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      Inside Kanye West’s Fraught Relationship With Adidas: 7 Takeaways

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      The runaway success of the Yeezy collaboration between Kanye West and Adidas came at a price as the company tolerated misconduct by him for nearly a decade.When Adidas cut ties with Kanye West a year ago, ending their wildly lucrative shoe deal, the breakup appeared to be the culmination of weeks of his inflammatory remarks about Jews and Black Lives Matter. But a New York Times examination found that behind the scenes, the partnership was fraught from the start.Mr. West, who now goes by Ye, subjected employees to antisemitic and crude sexual comments and routine verbal abuse. As Adidas executives doubled down on a partnership that boosted company profits and made Mr. West a billionaire, they scrambled for ways to cope with the star’s demands and provocations.Interviews with current and former employees of Adidas and of Mr. West, along with hundreds of previously undisclosed internal records, including contracts, text messages and financial documents, provide the fullest accounting yet of the relationship. Here are seven takeaways.For almost 10 years, Adidas looked past Mr. West’s misconduct as profits soared.Mr. West’s first contract with Adidas, in 2013, had the most generous terms it had ever offered to a non-athlete. In the next one, three years later, Mr. West got more money, and Adidas got a morals clause — allowing it to end the partnership if he did anything that led to “disrepute, contempt, scandal,” according to a copy obtained by The Times.As the partnership earned billions of dollars, Mr. West’s behavior grew increasingly erratic. But it is not clear whether the brand ever considered invoking the morals clause before terminating the deal last year.Both Adidas and Mr. West declined interview requests and did not comment on The Times’s findings.Mr. West showed a troubling fixation on Jews and Hitler in the partnership.Shortly after signing with Adidas, he met with designers at company headquarters in Germany to discuss ideas. He was so offended by their sketches, he drew a swastika on one, shocking employees.He later told a Jewish Adidas manager to kiss a portrait of Hitler every day. He informed a member of the company’s executive board that he had paid a seven-figure settlement to one of his own employees who accused him of repeatedly praising Hitler.Mr. West told Adidas colleagues that he admired Hitler’s command of propaganda. He also expressed a belief that Jews had special powers allowing them to amass money and influence.He brought pornography and crude comments into the workplace.Weeks before the swastika incident in 2013, Mr. West made Adidas executives watch pornography during a meeting at his Manhattan apartment. He continued showing pornography to Adidas employees at work. Last year, he ambushed Adidas executives in Los Angeles with a pornographic film.Staff members also complained to top executives that he had made angry, sexually offensive comments to them.Big demands and mood swings weighed on the relationship.Mr. West contended repeatedly that Adidas was exploiting him. He sought more money and power, even suggesting that he should become chief executive.His complaints were often delivered amid severe mood swings, creating whiplash for employees. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he at times rejected the assessment and resisted treatment. Tears were common; so was fury. In 2019, he abruptly moved his Yeezy operation to remote Cody, Wyo., ordering the Adidas team to relocate. He used “terms like ‘believer’ and ‘pilgrimage’” to describe those who would follow him there, an Adidas executive told colleagues in a group text chain. In a meeting with Adidas’s leaders that year to discuss his demands, he hurled shoes around the room.Adidas adapted to Mr. West’s behavior: ‘We are in a code red.’Managers and top executives started the group text chain, the “Yzy hotline,” to address issues involving Mr. West.The Adidas team working on Yeezys adopted a strategy they likened to firefighting, rotating members on and off the front lines of dealing with the artist. “We are in a code red,” the team’s general manager texted colleagues in 2019. “The first line is completely exhausted and don’t feel supported.”The company assigned a human resources official to the unit and gave new hires a subscription to a meditation app. The staff regularly gathered for something akin to group therapy.Mr. West on tour in 2016, the year he and Adidas renegotiated their deal.A J Mast for The New York TimesAs the brand grew more reliant on Yeezys, it sweetened the deal for Mr. West.Under the 2016 contract, he received a 15 percent royalty on net sales, with $15 million upfront along with millions of dollars in company stock each year.The “biggest issue,” an Adidas document from contract negotiations noted, was “putting CASH in Kanye’s pocket to show him we VALUE him.” The partnership would propel him to Forbes’s list of the world’s richest people.And in 2019, Adidas agreed to another enticement: $100 million annually, officially for Yeezy marketing but, in practice, a fund that Mr. West could spend with little oversight.He still stands to make money from the Adidas deal.After the relationship ruptured a year ago and Yeezy sales came to a halt, both Adidas and Mr. West were hit hard. The company projected its first annual loss in decades. Mr. West’s net worth plummeted.But they had at least one more chance to keep making money together. In May, the company began releasing the remaining $1.3 billion worth of Yeezys. A cut of the proceeds would go to charity. But most of the revenue would go to Adidas, and Mr. West was entitled to royalties. More

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      Designer Files New Lawsuit Against Lizzo and Her Wardrobe Manager

