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      ‘Brokeback Mountain’ Is Now a Play in London’s West End

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      Much has changed for L.G.B.T.Q. people since Annie Proulx’s short story was published in 1997. But a new theatrical version is a reminder that homophobia is far from over.In 2016, when the theater director Jonathan Butterell was considering a proposal to adapt Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story “Brokeback Mountain” for the stage, he wondered how to translate the prose’s vast landscape and insular emotions into a play.Last month, in a central London rehearsal studio, Butterell and Ashley Robinson, who wrote the play, tried to answer that question. To help the cast connect with Proulx’s story of a cowboy and a ranch hand falling in love against the wide-stretching landscapes of 1960s Wyoming, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls during rehearsals.“The vastness has been there from the very beginning,” Butterell said in a recent interview. When it came to evoking the story’s emotional landscape, the director had stuck one sepia-toned photograph, of a lone cowboy in a snow-covered Wyoming, behind a pillar. The image “speaks to the bit of us that feels alone in the world,” Butterell said. “Maybe he’s at peace with this, maybe it’s the source of his agony.”Butterell’s “Brokeback Mountain” opened in previews May 10 at @sohoplace in London’s West End. It’s the first time the story has been adapted for theater — an opera by Charles Wuorinen premiered in Madrid in 2014 — and each version now follows in the footsteps of Proulx’s text and the film that popularized it: Ang Lee’s 2005 Academy Award-winning adaptation, which is often cited as one of the best L.G.B.T.Q. films of all time.Faist, left, and Hedges at @sohoplace. During rehearsals, black-and-white photographs of American plains and mountain ranges were tacked to the walls.Suzie Howell for The New York TimesButterell said he was aware of his audience having expectations based on the film. “They’re inevitable,” he said, “but I don’t mind that.”This theatrical version also has some Hollywood clout. Its lead characters, Jack Twist and Ennis del Mar, are played by the BAFTA-nominated actor Mike Faist and the Oscar-nominated actor Lucas Hedges.In late 2016, Robinson first wrote a treatment for what he called a “memory play” based on the short story, after speaking with the composer Dan Gillespie Sells and Butterell. Robinson’s script stated that the Wyoming setting should not be conveyed “in a purely literal sense,” and his story is set in 2013, with an older version of del Mar reflecting on the years he spent with Twist between 1963 and 1983.Proulx approved of Robinson’s vision. She has “high hopes for the play,” she said in a recent email interview. “When I read Ashley’s script several years ago, I thought he had done a fine job.”In Proulx’s story, del Mar and Twist’s interior worlds are conveyed by an omniscient narrator. In the stage adaptation, music does much of that work.“These two men can’t sing,” Gillespie Sells said, because “they don’t have an emotional dialogue.” Instead, a character called The Balladeer — played by the Scottish singer-songwriter Eddi Reader — sings with an onstage country and western band. “She takes us through time,” Butterell said. “Sometimes it’s from night to day. Sometimes it’s 10 years.”“Brokeback Mountain” will be the first time its two lead actors have appeared onstage in five years. Faist, who plays Twist, originated the role of Connor Murphy in “Dear Evan Hansen” on Broadway, and has had more recent success in film, including Steven Spielberg’s 2021 remake of “West Side Story.”Hedges “hadn’t acted in a while” when he was sent the script, he said, having been focusing on writing instead. The “Brokeback” offer and playing del Mar changed that. “There wasn’t an angle I didn’t love about this,” he said.“As terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” Faist, left, said of the production.Shona LouiseAs the project entered its final week of rehearsals, both actors were grappling with the process in different ways. Hedges said he was experiencing “tragic and triumphant ups and downs” about his own work. “I have a day where I think I’ve figured it all out, and then a day when it all disappears,” he said. The “collective experience” of theater was daunting compared to working in film, he said, adding that onstage, “I can’t use tricks to make it through.”Faist concurred: “It’s a challenge, and it’s terrifying,” mainly because of the expectations of having to match the source material and 2005 film, he said. “But as terrifying and frustrating as it is, I really am having the time of my life,” he added.Butterell said that Faist and Hedges were “as men, as actors, very different creatures.” Faist, he said, had “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Hedges “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Neither Hedges, Faist nor Butterell had revisited Lee’s film since they were approached for the project. “The truth of the matter is, no matter what, he’s not Heath Ledger and I’m not Jake Gyllenhaal,” Faist said of the film’s two lead stars, who both earned Oscar nominations for their performances. He and Hedges, Faist added, would both bring their “own weird things” to the roles.The production has forced Faist to confront his “traumas,” he said. “We can take those traumas, turn them around,” he added, and, he hopes, make the audience “think deeply about their own lives.”Following the success of the “Brokeback Mountain” film, Proulx said fans of her text sent her fan fiction that rewrote the ending of her short story, claiming the original was too sad. She told the The Paris Review that those fans had “misunderstood” the story and stated that it was, most importantly, about “homophobia.”Jonathan Butterell, the play’s director, said his two lead actors had different strengths: Faist, left, has “a sense of life and vivacity,” while Lucas, right, “has this deeply complex interior landscape that’s very much of Ennis.”Suzie Howell for The New York TimesThis is the first adaptation of “Brokeback” to be released since the Supreme Court made gay marriage legal in all 50 U.S. states. Robinson — who lives in Brooklyn but was raised in the tiny town of Lockhart, S.C. — said he wrote it to remind audiences that gay trauma still exists.“These stories aren’t necessarily being told anymore because of a trend to put onstage what we want the world to be,” he said, referring to the theater community. “That’s a wonderful thing to do, but we shouldn’t cancel out all of the opportunities to talk about what’s going on underneath it.”Butterell added that the fight against homophobia was “not over” in Britain either, citing a recent spike in the number of attacks on L.G.B.T.Q. people.“This is a tragedy,” Butterell said of the play. “Of course love exists — I don’t want it to be solemn — but the tragedy of this piece is that fear wins.” More

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      ‘Imagining the Indian’ Review: Fighting Offensive Imagery

