Women and Girls

Subterms

    More stories

    • 100 Shares159 Views

      in Movies

      Give Phoebe Robinson the Title She Deserves: Boss

      by

      The comic has a publishing imprint, TV deals, even a primer on leadership she wrote after noting the absence of Black women’s perspectives in business books.Mention “The Devil Wears Prada” to the comic Phoebe Robinson and she’ll lean forward and tell you she has some opinions. The real villain in the tale of an ultra-demanding fashion magazine editor and her assistant is the assistant’s boyfriend, played by Adrian Grenier, for complaining when she has a work event. “Do you know centuries of women stood by their men pursuing careers?” Robinson said over lunch. “Adrian, calm down.”As for the title character — Miranda Priestly, the Anna Wintour-type boss — Robinson, 37, has more mixed feelings. “It’s easier to judge someone from afar,” she said, adding that women of her generation had to be tough to get ahead. “At the same time, you don’t have to be a monster.”In a time when pop culture and the news are filled with portraits of bad bosses, Robinson has been thinking a lot about what makes a good one. In the past few years, she has evolved from a hustling stand-up into a mini-mogul with a staff, a production company and myriad projects. This year alone, she released a Comedy Central series, “Doing the Most With Phoebe Robinson”; shot her debut hour special (“Sorry, Harriet Tubman,” premiering Oct. 14 on HBO Max); started a book imprint, Tiny Reparations; guest-hosted for Jimmy Kimmel; sold a half-hour sitcom; and wrote her third book, “Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes,” which is, among other things, a primer on leadership. If that’s not enough, she’s in the process of moving.Robinson backstage before filming her new comedy special, “Sorry, Harriet Tubman.”Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“It’s a lot, not going to lie,” she said, pointing out that her career models have shifted from comics like Wanda Sykes to multihyphenates like Reese Witherspoon and Mindy Kaling.Robinson’s style has always been down to earth, self-deprecating, with proudly basic music taste (U2 is a lodestar). Her instinct was to be the cool boss, she said, but the uneasy looks on her employees’ faces after she asked them to go bowling on a Friday night taught her a lesson: “I was like: ‘Right right right right right, I get it. If my boss asked me to hang out on a Friday I’d be like, no, I see you every day, I’m good.’”The first time I saw Phoebe Robinson was a decade ago. She had been doing stand-up for a couple of years, typically in vests, jeans and a T-shirt. “I dressed so nothing would signal I’m a woman,” she said, adding that she was hyperaware of being the only female comic in the room. “I was so insecure and nervous.”Even then, she had an ingratiating voice that cut through the clutter of competition, often playing with language, tweaking words, showing signs of a literary bent that would eventually lead her to publishing. When I reminded her of a joke she told about movies that cast handsome people as rapists, she cringed, saying she would do that in a more nuanced way now. At that moment, the sunlight shifted and she grabbed her sunglasses. Before putting them on, she said: “I don’t want you to think I’m doing this to look cool.”In early August, a week before shooting her new special at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Robinson walked onstage at Union Hall in a headband and comfy dress. The Delta variant had forced audiences to put their masks back on and she wasn’t hearing the explosive laughter that she had only weeks earlier, even though the crowd immediately responded when she started talking about her relationship, which has become a regular part of her act. “I’m the Rosa Parks of the bedroom,” goes one line aimed at her British boyfriend. “I’m not getting up for any white man.”Robinson decided to write about leadership after realizing there were a dearth of business books with a Black woman’s perspective.Penguin RandomhouseA week later, Robinson said she was too in her head in that show, that she needed to remind herself to have fun. “It’s hard to stay in the moment for someone like me who is always thinking about the next 20 moves,” she said by phone.Robinson had done a chunk of material about the difference between her 20s and 30s, including one bit about being more concerned with frivolous things earlier, like shaving body hair, which she did so much, she said, “that she didn’t read a book for 10 years.”Now she’s an author and publisher who tries to read a book a week. “I miss that innocence a bit,” she said, explaining that she didn’t have to worry about her employees or brand back then. A few years later, her profile would grow thanks to a regular show with Jessica Williams called “2 Dope Queens” that moved from small rooms to HBO. In the years since, she said, their paths have diverged. “It’s one of those things where you meet for an amount of time and then you grow in different ways.”A multitasker at heart, Robinson has juggled writing, performing and podcasting. She even recently joined Michelle Obama on her book tour, interviewing the former first lady, a major career turning point for Robinson, one that also provides the set piece closing out her new special.An imprint that would let her champion writers of color had been a longstanding dream that Robinson pitched over the pandemic. She said her first book, the 2016 best seller “You Can’t Touch My Hair,” was rejected by every publisher except Plume (which now runs her imprint), and the reason she heard was that books by Black women don’t sell. That stuck with her. Following the September debut of “Please Don’t Sit,” Tiny Reparations has two releases set for the spring, both debut novels by authors of color: “What the Fireflies Knew,” by Kai Harris, a coming-of-age story, and “Portrait of a Thief,” by Grace Li, about an art heist. “I don’t want to read trauma all the time. That’s something I have been particular about,” Robinson said. “I really want hopeful stuff.”Robinson filming her special at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.Sabrina Santiago for The New York Times“Please Don’t Sit on My Bed in Your Outside Clothes” is filled with thoughts on management and work, the product of an immersion in business books, podcasts and personal experience. The book is in part a response to the absence of Black women’s perspective in this genre. She writes: “Where’s ‘Lean In’ for us?”Robinson calls herself a “reformed workaholic,” but she’s not short of plans: an idea for a romantic comedy, a talk show, specials she would produce and, perhaps the most challenging one, a two-week vacation. Meanwhile, she must manage a growing business. With the pandemic, people are questioning how they work, and while Robinson understands balking at excessive hours, she insists there’s a middle ground that involves working more efficiently. She has cut down on meetings, for instance. “I love Zoom but I don’t need to see your face,” she said.Robinson said she knew that stereotypes about Black women might get her judged more harshly, but she had learned that one of the hard things about being a boss is asking your employees to do things they don’t want to do. “As someone who does comedy where you want everyone to feel good, you’re like, oh, I’m the problem?” she said, laughing at herself.Miranda Priestly isn’t as far from her as she used to be. “It’s really tough to be a boss,” she said, “because you have to accept you are going to piss people off.” More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Louise Farrenc, 19th-Century Composer, Surges Back Into Sound

