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      Giant Puppet of Syrian Refugee Angers Some on Walk Through Greece

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      “Little Amal” is on a 5,000-mile journey from Turkey to Britain to highlight the plight of Syrian refugees. But in Greece, some have objected to her presence, saying it could encourage more migrants.ATHENS — A giant puppet of a nine-year-old Syrian girl named Amal has been traveling across Turkey and Greece for much of the past month. It is the first leg of a 5,000-mile journey, one that is rich in symbolism as a new migration crisis looms in Europe following the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.The puppet is the lead character in an ambitious theater project called “The Walk” that aims to draw attention to the refugee experience by following a route similar to that taken by some Syrians who escaped the civil war in their country. “Little Amal” and her handlers plan to cross eight countries and dozens of cities in an 8,000-kilometer bid to shine a light on the plight of millions of displaced refugees.But Amal, who is 12 feet tall and “walks” with the aid of the team of puppeteers accompanying her, is not welcome everywhere.On Monday, the local council of Meteora, a municipality in central Greece, voted to ban Amal from walking through a village in the area, which is home to a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its cluster of Orthodox monasteries built on towering rock formations.The objection raised by several council members was that a puppet depicting a Muslim refugee should not be permitted to perform in a space of such importance to Greek Orthodox believers. The local bishop opposed the project for that reason, while a local heritage group complained that the initiative could bring more refugees to a country that has already taken in tens of thousands.The tensions in this corner of Greece come as Europe wrestles once again with the inflammatory issue of migration amid the escalating crisis in Afghanistan.Greece was particularly hard-hit by the migration crisis of 2015-2016, which saw more than 1 million refugees stream through the country — mostly from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.Meteora, central Greece, in May. The local council voted to ban the puppet from “walking” through the area.Dimitris Tosidis/EPA, via ShutterstockThen, many Greeks, particularly on the Aegean Islands, pitched in to help. Over time, however, solidarity was replaced by frustration, which intensified during a standoff at the land border with Turkey in March 2020 when thousands of migrants tried to enter Greece. Since then, Greek authorities have toughened their stance, extending a metal fence at the land border and drafting legislation to accelerate deportations.During a debate in Parliament on the bill on Friday, the migration minister, Notis Mitarachi, said that Greece “will not allow itself to become a gateway to Europe for illegal migration flows, as it was from 2015 to 2019.”The local heritage association in Meteora said it was particularly worried that the puppet initiative could encourage a new wave of refugees to Greece.“How much solidarity can Greece show?” Grigorios Kalyvas, the association’s head, said. “Isn’t there a limit to what we can do and how many we can take?”In a session of the local council on Monday night, the mayor of Meteora, Theodoros Alekos, said his concern had to do with the presence of a “Muslim doll from Syria” in an area rich in Orthodox significance and popular for religious tourism. Worries that the local walk, which had been planned for Sunday, could exacerbate the spread of the coronavirus at a time of record infection levels in Greece also factored into the decision to stop it, he said.The puppet would not be prevented from crossing the municipality’s main town of Kalambaka on its way through Greece, the council decided, but would not be allowed in villages close to the monasteries.For the local heritage association, this was not good enough. “If they enter the town, there’ll be protests,” Mr. Kalyvas said, saying the puppet’s presence would be an “insult.” He added: “If they keep her wrapped up in the box, that’s fine.”David Lan, one of the producers of “The Walk,” said in a telephone interview from Greece that he had not anticipated opposition to the project, but wasn’t surprised given how some people in Europe perceive refugees. “It’s a very live issue with Afghanistan,” he added.The plan had been for Amal, whose name means “hope” in Arabic, to walk near the monasteries and have a picnic with local children, Mr. Lan said, adding that his team had secured approval from regional authorities for the event. But they now planned to go elsewhere. “If we’re not welcome, we don’t go.”“The Walk” evolved out of the “The Jungle,” an acclaimed play about refugees that had runs on London’s West End and at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn.The project involves Amal and her puppeteers traveling from Gazientep, Turkey, to Manchester, England, with numerous detours along the way. Gaziantep was chosen as it is home to tens of thousands of Syrians, and Manchester because of its high concentration of asylum seekers.Along the way, Amal joins events with local artists, children and refugee groups.In Gazientep, excited children held up lanterns to guide Amal through the city. And on the Greek island of Chios, choirs sang to welcome her as an orchestra played.“The meaning’s obvious,” Mr. Lan said, referring to the aim of the project. “It’s ‘Don’t forget about us.’”Niki Kitsantonis More

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      Broadway Power Brokers Pledge Diversity Changes as Theaters Reopen

