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      The Virus Cost Performers Their Work, Then Their Health Coverage

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThe Virus Cost Performers Their Work, Then Their Health CoverageAs the entertainment industry collapsed during the pandemic, several major health plans made it harder to qualify for insurance. Thousands lost it.“You never think it’s going to be you,” said Robbie Fairchild, a star of ballet, Broadway and film who was one of many performers to lose their health coverage amid the pandemic. He started a flower company when live performances were halted.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMatt Stevens and March 9, 2021Updated 5:20 p.m. ETEllyn Marie Marsh was getting ready to appear in a new off-Broadway musical last year when the pandemic struck, theaters were shut and her work evaporated.Those months of lost wages carried another cost that only became clear much later: She did not get enough work to qualify to keep the health insurance she had been getting as a member of Actors’ Equity.She is far from alone. Haley Bennett was working as an associate music director on “Diana,” a musical that was in previews, when Broadway shut down. She became one of the hundreds of musicians in the New York area who are losing the insurance they received as members of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians.And in Los Angeles, Brad Schmidt, a television and film actor who was hospitalized with Covid-19 early in the pandemic, did not get enough work after he recovered to keep the insurance he had been getting through his union, SAG-AFTRA. He said that while he still did not feel fully himself, he had been skipping follow-up doctor visits because under his new insurance plan, he simply cannot afford them.“My lungs were shutting down,” he said. “Clearly I should go in and see how my lungs are now. And I will, hopefully, God willing, at some point. I just can’t do it right now.”Across the nation thousands of actors, musicians, dancers and other entertainment industry workers are losing their health insurance or being saddled with higher costs in the midst of a global health crisis. Some were simply unable to work enough hours last year to qualify for coverage. But others were in plans that made it harder to qualify for coverage as they struggled to remain solvent as the collapse of the entertainment industry led to a steep drop in the employer contributions they rely on.“To be dropped like this for my health insurance just feels like such a slap in the face,” said Mr. Fairchild, a former New York City Ballet dancer who starred in “An American in Paris” on Broadway. He appeared in 2019 at the Joyce Theater.Credit…Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesThe insurance woes compounded a year when performers faced record unemployment. Several provisions in President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, which passed the Senate on Saturday and is expected to pass the House on Wednesday, offer the promise of relief. One would make it a lot cheaper for people to take advantage of the federal government program known as COBRA, which allows people to continue to buy the health coverage they have lost, and another would lower the cost of buying coverage on government exchanges.Many of the more than two dozen performers interviewed by The New York Times said that they felt abandoned for much of the year — both by their unions and by what many described as America’s broken health care system. Some are angry.“You never think it’s going to be you,” said Robbie Fairchild, a former dancer at New York City Ballet who was nominated for a Tony Award in 2015 for his star turn in “An American in Paris” on Broadway and later appeared in the film adaptation of “Cats.”“To be dropped like this for my health insurance,” said Mr. Fairchild, who started a flower company during the pandemic as a creative outlet and to try to stay financially afloat, “just feels like such a slap in the face.”As unemployment soared last year, millions of Americans lost their job-based health coverage. Unlike other workers who simply sign up for a health plan when they start a new job, the people who power film, television and theater often work on multiple shows for many different employers, cobbling together enough hours, days and earnings until they reach the threshold that qualifies them for health insurance. Even as work grew scarce last year, several plans raised that threshold.“I’m 42 years old and I just feel like I should be able to take care of myself,” said Matt Wilkas, an actor who has starred on Broadway but fell short of the earnings he needed for health coverage in 2021. “I just want to be an adult. And instead I feel that devastating feeling you have when you’re not where you want to be in life.”The Equity-League Health Fund, which is run by trustees appointed by both representatives of the Actors’ Equity union and producers, cited the financial strain caused by the shutdown of the theater industry when it raised the number of weeks of work needed to qualify for coverage.Many lost it: While 6,555 actors and stage managers were enrolled in the plan at the end of 2019, officials said that fewer than 4,000 were still covered at the end of last month, and that the number is expected to drop further.Making it harder to qualify for health insurance during the pandemic is “insane,” said Tyler Hardwick, an actor who stands to lose his coverage in July.