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      Film and TV Writers on Strike Picket Outside Hollywood Studios

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      Those in picket lines at the headquarters of companies like Netflix were critical of working conditions that have become routine in the streaming era.Ellen Stutzman, a senior Writers Guild of America official, stood on a battered patch of grass outside Netflix headquarters in Los Angeles. She was calm — remarkably so, given the wild scene unfolding around her, and the role she had played in its creation.“Hey, Netflix! You’re no good! Pay your writers like you should!” hundreds of striking movie and television writers shouted in unison as they marched outside the Netflix complex. The spectacle had snarled traffic on Sunset Boulevard on Tuesday afternoon, and numerous drivers blared horns in support of a strike. Undulating picket signs, a few of which were covered with expletives, added to the sense of chaos, as did a hovering news helicopter and a barking dog. “Wow,” a Netflix employee said as he inched his car out of the company’s driveway, which was blocked by writers.In February, unions representing 11,500 screenwriters selected Ms. Stutzman, 40, to be their chief negotiator in talks with studios and streaming services for a new contract. Negotiations broke off on Monday night, shortly before the contract expired. Ms. Stutzman and other union officials voted unanimously to call a strike, shattering 15 years of labor peace in Hollywood, and bringing the entertainment industry’s creative assembly lines to a grinding halt.“We told them there was a ton of pent-up anger,” Ms. Stutzman said, referring to the companies at the bargaining table, which included Amazon and Apple. “They didn’t seem to believe us.”The throng started a new chant, as if on cue. “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! This corporate greed has got to go!”Similar scenes of solidarity unfolded across the entertainment capital. At Paramount Pictures, more than 400 writers — and a few supportive actors, including Rob Lowe — assembled to wave pickets with slogans like “Despicable You” and “Honk if you like words.” Screenwriting titans like Damon Lindelof (“Watchmen,” “Lost”) and Jenny Lumet (“Rachel Getting Married,” “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”) marched outside Amazon Studios. Acrimony hung in the air outside Walt Disney Studios, where one writer played drums on empty buckets next to a sign that read, “What we are asking for is a drop in the bucket.”Another sign goaded Mickey Mouse directly: “I smell a rat.”But the strike, at least in its opening hours, seemed to burn hottest at Netflix, with some writers describing the company as “the scene of the crime.” That is because Netflix popularized and, in some cases, pioneered streaming-era practices that writers say have made their profession an unsustainable one — a job that had always been unstable, dependent on audience tastes and the whims of revolving sets of network executives, has become much more so.The streaming giant, for instance, has become known for “mini-rooms,” which is slang for hiring small groups of writers to map out a season before any official greenlight has been given. Because it isn’t a formal writers room, the pay is less. Writers in mini-rooms will sometimes work for as little as 10 weeks, and then have to scramble to find another job. (If the show is greenlit and goes into production, fewer writers are kept on board.)“If you only get a 10-week job, which a lot of people now do, you really have to start looking for a new job on day one,” said Alex Levy, who has written for Netflix shows like “Grace and Frankie.” “In my case, I haven’t been able to get a writing job for months. I’ve had to borrow money from my family to pay my rent.”Lawrence Dai, whose credits include “The Late Late Show with James Corden” and “American Born Chinese,” a Disney+ series, echoed Ms. Levy’s frustration. “It feels like an existential moment because it’s becoming impossible to build a career,” he said. “The dream is dead.” More

