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“I feel like with the kind of work we do as artists, we are literally giving ourselves — we’re giving our body and voice and spirit,” said Kecia Lewis, who recently won a Tony Award for her performance as the tough-minded but inspirational piano teacher Miss Liza Jane in the musical “Hell’s Kitchen.” What with […] More
With the singer Harry Belafonte, she was one half of a celebrated (and sometimes denounced) interracial power couple who pressed the cause of civil rights in the 1960s.Julie Robinson Belafonte, a dancer, actress and, with the singer Harry Belafonte, one half of an interracial power couple who used their high profiles to aid the civil rights movement and the cause of integration in the United States, died on March 9 in Los Angeles. She was 95.Her death, at an assisted living facility in the Studio City neighborhood, was announced by her family. She had resided there for the last year and a half after living for decades in Manhattan.Ms. Belafonte, who was white and the second wife of Mr. Belafonte, the Black Caribbean-American entertainer and activist, had an eclectic career in the arts. At various times she was a dancer, a choreographer, a dance teacher, an actress and a documentary film producer.Ms. Belafonte with Harry Belafonte, whom she married in 1957 shortly after he and his first wife divorced. They had been introduced by Marlon Brando. via Getty ImagesMs. Belafonte traveled the nation and the world with her husband and their children during Mr. Belafonte’s sellout concert tours in the late 1950s and ’60s, presenting an image of a close interracial family that was otherwise rarely seen on television or in newspapers and magazines.She was at Mr. Belafonte’s side when they planned and hosted fund-raisers for civil rights groups, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the more militant Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More
Justina Machado and Aaron Mark went uptown to sample the savory pastries that play a central role in their new horror-comedy — minus the mystery meat.You know those days when you would kill for an empanada? Well.It was a cool and sunny morning last month in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, and the actress Justina Machado and the writer Aaron Mark had agreed to meet there to talk about their new Amazon series, “The Horror of Dolores Roach.” An eight-part horror-comedy, starting Friday on Prime Video, the show makes the neighborhood a central focus, which was why I took the train uptown. It does the same for cannibalism, though there was nothing like that on the schedule as far as I knew.But we had all day to talk about eating people. First, empanadas. Grabbing a park bench, Mark and Machado fueled up on the hot, crisp hand-held pastries — guava and cheese, carne de res — from Empanadas Monumental, near 157th Street and Broadway, around the corner from where Mark lived for a decade as what he called a “broke, broke, broke” playwright.I drooled a little watching Machado and Mark take bites of the face-sized empanadas, which were perfectly golden brown, bubbly in the right spots and oozy, not greasy. They were tasty, Machado said, but she was partial to the chicken-and-cheese pastelillos, fried turnovers similar to empanadas, that her Puerto Rican mother used to make.“She would make them with a cafe con leche,” said Machado, known best for her roles in the “One Day at a Time” reboot and “Jane the Virgin.” “I could kill, like, four of them.”Empanadas devoured, we moved to a nearby cafe — this time, to talk over cinnamon buns — and got right to the macabre meat of “Dolores Roach.” Mark, who created the show, serves as showrunner with Dara Resnik. Based on his fictional Gimlet Media podcast of the same name (2018-19), the series itself is an adaptation of the one-woman play he wrote, “Empanada Loca.” A New York Times review of its 2015 Off Broadway production by the Labyrinth Theater Company called it an “exuberantly macabre” show.Mark was inspired to pursue a “contemporary gender-flipped ‘Sweeney Todd’” while living in Washington Heights. Machado made her Broadway debut in “In the Heights,” which is set there.Victor Llorente for The New York TimesMachado stars as Dolores, who returns to a gentrified Washington Heights after 16 years in prison for taking the rap for her drug-dealer boyfriend. Rattled by her new surroundings, she tries to start life over as a masseuse in the basement of an empanada shop run by her old friend Luis (Alejandro Hernández). But after her jerk of a first client gropes her, and she snaps, killing him in a sudden rage, she can’t seem to stop murdering.To the delight of his unsuspecting customers, the deranged Luis decides to make empanadas stuffed with the kibbled dead body parts of her victims, leaving Dolores to wonder how her life has taken such a monstrous path.Mark, a self-described “Jew from Texas” and a longtime horror fan, said the idea for a “contemporary gender-flipped ‘Sweeney Todd’” started percolating in 2013, when he and the actress Daphne Rubin-Vega developed the idea in New York. (She played Dolores in the play and podcast and is an executive producer of the series.) Mark moved four years ago to Los Angeles, where he had no luck pitching it as a TV series.But the theater world is small: Mimi O’Donnell, a former artistic director of Labyrinth, was tapped to head scripted podcasts at Gimlet, and she brought the project over as her first fiction podcast. (She is now the head of scripted fiction at Spotify Studios.) In 2019, the horror producer Blumhouse Television came aboard to help develop it for TV.Alejandro Hernández plays Dolores’s old friend Luis, who turns her murder victims into the filling for empanadas at his shop.Amazon Prime VideoThe show features some high-profile names in