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      Richard Nelson’s New Play Closes a Chapter of Theater History

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      “What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad” is the 12th and final installment in the quiet yet sweeping “Rhinebeck Panorama.”A character named Kate tells a story, of a story told to her, about a man attending a play. The actors are all deaf, and they rest their cheeks and chins on a big table, which stretches out to the audience, to feel the vibration of a spinning top. From his seat, the man leans in and puts his forehead on the surface.“He wants to share in what the characters are feeling,” Kate says. “He wants to be at that table too.”Kate’s monologue is delivered almost in passing — no one onstage even responds to it — yet it reflects, in just a few lines, the mission and magic of Richard Nelson’s decade-long, 12-play project called the “Rhinebeck Panorama,” which concludes with “What Happened?: The Michaels Abroad,” opening Sept. 8 at Hunter College’s Frederick Loewe Theater.These works, written and directed by Nelson — and realized with aesthetic unity by a consistent creative team and a de facto acting company — contain the four Apple Family plays, which feature a family gathering in Rhinebeck, N.Y., on days that happen to be of national significance; the Gabriels trilogy, about another Rhinebeck household that we visit at three points during the 2016 election year; three pandemic Zoom plays that revisit the Apples as they talk through collective trauma in real time; and a two-part exploration of the Michaels, an artistic family on the verge, then the other side, of immense loss.Charlotte Bydwell in one of several dance scenes in “What Happened?,” which takes place after the death of a dance luminary.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAlong the way, Nelson has established a style of theater that has its roots in Chekhov: not naturalistic or realistic, but, as Nelson said in a recent interview, an attempt at verisimilitude. Through the dozen plays he makes a case — in our cultural moment of polarized absolutes — for questioning, nuance and, above all, conversation as a way to connect people, process the unknown and ultimately be in the world.“Centuries from now, when people want to know what a certain class of person lived like in America, they’ll go to Richard’s plays,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which produced nearly all of the panorama. “The characters are individual, yet they capture the shape of our time.”The plot of each Rhinebeck play couldn’t be more simple: A family prepares or eats dinner. Conversations are discursive, guided more by the timeline of the meal than anything else; but within them are sprawling and subterranean dramas that reveal themselves through ordinary discussion rather than traditional theatricality. Conflicts are rare — raised voices, even rarer.If the series has a broad arc, it is in how the characters relate not just to time, but to place: the Apples find a home in Rhinebeck, while the Gabriels are pushed out of it and, the Michaels, by the end, are assembling around a table in France.“Rhinebeck is a complicated place, as all places are,” said Nelson, who has lived in the Hudson Valley town since the early 1980s. “You take something small, and you just look at it enough, and you see all the pieces and all the things.”The plays have all been set on the days when they open. But despite that specificity of time and location — and a milieu of predominantly white, educated people — they have achieved broad resonance, including international adaptations and imitations. And by being presented in the round in small spaces, they also elicit the intimacy of a private gathering.From left, Jay O. Sanders, Nelson and Maryann Plunkett — whom Nelson called “the beating heart” of the Rhinebeck plays.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesJay O. Sanders, who along with his wife, Maryann Plunkett — “the beating heart” of the panorama, as Nelson called her — has starred in all 12 plays, recalled asking a question during “The Gabriels” that was promptly answered by a man in the audience who, like the one in Kate’s story, seemingly wanted to join them at the table.But that is the effect of Nelson’s style, in which no arguments are made and people represent nothing; as Sanders said, “The drama of just living is enough.” In a note for “What Happened?” Nelson includes a telling quote from a hero of his, the early-20th-century theater artist Harley Granville-Barker:One is tempted to imagine a play — to be written in desperate defiance of Aristotle — from which doing would be eliminated altogether, in which nothing but being would be left. The task set the actors would be to interest their audience in what the characters were, quite apart from anything they might do.Easier imagined than done. Nelson said that any time he has written a line that sounds like him or his beliefs, it gets cut. “The truth,” he added, “comes from the characters speaking to another character, and not for the audience to overhear.”In rehearsals, actors are directed to talk as they would at home, not to project as they typically would. They are aware, at all times, of where they are directing their questions or lines. In real life, Nelson said, rarely does someone speak to an entire room; so his characters don’t either.