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    Overlooked No More: Go-won-go Mohawk, Trailblazing Indigenous Actress

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    In the 1880s, the only roles for Indigenous performers were laden with negative stereotypes. So Mohawk decided to write her own narratives.This article is part of Overlooked, a series of obituaries about remarkable people whose deaths, beginning in 1851, went unreported in The Times.For a long time, theatrical roles for Indigenous characters were laden with stereotypes: the savage, the tragic martyr, the helpless drunk. And it was rare in stories of any kind, on the page or on the stage, for an Indigenous character to have a starring role.By the late 1880s, the actress Go-won-go Mohawk had had enough. “I grew tired of being cast in uncongenial roles,” like meek princesses or submissive women who were restrained in corsets, she told The Des Moines Register and Leader in 1910. So she decided to write her own roles, ultimately carving out a groundbreaking career in which she told stories onstage about Indigenous people as the heroes of their own lives. She also did it while performing as a man.Mohawk’s primary work was “Wep-ton-no-mah, the Indian Mail Carrier” (1892), which follows the title character, a young Indigenous man, as he saves a young white woman from a stampede, winning her heart and earning the respect of her family.The woman’s father, a colonel, offers Wep-ton-no-mah a position as a mail carrier, which he initially turns down. “I could not start being under the control of anyone but the great Manitou,” Wep-ton-no-mah says, referring to the spiritual power of the Algonquians. “I want to be free–free–free like the birds, the eagles and deers — owning no master but one.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Zdenek Macal, Conductor With an International Reach, Dies at 87

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      Shuttling between Europe and the United States, he conducted the world’s great orchestras. He was music director of the New Jersey Symphony for 11 years.Zdenek Macal in 2010. His sound, rounded and warm, was ideally suited to the 19th-century repertoire with which he was most closely associated.Michal Krumphanzl/Associated PressZdenek Macal, a Czech-born conductor who drew a distinctively rich and full sound from orchestras in several countries, including the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, where his tenure is regarded by musicians and administrators as something of a golden age, died on Oct. 25 in Prague. He was 87.The orchestra announced his death.With the New Jersey Symphony, where he was music director from 1992 to 2003, Mr. Macal (pronounced ma-KAL) was especially known for his robust performances of works by his compatriots Antonin Dvorak and Josef Suk, and by late-Romantic composers like Gustav Mahler and Sergei Rachmaninoff.But his career was international: He shuttled between Europe and the United States and conducted the world’s great orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Czech Philharmonic, where he was principal conductor from 2003 to 2007.After he left the Czech Philharmonic, he continued as guest conductor there and freelanced with other orchestras, a spokesperson for the Philharmonic said in an interview.Mr. Macal conducting the French National Orchestra. Among the many other European orchestras he conducted was the Czech Philharmonic, where he was principal conductor from 2003 to 2007.INA, via Getty Images“He was an old-world figure in music, and he really brought an old-school sound,” the New Jersey Symphony’s concertmaster, Eric Wyrick, said in a phone interview. “He would always ask, ‘Where is my sound?’ And he was relentless in pursuit of this sound world he was famous for.”That sound, rounded and warm, was ideally suited to the 19th-century repertoire with which Mr. Macal was most closely associated.“You must feel something, and you should try to show it or say it, and that’s the point for any kind of art,” he told the radio interviewer Bruce Duffie in 1990.Mr. Wyrick recalled: “There is a real aerobic feeling to the way he wanted us to play. He would tell the winds, ‘Don’t step out of the texture.’ He was marvelous.” He added that the slow tempos Mr. Macal sometimes favored were ideally suited to Dvorak, though perhaps less so to Beethoven.“He would say, ‘I don’t know how I do it. I take off with my elbows,’” and then he would gesture with his elbows, Mr. Wyrick said.In a review of a 1990 performance of Czech music by the Pacific Symphony led by Mr. Macal, the critic Chris Pasles noted in The Los Angeles Times that Mr. Macal “obviously had a sense of the correct style — the folk elements transmuted by the composer — and he emphasized the vigorous rhythms while maintaining uncluttered balance.”Reviewing a 1994 performance of the New York Philharmonic conducted by Mr. Macal, Bernard Holland of The New York Times called him “a good manager of excitement” who “manipulated the accumulating dramas” in Mussorgsky’s “A Night on Bald Mountain” with “admirable control.”The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians called Mr. Macal “a conductor of strong personality, clarity of purpose and firm structural logic in performance.”That personality could manifest itself in a certain impetuousness. When the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, Mr. Macal fled his homeland in a taxi, telling the driver to take him to the German border.“His wife and he and his young daughter, they left with whatever they had, and he had to start all over again,” said Larry Tamburri, the former executive director of the New Jersey orchestra.Looking back in 1990, Mr. Macal told Mr. Duffie: “In the whole of my life I started a few times from the beginning. I started my career in Czechoslovakia, and then after the Russian invasion we left in ’68. So I started again and had my base in Western Europe. We came every year a little to the United States, but my base was in Europe.”He moved to the United States in 1982 and, after becoming a citizen, assumed the directorship of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra in 1986. He held that position until 1995; for the last three years he was the music director of both the Milwaukee and New Jersey orchestras.The New Jersey Symphony’s recording of Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony, which he conducted, won a Grammy Award for best engineered classical album in 2001.Mr. Macal conducting in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, in 1966. Two years later, when the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia, Mr. Macal fled his homeland with his wife and daughter in a taxi.Frantisek Nesvadba/CTK, via Associated PressZdenek Macal was born in Brno, Czechoslovakia, on Jan. 8, 1936, and studied violin with his father from the age of 4. He enrolled at the conservatory in Brno, won an international conducting competition in Besançon, France, in 1965 and conducted the Czech Philharmonic for the first time shortly after winning the Dimitri Mitropoulos conducting competition in New York in 1966. He made his American debut with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1972.Mr. Macal’s wife, Georgina, a singer, died in 2015. A daughter, Monika, died last year. More

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      Turning 100, the New Jersey Symphony Sticks to Home

