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He was a model to me of artistic labor and discipline, even if those early paintings were painfully amateurish. The painting followed me from Amherst to my first job in New York, and on to London and Delhi. IT WASN’T MY intention to start an essay about artistic beginnings with a story of artistic death. I’m especially moved by those first moments of validation by which an artist comes out to himself, as it were. It’s this, the inexorability of the correspondence between an artist and the world, that gives those first steps their magical quality.

Persons: Naipaul, Neil Shah, James Wood —, Zack, who’d, ”, Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna, Elders ”, I’m, ” Gustave Flaubert, “, ” Zack, it’s, Bruce Chatwin, Paul Gauguin, Salman Rushdie, Somerset Maugham, Kathryn Bigelow, Philip Glass, Arundhati Roy, Booker, Joseph Conrad, Conrad, Jacques, ” Conrad, brimming, ’, ’ ”, Clarice Lispector, Benjamin Moser, ” Lispector, Maugham, eludes, Jan van Kessel, Elder, — Pieter Bruegel, —, Rebecca West —, “ Black Lamb, J.R, Hammond, Wells, Rebecca West ”, sloughed, Henrik Ibsen’s, Rosmersholm ”, Karan Mahajan, Salman Toor, what’s, ” Hemingway, Anoushka Shankar, Ravi Shankar, Harold Bloom, Ravi, Uday, René Daumal, Rasa ”, ” Anoushka, Norah Jones, Norah, I’ve, “ Raphael, Rachel Cusk, Italy ”, Perugino, Raphael, Cusk, J.M, Samuel Beckett, Gabriel García Márquez, Thomas Pynchon’s, James Joyce, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Marcel Proust’s, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Read, Emma Kehlbeck, Quinton Kamara Organizations: Amherst College, Elders, Fayerweather, ”, Google, Sunday Times, Somerset, Yugoslavia, The, “, . Locations: Delhi, ”, Massachusetts, Italian, Topeka, Kan, Amherst, New York, London, Patagonia, New Delhi, Torrens, Cambridge, Polish, Ukrainian, Brazil, Flemish, Victorian England, “ H.G, Fairfield, United States, “, East, Lahore, Europe, America, Texas, Side, Manhattan, India, Italy

☆ ‘Sunset Baby’ Review: Don’t Let Nina Be Misunderstood
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-21 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Dominique Morisseau’s characters are, as the post-colonial thinker Frantz Fanon once described himself, often paralyzed “at the crossroads between nothingness and infinity.” Her plays craft realistic depictions of marginalized people inextricably caught in the tide of history. In her 2013 piece “Sunset Baby,” receiving a potent revival at Signature Theater, Morisseau lays bare both a romantic relationship and a father-daughter drama while also exploring the effects of revolution, the deferment of dreams and the bind of being a Black woman in America. The play’s complexities find their avatar in its hardened protagonist, Nina (Moses Ingram, making a strong New York stage debut). As a drug dealer and (as conjured by the costume designer Emilio Sosa’s tiny dress and thigh-high boots) a honey pot eking out a living in Brooklyn, Nina’s life is a far cry from the dreams envisioned by her Black revolutionary parents, who named her after the singer-activist Nina Simone. After the death of her mother, Ashanti X, from a slow, ugly slide into addiction, Nina’s estranged father, Kenyatta Shakur (Russell Hornsby), reappears to collect a stash of letters her mother had written to him while he was a political prisoner.

Persons: Dominique Morisseau’s, Frantz Fanon, “, ”, Morisseau, Moses Ingram, Emilio Sosa’s, Nina Simone, Nina’s, Kenyatta Shakur, Russell Hornsby Locations: America, New York, Brooklyn, Ashanti

Jesse Green’s Best Theater | Unforgettable ExperiencesJESSE GREENYear of the DramedyIf 2023 was a tragedy in the world, on New York stages it was a dramedy year, highlighted not only by serious plays with great jokes, but also by flat-out comedies with dark underpinnings. Its residents included an unemployed man in his 50s, his barely-holding-on mother, a pregnant woman, two refugees — and us. Seated adjacent to the facility’s dingy common room, we became, in the playwright’s own staging, fellow residents. But if the others eyed us like we might steal a precious sandwich, we could blithely leave when the play was over. The New York Theater Workshop audience, too, learned a great deal, as the questions bedeviling so many relationships — the complexity of consent and the meaning of control — played out before us in this perfectly timed hot-button play.

Persons: Jesse Green’s, Alexander Zeldin, ”, Henrik Ibsen, Jessica Chastain, Nora, Jamie Lloyd’s, Amy Herzog, Chastain, Liliana Padilla, —, gorgeously, Rachel Chavkin, Steph Paul Organizations: Armory, Zeldin, bros, New York Locations: New York, York City, Norway, New York City

☆ Danielle Brooks and Sam Jay on Confidence and ‘The Color Purple’
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-20 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

That’s so important in any medium, and the point of what we do, so we can see ourselves. I moved out when I was 16 — I’ve had no parent longer than I’ve had a parent. I sometimes don’t remember my mother’s face, but I remember how she made me feel. : I think that’s the same for me … being more guarded because my mother is a minister. : I get this call from my manager, “Will you audition for ‘S.N.L.’ tomorrow?” I’m like, “Do they really want me?

