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      ‘Encanto’ Soundtrack Ousts Adele From No. 1

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      The album of music from the latest Disney animated film climbs to the top of the Billboard 200 after first arriving in November.The soundtrack to “Encanto,” the new Disney animated film, has reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart, displacing Adele’s “30” after a six-week run at the top.The “Encanto” album, with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda that draw on salsa and hip-hop and are performed on traditional Colombian instruments, came out in November — initially landing at No. 197 — and has had a steady climb to the top. After the film’s streaming release on Disney+ on Christmas Eve, the soundtrack entered Billboard’s Top 10.One of its numbers, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” is currently the most-streamed song on Spotify, beating out a slew of new tracks by the Weeknd. (The Weeknd’s surprise album, “Dawn FM,” released on Friday with just a few days’ notice, is expected to open with huge numbers on next week’s chart.)The “Encanto” soundtrack, which also features pieces from the film’s score by Germaine Franco, had the equivalent of 72,000 sales in the United States last week, according to MRC Data, Billboard’s tracking arm. That total includes 88 million streams and 11,000 copies sold as a complete package. “Encanto” is the first soundtrack to reach No. 1 on Billboard’s chart since “Frozen 2” in late 2019.Adele’s “30” fell to No. 2, while Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” is No. 3 in its 52nd week out. While Wallen has been publicly snubbed by the music industry after being caught on video last year using a racial slur — he received no Grammy nominations — “Dangerous” has been an enormous success, with steady fan loyalty.“Dangerous” was the most popular album of 2021, with the equivalent of 3.2 million sales in the United States, according to MRC — beating out “30” and other hits by Olivia Rodrigo and Drake by a wide margin. Since it came out last January, “Dangerous” has remained in the Top 10 of the Billboard 200 album chart every week except one, last month, when it was pushed out by a number of Christmas albums.Wallen is scheduled to begin a tour of arenas in February, including a date at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 9.Also this week, Rodrigo’s “Sour” is No. 4 and Taylor Swift’s Red “(Taylor’s Version)” is No. 5. More

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      Beyoncé Edges Closer to Her First Oscar Nomination as Shortlists Are Revealed

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      “Be Alive,” which the superstar wrote with Dixson for “King Richard,” made the academy’s cut in preliminary voting. So did Lin-Manuel Miranda, Billie Eilish and Van Morrison.Will Beyoncé and Lin-Manuel Miranda compete against each other at the Oscars? That matchup became a possibility on Tuesday when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced the shortlists for best song and nine other categories.Beyoncé and the songwriter Dixson made the cut for “Be Alive,” from “King Richard,” a biopic about the father of Venus and Serena Williams. If the song makes it through the next round, it would be Beyoncé’s first Oscar nomination. Miranda was included for “Dos Oruguitas,” which he wrote for “Encanto,” the animated tale about a gifted family in Colombia. Other contenders in the category include Billie Eilish and Finneas (for the Bond song “No Time to Die”) and Van Morrison (for “Down to Joy,” from “Belfast”), who has made news recently for songs protesting Covid-19 lockdown measures. (Eilish was also the subject of a documentary that made the shortlist.)For best score, Jonny Greenwood and Hans Zimmer might be competing against each other and themselves. Both are included twice: Greenwood for “The Power of the Dog” and “Spencer”; Zimmer for “Dune” and “No Time to Die.”Another notable twofer: “Flee,” the animated documentary about an Afghan refugee in Copenhagen, made the documentary and international feature lists. The documentary finalists included several films that made critics’ year-end best lists, including “Summer of Soul” and “The Velvet Underground.” The same goes for the international feature category, with “Drive My Car” (Japan’s submission) and “The Hand of God” (from Italy) making the cut.Members will begin voting on Jan. 27, and the final nominees will be announced on Feb. 8. The winners will be revealed in a ceremony scheduled for March 27.Here are the shortlists:Original Song“So May We Start?” (“Annette”)“Down to Joy” (“Belfast”)“Right Where I Belong” (“Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road”)“Automatic Woman” (“Bruised”)“Dream Girl” (“Cinderella”)“Beyond the Shore” (“CODA”)“The Anonymous Ones” (“Dear Evan Hansen”)“Just Look Up” (“Don’t Look Up”)“Dos Oruguitas” (“Encanto”)“Somehow You Do” (“Four