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesTyler Hardwick, an actor who was on the national tour of “Once on This Island” when the pandemic shut down the show last March, was told he would lose his insurance in July. Acting is already one of the “hardest industries in the world to be successful and consistent at,” he noted. Increasing the number of weeks actors must work to qualify for insurance in this climate, he said, is “insane.”“I know how the medical system treated me when I had pretty good health insurance,” Mr. Hardwick said, recalling the expenses he incurred after a rollerblading accident when he had coverage. “How am I going to be treated with a health insurance that I’ve never had before, that I don’t know how it works?”Many performers could not get enough work last year to qualify for coverage: Mr. Hardwick was on a national tour of “Once on This Island” when the pandemic closed the show.Credit…Joan MarcusOthers will be able to keep their coverage, but will have to pay more. James Brown III, who appeared in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” said that his quarterly premium had spiked to $300 from $100.“When you’re only really making unemployment, $300 quarterly is kind of a big deal,” Mr. Brown said.Musicians are struggling, too. Officials at Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the New York local that is the largest in the nation, estimate that when changes to its plan take effect this month, roughly one in three musicians will have lost coverage: It will have shed more than 570 of the roughly 1,500 people who had been enrolled a year earlier.“Nothing has kept me up at night more and weighed on me more heavily than the health care question,” said Adam Krauthamer, the president of Local 802 and a trustee co-chair of the union’s health fund.Perhaps the most public, acrimonious battle over coverage has broken out at the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Health Plan, which insures 33,000 actors, singers, journalists and other media professionals. That plan raised the floor for eligibility to those earning $25,950 a year, from $18,040, effective Jan. 1, and also raised premiums in response to deficits projected to be $141 million last year and $83 million this year.Officials at the plan have estimated that changes they are making will remove 10 percent of its participants from coverage. But a class-action lawsuit filed by Ed Asner, a former president of the screen actors union, and other mostly older actors and union members charges that at least 8,000 retirees will also lose some of their coverage. (Many companies have dropped retiree health coverage in recent decades.)The plan’s new rules effectively strip many older members of what is often their secondary insurance. An online advocacy campaign features Mark Hamill, Whoopi Goldberg, Morgan Freeman and other stars who say they feel betrayed by the union.“So many people, along with me, feel robbed of our health care benefits,” Dyan Cannon, 84, said in a statement provided by lawyers for the plaintiffs in the class-action.Michael Estrada, the chief executive of the SAG-AFTRA Health Plan, emphasized in an interview that the older members are insured by Medicare. And although some were required to switch to secondary insurance run by other providers, he said that they were not left without health care. In interviews facilitated by the health plan, three people whose plans were affected said that they were pleased with their new coverage.Still, Mr. Estrada acknowledged that “this is a huge change” for some people who have been covered by SAG-AFTRA health plans for decades.Insurance plan officials said they were left with no choice but to make painful changes to ensure their funds survive. Health care costs have been rising at rates that have outpaced the contributions that union members and their employers pay into their plans. When the pandemic essentially ended live performance, employer contributions to many health funds slowed or stopped entirely.“There is no money to squeeze out of the stone, and that’s the thing that nobody understands,” said Doug Carfrae, an Actors’ Equity representative on the board of trustees of the health plan.For many, losing coverage is not an option. Some have bought coverage through the Affordable Care Act. The Actors Fund has helped more than 4,000 performing artists navigate their health insurance options. Many have had little choice but to pay more.When Kristina Klebe, a 41-year-old actor and voice over artist, discovered that she no longer qualified for the new SAG-AFTRA plan, she knew she had to do something: she has a gene mutation that puts her at a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancer and requires periodic preventive checkups. So she is now paying almost double what she had been to continue her care under the COBRA program.“I don’t even know how to really put this in words,” she said. “It just feels very lonely.”Bill Jorgensen, a 93-year-old former news anchor and occasional voice-over artist who has been a member of the union for decades, is among the older people who is unhappy with the SAG-AFTRA changes.Mr. Jorgensen, a diabetic who takes 21 medications a day, said he is paying more for his insurance and for his medications under his new supplemental health insurance plan: a $2,400 deductible; a $47 monthly premium; plus another $370 just for blood thinning medication.“I can’t do voice overs or anything else at age 93 — I wish to hell I could,” Mr. Jorgensen said. “We’re going to be hurting bad because of this.”Sarah Bahr, Reed Abelson and Michael Paulson contributed reporting. Jack Begg contributed research.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      ‘Blindness’ Sets Opening, Off Broadway and Indoors