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      The singer, who already faces one lawsuit alleging a hostile work environment, has repeatedly denied wrongdoing.A former wardrobe designer who worked briefly on Lizzo’s 2023 tour before being dismissed filed a lawsuit on Thursday alleging that the tour’s wardrobe manager had created a hostile work environment that tour management and Lizzo failed to address.In the complaint the plaintiff, Asha Daniels, who worked on the tour for less than a month, names Lizzo as a defendant, but does not accuse her directly of harassing behavior. In a news release accompanying the lawsuit, Ron Zambrano, her lawyer, said, “Lizzo is the boss so the buck stops with her.”The filing comes more than a month after three of Lizzo’s former dancers, who are also represented by Zambrano, sued the singer and her production company, accusing them of creating a hostile work environment. Lizzo has denied the allegations, and her lawyer has said she plans to countersue. On Thursday, a spokesman for Lizzo called the latest suit an “absurd publicity stunt” and noted that the singer had never met the plaintiff.In the court papers submitted on Thursday in Los Angeles Superior Court, Daniels said she was asked to join the tour in early 2023 by the wardrobe manager, Amanda Nomura. The lawsuit alleges that throughout Daniels’s employment, Nomura had made “racist and fatphobic” comments and mocked both Lizzo and Lizzo’s background dancers “by doing an offensive stereotypical impression of a Black woman.”The lawsuit also alleged that a backstage manager on the tour sent a photo “graphically depicting male genitalia” to a group text message that included the plaintiff, tour management and other crew members; the lawsuit said the singer’s management failed to properly address the message, responding to it with humor in a way that encouraged an “unsafe, sexually charged workplace culture.”The plaintiff also said she was subjected to long hours and frequently denied breaks, alleging that Nomura required her to be on her feet all day despite an ankle injury.Attempts to reach Nomura on Thursday were not immediately successful.In response to the lawsuit, a spokesman for Lizzo, Stefan Friedman, said that Daniels never had any contact with the pop star during her time with the tour.“As Lizzo receives a humanitarian award tonight from the Black Music Action Coalition for the incredible charitable work she has done to lift up all people, an ambulance-chasing lawyer tries to sully this honor by recruiting someone to file a bogus, absurd publicity-stunt lawsuit,” Friedman said.He went on, “We will pay this as much attention as it deserves. None.” More

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      Lizzo Denies Allegations in Former Dancers’ Lawsuit

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      Three dancers have accused the Grammy-winning singer of creating a hostile work environment, claims that she said were “as unbelievable as they sound.”Lizzo on Thursday denied allegations made against her this week by three former dancers who said she created a hostile work environment while performing concerts during the Grammy-winning singer’s Special Tour this year.The three dancers said they had been “exposed to an overtly sexual atmosphere that permeated their workplace,” in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court. The lawsuit described several episodes that lawyers for the dancers said amounted to sexual harassment and weight shaming.“Usually I choose not to respond to false allegations but these are as unbelievable as they sound and too outrageous to not be addressed,” Lizzo said in a statement posted on social media. “These sensationalized stories are coming from former employees who have already publicly admitted that they were told their behavior on tour was inappropriate and unprofessional.”Two of the plaintiffs, Arianna Davis and Crystal Williams, became dancers for Lizzo after competing on her reality television show on Amazon Prime, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls,” in 2021. The lawsuit says Ms. Davis and Ms. Williams were fired in the spring of 2023.The third plaintiff, Noelle Rodriguez, was hired in May 2021 to perform in Lizzo’s “Rumors” music video and joined her dance team. Ms. Rodriguez resigned shortly after Ms. Davis and Ms. Williams were fired, the lawsuit says.Ms. Davis, who was diagnosed with a binge eating disorder, said in the lawsuit that some of Lizzo’s statements to dancers gave her the impression that she had to “explain her weight gain and disclose intimate personal details about her life in order to keep her job.”The lawsuit also describes an episode at a nightclub in Amsterdam where Lizzo began inviting employees to touch nude performers and handle dildos and bananas used in their performances.A dancer, fearing retaliation, “acquiesced” to touching the breast of a nude female performer despite repeatedly expressing no interest in doing so, the suit says.Lizzo said in her statement on Thursday that she took her music and performances seriously. “Sometimes I have to make hard decisions but it’s never my intention to make anyone feel uncomfortable or like they aren’t valued as an important part of the team,” the statement said.She also nodded to the sexual harassment allegations and directly denied the claims that she had weight shamed dancers.“I am very open with my sexuality and expressing myself but I cannot accept or allow people to use that openness to make me out to be something I am not,” the statement said. “There is nothing I take more seriously than the respect we deserve as women in the world. I know what it feels like to be body shamed on a daily basis and would absolutely never criticize or terminate an employee because of their weight.”The defendants in the lawsuit include Lizzo, using her full name, Melissa Jefferson, instead of her stage name; her production company, Big Grrrl Big Touring Inc.; and Shirlene Quigley, the tour’s dance captain. Lizzo did not address the allegations made against Ms. Quigley, who was accused of making sexually explicit comments to the dancers and of engaging in religious harassment. More

