Mitchell, Jerry (1960- )

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    Betty Boop Time Travels to New York, and Broadway, Next Spring

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    “BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical” had a run in Chicago last year. It is slated to open at a Shubert theater in April.A long-in-the-works musical about Betty Boop, a curvy flapper first featured in animated films of the 1930s, will open on Broadway next spring following a run in Chicago last year.“BOOP! The Betty Boop Musical” has some thematic echoes of last year’s “Barbie” movie, although it was in the works before that film came along. The stage production imagines that Boop leaves her early-20th-century film life to travel to present-day New York, where musical comedy ensues. (Her first stop: Comic-Con.)The show was staged late last year at the CIBC Theater in Chicago, where The Chicago Tribune gave it an encouraging review (“there is a great deal to like, and much more work still to be done,” wrote the critic Chris Jones). The Broadway production is to open next April at a theater operated by the Shubert Organization, according to a statement from the production on Thursday; the production did not announce specific dates, theater or cast.“BOOP!” features music by David Foster, a songwriter and music producer who has won 16 Grammy Awards. The lyrics are by Susan Birkenhead (a Tony nominee for “Jelly’s Last Jam” and “Working”) and the book is by Bob Martin (a Tony winner for “The Drowsy Chaperone”). The show is being directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, who won Tony Awards for choreographing the 2004 revival of “La Cage aux Folles” and the 2013 production of “Kinky Boots.”The musical’s lead producer is Ostar Productions, led by Bill Haber, who was among the founders of Creative Artists Agency and who has credits on more than 50 Broadway shows. “BOOP!” is being capitalized for up to $26 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.Even for Broadway, where musicals often take years to develop, this one has had a remarkably long journey: Haber has been working on a Betty Boop musical for more than two decades, changing creative team members and collaborators along the way. In 2003, Variety reported that a Boop musical was planned for Broadway in 2005; in 2008, The New York Times reported that Foster was attached and a Broadway bow was expected in the 2010-11 season. (Neither of those productions happened.)Betty Boop was created by Max Fleischer and was initially depicted, in a 1930 film, as a poodle with some human characteristics; subsequently the character was fully human, although with improbable proportions. The character has been adapted in various forms over the years, including for merchandise that has kept her image in the public eye. She has been seen as a sex symbol of sorts, often with short dresses, a squeaky voice and a signature expression, “Boop-Oop-a-Doop.” More

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      Review: A Faithful ‘Kinky Boots,’ With All Its Pizazz and Pitfalls

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      The Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein musical, in which the drag queen Lola saves a provincial shoe factory, makes an Off Broadway return at the spacious Stage 42.You can’t keep a drag queen down, at least not for long. It was only April 2019 that the Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein musical “Kinky Boots” closed on Broadway after a six-year run, and already it’s back in town. The Britain-set show, in which the statuesque performer Lola saves a provincial shoe factory by inspiring a line of toweringly outré footwear, is now running Off Broadway.But unlike the comebacks of shows such as “Jersey Boys” and “Rock of Ages,” which both reopened at the underground theatrical mall New World Stages, “Kinky Boots” is at the spacious Stage 42, which stands on 42nd Street and is large enough to accommodate a 25-person company and a minimally downsized version of the director Jerry Mitchell’s va-va-voom production.But enough about real estate: How is Lola?This, after all, is the role for which Billy Porter won a Tony in 2013, and it is a textbook Fierstein creation — bold and brassy, with big hair, bright nail polish and quick-fire quips barely concealing the scars of pain and rejection. There are expectations.Happily, Callum Francis, who has played the part in Britain, Australia and, briefly, on Broadway, meets them. He is a delight not just as Lola but as her alter ego, Simon — it is hard to tell who the real person is, what real means in this context and whether it even matters. Unlike Porter, whose physical intensity often came across as combative swagger, Francis moves with a dancer’s grace, and Lola’s confidence has a slinky playfulness that is especially fun to watch in her