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

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

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      in Television

      On TV, the Faces That Look Back at Us When We Come Out

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      Pattern Recognition is a series that looks at the building blocks of culture.Produced by Alicia DeSantis, Nick Donofrio, Gabriel Gianordoli, Jolie Ruben, Tala Safie and Josephine Sedgwick.Images: “Ellen” (ABC), “Dawson’s Creek” (WB), “This is Us” (NBC), “Seinfeld” (NBC), “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (WB), “Master of None” (Netflix), “The Golden Girls” (NBC), “Schitt’s Creek” (Pop TV), “My So-Called Life” (ABC), “All in the Family” (CBS), “BoJack Horseman” (Netflix), “Glee” (Fox), “Heartstopper” (Netflix), “The Office” (NBC), “The Jeffersons” (CBS), “Big Mouth” (Netflix), “Everything Sucks!” (Netflix), “Andi Mack” (Disney Channel), “Never Have I Ever” (Netflix), “Atypical” (Netflix), “Stranger Things” (Netflix), “Sense 8” (Netflix), “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina” (Netflix). More

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

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

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      in Movies

      Anne Heche, Actress Known for ’90s Film Roles, Dies at 53

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      Ms. Heche, who won a Daytime Emmy early in her career and whose films included “Donnie Brasco” and “Wag the Dog,” had been critically injured in a car crash.Anne Heche, an actress who was as well known for her roles in films like “Six Days, Seven Nights” and “Donnie Brasco” as for her personal life, which included a three-year romance with the comedian Ellen DeGeneres, died on Sunday in Los Angeles, nine days after she was in a devastating car accident there. She was 53.Her death was announced by a representative, Holly Baird, who said late Sunday in an email that Ms. Heche had been “peacefully taken off life support.”Ms. Heche was critically injured on Aug. 5 when a Mini Cooper she was driving crashed into a two-story home in the Mar Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles, causing a fire that took firefighters more than an hour to extinguish. Ms. Heche, who was alone in the car, sustained burns and a severe anoxic brain injury, caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain.A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police said the department was continuing to investigate whether drug use contributed to the accident.A statement released by her publicist on behalf of her family on Thursday night said Ms. Heche had remained in a coma at the Grossman Burn Center at West Hills Hospital in Los Angeles.“It has long been her choice to donate her organs, and she is being kept on life support to determine if any are viable,” the statement said.On Friday, a representative said Ms. Heche had been declared brain-dead on Thursday night.Ms. Heche was a soap opera star before she became known to movie audiences. In the late 1980s, soon after she graduated from high school, she joined the cast of the daytime drama “Another World,” where she played the good and evil twins Vicky Hudson and Marley Love. She won a Daytime Emmy Award in 1991 for outstanding younger actress in a drama series.By the mid-1990s, she was a rising star in Hollywood. She played Catherine Keener’s best friend in “Walking and Talking” (1996); Johnny Depp’s wife in “Donnie Brasco” (1997); a presidential aide in the political satire “Wag the Dog” (1997), with Dustin Hoffman and Robert De Niro; and a fashion magazine editor who crash-lands on a South Seas island in an airplane piloted by Harrison Ford in “Six Days, Seven Nights” (1998).Ms. Heche with Dustin Hoffman, left, and Robert De Niro in a scene from the movie “Wag the Dog” (1997).P. Caruso/New Line Cinema“Romantic comedies don’t get more formulaic than this bouncing-screwball valentine, but they don’t get much more delightful, either,” Rita Kempley wrote in her review of “Six Days, Seven Nights” in The Washington Post. “The same goes for Heche and Ford as squabbling opposites drawn together during this tropical adventure.”Ms. Heche began a relationship with Ms. DeGeneres in 1997, at a time when same-sex relationships in Hollywood were not fully accepted. The relationship became widely known in April of that year when they appeared, hand in hand, at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. A few days later, Ms. DeGeneres’s character on her sitcom, “Ellen,” came out as gay.Ms. Heche’s decision to reveal that she was in a lesbian relationship, The New York Times wrote, “confronted Hollywood with a highly delicate problem: how to deal with a gay actress whose career has been built on playing heterosexual roles.”After that relationship ended, Ms. Heche married and later divorced a man, Coleman Laffoon, with whom she had a son, Homer. She also had a son, Atlas Heche Tupper, from her relationship with the actor James Tupper.Remembering Anne Heche (1969-2022)The actress, who appeared in several popular Hollywood films and TV shows, died on Aug. 14, after being critically injured in a car accident.Obituary: Anne Heche started her career as a soap opera star on “Another World.” In the 1990s, she dated Ellen Degeneres, becoming one half of one of Hollywood’s most scrutinized couples.