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      5 Monologues, Each a Showcase for Asian American Actors Over 60

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      “Out of Time” at the Public Theater is intended to showcase the talents of older actors. “People want to dismiss your stories,” the show’s director says. Not here.They might be asked to play a person lying in bed, dying of a stroke, or someone’s horrible mother, or a beloved grandparent struggling with dementia.“Commercially speaking, ‘old Asian lady’ is a huge amount of my opportunity,” the actor Natsuko Ohama said recently. “I like being ‘old Asian lady.’ But it has its limitations.”The director Les Waters became even more acutely interested in those kinds of limitations as he was watching a dance performance choreographed by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker at the Skirball Center in 2020. The dancers in it, he recalled, were “older than usual.” He was struck by what he saw.Waters, who most recently directed Lucas Hnath’s “Dana H.” on Broadway, and Mia Katigbak, the co-founder of the National Asian American Theater Company, had met a few years back at a festival and had agreed to work together at some point. Three years later, they were together at dinner, and Waters could not help but share what he called “an insane directorial megalomaniac’s vision.”What if there was a show that started at night, ran until the morning, and featured a succession of talented older actors telling stories — demonstrating just how much they were capable of?“Out of Time,” which began performances Feb. 15 at the Public Theater, is not quite as ambitious as that original vision. But it is intended to showcase the talents of older actors all the same. It will feature five performers delivering five new monologues — centered on themes like memory, parenthood, and identity — in a show that will run roughly 150 minutes. All the playwrights and all the actors are Asian American. And all the performers are over 60.Ohama is performing a 40-minute monologue by the playwright Sam Chanse.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesKubota will perform Naomi Iizuka’s monologue, about a man much like the playwright’s father.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesIt is a first, officials at the Public maintain, even if the first is a tad specific: The first production in New York theater to be written by five Asian American playwrights for Asian American actors over the age of 60.“This is to say: ‘Older people in the theater exist,’” Waters, 69, said of the production’s purpose. “We’re here, we’re underused and we have experience.”“As an old person myself, I find people want to dismiss your stories — I did it to my parents all the time,” he added.“Hyper-consciousness” in casting these days means you’ll often see one old person featured in an ensemble, making for “its own kind of tokenism,” said Katigbak, who is 67.“This project addresses that,” she added, “because it centers the old character, the old actor.”The message will be purposefully reinforced by the fact that the actors will be giving long, demanding monologues, some of which run more than 40 minutes and approach 5,000 words.In her monologue, Anna Ouyang Moench, who wrote the 2019 Off Broadway play, “Mothers,” captures a grieving documentary filmmaker dealing with both personal loss and professional rejection.Naomi Iizuka’s piece features an elderly Japanese man who loves Scotch and hates jazz, while Sam Chanse introduces audiences to a novelist who is giving a speech at her alma mater despite (or in spite of) having apparently been canceled by the students she is addressing.“We’ve always had limitations — at every age — just being Asian American,” Leong said.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe playwrights also include Jaclyn Backhaus, whose breakout work “Men on Boats” was a 2015 Off Broadway hit; and Mia Chung, whose “Catch as Catch Can” will return next season, after a 2018 New York premiere.Waters and Katigbak said the playwrights were not given specific prompts, except that their monologues should be “of the moment.” Given that they were created during the pandemic, isolation — and an examination of how loneliness metastasizes and manifests when family and friends all but abandon you — pervades almost all of the works.In a round-table discussion earlier this month, the actors said that living through the last few years has made them intimately familiar with the feeling.“My mother, who turned 97 in August, sits at home and watches TV all day because all her friends are gone,” said Glenn Kubota, who will appear in Iizuka’s monologue. “To see what she has to do on a daily basis just to amuse herself is really eye opening. I’m getting a glimpse of what maybe I will be facing 10, 20, years from now.”Many of the works are also at least somewhat autobiographical. And a few of the playwrights, who are all younger than 60, have created characters that resemble one of their parents. In some cases, in the process of acting, editing and rehearsing, the characters have evolved as their creators have reflected more deeply on themselves and those close to them.The monologue by Iizuka, whose well-regarded “36 Views” opened at the Public almost two decades ago, features a Japanese man who, in peeling back the layers of his life, recounts the time a bomb fell on his house leading him to wander around Tokyo and end up inside a candy shop.Iizuka said the character is strongly influenced by her father, who died in December 2020. “It’s about trying to find joy and pleasure, but also running up against your own mortality,” she said.She shared photos of him with the show’s creative team, who in turn provided them to Kubota. Iizuka said the actor has an “uncanny ability” to capture her father’s “feisty, tart-tongued humor.”“I’ve found this process incredibly nourishing,” she said.Kubota noted that the script had changed considerably — from a first draft he felt was filled with anger to the one he is now performing that mostly expresses love.“Hopefully I can do her work justice,” Kubota said, “because I’m going to be talking about her father in front of all of these people.”As co-founder of the National Asian American Theater Company, Katigbak helped get the project off the ground.Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“Every time I work on something new,” said Wolf, “I do think about generations of minority performers who, for whatever reason, were marginalized.”Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesSince the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic roughly two years ago, the number of documented episodes of race-based hate toward people of Asian descent have soared, leaving Asian Americans in New York and beyond to endure what has at times been daily dread about their own safety and also the well-being of their older parents.The monologues mostly avoid racial animus and lean toward more universal themes. Even still, Katigbak emphasized that in “Out of Time,” audiences will hear the universal stories through Asian American voices — a rarity in the theater, even in 2022.“We’ve always had limitations — at every age — just being Asian American,” Page Leong, who last performed at the Public in “Too Noble Brothers” in 1997, said of the roles that come to members of her community. “It’s also connected to being relegated to being the surgeon or the lawyer.”Rita Wolf, who has had roles in Richard Nelson’s recent plays, including “The Michaels,” said, “So much of it is about opportunity.” She added: “Every time I work on something new, I do think about generations of minority performers who, for whatever reason, were marginalized. And I think about how they did not have opportunities to do something like this.”Ohama is performing Chanse’s work, “Disturbance Specialist,” which recently clocked in at 40 minutes and 21 seconds and 4,998 words. She joked about doing such a piece at her “advanced age,” since it takes hours and hours of memorization.“When you are our ages, life is there inside of you, so we don’t have to worry about the acting so much,” Ohama said. “But what is concerning to the older actor generally is: Do I know my lines?”“We have dedicated ourselves to this art form,” she added, “and the thing about us older people is we don’t get a chance to show that very often.” More