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      The orchestra could have rented Carnegie Hall for the celebration, but “our supporters are here, our audiences are here,” its chief executive said.When the New Jersey Symphony was planning this season’s centennial celebrations, which come to a close this weekend, a question kept coming up: Would the orchestra be going to Carnegie Hall?After all, appearing at Carnegie — even if that means renting the hall — is a mark of excellence and validation, an exclamation point on a tour or a special occasion. Like a 100th birthday.While the New Jersey Symphony has given many Carnegie performances over the years, most recently in 2012, it decided this was not the right time to return.“Sure, we can go to Carnegie,” Gabriel van Aalst, the orchestra’s chief executive, recently recalled thinking. “We could have hired it out; we could have done it. But I strongly felt that this major tentpole celebration should be us in our state. Our supporters are here, our audiences are here.”These were striking words from an institution long characterized by what — and where — it is not. The elephant in the concert hall is that New Jersey is squeezed, geographically, between two of the world’s greatest ensembles, the New York Philharmonic and the Philadelphia Orchestra.Smaller than either of those giants, the New Jersey Symphony has lately punched above its weight in programming ambition — and, as the music world continues to rebuild from the pandemic, has prided itself on thinking locally rather than trying to compete with its famous neighbors. In Xian Zhang, its music director since 2016, the ensemble has an energetic, collaboration-minded leader well liked by the players.“I felt this orchestra was, for me, very easy to conduct,” said Zhang, who has been music director since 2016. “They read me easily.”Douglas Segars for The New York Times“Since I’ve gotten here, I’ve hired 10 positions,” Zhang said. “We only have 66 musicians total, so that’s a high number. And after the pandemic, when everybody came back, there’s been even more of a sense of unity and wanting to be together. It feels closer now, psychologically.”What was initially called the Montclair Art Association Orchestra made its debut on Nov. 27, 1922, boasting female members at a time when that was unusual. The inaugural program included Bruch’s Violin Concerto No. 1, which Joshua Bell will reprise in this weekend’s season finale.In its early years, the orchestra benefited from its closeness to New York, since many of its players were also part of the Philharmonic — and even now, the proximity can be valuable for attracting talent. (The star pianist Daniil Trifonov might not be such a perennial presence if he didn’t live just across the Hudson River in Battery Park City.)Under the decade-long directorship of the young conductor Samuel Antek, who died suddenly in 1958, community outreach — lowering ticket prices, appearing on the radio, hiring local choruses, creating children’s concerts — was a priority. Ten years later came the glamorous tenure of Henry Lewis, the first Black music director of a major orchestra, who presided over the kind of booming institutional growth that spread throughout the American orchestral world in the 1960s and ’70s.Henry Lewis, the first Black music director of a major orchestra, presided over a golden era of institutional growth. Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe ensemble has been known for charismatic podium leaders. Hugh Wolff’s programming was creative, and his performances polished. Under Zdenek Macal, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark opened in 1997, providing a home base for the orchestra, and Neeme Järvi, in charge from 2003 to 2009, led enthusiastically received concerts.When Zhang, born in China in 1973, made her first guest appearance, in 2010, her English was still a work in progress, recalled Eric Wyrick, the orchestra’s concertmaster.“She was very businesslike” at those initial rehearsals, he said. “Very straight up and down with her delivery. But then, at the performances, she just exploded. For a tiny person, she was just huge.”“I felt this orchestra was, for me, very easy to conduct,” Zhang said. “They read me easily.”With swooping yet clear gestures, she has guided the ensemble into repertory it hadn’t touched in a long time — like, earlier this year, Mahler’s Third Symphony — as well as major commissions from composers like Steve Mackey, many of them based in New Jersey.At a recent rehearsal for a concert that featured Randall Goosby as the soloist in Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto, she worked with the musicians on a new piece by Chen Yi, emphasizing buoyancy and the length of the musical line: “Everything needs to be lighter and have a lot of space.” (With the composer in the house, it was a rare moment in the music world — a rehearsal being guided entirely by women of Asian descent: Zhang, Chen and the ensemble’s assistant conductor, Tong Chen.)“They’re faster than a lot of orchestras to grasp different things,” Zhang said after the rehearsal — a necessity, since the group is constantly traveling among its five main performance spaces across the state.“Because we’re not a behemoth, we can be more responsive to community needs,” van Aalst said. “Traditionally orchestras either say, ‘Come to us, we’re wonderful,’ or they go out into communities and say, ‘Hey, listen to us.’ We were very intentional that we were going to go to communities and ask, ‘What do you need from us?’”Zdenek Macal with the orchestra at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, which became its home base.Chang W. Lee/The New York TimesThis approach has meant bigger and richer Lunar New Year celebrations than at most American orchestras, and an intriguing performance of Indian music in May that aimed to engage with the state’s substantial South Asian community. The players’ contract has a strong chamber component, encouraging participation in educational activities.“We’re not going to compete with the New York Phil,” van Aalst said. “We’re not going to compete with Philadelphia. That’s not the point. We have been very intentional about framing the orchestra as ‘your New Jersey Symphony.’ We’re here for your community.”Zhang’s current contract extends through the 2027-28 season, at which point hers will be, at 12 years, the longest music directorship in the orchestra’s history. “She could have done this for eight years and gone and done other things,” van Aalst said. “But I think she loves being here; there’s a symbiosis.”There are also things to look forward to: new repertory, including more Mahler and a robust slate of commissions, as well as hopes to create a new building that the orchestra would own — unlike the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which is its own entity — devoted to offices, rehearsals and education. In the even longer term, there are dreams for a summer venue for the region, along the lines of the Hollywood Bowl.While Zhang said she would love to lead the orchestra on tour, including internationally, there doesn’t seem to be much worry about proving the ensemble’s bona fides — particularly nearby.“I would rather commission two new pieces from New Jersey composers than spend the money to go to Carnegie Hall,” van Aalst said. “That’s actually driving the art form forward; that’s actually celebrating the orchestra.” More