‘Donnie Brasco’: Heche starred in the 1997 gangster film as the wife of an F.B.I. agent who infiltrates a crime family. Read our review of the film.On Stage: The actress made her Broadway debut in 2002, in David Auburn’s Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Proof,” stepping into a coveted female role.Playing It Normal: In 2009, she spoke with The Times about her journey to success, facing professional downturns and making new starts.Complete information on her survivors was not immediately available.Ms. Heche told The New York Post in 2021 that she had been “blacklisted” in Hollywood because of her relationship with Ms. DeGeneres.“I didn’t do a studio picture for 10 years,” she was quoted as saying. “I was fired from a $10 million picture deal and did not see the light of day in a studio picture.”After she starred in “Six Days, Seven Nights” and in Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” as Marion Crane, the role originally played by Janet Leigh, leading roles in movies largely gave way to guest appearances on television shows like “Ally McBeal” and “Nip/Tuck.”She also starred in the short-lived sitcom “Men in Trees,” had recurring roles on “Everwood” and “Chicago P.D.” and landed a featured part on the HBO series “Hung,” which starred Thomas Jane as a male prostitute.Ms. Heche, right, with Ellen DeGeneres at a fund-raising dinner for the Human Rights Campaign in 1997. They began seeing each other at a time when same-sex relationships in Hollywood were not fully accepted.Win McNamee/ReutersShe appeared on Broadway in the play “Proof” from 2002 until it closed in 2003, then in the 2004 revival of “Twentieth Century,” the 1932 comedy about a Broadway producer (Alec Baldwin) who, as a passenger on the Twentieth Century Limited train, meets a former discovery, Lily Garland (Ms. Heche), who has become a Hollywood star. The role earned Ms. Heche a Tony Award nomination for best performance by a leading actress in a play.In his review in The Times, Ben Brantley wrote, “Her posture melting between serpentine seductiveness and a street fighter’s aggressiveness, her voice shifting between supper-club velvet and dime-store vinyl, Ms. Heche summons an entire gallery of studio-made sirens from the Depression era: Jean Harlow, the pre-mummified Joan Crawford and, yes, Carole Lombard, who famously portrayed Lily in Howard Hawks’s screen version of ‘Twentieth Century.’”In 2004, Ms. Heche was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for outstanding supporting actress in a mini-series or movie, for her performance in “Gracie’s Choice,” a TV film about a teenager faced with raising her half siblings after their drug-addicted mother is sent to prison.She appeared most recently in the films “The Vanished” (2020), a psychological thriller, and “13 Minutes” (2021), which centers on a tornado, as well as several episodes of the courtroom drama “All Rise.” Ms. Heche with Johnny Depp in “Donnie Brasco” (1997).PhotofestAnne Celeste Heche was born on May 25, 1969, in Aurora, Ohio, to Nancy and Donald Heche. Her father was an evangelical Christian and, it turned out, a closeted gay man. Her first acting role was in a New Jersey dinner theater production of “The Music Man,” which paid her $100 a week.In 1983, after her father died of AIDS, her mother became a Christian therapist and lectured on behalf of James Dobson’s organization Focus on the Family about “overcoming” homosexuality.Ms. Heche wrote in her 2001 memoir, “Call Me Crazy,” about being sexually abused by her father, and about her mother’s denial of that abuse. She said that when she called her mother after years of therapy to confront her about it, her mother ended the conversation by saying, “Jesus loves you, Anne,” before hanging up.Ms. Heche was critically injured on Aug. 5 when the car she was driving crashed into a two-story house in Los Angeles.Chris Delmas/AFP via Getty Images“People wonder why I am so forthcoming with the truths that have happened in my life,” Ms. Heche said in an interview with The Times in 2009. “And it’s because the lies that I have been surrounded with and the denial that I was raised in, for better or worse, bore a child of truth and love.”In 2018, she said she had been fired from a job at Miramax when she refused to give oral sex to Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced film magnate who founded the company with his brother, Bob, and who was accused of sexual assault by dozens of women. He was convicted of two felony sex crimes in 2020 and is serving a 23-year prison sentence.“If I wasn’t sexually abused as a child, I don’t know if I would have had the strength to stand up to Harvey — and many others, by the way,” she told the podcast “Allegedly … With Theo Von & Matthew Cole Weiss.” “It was not just Harvey, and I will say that.”Vimal Patel More

