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      in Theater

      Yesterday’s Broadway Warhorses, Saddled With Today’s Concerns

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      Revivals of “Romeo and Juliet,” “Our Town,” “Gypsy” and “Sunset Boulevard” aim to show that rethinking for the present is what makes classics classic.Two cheers for new voices! Of the 16 productions scheduled to open on Broadway between now and the end of the year, 12 are new to the Boulevard of Broken Budgets.But I’d like to reserve a third cheer for the fall’s four revivals, which may get less attention, having been this way before, but are likely to earn their keep if history holds true. Old voices are, after all, where new voices come from. And though 240 years separate the Broadway debuts of “Romeo and Juliet” and “Sunset Boulevard,” with “Our Town” and “Gypsy” in between, they all have much in common, at least in their continued haunting of theatergoers’ imaginations.That haunting arises, in part, from our memories of past stars who hover alongside the new ones. In “Our Town,” Henry Fonda and Paul Newman will be whispering the Stage Manager’s lines to Jim Parsons. Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury and Patti LuPone will no doubt watch over Audra McDonald as she takes on the role of Rose in “Gypsy.” LuPone will also be looking over Nicole Scherzinger’s shoulder in “Sunset Boulevard”; presumably keeping a safe distance, so will Glenn Close. And though few are likely to remember Robert Goffe, the original Juliet, he too will be felt on Broadway this fall. However long ago, the part was built on him.But revivals of shows like these have more to offer than ghosts. There’s a reason, aside from name recognition, that they keep coming back. Though products of vastly different times and cultures, they dig so deep into their specific truths that they reach a common, eternal one, from which many others may spring.Perhaps that’s most evident in “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play about two families whose ordinary life events, from birth to death, are consecrated by a kind of communal love. The director Kenny Leon said that in his production, “1936 runs into 2024,” allowing the story to serve “as a metaphor for our world, for our country, even our time.”Paul Newman in a 2002 production of “Our Town.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHenry Fonda in a 1969 production of “Our Town.”Everett CollectionWe 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

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Music

      The Creators of ‘Grounded’ Discuss Writing for the Met Opera

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      Allow the creators of opera some grace.Composers, librettists and their colleagues put years of work into something that, if they are lucky, gets a workshop performance or two before arriving onstage. If there is a revival — never a given in opera — they have an opportunity to make revisions.This process can be brutal for artists. And it’s not the usual one for the composer Jeanine Tesori and the playwright George Brant, the creators of “Grounded,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Sept. 23.Tesori was written operas before, but she and Brant are more often animals of the traditional theater and the Broadway musical, environments where constant revisions responding to workshops, rehearsals and preview performances are the norm. Operas are also revised until the last possible moment, but they are never given the luxurious feedback that creators get in theater.“In the theatrical space, the audience is part of the process,” said Tesori, the Tony Award-winning composer of the shows “Kimberly Akimbo,” “Fun Home” and “Caroline, or Change.” She learned from George C. Wolfe, the decorated playwright and director, “that the audience is your final scene partner.”“I wish I were one of those artists who really knows what they have, but I just don’t,” she said. “So, I feel like I’m still getting to know what ‘Grounded’ is.”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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      in Theater

      7 Days in the Cultural Life of an Artistic Director

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      Violaine Huisman, who leads programming for the Crossing the Line festival, takes in dance on Little Island, a world premiere at Asia Society and “invigorating” translation projects.Bastille Day felt a little bit different this year than others, said Violaine Huisman, the artistic director of New York’s annual Crossing the Line festival. L’Alliance, the French cultural center in Midtown, throws a party every July 14, the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution. This year, the celebration took place just one week after a surprising snap election left President Emmanuel Macron — and France — in a state of flux.“I overheard onlookers wondering out loud whether it was a French tradition to demonstrate with blank signs on that day,” recalled Huisman, who had just been in the country to witness the upset in the streets. (Many participants in this year’s festival opted to carry blank placards in homage to a demonstration created by the choreographer Anna Halprin during the civil rights and antiwar protests of the 1960s.)During these times of uncertainty, many look to art for clarity and guidance. Huisman, 45, is certainly one of those people, as she has been hard at work curating programming for the next Crossing the Line, which kicks off several weeks of art, dance and theater on Sept. 5.Ahead of the festival, Huisman tracked a few days of her cultural life, noting some of the performances, books and music, mostly from her native France, that inspired her. Here are edited excerpts from phone and email interviews.“I overheard onlookers wondering out loud whether it was a French tradition to demonstrate with blank signs on that day,” Huisman said.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesSunday: Placards for PeaceWe celebrated Bastille Day at L’Alliance with a street fair and an amazing piece of performance art, in which two dozen volunteers carrying blank placards engaged in a procession through Midtown, trailed by a marching band. It was a re-enactment by Anne Collod of Anna Halprin’s “Blank Placard Dance.” Volunteers asked audience members what they would march for. “Peace” was the overwhelming response.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