supporting roles, including Cyndi Lauper as a Broadway usher who moonlights as a private investigator and Marc Maron as the empanada shop’s landlord.But the series also has two uncredited stars: empanadas and Washington Heights. Mark said the show’s food stylist, Rossy Earle, tapped into her Panamanian roots to choreograph how Hernández rolled out, stuffed and fried the empanadas. She crafted distinct recipes for Dolores’s victims so that each corpse-meat filling had its own flavor.For Dolores’s first victim, Earle braised pork shoulder and butt in Achiote oil to give the filling an unctuous mouth feel — “Greasy and obnoxious,” like the character, Earle wrote in an email.Much of the series was shot in Ontario, but parts were filmed in Washington Heights, including on Mark’s old stoop on West 156th Street, where he recalled days spent “listening to what gentrification was doing to the humans who had been here for decades.”“That’s really what got me to ‘Sweeney Todd,’” he said. “I thought, this neighborhood is cannibalizing itself.”(Mark acknowledged in an email that he himself had been “very much an interloper uptown”; that awareness, and a growing “sense of culpability,” he said, had fueled his urgency to write about what he had seen and been a part of.)Machado, who grew up in Chicago, had a personal connection to Washington Heights, as well. In 2009, she made her Broadway debut in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s breakout musical, “In the Heights,” which is set there.Mark and Machado outside the building where Mark lived for a decade in Washington Heights.Victor Llorente for The New York Times“I guess there’s something about the Heights that’s calling me,” she said.As our conversation wrapped up and Machado and Mark eyed their doggy bags of empanadas, they were mum on whether a second season was in the works. But Roach isn’t Dolores’s last name for nothing. “She’s unkillable,” Mark said.Is she a coldblooded monster? Or a victim of circumstances? Machado and Mark didn’t entirely agree.“She’s not a maniac,” Mark said. “She wants to be a good person.”“She’s a survivor,” Machado offered. “But she’s a sociopath.”Either way, Machado called it “liberating” to be in a show about Latinos that wasn’t afraid to be comically sinister and eye-poppingly gory.“When we try to tell our stories, we feel a responsibility to make it a happy ending because we want to change the narrative, we want people to know that we have human experiences, that we are human beings,” she said. “But we love horror, too.”On playing Dolores, she added, with a laugh: “I’m a Latina serial killer, and I’m proud of it. I really am.” More
Spirited celebrations that included a block party in Washington Heights and a gathering at the Carlyle Hotel extended past 4 a.m.It wasn’t hard to spot J. Harrison Ghee at the official Tony Awards after-party outside the United Palace theater in Washington Heights on Sunday night — they towered over much of the crowd in a vibrant blue gown, with a statuette in hand and a trail of well-wishers close behind. After their groundbreaking win for best leading actor in a musical — they became the first out nonbinary performer to win in the category — the gown color, it seemed, was fortuitous.“I felt like this is such a Cinderella moment,” they said.Hundreds of the ceremony’s attendees spilled out, shortly after 11 p.m., almost directly into the party: a tented extension of the fuchsia carpet and its lush floral backdrop, with catering that reflected both the culinary traditions of the neighborhood’s surrounding communities (paella, ceviche, mango on sticks) and also the immediate hunger of nominees who had sat snackless for hours. (About 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack were gone within 90 minutes.)Suzan-Lori Parks, left, with LaChanze at the after-party near the United Palace theater. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesThe Tonys, which celebrate Broadway’s best plays and musicals, were held uptown for the first time this year at the United Palace — an ornate movie house at 176th Street in Washington Heights, nearly eight miles north of Times Square. The theater is tucked within the largely Dominican neighborhood where Lin-Manuel Miranda shot the 2021 film adaptation of his musical “In the Heights.”“To show off one of the cultural gems of the city to a national audience is super exciting,” Heather Hitchens, the president and chief executive of the American Theater Wing, which puts on the Tonys with the Broadway League, said in an interview on Saturday.“The after-party is always important, but to celebrate that we made it through a season and we gave some awards out and actually had a telecast?” she said, continuing, “We haven’t been able to do that for so long.”Sunday’s ceremony was certainly an unusual one. With the Writers Guild of America still on strike, the show featured unscripted commentary from presenters, abundant musical performances from the year’s productions — plus Lea Michele’s rendition of “Don’t Rain on My Parade” from last season’s “Funny Girl” — and a wordless opening dance number by Ariana DeBose, the show’s host.Kelli O’Hara, a presenter at the Tonys, at the party in Washington Heights. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesAbout 800 hamburgers from Shake Shack disappeared within 90 minutes at the after-party outside the United Palace.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesBowls of Frosted Flakes were scattered around the official after-party. Tony the Tiger attended the Tonys this year.Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York Times“Ariana DeBose,” Wayne Brady, who is set to star in the 2024 Broadway revival of “The Wiz,” said later in the evening, shaking his head. “She was tremendous. She can improvise like no one’s business.”