Quarantine (Life and Culture)

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares99 Views

      in Television

      Move Over, RuPaul! Meet the Drag Kings

      by

      Tenderoni outside of a barbershop in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.Credit…Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesSkip to contentSkip to site indexThe Great ReadDrag Kings Are Ready to RuleThe blurring of gender boundaries has allowed for more freedom in online pageants — and soon, it’s hoped, back in the clubs.Tenderoni outside of a barbershop in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago.Credit…Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 4, 2021Updated 4:23 p.m. ETIt should not be a big hairy deal that a 32-year-old Chicago-based drag performer named Tenderoni will be vying in a virtual talent competition on Sunday, and yet it is truly a reason to wig out.The pageant is called Drag Queen of the Year 2021. But despite a penchant for lip-syncing to Missy Elliott, Tenderoni isn’t a drag queen. He’s a drag king, which, generally speaking means a performer born female, who takes the stage in men’s clothes. He is what was once called a “male impersonator,” penciled-on mustache, compressed chest and all.Tenderoni, his creator says, “is a mash-up of Michael Jackson, Bobby Brown, Prince, George Michael and Boy George.”It’s drag, it’s cosplay and, he hopes, it’s enough to win.While androgynous costume in this direction is hardly new — Marlene Dietrich famously set libidos afire in top hat and tuxedo in the 1930 movie classic “Morocco” — drag kings tend to be the lesser-exposed and underappreciated segment of drag. Casual fans who get their drag from TV or with a side of waffles at brunch, in fact, may never even have heard of this particular practice.“In the past, many of our audience members didn’t understand the concept of drag kings,” said Chad Kampe, a producer who has been staging popular drag brunches in Minneapolis since 2012. “We often got questions.”Chief among them: “What the heck is a drag king?”But now that drag has gone mainstream — the Season 13 premiere of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” on VH1 on Jan. 1 drew 1.3 million viewers, its highest-rated episode ever — performers who exaggerate and explore the tropes of manhood are getting a closer look.Although a king has not yet been featured on “Drag Race” (a trans man named Gottmik who performs in female drag has), drag kings at last are getting more exposure elsewhere, and surprisingly, the pandemic may have helped.The closing of bars and restaurants has hit most performers’ pocketbooks very hard, but the mandated move to online entertainment may have helped level the playing field.“Covid made everyone have to go digital,” said Tenderoni, who developed his act at Berlin, a club in Chicago. “That has made the audience for all kinds of drag so much bigger. I’ve done shows and heard, ‘I’m from Brazil,’ ‘I’m from London.’ It has opened the floodgates.”‘A Seat at the Table’The Drag Queen of the Year pageant takes such diversity as its mandate.“We’ve worked with trans men and trans women and drag kings and all these different kinds of performers our whole lives,” said Alaska 5000, 35, the “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars” winner who founded the competition with a fellow drag queen, Lola LaCroix, in 2019.Why, they wondered one sleepless night flying home from a gig, shouldn’t such performers all compete against and celebrate each other? “Everyone has something to prove, and everyone brings so much,” Alaska 5000 said. “What they do isn’t just valid, it’s fierce.”To that end, Tenderoni will go up against seven other disparate drag artists — some bearded, burly and burlesque; some Jessica Rabbit curvaceous; some known for their lingerie-clad muscles — for the Drag Queen of the Year crown in a show to be seen on the Sessions Live platform.Whether he wins or not, it doesn’t really matter. “This gives us a seat at the table,” said Tenderoni, who started performing in drag less than five years ago. “Drag is a buffet. I don’t need to be the main course — I just want to be included.”By appearing that night, he will earn a spot in a brotherhood of drag kings that, under various names, has been around for centuries.Male mimics Vesta Tilley and Hetty King were widely celebrated on British music hall stages of the 19th century. Stormé DeLarverie, a Stonewall activist who preferred the term “male impersonator” to “drag king,” passed for a man while touring America with the Jewel Box Revue in the ’50s and ’60s.In the ’80s, the comedian and actress Lily Tomlin played Tommy Velour, a Las Vegas lounge lizard with more chest hair than talent. He lives on, in all his hirsute glory, on YouTube.In a June 2000 episode of “Sex and the City” titled “Boy, Girl, Boy, Girl…,” prim Charlotte York (Kristin Davis) is photographed in a mustache and a man’s suit, and her portrait is featured in a gallery show. The show used real drag kings, but only as background players.More recently, “Vida,” a Starz show about two Mexican-American sisters, featured the drag king Vico Suave, the creation of Vico Ortiz, a nonbinary actor. Tanya Saracho, the show’s creator, said she wanted to include drag kings in the cast because they’re an “underrepresented initiative” in queer entertainment. “The artistry is there,” she said, asking, “Why are they not part of the mainstream wave that’s happening right now with drag?”Twenty-five years ago, fans had to venture far beyond their living rooms to underground clubs late at night to see drag kings perform. In New York back then, that meant a watering hole like Flamingo East on Second Avenue, in an East Village much rougher than it is today.Murray Hill with barber Jack Khaimchayev, right at Model Barber in Brooklyn, N.Y.Credit…Isak Tiner for The New York TimesGoing for the clean close shave.Credit…Isak Tiner for The New York Times“Those early days in the clubs were electric, uncharted and riveting,” said Murray Hill, 49, a New York comedian known as the “hardest-working middle-aged man in show business” since his emergence as a young drag king in 1995. His earliest drag performance was as a “fat sweaty Elvis,” to use his words, at 2 a.m. on a Sunday at a party called Club Casanova at a venue called Cake on Avenue C. “It felt very underground,” he said.Mo B. Dick, 55, the drag king who ran Club Casanova before decamping for the West Coast in 2004, said that in that era, “it was more about drag king realness. You were passing as a male.” Kings were spirit-gumming their own hair clippings to their chins and chests in the name of entertainment. The illusion worked well enough, but such makeovers would be considered underwhelming today.Thanks to the special-effects-grade prosthetics and precision paint jobs seen on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” drag performers of every stripe have had to up their game. “Now when folks go to their local drag bar, they expect to see what they saw on television,” said Mr. Kampe, the Minneapolis producer, which encourages artists “to continually invest in new looks.”Mr. Dick thinks standards have gone up. “These kids today, I’m pleased at how extraordinary they are,” he said. “Now, there’s more artistry and more makeup. Being a king is more ‘draggy.’ The showmanship is phenomenal.” At a good brunch, he noted, “Performers now go through three or four costume changes during a one-hour show.”A 2018 all-drag-kings tribute to the boy bands Backstreet Boys and ’NSync, held at a venue in Minneapolis called the Union Rooftop, was so popular that Mr. Kampe said he had to do six shows to meet the demand.Mr. Dick recently created a website, dragkinghistory.com, to help new audiences learn about the art form’s past. On Feb. 21, he celebrated veteran drag kings with an international online event called “Drag King Legends.” The pay-what-you-can show featured stalwart performers like Fudgie Frottage of San Francisco, Flarington King of Toronto and Ken Vegas of Washington, D.C. All have been drag kings for 25 years or more.Shades of Elvis: Mo B. Dick at home by the pool.Credit…Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesMo B. Dick wipes down a dirt bike at home.Credit…Michelle Groskopf for The New York TimesMr. Hill, who is perhaps the RuPaul of drag kings, headlined the night. In the coming months, he will appear in roles on three high-profile TV series: Amy Schumer’s “Love, Beth” on Hulu, Bridget Everett’s “Somebody Somewhere” on HBO, and the American reboot of the British sitcom “This Country,” on which he will play a magician. “A regular character on TV is something I’ve wanted since I started over 25 years ago,” he said.Paul Feig, the producer-director of “Bridesmaids,” “Freaks and Geeks” and “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” wrote in an email that “I’ve been a huge fan of Murray’s for a while. When Jenny Bicks and I sold ‘This Country’ to Fox, one of my first goals was to get him on it. I love talented people who have their own unique take on the world and will do whatever I can to get them opportunities to shine.”Most drag kings, though, are still fighting an uphill battle. “Kings are rising in popularity in many large American cities, but they aren’t provided with the same opportunities as queens,” Mr. Kampe said.Live shows often are booked by male promoters who may not appreciate drag king artistry. “Often, a show will feature a dozen queens and only one king,” Mr. Kampe said. “Drag kings face as much discrimination in the workplace as women, and they often earn less.”Another obstacle, as Mr. Dick noted, is that audiences “don’t necessarily see the comedy in a woman putting on a suit. Female masculinity is still scary to some people.” There’s less inherent theatricality and, up until now, less glitz to performing in male drag, too; plus, people are a lot more accustomed in everyday American life to seeing women in pants than men in skirts. “Doing a male character is so much harder than doing a female character,” Alaska 5000 said. “Men are just not as exciting to look at.”‘Reigning in the Darkness’But the most exciting drag kings are making do, spectacularly.Landon Cider, 39, a performer in Long Beach, Calif., for instance, was the first drag king to win an American reality competition when, in 2019, he took home the title of “America’s Next Drag Super Monster” on “Dragula,” a Netflix series that plays like a goth version of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” Wearing horror-movie-grade makeup of his own design, Mr. Cider ate live spiders on one episode and dressed as a blood-splattered, axe-wielding tin man from Oz on another. He was the lone king to compete on the show, but he nailed it in all his gory glory.“We’ve been reigning in the darkness this entire time,” he said. “Now we have more light shining down on us. If audiences think they’re just getting a lesbian in their dad’s clothes, I take that as a challenge to show them.”An online pageant isn’t “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” But it’s not nothing.Wang Newton at The Norwood club in Manhattan.Credit…Celeste Sloman for The New York TimesMr. Newton combs his mustache.Credit…Celeste Sloman for The New York Times“Seeing drag kings perform on these platforms and do well is another chip in the misogyny of the drag community,” said Hugo Grrrl, 29, a performer in New Zealand who in 2018 won a televised drag competition called “House of Drag.”Mr. Grrrl, who has gone from a self-described “mustachioed transvestite” to a trans man in the years since his win, said: “Audiences are learning that drag kinging is just as transformative and artistic and entertaining as drag queen art forms. They’re wearing just as much makeup, glitter and shapewear.”With names like Vigor Mortis, Spikey Van Dykey, Jack Rabid and Freddie Prinze Charming, the latest drag kings were being nurtured in out-of-the-way venues in cities around the world, ones not unlike those clubs of the ’90s. In New York, performance collectives like Brooklyn’s Switch ’N Play, led by the burlesque-inspired “sex symbol” K. James; Night Gowns, a series of events run by Sasha Velour, a “Drag Race” winner; and Cake Boys, out of Queens, have been fertile ground.Typically, younger performers blur whatever is left of gender lines. As Mr. Grrrl put it, “Right now, if you don’t have an ‘AFAB performer,’” — meaning a cisgender woman, trans man or nonbinary person dressed as a drag queen — “or a drag king in your lineup, you’re doing it wrong.” The future of drag, he said, “is going to be a big old mess and that’s a wonderful, glamorous, fantastic thing. We’re all finding new ways to spread joy through the power of sequins.”When Damien D’Luxe, a 34-year-old drag king in Minneapolis, takes the stage, he may mime a medley of “Hooked on a Feeling” and “Crocodile Rock” dressed as Captain Hook. But he does so wearing high-heeled boots and false eyelashes that Bianca Del Rio would kill for. He has been known to wear a powdered wig and floppy lace cuffs straight out of Falco’s 1986 MTV video for “Rock Me, Amadeus” while lip-syncing to “The Barber of Seville” in Italian.When you’re a drag king, it can take that much effort to get noticed.“More kings are recognizing that passing as a dude, although that takes a lot of work and dedication and talent, isn’t getting the spotlight,” Mr. Cider said. “The kingdom has evolved into vivid colors and costumes and headpieces and glitter because that’s how you stand out in a crowd.” Especially, he said, when you’re on a bill with a gag-worthy gaggle of 7-foot-tall drag queens.“We can’t compete in the Glamazon department,” said Wang Newton, 42, an Asian-American New York drag king who, in his act, tests the boundaries of political correctness while wrapped in vintage Vegas swagger. But that doesn’t mean drag kings can’t compete. “We’re not about death drops. We’re our own thing,” Mr. Newton said. “It’s a whole new bag and we can explore that now.”And an increasing number of performers are doing so.“I’m watching girls and performers of all genders who maybe five years ago would have gone into burlesque who now are seeing drag kinging as the ultimate art form,” Mr. Grrrl said. “It’s a very interesting space to be in. Masculinity is something that deserves to be made fun of.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      A Digital Festival, in the Spirit of Bertolt Brecht

