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      Amorphous D.J.'d His Way Through 2020

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHis Dreams Came True, Despite the PandemicAfter having a rough start to 2020, Jimir Reece Davis, a D.J. who goes by Amorphous, ended it with a bang.“I’ve been doing mash-ups for a while, they come to my mind when I am bored,” said Jimir Reece Davis, a D.J. who goes by Amorphous. “I do it for fun. I am always listening to music in my head.”Credit…Chase Hall for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Updated 2:00 p.m. ETJimir Reece Davis’s 2020 wasn’t going well even before the pandemic hit. In January, he found himself homeless in Los Angeles after his living situation became untenable. Then his mother, who has epilepsy, had a bad seizure and was hospitalized. So, he decided to pack his bags and return home.Everything that could go wrong seemed to be going wrong for Mr. Davis, a 23-year-old D.J. who goes by Amorphous. Little did he know, his dreams were about to come true in mere months.On Thanksgiving, Mr. Davis filmed a video of himself mixing Rihanna’s “Kiss It Better” with Luther Vandross’s “Never Too Much.” Intertwined, the two tracks sounded familiar and warm, like the kind of song you’d hear a block party on a balmy spring day. In the video, he sports a black T-shirt with an image of Aaliyah’s face on it and he’s grooving to the sound of his mix..@rihanna’s ‘kiss it better’ x luther vandross’s ‘never too much’. 💞 pic.twitter.com/0wNENEDhuO— amorphous (@loneamorphous) November 26, 2020
      “I’ve been doing mash-ups for a while. They come to my mind when I am bored,” Mr. Davis said in an interview. “I do it for fun. I am always listening to music in my head.”The response on social media was immediate: Mr. Davis’s mix had gone viral. To date, the video has been played more than 2.6 million times, over 100,000 people have liked his tweet and it was shared more than 30,000 times. Superstar producers and artists like Missy Elliott, John Legend, Issa Rae and LL Cool J congratulated him on the mix and encouraged him to keep going.Less than a month later, when he tweeted that his laptop had stopped working, Oprah Winfrey sent him a replacement with a note that read: “Thank you for bringing joy to the world your way. ​I hope this helps you continue.”Mr. Davis’s world shifted again when he received a call from Fat Joe, who loved his new mix and wanted to use it for a song.“When I heard it, I was like ‘Yo, this is amazing,’” Fat Joe said in his slack jawed, New York City accent. “We were influenced by him. The kid is a genius, man, he’s done things that nobody has done before.”“Dreams do come true,” Mr. Davis said. “Even with the tragedy of the pandemic, I believe they can.”Credit…Chase Hall for The New York TimesFat Joe used the mix on his latest single, “Sunshine,” which was co-produced by Cool of the production team Cool & Dre. The video, which now has more than eight million views on YouTube, was shot in Miami in December and features Diddy and DJ Khaled in their yacht-life, silk-Versace-button-up best. Amorphous is on the boat, too, behind a D.J. booth, doing what he loves to do: mixing music.Mr. Davis said he was a little intimidated during the video shoot. But he said he tried to be himself because “that’s how all this happened was by me being me.”This wasn’t the first time Mr. Davis, who graduated from Full Sail University in 2018, had gone viral. But the response to this mix has been astronomical. He even managed to get the attention of Rihanna, the subject of a fandom-inspired documentary he made while he was in school. Mr. Davis said Rihanna reached out and watched the documentary.“I know, it’s crazy right?” Mr. Davis said. “From what I’ve heard, she liked it.”In college, Mr. Davis studied film making, but his heart was always in his music. When he was three, he would rap along to Jay-Z songs at home. Later on, he taught himself how to beat box. At 11, he was teaching himself how to use production software like Beaterator to make music.“I was kind of just using different free software,” Mr. Davis said. “I realized that I actually liked producing.”Back in high school, he begged his father to buy him Ableton, a music production suite that at the time cost $1,000. His father did not wince at the price and got it for him; Mr. Davis spent all his free time learning how to use it and was soon producing songs on his own.All of his hard work paid off. In 2016, he began to share his mash-ups online. The Canadian R&B duo Dvsn liked one of his mixes and used it on their album “A Muse in Her Feelings.” The experience gave Mr. Davis a taste of the music production process and soon he set his sights on becoming a producer himself.Things are finally falling into place for Mr. Davis. Now that “Sunshine” has debuted at No. 10 on the Rap Digital Song Billboard chart, he’s gained confidence and is looking forward to possibly collaborating with Chloe Bailey, one half of the R&B group Chloe x Halle, and the singer Kehlani.“Amorphous is not only an incredible ear, visionary young artist, but is the most gracious humble deserving human being,” Kehlani said.Mr. Davis still pinches himself every so often. He often re-shares his old tweets, from the days when he was hoping to have the opportunities he has now.“Dreams do come true,” Mr. Davis said bashfully. “Even with the tragedy of the pandemic, I believe they can.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Working in TV, Jen Silverman Wrote a Novel. About Theater.