      by

      Orchestras are turning to her turbulent symphonies; pianists, to her sophisticated études; chamber musicians, to her superb Nonet.Read the reviews that the composer, pianist and teacher Louise Farrenc received in the middle of the 19th century, and the kinds of gendered, backhanded compliments that male critics have so often given to female artists pop up with tiresome regularity.There was innuendo. “By the magic of her musical palette,” a critic wrote in 1841, “the composer envelops you with nocturnal images, at once mysterious and blissful.”There was surprise. “It is such a rarity for a woman to compose symphonies of real talent,” offered a journal in 1851.There was patronizing praise. “Well written,” Hector Berlioz called a Farrenc overture in 1840, “and orchestrated with a talent rare among women.”But if Farrenc’s success, greater than any of her female contemporaries except Emilie Mayer, had critics admitting she stymied their stereotypes, those stereotypes were then slyly reimposed. “The dominant quality of this work, composed by a woman, is precisely what one would least expect to find,” a critic wrote of her First Symphony in 1845. “There is more power than delicacy.”The conductor François-Joseph Fétis, one of her leading promoters, made the gambit clear. “With Mme. Farrenc,” he wrote, “the inspiration and the art of composing are of masculine proportions.”As the classical music world belatedly tries to put behind it the myriad prejudices it has inherited and perpetuated, Farrenc’s music is returning to a prominence that her newfound proponents argue she has always deserved.“The symphonies and the overtures should hold a similar place as Schumann and Mendelssohn,” said Yannick Nézet-Séguin, who conducted Farrenc’s Second Symphony this summer with the Philadelphia Orchestra, and leads her Third with the Orchestre Métropolitain in Montreal on Oct. 29. “I do believe that she’s completely deserving of that.”Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra during the pandemic in a streamed performance of Farrenc’s Symphony No. 2.Jeff FuscoScholarly attention to Farrenc remains meager in English, with no full biography appearing since Bea Friedland’s in 1980; unlike Florence Price, for example, she has enjoyed little in the way of persistent academic advocacy.But much of the chamber music in which Farrenc excelled has been recorded, including her sonatas, piano trios and famous Nonet, the success of which in 1850 led her to demand, and receive, equal pay on the faculty of the Paris Conservatory, where she had become the first female professor in 1842.“I find that a lot of pianist-composers from that time knew what instruments should sound like, but their craftsmanship was not always as immaculate as hers,” said the hornist James Sommerville, who performs the Nonet with the Boston Symphony Chamber Players on Nov. 7. “She has a great ear for melody, a great sense of structure.”And orchestras are turning to the three turbulent symphonies Farrenc wrote in the 1840s, which achieved significant success despite the Parisian public’s hostility to orchestral scores.“They are written in a style that is both Romantic and Classical, with a great thematic and harmonic originality, both poetic and energetic,” said the conductor Laurence Equilbey, who released recordings of the First and Third with the Insula Orchestra this summer and leads the Third with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston on Nov. 5 and 7. “Her music is not as avant-garde as that of Berlioz, for example, but it is so solidly constructed.”Craft was Farrenc’s trademark, one she honed in a strikingly supportive environment. Born Jeanne-Louise Dumont in 1804, she came from a line of court sculptors and grew up among artists resident at the Sorbonne. Her brother Auguste’s “The Spirit of Liberty” still crowns the Place de la Bastille.Farrenc learned piano and theory from 6, tutored by a godmother who had studied with Muzio Clementi. At 15, she began private lessons with Anton Reicha, a friend of Beethoven’s who, as a professor at the Conservatory that barred Farrenc from entry as a composition student, also taught Berlioz, Liszt and César Franck.She briefly broke off these studies in 1821 to marry Aristide Farrenc, a flutist and publisher of some of the era’s major composers, Beethoven included. It was an unusually congenial match, if not an affluent one. Aristide encouraged Louise to perform, partnered with her to organize salons and other events that showcased her writing in the context of their joint interests, and, crucially, published her works.Conforming to the composer-virtuoso model of the day, Farrenc’s early piano pieces were rondos or sets of variations on popular and operatic tunes, but they were far from the ostentatious, flimsy norm. Her “Air Russe Varié,” from 1835, caught the attention of Robert Schumann, who praised its “delightful canonic games” in the spirit of Bach, and declared that “one must fall under their charm.”Joanne Polk, a professor at the Manhattan School of Music, last year released an excellent recording of the “Air Russe” and half of Farrenc’s set of 30 Études, which — like Chopin’s from the same decade — escape their pedagogical constraints.“She really knew how to write well for the piano,” Polk said, “so that the music fits beautifully in the fingers and yet challenges you.”The cover of the autograph manuscript of Farrenc’s 30 Études (Op. 26), which, like Chopin’s, escape their pedagogical constraints.Bibliothèque nationale de FranceFarrenc laid the groundwork for a generation of female pianists to succeed as interpreters in Paris, a group that included her daughter Victorine. Victorine’s first prize at the Conservatory in 1844 — one of several pupils of Louise’s to achieve that distinction — foreshadowed what the journal Le Ménestrel declared in 1845 would be the “reign of the women.”Even so, as the musicologist Katharine Ellis has written, Farrenc was unique among such women for her large-scale compositions, finding a niche as audiences and critics at once enthroned Beethoven and sought a retreat from his late style.This was a difficult environment for anybody to write in, let alone a woman, but it was an unavoidable one. Every living composer who had a symphony performed from 1831 to 1849 by the Société des Concerts, Paris’s sole enduring outlet for orchestral music, found Beethoven closing the bill. Even at matinees chez Farrenc, Beethoven dominated programs, though she sometimes took the opportunity to promote his more radical works, playing his Op. 109 sonata at the premiere of her Second Piano Quintet in 1840.Like Mendelssohn, Farrenc drew praise for working within the confines of older traditions. When the prestigious Institute de France awarded her a chamber-music prize in 1869, it cited her for works that “glow with the purest classical style.”That is not to say that her works sound dutifully conservative now, though that reputation surely once hurt their prospects; they seem to glance back less in imitation, and more as if to teach listeners where they are coming from.Her two overtures from 1834 — Pablo Heras-Casado and the Pittsburgh Symphony perform the first on Oct. 22 and 24 — look back to Haydn and Mozart, just as some of her études trained players in Baroque styles. But they have a spirit, even in their darkness, that is wholly their own.The same is true of the symphonies. The First, from 1841, “is more in a Baroque style,” Equilbey said, “really the beginning of something.”The Second, from 1845, is somewhat more experimental. “The Scherzo reminds me of the first symphonies of Bruckner, with the same kind of covered angst; it’s fleeting, but it’s dark,” Nézet-Séguin said. “There is a connection with Mendelssohn in the last movement, in the counterpoint, but she takes it to another level. It’s used as a dramatic construction.”The Third, from 1847, is her masterpiece, with a brisk, light Scherzo and a slow movement that unfolds gloriously.“When I dug inside the score, I discovered an incredibly skillful hand,” said Gianandrea Noseda, who led a fiercely dramatic account of the Third with the National Symphony Orchestra in June and will reprise it in February. “She had a personal language, while reflecting the form. There are moments where she suspends the development section, for instance, inserting more ideas, going in the direction of a third melodic idea without getting to that point. It’s very creative.”But Farrenc’s development was, perhaps, cut short. After the death of her daughter in 1859, she retreated from composition, writing just a few miniatures.She turned instead to trying to start an early-music revival, arranging a series of lecture-recitals in the Salle Érard from 1862, at which her students paired her works with those of Byrd, Frescobaldi, Rameau and others. When Aristide died in 1865, he left only eight completed volumes of their carefully edited compendium of three centuries of piano music, “Le Trésor des Pianistes.” Louise added 15 more, while continuing to teach.Farrenc died on Sept. 15, 1875, with a notice reaching The New York Times later that month. By then, tastes had already started to turn. “It is sad to say,” wrote one witness at her memorial, “but at the funeral rites for this genuine artist, the Conservatory — where she was professor for 30 years — was conspicuous by its absence.”Happily, Farrenc is an absence no more. More