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookA Digital Festival, in the Spirit of Bertolt BrechtThe directors of the Brecht Festival Augsburg have curated an online-only event that runs the gamut from experimental films to poetry slams and puppetry.The Dakh Daughters from Kyiv, Ukraine, who croon their own versions of Brecht poems while playing an array of acoustic instruments. They were part of the Brecht Festival Augsburg.Credit…Tetiana VasylenkoMarch 4, 2021, 4:35 a.m. ETEvery February, the Brecht Festival turns the southern German city of Augsburg into a hub of theater, concerts, literature and art that spill out from its main theater to neighborhood parks, cinemas and even the planetarium.This year, because of the pandemic, this interdisciplinary theater festival named for Bertolt Brecht — the towering playwright and stage theorist who was born in Augsburg in 1898 — is taking place online. Yet unlike many festivals that have offered web editions as a stopgap measure once an in-person event was deemed unsafe, this year’s Brecht Festival, which began Feb. 26 and runs through March 7, was designed top-to-bottom as a digital-only event.Rather than livestream a handful of conventional stage productions, the festival’s artistic directors, Tom Kühnel and Jürgen Kuttner, invited dozens of artists to produce short films and audio recordings for the lineup, curating a program that runs the gamut from films and experimental video to poetry slams, concerts, readings, animation and puppetry. Most of the videos are less than an hour long; many are far shorter.The result is a genuinely new, pandemic-suitable format that still fulfills the Brecht Festival’s mission of showcasing art and performance in the spirit of the playwright’s influential work. Each evening, the festival presents a number of productions as online premieres, and they are available on demand throughout the event.Winnie Böwe, accompanied by Felix Kroll on accordion, in an abridged version of the 1929 Brecht-Weill musical “Happy End.” Credit…Brecht FestivalAmong those, the musical contributions have been the festival’s most accessible and entertaining entries. In addition to his contributions to theater, Brecht was one of the great poets of the 20th century: Many of his best-known texts were lyrics set to music by the composers Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau.A highlight from the opening night is a raucous concert by Dakh Daughters, a stylish and impossible-to-categorize Gypsy cabaret girl band from Kyiv, Ukraine, who croon their own versions of Brecht poems in both Ukrainian and German while playing an array of acoustic instruments.A similar energy courses through two poetry slams in which young German poets present Brecht-inspired work to the accompaniment of drum, synths and bass. Henrik Szanto and Tanasgol Sabbagh are dramatically captivating as they chant over a jazzy improvisation, in videos filmed with verve in Augsburg’s Textile and Industrial Museum. Another muscular, if more conventional, entry is an abridged version of the 1929 Brecht-Weill musical, “Happy End.” Filmed in various locations in Berlin, it features the chanteuse Winnie Böwe in warm and intimate renditions of some of Weill’s most famous songs, including “The Bilbao Song” and “Surabaya Johnny,” accompanied by Felix Kroll on accordion.From left, Matthias Trippner, a puppet version of Bertolt Brecht, and Suse Wächter, the puppeteer, in “20th-Century Heroes Sing Brecht.” Credit…Brecht FestivalOne of the festival’s most constant pleasures has been “20th-Century Heroes Sing Brecht,” a sophisticated series of music videos by the brilliant puppeteer Suse Wächter, released nightly throughout the event. They include uncannily expressive puppets of Yoko Ono, Karl Marx, God, Lenin and Brecht himself performing some famous songs with lyrics by the playwright. (Wächter does outstanding impersonations!)The video in which the socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg chants “The Ballad of the Drowned Girl” on the banks of the Berlin canal where her body was thrown in 1919 is particularly moving. In a more lighthearted example, Luciano Pavarotti belts out the “Children’s Hymn” — Brecht’s answer to Germany’s national anthem — in an empty soccer stadium, in the rain. The largely overlooked artistic contributions made by Brecht’s numerous lovers are highlighted in other new works on the program, including the director Akin Isletme’s short film “I Am Dirt.” The title comes from a text by the actress, writer and Brecht paramour Margarete Steffin, whose poetic voice merges with dialogue from Brecht’s own plays.Among the three actors in the film, Stefanie Reinsperger, who conceived the project jointly with Isletme, is the most impressive. A member of the Berliner Ensemble, the theater founded by the playwright in 1949, Reinsperger is one of today’s finest Brecht interpreters. Set largely in a derelict rail yard, the short film showcases her bravura acting, the incantatory power of the dialogue that Brecht often wrote with lovers like Steffin, and the visual power of the director’s cool, wide-screen compositions.The director Akin Isletme’s short film “I Am Dirt.” Credit…Hamdemir & Isletme“I Am Dirt’s” dialogue also features excerpts from texts by Helene Weigel, Brecht’s second wife and his Berliner Ensemble co-founder: Their relationship is further explored in a meditative black-and-white film essay by Lina Beckmann and Charly Hübner based on their correspondence, on the festival program as well.The varied multimedia offerings contain surprisingly little in the way of conventional theater. It says a lot that the most straightforward theatrical adaptation is a short film based on “Medeamaterial,” a text collage by the German playwright Heiner Müller. The festival directors, Kühnel and Kuttner, have turned this 1983 work exploring the mythological figure of Medea into a dense, eye-poppingly colorful and at times trippy short film, with archival cameos from the Italian movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the left-wing German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof.Müller, arguably