“It went so smoothly,” said Bonnie Milligan, a Tony Award winner for best featured actress in a musical for her performance as a scheming aunt in the offbeat musical “Kimberly Akimbo,” which was the top winner of the night with five trophies overall. “So many people were able to speak in solidarity with the strike.”With a long list of celebrations still ahead, many of the night’s winners and nominees stayed at the official after-party only briefly before moving on to smaller soirees hosted by individual productions across the city.Myles Frost, last year’s winner for best leading actor in a musical for playing Michael Jackson in “MJ,” at the official after-party. Jutharat Pinyodoonyachet for The New York TimesJulia Lester, a nominee for her turn as Little Red Riding Hood in the revival of “Into the Woods,” was leaving with her father as many attendees were still arriving. Ms. Lester said she was “just seeing where the night takes me.” She wore a voluminous green ball gown, sheer elbow-length gloves, a black choker and a bow in her red curly hair. “I’m wearing a hoop skirt, so I can’t do that much. Sitting down was a nightmare.”Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, donned a sparkling scarlet outfit meant to elicit, he said, “Big Red Riding Hood.” His after-party plans, he added, would extend “until the hood falls off, which is literally impossible. It’s pinned, glued, sewn — I probably won’t be able to take it off to go to sleep.”The event at the Carlyle Hotel, hosted by the theater publicist Rick Miramontez and the producer John Gore, picked up after midnight. Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBy 12:30 a.m., many had left the official after-party, and most of the nominees began heading to the Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side, where the theater publicist Rick Miramontez — dressed in a white blazer with red-and-white striped shorts — was hosting his famed late-night shindig for several hundred guests with the producer John Gore.“This is the party,” Mr. Brady proclaimed from a couch nestled alongside an open bar near the hotel’s entrance.Kolton Krouse, who starred in a recent revival of “Bob Fosse’s Dancin’” and uses the pronouns they and them, also opted for business-on-top-party-on-the-bottom, sporting a black blazer that barely covered their torso atop gold heels.Bonnie Milligan, left, who won the Tony for best featured actress in a musical, and Miriam Silverman, who won for best featured actress in a play, at the Carlyle Hotel.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesVictoria Clark, who won the Tony for best leading actress in a musical for her role in “Kimberly Akimbo,” at the Carlyle party.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJessica Chastain, with her grandmother Marilyn Herst, whom the actress said she brings to “all the parties.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York Times“Congratulations!” they said, lunging to stop Jessica Chastain, who was wearing a caped, sunshine-yellow Gucci gown, her long red hair in a high ponytail, as she swept in around 12:30 a.m. — accompanied by her grandmother, Marilyn Herst.“I bring her with me to all the parties,” said Ms. Chastain, who was nominated for best leading actress in a play for her performance as the housewife Nora Helmer in Jamie Lloyd’s bare-bones revival of “A Doll’s House.”The English actress Jodie Comer had won the category for her performance as a lawyer who defends men accused of sexual assault in the one-woman show “Prima Facie,” but you would not know it by Ms. Chastain’s cadre of photographers, who temporarily clogged the passageway between the upper lounge and a bar area, and a receiving line of those congratulating the actress after the play’s final performance this past weekend.“I hope it’s not over forever,” Ms. Chastain said as shutters clicked away.Alex Newell, left, and J. Harrison Ghee at the Carlyle, hours after becoming two of the first out nonbinary performers to win a Tony Award.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesJordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, at the Carlyle. His after-party plans would extend “until the hood falls off,” he said.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBuckets of Moet & Chandon champagne were placed around the room, while waiters in white blazers ferried silver trays of sliders and cartons of French fries around four rooms. On side tables sat slender trays of nuts and chips, which nominees appreciatively munched.In a back room alongside a bar, a cabaret singer crooned Frank Sinatra’s “Nice ‘n’ Easy” accompanied by a pianist and a cellist. (The Tony-winning soprano Kelli O’Hara, in a feathery white gown, bopped to the music.)Julia Lester, a nominee for “Into the Woods,” arriving at the Carlyle party, hoop skirt and all.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesBen Platt and Micaela Diamond, the stars of “Parade,” at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesZachary Prince, left, with Brandon Uranowitz, who won a Tony for best featured actor in a play for his role in “Leopoldstadt.”Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesThe party began to pick up around 1 a.m. Ben Platt, accompanied by his fiancé, Noah Galvin, in a matching black suit, got a hug from Micaela Diamond, his co-star in “Parade,” which won best revival of a musical. Ms. Lester — whose night had apparently taken her to the Carlyle — was deep in conversation in a corner with Julie Benko, the “Funny Girl” alternate for Michele’s Fanny Brice.Attendees discussed the beauty of the United Palace, a dazzling remnant of the golden age of cinema, which many had been inside for the first time that night.“I am so in love with that house,” Mr. Brady said.Natasha Katz, who won the Tony for best lighting design for her work on the Josh Groban-led “Sweeney Todd” revival, received a hug at the Carlyle.Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesShortly before 3 a.m., many of the performers began heading out, though the party would last until after 4 a.m.“I’m excited to have a shot at the Tonys next year,” Mr. Brady, “The Wiz” star-to-be, said around 2:30 a.m., before heading for the door.“In the bigger sense, I’m excited about making history with such a melanated cast, a mostly Black creative team.” More
