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      ‘Days of Wine and Roses’ Musical to Open on Broadway This Winter

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      Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James will reprise the roles they played Off Broadway earlier this year.“Days of Wine and Roses,” a musical adaptation of a midcentury story about a loving marriage destroyed by alcoholism, will come to Broadway early next year starring the acclaimed stage performers Kelli O’Hara and Brian d’Arcy James.The production had a 10-week run earlier this year at the Atlantic Theater Company, an Off Broadway nonprofit. Writing in The New York Times, the critic Laura Collins-Hughes called it a “jazzy, aching musical,” and praised its “glorious sound.”O’Hara is a seven-time Tony Award nominee who won the award in 2015 for her performance in a revival of “The King and I.” James is a four-time nominee, most recently for last season’s revival of “Into the Woods.”The Broadway production, directed by Michael Greif (“Dear Evan Hansen”), is scheduled to begin previews Jan. 6 and to open Jan. 28 at Studio 54 for a 16-week run. The lead producers are Kevin McCollum, Mark Cortale, Lorenzo Thione and Joey Monda.“Days of Wine and Roses” began its life as a teleplay in 1958; it was then adapted into a film in 1962. The musical features a score by Adam Guettel and a book by Craig Lucas; they previously collaborated on the 2005 musical “The Light in the Piazza,” and both of them have spoken about their own struggles with substance abuse.Guettel said he’s not sure when he first encountered the film, but that it immediately resonated. “I was really streaming tears at that point,” he said. “I had a sense of how alcohol and drugs had affected my life, and even though I had escaped the clutches of all that, the vivid recognition of it really spurred me on, not to create some sort of cautionary tale, but to depict how being addicted affects your life and the people around you.”The musical, like many, has had a long and bumpy road to Broadway. Guettel said he first discussed the idea with O’Hara two decades ago, when the two were working on “The Light in the Piazza,” and that he had developed the score for her.“It seemed like the right role for her, even then, in terms of the tenderness and the strength,” he said.James joined the project in the earliest days as well; he and O’Hara are friends who performed together in “Sweet Smell of Success.”There have been others who have come and gone — at one point, John Logan was the writer; at one point, Scott Rudin was the producer; at one point, Lincoln Center Theater was going to stage the show.“The fact that it is coming through the steeplechase intact is incredible,” Guettel said. More

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      Aubrey Plaza Has Found Her Scene Partner