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      in Theater

      Robert Patrick, Early, and Prolific, Playwright of Gay Life, Dies at 85

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      He got his start at Caffe Cino, the birthplace of Off Off Broadway. His first of many, many plays, performed there in 1964, is a milestone of gay theater.Robert Patrick, a wildly prolific playwright who rendered gay (and straight) life with caustic wit, an open heart and fizzy camp, and whose 1964 play, “The Haunted Host,” became a touchstone of early gay theater, died on April 23 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 85.The cause was atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, said Jason Jenn, a friend.Mr. Patrick’s story is intertwined with that of Caffe Cino, the West Village coffee shop that was the accidental birthplace of Off Off Broadway theater. One day in 1961, a 24-year-old Mr. Patrick followed a cute boy with long hair into the place, where the playwrights John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and, soon, Mr. Patrick, all got their starts; the cute boy was John P. Dodd, who went on to be a well-known lighting designer and die of AIDS in 1991.The cafe, run by a former dancer named Joe Cino, was scrappy, original and unpretentious, decorated with tinsel and silver stars that hung from the ceiling. Actors performed among the tables and chairs until they built a small stage. No one was paid, except the cops, because Mr. Cino was not just running an unlicensed cabaret but also a gay hangout, which was illegal in the early 1960s. Its young playwrights, particularly Mr. Patrick, churned out plays, playlets and monologues akin to TikToks, Don Shewey, the author and theater critic, said in a phone interview. As Mr. Patrick told Broadway World in 2004: “We wrote for each other, and it turned out there was an audience that, without knowing it, had been dying for personal, political, philosophical theater. And a few years after the Cino began doing original plays, there were over 300 Off Off Broadway theaters.”Actors performing at Caffe Cino in 1961. Mr. Patrick’s story is intertwined with that of that West Village coffee shop, the accidental birthplace of Off Off Broadway theater.Ben Martin/Getty ImagesMr. Patrick worked at the cafe as a doorman, a dishwasher and a waiter before writing his first play, “The Haunted Host.” It features Jay, a gay playwright who is haunted by the ghost of his lover, who died by suicide. Frank, a hustler who happens to be straight, wants help with a play and needs a place to spend the night.The dialogue is tart and snappy, as Jay rebuffs the young man and his work, razzes him about his sexuality — “Tell me, Frank, how long have you been heterosexual? Started as a kid, huh? Tsk-tsk” — and finally throws him out in the morning and in so doing exorcises the ghost.Early in the play, when Frank asks Jay how his lover died, Jay answers curtly, “Alone.”“Oh. Suicide?” Frank asks, to which Jay replies, “No, thanks, I just had one.”The play was not exactly a runaway hit in 1964, but it found new life in 1976, when it was revived in Boston with a very young Harvey Fierstein in the lead role. Mr. Fierstein reprised it again in 1991, at La MaMa in the East Village.“All these years later,” Howard Kissel wrote in his review for The Daily News, “‘Host’ has taken on a certain poignancy. It predates the gay rights movement and AIDS. It radiates an innocence no longer attainable.”Its significance was recognized in hindsight as an early example of a work with a gay person as the hero, and with themes that were universal: love, grief, self-respect.“It was so much before its time,” Mr. Fierstein said in a phone interview. “Here you have a play where the strange person, the bizarre person, the person who was the antagonist, was the heterosexual. The normal person, the one with real emotion and real love, was the gay character. We forget our history, and now we have people who want to erase our history. This is why Robert’s work is so important.”Harvey Fierstein, right, and Jason Workman in La MaMa’s 1991 revival of “The Haunted Host,” Mr. Patrick’s 1964 play that became a touchstone of gay theater. La MaMa archivesMr. Cino died by suicide in 1967, and Caffe Cino limped along for a year afterward. Mr. Patrick kept writing, and writing. Over the decades he wrote hundreds of plays as well as countless songs, poems and short stories, a memoir and at least one novel.“They just poured out of him,” Mr. Fierstein said.One work, many years in the making, was “Kennedy’s Children,” an affecting drama set in a bar on the Bowery one Valentine’s Day in the early 1970s. Five characters, including a disillusioned actor who was a proxy for Mr. Patrick, declaim their isolation and anomie in monologues that ruminate on the legacy of the ’60s — its failed promise and heartbreak.Mr. Patrick began working on the play in 1968. It was first produced in 1973 at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, but, as Mr. Patrick said, nobody came and nobody reviewed it. It then made its way to a tiny theater in London and had runs in similar small theaters around the world before returning to London and opening to great acclaim in the West End, followed by a Broadway production in 1975, for which the actress Shirley Knight won a Tony.“The wit is as hard as nails and as sharp,” Clive Barnes of The New York Times wrote in his review. “Mr. Patrick hears well and writes so colloquially, so idiomatically, that you could actually be eavesdropping on the drunken but revealing, paranoid but illuminating meanderings of the barstool set of bad cafe society.”Later work included “T-Shirts” (1980), which Mr. Shewey, in his review for The Soho News, described as a comic romp about the gay generation gap as well as “a schematic attack on the values of the gay male world, charging that money, youth and beauty have become as interchangeable as, well, T-shirts.”“Blue Is for Boys” (1987) is a nutty farce about an apartment converted into a dorm for gay male college students. “Camera Obscura,” a playlet about a boy and a girl who struggle to communicate, was first performed at Caffe Cino in 1966 and became a staple of high school drama festivals and regional theaters.For a while, Mr. Patrick was known, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the world’s most produced playwright, with his work performed at small theaters in Minneapolis, Toronto, Vienna, Brazil and New Zealand, often all at the same time. In 1978, The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported, “Certain works, such as ‘Kennedy’s Children’ and ‘Camera Obscura,’ are quite probably being done somewhere every day of the year.”For a while, Mr. Patrick was known, perhaps a bit hyperbolically, as the world’s most produced playwright. Becket LoganRobert Patrick O’Connor was born on Sept. 27, 1937, in Kilgore, in eastern Texas. His parents, Robert and Jo Adelle (Goodson) O’Conner, were itinerant workers who moved constantly throughout the Southwest. The family lived in tents, Mr. Patrick said, until he was 6. He recalled attending 12 schools in one year.He spent two years in college before joining the Air Force because he had fallen in love with a “flyboy,” he said. He was kicked out during basic training, however, when a love poem he had written to the airman was found in the man’s wallet. As Mr. Patrick told it, it was discovered during an Air Force sting operation in the restroom of a local hotel that gay servicemen were using as a rendezvous spot. Mr. Patrick’s love poem was for naught anyway; the man had already ditched him, he wrote, for a captain with a Cadillac.Mr. Patrick never stopped writing plays, but in later years he paid the rent by working as a ghost writer and as an usher for the Ford Theater in Los Angeles, where he moved in the 1990s; he also wrote reviews of pornographic movies. For the last decade or so, he performed a cabaret act at Planet Queer, a riotous variety show held weekly at a bar in Los Angeles.He is survived by his sister, Angela Patrice Musick.In 2014, Henrik Eger of The Seattle Gay News asked Mr. Patrick if there was anything he hadn’t yet done but wished he had.“True love,” he said. “And I would like to have the money to build or buy a theater in L.A. with enough ground space that I could call it Robert Patrick’s Free Parking Theater, because in L.A. the theater would fill up for every performance no matter what show was on, just because of the magic words ‘Free Parking.’ Then I could do whatever plays I liked.” More

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      Mötley Crüe Guitarist’s Lawsuit Says He Was Kicked Out