the most important German playwright of the late 20th century, wrote, “To use Brecht without criticizing him is treason.” In more ways than one, this year’s Brecht Festival seems to respond to Müller’s idea.As eclectic as its offerings are, they make sense as episodes in a compact yet varied whole, with its own internal logic. Despite their stylistic differences, what unites most of them is the care with which they’ve been made: Nothing here is slapdash or slipshod. Plus, an online festival built from short episodes is a format that seems designed to thwart burnout. As far as online theater festivals go, this one is practically binge-worthy.A montage of images from the film “Medeamaterial,” based on a text collage by the German playwright Heiner Müller.Credit…Jan-Pieter FuhrWhen theaters put their plays and festivals online, they’re no longer competing against other local playhouses, but rather against streaming behemoths with vastly superior resources and sophisticated means to command and hold our attention.Most every aspect of the 2021 Brecht Festival suggests how completely the artistic directors understood this. The robust program offers a vaster spectrum of theater, music, multimedia art and literature in a single place than anything else I’ve seen in the last 12 months. By dint of creative planning and professionalism, the artistic team has found ways to excite, surprise and delight the festival’s remote audience: 1,500 tickets, priced at 12 euros for adults, or $15, were sold on the opening weekend. Impressive as it has all been, however, I look forward to being in the audience when a live Brecht Festival again lights up Augsburg’s stages in 2022.Brecht Festival AugsburgOnline through March 7; brechtfestival.de.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares109 Views

      in Theater

      A ‘Rent’ Reunion Measures 25 Years of Love and Loss

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookA ‘Rent’ Reunion Measures 25 Years of Love and LossA fund-raiser, a tribute, a documentary — and a reminder that Jonathan Larson’s musical remains especially inspiring in hard times.Members of the original cast sing “No Day but Today” during New York Theater Workshop’s “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love.”Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopMarch 3, 2021Is “Rent,” Jonathan Larson’s 25-year-old groundbreaking musical, somber or celebratory? When I was in high school, in the early throes of my “Rent” obsession, I made my aunt see the show. “That’s so depressing!” she wailed afterward. “No it isn’t!” I insisted. She looked at me like I was crazy.I often think of that exchange, now 14 years later. For me, the adjective “depressing” never fit this musical, which was about so much more than its tragedies: a generation fighting AIDS, poverty, gentrification and the everyday drama and griefs of those 525,600 minutes that make a year.On Tuesday night the New York Theater Workshop hosted “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” a virtual fund-raiser commemorating the show, which premiered there in 1996 before going on to Broadway, Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and international renown.It is well known that Larson died just before the musical’s first preview performance. So even though this was a tender, even intimate celebration, the “Rent” event, hosted by the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” contestant Olivia Lux, also embraced loss.Olivia Lux hosted the show, which was at once a documentary, a telethon and a tribute to the “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson.Credit…—-, via New York Theater Workshop“25 Years of Rent,” directed by Andy Señor, worked as a tribute to Larson, a contemporary telethon packed with stage celebs and, most touching, a documentary about the making of the beloved show. The theater summoned him back to life through archival images and footage — a broad-grinned waiter making milkshakes at the Moondance Diner; singing “Will I” on a cassette tape — as well as via recollections from friends, family, performers and the show’s director, Michael Greif.The names involved were impressive enough to light up a marquee: the original cast members Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega, as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Platt, Anaïs Mitchell, Telly Leung and so many more.Some teared up recalling Larson’s exuberance and talents, and described the burden of carrying on with a show whose success he would never see. Of course, this is part of the tragedy of “Rent.”The saying goes that for every death in the world there’s a birth. And as “Rent” was born and grew, so did the careers of the cast members, many of whom were unknowns at the time. Anthony Rapp described working at Starbucks and auditioning with an R.E.M. song, while Idina Menzel, before jumping over the moon or defying gravity, had made a living as a bar mitzvah singer.Fredi Walker-Browne, who played Joanne in the original production, described hearing the lyric to her song “Take Me or Leave Me” for the first time.Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopThe night was also about how Larson’s work helped open people up to themselves. Fredi Walker-Browne, the original Joanne, spoke about first hearing “Take Me or Leave Me,” which Larson wrote for her and Menzel, and feeling that he laced her personality into the lyrics: “I look before I leap/I like margins and discipline/I make lists in my sleep.”Others, like Lux, hailed the show for portraying queerness and drag at a time when many productions didn’t.Winners of Jonathan Larson Grants, awarded to promising early-career musical theater artists, spoke to his legacy. And theater notables who weren’t in “Rent” at its beginnings took on pieces of the score in their own styles. Christopher Jackson’s hymnlike “One Song Glory,” Eva Noblezada’s coquettish “Out Tonight” and Billy Porter’s explosively baroque “I’ll Cover You” were standouts.Among the performers inspired by “Rent” was Billy Porter, who sang “I’ll Cover You.”Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopIf Larson’s death is one side of some karmic exchange, another side is the audiences who used — and continue to use — “Rent” to excavate some hidden part of themselves, and to inspire their own art.So much of this last year has been marked by things unmade: the people unmade by a pandemic, the innocent Black lives unmade by brutality, the planet unmade by a changing climate. My own tiny bubble of a life has gotten smaller, without the chance to see some of my closest friends and where the outside world seems newly and inexplicably dangerous.And yet in recalling the making (and remaking) of “Rent,” the event helped quiet the grief that creeps up on me every day. In the chat box next to the stream, which reached over 6,000 viewers, “Rent” fans confessed to crying; a final group rendition of “Seasons of Love” seemed to push many beyond comforting.It took me a few viewings before I could watch “Rent” without bursting into head-aching, snot-falling ugly crying, but eventually the show became my joy, my comfort. As much as Roger and Mark, a songwriter and filmmaker, hoped to make something of themselves through their art, so did I make myself — in whatever facile way — through “Rent,” using it to shape myself as an artist and an outcast and a New Yorker.At the end of “Rent,” Angel has died but the rest of the bohemians live, and Mark has finally finished his movie. You can read the signature lyric “No day but today” as fatalistic, as the characters’ existential cry, as Larson’s prescience about his sudden death.But I’ve always read “No day but today” — which gets woven into “Seasons of Love” in the show’s finale, and was this event’s final heart-rending hurrah — as a promise: Today I wake up to a new version of myself. I will be magnificent. I account for the losses of yesterday, but today? Today is alive. There’s no tragedy in that.25 Years of Rent: Measured in LoveThrough March 6; nytw.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 113 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      Children’s Film Festival Pushes Boundaries, Mixing Somber and Sweet

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyChildren’s Film Festival Pushes Boundaries, Mixing Somber and SweetFrom a feature just for teenagers to short movies for toddlers, this groundbreaking New York event will stream for the first time nationwide.The documentary “Curtain Up!” followed the production of “Frozen KIDS” at Public School 124 in Chinatown. This year, the festival has 14 features, seven programs of short films and more than a dozen livestreamed events.Credit… Hui Tong and Kelly NgMarch 3, 2021, 2:28 p.m. ETThe New York International Children’s Film Festival faced unusual challenges in developing a cinematic celebration during a pandemic. Now the festival, which will present its first all-streaming version from Friday through March 14, is offering its audience some unusual challenges, too.In addition to unblinking views of young people grappling with fractured families, bullying and puberty, the festival is showing what may be its most serious and mature feature yet: “Beans,” a fictionalized autobiography by the Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer. The action unfolds during what is now known as the Oka crisis, a conflict in 1990 between the Mohawk people and the Canadian authorities over land rights.The central character, a 12-year-old Mohawk girl nicknamed Beans, played by Kiawentiio Tarbell, begins a personal rebellion that parallels her community’s uprising. Recommended for viewers 14 and older, the film includes obscene language, violence and a harrowing scene in which an older boy tries to pressure Beans into performing oral sex. It’s hardly what you expect at a children’s festival, but the organizers, who this year are delivering 14 features, seven programs of short films and more than a dozen livestreamed events — all available for the first time to families across the country — found the movie too accomplished and relevant to put aside.Kiawentiio Tarbell in “Beans,” a fictionalized autobiography by the Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer. It is recommended for viewers 14 and over.Credit…EMA Films“It was a way to have great Indigenous storytelling, great female-led filmmaking and an extraordinary young lead actress — it was like, how can we not do this?” said Maria-Christina Villaseñor, the festival’s programming director. “It’s our responsibility to be mindful and not afraid.”Villaseñor said she felt particularly obligated after a year dominated by a public-health crisis and a racial reckoning. The initial inclination was “let’s just make it as lighthearted as possible,” she said of the festival. “But I don’t think that fully does justice to kids. Kids need time to process grief and think about loss in ways that are developmentally appropriate.”One of the most affecting evocations of a child’s experience with death is among the festival’s short films, which compete to receive prizes from an adult jury that includes the filmmakers Sofia Coppola and Peter Ramsey. Martina Lee’s “Black Boy Joy,” part of the new shorts program Celebrating Black Stories, focuses on a bereaved fictional family — a grandfather, a father and a 10-year-old autistic son — whose struggles are an affirmation of love as much as an exploration of mourning.Evan Alex in “Black Boy Joy,” part of the new shorts program Celebrating Black Stories.Credit…HBO MaxThe 24-year-old festival, however, also offers comedy, fantasy and another new shorts program, about young people who are reinterpreting their gender identity, as well as titles for audiences as young as 3. Its opening livestreamed event, on Friday evening, is a behind-the-scenes look at the new Netflix animated television series “City of Ghosts,” in which a diverse club of enterprising elementary school students investigate Los Angeles’s supernatural side. The ghosts, all friendly, are not Casper types so much as spirits that illuminate immigrant history.“My hope is that people who are looking for something more calming and intellectually stimulating will enjoy this show,” said Elizabeth Ito, the series’s creator, who will take part in Friday’s event. She said she was aiming for a tone like that of “old ‘Mister Rogers’” episodes.The festival will include a special screening of Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” a Disney movie.Credit…DisneyThe films, which will mostly be available to stream on demand throughout the festival, also include the cheerful New York City-centered documentary “Curtain Up!” Its directors, Hui Tong and Kelly Ng, visited Public School 124 in Chinatown to chronicle its production of “Frozen KIDS,” a half-hour adaptation of the Disney musical “Frozen,” for the 2019 Junior Theater Festival. The filmmakers and two of the students will take part in a discussion on March 13. Disney fans can also look forward to a special screening of Don Hall and Carlos López Estrada’s animated “Raya and the Last Dragon,” accompanied by a Q. and A., on March 12.Even the festival’s more somber films have moments of joy and triumph. Kenza (Tiara Richards), the 11-year-old protagonist of Eché Janga’s “Buladó,” a feature from the Netherlands and Curaçao, may be adrift without a mother, but she is also a car mechanic, a dead aim with a slingshot and unafraid to embrace the spiritual traditions of her enslaved ancestors. She draws on an inner strength that the heroine of “Beans” discovers as well.