early scenes with Charlie (Christian Douglas, whose performance is a little stiff).Charlie is the earnest bloke trying to save his late father’s failing shoe company because the jobs of people he has known since he was a child depend on it. Lola provides him with life coaching and the idea that will eventually reinvent the business — to create and build “tubular sex,” that is, boots that are simultaneously strong and sexy. Both characters have complicated relationships with their fathers, and Lola shows not just Charlie but everyone onstage that there are many ways to be a man. That thread was also in the 2005 movie that inspired the musical, but here, the message feels super-Fiersteinian.Simon’s wounded vulnerability is never too far underneath the glitter and takes center stage in the 11 o’clock power ballad “Hold Me in Your Heart.” The reveal of that song’s context hit harder in the original production because we had seen a little more of Lola’s back story — the roles of Young Simon and Young Charlie have been cut here. More subtle are tiny tweaks such as Lola’s welcome greeting, which has been expanded to “Ladies, gentlemen, theys, them and those who have yet to make up their minds!”But, overall, the show looks and feels like a slightly sized-down photocopy of the original. Danielle Hope, for example, is very funny as Lauren, an employee at the factory, and her big solo, “The History of Wrong Guys,” is perfectly calibrated, but the rendition faithfully duplicates Annaleigh Ashford’s, who originated the role on Broadway. It looks as if Hope might be capable of coming up with her own shtick, and it would have been interesting to see the supporting cast receive a little more agency. But don’t worry, the conveyor belts still turn into treadmills for the exhilarating “Everybody Say Yeah” — a sterling example of Mitchell’s showmanship.Considering this faithfulness to the original template, it is not surprising that the story’s less successful moments remain, too. Among them are the slightly preachy tone as well as Charlie’s sudden dark turn. According to Fierstein’s recent memoir, “I Was Better Last Night,” the show took nearly five years to complete, so you have to wonder how nobody could find an hour to refine this temporary personality transplant. The book also suggests an intriguing line of thought when Fierstein writes that the number “What a Woman Wants” expresses Lola’s “daring sexuality — as a cross-dressing heterosexual male.” You will have to stare extra-hard and perhaps do a bit of projecting to see that onstage, where Lola essentially manifests as a magical being. “The sex is in the heel,” as one song proclaims, but it would have been nice to transfer some from the boot to the character.One seemingly big change that turns out not to matter is the shrinking of the band to half of its Broadway size. But here it is perfectly fine to go big on synthesizers because Lauper’s songs, packed with hooks, and Stephen Oremus’s sharp arrangements and orchestrations always made terrific use of electronics. This is the only score in recent Broadway history that sounds as if it were written by people who had set foot in a nightclub within the past 40 years, and the hi-NRG finale, “Raise You Up/Just Be,” sounds like it’s booming out of a float at a Pride parade. That’s a compliment, of course.Kinky BootsAt Stage 42, Manhattan; kinkybootsthemusical.com. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes. More

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      Velcro or Snaps? The ABC’s of Stripping for a Cause

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      Broadway Bares began as a response to the AIDS crisis. Thirty years later, the one-night-only burlesque spectacle remains a potent, frisky fund-raiser.Jerry Mitchell was a 32-year-old Broadway hoofer causing a sensation each night by dancing nearly naked in “The Will Rogers Follies” when he had an idea: To shake his bare bum for a good cause.It was 1992, near the height of the AIDS crisis. Mitchell recruited seven fit fellow dancers from other Broadway shows, and on a rainy Sunday night at Splash, a since-shuttered gay club in Chelsea, they took turns undressing on the bar to raise money for Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. Two shows and a tray of tequila shots later, the novice strippers had collected $8,000 — and the burlesque spectacle Broadway Bares was born.