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      in Music

      The Gloriously Weird B-52’s Say Farewell to the Road

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      Forty-three years after their first album, the band that brought the world “Rock Lobster” and “Love Shack” is starting a tour for the last time.When the B-52’s played “Rock Lobster” on “Saturday Night Live” in January 1980, a few months after releasing their debut album, it was a lightning-strike moment for a generation of young misfits and oddballs.The band’s uninhibited dancing, statuesque wigs and absurdist lyrics embraced the ecstatic, and its kinetically rhythmic guitar, precise drumming and bursts of Farfisa organ ensured a good time. Many of their campy, catchy songs celebrated people who seemed to be happily dislocated or disconnected from known dimensions (“Planet Claire,” “Private Idaho”). Several of the band’s members were queer and all five considered themselves “freaks.” Over a period of decades, as they grew from a cult band to one with Top 40 hits — most notably “Love Shack” in 1989 — they discovered how many others identified the same way.“This eccentric, downright lovable quintet,” John Rockwell of The New York Times wrote in 1978, “provides about the most amusing, danceable experience in town.” The B-52’s sustained that vigor through seven studio albums and an EP, as well as the 1985 death of Ricky Wilson, one of rock’s most inventive guitarists. Their spirit can be heard in the work of a wide range of artists who followed, including Deee-Lite, Le Tigre, LCD Soundsystem and Dua Lipa.Culture made by and for misfits and oddballs is now a billion-dollar industry, but it wasn’t when the B-52’s played their first gig in 1977, in their Athens, Ga., hometown. Maybe that’s why, 45 years after they first played for a small number of friends, they’ve announced a farewell tour, which starts Aug. 20 in Vancouver and wraps with a three-night stand in Atlanta in November. It took a while, but the weirdos have won.In late July, the singers Fred Schneider, 70; Kate Pierson, 74; and Cindy Wilson, 65, gathered in a SoHo hotel suite for an 80-minute free-for-all punctuated by raucous laughter, as well as somber reflections. Schneider dispensed deadpan punch lines, Pierson spoke with hippie beneficence and Wilson talked movingly about the death of her brother, Ricky. Keith Strickland, 68, a drummer and guitarist who stopped touring with the band in 2012, added his thoughts in a phone interview later.“I call this our Cher-well tour,” Pierson said, a reference to the singer Cher, who has staged one “farewell” tour after another. “Never say never,” she added and shrugged.To her right, Schneider looked aghast and resolutely whispered a single word: “Never.”These are edited excerpts from the conversations.From left: The B-52’s, with Ricky Wilson on guitar and Strickland on drums in the early 1980s. Wilson died in 1985.Michael Ochs Archives, via Getty ImagesWhy did the band decide to quit touring?PIERSON We’re not quitting — we’re just moving on to the new phase of our lives, which is a documentary. We’ve worked hard on uncovering archival material, like Super 8 footage and photographs.SCHNEIDER We’ll still do shows, but no more touring. I love being onstage, but I got tired of people with cellphones not paying attention and blocking everyone behind them.PIERSON All in all, the digital thing was good for us. Having videos on YouTube exposed us to a new audience of young people. On “Rock Lobster,” they go nuts, freak-flag flying, crazy dancing, tearing off their clothes.SCHNEIDER I don’t know if I want them to tear off their clothes. Maybe just the younger ones.PIERSON The old ones too! Let’s see it all.If I told you in 1977, right before you played your first show, that in 45 years you’d be doing a farewell tour, would you have believed me?WILSON I know. That’s insane.STRICKLAND A band was just something to do, because in Athens, there was nothing else to do.SCHNEIDER It was a hobby. We’d jammed once or twice. We didn’t even have the money to buy guitar strings.PIERSON The miracle, to me, is that no one ever said, “Let’s start a band.” We just hung out with a group of friends who were —The Journey to Mainstream Success of the B-52’sNew wave’s most unapologetic loons conquered fans with their unusual mix of the avant-garde, fashion and party-friendly pop.Their Early Days: “What distinguishes the B-52’s is the sheer, driving danceability of the music,” The Times wrote of the band in 1978.‘The B-52’s’: Their debut album helped bring punk to the suburban kids. Here is a close look at the nine songs in it.