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    ‘Hamilton,’ ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Wicked’ Creators Welcome Back Broadway

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    Lin-Manuel Miranda felt joyful seeing Elmo in Times Square.Julie Taymor sees visual poetry in a moment where the audience, as well as her characters, are masked.And Stephen Schwartz is just happy to see audiences again.The creative minds behind “Hamilton,” “The Lion King” and “Wicked” are delighted that their shows are running again. But, even more important, they’re relieved that theater is back.“People are ready,” said Taymor, the director of “The Lion King,” “and it’s time.”Schwartz, the composer and lyricist of “Wicked,” said the long months of streaming have been no substitute for live theater.“The thing about live theater is it’s a community, not just onstage, but with the audience the whole theater becomes a community, and we’ve just really really missed that,” he said. “You can’t equal that experience on screens — on little screens or even big screens — it’s just not the same as live people and a live audience and what happens every night between them and among them in that theater. That’s irreplaceable.”The three creators spoke to The New York Times in a joint interview Tuesday afternoon as they prepared for their own shows to open. They had decided to open on the same night to call attention to Broadway and to signal that the industry is open, ready for visitors and prioritizing safety (all theatergoers must be vaccinated, except children under 12, and masked).“Broadway is a huge part of New York City — what defines New York City, and the economy of New York City,” Schwartz said. “So we are really thrilled to be back, and we want everyone out there to know it’s safe to come and join us.”Taymor said theater has a particularly important role to play in times when the world is confronting so many challenges. “This is what we do as theater people, especially in the dark times,” she said. “This is exactly what we’re here for — we’re here to inspire and excite.”Miranda, who not only wrote “Hamilton” but also starred in the original production, said he was relieved to see theater back.“There was a lot of fear that this day would never come,” he said. “Just even walking over here and seeing Times Square bustling, and seeing Elmo again, and I saw the line around the TKTS booth for the first time in a year and change, and so I’m just really thrilled that theater’s back.” More

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      in Theater

      'Wicked' Is First Broadway Tour Since Coronavirus Shutdown

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      DALLAS — Talia Suskauer knows what it’s like to be green. She remembers the feel of pigment and powder on her arms, neck, and face; how the color seemed to seep into her pores and linger behind her ears; what it was like to see a strange but familiar self staring back from a mirror.She didn’t know that, on a hot July afternoon in Dallas, getting painted once again would make her cry.Sixteen months after the touring production of “Wicked” in which Suskauer stars as the green-skinned witch Elphaba was forced to close, the cast and crew have reassembled in Dallas for a high-stakes effort to start again. The show’s first performance here on Tuesday, the first by any touring Broadway production since the coronavirus pandemic shut down shows across the nation, will be a sign of hope for a battered theater industry, but also a test at a time when the spread of the Delta variant has Americans once again on edge.Talia Suskauer is back as Elphaba, and she has two veterans to help her get into character: Joyce B. McGilberry, left, a makeup supervisor who has been with the show since 2006, and Andrea DiVincenzo Shairs, a hair supervisor, who joined in 2003.Cooper Neill for The New York Times“Each show is going to be someone’s first time back at the theater, so each show is going to be emotional,” Suskauer said. She had her own emotions to draw on, tearing up as she eased back into the makeup chair for the first time since the tour’s March 13, 2020, shutdown in Madison, Wis. “I felt like our purpose was being stripped away,” she said, “and now, to come back, it’s overwhelming.”Touring is a huge part of the commercial theater ecosystem. It’s big money — in the most recent full theater season, 18.5 million people attended touring shows in North America, and those productions grossed $1.6 billion.The resumption of touring will once again allow people who live far from New York to see Broadway titles. And it will provide much-needed income for actors, musicians and other theater workers left unemployed by the pandemic.