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☆ 5 Ways This Year’s Tony Awards Reveal That Theater Is Changing
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-16 | by ( Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Tonight’s Tony Awards ceremony will celebrate the best work on Broadway. Here are some things I’ve been thinking about as this awards season unfolded:Nonprofit theaters are struggling. Short of money, nonprofit theaters around the country are staging fewer shows, shedding jobs, and in a few cases, closing. Among plays, “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” and “Prayer for the French Republic” were all staged on Broadway by the nonprofit Manhattan Theater Club. (“Mary Jane” had an earlier Off Broadway run at another nonprofit, New York Theater Workshop.)

Persons: Tonight’s Tony, They’re, Tony, “, ” “ Mary Jane, ”, Republic ”, “ Mary Jane ” Organizations: Nonprofit, Broadway, Manhattan Theater Club, New York Theater Workshop, Playwrights Horizons Locations: Republic

☆ John Everett Benson, Who Chiseled John F. Kennedy’s Grave, Dies at 85
▼ + stars: | 2024-06-16 | by ( Penelope Green | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

His son Christopher said he died in a hospital but did not specify the cause. Mr. Benson practiced the ancient and exacting art of carving into rock; slate was his preferred medium. He did so, precisely and gorgeously, on cornerstones, gravestones and monuments, as his father had before him, working out of an atelier in Newport called the John Stevens Shop. The art Mr. Benson practiced is mostly devoted to mortality, the brief span of a life, though it is designed for eternity, or something close to it. Mr. Benson could spend a day carving a cross; a gravestone might take three months.

Persons: John Everett Benson, —, Christopher, Benson, John Stevens Organizations: John Stevens Shop Locations: Newport, R.I

☆ There’s a Bright Spot in New York Theater. It’s Not Where You Think.
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

At the same time, New York’s Off Broadway nonprofits, long essential seedbeds for many of the nation’s most acclaimed playwrights, are shedding staff, programming and even real estate. But there is an unexpected bright spot this season. Commercial Off Broadway, a small sector of New York’s theatrical economy and one that has for years been somewhere between difficult and dormant, is back in business. “Oh, Mary!,” a madcap comedy that imagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a daffy alcoholic, is selling out nightly at a 295-seat theater in the West Village, and is likely to transfer to Broadway this summer. Eddie Izzard’s solo “Hamlet” did well enough at a 199-seat theater in Greenwich Village that it relocated to a 349-seat house in the East Village, and next is planning runs in Chicago and London.

Persons: Mary !, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eddie Izzard’s, ” Organizations: Broadway Locations: West, Greenwich, East, Chicago, London

☆ The Playwright Who Fearlessly Reimagines America
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Imani Perry | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Rather than sink into discouragement, Parks absorbed the insult, turning it into part of her origin story. “I appreciated the note,” she said wryly, “because it planted a little seed in my subconscious: I gotta learn to spell. Dressed in purple-and-lavender-striped fingerless gloves, fur-lined boots and a black Comme des Garçons jacket, she looked every bit the iconoclastic downtown New Yorker. At 60, Parks carries herself with the energy of someone half her age, her presence a combination of gravitas and lightness, wisdom and childlike exuberance. One of America’s most celebrated playwrights — a recipient of the MacArthur “genius grant,” a Guggenheim fellowship and a Pulitzer Prize — she is in the midst of a renaissance.

Persons: Parks, “, ”, I’m, —, MacArthur Organizations: Parks, Guggenheim Locations: discouragement, New York, New Yorker

☆ Common Credits Ralph Ellison for Pointing Him Toward Music
▼ + stars: | 2024-01-11 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The Bible, “The Selected Works of Audre Lorde,” edited and with an introduction by Roxane Gay, and “The Tongue — A Creative Force” by Charles Capps. I’m a believer in God’s word so learning how to apply that was really inspiring and impactful for me. I was really moved by “The Creative Act” because I think Rick Rubin has experienced so much in life. I learned from a musician friend of mine that so many things can contribute to your musical/creative vocabulary, even nature. And after that, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X” and “The Mastery of Love” by Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills.