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWorking in TV, Jen Silverman Wrote a Novel. About Theater.“We Play Ourselves” finds a struggling playwright exiled to Los Angeles and obsessing over New York. Then she meets the manipulative filmmaker next door.“The book began as a love letter to the theater,” Jen Silverman said of her debut novel. “But it’s a love letter where you know the dark side.”Credit…Zackary Canepari for The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021“Theater only feels like an accomplishment if you’re part of the cult,” a character in Jen Silverman’s new novel, “We Play Ourselves,” says. “The rest of the world thinks we’re all wasting our best years.”The book’s flailing heroine, Cass, an emerging playwright, flees New York after a disastrous opening night. At loose ends in Los Angeles, she drifts toward an unscrupulous filmmaker and the teenage girls in her orbit. Like much of Silverman’s writing, the book balances what Silverman’s colleague, the showrunner Lauren Morelli, praised as a “razor-sharp absurdism alongside a deep reverence for humanity.”Silverman (“The Moors,” “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties”) started the novel in 2018, having temporarily moved to Los Angeles for a stint in Morelli’s “Tales of the City” writers’ room. Most days, she would arrive at her office an hour or two early and sit at her desk, trying to translate theater’s ephemerality into prose. She thinks she could only write the novel, her first, because theater felt so distant, which acted as a kind of deprogramming.“The book began as a love letter to the theater,” she said during a recent video call. “But it’s a love letter where you know the dark side. It’s not an idealized love.”Dana Delany, left, and Chaunté Wayans in Silverman’s “Collective Rage: A Play in 5 Betties,” which had an Off Broadway run in 2018.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesIn addition to plays, teleplays and now novels, Silverman also writes poems, essays and short stories. (She denies being prolific, which is funny.) Across genres, her style is mutable, her word choice precise, her interest piqued by tales of transformation and how people do and don’t resist it. The director Mike Donahue, a frequent collaborator, said that he admires her work because he never knows the form it will take. “It’s always an entirely new world to try to crack and a new language to understand,” he said.Speaking from the Upper Manhattan apartment that she shares with her partner, the set designer Dane Laffrey, Silverman discussed art, autobiography and what it means for the book to arrive in a world without theater. “It’s hard because I want so desperately to be back in a theater,” she said. “But when I think about hearing somebody three rows behind me cough, like, I feel this cold panic.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.How’s your pandemic going?It’s the best pandemic I’ve ever had. I’ve been working on the book. I got galleys for it in April. It felt a little crazy, because the world was on fire and I’m trying to decide between a semicolon and a comma. And I’ve been reading a lot. That’s saving my sanity. Maybe.How did this book come about?I had been writing a different book. But something about being in L.A. and being plunged into a different medium, I longed for theater, like in a visceral, full-body way. And I found that when I would sit down to write, I would just start writing about theater. I ended up calling my editor and saying, “I’m writing a completely different novel. I hope that’s OK.”Do you think that people outside the theater understand theater?What everybody understands is the desire to be transported outside yourself, the desire to experience something larger than you, the desire to be deeply moved. Everybody wants to feel magic in their lives.How autobiographical is the novel?The part that feels really aligned with my personal experience is the way that theater became something so much larger than a career, that it took the place of a spiritual life. Cass longs for it and needs it in a way that was a really personal, active thing for me. But there are a lot of divergences and one of them is Cass’s hunger for visibility and acknowledgment and her desire to be famous. Attention makes me really nervous, to be honest. So I found it really interesting to follow a character who desperately wants to be a public figure and whose sense of self is constructed around what is being said about her.Silverman started the book while working in the writers’ room for the Netflix reboot of “Tales of the City.”Credit…Zackary Canepari for The New York TimesYou’ve written an intense opening night scene. What are opening nights like for you?Like a particular ritual or ceremony that we’ve all agreed to participate in. From the gathering of the crowds to the party. Then there’s a judgment that’s going to come down and what will that judgment be? Depending on whether you’re a writer who reads reviews, that judgment can feel different, but it’s like running a gauntlet.Are the parties fun at least?I’m shy. Crowds scare me. I was not cut out for like a life of extroverts. I try to bring a friend who is an extrovert, and then just watch them thrive in this company of humans.Do you read reviews?I’ve gone back and forth. There was a time when I was like, “I’m not going to read reviews.” Then I was like, “No, there’s a lot to learn, I don’t have to agree with it. But I should learn.” At this point, there are a set of critics that I find really smart, thoughtful, nuanced, complex. I don’t always agree with them. They don’t always say good things about me. But I always want to know what they’re saying.In the novel, the theater world is rife with professional jealousy. Is that your experience?The arts economy in the U.S. is defined by scarcity, because we don’t have government funding. Institutions don’t have a lot of support beyond ticket sales. If you are a woman, queer, an artist of color, it’s very clear that there is a slot and the people who are your community, your collaborators, your family, are also being positioned as your competitors. I don’t think that is good for the arts. I don’t think that is good for the culture.Still, the book makes theater seem very sexy. Is it?It can be. What interests me is that it’s a really intimate place. No matter your role, you are performing essentially a mind meld in a really rarefied, intensified environment. Some of my closest friends, people who are family, are people I met doing shows.Cass has a nemesis in Tara-Jean, a younger playwright. And she falls for a TV star and an elegant director. Are these based on real people? Did you worry that readers would think so?I did have a moment of real anxiety about it. It is very much fiction. I had theater friends read it. A few of them actually called me after and they were like, “I didn’t know you knew this person.” But each of them had a different person. I’ve heard five different theories for who Tara-Jean is.What does it mean to have this novel arrive in a world largely without theater?I have no idea. I thought it was a different world that the novel was going to be entering. For myself, I have dreams almost every other night about theater. Sometimes it’s my play; most of the time it’s somebody else’s play. Sometimes the dream is really good. And sometimes, I have this feeling of like, “Wait a minute, aren’t we in a pandemic? Where’s my mask?” But because my longing for theater is such a big part of my life, I’ve been really enjoying reading about theater. I hope that this book can be that for other people.