight schedule and budget, there was pressure to fill jobs with men. She held firm to her quota.Ms. Contreras credits the female-led crew for the project’s success. Her subjects open up, telling tales about child abuse, discrimination and body insecurity. “Because of my own experiences as a human being, as a woman with my own thoughts and fears and struggles and joys and the way I show up in the world, we were able to have a conversation,” she said.That perspective, she said, echoes other arguments for giving women more opportunities: Diverse directors expand the possibilities of storytelling, which is the heart of filmmaking.Her next directing project centers on an “Erin Brockovich” type who triumphs, though in a different context from classical music. She plans to keep the same philosophy when assembling an inclusive production staff.“It’s now my responsibility to hire people who will then hire other people,” she said. “That chain cannot be severed or we go backwards.”Ms. Smith, whose academic research has made her a leading proponent of equity in the film business, said that chain affected the experiences of audiences, as well as the careers of female filmmakers.“If you have a female director, you’re more likely to have a whole series of things,” she said. “More female-driven story lines, more women over 40 in films, more women working behind the camera, and more people in below-the-line crew that are women.” More

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      ‘White Balls on Walls’ Review: Time With the Gatekeepers

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      The Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam becomes a somewhat flimsy case study for fine-art diversity and inclusion conversations in this documentary.From its tub-like exterior to its gallery walls and vast conference room, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is awash in white. But the Dutch documentary “White Balls on Walls” concerns a different whiteness (and maleness) endemic in one of the Netherland’s cultural institutions. The movie’s cheeky title comes from a protest that the arts-activist collective the Guerrilla Girls (or an offshoot) staged outside the museum in 1995.The filmmaker Sarah Vos began following the museum’s director, Rein Wolfs, and his staff in 2019 as they set out to address diversity and inclusion. The museum’s slogan, “Meet the icons of modern art,” had been met with scrutiny of the who-decides-what-is-iconic variety. Vos tracks those efforts through the height of the pandemic and the social justice demands wrought by the killing of George Floyd. There will be some awkward social distancing and a doubling down on Wolfs’s sense that the museum must include a richer array of artists, welcome a more diverse demographic and, while it’s at it, hire more people of color.With access to behind-the-scenes processes, the documentary can be instructive about the work of changing legacy institutions, but also wincingly cautionary as Wolfs, his administrators and curators get tangled up in numbers and nomenclature. (“‘Gender balance,’ that sounds nicely diverse,” a woman says in an early meeting.) Their internal conversations — about colonialism, gender and Dutch identity — become more nuanced when people of color arrive. Charl Landvreugd, the museum’s head of research and curatorial practice, and the curators Vincent van Velsen and Yvette Mutumba, offer that nuance and give context to the museum’s quandaries. But even they don’t always pierce the hermetically sealed feel of the documentary.White Balls on WallsNot rated. In English and Dutch, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

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      How Geena Davis Continues to Tackle Gender Bias in Hollywood