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      in Music

      It’s Never Too Late to Record Your First Album

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      “It’s Never Too Late” is a new series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.One day a couple years back, the woman who has long cleaned Russ Ellis’s house in Berkeley, Calif., showed up with a new helper. Mr. Ellis did not think to ask her name.Perhaps he forgot. Or maybe the recovering academic — a celebrated architecture professor at the University of California, Berkeley, later a vice chancellor — had other things on his mind. Whatever the case, the lapse rattled him.“Russell Ellis, your father’s mother was born into slavery,” he said to himself. “You have the right to invisibilize no one.”He not only learned the woman’s name then and there — Eliza — but pledged to sing it next time she came by. With that pledge, something strange shook loose in him.“A song walked right in. Eliiiiiza. Eliiiiiiiiiza. And then the urge kept coming.”Calling on experienced musician friends to help, Mr. Ellis spent the following year recording “Songs from My Garden,” his first-ever album. He was 85. (He turned 86 in June.) It consists of 11 original songs, released online with an extremely local label, in a variety of genres.The experience delighted him at a new level — he got to explore all new terrain, with a creative abandon he’d never known. Then, with that, he was delighted to conclude his brief recording career. (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesQ: Tell me about your life before the “Eliza” moment.A: I never bit down on any one thing. Over the years I’ve been an athlete, a parent, a friend, a lover. “In the golden sandbox” — that’s how I think of my life in California. As a kid growing up in the working-class Black world, you wanted a secure job at the post office or teaching school. But doing new things has always been part of my life.After retiring, I got into stone carving, then modeling clay, then steel work and painting. Sometimes I’d see former colleagues from Berkeley and they were still kind of wearing the clothes of the old office. I couldn’t have been happier to let go of all that.How hard was it to start writing music for the first time?Not hard at all. The songs just started coming, easily and naturally. I have always been a laborer, but I suddenly had the experience of a muse saying, “I gotcha, I’m taking over.”What did it feel like, doing this entirely new thing?Having that muse — it’s like I was accompanied by another self, more sophisticated and supple than I was. I’m an empiricist. But if I had to romanticize, I’d say it was a spirit that came to visit. It was one of the best experiences of my life. What a joy to have stuff flow like that.One side effect: You know how you get a song in your head sometimes? I now get whole orchestrated movements. New doors still open as you age. Along with creaky limbs, interesting things happen, too.Mr. Ellis at his home in Berkeley, Calif. “I think doing the album made me a kinder person,” he said. Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesHow did you learn about recording and songwriting?I’m kind of connected to the musical world through my children and their friends. I exploited any contacts I had: Would you mind helping me with this for free? Everyone was very generous.Were you nervous, taking the first steps into this new world?There are benefits to age. Not a lot, but some. I’m too old to get nervous. And nothing was riding on this.What kinds of challenges did you encounter at the beginning?The hardest thing was the blues. Recording my song “Night Driver (The Next-to-Last Old-Ass Black Man’s Bragging Blues)” was intimidating. Singing the blues ain’t just something you stand up and do. You have to be in it, you have to mean it, you have to deliver it in a way that people get into it themselves.How did this album change you?A big surprise to me about aging is that you do keep changing. I think doing the album made me a kinder person. Having my kids’ clear respect and support with it — it helped me feel better about myself, and when you feel better about yourself, you feel better about other people.In one of his many pursuits, Russ Ellis was a U.C.L.A. track star. In 1956, Mr. Ellis, second from left, ran in the 400-meter heats of the U.S. Olympic trials in Los Angeles.Hy Peskin, via Getty ImagesAlso, I was onstage for a living, teaching classes for 150 students, then representing the university in my administrative role. Before that I was a track star at U.C.L.A., from ’54 to ’58. If I ran a good race, my stroll across campus was an act of celebrity.All that stage time was not good for me. I felt somewhat unreal. I realized, when I finished this album, that was my last expression of my desire for it. I have been happy to get offstage.What’s next for you?My wife is suffering some significant health problems. It’s normal trouble, as they say — but it’s not trivial. Right now my life is about caregiving.What would you tell someone who’s feeling stuck in their life?Do something that involves other people. Even one other person. Getting out of a groove — sometimes you just need company.There’s this fantasy that creativity is something you do alone, by candlelight. No! Do something with other people who are as genuinely interested as you are.Was Mr. Ellis nervous about his album? “There are benefits to age. Not a lot, but some,” he said. “I’m too old to get nervous.”Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesWhat do you wish you’d known about life when you were younger?That doesn’t involve sex?Life is shorter than you think and longer than you think. My two best friends are also Black men in their 80s. We marvel about our actuarial improbability. I’m happy to have used my time in so many different ways — ways that connected me to the world, to people.Were there experiences before the album that helped prepare you for it?Over the last 10 years I’ve actually had a bit of an art career. In the process I discovered that I wasn’t as vulnerable as I thought. At one point I had a piece in a group show, at a gallery. I walked by it just as a guy was saying, “this painting sucks.” And I didn’t die! I actually went over and, without telling him I was the artist, asked why he said that. Turned out he was a painter, and he told me his reasons. I learned a whole bunch.Any other lessons you can pass on?Take note of what’s interesting in your life. Don’t keep every little scrap of paper. But take note.We’re looking for people who decide that it’s never too late to switch gears, change their life and pursue dreams. Should we talk to you or someone you know? Share your story here. More