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      This documentary, subtitled “The Fight Against Native American Mascoting,” argues that Native-themed sports team branding fits into a history of systemic racism.In July 2020, the National Football League team in Washington announced that it would shed a name that was long considered a slur against Indigenous people. The decision was a victory in the campaign by Native American activists to eliminate disparaging sports team names and iconography.“Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting,” a straightforward and often repetitive documentary, spotlights this movement by arguing a handful of key points: Native-themed mascots and branding are offensive. They fit into a national history of systemic racism. And the sustained use of stereotypical images has material consequences for Native people.To deconstruct these tenets, the directors Aviva Kempner and Ben West call on a raft of experts, historians and Native activists, including Suzan Shown Harjo, a trailblazer for the cause. The sources share their personal grievances and act as guides through the annals of racist American imagery, from “The Lone Ranger” and Bugs Bunny cartoons to footage of sports fans in headdresses. The effect is a frenzied slide show of sorts, set to galvanizing music that echoes the passion of the speakers.The marriage of talking heads and troubling material from the archives is a familiar documentary format, and “Imagining the Indian” rarely breaks free from the generic quality of its structure. The speakers introduce a few fresh ideas, such as the notion that football, in which teams use violence to compete for territory, mimics white land-grabbing. But in tuning the project to the key of advocacy, the directors have created a film to nod along with, not one that unpacks complexity.Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American MascotingNot rated. Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes. In theaters. More

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      A Conductor’s Battle With a Classical Music Gender Barrier

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      Claire Gibault has spent a lifetime fighting sexism and forging a path in a male-dominated profession. Her next targets: pay gaps and age discrimination.This article is part of our Women and Leadership special report that profiles women leading the way on climate, politics, business and more.The baton-waving bully conductor played by Cate Blanchett in “Tár” has earned a series of Oscar nominations and captivated audiences worldwide. That may be, in part, because of her novelty: Until recently, conducting was almost exclusively a male profession.The French conductor Claire Gibault has spent a lifetime battling that gender barrier. In 2019, she co-founded La Maestra, a biennial international competition for female conductors in Paris that draws more than 200 contestants from some 50 countries.“Giving confidence and visibility to the talented women who are emerging as orchestral conductors is a cause La Maestra will continue to champion with commitment and passion,” said a news release inviting contestants for the next competition, in March 2024. The competition, founded with the Philharmonie de Paris, awards prizes of 5,000 to 20,000 euros ($5,300 to $21,400) to finalists who are provided numerous musical opportunities, too. Ms. Gibault also founded the Paris Mozart Orchestra in 2011, one of France’s few female-led orchestras.Born in 1945 and raised in Le Mans in northwestern France, where her father taught music theory at the conservatory, Ms. Gibault was studying violin when she discovered conducting and persuaded the conservatory to teach it.She went on to make classical music history by becoming the first woman to conduct a performance at La Scala in Milan (where she was an assistant to her mentor, the late conductor Claudio Abbado, who was then La Scala’s music director). She also was the first woman to conduct the musicians of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Asian Actors: A record number of actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year. But historically, Asian stars have rarely been part of the awards.Hong Chau Interview: In a conversation with The Times, the actress, who is nominated for her supporting role in “The Whale,” says she still feels like an underdog.Andrea Riseborough Controversy: Confused about the brouhaha surrounding the best actress nominee? We explain why the “To Leslie” star’s nod was controversial.The Making of ‘Naatu Naatu’: The composers and choreographer from the Indian blockbuster “RRR” explain how they created the propulsive sequence that is nominated for best song.Ms. Gibault, 77, has been busy and much in the news lately, especially with the Academy Awards on March 12. She discussed her career, her views on “Tár” and sexism in classical music in a phone interview from Paris. The conversation was translated from French, edited and condensed.Why did you decide to set up the La Maestra competition?In 2018, I was the only female jury member of a conducting competition in Mexico. There were such sexist attitudes on the part of certain jurors that I was shocked. One man on the jury even said that women were biologically incapable of being conductors, because their arms were naturally turned outward to hold babies. Whenever a female contestant came up in the competition, this man would cover his face with his jacket, close his eyes and plug his ears. One female finalist who was very musical and very talented received as many votes as a young man to whom the jury gave the first prize. I found that very unfair.The competition in Mexico was a trigger for me. I was furious. When I got back to Paris, I met with a patron, Dominique Senequier, [founder and] president of the private investment company Ardian. I told her that a lot of female talents were invisible, and that it would be interesting to do something for them. She encouraged me to set up a prestigious competition for female conductors and said she would finance it.The International Conductors Competition La Maestra, at the Philharmonie de Paris in 2022. The three finalists, with bouquets from left, are Beatriz Fernández Aucejo (3rd Prize, ARTE Prize), Joanna Natalia Ślusarczyk (2nd Prize, French Concert Halls and Orchestras Prize, ECHO Prize) and Anna Sułkowska-Migoń (1st Prize, Generation Opera Prize).Maria Mosconi/Hans LucasWhat impact has the competition had?The impact has been extraordinary. Female conductors are now viewed as a very modern phenomenon. Yet we have to be careful and very vigilant: make sure that it’s not just the young and attractive conductors who are being recruited. There is a flagrant degree of age discrimination in the world of classical music. For that to change, we need more women in management positions.What was your own experience as a young female conductor in a profession with almost no women?Audiences took it very well. The problem was the condescension of colleagues — of certain male conductors and of the male managers and directors of orchestras and cultural institutions. For them it was fine to hire women as long as they were assistant conductors, especially if they were very good assistants. I worked on pieces that the men didn’t want to work on, such as new compositions. I knew that this was a battle I had to wage with a smile, never complaining, never whining. That’s the way it worked.Why did you set up the Paris Mozart Orchestra?In my career, I experienced aggressive behavior on the part of musicians who made my job very hard, orchestras that didn’t want to play at my tempo. It was sometimes very difficult. I wanted to be able to choose the program. And I didn’t want to wait to be chosen.What did you think of the movie “Tár”?I found it disturbing, yet fascinating. What I like about the movie is that it’s a fable about power: how power can transform human beings, be they men or women. It’s like a Greek tragedy.Ms. Gibault co-founded La Maestra, a biennial international competition for female conductors in Paris that draws more than 200 contestants from some 50 countries.Maria Mosconi/Hans LucasDid you feel that it was about you?I don’t think we should be egocentric about it. It’s not because I’m a woman conductor that I felt directly concerned. It’s true that when you’re fighting for the cause of female conductors, it’s disturbing to see a woman who accumulates so many reasons to be hated: who takes advantage of her power, who takes drugs, who flirts with the young women in the orchestra. Of course, if a man behaved in that way, it would be a lot less shocking because we’re used to it.That kind of male behavior in classical music is now being called out. I think it’s high time for that behavior to stop. Not only is there abuse of power and sexual misconduct, but male conductors are also overpaid. That’s unacceptable given the economic crisis that the world of culture is going through.You mean the pay gap between male and female orchestra conductors?Yes, but also the pay gap with the musicians in the orchestra. And this incredible disdain that some male conductors have for the musicians that they’re conducting. We need to revolutionize this world from the inside. We need a different set of values.What do you need to revolutionize?The economics of culture. And the fact that careers are being built on notoriety, so the focus is on boosting people’s fame. There are people who are very famous and who are extraordinary artists, and others who are a little less so. I know extraordinary artists who are not famous at all.So there’s a cult of personality?Yes — for purely economic reasons. More