‘Cosmic Thing’: With their seventh album and its hit single “Love Shack,” the group finally moved beyond cult status.Return of the Rock Lobsters: With “Funplex,” the band’s first studio release in 16 years, the B-52’s experimented with new sounds. One thing didn’t change: their trademark wigs.SCHNEIDER Freaks!PIERSON We’d go to a local disco, dress up and drive everyone else off the dance floors, flailing around and just being punks. People would clear away from us.SCHNEIDER After our first show, friends started asking us to play at their house. Finally, we played at Max’s Kansas City in New York. I guess anyone can play on a Monday night in December. [Laughter] We got $17.PIERSON Danny Beard, who put out our first 45, came to New York with us. He said, “Did you ask if they want us back?” So we ran upstairs and asked the booker, Deer France. She said, “Hell yeah.”SCHNEIDER Because we were like nothing they’d ever seen.PIERSON In the beginning, we were terrified. We looked fierce because we were so scared. We were each responsible for setting up onstage. I did the patch cords between the guitars and amps.SCHNEIDER I plugged everything in. [Laughter]PIERSON Fred would stand there and say, “Where’s the outlet?” until someone came and helped him.Soon after you started, a bunch of other great bands came out of Athens: R.E.M., Pylon, Love Tractor. Was it the cheap rents that allowed lots of Bohemians to flourish, as they did in New York?PIERSON Living in Athens was free and easy. We had jobs, sort of. I lived out in the country and had goats.SCHNEIDER I was meal delivery coordinator for the Council on Aging. You could rent an apartment in Athens for $60 a month. I think Kate paid $15 a month.PIERSON I was a paste-up artist on the local newspaper, and Cindy worked at the Whirly Q luncheonette counter. We started getting written up in all the magazines — New York Rocker, Interview — and we couldn’t afford to buy the magazines. We’d buy one copy and share it.At what point did you start to think, “Maybe this band is more than just a hobby”?PIERSON I knew something was happening when we played Hurrah in New York [in March 1979]. Ricky looked out the window and said, “Why is there such a long line outside?” They said, “That line is for y’all’s show.” What?What was so different about you?SCHNEIDER Everyone in New York was standing against the wall in their leather jackets, smoking cigarettes. We were a blast of color. No one would dance. We wanted to entertain people, and we kept it positive and fun.PIERSON People thought Cindy and I might be drag queens.SCHNEIDER When we played Max’s, someone yelled, “Is this a queen band?” I misheard, and I said, “Yes, we’re a clean band.” I guess nobody wore wigs in New York.PIERSON They thought we were from England, because they couldn’t imagine a band coming from Athens. But this was happening all over the country, in little towns. “Let’s start a band,” even if — well, we could play our instruments. People have a misconception that we couldn’t. I played keyboard and bass, and played guitar on two songs.SCHNEIDER I played keyboard bass on two songs. But I didn’t know which keys I was supposed to hit, so they put black tape on the keys. [Laughter]When most people start out singing, they imitate someone. I don’t think you guys did.WILSON I was trying to be Patti Smith.SCHNEIDER I wish I could sound like Wilson Pickett. But mostly, I was reciting. I talk-sang.PIERSON None of us were self-conscious.WILSON Because we were doing it for fun. It was kind of half-joking.PIERSON And Cindy and I just locked into our harmonies. We never said, “Oh, let’s try this interval.”STRICKLAND Cindy’s voice can be beautiful, but it has a primal quality at the same time. I used to tell Ricky she reminds me of John Lennon.“Everyone in New York was standing against the wall in their leather jackets, smoking cigarettes,” Schneider said. “We were a blast of color.”Peter Noble/Redferns, via Getty ImagesRicky told Keith he had AIDS, and asked him not to tell anyone else. Cindy, did you have any anger toward Keith for not telling you?WILSON Not at all. Both Keith and Ricky were in this horrible hell, you know? Ricky and I were living together, and he was away a lot. I thought, oh, he’s sick of living with his sister.STRICKLAND Hearing that breaks my heart.WILSON A hideous thing happened a day or two before Ricky passed. I got a phone call from a nurse in his doctor’s office. She was smacking gum, and said, “Did you know you’re living with a man that has AIDS?” It was the first time someone had said those words to me.STRICKLAND It was very difficult. I kept telling him, “You’ve got to tell Cindy.” He was a very private person, and I don’t think he knew how to deal with it. He’d gone into a coma in the hospital, and Cindy confronted me. I knew I couldn’t hide it anymore.WILSON After he died, I had a nervous breakdown. Keith moved up to Woodstock and became a hermit.STRICKLAND Ricky was my best friend — we were like brothers. I thought the band was finished, but writing music was a way to console myself. I wrote on the guitar, and I imagined Ricky sitting across from me. One of the first pieces I wrote became “Deadbeat Club,” and there are two guitar parts; I played the chords, and in my head, I imagined Ricky playing the other part.PIERSON I lived in a house across the pond from Keith, and I’d canoe over to his house. He played me a couple of things, and then we all got together. We said, this is for us, for our healing, and this is for Ricky. It was kind of miraculous that we came back together.The first album you did after Ricky died, “Cosmic Thing,” had your first hit singles, “Love Shack,” “Roam” and “Deadbeat Club.” Why was that the breakthrough album?PIERSON When we wrote “Cosmic,” it turned out to be an autobiographical album.WILSON But how could it not, you know? And we didn’t write the album to be a hit.PIERSON