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Julia Jacobs/The New York TimesEntering the show, theatergoers shook off the rain and buzzed with anticipation. One fan of Micheleâs, Stephen Carella, 24, said it felt surreal to be there after watching her play Brice on the TV show âGlee.â âIt is just a pop cultural moment,â Carella said. More
A revival of the classic musical offers a fresh twist on the founding for the post-âHamiltonâ era.âOur contribution to the history of the production is our bodies, our physical selves,â Crystal Lucas-Perry said of the Broadway revival of â1776,â and its cast of female, nonbinary and trans actors. Clockwise from top left: Sav Souza, Lucas-Perry, Elizabeth A. Davis, Carolee Carmello, Patrena Murray and Oneika Phillips.Camila Falquez for The New York TimesHow do you solve a problem like America?For the creators of the musical â1776,â the answer was to wrap it in jaunty tunes, 18th-century double entendres and enough twisty dialogue to make a dramatization of the debate over the Declaration of Independence feel like a thriller.Premiering on Broadway in 1969, the musical ran for 1,217 performances, won the Tony Award for best musical and, over the last 50-plus years, has left more than a few critics scratching their heads over how such a resolutely square show won over Vietnam-era America.But 1776 isnât what it used to be. In 2022, a touchstone of national identity has become a culture-war hot potato. And â1776,â which arrives this month on Broadway in a new revival for Roundabout Theater Company, isnât the same either.The revival, directed by Jeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus, has the familiar rousing melodies (in new, rock-infused arrangements), star-spangled color scheme and corny dad jokes. But theyâre delivered by a racially diverse cast of women, nonbinary and trans actors, whose embodiment, Paulus said, wakes the language up.âI want the audience to hold that dual reality, of what the founders were, but also a company of actors in 2022, who never would have been allowed inside Independence Hall,â Paulus said in a video interview last month, after the show concluded its pre-Broadway run at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass., where she is artistic director.The idea, she said, using a phrase that has become something of a mantra for the show, âis to hold history as a predicament, rather than an affirming myth.âAnnounced in 2019, the revival may initially have seemed to be riding the post-âHamiltonâ vogue for all things Founders, while doing that showâs inclusive casting one better. But the two-year pandemic delay â which saw nationwide racial-justice protests, a bitterly contested presidential election and the Jan. 6 insurrection â have only heightened the stakes.âThe deeper you get into it, the more poetry, the more stuff, exists inside of it,â Page said, in a separate video interview.At bottom, â1776,â he said, is âabout a clandestine meeting of people who desperately want to change the world.âThen again, â1776â was never the whitewashed retro-patriotic celebration it is often remembered as. For all its traditionalist guys-in-powdered-wigs look, the show â with songs by Sherman Edwards, a history teacher turned Brill Building tunesmith, and a book by the playwright Peter Stone â was as politically pointed in its time as âHamiltonâ (and perhaps, some argue, more so).Written ahead of the Bicentennial, it was meant to humanize the founders â âDemigods? We’re men, no more, no less,â Benjamin Franklin declares â while also challenging what the authors described as the âjingoisticâ history they had learned in school.Sara Porkalob, center left, Lucas-Perry and Davis in the production during its pre-Broadway run at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Mass.Evan Zimmerman for Murphy MadeThere was the bite of songs like âMomma, Look Sharp,â a denunciation of the carnage of war that might have been sung by a G.I. on Hamburger Hill. And there was âMolasses to Rum,â a chilling call-out of freedom-espousing New Englandâs complicity in the profits of slavery.The production even stirred its own mini-controversy: When cast members were invited to perform the show at the Nixon White House, they were asked to cut âCool, Cool Considerate Men,â a satirical minuet of money-loving conservatives who move âever to the right, never to the left.â (They refused.)âI continue to be surprised when I meet people who say, âOh, 1776! Itâs my favorite musical. Itâs just what our country needs!â Paulus said. âI keep thinking, what are they talking about?âBut then, when the touring production company NETworks first suggested the show to her in February 2019 as a possible revival, she knew little about it, except that it had beaten out âHairâ (which she had directed a Broadway revival of in 2009) for the Tony. âI had a vague assumption it was a kind of a celebratory look at American history,â she said.When she read the book, on a long plane ride, she said, she âalmost fell out of the airplane.âIn particular, she was struck by the dramatic climax: the debate over Thomas Jeffersonâs fiery denunciation of the slave trade, which was ultimately cut from the Declaration, to secure unanimous approval.Even talking about it now, Paulus still sounds incredulous. âI was unaware of that crossing out,â she said. âHow could I not know?ââThat began my journey into the show,â she continued. âI had to reckon with my own experience of American history.âA 2016 Encores! concert staging in New York had already used some racially diverse casting. Paulus said she was told off the bat that the estate would be open to an all-female cast, but she emphasized that the production takes a less âbinaryâ view of gender.There was a first reading in New York in August 2019, with the principal actors, including Crystal Lucas-Perry as the irascible and obstinate John Adams, leader of the âindependencyâ faction. By early March 2020, the show was fully cast, with an opening in Cambridge set for that May, to be followed by a national tour and then a Broadway run.Instead, they retreated to Zoom, like the rest of American theater. Without the pressure to stage the show, Paulus said, they could go deep in American history, including meetings with various scholars like the political theorist Danielle Allen and the historians Vincent Brown, Jane Kamensky and Annette Gordon-Reed.With the approval of the creatorsâ estates, the show includes a (wordless) depiction of a 14-year-old Robert Hemings, Jeffersonâs enslaved bodyservant (and brother to Sally Hemings), inspired by Gordon-Reedâs scholarship. It also adds a long excerpt from Abigail Adamsâs famous letter advising John to âremember the ladies.âWhile the gender-flipped casting may be the showâs claim to âfirstness,â the core of the production is a grappling with race.Even before the murder of George Floyd, Paulus said, discussions around race within the company were âvery raw.â Then came the protests, and the roiling conversation on racism, representation and hierarchy in the theater set off by the âWe See You, White American Theaterâ open letter.In September 2020, the American Repertory Theater announced a set of initial antiracism commitments. When it came to â1776,â she said, the conversations prompted by the protests âimpacted everything about our process.