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      Mick Mars accused his bandmates of gaslighting him and cutting him out of future profits after he said he was retiring from touring.Mick Mars, the guitarist for the veteran hair-metal band Mötley Crüe, filed a lawsuit this week accusing his bandmates of pushing him out of the group and cutting him out of its future profits.The lawsuit, filed on Thursday in Superior Court in Los Angeles County, details a falling out that the band had with Mars after he announced in October that he was retiring from touring, citing chronic pain from an inflammatory disease that affects the spine.The rest of the band responded, the suit says, by convening an emergency shareholders’ meeting of Mötley Crüe’s main corporate entity to throw Mars out of the band, fire him as a director of the corporation and take away his shares. The lawsuit says Mars has a 25 percent stake in each of the band’s affiliated business entities.“It is beyond sad that, after 41 years together, a band would try to throw out a member who is unable to tour anymore because he has a debilitating disease,” said Edwin F. McPherson, Mars’s lawyer. “Mick has been pushed around for far too long in this band, and we are not going to let that continue.”Mötley Crüe formed in Los Angeles in 1981 and became one of the most popular of the so-called hair-metal bands. Mixing glam-rock theatrics, heavy metal riffs and radio-friendly pop hooks, they were fixtures on MTV in the 1980s and, by that decade’s end, had topped the Billboard 200 chart with their 1989 album, “Dr. Feelgood.” The band’s tell-all memoir, “The Dirt,” which chronicled their rise to fame and rocky history, was adapted into a Netflix biopic in 2019.Mars, 71, whose real name is Robert Alan Deal, joined Mötley Crüe shortly after it was founded and, according to the lawsuit, came up with the band’s name. He was diagnosed at 27 with ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can cause the vertebrae to fuse over time. The disease has caused his spine “to seize up and freeze completely solid,” the suit says, adding that he is in chronic pain and is not able to move his head in any direction.Last fall, Mars told his bandmates that, because of his “debilitating” ankylosing spondylitis, he couldn’t physically “handle the rigors of the road” and would no longer tour with the band, the suit says. Mars, who last performed with Mötley Crüe in Las Vegas on Sept. 9, 2022, said he would still record and perform with the band in a “residency situation.”After Mars publicly announced the change on Oct. 26, the band issued a separate statement saying that he had “retired” and that a guitarist named John 5 was replacing him.The other band members — Nikki Sixx, Vince Neil and Tommy Lee — called the emergency shareholders’ meeting, where they sought to fire Mars from seven band-affiliated corporations and limited-liability corporations, the lawsuit says. Those entities — Mötley Crüe Inc.; Mötley Crüe Touring Inc.; Red, White and Crue Inc.; Masters 2000 Inc.; Cruefest LLC; Mötley Records LLC; and Masters 2008 LLC — are listed as defendants in the lawsuit, which demands that Mars be allowed to review the band’s business records. He is also seeking reimbursement for his legal fees.Mars claims in his lawsuit that the band also demanded that he sign an agreement that his share of future touring profits and sales of merchandise featuring the band’s name and logo be reduced to 5 percent from 25 percent, and that he receive no income from sales of merchandise that “named or depicted” his replacement in the band.Sasha Frid, a lawyer for the band, said the lawsuit was “unfortunate and completely off base.” He said that Mars and other band members signed an agreement in 2008 that nobody would receive money from performances if they resigned.“Despite the fact that the band did not owe Mick anything — and with Mick owing the band millions in advances that he did not pay back — the band offered Mick a generous compensation package to honor his career with the band,” Frid said in an emailed statement. “Manipulated by his manager and lawyer, Mick refused and chose to file this ugly public lawsuit.”The lawsuit sheds light on the band’s tumultuous personal relationships, accusing Sixx, Mötley Crüe’s bassist, of making decisions on the band’s behalf without consulting his bandmates. Sixx also “gaslighted” Mars in recent years, the suit says, telling him that his guitar playing was subpar, that he often played the wrong chords onstage and that he had “some sort of cognitive dysfunction.”Frid provided The New York Times with signed declarations from seven members of the band’s crew, including the band’s production manager, who said Mars’s performance on Mötley Crüe’s 2022 stadium tour was “by far the worst I have ever seen in my years with the band.”“Mötley Crüe always performs its songs live, but during the last tour Mick struggled to remember chords, played the wrong songs and made constant mistakes which led to his departure from the band,” Frid said. “The band did everything to protect him, tried to keep these matters private to honor Mick’s legacy and take the high road.”In his lawsuit, Mars acknowledged occasionally playing the wrong chords on tour, but said it was because of a faulty in-ear monitor that made him unable to hear his guitar. Instead, he accused the other band members, including Sixx, of miming to recordings onstage. More