The annual ceremony, honoring Broadway plays and musicals, is to take place June 11 at the United Palace in Washington Heights.Ariana DeBose, whose exuberant embrace of song and dance enlivened last year’s Tony Awards, will return to host the annual ceremony this spring.DeBose, who in 2022 won an Academy Award for her performance in Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” remake, appeared in six Broadway shows between 2012 and 2018, and was nominated for a Tony Award as one of three actresses playing Donna Summer in the jukebox musical “Summer.” She is currently featured in “Schmigadoon!,” a streaming musical comedy series on Apple TV+, and she has several upcoming films.Earlier this year, she sang the opening number at the BAFTA Awards, and a rapped section paying tribute to female movie stars was mocked and memed for a hot second. DeBose, who is 32, seems to have taken it in stride — in London earlier this month, she turned the kerfuffle into merch that raised money for charity, and last weekend she performed at Lincoln Center.This year’s awards ceremony will for the first time take place at the United Palace, a large theater in Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan. The ceremony, which is presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, honors plays and musicals staged on Broadway; it is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, June 11, and to be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.This season’s Tony nominees are to be announced on May 2. More
The annual ceremony honoring Broadway’s top productions and performers is moving to the New York neighborhood where the musical “In the Heights” was set.After 75 years of ceremonies in and around New York’s theater district, the Tony Awards next year will move uptown, holding the annual best-of-Broadway awards ceremony in Washington Heights.Tony Awards administrators made the surprise announcement Tuesday morning, saying that the next ceremony would take place on June 11 at the United Palace, an ornate theater in northern Manhattan that was constructed as a movie theater and is now used for religious and cultural activities.The administrators did not immediately offer a rationale for the move, but it brings the ceremony to a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population, and to a theater that has been championed by one of Broadway’s best-known stars, Lin-Manuel Miranda. (Miranda’s first Broadway musical, “In the Heights,” is named for, and takes place in, the neighborhood.)The ceremony, which will honor plays and musicals that opened on Broadway between April 29, 2022 and April 27, 2023, will be broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+. The nominations will be announced on May 2.The United Palace is a landmark building that opened in 1930 as a Loew’s “Wonder Theater,” which were large and luxurious movie palaces. The building has 3,400 seats, which makes it the fourth largest theater in Manhattan — it is significantly smaller than Radio City Music Hall, where the Tony Awards have often taken place, but larger than the Beacon Theater, where the awards have sometimes been staged in recent years.The Tony Awards have, since 1947, changed locations multiple times. They were initially held in hotel ballrooms, then Broadway theaters before switching to larger venues in the 1990s.The Tony Awards, formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards, were founded by the American Theater Wing and are now presented by the Broadway League and the Wing. Next year’s ceremony will be directed by Glenn Weiss, who has frequently played that role; Weiss and his longtime collaborator, Ricky Kirshner, will produce the broadcast with the League and the Wing. More
The Tony- and Pulitzer-winning author of ‘A Strange Loop’ finally has an apartment to himself in Manhattan.It had to be around here someplace, but Michael R. Jackson could not readily locate his Pulitzer Prize certificate when an importuning visitor asked for a look. He rummaged through piles of paper on a closet shelf. Not there. He inventoried the plastic storage boxes in that same closet, but came up empty again.“It was, like, in a cardboard folder. What did I do with it? What did I actually do with it?” Mr. Jackson said, casting about his two-bedroom condo sublet in Washington Heights and looking stricken. “I could not have thrown it away. This is now going to torture me for the rest of my life.”Do not judge. Do not “tsk-tsk” about carelessness. Of late, it has been a wild loop-the-loop ride for Mr. Jackson, 41, the author and composer of “A Strange Loop,” the hit Broadway show. The metafictional chronicle of an overweight, gay Black man writing a musical about an overweight, gay Black man, “Loop” won the 2022 Tony Award for best book of a musical and the Tony for best musical, to say nothing of the 2020 Pulitzer for drama. (The errant document eventually turned up atop a bookcase in the second bedroom, near photographs taken by Jill Krementz of Mr. Jackson’s proud parents at the opening-night performance of “A Strange Loop” and of the playwright himself during the opening-night curtain call.)“I’ve been traveling so much. I’ve been doing press and running in and out for the last two months,” Mr. Jackson said. “It was, ‘Throw this suit on! Take that suit off!’ It was like a cartoon, clothes flying left and right, and me running out the door.”“It just doesn’t feel like you’re in the city,” said Michael R. Jackson of his Washington Heights neighborhood.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesMichael R. Jackson, 41Occupation: Playwright and composerDesignated designer: “I hated every second of choosing furniture. This is the kind of thing I’m just not interested in. I want it to be done. I just want to be at a point where I can appoint a person who knows me really well and knows my taste to do their thing.”“The apartment was starting to look like a crack den, and I had to bring my attention to cleaning,” he continued. “I got the housekeeper to come yesterday, and we sort of tag-teamed, but there was still a lot to do.”Mr. Jackson moved into his current quarters in May 2021. For the preceding 16 years, he lived around the corner, in a crepuscular three-bedroom rental with a rotating cast of apartment mates, minimal furniture and — for the first few months of the pandemic, thanks to an issue with a gas line — an out-of-commission stove.“It was cheaper to live there, but it just got sort of painful to me personally. I’m not as young as I once was,” Mr. Jackson said. “I was like, ‘I want to live alone.’”Mr. Jackson enlisted the set designer of “A Strange Loop,” Arnulfo Maldonado, to help furnish the apartment.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesHe was determined to stay in the neighborhood — “I find this to be a peaceful space” — but seemed uncertain about the process of securing new housing or, more likely, was just too busy to engage. Accordingly, the lead producer of “A Strange Loop,” Barbara Whitman, recommended Bohemia Realty Group, a niche agency that caters to the New York theater community and specializes in rentals and sales in the northern precincts of Manhattan.The floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and the views of the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge from the compact balcony were all that a certain prospective tenant could desire. The roof deck was value added.“I’m a big fan of sunlight and windows, which I did not have in my old place, which for 16 years was so distressing to me,” said Mr. Jackson, who was also impressed with the primary bathroom. “It’s the nicest I’ve ever had, and I don’t have to share it with anyone.”The weighted blanket — lots of loops — has proved a favorite.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesThe décor is a crucial step up from Ikea — anodyne good taste, in shades of sienna and blue-gray, with a pop of burnt orange. The weighted Afghan on the ottoman, a true security blanket, adds texture.“I’ve always sort of lived like a college student,” Mr. Jackson said. “And so when I was able to upgrade a bit, I needed some help to figure out some basic things.”Arnulfo Maldonado, the set designer for “A Strange Loop,” became the furniture whisperer, presenting various options to his decidedly low-maintenance client.“I said, ‘I need a couch,’ and Arnulfo said, ‘You need a rug under the couch,’” Mr. Jackson recalled. “It would never have occurred to me to put a rug underneath the couch.”Perhaps more to the point, it would not have occurred to him to buy a rug.Mr. Jackson borrowed the soap opera magazines from his neighbor, Florencia Lozano, who was, for a time, part of the cast of the daytime drama “One Life to Live.”Desiree Rios/The New York Times“I do not have an interior-design bone in my body,” said Mr. Jackson, who vows to raise his game when he buys a house — something he hopes will happen in the next few years. “I couldn’t tell you whether I prefer neo-Classical to neo-non-Classical. I don’t know any of that. It isn’t something I’ve ever had to think about.”Of course, he has his discrete spheres of expertise. He waxes Talmudic on what he calls his trifecta of “Inner White Girl Inspirations.” Said trifecta comprises a framed poster of Joni Mitchell’s “Dog Eat Dog” album, which hangs over the sofa; a signed vinyl copy of Liz Phair’s “Exile in Guyville,” an opening-night gift from his agent (“This put Liz Phair on the map,” he said. “It blew the roof off the indie rock scene at the time — it’s a really iconic album”); and a vinyl copy of Tori Amos’s “Under the Pink.”“The first song on the album is ‘Pretty Good Year,’ and when I sat down to listen to it in high school, it really changed the game for me in terms of the kind of art I wanted to be making as a writer,” Mr. Jackson said. “She opened up a whole world of thought for me.”He is similarly steeped in the fine points of daytime dramas. “I was a huge soap person,” he said. “I watched all of them, or most of them. I had a subscription to Soap Opera Digest. I came to New York initially to become a soap opera writer. I interned at ‘All My Children’; I interned at ABC Daytime.”During lockdown, Mr. Jackson was able to rewatch many of the sin-and-suffering-in-the-afternoon episodes he had recorded years earlier, courtesy of the still-functioning TV-VCR combo his father bought him just before his freshman year in college.“I’m trying to wrap my mind around the idea that I have more money and time now, and I should put my attention to developing home-décor taste,” he said.Desiree Rios/The New York TimesWithout fanfare, he sat down at the Yamaha keyboard in the second bedroom and played a lovely stretch of melody from “White Girl in Danger,” a musical in development that is drawn in part from his love of soaps.“I do think having a nice setup does make me feel less stressed when I’m working, which is good,” Mr. Jackson said. But he insisted that his previous apartment, gloomy though it may have been, did not impede the progress of “A Strange Loop.”“It didn’t matter,” he said. “My whole life was writing all the time and working on the piece. I had to write. I had to get it done.”For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @nytrealestate. More