“There were people who were confused as to why we were using a strip show to raise money for AIDS,” Mitchell, who is now a Tony Award-winning director and choreographer, said in a phone interview. “It was coming from a place of innocence,” he said, and of paucity: He didn’t have the money to attend big-ticket AIDS charity events, “but I had the drive and desire to help my community.”Broadway Bares became a hit, outgrowing one establishment after another and becoming steadily more polished, until “we weren’t just a benefit,” Mitchell said. “We were a Broadway show.” On Sunday, that show will celebrate its 30th anniversary at the Hammerstein Ballroom in Midtown Manhattan, with performances at 9:30 p.m. and midnight.Putting together the event — which involves more than 500 volunteer theater artists, among them performers, designers and stage managers, many busy in current Broadway shows — is a complex and hectic game of logistics, topped by a final rehearsal sprint in which the entire, one-night-only production comes together in a matter of days.From left, Nick Kenkel, an executive producer of the show; the director Laya Barak; and the associate director Jonathan Lee.Matthew Leifheit for The New York TimesAt one of those rehearsals this week, at a studio near Times Square, nearly 30 dancers were spinning, kicking and pretending to rip off their pants. Laya Barak, the director of this year’s show and a creator of the opening number, reminded everyone to “keep it sharp” and “reach from the shoulder.” More pressing, though, was the choreography of clothes. “Whatever your strippable is, that has to travel with you,” she told a group, meaning they needed to cart away their discarded layers. Other items were to be handed off to other dancers or chucked offstage.“Are you wearing a jock or a G-string?” she asked one dancer of his attire for the show, which bares a lot but stops short of full-frontal nudity. He wasn’t sure; costumes were still being constructed and wouldn’t be ready until Saturday.That meant Collin Heyward, the lead dancer in another piece, and his castmates wouldn’t get to practice removing his clothes until the day before opening. At the rehearsal, Heyward, who made his Broadway debut in “The Lion King” in February, attacked the hip-hop choreography with confidence but admitted to being anxious about the stripping. “It has to be seamless,” he said. “That’s an added pressure.”With about a dozen dance routines, each with its own choreographer, Broadway Bares is a high-profile platform for emerging dance makers. The routines use a variety of styles, including hip-hop, Latin dance, ballet and aerial arts, often mashed together into new combinations. But burlesque remains the core of the artistic ethos and attitude.“Burlesque isn’t only about being naked,” Mitchell said. “It’s about being funny. The humor is the heart.”Still, the endgame is getting naked. And that has its complications.Sarah Marie Dixey working on a costume. “I’m very fond of snaps and magnets,” she said. “They don’t really get tangled in anything.”Matthew Leifheit for The New York TimesThe “lead strips,” as the featured dancers are known, might have as many as five layers to remove. The first one is easy, like a hat or coat. “Then it gets a little tricky,” said Nick Kenkel, who has been involved with the show for nearly 20 years and is now an executive producer. A T-shirt might get ripped away (prepared with a small cut to ease tearing), followed by a dancer’s pants, but “you have to do it in a way that the tight boxer shorts underneath don’t pop off,” he said.Minding such fragile costumes and perfecting their precisely timed removal is a new skill for dancers more used to focusing on counts than on discarding clothes. “If you’re not pulling hard enough, it can ruin the strip,” said Jonathan Lee, the associate director and one of the choreographers for Broadway Bares.That’s where the costume designers come in, with their tricks and tools to construct clothes that are “comfortable to dance in but aren’t going to break at the wrong moment,” the designer Sarah Marie Dixey said. Quick-rig costumes use a variety of fasteners, each with pros and cons. Dixey called herself “an anti-Velcro person,” adding, “I’m very fond of snaps and magnets. They don’t really get tangled in anything.” From the performer’s perspective, a consensus emerged: “Snaps,” Lee said. “Always snaps.”Mishaps are inevitable, but “these are people who do this all the time,” Dixey said. “Not necessarily stripping, but being onstage and able to problem-solve in the moment.”Mechanics aside, stripping “was a challenge for me artistically,” said Aubrey Lynch II, a former dancer with Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and “The Lion King” who performed in several early Broadway Bares shows and is now a dean and a director of education at American Ballet Theater. Despite any initial hesitation, Lynch said that what he experienced onstage was freedom — which “added another layer of performance to my toolbox and strangely strengthened my self-esteem.”Jason Tam and Bonnie Milligan rehearsing for this year’s show, which is called “XXX,” a nod to its age and its naughtiness.Matthew Leifheit for The New York TimesThat’s a lesson Mitchell is happy for performers to learn. He sees undressing onstage not as a vulnerable act, but an empowering one. “You’re in the driver’s