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      in Movies

      Angelo Badalamenti, Composer for ‘Twin Peaks,’ Is Dead at 85

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      The filmmaker David Lynch turned to his haunting work again and again, for “Blue Velvet,” “Mulholland Drive” and other neo-noir films.Angelo Badalamenti, an internationally sought-after composer who wrote the hypnotic theme to “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch’s 1990s television drama series, and the music for five Lynch films, including “Blue Velvet” (1986), died on Sunday at his home in Lincoln Park, N.J. He was 85.His niece Frances Badalamenti confirmed the death. She said she did not know the cause.Mr. Badalamenti was at the piano behind Isabella Rossellini when she sang “Blue Velvet” at the Slow Club in Lumberton, N.C., a flower-filled, picket-fence kind of town with a very dark side. Aside from the title song, a Bobby Vinton hit from 1963, he had composed much of the film’s music.He also wrote the music for Mr. Lynch’s 2001 neo-noir mystery “Mulholland Drive” and had a small role in the film as one of two mobster brothers who spits out his espresso in a conference-room scene.His best-known work was the “Twin Peaks” theme, recognizable from its first three ominous, otherworldly notes. He won the 1990 Grammy for best instrumental pop performance for the number, which was, according to the Allmusic website, “dark, cloying and obsessive — and one of the best scores ever written for television.”In 2015, a Billboard writer described the theme as “gorgeous and gentle one second, eerie and unsettling the next.” It was, according to Rolling Stone, the “most influential soundtrack in TV history.”Mr. Badalamenti didn’t really disagree.“Music and composing — I almost feel a little guilty about it — come so easily for me,” he told the north New Jersey newspaper The Record in 2004. “It’s like the well doesn’t seem to run dry.”Angelo Daniel Badalamenti was born on March 22, 1937, in Brooklyn. A second-generation Italian-American, he was the second of four children of John Badalamenti, a fish market owner, and Leonora (Ferrari) Badalamenti, a seamstress.Growing up in the Bensonhurst section, he started piano lessons at 8 but quit because he preferred playing stickball outdoors with his friends. He took it up again at his older brother’s insistence and came to appreciate the piano when girls admired his playing. He was soon accompanying vocalists and other acts at Catskills resorts during summers off from high school and college.Mr. Badalamenti attended the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and earned a master’s degree at the Manhattan School of Music in 1960.His first job was teaching the seventh grade in a public school, but when he wrote a musical Christmas program for his students, members of the Board of Education saw the production and told the local public TV station Channel 13 about it. The station videotaped and broadcast the show, and the Monday after Christmas, Mr. Badalamenti got a call from a Manhattan music publisher with a job offer.Nina Simone recorded some of his first songs, including “I Hold No Grudge,” in 1965. Nancy Wilson sang “Face It, Girl, It’s Over” (1968).Mr. Badalamenti got started in films by writing music for “Gordon’s War,” a 1973 blaxploitation film. Ossie Davis, the director, wanted an all-black crew, all “brothers,” he said. Mr. Badalamenti pointed to Sicily on a world map. “You do seven strokes from Sicily, and you’re in Africa,” he said he told Mr. Davis. “I may not be your brother, but I’m certainly your cousin!”Mr. Badalamenti was at the piano when Isabella Rossellini sang “Blue Velvet” in the 1986 David Lynch movie of the same title. De Laurentis Group/Courtesy Everett CollectionHe and Mr. Lynch met when Mr. Badalamenti was called in as a vocal coach for Ms. Rossellini on the set of “Blue Velvet.”Jamie Stewart, whose band Xiu Xiu did an album of “Twin Peaks” music, saw Mr. Badalamenti’s Lynchian work in a historical midcentury context: a postwar world where everything appeared to be sunshine and pastels but where the evil unleashed by World War II still lurked.“It’s very romantic but can be terrifying,” Mr. Stewart said of the music, speaking to The Guardian in 2017. “It has a violence and a sincere sentimentality — sadness but not despair.”Mr. Lynch, who described Mr. Badalamenti’s work as having “a deep and powerful beauty,” said that he and the composer would be entirely in sync in expressing Mr. Lynch’s vision for a film. “I sit next to him and I talk to him, and he plays what I say,” he said in an interview with the American Film Institute.As Mr. Badalamenti explained on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” that’s how he wrote “Laura Palmer’s Theme” for “Twin Peaks.” Sitting beside him at his Fender Rhodes keyboard, Mr. Lynch began talking.“It’s the dead of night,” Mr. Badalamenti said. “We’re in a dark wood. There’s a full moon out. There are sycamore trees that are gently swaying in the wind. There’s an owl.”The words became notes that evoked the story of a murdered homecoming queen in the Pacific Northwest.They collaborated again and again, on the films “Wild at Heart” (1990), “Lost Highway” (1997) and “The Straight Story” (1999), in addition to “Mulholland Drive.” There were five iterations of “Twin Peaks,” including the film “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” (1992) and an 18-episode sequel series (2017).In between, Mr. Badalamenti wrote for a wide variety of movies, among them “Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors” (1987), “The Comfort of Strangers” (1990), “Naked in New York” (1993), “The City of Lost Children” (1995), “A Very Long Engagement” (2004) and “The Wicker Man” (2006).He used what he called his “classical chops” to score “Stalingrad” (2013), a wartime love story set against that pivotal 1942 battle. It was an enormous box office success in Russia, where it was produced.One of his longest-running projects was the music for the PBS program “Inside the Actors Studio,” which was on the air from 1994 through 2019, hosted by James Lipton.Writer’s block was rarely a problem for Mr. Badalamenti, but composing a torch-lighting theme for the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona had him stumped. The notes finally came to him in the shower, he recalled, and he hurried downstairs to his piano. “I wrote it in half an hour,” he said.He received the Henry Mancini Award from Ascap, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and a Lifetime Achievement honor from the World Soundtrack Awards.Mr. Badalamenti is survived by his wife, Lonny; his daughter, Danielle; and four grandchildren. His son, André, died in 2012.His niece Frances interviewed him for a magazine, The Believer, in 2019. He remembered being drawn to film noir in his youth, telling her, “The haunting sounds have been there, the off-center instrumentals, ever since I was a child.”Alex Traub More