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Blindness’ Sets Opening, Off Broadway and IndoorsAn audio adaptation of the celebrated novel has no live actors and was a pandemic hit in London. In New York it will play to 50 people per show.Audience members listen to the narration through headphones in the Donmar Warehouse production of “Blindness,” which, after delays, will open in New York in April.Credit…Helen MaybanksMarch 9, 2021An immersive audio adaptation of José Saramago’s dystopian novel “Blindness” will be among the first productions to open in New York City since the coronavirus pandemic shuttered theaters a year ago.The producer Daryl Roth said she would present the show, which was created by the Donmar Warehouse in London and was a critical and popular success there, at her namesake Off Broadway theater, the Daryl Roth, for an open-ended run beginning April 2.The 75-minute show does not involve live actors, which considerably reduces the complexity of producing it during the pandemic; the audience listens, via sanitized headphones, to a story narrated by the British actor Juliet Stevenson.The play was written by Simon Stephens, a Tony Award winner for his stage adaptation of “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time,” and directed by Walter Meierjohann. (Stephens is currently up for a Tony as the writer of the first of the monologues that comprise “Sea Wall/A Life.”)Roth said she would allow just 50 people to attend each performance, in a Union Square venue that has held up to 400. Patrons will be required to wear masks and to have their temperatures taken upon arrival.The production is among the first announced since Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said last week that he would allow indoor arts and entertainment to resume April 2 at 33 percent capacity, with a limit of 100 people. If the “Blindness” productions sell out, the theater will be at just 12.5 percent capacity; Roth said tickets will be sold in blocks of two, and each pair of seats will be six feet from the others.Roth had hoped to bring “Blindness” to her theater last fall, but the worsening pandemic prevented that; productions scheduled for Washington and Toronto were shelved for the same reason. Now the Donmar is trying once again to present the show around the world; a production in Mexico City, narrated by Marina de Tavira (“Roma”), is scheduled to begin performances on Friday at Teatro de los Insurgentes.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Lessons From Oz: How Australian Theater Gives Broadway Hope

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyLessons From Oz: How Australian Theater Gives Broadway HopeCheck in with “Frozen,” “Come From Away,” “Moulin Rouge!” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” in Offstage, our digital series about theater during the pandemic.“Frozen” fans entering the Capitol Theater in Sydney. Credit…Matthew Abbott for The New York TimesMarch 8, 2021Updated 4:29 p.m. ETTheater is up and running … in Australia.“Frozen” is onstage in Sydney, and “Come From Away” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” are running in Melbourne. And there’s more to come: “Hamilton” opens later this month in Sydney, and “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” is gearing up for an August bow in Melbourne.How are they managing to perform when most of the theater world is dark? And what, if anything, do the Australian productions portend for a resumption of theater in New York, London, and everywhere else?That’s the subject of the next episode of Offstage, a New York Times digital series about theater during the pandemic. It airs at 7 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, April 29 (that’s 9 a.m. on Friday, April 30 in Sydney), and is free to Times subscribers.We’ll be talking with actors about what it’s like to perform at this time, and with producers about challenges faced and lessons learned. Plus, the casts of “Frozen” and “Come From Away” will sing.We’d love for you to join us. You can RSVP here.And if you missed the earlier episodes of Offstage, or just want to see them again, they’re all archived here.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Making Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the Stage