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      To Love, Honor and Co-Star: Making Room for Two on Zoom

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeBake: Maximalist BrowniesListen: To Pink SweatsGrow: RosesUnwind: With Ambience VideosAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTo Love, Honor and Co-Star: Making Room for Two on ZoomHiring couples to act together allows us to see two people in one virtual space. For the couples themselves, though, it can feel like “there’s no escape.”Michael Urie, left, and Ryan Spahn have acted together in one short play during the pandemic. Spahn also handled the camera for Urie’s performance of “Buyer & Cellar” from their apartment.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFeb. 10, 2021Last fall, the actor Jason O’Connell agreed to star in a new production of “Talley’s Folly,” Lanford Wilson’s wistful two-hander, for Syracuse Stage. The other hand? His wife, Kate Hamill. While they would film the piece in an empty auditorium, they would spend much of their rehearsal time at home, on Zoom. So much for leaving your role at the stage door.“There’s no escape,” O’Connell said, mostly joking. “There’s no time apart, there’s no breather. There’s no one to complain to about my co-star.”Since March, when theater began to pop up online, savvy producers have looked for Zoom box workarounds and ways of generating the intimacy that only actors sharing the same airspace can provide. A Covid-19 friendly solution: Hire cohabiting couples to perform opposite each another — on sofas, in bedrooms and on the occasional closed stage — with no grids or time lags intervening.That explains how viewers saw two Apple family siblings — Maryann Plunkett’s Barbara and Jay O. Sanders’s Richard — quarantining together in the latest Richard Nelson trilogy, with their West Village apartment subbing for Barbara’s Rhinebeck house. Cohabiting actors also enabled a surprising scene in Sarah Gancher’s “Russian Troll Farm.” Having spent the play on separate screens, the disinformation workers Greg Keller and Danielle Slavick suddenly leapt into the same box and then into bed.Some of these couples have acted together for decades; others have almost never shared a marquee. None of them could have predicted that they would be turning their homes into theaters and reassuring the neighbors that the bloodcurdling shrieks are just a work thing.The New York Times spoke to six theater couples about acting together while living together. These are excerpts from the conversations.Kate Hamill and Jason O’ConnellTogether eight yearsJason O’Connell, left, and Kate Hamill in the Syracuse Stage production of “Talley’s Folly.”Credit…via Syracuse StageHow they met At the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, through a mutual friend. They married in January 2020 and had planned to honeymoon last summer.Pandemic project “Talley’s Folly”Have you worked together much?O’CONNELL We worked together on Kate’s first play, “Sense and Sensibility.” We did “Pride and Prejudice.” Then I wrote an adaptation of “Cyrano” that I directed her in.HAMILL We know lots of people who have a professional/personal divide, but we really don’t.How has working from home been?HAMILL We’re both workaholics. We’ve had to adjust to a slightly different pace of life. Like, “Do we have any hobbies?” After we got done with our first Zoom rehearsal of “Talley’s Folly,” we turned off the camera and we both started crying because we had missed that part of our lives.O’CONNELL It was very, very special, but also bittersweet.HAMILL In the pandemic, as a couple, you either come out of it, like, “Wow, this is really strong and great,” or “Oh no. I’m glad we like each other.”Greg Keller and Danielle SlavickTogether 14 yearsDanielle Slavick, left, and Greg Keller in “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy.”Credit…via TheaterWorks HartfordHow they met At the National Theater Conservatory in Denver, Colo. “We had a talk in the library once about death,” Keller said.Pandemic project “Russian Troll Farm”Have you worked together much?SLAVICK We’ve done a bunch of workshops and readings and stuff, but only one other production together, Sheila Callaghan’s “That Pretty Pretty; or, The Rape Play.”KELLER Nobody’s wanted to bring the passion that is our relationship onto the stage.How has working from home been?SLAVICK Exciting. But also daunting. I was still breastfeeding during rehearsals and I was also pregnant, so I was very nauseous. Having people be part of your home life was just kind of vulnerable. But you’re, like, my favorite actor. So I just liked the opportunity to talk with you and listen to you in that medium.KELLER I’m blushing over here.SLAVICK There was so much equipment! It took over our apartment.KELLER A new couple with a kid moved in. They would hear us screaming at each other, her having fake orgasms.SLAVICK I actually stopped them in the hall and let them know that they don’t need to call the police.Crystal Dickinson and Brandon J. DirdenTogether 21 yearsBrandon J. Dirden, left, and Crystal Dickinson in “The New Math”Credit…via The 24 Hour PlaysHow they met In graduate school at the University of Illinois. “I will never forget seeing her for the first time,” Dirden said. “This gale force coming straight at me.”Pandemic projects “New Math,” as part of the 24 Hour Plays Viral Monologues; “Lessons in Survival”Have you worked together much?DICKINSON The first show we did was “Angels in America.” Brandon was Belize and I was the angel.DIRDEN We work together maybe every other year. It actually helps the relationship. We can’t be too mean to each other, because we’re probably going to have to work together pretty