The filmmaker’s commercial for a crypto company is one of many recent marketing efforts to make digital cash palatable for newbies.Before Spike Lee accepted cryptocurrency, he turned down Crocs.Years ago, the filmmaker rejected an offer to buy into the Colorado company that makes perforated foam clogs, a decision that caused him to miss out when its stock soared on the strength of the footwear fad.“I wish I would’ve given some money back then,” Mr. Lee said in a recent interview. “Anytime something is new, you’re going to have people who are going to be skeptical. With some of the best ideas, people thought the inventors were crazy.”Now he has taken a leap into another cultural craze, having agreed to direct and star in a television commercial for Coin Cloud, a company that makes kiosks for buying and selling Bitcoin and other virtual currencies. Although cryptocurrency is not widely used for transactions, an increasing number of merchants now accept it as payment.The commercial, which he shot last month, is one of several recent marketing efforts meant to broaden the audience for a form of currency that can intimidate people accustomed to cash and credit cards.Mr. Lee, outfitted nattily in a straw hat and gold-tipped cane while filming part of the commercial on Wall Street, led a diverse cast that included his daughter Satchel, the “Pose” actress Mj Rodriguez and the drag queen Shangela. Other shoot locations included Fort Greene Park and the Chillin’ Bar and Grill in Washington Heights, where breakfast patrons craned to catch a glimpse of the director as he filmed a Coin Cloud machine on the sidewalk.“Old money is not going to pick us up; it pushes us down,” Mr. Lee says in the commercial, which portrays the cryptocurrency system as a more accessible and equitable alternative to traditional, discriminatory financial institutions.“The digital rebellion is here,” he says.Cryptocurrency has also been known to intimidate investors, with its extreme volatility and the overwhelming number of virtual alternatives, known as coins. The marketing of this relatively new money has so far been limited mostly to ads on trade websites and targeted pushes on social media, where aficionados swap meme-fueled in-jokes about coin values rocketing to the moon.The industry is increasingly betting that celebrities can help demystify cryptocurrency for the uninitiated.The actor Alec Baldwin offered crisp definitions of cryptocurrency in a series of online ads for the crypto trading platform eToro, and the National Football League star Tom Brady signed on as a brand ambassador for FTX, a crypto exchange that also has a deal to sponsor Major League Baseball.Alec Baldwin is advertising for the cryptocurrency trading platform eToro.eToroThe actor Neil Patrick Harris recently appeared in a TV commercial for the digital currency kiosk operator CoinFlip. “Now anyone, anywhere, can turn cash into crypto!” he declares.EToro and Coinbase, another exchange, collectively spent $22.8 million on advertising last year, nearly double the $12.4 million they shelled out in 2019, according to the research firm Kantar. In recent months, Coinbase hired the Martin Agency, the advertising company behind GEICO and DoorDash.As Madison Avenue fields more inquiries from cryptocurrency clients, agency executives are feeling pressure to better communicate the investment risks, rather than romanticize the industry.“I get very nervous because I start looking at the way that some of the platforms are specifically targeting younger investors,” said Alex Hesz, the chief strategy officer of the advertising giant DDB Worldwide. In the face of frenzied cryptocurrency trading, ad agencies should push for moderation and diversification, he said. “Maximizing is what’s being encouraged here — the idea that this is an amazing asset, and as much as you want to put in, come on and jump on in, the Bitcoin’s lovely,” Mr. Hesz said. “We would never feel comfortable for an alcohol client, or a high-salt or high-sugar or high-fat client, to encourage that level of unequivocal behavior.”Some celebrity endorsements of cryptocurrencies have run into trouble. In 2017, the Securities and Exchange Commission cautioned that some famous people were hyping the virtual currency sales known as initial coin offerings without disclosing that they had been paid to promote them. The commission has since settled charges against the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr., the music producer DJ Khaled and the actor Steven Seagal.Social media influencers and e-sports stars have also been linked to shady cryptocurrency schemes, accused of pumping up coins just before their value crashes.Coin Cloud’s chief marketing officer, Amondo Redmond, said he hoped Mr. Lee’s stature would help elevate the industry by delivering something “more than just cool creative, but that is really at the forefront of digital currency becoming mainstream.”“It’s more than just adding a celebrity face,” he said.Mr. Lee, who won an Oscar in 2019 in the best adapted screenplay category for “BlacKkKlansman,” has worked on ads for Capital One, Uber and, most famously, Nike. In the 1980s and 1990s, he directed and starred in commercials for Air Jordans, playing his cinematic alter ego Mars Blackmon opposite Michael Jordan.“That was lightning in a bottle,” Mr. Lee said from a flight bound for the Cannes Film Festival, where he is the first Black person to lead the festival jury.He declined to say how much he had been paid for the Coin Cloud commercial, but noted that “if anyone’s known my body of work over the last four decades, you kind of know about the way I see the world, and when they approached me, it fit in line.”As the coronavirus pandemic continues to highlight financial disadvantages for people of color, Mr. Lee hopes to promote cryptocurrency as neutral to race, gender, age and other identifying characteristics.But he was no expert before filming began, and had to take “a crash course” on crypto. He insisted that the commercial include a line urging viewers to do their own research on virtual money.Mr. Lee said he now planned to invest in virtual coins. He said he would not, however, go anywhere near the digital ownership certificates known as nonfungible tokens.“NFTs, I don’t understand that,” he said, laughing. “I’m old school, so sometimes my children have to turn on the TV — all those remotes and stuff.” More