    • 75 Shares159 Views

      in Music

      Musicians Flee Afghanistan, Fearing Taliban Rule

      by

      Dozens of artists and teachers from a prominent music school that promoted girls’ education left the country, but more remain behind. “The mission is not complete,” its founder said.More than 100 young artists, teachers and their relatives affiliated with the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, a celebrated school that became a target of the Taliban in part for its efforts to promote the education of girls, fled the country on Sunday, the school’s leaders said.The musicians, many of whom have been trying to leave for more than a month, boarded a flight from Kabul’s main airport and arrived in Doha, the capital of Qatar, around midday Eastern time, according to Ahmad Naser Sarmast, the head of the school, who is currently in Australia. In the coming days, they plan to resettle in Portugal, where the government has agreed to grant them visas.“It’s already a big step and a very, very big achievement on the way of rescuing Afghan musicians from the cruelty of the Taliban,” Mr. Sarmast, who opened the school in 2010, said in a statement. “You cannot imagine how happy I am.”The musicians join a growing number of Afghans who have fled the country since August, when the Taliban consolidated their control of the country amid the withdrawal of American forces. Among figures in the arts and sports worlds who have escaped are members of a female soccer team who resettled in Portugal and Italy.Still, hundreds of the school’s students, staff and alumni remain in Afghanistan and face an uncertain future amid signs that the Taliban will move to restrict nonreligious music, which they banned outright when they previously led Afghanistan, from 1996 to 2001.The school’s supporters, a global network of artists, philanthropists, politicians and educators, plan to continue to work to get the remaining musicians out of Afghanistan. “The mission is not complete,” said Mr. Sarmast, an Afghan music scholar. “It just began.”A girl practiced at the music institute in 2013. Hundreds of the school’s students, staff and alumni remain in Afghanistan and face an uncertain future under the Taliban.Musadeq Sadeq/Associated PressYo-Yo Ma, the renowned cellist, helped raise awareness about the plight of the musicians among politicians and other artists. He said he was “shaking with excitement” by the news that some of them had escaped.“It would be a terrible tragedy to lose this essential group of people who are so deeply motivated to have a living tradition be part of the world tradition,” Mr. Ma said in a telephone interview.Of the musicians who remain stuck in the country, he said, “I am thinking about them every single hour of the day.”The Afghanistan National Institute of Music was a rarity: a coeducational institution devoted to teaching music from both Afghanistan and the West, primarily to students from impoverished backgrounds. The school became known for supporting the education of girls, who make up about a third of the student body. The school’s all-female orchestra, Zohra, toured the world and earned wide acclaim, and became a symbol of Afghanistan’s changing identity.The school has faced threats from the Taliban for years, and in 2014 Mr. Sarmast was wounded by a Taliban suicide bomber.Since the Taliban returned to power, the school has come under renewed scrutiny. Mr. Sarmast and the school’s supporters have worked for weeks to help get students, alumni, staff and their relatives out of the country, fearing for their safety. The government of Qatar helped arrange safe passage for the musicians to Doha, and played a key role in negotiating with the Taliban.An empty room at the Afghanistan National Institute of Music last month. The musicians plan to resettle in Portugal, where the government has agreed to grant them visas.Wakil Kohsar/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSeveral students and young artists affiliated with the music institute said in interviews with The Times in recent weeks that they had been staying inside their homes, for fear of being attacked or punished by the Taliban. Many stopped playing music, hid their instruments and tried to conceal their affiliation with the school. They requested anonymity to make comments because of the fear of retribution.In the final days of the American war in Afghanistan, the school’s supporters led a frantic and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to evacuate nearly 300 students, teachers and staff affiliated with the school, along with their relatives. The operation was backed by prominent politicians and security officials in the United States. At one point, the musicians sat in seven buses near an airport gate for 17 hours, hoping to get on a waiting plane. But the plan fell apart at the last minute when the musicians were not able to obtain entry to the airport and as fears of a possible terrorist attack escalated.The Taliban have tried to promote an image of tolerance and moderation since returning to power, vowing not to carry out reprisals against their former enemies and saying that women would be allowed to work and study “within the bounds of Islamic law.”But they have sent signals that they will impose some harsh policies, including on culture. A Taliban spokesman recently said that music would not be allowed in public.“Music is forbidden in Islam,” the spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, said in an interview with The Times in August. “But we’re hoping that we can persuade people not to do such things, instead of pressuring them.”John Baily, an ethnomusicologist at the University of London who has studied cultural life in Afghanistan, said it would be difficult for the Taliban to eradicate music in the country entirely, after years in which the arts have been allowed to flourish.“You have got literally thousands of young people who have grown up with music,” he said, “and they’re not going to be just kind of switched off like that.” More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Television