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      To address Black artists’ concerns, the pact calls for forgoing all-white creative teams, renaming theaters for Black artists and establishing diversity rules for the Tonys.Fifteen months after the George Floyd protests called renewed attention to racism in many areas of society, some of the most powerful players on Broadway have signed a pact pledging to strengthen the industry’s diversity practices as theaters reopen following the lengthy shutdown prompted by the coronavirus pandemic.The agreement commits Broadway and its touring productions not only to the types of diversity training and mentorship programs that have become common in many industries, but also to a variety of sector-specific changes: the industry is pledging to forgo all-white creative teams, hire “racial sensitivity coaches” for some shows, rename theaters for Black artists and establish diversity rules for the Tony Awards.The document, called “A New Deal for Broadway,” was developed under the auspices of Black Theater United, one of several organizations established last year as an outgrowth of the anger Black theater artists felt over the police killings of Floyd in Minnesota and Breonna Taylor in Kentucky. Black Theater United’s founding members include some of the most celebrated performers working in the American theater, including Audra McDonald, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Billy Porter, Wendell Pierce, Norm Lewis and LaChanze.The signatories include the owners and operators of all 41 Broadway theaters — commercial and nonprofit — as well as the Broadway League, which is a trade organization representing producers, and Actors’ Equity Association, which is a labor union representing actors and stage mangers. Their pledges are not legally enforceable, but they agreed to “hold ourselves and each other accountable for implementing these commitments.”The document was negotiated at a series of virtual meetings that began while theaters were closed because of the pandemic; the changes are being announced as two Broadway shows have begun performances this summer, with 15 more planning to start, or restart, in September.“We convened all of the power players in our industry — the unions, the theater owners, producers and creatives — and had conversations about changing habits, structures and creating accountability,” said the director Schele Williams. “We knew that before our theaters robustly started opening in the fall, everyone deserved to know who they were in the space, and how they would be treated, and that’s something none of us have known in our careers.”One of the key changes being called for is that creative teams — which include directors, writers, composers, choreographers and designers — should be diverse. A section signed by directors and writers vows to “never assemble an all-white creative team on a production again, regardless of the subject matter of the show,” while a section signed by producers says, “We will make best efforts to ensure true racial diversity on all future productions.”The meetings, which started in March, were funded by the Ford Foundation and facilitated by Kenji Yoshino, director of the Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University School of Law. “Everyone came in ready to make change,” the producer David Stone said.Among the changes that will be most visible to the general public: The three big commercial landlords on Broadway — the Shubert, Nederlander and Jujamcyn organizations — each pledged that at least one theater they operate would be named for a Black artist. Jujamcyn already operates the August Wilson Theater, the only Broadway house named for a Black artist.“This is a movement that is going to make change, and we’re happy to be part of it,” said Robert E. Wankel, chairman and chief executive of the Shubert Organization..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The document’s signatories are committing to changes that would affect many aspects of the theater business, from casting to hair care. But Broadway is a highly unionized work force, and the only labor unions that signed the agreement are those representing actors, stage managers, makeup artists and hairstylists.That leaves some conspicuous gaps — there is pervasive concern about low levels of diversity among Broadway stagehands, musicians and design teams, for example — and the leadership of Black Theater United said that although the group has endorsements from individuals working in those areas, it will continue to work to win more organizational support for the document.The actor NaTasha Yvette Williams said that she expected more groups to embrace the calls for change. “It’s only a matter of time before they come around,” she said.The director Kenny Leon acknowledged frustration that his own union, the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, was not a signatory. “I am disappointed that my directing union hasn’t signed on yet,” he said. “But as a Black member of that union, I’m going to keep fighting for that.”The executive director of the union, Laura Penn, said the organization was “deeply committed to the principles” of the agreement, but opted not to sign because much of it is “beyond the scope of the union’s purview.”Jeanine Tesori, a composer, said she is hopeful that the variety of professions represented in a show’s music department will jointly commit to creating more opportunity in what can be a tough area to break into. “We have to invite newcomers in,” she said.The signatories pledged to create a new, mandatory, industrywide training program for Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Accessibility and Belonging. And, with an eye toward further diversifying the industry, they also committed to “mentoring and sponsoring Black talent in our respective fields on an ongoing basis.”“Everybody has a Black Lives Matter statement out,” said the actress Allyson Tucker. “The words are no longer enough. What is the action?”Among the other commitments: remove “biased or stereotypical language” from casting notices; insist on diversity riders prioritizing inclusivity as part of director and author contracts; search more widely for music contractors, who are the gatekeepers to orchestra staffing; and abolish unpaid internships. “Internships had a reputation of being for people who could afford to not be paid any money,” said the actor Darius de Haas.The signatories also commit to “sensitivity” steps for shows dealing with race. “For shows that raise racial sensitivities, we will appoint a racial sensitivity coach whose role is akin to an intimacy coach,” the document says. And separately, it says, “While acknowledging that creatives can write about any subject that captures their interest or imagination, we will, when writing scripts that raise identity issues (such as race), make best efforts to commission sensitivity reads during the drafting process to assist in flagging issues and providing suggestions for improvement. Playwrights and/or those individuals or entities with contractual approval rights will retain creative control to accept or reject the sensitivity reader’s recommendations.”“We have to tell difficult stories,” Schele Williams said. “But we also must take great care.”The document does not detail what kinds of diversity rules the group is seeking for the Tony Awards. But the actor Vanessa Williams said the document’s call for diversity “requirements for Tony Award eligibility” was inspired by new rules for the Academy Awards that will require films to meet specified inclusion standards to qualify for a best picture nomination. More