âPaulus said she first met Page (whose long rĂ©sumĂ© as a choreographer includes extensive collaborations with BeyoncĂ©) in 2017, when he was starting the M.F.A. program in directing at Columbia. He was initially hired as the showâs choreographer, in 2019. In the summer of 2020, he also became co-director.âI felt that the most powerful and honest reflection of our collaboration,â Paulus said, was to be âcoequals.âJeffrey L. Page and Diane Paulus directed the production, which starts previews at the American Airlines Theater on Sept. 16 and opens Oct. 6.Matthew MurphyThe George Floyd moment, Page agreed, âchanged everythingâ about the show. The team, including the set designer Scott Pask, had already started moving away from the original scenic designs, which Page described as attempting to land the show too much âin the world of realism.ââWe came together and said, this doesnât feel right anymore,â he said. âWe started asking, when you break it all the way down to the core, what is this piece about?âThese were men who were attempting to make a change inside the world,â he continued. âWho cares about the chair they sat in, and are we getting it right?âThe production, with its spare, Brecht-influenced design, is set not in Independence Hall in 1776, but onstage in 2022, where itâs performed by a company of actors from the present who arrive in street clothes, with no fanfare, before putting on their 18th-century(ish) waistcoats and period-appropriate shoes.(One performer also puts on a beaded necklace â seemingly a nod at the fact, mentioned in Stone and Edwardâs original authors note, that Native American leaders would often appear before the Continental Congress, as leaders of independent nations.)Page, whose other recent directing credits include this summerâs revival of âAinât Misbehavinââ at Barrington Stage Company, also cited the importance of an âaffinity spaceâ for Black cast members, which helped guide the showâs exploration of race.âWith the other cast members, the main thing we communicated was, âYouâre going to feel some things,ââ Page said. âWhat the Black cast members asked was to leave your fragility at the door.âIn a group interview with four of the showâs founding âfathers,â Elizabeth A. Davis, who plays Jefferson, recalled a video meeting in which cast members presented their family trees, as part of an exploration of how personal and national history intersect. She said she could still remember exactly where she was sitting â âin my grandmotherâs old room, in the middle of Texasâ â as Black colleagues described hitting the so-called slavery wall, beyond which ancestry can be hard to trace.âIt was a profound moment for me,â she said. âIt was understanding something not just intellectually, but viscerally and cellularly.âLucas-Perry nodded. âI remember saying, âI feel a little without,ââ she said.The 2020 protests, Lucas-Perry said, contributed to a âhyper-awarenessâ of the way the casting altered the meaning of the text, and the importance of a production using diverse bodies âjust because it can.ââOur contribution to the history of the production is our bodies, our physical selves,â she said. âWe were looking for ways of taking advantage of moments where you can dig deeper into what it means to be other.ââMomma, Look Sharpâ lands differently sung by a Black woman (the big-voiced Salome B. Smith, as a courier bringing news from the front) to another Black woman, after the founding âfathersâ have left the room. (The courierâs piercing âMomma!,â Page said, echoes Floydâs cry as he gasped for air.)But the showâs dark heart is the silky and sinister âMolasses to Rum.â Traditionally, itâs presented as a vocal tour de force (see John Cullumâs stentorian baritone in the 1972 movie), and critics have often paid more attention to the singing than the chilling substance of the song.In their staging of the song (sung by Sara Porkalob), Page and Paulus force the audience to consider the enslaved people who form one corner of the Triangle Trade not as abstractions, but as real bodies, massed in a wordless chorus that includes the Black actors who play Adams, Franklin and John Hancock. (The sometimes defiant choreography, Page said, reprises some gestures from âCool, Cool, Considerate Men.â)Carolee Carmello, who is joining the Broadway production as John Dickinson of Pennsylvania (one of the cool, conservative men), played Abigail Adams in the 1997 Broadway revival, which had a white cast. She had heard âMolassesâ hundreds of times, but wasnât prepared for seeing it in the new production.âThe understanding of what theyâre actually arguing about is extremely powerful,â she said.Lucas-Perry said the song âfeels like it goes on foreverâ â âand it did go on forever,â she added, referring to slavery. âIâm not going to lie,â she said of the scene. âThereâs not a night where it doesnât hit me.ââHamiltonâ was fundamentally celebratory, reflective of the liberal optimism of Obama-era America, and the feeling that the arc of history was bending its way. Page and Paulusâs â1776,â for all its humor and exuberance, is darker and more uncertain.But neither show is the last word on the founding, or on the Declaration, a document that might be seen as the ultimate American classic: time-bound and flawed, but also profound and visionary â and requiring continual revival and reinterpretation, by a perpetually changing cast of Americans, to stay alive.Page summed up the heart of 1776, and â1776,â crisply: âHow do we self-proclaim our presence in the world?â More
Behind every new New York season are a lot of wannabes, also-rans and hopeless cases to keep track of.I have friends who keep a spreadsheet of every show theyâve seen, cross-indexed to their Playbill collection.Iâm the opposite. I toss my Playbills but keep Excel fired up with compulsive catalogs of whatâs coming next.Especially for musicals, itâs a highly unreliable list. Some shows have sat on it undisturbed since the 20th century. I donât think the stage adaptation of âMy Man Godfrey,â first announced in 1985 and occasionally re-announced ever since, will ever actually open on Broadway. And was ABBA really going to write a version of âMartyâ? No, that must have been a typo â though Iâm not sure for what.On the other hand, at least one show I thought would never make it off the list unfortunately did. (Clue: It involved an escape to Margaritaville.) In my âcommentsâ column for dubious entries, I sometimes include useful information like âWhut?