      Onstage, ‘Designing Women’ Sheds the Shoulder Pads, Not Its Politics

      by

      The hit sitcom, which ended in 1993, is back as play, premiering in Arkansas. But how do its laughs land in our more pointed political landscape?FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, the Emmy-nominated writer and producer, started hearing voices earlier this year, voices she hadn’t heard in nearly 30 years. Those voices wouldn’t shut up.“I told my husband, I’m going to have to get a gun and shoot them,” Bloodworth-Thomason said during a recent phone conversation.She didn’t know how else to make them stop.The voices were those of Julia Sugarbaker, Suzanne Sugarbaker, Mary Jo Shively and Charlene Frazier, the characters from “Designing Women,” the half-hour sitcom that premiered on CBS in 1986. Nominated for a slew of Emmys, it won only one, for outstanding achievement in hairstyling. Set in Atlanta, and centered on a quartet of mouthy women who orbit an interior design firm, it combined feminist politics with click-clack comedy rhythms, celebrating the New South with wit and pluck and shoulder pads.The show earned her, Bloodworth-Thomason said, citations from both Mitch McConnell, who had praised an antipornography episode, and the A.C.L.U. The A.C.L.U. one she framed.The show wrapped in 1993. Prime time and popular culture moved on. But friends and fans would often ask Bloodworth-Thomason what Julia, the outspoken founder of the design firm, played by Dixie Carter, might say about same-sex marriage or the #MeToo movement or the election of Donald J. Trump to the presidency.More recently, Bloodworth-Thomason began to think about answers.Those answers coalesced into a two-act comedy, “Designing Women.” Directed by Bloodworth-Thomason’s husband, Harry Thomason, the play had its premiere recently at TheaterSquared, in Fayetteville, Ark. (Thomason grew up in Hampton, Ark.; Bloodworth-Thomason in Poplar Bluff, Mo., just over the border.) The play runs through the end of October. It will also be available to stream, starting Oct. 15.The cast of the original “Designing Women” included, clockwise from bottom left: Jean Smart, Alice Ghostley, Delta Burke, Dixie Carter, Annie Potts and Meshach Taylor.Fotos International, via Getty ImagesA sleek, glass-walled building, a paper airplane’s flight from the University of Arkansas campus, TheaterSquared occupies a busy-ish corner. It has two theaters: the West, where “Designing Women” plays, which seats 275, and the Spring, which seats 120. The building hosts rehearsal spaces, administrative offices, scene and wardrobe shops, a flexible lobby performance space and a welcoming cafe where pastry always seems to be baking.Its programming favors lively dramas and musicals from contemporary playwrights of diverse backgrounds. This season includes Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” Mike Lew’s “Tiger Style!” and Kristoffer Diaz’s “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity.” Fayetteville, where more than 77 percent of residents identify as white, is not itself especially diverse.“If you’re a theater company that sets as its mission creating a more equitable community, then you want to bring people along,” Martin Miller, the theater’s executive told me. He had found me on the cafe’s patio, in early September, demolishing some local goat cheese. I’d come to northwest Arkansas for a few days of table work and rehearsal because I had wanted to see if an ’80s sensation, a sensation I had loved as a kid, still had anything to say to a 2020s audience. And, if I’m honest, I wanted to know just what this sensation was doing in Fayetteville.In “Designing Women” — the theatrical version — the diversity centers on the class backgrounds of its characters, their religious beliefs, their voting patterns, as the TV one had. Set in the very recent past, the script eavesdrops on the women and a few new characters as they contend with the pandemic, the possible financial collapse of their firm and the 2020 presidential election. It is no spoiler to say that the women ultimately triumph, bridging their differences stylishly. The creators and producers hope that it will encourage audiences across the political spectrum to build some bridges, too.“We just need to look at each other with more grace and more love, that’s what I’m gathering from this play,” Carmen Cusack, the Tony-nominated actress who plays Julia in the theatrical version, said. “At the end of the day, what’s most important is just appreciating that we’re all in this together.”The original “Designing Women” wore the skirt suits and heels of a workplace comedy. But the workplace occupied Julia’s living room, so it was a domestic comedy, too. Part of a late ’80s boom in women-centered shows that included “Roseanne” and “Murphy Brown,” it wrestled — sometimes explicitly, sometimes obliquely, often in heels — with the feminist discourse of the day.Joan Williams, the director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, described the series as a helpful fiction suggesting that women could have both careers and families without apparent conflict. “It opened a fantasy, a conceptual space, an idealized image that it was going to be possible for women to be very successful professionals and very successful mothers,” Williams said.The fantasy largely favored an empowerment agenda, implying that if a woman just tugged on her big-girl panties and stood up tall in them, she could bend the world to her will. But episodes also exposed systemic problems — sexual harassment, violent pornography — without offering easy answers.“‘Designing Women’ really did try to speak to the particular political moment, even as it attempted to negotiate it within the politics of television,” said Alfred Martin, a media and cultural studies scholar at the University of Iowa.The show’s director, Harry Thomason, far left, with Jason Lynch, the production lighting designer, and Austin Bomkamp, the programmer, at a tech run.Rana Young for The New York TimesThe show wasn’t entirely progressive. Its sole character of color, Anthony Bouvier (Meshach Taylor), had a subordinate role in the firm, and queer characters were rare. But it gave its characters divergent attitudes, insisting that the experience of women wasn’t uniform. In a logline, the characters might have come across as stereotypes — hardass, bimbo, pragmatist, naïf — yet as played by Carter, Delta Burke, Annie Potts and Jean Smart, they had smart minds and big hearts. Even as they fought, they supported one another.That’s what makes this theatrical version of “Designing Women” more than an attempt to capitalize on familiar intellectual property. As a television show, it straddled the political divide, allowing both progressive and conservative women to see themselves represented, glamorously. Those divides are wider now. But if these characters can still talk to one another onstage, maybe audience members can continue those conversations offstage, with or without repartee.Though TheaterSquared announced the show in early 2020, Bloodworth-Thomason didn’t start writing it until this year, ultimately amassing some 7,000 pages. (Those voices really wouldn’t shut up.) The September draft flaunted her practiced style, a rapier wit with a bedazzled handle, and included a few callbacks for dedicated fans, like a riff on Julia’s “the lights went out in Georgia” speech.The feminism still isn’t especially intersectional, even as the firm now includes a co-owner who is Black and queer, Anthony’s cousin Cleo (Carla Renata). But the script has updated its politics. The first line has Julia instructing Hayley (Kim Matula), the new receptionist, in temperature checks for clients. “If they refuse, kick ’em out,” Julia says. “If they’re wearing a MAGA hat, don’t let ’em in.” In the background a voice mail message plays, calling Julia a “lying socialist slut.”Bloodworth-Thomason dreams of a tour of the South for the play and an eventual berth on Broadway. But it’s dialogue like this that explains why she and Thomason chose TheaterSquared for the tryout. Washington County, which encompasses Fayetteville, went for Trump in 2020, though by a somewhat narrow margin — 50.39 percent to Trump, and 46.49 percent to Joseph R. Biden’s ticket — and the theater attracts spectators who don’t all vote the same way.“I know that not everybody who walks in the door would automatically agree with me in a conversation over a beer,” Miller told me. But the theater deliberately programs plays that prompt those conversations. And the cafe has 16 local beers on tap.On a Tuesday, about two weeks before previews began, the theater thrummed with activity — set painting, costume stitching, wig combing. The scenery was half assembled, and a variety of faux topiary dotted the back of the auditorium. The theater had recently announced new Covid protocols, which require that audience members offer proof of vaccination or a recent negative test, and Miller had to devote several hours to handling angry responses, like an email describing the protocols as “an imperialist act against our democracy” — only a step or two removed from “lying socialist slut.”A rehearsal in early September. Thomason said he wanted the play’s cast members to capture some of the aura of the original actresses, without quite impersonating them.Rana Young for The New York TimesUpstairs, in the rehearsal space, the masked actors arrayed themselves around several folding tables, with cookies and water bottles in reach. Bloodworth-Thomason had hoped to join them, but an illness had kept her at home in Los Angeles. (A glitchy Zoom connection made table work possible.) Though the characters ought to be in their 70s by now, the actresses, and a few male love interests, were mostly in their 50s, suggesting either a suspension of disbelief or some superb plastic surgeons. The mood was friendly, while also faintly tense, a reflection of the work ahead.Playing beloved characters — characters associated with even more beloved actresses — applies deep-tissue pressure. Most of the actors had seen the show during its original run. (Cusack, who grew up in an evangelical Christian household, is an exception.) They spoke, feelingly, about what it had meant to see smart women, funny women, Southern women, beamed into their living rooms. Several of them voiced an obligation to honor those performances.“I do feel a responsibility, particularly to the fans,” Elaine Hendrix, who plays Charlene, said.In an interview the next day, just before rehearsal, Thomason said he hoped that this cast would capture some of the aura of the original actresses, without quite impersonating them. “That’s all one can hope for,” he added. “Because if you try to just duplicate them, then the audience will not forgive you.”During the rehearsal, as coffee bubbled in a percolator, everyone tried to inhabit the characters, old and new, even when the characters voiced opinions that diverged from the actors’ own.“It’s the challenge, right?” said Matthew Floyd Miller, who plays Suzanne’s latest ex-husband, a Trump supporter. “How do you sympathize and humanize somebody who has diametrically opposed views than you do?”But what will audiences forgive? What will get them in the door? There’s already a glut of reboots, reimaginings and screen-to-stage variations. And not everyone wants to see “Designing Women,” which was overtly political to begin with, revived for our era. Thomason had heard from friends about some people’s plans to protest the show, even before they knew a lick of its plot or a line of the script.That didn’t faze his wife. “I would love to see a big crowd outside with a lot of signs,” she said.It did, however, give some of the actors pause. “I’m a little nervous because I say some stuff that is blunt and is hard-core and is extremely politicized, and I’m a Black person in Arkansas,” Renata said.When Cusack told her mother about the show, her mother told her she planned to be among the protesters. Cusack didn’t try to dissuade her. “I said, ‘Mom, I’ll buy your plane ticket,’” Cusack recalled. “‘Come. Bring it. Let’s have the discussion.’” More