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyMaking Chess Sing: ‘Queen’s Gambit’ to Be Adapted for the StageA creative team has not yet been set for the proposed show, which would be based on the 1983 novel that spawned the hit streaming series.Anya Taylor-Joy and Thomas Brodie-Sangster in the Netflix adaptation of the novel “The Queen’s Gambit.”Credit…via NetflixMarch 8, 2021, 11:02 a.m. ETBeth Harmon is making her next move.A production company led by a Disney heir is planning to adapt “The Queen’s Gambit” into a stage musical. The fictional story is about an orphan girl — that’s Harmon — who becomes a pill-popping prodigy in the overwhelmingly male world of chess.Level Forward, a company whose founders include Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, said on Monday that it has won the rights to adapt Walter Tevis’s 1983 novel, which has become newly noteworthy thanks to the enormous success of last year’s streaming series adaptation on Netflix.Level Forward is not yet announcing a creative team or any other details of the project.The company has a decidedly progressive bent (it describes itself as “an ecosystem of storytellers, business people and social change organizers”), and is a relatively recent but active player in the theater industry, co-producing four Broadway shows in 2019: “What the Constitution Means to Me,” “Slave Play,” “Jagged Little Pill” and a revival of “Oklahoma!”The game of chess, although seemingly unlikely fodder for song-and-dance, has inspired at least one other musical: In the 1980s, the lyricist Tim Rice collaborated with Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus of Abba to write “Chess,” a fictional account of a tournament between an American and a Soviet grandmaster. The show had a well-received score that remains an object of affection and fascination for some, but, despite repeated efforts at revisions, it has not found success onstage; it ran for two months on Broadway in 1988.“The Queen’s Gambit” project is just at the start of its developmental life, and it’s not yet clear when or where there might be a production.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Bill C. Davis, Who Had a Hit Play With ‘Mass Appeal,’ Dies at 69

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Coronavirus OutbreakliveLatest UpdatesMaps and CasesRisk Near YouVaccine RolloutNew Variants TrackerAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyThose We’ve LostBill C. Davis, Who Had a Hit Play With ‘Mass Appeal,’ Dies at 69He was an unknown playwright in his 20s when his comic drama about a priest and a seminarian drew raves off and on Broadway. It was turned into a movie.Bill C. Davis in an undated photo. His play “Mass Appeal” was a “moving and very funny comedy about the nature of friendship, courage and all kinds of love,” Frank Rich wrote.Credit…via Davis familyMarch 5, 2021Updated 6:07 p.m. ETBill C. Davis, whose play “Mass Appeal” was a hit both off and on Broadway in the early 1980s and has been performed countless times since, died on Feb. 26 in Torrington, Conn. He was 69.His sister, Patricia Marks, said the cause was complications of Covid-19.Mr. Davis was virtually unknown in theater circles and still in his 20s when he wrote “Mass Appeal,” a two-character comic drama in which a middle-aged Roman Catholic priest finds his complacency challenged by an outspoken young seminarian. A friend — a priest, in fact — sent the play to the actress Geraldine Fitzgerald, who in turn brought it to Lynne Meadow, the artistic director of the Manhattan Theater Club.Ms. Meadow, in a telephone interview, recalled first reading the play.“I put it down and I had this feeling of lucidity,” she said. “It was crystal clear what he was trying to talk about.”The play, directed by Ms. Fitzgerald, opened at Manhattan Theater Club in spring 1980 to rave reviews. “There are few more invigorating theatrical experiences than hearing the voice of a gifted writer for the first time,” Frank Rich’s review in The New York Times began.“Though ‘Mass Appeal’ starts out as a debate between two men on the opposite sides of a generational-theological gap,” Mr. Rich wrote, “it quickly deepens into a wise, moving and very funny comedy about the nature of friendship, courage and all kinds of love.”The play, starring Milo O’Shea as the older man and Eric Roberts as the younger one, enjoyed an extended run at Ms. Meadow’s theater before moving to Broadway, where Michael O’Keefe replaced Mr. Roberts. It ran for 212 performances at the Booth Theater, earning Tony Award nominations for Ms. Fitzgerald and Mr. O’Shea.Mr. Davis adapted the play for a 1984 film version that starred Jack Lemmon as the priest and Zeljko Ivanek as the younger man.Mr. Davis’s subsequent plays were performed Off Broadway and in regional theaters (one, “Dancing in the End Zone,” about the tribulations of a college football star, had a brief Broadway run in 1985), but none approached the success of “Mass Appeal,” which was beloved by both audiences and actors. A 1982 production in Colorado starred Charles Durning and John Travolta.For Ms. Meadow, “Mass Appeal” led to an enduring friendship with Mr. Davis.“He was a person who loved the theater and loved ideas,” she said. “He was innocent and wise at the same time.”The Coronavirus Outbreak More

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      A Digital Festival, in the Spirit of Bertolt Brecht