Good Days”)“Guns Go Bang” (“The Harder They Fall”)“Be Alive” (“King Richard”)“No Time to Die” (“No Time to Die”)“Here I Am (Singing My Way Home)” (“Respect”)“Your Song Saved My Life” (“Sing 2”)Original Score“Being the Ricardos”“Candyman”“Don’t Look Up”“Dune”“Encanto”“The French Dispatch”“The Green Knight”“The Harder They Fall”“King Richard”“The Last Duel”“No Time to Die”“Parallel Mothers”“The Power of the Dog”“Spencer”“The Tragedy of Macbeth”Documentary Feature“Ascension”“Attica”“Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry”“Faya Dayi”“The First Wave”“Flee”“In the Same Breath”“Julia”“President”“Procession”“The Rescue”“Simple as Water”“Summer of Soul”“The Velvet Underground”“Writing With Fire”International FeatureAustria, “Great Freedom”Belgium, “Playground”Bhutan, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom”Denmark, “Flee”Finland, “Compartment No. 6”Germany, “I’m Your Man”Iceland, “Lamb”Iran, “A Hero”Italy, “The Hand of God”Japan, “Drive My Car”Kosovo, “Hive”Mexico, “Prayers for the Stolen”Norway, “The Worst Person in the World”Panama, “Plaza Catedral”Spain, “The Good Boss”Sound“Belfast”“Dune”“Last Night in Soho”“The Matrix Resurrections”“No Time to Die”“The Power of the Dog”“A Quiet Place Part II”Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      In 'Tick, Tick … Boom!,' Robin de Jesús Showcases His Range

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      In the film, this queer Puerto Rican actor gets to showcase his range, stepping into a more mature role as Michael.The T-shirt says it all: “This body was built on arroz con gandules.”Arroz con gandules, or rice with pigeon peas, is a Puerto Rican classic, and Robin de Jesús wears the shirt with pride under a burnt orange jacket. When mounds of maduros (fried sweet plantains) arrive with our entrees, each is topped with a tiny Puerto Rican flag. De Jesús, 37, approves.The actor’s family is from rural Puerto Rico, and he grew up in a working-class community in Norwalk, Conn. Known for larger-than-life roles like a gay teenager who dabbles in drag in the movie “Camp,” a spirited maid in the Broadway revival of “La Cage aux Folles” and a boisterous interior decorator in both the play and film versions of “The Boys in the Band,” he wanted to diversify his work.Then along came “Tick, Tick … Boom!.” De Jesús was deeply intentional in auditioning for the role of Michael, an actor turned advertiser, in the film, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.“What kept coming up for me was, ‘I want a quiet performance.’ I want a quiet, subtle, nuance,” de Jesús said at lunch. “And I know that, if I do that, I can showcase maturity.”The movie (in theaters and on Netflix) is an adaptation of a musical about the writing of a musical. The original “Tick, Tick … Boom!” was written by Jonathan Larson — who would later go on to write the rock musical “Rent” — and first performed in 1990. The film tells the tale of an aspiring composer (also named Jonathan and played by Andrew Garfield) pouring himself into yet another musical, this one called “Superbia.” It takes place in the early ’90s, against the stark backdrop of the AIDS epidemic.As his 30th birthday looms, Jonathan’s anxiety manifests as a persistent ticking. He worries about the upcoming workshop of “Superbia,” upon which everything seemingly hinges — and about whether he can succeed in the performing arts at all.Michael, his former roommate and best friend since childhood, has tapped out of the threadbare artist lifestyle, opting instead for a plush career in advertising and a glittering high-rise apartment. He was tired of waiting for hours in line for an audition, just to be cut off after six measures of a song and called the wrong name: “Juan, Pedro, Carlos, lo que sea.”De Jesús with Andrew Garfield in “Tick, Tick … Boom!”Macall Polay/NetflixThat’s not to say that Michael has hardened into a formal shell; he stays playful and supportive of Jonathan’s dreams. We first meet him visiting Jonathan at work in the Moondance Diner, where he drops off copies he made of the “Superbia” script.“Boo-boo, you need to ask yourself,” Michael tells Jonathan, “In this moment, are you letting yourself be led by fear? Or love?”De Jesús said, “I knew that Michael did not have to be pulled and buttoned up, that he was someone who navigated being an artist, a creative, someone who was down and hip, and cool with also doing advertising.”“It didn’t have to just be one thing,” he continued.Although de Jesús has appeared in many major movies, he assumed some other, bigger film star might snag the role of Michael. So he took a risk in his audition. Miranda was impressed.