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      in Movies

      Meet Radio Man, a ‘Bum’ Who Befriends Movie Stars and Sells Their Autographs

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      On a blustery February evening in Midtown Manhattan, opposite an unmarked side entrance to the Ed Sullivan Theater, a crowd of more than 60 people stood crushed against a row of steel barricades. They all knew that at any moment, Harrison Ford would arrive for an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” They elbowed and cursed one another, jockeying for position, each clutching a sheaf of photographs for Mr. Ford to sign.They weren’t fans — not most of them, anyway. They were “graphers,” who make a living by hounding celebrities for autographs and selling them to the highest bidder. For many of them, graphing is a full-time job. Some have been at it for decades. They can flip a single signature for anywhere from $25 to more than $1,000, depending on a star’s cachet and how frequently they sign. A Harrison Ford autograph, for example, retails for about $750.At 5:30 on the dot, a black Escalade pulled to a stop in front of the theater. The rear door swung open, and the pack of graphers across the street broke into a frenzy. “Harrison!” they hollered. “Harrison, please!”Slumped near a dumpster by the stage door, a disheveled man with a mane of gray hair and a wild beard let out a grunt. He clambered to his feet, reached into a grocery bag and pulled out an overstuffed FedEx mailer, inscribed in large, looping cursive with a note. “Thank you, Harrison,” it read. “Love, Radio Man.” He staggered past the theater’s security team and approached the Escalade.“Harrison!” the man called as Mr. Ford climbed out of the back seat. “How are ya?”Mr. Ford grinned. “Radio,” he said warmly. They shook hands. Fifty feet away, the graphers behind the barricades bellowed in a desperate chorus.Giovanni Arnold, who has been graphing in New York City since 1999, unrolling movie posters outside the Edison Ballroom. He waited outside for over three hours hoping to get Mr. Spielberg’s autograph as he entered the venue for the Writers Guild Awards.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“Listen, I’ve got some photos for you,” the man said, handing Mr. Ford the package.“Sure, sure,” Mr. Ford said, accepting it. They made small talk. Mr. Ford asked after the man’s health, and the man asked after Helen Mirren, Mr. Ford’s co-star on the “Yellowstone” spinoff “1923.”“Good to see you, Radio,” Mr. Ford said. He slipped into the theater without acknowledging the graphers screaming his name. They would have to wait until he had finished his interview.There are at least 150 professional graphers in New York City, according to Justin Steffman, the founder of the autograph authentication company AutographCOA. And right now, they are working at full tilt. All winter long, celebrities have been flocking to New York to campaign for projects up for various film and television awards, culminating in the Oscars. For graphers, collecting signatures during awards season is like fishing at a trout farm.The rest of the year is by no means slow. Stars are always cycling in and out of Broadway theaters, concert venues, luxe hotels, film shoots and, most reliably, morning shows like “The View” and late-night shows like Mr. Colbert’s. Their constant presence has made New York the graphing capital of the United States, topping even Los Angeles, whose sprawl, closed sets and tight security make life more challenging for graphers. “It’s got to be a billion-dollar industry,” Mr. Steffman said. “It’s gotten bigger and bigger and bigger.”There are at least 500 full-time graphers around the world, Mr. Steffman said, and thousands more who graph on a regular basis.But none of them do it quite like Radio Man.Radio Man — legally known as Craig Castaldo, though no one ever calls him that — has been graphing in New York since the early 1990s. Over the years, he has managed to charm a small army of celebrities into accepting his hefty packages of photographs, which they sign and return to him. Where most graphers would be lucky to get more than one signature from a star at a time, Radio Man regularly nabs dozens, sometimes hundreds. He considers the A-listers who sign for him his personal friends.Craig Castaldo, known to all as Radio Man, outside the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York during a taping of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesAfter his exchange with Mr. Ford, Radio Man made his way to the Park Hyatt to pick up a package that Sarah Michelle Gellar had left for him at reception. It was adorned with a heart in black Sharpie, along with a handwritten note: “Only for you, Radio.” Inside were 43 signed photographs of Ms. Gellar.“It’s amazing how they take to me, these actors,” Radio Man said. “A bum! I don’t understand it.”Radio Man, 72, lives just above the poverty line, in a basement apartment in Yonkers he rents for $900 a month. He commutes into the city each morning on his bicycle, a 13-mile journey that takes him about two hours. He said he survives exclusively on food he gathers from free pantries and movie sets.Though he could make a small fortune selling his autographs directly to collectors, his grasp of the necessary tools — photo databases, printers, the internet — is tenuous at best. Instead, like most graphers, he peddles his merchandise to a dealer, who in turn hawks it at a significant markup on eBay and other, more obscure autograph marketplaces.Leaning against a wall outside the Park Hyatt, Radio Man pulled out his phone and made a call. A few minutes later, a silver sedan pulled up to the hotel. A tall, middle-aged man with close-cropped hair and a manicured beard stepped out of the car and into the frigid night. Radio Man handed him the package of signed photographs from Ms. Gellar, and the man accepted them without a word. He hurried back to the warmth of his car, leaving Radio Man alone next to his bicycle.“Hey,” Radio Man called out to him. “You got six bucks so I could get a tea or something?”“I don’t have any cash on me,” the man said. He ducked into the car and drove away.The man, Radio Man’s de facto handler, supplies him with his FedEx mailers of photographs. Once Radio Man gets them signed, the handler sends them to a dealer based in Florida, who is rumored among graphers to be a millionaire. All told, the autographs Radio Man received from Ms. Gellar are worth approximately $6,000. He was paid about $300 for them.“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”By “friends,” he meant the celebrities who have taken an unlikely shine to him since he stumbled into their world more than 30 years ago.As Radio Man tells it, he made his first famous friend when he was homeless. One winter day in 1990, he was walking through Central Park when he encountered a man dressed in rags, whom he took for “a bum like me,” he said. He offered the man a beer. “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.It was Robin Williams. He was shooting “The Fisher King,” Terry Gilliam’s 1991 film in which Mr. Williams plays a vagabond searching for the Holy Grail.The actress Riley Keough signed autographs from her S.U.V. after a taping of “The Late Show.” Graphers chased her car down the street, catching up to her at a red light.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York Times“You’re doing this all wrong,” Radio Man told him. “You’re not acting the way a bum should be.”He introduced the actor to life on the street, showing him “where to go and what to do.” Mr. Williams patterned his performance in “The Fisher King,” which earned him an Oscar nomination, after Radio Man. Or so Radio Man claims.In exchange for his guidance, the movie’s producers gave Radio Man $200 and a case of beer. They also cast him as an extra. From then on, he made a habit of hanging around film sets in New York, where he helped himself to food from craft-services stations and scored low-paying parts as a background actor. Graphing was an easy way to make money.