“It’s very unusual,” Sanders said. “And it takes a lot of courage.”The plays have flashes of prescience and recognition. You can, for example, trace former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s career through the seven Apple plays, which open in media res with an expletive and mention of his name. The first installment of “The Gabriels,” from early March 2016, includes the now-haunting line, “Don’t you feel something really bad is going to happen?”At times, though, Nelson’s characters — and perhaps Nelson himself — have been unequipped to deal with history in the making. The Apples gathered on Zoom in early July 2020, amid the upheaval of the Black Lives Matter movement. In the theater industry, platitudes reigned; but in Rhinebeck, a group of white people didn’t really know how to talk about it.Their not thoroughly engaging with Black Lives Matter frustrated some in the moment, including The New York Times’s critic, Jesse Green. But that wouldn’t fit Nelson’s approach to theater. Instead, the Apples ask questions with no answers, and are quietly saddened by a world that might be passing them by.“What you don’t want to do is make an argument,” Nelson said. “I don’t think my characters are confident about what’s going on. Everybody has their own journey.”Plunkett and Sanders, center, seen here in the 2011 play “Sweet and Sad,” have acted in the entire “Rhinebeck Panorama.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThat tension arises again in “What Happened?” — “I don’t know” is a common line — the first of the staged Rhinebeck plays not to be produced by the Public. (Presented by Hunter Theater Project, it is being underwritten by a single donor, Susie Sainsbury. The second two Zoom plays were also independently produced.)There are no bad feelings between Nelson and the Public; the separation was a matter of logistics. “He was not going to let a pandemic slow him down,” Eustis said of Nelson. “It was sad for me that for the first time, I couldn’t keep up with him. So on a level it breaks my heart that this is not at the Public.”Nelson felt that “What Happened?” couldn’t wait any longer. He had written a version last year for a live theater season that never came, with politics on his mind as the election approached. But he rewrote it to open now, as live theater re-emerges in New York. Gone are any mentions of the current or former president; instead the loss presaged by the first play in 2019 — the matriarch, a modern dance luminary named Rose Michael, has cancer — permeates its sequel.That, in addition to the setting of Angers, France, makes for a departure from the panorama. “What Happened?” may be a mirror of the present, with characters regularly sanitizing their hands and sharing how they passed time in lockdown, but its preoccupations are also comparatively abstract: the loss of life, of youth, of work.And of Rhinebeck itself. Plunkett said that during a recent rehearsal it hit her: “I found myself tearing up. This specific place that we resided in and explored for a decade — not many people have gotten to do that, and I’m very fortunate. You realize how short a decade is.”Nelson may return to Rhinebeck in the future — he has written a television series of Chekhov stories set there in the present — but for now “What Happened?” is the last time he is bringing a family together at a dinner table to weave, as the critic Ben Brantley once wrote, “momentous history in the fabric of the quotidian.”The audience is, as always, invited to the table. “We’re living in a moment of confusion, tragedy and loss, but together,” Nelson said. “We are not alone.” More

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      Human Most of All: In Moscow, a Theater Stages ‘Gorbachev’