Yeah, and the songs just came together in a sort of story. It came really directly from the collective heart of the band. And it just poured out, all this stuff about the innocence we had in Athens.SCHNEIDER We had to beg radio stations to play “Love Shack” because it was unlike anything. Once it went to No. 1 on college and alternative radio, that’s when mainstream radio picked it up. And once that happened, it’s like, oh, my God.You also used two of the best producers around, Don Was and Nile Rodgers. How did you pick them?PIERSON We interviewed Todd Rundgren, who said, “I have a mandate. I’m going to tell you what to do, and you’re going to do what I say.” He didn’t say it in that way, but he used the word “mandate,” and we were like, no. [Laughter]SCHNEIDER We go on man dates, but we don’t put up with one.PIERSON A friend’s mother, who’s a psychic and doesn’t know anything about music, went through the list of producers and said, “The spirit guides love Nile Rodgers and Don Was too.” She had no idea who they were.Why has the band recorded only one studio album in the last 30 years?SCHNEIDER We wanted to wait until people finally stopped buying albums and CDs. [Laughter]STRICKLAND The way we write is complex and time-consuming, because it’s so collaborative. And it would get contentious at times — you edit out a part and someone says, “That’s my favorite part.” We’ve never been a band that just pumps it out.Do you think the B-52’s contributed a lot to what people call the queering of American culture?PIERSON We queered it. We done queered it.SCHNEIDER Unintentionally, to a degree. A lot of people said seeing us on “Saturday Night Live,” they felt comfortable with themselves, finally, even though they might live in some Podunk town where tolerance is, forget it. We hear those stories all the time. Back then, it was a stigma to even say you were gay, so I would say, “I’m a try-sexual. I’ll try anything.”PIERSON We not only had a gay sensibility, we also embodied it. We look different, our songs are different, so people identified us from the beginning as different.SCHNEIDER Everybody’s invited to our party. We always made that one of our premises. Bring your mom. Bring grandma.Bonus Track: Keith Strickland on Ricky Wilson“When Ricky played guitar, he sounded like two people,” Cindy Wilson said. Guitar World named Wilson, who often removed one and sometimes two strings from his guitar, one of its 25 All-Time Weirdest Guitarists. In a phone call, Keith Strickland, the B-52’s drummer who took over guitar duties after Wilson died, explained Ricky’s unique style. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.STRICKLAND Ricky and I met in high school at 16 and bonded over music. He was writing songs on guitar, very much influenced by Donovan. He was quite skilled in fingerpicking, which he learned by watching the show “Folk Guitar With Laura Weber” on PBS. The first time all five of the B-52’s jammed, I played guitar and Ricky played congas. But he was a better guitarist and I was a better drummer, so we switched.On some songs, like “Rock Lobster” and “Private Idaho,” Ricky played alternating parts. He’d play the rhythm on his lower strings, and a counterpoint lead line on the higher strings. It sounds like two guitars. For me, that’s the genius of Ricky’s playing. And he used real heavy-gauge strings, because he kept breaking the thinner ones and we didn’t have guitar techs to change them. [Laughs]He removed the G string from his guitar, which eliminates some of the midrange frequencies, and he played with only five strings. That happened by accident. When I played the guitar, if I broke a string, I wouldn’t change it — I’d just retune the other strings to an open tuning. I liked how it sounded.One day, Ricky was annoyed because I hadn’t changed a broken string on the guitar. I said, “You should play it like that.” He scoffed it off. But the next time I went to his house, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, playing and laughing. He said, “I’ve just written the most stupid guitar riff you’ve ever heard.” And it was the “Rock Lobster” riff, played on five strings in an open tuning.He and I were aware of open tunings because we were both big fans of Joni Mitchell, who used them a lot. People always say, “Really? You like Joni?” because our music is nothing like hers. Some of the chords she used were so beautiful, and they sound unresolved. Open tunings offer different color palettes or voicings that might be physically impossible to play in standard tuning.After Ricky died, it seemed impossible to me to find someone else that could play in open tuning. So I said, “I’ll be the guitarist.” It was pragmatic, but I also knew that if we brought somebody else in, I’d hover over them and say, “You’re not doing that right.” [Laughs] I had to learn Ricky’s parts, but I never wanted to imitate him, because I knew I couldn’t. It was a good 10 years before I was comfortable playing guitar onstage. The whole Cosmic Thing Tour, I was hanging by a thread.Around 1983, Ricky bought one of the first Macintosh home computers, and he loved it. When I’m writing music at my computer now, using Logic Pro software, I always say, “Gosh, Ricky would’ve loved this.” I often think about Ricky. More