Persons: “, Audre, ”, Roxane Gay, Charles Capps, Florence Scovel Shinn, Rick Rubin’s, Florence Scovel Shinn ”, Rick Rubin, who’s, Malcolm X ”, Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills, —

☆ How Jewish People Built the American Theater
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-29 | by ( Jesse Green | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +46 min

Let Us Tell You A Story How Jewish people built the American theater as we know it. The theater, which for many Jews was a major way of becoming American in the first place, seems unable to acknowledge that the danger that American Jews face is not just historical, and not just onstage. (Both of Adler’s parents were Yiddish theater stars — her father, Jacob Adler, was a renowned Shylock in 1903.) Embedding their own observation and experience within Stanislavsky’s, along with the best of Yiddish theater and a generous dollop of Freud, they converted the American theater to Judaism. Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThe Jewish contribution to the creation of the American theater was built on the acknowledgment of a larger humanity alive within each of us, available to some, with natural empathy and rigorous training.

Persons: Glocca, “, Lerner, Loewe, ”, Isidore Hochberg, Burton Lane, né Burton Levy, William Goldman, “ Killybegs, Sammy Davis Jr, Julie Andrews, Connie Francis, Rosemary Clooney, Tommy Dorsey, Davis, —, Arthur Miller’s “, joyously, Jason Schmidt, Christine Jones, Miller, I’ve, Marilyn Monroe, Robert Brustein, Neil Simon’s, ” Cynthia Ozick, Sholom, Philip Roth, Simon, Leonard Bernstein, Matt Nadel, Bradley, Bernstein, “ Maestro, Shylock, William Shakespeare’s “, Venice ”, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe’s, Farah Karim, Cooper, Bard ”, “ Merchant, Tom Stoppard’s, Sara Krulwich, Ansky’s, Stella Adler, Bessie Berger, Clifford Odets’s, Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan, Francis Joseph Bruguière, Billy Rose, Eugene Smith, Roth, Arthur Schnitzler, Juliet Stevenson, Ruth Wolff, Lorraine Hansberry’s, Sidney’s, Alex Edelman’s “, Leo Frank, Bernard B, Frank, Mandy Patinkin, James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim’s, George, Martha Swope, outspokenness, creatives, Oscar Isaac, Sidney, “ Sidney Brustein, Isaac, Stevenson, Robert Icke, Roman Catholic Cooper, Rachel Brosnahan, Maisel, Joan Rivers —, Brosnahan, Sidney Brustein’s, Alec Guinness, Fagin, “ Oliver Twist, I’m, Micaela Diamond, Ben Platt, Lucille, Alfred Uhry, Jason Robert Brown’s, Rivers, Wolff, Robert, Republic ”, isn’t, LEE Strasberg, Konstantin Stanislavsky’s, Fyodor Ivanovich, Strasberg, Israel Strassberg, Zalmon, Srulke, Joseph Stein, Sheldon Harnick, Jerry Bock’s “, Bette Midler, Jackie Hoffman, Photofest Stanislavsky, Theater’s, Isaac Butler, Stanislavsky, Harold Clurman, George Bernard Shaw, Henrik Ibsen, Clurman, Adler, Jacob Adler, Freud, Rebecca Naomi Jones, Ruthie Rivkin, Jerome Weidman, Harold Rome’s “, John Weidman, disown Strasberg, Sanford Meisner, Bobby Lewis, né, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Meisner, Robert Duvall, Lewis, Meryl Streep, Clifford Odets, Jacob Garfinkle, Jules Garfield, Odets, Sam Feinschreiber, Garfield, Ralph Berger, wasn’t, John, Tovah Feldshuh, Golda Meir, William Gibson’s, Aaron Epstein, exigencies, Bessie, Feinschreiber —, loveless, William Fox, Louis B, Mayer, Jack Warner, Marjorie Morningstar ”, Morgenstern, Marjorie, Natalie Wood, Anne Frank ”, Millie Perkins, Audrey Hepburn, Susan Strasberg —, Ibsen, Sholom Aleichem, August Wilson, Daveed Diggs, Thomas Jefferson, Lin, Manuel Miranda’s “ Hamilton ”, Adrian Lester, Emanuel Lehman —, Barbra Streisand, Marmelstein, George Silk, Miller’s, Sophie Okonedo, Elizabeth Proctor, Ben Whishaw, John Proctor, Jan Versweyveld, Don’t, — Bernstein, Stoppard, Schnitzler, Jeanine Tesori, Tony Kushner’s “ Caroline, Sharon D Clarke, Adam Makké, Noah Gellman, Leo, Stoppard —, Hermine, ” Leo Frank, there’s, Matthew Broderick, Eugene Jerome, it’s, Edelman’s, Queens bigots, David Yosef Shimon ben Elazar Reuven Alexander Halevi Edelman, Woody Allen, Joshua Harmon’s, — George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Richard Rodgers, Porgy, Bess ”, Barns, Alex Edelman, Paula Vogel, Harvey Fierstein, Jordan Taylor Fuller, — that’s, Wendell Pierce, Friedman, Jacobs, Hirschfeld, Gershwin, Rodgers, PAULA VOGEL, BRANDON URANOWITZ, DAVID CROMER, MICAELA DIAMOND, TONY KUSHNER, Diamond, Monica Rich Kosann, Marco Bicego, JESSE EISENBERG, MATTHEW BRODERICK, AMY HERZOG, LESLIE RODRIGUEZ KRITZER, JOEL GREY, Herzog, Michael Kors, Kritzer, Marco, HARVEY FIERSTEIN, LIEV SCHREIBER, ETHAN SLATER, IDINA MENZEL, TINA LANDAU Organizations: Broadway, Broadway’s Lyceum, “, of Venice, New York Times, Defamation League, New York Public Library, Performing, Vandamm, Billy, Billy Rose Theatre Division, Performing Arts, New, Jacobs, Empire State, Nazi, Goyim Defense, The New York Public Library, Roman Catholic, New York City, Street, Moscow Art, Group, Hollywood, Disney, Everett, The New York Times, Philadelphia, Brit, Times Locations: Poland, American, kilts, E.Y, Harburg, Kilkerry, Kildare, Philadelphia, New York, Polish, Massachusetts, Vichy, Biloxi, Venice, Malta, of, ”, Germany, playgoers, Sweden, England, United States, Pittsburgh, Nazi, Brustein’s, Greenwich, Georgia, Gutenberg, “, Atlanta, Republic, New, Konstantin Stanislavsky’s Moscow, Russian, America, Moscow, Stanislavsky’s, Clurman, Eastern Europe, Czech, Austrian, Auschwitz, Heini, Southern, Brighton, Rivers, French Republic, “ Brigadoon