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      “Oh, put it down. Down the hatch,” Aubrey Plaza said while eating pizza for breakfast, in a downtown Los Angeles restaurant that was otherwise deserted on a late-August Friday morning.Her colleague, Christopher Abbott, was assessing the spread of carbs, dairy, prosciutto and espresso on the table, declaring it a “nightmare for the gut.”“You have your fiber pills in the car. Why don’t you go get them?” Plaza said, teasingly, unleashing objections from Abbott before she hastily backpedaled. “They’re mine, they’re mine. I take them.”Four years after meeting on the set of the comedic thriller “Black Bear,” the actors are working together again, this time on an Off Broadway revival of John Patrick Shanley’s play “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” in which they will portray strangers who become lovers after meeting at a dive bar in the Bronx.Plaza is making her theatrical debut in the two-person play, which begins performances on Oct. 30 at the Lucille Lortel Theater in the West Village, and the only person she could see herself sharing it with was Abbott, an experienced stage actor with whom she shares both an artistic symmetry and a knowing, playful rapport.After years spent proving that she could be much more than versions of April Ludgate, the comically unaffected, scowl-prone intern in “Parks and Recreation,” Plaza, 39, has become one of the most sought-after actresses in Hollywood. Her performance as a jaded lawyer in Season 2 of the HBO series “The White Lotus” was an audience favorite, and her role as a budding scammer in the big-screen thriller “Emily the Criminal” was praised by critics for its ferocity and nuance.“I like to just throw things out the window also and laugh and mess around and not take it so seriously,” Plaza said. Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesAt the same time, she has reached a level of celebrity where, to some, she has become less known for her association with any particular character than for just being herself: an internet darling known for impassively delivering outlandish, sometimes sinister commentary that can leave late-night hosts unsure if she is joking.In Abbott, 37, who played a lovelorn boyfriend with a dark turn in the HBO comedy “Girls,” Plaza has found a co-star who seems to know exactly when she’s joking, gamely joining in on the weirdness with which she has become associated.While mulling the menu, Abbott responded with an exaggerated Italian accent when Plaza assumed one, later testing aloud his gruff Bronx brogue for the play. (“Do you wanna hee-yuh what I’m wuh-kin on?” Abbott blurted. “I’m going for an Andrew Dice Clay kind of thing.”)“He cares but he also doesn’t care; it’s the best recipe for me for a scene partner,” Plaza said, resembling a mid-20th-century movie star with her shoulder-length hair loosely curled and dark-rimmed sunglasses propped atop her head. “It’s fun and it’s also good and it’s also safe. I like to just throw things out the window also and laugh and mess around and not take it so seriously. It’s a hard combo to come by.”The feeling is mutual. “We’re both unafraid to be ugly and weird and strange,” said Abbott, who started his professional acting career 15 years ago in an Off Broadway production of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s “Good Boys and True,” about a scandal at a prep school.Plaza’s first play as a professional actress is not a tame one. Her character, Roberta, is a lonely divorcée who is both desperate for love and confident that all she deserves is punishment; Abbott’s character, Danny, is a lonely brute who will start a fight over the most minor of slights. Together, they fall into a cycle of screaming, crying, slapping, choking and expletive-laced bickering. There is also kissing, cuddling, tender touching and musings on fairy-tale love.PLANS FOR THE PLAY were solidified well before Hollywood writers and actors went on strike, resulting in the industrywide shutdown. Over a year ago, Jeff Ward, an actor (“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.”) who is directing “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea,” pitched the idea to Abbott, a friend and former roommate. Abbott immediately agreed, and in reading the short description of Roberta in Shanley’s script, he thought of Aubrey.“I don’t want to paraphrase it,” Abbott began, “but it was something like — —”“Sexy…,” Plaza suggested. “Beautiful … broken?” (In fact, it was Roberta’s “nervous bright eyes” that made him think of Plaza for the role.)If not for the strike, Plaza would have spent much of the summer filming a movie, “Animal Friends,” alongside Ryan Reynolds and Jason Momoa. Abbott would have been traveling to the Venice Film Festival for the premiere of the surreal comedy “Poor Things” (where it would go on to win the Golden Lion) and Ward would have been in Japan promoting the live-action manga series “One Piece.” It just so happened that amid the strike, the actors and their director had time to simply talk about the play and what they might do with it.“It feels like the secret ingredient to this whole thing might be time,” Ward said. “A little extra time.”Abbott “cares but he also doesn’t care,” Plaza said. “It’s the best recipe for me for a scene partner.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesPart of what they are working through is an idea that Ward said came to him years ago, when he and Abbott were living in Bushwick. They met about 14 years ago at an audition for a play: Abbott got the job, while Ward was hired as his understudy. At parties, Ward, an experimental dance enthusiast, noticed that Abbott was a good dancer, and thought they might one day collaborate on something involving movement.Then last year, while thinking about ways to incorporate choreography into a production of “Danny,” Ward picked up a copy of the script with the work’s full title: “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea: An Apache Dance.”The subtitle is a reference to a French dance style, developed into a popular cabaret act in the early 1900s, that mixes a seductive kind of tango with a violent domestic battle in which the dancers fling each other around in between loving détentes.It was a common pop cultural reference in the 1950s and ’60s, when Shanley was growing up in the east Bronx. The dance appears in old movies like “Can-Can,” with Shirley MacLaine; cartoons like “Louvre Come Back to Me!,” featuring Pepé Le Pew; and sitcoms like “I Love Lucy.” In that show’s first season, Ethel Mertz describes it as the dance “where the tough Frenchman grabs the girl by the hair and throws her over his shoulder and slams her down on the floor and steps on her.”A reader of the script will quickly see what Shanley meant with the subtitle. After Danny and Roberta meet, their encounter swings between desperate affection and uncontrollable, instinctual aggression. (Shanley based Danny’s proclivity for fistfights on his own teenage tendencies.)