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookA Digital Festival, in the Spirit of Bertolt BrechtThe directors of the Brecht Festival Augsburg have curated an online-only event that runs the gamut from experimental films to poetry slams and puppetry.The Dakh Daughters from Kyiv, Ukraine, who croon their own versions of Brecht poems while playing an array of acoustic instruments. They were part of the Brecht Festival Augsburg.Credit…Tetiana VasylenkoMarch 4, 2021, 4:35 a.m. ETEvery February, the Brecht Festival turns the southern German city of Augsburg into a hub of theater, concerts, literature and art that spill out from its main theater to neighborhood parks, cinemas and even the planetarium.This year, because of the pandemic, this interdisciplinary theater festival named for Bertolt Brecht — the towering playwright and stage theorist who was born in Augsburg in 1898 — is taking place online. Yet unlike many festivals that have offered web editions as a stopgap measure once an in-person event was deemed unsafe, this year’s Brecht Festival, which began Feb. 26 and runs through March 7, was designed top-to-bottom as a digital-only event.Rather than livestream a handful of conventional stage productions, the festival’s artistic directors, Tom Kühnel and Jürgen Kuttner, invited dozens of artists to produce short films and audio recordings for the lineup, curating a program that runs the gamut from films and experimental video to poetry slams, concerts, readings, animation and puppetry. Most of the videos are less than an hour long; many are far shorter.The result is a genuinely new, pandemic-suitable format that still fulfills the Brecht Festival’s mission of showcasing art and performance in the spirit of the playwright’s influential work. Each evening, the festival presents a number of productions as online premieres, and they are available on demand throughout the event.Winnie Böwe, accompanied by Felix Kroll on accordion, in an abridged version of the 1929 Brecht-Weill musical “Happy End.” Credit…Brecht FestivalAmong those, the musical contributions have been the festival’s most accessible and entertaining entries. In addition to his contributions to theater, Brecht was one of the great poets of the 20th century: Many of his best-known texts were lyrics set to music by the composers Kurt Weill, Hans Eisler and Paul Dessau.A highlight from the opening night is a raucous concert by Dakh Daughters, a stylish and impossible-to-categorize Gypsy cabaret girl band from Kyiv, Ukraine, who croon their own versions of Brecht poems in both Ukrainian and German while playing an array of acoustic instruments.A similar energy courses through two poetry slams in which young German poets present Brecht-inspired work to the accompaniment of drum, synths and bass. Henrik Szanto and Tanasgol Sabbagh are dramatically captivating as they chant over a jazzy improvisation, in videos filmed with verve in Augsburg’s Textile and Industrial Museum. Another muscular, if more conventional, entry is an abridged version of the 1929 Brecht-Weill musical, “Happy End.” Filmed in various locations in Berlin, it features the chanteuse Winnie Böwe in warm and intimate renditions of some of Weill’s most famous songs, including “The Bilbao Song” and “Surabaya Johnny,” accompanied by Felix Kroll on accordion.From left, Matthias Trippner, a puppet version of Bertolt Brecht, and Suse Wächter, the puppeteer, in “20th-Century Heroes Sing Brecht.” Credit…Brecht FestivalOne of the festival’s most constant pleasures has been “20th-Century Heroes Sing Brecht,” a sophisticated series of music videos by the brilliant puppeteer Suse Wächter, released nightly throughout the event. They include uncannily expressive puppets of Yoko Ono, Karl Marx, God, Lenin and Brecht himself performing some famous songs with lyrics by the playwright. (Wächter does outstanding impersonations!)The video in which the socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg chants “The Ballad of the Drowned Girl” on the banks of the Berlin canal where her body was thrown in 1919 is particularly moving. In a more lighthearted example, Luciano Pavarotti belts out the “Children’s Hymn” — Brecht’s answer to Germany’s national anthem — in an empty soccer stadium, in the rain. The largely overlooked artistic contributions made by Brecht’s numerous lovers are highlighted in other new works on the program, including the director Akin Isletme’s short film “I Am Dirt.” The title comes from a text by the actress, writer and Brecht paramour Margarete Steffin, whose poetic voice merges with dialogue from Brecht’s own plays.Among the three actors in the film, Stefanie Reinsperger, who conceived the project jointly with Isletme, is the most impressive. A member of the Berliner Ensemble, the theater founded by the playwright in 1949, Reinsperger is one of today’s finest Brecht interpreters. Set largely in a derelict rail yard, the short film showcases her bravura acting, the incantatory power of the dialogue that Brecht often wrote with lovers like Steffin, and the visual power of the director’s cool, wide-screen compositions.The director Akin Isletme’s short film “I Am Dirt.” Credit…Hamdemir & Isletme“I Am Dirt’s” dialogue also features excerpts from texts by Helene Weigel, Brecht’s second wife and his Berliner Ensemble co-founder: Their relationship is further explored in a meditative black-and-white film essay by Lina Beckmann and Charly Hübner based on their correspondence, on the festival program as well.The varied multimedia offerings contain surprisingly little in the way of conventional theater. It says a lot that the most straightforward theatrical adaptation is a short film based on “Medeamaterial,” a