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      After Hollywood’s #MeToo Reckoning, a Fear It Was Only Short-Lived

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      Harvey Weinstein’s second sex crimes trial began Monday in Los Angeles. “She Said,” about the journalistic investigation that took him down and helped ignite the #MeToo movement, arrives in theaters on Nov. 18. “The Woman King” opened to strong ticket sales last month, with Viola Davis saying she thought about the man who sexually assaulted her to power her visceral performance as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors.The convergence is a reminder of just how earthshaking #MeToo was for Hollywood.It helped touch off a broader reckoning in the entertainment industry around diversity, equity and inclusion on both sides of the camera — who gets to make movies, who gets to be the subject of them. Activists say that studios and sets have been permanently changed for the better. Zero tolerance for workplace sexual harassment and discrimination is real.In recent months, however, Hollywood’s business culture has started to regress in subtle ways.New problems — widespread cost-cutting as the box office continues to struggle, coming union contract negotiations that producers worry will result in a filming shutdown — have become a higher priority. Fearing blowback, media companies that were vocal about #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have been quieter on more recent political debates over cultural issues.Diversity, equity and inclusion executives say they are exhausted by an old-boy network that is continuously trying to reconstitute itself: Women who were hired for big jobs and held up as triumphant examples of a new era have been pushed aside, while some of the men who were sidelined by misconduct accusations are working again.“The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors, opened to strong ticket sales last month.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesIf asked to speak on the record about their continued dedication to change, Hollywood executives refuse or scramble in terror toward the “we remain staunchly committed” talking points written by publicists. But what they say privately is a different story. Some revert to sexist and racist language. Certainly, much of the fervor is gone.This article is based on interviews with more than two dozen industry leaders — including top studio executives, agents, activists, marketers and producers — who spoke on condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the current state of the entertainment business. They varied in age, race, ethnicity and gender.“For three years, we hired nothing but women and people of color,” said a senior film executive, who like many leaders in the industry is a white male. He added that he did not think some of them were able to do the jobs they got.In hushed conversations over lunch at Toscana Brentwood and cocktails at the San Vicente Inn, some powerful producers and agents have started to question the commercial viability of inclusion-minded films and shows.They point to terrible ticket sales for films like “Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, and “Easter Sunday,” a comedy positioned as a watershed moment for Filipino representation. “Ms. Marvel,” a critically adored Disney+ series about a teenage Muslim superhero, was lightly viewed, according to Nielsen’s measurements.“There was an overcorrection,” one studio head said.At another major studio, a top production executive pointed to the implosion of Time’s Up, the anti-harassment organization founded by influential Hollywood women, as a turning point. “For a while, we all lived in complete fear,” he said. “That fear remains, but it has lessened. There is more room for gray and more benefit of the doubt and a bit of cringing about the rush-to-judgment that went on at the height of #MeToo.”“Bros,” the first gay rom-com from a major studio, had disappointing box office results.Nicole Rivelli/Universal PicturesIs this a pendulum swing back to the bad old days?“Amazing progress has been made that is not going away, and that should not be discounted or overlooked,” said Amy Baer, a producer, former studio executive and the board president of Women in Film, an advocacy organization. “But there is fatigue. It is hard to maintain momentum.”Entertainment companies are not backing off the tough sexual harassment policies that have been introduced in recent years, in part because board members are worried they will face shareholder lawsuits. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently recommitted to its diversification campaign. Despite years of aggressive efforts to invite women and people of color to become members, the academy is currently 66 percent male and 81 percent white..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.Studios remain focused on inclusive casting, most notably Disney, which has a live-action “Little Mermaid” movie on the way with a Black actress playing the title role, and a “Snow White” movie in production with a Latina lead.The moment is nonetheless unnerving, said Sarah Ann Masse, an actress who appears in “She Said” — which is based on a book by The New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey — and who serves on two sexual harassment prevention committees for SAG-AFTRA, the omnipotent actors union. In 2017, Ms. Masse accused Mr. Weinstein of sexually assaulting her in 2008. He has denied wrongdoing.