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in Television

      Irma Kalish, TV Writer Who Tackled Social Issues, Dies at 96

      by

      A female trailblazer in the TV industry, she and her husband took on topics like rape and abortion in writing for sitcoms like “All in the Family” and “Maude.”Irma Kalish, a television writer who tackled abortion, rape and other provocative issues in many of the biggest comedy hits of the 1960s and beyond as she helped usher women into the writer’s room, died on Sept. 3 in Woodland Hills, Calif. She was 96. Her death, at the Motion Picture and Television Fund retirement home, was attributed to complications of pneumonia, her son, Bruce Kalish, a television producer, said.Ms. Kalish’s work in television comedy broke the mold for female writers. What women there were in the industry around midcentury had mostly been expected to write tear-jerking dramas, but beginning in the early 1960s Ms. Kalish made her mark in comedy, notably writing for Norman Lear’s caustic, socially conscious sitcoms “All in the Family” and its spinoff “Maude” in the ’70s.She did much of her writing in partnership with her husband, Austin Kalish. They shared offices at studios around Los Angeles, usually working at facing desks producing alternating drafts of scripts.“When I became a writer, I was one of the very first woman comedy writers and later producers,” Ms. Kalish said in an oral history for the Writers Guild Foundation in 2010. She added, referring to her husband by his nickname, “One producer actually thought that I must not be writing — I must be just doing the typing, and Rocky was doing the writing.”To combat sexism in the industry, she said, “I just became one of the guys.”Ms. Kalish moderated an event sponsored by the Writers Guild in Los Angeles. She made a mark writing for Norman Lear’s topical sitcoms “All in the Family” and “Maude.”  Richard Hartog/Los Angeles Times via GettyWriting for “Maude,” Ms. Kalish and her husband, who died in 2016, worked on the contentious two-part episode “Maude’s Dilemma” (1972), in which the title character, a strong-minded suburban wife and grandmother in her late 40s (played by Bea Arthur), had an abortion. When it was broadcast, Roe v. Wade had just been argued in the United States Supreme Court and would be decided within months, making abortion legal nationwide. Controversy over the episode rose swiftly; dozens of CBS affiliates declined to show it.Mr. and Ms. Kalish earned a “story by” credit, and Susan Harris was credited as the script writer; Mr. Kalish said in an interview in 2012 that he and Ms. Kalish had come up with the idea for the episode.Lynne Joyrich, a professor in the modern culture and media department at Brown University, called the episode a watershed moment for women’s issues onscreen. “Maude’s Dilemma” and episodes like it, she said, demonstrated “the way in which the everyday is also political.”The Kalishs’ takes on social issues also found their way into “All in the Family.” One episode centered on Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton), the wife of the bigoted Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), weathering a breast cancer scare. Another focused on the couple’s daughter, Gloria (Sally Struthers), as the victim of a rape attempt.The topical scripts “elevated us in the eyes of the business,” Mr. Kalish said in a joint interview with Ms. Kalish for the Archive of American Television conducted in 2012.Mr. and Ms. Kalish were executive producers of another 1970s hit sitcom, “Good Times,” about a Black family in a Chicago housing project, and continued to write for that program and numerous others.Ms. Kalish’s career spanned decades, beginning in the mid-1950s, and included writing credits for more than three dozen shows, many that would make up a pantheon of baby boomers’ favorite sitcoms, among them “The Patty Duke Show,” “I Dream of Jeannie,” “My Favorite Martian,” “F Troop,” “My Three Sons” and “Family Affair.” She also had producing credits on some 16 shows, including “The Facts of Life” and “Valerie.”Ms. Kalish’s work laid a track for other female sitcom writers to follow. As she said to the comedian Amy Poehler in an interview in 2013 for Ms. Poehler’s Web series, “Smart Girls at the Party,” “You are a descendant of mine, so to speak.”Ms. Poehler, beaming, agreed.Irma May Ginsberg was born on Oct. 6, 1924, in Manhattan. Her mother, Lillian (Cutler) Ginsberg, was a homemaker. Her father, Nathan Ginsberg, was a business investor.Irma attended Julia Richman High School on the Upper East Side and went on to Syracuse University, where she studied journalism and graduated in 1945. She married Mr. Kalish, the brother of a childhood friend, in 1948 after corresponding with him while he was stationed in Bangor, Maine, during World War II.After the couple moved to Los Angeles, Mr. Kalish became a comedy writer for radio and television. Ms. Kalish worked as an editor for a pulp magazine called “Western Romance” before leaving to stay home with their two children. Her first writing credit, on the dramatic series “The Millionaire,” came in 1955.She joined the Writers Guild in 1964 and began writing with her husband more consistently. The Writer’s Guild Foundation, in their “The Writer Speaks” video series, called them “one of the more successful sitcom-writer-couples of the 20th century.”Ms. Kalish was active in the Writers Guild of America West chapter and in Women in Film, an advocacy group, serving as its president.The couple’s last television credit was in 1998, for the comedy series “The Famous Jett Jackson,” which was produced by their son, Bruce. They wrote a script dealing with ageism.Along with her son, she is survived by her sister and only sibling, Harriet Alef; two grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her daughter, Nancy Biederman, died in 2016. In the interview with the Archive of American Television, Ms. Kalish expressed her desire to be known as her own person, not just Austin Kalish’s wife and writing partner.“Sure, God made man before woman,” she said, “but then you always do a first draft before you make a final masterpiece.” More