    • 88 Shares179 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Scarface’ Actor Ángel Salazar Dies at 68

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      He first made his mark doing stand-up in New York, but he was best known for his role as Chi Chi opposite Al Pacino in the hit 1983 movie.Ángel Salazar, a dynamic stand-up comedian who became well known for his wild routines and an actor best known for his role in the hit 1983 film “Scarface,” died on Sunday at a friend’s apartment in Brooklyn. He was 68.His death was confirmed by a representative, Roger Paul, who said Mr. Salazar had an enlarged heart and was found unresponsive.Mr. Salazar built his career in New York City comedy clubs after fleeing Cuba when he was young.As an actor, he was seen onstage, on television and in films including “Carlito’s Way” in 1993. But none of these roles would surpass the renown he achieved in “Scarface” as Chi Chi, a henchman of the drug lord Tony Montana, played by Al Pacino. In that film, directed by Brian De Palma and loosely based on the 1932 movie of the same name, Chi Chi backs Montana, a fellow Cuban refugee, on his violent campaign to reach the top of Miami’s cocaine trade.More than 30 years later, in 2017, after the film had secured generations of fans, Mr. Salazar told The Record of Bergen County, N.J., that he still answered to “Chi Chi” and didn’t mind when people brought copies of the “Scarface” DVD to his comedy shows to be signed.Ángel Salazar was born on March 2, 1956, in Cuba. He acted in plays there before fleeing the country in the early 1970s, swimming across Guantánamo Bay to reach the U.S. naval base there, he told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1996. From there, he was flown to Miami and then moved to New York, where he was placed in a foster home in the Bronx.Information on survivors was not immediately available.Mr. Salazar, left, with Al Pacino in the 1983 film “Scarface.” He played Chi Chi, a henchman of the drug lord Tony Montana, played by Mr. Pacino. Photo 12/Alamy Stock PhotoIn New York, he had trouble finding acting jobs, but he could make people laugh and at age 18 decided to test how far that could get him by performing at a comedy club’s open mic night.“I had 10 minutes,” Mr. Salazar told The Inquirer. “And I think I had one joke. The rest of the time I said, ‘Check it out,’ over and over again.”He eventually became a comedy club regular, and “Check it out” was a staple of his high-energy routines, which included costumes, props and impersonations of celebrities like Bruce Springsteen, Madonna and Tina Turner.Mr. Salazar lived between New York and Florida. Earlier this month he performed at the Laugh Factory in Reno, Nev., and Mr. Paul, his representative, said that they had talked last week about a possible show in Chicago.In Vanity Fair’s 2016 oral history of the famed New York City club the Comedy Cellar, the comedian Jim Norton said: “Auditions were typically done during the Friday late show, which meant you could get stuck following Ángel Salazar or some other guy who killed so hard the walls would shake.”Mr. Salazar at an event celebrating the release of “Scarface” on Blu-ray in Los Angeles in 2011.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images More

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      in Television

      How ‘Seinfeld Night’ Became a New York Summer Tradition

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      It’s a night that combines the zaniness of “Seinfeld,” a Coney Island freak show and a lower-level minor league baseball team with nothing to lose.It all began 10 years ago as a whimsical one-off minor league baseball promotion that ended with a contest.Yada, yada, yada …“Seinfeld Night” at the Brooklyn Cyclones is now a “Must-See-TV” kind of New York summer tradition, a game that easily sells out the 7,500 seats at the team’s Coney Island ballpark every year and demonstrates the show’s enduring appeal.It’s a night that combines the zaniness of “Seinfeld,” a Coney Island freak show and a lower-level minor league baseball team that has all the chutzpah of a short, stocky, balding man trying to impress a woman by pretending to be a marine biologist.Not that there’s anything wrong with that.On Saturday night, there were numerous contests. Men got as much ice cream on their face as possible. Soup was dumped on the head of someone who had been repeatedly scolded: “No soup for you!” And it all ended, of course, with 20 dancing Elaines.Sam Wekselblatt, left, and Patrick Westervelt Jr. compete for the messiest face. Mr. Westervelt was declared the winner.Lanna Apisukh for The New York TimesIt did not matter much that the Cyclones — make that the Bubble Boys — got shut out 3-0 by their archrivals, the Hudson Valley Renegades. (The Cyclones are part of the Mets organization and the Renegades belong to the Yankees.)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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      in Music