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      The Robust Return of Beyoncé

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | StitcherBeyoncé’s seventh solo album, “Renaissance,” is a rich tribute to the long history of Black dance music, from disco up through ballroom house. It functions both as collage and history lesson, and also captures an evolution in her songwriting and personal presentation toward more modern directions.For Beyoncé, who is 40, it is a strong midcareer pivot that asserts her singular place in pop music, capable of essentially disappearing for several years then re-emerging on her own terms, and still finding her audience.On this week’s Popcast, a deep dive on Beyoncé’s new album, her push-and-pull between tradition and futurism, her relationship to queer music communities and the ways in which she reframes understanding of authorship and ownership.Guests:Joe Coscarelli, The New York Times’s pop music reporterWesley Morris, a critic at large at The New York TimesJon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music criticSalamishah Tillet, a contributing critic at large at The New York TimesConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica. More

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      Who Can Play the King? Representation Questions Fuel Casting Debates.

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      Should Shakespeare’s Richard III be reserved for disabled actors? Does the character have to be played by a white man? By a man at all? Three recent productions took different tacks.When three of the most prestigious Shakespeare companies in the world staged “Richard III” this summer, each took a different approach to casting its scheming title character in ways that illuminate the fraught debate over which actors should play which roles.At the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, Richard was played by the actor Arthur Hughes, who has radial dysplasia, which means he has a shorter right arm and a missing thumb. The company said it was the first time it had cast a disabled actor to play the character, who describes himself in the opening scene as “deformed.” The production’s director, Gregory Doran, who was until recently the Royal Shakespeare’s artistic director, told The Times of London earlier this year that having actors pretend to be disabled to play “Richard III” would “probably not be acceptable” these days.The Stratford Festival in Ontario, Canada, took a different tack: It cast Colm Feore, who is not disabled, to play a Richard who has a deformed spine but who is not a hunchback. And in New York City, the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park went in yet another direction, casting Danai Gurira, a Black woman who does not have a disability, as the duke who schemes and kills his way to the throne of England.Their varying approaches came at a moment when an intense rethinking of the cultural norms around identity, representation, diversity, opportunity, imagination and artistic license have led to impassioned debates, and battles, over casting.It has been decades since major theaters have had white actors play Othello in blackface, and, after years of criticism, performances by white actors playing caricatured Asian roles are growing rarer in theater and film, and are being rethought in opera and ballet.Now there are questions about who should play gay characters (Tom Hanks recently told The New York Times Magazine that today he would, rightly, not be cast as a gay attorney dying of AIDS, as he was in his Academy Award-winning role in the 1993 film “Philadelphia”) or transgender characters (Eddie Redmayne said last year that it had been a “mistake” to play a trans character in 2015’s “The Danish Girl”) or characters of different ethnicities and religions. (Bradley Cooper faced criticism this year for using a prosthetic nose to play the Jewish conductor Leonard Bernstein in a forthcoming biopic.)Tom Hanks recently said that today he would, correctly, not be cast as a gay attorney dying of AIDS, as he was in the film “Philadelphia,” which he starred in with Denzel Washington.TriStar PicturesWhile many celebrate the move away from old, sometimes stereotyped portrayals and the new opportunities belatedly being given to actors from a diverse array of backgrounds, others worry that the current insistence on literalism and authenticity can be too constraining. Acting, after all, is the art of pretending to be someone you are not.“The essential nature of art is freedom,” said the Oscar-winning actor F. Murray Abraham, whose many credits include Shylock, the Jewish moneylender of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” though Mr. Abraham is not Jewish. “Once we impose any kind of control over it, it’s no longer free.”And while the recent insistence on more authentic casting promises greater diversity in some respects, it threatens less in others — coming as many women and actors of color are getting more opportunities to play some of the greatest, meatiest roles in the repertory, regardless of whatever race or gender or background the playwrights may have initially envisioned.More About on Deaf CultureUpending Perceptions: The poetic art of Christine Sun Kim, who was born deaf, challenges viewers to reconsider how they hear and perceive the world.‘Coda’: The Oscar-winning film showcases deaf actors and lives. But some deaf viewers found its hearing perspective frustrating. Seeking Representation: Though deafness is gaining visibility onscreen, deaf people who rely on hearing devices say their experiences remain mostly untold. Name Signs: Name signs are the equivalent of a first name in some sign languages. We asked a few people to share the story behind theirs.Sometimes such casting is considered “colorblind,” in which case audiences are asked to look beyond an actor’s race or ethnicity, or other features. But in recent years the trend has been toward “color-conscious” casting, in which an actor’s race, ethnicity or identity becomes part of the production, and a feature of the character being portrayed.The casting of Mr. Hughes in a production by the Royal Shakespeare Company in Britain was hailed as the first time the company had cast a disabled actor in the title role.Ellie Kurttz, via Royal Shakespeare CompanySome of the varied approaches were underscored by this summer’s productions of “Richard III,” and the different directions each theater took when choosing an actor to play Richard.Richard tells the audience in the opening scene that he is:Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before my timeInto this breathing world, scarce half made up,And that so lamely and unfashionableThat dogs bark at me as I halt by themThe remark by Mr. Doran, the director of the Royal Shakespeare Company production, that it would “probably not be acceptable” these