âIn any case, itâs around this time of year that I traditionally cull and update the herd, getting excited or terrified about whatâs headed my way. So far, seven Broadway musicals are in the âdefiniteâ column, having been officially announced for the fall.They make an unusual grouping. To begin with, only one, â1776,â is a revival â and that one might as well be new. As reshaped by Diane Paulus and Jeffrey L. Page in the post-âHamiltonâ manner, and featuring a cast of women, nonbinary and transgender performers, the American Independence pageant aims to offer a more inclusive history than our real past did.Also unusual: Among the six new musicals, only âA Beautiful Noise,â based on the life and songs of Neil Diamond, is a biographical jukebox. (Will Swenson, who does swagger very well, stars.) And only two others â a very modest proportion compared to most seasons â are Hollywood adaptations.One of those is âAlmost Famous,â based on Cameron Croweâs 2000 coming-of-age film about a young man swept up in a 1970s rock ânâ roll dream. It may ensure some authenticity that Crowe has written the book for the show, and, with the composer Tom Kitt, the lyrics.The other Hollywood adaptation is âSome Like It Hot,â based on the 1959 Billy Wilder comedy. If you think youâve seen it onstage before, youâre partly right; it was first turned into a musical, called âSugar,â in 1972. That versionâs score was by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill; this oneâs by their natural inheritors, the âHairsprayâ team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The remaining incoming musicals, though no less exciting, may be even more familiar. (Iâve already seen two of them in earlier productions.) âKimberly Akimbo,â based on David Lindsay-Abaireâs play about a girl with a premature-aging condition, ran Off Broadway, at the Atlantic Theater Company, last season. âKPOP,â a behind-the-scenes look at the Korean pop music industry, was another Off Broadway hit, in 2017. Both will have big adjustments to make for larger theaters and audiences, and Iâm eager to see how they do it.Then thereâs â& Juliet,â which has been playing in London (with a pandemic interruption) since 2019, and which is the only show on my spreadsheet to start with a typographical symbol. From a distance, it appears to be a mash-up of several Broadway tropes: updated Shakespeare, romantic fantasy and hit parade. Its songs, by Max Martin, are mostly familiar from recordings by Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Backstreet Boys and the like.But the seven sure musicals this fall are only the tip of my Excel iceberg. Slightly below the water line are shows almost certain to announce their arrival quite soon, including the revival of Bob Fosseâs âDancinâ,â the stage adaptation of âThe Devil Wears Pradaâ and the London hit âEverybodyâs Talking About Jamie.âDiving a bit deeper, we get to a larger school of wannabes. Many seem fascinating; âLempicka,â for one, about the hedonistic Polish painter, has been getting good reviews for its various tryout productions.Others seem stuck in development hell. âHarmony,â the Barry Manilow show about a singing group in Nazi Germany, had its world premiere in 1997; it took 25 years to get as far as the tip of Manhattan, where it had a brief run this spring. At its final performance there, Manilowâs collaborator Bruce Sussman told the audience, âIâd like to think of today as only the end of the beginning!âEveryone does, even the bottom feeders, those mystifying creatures someone apparently once considered a good idea. âMagic Mikeâ? âThe Honeymoonersâ? The Baby Jessica Falls in the Well musical? The adaptation of âParadise Lostâ? (Only one of those is made up.)But for list-compulsives like me â my spreadsheet includes nearly 100 titles, from âA Little Princessâ to âZannaâ â the quality of the product hardly matters. What I like to contemplate is the vast array. Sometimes I envision the titles as a swarm of planes taxiing at airports all over the country: âBhanginâ It,â âTrading Places,â âBlack Orpheus,â âBeaches,â even the âUntitled Roy Rogers Musical.â They havenât lifted off yet, and some of them are out of fuel, but theyâre on the runway, eager noses all pointed in our direction. More
For nearly 70 years, Stratford, Ontario, has attracted legions of theater fanatics to its Shakespeare festival. About a dozen years ago, a very different type of pilgrim began arriving: Beliebers.STRATFORD, Ontario â Itâs a small city that practically shouts âShakespeare!âMajestic white swans float in the Avon River, not far from Falstaff Street and Anne Hathaway Park, named for the playwrightâs wife. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while young students attend Hamlet elementary. And the schoolâs namesake play is often performed as part of a renowned theater festival that draws legions of Shakespeare fans from around the world, every April to October.Stratford, Ontario, steeped in references to and reverence for the Bard, has counted on its association with Shakespeare for decades to dependably bring in millions of tourist dollars to a city that would otherwise have little appeal to travelers.âMy dad always said we have a world-class theater stuck in a farm community,â said Frank Herr, the second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.Then, about a dozen years ago, a new and typically much younger type of cultural enthusiast began showing up in Stratfordâs streets: Beliebers, or fans of the pop star Justin Bieber, a homegrown talent.William Shakespeare Street in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesA star dedicated to Justin Bieber outside the Avon Theater where he would busk as a child.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesResidents donât have much trouble telling the two types of visitors apart. One clue: Look at what they are carrying.âTheyâve got the Shakespeare books in their hands,â Mr. Herr said of those who are here for the love of theater. âTheyâre just serious people.âBeliebers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at the ready to excitedly document the otherwise humdrum landmarks connected to the pop star: the site of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, the diner where he was rumored to eat.Unlike Shakespeare â who never set foot in this city, named after his birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, England â Mr. Bieber has genuine and deep connections: He grew up here and is familiar to many.âI know Justin,â Mr. Herr said. âHe was always skateboarding on the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,â he added, referring to a World War I memorial in the gardens next to Lake Victoria.A cutout of Justin Bieber in the Stratford Perth Museum. The setting is meant to replicate the steps of the cityâs Avon Theater. Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesDiane Dale, Mr. Bieberâs maternal grandmother, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive away from downtown Stratford, where the fledgling singer, now 28, could often be found busking on the steps of Avon Theater under their supervision, collecting as much as $200 per day, she said in a recent interview.Those steps became something of a pilgrimage site for Mr. Bieberâs fans, especially those vying to become âOne Less Lonely Girlâ during his teen-pop dreamboat era.Another popular stop on the pilgrimâs tour was Ms. Daleâs doorstep. After fans rang her doorbell, she would assure them that her grandson was not home, though that didnât stop them from taking selfies outside the red brick bungalow.