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      ‘32 Sounds,’ a Film Performed Live, Probes the Power of Listening

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      Sam Green’s documentary about the physics and emotions attached to sound comes to BAM with a live score performed by JD Samson and Michael O’Neill.Early in Sam Green’s relentlessly curious documentary “32 Sounds,” the filmmaker asks an employee of the British Library Sound Archive — one of the world’s largest collections of audio recordings — if she has a favorite sound. Choosing among the archive’s nearly 7 million options, she cues up a 1987 recording of the mating call of the Moho braccatus, a Hawaiian bird with dark plumage and bright shocks of yellow sprouting from its legs.The Moho braccatus was declared endangered in 1973, and by the early 1980s its population had dwindled to two, one male and one female. In 1982, the female was killed in a storm. And so this heartbreaking recording depicts the male’s determined mating call — a lilting, hauntingly hopeful whistle — ringing out five years after the death of the only bird who could possibly answer it.The Moho braccatus’s mating call is one of the most memorable of the 32 sounds Green alludes to in his freewheeling documentary’s title; there are also, among others, muffled gurgles from inside the womb (sound number one, naturally), the sound of a tree falling in the woods (playfully and expertly reconstructed by the Foley artist Joanna Fang), and even the sound of silence, as demonstrated by a particularly delightful montage of a wide variety of musicians performing “4’33”,” by John Cage.At the beginning of a showing of “32 Sounds” Friday evening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Fisher theater, following celebrated runs at Sundance and SXSW, Green himself announced to the audience, “We’re going to make a documentary film about sound,” highlighting the transitory and participatory nature of what was about to take place. “32 Sounds” is the latest of what the Oscar-nominated Green calls his “live documentaries,” a hybrid form that combines conventions of a film screening, a theatrical performance and a live concert to create a unique and ephemeral experience. (His previous works include “The Love Song of R. Buckminster Fuller,” which featured the rock band Yo La Tengo performing an original score at screenings, and “A Thousand Thoughts,” which he made in collaboration with the writer Joe Bini and the Kronos Quartet.)At live showings of “32 Sounds,” Green himself provides in-person narration, while the musicians JD Samson and Michael O’Neill perform, in real time, Samson’s eclectic, largely electronic score. With the narrator and musicians seated in front of the movie screen, proudly displaying their processes, the effect is as though one has unscrewed the top of a traditional documentary to expose its busily whirring component parts.Samson demonstrating the wonders of a whoopee cushion.Maria Baranova-SuzukiEach audience member is also given a pair of headphones — Green and his crew travel with 500 of them — to better immerse themselves in the film’s soundscapes, and particularly for its experiments with binaural audio. Among the lively cast of characters Green meets in his wide-ranging meditation on sound and human memory is the Princeton physicist Edgar Choueiri, who experiments with recordings that mimic three-dimensional sound. He demonstrates this viscerally, shaking a matchbox at various points around a binaural microphone; wearing headphones, the listener can detect the clattering matches moving around in space. It’s heady and spine-tingling, like high-tech ASMR.While there’s certainly a specific charm to seeing “32 Sounds” live (particularly during a five-minute interactive dance break, when Green invites audience members to walk up to the stage and feel the quaking power of a pair of subwoofers as Samson acts as D.J.), the filmed narrative is engaging and richly visual enough that “32 Sounds” would still achieve many of its most spectacular effects at home, preferably through a pair of good headphones. (It played virtually at Sundance and is the first of Green’s live documentaries that, in addition to being performed live, will eventually be able to stream.)If there’s a star of “32 Sounds” (aside from the human ear), it’s the spirited Annea Lockwood, an 82-year-old experimental composer who has been making field recordings of rivers for more than 50 years. There’s a contagious wonder on her face as she invites Green, and the viewer, to listen to the loquacious chatter of organisms picked up by her underwater microphone. She prefers the term “listening with” rather than listening to — a non-hierarchical way of framing humans’ coexistence with the sonic environments all around them.Much like Cage’s “4’33”” or the composer Pauline Oliveros’s philosophy of “deep listening,” Green’s film aims to sharpen the viewer’s (er, listener’s) sense of hearing by redirecting awareness to the everyday environmental sounds one too often takes for granted. His 95-minute exploration prefers to leapfrog across several dozen scintillating surfaces, though, rather than approaching the type of depth or stillness Lockwood seeks with her river recordings. The formal structure of “32 Sounds” is a nod to François Girard’s 1993 experimental biopic “Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould,” and its chattily inquisitive tone is occasionally reminiscent of an audiovisual episode of “This American Life.”What gives the film a lingering gravitas, though, is how often Green’s sonic journeys lead him back to contemplating grief and loss. One man’s trash is another man’s aural treasure, as Green finds with the answering machine tapes he’s saved to preserve the voices of deceased loved ones. Lockwood admits that part of the reason she “listens with” the chirping creatures in her backyard each evening is that she finds the experience of listening to music too emotionally intense since her longtime partner, the composer Ruth Anderson, passed away several years ago.In the earliest days of recorded sound, Green points out that the phonograph — the first technological development to allow deceased people’s voices to have an afterlife — was sometimes advertised as a means of “stopping death.” His film serves as a poignant reminder that, for all the incredible technical advancements of the past century or even the past decade, that particular goal still remains elusive. But whether through the personal preservation of sonic mementos like wax cylinders, voice mail messages or any number of yet-to-be-invented formats, that impossible impulse to press pause on mortality is likely to echo, like the Moho braccatus’s persistent call, well into the distant future. More