“If anybody doesn’t love a national tour, there’s something they’re not getting,” said Cleavant Derricks, the Tony winner who is playing the Wizard in the “Wicked” tour.Cooper Neill for The New York Times“If anybody doesn’t love a national tour, there’s something they’re not getting,” said Cleavant Derricks, who in 1982 won a Tony Award for his role in the original Broadway production of “Dreamgirls,” and who now plays the Wizard in the “Wicked” tour. “You’re going from state to state, meeting different people, seeing different aspects of the country, and each night applause comes your way. How can you beat something like that?”A revisionist back story for “The Wizard of Oz,” “Wicked” is a musical theater juggernaut that opened on Broadway in 2003, has sold more than $5 billion worth of tickets and has been seen by more than 60 million people in 100 cities around the world. The show, which revolves around a fraught friendship between the witches Elphaba and Glinda, has been running so long that Suskauer and her co-star and fellow Floridian, Allison Bailey, both saw it as children..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“I saw it in New York when I was in seventh grade, and it was so magical,” said Bailey, who plays Glinda. “It’s why I wanted to do theater.”The show, which has been touring since 2005, travels from city to city with 13 trucks that carry the set, costumes and a lot of equipment and supplies.Cooper Neill for The New York Times“Wicked,” with songs by Stephen Schwartz, a book by Winnie Holzman and direction by Joe Mantello, has been touring North America since 2005. The tour now travels from city to city in 13 trucks that transport the set, the sound and light equipment, more than 300 costumes and about 100 wigs.The touring company includes 33 actors, an 18-person crew, six musicians, three stage managers, two company managers and a physical therapist, plus the 16 dogs, one cat and three ferrets brought along for companionship. The traveling company is then supplemented at each stop by 32 local crew members and nine local musicians, as well as dozens of stagehands to help load the set in and out.The resumption of the “Wicked” tour, which comes a month before the first musicals are scheduled to restart on Broadway, will soon be followed by others: Beginning in mid-August, touring productions of “Hamilton” will resume in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Tempe, Ariz., and in September tours of “Frozen” and “My Fair Lady,” as well as the play “What the Constitution Means to Me,” will hit the road.In New York, ticket holders to Broadway shows will be required to show proof of vaccination and wear masks, at least through October. In Dallas, the touring production of “Wicked” is requiring vaccines for cast and crew, but not for the audience, which will be instructed to wear masks. Actors will be barred from interacting with the audience, meaning no stage-door autographs or selfies, and no backstage tours.The cast was masked for rehearsals, except when singing or speaking. During performances, the actors will be unmasked.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesEarly indicators are that audiences are eager to return: The five-week Dallas run has sold strongly, and prices have held steady, ranging from $25 for a lottery ticket to $169 for the best seats.When the pandemic forced the tour to close last year, the crew packed the set and costumes into boxes and left them in the Madison theater, imagining they’d be back in a few weeks. Then, as the shutdown dragged on, the crew went back to load those boxes into trucks. Ten of the trucks spent nearly a year parked in a Wisconsin truck yard, while three, containing temperature-sensitive electronics, wigs and wardrobe, were sent to a climate-controlled warehouse in Pennsylvania.The crew was worried about how the show’s approximately 100 wigs, many of which are made of human hair, would fare during the lengthy shutdown, but they turned out to be in good condition.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesSome members of the company went home, but some had no homes — they are usually on the road so much, they don’t need them — so they stayed with family, or rented something somewhere.“Since I’ve been married, I’ve never been home this long, ever,” said the tour’s hair supervisor, Andrea DiVincenzo Shairs, who has been with “Wicked” off and on since 2003. “I went to Fort Lauderdale — my husband is there — and we actually still love each other, so it worked out!”“I saw it in New York when I was in seventh grade, and it was so magical,” Allison Bailey, the actress playing Glinda, said of “Wicked.” “It’s why I wanted to do theater.”Cooper Neill for The New York TimesReuniting was fun, but restarting was complicated, and the show set aside three weeks to get ready at Dallas’s Music Hall at Fair Park, the 3,420-seat venue “Wicked” was returning to for the sixth time. The cast was rusty, and needed to re-rehearse the show, while the crew needed to assess each piece of equipment for possible damage after months of disuse.