âJustin said, if you donât move, weâre not coming to visit you anymore,â Ms. Dale, a retired sewer at a now shuttered automotive factory in town, recalled. She has since relocated.Businesses in Stratford that benefited from this second set of tourists began speaking of âthe Bieber Effect,â a play on the âBilbao Effectâ in reference to the Spanish city revitalized by a museum.Justin Bieberâs grandparentsâ former home in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesBut one of the problems with pop fame is that it can be fickle. As fans have aged out of their teen infatuation with the musician, âBieber feverâ has cooled and the number of pilgrims has dropped.The issues that have long afflicted other Canadian cities, like increased housing prices and drug addiction, are more often peeking through the quaint veneer of Stratford, a city of about 33,000 people bordered by sprawling fields of corn in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario.But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeareâs magnetic force remains fully intact.The theater festival, which draws over 500,000 guests in a typical year and employs about 1,000 people, features Shakespeare classics, Broadway-style musicals and modern plays in its repertoire.Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging a limited run of shows outside under canopies, as it did during its first four seasons, starting in 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building opened with a summer performance of âHamlet,â with the Canadian actor Christopher Plummer in the titular role.The Tom Patterson Theater, a new addition to the Stratford Festival.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThis yearâs production stars a woman, Amaka Umeh, the first Black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.While itâs unknown how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, the appeal of someone who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone doesnât dissipate overnight.And Stratford has taken steps to permanently memorialize his youth here.Mr. Bieberâs grandparents had hung on to boxes of his belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for the by the community in a crowdfunding effort â until a local museum presented them with an opportunity to display the items.âItâs changed the museum forever, in a myriad of ways,â said John Kastner, the general manager of the Stratford Perth Museum.After informing the local newspaper that the museum was opening an exhibition, âJustin Bieber: Steps to Stardom,â in February 2018, Mr. Kastner said, he was flooded with calls from international media.âWe were going to do one room, like one 10-by-10 room,â Mr. Kastner said. He called his curator. âI said, âWe have a problem.ââAngelyka Byrne walking through the Bieber exhibit at the Stratford Perth Museum.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesThey cut the agricultural exhibition that had been planned for the adjoining space, which proved helpful in accommodating the 18,000 visitors in the first year of the Bieber show, a huge jump in attendance from the 850 who visited the museum in 2013.The Bieber show, on view through at least next year, has brought in thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, Mr. Kastner said, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.Mr. Bieber has also made a handful of visits, marking his name in chalk on the guest blackboard and donating some more recent memorabilia, including his wedding invitation and reception menu, featuring a dish called âGrandma Dianeâs Bolognese.âBut even before the Beliebers descended on the town, young people had been coming to Stratford by the busload thanks to organized school visits, with 50,000 to 100,000 students arriving from the United States and around Canada each year.With the exception of the pandemic border closures, James Pakala, and his wife, Denise, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week every year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Ms. Pakala traveled to Stratford with her high school English literature class from Ithaca, N.Y., and the trip has since become a tradition.The Shakespearean Gardens in Stratford.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesâI love Shakespeare and also MoliĂšre,â said Mr. Pakala, 78, who was studying his program outside the Festival Theater before a recent production of MoliĂšreâs comedy âThe Miser.âOther guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. The traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking and most major attractions are a short walk from one other, with pleasant views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.âItâs easy to attend theater here,â said Michael Walker, a retired banker from Newport Beach, Calif., who visits each year with friends. âItâs not like New York, where itâs burdensome, and the quality of the theater here, I think, is better than whatâs in Los Angeles or Chicago.âHere for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened during the pandemic and plays to audiences of no more than 50, enjoys a âsymbiotic relationshipâ with the festival, said its artistic director, Fiona Mongillo, who compared the scale of their operations as a Fiat to the festivalâs freight train.Performing âTake Careâ at the Here for Now Theater in August.Brett Gundlock for The New York TimesâItâs an interesting moment for Stratford because I think itâs growing and changing in a really lovely way,â said Ms. Mongillo, citing the increased diversity as Canadians from neighboring cities have relocated to a town that was formerly, she added, âvery, very white.âLongtime residents of Stratford, like Madeleine McCormick, a retired correctional officer, said it can sometimes feel like the concerns of residents are sidelined in favor of tourists.Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the pluses of the vibrant community of artists and creative people, one that drew her musician husband into its orbit.âItâs a strange place,â she said. âThereâs never going to be another place thatâs like this, because of the theater.âAnd Mr. Bieber. More
A familiar TV face for years, he appeared on many of the most popular prime-time shows of recent decades.Richard Roat, a versatile character actor whose half-century-long career was punctuated by notable guest appearances on three of the most popular sitcoms of recent decades, âCheers,â âFriendsâ and âSeinfeld,â died on Aug. 5 in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 89.Kathy (Arntzen) Roat, his wife and only immediate survivor, said the cause was a heart attack. She said Mr. Roat, who lived in Glendale, died in a condo while on vacation.On a 1985 episode of âCheers,â as the imperious boss of the barstool habituĂ© Norm Peterson (George Wendt), he threatened to fire Norm if he didnât accept a promotion (and raise) to become the companyâs âcorporate killerâ â the person who terminates people.âStudies have shown that itâs particularly humiliating when youâre fired by someone who is clearly and markedly superior to yourself,â Mr. Roatâs character tells Norm coldly. âThat wouldnât be the case with you, Norman. Youâre just an ordinary Joe. We checked out your home life. You have absolutely nothing that anyone could possibly envy or resent.âIn 1996, on âSeinfeld,â Mr. Roat was a dermatologist who labeled Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) a âdifficultâ patient when she sought treatment for a rash. His character turned from friendly to stern when he checked her patient history.âWell, that doesnât look serious,â he says, barely examining her. âYouâll be fine.â He then adds notes to her history when she complains that the rash is âreally itchy.âAnd on âFriends,â in 2000, he was a professor at the college where Ross (David Schwimmer) taught. At one point he tells Ross that he was violating campus rules by dating a student.âTheyâre going to fire you,â he says.