“I’m not naïve enough to think that a system that is unequal and oftentimes oppressive — yes, still, very much so — is going to change overnight,” Ms. Masse said. “At the same time, I find it incredibly frustrating. People at the top of the food chain, in particular, seem to have gotten distracted by new concerns.”In August, Warner Bros. Discovery shelved “Batgirl,” a nearly finished movie starring a Latina actress, featuring a transgender actress in a supporting role, written by a woman, produced by women and directed by two Muslim men. Warner Bros. Discovery never publicly explained its decision, but signaled that it found “Batgirl” to be creatively lacking.Dan Lin, a producer whose credits include “Aladdin” (2019) and “The Lego Movie,” was among those who inferred something else.“It’s no longer about optics,” Mr. Lin said. “A recession is coming, budgets are tightening and I’m really worried that diversity is going to be the first thing that goes.”The producer Dan Lin recently started a nonprofit that aims to help budding minority filmmakers and writers.Todd Williamson/Invision, via APLast week, Warner Bros. Television, as part of wider cost cutting, shut down “new voices” programs for emerging writers and directors, prompting a fiery reaction from the Directors Guild of America. “The D.G.A. will not stand idly by while WB/Discovery seeks to roll back decades of advancement for women and directors of color,” the guild said in a statement.Within a day, Warner Bros. Discovery had scrambled to clarify that, while the “new voices” programs would indeed end, it had planned all along to expand talent pipeline programs in its diversity, equity and inclusion department.“The resolve is still there to have more women and people of color in writers’ rooms and directing and up on the screen” Mr. Lin said. “The problem is that there is so little training and support. Those things cost money.” To help, Mr. Lin recently started a nonprofit accelerator called Rideback Rise that focuses on budding minority filmmakers and writers.There is no longer across-the-board banishment for men who have been accused of misconduct. Johnny Depp is directing a film, having largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence. John Lasseter, the animation titan at Disney and Pixar, was toppled in 2018 by allegations about his behavior and unwanted hugging and apologized for “missteps” that made some staff members feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.” He is now making big-budget films for Apple TV+. James Franco’s acting career imploded in 2018 amid sexual misconduct allegations. Four years later, after a $2.2 million settlement in which he admitted no wrongdoing, he has at least three movies lined up.Johnny Depp largely won a court case in which his former spouse, the actress Amber Heard, accused him of sexual and domestic violence.Craig Hudson/Associated PressStudios have also started to take more risks with content — backing scripts, for instance, that would have been radioactive in 2018, at the height of #MeToo, or in 2020, when Black Lives Matter was at the forefront of the culture.Examples include “Blonde,” the Netflix drama about Marilyn Monroe that has been derided by critics as exploitative and misogynistic. (It features an aborted fetus that talks.) Paramount Pictures is working on a live-action musical comedy about slave trade reparations; it comes from Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the politically incorrect creative forces behind “South Park” and “The Book of Mormon.”Two ride-along reality shows that glorified the police, “Cops” and “Live PD,” and were canceled in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing in police custody have both been reconstituted. “Cops” was picked up by Fox Nation, a streaming service from Fox News, and “On Patrol: Live,” a thinly disguised copy of “Live PD,” debuted over the summer on Reelz, a cable network.At the same time, some movies and shows that overtly showcase diversity and inclusion have either struggled in the marketplace or failed to get off the runway. The takeaway, at least to some agents and studio executives: We tried — these “woke” projects don’t work.Of course, most of what Hollywood makes struggles to get noticed, and almost never for a single reason; nobody looks at poor ticket sales for a Brad Pitt movie and concludes that no one wants to see older white men onscreen. But entertainment is a reactive business — chase whatever worked over the weekend — and there is a risk that “go woke, go broke” jokes could calcify into conventional Hollywood wisdom.“When the real question should be whether comedies generally can succeed at the box office, my concern is that the question is becoming ‘can a Filipino comedy work’ or ‘can a gay comedy work,’” said Mr. Lin, who produced “Easter Sunday,” which starred Jo Koy and collected $13 million in theaters before stalling out. “If you are a woman or a minority, you still do not get repeated chances.” More