Persons: Comedy’s, I’ve, ” S.J, “, ”, “ Will, ‘, I’m

☆ After ‘Saltburn,’ Watch These Five Country House Movies
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-17 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

If “Promising Young Woman” was Emerald Fennell’s darkly comic take on the rape-revenge thriller — one that rode a zeitgeisty wave of discourse onto a best original screenplay Oscar in 2021 — “Saltburn” is the writer-director’s entry in the country house canon. The film (in theaters) is the latest in a subgenre ripe for dramatic tension: upstairs versus downstairs; invited versus interloped; public versus private. In “Saltburn,” Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan), a shy Oxford student, accepts an invitation to spend the summer at the family estate of a wealthy classmate, Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi). While there, Oliver’s adoration for the charming aristocrat reveals itself to be much more than an innocent infatuation. Here are five other films where summering at a country house leads to significant power imbalances and lifelong consequences.

Persons: ”, Oscar, Saltburn, ” Oliver Quick, Barry Keoghan, Felix Catton, Jacob Elordi, Ripley ” Organizations: Oxford Locations: revel

☆ This Evil Stepmother Has Perfect Comedic Timing
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-16 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Then, midsentence, she back rolls into a standing position — in heels. The move brings the house down, but doesn’t stop the show. As natural as it is indescribably comical, the action makes plain that Simard, 53, is more invested in continuing the larger story. “I had to get up, and it occurred to me that it’s a great juxtaposition between a dress that makes me look like a human feather duster, and ‘Why not?’” she said. “I’m of the school that says you have to take a bunch of spaghetti and throw it at the wall and see what sticks.”

Persons: ” Jennifer Simard, Britney Spears’s, Simard, “, ” Locations: “

☆ ‘The Half-God of Rainfall’ Review: Basketball Under the Heavens
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-01 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Turning verse into action is tricky, especially with ideas as lofty as the ones in Inua Ellams’s epic poem “The Half-God of Rainfall,” now appearing in theatrical guise at New York Theater Workshop. The poem is a melodious, sky-high tale of a basketball superstar born as a result of a celestial contest between the Greek and Yoruba gods of thunder, Zeus and Sango. But the stage adaptation, which opened on Monday, runs into some flaws that, while not fatal, strand this Nigerian writer’s work in the mortal realm. To Hera’s (Kelley Curran) defeated disdain, Zeus rapes Modúpé (Jennifer Mogbock), a Nigerian woman, and soon the mixed-race half-god Demi (Mister Fitzgerald) is born. Demi’s growing celebrity eventually lands him face to face with Zeus, providing a chance to avenge his mother.

Persons: Jason Bowen, Michael Laurence, Kelley Curran, Modúpé, Jennifer Mogbock, Demi, Mister Fitzgerald Organizations: New York Theater, Golden State Warriors Locations: Nigerian

☆ Ato Blankson-Wood on Playing a Hamlet Who ‘Leads With Love’
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-26 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“I have my issues with this cut. A lot of the meta-theatricality is gone, and that’s one of the things I love about the character, like his line about holding a mirror up to nature. Born the middle of five siblings in Silver Spring, Md., to two Ghanaian immigrants, Blankson-Wood grew up watching movie musicals with his mother. While his home was “culturally, very traditionally Ghanaian,” he said musicals created a cultural bridge to his American interests, which led to acting. He studied acting at New York University and was soon cast as a member of the tribe in a production of “Hair” at the Delacorte — which, coincidentally, shared the 2008 summer season with another “Hamlet,” starring Michael Stuhlbarg.

Persons: “, Shakespeare, what’s, ”, Wood, Leon, Jesse Green, Michael Stuhlbarg, Lysistrata Jones Organizations: The Times, New York University, Broadway Locations: Md

☆ Willy Chavarria and Omar Apollo on Faith and Heartbreak
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Three days after his fall 2023 runway show in February, while on his way to meet Omar Apollo at a photographer’s house in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, the 55-year-old fashion designer Willy Chavarria studied the 25-year-old musician’s Wikipedia page. What Chavarria lacked in detailed knowledge about Apollo’s career, he made up for with an immediate paternal tenderness. “And on all-Latino models,” Apollo says. And yet the pair saw eye to eye on more than just success. Some similarities were obvious: Both are gay and Mexican American, and both were born in small towns where dreams of artistic stardom seemed impossibly distant.

☆ When a Margaret Cho DVD Was Like Precious Contraband to Atsuko Okatsuka
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

To me, humor is the unexpected thought that comes through. Atsuko’s work is observational, but it’s delivered through misdirection. It’s rare, in comedy, certainly, but in entertainment in general, to find somebody with a unique point of view that blends so seamlessly into what they do as an artist. And that hair. Nobody in the history of comedy has had better hair.

☆ A Dancer’s Life: Chita Rivera on Working Hard and Learning From the Best
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Juan A. Ramírez | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

“She makes you feel immediately part of a team,” Benanti said. “She’s not just out there for herself. “When you hear Chita, you see Chita. When you work with somebody like that, their range is so enormous that there’s nothing you can’t write,” he said of developing characters with Rivera. This constant work is all she knows, Rivera said, though it has left her with a slight blind spot when it comes to the business she so loves.

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