“I put that in there to give some guidance as to how the play might be done,” Shanley said of the subtitle in a phone interview. “It’s really about the interior life of these two people and how they meet and explode by touching each other.”Shanley, who has won an Oscar (for “Moonstruck”) and a Tony (for “Doubt: A Parable,” which is receiving its own starry revival on Broadway in February), gave Ward, a first-time director, his blessing to revive “Danny.” It premiered in 1984 at the Humana Festival in Louisville, Ky., with John Turturro and June Stein, before transferring to New York. (In his New York Times review, Mel Gussow wrote that the play “is the equivalent of sitting at ringside watching a prize fight that concludes in a loving embrace.”) Shanley is also allowing Ward to develop movement beyond the script’s stage direction, though he said he would make his feelings known if he disliked the additions.Those additions will be choreographed by Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber, whose gestural, sometimes pedestrian movements have depicted the inner lives of a couple, with an intimacy that almost makes observers feel as if they’re witnessing something they shouldn’t.For Abbott and Plaza, whose dance background consists of Irish step dancing as a child, a sense of voyeurism is exactly what they want the audience to feel as Danny and Roberta fall into mad, improbable love.“We’re doing this play every night for an audience, but I think you also have to do it for each other,” said Abbott, who looked character-appropriate in a white T-shirt and chain necklace, a fishing hook tattoo visible on his forearm. “We want to entertain the audience, but I personally want to entertain Aubrey.”“I guess I like to entertain him as well,” Plaza said, adopting a voice like a hostage reading from a script before breaking into a smile.“We’re doing this play every night for an audience, but I think you also have to do it for each other,” Abbott said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesPLAZA AND ABBOTT both grew up far outside the Hollywood machine: she in Delaware, he in Connecticut. Both developed their love for movies working in video stores, and after deciding that she wanted to become an actor as a child, Plaza started out in entertainment as a “Saturday Night Live” set design intern and an NBC page. Abbott discovered acting later, in a drama class at a local community college, which led him to drop out and move to New York to study it more seriously.More than 15 years later, both actors have become recognizable faces onscreen and have gradually broken free from the association of the roles that made them famous.Since “Girls,” Abbott has taken on complex, often tortured parts in films like “James White,” about an unemployed man facing the weight of his mother’s terminal illness, and “Sanctuary,” about a hotel scion determined to break up with his longtime dominatrix. In one of his most prominent roles, he starred as the spiraling Air Force bombardier John Yossarian in the 2019 television adaptation of the novel “Catch-22.”“He has an explosive side to him,” Shanley said of Abbott. “There’s always a feeling of instability and danger.”Since “Parks and Recreation,” Plaza has hosted “S.N.L.,” received her first Emmy nomination for her performance in “White Lotus,” and taken on producing roles to gain more control over scripts she feels particularly drawn to, including “Emily the Criminal” and “Ingrid Goes West,” in which she plays an Instagram-obsessed stalker. She has stepped away from the comfort of dark indie comedy to take on a glamorous, gun-wielding action film role in this year’s “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” and she recently fulfilled a dream of working with Francis Ford Coppola on his long-awaited epic “Megalopolis.”“Black Bear,” a movie within a movie set in the Adirondack Mountains, was one of those scripts that Plaza leaped at, becoming both a producer and lead actress opposite Abbott.“Unfortunately we can’t really talk about that movie,” Plaza said, citing the continuing strike by SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union, that prohibits actors from promoting films and TV shows that have already been completed. (Plaza picketed last month alongside a miniature horse named Li’l Sebastian, a local celebrity in the Indiana town where “Parks and Recreation” is set.)But contained in that psychological thriller are hints of what could take place onstage in “Danny,” including Abbott’s wrestling, sometimes messily, with his character’s masculinity, Plaza’s talent for portraying the unhinged, and moments of crackling intimacy between them.Their characters’ relationship in “Black Bear” is shape-shifting: At first, Abbott, a soon-to-be father, can’t suppress his attraction to a houseguest (Plaza) despite the presence of his pregnant girlfriend. In the movie’s second half, the women’s roles are flipped, and Plaza is a wife tortured by jealousy, eventually descending into a drunken fit of rage and hopelessness.“From ‘Black Bear,’ it was clear that it was going to be electric. There was no ‘getting to know you’ section,” Ward said. “There’s just something about the way they match up.”“There are all different kinds of love stories, and this is just one of them,” Plaza said.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesTHE TWO ACTORS encountered “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea” in acting school — not uncommon since the play, with a surplus of opportunities to emote, is a favorite of theater classes and auditions. The actor Sam Rockwell, one of the revival’s producers, recalled doing snippets in auditions for “Last Exit to Brooklyn” (he got the part) and “The Godfather Part III” (he didn’t).Abbott approached Plaza about the role unsure if she would be open to it. Although she had acted in community theater as a child — “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Cinderella,” in which she played a stepsister — and trained in improv at the Upright Citizens Brigade, this would be something new altogether.But after Plaza read “Danny,” she knew they had to do it.“I cried. I laughed. I loved it,” she said.Despite its ubiquity, the play has had only one other Off Broadway production since its premiere — in 2004, starring Adam Rothenberg and Rosemarie DeWitt — and there has never been a Broadway production.In a phone interview, Rockwell said he suggested the production keep it that way, at least for now, even though Abbott and Plaza’s name recognition could potentially rake in ticket sales on Broadway. “I think a lot of plays have failed on Broadway because they were really meant to be Off Broadway,” said Rockwell, who is working on the show with his producing partner Mark Berger. “They had that funky quality.”After all, “Danny” is not the kind of inspirational, affirming fare that is likely to prompt theatergoers to buy T-shirts or bring their children. It’s about two damaged, shame-ridden people trying to find a way out of their own misery.“There are all different kinds of love stories, and this is just one of them,” Plaza said. “And I don’t like the idea that every piece of art that’s out there has to have some kind of social commentary or political message. It’s a play. They’re characters.”Over the remaining slice of pizza, Abbott agreed — “the ‘why now’ question is always like, ‘why not?’” — and explained that like Plaza, he had learned over the years to care about the work without caring how that work was going to benefit his career.“I don’t know — I just want to do it,” Abbott said. “I’ve let go of the question of what is it going to do for me.”Plaza squinted down at the crumb-covered pizza peel. It had hearts and the phrase “Happy Galentine’s Day” carved into it, a reference to a bit from “Parks and Recreation” that has caught on to the point of becoming a full-fledged holiday.“Is this a joke?” she asked, turning around to see if anyone might have been behind this. “It’s like I can’t escape. I’m trying to do a play. Can’t I just do a play without somebody reminding me that I was on network television?” More