“I’ve seen a lot of productions of ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ and a lot of the time the guy that gets cast as Michael is someone who looks very at home being a business guy, very dapper, very smooth,” Miranda said in a phone call. “What’s fun about Robin as a choice is that you 100 percent believe this is an artist who thrives in this world. It’s an artist with a business suit on.”Miranda and de Jesús go way back. (So far, in fact, that de Jesús sang at Miranda’s wedding.) In 2005, de Jesús made his Broadway debut in “Rent” as a member of the ensemble and an understudy for Angel, a young drag queen. That same year, he joined the original cast of “In the Heights,” Miranda’s first musical, with a book by Quiara Alegría Hudes.“Quiara and I realized every time he had the ball, he just put a crazy spin on it and knocked it out of the park,” Miranda said of de Jesús. “I am mixing my tennis and baseball metaphors, but so would Robin.”De Jesús earned a Tony nomination for his role as Sonny in “In the Heights.” He received subsequent nominations for “La Cage aux Folles” in 2010 and “The Boys in the Band” in 2019. This year, he presented at the Tony Awards with Andrew Garfield.But so many of his roles came across as youthful or outsize. De Jesús was ready for something fresh.Five Movies to Watch This WinterCard 1 of 51. “The Power of the Dog”: More

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      ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’ Review: A Bohemian’s Rhapsodies

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      Andrew Garfield stars as Jonathan Larson, the composer and lyricist of “Rent,” in this meta-musical directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda.For his feature directing debut, the “Hamilton” honcho Lin-Manuel Miranda points his spotlight at the composer who inspired his own creative awakening: Jonathan Larson.That artist heard little applause in his lifetime. He died at age 35 from an aortic aneurysm the day before the first preview of his breakthrough hit, “Rent.” In addition to “Rent,” Larson left behind the 1991 meta-musical “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” a self-portrait of the artist as an angst-ridden wretch, which Miranda has reverently dusted and polished like a sacred totem for a select cult. When Larson introduces himself as “a musical theater writer, one of the last of my species,” the line prods fans to protest that his as-yet-unwritten rock musical would galvanize a generation of creators. Miranda, who saw “Rent” at 17, is palpably thrilled to gain access to his hero’s hovel on Greenwich Street, here recreated with exactitude — right down to the Scorpions cassette.“Tick, Tick … Boom!” is an autobiography of anxieties. Larson, played with kinetic desperation by Andrew Garfield, fixates on success. How can he get it? How long can his wallet can hold out for it? How much might his all-consuming ambition cost him emotionally? Larson stakes his hopes on wowing producers with a head-scrambling sci-fi operetta called “Superbia.” At the same time, his dancer girlfriend, Susan (Alexandra Shipp, primarily tasked to look beatific), threatens to slink off to a teaching job in the Berkshires, and his best friend, Michael (Robin de Jesús), sells out for a corporate salary and an apartment big enough to host the film’s only full-on dance number. (The charismatic de Jesús celebrates his walk-in closet by letting Garfield spin him in the air like a Christmas puppy.)“Compromise or persevere?” Garfield’s striver croons, convinced that his impending 30th birthday — the time bomb in the title — will mark his decline from future superstar to “waiter with a hobby.” Foreshadowing carries the film. Even the songs cop that Larson was not yet the lyricist he would become. The lyrics dwell on chirpy observations about his diner job, his writer’s block, his favorite swimming pool (another location in the film) and, of course, his prescient fear of mortality, which is the only reason Steven Levenson’s screen adaptation has dramatic heft.Miranda’s devotion to his idol keeps him from expanding the musical’s myopic fretting into a universal story of sacrifice and resolve. Garfield at least gives Larson an endearing vulnerability. While he isn’t a lifelong singer like Vanessa Hudgens (in a supporting role as a cast member in Larson’s show-within-the-show), Garfield holds up his half of their duet with a capable voice that creaks just enough to sound sincere. As a dancer, Garfield is a gleeful pogo-bopping creature in the homespun key of David Byrne. His gangly limbs fill the frame, and the cinematographer Alice Brooks even follows his lead by eschewing pizazz for the humble grays of a walk-up apartment in winter. Instead, it’s up to a constellation of stage legends to bring the glitz — and boy, do they, in a centerpiece number with so many cameos that this small-scale film briefly becomes Broadway’s “Avengers.”Tick, Tick … Boom!Rated PG-13 for unmelodic cursing and a whiff of drug use. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes. In theaters and on Netflix. More

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      ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’: A Musical Based on a Musical About Writing a Musical. We Explain.