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      Review: An Orchestra Manages to Capture That Ellington Swing

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      At Carnegie Hall, the American Symphony Orchestra and Leon Botstein made a case for Duke Ellington works still rarely heard from classical ensembles.What should America’s major orchestras do with the genius of Duke Ellington? Should they program his music in pops concerts, or on their main classical series?And when they play him, which of the messy labyrinth of editions of his symphonic pieces should they use? Will they need to hire ringers from the jazz world to take on solo parts?Many big ensembles dodge Ellington entirely, or marginalize him: The New York Philharmonic, for example, tends to play his works at community events or Young People’s Concerts, but only occasionally as part of its subscription season.Even if Ellington’s legacy hasn’t really suffered for this, given his extensive catalog of recordings and worthy interpretations by jazz groups past and present, there’s still ambiguity about how his orchestral music — a body of work he created alongside his compositions for jazz band — should sound and be presented.So give the conductor Leon Botstein and his American Symphony Orchestra credit for bravery as he and his players offered a concert of Ellington at Carnegie Hall on Thursday.The program wasn’t much of a surprise: essentially a mix of selections from the 1960s album “The Symphonic Ellington” and pieces from the conductor and arranger Maurice Peress’s later recording with the American Composers Orchestra. (While Ellington’s best music fulfills his own ambitions of being “beyond category,” the Peress arrangements can sound more syrupy, with a mid-20th-century “pops” orchestral sound.)But in a smart move, Botstein also engaged the pianist Marcus Roberts’s trio for the second half, which gave the evening a sense of occasion — and, at times, fresh insight.Was it faultless, judged next to recordings that included Ellington as a participant? No, though that’s a high bar. The performance of the first movement of “Black, Brown and Beige” (in Peress’s arrangement) was full-throated but not ideally balanced — the strings sodden in a way that dampened the blues feeling, particularly during the rousing, complex finish.I remain convinced that orchestras should learn and play something closer to the original version of “Beige” that Ellington premiered with his leaner orchestra at Carnegie Hall in 1943. (This notion isn’t so far-fetched at a time when conservatory graduates move between jazz and classical styles with greater ease than ever before.)A similarly string-heavy ensemble at first threatened to bog down Thursday’s performance of “Harlem” (in Peress’s arrangement with Luther Henderson). But midway through, some graceful descending patterns in the winds aided soulful, delicate interplay between a pair of exposed clarinets. Later, when the strings came back in force, they enhanced the glow, instead of washing out the color.It was a turning point for the concert, which got stronger as it went on. Before intermission, the take on “Night Creature” — once again in Peress’s arrangement — exuded brassy confidence. (A recording of Ellington’s 1955 premiere of the piece at Carnegie, with the Symphony of the Air Orchestra, can be found online.)Russell also joined, from left, the drummer Jason Marsalis, the bassist Rodney Jordan and the pianist Marcus Roberts for a set of Ellington songs without orchestra.Matt DineAfter intermission, Roberts, the pianist, took the stage with the bassist Rodney Jordan and the drummer Jason Marsalis. The trio played a short, vivacious set of Ellington tunes — without orchestra but with the vocalist Catherine Russell, who had been already heard with the American Symphony in a somewhat muted take on “Satin Doll.”Speaking from the stage, Roberts encouraged the audience to listen to the music as though it were written “last week.” A tempo-switching take on “Mood Indigo” brought that point home nicely. Russell was properly featured during the set; her improvisatory exclamations at the close of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (if It Ain’t Got that Swing)” inspired a mighty, deserving ovation.When the orchestra returned to join Roberts’s trio, it seemed swept up by the energy. Crucially, both “New World A-Comin’” (arranged by Peress) and “Three Black Kings” (completed by Mercer Ellington and arranged by Henderson) featured new piano solos arranged by Roberts. His playing — often denser than Ellington’s own — helped to establish a new way of hearing this music, outside its creator’s looming shadow. The drumming by Marsalis was likewise individual in character, particularly during “Three Black Kings.” (At one point, he made a simple-sounding pattern progressively complex in its syncopations, until he stirred the crowd to applause.)The commitment from Botstein and his players was gratifying. And as usual with this conductor, there was a pedagogical aspect to the proceedings. A question hung in the air: Why is Ellington still a relative symphonic rarity?In some places, he’s not. One of the best streaming concerts I have seen during the pandemic came from the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which played a joyous version of Ellington’s “Night Creature” (David Berger’s transcription) on a program that also featured music by Copland and Gabriella Smith and a premiere by Christopher Cerrone. I also have fond memories of a Schoenberg Ensemble album that featured John Adams conducting Ellington’s spellbinding, through-composed “The Tattooed Bride” alongside his own “Scratchband.”So putting Ellington into his proper place, at the heart of the American classical music canon, can be done successfully. Other groups coming to Carnegie would do well to remember that.American Symphony OrchestraPerformed on Thursday at Carnegie Hall, Manhattan. More

