Mengesha, Weyni

Subterms

    Latest story

    138 Shares93 Views

    Hit Play About U.S. Constitution Debuts in Canada. Amended, of Course.

    by

    How do you retool “What the Constitution Means to Me” for those unfamiliar with the U.S. Constitution? Consult Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.“What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s Tony-nominated exploration of the document’s gender and racial biases, will be the most performed work in the United States for the second year in a row. And this week, just days before the U.S. presidential election, it will have its Canadian premiere.The timing is intentional. By presenting the work starting Friday, at the Soulpepper Theater in Toronto, its artistic director, Weyni Mengesha, said she wants the production to not only inspire Canadian audiences to pay attention to what’s happening in the United States but also in their own political sphere.“Things that happen down south affect things up here,” Mengesha said. “And we’re feeling a similar sense of divisiveness.”Canadians are contending with a housing crisis, sky-high grocery bills, debates about immigration, and a leader — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — whose own party wants him to step down.But how do you retool a highly specific work for audiences who may be unfamiliar with the finer points of the U.S. Constitution?Toward the end of U.S. productions of “What the Constitution Means to Me,” the protagonist debates a high schooler about whether to keep or scrap the U.S. Constitution. In Toronto, the production’s star, Amy Rutherford, and a local student will instead debate the merits of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was created in 1982 as part of the country’s Constitution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    More stories

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Review: Royalty as Horror Show in ‘Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!’

      by

      An uncanny new play imagines Meghan (and Kate, too) trapped in a nightmare palace where racism reigns.“Were you silent,” Oprah Winfrey asked Meghan Markle, “or were you silenced?”That transfixing moment from Sunday’s televised interview between the Queen of Empathy and the Duchess of Sussex rang in my ears as I watched, on Monday, a new play, by Vivian J.O. Barnes, that explores the same question in 32 minutes instead of two hours. With uncanny timing and daring theatricality, “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” — now streaming from the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago — dissects the phenomenon of Black women who, in exchange for privilege, forfeit their ability to speak, or have it taken from them.I don’t mean Winfrey, of course. In Barnes’s play, which she started writing in 2018, the interview is rather between a woman called the Soon-to-Be Duchess, who is like Markle shortly before her wedding to Prince Harry, and a woman called the Duchess, a Kate Middleton figure reimagined as Black. The occasion is a meeting, evidently arranged by palace apparatchiks, in which the experienced royal wife is supposed to school the totally inexperienced royal fiancée in the finer points of duchessing: how to hold one’s legs (“the Duchess slant”) and especially how to hold one’s tongue.Cooper, right, conferring with Sydney Charles as an experienced royal in the Steppenwolf Theater Company production.Lowell ThomasBy making the Middleton figure Black, Barnes both generalizes the problems of royalty to encompass any woman who joins “the firm” and stakes a claim on particular themes without having to spell them out. The Duchess (Sydney Charles) is sleek and sophisticated, with straight hair, silky diction and a profound mastery of self-abnegation. Soon-to-Be (Celeste M. Cooper) is less processed in every way: She shows too much skin, says what she thinks and has condoms in her purse.Still, she’s jittery. At night she dreams