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      “Transforming Spaces” is a series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.Geena Davis and her family were returning from dinner in their small Massachusetts town when her great-uncle Jack, 99, began drifting into the oncoming lane of traffic. Ms. Davis was about 8, flanked by her parents in the back seat. Politeness suffused the car, the family, maybe the era, and nobody remarked on what was happening, even when another car appeared in the distance, speeding toward them.Finally, moments before impact, Ms. Davis’s grandmother issued a gentle suggestion from the passenger seat: “A little to the right, Jack.” They missed by inches.Ms. Davis, 67, relayed this story in her 2022 memoir, “Dying of Politeness,” an encapsulation of the genially stultifying values that she had absorbed as a child — and that a great many other girls absorb, too: Defer. Go along to get along. Everything’s fine.Of course the two-time Academy Award-winning actress ditched that pliability long ago. From “Thelma & Louise” and “A League of Their Own” to this year’s coming-of-age drama, “Fairyland,” back-seat docility just wasn’t an option. Indeed, self-possession was her thing. (Or one of her things. Few profiles have failed to mention her Mensa membership, her fluency in Swedish or her Olympic-caliber archery prowess.) But cultivating her own audaciousness was only Phase 1.Next year will mark two decades since the creation of the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. When her daughter was a toddler, Ms. Davis couldn’t help noticing that male characters vastly outnumbered female characters in children’s TV and movies.“I knew everything is completely imbalanced in the world,” she said recently. But this was the realm of make-believe; why shouldn’t it be 50/50?It wasn’t just the numbers. How the women were represented, their aspirations, the way young girls were sexualized: Across children’s programming, Ms. Davis saw a bewilderingly warped vision of reality being beamed into impressionable minds. Long before “diversity, equity and inclusion” would enter the lexicon, she began mentioning this gender schism whenever she had an industry meeting.“Everyone said, ‘No, no, no — it used to be like that, but it’s been fixed,’” she said. “I started to wonder, What if I got the data to prove that I’m right about this?”Amid Hollywood’s trumpeted causes, Ms. Davis made it her mission to quietly harvest data. Exactly how bad is that schism? In what other ways does it play out? Beyond gender, who else is being marginalized? In lieu of speechifying and ribbons, and with sponsors ranging from Google to Hulu, Ms. Davis’s team of researchers began producing receipts.Ms. Davis wasn’t the first to highlight disparities in popular entertainment. But by leveraging her reputation and resources — and by blasting technology at the problem — she made a hazy truth concrete and offered offenders a discreet path toward redemption. (While the institute first focused on gender data, its analyses now extend to race/ethnicity, L.G.B.T.Q.I.A.+, disability, age 50-plus and body type. Random awful finding: Overweight characters are more than twice as likely to be violent.)Geena Davis accepting the Governors Award for her institute during the Primetime Emmy Awards last year. At her left are the screenwriter Shonda Rhimes and the actor Sarah Paulson.Kevin Mazur/WireImage, via Getty ImagesEven when braced for it, the institute’s findings are staggering: In the 101 top-grossing G-rated films from 1990 to 2005, just 28 percent of speaking characters were female. Even in crowd scenes — even in animated crowd scenes — male characters vastly outnumber female ones. In the 56 top grossing films of 2018, women portrayed in positions of leadership were four times more likely than men to be shown naked. (The bodies of 15 percent of them were filmed in slow motion.) Where a century ago women had been fully central to the budding film industry, they were now a quantifiable, if sexy, afterthought.“When she started to collect the data, it was kind of incredible,” said Hillary Hallett, a professor of American studies at Columbia University and the author of “Go West, Young Women! The Rise of Early Hollywood.” “This wasn’t a vague feeling anymore. You couldn’t claim this was just some feminist rant. It was like, ‘Look at these numbers.’”Ms. Davis is by turns reserved and goofy offscreen — a thoughtful responder, an unbridled guffawer. (At one point she enunciated the word “acting” so theatrically that she feared it would be hard to spell in this article.) On a recent afternoon in Los Angeles, she took a break from illustrating the children’s book she had written, “The Girl Who Was Too Big for the Page.”“I grew up very self-conscious about being the tallest kid — not just the tallest girl — in my class,” she said. “I had this childhood-long wish to take up less space in the world.”In time she began to look beyond her height — six feet — to the insidious messages reinforcing such insecurity.“Hollywood creates our cultural narrative — its biases trickle down to the rest of the world,” she said in “This Changes Everything,” the 2018 documentary she produced about gender inequity in the film industry. The documentary takes its name from the incessant refrain she kept hearing after the success of “Thelma & Louise,” and later “A League of Their Own.” Finally the power and profitability of female-centric movies had been proven — this changes everything! And then, year after year, nothing.Geena Davis, right, with the director Penny Marshall on the set of “A League of Their Own” in 1992.Columbia Pictures, via Everett CollectionIt was here that Ms. Davis planted her stake in the ground — a contention around why certain injustices persist, and how best to combat them. Where movements like #MeToo and Times Up target deliberate acts of monstrosity, hers would be the squishier universe of unconscious bias. Did you unthinkingly cast that doctor as a male? Hire that straight white director because he shares your background? Thought you were diversifying your film, only to reinforce old stereotypes? (Fiery Latina, anyone?)It’s a dogged optimism that powers Ms. Davis’s activism — a faith that Hollywood can reform voluntarily. When she goes to a meeting now, she’s armed with her team’s latest research, and with conviction that improvement will follow.“Our theory of change relies on the content creators to do good,” said Madeline Di Donno, the president and the chief executive of the institute. “As Geena says, we never shame and blame. You have to pick your lane, and ours has always been, ‘We collaborate with you and want you to do better.’”If a car full of polite Davises can awaken to oncoming danger, perhaps filmmakers can come to see the harm they’re perpetuating.“Everyone isn’t out there necessarily trying to screw women or screw Black people,” said Franklin Leonard, a film and television producer and founder of the Black List, a popular platform for screenplays that have not been produced. “But the choices they make definitely have that consequence, regardless of what they believe about their intent.”He added: “It’s not something people are necessarily aware of. And there’s no paper trail — it can only be revealed in aggregate. Which gets to the value of Geena’s work.”“Hollywood creates our cultural narrative — its biases trickle down to the rest of the world,” Ms. Davis said in “This Changes Everything,” the 2018 documentary she produced about gender inequity in the film industry.Magdalena Wosinska for The New York TimesUnique to the institute’s efforts is its partnership with the University of Southern California’s Signal Analysis and Interpretation Laboratory, which uses software and machine learning to analyze scripts and other media. One tool born of that collaboration, Spellcheck for Bias, employs AI to scan scripts for stereotypes and other problematic choices. (Janine Jones-Clark, the executive vice president for inclusion for NBCUniversal’s global talent development and inclusion team, recalled a scene in a television show in which a person of color seemed to be acting in a threatening manner toward another character. Once flagged by the software, the scene was reshot.)Still, progress has been mixed. In 2019 and 2020, the institute reported that gender parity for female lead characters had been achieved in the 100 highest-grossing family films and in the top Nielsen-rated children’s television shows. Nearly 70 percent of industry executives familiar with the institute’s research made changes to at least two projects.But women represented just 18 percent of directors working on the top 250 films of 2022, up only 1 percent from 2021, according to the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film; the percentage of major Asian and Asian American female characters fell from 10 percent in 2021 to under 7 percent in 2022. A 2021 McKinsey report showed that 92 percent of film executives were white — less diverse than Donald Trump’s cabinet at the time, as Mr. Leonard of the Black List noted.“I think the industry is more resistant to change than anybody realizes,” he added. “So I’m incredibly appreciative of anyone — and especially someone with Geena’s background — doing the non-glamorous stuff of trying to change it, being in the trenches with Excel spreadsheets.”Ms. Davis has not quit her day job. (Coming soon: a role in “Pussy Island,” a thriller from Zoe Kravitz in her directorial debut.) But acting shares a billing with her books, the diversity-focused Bentonville Film Festival she started in Arkansas in 2015 — even the roller coasters she rides for equity. (Yes, Thelma is now Disney’s gender consultant for its theme parks and resorts.)“We’re definitely heading in the right direction,” she said. “Bill Gates called himself an impatient optimist, and that feels pretty good for what I am.” More