“Just because we’re young, it doesn’t mean that we’re powerless,” said Deer, who will discuss “Beans” online with festivalgoers on March 13. “I hope that message gets to them. And that they matter, they have a voice, and the importance of standing up for what they believe in.”“Nahuel and the Magic Book,” a feature from Brazil and Chile that will be screened in a special event.Credit…Punkrobot Animation StudioFilms like these reveal a continuing theme of children connecting to their cultural roots. Sometimes that bond is mystical, as in Germán Acuña’s animated “Nahuel and the Magic Book,” a feature from Brazil and Chile, which will be screened in a special event on Saturday. At other times it involves unearthing forgotten history, as when a teenage Canadian hockey player in Sandi Rankaduwa’s short documentary “Ice Breakers” learns about the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes.Knowing how much young moviegoers have missed being in theaters, the festival’s organizers have tried to make the experience feel authentic. Cinephiles will still vote for their favorite titles, but with digital ballots, and while the festival participants won’t meet filmmakers face to face, they will have increased opportunities for live discussions online. (Those events will be recorded for later viewing on the festival’s Facebook page.)“Every year we talk about the opportunity to explore the world, to explore ideas, to explore identity through the festival,” said Nina Guralnick, its executive director. Right now, she added, “that feels particularly poignant.”The New York International Children’s Film FestivalThrough March 14; 212-349-0330, nyicff.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      The Dos and Don’ts of Staging a Pandemic-Era Awards Show

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedBest and Worst MomentsWinners ListStream the WinnersRed Carpet ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe ProjectionistThe Dos and Don’ts of Staging a Pandemic-Era Awards ShowThe Oscars have nearly two months to get right what has gone oh-so-wrong at other ceremonies.Joaquin Phoenix was onstage Sunday night at the Globes while the best-actress nominees and their supporters loomed behind him. (Top, from left, Viola Davis, Andra Day and Vanessa Kirby; bottom, Frances McDormand, left, and Carey Mulligan.)Credit… NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty ImagesMarch 3, 2021, 2:12 p.m. ETAre awards shows merely the perk for a fully functioning society, or is there a way to make them work even while the world around us in still in dire straits? These are the questions that many in Hollywood are asking after Sunday’s disastrous Golden Globes ceremony brought in 6.9 million viewers, a free-fall plunge from last year’s tally of 18.3 million.Certainly, people have more pressing matters on their minds than whether “Nomadland” can beat “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” but even casual movie fans surely cringed (or changed the channel) when technical difficulties nearly torpedoed the speech given by Golden Globe winner Daniel Kaluuya at the top of the show. We’re all tired of buggy Zoom calls by now, even when those thumbnails are filled with Hollywood’s best and brightest.There are still nearly two more months before the Oscar telecast on April 25, which will be produced by the often innovative Steven Soderbergh alongside Stacey Sher and Jesse Collins. It won’t be easy for them to mount a glitzy gala during a still-raging pandemic, but here are the lessons that can be learned from the awards shows that were unlucky enough to go first.DO a sound check.In too many of the ceremonies I’ve watched this year, from the Gotham Awards to the Golden Globes, the first big winner of the night either had no idea when to speak or was still on mute when they finally began to. Clearly, some more robust preshow prep is necessary: If you’ve already got the stars on standby, keep drilling them offscreen until they know their cue to come in. (And send them better cameras and microphones, when possible.) An acceptance speech ought to begin with emotion, not technical difficulties.DON’T do improv comedy.The Golden Globes booked two sets of consummate vampers — the “Saturday Night Live” vets Maya Rudolph and Kenan Thompson, and the “Barb and Star” leads Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo — but each duo’s improvised patter only made a ramshackle show feel even more chaotic. Improv comedy works better as a palate cleanser during a tightly scripted ceremony, and it feels perverse to let comedians churn through show time in pursuit of a punchline when some of the biggest winners then have their speeches quickly curtailed by wrap-it-up music.DO some short, pretaped bits.Live award ceremonies still feel hemmed in by awkward social distancing, but plenty of movies and television shows are back in full production all over the world. The Oscars could take advantage of their long lead time and ask some of Hollywood’s wittiest to shoot pretaped bits, running no more than thirty seconds, to help expand the breadth of the show in safe and creative ways. Call up Taika Waititi and have him improvise something funny with Chris Hemsworth! Tell Judd Apatow that yes, it has to be 30 seconds — not 60! And any shorts that are cut for time can easily be released online the next day to extend Oscar’s golden afterglow.Awards Season More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape Rooms

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape RoomsThe past year has made us rethink the boundaries between theater and film. Many of these shows are a little bit of both.From left, Vicki Lee Taylor, Tom Bales, Marc Pickering, Ryan Pidgen and Kayleigh Thadani in a musical adaptation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the Southwark Playhouse in London.Credit…Geraint LewisMarch 3, 2021It used to be easy to tell theater from film from streaming. The first was live, physical and by appointment; the others were not. But this past year has made us rethink definitions: Theater is not necessarily live or physical anymore, and film might be a little bit of both.Qui Nguyen, who is taking part in the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival. Credit…Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesIf anybody knows how to straddle the physical and virtual, it’s the playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen. On March 10, Nguyen, the author of the hit show “She Kills Monsters,” will participate in a Q. and A. for the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival — which will present over 30 pieces by theatermakers exploring new mediums. March 10-14; newohiotheatre.orgThe Young Vic in London inadvertently anticipated this change a few years ago by beginning to make digital companions to some of its shows, with crackerjack casts. Happily, they’re online for