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      The Latvian director Alvis Hermanis’s bioplay is an ode to the love story of Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev, and portrays the former leader in all his humanity.MOSCOW — In August 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, returned to Moscow with his family from house arrest in Crimea after a K.G.B.-managed anti-democracy coup had failed to depose him.Instead of joining hundreds of thousands of ecstatic Muscovites, who had gathered on the city’s squares to celebrate his victory and theirs, Gorbachev went to a hospital with his wife, Raisa, who had suffered a stroke.This scene was pivotal for Russia’s recent history, and it is also central to “Gorbachev,” the latest hit production from the state Theater of Nations in Moscow, where despite the pandemic shows continued to be performed live, though at limited capacity.“I was not married to the country — Russia or the Soviet Union,” Gorbachev, who is now 90 and still lives in Moscow, wrote in his memoirs.“I was married to my wife, and that night I went with her to hospital,” his character, masterly played by Yevgeny Mironov, said from the stage. “Perhaps it was the most crucial decision of my political life.”“Gorbachev,” which premiered last October, is an ode to the love story of the Gorbachevs. By putting their relationship at its center, the play does something extraordinary for the Russian performing arts culture. It portrays the country’s leader as a human being instead of a grand demiurge, responsible for its future. It shows Gorbachev as someone for whom sentiments and moral obligations, to his wife, friends and citizens, reigned supreme over political expediency.In a country where autocrats, including the current one, carefully protect their image and personal life, “Gorbachev” is a breath of fresh air. It celebrates the humanity of a person who is almost universally celebrated as a liberator and equally despised by many in Russia as the butcher of the country’s superpower status.Alvis Hermanis, the acclaimed Latvian director who wrote and staged the play, tried to show how political matters appear secondary in the presence of true love. In the tradition of Russian classics, Hermanis makes the theme of love primary to historical events, which serve only as background. He makes the story universal, applicable not only to the leader of a vast nation but also to all of us.To achieve this result, Hermanis uses the tools of Russia’s psychological realism tradition. The only two actors onstage, Chulpan Khamatova as Raisa Gorbacheva and Mironov as the last Soviet president, play impeccably with eerie precision, creating an atmosphere of timelessness, and melancholia. Under Hermanis’s direction, the play’s pacing gives the viewer enough space to reflect on the characters.The whole production takes place in a dressing room with two makeup stations and two mirrors. There is a rack of dresses, and wigs are scattered around the space. This is a work in progress. A large sign on the entrance door reads: “Silence! Performance is ongoing.”Khamatova and Mironov enter in what could easily be their usual street clothes: a hoodie, jeans, an unpretentious black shirt. Over the course of the performance, they will transform onstage, change their attire and looks as they age.The two actors start by reading their lines out loud, discussing how to impersonate their characters. Slowly, through discussion, they adopt their roles, most visibly by imitating accents: Mikhail’s southern Cossack-derived pronunciation with elongated vowels and Raisa’s highly pitched chirping of an enthusiastic philosophy major in a country where the only accepted philosophical school was Marxism.Khamatova and Mironov, who are among the finest drama theater actors of their generation, leave the stage only once, for the intermission in this three-hour performance. Slowly and seamlessly, they read out and play out their lives: The story of Stalin’s purges is followed by the gruesome war with Germany. Then their lives get consumed by their university love affair and, finally, by Gorbachev’s rise to the top through the ranks of party nomenklatura.The story of Gorbachev at the helm of one of the world’s two superpowers is treated as background noise: “It was just one, six-year-long working day,” Raisa says from the stage. In the end, by the time the actors are already fully immersed in their characters, we only see a 90-year-old Mikhail. (At this point, Mironov is wearing a mask that covers his entire head, with Gorbachev’s port-wine birthmark on full display.) For the last few minutes, Mikhail is by himself, mourning his wife’s death in 1999 from leukemia, remembering her last words: “Do you remember if we returned the white shoes that we borrowed from Nina for our wedding?”The play’s success, and the insatiable demand for tickets that sell out in a half-hour and cost up to $250, can be attributed to the fact that its creators had something personal at stake.For Hermanis, Gorbachev, who liberated his native Latvia from the Soviet yoke, was the third person “who changed his life the most after his father and mother,” he said in an interview with a Russian state-run broadcaster.For Khamatova, Gorbachev gave hope for “a different life with the freedom of speech and sexual orientation,” she said in an interview with the Russian GQ.For Mironov, who, as manager of the Theater of Nations, turned it into Moscow’s premier cultural institution over the past decade, Gorbachev provided artistic freedom at the time when he was just starting his career in the late 1980s.