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      Review: The Philharmonic’s Conductor Returns to His Perch

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      Jaap van Zweden led the orchestra after seven weeks away in works by Julia Perry, Shostakovich and Beethoven.He’s back: After six weeks of guest conductors — including some prominent contenders to succeed him as music director when he leaves in two years — Jaap van Zweden returned to the New York Philharmonic on Thursday.And he’s back, too: A month after swooping into Carnegie Hall as a last-minute replacement for an artist with ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the pianist Seong-Jin Cho was once again in Manhattan.They joined at Alice Tully Hall for Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “Emperor,” its opening orchestral chord full and rounded; the balances between the strings and the winds, which had heavily favored the violins at Tully earlier this season, equitable; the tempos judicious.Cho, who played a tour date with the Philharmonic in 2019 but on Thursday made his subscription series debut, was most memorable when most delicate: his silvery playing under the horn just after his cadenza in the first movement; his gentleness in the questioning chords wandering from the second movement to the third; his shimmering trills at the end of the piece.His forcefulness in his right hand sometimes tipped into rawness — which, in passages of worried repetition, added an intriguing note of obsessiveness but otherwise felt too steely for such an intimate space. In the Rondo finale, though, he and the orchestra shared a graceful mixture of lightness and weight.In 1965, the Philharmonic premiered the final version of Julia Perry’s “Study for Orchestra,” but hadn’t reprised it until a one-off last year. Also known by an earlier title, “A Short Piece for Orchestra,” it is certainly that: Barely seven minutes long, it opens punchily, with heated strings and sardonic brasses, then enters a slower section of poetic winds and quietly suspended harmonies. The music turns blocky and dramatic again, with the vehemence of a Bernard Herrmann film score, before a softening ensemble, with touches of celesta and piano, is surprised by a brief, fierce coda.Perry’s “Study” felt connected — across the Beethoven concerto and the intermission that followed — to Shostakovich’s Ninth Symphony, another work whose swaths of high spirits are tinged with a bit too much aggression, a clenched grin. And both pieces relax into melancholy passages of seeming sincerity, haunted by eerie mists.Shostakovich wrote it as World War II came to an end, and originally planned something huge and triumphant, akin to Beethoven’s full-chorus Ninth. When he delivered a slighter, merrier piece, less than half an hour long, some were charmed, while others — including, dangerously, officials in Stalin’s government — felt he had failed to meet the historic moment.The degree to which the music is ironic — its bubbly passages even politically subversive — is unclear, a familiar ambiguity from a composer adept at playing all the angles. Its sprightliness in a sober time recalls Prokofiev’s “Classical” Symphony, written three decades earlier, which the Philharmonic played under van Zweden in February.Sharp, precise performances of this kind of repertory are the main reason van Zweden — known in past positions as a martinet of polish — was hired, and the orchestra played on Thursday with pep and something close to unity. The slower sections were particularly impressive, with icy waves of violin, brasses ominously smoldering, Anthony McGill’s clarinet aching and Judith LeClair’s bassoon offering eloquent humanity, without schmaltz.What are the piece’s politics? The jury is, and always will be, out.But playing the work makes its own political statement as Putin went on television on Friday to decry what he called instances of the West canceling Russian composers like Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich and Rachmaninoff to protest his invasion of Ukraine. This is, of course, largely his fantasy, a message of division meant to rally his people against phantoms he imagines to be demeaning and destroying Russia’s cultural heritage.For the Philharmonic to play this Ninth Symphony — and, next week, Rachmaninoff and Prokofiev — is a gesture, however small, against that message.New York PhilharmonicThis program repeats through Saturday at Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org. More