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      Climate Change Threatens Summer Stages and Outdoor Performances

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      ASHLAND, Ore. — Smoke from a raging wildfire in California prompted the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to cancel a recent performance of “The Tempest” at its open-air theater. Record flooding in St. Louis forced the cancellation of an outdoor performance of “Legally Blonde.” And after heat and smoke at an outdoor Pearl Jam concert in France damaged the throat of its lead singer, Eddie Vedder, the band canceled several shows.Around the world, rising temperatures, raging wildfires and extreme weather are imperiling whole communities. This summer, climate change is also endangering a treasured pastime: outdoor performance.Here in the Rogue Valley, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is seeing an existential threat from ever-more-common wildfires. In 2018 it canceled 25 performances because of wildfire smoke. In 2020, while the theater was shut down by the pandemic, a massive fire destroyed 2,600 local homes, including those of several staffers. When the festival reopened last year with a one-woman show about the civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer, wildfire smoke forced it to cancel almost every performance in August.“The problem is that in recent years there have been fires in British Columbia and in the mountains in Washington State and fires as far as Los Angeles,” said Nataki Garrett, the festival’s artistic director. “You have fire up and down the West Coast, and all of that is seeping into the valley.”Even before this year’s fire season began, the festival moved the nightly start time of its outdoor performances later because of extreme heat.Wildfires, which generate smoke that pollute air quality over long distances, have already begun burning this year in parts of Europe and the United States. In July, the Oak fire raged near Yosemite National Park.David McNew/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRecord rainfall in the St. Louis area caused flash flooding. Among the effects: The Muny, a major outdoor musical theater, had to cancel a performance of “Legally Blonde” because of flooding on its campus.Robert Cohen/St. Louis Post-Dispatch, via Associated PressAshland is not the only outdoor theater canceling performances because of wildfires. Smoke or fire conditions have also prompted cancellations in recent years at the Butterfly Effect Theater of Colorado; the California Shakespeare Theater, known as Cal Shakes; the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival in Nevada and the Getty Villa in Malibu, Calif., among others.“We are one giant ecosystem, and what happens in one place affects everywhere,” said Robert K. Meya, the general director of the Santa Fe Opera, which stages open-air productions against a striking desert backdrop each summer, and which, in an era of massive wildfires near and far, has installed sensors to gauge whether it is safe to perform.The reports of worsening conditions come from wide swaths of the country. “Last summer was the hardest summer I’ve experienced out here, because fires came early, and coupled with that were pretty severe heat indexes,” said Kevin Asselin, executive artistic director of Montana Shakespeare in the Parks, which stages free performances in rural communities in five Rocky Mountain West states, and has increasingly been forced indoors. “And the hailstorms this year have been out of control.”Road signs in Ashland, Ore., guide drivers along wildfire evacuation routes.Kristina Barker for The New York TimesIn southern Ohio, a growing number of performances of an annual history play called “Tecumseh!” have been canceled because of heavy rain. In northwest Arkansas, rising heat is afflicting “The Great Passion Play,” an annual re-enactment of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. In Texas, record heat forced the Austin Symphony Orchestra to cancel several outdoor chamber concerts. And in western Massachusetts, at Tanglewood, the bucolic summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, more shade trees have been planted on the sweeping lawn to provide relief on hot days.“Changing weather patterns with more frequent and severe storms have altered the Tanglewood landscape on a scale not previously experienced,” the orchestra said in a statement.On Sunday, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of the nation’s first major climate law, which, if enacted into law, would seek to bring about major reductions in greenhouse pollution. Arts presenters, meanwhile, are grappling with how to preserve outdoor productions, both short-term and long-term, as the planet warms.