    • 138 Shares139 Views

      in Music

      A Celebrated Virtuoso on an Instrument She Wasn’t Meant to Play

      by

      The hallowed tradition of kora playing in Sona Jobarteh’s family passed down the male line. One of her teachers dismissed it as “an ethnic thing.” But it has brought her international acclaim.MANCHESTER, England — The ethereal sound of the kora, a centuries-old West African instrument, reverberated as Sona Jobarteh, a virtuoso from one of Gambia’s most celebrated musical families, plucked its strings with her forefingers and thumbs.Under purple stage lights at the Manchester International Festival in July — her first performance since the pandemic began — Ms. Jobarteh added her velvet voice to the crisp sound of the kora, a 21-string instrument that combines the qualities of a lute and a harp. She sings in Mandinka, a language spoken by one of Gambia’s many ethnic groups, and the words descended like rainfall on the audience in northern England.Like her father and relatives stretching back generations, Ms. Jobarteh is a griot — a musician or poet whose tradition is preserved through the family bloodline. And in West Africa the griot fills a far broader role: not just as a kora master, but also as a historian, genealogist, mediator, teacher and guardian of cultural history.“The griot is someone who is a pillar of society, who people go to for guidance, for advice, for wisdom,” said Ms. Jobarteh, who is 37.Until Ms. Jobarteh, kora masters had one other notable characteristic: They were always male. By tradition, the playing of the kora is passed from father to son, but for many years Ms. Jobarteh was her father’s only child. “Whatever I do, it’s always in the awkward box,” she said, laughing.She initially shunned the label of first female kora master, preferring to be appreciated for her abilities rather than her gender. “I hated it with a passion,” she said. “I felt like no one would listen to what I was playing, that all they would do is observe what I am.”But she has come to embrace that status, in part because her achievements have inspired young female students. “It’s much bigger than just being about me,” she said. “It’s about instilling that seed of inspiration in girls.”The kora was also what brought her parents together.The kora, a 21-string instrument, combines the qualities of a lute and a harp.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesIn 1982, a year before Ms. Jobarteh was born, her mother, Galina Chester, who is English and who had never left Britain, flew to Senegal. She was traveling with Ms. Jobarteh’s half brother, Tunde Jegede, a British-Nigerian who is now a multi-instrumentalist and composer, to connect him with his African heritage.Toting a piece of paper scrawled with the name of a kora master, Ms. Chester drove across the desert to Gambia, where there was no airport at the time, to the house of Amadu Bansang Jobarteh, whose influence was so broad that he served as an adviser to Gambia’s first president.There, she met the kora master’s son and primary student, Sanjally — who would go on to become Ms. Jobarteh’s father. “That’s how she met my father, and how my story began,” Ms. Jobarteh said.Ms. Jobarteh’s childhood straddled two worlds: Britain, where she was born, and Kembujeh, her grandfather’s village in Gambia, where, enveloped by the warmth of her extended family, she found her “cultural grounding.”Griot women are typically taught to sing, but her grandmother Kumunaa encouraged her to sit with her grandfather and listen to the kora.A few years ago, Ms. Jobarteh’s mother shared letters with her daughter in which Kumunaa had predicted that the girl would become a griot and pleaded that her lineage be nurtured.“I just wish she was alive for me to ask her what was in her mind,” Ms. Jobarteh said. “She knew I was a girl. She knew it was not acceptable.”Ms. Jobarteh’s first kora teacher was Mr. Jegede, her half brother, whom she began playing the instrument with at age 3. (Although Mr. Jegede is a virtuoso in his own right, he is not a griot, coming from outside the Jobarteh bloodline.)She later became determined to carve out a path in classical music. At 14, she took composition lessons at the Purcell School for Young Musicians, outside London. Yet her initial instrument remained in her periphery: The school library displayed a kora that Tunde had donated as a student there. Drawn to it, she tuned and played it, and the school eventually gave it to her.A year later, she enrolled in the Royal College of Music, where she learned the cello, harpsichord and piano. But her personal musical legacy wasn’t welcome. One instructor dismissed the kora as an “ethnic thing,” she said, and another said of the instrument, “If you want to succeed, this is not a part of it.”Three years into her education there, Ms. Jobarteh deliberately failed her annual assessment in piano and cello. “I was shaking,” she said. “It felt so wrong, but I just knew, ‘I can’t do this to myself anymore.’”The college declined to comment for this article.Ms. Jobarteh instead asked her father to officially teach her to play the kora, and went on to train with him for several years. He told her, “I have a duty to give you what is mine,” she recalled.Ms. Jobarteh’s 14-year-old son, Sidiki Jobarteh-Codjoe, playing onstage with his mother in Manchester.Adama Jalloh for The New York TimesSome families say the instrument dates to the establishment of the griot tradition in the 13th-century Mandinka empire. The first written account of the kora, by the Scottish explorer Mungo Park, appeared in 1797, according to Lucy Durán, a professor of music at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies. Its popular origin story, Ms. Jobarteh said, is that it was stolen from a jinn, a supernatural being mentioned in Islam.The Mandinkas and griots attracted widespread interest after the writer Alex Haley traced his ancestry to a Gambian village in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “Roots.” But their ancient melodies had made their way across the Atlantic centuries earlier, aboard ships carrying enslaved Africans, and morphed into the early American blues.The kora, with its improvised, oral tradition, can take decades to master. “You learn with your ears, not with your hands,” Ms. Jobarteh said.For years, she was reluctant to perform in Gambia, where a professional female kora virtuoso had never been seen onstage. But her stage debut with her family, in 2011, was met with adulation.The release of her debut album that year was also a leap of faith, as Ms. Jobarteh sang in Mandinka rather than in English, which could garner more commercial success. “I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve just put my life down the plug hole,’” she recalled.The album propelled Ms. Jobarteh’s music around the world, from the United States to New Zealand. And that brought her something far more meaningful than royalties.Ms. Jobarteh performing in Manchester.Adama Jalloh for The New York Times“It makes Africans feel something, to see that someone is being respected to sing in their own language, dress in their own clothes, play their own music,” she said. “That is a message not just for Gambians — it’s for the whole African continent.”Although preserving her heritage is Ms. Jobarteh’s passion, she says her real purpose is educational reform in Gambia — a broader mission that aligns with her role of griot.In 2015, she opened The Gambia Academy in Kartong, a coastal town, in part to prevent a brain-drain of young people seeking better prospects abroad. “I don’t want the next generation to have to do that,” she said, “where you have to have the privilege of having European connections or titles to be able to succeed in your own society.”With a curriculum that centers on West African traditions, the school now has 32 students, including her 14-year-old son, Sidiki, and 9-year-old daughter, Saadio. That has helped her pass down her family tradition, too, and onstage in Manchester Sidiki played the xylophone-like balafon and Saadio percussion.They are learning the griot repertoire — not from their father, but from their mother, a guardian of seven centuries of tradition. More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Little Girl’ Review: Growing Up and Seeking Peace