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      Tennessee Law Limiting ‘Cabaret’ Shows Raises Uncertainty About Drag Events

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      The measure is part of a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers across the country against drag performances. Many are wondering how it will be applied.NASHVILLE — A bill signed into law this week in Tennessee makes staging “adult cabaret” on public property or anywhere a child could see it a criminal offense. The law forbids performances in those places by topless, go-go or exotic dancers, strippers, or male or female impersonators who, as the law defines it, provides entertainment that is “harmful to minors.” The word “drag” does not appear in the legislation. And to some legal experts, the description provided in the letter of the law would not apply to drag as they know it. But many in the state are still trying to grasp how the measure will ultimately affect drag events, theater performances that involve drag, and even transgender and gender nonconforming people as they go about their lives.The law is part of a cascade of legislation across the country fueled by a conservative backlash to drag events, which has also spurred protests from far-right groups and threats directed at performers. Now that it is one of the first to succeed, with lawmakers in other states pursuing legislation with similarly ambiguous language, the law has prompted concerns about how it will be enforced and the implications it could have.“The murkiness of this law is causing a lot of people to be on edge,” said Micah Winter, a performer and board member of Friends of George’s, a theater company in Memphis whose shows are often centered on drag.Proponents of the legislation have described it as a way to safeguard children, asserting that drag events can have sexualized language and suggestive performances that may be too mature for younger viewers.“This bill gives confidence to parents that they can take their kids to a public or private show and will not be blindsided by a sexualized performance,” Jack Johnson, the Republican state senator who sponsored the legislation, said on Twitter.Gov. Bill Lee of Tennessee giving his State of the State address in February. Mark Zaleski/Associated PressStill, the legislation figures into a campaign by conservative lawmakers across the country to curb the rights of people in the L.G.B.T.Q. community. In Tennessee, one proposal would block transgender people from changing the gender listed on their drivers’ licenses, and on Thursday, the same day Gov. Bill Lee signed the adult cabaret bill, he approved legislation that prevents all puberty-delaying treatment, hormone therapies and referrals for transgender children to receive gender-affirming medical care in the state.Drag has become more mainstream in Tennessee, as in much of the country. Performers in vibrant costumes that upend gender assumptions could simply be reading a book, promoting acceptance and literacy. Or they might be “reading” — that is, playfully mocking — tourists piled onto buses rolling through Nashville or lip-syncing in variety shows in boozy brunches in Memphis or Chattanooga.“Not one of our performers on this bus has ever shown more skin than a Titans’ cheerleader on a Sunday afternoon,” David Taylor, an owner of the Big Drag Bus Tour in Nashville and bars that host drag events, said in a hearing on the legislation.Legal experts said the equivocal wording meant that the adult cabaret law was not exactly a ban on drag but could still have consequences.“It’s an anti-drag law,” said Kathy Sinback, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, “because they passed it intentionally to try to chill and prevent people from doing drag, but that’s not really what the law says.”“It should not even touch any drag performances,” she added. But after watching public commentary and a series of legislative hearings debating the merits of the bill, she said, “it’s clear that some people think that drag in and of itself as an art form is obscene and that it should not be viewed by children.”But Ms. Sinback said the parameters set in the legislation should not apply to most drag performances, given that they would have to be considered extremely sexual or violent, lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific values, and be considered broadly offensive and obscene to a child to warrant charging the performer with a crime.Mr. Johnson said that the law was not meant to target drag performances in general or discriminate against the L.G.B.T.Q. community. “It simply puts age restrictions in place to ensure that children are not present at sexually explicit performances,” he said in an interview with CNN.Critics said the legislation reflected what many in the gay and transgender community have described as a bleak and dangerous climate in Tennessee, threatening people who are often marginalized and already uniquely vulnerable. The law over medical care has provoked the most alarm. The Tennessee chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics opposed the law, saying in a statement that it will “significantly limit our ability to practice to the standard of care established by numerous national medical organizations.”Sruti Swaminathan, a staff attorney for Lambda Legal, which is working with other civil liberties groups in mounting a legal challenge to the legislation barring gender-affirming care, said, “This is clearly an effort to villainize us and isolate us because they fear our resilience and our self-love and our collective power.”People protesting against the bill on cabaret restrictions in Knoxville, Tenn., in February. Jamar Coach/News Sentinel, via ReutersTennessee is one of more than a dozen states where conservative lawmakers, focusing on issues of gender and identity, have pursued legislation that explicitly or otherwise seeks to impose restrictions on drag events.Some of the bills would require venues to register as adult entertainment spaces or “sexually oriented businesses,” and others would forbid performances at schools or libraries. A proposal in Arizona would outlaw drag performances within a quarter-mile of public playgrounds and schools.The law in Tennessee has not yet spurred a legal challenge, but activists and lawyers were prepared to start one as they watched to see how it is applied. Those who violate the law will be charged with a misdemeanor or a felony for continued offenses.The drag performer Poly Tics attending a rally in Kentucky on Thursday. Bruce Schreiner/Associated PressIn Kentucky, where the State Legislature has advanced a sprawling bill to curtail health care access for L.G.B.T.Q. children, lawmakers had also considered restrictions that included prohibiting what the state classifies as “adult performances” from operating within 1,000 feet of child care facilities, schools, public parks, homes or places of worship. The legislation was amended on Thursday to limit such performances from taking place in public places or a location where the performance could be viewed by a child — a step that critics of the legislation took as a victory.“This version is much more narrowly tailored to just explicit sexual content,” said Chris Hartman, executive director of the Fairness Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group in Kentucky, who acknowledged that much of his organization’s limited energy was focused on challenging the legislation on restricting gender-affirming health care.Compared with other proposals on L.G.B.T.Q. issues that advocates contend will have immediate and damaging impact, the ones that are tied to drag stir worries rooted more in uncertainty.For transgender and gender nonconforming people, who face a heightened threat of violence, some fear the law could be wielded as a tool to further discriminate against them.“The language is vague enough that it leaves it in the hands of each individual jurisdiction to define what counts as a ‘male or female impersonator,’” said Dahron Johnson, who works in community outreach with the Tennessee Equality Project. “They could say I, just going about my daily life, am an ‘impersonator.’”In theater, there is a long history of performance featuring cross-dressing and drag — Shakespeare famously employed male actors to play female roles — and many touring shows feature some variation on the practice: “The Lion King” (a male meerkat, Timon, dons a dress to dance the Charleston), “Hairspray” (the protagonist’s mother is often played by a man in drag) and “1776” (now touring with a new production in which all the male characters are played by female, transgender and nonbinary actors).“Hairspray” and many other theater productions feature drag performances.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“We’re absolutely opposed to any legislation that restricts the rights of our producers to present stories we’ve been presenting for 4,000 years,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and presenters around the country. Ms. Martin said the league is “very concerned” about the legislation under consideration in multiple states.Brett Batterson, the president and chief executive of the Orpheum Theatre Group in Memphis, said that on Friday, he paused conversations about bringing to Memphis a solo show, “Dixie’s Tupperware Party,” a small, long-running and popular touring production that has played all over America and is performed by a man in drag.“We decided we would pause our discussion to see how some of the language is interpreted,” Mr. Batterson said. “I think the law will be challenged, and we want to see how it plays out.”For now, Friends of George’s was not ready to change any of its plans. “We think it’s outrageous, but we’re forging ahead with our next production in spite of everything,” said Ty Phillips, the nonprofit’s vice president.Yet uncertainty remained. Mr. Winter noted that over the years he has played Mother Ginger in “The Nutcracker” and the mother in “Hairspray.”“Can I still do that?” he asked. More