“After getting into Gorbachev’s skin, I realized that he wasn’t a politician,” Mironov said in an interview recorded during rehearsals last year.“That’s why he did what he did — that’s why he is so interesting and valuable to me as a person,” he said. “Because he behaved like a human being.”The sense of care oozes through every pore of the acting and directing. That wouldn’t be enough, however, without the mastery that is also on full display here, which only testifies to the fact that it is time for Russian theater to cultivate more new territories, including the country’s most recent history.In that vein, the authors could have gone farther along their path. For instance, the production could have put more emphasis on the role of Raisa. The production could have been called Raisa, after all. With her independence and carefully crafted looks, she was among the most hated figures in late Soviet times. (My grandfather called her nothing but “rat” because her name rhymes with the word for rat in Russian.)It is time to do her justice.In the end, Gorbachev, who attended one of the final rehearsals, and stood up to a standing ovation from a box, did not ask for a single change.“This is freedom,” he said, according to Mironov. “Get used to it.”GorbachevAt the state Theater of Nations, Moscow; theatreofnations.ru. Running time: 3 hours. More

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      For a Tony Nominee, an Apartment With a Sense of Drama

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      Kathryn Gallagher’s Upper West Side home ‘was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment.’ But that’s why she likes it.When Kathryn Gallagher was 11, the career demands of her father, the actor Peter Gallagher, forced the family to leave the Upper West Side of Manhattan for Los Angeles. A decade or so later, the demands of her own burgeoning career — specifically, a role in the 2015 Broadway revival of “Spring Awakening” — meant a move back to Manhattan. And she knew precisely where she wanted to land.“I was like, ‘If I’m going to live in New York, it has to be the Upper West Side, which is home, and which is where the best bagels are to be found,’” said Ms. Gallagher, now 28, a current Tony nominee for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill” and a Season 2 cast member of the Amazon series “Modern Love,” based on the New York Times column. “This is my neighborhood.”Initially, she rented a studio apartment on the fourth floor of a walk-up building near Central Park West, the fulfillment of every “young-woman-in-the-big-city” dream she ever had. There were tall windows, exposed brick, crown molding and just the right degree of scruffiness. But what with the three or four (or more) daily walks required by her dog, Willie Nelson, the trips up and down the stairs became burdensome.Kathryn Gallagher, 28, who is nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in the musical “Jagged Little Pill,” lives in a one-bedroom rental in a townhouse near Riverside Park.James GallagherKathryn Gallagher, 28Occupation: Actor and songwriterDesign for living: “It’s very helpful for have a mother who’s an interior decorator. I inherited my mom’s sense of style, but added 50 points for zany wackiness.”Ms. Gallagher is an avid student of life. Her conversation is studded with phrases like “lessons hard learned,” “a journey of learning” and “learning curve.” So it will come as no surprise that when she went hunting for a new apartment two and a half years ago, she had absorbed enough wisdom to hold out for something that was close to ground level but with the raffish charm of the walk-up.She found such a place — a one-bedroom with high ceilings and period detail on the parlor floor of a townhouse near Riverside Park — at the end of a long, rainy day of searching with her mother, Paula Harwood, an interior designer.“The moment I walked in, I was like, ‘When this was a single-family home, this was where they gathered after work to smoke a pipe and have a whiskey, and there were books lining the walls.’ I created a whole fantasy for the life that was lived in here before,” Ms. Gallagher said.