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      in Theater

      When an Actor Calls With a Poem to Share

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookWhen an Actor Calls With a Poem to ShareA Paris playhouse has developed a program of one-on-one “consultations,” delivered by its artists while the theater is closed.The singer Dimitra Kontou performing this week for an elderly patient at the Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a suburb of Paris.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesFeb. 25, 2021, 3:31 a.m. ETPARIS — “I am calling you for a poetic consultation,” said a warm voice on the telephone. “It all starts with a very simple question: How are you?”Since March, almost 15,000 people around the world have received a call like this. These conversations with actors, who offer a one-on-one chat before reading a poem selected for the recipient, started as a lockdown initiative by a prominent Paris playhouse, the Théâtre de la Ville, in order to keep its artists working while stages remained dark.It’s free: Anyone can sign up for a time slot, or make a gift of a call to someone. The exchange generally starts with simple questions about the recipient’s life, then ranges in any direction; after 20 to 25 minutes, the actor introduces the poem.As coronavirus restrictions in France stretch on, the program has become such a hit that the Théâtre de la Ville now offers consultations in 23 languages, including Farsi, its latest addition. It has also been expanded to encompass different subjects and formats: Since December, the actors have held consultations at a hospital and at emergency shelters run by the city of Paris.When Johanna White, the comedian who called me, asked how I was doing, I answered honestly. We may tell white lies to reassure loved ones, but there is no reason to skirt the truth with a kind stranger. White and I shared our pandemic coping strategies and talked about the ways in which theater has adapted in the past year.And then White picked my poem: “Incantation,” by the Polish-American poet Czeslaw Milosz. “Human reason is beautiful and invincible,” she began after a pause.A year into the pandemic, I’ll admit I had my doubts about the healing power of yet another replacement for live performance. Yet when I hung up the phone, I felt a little lighter. White, who has a rich, deep voice, was adept at putting an audience of one at ease, and Milosz’s words held hope.“Through the phone it can be intimate, because generally you’re isolated,” White, a trilingual voice actor, said in an interview the next day.The comedian Johanna White, who estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people around the world.Credit…via Théâtre de la Ville She estimates that in the past year, she has talked to between 400 and 500 people, from places including Wisconsin, Los Angeles, Chile and Niger. A man based in Beirut told her about local riots in which he had lost half of a hand; from Mexico, an 85-year-old woman shared her grief about being separated from her 92-year-old lover by pandemic-mandated rules.Consultations involve a great deal of improvisation, White said, including choosing a poem for a person you’ve only just met. “Each of us has our own method,” she added. “I file them by emotions, by feelings.”For the director of the Théâtre de la Ville, Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, the idea of individual consultations with actors didn’t come out of the blue. In 2002, when he was at the helm of the northern French theater La Comédie, in Reims, he initiated in-person sessions at a local bar. Passers-by could meet an artist and leave with a poetic “prescription” — a printed version of the poem that was read to them.Last February, he revived the concept at a Paris shopping mall, Italie Deux, where visitors could drop in for a chat between errands — and then the pandemic struck. The Théâtre de la Ville immediately pivoted to phone consultations. “We were ready,” Demarcy-Mota said in a phone interview this month.Other institutions have taken an interest in the program’s popularity. The Théâtre de la Ville has partnered with a handful of European