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    For the Actors of ‘Sumo,’ Learning Lines Was Just the Half of It

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    Two men, barefoot and wearing traditional loincloths around their waists, tussled with each other on a stage transformed to look like a sumo ring.A fighting consultant, who had been observing the rehearsal nearby, stepped in to offer advice: The men’s arm movements were too straight; their motions needed to be smoother and more circular. Moments later, the two actors were at it again: reaching out, shifting their weight and then pushing off each other in a grappling exchange.New York theatergoers have seen it all, including shows about sports — which are not uncommon. But rarer, nonexistent even, is a theatrical work about sumo wrestling. Now, Lisa Sanaye Dring’s “Sumo” is transporting Off Broadway audiences at the Public Theater to an intimate sumo wrestling facility in Tokyo — known as a heya, or wrestling stable — where bare-chested actors fearlessly slap into each other in a heap of flesh and sweat.“I’m interested in people who use their bodies differently than I use my body,” Dring said, reflecting on what led her to write “Sumo.” “It feels very much linked to me — the fighting and the human story — because their humanity is inside how they fight.”The play itself tells the story of Akio, a newcomer to the heya who, because he’s considered rather small by sumo standards, isn’t taken seriously at first. An unranked wrestler trying to prove himself, he endures brutality as he goes about sweeping up rice, bathing the highest-ranking wrestler and doing other servant-like tasks that he has been relegated to performing. Before long, though, he quickly proves himself and rises to become one of the group’s strongest combatants.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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      ‘Sumo’ Review: Wrestling With Angels and Demons

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      An Off Broadway play opens a window on the spiritual and physical trials of the ancient Japanese sport.Lisa Sanaye Dring’s “Sumo” offers New Yorkers who are little exposed to that ancient Japanese discipline an opportunity to learn about it in an atmosphere of authenticity and respect. The director Ralph B. Peña’s visually splendid staging, with the athletes’ nearly naked bodies deployed as living sculpture, immerses us in the pageantry and poetics of a spiritual practice that is also a sport and a big business.But what’s authentic and respectful may not always feel satisfying emotionally, and “Sumo,” a Ma-Yi Theater Company and La Jolla Playhouse production that opened Wednesday at the Public Theater, rarely rises to the dramatic heights it seeks. For long stretches, it feels more like a fuzzy nature documentary than a play.Not that it lacks events. In a fictional Tokyo heya, or wrestling stable, a rigid hierarchy based on competitive achievement is brutally enforced. The main enforcer is Mitsuo (David Shih), who is one tournament away from reaching the sport’s highest level. Stratified beneath him are Ren (Ahmad Kamal), Shinta (Earl T. Kim), Fumio (Red Concepción) and So (Michael Hisamoto), each wearing the traditional loincloth and carrying the privilege of his respective rank — or lack thereof. The lowest man, So, spends a lot of time serving the rice and sweeping the ring.Yet there is someone beneath even him. Naturally, that’s the unranked newcomer, Akio (Scott Keiji Takeda): an 18-year-old from a troubled background who, though small by sumo standards, has dreamed of becoming a wrestler since childhood. In the way of such stories, his ambition must be humbled. As he scrubs Mitsuo clean in the tub, he scrubs himself of arrogance, pain and desire.“You reek of need,” Mitsuo says, before violently pouring hot tea down his back.The best plays set in the world of men’s sports, like Kristoffer Diaz’s “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” about American wrestling, take the rituals of their milieu and the abuse of athletes within it as givens: starting points for the story, not the story itself. At most they suggest a connection to a general atmosphere of toxic masculinity or the relentless pummeling of no-holds-barred capitalism.Each of the sumo wrestlers gets a back story in Lisa Sanaye Dring’s play, including one involving Red Concepción, left, and Ahmad Kamal.Sara Krulwich/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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      As Off Broadway Crews Unionize, Workers See Hope, Producers Peril