days to have actors pretend to be disabled to play Richard caused a stir in theater circles.Not only is Mr. Doran a renowned Shakespearean, but his husband, Antony Sher, who died last year, was one of the most memorable Richards of recent decades, using crutches in an acclaimed 1984 production and writing a book about his portrayal.Mr. Doran, whose production in Stratford-upon-Avon was critically lauded, later clarified his thinking about its casting, explaining that while any actor might be a successful Richard, he believed the role should be reserved for disabled actors until they “have the opportunities across the board now more widely afforded to other actors.”The new staging in Stratford, Ontario, featuring Mr. Feore, listed a “disability consultant” in its credits. His depiction was inspired by the discovery of Richard’s bones nearly a decade ago — the skeleton suggested a form of scoliosis — and rested on the idea that his physique “was less of a medical disability than a social and cultural one,” the company’s spokeswoman, Ann Swerdfager, said in an email. The critic Karen Fricker wrote in The Toronto Star: “As much as I admired Feore’s performance, it did lead me to wonder if this will be the last able-bodied actor making a star turn as a disabled character on the Stratford stage, given crucial conversations currently happening around deaf and disability performance.”And in New York, Ms. Gurira, who has appeared in “Black Panther” and the television series “The Walking Dead,” tried to explore the underlying reasons for Richard’s behavior. “There is a psychological reason for what he becomes,” she said in an interview. “He’s looking at the rules in front of him, and he feels he’s most capable, but the rules disallow him from manifesting his full capability.”The production’s director, Robert O’Hara, said that they made Richard’s difference key to the interpretation. “Richard’s otherness becomes an entire reason for his behavior,” he said in an interview. “He feels like now he has to play a part people projected onto him.”Ms. Gurira, left, said her approach to Richard aimed to get at the “psychological reason for what he becomes.” She appeared with Daniel J. Watts, right.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe rest of the cast for the production, which ended its run earlier this month, was notably diverse, and included several actors with disabilities in roles that are not usually cast that way. Ali Stroker, a Tony-winning actress who uses a wheelchair, played Lady Anne; Monique Holt, who is Deaf, played Richard’s mother, the two typically communicating onstage via American Sign Language.“I wanted to open up the conversation from ‘Why isn’t Richard being played by a disabled actor?’ to ‘Why isn’t every role considered able to be played by a disabled actor?’” Mr. O’Hara said.Ayanna Thompson, a professor of English at Arizona State University and a Shakespeare scholar in residence at the Public Theater who consulted on its “Richard III,” argued that the growing embrace of color-conscious casting reflected contemporary understandings of how different attributes inflect both actors’ identities and audiences’ perceptions.“All of our bodies carry meaning on stage, whether or not we want to acknowledge that. And that’s going to affect storytelling,” Ms. Thompson said.She pointed to an example from another play: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, friends of Hamlet’s, whom other characters often confuse for each other. “If Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are played by Black actors and the Hamlet family is all-white,” she said, “the inability to distinguish carries a whole set of different meanings.”Many productions upend traditional casting to interrogate classics. Women played every role in a trilogy of acclaimed Shakespeare productions directed by Phyllida Lloyd at Donmar Warehouse in London, seen in New York at St. Ann’s Warehouse. A “Julius Caesar” directed by Mr. Doran reset the scene from ancient Rome to modern Africa. Even Hollywood has reimagined some blockbusters, as with the gender-swapped 2016 “Ghostbusters.”Harriet Walter, with hands outstretched, in a 2013 production of “Julius Caesar,” in which all of the roles were played by women. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBut as there is a push for greater casting freedoms in some areas, there is an argument for more literalism in others, especially from actors with certain backgrounds who lack opportunities.Some disabled actors are upset when they see Richard III, one of the juiciest disabled characters in the canon, go to someone else. “We all want a level playing field where everybody can play everybody,” said Mat Fraser, an English actor who is disabled and has played Richard, “but my entire career I’ve not been allowed to play hardly anybody.”In 2016, while accepting an Emmy for his turn as a transgender character in “Transparent,” Jeffrey Tambor said that he hoped to be “the last cisgender male to play a transgender female.” Now, with a “Transparent” stage musical being created in Los Angeles, its creator, Joey Soloway, vowed in an interview: “No trans person should be played by a cis person. Zero tolerance.”The conversation on casting has been evolving in recent years.“It used to be that part of the measurement of greatness was your ability to transform yourself,” said Isaac Butler, the author of “The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act,” a new history of Method acting. “Is versatility still the hallmark of good acting? And how do you approach it if there are certain identity lines you cannot cross? And which are those identity lines?”Gregg Mozgala, left, an actor with cerebral palsy, says he has to bring his “full humanity to every character I play.” He appeared with Jolly Abraham in 2017 in a production of the play “Cost of Living.” Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesGregg Mozgala, an actor with cerebral palsy, has played roles that are not traditionally portrayed as disabled, as he did playing two monarchs in “Richard III” in New York, and sometimes plays characters written as having cerebral palsy, as he will this fall in a Broadway production of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play “Cost of Living.”“I spent years trying to pretend my disability didn’t exist in life and onstage, which is ridiculous, because it does,” Mr. Mozgala said.“Every character I ever play is going to have cerebral palsy — there’s nothing I can do about that,” he added. “I have to bring my full humanity to every character I play.”Some still hold out hope for a day when identity will recede in the conversation.“A hundred years from now, do I hope white actors could play Othello?” said Oskar Eustis, the Public Theater’s artistic director. “Sure, because it would mean racism wasn’t the explosive issue it is now.” More