âReally, itâs not just frowned upon?â Ross asks.Mr. Roat worked primarily in television, starting in 1962 with two very different series about police officers: the sitcom âCar 54, Where Are You?â and the drama âNaked City.â He was a regular on the daytime soap opera âThe Doctorsâ from 1963 to 1964, and over the next 45 years was seen on comedies like âThe Mary Tyler Moore Show,â âMurphy Brownâ and âEllenâ and dramas like âThe Fugitive,â âColumbo,â âMatlockâ and âDynasty.âIn a 1986 episode of âThe Golden Girls,â as the boyfriend of Rose (Betty White), he dies in bed after they sleep together.He also worked regularly in regional theater. He starred with Jo Anne Worley in Ken Ludwigâs theatrical farce âMoon Over Buffaloâ at the Pasadena Playhouse, and in William Luceâs one-man show âBarrymore,â about the actor John Barrymore, at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont. He played the title role, based on Lyndon B. Johnson, in Barbara Garsonâs political satire âMacbird!â at the Playersâ Ring Gallery in Los Angeles, and a married character in Mart Crowleyâs âThe Boys in the Band,â about a group of gay men, at what is now the MontalbĂĄn Theater, also in Los Angeles.In 1962 he played Mark Antony in the New York Shakespeare Festivalâs production of âJulius Caesar.â Mr. Roat, seated, with Jay Leno and Ellen Reagan in the 1978 television movie âAlmost Heaven.âG Stein/ABC via Getty Images
Richard Donald Roat Jr. was born on July 3, 1933, in Hartford, Conn. His father was a glazier, and his mother, Lois (Bowan) Roat, was a homemaker.After graduating with a bachelorâs degree from Trinity College in Hartford in 1956, Mr. Roat acted with the Mark Twain Masquers and other local theatrical groups. He also earned a living by driving a bakery truck and holding other odd jobs.In 1961 he made his Broadway debut as a replacement for Michael Ebert in âThe Wall,â a play about Jews in occupied Poland during World War II. Mr. Roat played Dr. Jerry Chandler during 172 episodes of âThe Doctorsâ and told The Portland Press Herald that he felt grateful for the opportunity to act regularly.âThereâs room for less than one percent of the new actors in nighttime television,â he said. âUnless youâre a âregularâ and get a running assignment for a season-long series, your chances in nighttime television are practically nil.âHis last television role was in the drama â24â in 2009.Mr. Roat had another long-running role, which he pursued as an actor and continued after he retired that year: as a tax preparer for people in the entertainment business. During a slow period in his acting career in the late 1960s, he took a job in an accountantâs office. On April 15 of that first year, the accountant had a nervous breakdown, Kathy Roat said, and Mr. Roat âtook some tax forms and decided to become a tax preparer.â More
Two young men wander the city before they both must say farewell and return to very different lives.Sammyâs parents used to rhapsodize about the trip they took to Paris once, before he was born. Hearing their stories made the city shimmer in his imagination, but the closest heâs ever gotten to it was on a nonstop drive across France.Hidden in the back of a truck, peering through a hole in its side, he glimpsed a highway sign that said Paris. Then the driver blew past it, on through the darkness toward Amsterdam.In Clarence Cooâs play âOn That Day in Amsterdam,â thatâs where Sammy is on the night in 2015 when he meets Kevin at a club. They are young and beautiful, something sparks between them, and they wake together the next morning in a houseboat on a canal. Outside, snow is falling.Sammy is Syrian and without a passport, hoping to reach safety in England but terrified of the journey across the water to get there. Kevin is American, not wealthy but privileged anyway, a college student traveling on the credit card his mother pays for.While both are scheduled to leave the Netherlands that night, they have very different notions of how precious it is to be passing through, even briefly. Sammy (Waseem Alzer), who is sweet, eager and daring in his vulnerability, wants to grab this day with both hands and go on a tourist adventure. Kevin (Glenn Morizio), who is callow, arrogant and incurious in ways that he will come to regret, eventually acquiesces.Itâs a bit of a Richard Linklater, âBefore Sunriseâ setup: just-met lovers with mere hours to spend together in a glamorous foreign capital. And on the largest stage at 59E59 Theaters, the set by Jason Sherwood (a two-time Emmy Award winner) conspires with projections by Nicholas Hussong (a 2022 Tony Award nominee for his spectacular projections in âSkeleton Crewâ) and lighting by Cha See to bring visual texture and depth to Sammy and Kevinâs ramble through Amsterdam.There is the nagging sense, though, that design is the tail wagging the dog in this Primary Stages production from Zi Alikhan â that the setâs transparent downstage screen, which frames the action, constrains the performers somehow, and that the copious projections, on that screen and another upstage, could have used some editing. Yes to the moody, abstract and dreamy, emphatically yes to the striped blocks of color that represent evening windows; no to the drably literal, which only gets in the way of the poetry that Coo is reaching for.The playwright, too, has also overwhelmed the show, with a surfeit of ideas jostling for limited oxygen. This is a quasi-romance and coming-of-age story set inside a refugee crisis in a world awash in bigotry. But itâs also about art as a necessary solace, which is what it provides to Sammy, who wants to take his mind off the peril heâs in by popping into some museums. Kevin, though, is a tortured would-be writer; the making of an artist is much on Cooâs mind as well.The play might be able to manage all of that, yet it also collapses time to usher in three famous former residents of Amsterdam: Rembrandt (Brandon Mendez Homer), Vincent van Gogh (Jonathan Raviv) and Anne Frank (Elizabeth Ramos). Anne, at least, fits the principal themes: She was both an artist and a migrant fleeing â and hiding from â danger. But these charactersâ interstitial-feeling scenes fit awkwardly with the whole.The result is a play too overcrowded for fullness. What sticks in the memory is Alzerâs lovely Sammy, grasping at a few hours of normalcy, cherishing the chance to lose himself in throngs of tourists who, with their documents in order, are free to come and go.On That Day in AmsterdamThrough Sept. 4 at 59E59 Theaters, Manhattan; 59e59.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More