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      Workers say the move is overdue, but theater companies fear it will drive up costs in a wounded sector that has yet to recover from the pandemic.A unionization wave sweeping across Off Broadway is poised to reshape the economics of theater-making in New York — for workers as well as producers.Striking stage crews have idled the nonprofit Atlantic Theater Company — the birthplace of the musicals “Spring Awakening,” “The Band’s Visit” and “Kimberly Akimbo,” which all transferred to Broadway and won Tonys. The strike, which began last month, comes amid a drive to unionize stage hands and crews at Off Broadway theaters.Nonprofit companies and producers fear that the unionization push could drive up costs at a moment when many are running deficits and staging fewer, and smaller, shows. Second Stage Theater and Soho Rep both recently moved out of their longtime venues and opted to share space with other companies. Another measure of the sector’s shrinkage: In 2019 there were 113 shows eligible for the Lucille Lortel Awards, which honor Off Broadway work; there are just 59 eligible shows so far this season, which, for the Lortels, closes at the end of March.Many workers see the unionization of stage crews as long overdue, noting that the sector has come a long way from its scrappy origins. Now that many Off Broadway theaters have become mature institutions with elevated production values, workers say, it is time for them to pay better wages and offer benefits to their crew members.“The stakes are incredibly high,” said Casey York, the president of the Off-Broadway League, which represents theater owners, managers and producers, “not just for those directly involved, but for the future of this vibrant sector, which has always been a cornerstone of New York’s cultural identity.”“Grief Camp,” a new play by Eliya Smith, had begun previews at Atlantic when it was shut down by the strike. It has since been canceled, along with Mona Pirnot’s “I’m Assuming You Know David Greenspan.”Sara Krulwich/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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      Morgan Jenness, Whose Artistic Vision Influenced American Theater, Dies at 72

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      A beloved figure in the theatrical community, she redefined the role of dramaturg, influencing playwrights like David Adjmi and David Henry Hwang.Morgan Jenness, a dramaturg, teacher and theatrical agent who nurtured the work of countless playwrights — including Taylor Mac, David Adjmi, David Henry Hwang, Larry Kramer and Maria Irene Fornés — died on Nov. 12. Ms. Jenness, who in recent years began using the pronouns they/them and she interchangeably, was 72.Mx. Mac confirmed the death. “In Act 3 of her life, she was exploring her gender identity,” said Mx. Mac, who went to Ms. Jenness’s apartment in the East Village of Manhattan with two friends after she failed to show up for a class she taught at Columbia University and discovered her body. The cause of death had not yet been determined.Ms. Jenness was a revered and beloved figure in the theater community — particularly the downtown theater community. (In many ways, she was its embodiment.) She had a deep moral seriousness, colleagues said, as well as a fierce artistic integrity and a passion for subversive work that had depth charges in all the right places. She also had “a complete indifference to material success,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, where Ms. Jenness began her career. “She was frankly repelled by it.”The play was the thing.“She would ask writers, ‘What do you want to inject into the bloodstream of the American theater?’” recalled Beth Blickers, a theatrical agent.“If you said, ‘I just want to tell good stories,’ she would turn to me and say, ‘That was a terrible answer,’” Ms. Blickers continued. “She wanted someone to say, ‘I have a passion for this community or this idea.’ To tell good stories wasn’t enough.”A dramaturg has been defined as a sort of literary and theatrical adviser who helps the actors and director understand the play they’re presenting. “But that was the European model, focused primarily on the classics,” Mr. Eustis said. “Morgan was one of the first generation of people who were defining what a new play dramaturg was: the midwife and support system of a playwright.”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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      ‘Good Bones’ Review: A Gentrification Drama at Public Theater