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      Broadway Theater Owners and Producers Start Campaign to Bring Back Locals

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      The trade association representing theater owners and producers gets an assist from Oprah Winfrey as it seeks to drive ticket sales beyond the buzzy September reopenings.Broadway producers and theater owners, concerned about whether fans are ready to return as dozens of shows prepare to start or resume performances, have banded together for an industrywide marketing campaign aimed at persuading Broadway’s core audience to purchase tickets.Gone are the days when the booming industry was focused on expanding its reach to tourists from China and Brazil. Now, as the longest shutdown in history nears an uncertain end, an anxious industry is more focused on bringing back fans from New Jersey and Connecticut.On Monday, the Broadway League will begin a “This Is Broadway” campaign that it plans to roll out on screens not only across the five boroughs — at subway and bus stations, in taxis and Wi-Fi kiosks, and on a giant electronic cube in Times Square — but also through social and news media platforms with a broader geographic reach, including YouTube, Facebook, Hulu, Condé Nast, CNN, The New York Times and more. The campaign, aimed squarely at people from the East Coast who before the pandemic enjoyed seeing Broadway shows, seeks to serve as a reminder of all that Broadway offers.The campaign is anchored by a 2.5 minute video, featuring snippets of 99 shows, such as “A Chorus Line” and “Hamilton,” and narration by Oprah Winfrey. The spots will be excerpted in 30 second, 15 second and 6 second digital ads.The marketing material points consumers to a new website, thisisbroadway.org, that features, describes and links to sales sites for every Broadway show that will be onstage this season; two shows, “Springsteen on Broadway” and “Pass Over,” are already running, and 15 more plan to start performances in September. The site also features recommendations based on user interests, and information about safety protocols (all shows are requiring that patrons be vaccinated and masked).“The goal is to let the world know we’re back, and, specifically, to drive ticket sales for the first six months from the Northeast corridor and the Eastern Seaboard, which is where we believe is our best opportunity to put people in seats,” said Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, which is a trade association representing theater owners and producers. The League has set aside $1.5 million for the campaign, but says that the campaign will have a broader reach, which they estimate will be worth more than $3 million in advertising value, thanks to discounted ad rates and support from other organizations.The campaign is unusual for Broadway because individual shows usually do their own marketing. But this is an unusual time, when concerns about the Delta variant have made an already precarious reopening seem even more risky. The League, citing the atypical nature of this season, says it will not disclose box office grosses, but St. Martin said the industry’s September sales are strong..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“There will be shows, as there always are, that don’t do well, and I’m sure they’ll blame it on the pandemic,” St. Martin said. “But I’m very encouraged.”Theater owners agreed to pool consumer data from a period of five years, including 17 million ticket sales in the Northeast, to improve the campaign’s targeting, and multiple unions agreed to allow the use of archival video for advertising. Collectively the spots feature 113 shows, 735 performers, and one dog (Sandy, from “Annie,” of course).In addition to the video, the campaign will call attention to the industry in other ways as well. On Aug. 30, the Empire State Building will be lit up to celebrate Broadway’s reopening. In collaboration with Audience Rewards, there will be a contest in which one person can win four tickets to all 38 shows now on sale. And, in collaboration with Playbill, there will be a mid-September festival and concert in Times Square.The League has been determined since the start of the Broadway shutdown in March 2020 to find a way to promote Broadway as it returns, but the focus of the campaign has shifted as the Delta variant has rattled consumers.“The hypothesis had been that the core audience is going to come back, and we should focus on the casual theatergoer,” said Andrew Lazzaro, a consultant who helped design the campaign for the Broadway League. “But over the course of the summer, as the Delta variant took hold, positions changed — a lot of our data started to suggest that the core audience wasn’t coming back at the level we needed, and we were able to pivot.”Lazzaro said their strategy is primarily aimed at a million people living between Maine and Virginia who, before the pandemic, were reliable theatergoers, interested in seeing what’s new on Broadway, and accounting for a disproportionate share of ticket sales, but who now may need a bit of encouragement to resume the habit.The campaign is scheduled to run through the end of the year. It overlaps with a $30 million promotional campaign by the city’s tourism agency to lure visitors back to New York City. More

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      ‘Ni Mi Madre’ Review: A Son’s Stinging Tribute to His Mother