“This is a one-bedroom apartment that was never supposed to be a one-bedroom apartment,” she added. “I think of it as a library and a lounge. I love it.”It’s true that there’s more vertical than horizontal space, and Ms. Gallagher, an eager cook, has “a criminally small” kitchen. But, really, what’s a dearth of counter space when measured against the vintage mirror over the fireplace, the fireplace itself, the Tiffany-style ceiling pendant, the French doors separating the living room from the bedroom, and the massive wood front door?“I’m obsessed with the door,” Ms. Gallagher said. “No one is messing with this door. This door has seen many things.”“I love having meteorites and beautiful stones all around the apartment,” she said. “And I like having things around, like my tarot cards, that make me happy and connect me to something.” James GallagherIn pulling the apartment together, Ms. Gallagher came to an important realization: Mom really does know best. It was Ms. Harwood, after all, who inveighed against the folly of trying, as she put it, to move in overnight. “She was like, ‘You won’t know what you need for six months. Don’t buy everything at the beginning,’” Ms. Gallagher said.Only recently, for example, did she have radiator covers made. “I was like, ‘Of course I need them.’ But it took me a long time to realize they were even an option,” she said, noting that she’s using the newly available flat surfaces to hold books. “I’m really excited about that.”The one thing she did insist on soon after signing the lease was a red velvet sofa. “And my mother was like, ‘Are you sure?’” Ms. Gallagher said. “‘Because if you get a red velvet couch, everything else has to be chill. You can’t get an orange chair and a purple rug.’”As if. The red velvet, tufted, Tuxedo-style sectional makes its strong statement, while a leaf-patterned rug in shades of sage, cream and blue provides appropriately quiet support. “It’s the kind of couch that, if this were the 1920s, someone with curls in a long silk robe would be sitting on it smoking a skinny cigarette and drinking a martini,” she said.In the interest of filling out the scene she has so earnestly conjured, an Art Deco bar cart with mirrored shelves is just a few feet away.In moments of uncertainty in life and in work, Ms. Gallagher’s first instinct is to nest. “I never imagined spending so much time in the apartment,” she said. “But since the pandemic, I’m finding I just love it more and more, and have found little ways to personalize it, by putting things that make me happy in every corner.”The list includes tarot cards, guitars and journals. Atop and around the fireplace are large quantities of crystals and candles, as well as vases that once contained congratulatory opening-night bouquets, then candy canes during Christmas season, and now dried flowers.Nick Cordero, an actor known primarily for his theater work, died last year of Covid-19. Friends, including Ms. Gallagher, poured the contents of a whiskey bottle into the Hudson River in tribute to him. The empty bottle now sits on the mantel of Ms. Gallagher’s fireplace. James GallagherOn the wall behind the sofa hangs a photo of Ms. Gallagher’s maternal grandmother, who was a member of the now-defunct ballet company at Radio City Music Hall; an original piece by Erté, a gift from that same grandmother; and a needlepoint likeness of the four principal female “Jagged Little Pill” cast members, stitched by Ms. Gallagher’s dresser, Dyanna Hallick.On a wall in the bedroom is a handwritten card from Alanis Morissette, whose music forms the basis of “Pill”: “Kathryn: thanks for your courage and willingness and grace and power and vulnerability. Love Alanis.”Peter Gallagher, who is “super handy,” according to his daughter, took on the role of picture-hanger and also installed a clothes rod in an armoire from the family’s old apartment, to turn it into a coat closet for Ms. Gallagher.“I had my dad on FaceTime when I was re-caulking the bathtub and when I was putting in an air-conditioner,” she said. “I think he was prouder of me for installing the A/C than he was of my Tony nomination.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More

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      Micki Grant: ‘I Wanted to Open Eyes’