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      Booze, Biscuits and Bands: Musical Brunch Is Back in New York

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      Here are six brunches that, after a long pandemic pause, are entertaining and feeding weekend crowds in Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.The room was packed with tipsy party people when the drag queen Ginger Snap suddenly grabbed my wrist and planted my hand on her right falsy — and with exhilarated eyes gave me a look that passionately purred: Brunch is back, girl.That’s how I kicked off an afternoon at Broadway Drag Brunch, one of several live-entertainment brunches that, after a long pause caused by coronavirus restrictions, are feeding music-loving and hungry patrons in New York, where brunch is church.Some of these brunches are like intimate concerts with music as an atmospheric backdrop. At others, the star of the show is the show itself — with performers encouraging hands-in-the-air singalongs and servers nudging you to order pitchers of bottomless cocktails to drink with the prix fixe omelets and pancakes. The music ranges from boy-band ballads to chill jazz and lonesome bluegrass, and the locations include a below-ground club and an idyllic waterfront.Here are six weekend musical brunches that — barring coronavirus restrictions — will quench your thirst for tunes and toe-tapping to go with your booze and biscuits.Christopher Brasfield is part of a rotating cast that performs as the flirty Boy Band Project.Hunter Abrams for The New York TimesBoys Are the BandSweet seduction is on the menu at Boy Band Brunch, held every other Sunday afternoon at one of New York’s new kids on the block: Chelsea Table + Stage, a performance venue that opened in September inside the Hilton New York Fashion District hotel. It stars the Boy Band Project, a flirty quartet with members who belt, dance, thrust their pelvises and sing the “Please don’t go, girl” musical repertoires of ’NSync, Boyz II Men and other crush-inducing boy bands of the 1990s and 2000s.The cast rotates, but at a recent performance, the bandmates were played by Chris Messina (the sporty one), Sam Harvey (the not-that-bad boy), Christopher Brasfield (the boy next door) and Nic Metcalf (the sensitive one). The tables were filled with mostly millennials and Gen Xers brunching on smoked salmon avocado toast and singing along with every lyric, as if Justin Timberlake himself were on one knee pleading for their affections.If the vibe feels like Backstreet Boys meets Broadway, it’s no wonder: The Boy Band Project was created by Travis Nesbitt, a former cast member of “Altar Boyz,” a musical satire of a Christian boy band that had a hit Off Broadway run in the 2000s. (chelseatableandstage.com)Breakfast BebopEye-popping Hudson Valley vistas accompany the vamps at Sunday Jazz Brunch at Cove Castle, a lakeside restaurant in Greenwood Lake, N.Y. Located about a 45-minute drive from the George Washington Bridge (or a 10-minute drive from the Metro-North station in Tuxedo, N.Y.), the town doesn’t have the same weekend bustle and artistic cache as nearby Beacon or Hudson. But that’s a draw for brunchers, especially those who pull up in their boats to dock and dine in an 80-seat room with sweeping views of Greenwood Lake, as well as the hills and woodlands of Sterling Forest State Park.Along with Cove Castle, the Sunday brunch is hosted by the Hudson Valley Jazz Festival, which helps program the mostly local bands. The menu is brunch comfort food, including challah French toast and a trio of sausages served with Brazilian cheese bread. (covecastleny.com)Latin and Cuban are the musical styles you’re likely to hear during jazz brunch at 1803, a corner restaurant in TriBeCa. Named for the year of the Louisiana Purchase, the New Orleans-inspired venue features a rotating schedule of