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      in Theater

      Medieval Times Employees Vote to Unionize in New Jersey

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      The horsemen, courtiers, stablehands and other performers at ye olde New Jersey tourist attraction formed a new kind of medieval guild when they voted to unionize.LYNDHURST, N.J. — In 11th-century Spain, a nobleman trying to put his hand up the queen’s skirt after a royal feast might be subjected to medieval torture methods.But at the Medieval Times just off Route 3, dealing with that kind of behavior has been accepted as part of the job for too long, said Monica Garza, one of several actresses who plays the queen at the dinner-and-a-tournament attraction.Garza said management made her feel like a “diva” for requesting additional security protocols after she pointed out increasingly bold behavior from guests. It was only after an incident in which a rowdy ticket holder got close to her throne and tried to shout into her microphone, Garza said, that management installed a chain to block access to her.The desire for bolstered security and other safety measures at the castle — where falling off horses can be part of the job description — was one reason that queens, knights, squires and stablehands at the Lyndhurst castle voted on Friday to unionize.The unionization effort, first reported by The Huffington Post, prevailed on Friday, when the employees voted, 26 to 11, to join the American Guild of Variety Artists. The medievalists will join a wide array of performers represented by the guild, including the Radio City Rockettes, some circus performers, and the character actors who perform at Disneyland — including Mulan and Aladdin, for example — in California.The employees are also seeking higher pay (Garza receives $20 per hour, and squires start at about $14 per hour), and for higher-ups to treat them more like skilled workers — trained stuntmen who perform intricate fights with lances, swords and axes, and experienced actors who do more than just read lines. Medieval Times management did not respond to requests for comment.A knight, Sinan Logan, with one of the horses backstage in 2007. Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times“A huge point of the union is just basic respect,” said Garza, 25, a trained actor and self-described history nerd. “People will always exploit you when it’s something you love, because they know you’ll do it for nothing.”Many performers ultimately fall in love with the job, even if they didn’t initially dream of working at the concrete castle, with its vast hall of arms and seemingly endless supply of tomato bisque. The two-hour shows are staffed by a motley crew that includes an ex-Marine, an erstwhile Elton John backup singer, a musical theater student turned stuntman, a former zookeeper and an actor known for his voice work on the video game “Grand Theft Auto.”“We are a bunch of misfits,” laughs Sean Quigley, 33, the backup singer who is also a classically trained actor from London, giving him no need to fake a British accent. (The show is technically set in Spain, but New Jersey audiences aren’t picky.)Read More on Organized Labor in the U.S.Apple: Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store voted to unionize, making it the first of the company’s 270-plus U.S. stores to do so. The result provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees.Starbucks: When a Rhodes scholar joined Starbucks in 2020, none of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations had a union. She hoped to change that by helping to unionize its stores in Buffalo. Improbably, she and her co-workers have far exceeded their goal.Amazon: A little-known independent union scored a stunning victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. But unlike at Starbucks, where organizing efforts spread in a matter of weeks, unionizing workers at Amazon has been a longer, messier slog.A Shrinking Movement: Although high-profile unionization efforts have dominated headlines recently, union membership has seen a decades-long decline in the United States.Taking orders from their corporate headquarters in Texas, the Lyndhurst shows are engineered to follow the same structure each night. Visitors here put on the same paper crowns and eat the same four-course meal as in Atlanta and Baltimore. The queens are paid to say the same lines as in the company’s other nine castles, where a reported 1.5 million guests visited last year.“Good nobles, welcome to the hall of my forefathers,” Garza says as she rides atop a white Andalusian into an arena of shrieking children wielding light-up swords.The queen hasn’t been in charge of the realm for long. The show had always cast a king as the lead, but about five years ago the company rewrote the script, putting a queen on the throne to accommodate requests for more substantive roles for women.The new story goes something like this: After inheriting the realm, the queen stages a tournament in which six knights on horseback compete for a vaunted title, but her power is threatened by a sleazy adviser who plots to marry her off. The dialogue is often drowned out by the aforementioned shrieks and the bustle of the “serfs and wenches” (Medieval Times-speak for waiters), who are known to end the evening with, “Cash or card, milady?”For the actors, who can perform the same script several times a week, year after year, the lines start to feel tattooed on their brains — so they find ways to entertain themselves.Paper crowns have long been de rigueur at the castle, as seen in 2007. Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Time“I’ll do a show where I’m pretending I’m secretly in love with the queen; I’ll do a show where I’m secretly in love with one of the knights,” said Quigley, who plays Lord Marshal, the show’s emcee. “In order to keep it fresh, you can tell a different story in your head.”Quigley, who auditioned for a job at Medieval Times after struggling to make a smooth transition between London’s West End and New York’s theater scene, also amuses himself by assuming various accents. He’s tried a cockney drawl, performed the whole show as if he were Sean Connery and put on a voice like Jon Snow from “Games of Thrones” — it was only when he tried doing the entire performance with a lisp that the sound department sent a runner to tell him to cut it out.For Christopher Lucas, the video-game voice actor who has also appeared in daytime soap operas, his improvisational frisson comes during a scene where, as the queen’s slimy adviser, he goes on and on about his adoration for oranges from Valencia in an oration that verges on the unhinged. For reasons that even Lucas can’t quite understand, the audience loves it, sometimes starting a chant — “Oranges! Oranges! Oranges!” — and bringing him fresh fruit on their next visit.“As a performer, these are the types of things you live for,” Lucas said.Ultimately, the enterprise of Medieval Times, which started in Spain and came to the United States in 1983, revolves around the knights, who parade around the arena on horseback before jousting and dueling for the queen.One of New Jersey’s most veteran knights, Antonio Sanchez, 31, had grown disillusioned with the idea of a long-term career in the U.S. Marines when he saw on Facebook that Medieval Times was hiring. On a whim in 2014, he drove to the Lyndhurst castle, walked into the horse stables, and soon, he was mucking out stalls and saddling up the steeds before showtime.“From the back of the stables, you could hear the crowd roaring,” Sanchez said, recalling the moment he started dreaming of becoming a knight.To get the job, no experience with horses is required. As knights’ apprentices, the men undergo hundreds of hours of training, learning both how to ride and how to roll off into the sand safely when rival knights “knock” them off.Employees at the castle in Lyndhurst, N.J., are now unionized.Amir Hamja for The New York Times“I don’t think I had ever been face to face with a horse before,” said Joe Devlin, 28, who started as a squire after he returned home from a stint as a touring musician and was in desperate need of a job.Protecting themselves with aluminum shields, the apprentices learn fight choreography that will gradually become committed to muscle memory.Still, accidents happen. The fact that the show is dependent on a stable of about two dozen horses adds an element of constant danger, said Purnell Thompson, a stablehand who was hired after losing his job taking care of farm animals at a local zoo. In an arena of boisterous revelers, there are many potential triggers for a horse to spook, including if audience members flout the rules and bang their metal plates and bowls onto the tables.Once, when Devlin was in training, he fractured his ankle learning how to jump off a horse. And Jonathan Beckas, a knight of two years, has dealt with an injured knee and two head injuries, including one that involved taking a wooden lance to the head. (Full-time workers receive health insurance.)One reason the knights are unionizing, said Beckas — a 27-year-old trained stuntman who is paid $21.50 per hour, up from $12 when he started working as a squire — is that they feel acutely underpaid considering the risks they take at work. “I am a knight, but I’m also a human,” he said.This isn’t the first time a union vote was held at this castle. There was a similar effort in 2006, where complaints largely centered around a lack of job security and fears that squires were becoming knights too quickly. That vote narrowly went against forming a union.Even before the vote on Friday’, employees said, they were seeing changes. After news of the unionization effort went public, garnering support from Gov. Phil Murphy, management installed a more robust barrier to her throne, Garza said.Now, the knights have bargaining power, and they plan on using it.“Being a knight is every little kid’s dream,” Sanchez said. “But I got older, and fun doesn’t pay the bills.” More