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      Why Some Black Playwrights Are Saying Their Shows Must Not Go On

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      Several Black playwrights have canceled productions of their works, in some cases after performances started, because of concerns about conditions at the theaters presenting them.In Ohio, the playwright Charly Evon Simpson scuttled last month’s planned Cleveland Play House production of her latest work, “I’m Back Now,” after the director said that the theater had mishandled an actor’s report that she was sexually assaulted at the building where the theater housed artists.In Chicago, Erika Dickerson-Despenza forced Victory Gardens Theater to stop its production of “cullud wattah,” her Flint water crisis-prompted family drama, in the middle of its run last summer to protest actions that included the ouster of the theater’s artistic director.And in Los Angeles, Dominique Morisseau shut down a Geffen Playhouse production of her play “Paradise Blue” a week after its opening in late 2021, saying that Black women who worked on the show had been “verbally abused and diminished.”The steps by playwrights to halt productions of their own work reflects concerns by Black artists frustrated by what they see as a failure of theater administrators to live up to the lofty promises made during and after the spring of 2020, when George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police prompted nationwide protests and calls for change in many corners of American society, including the arts. In theater, an anonymously-led coalition of artists, known by the title of its first statement, “We See You, White American Theater,” circulated a widely read set of demands for change.“We don’t want to be pulling our plays — we are playwrights, we want our plays to be done, we are walking away from money, and we are walking away from seeing our work onstage,” Morisseau said. “But this is not an ego act and it is not a diva act. What we are doing is standing up when no one else will.”The cancellations have come just as theaters have been trying to reopen and rebuild following the lengthy pandemic shutdown.There has been notable change to address concerns about diversity and representation: An increase in the number of plays by Black writers staged on Broadway and beyond; a wave of appointments of administrators of color to high-level theater industry positions; the renaming of two Broadway houses after Black performers (James Earl Jones and Lena Horne).More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.But the cancellations reflect recurrent concern about conditions in the industry. There is pain all around — although actors are often still paid, the playwrights can lose fees and the theaters lose box office revenue and sunk production costs. And there are reputational risks: Will theaters still want to hire these artists? Will artists still want to work at these theaters?“It’s damaging to the theaters, it’s damaging to the playwrights, and it’s damaging to all the artists involved, but it puts a spotlight on issues that need a spotlight, and I hope it’s catching the field’s attention and reminding us that we haven’t solved all the problems,” said Sheldon Epps, a senior artistic adviser at Ford’s Theater in Washington, the former artistic director of the Pasadena Playhouse, and the author of a new memoir, “My Own Directions: A Black Man’s Journey in the American Theater.” “We had all those conversations and all those conference calls, and the talk was valuable but clearly a lot more action is needed.”The playwright Jeremy O. Harris threatened to pull “Slave Play” from the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles to protest its dearth of works by women. After they agreed to stage more, the play, starring Antoinette Crowe-Legacy and Paul Alexander Nolan, went on.Craig SchwartzThese cancellations began in October of 2021, when Jeremy O. Harris posted on Twitter an email he had sent to the Center Theater Group of Los Angeles, saying he wanted to “begin the process” of canceling that theater’s production of “Slave Play,” his acclaimed drama about interracial relationships. The Los Angeles production was to be the first since a pair of buzzy Broadway runs, but Harris was upset that the theater had announced a season with just one work by a woman.The reaction was immediate. The company apologized publicly, and within a week had pledged that the following season at its Mark Taper Forum would feature only work by women or nonbinary playwrights. Harris then allowed “Slave Play” to proceed; the production became the best-selling show at the Taper since the pandemic shutdown.“We have nothing to lose by telling a theater that we don’t want to be their mascots any longer,” Harris said.“Here’s the thing: writing a play is an act of community service, and even in pulling the play you are doing an act of community service — that is theater as well, because the conversation that gets sparked is similar to the conversation sparked by doing the play,” he added. “The only cost is to the ego of theater administrators who have dropped the ball in upholding the politics of the playwrights they’ve programmed.”Harris ultimately praised the Center Theater Group for its responsiveness, and Meghan Pressman, the theater’s managing director and chief executive, said she was “grateful” for Harris’s confrontation, even though it was difficult.“We’re being called to task, and we learned a lot,” she said. Morisseau was next, pulling the rights for “Paradise Blue” from the Geffen. The precipitating incident has never been made public, but Morisseau said at the time that “Harm happened internally within the creative team, when fellow artists were allowed to behave disrespectfully.” The Geffen apologized, saying, “an incident between members of the production was brought to our attention and we did not respond decisively in addressing it.”In an interview, Morisseau said she considered pulling her play a last resort.“I felt there was nothing else for me to do,” she said.And why have there been several cancellations in recent months? “I think what you’re seeing is a failure of institutions and institutional leadership to take seriously the harms against Black women,” Morisseau said. “It’s nothing new to us, but it is very disappointing to experience it in a theater ecosystem that we all seek to be better. You can’t welcome us and our stories, and not welcome the people who tell our stories and the bodies on whom our stories are told.”Playwrights, unlike screenwriters, have enormous power over the use of their work, sometimes by virtue of their contracts, and sometimes by virtue of the nature of their relationships with regional theaters.Prepandemic, there were occasional instances of playwrights exercising such rights for a variety of reasons. In 2016, Penelope Skinner withdrew a Chicago theater’s right to stage her dark comedy, “The Village Bike,” after a news report detailed allegations that the theater’s leader had mistreated performers; in 2012, Bruce Norris withdrew a German theater’s right to stage his Pulitzer Prize-winning race-relations satire, “Clybourne Park,” because he was angry about plans to cast a white actor to play a Black character; and in the 1980s, several playwrights canceled productions because of a union dispute.“We encourage authors to exercise all of their contractual rights to the extent possible,” said Ralph Sevush, the executive director of business affairs at the Dramatists Guild of America, an association representing playwrights.For the affected theaters, the cancellations have been disruptive — in each case, tickets had already been sold. Victory Gardens, which was already imploding when “cullud wattah” was pulled, has since stopped producing shows; the Cleveland Play House and Geffen Playhouse both issued apologies.“Cleveland Play House acknowledges there were missteps in efforts to respond to a sexual assault,” that organization said in a statement last month.The financial implications vary from case to case. Morisseau said that, when “Paradise Blue” was canceled, “Every artist got paid through their contracts. I, as the writer, and the Geffen, as the institution, are the only ones who took any financial hit.” David Levy, a spokesman for the labor union Actors’ Equity Association, said that “Every Equity agreement anticipates worst case scenarios in which a production is canceled before the full run of the show is completed. When that happens, the union does our part to enforce the contract so that actors and stage managers are taken care of.” In Cleveland, the union filed grievances that led to payment to its members for the canceled show there.The current round of cancellations is directly tied to the racial reckoning that has roiled theaters over the last three years; there have been a wide array of calls for change, from term limits for industry leaders and more diverse creative teams sought by the We See You petitions, to the renaming of theaters and the use of racial sensitivity coaches won in a pact negotiated by the organization Black Theater United.Black artists have cited the issues that propelled those movements in describing their current concerns. In Chicago, Dickerson-Despenza pulled the rights to her play after the dismissal of the theater’s artistic director, Ken-Matt Martin, who was one of three Black leaders in top positions at Victory Gardens. At the time Dickerson-Despenza decried the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchal values” of the board. On Wednesday, the board issued a statement saying, “Victory Gardens Theater vehemently disagrees with the characterization,” noting that it had had a diverse staff and board, and adding that “it is our hope that, rather than jumping to conclusions and casting aspersions, we can all move forward with a shared goal of having a vibrant and inclusive theater community for all.”Stori Ayers, who directed both the canceled production of “I’m Back Now” in Cleveland and the canceled production of “Paradise Blue” in Los Angeles, used similar language in an Instagram post about the two experiences, citing “white supremacy theater making culture.” Both of those theaters declined to comment beyond their written statements.Simpson, the playwright who pulled the rights for “I’m Back Now” from the Cleveland Play House, said she had decided to take that step after Ayers withdrew from the production over the theater’s response to an actor who said she had been sexually assaulted in an elevator at the theater’s artist housing.“To put it simply: if the health, safety and well-being of people working on my play is in question, then there’s no reason for the play to happen,” Simpson said. “I could no longer trust that the theater was going to take care of the people putting on my show.”Simpson said she’s not sure what will happen next with “I’m Back Now,” because it was commissioned by the Cleveland Play House, and this was to be its first production. The play is about three generations of Cleveland residents, including a historical figure named Sara Lucy Bagby, who was the last person forced to return to slavery under the Fugitive Slave Act.“You want the production, and you want to make it possible, and many of us are taught to be so grateful for that and to ignore things that may bother us,” Simpson said. “I didn’t ever imagine having to pull the rights.” More

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      The Oscars’ Andrea Riseborough Controversy, Explained