text collage by the German playwright Heiner Müller. The festival directors, Kühnel and Kuttner, have turned this 1983 work exploring the mythological figure of Medea into a dense, eye-poppingly colorful and at times trippy short film, with archival cameos from the Italian movie director Pier Paolo Pasolini and the left-wing German terrorist Ulrike Meinhof.Müller, arguably the most important German playwright of the late 20th century, wrote, “To use Brecht without criticizing him is treason.” In more ways than one, this year’s Brecht Festival seems to respond to Müller’s idea.As eclectic as its offerings are, they make sense as episodes in a compact yet varied whole, with its own internal logic. Despite their stylistic differences, what unites most of them is the care with which they’ve been made: Nothing here is slapdash or slipshod. Plus, an online festival built from short episodes is a format that seems designed to thwart burnout. As far as online theater festivals go, this one is practically binge-worthy.A montage of images from the film “Medeamaterial,” based on a text collage by the German playwright Heiner Müller.Credit…Jan-Pieter FuhrWhen theaters put their plays and festivals online, they’re no longer competing against other local playhouses, but rather against streaming behemoths with vastly superior resources and sophisticated means to command and hold our attention.Most every aspect of the 2021 Brecht Festival suggests how completely the artistic directors understood this. The robust program offers a vaster spectrum of theater, music, multimedia art and literature in a single place than anything else I’ve seen in the last 12 months. By dint of creative planning and professionalism, the artistic team has found ways to excite, surprise and delight the festival’s remote audience: 1,500 tickets, priced at 12 euros for adults, or $15, were sold on the opening weekend. Impressive as it has all been, however, I look forward to being in the audience when a live Brecht Festival again lights up Augsburg’s stages in 2022.Brecht Festival AugsburgOnline through March 7; brechtfestival.de.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      A ‘Rent’ Reunion Measures 25 Years of Love and Loss

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyCritic’s NotebookA ‘Rent’ Reunion Measures 25 Years of Love and LossA fund-raiser, a tribute, a documentary — and a reminder that Jonathan Larson’s musical remains especially inspiring in hard times.Members of the original cast sing “No Day but Today” during New York Theater Workshop’s “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love.”Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopMarch 3, 2021Is “Rent,” Jonathan Larson’s 25-year-old groundbreaking musical, somber or celebratory? When I was in high school, in the early throes of my “Rent” obsession, I made my aunt see the show. “That’s so depressing!” she wailed afterward. “No it isn’t!” I insisted. She looked at me like I was crazy.I often think of that exchange, now 14 years later. For me, the adjective “depressing” never fit this musical, which was about so much more than its tragedies: a generation fighting AIDS, poverty, gentrification and the everyday drama and griefs of those 525,600 minutes that make a year.On Tuesday night the New York Theater Workshop hosted “25 Years of Rent: Measured in Love,” a virtual fund-raiser commemorating the show, which premiered there in 1996 before going on to Broadway, Tony Awards, a Pulitzer Prize and international renown.It is well known that Larson died just before the musical’s first preview performance. So even though this was a tender, even intimate celebration, the “Rent” event, hosted by the “RuPaul’s Drag Race” contestant Olivia Lux, also embraced loss.Olivia Lux hosted the show, which was at once a documentary, a telethon and a tribute to the “Rent” composer Jonathan Larson.Credit…—-, via New York Theater Workshop“25 Years of Rent,” directed by Andy Señor, worked as a tribute to Larson, a contemporary telethon packed with stage celebs and, most touching, a documentary about the making of the beloved show. The theater summoned him back to life through archival images and footage — a broad-grinned waiter making milkshakes at the Moondance Diner; singing “Will I” on a cassette tape — as well as via recollections from friends, family, performers and the show’s director, Michael Greif.The names involved were impressive enough to light up a marquee: the original cast members Taye Diggs, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Adam Pascal and Daphne Rubin-Vega, as well as Lin-Manuel Miranda, Annaleigh Ashford, Neil Patrick Harris, Ben Platt, Anaïs Mitchell, Telly Leung and so many more.Some teared up recalling Larson’s exuberance and talents, and described the burden of carrying on with a show whose success he would never see. Of course, this is part of the tragedy of “Rent.”The saying goes that for every death in the world there’s a birth. And as “Rent” was born and grew, so did the careers of the cast members, many of whom were unknowns at the time. Anthony Rapp described working at Starbucks and auditioning with an R.E.M. song, while Idina Menzel, before jumping over the moon or defying gravity, had made a living as a bar mitzvah singer.Fredi Walker-Browne, who played Joanne in the original production, described hearing the lyric to her song “Take Me or Leave Me” for the first time.Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopThe night was also about how Larson’s work helped open people up to themselves. Fredi Walker-Browne, the original Joanne, spoke about first hearing “Take Me or Leave Me,” which Larson wrote for her and Menzel, and feeling that he laced her personality into the lyrics: “I look before I leap/I like margins and discipline/I make lists in my sleep.”Others, like Lux, hailed the show for portraying queerness and drag at a time when many productions didn’t.Winners of Jonathan Larson Grants, awarded to promising early-career musical theater artists, spoke to his legacy. And theater notables who weren’t in “Rent” at its beginnings took on pieces of the score in their own styles. Christopher Jackson’s hymnlike “One Song Glory,” Eva Noblezada’s coquettish “Out Tonight” and Billy Porter’s explosively baroque “I’ll Cover You” were standouts.Among the performers inspired by “Rent” was Billy Porter, who sang “I’ll Cover You.”Credit…via New York Theater WorkshopIf Larson’s death is one side of some karmic exchange, another side is the audiences who used — and continue to use — “Rent” to excavate some hidden part of themselves, and to inspire their own art.So much of this last year has been marked by things unmade: the people unmade by a pandemic, the innocent Black lives unmade by brutality, the planet unmade by a changing climate. My own tiny bubble of a life has gotten smaller, without the chance to see some of my closest friends and where the outside world seems newly and inexplicably dangerous.And yet in recalling the making (and remaking) of “Rent,” the event helped quiet the grief that creeps up on me every day. In the chat box next to the stream, which reached over 6,000 viewers, “Rent” fans confessed to crying; a final group rendition of “Seasons of Love” seemed to push many beyond comforting.It took me a few viewings before I could watch “Rent” without bursting into head-aching, snot-falling ugly crying, but eventually the show became my joy, my comfort. As much as Roger and Mark, a songwriter and filmmaker, hoped to make something of themselves through their art, so did I make myself — in whatever facile way — through “Rent,” using it to shape myself as an artist and an outcast and a New Yorker.At the end of “Rent,” Angel has died but the rest of the bohemians live, and Mark has finally finished his movie. You can read the signature lyric “No day but today” as fatalistic, as the characters’ existential cry, as Larson’s prescience about his sudden death.But I’ve always read “No day but today” — which gets woven into “Seasons of Love” in the show’s finale, and was this event’s final heart-rending hurrah — as a promise: Today I wake up to a new version of myself. I will be magnificent. I account for the losses of yesterday, but today? Today is alive. There’s no tragedy in that.25 Years of Rent: Measured in LoveThrough March 6; nytw.orgAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      New York to Allow Limited Live Performances to Resume in April

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyNew York to Allow Limited Live Performances to Resume in AprilThe state will allow plays, concerts and other performances to start again April 2 for audiences of up to 100 people indoors, or 200 outdoors.New York State is relaxing coronavirus restrictions and allowing venues to reopen next month to limited audiences. The musicians Jon Batiste and Endea Owens performed at a pop-up concert last month at the Javits Center.Credit…Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesMarch 3, 2021Updated 5:32 p.m. ETPlays, concerts and other performances can resume in New York starting next month — but with sharply reduced capacity limits — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said Wednesday.Mr. Cuomo, speaking at a news conference in Albany, said that arts, entertainment and events venues can reopen April 2 at 33 percent capacity, with a limit of 100 people indoors or 200 people outdoors, and a requirement that all attendees wear masks and be socially distanced. Those limits would be increased — to 150 people indoors or 500 people outdoors — if all attendees test negative before entering.A handful of venues immediately said they would begin holding live performances, which, with a handful of exceptions, have not taken place in New York since Broadway shut down last March 12.The producers Scott Rudin and Jane Rosenthal said they expected some of the earliest performances would take place with pop-up programs inside Broadway theaters, as well as with programming at nonprofit venues that have flexible spaces, including the Apollo Theater, the Park Avenue Armory, St. Ann’s Warehouse, the Shed, Harlem Stage, La MaMa and the National Black Theater.“That communion of audience and performer, which we’ve craved for a year, we can finally realize,” said Alex Poots, the artistic director and chief executive of the Shed, which plans to begin indoor performances for limited-capacity audiences in early April.The new rules will not affect commercial productions of Broadway plays and musicals, which are still most likely to open after Labor Day, according to Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League.