“We were worried about what was going to come out of the trucks,” said David O’Brien, the tour’s production stage manager. “Opening these boxes of clothes, what are we going to find, and what’s it going to smell like?”There were minor problems — a dimmer rack that needed to be reprogrammed, and a warped board in the set floor that caused a sliding statue to jam — but for the most part, the crew was delighted with how well the equipment held up.While the crew reassembled the Tony-winning set, the cast rehearsed in the lobby, working on a sprung floor rented from the Texas Ballet Theater. “It’s been 16 months of singing in your shower, which is different than singing with multiple people,” said Evan Roider, the tour’s music director, “but they came back ready to go.”There were jokes about expanded waistlines and forgotten dance steps. “It’s a little more snug this time around!” Suskauer said of her costume when a button popped as she rehearsed.“Look, it’s Glinda!” Bailey rehearses her entrance in a floating bubble.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesBy the time they were working in the theater, underneath a proscenium featuring the show’s red-eyed dragon, the cast was polishing details. “Careful with your wand!” the associate director, Lisa Leguillou, instructed Bailey as she rehearsed her entrance in a floating bubble. “It’s covering your face!”Onstage, the show hasn’t changed. But backstage, there are many new precautions, including air scrubbers.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThere are, of course, new safety protocols, which the “Wicked” team is sharing in video meetings with crews from other tours as they, too, prepare to restart. Some measures are now familiar: plentiful hand sanitizer, plus masks and gloves and air scrubbers. But there are also more theater-specific strategies. Ultraviolet wands are being used to clean mask interiors, lest too much disinfectant give actors headaches. Actors now scan QR codes for their daily check-ins, in lieu of the traditional sign-in sheet on a clipboard. And partitions are being installed in the orchestra pit to try to contain any aerosols emitted by reed and brass instruments.“Our biggest concerns have been how to reinvent things we do in a Covid world,” said Steve Quinn, the tour’s company manager, who has been touring with “Wicked” for 16 years. “We’re the guinea pigs, and we’re just trying to navigate this.”Among the new safety measures: The cast’s daily sign-in is now digital, replacing the traditional pen-and-paper system. Marie Eife, a member of the ensemble, scanned the QR code as she arrived for rehearsal one morning.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesThe company’s excitement about being back together, and making a show, is tempered by some anxiety, particularly among the crew. “I want to make sure I have covered all my bases, so not by my hands would anybody become sick or injured by something I didn’t think of,” said Joyce B. McGilberry, the tour’s makeup supervisor. “I wanted to come back, but I can’t deny my concerns.”The tour company has a wide range of experience. Rebecca Gans Reavis had been playing a flying monkey for just a week before the tour shut down, while Laurel Parrish, the advance wardrobe supervisor, has been with “Wicked” since it opened on Broadway.Reavis, heartbroken, spent the pandemic in Wichita, Kan., where she and her husband took jobs teaching at her mother’s dance studio; Parrish, in northern Manhattan, worked for a cheesemonger while taking on passion projects in embroidery and sewing.“I don’t think I knew how much I missed it until we started back,” Parris said. “Seeing the clothes was like seeing old friends.”When two of the show’s cast members opted not to return after the pandemic, that created openings for the return of an alumnus, Clifton Davis, who at 75 is the oldest member of the tour cast, and a newbie, Anthony Lee Bryant, a Los Angeles-based dancer who had auditioned for the show six times before landing a spot.“Theater is being resurrected, thank God,” said Davis, who is relishing a second go as Doctor Dillamond, an erudite goat who taught at Shiz University when Glinda (then known as Galinda) and Elphaba were students there. Davis previously played the same role in 2012.Anthony Lee Bryant, right, is the only brand-new member of the tour cast, and during rehearsals he took careful notes as he watched other ensemble members dance.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesAs Bryant scrupulously took notes on dance moves, and Davis practiced his bleat, some moments seemed sure to land differently, even though they were crafted years ago. Chief among them: Glinda’s opening line, which Bailey utters as she floats in on her bubble.“It’s good to see me, isn’t it?”“I think I’m going to say it the same, but it’s going to feel different,” Bailey said. “I feel like I’m saying it on behalf of theater itself.” More