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      You’ve got questions about the surprise best-actress nominee, and our awards columnist has the answers (and a few more questions).The seismic Will Smith slap? The jaw-dropping “La La Land”-“Moonlight” mix-up? You can have ’em. I like my Oscar controversies like I like my “Curb Your Enthusiasm” plot lines: small, petty and a little bit deranged.That’s why I’ve been gripped by all the new developments surrounding Andrea Riseborough, who managed a surprise best-actress nomination last month that quickly turned from boon to boondoggle. It’s the story everyone in Hollywood is talking about, though you’d be forgiven for wondering what exactly has gone down or why any of it matters. With that in mind, let’s see if I can find the answers to your questions:Who is Andrea Riseborough?The 41-year-old Brit is a real actor’s actor, the sort of committed thespian who is well-respected by her peers but has mostly flown under the pop-cultural radar. Without even clocking that it was the same actress, you might have seen Riseborough playing Nicolas Cage’s wife in the hallucinogenic “Mandy”; seducing Emma Stone in “Battle of the Sexes”; covering up an accidental death in an episode of “Black Mirror”; or exploring a ruined Earth with Tom Cruise in “Oblivion.”Because Riseborough has played such a wide variety of roles without developing a tangible star persona, she is often described as a “chameleon” or even “unrecognizable,” which is Hollywood-speak for an actress who doesn’t wear eye makeup. Still, the woman is damn castable: She appeared in four movies last year alone, including “To Leslie,” the tiny indie at the heart of this Oscar controversy. Spot the chameleonic Riseborough: Clockwise from top left, in “Oblivion,” “Mandy,” “Black Mirror” and “Battle of the Sexes.”What is “To Leslie”?Directed by Michael Morris, “To Leslie” stars Riseborough as the title character, a hard-drinking West Texan who won the lottery years ago but has blown through her money and torpedoed her relationships in the time since. As her frustrated family and friends wonder what to do with the belligerent Leslie, big questions are bandied about: Is it better to let an addict hit rock bottom or to extend a helping hand? Does there ever come a time when severing family ties should be done for your own good? And hey, is that Stephen Root, the stapler nerd from “Office Space,” playing a leather-daddy biker? (Alongside a glowering Allison Janney, no less!)The film debuted at South by Southwest last March alongside a much more high-profile Oscar contender, “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” and though “To Leslie” received mostly positive reviews, it earned less than $30,000 during its October release. In a year when many specialty films struggled to find an audience in theaters, that box office total was still so low that Riseborough’s co-star, the podcaster Marc Maron, accused the “To Leslie” distributor, Momentum Pictures, of “gross incompetence” on Twitter, then blasted the studio for failing to submit the film for awards consideration by most industry guilds. That sort of negligence might make people want to take matters into their own hands … but we’ll get to that.How is Riseborough’s performance?Though Leslie is a scrappy slip of a person, Riseborough makes a lot of big choices while playing her. It’s a pugnacious, eccentric performance, and though I’m an on-the-record fan of maximalist acting, I should let you know that if this were measured on a scale of 1 (utter naturalism) to 10 (Kristen Wiig as Liza Minnelli trying to turn off a lamp), Riseborough would be pulling an awfully high number.In other words, it’s the sort of big, actressy transformation that awards voters flock to like catnip, and if someone like Charlize Theron or Michelle Williams had de-glammed to play Leslie, there likely would have been Oscar buzz from the beginning. But without box office success or a big name, Riseborough appeared to be a non-starter.What was unusual about her Oscar campaign?A typical Oscar race plays out like a couture-clad season of “Squid Game,” where a large number of hopefuls are winnowed down to a surviving few. To stay in the conversation until the very end, it helps to win critics awards and earn nominations at televised awards shows, and Riseborough lagged on both counts: She hadn’t mustered much more than an Independent Spirit Award nomination and had no deep-pocketed distributor ready to buy For Your Consideration ads on her behalf. By most pundits’ estimation, she was not a serious contender, nor even an on-the-bubble dark horse.Interviews With the Oscar NomineesKerry Condon: An ardent animal lover, the supporting actress Oscar nominee for “The Banshees of Inisherin” said that she channeled grief from her dog’s death into her performance.Michelle Yeoh: The “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star, nominated for best actress, said she was “bursting with joy” but “a little sad” that previous Asian actresses hadn’t been recognized.Angela Bassett: The actress nearly missed the announcement because of troubles with her TV. She tuned in just in time to find out that she was nominated for her supporting role in “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Austin Butler: In discussing his best actor nomination, the “Elvis” star said that he wished Lisa Marie Presley, who died on Jan. 12, had been able to celebrate the moment with him.But during the second week of January, just days before voting for the Oscar nominations began, a cadre of movie stars suddenly took to social media on Riseborough’s behalf. Edward Norton was the first big booster, telling his two million Twitter followers that Riseborough gave “the most fully committed, emotionally deep … physically harrowing performance I’ve seen in a while.” The next day, Gwyneth Paltrow announced on Instagram that “Andrea should win every award there is and all the ones that haven’t been invented yet.”As the week wore on, at least two dozen more celebrities climbed aboard the Riseborough Railroad — from A-listers like Amy Adams, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Aniston to random stowaways like Jenny McCarthy and Tan France — and award watchers started to wonder what the hell was going on. The answer that emerged is that a late-breaking campaign had been waged by Riseborough’s manager, Jason Weinberg, and the actress Mary McCormack, who is married to Morris, the “To Leslie” director, to get the film in front of as many of their famous industry friends as possible.Riseborough, opposite Owen Teague in “To Leslie,” wasn’t even a dark-horse contender until mid-January. Momentum Pictures“The movie cannot afford any FYC ads, so this letter and invitation will have to do instead!” McCormack wrote in one of her mass emails, which were published by Vanity Fair. In a later missive, she said movies like “To Leslie” were an endangered species in need of support, writing, “I worry that unless we all support small independent filmmaking, it’ll just get eaten up by Marvel movies and go away forever.”With those entreaties, McCormack, Weinberg and Riseborough assembled a starry battalion of boosters that eventually