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      in Television

      Guy Fieri, Elder Statesman of Flavortown

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      MIDDLETOWN TOWNSHIP, N.J. — Guy Fieri looks as if he has prepared his whole life to be a middle-aged rock star.He has grays in the famous goatee now, a faint tan line beneath his chain necklace and a pair of hulking middle-finger rings that do not slow his incorrigible fist-bumping. He talks about the higher purpose of his “namaste” tattoo, and feigns outrage when no one recognizes his Dean Martin references. He revels, still, in conspicuous consumption, double-fisting naan and tandoori chicken during a recent television shoot here at a strip-mall Indian restaurant tucked between a nail salon and a wax center.“I want to chug the chutney!” Mr. Fieri said, daring someone to stop him. “One little bump.”It was 9:33 a.m.But somewhere on a rickety highway near the Jersey Shore that afternoon — past the Jon Bon Jovi restaurant he said he needs to come back and visit; beyond a seaside bar called the Chubby Pickle, where he congratulated himself for not making any R-rated puns, before making several — Mr. Fieri caught himself in a reflective mood.In the 15 years since he began “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his Food Network flagship, Mr. Fieri, 54, has become perhaps the most powerful and bankable figure in food television, the éminence grise of the eminently greasy. And by dint of that show’s success — and Mr. Fieri’s runaway celebrity, and that golden porcupine of hair, and maybe that one review of his Times Square restaurant a while back — certain perceptions have attached to him through the years, perpetuating the caricature he still often seems eager to play.He would like a word about all that.“If you only hear Metallica as a heavy-metal band, then you are not hearing Metallica,” Mr. Fieri said, riding shotgun after a day of filming and charity work. “Now maybe you don’t like that style. But they’re real musicians.”Mr. Fieri’s red Camaro is a signature emblem of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,” his flagship Food Network show.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesFor nearly two decades, since before he mailed a reality-show audition tape to the network, Mr. Fieri has plainly believed he was a real musician, contributing worthy entries to the canon.What is striking now, long after the parody seemed to congeal, is that the wider food community stands ready to believe him.Mr. Fieri has emerged as one of the most influential food philanthropists of the Covid age, helping to raise more than $20 million for restaurant workers. He has established himself as an industry mentor among chefs who may or may not admire his cooking but recognize his gifts as a messenger, which have boosted business for the hundreds of restaurants featured on his show. He has won the blessing of the white-tablecloth set through sheer force of charisma and relentlessness, coaxing a reconsideration of how the food establishment treated him in the first place.“I don’t think he had the respect of people like me or people in the food industry,” said Traci Des Jardins, an acclaimed Bay Area chef who has become a friend. “He has earned that respect.”“An amazing individual,” said the philanthropic chef José Andrés, recalling how Mr. Fieri churned out plates of turkey for wildfire evacuees in 2018.At a recent shoot for “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” at Moo Yai Thai in Sea Bright, N.J.Timothy O’Connell for The New York Times“Whether he likes it or not,” said Andrew Zimmern, a fellow food-television veteran, “he has become an elder statesman.”In that case, Mr. Fieri said, he looks forward to the initiation ceremony.“Don’t you think there should be some kind of a cloak?” he asked, imagining luminaries fitting him for a tweed jacket with elbow pads over his tattoos. But, he added, “I guess I’m kind of becoming one of the guys now.”His point, as ever, was that people are complicated, including Guy Fieri, professional uncomplicated person. Maybe especially Guy Fieri, whose very surname (it is “fee-ED-ee,” he reminds audiences, nodding at his Italian roots) demands fussiness from a man who says things like “flavor jets, activate!” for a living.He is at once sensitive to the exaggerated persona he has embraced, challenging a reporter to name the last time his show recommended a hamburger, and acutely aware of his own ridiculousness. He calls himself semi-chunky as a matter of branding (“body by dumpling,” he said) but is actually quite trim in person, singing the praises of vegan food.The young, pregoatee Mr. Fieri showed an entrepreneurial instinct, selling pretzels from a cart in Ferndale, Calif.Courtesy of Guy FieriHe is a son of Northern California hippies, with superfans across MAGA nation and what can seem like a bespoke set of personal politics, often using his platform to tell stories celebrating immigrants while lamenting what he sees as the country’s overreliance on welfare programs.He can pass hours, by land or fishing boat, reflecting on life and family with a close friend, Rob Van Winkle, whom Mr. Fieri addresses as Ninja and most others know as Vanilla Ice.