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      in Movies

      ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ at 25: ‘The Most R-Rated G You Will Ever See’

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      How did the ratings board overlook songs filled with lust and damnation? “Maybe we bamboozled them with gargoyles,” one filmmaker said.They know exactly what they got away with.“That’s the most R-rated G you will ever see in your life,” said Tab Murphy, a screenwriter of Disney’s animated “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which was released 25 years ago this month.“Thousands of dollars must have changed hands somewhere, I’m sure,” joked Gary Trousdale, who directed the film with Kirk Wise.However it came about, a ratings board made up of parents decided that a film with a musical number about lust and hellfire and a plot that involves the threat of genocide against Gypsies was appropriate for a general audience.Maybe the reason had to do with the studio: Nearly all of Disney’s hand-drawn animated movies had been rated G up to that point. Maybe it was the marketing, which presented “Hunchback” as a complete departure from the dark Victor Hugo novel on which it was based, reframing it as a carnival with the tagline “Join the party!” Maybe the higher-ups at Disney exerted pressure, convinced a PG rating would hurt the box office take. (“It was a G rating or bust,” Wise said.)But the fact that what is arguably Disney’s darkest animated movie earned a rating on par with “Cinderella” reflects the subjectivity of the rating system — and how much parents’ tastes have changed over the years.“PG today is the equivalent of what G was in the 1990s,” Wise said.Trousdale added, “Nowadays, you can’t even smoke in a G film.”But one scene in particular defies explanation.“That ‘Hellfire’ sequence?” Murphy said, referring to the Stephen Schwartz-Alan Menken song sung by Judge Claude Frollo about his conflict between piety and lust for Esmeralda. “Come on, man. Come on.”Talking gargoyles were added to lighten the story.DisneyMURPHY HAD LONG WANTED to adapt the 1831 Gothic story of Esmeralda, a beautiful Roma girl who captures the hearts of several Parisian men, including Quasimodo, a bell-ringer with a severe hunchback whom Hugo describes as “hideous” and “a devil of a man.”But then he realized what he’d gotten himself into.“I was like, ‘Oh, God, I don’t want to write a singing, dancing, watered-down film that turns this amazing piece of world literature into a typical Disney movie,’” he said.But, he said, it was to the credit of Walt Disney Company executives at the time, Roy E. Disney and Michael D. Eisner, that they took a hands-off approach.“I was never told to stay away from this or that or you can’t do this,” he said. “They were like, ‘You write the story you want to tell, and let us worry about our brand.’”Of course, the Hugo novel, in which many major characters die at the end, was “too depressing” for a Disney film. So Murphy had to get creative.He decided the story would focus on the colorful fantasy world Quasimodo imagines while stuck in his bell tower. There’d be a festival. Talking gargoyles. A hero to root for.Instead of Quasimodo (voiced by Tom Hulce) being whipped on the pillory, he’s pelted with vegetables and humiliated at the Feast of Fools. Hugo’s troubled archdeacon, Claude Frollo (Tony Jay), became an evil magistrate. Disney did not want to take on the church, Trousdale said. Unlike in the novel, Esmeralda (Demi Moore) is saved by Quasimodo and the dashing Phoebus (Kevin Kline), the rebel captain of the guards. All three live happily ever after instead of dying, as both Quasimodo and Esmeralda do in the book.But, Wise said, there was always one looming issue they had to deal with: Frollo’s lust for Esmeralda.The screenwriters had to figure out how to deal with Frollo’s lust for Esmeralda. Disney“We knew that was going to be a really delicate topic,” he said. “But we also knew we had to tell that story, because it’s key to the central love rectangle.”At first, Murphy tried to tackle it in words.“I’d originally written a monologue for that scene that was filled with lots of subtext showing that his anger was all about his forbidden lust for her,” Murphy said. “But then Stephen and Alan said, ‘We think that can be a great song.’”Six months later, a small package from Schwartz, who wrote the lyrics, and Menken, who composed the score, arrived at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif. Inside was a cassette with a new song.Murphy, Trousdale, Wise and Don Hahn, the film’s producer, gathered in an office, popped the tape into a cassette player and pressed play — and realized what they were hearing.In a crashing percussive number, Frollo, backed by a choir chanting in Latin, agonizes over his lust and his religious faith and his hatred of the Roma.