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      ‘Moonlight’ Writer Tarell Alvin McCraney to Lead Geffen Playhouse

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      The prominent Los Angeles nonprofit chose the playwright to oversee its artistic programming at a time of crisis for American theaters.Tarell Alvin McCraney, an acclaimed playwright who won an Oscar for writing the story that became the 2016 film “Moonlight,” has been named the next artistic director of the Geffen Playhouse, a prominent nonprofit theater in Los Angeles.The Geffen, like many regional theaters in the United States, has been hit by a downturn in the field — as of this spring, its subscriptions were 40 percent below prepandemic levels. But it was among the more innovative theater companies when theaters were closed during the pandemic, producing some popular virtual shows, and it is now in better shape than many.McCraney, 42, said he was fully aware of the crisis facing the field, which he said was the impetus for him to decide to step into leadership.“We’re at a place where, if I really love this, if I really want to effect change, I have to get in,” he said. “I can’t just sit on the sidelines. Across entertainment and across the arts there is a strong shift for everybody. Everybody is feeling this new something — that something else is coming — and I could wade through it, or I could be helpful by being in leadership.”McCraney, an important figure in the American theatrical landscape, won a so-called genius grant from the MacArthur Foundation in 2013, and he recently wrapped up six years as chairman of the influential playwriting program at Yale’s David Geffen School of Drama. He is also a member of the ensemble at Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, and an associate artist at the Royal Shakespeare Company in Britain.His play “Choir Boy,” about a gay adolescent at an elite prep school, was staged on Broadway in 2019 and has been performed in theaters around the country, including at the Geffen. Among his other plays are “The Brothers Size” (a part of his “Brother/Sister Plays” trilogy), which has been discussed for a possible Broadway production, and “Head of Passes.”“Moonlight” was adapted from a script McCraney wrote called “In Moonlight Black Boys Look Blue”; in 2017 he and Barry Jenkins shared the Academy Award for adapted screenplay.McCraney said he would keep writing his own work, for the Geffen and for other theaters, even as he assumes this new role, in which he will choose the productions staged at the Geffen and oversee their artistic development.Stepping into a leadership role, he added, is not as much of a swerve as it might seem. “It’s been something that’s been with me for a long time,” he said. “As a young person in Miami, I always imagined I would run the Coconut Grove Playhouse, which has been shuttered for years.”The Geffen, founded in 1995, has two stages — the 512-seat Gil Cates Theater and the 149-seat Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater. The Geffen has 45 full-time staffers (and another 150 part-timers) and a $12 million annual budget. McCraney succeeds Matt Shakman as artistic director; Gil Cates Jr., whose father founded the theater, serves as its executive director and chief executive.McCraney currently lives in Miami, which is where he grew up; he said he would relocate to Los Angeles. He has worked in Los Angeles, not only on “Moonlight,” but also in the writers room for the television show “David Makes Man,” and for a variety of other projects, including a production of “Head of Passes” at the neighboring Center Theater Group.“Los Angeles is a city that is reminiscent of Miami,” he said, “and it has a theater scene that is often thought of as secondary, but I always thought it had a rich community of artists who were hybrid, and that’s exciting for me to connect to folks who have those multi-hyphenate careers.”Building stronger relationships with U.C.L.A., which is across the street from the Geffen, will be among his priorities, he said, as well as nourishing playwrights in a way that he felt nourished by nonprofit theaters early in his career.“We don’t necessarily take care of our artists,” he said. “I want to be more intentional about that.” More

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      in Theater

      ‘Water for Elephants’ Musical to Arrive on Broadway Next Spring

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      The show, with a group of circus artists as part of the cast, is adapted from Sara Gruen’s best-selling novel.“Water for Elephants,” Sara Gruen’s novel about a Depression-era veterinary student whose life is transformed when he joins a circus, became a surprise best seller after it was published in 2006. Five years later came a film adaptation, and next spring, a spectacle-rich stage musical version will open on Broadway.The musical, as befits a show set primarily at a circus, will feature seven circus performers, who make up about one-third of the onstage cast. As in the novel, the story is told through the recollections of the main character in his older years.“Most people think of the story as about this young man who jumps on a train and joins the circus, but I’m really compelled by his older self, looking back on the chapter that changed the course of his life forever,” said the musical’s director, Jessica Stone, who also directed “Kimberly Akimbo,” the winner of this year’s Tony for best musical. “The show is about the kind of person you are when you lose everything, and it’s also about chosen family, and the choices you make with the time that you have.”“Water for Elephants,” a big-budget musical that has been in development for about eight years, had an initial run in June and July at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta. After some reworking aimed at strengthening the storytelling, it is scheduled to begin previews on Feb. 24 and to open March 21 at the Imperial Theater.The musical is set largely in 1931; its book is by Rick Elice (“Jersey Boys,” “Peter and the Starcatcher”) and the score is by PigPen Theater Co. The circus design is by Shana Carroll, who is an artistic director of The 7 Fingers, a prestigious Montreal-based circus collective; Carroll is also collaborating on the choreography with Jesse Robb.The show is being capitalized for up to $25 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which could make it the biggest-budget production of the current Broadway season.The producing team is being led by Peter Schneider, a former Disney animation executive who played a key role in bringing “The Lion King” to Broadway, and Jennifer Costello, a former executive at the John Gore Organization, where Schneider is the chairman of the board. The other lead producers are Grove Entertainment, Frank Marshall, Isaac Robert Hurwitz and Seth A. Goldstein. More

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      Echoing Federal Theater Project, 18 Towns Plan Simultaneous Events