“For a traditional Broadway show, the financial model just doesn’t work,” she said. “How do we know that? Because shows that get that kind of attendance close.”Mr. Cuomo announced his plan to ease restrictions as New York, along with New Jersey, has been adding new coronavirus cases at the highest rates in the country over the last week: both reported 38 new cases per 100,000 people. (The nation as a whole is averaging 20 per 100,000 people.) And New York City is currently adding cases at a per capita rate roughly three times higher than that of Los Angeles County.The labor union Actors’ Equity responded by calling on Mr. Cuomo to “prioritize getting members of the arts sector vaccinated.”Many nonprofit leaders welcomed the new rules as a sign of hope and a first step toward recovery. “We have suffered immense loss and there’s a way to go,” said Oskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, “but this policy change signals that we are turning a corner on the worst crisis the American theater has ever experienced.”Lincoln Center and the Glimmerglass Festival have already announced plans to perform outdoors this year, and the new rules clarify how many people can attend.“We welcome the new guidelines and want to serve as many people on our campus as is safe,” said Isabel Sinistore, a spokeswoman for Lincoln Center, which is planning to open 10 outdoor performance and rehearsal spaces on April 7.For many New York music venues, operating at 33 percent capacity still may not be enough to make reopening economically feasible, give the costs of running the venues and paying performers.“It doesn’t make financial sense for the Blue Note to open with only 66 seats for shows,” said Steven Bensusan, the president of the Blue Note Entertainment Group, whose flagship jazz club is in Greenwich Village.Smaller music venues, which are among the eligible recipients of $15 billion in federal aid, have been anxiously awaiting permission to reopen. But even with growing vaccination numbers and New York’s latest rule change, it may still take months for the touring industry to resume, and even then venues say they will need help.The Blue Note, along with some other jazz spots that serve food, had reopened last fall for dinner performances, allowing them to put on some shows without running afoul of state regulations that had banned anything but “incidental” music. (Some venues, and musicians, had filed lawsuits challenging those rules.) Then the city shut down indoor dining again, and some clubs did not reopen when it was allowed to resume last month.Michael Swier, the owner of the Bowery Ballroom and Mercury Lounge, two of New York’s best-known rock clubs, said that the state’s order that venues require social distancing and mask-wearing means that the true capacity at many spaces may be much lower.“Given that social distancing is still part of the metric, it brings us back down to an approximate 20 percent capacity, which is untenable,” Mr. Swier said.Several promoters and venue operators said they were holding out to reopen at 100 percent capacity, which many hope can happen this summer.But some small nonprofits immediately expressed interest. At the Tank, a Midtown Manhattan arts venue with a 98-seat theater, Meghan Finn, its artistic director, said that within hours of the governor’s announcement she started hearing from comedians eager to resume indoor performance.“Having the ability to use our space is not something we will pass up,” Ms. Finn said.The Joyce Theater in Manhattan had been expecting to bring audiences back to see live dance in September, but Linda Shelton, its executive director, said that she and her team had “hard work” to do in the coming days, as they assess whether staging a performance in the near term makes financial sense and can be done safely.“We’ve got a few things that we could present pretty quickly,” she said.Leon Botstein, the president of Bard College, home to the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts in Annandale-on-Hudson, the site of a respected music festival each summer, called the moves a “welcome first step.”“One hundred is a good beginning number,” Mr. Botstein said. “That’s April’s number. Let’s hope June’s number is larger.”A variety of nonprofit theaters said they found the news encouraging.Paige Evans, the artistic director of Signature Theater, said that she had already commissioned the playwright Lynn Nottage and the director Miranda Haymon to create a multimedia performance installation in the theater’s capacious lobby this summer, and that the new rules should allow for audiences to attend.Rebecca Robertson, the founding president and executive producer of the Park Avenue Armory, said she, too, is eager to welcome people back. “To have live audiences responding to the work is going to be thrilling,” she said.Other organizations said the relaxed rules would allow them to imagine new programming. El Museo del Barrio said it would seek to develop outdoor work for parks, on streets, or in borrowed spaces.“Finally,” said Leonard Jacobs, interim executive director of the Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning in southeast Queens, “we have good guidance from the state to help us take the first steps back to normal life.”Ben Sisario and Matt Stevens contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More