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      A new play from James Ijames, who won a Pulitzer for his “Fat Ham,” has intriguing ideas about identity and community that never fully take shape.In the immortal words of Joni Mitchell, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” In James Ijames’s “Good Bones,” which opened on Tuesday at the Public Theater in Manhattan, it’s not a parking lot that’s the issue but a sports complex. This project is being nudged along by Aisha (Susan Kelechi Watson), a former local who is promoting the arena and building a luxe new home in her old hood as a way to revitalize it.Still, “Joni Mitchell never lies,” at least according to Earl (Khris Davis), the contractor working on Aisha’s house. Earl has fond memories of the housing project (in an unspecified city) known to its residents as the Heat. Aisha doesn’t; she sees the Heat as a place of fear, crime and lost prospects, and doesn’t mourn its potential replacement. Now, with her husband, Travis (Mamoudou Athie), she has returned to help transform the Heat into the up-and-coming neighborhood of Fennbrook. Oh, but their fabulous home may be haunted.“Good Bones” has great foundations: It’s a play about property and community exclusively featuring Black characters, and Black characters from different ends of the economic spectrum. How often do we see stories featuring the gentrified and the gentrifiers, all of whom are the same skin color? But “Good Bones” is meager with its plot and noncommittal in its intrigue, so even when the play offers its wry charms and astute reflections, it feels largely stuck in place.This production, directed by Saheem Ali, opens with a Brontë vibe; Aisha wanders in a shift dress through her in-progress modern mansion, with plastic sheets draping down from the high ceilings so the characters move through a haze of construction material. (Don’t worry, the sheets are gradually ripped down throughout the play to expose an Ikea showcase-worthy kitchen and dining room, beautifully designed by Maruti Evans.) The follow-through is a little less impressive.There’s an argument about kitchen knobs (Travis wants the handcrafted $40 ones; Aisha wants to stick to their budget) and whether they should have kids. Earl brings his sister Carmen (Téa Guarino) over for dinner. Occasionally Aisha hears a ghoulish giggle or watches her French doors spookily open on their own. But even our protagonist comically shrugs off these humble hauntings. (“I ain’t got time for this,” she snaps, turning on her heel.)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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      On City Strolls, ‘Fat Ham’ Writer Was Inspired by ‘Ghosts of Absence’

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      The Tower Records on Broad Street, the Borders bookstore on Chestnut, and the Kitchen Kapers boutique at the corner of Walnut and 17th Streets in Philadelphia: The playwright James Ijames shopped at all of them in the early 2000s while pursuing his M.F.A. at Temple University.I frequented them as well, in the late 1990s, as a student at the University of Pennsylvania. During a walk around downtown Philadelphia on a sweltering August afternoon, we noticed that those businesses were long gone. Passing by the buildings that once housed them, we reflected on how those old haunts endure, in some way, because they stay in our memories, paralleling many of the ideas of that lingering generational history Ijames gets at in his work.Our small talk — about our fondness for the city, receiving Pulitzer Prizes the same year (in 2022) and being college professors — gave way to weightier issues: gentrification, ghosts and intergenerational trauma. Those subjects are all explored in “Good Bones,” his much-anticipated follow-up to his Tony-nominated “Fat Ham,” a Pulitzer winner about a Hamlet-inspired character’s struggles to overcome his family’s cycles of trauma and violence.The cast of “Fat Ham” during its Tony-nominated Broadway run in 2023.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIjames (pronounced “imes”) still lives in Philadelphia, with his husband, and teaches at Villanova University. (He is also a former co-artistic director of that city’s Wilma Theater, which produced a film version of “Fat Ham” in 2021, before the Public Theater in Manhattan staged the play’s in-person premiere in 2022.) As we stood on the corner of 15th and Locust Streets, he pointed out that his favorite video store is now a plastic surgery center.“I loved TLA Video because they carried queer independent films, like ‘The Watermelon Woman.’ It was the only place I could find that stuff,” Ijames said. “I’m sad that there isn’t a place for a little queer boy to go.”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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      ‘Counting and Cracking’ Review: One Family’s Tale Fit for an Epic