Sheâs landed her dream role in âFunny Girl.â Now sheâs tasked with rescuing the faltering Broadway show and proving that she is not the person she once was.Fifteen years ago, Lea Michele was sulking in her âSpring Awakeningâ dressing room, heartbroken over a guy, when the Broadway showâs director offered her a bit of advice.The director, Michael Mayer, suggested that she watch âFunny Girl,â which, he explained, was about a performer learning to not let a man drag her down.âI gave it to her as a kind of comfort,â Mayer said in a phone interview last month. âYouâve got this great career, youâre the lead in this significant new musical, and youâre young still.âMichele watched the movie that night. Dazzled, she watched it again the next night, resolving to one day land the lead role of Fanny Brice. A few weeks later, she gushed about âFunny Girlâ and its star, Barbra Streisand, at dinner with a television producer, Ryan Murphy, who went on to create a new series, âGlee,â with Michele in mind.This is where it gets meta: Playing a glee club captain who graduates to become a striving theater actress, Micheleâs character lands her dream role in the first Broadway revival of âFunny Girlâ since its debut in 1964.Murphyâs plan to transfer Micheleâs Fanny Brice from the TV screen to stage never materialized. But on Tuesday, a tale that feels to many like life imitating art culminates with Micheleâs first performance as Brice, a 20th-century Jewish performer, at the August Wilson Theater.Like the two other actresses who occupied the lead role this year (first Beanie Feldstein, then her standby Julie Benko), Michele must seek to avoid the shadow of Streisandâs star-making performance in the original musical and movie.Unlike the other actresses, Michele, 36, must contend with another shadow: her past self. Two years ago, she faced a wave of criticism from former colleagues who publicly accused her of bullying behavior and a prima donna attitude. And she must step into a show whose behind-the-scenes machinations and cast changes have been one of the juiciest running stories on Broadway this summer, prompting reams of coverage and gossip.Michele during a âFunny Girlâ rehearsal. She is playing Brice with the characterâs feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. Jenny AndersonâI feel more ready than I ever have before, both personally and professionally,â Michele said in an interview three weeks before her debut. She spoke from a dressing room vacated by the actress Jane Lynch, who ended her run as Briceâs mother earlier than planned, ensuring that the former âGleeâ co-stars would never perform together onstage.The allegations prompted an âintense time of reflectionâ about her conduct at work, Michele said â which, she believes, has equipped her to be a part of, and lead, a Broadway company for the first time since leaving âSpring Awakeningâ in 2008.âI really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,â she said. âIt means not only going and doing a good job when the cameraâs rolling, but also when itâs not. And that wasnât always the most important thing for me.âFor Michele, who temporarily stepped away from performing after the birth of her son, Ever, in 2020, the explosive internet reaction to her âFunny Girlâ casting was not, perhaps, the return-to-Broadway narrative she had imagined.Before the news was announced, Feldstein, who had generally received underwhelming reviews in the role, said on Instagram in July that she would be leaving the show two months earlier than expected, writing that the production had âdecided to take the show in a different direction.â The announcement fueled speculation that Feldsteinâs departure had something to do with Michele, who was rumored to be taking over the part.âI really understand the importance and value now of being a leader,â Michele said. âIt means not only going and doing a good job when the cameraâs rolling, but also when itâs not.âGioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesRebukes of Michele resurfaced online, with some questioning whether she should have been offered the role at all.To go back to June 2020: After Michele tweeted a message with the Black Lives Matter hashtag, Samantha Marie Ware, a Black actress who appeared on âGlee,â said Michele had been responsible for âtraumatic microaggressionsâ toward her, saying that Michele had threatened to get her fired and made a humiliating remark in front of castmates.A deluge of criticism followed, including from former âGleeâ actors who described Michele as exclusionary and demeaning to colleagues. The meal-kit company HelloFresh, saying it âdoes not condone racism nor discrimination of any kind,â ended its partnership with her.Another co-star from âGlee,â Heather Morris, tweeted at the time that it had been very unpleasant to work with Michele, writing that âfor Lea to treat others with the disrespect that she did for as long as she did, I believe she should be called out.â (Morris did not respond to an interview request.)Michele apologized in 2020 for her past behavior. In the interview last month, she declined to address the specifics of Wareâs account, saying she doesnât âfeel the need to handle thingsâ through the media. Ware declined to comment, but shortly after Micheleâs âFunny Girlâ casting was announced, Ware posted a tweet in which she said, âYes, Broadway upholds whiteness.â Her account and tweets have since been made private.Michele now acknowledges that her work style is intense, sometimes to a fault. âI have an edge to me. I work really hard. I leave no room for mistakes,â she said. âThat level of perfectionism, or that pressure of perfectionism, left me with a lot of blind spots.âShe traced that psychology to her days as a child actress on Broadway, where, she said, the expectation to perform at a consistently high level often put her in a âsemi-robotic state.âHer performance career started unexpectedly when she was 8, living in Tenafly, N.J., with her father (a Jewish deli owner) and her mother (an Italian-Catholic nurse). As Michele tells it, her mother was asked to drive a friendâs daughter, whose father had just had a heart attack, to an audition for the Broadway production of âLes MisĂ©rables.â Michele insisted on coming along, and she ended up landing the dual role of Young Cosette and Young Ăponine. Hungry for more, Michele was 9 when she was cast in the new musical âRagtime.âAt 14, she met Mayer when she landed the role of Wendla in a workshop of âSpring Awakening.â The role, as a teenager exploring her sexual desires within the strictures of a 19th-century German household, left no questions about her dedication to the theater. Michele was beaten with a switch onstage by her co-star, Jonathan Groff, and when she was older, she was asked to bare her chest and simulate sex onstage.Groff, who formed a close bond with Michele during the run, remembers Michele being upset by the uncomfortable laughter that beating scene would elicit from audiences.âIt would really crush her,â he said, âlike, âOh gosh, are we not doing the scene well enough? The people are laughing!ââGroff was the person who invited her to dinner with Murphy, setting the stage for Micheleâs âGleeâ role. At 22, Michele became known to the world as Rachel Berry, an anal-retentive high school glee club member whose middle name, Barbra, is after a certain Brooklyn-born diva.By the time Berry lands the âFunny Girlâ role in the series, her affinity for the musical is well established, having already sung âDonât Rain On My Paradeâ and the movie-specific âMy Man.â In the showâs fifth season, Berry belts âIâm the Greatest Starâ on a Broadway stage, with Lynch watching from the audience.You can be forgiven for mixing up which plot points belong to Michele and which to Berry. âIt all kind of morphed together a little bit,â Michele said.In a moment of Rachel Berry-like perfectionism, she admitted that during a âGleeâ concert tour, she asked that âDonât Rain On My Paradeâ be removed from the set list because she had messed up during a live performance.Behind the scenes, Michele said, she was getting a âquick education on addictionâ while dating Cory Monteith, her co-star who had long struggled with substance abuse. Monteith died in 2013 of a combination of heroin and alcohol, devastating Michele and other cast members.Performing in 2010 with Cory Monteith, who died of a combination of heroin and alcohol in 2013.Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesNot long after, Michele got within reach of her dream role, as Murphy snagged the rights to a Broadway revival of âFunny Girl.â It was a difficult time, Michele said, and she felt uncertain about the plan because she had just performed many of the showâs songs on TV.âI didnât feel like there was anything new that I could bring,â she said.The new emotional material came in the years since â when, as Brice does in the showâs second act, Michele got married and had a child, reordering her priorities.Her friends started to notice changes. Groff recalled that at Micheleâs wedding to Zandy Reich, a businessman, in 2019, Murphy, who officiated, told a story about his first dinner with them as a couple. According to Groff, Murphy lightheartedly said, âThis was the first time Iâve had dinner with Lea where the main topic of the conversation wasnât about her, what she wanted to do next creatively.â (A representative for Murphy said he was unavailable to comment for the story.)Michele gave birth to Ever the next year after months of pregnancy complications. He was still a baby when the team behind the London production of âFunny Girlâ was casting for the transfer to Broadway. Mayer said that even though Michele was at the top of the list for Brice, he sensed she would not be ready to return to work.After the show cast Feldstein, Mayer had a conversation with Michele to explain the decision. âI said, âLook, I know this probably isnât what you want to hear, but this is what weâre doing,ââ Mayer remembered telling Michele.Down the road, he added, ââI would love to do âFunny Girlâ with you some time.ââMichele said she had not been set on returning to Broadway until November 2021, when she performed in a one-night-only âSpring Awakeningâ reunion concert. Around that time, she said, she had another conversation with Mayer, in which she said that if Feldsteinâs run ended, and they wanted a replacement, she would be âhonoredâ to step in.After Feldstein initially announced her planned departure in June, the wheels for Michele to take over were set in motion, Mayer said. He added that he loved Feldsteinâs performance and stands by her â100 percent.â Asked why Feldstein decided to leave earlier than expected, he said he was unsure.âI havenât spoken to her about it,â Mayer said. âI think it was hard for her once she knew she was going to be leaving and that someone else was taking over.â (A representative for Feldstein didnât respond to requests for comment.)Mayer said Micheleâs deal went through relatively quickly because she and Feldstein had the same agent, who already knew the details around the show. By late July, Michele was in the rehearsal room. Benko took over as Brice for the month of August, with the assurance sheâd perform one show a week in the role after Micheleâs debut.On one of Micheleâs first days with the full cast, she sang âDonât Rain On My Paradeâ onstage, and an ensemble member, Leslie Blake Walker, said she remembered watching her perform the song on âGleeâ â Walkerâs first exposure to âFunny Girl.âRehearsing âGreatest Starâ onstage last month, Michele played Brice with the characterâs feverish energy dialed up a bit higher than the two Fannies before her this year. The comedy was her way of taking things to the extreme: grabbing a fistful of Jared Grimesâs sweatshirt when trying to convince him of her talent, or hoisting herself on top of the piano, as Mayer suggested, standing partially on the keys.Referring to her âFunny Girlâ colleagues, Michele said, âEveryone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space.âGioncarlo Valentine for The New York TimesThe structure of the show itself will see some changes, including a new interlude of a Brice song, âIâd Rather Be Blue Over You,â that Streisand sings in the movie.Michele, like her predecessors, has tried to remove the pressure of the comparison, saying, âââI will never be as good as Barbra Streisand.â Whatever performance she delivers, it will not be eligible for a Tony: Only the originating actress in that production, Feldstein, can be considered for the award.But the pressure on her to save this revival is hard to dismiss. Mayer said he sees this as a âsecond chanceâ for âFunny Girl,â whose ticket sales had been on the decline, dropping to an average weekly gross of about $760,000 in Feldsteinâs final month from $1.2 million in the first two, according to data from the Broadway League. Prices have now skyrocketed for Micheleâs debut: The most expensive ticket on her first night is more than $2,600, as of Wednesday.Despite the evident star power, Michele seems aware that she should avoid behaving like a diva.âEveryone here has been through a lot, and I just have to come in and be prepared and do a good job and be respectful of the fact that this is their space,â she said.A humbling element of the process is that she had to learn how to tap dance from square one, practicing with a nursery rhyme tap video one of the showâs choreographers, Ayodele Casel, sent her. (After the first tap rehearsal, she said, she cried in the bathroom, wondering if she really could pull this role off, before the steps eventually clicked.)Still, Michele admits that she is only just learning how to be publicly vulnerable. Online hatred of her can verge on gleeful, and she fears that if she responds to criticism â or a bizarre rumor that she is illiterate â it will fuel the fire.âI went to âGleeâ every single day; I knew my lines every single day,â she said. âAnd then thereâs a rumor online that I canât read or write? Itâs sad. It really is. I think often if I were a man, a lot of this wouldnât be the case.âRight now, Michele said, she is focused on whatâs in front of her: inhabiting the role, and this time, doing it as a wife and mother rather than a fame-hungry former glee club captain.Maybe Rachel Berry would throw a fit if her performance was ineligible for a Tony Award, but present-day Lea Michele insists that she isnât bothered.âYou might think thatâs the biggest piece of bull that Iâm going to say to you all day,â Michele said, using the stronger version of the word, âbut I really donât care about that at this point. Itâs just about being able to play this part.â More