“I’ve been getting movies ever since,” Radio Man said. “Here and there, playing my role: bum, homeless guy, guy on a bicycle with a radio.”But that’s just one version of the story Radio Man tells about his origins.Another version involves running a newspaper stand in the 1970s and being cast as an extra in “The In-Laws,” starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Another involves sharing a beer with Bruce Willis on the set of “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Yet another involves showing up to shoots with a boombox around his neck and playing it at full volume until someone paid him to leave, a racket that supposedly earned him his nickname. (“A cop was there and he said to me: ‘Hey, radio guy! Hey, radio person! Hey, radio man! Can you turn that down, please?’ And that’s how I became Radio Man.”)Whatever he may claim about his past, this much is true: Radio Man is a fixture on film sets in New York. He has appeared as an extra in dozens of movies, including “Ransom,” “Zoolander,” “The Departed” and “The Irishman.” He has a preternatural knowledge of actors’ whereabouts and shooting schedules. And he has forged something like a friendship with some of the biggest names in Hollywood.Radio Man biking through Midtown Manhattan after staking out the stage door to “The Late Show.” He was hoping to see Sarah Jessica Parker at a nearby filming location.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesOn a January night in Chinatown, Radio Man sauntered around the set of “Wolves,” a forthcoming movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt, as if he were its executive producer. He weaved through packs of stagehands, chatting amiably with anyone who crossed his path. During a break in shooting, he shuffled over to Mr. Clooney, who was sitting in a director’s chair. “Clooney!” he shouted, followed by an expletive-laden insult.“There it is,” Mr. Clooney said.“You know where you’re going tomorrow?”“I don’t know where I’m going tomorrow,” Mr. Clooney said.“Under the Manhattan Bridge.”“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Mr. Clooney said, as the production crew standing around him laughed. “You don’t need a call sheet. Radio Man is the call sheet.”Mr. Clooney first met Radio Man in 1996, on the set of “One Fine Day” in Manhattan. The actor has “never not seen him” during a trip to New York since, he said.“Radio’s everywhere,” Mr. Clooney said. “Every hotel you show up at, Radio will be standing out in front of it going, ‘De Niro’s over at this, and Cate Blanchett’s over here staying at the Carlyle.’ He’s got all the intel.”Radio Man endeared himself to Mr. Clooney, the actor said, after rescuing his wife, Amal Clooney, from a throng of paparazzi that had swarmed her on Fifth Avenue. Radio Man blocked them with his bicycle, hailed a cab and steered Ms. Clooney inside, securing her escape.“He’s a great guy,” Mr. Clooney said. “He’s a lovable mess, which we all are.”About six years ago, Mr. Clooney got together with a few other actors and flew Radio Man out to L.A. They sent him to the Oscars. He wore a tuxedo. He walked the red carpet. He sat in the audience. He brought a date.A grapher outside the Ed Sullivan Theater with the tools of the trade. She was among a small crowd hoping to get signatures from Michelle Yeoh and Riley Keough.Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesA few nights after bumping into Radio Man in Chinatown, Mr. Clooney poked his head out of a white trailer parked on East Broadway and peered down the street. “Radio!” he yelled.Radio Man ambled over. Mr. Clooney strode toward him holding a large bag, trailed by a pack of photographers.“Here you go, Radio,” he said, dropping the bag on the sidewalk with a thunk. “This thing weighs a ton, by the way.”Radio Man reached inside and pulled out two bulging FedEx mailers. They contained 185 signed photographs of Mr. Clooney, worth approximately $18,000.Mr. Clooney said that Radio Man is the only grapher he will take a package from. But he signs for all of them.“Every one of these guys who come over for autographs, it’s a business for them,” he said. “You try to help them out when you can.”“My job baffles me,” said Mr. Arnold. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesThere is at least one other grapher in New York capable of exchanging packages with celebrities: Giovanni Arnold, 38, who has been graphing in the city since 1999. He calls himself “Black Radio Man.”“There isn’t really an elite group of graphers who are getting packages,” Mr. Steffman said. “There’s Gio, and there’s Radio Man.”On a Saturday afternoon in January, Mr. Arnold sat in a dark bar in the East Village indexing several large bags of autographed memorabilia he had just received from Daniel Radcliffe, who was starring in a production of “Merrily We Roll Along” at the New York Theater Workshop a few blocks away.He laid out his haul on a grimy, beer-stained table, examining each item — cheaply printed photos, plastic Harry Potter eyeglasses, Gryffindor neckties — for Mr. Radcliffe’s signature. He counted 95 autographs in all, whose total value he pegged at $10,000. “I’m hype right now,” he said. “He really blessed me.”Mr. Arnold celebrated with a Guinness. He took a sip from his pint glass and shook his head, pondering a question that has long puzzled him: Why would anyone pay for an autograph?“My job baffles me,” he said. “Personally, I wouldn’t buy an autograph. It would be of more sentimental value if I got the autograph myself, but if someone else got it, it’s just weird.”Mr. Arnold has taken a different approach to the business of graphing than most of his peers. He sells his own merchandise on eBay, as well as directly to private collectors, which has allowed him to accrue a level of wealth few graphers seem to enjoy.He documents his day-to-day life hunting for autographs on Instagram under the handle @gtvreality, where you might find him giving Lady Gaga a ride on his bicycle, holding hands with Ben Affleck or shouting his catchphrase — “Stay Black!” — at Bob Dylan. He hopes to turn GTV Reality into a full-fledged brand and to monetize his content, though at 5,000 followers, he hasn’t quite figured out how to do so.“I’m trying to move in a different direction,” he said. “Everyone and their mama’s an autograph-getter now.”Ultimately, Mr. Arnold wants to find a way out of the memorabilia industry. He doesn’t derive the same kind of joy that Radio Man does from chasing down celebrities, and he isn’t willing to dedicate his life to it.“I’m good at what I do,” Mr. Arnold said. “But he’s another level.”“Let them make all the money they want,” Radio Man said of the autograph middlemen. “I don’t care. As long as I get to see my friends.”Jonah Rosenberg for The New York TimesBack on the set of “Wolves,” Radio Man cruised the streets of Chinatown looking for the director, Jon Watts. He was hoping there might be a scene he could sneak into. But the cameras were already rolling, and Mr. Watts was occupied.Radio Man returned to his usual post outside Mr. Clooney’s trailer. It was closing in on midnight. He was standing near his bicycle and sipping a hot tea, killing time until the next break in filming, when he was approached by someone he didn’t recognize.“Radio,” the man said. He held up an 8-by-10-inch photograph, taped to a sheet of hardboard, of Radio Man. “Do you mind signing real quick?”“What do you want me to say?” Radio Man asked. “Just, Radio Man?”“Yeah,” the man said. “Radio Man.”Radio Man signed the photograph in big, sloppy cursive. The man thanked him and walked away. It was hard to say if he was a grapher or just a fan. More