      Facing Turmoil at Home, Young Artists Find a Musical Haven in New York

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      As the tour boat in New York Harbor approached the Statue of Liberty, Miranda Marín, a 12-year-old violinist from Venezuela, turned to a group of friends gathered near the bow and jumped up and down.“We’re here!” she shouted, taking pictures of the statue’s crown. “Can you believe it?”Marín, along with more than 160 members of the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela, had come to New York for a weeklong festival that ended on Wednesday at Carnegie Hall. The festival, known as World Orchestra Week, featured more than 700 student musicians from 38 countries, including China, Nigeria, Germany, Afghanistan, Israel, Ukraine and the United States.When they were not practicing Beethoven, Ginastera or folk music, the young artists toured New York by boat, bus and subway, venturing out for pizza and ice cream. The Venezuelans held a dance party and played a card game called caída on a Circle Line cruise. The Afghan students toured the Juilliard School and the United Nations and visited the top of Rockefeller Center.The National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesGraham Dickie/The New York TimesGustavo Dudamel, the renowned conductor from Venezuela, led the National Children’s Symphony. “This is the Venezuela that we want,” he said from the podium.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe 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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      in Music

      A Hip-Hop Comic Book Star Comes to Life in Steel

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      A statue of Rappin’ Max Robot is bound for Paris. But first it’s making a stop in the Bronx.Good morning. It’s Thursday. We’ll meet a new iteration of Rappin’ Max Robot that is bound for Paris, via the Bronx. We’ll also get details on Robert Kennedy Jr.’s testimony in the court case seeking to have him removed from the November ballot in New York.Clark Ivers, Welder UndergroundRappin’ Max Robot began life as a comic book character only a few inches tall. Now he is a man of steel. He has a skin of steel plates up to an inch thick that covers an I-beam skeleton.He is on his way to Paris, to take note of breaking’s debut in the Olympics, but he will get there a little late. First he will spend some time in the Bronx, the birthplace of hip-hop.Today an 18-foot-tall statue of Rappin’ Max Robot that was fabricated in Brooklyn will be hauled to a spot outside the Hip Hop Museum in the Bronx. The museum is not scheduled to open until next year. But Marc Levin, who with his wife, Adina, runs the studio and foundry where the statue took shape, said it would be assembled for a Champagne toast on Saturday, the second day of breaking events at the Olympics.Hip-hop is a “wondrous and centerless tangle,” The New York Times critic Jon Caramanica wrote last year, so perhaps it is not surprising that the toast will not be the only hip-hop event this weekend. Sunday is the 51st anniversary of the day hip-hop is said to have gotten its start, in the rec room of the apartment building at 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the Bronx, and a group that is not affiliated with the museum is planning a march from that neighborhood to Crotona Park, a couple of miles away.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

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Lincoln Center Taps Education Leader as Next President

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      Mariko Silver, a former president of Bennington College, will take the reins of the organization as it seeks to expand its audience and increase fund-raising.Mariko Silver, a prominent leader in education, government and the nonprofit sphere, will serve as the next president and chief executive of Lincoln Center, the organization announced on Wednesday.Silver, who previously led Bennington College in Vermont and the Henry Luce Foundation in New York, will succeed Henry Timms, who left last month after five years in the job.She will take the reins of Lincoln Center as it works to broaden its audience, navigate an uncertain economy and push through an ambitious plan to tear down the barriers between the center and the surrounding neighborhood. She will also help shape its programming; the center has recently shifted away from classical music in favor of genres like pop, hip-hop, social dance and comedy.“Lincoln Center is the beating heart of New York City,” Silver said in an interview. “I’m incredibly excited to get going and do the work of bringing more beauty, more joy, more art and more human feeling into the world.”The appointment is a milestone for Lincoln Center: Silver, 46, whose father is Jewish and mother is Japanese American, will be the first woman of color to serve as president and chief executive. It is also a homecoming of sorts: Silver grew up a few blocks from the center and studied dance and theater as a child.Steven R. Swartz, the president and chief executive of Hearst, who serves as chair of Lincoln Center’s board, said the organization was impressed by Silver’s record as a nonprofit executive. At Bennington, where she was president from 2013 to 2019, she oversaw the largest capital campaign in the school’s history, raising more than $90 million. She also serves as chair of the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art’s board and was an official at the Department of Homeland Security in the Obama administration.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