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      The theme “No Place Like Home” will drive shows and festivals in both large cities and rural locales of this country on July 27, 2024.One night in the fall of 1936, with Fascism rising in Europe, theaters in 18 cities and towns across the United States staged productions of the dystopian play, “It Can’t Happen Here,” under the auspices of the Federal Theater Project, which was created to provide Depression-era artists with work.Now, inspired by that moment, organizations in 18 American cities and towns are planning a contemporary version of that endeavor: On a single day next summer, they will each present a participatory arts project responding to a more hopeful prompt, “No Place Like Home,” from the “Wizard of Oz.”Given the atomization of American culture, the communities will not present a single show — in fact, many of them are not staging shows at all — but they will each come up with ways to express something that connects notions of home with culture and with health on July 27, 2024. In Chicago, the city will establish artist apprenticeships at mental health clinics; in Tucson, Ariz., Borderlands Theater will create a “theatrical showcase” including a play about mental health and healing.The initiative is the brainchild of Lear deBessonet, a New York-based director who created Public Works, a program of the nonprofit Public Theater that develops musical adaptations of classic works and stages them with a combination of professional and amateur actors. The Public Works model has been adopted by theaters in other American cities, and in London.“Art, by necessity, must look different in every place, to reflect its own community,” deBessonet said. “Our projects are not exclusively theater, or even predominantly theater, but really are reflecting the unique voice and character of the people in each of these places — they are making things that only they could make because they’re making them in direct relation with the people of their place.”DeBessonet, who is now the artistic director of the Encores! program at City Center, is working with Nataki Garrett, who just wrapped up a fraught run as artistic director of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and Clyde Valentin, who previously led Ignite/Arts Dallas at Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. They are the artistic directors for a program called One Nation/One Project, and are calling the initiative “Arts for EveryBody.”“How do we solve these problems that are happening within these large-scale organizational structures that are not moving in the direction that we need them to move in?” Garrett asked. “One way that you do that is, you go meet the people at their source — you go where they are and you engage with them in the way that they have been engaging outside of our museums and theaters and other spaces.”The endeavor, which is inspired by a “Wizard of Oz”-based prompt, has been designed with a belief that participating in the arts can improve health outcomes.Silver Screen Collection/Getty ImagesThe program has set a goal of a $14 million budget. Unlike the Federal Theater Project, which was government-sponsored, as part of the Works Progress Administration, the current initiative is being supported primarily by contributions from foundations and individuals and is sponsored by the Tides Center, a nonprofit philanthropic organization that supports social change. Many of the projects are collaborations between arts groups, local governments and community health centers.The endeavor, working with the Center for Arts in Medicine at the University of Florida, has been designed in the belief that participation in the arts can improve health outcomes, and the organizers have commissioned studies to research that connection.The 18 communities chosen to take part are a mix of urban and rural, large and small, from Honolulu to the South Bronx; the National League of Cities helped with site selection and project design. Valentin said one priority was to “not have it be something that’s just in the coastal elite cities — geographically we think there’s profound diversity.”Three cities — Chicago, New York and Seattle — that were in the 1936 project are taking part. Some of the communities are planning work that will call attention to local challenges: Phillips County, Ark., will highlight issues with the local water supply; Oakland, Calif., will focus on housing costs; and Utica, Miss. is seeking to generate conversation about food insecurity associated with the lack of a local grocery store.“I think this is a much needed departure from the divisiveness we see,” said Carlton Turner, a co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Cultural Production, which will be organizing a food and wellness festival, with lots of music, in the rural community of Utica. He added, “This opportunity to bring these 18 communities together is a way to heighten our commonalities, versus homing in on the things we disagree about.” More

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      Rachel McAdams to Make Broadway Debut in ‘Mary Jane’

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      The play, by Amy Herzog, is about a mother caring for a chronically ill child.The film star Rachel McAdams will make her Broadway debut next spring in an acclaimed and heart-wrenching play about a mother caring for a small child with a serious illness.McAdams will star in “Mary Jane,” a drama by Amy Herzog that debuted at Yale Repertory Theater in 2017 and was followed by an Off Broadway run at New York Theater Workshop that same year. In The New York Times, the critic Jesse Green called the play “a heartbreaker for anyone human” and “the most profound and harrowing of Ms. Herzog’s many fine plays.”McAdams, who became famous playing Regina George in the 2004 movie “Mean Girls,” performed regularly onstage while growing up in Canada and studied theater at York University in Ontario. But she has not performed onstage professionally since she was a student. In a telephone interview, she said her initial career aspirations were to perform as a theater actor.“I had dreams of going to the Stratford Festival in Canada, and hadn’t really entertained Broadway — that was so far off, and even now I’m pinching myself,” she said. “I’ve been looking for a play forever, but kind of casually — not fully committed to it — and this came along, I read it, and I just was so taken with it.”She said she found the play “beautifully written” and “couldn’t stop thinking about it. It was already inside of me.”“It’s shedding light on the difficulties, but also the resiliency, of families with children with special needs,” she added. “There’s actually a lot of comedy to the piece as well — she’s drawn an amazingly positive, resilient character in Mary Jane, and really well-drawn, supporting characters around her.”McAdams was nominated for an Academy Award for the 2015 film “Spotlight.” She also starred in the 2004 film adaptation of “The Notebook”; a musical adaptation of that same story is scheduled to open on Broadway in March.McAdams said her decision to come to Broadway was not related to the dual strikes by screenwriters and actors that have largely idled Hollywood. She said she had committed to “Mary Jane” before the strikes began. And though apprehensive about returning to the stage, McAdams is also looking forward to it.“There’s no editor — you’re really so naked and vulnerable,” she said. “I hope my training will support me, but it was such a long time ago.”“I think it might be like riding a bike,” she added. However, she said, “there’s a little bit of the unknown about it. And I think also just having emotional stamina — you really don’t know until you’re there if you’re going to be able to fill your vessel up enough to keep you going. So it’s just all those ‘I won’t know until I get there’ things, but I’m excited to do the work.”The Off Broadway production won three Obie Awards, for Herzog’s playwriting, for direction by Anne Kauffman, and for a lead performance by Carrie Coon. There have since been several productions at regional theaters; one is now running in Santa Rosa, Calif.The nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club will present the Broadway production, also directed by Kauffman, at its Samuel J. Friedman Theater. Previews are scheduled to begin on April 2; an opening date and the names of the other cast members have not yet been announced.Herzog, whose play “4000 Miles” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2013, has recently turned her attention to revising classic works: She adapted Henrik Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House” for a Broadway production starring Jessica Chastain and Arian Moayed that ran earlier this year, and she is adapting Ibsen’s “An Enemy of the People” for a Broadway production planning to open next spring with Jeremy Strong in the title role. More

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      Rachel Bloom Enjoys the Ride