of her mouth turning into a hand that waves as if to perpetual crowds. She has already been pilloried in racist terms in the press and, even within the palace, has been advised to tone herself down. One internal memo asks that she try to be “a little less cocoa, a lot more beige” — a line that, though written earlier, recalls Markle’s description of royal family members expressing concern about the skin tone of the children she and Harry might have.Unlike them, Soon-to-Be laughs off the matter, tearing the memo to pieces along with many others. But if she expected to find the Duchess a comforting sister, “one person who gets it, who’s gonna look out for me,” she is as mistaken as Markle apparently was in the parallel situation.There is no solidarity to be found in a hollowed-out personality; the Duchess, who has recently had a baby she can’t quite recall giving birth to, imagines her public self as a “person who’s taking up the me-shaped hole I left behind.” She has bought so deeply into the royal mythology that she seems to believe she now exists in a rarefied world beyond personality and thus beyond race.As the Markle interview made clear, no such world exists. Institutions can be racist even when their leaders (as Markle said of Queen Elizabeth) have “always been wonderful.” Because this can only be seen from outside, it is not the assimilated royal in Barnes’s play who ends up teaching the outsider how to speak, but the reverse. In ways that are both fascinating and intensely disturbing, Soon-to-Be takes both women to places they could not reach in real life.This puts “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” in the line of recent movies, including “Get Out,” “Us” and “Antebellum,” that figure racism as a species of horror, complete with surrealistic touches, eerie mash-ups of sounds and music (by Pornchanok Kanchanabanca) and a culminating dose of (implied) gore. Yet it is still recognizably a play: The director, Weyni Mengesha, stages it elegantly on a minimal set, against a black backdrop, with just enough editing to stitch the two characters, who were filmed separately, together.Even aside from creating mini-studios in their own apartments, the cast has a difficult job here. Working hard to split the genre difference, they aim for a performance style that is neither too stagy for film nor too subtle for theater. Charles has an easier time of it; Barnes has given the Duchess a clear dramatic profile with a rising arc of crisis. Cooper’s role is rangier and harder to corral: Soon-to-Be toggles so fast between nerves and nerve that she starts to seem like a firefly.That’s a trap built into the setup: Someone has to keep goading the action when the primary antagonists are deliberately kept offstage. Another trap is that horror can lend those absent antagonists a kind of otherworldly glamour; why were the Duchess and Soon-to-Be — or Markle and Middleton, for that matter — attracted to royals in the first place?Yet as Markle reminded us, racism isn’t glamorous, even when it wears a tiara. It’s ordinary and sour.If “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” can’t strike that note clearly, it strikes plenty of others. The obtuseness of privilege — and the mania that aims to preserve it with absurd rituals and at unimaginable emotional cost — get a thorough workout, even in such a short play. The writing itself is wonderfully operatic; you could almost imagine the script as a libretto. No surprise that among Barnes’s inspirations are such musical stage stylists as Ntozake Shange, Caryl Churchill and George C. Wolfe.Beyond that, it’s no small thing to find a young playwright — Barnes is still in graduate school, at the University of California, San Diego — using the theater’s big tools so presciently and fearlessly. She’s got a voice, and she knows it.Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!Through Aug. 31; steppenwolf.org More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Music