seat,” he said he tells dancers, reminding them that “the audience is on your side. They’re rooting for you. If you’re comfortable, they’re comfortable.”The Broadway Bares routines, which are three to four minutes long, convey a mini narrative, and have been inspired by things like Greek myths and board games. Some choreographers have also used the dance to comment about societal issues.In this year’s production, titled “XXX” — a wink at both the show’s age and its naughtiness — Lee reimagined a superhero number from the 2002 event to include characters like Black Panther (danced by Heyward) and Shang-Chi with dancehall music, Afro beats and stepping. “I wanted to honor what we have gained in the past 20 years,” he said.While the inaugural Broadway Bares featured only well-toned, cisgender men, the next year’s event included women. Later iterations have gone on to feature transgender performers, disabled dancers and all expressions of sexuality. “We’ve even had straight performers,” Mitchell joked. (For all the representation onstage, though, the audience remains mostly gay men.)When Jessica Castro was invited to create a dance this year, she knew she wanted to embrace body positivity. She cast as her star Akira Armstrong, a plus-size dancer and the founder of Pretty Big Movement dance company. “It’s about celebrating all backgrounds, all body shapes, all types,” Castro said, adding that she found stripping to be an act of agency. “It’s a shedding of all these ideals, all these constructs that society has put on us.”Over the 30 years of Broadway Bares shows, AIDS has become a manageable condition, especially for those with access to health care and preventive drugs. But the devastation it caused New York’s tight-knit theater scene is a part of Broadway history that is woven into the show’s mission.The event is “both a fund-raising and an educational opportunity,” said Tom Viola, the executive director of Broadway Cares who attended the first Bares at Splash. (It has raised more than $22 million to date for Broadway Cares to support health and social services for entertainment professionals both locally and nationwide, crucially during the coronavirus pandemic.)As part of the rehearsal period, the organization helps dancers, most of whom did not experience the worst of the AIDS epidemic, “understand the anger, sorrow, loss and stigma that first propelled us into action,” Viola said. At this week’s rehearsal, dancers were given profiles of beneficiary organizations and encouraged to step up their own online fund-raising efforts.And while Barak is concerned with all the usual elements of directing a show of this scale, she is also asking: “How do we keep that flame going into the future to continue raising money for Broadway Cares and continue this tradition of community?”But in the meantime, back at rehearsal, she was ready for another run-through.“Going from the pants strip!” she yelled. More

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      ‘Kinky Boots’ Sets Summer Return Off Broadway

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      A revival of the Tony-winning Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein collaboration will begin performances at Stage 42 in July.The sex is back in the heel.The producers Daryl Roth and Hal Luftig announced on Thursday that an Off Broadway revival of “Kinky Boots,” the Cyndi Lauper-Harvey Fierstein collaboration that won the Tony Award for best new musical in 2013, would begin performances at the theater in July.The revival at the 499-seat Shubert theater is set to be directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell (“La Cage Aux Folles,” “Legally Blonde”), who directed and choreographed the original Broadway production, which won him his second Tony for choreography.The feel-good musical tells the story of a young Englishman, Charlie Price, who attempts to save his family’s shoe factory by making boots for drag performers. The Broadway production — which starred Stark Sands as Price and Billy Porter as the drag queen Lola, a performance for which Porter won a Tony — closed in April 2019 after 34 preview and 2,505 regular performances.In his critic’s pick review, the New York Times critic Ben Brantley called the musical, which features music and lyrics by Lauper and a book by Fierstein, “a shameless emotional button pusher.” He described its pulsing, earworm-y score as performing “like a pop star on Ecstasy.” (The cast recording won a Grammy for best musical theater album.)“Kinky Boots” has been a significant hit in the nine years since it opened on Broadway, where it grossed $297 million and won six Tony Awards. The show has toured North America and Britain, and productions have been staged in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Poland and Spain.The Off Broadway production is scheduled to begin performances July 26 and open Aug. 25 at Stage 42 in Hell’s Kitchen. No casting has been announced. More