“Some of us never grow up,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who attributed Mr. Fieri’s nickname for him to his rap in the 1991 “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” sequel, adding that he has been renovating the chef’s new home in Palm Beach County, Fla., a short drive from his own. “When Guy and I are together, we’re like the oldest teenagers in town.”The tonal whiplash in Mr. Fieri’s company can be dizzying. He compares himself in one breath to Happy Gilmore, Adam Sandler’s rampaging golf star of the 1990s (“He’s a hockey player that makes money playing golf, and I’m a cook that makes money doing television”) and speaks in the next of his “fiduciary responsibility” to continue showcasing local restaurants.Rob Van Winkle, better known as Vanilla Ice, has become a close friend. Courtesy of Food NetworkHe can edge toward profundity discussing the America he sees in his travels — comparing it to an overstuffed washing machine, clanking through its burdens — before defaulting to pablum about a national shortage of hugs.He has learned that moderation has its place, he suggests, but only in moderation — a principle best expressed, perhaps inevitably, through the Tao of Lars Ulrich, the Metallica drummer.Mr. Fieri was filming at the Chubby Pickle, in Highlands, N.J., when a chef preparing pork tacos seemed to skimp on the salsa. Mr. Fieri objected.When Metallica cuts an album, he asked, doesn’t the band go heavy on the high-hat? Don’t they give the people what they want?“You get as much Lars,” Mr. Fieri said, “as Lars wants to give you.”Riding the ‘Fame Rocket’The red bowling shirt was probably a giveaway.But for the first 25 seconds of his 2005 audition reel for “The Next Food Network Star,” Mr. Fieri presented himself as a proper snob. He welcomed viewers to Sonoma County and pledged to prepare a dish “not in fusion but in con-fusion” — a Gorgonzola tofu sausage terrine over a “mildly poached” ostrich egg, with Grape-Nuts (this was wine country, after all) and pickled herring mousse.Mr. Fieri as he won “The Next Food Network Star” competition in 2006 — a victory that propelled him to fame. At right is the chef Emeril Lagasse.Courtesy of Food NetworkMr. Fieri shivered at his own faux brilliance. He clasped his hands and stared, as if waiting for his audience to agree. And then: “Ha, ha, haaa. No, seriously, folks, real food for real people. That’s the idea.”Mr. Fieri proceeded to make something he calls the jackass roll — rice, pork butt, fries and avocado — so named, he said, because a friend told him he looked like a jackass preparing it. He described his parents’ macrobiotic diet in his youth, saddling him with “enough bulgur and steamed fish to kill a kid” and leaving him no choice but to cook up alternatives.He ticked through his well-curated biography — a year studying in France; a hospitality degree from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas; a stab at his own casual restaurants back in California — with such conviction that it almost made sense watching a man lay fries and barbecue over sushi rice.Revisiting the video, what stands out is how fully formed Mr. Fieri’s public image was before a single television producer could think to meddle.His hairstylist friend gave him the bleached spikes on a lark one day, and they stuck. His buddies knew his talents for table-to-table rat-a-tat, and urged him to make a tape. The ethos was effectively airlifted to “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” shortly after he won the next-food-star competition, and has never much changed.Mr. Fieri, appearing here with Jay Leno on “The Tonight Show,” was quick to embrace mainstream celebrity.NBC Photo / Paul Drinkwater“It’s been super-hard to rip off, and I’ve tried numerous times,” said Jordan Harman, who helped develop the show in 2007 and is now at A+E Networks. “You can redo the same beats, the same kind of places, the same kind of food. But there’s a magic that he brings that is really not replicable.”Mr. Fieri took to fame quickly, hustling as though the window might be brief. He appeared at local fairs and casino shows that seemed beneath him (Mr. Harman thought), because they invited him. He autographed spatulas and bell peppers because fans asked him to. He toured the country in a flame-painted bus stocked with Pabst Blue Ribbon because what better way to travel? He wore sunglasses on the back of his head because sure, why not?Friends say Mr. Fieri expanded his empire with almost clinical resolve, tending to a portfolio that came to include books, knives, a winery, a line of tequilas and several shows. Today, his name graces dozens of restaurants across six countries and more than a few cruise ships.“This guy don’t sit down,” said Mr. Van Winkle, who traced their friendship to a chance encounter years ago at an airport Starbucks in Charlotte, N.C. “I don’t sit down a lot, too, and I look at him and go, ‘Bro, you don’t sit down.’ ”Mr. Fieri remarked in 2010 that his “fame rocket” would shoot skyward for only so long, reasoning that he must “do what I can for the program while it lasts.” (By “the program,” he meant his wife, Lori, and two sons in Santa Rosa, Calif., along with his parents and a cast of tag-along pals with names like Gorilla and Dirty P.)Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a 500-seat restaurant in Times Square that opened in 2012 and closed five years later.Casey Kelbaugh for The New York TimesHis Times Square restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, can feel in hindsight like an exercise in overextension, an assumption of manifest destiny powered by swagger and a signature Donkey Sauce.“Like, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m going to do this, and it’s just going to be another big success for me,’” said Mr. Zimmern, summarizing Mr. Fieri’s confidence. “But you need to make sure that the food is absolutely perfect.”It was not.And that blazing New York Times review in 2012 (“Guy Fieri, have you eaten at your new restaurant?”) dovetailed with an already-rolling sendup of Mr. Fieri across the culture. He was skewered on “Saturday Night Live,” preparing Thanksgiving “turducken-rab-pig-cow-cow-horse-nish-game-hen” fried in Jägermeister. His likeness became fodder for undercooked Halloween costumes nationwide.He was invited to a Manhattan roast of Anthony Bourdain, a frequent antagonist who once said that Mr. Fieri appeared “designed by committee,” and often took more incoming than the honoree.