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      Arturo Luís Soria wrote and stars in a forgiving, yet cleareyed solo show about parental damage done.Enter the playwright, bare-chested and barefoot in a white skirt that skims the floor. Then the skirt becomes an off-the-shoulder dress, and he becomes his mother, in an exuberant dance.It’s a simple transformation into the character, and utterly theatrical. Suddenly there she is, regaling us: Bete, an irresistibly charming, no-nonsense, twice-divorced Brazilian immigrant who, it’s fair to guess, has never won an award for parent of the year.There was, for example, the joke she used to play on her son Arturo when he was small. He would ring the doorbell, and she would answer as if he were a stranger: “I’m sorry, honey, but are you looking for your mother?” Then she would tell him to try next door.Arturo Luís Soria’s autobiographical solo show “Ni Mi Madre,” directed by Danilo Gambini at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in Manhattan, is remarkably unconventional. That’s not because it’s a queer narrative, though it is, or because its mostly English dialogue often slips briefly, without translation, into Portuguese and Spanish, though it does, and works just fine that way.A black-and-white floor in homage to the sidewalk in Ipanema, where Bete grew up. The set is designed by Stephanie Osin Cohen.Andrew Soria/Courtesy of The Rattlestick Playwrights TheaterWhat marks this play as extraordinary in these knee-jerk antagonistic times is its ease with emotional contradiction and discomfort, its willingness to let filial affection persist despite a cleareyed acknowledgment of parental damage done. (In the program, Soria thanks his mother “for not only living the life that I have bastardized on this stage, but for also enduring my retelling of it over and over again for the past decade and a half.”)At 60 minutes, the production is not quite as tight as it could be; its shifts into Bete’s childhood, and other, ghostlier realms don’t always persuade. But Soria, who appeared on Broadway in “The Inheritance,” is a charismatic actor. And it is lovely to return to Rattlestick, where the indoor air moves in a soft, reassuring breeze. (Masks and proof of vaccination are required.)“Ni Mi Madre,” which means “nor my mother,” is about legacy across cultures and generations: what Bete handed down to Arturo, intentionally or not, and what Bete’s mother, who Bete says never wanted to be a parent, handed down to her.But it is also about a straight woman and the queer son she has in some ways always championed — even if, when he came out as bisexual, she in effect told him to pick a side — trying to navigate a world in which straight men hold so much of the power and make so many of the rules.When Bete, an unapologetic believer in using corporal punishment on children, tells of the time she beat Arturo for something it turned out he hadn’t even done, she clings to her reasoning: that his behavior was going to embarrass her in front of her fiancé.“I had three kids, and I was about to marry my third husband,” she says. “What was this man going to think about me?”In keeping with Bete’s philosophy that walls should be the color of “suggestive foods,” “Ni Mi Madre” has a papaya-orange set (by Stephanie Osin Cohen). Its black-and-white patterned floor is in homage to the sidewalk in Ipanema, where she grew up, and the painting upstage center is of the mother goddess Iemanjá.Andrew Soria/Courtesy of The Rattlestick Playwrights TheaterAndrew Soria/Courtesy of The Rattlestick Playwrights TheaterAgainst this vivid backdrop, and beneath Krista Smith’s saturated lighting, Bete’s appearance is wisely almost unembellished: hair loose, little makeup, minimal jewelry (costume design is by Haydee Zelideth).Soria gives a performance of matching restraint, which is vital to safeguarding Bete’s humanity. As funny and over the top as she is, she never slips into caricature. And so we can feel for both her and her son.“Ni Mi Madre” is an aching heart wrapped in laughter and a long white dress — an offering of understanding and forgiveness, presented on the altar of bruised inheritance.Ni Mi MadreThrough Sept. 19, in person and livestreamed, at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Manhattan; 212-627-2556, rattlestick.org. Running time: 1 hour. More

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      At Two Summer Festivals, Offerings That Are Gloomy and Grim