La película, ambientada en un barrio neoyorquino conocido como la Pequeña República Dominicana, no incluyó a latinos de piel oscura en los papeles principales. Críticos y reporteros del Times analizan cómo repercute esa ausencia.In the Heights, la muy postergada adaptación de Hollywood del musical de Broadway, se presentó como un avance para la representación latina en Hollywood, pero ha suscitado una conversación sobre el colorismo y el reparto de la película.El barrio neoyorquino en el que se desarrolla la historia, Washington Heights, es predominantemente afrodominicano. En una entrevista, Felice León, productora de video para The Root, le preguntó a Jon M. Chu, el director, y a algunas de las estrellas sobre la falta de protagonistas de piel oscura en la película: “Como mujer negra de ascendencia cubana, específicamente de la ciudad de Nueva York”, le dijo, “sería negligente por mi parte no reconocer el hecho de que la mayoría de sus actores principales son personas latinas de piel clara o blanca”. Chu dijo que se trataba de una conversación pendiente y de algo sobre lo que necesitaba educarse. Al final, dijo, trataron “de conseguir a la gente que era mejor para esos papeles”.Lin-Manuel Miranda, integrante del equipo creativo de la película, que incluye a la escritora Quiara Alegría Hudes, abordó las críticas la semana pasada en un comunicado en Twitter. Se disculpó por quedarse corto al “intentar pintar un mosaico de esta comunidad”. Varios latinos destacados salieron en defensa de Miranda, incluida la pionera actriz latina Rita Moreno, que más tarde se retractó de sus comentarios. No es la primera vez que Chu tiene que responder a cuestionamientos de identidad. Su éxito de taquilla Crazy Rich Asians también tuvo que enfrentarse a cuestiones similares en lo que respecta al elenco de asiáticos y asiáticoestadounidenses en la película. (El actor principal de esa película, Henry Golding, es birracial).Pedí a cinco críticos y reporteros del Times que opinaran sobre las críticas y lo que significa para la representación en las artes. Estos son extractos editados de la conversación. MAIRA GARCIAEl equipo creativo de la película, en el que participan Jon M. Chu, a la izquierda, y Lin-Manuel Miranda, enfrenta acusaciones de colorismo.Macall Polay/Warner Bros.Mi primera ida al cine desde que comenzó la pandemia, como la de muchas personas, fue para ver In the Heights en la gran pantalla. Fue un momento de gozo, después de un año lleno de cosas sin alegría. Era emocionante ver cuerpos morenos cantando y bailando en la ciudad que ha sido mi hogar durante casi una década.Durante mucho tiempo ha habido una falta de representación latina en Hollywood, e In the Heights pretendía ser un avance para rectificar. Sin embargo, la entrevista de León planteó importantes cuestiones sobre el colorismo en el reparto de la película, que se centra en un barrio que tiene una gran población afrolatina. ¿Hizo el equipo creativo lo suficiente en lo que respecta a la representación?CONCEPCIÓN DE LEÓN En mi opinión, no. Desde que salió el tráiler me preocupaba el tema del colorismo en la película. Aparte de Leslie Grace, la actriz dominicanoestadounidense que interpreta a Nina, una estudiante universitaria puertorriqueña que tiene dificultades para encajar en la comunidad de la Universidad de Stanford, ninguno de los papeles principales lo interpreta un afrolatino. Hollywood lleva mucho tiempo valorando y destacando a los latinos de piel clara por encima de los afrolatinos, negándoles a menudo papeles que reflejan su cultura. Es una representación limitada e inexacta de los latinos, que son diversos en cultura y aspecto.Pero lo que hace que estas decisiones de reparto sean especialmente indignantes es que la película está ambientada en Heights, una zona que se conoce como la Pequeña República Dominicana. Al menos el 90 por ciento de los dominicanos somos afrodescendientes, según un reciente estudio de población. Entonces, ¿por qué no aparecemos de forma destacada? En cuanto a lo que el equipo podría haber hecho de forma distinta, parece sencillo. Podrían haber contratado a más actores negros y latinos, no para llenar una cuota de diversidad, sino porque eso habría reflejado la realidad del barrio. O, al menos, podrían haber sido más claros y decir que esta película no pretendía representarlos.SANDRA E. GARCIA Los dominicanos son afrodescendientes, son un pueblo negro y no vi que eso se representara. Los latinos que vi eran del tipo que Hollywood siempre ha favorecido: latinos que se parecen a Jennifer López y Sofía Vergara. Los latinos como yo, en los que no hay ambigüedad sobre su negritud, los que llevan su negritud en la cara, apenas pasan el corte en alguna producción, ya sea de Hollywood o de Univisión. Hay una razón por la que mi madre sabe los nombres de todos los presentadores de noticias de piel oscura en Telemundo y es porque es raro verlos en los reflectores. In the Heights continúa con el gaslighting o manipulación que los negros latinos han soportado desde que tengo memoria. Tenemos una cultura hermosa, tenemos una música es hermosa, pero no somos lo suficientemente dignos para que se nos destaque junto con ellas. Todo lo que creamos, como