“The guy who just dropped a 500-seat deuce into Times Square,” Mr. Bourdain called him. (The restaurant closed in 2017.)Lee Brian Schrager, the founder of the South Beach Wine & Food Festival, remembered the evening as “the single most uncomfortable night of my life” — and, looking back, a snapshot of a distant time.“He went through the war,” Mr. Schrager said of Mr. Fieri. “He won.”New Context, Same ShtickSo, has he changed, or have we?Mr. Fieri appraises himself now as “a little more mellow, a little more methodical” — and maybe a little likelier to prize mentorship of the next class of television chef, including his son Hunter, over his own celebrity.Mr. Fieri, filming at the Chubby Pickle in Highlands, N.J., often shoots at several restaurants in the same day. Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesThe moment has likewise tilted his way, at a time when there can seem to be less cultural currency in sarcastic detachment. “Can someone please explain to me what the hell Guy Fieri ever did to anyone?” the comedian Shane Torres asked, earnestly, in a 2017 routine. “As far as I can tell, all he ever did was follow his dreams.”It has helped that Mr. Fieri is well suited to the modern internet, a TikTok regular and walking meme who generates headlines that can register as Onion-ish absent close inspection.“Is Guy Fieri to blame for Dogecoin’s latest record high?” Fortune wondered last May.“Amid Ukraine-Russia war,” read a Fox News web piece in March, “Guy Fieri’s new season of ‘Tournament of Champions III’ provides comfort, unity.”Yet the likeliest explanation for his durability, for his heightened esteem among some peers, is deceptively simple.“He seeks to understand rather than be understood,” Mr. Zimmern said, “which I think is as high a compliment as I can give.”For all the tropes and totems on “Diners” — the loud shirts and little hoop earrings; the adult baby talk (“me likey wingy”); the red Camaro whose driver-side door he opens and shuts at every stop for the cameras, without necessarily hopping inside — he is, at core, hosting a travel show.Working the selfie circuit at a recent charity event for New Jersey veterans.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesViewers see a culinary backpacker cosplaying as the ugly American, a man always seeking, even if all roads lead to ambient comfort. The episodes blur, their locations at once distinctive and indistinguishable. California and Wyoming and Maine do not seem so far apart.“He goes to all these diners, drive-ins and dives,” said one fan, Jim McGinnis, 77, explaining the show’s appeal as Mr. Fieri administered handshakes and how-ya-doing-brothers at a charity event for New Jersey veterans. “It’s just a pleasure.”It helps that no one wrings more theater from the preordained: Mr. Fieri arrives at a chosen spot. He seems excited. He riffs, a little uncomfortably, to make the jittery proprietors more comfortable. (The stop at the Indian restaurant, Haldi Chowk in Middletown Township, N.J., included nods to “Wheel of Fortune,” “Forrest Gump” and “My Cousin Vinny,” with a brief meditation on the differences between I.T., iced tea and Ice-T for reasons that eluded the room.)Eventually, a chef has walked Mr. Fieri through the preparation of a favored dish. The host takes a bite — in this scene, it is the tandoori chicken — and shifts his weight a bit. He stands back, silent. His eyes dart mischievously, as if he has just gotten away with something. He wanders off, pretending to collect himself. The chef smiles. The big reveal only ever goes one way.“Not good, chef. Not good at all,” Mr. Fieri says, the oldest left turn in the TV judge’s manual. “Fantastic.”Rachael Ray, a friend whom Mr. Fieri cites as an influence, compared his people skills to a game of tag: You will like him. Denying as much midpursuit only wastes everyone’s time. “He just keeps chasing you,” she said.Mr. Zimmern described him as a politician, “always talking to his base,” forever the person he told them he was.Mr. Fieri tends to be a generous reviewer, typically doling out on-camera raves.Timothy O’Connell for The New York TimesAnd if Mr. Fieri has carefully avoided the public politics of some Trump-denouncing peers, a day on the road with him during filming can feel something like a campaign swing before the Iowa caucuses: an hour in each ZIP code, a quick check with an aide to make sure he knows what town he’s in, an inveterate fondness for name-dropping.“I learned this from Henry Winkler, one of my heroes …”“My buddy, Sammy Hagar, who’s my business partner …”That Mr. Fieri does not appear to have an off switch is consistent with the public record. Several friends compared him, warmly enough, to some natural disaster or another. “Hurricane Guy,” Mr. Harman said.Reminded of his 2010 line about capitalizing before his “fame rocket” crashed to earth, Mr. Fieri insisted he still viewed his celebrity horizon as finite.“There will be a time when the light doesn’t shine as bright on the golden locks,” he said. “Which is cool.”He was not entirely convincing on either score. But until that day comes, he suggested, he would keep up appearances, with one exception.“Everybody’s like, ‘You bleach your hair. Why don’t you dye your goatee?’ ” he said, rubbing at his grays. “I’m like, ‘You know what? Enough.’ ”He smirked a little, raising his head in concession to the moneymaker atop it.“This, I got stuck with,” he said. “This kind of happened.”Follow New York Times Cooking on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and Pinterest. Get regular updates from New York Times Cooking, with recipe suggestions, cooking tips and shopping advice. More