☆ Full Exposure? Four Solo Shows Ponder the Art of True Nature.
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-21 | by ( Naveen Kumar | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Two years of post-shutdown theater has brought to New York stages a slew of solo performers wrestling with subjects like grief, death and the apocalypse — and those are just the comedies. Solo shows are inexpensive to produce and relatively low-lift endeavors for an industry still on shaky ground. There has been no shortage this fall, and now four solo shows running Off Broadway demonstrate a range of approaches to the form, proving, at least for this round, that baring your inner thoughts and fears pays off. “School Pictures” and “Amusements,” also at Playwrights Horizons, take the opposite tack, with performers who hold themselves at a distance to direct attention elsewhere, but with devices that can be distracting and evasive. Now she is nursing HPV and moving into a convent boardinghouse named for St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins and sexual abuse survivors.

Persons: baring, “, ”, Waterwell, Lameece Issaq, Agnes, Peiyi Wong Organizations: Connelly, “, Playwrights, Playwrights Horizons, Yorker, St Locations: New York, East, Harpy, Midtown Manhattan

I hope it’s the beginning of an era,” says FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. “The truth was most theaters had never produced a single play by a Native playwright. It may have been about some Native people, but it was not written by Native people. They would answer that they didn't know any Native playwrights or that there weren't enough Native audiences to power ticket sales. “I think one thing I’m just hoping that people take away from this play is like, ‘Wow, Native stories are really compelling.

Persons: Mary Kathryn Nagle, swindled, Nagle, “ I’m, ”, Larissa FastHorse, ” Nagle, Martin Scorsese’s, Ken Burns, “, ” Madeline Sayet, what’s, FastHorse, Peter Pan, Jerome Robbins, Moose Charlap, Carolyn Leigh, Jule Styne, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Lily fends, randy braves, —, ” ___ Mark Kennedy Organizations: Cherokee Nation, Lakota, MacArthur, University of California, Natives, The, Arizona State University, Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, Civil Rights Movement, Mohegan Tribe, Public, Young, Broadway, Indians, “ redskins Locations: “, New York City, “ Rutherford, Los Angeles, Oklahoma, The American Buffalo, New York, ‘, Africa, Japan, Eastern Europe, South Dakota