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      Hayley Kiyoko Revs Up With Arcade Fire and Chills Out to ‘Friends’

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      The pop singer and songwriter has been doing some emotional spring cleaning as she prepares to release her second full-length album, “Panorama.”The pop singer and songwriter Hayley Kiyoko’s fans call her “lesbian Jesus,” and she’s become known for boldly and unapologetically putting every facet of herself into her artistry. That wasn’t always the case, however.“Growing up I would write music in my bedroom with a guitar on my bed, or in my journal,” she said, “and I would use he/him pronouns, and it took a long time for me to obviously speak my truth, lyrically.”Kiyoko, 31, was born and raised in Los Angeles, and expressed her interest in music and performing at a very young age, acting in commercials, then in films and on TV. In 2007, she joined a girl group called the Stunners that also included the R&B singer Tinashe. After its 2011 split, she started carving out a solo career. Her 2015 EP “This Side of Paradise” provided a breakthrough moment with the electro-pop track “Girls Like Girls,” which was also a coming out of sorts. Kiyoko directed its video, a queer teen love story depicting a girl with a boyfriend falling for her best friend, which has 147 million views on YouTube.For her second album, “Panorama” (due July 29), Kiyoko said she’s presenting a more refined version of herself sonically, melodically and lyrically — the result of some crucial emotional spring cleaning. “You have a lot of stuff in your room and it’s like, do you really need all of that?” she explained. Part of the process involved taking down the walls she’d built as a young songwriter who was trying to mask what she was actually trying to say. “Hey, I’m comfortable with myself,” she said she realized. “I love myself and I’m at a place in my life where I don’t need you anymore.”For “Panorama,” Kiyoko brought back a few collaborators from her first album, “Expectations,” (the writers Nikki Flores and Brandon Colbein) and introduced some new ones (the producers Danja, Patrick Morrissey and Kill Dave). The album’s first single, “For the Girls,” is a bass-boosted anthem of empowerment that arrived with a queer “Bachelorette” parody music video, featuring a cameo from the real-life “Bachelor” contestant Becca Tilley. (Kiyoko and Tilley have been dating for four years.) On the mid-tempo thumper “Deep in the Woods,” Kiyoko softens her voice to describe meeting someone and feeling like you’ve known them forever. And on “Luna,” a love letter to a crush, Kiyoko jumps octaves as she sings, “You get me wild you know/I’ll chase your shadow.”“We spent a lot of time making sure that everything that you hear and experience is as close to and true to my experience,” she said.On a phone call from her studio at home in Los Angeles, Kiyoko shared a list of the things that continue to inspire her. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. “The Voice of Knowledge” by Don Miguel Ruiz I recently started reading and I’m not going to be ashamed to say that, because it’s just the truth. I fell in love with this book. It really supports you and helps you find a way to navigate those voices in your head, what is reality and what is your 5-year-old self afraid of, or your past trauma, or fears. It’s really helped my mental health a lot.2. Arcade Fire’s “Ready to Start” If I’m having a hard day or not feeling inspired I’ll go for a walk and listen to “Ready to Start” and it is like what that title is: It’s a reset for me. It invigorates me and inspires me to keep going. It validates my fears and my sadness. Arcade Fire is one of my favorite bands and I listened to them a lot growing up, so I think I find a lot of comfort and nostalgia listening to Arcade Fire, but then that song specifically, I really resonate with the lyrics.3. Her own fragrance, Hue Growing up as a queer kid in the closet, I had a really hard time having conversations with cute girls. My only way of having conversations with cute girls was when I smelled good. I would put on perfume and go to school and they’d be like, “Hey, you smell really good” or “What are you wearing?” It was a conversation starter and also boosted my confidence when I felt really insecure, so I wanted to create a perfume that could give my fans confidence and was gender inclusive. I think I’ve always struggled with my femininity and masculinity and which box I fit in, so I wanted to create a perfume that kind of symbolized and represented both my masculine and feminine energy in one bottle. It has this really nice balance of fruity floral and musk.4. “Friends” I probably watch three episodes every single night. Jennifer Aniston is like my safe space. I can always laugh and just decompress watching that show. I remember going through a hard breakup and I was living alone and I would just turn on “Friends” and felt like I was with a bunch of friends. I feel like I can watch that show and see little bits and pieces of my friends and family in the characters, so it’s just ever-evolving.5. Monopoly Deal It’s basically like a more convenient Monopoly but you can play it faster and you get your properties at random. It’s one of my favorite games because each card is worth millions of dollars. I used to play it all the time during the pandemic. I love playing it with my friends because you can charge your friends $11 million and they have to give it to you. I bring it with me everywhere in my purse.6. Journaling I have so many journals. Growing up, aunts, uncles or random parental friends would gift me journals and I’d be like, “What am I going to do with this?” They would just sit on my desk and then I began to love writing in them. It’s so incredible just to have a dialogue with myself for therapy. I also like to go back and read my journals because it reminds me of the things that I’ve overcome, especially during the dark times. It helps me feel centered in where I’m at, that I can keep going and that I’m resilient and strong. If I’m on a plane for six hours I’m not watching the TV, I’m journaling.7. Fried eggplant Growing up, I hated Japanese nights because my mom would make this fried eggplant and we’d have spinach and rice and ginger and all these things. There were so many plates. The soy sauce plate, the ginger plate, the edamame plate. Every time after Japanese night, my mom and dad would be like, “OK, kids, you guys can do the dishes.” And I remember being like, “No, I don’t want to do the dishes!” Now looking back, it’s one of my favorite meals and it’s a meal that I probably have once a week to comfort myself. If I’m stressed or just needing to feel love I’ll make that meal and I don’t complain about the dishes anymore.8. Premiere Pro I’m going to shout out Premiere Pro because as an artist, I became a director out of necessity. Wanting to be a storyteller and learning how to edit and having to kind of do everything myself, I was really grateful for Premiere Pro because it was a way for me to be able to tell my stories and have my stories come to life visually. It gave me the courage to be like, “Hey, I can direct, and I can do this.”9. Acupuncture Acupuncture has been a huge part of my healing process: taking care of my body and making sure that my blood circulation is good. I think I struggled with meditation, and acupuncture helped me get to that point of being able to practice meditating because when I go to acupuncture I just lay and I’m able to just be. It’s such an incredible reset for my body and my mind.10. Claude Monet I have always been inspired by color and I want to say a lot of that has to do with really connecting to Claude Monet’s Impressionism. My mouse pad is the sunrise painting and I have big Claude Monet paintings all over my apartment. Color has just always created a sense of ease, calm and safety. I think that translates in my music videos and directing — wanting to create a world where the color palette feels inviting, warm, safe and nostalgic. When I write music, and when I was working on “Panorama,” I always see color. I listen to a song and I’m like, “OK, this is like dark purple or this is like purple and lime green.” More