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      The Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale host a series of theatrical pieces, both old and new, that seem to reflect our troubled time.ESSEN, Germany — In the constellation of Europe’s performing arts festivals, few make a more contrasting pair than the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale.The differences begin with the events’ settings. Salzburg, Mozart’s picturesque hometown, nestled in the Alps, lies at the geographical center of Europe. The Ruhr region, Germany’s rust belt, is comparatively isolated. Salzburg boasts stunning mountain vistas, an old town and a fairy-tale castle. The Ruhr region is a linked network of drab postindustrial cities.The Salzburg Festival usually plays host to well-heeled visitors from over 80 countries, while the Ruhrtriennale caters heavily to locals with subsidized tickets.Yet for all their differences, the two festivals share some DNA.When the Flemish impresario Gerard Mortier founded the Ruhrtriennale in 2002, he was coming off a decade of shaking things up as the Salzburg Festival’s artistic director. Although his time there is now seen as a golden age, Mortier’s attempts to nudge the festival in a more artistically daring direction proved wildly contentious at the time. When Mortier arrived in the Ruhr region, his new festival gave him the opportunity to realize large-format experiments that he could never pull off at Salzburg.Two decades later, the Salzburg Festival’s roster of operas and concerts has recaptured something of the boundary-pushing and avant-garde flair of the “Mortier era.” The festival’s dramatic program, however, has struggled to keep up.A silent chorus of nude male performers in Friedrich Schiller’s “Maria Stuart” in Salzburg.Matthias Horn/Salzburg FestivalSalzburg’s outdoor production of “Jedermann,” a morality play written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, one of the festival’s founders, is the event’s oldest tradition. In recent years, little of the Austrian poet and dramatist’s other work has been staged there. This summer, however, as part of the festival’s ongoing centenary festivities, Hofmannsthal’s “The Falun Mine” has taken center stage.Written in 1899, though never performed during its author’s lifetime, “The Falun Mine” is a ghost story composed in the pungently lyrical language of Hofmannsthal’s best early work. It tells the story of a miner beset by strange apparitions and swallowed up by a mountain on his wedding day, and is choked with symbolism, much of which remained inscrutable in the dreary production by the Swiss director Jossi Wieler.The actors declaimed their lines in a highly mannered tone from a rotating stage littered with cinder blocks. It often seemed that the play itself was buried alive under the rubble.A theatrical death knell also sounded for Salzburg’s new production of Friedrich Schiller’s “Maria Stuart.” Despite some powerful images, thanks to a silent chorus of 30 nude male performers, or a single swinging light bulb, Martin Kusej’s stripped-down staging, a coproduction with Vienna’s Burgtheater (where Kusej is the artistic director) fell flat, sabotaged by hammy overacting from nearly every member of the cast.The atmosphere of gloom and doom seemed to spread like a fog from Salzburg to the Ruhr, where a number of the region’s “cathedrals of industry” — the disused factories that have been repurposed as theaters — had a haunted quality at the start of the Ruhrtriennale.From left, Annamária Láng, Katharina Lorenz, Deborah Korley, Michael Maertens, Jan Bülow and Markus Scheumann in Barbara Frey’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” part of the Ruhr Triennale.Matthias Horn/Ruhrtriennale This summer’s program is the first of three to be overseen by Barbara Frey, a Swiss director and the second consecutive woman to run the festival after Stefanie Carp, whose troubled tenure was cut short by the Covid-19 pandemic. Based on Frey’s work so far, she seems set on restoring the Ruhrtriennale to the provocative and artistically unpredictable spirit of its founder.In her own production of “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the edifice in question was the Maschinenhalle Zweckel, the electrical center of a former coal mine in the city of Gladbeck. In this sinister show, another coproduction with the Burgtheater, a close-knit group of eight performers narrated five of Poe’s spine-tingling tales in German, English and Hungarian. With ritualistic precision, they luxuriated in the American writer’s melancholy prose.This atmosphere of suffocating sadness turned gleefully macabre with “The Feast of the Lambs,” a musical theater work written by the Nobel Prize-winning author Elfriede Jelinek and the composer Olga Neuwirth. Based on a play by the British writer Leonora Carrington, it is, like “Usher,” a tale of madness and familial decay.Elfriede Jelinek’s “The Feast of the Lambs.”Volker Beushausen/Ruhrtriennale The directors Bush Moukarzel and Ben Kidd, of the Dublin-based theater company Dead Center, filled the cavernous Jahrhunderthalle, a former gas power plant in the city of Bochum, with an eye-popping production, complete with trippy video projections, falling snow and a blood-red lake, effectively blurring the boundaries between domestic and outdoor horrors, as well as between human and animal savagery. (You can watch a streamed performance on the festival website).As in “Usher,” the oddball spirit of “Lambs” was tethered to artistic seriousness and skill. Things looked very different for “A Divine Comedy” by Florentina Holzinger. This young Viennese choreographer has gained fame for extreme performances that deconstruct dance history and sexualized representations of the female body.Florentina Holzinger’s “A Divine Comedy” in the city of Duisburg.Katja Illner/RuhrtriennaleHer latest, Dante-inspired outing combines onstage hypnosis, athletic performances, slapstick routines, action painting and pornographic situations to no apparent end. Using the Kraftzentrale, an enormous former power plant in the city of Duisburg, Holzinger and a score of naked female performers ran riot for the better part of two hours, often to seat-rumbling music.Holzinger is part of the incoming artistic team at the Berlin Volksbühne, where “A Divine Comedy” will transfer in late September. It’s a full-on three-ring circus of horrors that was mostly just tedious. I didn’t buy Holzinger’s willfully transgressive spectacle, but apparently I was in the minority: The only thing that truly shocked me about “A Divine Comedy” was how much the audience loved it.I felt there was one artistic work at the Ruhrtriennale that connected to humanity — and it wasn’t in a theater.An installation view of Mats Staub’s “21 — Memories of Growing Up” in a turbine hall in Bochum.Sabrina Less/RuhrtriennaleOver the past decade, the Swiss artist Mats Staub has conducted hundreds of interviews with individuals of various ages and backgrounds for “21 — Memories of Growing Up,” which has been installed in a turbine hall in Bochum. Spread over 50 different stations, the video interviews provide varied reflections on maturity, independence and happiness. The project feels like an archive of human strivings and the possibility for rebirth.Renewal was the watchword at the founding of both the Salzburg Festival and the Ruhrtriennale. In 1920, that meant reclaiming and safeguarding European culture after the Great War and the loss of the Habsburg Empire; at the turn of the millennium, it meant rejuvenating a depressed, postindustrial corner of Germany.If the onstage offerings at both events this year have seemed unrelentingly grim, they have at least reflected the struggles of our time. Yet, as we cautiously adjust to living with a pandemic for the foreseeable future, we could desperately use some renewal, too.The Salzburg Festival continues through Aug. 31.The Ruhrtriennale continues through Sept. 25. More