“This burning desire,” he sings in the film, rubbing her scarf sensuously against his face, “is turning me to sin.” (Schwartz sang the part on the demo.)“I swear to God, everyone’s jaw slowly started to drop open,” Murphy said. “At the end of it, Kirk reached over, clicked off the cassette player, sat back, crossed his arms, and said, ‘Well, that’s never going to make it into the movie.’ And it did!”Initially the filmmakers imagined Frollo’s lust would be subtext. Instead he wound up singing about his “burning desire.”DisneyTHOUGH IT WAS NEVER STATED EXPLICITLY, Wise said a G rating was the expectation.“The studio felt anything above a G would threaten the film’s box office,” he said. “This was before ‘Shrek,’ or movies that made a PG rating in animation commonplace.”A G-rated film, according to the Motion Picture Association of America system, which was introduced in 1968, “contains nothing in theme, language, nudity, sex, violence or other matters that, in the view of the Rating Board, would offend parents whose younger children view the motion picture.” Some snippets of language, it says, “may go beyond polite conversation but they are common everyday expressions.”“We never thought we’d get away with the term ‘hellfire,’” Trousdale said.The first cut of “Hunchback” indeed didn’t pass muster for a G — but it wasn’t the use of the word “hell” or “damnation” that the board took issue with.It was the sound effects.In the “Hellfire” number, imagined as a nightmarish, hallucinogenic sequence, Frollo is tormented by hooded, red-robed figures that reflect his slipping grip on reality.“This burning desire,” he sings, gazing at a dancing Esmeralda figure in his fireplace, “is turning me to sin.”The ratings board was uncomfortable with the word “sin,” Trousdale said. But the sequence was already animated, and the soundtrack recorded, so they couldn’t change the lyric.Then Hahn came up with a solution: Make the “Whoosh!” when the hooded judges rush up from the floor a little louder so it would drown out the “sin.” It worked, Trousdale said.The sound effects seemed to trouble the ratings board more than the language in the “Hellfire” sequence.DisneyBut what ultimately got the film its G rating, Wise said, was a change so tiny that “you’ll never believe this.”In the scene where Frollo sneaks up behind Esmeralda and sniffs her hair, the ratings board thought the sniff was “too suggestive,” he said.“They were like, ‘Could you lower the volume of that?’” he said. “And we did, and it got the G rating.”NEITHER THE POSTERS nor the trailers hinted at the darker themes.“There was definitely a huuuuuge effort to emphasize the lighthearted aspects of ‘Hunchback,’” Menken said, laughing.The film’s tagline? “Join the party!”“Maybe that was the right campaign for the studio to get people in the theater,” Hahn said. “But I’m sure I wouldn’t do that today — I think there’s a truth-in-advertising responsibility that perhaps we overlooked back then.”When the film, which cost $70 million to make before marketing, opened on June 21, 1996, it was a bit of a disappointment at the box office, grossing about $100.1 million domestically. Trousdale said they did get some pushback from parents’ groups about the G rating.“They were saying ‘You tricked us; you deceived us,’” he said. “The marketing was all the happy stuff and ‘Come to the Feast of Fools; it’s a party!’ with talking gargoyles, confetti and pies in the face. And then that wasn’t the film, and people were really pissed off.”Parents’ groups complained that the marketing emphasis on talking gargoyles and other fun elements was misleading.DisneyTom Zigo, a spokesman for the Classification and Rating Administration, which administers the rating system, said that he could not speak about the specifics of the “Hunchback” G, but that it was “very possible” that a movie rated 25 years ago would receive a different rating today.Hahn, Menken, Murphy, Trousdale and Wise all agreed there would be no chance of the film getting a G rating today — or even, Murphy suggested, being made at all.“Disney was willing to take some chances in that movie that I don’t think they’d take today,” he said. “That’s a PG-13 in my book.”Yet the movie has stood the test of time — Frollo, Wise noted, feels like a “very contemporary” villain in the #MeToo era — and remains a favorite among young adults who rewatch and discover references they missed the first time around.“I’ve read posts on fan pages from a few fans in their mid-20s and 30s who were pretty young when they saw this,” Trousdale said. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, this just messed me up when I saw it as a kid, but I still love it.’”Menken said “Hellfire” pushed the envelope more in terms of what Disney does than any song he’s ever written.“Maybe, in retrospect, ‘Hunchback’ was a bridge too far,” he said. “But God, am I glad they took that bridge too far.” More