local ensembles. On a recent Saturday, a jazz trio — Eduardo Belo on bass, Rogério Boccato on drums and Vinicius Gomes on guitar — made the airy two-story dining room feel like the French Quarter by way of São Paulo, Brazil.The menu is heavy on bayou fare, including a crawfish-cake benedict, gumbo and jambalaya (a vegan option is made with a crispy tofu); and Southern favorites like chicken and waffles and a rosemary-forward macaroni and cheese. (1803nyc.com)A Glass of TwangBrunches with honest-to-goodness live country music are scarce in New York, and that surely makes country fans madder than a cat getting baptized.Filling that void is Spaghetti Tavern, an Upper West Side bar and restaurant that hosts bluegrass brunches on the weekends. Last Sunday, it was as if the 65-seat dining room were nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, thanks to Pickin’ Parm, a quartet made up of Kris Bauman (banjo), Ross Martin (guitar), Kells Nollenberger (bass) and Cesar Moreno (mandolin). “This is a song about picking up farm girls,” Moreno announced with a smile, to which diners responded with applause and a “yeehaw!” It was a cool spring day so the doors were open, giving passers-by a taste of honky-tonk.The menu features traditional brunch fare with Italian twists, including a spaghetti frittata wedge and baked cannellini beans and eggs. But the house specialty is Spaghetti in a Bag: pasta tossed in a sauce (pick among pesto, cacio e pepe and others) and served piping hot in an oversized parchment satchel. The bottomless mimosas come in a cute refillable ceramic donkey, because why not. (spaghettitavern.com)Curtain Up, Chow DownAnnie, Effie, Mimi: No Broadway diva is safe from sendup at the R-rated Broadway Drag Brunch, a raucous meal-and-a-show that plays twice on Sundays at Lips, a long-running drag club-restaurant that now lives on a quiet stretch of Midtown East, where it moved in 2010 after more than a dozen years at its original home in the West Village.On a recent afternoon, it was mostly young women in the audience, including brides-to-be and birthday revelers who, at one point in the show, lined up to sit on a throne and take a photo with the sharp-tongued Ginger Snap. (“I smell Long Island Railroad,” Miss Snap told one table.) The cast of drag queens lip-synced to numbers from Broadway musicals including “Dreamgirls,” “Rent” and “Jekyll & Hyde,” but the crowd became the most worked up when the D.J. cut show tunes with pop hits.The is the only brunch on this list that doesn’t include live music and singing, but give a queen a break: The performers double as servers (and work hard for tips). Thirty dollars gets you a musical-themed entree, like the Sweeney Todd steak and eggs, or the Mamma Mia mozzarella omelet — and a bloody mary or mimosa. Add $6 and the cocktails are unlimited. (nycdragshow.com)Strawberry Fields: Ultimate Beatles Brunch features songs from the Beatles catalog sung by costumed cast members. Deborah SableA Hard Night’s MorningPaul and Ringo meet pizza and ratatouille every Sunday for the nostalgic Strawberry Fields: Ultimate Beatles Brunch. The meal-meets-concert had an 18-year run at the former B.B. King Blues Club & Grill in Times Square; it’s now a weekend staple at City Winery’s 32,000-square-foot venue, which opened in October 2020 and overlooks the Hudson River at Pier 57 on Manhattan’s West Side. The show features vintage instrumentation and amplification of songs from the Beatles catalog sung by costumed cast members, many of whom performed with the Broadway and touring companies of the long-running musical “Beatlemania.”The $55 ticket includes the show and an unlimited breakfast buffet; bottomless drink packages are also available. It’s a great way to introduce children under 12 to the Fab Four: They get in at no cost, with brunch foods available for purchase. (citywinery.com) More