included even her best actress competitor Cate Blanchett, who gave Riseborough a shout-out during her televised acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards. (This begs the question: Would Lydia Tár have been Team Riseborough? I don’t think the fictional conductor could ever bring herself to endorse a movie about West Texas — they eat too much barbecue there — though I could imagine a scene where she receives McCormack’s mass email, grimaces and then orders an underling to delete it.)Why were people so upset?This was hardly the first time that a contender had taken Oscar promotion into her own hands: Who can forget Melissa Leo’s iconic “Consider” ad campaign, in which the eventual Oscar winner donned furs and posed among pillars like a Blackglama model prowling Hearst Castle? But Riseborough’s team bypassed the FYC-ad industrial complex entirely, opting to wage a weeklong war powered mostly by word of mouth instead of an expensive, multi-month campaign that would have involved round tables, parties, red-carpet appearances, film-festival tributes and endless press hits.It was an unprecedented awards-season gambit, and it worked: When the presenter Riz Ahmed read Riseborough’s name out loud during the Jan. 24 announcement of the Oscar nominations, the journalists in attendance gasped, giggled and oohed like a scandalized sitcom audience. They knew that Riseborough had just pulled off something crazy, and it didn’t take long before rival awards strategists began working the phones, suggesting that her grass-roots campaign may have run afoul of Oscar rules.And as the Riseborough surge sunk in, her surprise nomination was weighed against the snubs of the “Woman King” star Viola Davis and the “Till” lead Danielle Deadwyler: If those two Black actresses had been nominated alongside the “Everything Everywhere All at Once” star Michelle Yeoh, as many pundits were expecting, it would have been the first time in Oscar history that the best actress race featured a majority of women of color.Viola Davis’s performance in “The Woman King” was snubbed in the nominations.Sony Pictures, via Associated PressIn an essay for The Hollywood Reporter published Tuesday, the “Woman King” director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, did not mention Riseborough by name but alluded to the “social capital” that had helped propel her to a nomination. “Black women in this industry, we don’t have that power,” Prince-Bythewood wrote. “There is no groundswell from privileged people with enormous social capital to get behind Black women. There never has been.”Did the campaign break any rules?In a statement released on Jan. 27, the academy announced it would review the campaign procedures of the year’s nominees to make sure none of its guidelines were violated. Though Riseborough and “To Leslie” weren’t mentioned specifically, a reference to grass-roots campaigns in the statement all but confirmed that her nomination was the subject of investigation.Which aspects of the campaign might have earned scrutiny? Online sleuths noticed that a slew of copy-paste phrases — including the description of “To Leslie” as “a small film with a giant heart” — had appeared in social-media posts from the unlikely likes of Mia Farrow, Meredith Vieira and Joe Mantegna. And there was an eyebrow-raising Instagram post from the actress Frances Fisher, soon to be seen tightening Kate Winslet’s corset in the “Titanic” rerelease, who encouraged voters to select Riseborough because “Viola, Michelle, Danielle & Cate are a lock,” though it’s generally forbidden to mention specific competitors in that way.As the controversy began to heat up, wild rumors flew that Riseborough’s nomination could be rescinded. Puck News even wondered, “Was the Andrea Riseborough Oscar Campaign Illegal?” — a headline so breathless that you’d half-expect someone like Paltrow to be hauled before The Hague as an accomplice. (Hey, if you can’t lock someone up for selling jade vagina eggs, maybe they could be arrested for the lesser charge of Oscar meddling. Isn’t that how they got Al Capone?)Have Oscar nominations ever been rescinded before?Rarely, but the last two times it happened, the cause was improper campaigning. In 2014, the academy rescinded Bruce Broughton’s extremely “huh?” original-song nomination from the obscure faith-based film “Alone Yet Not Alone” because he’d leaned on his influence as a former academy governor when soliciting consideration. And in 2017, the academy yanked the nomination for the “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” sound mixer Greg P. Russell because he had engaged in “telephone lobbying.” It was tempting, then, to wonder if a Riseborough rebuke might change the entire makeup of the best actress race: After all, the Emmys rescinded Peter MacNicol’s 2016 nomination for guest actor in a comedy after learning he had appeared in too many “Veep” episodes to qualify, and then his replacement, the “Girls” guest star Peter Scolari, actually went on to win in the category. But even if the academy had seen fit to give Riseborough the hook, there would be no one to take her place. According to the academy’s bylaws, the race would simply be reduced to the remaining four nominees.So what happens now?On the last day of January, the academy’s chief executive, Bill Kramer, released another statement about the investigation, and though this statement did mention the “To Leslie” awards campaign by name, it concluded that Riseborough’s nomination would not be rescinded. “However, we did discover social media and outreach campaigning tactics that caused concern,” Kramer wrote. “These tactics are being addressed with the responsible parties directly.”It’s unclear who those parties are: The academy didn’t name names, Riseborough hasn’t given an interview since the morning of the nominations, and Fisher’s Instagram post was still up last time I checked. But even if the terms of the scolding are unclear, the far-reaching effects of Riseborough’s curveball campaign have the potential to change the way we think of awards season.For one, a new spotlight has been put on the academy’s vaunted diversity efforts: Is it enough to simply recruit more members of color when so many of the voters remain obstinate, older white people who, for example, told Prince-Bythewood that they’d had no interest in seeing her movie? Of the four acting categories, the best-actress race has proved most hostile to recognizing people of color, and that won’t change until voters recognize the biases they hold when determining whose stories matter.But it also means that next season, just when we think the amount of viable Oscar contenders has shrunk to almost five, a surprise could come from nowhere that completely changes the race. Riseborough pioneered a risky new tactic that other would-be contenders could use to slingshot themselves back into viability. All they’ll need is patience — well, and an improbably starry Rolodex that hopefully has little overlap with Riseborough’s. After all, if Winslet has already called Riseborough “the greatest female performance onscreen I have ever seen in my life,” will we believe her when she says the same thing next year about M3gan? More