soon.How has working from home been?DICKINSON The 24 Hour Plays reached out to us. I told Brandon, “We’re doing it. You’re going to do one and I’m going to do one. Because we’ve got to do some art.” So we did and I told them, “That was great. Brandon and I should do one together.’” Two weeks later, they were like, “We want to take you up on that.” And I was like, “How are we going to home-school?” We told our playwright, “You have to incorporate our kid.” Which turned out to be fun. Though we did almost kill each other for about five seconds.DIRDEN Chase [their son] was the best part of the process. He took direction very well.Michael Urie and Ryan SpahnTogether 12 yearsUrie and Spahn in Talene Monahon’s short play “Frankie and Will.”Credit…via MCC TheaterHow they met Friends set them up. “We had plans to see ‘Doubt,’” Urie said. “Very romantic.”Pandemic projects “Nora Highland,” “Buyer & Cellar,” “Frankie and Will”Have you worked together much?URIE Most recently, “Hamlet,” which we did in Washington, D.C. We’ve also worked together on some movie projects. Ryan and Halley Feiffer wrote “He’s Way More Famous Than You,” which I directed.SPAHN That was when we learned how to collaborate. We turned our apartment into the production office.How has working from home been?SPAHN Jeremy Wein does Play-PerView. He reached out. I had never even heard of Zoom. I had this two-hander, “Nora Highland.” Michael and Tessa Thompson did it live online.URIE There was no audience, but it felt something like theater, because it was live.SPAHN We would talk about the hunt for that feeling of opening-night jitters.URIE “Buyer & Cellar,” which we did in our living room, had exactly that. It was a big old comedy put together right before you. Ryan was the director of photography.SPAHN After that one, we did a short play Talene Monahon wrote, “Frankie and Will.” Our dog was in it. And we have a cat, so we had to animal wrangle. It gave us something to put our manic, terrified, and laser-focused energy into.Jennifer Byrne and Timothy C. GoodwinTogether four yearsJennifer Byrne, left, and Timothy Goodwin at home with their dog, Awesome.Credit…Timothy C. GoodwinHow they met During a production of “Shear Madness” in Fort Myers, Fla. “We had a start-over first date in New York City,” Byrne said.Pandemic project “Singles in Agriculture”Have you worked together much?BYRNE We never work together. I’m in musical theater and Tim is into plays and film and TV. Our paths for auditions rarely cross.How has working from home been?BYRNE Ken Kaissar and Amy Kaissar, the artistic directors of Bristol Riverside Theater, were looking for acting couples quarantining together. They hit us up by email and Ken found “Singles in Agriculture.” We did a Zoom cold read and it was our rhythm, it was our energy. It felt right.GOODWIN Usually you can leave work at work. But the space that we sleep in is also our rehearsal space and our performance space. We have a nice lighting set up. But as soon as the rehearsal is over we tear it all down.BYRNE We literally open the blinds, we open the windows and we shut the door so that it gets super cold in the bedroom. Almost like starting over.Maryann Plunkett and Jay O. SandersTogether 32 yearsClockwise from lower left: Jay O. Sanders and Maryann Plunkett as two of the Apple siblings, along with Laila Robin, Stephen Kunken and Sally Murphy in “What Do We Need to Talk About? Conversations on Zoom.” Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesHow they met On the set of “A Man Called Hawk,” a spinoff of “Spenser: For Hire.” “Our first kiss was on film,” Sanders said.Pandemic project The Apple Family Plays’ pandemic trilogyHave you worked together much?SANDERS Countless reading and workshops. And some small film things.PLUNKETT Because of the Rhinebeck panorama [Richard Nelson’s sequence of Rhinebeck-set plays], it feels like we’re working together all the time. We like to work together.How has working from home been?PLUNKETT With the Zoom plays, we’re sitting side by side. It’s the utmost in trust, and playfulness, knowing that I’m looking into Jay’s eyes, but I’m also looking into the character’s eyes. Shoulder to shoulder, captured in a little tiny box, there’s no room for faking it.SANDERS I used to dream about this, when I was a young actor, finding someone who could be a partner, who could be at the same level. It’s a very rare relationship that we’re fortunate to have. We appreciate it every day.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Exploring Race and Resistance for Young Audiences

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookExploring Race and Resistance for Young AudiencesA Harriet Tubman monologue, an animated “Sit-In” and a toy theater short about medical inequity deliver useful messages through varied mediums.Janet (center) intends to stage a protest over climate change in the animated “Sit-In.”Credit…via Alliance TheaterFeb. 9, 2021How can you build a hopeful future without first learning from the painful past?This question, which has arisen repeatedly over the last year, resonates in three new streaming theater productions for young people. Directed toward audiences 9 and older, each uses African-American history to reflect on current issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement, climate change and the coronavirus pandemic. Frequently unsparing in detail — and even in language — these works should inspire discussions well beyond Black History Month.“A Tribe Called Tubman,” from TheaterWorksUSA, is the most fully realized, incisive and moving of the shows, both because of its length — 42 minutes — and its reliance on an actor’s presence. (The other productions feature animation or puppetry.) Available indefinitely on TWUSA.TV, a platform that the company developed for its own work and that of other family-theater producers, the play stars Jada Suzanne Dixon as a serene and commanding Harriet Tubman, the escaped slave who became a leader of the Underground Railroad. (You must wait until the end to discover the identity of the tribe in the title.)Jada Suzanne Dixon as the title character in Idris Goodwin’s “A Tribe Called Tubman.”Credit…via TheaterWorksUSACasually dressed in contemporary clothes, Dixon spends much of her time in a simple black chair. But she doesn’t need to stride the stage. Written and directed by Idris Goodwin, the play refuses to enshrine Tubman as a towering heroine of near-mythical powers. “What if I was just as ordinary as anyone else?” she asks.Speaking conversationally and occasionally singing, she relates her experiences, which were far from ordinary. But they were human, and in portraying her as a flesh-and-blood woman, the script demonstrates that it is courageous people, not gods, who bring about social change.The show does, however, have a mystical side. Tubman says she has died twice and will die again. The first time was when her skull was struck by a metal bar thrown by an overseer trying to stop a fleeing slave. (Imitating that white man’s rage, she shouts the ugliest of racial slurs.) The second occasion was when she succumbed to pneumonia in 1913. And why is she here again?