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      in Movies

      At the Oscars, the Red Carpet Goes Champagne

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      The 2023 Academy Awards carpet’s champagne hue — a break with a 62-year tradition of the bright red rug — is the latest arrival rug to opt for a colorful palette.There are some fundamental truths in the world: The sky is blue. The grass is green. The Oscars red carpet is re —— champagne-colored.Jimmy Kimmel, this year’s host, joked at the unveiling on Thursday that the color change — the first time in more than six decades that the academy’s arrival rug will not be red — had been prompted by Will Smith slapping the comedian Chris Rock across the face onstage at last year’s ceremony.“I think the decision to go with a champagne carpet rather than a red carpet shows just how confident we are that no blood will be shed,” he said.Oscars organizers said they wanted the rug to be mellow, like a beach at sunset.The 50,000-square-foot rug, which was created in a color chosen by the academy, is the latest in a trend of colorful carpets sweeping premieres, galas and award ceremonies across the country, from the Emmys (gold) to the Golden Globes (gray) to the purple-carpeted world premiere of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” in Los Angeles in November.“Every year, a new color will be a hot color,” said Steve Olive, the president of Event Carpet Pros, the company that has manufactured the carpet for the Oscars for more than 20 years, as well as events on both coasts like the Golden Globes, the Emmy Awards, the Grammy Awards and thousands of movie premieres. “This year seems to be a lot of lavender,” he said. (Red, he notes, is still the most popular color, though black, white and gray are gaining on it.)Clockwise from top left: The Emmys carpet in 2022; the “Avatar: The Way of Water” premiere in 2022; the premiere of ”Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” in 2022; and the Golden Globe Awards in 2023. Clockwise from top left; Lisa O’Connor/Invision, via Associated Press, Allison Dinner/EPA, via Shutterstock, Valerie Macon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images, Jon Kopaloff/Getty ImagesFor the Oscars production team, which chose the champagne color, the priority was a light, “soothing” color that would not clash with the orange tent that will be erected over the carpet to shield attendees from the sun and potential rain.The Run-Up to the 2023 OscarsThe 95th Academy Awards will be presented on March 12 in Los Angeles.Nell Mescal: The 19-year-old singer-songwriter says she doesn’t want to go viral, but her reaction to her brother’s Oscar nomination made her an internet microcelebrity just the same.Trying to Fix the Oscars: Acceptance speeches on TikTok? They’re part of an urgent effort to win back viewers to the Academy Awards.Inside the Oscars Campaigns: Despite the big show of sealed envelopes, Oscars voting is a result of a highly contingent, political process. This is how the quest for awards-season glory got so cutthroat.Asian Actors: A record number of actors of Asian ancestry were recognized with Oscar nominations this year. But historically, Asian stars have rarely been part of the awards.(They also considered chocolate brown, said Lisa Love, who was a red carpet creative consultant for the Oscars for the first time this year and is also a creative contributor for the Met Gala, which has been known for its eye-catching floor wear.)“The sienna-color tent and champagne-colored carpet was inspired by watching the sunset on a white-sand beach at the ‘golden hour’ with a glass of champagne in hand, evoking calm and peacefulness,” she said in an interview on Thursday.The red carpet traces its origins back to 458 B.C., when it appeared in the Aeschylus play “Agamemnon.” When the Greek king Agamemnon returns home victorious from the Trojan War, his vengeful wife, Clytemnestra, tries to trick him into arrogance by laying out a red carpet for him to walk on, an action that, undertaken by a mere mortal, would court the wrath of the gods. (He takes the bait and, shortly afterward, she murders him in a bathtub.)Red carpets have been a staple at premieres and galas since 1922, when the showman Sid Grauman rolled one out for the 1922 premiere of “Robin Hood,” which starred Douglas Fairbanks, at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. The Oscars adopted it beginning with the 1961 ceremony, and, ever since, the special shade — known as Academy Red — has been instantly recognizable in photos.But beginning about 15 years ago, at events across the country, producers began opting for more vibrant and varied fare, Mr. Olive said. There are the Met Gala’s pink and red, white and blue carpets, and Disney’s blue (“Moana” and “Avatar: The Way of Water”), white with black thorns (“Maleficent: Mistress of Evil”) and green (“Pete’s Dragon”) carpets for its premieres.“It’s important for us as creatives and producers to create visuals that stand out from each other,” said Keith Baptista, a partner at the creative agency Prodject, which handles design and management for events like the LACMA Art + Film Gala and the MoMA Film Benefit, and works with companies including Chanel, Gucci and Ralph Lauren. “You want to be able to look at something at a quick glance and go, ‘That was the Met Gala’ or ‘That was Vanity Fair.’”Lady Gaga arriving at the Met Gala in 2019, which featured a light pink carpet.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesMindi Weiss, an event planner who has worked with the Kardashians, Justin Bieber and Ellen DeGeneres, pointed to another consideration: How the carpet will photograph. Red, she said, tradition aside, is simply not flattering.“The color of red carpets has changed because of fashion,” she said. “It has to match the dresses, and the red clashed.”In fact, event planners say trends in carpet colors now correlate with trends on the runways.“It all goes back to fashion and style and trendsetting,” Ms. Weiss said. “The carpet should reflect the fashion that’s going to walk down it and not fight with it.”But a striking color does not always complement what celebrities are wearing, Mr. Baptista said — or photograph well. The wrong tone of gold, for instance, can wash out a photo, said Stephanie Goodell, who has led what the Television Academy refers to as its “SWATCH” team for the Emmys for the past seven years. To head off any issues, production companies do extensive lighting, color and even footprint testing beforehand, and warn stylists.“We’re in constant communication with publicists before the show,” Ms. Goodell said. “We always want to make sure they know exactly what we’re dealing with because they do select fashion based on the color of the carpet.”Planning teams for big-ticket events generally begin considering the carpet — the color, material, length, width and pile type — six months to a year before the event. They also look for other ways to stand out, like inscribing a logo or lettering on the carpet, Mr. Baptista said.“Sometimes we’ll see people use grass, especially for summertime events,” he said. Then, for the background, “a lot of people use hedgerows, so it’s just greenery and it becomes neutral. Sometimes, there’s no logo,” he said.Organizers of the 2023 Oscars said they wanted a carpet color that would evoke calm and peacefulness. Todd Heisler/The New York TimesFor the Oscars, Mr. Olive got the call that carpet would be champagne about 45 days before the show. He rushed to get the three-week manufacturing process underway, which takes place at a mill in Dalton, Ga., before the carpet is trucked across the country to Los Angeles, which takes about a week.So what happens to the carpet after Cate Blanchett and Austin Butler have strolled it?Its future, Mr. Olive said, does not lie in an industrial-size dumpster. The polyester-based, sisal-style rug is made from recycled materials and is recycled after the event, possibly beginning life anew as wall insulation or carpet padding, Mr. Olive said.But first, it has to look sharp on the big night. So, was this year’s Oscars squad worried that the champagne carpet — the kind of flooring that screams “Shoes-off house!” — would get dirty?“It will probably get dirty — maybe it wasn’t the best choice,” Ms. Love said. “We’ll see!”Katie Van Syckle More