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      Nonbinary “& Juliet” Performer Opts Out of Gendered Tony Awards

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      Justin David Sullivan of “& Juliet” decided to abstain from consideration and urged awards shows to “expand their reach.”A principal performer in the new Broadway musical “& Juliet” has withdrawn from consideration for the Tony Awards rather than compete in a gendered category, shining a renewed spotlight on the question of whether major awards should continue to have separate categories for men and women.The performer, Justin David Sullivan, is trans nonbinary and uses the pronouns he, she and they. In the pop-song-fueled musical, which imagines an alternative to “Romeo and Juliet” in which Juliet does not die, Sullivan plays May, one of Juliet’s best friends. May — an adolescent, like Juliet — is still figuring things out.The Tony Awards, like the Oscars and the Emmys, have separate acting categories for men and for women. The Grammy Awards eliminated many gendered categories as part of a consolidation in 2012, and the Obie Awards, which honor Off and Off Off Broadway work, have long had nongendered categories.Sullivan, whose performance has been generally well-received, was among many people who could have been nominated as a featured performer in a musical. But those categories, like all the Tony acting categories, are gendered, and by opting out of the contest altogether, Sullivan puts public pressure on the awards.“I felt I had no choice but to abstain from being considered for a nomination this season,” Sullivan said in a statement on Wednesday. “I hope that award shows across the industry will expand their reach to be able to honor and award people of all gender identities.”The Tony Awards have accepted Sullivan’s position, meaning that Sullivan will not appear on the list of Tony-eligible performers considered by nominators at the end of the season. “Per Justin David Sullivan’s request to the Tony Administration Committee, they opted to withdraw themselves from eligibility,” Tony Award Productions said in a statement.Sullivan is not the first nonbinary performer to make such a move. Asia Kate Dillon, who played Malcolm in a production of “Macbeth” last season, asked not to be considered in either the actor or actress categories. That move did not become public at the time but was confirmed by a Tony Awards spokeswoman on Wednesday.This season, there will be at least one Tony-eligible nonbinary performer: J. Harrison Ghee, who stars in the new musical “Some Like It Hot,” will be considered for possible nomination in the leading actor category, the Tony Awards administration committee said on Wednesday. The committee, which determines eligibility categories for shows and artists, was following a request from the show’s producers.Ghee, whose performance has drawn strong reviews and who is considered likely to receive a Tony nomination, plays a musician who initially identifies as male but starts dressing as a woman to escape the mob, and by the end of the show has a more fluid identity.“I’m not going to put myself on this pedestal like, ‘I need it to change today,’” Ghee told The Daily Beast in a recent interview when asked about this season’s Tony Awards categories. “I never go into things expecting to be the person that changes everything. I’m just showing up and meeting the moment.”Tony Awards administrators have quietly been talking about whether to change the gendered nature of their acting awards — awards for designers and directors are not gendered — but it is not clear if, when or how they might do so. There has long been concern that such a change would make it even harder for performers to win the industry’s top honor.“We recognize that the current acting categories are not fully inclusive, and we are currently in discussion about how to best adjust them to address this,” Tony Award Productions said in a statement. “Unfortunately, we are still in process on this and our rules do not allow us to make changes once a season has begun. We are working thoughtfully to ensure that no member of our community feels excluded on the basis of gender identity in future seasons.”The Outer Critics Circle, which grants awards for work both on and Off Broadway, said this year that it would eliminate gendered categories. Several regional theater award competitions, including the Helen Hayes Awards in Washington, the Barrymore Awards in Philadelphia and the Jeff Awards in Chicago, have eliminated gender-specific awards categories. More