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      Review: ‘Little Girl Blue’ Revisits Nina Simone in Her Prime

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      Laiona Michelle’s tribute show, now at New World Stages, is more an impressionistic portrait for those familiar with the singer’s life and career.Musicals often rely on familiar patterns — a patter song here, an “I want” number there — and biographical musicals might well be the most predictable of all. The songs are mixed with enough back story to make the audience feel as if they haven’t just paid a lot of money to watch a cover act, and there is traditionally a juicy, awards-baiting tour de force for the lead performer.And so it has gone, successfully so in the case of such hits as “The Boy From Oz” (Hugh Jackman as Peter Allen), “Beautiful” (Jessie Mueller as Carole King) and “Tina” (Adrienne Warren as Tina Turner).Laiona Michelle’s tribute to Nina Simone, “Little Girl Blue,” which recently opened at New World Stages, fits the general format, with some interesting, if not always successfully implemented, idiosyncratic touches. The show’s most distinctive characteristic is its attempt to eschew linear storytelling and its refusal to supply the expected touchstones. This approach befits Simone, who rarely followed predetermined paths, but the resulting impressionistic portrait benefits from a viewer’s familiarity with the basic benchmarks of the subject’s art, personality and life.Each of the evening’s two acts takes place at a concert from a key period in Simone’s career: The first was in Westbury, N.Y., in April 1968, a few days after the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; the second was at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, in July 1976. Backed by a snappy onstage trio led by the music director and pianist Mark Fifer, Michelle portrays Simone with a fiery commitment to the musician’s mood swings, prickliness and arch stylings. She emulates some of the banter and the set lists, but not that much. And since the rights to “Mississippi Goddam” could not be secured for this show, she and Fifer wrote the original “Angry Black Woman” as a kind of conceptual homage.Mostly those historical concerts act as springboards for snapshots of an often tormented, always searching artist, just like songs were springboards in Simone’s freewheeling live act. (It is not a coincidence that Justin Vivian Bond and Taylor Mac, whose performances can also go from erratic to brilliant and back again in a second, are both superb Simone interpreters.)If there is a thread, it is the fury of Simone fighting against the expectations placed upon her as a Black female artist. She disliked being labeled jazz, for example. “That is a term invented by white people to identify Black people,” she says in the show. “I. Am. Classical.” But her genius rested in using one to feed the other, leading to some inspired musical juxtapositions by Michelle (who wrote the script with additional material from the director Devanand Janki).At one point, Simone’s piano teacher Muriel Mazzanovich, a.k.a. Miss Mazzy, says, using her young student’s real name: “Eunice Kathleen Waymon, I’d like for you to meet Johann Sebastian Bach.” Michelle’s Simone immediately goes into the line “Ooh-oo child, things are gonna get easier,” from the Five Stairsteps’ “O-o-h Child,” and that beat might well be the most hopeful moment in the show.“Little Girl Blue” loses focus during the Montreux concert, as the push and pull between Simone’s talent and her demons, her activism and the world around her, becomes harder to pin down — it feels as if Michelle was somehow bedeviled by her subject. Then again, she is not the first, nor the last: Liz Garbus’s Oscar-nominated documentary is tellingly titled “What Happened, Miss Simone?”Little Girl BlueAt New World Stages, Manhattan; littlegirlblue.nyc. Running time: 2 hours. More

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      in Theater

      ‘CODA’ Is Being Developed Into a Stage Musical by Deaf West

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      The theater plans to work with the Oscar-nominated film’s producers to adapt the story of a teenager torn between helping her deaf family and singing.The Oscar-nominated film “CODA,” in which a hearing child of deaf parents pursues a passion for singing, is being developed into a stage musical by Deaf West Theater, a highly regarded Los Angeles-based nonprofit with a strong track record in musical theater.The project, which does not yet have a creative team or a production calendar, is a joint venture between the theater and two of the companies that produced the movie, Vendôme Pictures and Pathé Films.“CODA,” written and directed by Sian Heder, is nominated for three Academy Awards, including best picture. The film is about a high school student torn between helping her family, which runs a fishing boat, and pursuing a newfound interest in singing; she is the only hearing member of her family. (CODA is an acronym for child of deaf adult.)“‘CODA’ is unique among the entire canon of feature films in that it features us in our natural setting: among the world at large and among our own, often at home or in private settings,” DJ Kurs, the artistic director of Deaf West, wrote in an email interview. “As a Deaf person, I knew from the start that ‘CODA’ would make a perfect musical: It addresses our relationship with music and how we move through the world of sound like immigrants in a foreign country, learning new, seemingly arbitrary rules on the fly.”Deaf West, founded in 1991, is the nation’s most prominent theater focusing on what it calls “Deaf-centered storytelling,” and its productions are generally performed in both American Sign Language and spoken English by casts that include deaf and hearing artists.The theater has previously staged five musicals, including two revivals that transferred to Broadway, “Big River” in 2003 and “Spring Awakening” in 2015. Both were nominated for Tony Awards. “CODA” would be the second musical originated by the company; the first was “Sleeping Beauty Wakes” in 2007.“Professional musical theater was largely inaccessible to our community for the most part until our production of ‘Big River’ was staged in bigger houses in L.A. and N.Y.,” Kurs wrote. “Now we have musical theater aficionados within our community, and that’s a beautiful thing. I would wager that the art form of signed musical theater is still in its infancy.”10 Movies to Watch This Oscar SeasonCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      in Television