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      The writer and actress visits Coney Island as the New York leg of “Death, Let Me Do My Show” arrives Off Broadway.“My grandfather went on this one time,” Rachel Bloom effused on a recent afternoon. “He thought he was going to die.”A writer-performer best known for the cult musical comedy “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” Bloom was standing at the base of Coney Island’s Cyclone, the 96-year-old wooden thrill ride designated as a landmark by American Coaster Enthusiasts. She was in town to begin technical rehearsals for the New York leg of “Death, Let Me Do My Show,” a mostly one-woman comedy about existential dread at the Lucille Lortel Theater.That dread is familiar to her. And personal. She first experienced it as a school-age child, after emerging from Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion attraction. “I just had this thought of, we’re all going to die someday,” she said. “And I couldn’t shake that.”She has since learned coping mechanisms — how to stop the thoughts before they start or, if that fails, to do something that returns her to her body. Something like riding the world’s second-steepest wooden roller coaster, which boasts 60-mile-per-hour speeds and an 85-foot drop. Bloom — brisk, animated, with a mind that sometimes outraces her mouth — apparently finds a 3.75 G-force relaxing.“When my brain is spinning about something that I cannot solve, the only way to actually fix it is to not think about it and not engage and to be present and in my body,” she said. “What’s the encapsulation of that? It’s being on a roller coaster.”Bloom as Rebecca Bunch (with Santino Fontana, left, and Vincent Rodriguez III) in an episode of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.”Robert Voets/The CWAs with existential dread, Bloom came to coasters young. Having grown up in Los Angeles, within driving distance of the Disneyland, Six Flags, Knott’s Berry Farm trifecta, her favorites include the GhostRider, the Incredicoaster, the Riddler’s Revenge. Though she graduated from New York University, she had never ridden the Cyclone.Bloom had arrived on the boardwalk frazzled from subway hassles. She wore dark pants, a printed shirt over a lacy bra, a baseball cap bought at Mel Brooks’s Vegas show, hoop earrings, Ray-Bans. A young man had hit on her on the train ride over and she had pretended to be a graphic designer named Jessica, then given him a fake Instagram handle. To prepare for the ride, she primed herself with a Nathan’s hot dog (a person should never coaster on an empty stomach), an application of sunscreen to her décolletage and a warm-up cruise on a kiddie coaster, the Sea Serpent. (This was the most intense coaster I could handle, and Bloom now owns a picture of me surrounded by children and looking absolutely terrified.) Then it was time to approach the Cyclone.Her director, Seth Barrish, a solo show veteran, had warned against it, revealing that the last time he had ridden the Cyclone, he had popped a rib. But Bloom was undaunted.“I trust it,” she said, as she approached the ticket booth. She was going to think about drops, thrills, camelback humps. Not injury. Not death.“I think it is very important to not ignore death,” Bloom said. “And to acknowledge that it’s coming for us, but to not let it overwhelm us.”Amir Hamja/The New York TimesFor what it’s worth, Bloom didn’t set out to write a show about the fear of death. She began work on it in 2019, just as “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” was ending. (Owing to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes, she could neither discuss that CW comedy nor her short-lived showbiz series “Reboot.”) At first, the stage show was resolutely silly. Its big number concerned a tree with blossoms that smelled like ejaculate. She became pregnant that year and planned to film the show a few months after her due date, then release it as a special.But the world and the novel coronavirus had other ideas. She gave birth in late March, just as she learned that her songwriting partner, Adam Schlesinger, had been admitted to the hospital and was on a ventilator. Her daughter needed a week in the NICU and some time on a ventilator, too. And then, just as her daughter was discharged, Bloom was told that Schlesinger had died from complications of the coronavirus.She’d been thinking about death already. (Pregnancy and maternal mortality rate statistics have a way of forcing that.) After Schlesinger died, those thoughts worsened. “It was awful,” she said. “It was just too profound.”Months later, in the home office that has since become her daughter’s playroom, she looked up at the run order for the show. There was the song about the tree, a bit about pregnancy tests. “This is all moot,” she remembered thinking. “The world is falling apart, my friend’s dead. What is this? It just seems so absurd.” She began to ask herself if a world that felt fundamentally terrible could still support the raunchy, the frivolous. Could she still sing about ejaculate now?As she put it, “What is the place of laughter and silliness when you’ve stared into an abyss?”About a year after that, she felt ready to offer an answer: Onstage, with the abyss as co-star. As she kept working on the show, most of the material that didn’t concern life and death fell away. (Somehow, the tree remained.) The show that emerged and which she has since performed in a half-dozen cities still begins breezily. “Who’s ready to just have fun and pretend it’s 2019?” Bloom announces in the opening moments. Not Bloom. The transformed show becomes a way — in song, video and bits about vaginal bleeding — to work through dread and despair.“I think it is very important to not ignore death,” she said. “And to acknowledge that it’s coming for us, but to not let it overwhelm us.” (In this, the show dovetails with the last sections of her recent essay collection, “I Want to Be Where the Normal People Are.”)Bloom said she doesn’t include anything in her show that “I’m not ready to stand behind 100 percent or any emotion that isn’t processed.”Amir Hamja/The New York TimesThe show isn’t bleak. Or even especially raw. Bloom is a practiced comedian. Barrish is an experienced director. While she admits to having a “a lower level of embarrassment or shame” than most people, she doesn’t include anything that she hasn’t already worked through. “Anything that I’m not ready to stand behind 100 percent or any emotion that isn’t processed,” she said. The character she plays in the show is a Rachel Bloom that hasn’t yet dealt with birth and loss. But she gets there. And the show ends with a revelation that she actually had, in the ocean, on vacation, about her daughter and her dog and an acceptance of her own mortality.“It’s almost like when I start the show I’m pretending to be myself years ago, and then by the end of the show, I’m caught up,” she said.This mental equilibrium suggests that a ride on the Cyclone wasn’t absolutely necessary. But a lack of immediate anguish wouldn’t stop her. After buying a ticket she strode through the gate and then into a seat toward the back of the train, the lap belt tight. Then with a jerk and the sound of juddering metal she was off, hair gleaming in the sun, one arm up to wave as she hurtled down the drops.Two minutes later she returned to the street, breathless and elated, enthusing about the speed, the dips, even the bumps. Worry, if she’d had any to begin with, had been banished.“That was great!” she said. “That was wild. It was like the subway turned into a roller coaster.” More