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      A Broadway Choreographer Who Gets Ideas on the Subway Platform

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      5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00a.m. 6:00 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 5:00 6:00 7:00p.m. 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 1:00 2:00 3:00 4:00 Samuel R. Delany Jonathan Bailey Piet Oudolf […] More

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      Netflix Eyes New Jersey Army Base for Major Production Hub

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      The streaming service said it would bid for a nearly 300-acre chunk of Fort Monmouth and it has the support of Gov. Phil Murphy.Netflix wants to turn a crumbling Army base in New Jersey into one of the largest movie and television production hubs in the Northeast, a plan that has at least one important proponent: Gov. Phil Murphy.On Tuesday, Netflix said it would bid for a 289-acre chunk of Fort Monmouth, about 50 miles south of New York City in the boroughs of Oceanport and Eatontown. The 96-year-old base — used by the United States to develop radar technology and where a civilian engineer, Julius Rosenberg, infamously began his espionage career — was closed by the Pentagon in 2011 as the military cut spending.Bids for the site are due Jan. 12, and Netflix would not discuss the price it planned to offer. The Fort Monmouth Economic Revitalization Authority has appraised the site at $54 million, but several developers previously offered more than $100 million for just 89 acres of the land in consideration. (Those plans fell through.) Netflix said in a statement that it would transform Fort Monmouth into a “state-of-the-art production facility,” indicating a mix of soundstages, postproduction buildings and backlot filming areas.“Governor Murphy and the state’s legislative leaders have created a business environment that’s welcomed film and television production back to the state, and we’re excited to submit our bid,” Netflix’s statement said.At nearly 300 acres, the Jersey Shore site would be Netflix’s second-largest production complex behind ABQ Studios in New Mexico. Netflix bought that complex in 2018 and committed to spend $1 billion in the state, announcing plans in 2020 to expand and invest an additional $1 billion. ABQ Studios will have more than 15 soundstages when complete.Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey is offering tax credits for production and studio construction.Al Drago for The New York TimesSpeculation about Netflix’s interest in Fort Monmouth has swirled since July, when The Two River Times reported that Netflix had been in contact with Mr. Murphy’s office about building opportunities.New Jersey officials began playing up their state as economically and politically friendly to Netflix in 2019, when a delegation from Mr. Murphy’s administration visited various Hollywood companies in Los Angeles. In April, Mr. Murphy took a swipe at Georgia, which had just passed a law restricting voter access, leading activists, stars and others to demand that companies like Netflix, Disney and Warner Bros. boycott the state. In a letter to all of the major studios, Mr. Murphy highlighted his incentives for the film and television industry — tax credits on up to 30 percent of eligible production costs, on par with Georgia, and “a subsidy for brick and mortar studio development of up to 40 percent.”“I am incredibly excited to hear about Netflix’s proposed investment,” Mr. Murphy said in a statement on Tuesday. “While there is an objective process that any and all applications will have to go through, this is yet more evidence that the economic plan my administration has laid out is working and bringing high-quality, good-paying jobs to our state.”New Jersey has a long relationship with Hollywood. Thomas Edison started what is considered to be the nation’s first film studio in West Orange in 1893. The state’s political winds, however, have not always been favorable to the entertainment industry.Throughout the 2010s, former governor Chris Christie was so disgusted with MTV’s “Jersey Shore” and its depiction of Jersey residents as binge-drinking blowhards that he made sure the state maintained a hard line on providing tax credits to film and television productions. In 2009, when HBO went to find production space for “Boardwalk Empire,” set in Prohibition-era Atlantic City, the network chose to shoot the series in New York, which has long offered tax breaks. “Only New Jersey’s high taxes can make building a replica boardwalk in Brooklyn cheaper than filming on the real Boardwalk in Atlantic City,” a New Jersey state senator railed.In recent years, production in the state has started ramping back up, in part to meet the content needs of fast-growing streaming services. Netflix alone has filmed more than 30 projects in New Jersey since 2018, including “Army of the Dead,” Zack Snyder’s zombies-in-Vegas extravaganza. Coming up, Apple TV+ will shoot “The Greatest Beer Run Ever,” a movie starring Russell Crowe, Zac Efron and Bill Murray. The CBS drama “The Equalizer” has been among the other shows to tape episodes in the state.The CBS drama “The Equalizer,” starring Queen Latifah, is one of many projects to film in New Jersey recently.Barbara Nitke/CBS Entertainment, via Associated PressA Netflix spokesman said the company would continue to shoot in states like New York, Georgia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and North Carolina even if the Fort Monmouth plans come to fruition. Last month, the streaming service opened a new 170,000-square foot studio converted from a former steel factory in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn. The new studio includes six soundstages and office space.On a recent afternoon outside the Bushwick studio, there were half a dozen crew and craft service trucks, as well as a number of crew members milling in and out of the building. Signage around the studio indicated that two series were already in production: “The Watcher,” a Ryan Murphy-produced limited series starring Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale, and “Jigsaw,” a new drama. More

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      Bill Cosby Is Sued; Woman Says He Sexually Assaulted Her in 1990

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      The suit was filed under a change in New Jersey law that extended the deadline to sue in cases involving allegations of sexual assault.A woman sued Bill Cosby in New Jersey on Thursday, accusing the entertainer of drugging and sexually assaulting her at a hotel in Atlantic City in 1990, when she was 26.The woman, Lili Bernard, now 57, an actor and visual artist, has long been public about her accusations against Mr. Cosby. She was able to file the suit because New Jersey overhauled its laws on the statute of limitations for sexual assault cases in 2019.Under the old laws, Ms. Bernard would have been time-barred from filing suit because lawsuits had to be filed within two years of the alleged assault. The reforms extended the time limit to seven years and created a special two-year window, ending next month, to bring cases regardless of how long ago the alleged assault might have occurred.Ms. Bernard, a former guest star on “The Cosby Show,” said in court papers that Mr. Cosby had acted as her mentor before an incident in which she said he drugged and raped her at the hotel, the Trump Taj Mahal. She began to feel dizzy after drinking something he gave her, she said in the court papers.“I have waited a long time to be able to pursue my case in court and I look forward to being heard and to hold Cosby accountable for what he did to me,” she said in a statement. “Although it occurred long ago, I still live with the fear, pain and shame every day of my life.”The suit comes more than three months after Mr. Cosby, 84, was freed from prison in Pennsylvania where he was serving a three-to-10-year prison sentence after being convicted of sexually assaulting another woman, Andrea Constand. The 2018 conviction was overturned by the state’s Supreme Court on due process grounds.In a statement, a spokesman for Mr. Cosby, Andrew Wyatt, denied Ms. Bernard’s allegations and attacked the so-called “look back” reforms.“These look back provisions are unconstitutional and they are a sheer violation of an individual’s Constitutional Rights and denies that individual of their Due Process,” he said in a statement. “This is just another attempt to abuse the legal process, by opening up the flood gates for people, who never presented an ounce of evidence, proof, truth and/or facts, in order to substantiate their alleged allegations.”The suit against Bill Cosby was based on a change in New Jersey law that expanded the statute of limitations governing lawsuits in cases involving allegations of sexual assault.Dominick Reuter/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Wyatt said that in 2015 Ms. Bernard had made a criminal complaint to the New Jersey authorities who decided against moving forward with the case. Lawyers for Ms. Bernard said she was told her complaint fell outside the criminal statute of limitations.New Jersey eliminated the criminal statute of limitations for most cases of sexual assault in 1996.More than 50 women have accused Mr. Cosby of a range of sexual assault and misconduct, including rape. Ms. Constand’s case was the only one that proceeded criminally and other women have said their efforts to sue Mr. Cosby on sexual assault grounds have been blocked by statutes of limitation.Ms. Bernard had lobbied for changes in California’s laws on sexual assault, joining legislative efforts by other women who had similarly accused Mr. Cosby. More