      Amanda Bynes, Former Child Star, Is Released From Conservatorship

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      A judge in California freed the former Nickelodeon star from the arrangement that had governed her life after highly publicized struggles with substance abuse.A judge ruled on Tuesday to end the conservatorship that for the better part of a decade has governed the life of Amanda Bynes, who shot to fame as a child star on Nickelodeon and went on to have highly publicized struggles with substance abuse.A court in California first ordered that Ms. Bynes be put in a conservatorship — a legal arrangement typically reserved for people who are older, ailing or have disabilities — in 2013, after erratic public behavior and a series of arrests. Over the years, Ms. Bynes’s parents have overseen her life, taking control of medical and mental health decisions and, for a time, her finances.The conservatorship system has come under intense scrutiny in the last year, after Britney Spears condemned her own as abusive and accused her father and others of exploiting her and seeking to capitalize off her wealth and stardom. A judge agreed to terminate Spears’s conservatorship in November.But Ms. Bynes’s conservatorship appeared to reach a smoother ending. Her mother, Lynn Bynes, who had acted as her conservator, told the court that she agreed that her daughter was now ready to live without that level of oversight, and a psychiatrist signed off, writing that Ms. Bynes had “no apparent impairment in alertness and attention, information and processing, or ability to modulate mood and affect.” Ms. Bynes’s lawyer, David A. Esquibias, held her case up as an example of how a conservatorship could be effective in rehabilitating a person while allowing them a degree of autonomy.“For the most part, mom has allowed Amanda to live freely,” Mr. Esquibias said. “She never wanted to be conserved, but she understood why.”At Ventura County Superior Court on Tuesday, Judge Roger L. Lund granted Ms. Bynes’s request to terminate the conservatorship. “She’s done everything the court has asked over a long period of time,” Judge Lund said.Ms. Bynes, 35, gained prominence as a young cast member of “All That,” Nickelodeon’s “Saturday Night Live”-style show, before headlining her own sketch comedy program, “The Amanda Show,” which helped define the network’s goofy brand of non sequitur humor. Ms. Bynes then graduated to roles in mainstream romantic comedies including “She’s the Man” and “Easy A.”A series of run-ins with the law in 2012 and 2013 drew intense media coverage, as she was arrested and accused of driving under the influence, hit and run and possession of marijuana. Ms. Bynes was held involuntarily in a psychiatric hospital in 2013 after setting a small fire in a driveway, and was later ordered into a temporary conservatorship.In an interview with Paper Magazine in 2018, Ms. Bynes said, “I got really into my drug usage and it became a really dark, sad world for me.” She told the magazine that she had been sober for nearly four years.At a time of reassessment of how the media, the entertainment industry and the public have treated female celebrities going through mental health or substance abuse struggles — spurred in part by Ms. Spears’s case — Ms. Bynes offers another example of a young woman raised in the spotlight whose subsequent breakdown was breathlessly covered by tabloids.In recent years, Ms. Bynes’s life has stabilized, her lawyer said. She is now studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles and lives in an apartment community for women “poised to transition into an autonomous lifestyle,” according to papers filed with the court last month that requested Ms. Bynes’s conservatorship be terminated.“Ms. Bynes desires to live free of any constraint,” the filing said.The former actress has said little publicly about the conservatorship, aside from a video posted to social media in which she took issue with the cost of her mental health treatment.Conservatorships, often called guardianships, have received a great deal of public interest as a result of Ms. Spears’s case, disability rights advocates say, and a bill in California making its way through the state legislature would make it easier for conservatorships to be terminated and would require courts and potential conservators to consider alternative options first.Judy Mark, the president of Disability Voices United, a nonprofit organization that is working to get the legislation passed, said that while she supports the termination of Ms. Spears’s and Ms. Bynes’s conservatorships, she is not seeing it getting easier for a more typical conservatee to assert their freedoms.“Not everyone has Instagram accounts with millions of followers and a fan base that cares about them,” Ms. Mark said. “Most people conserved are normal people with disabilities, and most courts are very paternalistic.”Ms. Bynes and her parents have long been preparing for the termination of the conservatorship to ensure a smooth transition, said Tamar Arminak, a lawyer for Ms. Bynes’s parents. (The conservatorship of Ms. Bynes’s estate was ended several years ago, leaving the conservatorship in charge of her person, which involved medical and basic life decisions.) The court’s ruling allows Ms. Bynes to make personal choices that she did not have before, such as getting married to her fiancé, Ms. Arminak said.“The moment that it was clear and apparent that Amanda would do well off this conservatorship we agreed to terminate this conservatorship,” she said. More