      11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story11 Things Our Critics Are Looking Forward to in 2021Nicolas Cage hosts the history of swearing. Lorde writes a book and Julie Mehretu takes over the Whitney. This new year has to be better, right?Credit…María MedemDec. 31, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETAs a new year begins, our critics highlight the TV, movies, music, art and streaming dance and theater they anticipate before summer.Jason ZinomanSwearing With Nicolas CageNicolas Cage hosts “History of Swear Words,” a new Netflix series.Credit…NetflixSure, the new Netflix series “History of Swear Words,” which premieres Jan. 5, features a cast of comics like Sarah Silverman, Joel Kim Booster and Nikki Glaser working as talking heads, breaking down the meaning, impact and poetry of six major bad words, which mostly cannot be published here. An exception is “Damn,” which, you learn from this show, used to be much more taboo than it is today. And there are also some very smart academics who will explain such history, some of it hard fact sprinkled in with a few questionable legends. Etymology really can be riveting stuff. But let’s face it: The main reason to be excited about this show is the prospect of its host, Nicolas Cage, hammily shouting curses over and over again. I have seen the screeners and it lives up to expectations.Jon ParelesJulien Baker Scales UpHow does a songwriter hold on to honest vulnerability as her audience grows? It’s a question Julien Baker began to wrestle with when she released her first solo album, “Sprained Ankle.” She sang about trauma, addiction, self-doubt, self-invention and a quest for faith, with quietly riveting passion in bare-bones arrangements. And she quickly found listeners to hang on her every word. Through her second album, “Turn Out the Lights,” and her collaborative songs in the group boygenius (with Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus) she used better studios and drew on richer sounds but still projected intimacy. Her third album, “Little Oblivions,” is due Feb. 26. With it she scales her music up to larger spaces, backed by a full rock band with ringing guitars and forceful drums. But she doesn’t hide behind them; she’s still ruthless and unsparing, particularly about herself.Maya PhillipsThe Scarlet Witch Gets Her DueElizabeth Olsen, left, stars as Wanda Maximoff in the new Disney+ series “WandaVision,” which also features Paul Bettany as Vision.Credit…Disney PlusWhen I heard the Scarlet Witch, also known as Wanda Maximoff, was joining the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I was hyped. Sometimes known as a daughter of Magneto (yes, we’ve got an X-Men crossover here), the powerful mutant had the ability to alter reality. So imagine my disappointment when Wanda was elbowed off to the side, shown shooting red blasts from her hands but not much else. Wanda, they did you wrong.But I’m not just thrilled about “WandaVision” finally giving this female hero her due. The new series, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and arrives on Disney+ on Jan. 15, grants the Scarlet Witch her own universe to manipulate, and uses it as a way to toy with a fresh tone and aesthetic for the MCU. Offbeat and capricious, and a perversion of classic sitcom series, “WandaVision” seems like it will give its superheroine the space to power up and unravel in ways that she couldn’t in the overstuffed “Avengers” films. Olsen seems up to the task, and Kathryn Hahn, Paul Bettany and Randall Park are also there to provide extra comedy and pathos.Jason FaragoA Retrospective for Julie Mehretu“Retopistics: A Renegade Excavation,” a painting by Julie Mehretu, from 2001, which will appear in a midcareer retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.Credit…Julie MehretuThis midcareer retrospective of Julie Mehretu and her grand, roiling abstractions drew raves when it opened last year at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and it belatedly arrives on March 25 in the artist’s hometown, at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Mehretu came to prominence 20 years ago with dense, mural-scaled paintings whose sweeping lines suggested flight paths or architectural renderings; later, she turned to freer, more fluid mark-making that places abstract painting in the realms of migration and war, capital and climate.Her most recent work, made during the first lockdown and seen in a thundering show at Marian Goodman Gallery, is less readily legible, more digitally conversant, and more confident than ever. To fully perceive her jostling layers of silk-screened grids, sprayed veils and calligraphic strokes of black and red requires all one’s concentration; come early, look hard.Jesse GreenBlack Royalty Negotiates PowerA scene from “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!,” a filmed play starring Sydney Charles, left, and Celeste M. Cooper, presented by Steppenwolf Theater.Credit…Lowell ThomasEnough with “The Crown.” Television may have cornered the market on stories about the nobility, but it was theater that traditionally got into the heads of heads of state and tried to understand what they were thinking.That tradition gets a timely update in February, when Steppenwolf Theater presents “Duchess! Duchess! Duchess!” — a filmed play by Vivian J.O. Barnes, directed by Weyni Mengesha. Inspired and/or appalled by the experiences of Kate Middleton and Meghan Markle, Barnes imagines a dialogue in which a Black duchess helps acculturate a Black duchess-to-be to her new position. Together, they explore what it means to join an institution that acts as if they should feel honored to be admitted, even as it eats them alive.That the institution in question involves not just royalty but racism, if the two are different, broadens the story. How Black women negotiate power in traditionally white arenas, and at what cost, is something that resonates far beyond Balmoral.Mike HaleAn Alien Impersonates a DoctorThe title character of the Syfy