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      Micki Grant, Groundbreaking Broadway Composer, Dies at 92

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      With “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” she became the first woman to write the book, music and lyrics of a Broadway musical.Micki Grant, who in the early 1970s became the first woman to write the book, music and lyrics of a Broadway musical, “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope,” a soulful, spirited exploration of Black life, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 92.Her death, at Mount Sinai Morningside hospital, was announced by Joan Allen, a family spokeswoman.Ms. Grant, an actress, composer, playwright and musician, had developed “Don’t Bother Me” for two years with the director Vinnette Carroll, taking it to small theaters in New York, Philadelphia and Washington before opening on Broadway in April 1972.She would also be known for her work on another Broadway musical, “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and for her seven years on the NBC soap opera “Another World.”Set in New York City, “Don’t Bother Me” explored topics like ghetto life, Black power, feminism and student protests with an all-Black cast performing songs — all by Ms. Grant — that drew from rock, jazz, funk, blues calypso and other musical genres.Ms. Grant recalled in 2018 that she and Ms. Carroll had wanted audiences of the musical to recognize the similarities among races, not the differences.“And I think that’s expressed when you find out in the end that the audience is willing to reach out and take someone’s hand,” she said in an interview with The New York Amsterdam News. “Some people in the audience never held the hand of a person of a different race before, and all of the sudden, they’re holding another person’s hand.”The musical got rave reviews, including one from Clive Barnes of The New York Times, who wrote: “It is the unexpected that is the most delightful. Last night at the Playhouse Theater a new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun and Black.”The show received Tony nominations for best musical, best original score, best book (also by Ms. Grant) and best direction. It won a Grammy for best musical theater album, making Ms. Grant the first female composer to win in that category.“Don’t Bother Me” was revived in 2016 as a concert performance by the York Theater Company in Manhattan and two years later by the Encores! Off-Center series at New York City Center, directed by Savion Glover.Amber Barbee Pickens, foreground, in the Encores! production of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” at New York City Center in 2018. One critic said of the original Broadway production: “A new musical came clapping, stomping and stamping in. It is fresh, fun and Black.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJames Morgan, York’s producing artistic director, said in a phone interview that Ms. Grant had “wanted a say in everything and would say, ‘No, that’s not how that goes.’ I’d tell her, ‘We want this to be your version of the show.’”He had been hoping to stage a full Off Broadway production of “Don’t Worry,” he said, but couldn’t raise the money. “I so wanted it for her, because there’s still a big audience for it,” he said.Ms. Grant was born Minnie Louise Perkins on June 30, 1929, in Chicago to Oscar and Gussie (Cobbins) Perkins. Her father was a barber and a self-taught pianist, her mother, a saleswoman for Stanley Home Products.Minnie was smitten by theater and music at a young age. At 8 she played the Spirit of Spring, touching flowers to bring them to life, in a community center production. She began taking piano and double-bass lessons at about the same age.And, she recalled in an interview with The Times in 1972: “I was busy writing poetry and walking around the house reciting it. My family always listened and said what nice poetry it was.”Ms. Grant began writing music at 14 or 15 and acting in community theater at 18. She studied at the Chicago School of Music and later attended the University of Illinois, Chicago.But one semester shy of graduating, she left to perform in Los Angeles, where, in 1961, she appeared in a musical revue, “Fly Blackbird,” a social satire about the evils of segregation. She moved with the show to