Even before the production debuted, it had inflamed a rancorous debate about sex and gender that plays out almost daily in Britain.LONDON â When the playwright Charlie Josephine watched the first performance of their play âI, Joanâ at Shakespeareâs Globe last week, they sat in the theater, wracked with nerves.The play, based on the story of Joan of Arc, is Josephineâs first on a major London stage. But that was not the only reason that the playwright, who identifies as transgender, queer and nonbinary, and uses the pronoun they, was anxious. Throughout last month, âI, Joanâ had been at the center of a media furor in Britain because of Josephineâs decision to depict Joan of Arc as nonbinary.In the play, which runs at the Globe through Oct. 22, Joan of Arc comes to terms with their gender identity while inspiring French soldiers to repel English forces from their soil. âIâm not a girl,â Joan says at one point. âI do not fit that word.âWhen The Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper, reported details of the Globe production in August, it led to a barrage of complaints on social media and in print. Allison Pearson, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph, a conservative newspaper, wrote that recasting Joan of Arc as nonbinary was âan insult.â Sophie Walker, a former leader of Britainâs Womenâs Equality Party, wrote on Twitter that when she âwas a little girl, Joan of Arc presented thrilling possibilities about what one young girl could do against massed ranks of men. Rewriting her as not female and presenting it as progress is a massive disappointment.âShakespeareâs Globe, where âI, Joanâ is running through Oct. 22.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesThe Globe warns patrons about details in âI, Joanâ that some may find upsetting. This is not the first show there that has caused a stir.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesBefore anyone had even seen it, the Globeâs show touched a nerve in Britain, where a perceived conflict between the rights of women, and transgender and nonbinary people, has ignited a furious debate that plays out almost daily in the news media, in lawmakersâ speeches and in the courts. Some feminists in Britain have long called for the maintenance of rights based on biological sex, rather than gender identity, which they say threatens womenâs-only spaces. Many transgender and nonbinary people say those campaigns discriminate against them and create a hostile environment.The story of Joan of Arc â a 15th-century teenage girl who is said to have heeded Godâs instructions to put on menâs clothing and lead French soldiers in battle, only to be tried for heresy and burned at the stake â has been the subject of plays for centuries. Daniel Hobbins, a historian at the University of Notre Dame, said many of those depictions played fast and loose with historical truth. Shakespeare, in âHenry VI, Part 1,â portrayed Joan of Arc as a witch, in keeping with British views at the time, Hobbins said. In the early 19th century, Friedrich Schiller, in âThe Maid of Orleans,â showed Joan falling in love with an English knight. âThat didnât happen,â Hobbins said. âShe has been reimagined forever to suit contemporary needs.âJoan of Arc was tried for heresy in the 15th century and burned at the stake.Helen MurrayLucy Delap, a professor of gender history at the University of Cambridge, said Josephineâs reinvention of Joan of Arc had fed into a debate in Britain that had become âso heightenedâ that there was little communication between the two sides. A play like âI, Joanâ could have been a way to open a conversation that would cross that divide, she said, but it had instead become a âuseful dog whistleâ for people âwho were hot under the collar about trans issues.âHeather Binning of the Womenâs Rights Network, a group that aims âto defend the sex-based rights of women,â said in an email that she objected to âI, Joanâ because a nonbinary identity was âa 21st-century idea.â Joan of Arc âexisted in a time where her struggles were that of being a woman,â she wrote. âBeing female, and the biological sex of her body, lies at the root of this story.âBinning said she thought âI, Joanâ was âtrying to attract attention by riding on the wave of gender identity ideology that is sweeping not just the U.K., but many other countries.âSitting on the roof terrace of the Globeâs offices last week, Josephine, the playwright, said they had anticipated most of the complaints, and felt they were misguided. The play was not trying to erase women from history, Josephine said. It was meant to open up new ways of thinking about a historical figure. If anyone wanted to keep thinking of Joan as a young woman, they said, âthen, cool â you still can.âJosephine, 33, said the French martyrâs story had meant little to them growing up in a working-class family in Hemel Hempstead, southern England. The Globe asked them to write the play last year; the playwrightâs main concern, at first, was nothing to do with gender, but how to talk about Joanâs religious beliefs in a way that would resonate with a largely nonreligious theatergoing audience.Thom as Joan of Arc.Helen MurrayMembers of the âI, Joanâ cast, including dancers the script describes as âyoung, queer and fierce.âHelen MurrayJosephine said the decision to make Joan nonbinary came after studying Joanâs life and realizing that Joan of Arc had been willing to die at the stake rather than stop wearing menâs clothing. This was ânot a casual fashion statement,â Josephine said. âIt was a deep need for them.â Josephine wanted to depict what it would have been like for âa young person in a female body, who is questioning gender in a very different society than what we live in now,â they said. âMy younger self really needed a protagonist like this,â they added.Michelle Terry, the Globeâs artistic director, said the playhouse had a history of causing a stir by playing with gender onstage. In 2003, Mark Rylance, the companyâs artistic director at the time, upset some patrons with all-female productions of âThe Taming of the Shrewâ and âRichard III.â More recently, Terry said she received complaints for playing Hamlet there in 2018, and again this year, when the Globe toured a production of âJulius Caesarâ in which the main male characters were played by women.âEveryoneâs got an idea of how plays should be done and how historical figures should be treated,â she said. All âI, Joanâ was doing, Terry said, was asking, âWho is Joan for now?âFor all the media fuss, the one place where few people seemed concerned about Joan of Arcâs gender was in the auditorium of the Globe itself. At a recent performance of âI, Joan,â the audience of nearly 1,000 was made up of the theaterâs usual mix of British theater lovers, tourists and school groups. At 7:30 p.m., Isobel Thom, who plays Joan, walked onstage and began the showâs opening speech: âTrans people are sacred. We are the divine.â The monologue was interrupted by cheers of support.Audience members seem to have embraced the depiction of Joan of Arc as nonbinary. In interviews with nearly 20 spectators, no one said they had a problem with it.Alex Ingram for The New York TimesRobin van Asselt, 23, a transgender woman from Amsterdam in the audience, said she had cried watching the âcasual queernessâ onstage. Joanâs âaggressive push to be seen and respectedâ as nonbinary âwas just so cathartic,â van Asselt added.In interviews with nearly 20 more audience members, no one said they had a problem with a nonbinary Joan of Arc. Wanda Forsythe, 72, a retired college administrator on vacation from Toronto, said she âdidnât feel offended as a woman â just that it could have been done a bit better, and shorter.â (The show runs almost three hours.)Jackie Warren, 62, a retired government official, said she and her husband came to two plays at the Globe every year and had picked âI, Joanâ at random. Portraying Joan as nonbinary was âreally clever,â Warren said.âIâm old, arenât I?â she added, âso I donât understand a lot of it. I just think we need to open our hearts to everybody, and I canât understand why we canât.â More