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      How a TV Ad Enticed Broadway Crowds Right After 9/11

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      Rudy Giuliani was meant to appear; Elaine Stritch arrived just in time. Recalling the “I Love New York” spot that helped dispel the fear in Times Square.Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Broadway suspended performances for just two days, reopening on Sept. 13, 2001. But audiences were hesitant to return, and many shows performed to near-empty houses for weeks.To encourage attendance, the theater’s brightest stars — many in costume — gathered in a mostly deserted Times Square on Sept. 28 to perform the John Kander and Fred Ebb song “New York, New York.” (A studio recording session was held the day before to capture audio).Book ended by two of Broadway’s best-known voices, Bernadette Peters and Nathan Lane, the performance had the Phantom rubbing shoulders with the Beast, while “Lion King” puppets bobbed overhead. Brian Stokes Mitchell and Brooke Shields were there; so were the preteen urchins from “Les Miserables.”The footage was used for a 30-second commercial that ran on major television networks, as well as in movie theaters across the country. The goal of the ad, according to its director, Glenn Weiss: “I want people to not be afraid to come and see a show.”The week of the attacks, Broadway altogether grossed an anemic $185,490. After the commercial’s release, ticket sales steadily increased, and for the week of Nov. 11, shows brought in $470,845.Twenty years later, as Broadway braces for another nervous reopening, there are striking parallels to that morning in late September. Indeed, on Aug. 30, the industry set in motion its own post-pandemic marketing campaign, including a clip-filled video entitled “This is Broadway,” narrated by Oprah Winfrey.Here, those who were in front of the camera and behind the scenes for the 2001 ad reflect on the experience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.JAN SVENDSEN FRIEDLANDER, then-marketing director of the Broadway League On the 12th, I did go to work. I went to the League offices and all these members — producers and theater owners and general managers — started coming. No one knew what to do. And then midday, the mayor’s office called and they said, “You’ve got to get Broadway reopened.” So we agreed to reopen on Thursday the 13th.Jan Svendsen Friedlander, the former marketing director of the Broadway League, with a poster signed by many of the participants in the Broadway-boosting 2001 commercial.Rozette Rago for The New York TimesRozette Rago for The New York TimesNATHAN LANE, performer Everybody was shaken by what happened. And people were concerned it might happen again. “The Producers” had opened and played through summer and then it was the fall. We went back on a Thursday, all because of [then Mayor] Rudy Giuliani — this is before he was a raging [expletive]. It felt wrong to be going back so quickly. And yet we were trying to do something positive.DREW HODGES, founder, SpotCo advertising agency Something like five days later we were back in the office and trying to figure out what to do. We had this idea of doing a TV commercial, getting everybody into Times Square. Barry Weissler, the “Chicago” producer, he was a friend. We went to him and said, “We have this idea, help us rock and roll it forward and get it to more powerful people.” And I believe he said, “I was thinking the same thing.”BARRY WEISSLER, producer We knew we wanted to sing “New York, New York.” What else? It was an idea that grew out of my meeting with Jed [Bernstein, former Broadway League president], saying we should bring the entire Broadway community together in one place to celebrate humanity — the tragedy aside, 9/11 aside. Let’s celebrate Broadway, humanity and life.BERNADETTE PETERS, performer Of course, New York was afraid. We were concerned: Is it going to happen again? But we just had to be brave and let people know that it was time to take back New York.JERRY MITCHELL, choreographer Drew Hodges called me and said, “We’re getting ready to do a commercial. We’re filming in Times Square. I’m going to get all the actors before their matinee. Will you choreograph it?” I said, “Absolutely, what do you need?” He sent me the song, and I had 12 dancers, I think, with me. I choreographed a little something for them that night. And the next morning, we met at the Booth Theater [functioning as a green room]. I went onstage, and there was the Broadway community, in costume, sitting in the audience.CHRIS BONEAU, publicist [Producers] were told, “We need two people to do this, and it has to be Nathan and Matthew [Broderick].” Or: “It can be three costumed characters, and these are the ones who we would like to get.” You got to hand it to the people who wrangled the whole thing. I mean, there were so many people behind the scenes who were doing every single thing they could to get this moment right, because you only had one shot at it.HODGES We were standing in Shubert Alley, waiting to go into the Booth while the shows filed in. And we heard this jangling sound, and we couldn’t figure out what it was. And it got louder and louder. And then around the corner came all the Rockettes. And they were in costume, in formation in one line, tap dancing, literally, across an empty Times Square.Faces in the crowd, from left: Tony Roberts, Peters, Betty Buckley, Joel Grey, Dick Cavett, Stritch and Cady Huffman.