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      in Theater

      Carrie Mae Weems and George C. Wolfe on Defiance and Claiming Space

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      Two creative people in two different fields in one wide-ranging conversation. This time: the “Kitchen Table Series” artist and the theater and film director.George C. Wolfe can pinpoint the exact moment that sparked his career as a director and dramatist. When he was a fourth grader, his all-Black elementary school in Kentucky was preparing for a visit to a nearby white school to mark what was then known as Negro History Week. “We were supposed to sing this song,” recalls Wolfe, 68. “And our principal told us that when we got to a certain line, we should sing it with full conviction because it would shatter all the racism in the room.” To this day, he can remember standing with his classmates singing, “These truths we are declaring, that all men are the same,” and then suddenly belting out, “that liberty’s a torch burning with a steady flame.” “That’s why I’m a storyteller,” he says. “Because someone told me when I was 10 that if I fully committed with my passion and my intelligence and my heart to a line, I could change people.” That belief led him to become both a Broadway powerhouse — a co-writer and the director of the hit musical “Jelly’s Last Jam” (1992) and the director of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” (1993) — and the producer of the Public Theater/New York Shakespeare Festival, for which he conceived “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk” (1995). In recent years, he’s devoted more time to making films, including “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” (2017) and “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” (2020). His latest, “Rustin,” executive produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground and coming to theaters on Nov. 3 and to Netflix two weeks later, tells the story of Bayard Rustin, a civil rights activist who was instrumental in planning the 1963 March on Washington, helping to recruit his friend Martin Luther King Jr. to take part. But Rustin, who was, in Wolfe’s estimation “about as out as a Black man could be in 1960s America,” was largely pushed aside by civil rights leaders who feared that his sexuality would bring shame on the movement. “Here was this monumental human being who changed history, and then history forgot him,” says Wolfe, himself a gay man, who has lived in New York City since 1979. Telling stories like Rustin’s, he says, is “a means to share, to inform, to challenge, to confront the world.”For the multidisciplinary artist Carrie Mae Weems, 70, those same objectives have influenced more than four decades of photographs, installations and performances exploring themes of class, gender and, most notably, race. The first Black artist to have a retrospective at Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum (2014’s “Carrie Mae Weems: Three Decades of Photography and Video”), the Portland, Ore., native who now lives between Brooklyn and Syracuse, N.Y., not only built her reputation as one of America’s most influential photographers but has also elevated fellow artists like Julie Mehretu and Lyle Ashton Harris with her convenings, for which she recruits artists, writers and scholars to come to various institutions for multiday conferences. With works like her “Museum Series” (2006-present) — for which she photographed herself, back to the camera, standing in front of institutions, including the Tate Modern in London and the Pergamon in Berlin — and “Thoughts on Marriage” (1989), which depicts a bride with her mouth taped shut, she has created indelible images of humanity in the face of injustice.Though contemporaries in adjacent disciplines, Wolfe and Weems had never had a real conversation before meeting on a steamy July day in a downtown Manhattan studio. Here, the two discuss their childhoods, art as activism and what they feel is still left to accomplish.Carrie Mae Weems: Let’s start at the beginning. Where are you from, George? George C. Wolfe: I’m from Frankfort, Ky., which was segregated for the first eight years of my life. I went to a grammar school that was part of a Black university, Kentucky State. And I went [to college] there for one year but ran away because I wanted to become another version of myself. I went to Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., and then to Los Angeles. At a certain point, it became clear that I needed to leave L.A. [to direct theater], so I came to New York, and that was that. C.M.W.: What made you want to make this new film? G.C.W.: I wanted to explore the brilliance of this organizational mind who put together the March on Washington in seven weeks. It’s about the idea that activism is not a noun or a title; it’s a verb — it’s the doing of. There’s a scene in the film that was inspiring to me, where Bayard [who is played by Colman Domingo] is talking to young kids who’re organizing, and he tells them that every night they should think through every detail and ask themselves what they’re missing, what they haven’t thought about.Colman Domingo (standing) as Bayard Rustin in “Rustin.”David Lee/NetflixC.M.W.: When did you learn about Bayard Rustin? I didn’t know anything about him.G.C.W.: I helped create a museum in Atlanta called the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, which opened nine years ago, so I got into some of these stories that I didn’t know, like Jo Ann Robinson, who was the brain behind the Montgomery Bus Boycott, and Claudette Colvin, who refused to give up her bus seat before Rosa Parks. I became obsessed with ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Often, history forgot them.C.M.W.: Yes, so many people! I knew very early on that whatever I did as an artist, I wanted to broaden the field. So I would pick up the phone and call these museums and say, “I love your collection, but I noticed there are actually no women or African Americans. I’ve been doing quite a bit of research in the area, and I’d love to come by and share with you what I have.” And they were like, “Who? What?” I was just 23. But I’d say, “OK, you don’t have any idea who I am, but I do know that this work is important, and I absolutely need you to look at it.”G.C.W.: And what would they say?C.M.W.: “Wellll, OK.” That’s how I became known as a