its Off Broadway production in 1962.By then, she had changed her name to Micki.Ms. Grant made her Broadway debut a year later in a supporting role in “Tambourines to Glory,” a short-lived “gospel singing play” — written by the poet Langston Hughes with music by Jobe Huntley — about two female street preachers in Harlem. It also starred Robert Guillaume and Louis Gossett Jr. A year later she appeared in a revival of Marc Blitzstein’s musical play “The Cradle Will Rock,” set in 1937 during the Great Depression.She turned to television in 1965, beginning a seven-year run on “Another World” playing a secretary-turned-lawyer, Peggy Nolan. She is believed to have been the first Black contract player in soaps. She later had roles in the soap operas “Guiding Light,” “Edge of Night” and “All My Children.”Ms. Grant in the NBC soap opera “Another World” in 1968. She had a seven-year run on the show playing a secretary-turned-lawyer.Fred Hermansky/NBCCasey Childs, the founder of the Primary Stages Company in New York, recalled directing her in one soap opera episode. “She was an absolutely lovely actress, who understood the need on a soap to move quickly and make fast choices,” he said in an interview.During her long run on “Another World,” Ms. Grant was building a theatrical legacy with Ms. Carroll, who in 1967 founded the Urban Arts Corps to provide a showcase for Black and Puerto Rican performers.They put together the first production of “Don’t Bother Me” in 1970 at the company’s theater on West 20th Street in Manhattan. Ms. Grant also wrote the music and lyrics for a song and dance version of the Irwin Shaw novel “Bury the Dead” and for a children’s show called “Croesus and the Witch.”Working with Ms. Carroll, she said, was a “magical” experience.“It all came together so perfectly,” Ms. Grant told American Theater magazine in an interview this year. “It was a fortunate meeting between us: I needed somewhere to present my work, and she needed the new work to present because of who she was — having original works brought out her creativity, rather than trying to repeat something that was already done.”The two women also collaborated on “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” an acclaimed gospel-infused musical that opened on Broadway in 1976 and ran for 429 performances. Ms. Carroll wrote the book, and music and lyrics were by Alex Bradford, with additional songs by Ms. Grant.Two years later, Ms. Grant was one of the five songwriters behind the musical “Working,” which was based on the writer Studs Terkel’s book of interviews with everyday people about their jobs. The group was nominated for a Tony for best original score.In one of Ms. Grant’s songs in “Working,” a woman laments: “If I could’ve done what I could’ve done/I could’ve done big things./With some luck to do what I wanted to do/I would’ve done big things./Swam a few rivers/Climbed a few hills/Paid all my bills.”She returned to Broadway one last time, with a musical, “It’s So Nice to Be Civilized” (1980), which closed after eight performances.Her other credits include the English-language lyrics to songs in “Jacques Brel Blues,” which debuted in East Hampton, N.Y., in 1988, and “Don’t Underestimate a Nut,” a musical based on the life of George Washington Carver, the agricultural scientist who promoted the cultivation of peanuts. It was commissioned by a children’s theater in Omaha, Neb., in 1994.In the late 1990s, Ms. Grant spent two years with Lizan Mitchell on a tour of the United States and South Africa as they played the centenarian Delany sisters in “Having Our Say,” Emily Mann’s Tony Award-winning play.Ms. Grant had no immediate survivors. Her marriages to Milton Grant and Ray McCutcheon ended in divorce.When Encores! revived “Don’t Bother Me,” Ms. Grant, reflecting on its creation, said that her and Ms. Carroll’s goal had not been to produce an incendiary musical about the difficulties faced by Black people in America.“There was a lot of angry theater out there at the time, especially in the Black community — Bullins, Jones,” she said, referring to the playwrights Ed Bullins and LeRoi Jones, who became known as Amiri Baraka. “I wanted to come at it with a soft fist. I wanted to open eyes but not turn eyes away.” More

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      Review: In ‘Islander,’ the Puck Stops Here