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      Lin-Manuel Miranda’s directorial debut is an adaptation of a show by Jonathan Larson, creator of “Rent.” This guide unpacks the many layers.Lin-Manuel Miranda’s new film adaptation of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” is the musical version of the “Rent” creator Jonathan Larson’s musical about writing a musical.To clarify, that musical is not “Rent.” (Yes, our brains hurt, too.)“Tick, Tick … Boom!,” which premieres Nov. 12 in theaters and Nov. 19 on Netflix, portrays Larson (Andrew Garfield) and his efforts to find success in his late 20s. The audience watches him struggle to write “Superbia,” a retro-futuristic musical, while he frets about whether he should choose a more conventional career.To help you keep “Superbia” (Larson’s never-produced musical) straight from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” (Larson’s autobiographical show about writing “Superbia”) straight from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” the new film that tells Larson’s story, we’ve created this guide:Who was Jonathan Larson?The composer and playwright is best known as the creator of “Rent,” a musical loosely based on Puccini’s 1896 opera, “La Bohème.”But Larson never got to see the smash-hit success of his rock opera, which went on to win four Tony Awards. The composer died unexpectedly at age 35 in 1996 from an aortic aneurysm — on the morning before the first Off Broadway preview of “Rent” and a few months before its Broadway debut.But “Rent” was hardly his first musical, and was in many ways shaped by an autobiographical show he was writing at the same time, about his struggles to write “Superbia.”Larson himself in 1996.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesWhat was “Superbia”?No up-and-coming playwright in New York City is living in the lap of luxury, but Larson’s digs were especially hardscrabble. He lived and worked in a fifth-floor walk-up in Lower Manhattan, an apartment with no heat and a bathtub in the kitchen that he shared with two roommates and a couple of cats. He would write for eight hours on days off from his weekend job waiting tables at the Moondance Diner in SoHo.The musical he was working on was “Superbia” (based on George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” even though he had been denied the rights). He won a number of grants and awards to continue writing the show, including the Richard Rodgers Development Grant, chaired by Stephen Sondheim, which paid for a workshop production at Playwrights Horizons in 1988.But effort did not equal success. Though the music and lyrics won high praise among some downtown theater people, the show was considered too big and too negative, and no producer was ready to take it on, according to a 1996 article by Anthony Tommasini in The New York Times.So, Larson decided to do a monologue.Where does “Tick, Tick … Boom!” come in?Not dissuaded by the flop of “Superbia,” Larson began working on a new musical — “Rent” — as well as another idea: an autobiographical “rock monologue” that chronicled his struggles writing “Superbia.” Initially titled “30/90” — because he was turning 30 in 1990 — and then “Boho Days,” the one-man show that would later become “Tick, Tick … Boom!” was first staged, starring Larson, in a 1990 workshop at the Second Stage Theater. The show — part performance-art monologue, part rock recital — captivated a young producer named Jeffrey Seller, who became a champion of Larson’s work and later persuaded his fellow producers to bring “Rent” to Broadway.But “Boho Days” was difficult to pull off: Larson had to nail long monologues, often while playing several characters; sing musical numbers that represented multiple points of view; and simultaneously accompany himself on the piano and direct his band through a score that was a combination of pop, rock and Sondheim pastiche.Tommasini described the show as an “intense, angry solo” in which a man “wakes on his 30th birthday, downs some junk food and complains for 45 minutes about his frustrated ambitions, turning 30 in the tenuous ’90s and much more.”After the workshop, Larson continued to revise the piece, including changing the title to “Tick, Tick … Boom!” — a reference to the clock he felt was continually ticking on his life and career — and presented it at New York Theater Workshop in 1992 and 1993. It was still a work-in-progress when he died in 1996, and he left behind at least five versions of the script and a bevy of song lists.The 2001 Off Broadway version of “Tick, Tick … Boom” at the Jane Street Theater, featured Jerry Dixon, left, Raul Esparza (as Larson) and Amy Spanger.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow did the solo show become a three-person musical?After Larson’s death in 1996, the playwright David Auburn, who won the Pulitzer Prize for drama for “Proof,” revised the show as a three-person chamber musical that lessened the burden on the actor playing Jon. Now two additional actors played Michael, Larson’s advertising-executive best friend, and Susan, his dancer girlfriend, in addition to each portraying a variety of ancillary roles. Songs were rearranged for three voices, though the music and lyrics remained Larson’s.With the permission of Larson’s family, Auburn also excised most of Larson’s references to his terror of growing older and the feeling of being under so much pressure that his heart was about to burst in his chest, which would only seem callous given the audience’s knowledge of the composer’s fate.The revised “Tick, Tick … Boom!” premiered Off Broadway in 2001 at the Jane Street Theater, and went on to have a West End production, an Off West End production, two Off Broadway revivals, in 2014 and 2016, and an American national tour.Reviews were positive, with the New York Times critic Ben Brantley noting that the songs “glimmer with hints