photographer, by doing all that work. I started reading about all these artists when I was a young person, and I made little video projects about people like [the Harlem Renaissance photographer] Roy DeCarava. It was born out of deep curiosity: “Who were those who came before you? Who widened the path? And how do you acknowledge them? And then who’s coming behind you? And how do you broaden the path for them?” In 2014, when I became the first African American to have a retrospective at the Guggenheim, I thought, “This is kind of cool, but it would be really great to have a fabulous convening of a couple of hundred artists and bring all of them to the institution for four or five days and just rock it out.” I continue to do that. I’m doing another one in the fall [at Syracuse University, centered on contested monuments].G.C.W.: I’m obsessed with one aspect of your “Museum Series”: You have your back to us, looking at these buildings, and what it ignites inside of me is, “Are you going to invade it? Are you going to tear it down? Are you going into it, and will it change you? Or will you change it?” Those questions are born out of your proximity to the buildings. If you were farther away, it would say something was keeping you from going in. If you were closer, it would tell the viewer you’d already made the decision to enter. There’s a danger and a possibility of being in the in-between. Carrie Mae Weems’s “Museum Island” (2006-present).© Carrie Mae Weems. Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery, New YorkC.M.W.: It allows so much for the viewer. I started making those pieces in 2006, and it’s only recently that institutions have begun paying attention to them. Artists are often ahead of the curve in the ways we pose questions; museums are just now arriving at that moment of interrogation. I always think of George Floyd as the straw that broke the camel’s back. His death [in 2020] allowed so much to be brought into focus.G.C.W.: What is your responsibility [when infiltrating] these institutions? It was made very clear to me at a young age that if you come with a certain skill set, it’s your responsibility to invade.C.M.W.: To engage. G.C.W.: For me, it was very specifically invading. Get inside, open up the doors and the windows so that everybody else could come in. C.M.W.: I understand, but I think about it slightly differently. For me, it’s not invasion; it’s claiming of space. It’s really understanding the uniqueness of this voice and what we have to offer — our right to be in that space and to change it by our very presence. I’ve started to think about resistance as an act of love. G.C.W.: And commitment.C.M.W.: And commitment, always. I think this is both our gift and our burden. You’re never just George. You’re always in a group. It’s a part of the condition of being African American in this country. You’re forced by your identity to negotiate the space between who you are, what the group is and what your responsibilities are in relation to both. This has given us, as a people, ingenuity — a level of inventiveness, expansiveness, artistic integrity and a grace that’s truly profound. Without us, this nation would truly suffer. Are you an activist?G.C.W.: I think my work is activism. I do my job with a sense of joy and aggression and defiance.C.M.W.: I was very lucky that I had my father [the owner of a salvage company] and my mother [a seamstress] and my family. My father would say, “Remember that you have a right.” My earliest memories are of that. So that’s given me a sense of confidence, that I just feel very comfortable in the world, wherever I am. I love knowing about other cultures, but our quest to be human is what interests me. I think we are still crawling toward our humanity. We haven’t arrived yet.G.C.W.: My theory is that everything is a muscle. Love is a muscle. If you don’t use it, it atrophies. And curiosity is one of the most important muscles, curiosity about the world and about others. My first memory was of George Wolfe, whom I’m named after, my grandfather [a carpenter]. He would build a big tower of blocks and then I would knock them down and he would applaud. Defiance! C.M.W.: At this stage, my concerns are more focused on the spiritual dimensions of my life. I made a small performance piece called “Grace Notes: Reflections for Now” [for the Spoleto Festival U.S.A. in Charleston, S.C.] after the 2015 killings at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. At the funeral of one of the victims, [President] Obama came to the stage, spoke for a while — and then, finally, the only thing he could do was sing “Amazing Grace.” He had to go to a spiritual place in order to deal with the tragedy of that event.Over the past few years, I’ve collected over 400 photographs of primarily Black men who’ve been killed in the United States since around 2000. I’m chronicling this history of violence. There are days when I have to leave the studio early because I’ve been looking at murder all day. Ultimately, artists deal with similar ideas over and over during the course of a lifetime, so there’s a set of primary ideas that you’re always coming back to. For instance, I produced [an installation and performance] piece called “The Shape of Things” (2021), which looks at the circus of politics and the rise of Trumpism, and the extraordinary violence that has been inflicted on people of color as the country moves from white to Black and varying shades of brown. But even though you’re looking at tragedy, the real work is to find where hope resides within that tragedy.G.C.W.: This country is at its most interesting when people cross borders. The culture that phenomenon creates is astonishing. So the stories of my family are driving me now: the monumental, ordinary, astonishing, brilliant people who said, “The border that you’ve crafted doesn’t serve my definition of myself, so let me go charging through it.” That’s what Bayard did. It’s what our ancestors did. They said, “I’m bigger than your definition of me.”C.M.W.: I decided there’s a part of what I’m doing that needs to be done out of my human ingenuity, but I’m not interested in persuading anybody about anything. The work has within it all kinds of questions, but the way in which the vast majority of America views me? I couldn’t care less. I just want to get this work done.This interview has been edited and condensed.Hair: Kiyonori Sudo. Makeup: Linda Gradin More