“The knee is still on our necks,” says Tubman, who was often called Moses. Having advised young audiences on how to pursue justice, she adds, “Maybe what I am now is that burning bush.”The Alliance Theater decided to animate Pearl Cleage’s “Sit-In” script when live performance became impossible.Credit…via Alliance TheaterAnother incendiary phrase — “Our house is on fire” — propels “Sit-In,” produced by Alliance Theater in Atlanta. This statement refers to global warming rather than civil rights, although Janet (Eden Luse), an 11-year-old African-American girl, soon learns how the struggles surrounding these issues are related.Janet finds herself in conflict with her best friends, Mary Beth (Bella Fraker) and Consuelo (Lena Castro), after she tells them she can’t be part of their singing trio at the talent show because she intends to stage a school sit-in about climate change. Consuelo retaliates by saying she won’t sing with Janet at an upcoming rally.Torn, and facing opposition at home and at school — she’s threatened with expulsion — Janet resolves her dilemma only after talking to her grandfather (L Warren Young), who tells her of his own participation in the Atlanta Student Movement in 1960.Inspired by “Sit-In: How Four Friends Stood Up by Sitting Down,” a picture book created by the married couple Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney, the play artfully transforms a true story of young Black men 60 years ago into a dramatic narrative about three contemporary girls of varying ethnicities.Faced with the Covid lockdown, the playwright Pearl Cleage and the director Mark Valdez worked with Alliance and the Palette Group to turn the production into a 33-minute animated film. The result incorporates a rich soundtrack (by Eugene H. Russell IV) and a vivid interplay of images, including gritty footage of the real 1960s lunch counter sit-ins.Streaming on Alliance’s website and on TWUSA.TV through June 30, “Sit-In” educates and entertains, though I wish it had been longer. The play illustrates that protest carries risks, but ends before you learn the consequences of the 21st-century student activism it depicts.The set and characters in “Diamond’s Dream,” like this image inside a train car, are constructed from detailed cutouts.Credit…via Chicago Children’s TheaterThe visually mesmerizing “Diamond’s Dream,” presented by Chicago Children’s Theater, is even shorter — just under 18 minutes. Created by Jerrell L. Henderson (who also directed) and Caitlin McLeod (who designed it), this toy theater production features a set and characters constructed from meticulously detailed cutouts. The scrolling painterly backdrops and Daniel Ison’s soundtrack enhance the feeling that you’re inside an L train in Chicago.The play, which streams free on the company’s YouTube channel, CCTv, through June 22, unfolds in the present day, when Diamond (Davu Smith), an African-American youth wearing a surgical mask, is on his way to visit his dying grandmother. (Whether she has Covid-19 is unclear.) After dozing in his empty train car, he suddenly encounters a Black girl (Amira Danan), who tells him she’s a lost spirit who can’t recall her identity. She remembers only how “the colored people got hit by the flu, the big flu” and how “an angry mob” arrived as she was dying.The “big flu” is the 1918 pandemic, and the “angry mob” refers to attacks by white rioters during what is now known as the Red Summer of 1919, but children are unlikely to grasp this unless they consult an accompanying online study guide. And although the production offers an emotional resolution, it still feels like only a tantalizing taste of what deserved to be a bigger project. Parents and teachers will have to help young viewers investigate the subjects — racial inequities in housing and health care, the disproportionate effects of disease on minorities — that “Diamond’s Dream” raises yet doesn’t fully explore.What can’t be ignored is that these historical struggles continue. Or, as Harriet Tubman puts it in Goodwin’s play, “The scars are still fresh.”A Tribe Called TubmanOn TWUSA.TVSit-InThrough June 30; alliancetheatre.orgDiamond’s DreamOn YouTube through June 22; chicagochildrenstheatre.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      What Megan Mullally Likes: Soft T-Shirts and Sad Songs

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      #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 storyWhat Megan Mullally Likes: Soft T-Shirts and Sad SongsA star of the animated Fox comedy “The Great North” swears by Instagram street dance videos, vintages Ts and “Promising Young Woman.”Credit…Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesFeb. 9, 2021, 1:38 p.m. ETWhen the actress Megan Mullally began recording her podcast, In Bed With Nick and Megan, she and her husband, the actor Nick Offerman, invited guests into their actual bed. In the spring, the bed went virtual. But she and Offerman kept recording, turning a guest room into a studio where they could tape episodes of their new animated show, “The Great North,” which premieres Sunday on Fox. She plays Alyson Lefebvrere, a sultry small-business owner with a crush on Offerman’s single dad, Beef.“She’s a groovy lady,” Mullally said, speaking from her home in Los Angeles.Nimble, ferocious, with a barrel-aged voice that she pitches higher for certain roles, Mullally, 62, has spent the last two decades caroming from one TV comedy role to the next, with a couple of Broadway shows in between. Pandemic willing, she will travel to London in the spring for a West End production of “Anything Goes.” “I’m supposed to take tap classes for that,” she said. “But I haven’t started yet.”When not avoiding her shuffles, scuffles and stomps, her lockdown schedule involves cooking, reading, drawing, Zooming and searching out new songs for her all-covers rock band, Nancy and Beth. With the occasional pause to tend to her dogs, she detailed her current cultural top 10. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Street dance videos on Instagram I just happened to see a video of Lil Buck. I don’t even know why he came up in my search. His style is called Memphis jookin. He has a very poignant lyrical sensibility. He’s a very good storyteller and he can be quite heartbreaking. I got to know him and his best friend, Jon Boogz, over Instagram and then they were friends with Sheopatra and Yorelis Apolinario and this other dancer that I love, JaJa Vankova. She’s crazy amazing. Their freestyles are insane. They’re out there almost every day, shooting videos. I find that so incredibly cool. Just the work ethic alone. It’s coming from this true passion for dance.2. “Discomfort of Evening” by Marieke Lucas Rijneveld She’s a first-time novelist. I thought the whole thing was just so staggering. It’s about a family. The eldest son dies in an accident at the very beginning of the book and the family unravels. Basically, none of the kids or the parents can accept that the son died and they can’t make sense of his death. It’s very dark and complex. It’s also about how religion can warp people and be twisted into something to be used as a weapon. I was like, “Gosh, do I really like this? Or do I hate it? I’m definitely going to keep reading!”3. “Promising Young Woman” Nick and I watched that last week. I was pretty blown away. It’s the best movie I’ve seen in a long time. And it’s so important. I didn’t really understand feminism until later in life. I’m a rape survivor and every other possible form of sexual harassment and abuse you could think of. And yet, because I’m 62, I’m from this generation where a lot of that, you were supposed to just think, that’s normal. Especially being an actress and having absolutely no power whatsoever, because back in the day, you’d better just get there and learn your lines and shut up. This movie, written and directed by a woman, it’s a black comedy until it’s not.4. Vintage T-shirts I’ve been into vintage T-shirts for forever. I will not reveal the website I buy shirts from under pain of death. I don’t have any room left, but I keep buying them. During quarantine I’ve bought probably 20. I like soft ones. And I like them sort of cute, but not too cute. Not girly. My style is “moderately successful male rancher from New Mexico.” I also buy them for Nick. I recently just got some for him that he was like freaking out over. One, it’s goldenrod-colored, it’s a production of “Pippin” from somebody’s high school. It’s freaking genius. Another one is this really great blue, but with some bears and wildlife. Today, I was like, “It’s as if you were born in that T-shirt.”5. POOG with Kate Berlant and Jacqueline Novak Now everybody has a podcast. It’s not fun anymore. But POOG, I immediately got obsessed with. Ostensibly the premise of the thing is beauty and wellness. But it’s just them talking about whatever. I love what it says about our consumer culture and about being a woman in this world, which is so [expletive] hard and never fair and never right and never adds up. I love that Kate just wanted to do it so she could get free stuff, because she’s cheap, and that Jacqueline is incredibly obsessed with skin care. I’m fascinated. I don’t think I even washed my face until I was like 40. No joke.6. TwinsthenewTrend pop music reaction videos on YouTube It’s these 22-year-old twins in Gary, Ind., who post YouTubes of themselves listening to songs that they’ve never heard before. In the last two weeks, there have been days where I’ve spent up to an hour or two just watching their videos. They’re both really funny, but they’re sweet. When they watch the videos, I feel like it would be so easy for them to take it in another direction and be more meanspirited. Them watching it makes you hear the song again, like for the first time. The one that got me the most is Whitney Houston singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. I literally burst into crazy sobs at the end of that. She’s in a state of joy when she sings it. And they’re like, “Look, she’s just smiling.”7. Food52 I’ve never cooked in my whole life. But I had a craving for chocolate chip cookie dough. I was regressing. So I found a recipe and I ate a lot of cookie dough. Then I cooked this chicken thing, a Martha Stewart thing. And it was so good! Nick was freaking out, because we’ve been married for 20 years and I swear to God, I’ve never cooked anything more than oatmeal. I was like, “Wow, I’ll do this more to freak Nick out.” I got completely consumed with which pots and pans to buy. I would go on these sites and read reviews for hours, even just to buy a spatula. Food52, I’ve gone super deep on their recipes. Milk bread, this spinach and cilantro soup with tahini and lemon, there’s a cake called simple pistachio almond cake that’s one of my favorites. Here’s the best one: White lasagna with Swiss chard, leeks and Gruyère.8. “The Vow” documentary mini-series We just watched “The Vow” like a week ago. I’ve had some dealings with people who have personality disorders. And that’s what Keith Raniere is, a psychopath or a sociopath. The more people that watch “The Vow,” the better. If you stand warned, then you have a better chance of avoiding the total control and manipulation, the gaslighting, the charm offensives, the cycle of abuse, the building up to tear you down to build you up to tear you down.9. Vielmetter Los Angeles I’ve known [Susanne] Vielmetter since 1999. I met her when I first started collecting. Susanne started in a little storefront on Wilshire Boulevard and she has built this incredible gallery. She’s brought in a ton of cool artists and over half of them are women. She also has a lot of people of color. She has run that place with integrity. And she’s got great taste. There’s this artist I really like, Raffi Kalenderian. He’s a portrait painter, but a very modern version of that. Very cool. I saw a new painting of his and I emailed her. I was like, “Oh my God, I love this.” I ended up buying it even though we’re completely out of space.10. Covers by Rickie Lee Jones I love a sad song. I mostly listen to music when I’m finding songs for Nancy and Beth because we do all covers. In the late ’80s, Rickie Lee Jones had a couple of records that were all covers. One was called “Girl at Her Volcano,” which is unbelievable. She does “My Funny Valentine.” She does “Lush Life.” I love her covers. It’s an amazing voice, but not necessarily a beautiful voice. It’s just coming straight from the heart.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Cuomo Announces Pop-Up Performances Across New York