“We’re in a world that we have never been in as a species, and we’re going into a world that is completely foreign and new and will be challenging us in ways we can only dimly see right now,” said Kim Cobb, the director of the environment and society institute at Brown University.The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is an important driver of the local economy, but smoke and heat associated with climate change have become a growing challenge.Kristina Barker for The New York TimesSome venues are taking elaborate precautions. The American Players Theater in Spring Green, Wis., now requires performers to wear wicking undergarments when the heat and humidity rise, encourages actors to consume second act sports drinks, and asks costume designers to eliminate wigs, jackets and other heavy outerwear on hot days.Many outdoor performing venues say that, even as they are bracing for the effects of climate change, they are also trying to limit the ways that they contribute to it. The Santa Fe Opera is investing in solar energy; the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival is planting native meadows; and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is using electric vehicles.The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which before the pandemic had been one of the largest nonprofit theaters in the country, is, in many ways, patient zero. The theater is central to the local economy — the downtown features establishments with names like the Bard’s Inn and Salon Juliet. But the theater’s location, in the Rogue Valley of southern Oregon, has repeatedly been subject to high levels of wildfire smoke in recent years.At the Santa Fe Opera, which offers majestic desert views at sunset, concern about wildfire smoke prompted officials to install air quality sensors. Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesThe theater, like many, has installed air quality monitors — there’s one in a niche in the wall that encircles the audience in the open-air Allen Elizabethan Theater, where this summer “The Tempest” is alternating with a new musical called “Revenge Song.” The device is visible only to the keenest of eyes: a small cylindrical white gadget with lasers that count particles in the passing breeze.The theater also has a smoke team that holds a daily meeting during fire season, assessing whether to cancel or proceed. The theater’s director of production, Alys E. Holden, said that, ever since the time she opposed canceling a performance mid-show and later learned a technician had thrown up because of the air pollution, she has replaced her “show must go on” ethos with “If it’s too unsafe to play, you don’t play.”This year the festival reduced the number of outdoor performances scheduled in August — generally, but not always, the smokiest month.Air quality monitors, now in use at many Western venues including the Santa Fe Opera, can help presenters protect not only audience members but also performers. The opera is particularly concerned about its singers.Ramsay de Give for The New York Times“Actors are breathing in huge amounts of air to project out for hours — it’s not a trivial event to breathe this stuff in, and their voices are blown the next day if we blow the call,” Holden said. “So we are canceling to preserve everyone’s health, and to preserve the next show.”Wildfire-related air quality has become an issue for venues throughout the West. “It’s constantly on our mind, especially as fire season seems to start earlier and earlier,” said Ralph Flores, the senior program manager for theater and performance at the J. Paul Getty Museum, which has a 500-seat outdoor theater at the Getty Villa.Air quality concerns sometimes surprise patrons on days when pollution is present, but can’t be readily smelled or seen.“The idea that outdoor performance would be affected or disrupted by what’s happening with the Air Quality Index is still a fairly new and forward concept to a lot of people,” said Stephen Weitz, the producing artistic director at the Butterfly Effect Theater of Colorado, which stages free shows in parks and parking lots. Last summer the theater had to cancel a performance because of poor air quality caused by a faraway fire.The coronavirus pandemic also remains a concern, prompting crew members in Santa Fe to wear masks as they met before a performance of Bizet’s “Carmen.”Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesAnother theater there, the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, is now working with scientists at the affiliated University of Colorado Boulder on monitoring and health protocols after a fire more than a thousand miles away in Oregon polluted the local air badly enough to force a show cancellation last summer. Tim Orr, the festival’s producing artistic director, recalled breaking the news to the audience.“The looks on their faces were surprise, and shock, but a lot of people came up and said ‘Thank you for making the right choice,’” he said. “And when I stepped offstage, I thought, ‘Is this going to be a regular part of our future?’”Planning for the future, for venues that present out of doors, now invariably means thinking about climate change.The Santa Fe Opera’s stunning outdoor location is one of its great attributes, but also makes it vulnerable to climate change.Ramsay de Give for The New York TimesOskar Eustis, the artistic director of the Public Theater, which produces Free Shakespeare in the Park at the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park, said that the 2021 summer season, when the theater reopened after the pandemic shutdown, was the rainiest in his two decades there. “I could imagine performing more in the fall and spring, and less in the summer,” he said.In some places, theater leaders are already envisioning a future in which performances all move indoors.“We’re not going to have outdoor theater in Boise forever — I don’t think there’s a chance of that,” said Charles Fee, who is the producing artistic director of three collaborating nonprofits: the Idaho Shakespeare Festival, the Lake Tahoe Shakespeare Festival and Great Lakes Theater in Cleveland. Fee has asked the Idaho board to plan for an indoor theater in Boise.“Once it’s 110 degrees at 6 o’clock at night, and we have these occasionally already, people are sick,” he said. “You can’t do the big Shakespeare fight, you can’t do the dances in ‘Mamma Mia.’ And you can’t do that to an audience.” More