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      The composer and lyricist, who died at 92, was a trailblazer in virtually every field she touched.Theater in Manhattan was bristling with Black voices in the early 1970s, but these tended to be heard in smaller spaces like the New Federal Theater, the Negro Ensemble Company and the Urban Arts Corps. Micki Grant’s “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” spent time in such theaters before winding its way to Broadway in 1972, making it the first time a woman had written the book, music and lyrics to a Broadway musical.The result — four Tony Award nominations, a run of more than two years — was a testament to Grant, a trailblazer in virtually every field she touched. She died on Aug. 21 at 92. But the success of the show also stemmed in part from its image of Black America, one that Grant created through a blend of conviction and calculation.Just as “Hair” channeled the era’s countercultural passions into a package that (most) staid Broadway theatergoers could handle — Joe Papp, who squired that show to Broadway from his brand-new Public Theater in 1968, described it as “marvelous for middle-aged people” — “Don’t Bother Me” took a cleareyed but rarely confrontational stance at race relations. At one point, the cast members raised clenched fists, which then turned to peace signs.“I wanted to open eyes but not turn them away,” Grant told me in a 2018 interview about the work, which she described as a conscious divergence from more incendiary pieces by such Black playwrights as Ed Bullins and Amiri Baraka. “I wanted to come at it with a soft fist.” (Grant had just come home from the hospital when we met, but was still energetic enough to shave more than a decade off her stated age at the time without raising any suspicions.)And so the show discussed slavery and slumlords but also Flip Wilson and Archie Bunker, resulting in what the New York Times theater critic Clive Barnes described as “a mixture of a block party and a revival meeting.”As it happens, Grant was in a rare position to call the shots on these decisions. She had spent several years as a contract performer on a soap opera — one of the first Black actors to do so — playing an attorney, Peggy Nolan, on “Another World.” (She also starred in “Don’t Bother Me.”) She would go on to find success writing advertising jingles, winning a Clio award along the way.In 2018, Grant and Savion Glover, the choreographer and director, led a table reading of “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” at New York City Center.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesBut the advertising and soap opera industries aren’t exactly known for cultivating auteurist voices. Theater gave Grant a chance to write every syllable and every note of “Don’t Bother Me,” which earned her half of the show’s four Tony nominations. (Her frequent collaborator Vinnette Justine Carroll, who became the first Black woman to direct on Broadway, was also nominated.)It came up blank at the 1973 Tony Awards — “A Little Night Music” and “Pippin” also opened that season — but “Don’t Bother Me” showcased a musical voice equally comfortable with calypso, spoken-word, soul, funk, jazz, and even what could be described as proto-hip-hop. Not to mention gospel, which came to the forefront in “Your Arms Too Short to Box With God,” and other subsequent shows that Grant wrote or co-wrote.Dabblings in Black musical idioms were nothing new for Broadway, of course: Cole Porter never met an Afro-Caribbean rhythm he couldn’t use, while Frank Loesser all but trademarked the still common use of a gospel-style roof-raiser to get the crowd agitated near the end of a show. But Grant’s wide range of repurposings was of an altogether different nature, because it drew so heavily from her own background.This versatility turned her into a go-to lyricist for pre-existing melodies by Eubie Blake (“Eubie!”) but also Harold Arlen (“Sweet & Hot”) and Jacques Brel (“Jacques Brel Blues”), and it also earned her a spot on the all-star writing team of 1978’s “Working” alongside James Taylor, Stephen Schwartz and Mary Rodgers. When I spent long college afternoons listening to published Broadway scores, one particularly fast passage in her “Working” song “Lovin’ Al” had me hitting rewind on the library’s cassette player for a solid half-hour.Grant, a former national chairwoman of the Actors Equity union’s Equal Opportunity Employment Committee, viewed as her biggest professional disappointment “Phillis,” a 1986 musical about the pioneering Black poet Phillis Wheatley. In a recent interview for American Theatre magazine, published after her death, she blamed the white director for the show’s failure, saying he had no knowledge of or sensitivity to the subject matter.But Grant bounced back from this, as she had done from the many other setbacks along the way in becoming her own sort of pioneer. “There’s so little time for hatred,” Grant sang almost 50 years ago in the show that earned her a place in history. Her hand was equally capable of clenching tight and relaxing into a peace sign. The fist was soft, but it held considerable force. More

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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