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      Up Next for Jessie Buckley of ‘The Lost Daughter’: More Movies, and Music

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      The actress Jessie Buckley is a natural brunette, but her hair is currently chopped into a ragged black bob and her nails are painted the same emerald green that the writer Christopher Isherwood gave Sally Bowles, the glamorously in-denial singer, in his 1937 novella of the same name. “Different hair for every job,” says Buckley, characteristically wry over a video call from London. “People think you’re very transformative.” Later, she’ll go onstage in “Cabaret,” the musical adaptation of Isherwood’s story of Weimar-era doom, at the Playhouse Theatre’s Kit Kat Club, alongside Eddie Redmayne. And in a few weeks, she’ll fly to Los Angeles for the 94th Academy Awards: Her performance in “The Lost Daughter” garnered her a nomination for best actress in a supporting role. Her brother had delivered the news to her over text the day before. “I thought he was joking,” she says. “It’s just something that doesn’t happen in life.”Buckley, photographed for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, wearing a Celine by Hedi Slimane shirt.Photograph by Andrea Urbez. Styled by Hisato TasakaBuckley with her musical collaborator Bernard Butler. Buckley wears a Miu Miu sweater, $1,430, and shoes, $875, miumiu.com; and Celine by Hedi Slimane pants, $1,250.Photograph by Andrea Urbez. Styled by Hisato TasakaExplore the 2022 Academy AwardsThe 94th Academy Awards will be held on March 27 in Los Angeles.A Makeover: On Oscar night, you can expect a refreshed, slimmer telecast and a few new awards. But are all of the tweaks a good thing?Best Actress Race: Who will win? There are cases to be made for and against each contender, and no one has an obvious advantage.A Hit: Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s “Drive My Car” is the season’s unlikely Oscar smash. The director Bong Joon Ho is happy to discuss its success.  Making History: Troy Kotsur, who stars in “CODA” as a fisherman struggling to relate to his daughter, is the first deaf man to earn an Oscar nomination for acting. ‘Improbable Journey’: “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” was filmed on a shoestring budget in a remote Himalayan village. In a first for Bhutan, the movie is now an Oscar nominee.Buckley, 32, has been earning praise for her deft portrayals of maddening, messily vital characters, but her own career trajectory has been disciplined, even conventional: drama school (the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) to theater (Shakespeare’s Globe), theater to indies, indies to Hollywood. She was born in Ireland’s County Kerry and seems to fulfill a kind of Yeatsian fantasy of the woman from the west who’s gifted in song. Raised in an artistic household with four younger siblings — her mother is a musician and teacher, and her father is a poet and bar manager — she moved to London as a teenager, where she finished second on a TV talent series called “I’d Do Anything.” YouTube videos show her delivering a tune from “Oliver!” with the same blend of power and vulnerability she’d bring to later roles.It’s Buckley’s voice, after all, that astonished audiences in 2018’s “Wild Rose,” a movie in which she plays an aspiring country star. This summer, she and Bernard Butler — a veteran musician, songwriter and producer — are set to release a 12-track album called “For All Our Days That Tear the Heart” on the British label EMI. “I feel a bit shy about it,” she says. “It was a really pure, beautiful, untainted thing, and a bit of a secret.” Over the past two summers, she and Butler would meet weekly to drink tea in his kitchen and discuss, among other things, lines of poetry. At the end of the day, they’d record whatever they’d made on an iPhone, just one or two takes, “and then we’d say goodbye,” says Butler. The finished album conveys the intimacy of two friends finding private meaning through creativity.Buckley, photographed for T: The New York Times Style Magazine, wearing aMiu Miu sweater; and Celine by Hedi Slimane pants.Photograph by Andrea Urbez. Styled by Hisato TasakaIn the fall, Buckley will travel to Spain to film Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s “Hot Milk.” This year will also see the release of the Sarah Polley-directed “Women Talking” — starring Buckley, Rooney Mara and Frances McDormand as members of a remote religious community disturbed by sexual violence — and Alex Garland’s “Men,” in which Buckley portrays a widow alone on holiday.Our Reviews of the 10 Best-Picture Oscar NomineesCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More