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      No theatrical wizardry is needed for this compelling drama about a woman’s journey to Australia from war-torn Sri Lanka and the generations that follow.Some shows use an extended running time to challenge the audience and its perceptions. Pulling viewers into a trance state and testing their endurance is the ultimate artistic gambit.Then there are the shows that are long simply because they have a lot to tell.Such is the case with “Counting and Cracking,” which fills its three and a half hours with an absorbing tale of family ties and national strife, from Sri Lanka to Australia, across almost five decades. When the first of two intermissions arrived, I had barely recovered from a head-spinning plot twist. And the production, which is at N.Y.U. Skirball in partnership with the Public Theater, had more in store. It’s that kind of good yarn.Written by S. Shakthidharan, who drew from his own family history and is also credited with associate direction, “Counting and Cracking” starts in 2004 Sydney. The show opens with Radha (Nadie Kammallaweera) briskly instructing her son, the 21-year-old Siddhartha (Shiv Palekar), to disperse his grandmother’s ashes in the Georges River, and then immerse himself in the water, as required by tradition.“In Tamil we don’t say goodbye,” Radha tells Siddhartha. “Only, I will go and come back.”As the show progresses, we gradually realize what these words really mean to her, and to her family and community. In 1983, when she was pregnant and living in her home country of Sri Lanka, Radha was told that her husband, Thirru (Antonythasan Jesuthasan), had been killed in the budding civil war between the minority Tamil and the majority Sinhala. She fled the violence and settled in Australia, where she gave birth to a child who would grow up largely unaware of his heritage.At a steady clip, Shakthidharan and the director Eamon Flack (also credited with associate writing) hopscotch between Sydney and Sri Lanka, from the 1950s — when the South Asian nation was still known as Ceylon — to the 1980s and 2000s and back again. Even the language is in constant movement as the 16 actors juggle English, Sinhala and Tamil, providing instant translation when necessary.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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      Working on a Sri Lankan-Australian Epic, He Learned His Family’s Past

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      As the acclaimed “Counting and Cracking” makes its North American debut, the playwright describes the work as “my soul on a plate.”The playwright S. Shakthidharan has lived in Australia since he was a toddler, but when he speaks of his homeland, he means Sri Lanka.That’s where he was born, where he spent his first birthday, where his ancestors were rooted. Then in 1983, the South Asian nation descended into what would become a 26-year civil war. His family, part of the country’s Tamil minority, had the means to flee to safety. So they did, going to India, Singapore and finally Australia, in 1984.“I do think of Sri Lanka as my homeland, but I think of Australia as my home,” he said the other day, his accent redolent of Sydney, where he grew up. “I think I carry the two simultaneously. Sri Lanka lives somewhere in my chest. Always. Wherever I am.”He was saying this in New York, after a rehearsal of his epic play, “Counting and Cracking,” in which the personal and political are inextricably entwined. Jet lag had a hold of him, but he was game to talk about the show, which has a largely South Asian cast of 19 and a running time of three and a half hours (intermissions included).Shiv Palekar, center, and other performers at N.Y.U. Skirball. Multiple trips to Sri Lanka and India were involved in assembling the cast.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAn autobiographically infused hit in Australia, where it had its premiere in 2019, it is now in previews at N.Y.U. Skirball in Greenwich Village. Produced by Belvoir St Theater and Kurinji, and presented by the Public Theater and N.Y.U. Skirball, it’s a multigenerational saga about a Sri Lankan-Australian family and the dangerous fragmenting of a society that can drive people to leave their beloved country and risk trying to forge a new life elsewhere.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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      The Five Women Who Started a Secret Theater Society

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      It was their own secret society. Five women who worked together at the Public Theater, bonding over drinks and aspirations, sharing frustrations and ideas, commiserating and brainstorming and laughing.They gave their alliance a nickname: Women and Ambition — cheeky because, as they saw it, “ambitious” remained such a loaded adjective for young women. Their convergence at the Public in the mid-2010s would resonate as far more than happy memories: Now each of them has become a Woman With Power, in a beleaguered field in vital need of new inspiration.“These women have helped change the trajectory of my life,” said one of the women, Maria Goyanes, who is now the artistic director of Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington.Lear deBessonet, who oversees the long-running Encores! series at New York City Center, recalled the prevailing spirit: “There was a sense of like, ‘I see you, girl. I see you. You’ve got to run things now.’”And now they do.Before deBessonet officially took over the Encores! series in 2021, she ran Public Works, the community-oriented program that stages a musical adaptation of a classic story each summer. Once at Encores!, which gives rarely revived shows short-running productions, she got off to a shaky start during the pandemic. But she’s since had a number of buzzy productions, including a starry “Into the Woods,” which went to Broadway. This summer, her acclaimed production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” with Sutton Foster, is Broadway-bound as well.Shanta Thake.Ye Fan for 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