free. Directed by and starring Gillian Anderson, “The Departure” imagines Blanche DuBois in the few days before her fateful visit to Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Juliet Stevenson appears in “Mayday,” a postscript to Beckett’s “Happy Days”; while Hattie Morahan gives us a contemporary “Nora” in Carrie Cracknell and Nick Payne’s update of “A Doll’s House.” If you like Peter Brook jokes — and you well might if you are reading a column about theater — click on the dryly funny “The Roof,” whose cast includes Natalie Dormer, Noma Dumezweni, Jude Law and Ian McKellen as fans of the illustrious director. youngvic.org‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’During the past year, the Southwark Playhouse in London has emerged as a dynamic force in British theater, not letting lockdowns get in the way of new shows. After its well-received production of Philip Ridley’s “The Poltergeist,” Southwark is presenting the premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s gender-flipped — and very, very loose — musical adaptation of the Goethe poem about a young inventor (now a girl, played by Mary Moore) who gets lost in magic. Through March 14; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘To the Moon’It’s unfortunate that Kathryn Grody has a lower professional profile than her husband, Mandy Patinkin, because she is a very fine actress in her own right. Here is a chance to watch her in action through the Creede Repertory Theater, a Colorado-based company with which Grody and Patinkin have a long history. She is slated to appear in Beth Kander’s docu-play about survivors of domestic violence. Live on March 5 and 6, then on demand March 15 through April 11; creederep.orgKathleen Chalfant, the star of “The Year of Magical Thinking.”Credit…Marc Deliz‘The Year of Magical Thinking’The pandemic has seen a surge in solo shows, for obvious reasons. Joan Didion’s adaptation of her memoir was a Broadway hit in 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Now, Kathleen Chalfant tackles this haunting evocation of grief in a fund-raiser for the Keen Company. March 13-17; keencompany.orgFrom left, Saffron Coomber, Clare Perkins and Adelle Leonce in “Emilia.”Credit…Helen Murray‘Emilia’A recording of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s “chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio-play,” as The New York Times put it last year, is available again. The Olivier Award-winning comedy is set in the Elizabethan theater scene, where men played women — except here women play the men playing the women, opening up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Through March 31; emilialive.comMax Chernin, center, in “Passing Through.”Credit…Diane Sobolewski‘Passing Through’Goodspeed, a company in Connecticut, is among the greatest champions of American musicals old and new, and it has finally set up an on-demand arm to offer archival recordings of its past productions. The first is this capture of the 2019 developmental production of Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa’s show about a young man (Max Chernin) who walks from Pennsylvania to California. March 15 through April 4; goodspeed.orgTwo Playwrights Go CampingFood for Thought Productions continues its run at Theater 80 St. Marks with a double bill that should be catnip to connoisseurs of theatrical camp. The program includes the Tennessee Williams one-act comedy “Lifeboat Drill,” set on the Queen Elizabeth II, and Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” a wicked parody of “The Glass Menagerie” in which Laura becomes Lawrence, who collects glass swizzle sticks. Durang and the actress Carroll Baker are expected to turn up for a post-show Q. and A. March 8 and 13-14; foodforthoughtproductions.comPhoebe Hyder in “Dream.”Credit…Stuart Martin, via RSCInteractive ExperiencesAfter its concert of the 1930s Broadway flop “Swingin’ the Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company is involved in another experiment inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A multimedia, choose-your-own-narrative, high-concept show — in other words, it’s unclear how this will look — “Dream” is led by Puck and the Sprites and involves motion-capture technology, as well as a score including the Gestrument, an app that allows for composition through movement. March 12-20; dream.onlineThe New York-based playwright Aya Ogawa’s 2015 play “Ludic Proxy” dealt with virtual reality and incorporated polling. And now Ogawa has adapted part of it for the new “Ludic Proxy: Fukushima,” presented by the Japan Society and PlayCo, with the audience polling conducted online. Live on March 6, 7 and 11, then on-demand March 12-26; japansociety.orgBathsheba Piepe in “Plymouth Point.”Credit…Matt HassThe London Stone TrilogySwamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones (of Punchdrunk, the immersive-theater company behind “Sleep No More”) have created a tripartite project that is not so much theater as theatrical experience — think virtual escape room, but with actor Dominic Monaghan. In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media. (Full disclosure: My bumbling team put on a display of pitiful detective skills. Who would have thought watching hundreds of hours of cop shows could be so useless?) The next installments, “The Mermaid’s Tongue” and “The Kindling Hour,” will be available in the United States soon. You can already do the British versions; but they are live, so just keep the time difference in mind. plymouthpoint.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTony Awards Voting Starts Now. And It’s Going to Be Weird.No shows are playing, and no one knows when they will come back. Here are answers to six questions about a process even more idiosyncratic than usual.Adrienne Warren as the title character in “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” one of three shows eligible for the best musical Tony Award.