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      This verbatim hockey drama considers issues of masculinity and the peculiar ownership that fans feel toward a team and its players.The 2017 season didn’t start too badly. The New York Islanders, a National Hockey League team with a new coach and a newish berth at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, might have allowed a few too many shots on goal, but they still won most of their games. A couple of months later, in December, it all began to go wrong. Then it went more wrong. The defense fell apart. The team missed the playoffs. John Tavares, the Islanders’ captain and star player, departed for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Fans revolted.The director Katie Brook and the playwright Liza Birkenmeier, hockey fans both, have scraped some of that bad ice into “Islander,” a verbatim piece at HERE. Presented by Tele-Violet and supported by New Georges, the play borrows commentary from the season and puts it in the mouth of a bearded, sweatpants-clad, aggressively average dude called Man (David Gould). (The sources aren’t listed, but Man’s language suggests live broadcast commentary, postgame interviews and fan forums.)Additional text is culled from the celebrity academic and men’s rights stan Jordan Peterson. Imagine a snow cone that’s part obsession, part self-justification, part masculine fragility, sweetened with self-pity and sweat, and you’re mostly there.Brook and Birkenmeier (“Dr. Ride’s American Beach House”) are interested in questions of identity, identification and form. They have structured “Islander” a little like a game. It begins with the national anthem and pauses for a halftime dance break. A bare stage, carpeted in rubber tiles, stands in for the rink. (The set and lighting design are by Josh Smith.) But there’s just one player — and then toward the end, a second (Dick Toth) and a third (Aksel Latham-Mitchell, a child actor who also provides a drum solo). If you’re looking for the nail-biting narrative propulsion of a proper game, look elsewhere. A buzzer beater, “Islander” is not.It does, though, probe some fascinating ideas, like the peculiar ownership that fans feel toward a team and its players — a level of mimetic engagement that theater rarely achieves, Broadway musicals excepted. No man is an island, but a lot of men, recliner-bound and alone with their Wi-Fi, seem to consider themselves Islanders. And fan forums and postgame debriefs provide the rare spaces in American life where men are actively encouraged to talk about their feelings. In these homosocial arenas, they confess their self-doubt, their disappointment and their feelings of low self-worth.Gould, air guitaring away self-doubt and disappointment in “Islanders.”Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m very arrogant,” Man says. “I’m very lost within myself. I’m as sick of me as you are.” (Less helpfully, these are also spaces for some men to justify their mediocrity.) But the script — a latticework of unconnected observations — has a way of flattening out these ideas, compressing them like the air mattress that Latham-Mitchell’s John Tavares cheerfully deflates.“Islander” isn’t long, just 75 minutes, about the same as a hockey game. But since it offers so little in the way of plot or character, it feels longer. The language of commentary isn’t particularly interesting, though there are blazes of figuration (“He makes them as uncomfortable as a beached whale”), a few snappy neologisms (“Sneakery: Is that a word?”) and the occasional metaphor melee.While Gould is a charmer — precise, inexhaustible, brave enough to dance with his shirt off — there is only so much an actor can do when stringing together disjointed fan forum posts and meditations that only an extremely concussed Marcus Aurelius might write: “Good is the enemy of great. No more good; it’s time to be great.”Maybe “Islander,” like many N.H.L. games, is better experienced via a highlights reel.IslanderThrough Sept. 4 at HERE, Manhattan; 212-647-0202, Here.org. Running time: 1 hour 15 minutes. More

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      Virus Fears Prompt a Major New York Theater to Postpone Its Return

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      As the Delta variant spreads, Signature Theater delayed its planned October opening of “Infinite Life,” a new play by Annie Baker.Signature Theater, a prominent Off Broadway nonprofit, has postponed its return to the stage over concerns about the persistent coronavirus pandemic, becoming the first major New York theater to take such a step.The theater’s leadership announced the postponement Friday afternoon, just days before rehearsals were to begin for “Infinite Life,” a new play by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, who was also planning to direct the work. The production was supposed to run from Oct. 5 to Nov. 7.“Due to ongoing health and safety concerns, Signature Theater and Annie Baker have decided to postpone the upcoming production of ‘Infinite Life,’” the theater said in a statement. “Signature will continue, in discussion with artists, to evaluate on a case-by-case basis how to proceed with other programming planned for this season. The company and artist agree that this is the best choice for this show at this time.”Around the country, there have been a number of cancellations and postponements of pop music tour dates and festivals because of the rise in coronavirus cases caused by the spread of the Delta variant. There have been several theater postponements in California, including at Berkeley Repertory Theater, which recently cited the Delta variant in delaying until next year a Christina Anderson play that had been scheduled to begin in October.It is unclear whether the postponement of “Infinite Life” is an outlier or a first indication that the theater industry is getting cold feet about the many reopenings planned in New York this fall, on Broadway and off. Two Broadway shows, “Springsteen on Broadway” and “Pass Over,” are already running, and 15 more plan to start next month; there are also some plays already running in commercial and nonprofit venues around the city, and many of the city’s larger nonprofits plan to resume presenting shows during the fall.Broadway theaters are requiring audience members to show proof of vaccination and wear masks. And Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that all performing arts theaters must require proof of vaccination as part of a mandate that applies to indoor dining, entertainment, and fitness.Signature said it was still hoping to stage a revival of Anna Deavere Smith’s “Twilight: Los Angeles, 1992” in October. Although “Infinite Life” would have been its first stage production since the start of the pandemic, it would not have been the first use of its building: This summer, the nonprofit featured an installation called “The Watering Hole,” conceived by Lynn Nottage and Miranda Haymon, in its Frank Gehry-designed home, the Pershing Square Signature Center, a few blocks west of Times Square.Baker, who won a Pulitzer in 2014 for “The Flick,” writes plays that are sometimes hard to describe, and very little has been released about this one, but a spokesman said there was a six-person cast. In news releases, the theater has described “Infinite Life” as “a play about no end in sight” and “a new play that tackles persistent pain and desire.” More