playhouses, including the Teatro della Pergola in Florence and the Orkeny Theater in Budapest, to expand its roster of actors. Additionally, Demarcy-Mota and his team are in the process of holding phone training sessions with around 100 actors from nine African countries, including Benin and Mali, so theaters there can replicate the program.Demarcy-Mota acknowledged that the consultation format didn’t suit all stage actors. “Some were scared. You’re no longer performing while someone else watches: Instead, you’re in the position of listening to someone.” It involves a degree of psychology, White said, but “we’re not psychologists,” she added. “People need to feel that they’ve got a real person with them, that we’re in the same situation.”The Théâtre de la Ville now employs a total of 108 “consultants.” While most are actors, they also include singers, dancers and a handful of scientists, who share their knowledge via “scientific consultations” as part of a program started in December. (These are being offered only in French for now.)Most of the scientific consultations are also individual and take place over the phone, but the Théâtre de la Ville is testing group sessions over Zoom. Last week, I joined one with the astrophysicist Jean Audouze.To explain the relativity of time, Audouze suggested that when we talk via videoconference — that is, over electromagnetic waves — there is an infinitesimal delay between the moment someone speaks and the moment the other hears. “We’re all on our own time,” he said, something to bear in mind, perhaps, the next time a Zoom meeting descends into chaos.While remote sessions are the most virus-averse format, the Théâtre de la Ville also brought back in-person consultations this winter in partnership with public institutions. The Charles-Foix hospital in Ivry-sur-Seine, a Paris suburb, was the first to allow performers to come for conversations with staff members and patients. (Several other hospitals are scheduled to follow in the coming months.)Dimitra Kontou entertaining patients at the Charles-Foix hospital.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesThe actor Hugo Jasienski interacting with the patient Éliane Le Bras.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesDimitra Kontou, at the piano, with Simone Gouffe.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesOn a recent afternoon, the actor Hugo Jasienski and the singer and musician Dimitra Kontou went from room to room in a residential care building at the Charles-Foix for elderly patients, known as L’Orbe. As on the phone, each encounter led to a poem or, in Kontou’s case, a song.For some residents, especially those with dementia, the performances were adapted: Instead of asking questions, Kontou sang to them directly, in a transparent mask so they could see her mouth. Still, the music inspired interaction. At one point, a 97-year-old woman, Simone Gouffe, almost rose from her wheelchair and started singing, her voice powerful despite her slight frame.With other patients, the kind of conversations that flow so smoothly on the phone proved tricky to navigate. “What do you enjoy in life?” Jasienski asked one resident, Éliane Le Bras, 88. “Walking,” she said dryly. “But I can’t walk anymore.”Still, Le Bras lit up when the conversation turned to her great-grandchildren, and listened closely to a poem by the early 20th-century writer Anna de Noailles. “It’s nice,” she concluded. “A woman wrote this?”After the visit, Jasienski said that working on the consultations had been a unique experience for him as an actor. “The verdict lands immediately,” he said. “When you go back to the stage, you’ve learned a lot.”And while in some ways the consultations are more impromptu therapy than theater, now has been the right time for artists to embrace social responsibility, Demarcy-Mota said.“We need a new alliance between health care, theater, culture and education,” he said. “It’s time to take care of one another.”Dimitra Kontou’s uniform includes the logo of the Théâtre de la Ville.Credit…Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York TimesAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Music