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      Medieval Times Employees Vote to Unionize in New Jersey

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      The horsemen, courtiers, stablehands and other performers at ye olde New Jersey tourist attraction formed a new kind of medieval guild when they voted to unionize.LYNDHURST, N.J. — In 11th-century Spain, a nobleman trying to put his hand up the queen’s skirt after a royal feast might be subjected to medieval torture methods.But at the Medieval Times just off Route 3, dealing with that kind of behavior has been accepted as part of the job for too long, said Monica Garza, one of several actresses who plays the queen at the dinner-and-a-tournament attraction.Garza said management made her feel like a “diva” for requesting additional security protocols after she pointed out increasingly bold behavior from guests. It was only after an incident in which a rowdy ticket holder got close to her throne and tried to shout into her microphone, Garza said, that management installed a chain to block access to her.The desire for bolstered security and other safety measures at the castle — where falling off horses can be part of the job description — was one reason that queens, knights, squires and stablehands at the Lyndhurst castle voted on Friday to unionize.The unionization effort, first reported by The Huffington Post, prevailed on Friday, when the employees voted, 26 to 11, to join the American Guild of Variety Artists. The medievalists will join a wide array of performers represented by the guild, including the Radio City Rockettes, some circus performers, and the character actors who perform at Disneyland — including Mulan and Aladdin, for example — in California.The employees are also seeking higher pay (Garza receives $20 per hour, and squires start at about $14 per hour), and for higher-ups to treat them more like skilled workers — trained stuntmen who perform intricate fights with lances, swords and axes, and experienced actors who do more than just read lines. Medieval Times management did not respond to requests for comment.A knight, Sinan Logan, with one of the horses backstage in 2007. Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Times“A huge point of the union is just basic respect,” said Garza, 25, a trained actor and self-described history nerd. “People will always exploit you when it’s something you love, because they know you’ll do it for nothing.”Many performers ultimately fall in love with the job, even if they didn’t initially dream of working at the concrete castle, with its vast hall of arms and seemingly endless supply of tomato bisque. The two-hour shows are staffed by a motley crew that includes an ex-Marine, an erstwhile Elton John backup singer, a musical theater student turned stuntman, a former zookeeper and an actor known for his voice work on the video game “Grand Theft Auto.”“We are a bunch of misfits,” laughs Sean Quigley, 33, the backup singer who is also a classically trained actor from London, giving him no need to fake a British accent. (The show is technically set in Spain, but New Jersey audiences aren’t picky.)Read More on Organized Labor in the U.S.Apple: Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store voted to unionize, making it the first of the company’s 270-plus U.S. stores to do so. The result provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees.Starbucks: When a Rhodes scholar joined Starbucks in 2020, none of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations had a union. She hoped to change that by helping to unionize its stores in Buffalo. Improbably, she and her co-workers have far exceeded their goal.Amazon: A little-known independent union scored a stunning victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. But unlike at Starbucks, where organizing efforts spread in a matter of weeks, unionizing workers at Amazon has been a longer, messier slog.A Shrinking Movement: Although high-profile unionization efforts have dominated headlines recently, union membership has seen a decades-long decline in the United States.Taking orders from their corporate headquarters in Texas, the Lyndhurst shows are engineered to follow the same structure each night. Visitors here put on the same paper crowns and eat the same four-course meal as in Atlanta and Baltimore. The queens are paid to say the same lines as in the company’s other nine castles, where a reported 1.5 million guests visited last year.“Good nobles, welcome to the hall of my forefathers,” Garza says as she rides atop a white Andalusian into an arena of shrieking children wielding light-up swords.The queen hasn’t been in charge of the realm for long. The show had always cast a king as the lead, but about five years ago the company rewrote the script, putting a queen on the throne to accommodate requests for more substantive roles for women.The new story goes something like this: After inheriting the realm, the queen stages a tournament in which six knights on horseback compete for a vaunted title, but her power is threatened by a sleazy adviser who plots to marry her off. The dialogue is often drowned out by the aforementioned shrieks and the bustle of the “serfs and wenches” (Medieval Times-speak for waiters), who are known to end the evening with, “Cash or card, milady?”For the actors, who can perform the same script several times a week, year after year, the lines start to feel tattooed on their brains — so they find ways to entertain themselves.Paper crowns have long been de rigueur at the castle, as seen in 2007. Sylwia Kapuscinski for The New York Time“I’ll do a show where I’m pretending I’m secretly in love with the queen; I’ll do a show where I’m secretly in love with one of the knights,” said Quigley, who plays Lord Marshal, the show’s emcee. “In order to keep it fresh, you can tell a different story in your head.”Quigley, who auditioned for a job at Medieval Times after struggling to make a smooth transition between London’s West End and New York’s theater scene, also amuses himself by assuming various accents. He’s tried a cockney drawl, performed the whole show as if he were Sean Connery and put on a voice like Jon Snow from “Games of Thrones” — it was only when he tried doing the entire performance with a lisp that the sound department sent a runner to tell him to cut it out.For Christopher Lucas, the video-game voice actor who has also appeared in daytime soap operas, his improvisational frisson comes during a scene where, as the queen’s slimy adviser, he goes on and on about his adoration for oranges from Valencia in an oration that verges on the unhinged. For reasons that even Lucas can’t quite understand, the audience loves it, sometimes starting a chant — “Oranges! Oranges! Oranges!” — and bringing him fresh fruit on their next visit.“As a performer, these are the types of things you live for,” Lucas said.Ultimately, the enterprise of Medieval Times, which started in Spain and came to the United States in 1983, revolves around the knights, who parade around the arena on horseback before jousting and dueling for the queen.One of New Jersey’s most veteran knights, Antonio Sanchez, 31, had grown disillusioned with the idea of a long-term career in the U.S. Marines when he saw on Facebook that Medieval Times was hiring. On a whim in 2014, he drove to the Lyndhurst castle, walked into the horse stables, and soon, he was mucking out stalls and saddling up the steeds before showtime.“From the back of the stables, you could hear the crowd roaring,” Sanchez said, recalling the moment he started dreaming of becoming a knight.To get the job, no experience with horses is required. As knights’ apprentices, the men undergo hundreds of hours of training, learning both how to ride and how to roll off into the sand safely when rival knights “knock” them off.Employees at the castle in Lyndhurst, N.J., are now unionized.Amir Hamja for The New York Times“I don’t think I had ever been face to face with a horse before,” said Joe Devlin, 28, who started as a squire after he returned home from a stint as a touring musician and was in desperate need of a job.Protecting themselves with aluminum shields, the apprentices learn fight choreography that will gradually become committed to muscle memory.Still, accidents happen. The fact that the show is dependent on a stable of about two dozen horses adds an element of constant danger, said Purnell Thompson, a stablehand who was hired after losing his job taking care of farm animals at a local zoo. In an arena of boisterous revelers, there are many potential triggers for a horse to spook, including if audience members flout the rules and bang their metal plates and bowls onto the tables.Once, when Devlin was in training, he fractured his ankle learning how to jump off a horse. And Jonathan Beckas, a knight of two years, has dealt with an injured knee and two head injuries, including one that involved taking a wooden lance to the head. (Full-time workers receive health insurance.)One reason the knights are unionizing, said Beckas — a 27-year-old trained stuntman who is paid $21.50 per hour, up from $12 when he started working as a squire — is that they feel acutely underpaid considering the risks they take at work. “I am a knight, but I’m also a human,” he said.This isn’t the first time a union vote was held at this castle. There was a similar effort in 2006, where complaints largely centered around a lack of job security and fears that squires were becoming knights too quickly. That vote narrowly went against forming a union.Even before the vote on Friday’, employees said, they were seeing changes. After news of the unionization effort went public, garnering support from Gov. Phil Murphy, management installed a more robust barrier to her throne, Garza said.Now, the knights have bargaining power, and they plan on using it.“Being a knight is every little kid’s dream,” Sanchez said. “But I got older, and fun doesn’t pay the bills.” More

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      On Broadway, One Show Decides to Keep Masks. No, It’s Not ‘Phantom.’