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      Book Review: ‘Reckoning,’ by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

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      Writing now as V, the creator of “The Vagina Monologues” tackles racism, colonialism and sexual violence in a raw and free-associative collection.RECKONING, by V (formerly Eve Ensler)Way before #MeToo — not that it’s a contest — there was Eve Ensler, shouting all the way up into the cheap seats. Her breakthrough 1996 play, “The Vagina Monologues,” eventually performed by a rotating cast of celebrities, amplified stories of rape and abuse and helped de-taboo the female anatomy. Two years after that success she founded V-Day, which has raised piles of money to fight violence against women and girls around the world: Galentine, with gravitas.The writer identifies so strongly with the letter “V” that she has taken it as her new name, she announces in a characteristically raw and free-associative memoir, “Reckoning.” This is a gesture that seems — like most of what she has done in a long career — both performative and potent. “V” stands for “vagina,” “V” stands for “victory,” “V” stands for “peace” (we’ll forget about the canned vegetable drink and the old NBC series about aliens wearing human masks), and for Generation Y on social media, a “V” hand signal has become as popular as the thumbs up was for boomers, the former Ensler’s generation. “I am older now,” she laments. “Irrelevant in the cult/ure of youth, followers and TikTok.”“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple,” the English poet Jenny Joseph wrote (to her eventual consternation), and on the back cover of “Reckoning” its rechristened author stands in a fuchsia caftan, raising arms in a V-shape to a rainbowed, sunsetted sky. A little cornball maybe, like a motivational desk calendar in a mall gift shop, but having survived incest, alcoholism, uterine cancer and the occasional mixed review, V, who will turn 70 in May, just Does. Not. Care. She has plenty of fuchsia left to give.For those familiar with Ensler’s work, much of “Reckoning” will feel like a jagged replay of her core stories; amply represented are transcripts of speeches she’s delivered at the conferences and forums where she’s become an honored guest, or pieces previously published in places like The Guardian. She processed her experience fighting cancer in a previous, more humorous memoir, “In the Body of the World” (2013), which was also made into a stage show, and the post-9/11 world in “Insecure at Last” (2006).Now she is examining a term that has become ubiquitous to the point of cliché in American discourse since the murder of George Floyd. For V, as before, the political is intensely personal.Her father’s horrific molestations, which began when she was 5, are further detailed; in what is perhaps the consummate therapy exercise, she expands on the apology she wrote on his behalf in another book. She reveals more of her mother’s complicity by indifference — “I needed her milky breasts. I got cigarette smoke instead” — and her posthumous bequeathal of a musty brown envelope (“Does pain have a smell?” V wonders) with a picture inside of the author as a baby, mysteriously bruised and bloodied. “I spent an entire childhood ducking, fists permanently raised like a boxer, quick but never fast enough, darting, panicked, frenetic, unbearably anxious,” she remembers. “My body was never my body.”In apparent refutation of the patriarchy V wants passionately to upend, “Reckoning” obeys no conventional chronology or form. It’s collaged together with concepts — the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, for example, is linked to birds falling from the skies in 2020 — and exhibits a woman drawn inexorably, as if in repetition compulsion, to sites of even worse suffering than her youth. It’s a kind of Choose Your Own Abomination, from Covid to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt to Congo, where the author has done humanitarian work and tells of murdered infants and children, repeated rape and even forced cannibalism.“How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?” she wonders in an essay that was originally written for Glamour. Contemplating the ISIS sex market, she imagines “crates of AK-47s, falling from the skies” and “breasted warriors rising in armies for life.”I think V underestimates herself; the jump-cut style she’s refined for decades is actually perfectly suited to people who get their news from TikTok, and her rhythmic singling out of particular words — which she calls “trains traveling through a lush countryside”— presaged hashtag activism.Along the long highway of her argument here, that readers should wake the heck up to injustice and suffering, poems pop up, like little rest stops. “Think of your luxuries, your cell phones/as corpses,” she writes of the mass rapes that occur near coltan mines, which are tapped to manufacture electronic devices. In a section that graphically recalls how AIDS ravaged friends and colleagues, she promises Richard Royal, a collaborator on a magazine called Central Park, that she will not write a poem about the budding trees; he hated pathetic fallacy and echoed Adorno that there is no poetry since Auschwitz. So after his death, in winking homage, she versifies instead his medical woes.“One is always failing at writing,” V acknowledges, in a sentiment any writer understands. And indeed “Reckoning” is, if not a failure, kind of a bloody mess, but defiantly, provocatively, maybe intentionally so. It exhorts readers to confront the worst and ugliest, pleads for progress and peace, and provokes admiration for its resilient, activist author. V shall overcome, someday.RECKONING | By V (formerly Eve Ensler) | Illustrated | 272 pp. | Bloomsbury | $28 More