of the urgency and wit” that lend the musical score of “Rent” irresistible momentum.”Miranda — who’d found success with “In the Heights” but had not yet debuted his smash hit “Hamilton” — played Jon in a 2014 revival at New York City Center, a performance that the Times critic Charles Isherwood said “throbs with a sense of bone-deep identification.”Isherwood pointed out that it hadn’t been long since Miranda was “teaching high school English while scribbling songs on the side,” trying to make it as a musical-theater composer.Garfield in the new film, directed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, who played the role in a 2014 stage revival. Macall Polay/NetflixHow does the film adapt all this?Twenty years after seeing the Off Broadway revival of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as a 21-year-old theater major struggling to write “In the Heights,” Miranda directed the new film adaptation, which follows a young composer named Jon in the eight chaotic days leading up to a workshop production of his musical “Superbia.” As in the Off Broadway revival, Larson’s rock monologue has been expanded, this time to a cast of more than a dozen characters. (Bradley Whitford now plays an encouraging Stephen Sondheim.) The film cuts between Jon’s performance of Larson’s original staging of “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the story as it unfolds in real time.Miranda has said the show is a combination of Larson’s rock monologue, the 2001 Off Broadway revival, and a cinematic exploration of Larson’s thought process. He used the Library of Congress archives to craft the film’s score entirely using Larson’s music, both from “Tick, Tick … Boom!” and the composer’s larger body of work.“It was like we were putting together an original musical with Jonathan Larson’s songs,” Miranda told Entertainment Weekly, explaining the process as finding the best way to “unlock” the songs and stories.Did Larson himself feel the urgency of his work? Sometimes it seems, to quote a “Rent” anthem, that he understood “There was no day but today” to do it. More

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      Aneesa Folds, Back on Broadway, Is Still Getting Used to This

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      There has been an am-I-dreaming quality to Aneesa Folds’s life lately. That much she wanted to make clear.Yes, that was her in the glittering gold jumpsuit at the Tony Awards, performing in knockout voice with the troupe Freestyle Love Supreme. But a few mornings later, sitting in a booth at a hotel restaurant in Manhattan’s theater district, she was still doing a mental double take at the memory of Broadway stars saying hello to her backstage “as if I wasn’t a pedestrian.” And meeting a reporter for a profile interview? That wasn’t normal either.“I love that you’re talking to me as if this is regular for me,” she said, and laughed.On the other hand, she is on her way back to Broadway with Freestyle Love Supreme. Founded by Thomas Kail, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Anthony Veneziale, the longstanding hip-hop improv comedy troupe got fresh attention with the rise of “Hamilton,” which led to a Broadway run two years ago. Now, it’s back for a limited encore engagement that starts previews on Thursday and opens Oct. 19.Folds, who even offstage has an easy charisma, is a relative newcomer to the group. When she and Kaila Mullady joined in 2019, they were entering what had been all-male territory. Then, as now, they had only a week’s worth of rehearsals to acclimate before stepping in front of the first audience.At the Tony Awards, from left: James Monroe Iglehart, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr., Wayne Brady and Folds.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“You’re going into this space with all of these people that have been doing a show for 18, 19 years,” said Folds, 28. “They know each other like the back of their hands, and they’re like, ‘OK, we’re just going to improvise.’ And then you go to Broadway the next week and they put you onstage.”In 2019, she spent rehearsals in survival mode, trying to soak up as much knowledge as she could about the mechanics of the show. This time feels different — more like “playing with your friends,” she said.But to Kail, the show’s director, it was obvious even in the jam-session audition ahead of the original Broadway run that Folds, with her boldness and talent, belonged.“I was in the session with Chris Jackson and James Iglehart, who have both been in the group for a long time and have both been on Broadway for a long time,” he said in a phone interview. “She was doing her thing, like full Aneesa, and they looked at me and they were like: ‘Bro. Bro.’ I was like: ‘I know! Like, try to be cool. She’s still in the room.’”If Folds could turn back time — the way Freestyle Love Supreme does in one of its signature bits — and tell her child self what she is up to now, it might come as something of a shock. Growing up in Jamaica, Queens, she loved singing and felt safe blending in with a choir, but she was mortified whenever her talent was singled out for praise.“I was afraid of my voice,” she said. “I just was very insecure.”She had teachers who pushed and prodded her, though, and a mother who agreed when they encouraged her to do things like perform in the school musical. Her mother also found programs that helped her daughter blossom, like the Wingspan Arts theater conservatory in Manhattan and the Young People’s Chorus of New York City.From left, Chris Sullivan, Christopher Jackson, Andrew Bancroft, Folds and Iglehart during Freestyle Love Supreme’s Broadway run in 2019.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesStill, musical theater — which, when you get right down to it, is what Freestyle Love Supreme does — was a tough sell for Folds as a child, partly because, she said, “it felt very white to me.”