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      Three days after the Broadway League announced that all 41 theaters would make masks optional starting July 1, one of those theaters has decided to stick with mandatory face coverings.The producers of a starry revival of “American Buffalo,” which is a 1975 drama by David Mamet about three schemers in a junk shop, announced Friday that they would continue to require masks through the scheduled end of the show’s run at Circle in the Square Theater on July 10.That’s only 10 days beyond when Broadway plans to drop its industrywide masking requirement, and it’s just one show, but it suggests that the unanimity among producers and theater owners may not be rock solid.There are several factors that make the “American Buffalo” situation unusual.The play, starring Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss, is being staged at Broadway’s only theater-in-the-round (it’s actually almost-in-the-round, because the seating doesn’t entirely encircle the stage), which means there are more patrons seated within spitting distance of actors than at other theaters.Also, Circle in the Square, with 751 seats as it is currently configured, is the only remaining Broadway theater that is not operated by a large company or a nonprofit organization, so its decisions are not tied to those of a bigger entity.Rockwell expressed concerns about the end of the masking policy in an interview this week with the New York Times columnist Ginia Bellafante.The show announced the change in policy in a news release, saying that it was “due to the close proximity of the audience to the actors as a result of the intimate size of the theater and the staging in the round.” The production and theater owner did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.Charlotte St. Martin, the president of the Broadway League, said of the “American Buffalo” decision, “As the optional mask policy takes effect in July, there may be unique situations which would require the audience, or some of the audience, to be masked.”It is not clear whether the decision will affect other Broadway shows. The vast majority take place in theaters operated by a handful of big landlords who endorsed the mask-optional decision. Broadway’s four nonprofit theater operators, who have been more Covid-cautious, do not have any shows this summer. And summer fare on Broadway is dominated by big musicals, where the audience tends to skew toward tourists, many of whom come from places where masks are long gone; older New York playgoers are scarcer at this time of year (and the volume of shows is lower, too: there are only 27 shows now running on Broadway).After “American Buffalo” closes next month, Circle in the Square is scheduled to be vacant until October, when a new musical called “KPOP” begins previews.Actors’ Equity, the union representing performers and stage managers, has declined to comment on the audience safety protocols, but this week sent an email to its members, previously reported by Deadline, saying, “This decision was made unilaterally, without input from your union or any other, and the unions were only given advance notice a couple of hours before the announcement.”Although the decision was announced by the Broadway League, it was made by theater owners and operators, and they plan to reconsider the protocols monthly. More

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      New 42 Worker Files Bias Lawsuit Over Diversity Training

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      A white teaching artist at the theater organization says it discriminated against white people. The nonprofit declined to comment.A contract worker at a nonprofit New York theater organization has filed a lawsuit saying that the institution’s diversity trainings were themselves discriminatory.Kevin Ray, a part-time teaching artist at New 42, an organization that runs rehearsal studios, youth programs and a children’s theater in Times Square, filed the lawsuit late Wednesday in Federal District Court, accusing the organization of discriminating against white employees. He is asking the court to determine that New 42 violated the federal civil rights act as well as local human rights laws, and to award him an unspecified amount of damages.In the lawsuit, Ray, who is white, alleged that the diversity programs implemented by New 42 included “racially-discriminatory propaganda and lectures promoting discriminatory ideology on the basis of race.” Ray said he was asked to join a conversation about a “white affinity group” at New 42, and said the organization had designated a “white-identifying breakout room” at an online town hall.“In reality, ‘diversity training sessions’ were race-based indoctrination sessions that promoted the division of employees on the basis of race,” the lawsuit says.Ray’s job involves visiting schools for educational programs, usually related to a show the students are about to see. He claims that he has been assigned less work and has been subjected to retaliation after raising concerns about the organization’s diversity training programs.The lawsuit comes at a time when the use of antiracism training programs and the creation or expansion of diversity initiatives has grown significantly in the theater industry, as in many other sectors of society, following the unrest over racism in the United States in the summer of 2020.The lawsuit is being backed by an organization called the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism, which says it is concerned about a “cynical and intolerant orthodoxy” that “pits us against one another, and diminishes what it means to be human.” The organization, founded by Bion Bartning, has filed other lawsuits challenging what it says are forms of discriminatory overreach by organizations trying to implement diversity programs; the Ray suit is the organization’s first in the arts arena, but it has begun an arts program as it considers other action.A lawyer for New 42, David Lichtenberg, said via a spokeswoman that the nonprofit had “no comment at this time.” More