series “Resident Alien,” which premieres on Jan. 27, does not have a green card, but he does have green skin, or at least a green-and-purple exoskeleton. He’s been sent to earth to exterminate us; there’s a delay, and in the meantime he has to impersonate a small-town Colorado doctor and learn, with exceeding awkwardness, how to act like a human being. This snowbound scary-monster comedy won’t make any Top 10 lists but it looks like a hoot, and it’s tailor-made for the eccentric comic talents of Alan Tudyk (“Doom Patrol,” “Arrested Development”), who never seems comfortable in whatever skin he’s in.Salamishah TilletDeath of a Black PantherDaniel Kaluuya, rear, and Lakeith Stanfield star in “Judas and the Black Messiah,” a film about a deadly raid on the Black Panther Party in Chicago.Credit…Glen Wilson/Warner Bros., via Associated PressOn Dec. 4, 1969, 14 Chicago police officers, with a search warrant for guns and explosives, raided an apartment where members of the Black Panther Party were staying. When they left, the party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were dead. Congressman Bobby Rush, who was then a deputy minister of the party, testified that Hampton, 21, was asleep in his bed when police officers shot him, a version of events investigated in “The Murder of Fred Hampton,” a 1971 documentary. Now there is a feature film about the raid. “Judas and the Black Messiah” tells the story of Hampton (Daniel Kaluuya), and William O’Neal (Lakeith Stanfield), an FBI informant who was part of Hampton’s security team, reuniting the two stars from “Get Out.” Directed by Shaka King (“Newlyweeds”), the movie is expected to be released in early 2021.Margaret LyonsA Drama Jumps Through Time“David Makes Man” is one of the most beautiful dramas of the last several years, and its structural daring added new facets to the coming-of-age genre. David (Akili McDowell) was in middle school in Season 1, but in the upcoming second season (currently slated for early summer on OWN) he’s in his 30s and facing adult challenges. That kind of time jump — and creative leap — would be intriguing on its own, but the way the show captured the warring thoughts within one’s adolescent psychology makes me even more excited to see how it depicts the turmoils of maturity.Gia KourlasDance and the Natural WorldMembers of the Martha Graham Dance Company in Graham’s “Dark Meadow Suite.”Credit…Brigid PierceSince the pandemic began, the robust digital programming at the Martha Graham Dance Company has stood out for its multifaceted approach of exploring the works of its groundbreaking modern choreographer. It helps, of course, to have Graham’s works to excavate in the first place. (And access to a healthy archive.)As most dance companies continue to maintain their distance from the stage, the Graham group — now in its 95th season — opens the year with digital programming organized by theme. The January spotlight is on nature and the elements, both in Graham’s dances and in recent works. How is the natural world used metaphorically?On Jan. 9, “Martha Matinee,” hosted by the artistic director, Janet Eilber, looks at Graham’s mysterious, ritualistic “Dark Meadow” (1946) with vintage footage of Graham herself along with the company’s recent “Dark Meadow Suite.” And on Jan. 19, the company unveils “New @ Graham,” featuring a closer look at “Canticle for Innocent Comedians” (1952), Graham’s unabashed celebration of nature, with an emphasis on the moon and the stars.Jason FaragoThe Frick’s Modernist Pop-UpA view of the former Met Breuer on Madison Avenue; the museum will be taken over by the Frick for a modernist pop-up called Frick Madison.Credit…Vincent Tullo for The New York TimesIn this market you’re better off subletting! When the Frick Collection finally won approval to renovate and expand its Fifth Avenue mansion, it started hunting for temporary digs — and got a lucky break when the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced it would vacate its rental of Marcel Breuer’s Brutalist citadel three years early. Henry Clay Frick’s will bars loans from the core collection, so the Frick’s modernist pop-up, called Frick Madison, will offer the first, and probably only, new backdrop for Bellini’s mysterious “St. Francis in the Desert,” Rembrandt’s brisk “Polish Rider,” or Holbein’s dueling portraits of Thomas Cromwell and Thomas More (a must-see face-off for “Wolf Hall” fans).But the modern architecture is only part of the adaptation; the Frick is a house museum, and the Breuer sublet allows curators a unique chance to scramble and reconstitute the collection outside a residential framework. The real UFOs at Frick Madison, expected in the first quarter of 2021, may therefore be the decorative arts: all those gilded clocks, all that Meissen porcelain, relocated from plutocratic salons into cubes of concrete.Lindsay ZoladzLorde Writes About AntarcticaFew new years have arrived with such weighty expectations as 2021, so to prevent disappointment let us calibrate our hopes: What I know is that in 2021 the New Zealand pop-poet Lorde has promised to put out, at the very least, a book of photographs from her recent trip to Antarctica. Titled “Going South,” it features writing by Lorde (who describes her trip as “this great white palette cleanser, a sort of celestial foyer I had to move through in order to start making the next thing”) and photographs by Harriet Were, and net proceeds from its sale will go toward a climate research scholarship fund. Cool. I love it. Of course, my true object of anticipation is Lorde’s third album, the long-awaited follow-up to her spectacularly intimate 2017 release, “Melodrama,” but after a year like 2020, I’m not going to rush her. Actually, you know what? I am. Lorde, Ella, Ms. Yelich-O’Connor: Please release your epic concept album about glaciers and spiritual rebirth at the South Pole in 2021. After a year in the Antarctic climate of the soul that was 2020, this is what we all deserve.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More