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      in Theater

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

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

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      in Music

      For Two Broadway Stars, a Love Story Blossoms in a Honky-Tonk Bar

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      The new musical “The Lonely Few,” starring Lauren Patten and Ciara Renée, puts a romance between two women at its very heart.LOS ANGELES — During a rehearsal of “The Lonely Few” at the Geffen Playhouse, Lauren Patten, a Tony winner for her performance in “Jagged Little Pill,” was sharing a stage with Ciara Renée, whose Broadway credits include “Waitress” and “Frozen.” The performances were mesmerizing, and loud (drumsticks were broken; earplugs were provided), with Patten steam-rolling her way through a pair of headbangers about the joys of rock ’n’ roll and the desire to escape, and Renée filling the room with a heartbreaking ballad about unrequited love.“I would go see that band,” Zoe Sarnak, the show’s composer and lyricist, said during a break.The setting was about as far from a Broadway stage as one could imagine: a small rehearsal space in the Westwood neighborhood. And the actual performance space for the show, the Geffen’s Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, isn’t that much larger. The 114-seat theater has been reconfigured to resemble a dive bar in backwoods Kentucky, so audience members, sitting at tables and bar stools amid the players, will feel as if they’re at a neighborhood watering hole.“The minute you walk into the theater, you’re going to feel like you’re not at the Geffen,” said Ellenore Scott, who is sharing directing duties with Trip Cullman. “Performers will be walking right by you, or using your table, or doing an entire scene next to you.”For venues this size, Patten said, vocal adjustments need to be made. You’re still playing to the guy in the back row, she said, but with a care for the audience member sitting a few feet away. “I also think that with a show like this, with music like this,” she said, “it’s got to smack you in the face.”After five years of development, which included pandemic-related breaks, “The Lonely Few” is now having its world premiere, with preview performances scheduled to start Thursday and opening night set for March 9. In the musical, Patten plays Lila, a Save-A-Lot clerk who leads the Lonely Few, a preternaturally gifted band that plays Friday nights at Paul’s Joint, the local honky-tonk. Rounding out the band is Damon Daunno (“Oklahoma”), Helen J Shen (“Man of God”) and Thomas Silcott (“Birthday Candles”); Joshua Close (a star of the 2022 film “Monica”) portrays Lila’s brother Adam, the loving but troubled albatross around her neck.When Amy (Renée), an established musician, enters the club and offers Lila a chance to come on the road with her and open for her band, choices must be made, both practical and romantic.The new show has provided the two leads with a rare opportunity to create roles from the ground up. It’s a welcome change for Renée, who took over but didn’t originate the roles of Jenna in “Waitress” and Elsa in “Frozen,” both on Broadway.A recent rehearsal in Los Angeles. The show’s vibe is honky-tonk dive bar.JJ Geiger for The New York Times“I’ve done a lot in my career where I’ve been the Black woman who steps into a white role,” she said. “But this play doesn’t exist anywhere. It’s totally new. And there’s so much beauty in that.”“The Lonely Few” is also that rarest of shows: a musical that puts a love story between two women at its very heart.More on N.Y.C. Theater, Music and Dance This SpringMusical Revivals: Why do the worst characters in musicals get the best tunes? In upcoming revivals, world leaders both real and mythical get an image makeover they may not deserve, our critic writes.Rising Stars: These actors turned playwrights all excavate memories and meaning from their lives in creating these four shows, which arrive in New York in the coming months.Gustavo Dudamel: The New York Philharmonic’s new music director, will conduct Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in May. It will be one of the hottest tickets in town.Feeling the Buzz: “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” is back on Broadway. Its stars? An eclectic cast of dancers who are anything but machines.“Fun Home,” the musical adaptation of Alison Bechdel’s award-winning graphic novel, features the coming out narrative of an adolescent girl, as does “The Prom,” which opened on Broadway in 2018. But the romantic relationships in both of those musicals — though crucial to the stories — are largely secondary.“Those pieces are incredibly important to the canon, and I’m so thankful for them,” said Sarnak, whose previous shows include “A Crossing” for Barrington Stage Company. “But I can’t think of a show where the narrative center is a love story between two women who are out.”The first seeds of the show were planted in 2018, when Sarnak was talking with Rachel Bonds, who wrote the show’s book, about working together. They wanted to do a piece about two women with music in it, telling a story that could pull from their own experiences.For years, Sarnak had written songs about her life and past loves. “There are several relationships in my life that find their way into the show,” she said. “The first woman I ever dated, who I was with for four years, and then my marriage and divorce, and then relationships after that. It’s not any one relationship. There are pieces of anyone I’ve ever been with or been in love with.”For the play’s setting and people, Bonds drew from her childhood growing up in Sewanee, Tenn., home of the esteemed University of the South. “Sewanee is up on a mountain, and when you go down into the valley, it’s a whole different world,” she said. “There’s a real separation,” she added, “and I grew up very aware of that.”“Southerners are often portrayed as stupid or ignorant, and small-town folks are often portrayed as people without dreams or meaning in their lives,” Bonds continued. “I really wanted to fight against that.”Over time, the project morphed from “a play with music” to a full-blown book musical, a first for Bonds, whose plays include “Goodnight Nobody” and “Michael & Edie.” Many of Sarnak’s songs shaped the show’s plot about the star-crossed lovers Lila and Amy. “I think we both felt that these songs wanted to be a love story, this play had to be a love story,” Bonds said.Not long after, the two began considering possible leads. Sarnak had worked with Patten on readings and workshops, but never anything that had been produced.“We both felt that these songs wanted to be a love story, this play had to be a love story,” said Rachel Bonds, right, with Zoe Sarnak.JJ Geiger for The New York TimesGrowing up in Downers Grove, Ill., Patten was an early bloomer, staging home concerts in her living room when she was 3. “Apparently, the first song I sang was a Hank Williams song, ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ where he talks about drowning himself in a river because his woman left him,” she said. Commercials and theater roles soon followed.Patten made her Broadway debut in “Fun Home.” In 2021, she received a Tony for her role in “Jagged Little Pill,” but the show was criticized for changing Patten’s character, Jo, from seemingly nonbinary to gay and cisgender when the production moved from Boston to Broadway. In 2021, Patten released a mea culpa, in the form of a video conversation with the trans writer and activist Shakina Nayfack. “There’s a lot I wish was handled differently,” Patten said, looking back. “But I do feel grateful that even with something that was obviously a painful moment, I think it has a potential to move things forward in the industry.”Like Patten, Renée also began performing at an early age, winning singing competitions by the time she was 12. “I thought I was going to be a Christian music artist,” she said. In high school, however, she fell in love with the theater, and at 22, within three months of arriving in New York, she was offered roles in three Broadway shows. “I picked the flop,” she said of “Big Fish.”Then came a starring role in “Frozen,” though her run was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. “Every night I’d see these little girls, Black girls, girls of color, wearing Elsa, Anna, Olaf,” she said. “They were just so excited about their favorite characters, and about getting to see the leads of a show being played by women of color. I know how impactful that is, because I know that, growing up, I never saw it.”AS INITIALLY WRITTEN, the character of Amy in “The Lonely Few” was racially nonspecific, but that soon changed, even more so after Renée came aboard. “This whole piece could be open casting,” Bonds said. “But then when we started to place it in the South, we were interested in the tensions they’re in, and we really started to nail down who these women were.”So was Amy created for Renée? “I think it’s certainly being heavily shifted by my presence,” Renée said with a laugh.“It’s a testament to Rachel and Zoe really caring about my story as a Black woman,” she added, “and about this Black character in the South being queer, that there are things that complicate that in a way that’s different than if this character were white.”The show’s creators made a point of the care they are taking with the love story, and they have hired an intimacy director to help. “I feel a lot of trust in the room with Ciara,” Patten said. “We’re both doing very intense, emotional, vulnerable things in the show, and I feel very safe to do that with her.”During a break in rehearsal, the directors gave notes. In Lila’s line about chewing gum, Cullman told Patten it sounded like she was saying “gun.”“Oh my god,” Patten said. “Gum. Guuum.”“I feel a lot of trust in the room with Ciara,” Patten said. “We’re both doing very intense, emotional, vulnerable things in the show, and I feel very safe to do that with her.”JJ Geiger for The New York TimesBoth directors offered suggestions to Renée and Patten about their first scene together, when the two lock eyes in Paul’s Joint and the rest of the world (and the rest of the band) fades away.Many of the tweaks made over the past days and months are intended to ensure the show is as truthful to the place and its people as possible. The creators are quick to point out that the love story is the focus, not any sort of hatred or violence a lesbian relationship might provoke in the community. “I’m just not interested in seeing women get brutalized anymore,” Bonds said.In many ways, the musical toys with several possible expectations theatergoers might have coming into the show. How will this interracial love story between two women play out in a Kentucky dive bar? And just what is a band this good doing in a Kentucky dive bar in the first place?“This setting, this little bar, has become a bit of an enclave for folks who might feel like outsiders or weirdos or misfits,” Bonds said. “I think the community where Lila comes from actually surprises you in the end.”Despite the show’s specificity, the creators believe “The Lonely Few” will have broad appeal. “In my heart of hearts, I hope we have an Off Broadway run in New York,” Bonds said. “And then I hope we have a Broadway run.”“This is a queer love story,” she continued. “It’s a love story between two women. But my hope is that anybody could watch it, and be moved by it, and see themselves in it.” More