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCuomo Announces Pop-Up Performances Across New York“NY PopsUp” will kick off Feb. 20 and run through Labor Day.A festival celebrating Little Island, the parklike pier being built downtown in the Hudson River, will coincide with the last days of “NY PopsUp.”Credit…Brittainy Newman for The New York TimesFeb. 8, 2021, 3:18 p.m. ETGov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, who has made it clear that he sees the return of art and culture as key components of the economic revival of the state, announced Monday that a series of more than 300 free pop-up performances, “NY PopsUp,” would begin Feb. 20 and run through Labor Day.Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, announced details of the city’s Open Culture program, which will permit outdoor performances on designated city streets this spring.The state’s pop-up events are part of a public-private partnership, New York Arts Revival, and will feature more than 150 artists including Amy Schumer, Chris Rock, Mandy Patinkin, Renée Fleming and Hugh Jackman.Since the state does not wish to draw large crowds in the pandemic, many of the events will not be announced in advance.“We’re trying to thread the needle,” Mr. Cuomo said. “We want the performances. We don’t want mass gatherings, we don’t want large crowds.”The events, the state said, will take place in parks, museums and parking lots, as well as on subway platforms and in transit stations. People can follow a new Twitter and Instagram account, @NYPopsUp, for details about upcoming performances. Many will be shown online.The series will be spearheaded by the producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal, along with the New York State Council on the Arts and Empire State Development. It is part of an arts revival plan that the governor had announced during an address in January, when he had said the state would organize the pop-up performances beginning Feb. 4.The series will begin Feb. 20 at the Javits Center in New York City with a free performance for health care workers that will feature Jon Batiste, Anthony Roth Costanzo, Cecile McLorin Salvant and Ayodele Casel. The performers will travel across the city to all five boroughs, performing in parks and street corners, as well as at the footsteps of Elmhurst Hospital and St. Barnabas Hospital.Mr. Cuomo said some of the events would use flexible venues that do not have fixed seats, and could therefore be reconfigured to allow for social distancing, including the Shed, the Apollo Theater, Harlem Stage, La MaMa and the Glimmerglass Festival’s Alice Busch Opera Theater.In June, the opening of Little Island, the parklike pier being built downtown in the Hudson River by Barry Diller, and the Tribeca Film Festival, celebrating its 20th anniversary, will add to the expanding arts programming in the city.Little Island plans to hold its own festival from Aug. 11 to Sept. 5, which will coincide with the final weeks of “NY PopsUp” programming.Mr. de Blasio announced on Monday that the city would launch a new program to help some of the city’s cultural institutions apply for federal grants. The city’s effort, called “Curtains Up NYC,” will offer webinars and counseling to businesses and nonprofits that are connected in some way to live performances.“We have to make sure that New York City cultural institutions get the help that they need,” Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference.Asked whether any Broadway theaters could be allowed to reopen as his arts revival plans continue, Mr. Cuomo expressed hope.“I think that is where we are headed, right?” he said. “The overall effort is headed towards reopening with testing.”He announced last week that the state planned to issue guidance to begin allowing wedding ceremonies for up to 150 guests if attendees were tested beforehand.“Would I go see a play and sit in a playhouse with 150 people?” he said. “If the 150 people were tested and they were all negative, yes, I would do that. And the social distancing and the air ventilation system is proper? Yes, I would do that.”Commercial producers have repeatedly said that economics of Broadway preclude reopening at less than full capacity.New York reported at least 177 new coronavirus deaths and 9,923 new cases on Sunday. While the number of new cases has fallen from a post-holiday high last month, the average number of new daily cases and deaths is still far above where it was last summer and fall.Mr. Cuomo said that government had to take an active role to help the city and the state recover from the economic pain wrought by the pandemic. “It’s not going to be a situation where the economy is just going to come back,” he said. “We have to make it come back.”“New York leads,” he added. “And we’re going to lead in bringing back the arts.”Michael Gold contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Its Musicians Are Out of Work, but the Met Is Streaming

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeMake: BirriaExplore: ‘Bridgerton’ StyleParent: With ImprovRead: Joyce Carol OatesAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookIts Musicians Are Out of Work, but the Met Is StreamingAnna Netrebko sang a recital live from Vienna as the opera company and its unions remain in a standoff.The soprano Anna Netrebko, the Metropolitan Opera’s reigning diva, concentrated on songs by Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss in her streaming recital.Credit…Metropolitan OperaFeb. 7, 2021The Metropolitan Opera rang in 2020 auspiciously, with a Puccini gala featuring Anna Netrebko, the company’s reigning diva.But in March, of course, just weeks before Netrebko was to return to the Met as Tosca, the company closed because of the pandemic. It has been shut for the past 11 months, canceling a slew of plans, including a new production of “Aida” for Netrebko, and furloughing hundreds of its workers without pay.On Saturday Netrebko returned to the company — in a sense — with the latest recital in its Met Stars Live in Concert series, streamed from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and available through Feb. 19. In recent years Netrebko has moved into weighty dramatic soprano repertory. But for this occasion, accompanied elegantly by the pianist Pavel Nebolsin, she presented lighter material, mostly intimate songs by Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and Richard Strauss.