      by

      This sensitive documentary by the French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz naturalistically explores the struggles of a 7-year-old transgender girl.“Little Girl,” the French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz’s disarmingly sensitive documentary about a 7-year-old transgender girl, understands the power of close-ups. The camera often lingers on the face of our fledgling protagonist, Sasha, not to gawk at her appearance, but to challenge whatever moralizing preconceptions one might have with emotion laid devastatingly bare.One could easily mistake “Little Girl” for a fictional drama that tends toward observation and realism. Lifshitz follows Sasha and her family over the course of roughly a year, homing in on her mannerisms and means of play with naturalistic camerawork that heightens the idyllic splendor of rural France, while framing her home life as a kind of safe haven away from the cruelties of the outside world. Beautiful as it may be, the French countryside remains a stronghold of rigidly traditional values.Sasha’s mother, Karine, often takes the spotlight: We see her struggle to convince dismissive school administrators to correctly identify Sasha as a girl and, in direct interviews, witness the emotional toll of such perpetually thwarted efforts as she verbalizes her frustrations and insecurities.There are no rubbernecking, pity-provoking scenes of Sasha being bullied or spurned; perhaps more affecting are the images we do see: Sasha miming the movements of a girl in her ballet class, delighting in what it feels like to move her hands with feminine softness and grace.In conversation with a psychiatrist, Sasha hesitates to respond to a question about her treatment at school. But the proof is in her face, which twists, flits and goes blank before capitulating to tears. It’s in simple moments like these that Lifshitz invites us to consider Sasha’s feelings: the stark reality of her despair, the depth of which only images can communicate, asking us to reconsider what exactly is fueling our ideological fights.Little GirlNot rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. In theaters. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Music

      Top Orchestras Have No Female Conductors. Is Change Coming?