Known as a passionate and provocative theater advocate who pushed for boundary-breaking works and for classics to be adventurously modernized, Brustein founded both the Yale Repertory Theatre and the American Repertory Theatre at Harvard. He was dean of the Yale School of Drama from 1966-1979 and during that time founded the Yale Repertory Theatre. “They'll have an unresolved experience.”After a painful, highly publicized dismissal from Yale, Brustein in 1979 switched to Harvard, where he taught English and founded the American Repertory Theatre in 1980. At both Yale Rep and A.R.T., Brustein told The Boston Globe in 2012, he embraced popular theater with a nationalistic streak: “We were trying to liberate American theater from its British overseers. The light, absurd comedy, which gently mocks the lavishness of other musicals, premiered in 1994 at the American Repertory Theatre and was close to making it to Broadway.

Persons: — Robert Brustein, Brustein, Gideon Lester, Lester, Doreen Beinart, “, ”, Tony, Meryl Streep, Christopher Walken, Cherry Jones, Sigourney Weaver, James Naughton, James Lapine, Tony Shalhoub, Linda Lavin, Adam Rapp, William Ivey Long, Steve Zahn, Wendy Wasserstein, David Mamet, Peter Sellars, Lee Strasberg, Marilyn Monroe, William Shakespeare, Shakespeare, August Wilson, Isaac Bashevis Singer, ” “ Chekhov, Ice, George Polk, Barack Obama, Daniel, Norma Brustein, it’s, ___ Mark Kennedy Organizations: Fisher, Bard University, Yale Repertory Theatre, American Repertory Theatre, Harvard, New York Times, Tea Party, Suffolk University, Harvard University, The New, Fulbright, Cornell, Vassar, Yale School of Drama, Yale Rep, Broadway, Los Angeles Times, Yale, Institute, Advanced Theatre, Time, Boston Globe, “, Vineyard, Washington , D.C, Abington Theatre, Theatre, Globe, Journalism, American Academy of Arts and, Theatre Hall of Fame, Arts, White, Carr, for Human Rights, Kennedy School of Government Locations: Cambridge , Massachusetts, The New Republic, New York City, Amherst, Columbia, Brustein, American, Washington ,, New York, New, “, United States

☆ ‘What the Constitution Means to Me’ Is This Season’s Most-Staged Play
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-18 | by ( Michael Paulson | More About Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“What the Constitution Means to Me,” a challenging exploration of American legal history sparked by a student oratory competition, will be the most produced play at U.S. theaters this season, according to a survey released on Wednesday. The play, written by Heidi Schreck, will have at least 16 productions around the country, according to a count by American Theater magazine. The survey covers theaters that are members of the Theater Communications Group, the national nonprofit organization that publishes the magazine. “What the Constitution Means to Me” was staged on Broadway in 2019, with Schreck starring, and it was filmed for Amazon. (The play has a three-person cast, including a young person who debates the lead actress about the merits of the Constitution.)

Persons: Heidi Schreck, Carol ”, Shakespeare, ”, Schreck Organizations: American Theater, Theater Communications Group, Broadway, Amazon

サマリー企業 Fosse is one of the world's most performed playwrightsAuthor was among bookies' favourites to winFirst Norwegian to win literature prize since 1928STOCKHOLM, Oct 5 (Reuters) - Norwegian author and dramatist Jon Fosse won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable," the award-giving body said on Thursday. The prize is awarded by the Swedish Academy and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns (about $1 million). Fosse is the fourth Norwegian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, but the first since 1928. Alongside the peace prize, literature has often drawn the most attention, and controversy, thrusting lesser known authors into the global spotlight as well as lifting book sales for well-established literary super stars. Over the years, the literature prize has also picked winners well beyond the novelist tradition, including playwrights, historians, philosophers and poets, even breaking new ground with the award to singer-songwriter Bob Dylan in 2016.

Persons: サマリー企業, bookies, Jon Fosse, Anders Olsson, " Olsson, Fosse, Claude Régy's, andre namnet, Academy's Olsson, Alfred Nobel, Bob Dylan, Simon Johnson, Niklas Pollard, Johan Ahlander, Terje Solsvik, Angus MacSwan 私 Organizations: Swedish Academy, Norwegian Salvation Army, NRK Locations: Norwegian, STOCKHOLM, Haugesund, Norway's, Paris, Denmark, Swedish, Stockholm, Oslo