      Tony Bennett Reveals He Has Alzheimer’s Disease

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Bennett Reveals He Has Alzheimer’s Disease“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” his wife, Susan, said. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”The singer Tony Bennett has announced that he has Alzheimer’s disease, writing on Twitter: “Life is a gift — even with Alzheimer’s.”Credit…Evan Agostini/Invision, via Associated PressFeb. 1, 2021Tony Bennett, the 94-year-old singer who has become a beloved interpreter of the American songbook, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, his wife, Susan, told AARP The Magazine this week.“Life is a gift — even with Alzheimer’s,” the singer tweeted on Monday morning. “Thank you to Susan and my family for their support.”Susan Bennett, and Tony Bennett’s eldest son, Danny, told the magazine that Bennett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s — a degenerative brain disease that causes memory loss, among other things — in 2016.According to the magazine, Bennett began showing symptoms in 2015. “Even his increasingly rare moments of clarity and awareness reveal the depths of his debility,” the article states. But it said that he had not experienced the disorientation that prompts some patients to wander off, or episodes of terror, rage or depression.Before the coronavirus pandemic, Bennett had continued to perform extensively. But backstage, relatives told the magazine, he could seem “mystified about his whereabouts.”“But the moment he heard the announcer’s voice boom ‘Ladies and gentlemen — Tony Bennett!’ he would transform himself into performance mode, stride out into the spotlight, smiling and acknowledging the audience’s applause,” the piece said.His wife, Susan, would watch nervously, worrying that he would forget a lyric. “I was a nervous frigging wreck,” she told the magazine. “Yet he always delivered!”The early signs came in 2015, she told the magazine, when he began forgetting musicians’ names onstage, and began stashing a list on the piano, she said. But he knew something was wrong and wanted to see a doctor, she said, and he learned he had Alzheimer’s in 2016.Susan Bennett said that he can still recognize family members, but the magazine reported that “mundane objects as familiar as a fork or a set of house keys can be utterly mysterious to him.”Bennett, who has had a seven-decade-long career, scored his first big hit in 1951, “Because of You.” In 1962 he recorded “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” which became his signature song. Long after other crooners had died or faded from the airwaves, Bennett experienced a resurgence in popularity: He won a Grammy for his 1994 album, “Tony Bennett: MTV Unplugged.” Since then, he has recorded duets with a string of notables including James Taylor, Sting and Amy Winehouse.He recorded an album with Lady Gaga in 2014, “Tony Bennett & Lady Gaga: Cheek to Cheek,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard’s Top 200 pop and rock chart. According to the AARP article, a follow-up album with Lady Gaga, which was recorded between 2018 and early 2020, will be released this spring.Lady Gaga was aware of Bennett’s condition when they were recording their most recent collaboration, the article said. In documentary footage of the sessions, Bennett rarely speaks, and offers one-word responses like “Thanks” or “Yeah.”But his appetite for all things musical remains robust. According to the magazine, he continues to rehearse a 90-minute set twice a week with his longtime pianist, Lee Musiker — and does so without any of the haltingness that can characterize his speech.More than five million Americans are living with Alzheimer’s, according to the Alzheimer’s Association, including one in 10 people age 65 or older. Symptoms may initially include repeating questions, getting lost in a familiar place or misplacing things, and may eventually progress to hallucinations, angry outbursts, and the inability to recognize family and friends or communicate at all. Alzheimer’s has no cure.Susan Bennett is serving as her husband’s caregiver.“I have my moments and it gets very difficult,” she told the magazine. “It’s no fun arguing with someone who doesn’t understand you.” But she added that they felt more fortunate than many other people living with Alzheimer’s.Bennett’s last public performance was in March at the Count Basie Center for the Arts in Red Bank, N.J. Before the coronavirus shut down live performances, he was touring often, singing a 90-minute set without cluing in audiences or critics that anything was amiss.“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” Susan Bennett told the magazine. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      in Movies

      Actors Sue SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Over Changes in Insurance

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best TV ShowsBest DanceBest TheatreBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyActors Sue SAG-AFTRA Health Plan Over Changes in InsuranceEd Asner, a seven-time Emmy winner, is the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit filed in Los Angeles on Tuesday; it includes nine other participants.Ed Asner, who is 91, would  lose coverage when SAG-AFTRA Health Plan changes take effect in 2021 because he will not reach a new earnings threshold, the lawsuit says.Credit…Rachel Luna/Getty ImagesBy More