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMarch 1, 2021The last Broadway season ended, unexpectedly, nearly a year ago. The next one will begin who-knows-when.But deep in this winter of our theaterlessness, a dormant tradition is starting to stir: the Tony Awards.Hundreds of voters, this week and next, are casting ballots for the best shows, and the best performances, of a theater season abruptly cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.The jukebox shows “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical’ are competing for best musical, and hope to resume performances whenever Broadway reopens. All five of the best play contenders have closed. They are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.In this strangest-of-all Tony competitions, the voting is disconnected from both the period being assessed, which ran from April 26, 2019, to Feb. 19, 2020, and the ceremony for handing out awards, which has not yet been scheduled.In other words, we won’t know the results until — well, for a long time.But here’s what we do know:Who’s going to vote?Not a lot of people.There are 778 Tony voters, but they can only cast ballots in categories in which they’ve seen all the nominees. Because the pandemic prevented any spring theatergoing, there are fewer qualified voters than usual.There are 25 prize categories; the Tonys won’t say how many people will actually be able to vote in each category, but producers believe slightly fewer than 400 people will qualify to cast ballots for best musical, and fewer than that for best play.What’s missing?Parties.The usual Tonys season is all-encompassing. Shows that opened in the fall (and that would have included all three of last season’s nominated musicals) invite voters back to see them again. Monday nights are jammed with nonprofit galas at which nominees mingle with voters, and those who can sing, do. There are press junkets and mixers; display ads in The New York Times and caricatures at Sardi’s; plus, of course, a raft of spring openings to catch up with.So much hugging. So much schmoozing. So many four-hour dinners. Everyone complains. And now they long for it.“I can’t believe I miss buffets,” said Eva Price, a lead producer of “Jagged Little Pill.” “So much that we took for granted, and sometimes grimaced at, we would give our left arms for right now.”Lauren Patten, center, in “Jagged Little Pill,” a show that re-aired a cast reunion concert as a way to remind voters and fans that it plans to return to Broadway.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIs it appropriate to campaign?Yes, but very gingerly.We’re still in the middle of a devastating pandemic and a huge number of people who work in theater are currently unemployed. Also: money is tight because there are no ticket sales.“The 2020 shows can’t run a campaign in the usual way, and even if we could it would feel icky to try,” said Carmen Pavlovic, the lead producer of “Moulin Rouge!”“This is not a moment for cocktail parties and gossip,” she added. “It’s just a moment for lifting up artists from darkness, and hoping that lifts everybody else along the way.”So swag is minimal. “Moulin Rouge!” and “Jagged Little Pill” sent voters coffee table books about their shows, but that’s about it. The main form of campaigning this year is in the form of “For Your Consideration” emails.The nominated show that is furthest in the rearview mirror — a revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which closed in July 2019 — sent voters a video montage of interviews including its playwright, Terrence McNally, who died eight months later from complications of the coronavirus.Nominees are sitting for profiles with theater trade publications. And last week, “Tina,” “Jagged Little Pill,” “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play” and “Betrayal” bought daily sponsorships of Broadway Briefing, an emailed industry newsletter whose subscribers include many Tony voters.And there are other, newfangled ways to refresh voters’ memories. “Betrayal” on Sunday held a cast reunion on Instagram Live; “The Sound Inside” sent voters videotaped selections from the production; “Jagged Little Pill” released a video reflecting on the year and is re-airing a concert version of its show. “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Inheritance” built voter web pages with performance clips, interviews, scripts and more.The message needs to be focused, producers say. “We have to be very mindful and respectful of what people’s experiences are right now,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina.” At the same time, she said, “Honoring our talent and their contribution is important. More than ever, we have to shout out about their exceptional value in society.”What happens when the votes are tallied?An accounting firm sits on the results.The voting period runs through March 15, with votes cast electronically via a password-protected website, and tabulated by Deloitte & Touche LLP. Even in pre-pandemic years, results are not shared with the leaders of the organizations that present the awards — the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — or anyone else before they are announced.This year they will just be kept secret for longer than usual.Aaron Tveit (with Karen Olivo, in “Moulin Rouge!”) is the only actor eligible for best actor in a musical.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesCan you lose if you’re the only nominee?Theoretically, yes.Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” is the only person nominated as best actor in a musical. This is an unusual circumstance, for which the Tonys have imposed an unusual rule: to win, Tveit must get a positive vote from 60 percent of those who cast ballots. But, to be clear, he’s likely to pick up his first statuette this year.There are a couple of other nomination quirks, too. There will be no prize for best musical revival, because the only one that managed to open, “West Side Story,” did so after the retroactively imposed eligibility date. And the contenders for best score were all from plays.So when will we know the winners?Stay tuned.It seems clear that the ceremony will only take place after live performance is allowed to resume in New York and tickets to Broadway shows have gone on sale.That’s because the industry’s priority will be to use the ceremony to remind potential audiences that Broadway is back. The goal, said Heather A. Hitchens, the Wing’s president and chief executive, “is to be most helpful to the industry.”Several producers and publicists say they are now thinking the most likely time frame is after Labor Day, a full year and a half after Broadway shut down.The organizers have shared a few other details. This year’s ceremony, like those before the pandemic, will be overseen by Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner. There will be some noncompetitive awards (those are honors like lifetime achievement). But there has been no announcement about whether the ceremony will be in-person or virtual, televised or streamed, live or taped; only that it will take place “in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.”“We hope to have news very soon,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      The Best and Worst of the Golden Globes

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Awards SeasonGolden Globes: What HappenedMoments and AnalysisGlobes WinnersGolden Globes ReviewAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Best and Worst of the Golden GlobesAmid deeply moving moments (like the speech by Chadwick Boseman’s widow), there were technical difficulties and the strange sight of long-distance hosts pretending to be on the same stage.March 1, 2021, 4:57 a.m. ET More