“I didn’t really see myself,” she added. “I just didn’t know if I could be in that world, if I was allowed to be in that world, to take up space in that world. And I was a very, very shy kid. I didn’t really speak much.”At Repertory Company High School for Theater Arts, in the Town Hall building on West 43rd Street, Folds emerged from her shell, making jokes and rapping in the cafeteria. (That’s also when she came up with the rapper name Young Nees, which she uses in Freestyle Love Supreme.) And thanks to Miranda’s “In the Heights,” a show she first listened to on a Young People’s Chorus trip to Austria, then saw repeatedly on Broadway, she thought there might be a place for her after all.“That was the show that made me feel like, OK, they’re changing musical theater,” she said.But not nearly fast enough. This spring, Folds told Playbill that most of the racist encounters she has had in her life have been in theater.“When I wasn’t doing Broadway,” she said, “I was doing a lot of regional shows. I’ve been in a lot of spaces where I was the only person of color, so as you can imagine, I’ve heard all sorts of things.”Like comments from wig designers who didn’t know how to work with Black hair — remarks so painful and common that Folds pulled in her shoulders to make herself smaller as she spoke of them.“When I get into a wig chair, I start apologizing,” she said. “Like: ‘I have a lot of hair, this is all mine, I have locs. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’”Once, she said, she was assigned to actor housing in a home whose white owner had a collection of mammy dolls, and took them out to show her.This season, productions by Black artists are abundant on Broadway, but Folds said she feared those higher numbers will be a mere blip before the industry reverts to its old ways.“I really pray and hope that it doesn’t,” she said. “So that the little girl that’s sitting in Queens, New York, who maybe wants to do musical theater, does see herself.”It was during a visit home, when Folds was a college student at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford, that she first saw Freestyle Love Supreme. An instant fan, she wanted to do what they did. “It felt like everything I was good at,” she said.Freestyle Love Supreme, Folds said, “felt like everything I was good at.”Lia Clay Miller for The New York TimesSo in 2019, the year after the troupe started an academy, she applied. And while Kail said the program is not meant to be a training ground for new members, people there quickly told him they had found someone.With the addition of women, Folds said, suddenly the group had a wider pool of topics to talk about onstage. She particularly relishes the memory of a woman shouting “period cramps” when Veneziale was collecting audience pet peeves for the cast to rap about.“He didn’t hear her,” Folds said. “Which men often don’t. And I was like, ‘I’ll take period cramps.’”She did her rap, the crowd screamed with delight, and women came to the stage door and raved about it.“It’s awesome to be one of the women in the group,” Folds said. “We’re here and we’re switching it up.”Freestyle Love Supreme has led to work for her on other projects, including Miranda’s recent animated musical for children, “Vivo,” and his film adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s “Tick, Tick … Boom!,” out next month in theaters and on Netflix. In that movie’s recently released trailer, she is in the opening shot.All this contributes to Folds’s pinch-me feeling. A small, doubting part of her wonders if she is where she is because her higher-profile colleagues are also her friends. A more brisk and confident part knows that she didn’t fall into any of her success — though if she’s a pleasure to be around, that doesn’t hurt.“My name does mean friendly and well-liked,” she said. “I try to live up to it. Be nice: That’s the first rule of theater.” More

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      'Freestyle Love Supreme' Wins Special Award at the Tony Awards

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      The vast majority of the Tony Awards granted on Sunday are honoring shows that have been rehearsed to an excessive degree — every step onstage precisely choreographed, every note and line repeated to perfection.And while the cast of “Freestyle Love Supreme” has undoubtedly put in their share of rehearsal time to do what they do, the show is receiving a special Tony Award for creating something entirely different: an improvised, rapped, beat-boxed musical performance whipped up anew every night from audience suggestions.The honor comes at a fitting time for the industry: It was a production that, by its nature, celebrated the fleeting and constantly reinventive experience of seeing live theater.The show ran for several months at the Booth Theater starting in September 2019, and it is set to return to Broadway on Oct. 7, followed by a national tour starting in San Francisco. But the troupe’s origins go back to the early aughts, when it was established by Anthony Veneziale, Thomas Kail and, most recognizably, Lin-Manuel Miranda — before “In the Heights” and “Hamilton,” both Tony Award winners for best new musical.In his review for The New York Times, Ben Brantley wrote that it was an “exultant master course in the fine art of hip-hop.” Among the fluctuating cast on Broadway were Veneziale and Utkarsh Ambudkar, with a rotating lineup of surprise guest stars, including Miranda and fellow “Hamilton” alumni Daveed Diggs, Christopher Jackson and James Monroe Iglehart.Tony viewers who missed the 2019 run will get a taste of “Freestyle Love Supreme” at the end of the ceremony, when the cast is set to give the evening’s closing performance. More

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      Andrew Garfield Can’t Remember Who He Was Before ‘Tick, Tick … Boom!’