      by

      At the largest American ensembles, one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres, a shift might be on the horizon.For years, they have worked their way to the top of the classical music industry. They have confronted stereotypes that they are too weak to lead. They have shared advice about how to deal with sexist comments and even how to dress.Now a group of women could be on the cusp of breaking barriers in one of music’s most stubbornly homogeneous spheres: the male-dominated world of orchestral conducting.In the history of American orchestras, only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month. Her departure has ushered in an unsettling era for the country’s musical landscape. Among the 25 largest ensembles, there are now no women serving as music directors.Only one woman has risen to lead a top-tier American ensemble: Marin Alsop, whose tenure as music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra ended last month.Schaun Champion for The New York TimesAlsop, 64, said in an interview that she was surprised the statistics remain “so shockingly brutal.” When she assumed the top spot in Baltimore in 2007, she expected more women would soon be appointed at other orchestras.They never were. Instead, she said, she met resistance when she tried to bring in more women as guest conductors.Alsop said she feels the current moment could be different, since the #MeToo movement and a broad reckoning over severe gender and racial disparities in classical music are putting pressure on arts leaders.“I hope that we’re past the tipping point,” she said. “It feels that way. But I’ve been naïve in believing that before.”For women in conducting, there are reasons to be optimistic. Administrators at major ensembles in cities like Atlanta, Minneapolis and Cincinnati, as well as Baltimore, are vowing to ensure that women are serious contenders.The Finnish conductor Susanna Malkki is considered a serious contender for a major American position.Michelle V. Agins/The New York TimesSo is Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, who leads the City of Birmingham Orchestra in England.Hiroyuki Ito for The New York TimesSearch committees are looking at a mix of established artists and rising stars, according to interviews with 20 committee members, administrators, players and conductors.Among the most frequently mentioned names are Susanna Malkki, 52, the chief conductor of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra, and Mirga Grazinyte-Tyla, 35, who leads the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in Britain.Mark Volpe, the former president and chief executive of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, said that while “progress has been painfully slow,” orchestras were likely to appoint more women over the next several years.“People respond to pressure,” he said. “There is heightened awareness of the imperative to be more inclusive.”Women are winning plum jobs as assistant and guest conductors, typically steppingstones to prestigious posts. Eun Sun Kim has just begun her tenure at the San Francisco Opera, becoming the first woman to serve as music director of a major American opera house.“You’re going to see an acceleration,” said Deborah Borda, the New York Philharmonic’s president and chief executive, who also serves as chairwoman of the jury at La Maestra, an international conducting competition for women. “The foot is on the gas.”The German conductor Ruth Reinhardt, 33, a former assistant conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, said, “My generation is maybe the first one who got equal opportunities to develop and grow.”Still, she said she feels there is a perception that there is only space for a small number of women to rise. “We have thousands of male conductors, and there’s good male conductors and bad male conductors and everything in between,” she said. “There should be a right to have just as many women conductors.”Jeri Lynne Johnson leading the ensemble she founded, Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra.Ed A. Kennedy IIIRuth Reinhardt leading the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia ElzafonOpenings loom: Roughly a third of the music directors at the top 25 largest orchestras in the United States are planning to step down over the next several years. That includes veterans like Louis Langrée, 60, at the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Robert Spano, 60, at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. The contract of Riccardo Muti, 80, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra ends in 2022. Baltimore’s podium is currently empty, and at the Minnesota Orchestra, Osmo Vanska, 68, is stepping down after the coming season. There are current or coming openings in Indianapolis, Kansas City and Salt Lake City.But some women describe an uphill battle. They continue to face stereotypes that only men can serve as maestros. They also grapple with the perception that they do not have enough experience to lead elite ensembles. This can lead to a paradox: While top orchestras demand their conductors be seasoned, particularly if they’re going to appear on prestigious subscription series, it is hard to get that experience if you do not already have it.Jeri Lynne Johnson, the founder and artistic director of the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra in Philadelphia, said that earlier in her career orchestras turned her down for conducting positions because they said she was not what audiences expected a music director to look like.Johnson, who is Black, said she felt ensembles seemed more willing to take chances on young men than young women. While the average age of music directors skews older, American orchestras have shown a willingness to hire charismatic young men, such as Gustavo Dudamel, who was named to lead the Los Angeles Philharmonic in 2007, when he was 26. Yannick Nézet-Séguin was 35 when he was hired by the Philadelphia Orchestra in 2010; Andris Nelsons, 34 when he was named music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2013.“Female leadership is more necessary now than it ever was,” Johnson said. “We need to allow the insight and perspective of someone who has been kept out of the halls of power, to create more inroads for other people.”Across 174 American ensembles of all sizes, about 9 percent of music directors were women in 2016, the last year for which data is available, according to the League of American Orchestras. Experts say a lack of role models has contributed to gender disparities in conducting. Orchestras also have historically given women fewer opportunities to lead ensembles as guests, making it difficult for them to practice and to build relationships with administrators and players.Xian Zhang is the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Cherylynn TsushimaDalia Stasevska leading the First Night of the BBC Proms earlier this summer.Chris ChristodoulouThe talent pool has widened in recent years. Competitions, master classes and fellowships geared toward women have become more popular. Veteran conductors like Alsop and JoAnn Falletta, the music director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra in New York since 1999, have started programs to mentor rising artists.Falletta, 67, said she helps women navigate a variety of issues, including what to wear while conducting and how to build trust with boards of directors dominated by men.“You have to find your own authority,” she said. “You don’t have to imitate anyone. You don’t have to be like a Toscanini. That actually doesn’t work anymore, to be a conductor with totalitarian power.”Orchestra leaders say they are working to include more women and people of color on hiring committees — a critical step, they say, in ensuring that female candidates are fairly considered.Jonathan Martin, the president of the Cincinnati Symphony, said he believed systemic discrimination in orchestras had kept women from attaining music director posts for decades. He said he rejected the idea that women have only in recent years gained enough experience to be considered for positions at large ensembles.“It was an issue of opportunity,” he said. “It was never an issue of talent.”A lack of diversity among board members has contributed to the dearth of female conductors, many say. Across the industry, boards are about 58 percent male and 92 percent white, according to the League of American Orchestras.Jeannette Sorrell started her own ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, a Baroque orchestra based in Cleveland, in part, she said, because she encountered bias while trying to navigate a traditional career. She said a lack of diversity on boards is a major obstacle.“A lot of orchestras are still led by boards of directors who see their role as the guardians of tradition,” said Sorrell, 56. “That is a very important role for a board, but it’s not the only role.”Orchestras, hoping to expand the pool of experienced, viable candidates for when vacancies arise, have made an effort in recent years to appoint more women as assistant conductors and guests.At the Los Angeles Philharmonic, leaders say change will come only when women are allowed to build long-term relationships with orchestras. Of 40 young conductors who have participated in the Philharmonic’s conductor fellowship program since 2009, about a quarter have been women.Lina González-Granados is among the rising conductors creating buzz.Chris LeeGemma New is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.Sylvia Elzafon“Conducting doesn’t happen overnight,” said Chad Smith, the Philharmonic’s chief executive. “There’s a lag time here, which is something we’re all struggling with.”Malkki, who serves as the Philharmonic’s principal guest conductor, said orchestras sometimes focused too much on hiring charismatic figures instead of those with solid technical abilities.“Some artists are just put aside because they are not glamorous enough,” she said. “There is talent, and if we give the dedicated people opportunities, then these people will also grow into greater artists.”While search committees at many orchestras are just beginning to convene — Cincinnati announced the members of its panel on Sept. 2 — the wish list for some includes stars like Malkki and Grazinyte-Tyla.Other frequently mentioned names include respected artists like Sorrell; Barbara Hannigan, 50, a Canadian soprano and conductor; Anna Skryleva, 46, a Russian who leads the Theater Magdeburg in Germany; Debora Waldman, 44, the director of the Orchestre National Avignon-Provence in France; the Australian conductor Simone Young, 60; and Xian Zhang, the music director of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.Up-and-coming conductors like Reinhardt; Karina Canellakis, 40, the chief conductor of Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra; Elim Chan, 34, the chief conductor of the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra; Lina González-Granados, 35, the Philadelphia Orchestra’s conducting fellow; Gemma New, 34, a New Zealand-born conductor who is the principal guest conductor of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra; Dalia Stasevska, 36, the principal guest conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra; and the Austrian conductor Katharina Wincor, 26, are also creating buzz.While it may take several years for widespread change to come, some women say they are already noticing a shift. They are getting more invitations to appear with top orchestras, and they say their fan bases are widening.Speranza Scappucci, 48, an Italian conductor who is rising in the opera world, said ensembles should move swiftly.“There are some really amazing women out there,” she said. “I look at it and I think, ‘Wow, it’s 2021. What are we waiting for?’ ” More