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      in Movies

      Acting Awards Without Gender Categories? Here’s Where Celebrities Stand

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      Nominees at the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles on Sunday were split on combining award show categories for best actor and best actress.LOS ANGELES — On the red carpet before the Screen Actors Guild Awards at the Fairmont Century Plaza in Los Angeles on Sunday, stars answered the usual questions. Were they excited to be here? Yes. How did it feel to be recognized? Amazing. What TV show would they want to guest star in? “The White Lotus.”But one question we posed made nearly every person stop, ponder for several seconds and then deliver a thinking-aloud answer, often with a caveat or a pivot in the middle:“Should major award shows eliminate separate acting categories for men and women?” we asked.The ongoing debate over gender-neutral acting prizes, which could also mean fewer nominations for everyone, is part of the conversation again this awards season. In 2021, the Gotham Awards, which honor independent films, nixed separate acting categories for men and women. Last year, the Brit Awards, Britain’s equivalent of the Grammys, merged its categories for best male and best female artist of the year into one gender-neutral top prize. And this year, the event faced backlash for not nominating any women for the award. The Grammy Awards eliminated many gendered categories beginning with the 2012 ceremony.Nonbinary actors such as Emma Corrin, who are often forced to choose a category in which to be considered, have called for gender-neutral award categories. The trans nonbinary performer Justin David Sullivan from the Broadway musical “& Juliet” withdrew their name from consideration when the Tony Awards eligibility rulings were announced earlier this month, putting public pressure on the awards. (Both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which hands out Oscars, and the Television Academy, which handles the Emmy Awards, are looking into nongendered categories, according to The Los Angeles Times. Nominees are already able to request gender-neutral wording on their awards at both events.)The immediate response of many attendees at the SAG Awards was a desire for awards to be more inclusive.“I think it’s a positive thing,” said Will Sharpe, who plays Ethan Spiller, the workaholic tech nerd married to Harper on Season 2 of “The White Lotus,” which won the top TV award for a drama series on Sunday night, noting he believed it would “level out the playing field.”Will Sharpe from Season 2 of “The White Lotus” at the SAG Awards. Aude Guerrucci/Reuters“Why not?” said Michael Imperioli, who plays the womanizing Hollywood producer Dominic Di Grasso on “The White Lotus,” on combining the acting categories. “It’s all one big acting soup.”Other nominees addressed the potential benefit for nonbinary actors.“There are people who don’t want to be defined by gender, and I want to help make awards more inclusive for them,” said Rhea Seehorn, who plays the lawyer Kim Wexler in “Better Call Saul,” which was nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series for its final season.But then she paused.“At the same time,” she added, until women and nonbinary performers are afforded “as much screen time as the men, it’s not very fair to compare the performances.”Top awards often go to the actors who spend the most time onscreen, and a recent study found that, in 2021, in the top 100 grossing films, male characters outnumbered female ones by almost two to one.Jamie Lee Curtis, who won the supporting-actress statuette for her role in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” over the Golden Globe winner Angela Bassett (“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”) and the BAFTA winner Kerry Condon (“The Banshees of Inisherin”), echoed Ms. Seehorn’s indecision.Jamie Lee Curtis won a SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a supporting role for her part in “Everything Everywhere All at Once.”Frazer Harrison/Getty Images“I’m all for inclusion, which is the most important thing,” she said, “but, at the same time, I want to make sure that the most opportunities are available to people. I know a lot of people believe in same-sex education. There are a lot of young women who get very quiet when the boys get really loud.”Female nominees in particular expressed concern that the idea of a single prize would put men at a distinct advantage because of the richer and more numerous roles available to them.“There’s still a lot of male parts,” said Patricia Arquette, who plays Harmony Cobel, Mark’s domineering boss, in “Severance,” which was nominated for outstanding ensemble performance in a drama series. “I don’t know if that would be fair.”Patricia Arquette plays Harmony Cobel in “Severance,” which was nominated for outstanding performance by an ensemble in a drama series.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated Press“Until there’s a 50-50 opportunity, then we still need to have our own categories,” said Olivia Williams, who plays Camilla Parker Bowles in Season 5 of “The Crown,” which was also nominated for best ensemble performance in a drama series.Sarah Polley, the writer and director of the female-focused film “Women Talking,” which examines sexual assault in a religious community, said the potential for parity in consideration had to be weighed against the realities of the film and television industries.“What none of us want to see is a general acting category where it ends up being all-male nominees,” she said, “Which I think is the fear — and that’s a genuine fear.”But, she added, there were also important considerations to weigh that extend beyond fairness to the issue of fundamental identity.“We have a nonbinary actor in our cast,” she said, referring to August Winter, who plays Melvin, a character who lives as an openly trans man in a patriarchal society. “And there would have had to be a choice made between male and female, neither of which was accurate.”Members of the cast of “Women Talking” from left, Liv McNeil, August Winter, Kate Hallett, Michelle McLeod, Sheila McCarthy, Sarah Polley, Rooney Mara, Claire Foy and Jessie Buckley.Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated Press“I’m not sure what the solution is,” she added, “but it certainly can’t stay the way it is, because it is excluding people from being recognized.”Mx. Winter, who uses the pronouns they and them, said they supported gender-neutral categories because they “honor the person who is making the art.”“Right now, you need to choose,” they said, referring to awards that separate categories for men and women. “And I don’t think people should be put in that position.”Other nominees noted, however, that they were concerned that combined categories would lead to fewer performances being recognized.Ms. Bassett said that collapsing the categories could lead to fewer chances for recognition. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Not enough opportunity.”Angela Bassett was nominated for a SAG award for outstanding performance by an actress in a supporting role for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.”Jordan Strauss/Invision, via Associated PressJon Gries, who plays Greg Hunt, the scheming husband of Jennifer Coolidge’s character, Tanya, in “The White Lotus,” echoed that concern. “When you have best actor, best actress, you have more awards,” he said. (“We like more awards,” said Sabrina Impacciatore, who plays the series’s uptight hotel manager, as she strolled up and put a hand on his shoulder.)Sally Field, who received a lifetime achievement award for her nearly six-decade TV and film career on Sunday night, expressed a general frustration with the competitive nature of awards. “It’s hard to compare actors, whether they be male or female, because the roles are so different,” she said. So the idea of a rule change that would recognize even fewer performances was befuddling to her.“Why would you do that?” she said, looking as though someone had just suggested she go roll through the mud in her ball gown. “I mean, you already can’t even compare Cate Blanchett and Viola Davis. They’re both beyond belief.”Quick Question is a collection of dispatches from red carpets, gala dinners and other events that coax celebrities out of hiding. More