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      In the movie musical, Garfield plays the creator of “Rent,” who died unexpectedly at 35. Making the film helped Garfield process a death in his own life.Jon (Andrew Garfield) is throwing a party, though there’s hardly a reason to celebrate. He’s riven with anxiety, his cramped apartment is overpacked with people, and he’s just spent money he doesn’t have, a down payment on success that will not come within his lifetime. But still, with a wide grin, Jon toasts his friends, leaps on his couch and sings, “This is the life!”Jon is Jonathan Larson, the composer and playwright who died suddenly of an aortic aneurysm at age 35 in 1996 just before his new musical, “Rent,” would become a global smash. The new film “Tick, Tick … Boom!” portrays Larson struggling to find success in his late 20s, as he frets about whether he should pack it in and choose a more conventional path than scripting musical theater.Larson originally created “Tick, Tick … Boom!” as a solo show, “Boho Days,” starring himself in 1990; after his death, it was reworked by the playwright David Auburn into a three-person production that the “Hamilton” creator, Lin-Manuel Miranda, saw in 2001, when he was still a senior in college.“Here’s this posthumous musical from the guy who made me want to write musicals in the first place,” said Miranda, who’s now made his feature directorial debut with the film.Miranda saw Garfield in the 2018 Broadway production of “Angels in America” and thought he was “transcendent” in that show. “I just left thinking, ‘Oh, that guy can do anything,’” the director recalled. “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything. So I cast him in my head probably a year before I talked to him about it.”Miranda put Garfield through his paces, sending him to a vocal coach and ensuring that the actor would be able to play enough piano so the camera could pan from his fingers to his face throughout the film. But those are just the technical aspects of a performance that is impressively possessed: Garfield plays the passionate, frustrated Larson with enough zealous verve to power all the lights on Broadway.Garfield as Jonathan Larson in a scene from “Tick, Tick … Boom.”Macall Polay/NetflixIt’s all part of a very busy fall for the 38-year-old actor, who recently appeared in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” as the disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker and, it’s rumored, will suit up alongside Tom Holland and Tobey Maguire in “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” out in December. (Of that supersecret superhero team-up, Garfield can divulge nothing.) Still, it’s clear that “Tick, Tick … Boom!” meant much more to him than he initially expected.“It’s a strange thing when there’s someone like Jon that you didn’t have any relationship to before, and then suddenly now there’s this mysterious forever connection that I am never, ever going to let go,” Garfield told me on a recent video call from Calgary, Canada, where he’s shooting “Under the Banner of Heaven,” a limited series. “I just feel so lucky that Jon was revealed to me, because now I don’t remember who I was before I knew who Jon was.”Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.How did “Tick, Tick … Boom!” originally come to you?One of my best friends in New York is Gregg Miele, and he’s the great body worker and massage person of New York City — he works on all the dancers and actors and singers on Broadway and beyond. Lin was on his table one morning and asked, “Can Andrew Garfield sing?” And Gregg, being the friend that he is, just started lying, basically, and said, “Yes, he is the greatest singer I’ve ever heard.” Then he called me and said, “Hey, go and get some singing lessons because Lin’s going to ask you to do something.”Lin and I had lunch, and he told me briefly about “Tick, Tick” and Jon. I’m not a musical theater guy in my history — it’s not something that I’ve been introduced to until the last few years, really. So Lin left me with a copy of the music and lyrics, and he wrote at the front of it, “This won’t make sense now, but it will. Siempre, Lin.”Garfield hadn’t done much singing when he was cast in “Tick, Tick … Boom” opposite musical theater veterans. “I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to die.’”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesYou’ve performed in plays like “Angels in America” and “Death of a Salesman” on Broadway, but in this film, Lin surrounded you with a lot of musical-theater ringers, and even some of the smallest roles and cameos are filled by major players from that world. That had to have been a daunting space to step into.I remember a very specific moment where we were in music rehearsal. Alex Lacamoire was at the piano walking us through the songs — he’s Lin’s musical arranger and producer — and I was with [“Tick, Tick” co-stars] Robin de Jesus and Vanessa Hudgens and Josh Henry and Alex Shipp. You can imagine how I’m feeling! They’re all just pros, they know exactly what they’re doing, they’re making notes. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to die.”Then it comes time for me to get into the song and I’m just trying to get through it. I remember Alex Lacamoire going, “Woo, Andrew!” And then everyone behind him, like Josh and Vanessa and Alex and Robin, were like, “Yeah baby, that’s it baby! You got it, baby!” I go beet red and five minutes pass, and I’m just like, “Hey guys, sorry.” I start crying, and I say, “I don’t know if I’ve ever been this happy in my entire life, to be surrounded by the most supportive liars I have ever known.”Garfield working with his director, Lin-Manuel Miranda, who cast him after seeing the actor in “Angeles in America.” Miranda recalled, “I didn’t know if he could sing, but I just felt like he could do anything.”Macall Polay/NetflixJonathan spends the movie anxious about this ticking that only he can hear. How did you interpret that?There was a line in the original one-man show “Boho Days”: “Sometimes, I feel like my heart is going to explode.” It was too on-the-nose for people after he passed away, and they had to cut it, but he spends the story trying to figure out what this ticking is: “Is it turning 30? Is it that I haven’t succeeded? Is it some unconscious idea of my girlfriend’s biological clock combined with the pressure of my career? Or is it all of my friends who are losing their lives at a very young age because of the AIDS epidemic?”It could even be a musical metronome. The way you play Jonathan, as this theatrical person who feels so deeply and urgently, it’s almost like he needs to break into song because normal life just doesn’t cut it.Everything is up at an 11. Even when he’s making love, it’s at 11! Somehow he knows that this is all going to end, that this is all so ephemeral, and I think he was acutely, painfully aware that he wasn’t going to get all of his song sung. And I think he was also agonizingly aware that he wasn’t going to get the reflection and recognition that he knew he was supposed to have while he was still breathing.On the last day of shooting, what I understood is that Jon had it figured out. He knew that this is a short ride and a sacred one, and he had a lot of keys and secrets to how to live with ourselves and with each other and how to make meaning out of being here. Once he accepted that, he could be fully a part of the world, and then he could write “Rent.” I don’t think there’s an accident in that. That very visceral knowing of loss and of death, that’s what gives everything so much meaning. And without that awareness, we will succumb to meaninglessness.So what kind of meaning did this story give to you?Every frame, every moment, every breath of this film is an attempted honoring of Jon. And, on a more personal level, it’s an honoring of my mom. She is someone who showed me where I was supposed to go in my life. She set me on a path. We lost her just before Covid, just before we started shooting, after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. So, for me, I was able to continue her song on the ocean and the wave of Jonathan’s songs. It was an attempt to honor him in his unfinished song, and her in her unfinished song, and have them meet.I think that’s part of the reason I didn’t want this movie to end, because I got to put my grief into art, into this creative act. The privilege of my life has been being there for my mother, being the person that gave her permission when she was ready. We had a very amazing connection, and now an audience will know her spirit in an unconscious way through Jon, which I just find so magical and beautiful.“I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing,” Garfield said, adding, “Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm.”Alana Paterson for The New York TimesStill, that’s a lot to deal with while you were shooting this movie. It can’t have been easy.I was hesitant whether I was going to share that, but I feel like it’s a universal experience. In the best-case scenario, we lose our parents and not the other way around, so I feel very lucky that I got to be with her while she was passing, and I got to read her favorite poems to her and take care of her and my dad and my brother. I’ve lost people before, but one’s mother is a different thing. It’s the person that gives you life no longer being here. Nothing can prepare you for that kind of cataclysm. For me, everything has changed: Where there was once a stream, there’s now a mountain; where there was once a volcano, there’s now a field. It’s a strange head trip.You put parts of yourself in other people, almost like they’re the stewards of who you are. And when you lose those people, suddenly you become their steward.As you say, it’s like my mother now lives in me in a way that maybe is even stronger than ever when she was incarnate. I feel her essence. For me, it only comes when one can accept the loss, and it’s so hard for us to do that in our culture because we’re not given the framework or the tools to. We’re told to be in delusion and denial of this universally binding thing that we’re all going to go through at some point, and it’s fascinating to me that this grand adventure of death is not honored.Actually, the only thing that gives any of this meaning is if we walk with death in the far corner of our left eye. That’s the only way that we are aware of being alive in this moment. I think that was the legacy that Jon leaves and the legacy that my mom leaves for me personally, is just to be here. Because you’re not going to be here for long.It reminds me of what was written on your script before all of this happened: “You don’t understand now, but you will.”“You don’t understand now, but you will.” I’m still reeling from the download of understanding what Jon’s life was about, what my mother’s life was about, what all of this is about. Oh God, how lucky to explore that in one’s work! More