el salchichón y el mangú que se muestran en la película, o el merengue y la bachata, son dignos de celebración, pero nosotros no.Varias banderas aparecen en la escena del ‘Carnaval del Barrio’, pero no muchos rostros negros.Warner Bros.MAYA PHILLIPS Debo reconocer que no lo noté al principio; mis ojos estaban demasiado encandilados por la felicidad de ver un gran y brillante musical en una pantalla grande. Pero sí empecé a notar la ausencia: por ejemplo, en el número del Carnaval del Barrio (que está muy bien coreografiado, por cierto), hay una parte en la que la cámara se desplaza para mostrar a diferentes grupos de residentes que llevan varias banderas, y me di cuenta de la falta de rostros negros. Y Benny me llamó la atención porque aparentemente era el único personaje de piel oscura ¡en todo el barrio! A veces, mi madre y yo vemos una película o una obra de teatro, o simplemente estamos en algún lugar del mundo y jugamos a un juego llamado “Encuentra a los negros”, como “¿Dónde está Waldo?”, pero menos divertido, ja. Parece que muchas artes y reuniones públicas hacen como si los negros no existieran.Me pasa lo mismo, Maya. Soy una gran aficionada a los musicales y a la música latina, así que creo esto en parte nubla la realidad de este barrio: que es predominantemente afrolatino y que la falta de rostros negros se ha convertido en una omisión más flagrante.ISABELIA HERRERA He visto justificaciones que dicen que In the Heights no es un documental y no pretende representar al verdadero barrio dominicano de Washington Heights sino que se trata de un barrio latino de fantasía. Claro que entendemos que se trata de un musical, una historia con elementos surrealistas y fantásticos. Incluso si aceptamos la opinión de que una fantasía no tiene que ser representativa, ese argumento supone que de todos modos, los latinos negros no pertenecen a estos mundos imaginarios. Al mismo tiempo, el director, los actores y los productores han utilizado el lenguaje de la celebración comunitaria y la historia cultural del barrio real de Washington Heights para comercializar la película. Esto parece una contradicción, y una que para mí resulta muy reveladora.¿Qué significa el colorismo en la comunidad latina y cuáles son las formas en que se manifiesta? ¿Qué perdemos al no tener un amplio espectro de representación en las artes?DE LEÓN El colorismo en la comunidad latina se manifiesta de forma parecida a como sucede en la comunidad negra estadounidense: cuanto más clara es tu piel, más hermosa y deseable se te percibe. Mi complexión era siempre un tema de conversación cuando era niña, y a mis primas que son más oscuras que yo les iba peor, a menudo ridiculizadas con palabras denigrantes como “mona”, que están normalizadas pero tienen un trasfondo racista.En República Dominicana y en otros lugares existe el concepto de “mejorar la raza” al salir con blancos, para blanquear el linaje. Es una noción que tiene sus raíces en la colonización, cuando España implantó un sistema de castas en la isla de La Española, que la República Dominicana comparte con Haití, donde se situaba a las personas de ascendencia europea o mestiza más arriba en la escala social y se les permitía más oportunidades de progreso. Aunque este sistema ya no existe, todavía hay rastros de él en la forma en que se ve y se trata a los latinos negros. Son más pobres y tienen menos acceso a educación de calidad, vivienda o salud que los latinos de piel clara. Al borrarlos en la pantalla, estamos perpetuando este daño y fomentando la narrativa de que solo lo blanco es adecuado.En mi familia (soy mexicanoestadounidense), soy de piel más oscura que algunos de mis parientes y eso me ganó el apodo de “Prieta”. Tengo hermanos y primos que son más blancos que yo, incluso que pasan por blancos. Aunque algunos podrían considerar que palabras como prieta son términos cariñosos, también pueden ser muy perjudiciales, ya que transmiten una diferencia: no eres la norma, es decir, blanco.GARCIA Como alguien que ha existido como latina de piel negra toda la vida, el colorismo está en todas partes en la Latinidad, un término académico que dice que los latinos comparten hilos comunes de identidad. Las cicatrices de la colonización y de un dictador que se ponía polvos en la piel para parecer más claro siguen siendo visibles en la cultura dominicana. Para la gente como yo, esas cicatrices todavía se viven de forma muy visceral. Creo que los dominicanos están despertando a una negritud que se les ha enseñado a evitar, y creo que ahora más que nunca hay más espacio para los dominicanos de piel oscura. Dicho esto, el statu quo es que los latinos de piel más clara son mejores y mucha gente no está dispuesta a renunciar a eso, por la razón que sea.A.O. SCOTT Ese parece ser el caso de gran parte del cine y la televisión latinoamericanos. Es raro ver protagonistas negros o indígenas en las películas del Caribe o de Brasil, y más raro aún encontrar directores de esos orígenes.PHILLIPS Creo que todo esto refleja la visión terriblemente estrecha que tiene nuestra sociedad de la representación racial, que una persona latina debe tener un aspecto muy específico y una persona negra debe tener un aspecto muy específico, y que esas identidades no pueden cruzarse. Es como si existiera miedo a que tener ese amplio espectro de representación pueda ser confuso.Leslie Grace, a la derecha, es la única afrolatina entre los protagonistas de “In the Heights”, entre los que se encuentra Gregory Diaz IV como un ‘dreamer’.Warner Bros.La película no contaba con grandes estrellas en los papeles principales porque el equipo creativo quería arriesgarse con nuevos talentos. Parece que podría haber sido la oportunidad perfecta para evitar los problemas de colorismo. Chu dijo que seleccionaron a los mejores actores para los papeles. ¿Qué le pareció su respuesta? More