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJOEL GREY, performer Everybody you ever knew in the theater all of a sudden was there, shiny and bright and ready to take on the world. Theater people believe in dreams, so we were all dreamers saying, “Everything is going to be all right.” We all needed to tell a story.MITCHELL I was standing onstage [at the Booth] and said, “This is the choreography; everybody stand up.” I think I played the tape three times. And then as each group went to their place, I put an assistant with them. They took them out to the platform and started reviewing it. Then I went out front, and I climbed the George M. [Cohan] statue, and I was standing on the statue yelling at everybody over a megaphone.PETER GALLAGHER, performer I remember Jerry, he couldn’t have been a more embracing and vibrant life spirit. And, frankly, it was just really reassuring to see everybody — just to see a lot of people you had known or worked with.HODGES The last line is, and Nathan says it in the spot, “Come to New York and let’s go on with the show.” But it was supposed to be Giuliani.FRIEDLANDER We kept hearing, “He’s coming, he’s coming. Don’t let anybody go, he wants to be in it.” So while we were waiting, a lot of the restaurants in Times Square came running out, and they were handing [out] cases of water and croissants and pastries and sandwiches and drinks.GLENN WEISS, director Fire trucks were heading right past us. And literally every cast from every Broadway show stopped, turned and applauded. The people who get applause were giving applause, and it was for our first responders. That vision will stick with me forever.PETERS We had our passion and our power and our love for New York and what it represents. Everyone was there. Of course Elaine Stritch, my dear friend, she just made it at the last minute, because she always would run just a little late.HARVEY FIERSTEIN, performer We were told to wear anything we wanted except white. That was emphasized a bunch of times. So we were ready to shoot and a cab pulls up through the police line and out steps Stritch, all in white. And then of course, everybody’s already in place, so the only place she can possibly stand is dead center — in white.LANE She thought, I think because of the success of “The Producers,” I would be in the front row and that if she stood next to me, she would definitely be on camera. She said, “Oh, no, no, no, I’ll be right here next to Nathan.” That I remember was very amusing. And very typical of her.Nathan Lane recalled how Elaine Stritch jostled for a prime position at the shoot.Jesse Dittmar for The New York TimesWEISSLER A few performers, when we placed them, insisted on pushing through to the front. I’m not going to name names. So take a look at who’s in front. She was a dear friend.HODGES We had to plan where everybody stood, and it was a grid of 40 shows. So people like Susan Lucci and Alan Alda [both had previously been on Broadway] were in the front, as they did not have a show to stand with. And of course, they were recognizable.FRIEDLANDER The concept was always to start really small with Bernadette. Bernadette symbolizes Broadway. And then the idea was just to go wider and wider and wider, so that you see Times Square, and you see that there was life there.PETERS Although I started it and I’m the first voice, it’s all of us. That’s what was important. The feeling of the love between us made us all stronger.HODGES Every single person did it for not a penny, which is kind of miraculous.FRIEDLANDER Seth Popper [the League’s director of labor relations] was my counterpart; he managed to get all the unions to give us concessions, so that we could actually shoot this spot. In the real world, if we had tried to pay for that spot, it would have been millions of dollars.GREY It was impossible to not want to be a part of it, to be somehow part of the solution. God, who would believe that there even was a solution?GALLAGHER Fortunately, none of us are accustomed to certainty in any aspect of our lives. And so it’s the kind of pluck: We don’t stop performing in a show just because it doesn’t work, or it’s going to close. You don’t stop because there’s a threat. You just keep going. More