[embedded content]From the opening, Rachmaninoff’s “Lilacs,” she seemed to become the young protagonist of the text, singing with subdued tenderness and mellow colorings as she recalled the fresh fragrances of dawn and wistful happiness among the flowers. When Netrebko let go in bursts of full-voiced radiance, as in Rimsky-Korsakov’s exuberant “The Lark’s Song Rings More Clearly,” it was almost startling.Here were hints of the fearsome intensity and thrilling sound she brought to Act II of “Turandot” for the gala over a year ago. But watching her recital, it was hard not to think about what was missing this time: the Met’s musicians. Since the end of March, the unionized orchestra and chorus, among other workers, have remained furloughed, with talks between the unions and management at a standstill. Frustrations have been vented on social media over the Met’s decision to stream recitals like Netrebko’s while the company’s house artists remain out of work. (The orchestra is planning its own streaming concert, independent of the Met, on Feb. 21 at metorchestramusicians.org, featuring the star soprano Angela Gheorghiu; proceeds will go to the Met Orchestra Musicians Fund.)The issue has been hanging over the recital series, which began in July with Jonas Kaufmann and is a venture into testing whether opera audiences will pay for online content, as well as an attempt to keep fans and patrons of the Met engaged. Many of the recitals, by singers like Joyce DiDonato, Bryn Terfel and, most recently, Sondra Radvanovsky and Piotr Beczala, have been artistically rewarding and sensitively directed. But the orchestra and chorus are the core of the Met.Netrebko’s recital was originally planned for October, but in September, while performing at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, she was diagnosed with Covid-19 and briefly hospitalized. So it was a relief to have her looking and sounding wonderful. Her tendency to sometimes let a note slip off pitch was a bit more prevalent than usual. But I’ve always felt this criticism was a little unfair. Like many singers from Russian and Scandinavian traditions, she brings a cool Nordic cast to her sound and sings whole phrases with focused tone, saving vibrato for bursts of intensity. So even small imperfections of pitch stand out.Ms. Netrebko, center, appeared with the pianist Pavel Nebolsin, left, and the mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova.Credit…Metropolitan OperaOne hardly cares, given the splendor of her charismatic vocalism. Even when bringing affecting restraint to songs like Strauss’s “Morgen” or Debussy’s “Il pleure dans mon coeur,” she kept the operatic fervor stirring just below the surface, ready to unleash in climactic phrases. I loved how she began Tchaikovsky’s “Nights of Delirium” with hushed, milky tone, then slowly built intensity as the music expressed a young woman’s thoughts of sleepless, feverish nights consumed with memories of a lover. And she capped a beguiling performance of the aria “Depuis le jour” from Gustave Charpentier’s opera “Louise,” in which a young seamstress in Paris who has run off with a lover expresses blissful romantic contentment, with a softly shimmering high B.She was joined by the excellent mezzo-soprano Elena Maximova in a duet from Tchaikovsky’s “The Queen of Spades” and the famous Barcarolle from Offenbach’s “Les Contes d’Hoffmann.” During a break, the soprano Christine Goerke, the recital series’ host, spoke with Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, about Netrebko’s future plans, which include Elsa in a new production of Wagner’s “Lohengrin,” with Goerke as Ortrud. Count me in.But next up for her, if reopening this fall goes as planned, will be a concert at the company’s Lincoln Center home with its full orchestra in October. A return to live performance, with the Met’s essential artists fully paid, cannot come soon enough.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Life in a Day 2020’ Review: A Video Diary of a Difficult Year

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeExplore: A Cubist CollageFollow: Cooking AdviceVisit: Famous Old HomesLearn: About the VaccineAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Life in a Day 2020’ Review: A Video Diary of a Difficult YearThis YouTube documentary seeks to be a time capsule during a period of great racial divide and pandemic distress.A scene from the YouTube documentary “Life in a Day 2020.”Credit…YouTube OriginalsFeb. 5, 2021Updated 6:29 p.m. ETLife in a Day 2020Directed by Kevin MacdonaldDocumentary1h 30mFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.Will we ever fully be ready to remember 2020? The masks. The quarantines. Racial injustice. So much death.Assembled from video footage shot by people from around the world on July 25 of last year, “Life in a Day” is a well-meaning but unnecessary crowdsourced documentary, a companion piece to a 2011 version of the same name, that thinks we’re ready.The film gets off to an obvious start: with a symphony of child birth. Mostly, though, the breezy snippets capture everyday mundanities that encompass a vast range of human experiences and multicultural behavior, juxtaposing beauty and darkness, birth and death. It’s a call for empathy with some genuinely moving moments. What this video portrait doesn’t do is focus enough on its subjects to allow for any true investment in their lives.[embedded content]Though participants’ experiences are singular, their clips are cut together into montages to create a sense of pandemic-era interrelational connection. A few subjects get extended screen time, their narratives stitched throughout this patchwork of life. The result is a tediously formatted stream of categorized segments that might as well fall into hashtagged classifications: Environmental Conservation, Zoom Life, Class of 2020, Love Is Love and You Weren’t the Only One Cooking All the Time.The film indicates that the director Kevin Macdonald (“The Last King of Scotland”) and the producer Ridley Scott received 324,000 videos submitted from 192 countries for this project. That’s a lot of videos. And yet, amid Black Lives Matter marches and medical workers in hazmat suits, the filmmakers devote considerable time to a man who drives around chasing trains on all seven Class 1 railroads. Spoiler alert — he succeeds at whatever he’s trying to achieve (the film assumes you understand why this is an accomplishment). And, honestly, good for that guy. I know his pursuit is meant to be a quaint respite. But over and over in a film about 2020? When a young Black woman is only briefly shown lamenting the death of two of her brothers who died while in police custody? I want her story.“Life in a Day” seeks to be a time capsule during a period of great racial divide and pandemic distress. But since the time it’s memorializing is still fresh, the film arrives about 10 years too soon. As it stands, it hasn’t captured anything that 90 minutes of TikTok surfing can’t.Life in a Day 2020Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. Watch on YouTube.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More