☆ The Fight Over the Dune Shacks of Cape Cod: No Power, No Water — but Eugene O’Neill Was Here
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-06 | by ( Jenna Russell | More About Jenna Russell | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Among those inspired by the solitude and natural wonder they found there were the playwrights Eugene O’Neill and Tennessee Williams, painters Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, novelists Jack Kerouac and Norman Mailer and poets E.E. “A grand place to be alone and undisturbed,” O’Neill once said of his hideaway there. “I’m ashamed that the Park Service would try to capitalize on it, without realizing the point of the shacks was to get away from civilization, from capitalism.”The Park Service set no limit on financial offers from bidders. The structures’ use must be private and residential, not commercial; modern upgrades are not allowed, and lease holders will bear the full costs of their upkeep. The agency declined to say how many bids were submitted by the July deadline, or when it will notify the winners.

Persons: Eugene O’Neill, Tennessee Williams, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Jack Kerouac, Norman Mailer, E.E . Cummings, Mary Oliver, “, O’Neill, ”, Salvatore Del Deo, John F, Kennedy Organizations: Service, Coast Guard

☆ Opinion | American Theater Is Collapsing. The Federal Government Must Save It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-19 | by ( Isaac Butler | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The American theater is on the verge of collapse. The Humana Festival of New American Plays, a vital launching pad for such great playwrights as Lynn Nottage and Will Eno over the past four decades, was canceled this year. This season the Williamstown Theater Festival, one of our most important summer festivals, will consist of only one fully produced work, alongside an anemic offering of staged readings. The Lookingglass, a major anchor of Chicago’s theater scene, is halting production for the year. Nonprofit theaters are where many recent hits — including “A Strange Loop” and “Hamilton,” both of which won Pulitzer Prizes — started out.

Persons: Lynn Nottage, Will Eno, Edward Albee, August Wilson, Tony Kushner, Annie Baker, Simon, Garfunkel’s, “, “ Hamilton, ”, — Organizations: Public, New, Williamstown Theater, Oregon Shakespeare, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Nonprofit Locations: Oregon, New York

☆ ‘The Democracy Project’ Puts America Onstage, Warts and All
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-30 | by ( Alexis Soloski | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

Tourists who pause outside Federal Hall, a Wall Street memorial maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, will find its neoclassical facade covered in scaffolding. But until July 22, the man himself can be found inside, fussing over his dentures, his sleep and his coming inauguration. “Oh, hon,” his wife, Martha, says. The project began when Marie Salerno, the chief executive officer of Federal Hall, and Lynn Goldner, a producer, were strategizing how to raise the memorial’s profile ahead of the nation’s 250th anniversary in 2026. Where Federal Hall stands (the original hall was demolished in 1812) was the site of Washington’s inauguration and the first Capitol building.

Persons: George Washington, “, Martha, ” George, Tom Nelis, Erin Anderson, Michael R, Jackson, George, Billy Lee, Nathan Hinton, Ona Judge, Alexander McGillivray, ”, Lisa D’Amour, Marie Salerno, Lynn Goldner, —, “ Hamilton Organizations: U.S . National Park Service, Democracy, Federal Hall Locations: Washington, New York

☆ Jennifer Croft Knows a Good Translation When She Reads One
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-29 | by ( ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Shackelford, and “Goodnight Moon” — the board book edition — by Margaret Wise Brown. What’s the last great book you read? I just finished reading “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, which is a masterpiece. Which translators working today do you admire most? And which writers in other realms — novelists, playwrights, critics, journalists, poets?

Persons: Christine Lai, Pablo Maurette, Georgi Gospodinov, Angela Rodel, Sara Baume’s, Paul Gauguin’s, George T.M, Shackelford, “, Margaret Wise Brown, Nana Kwame Adjei, Anton Hur, Jeremy Tiang, Frank Wynne Organizations: NoViolet Locations: NoViolet Bulawayo, “

☆ Is Originality Even a Worthy Ambition Anymore?
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( Jason Zinoman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The amount of derivative work makes you wonder if the demand for the new is in decline. Ever since Penn and Teller burst on the scene, every magician seemed to be deconstructing illusions while doing them. But this peek behind the curtain is something new, while, as its title suggests, not being original at all. We only hear Hnath, on a recording played by Cuiffo, the sole one onstage. Hnath asks Cuiffo to show him a trick, and after he does, multiple times, artistic tension between collaborators emerges.

Persons: TikTok virality, Teller, Steve Cuiffo, Lucas Hnath, Hnath, Cuiffo Organizations: Penn, Cuiffo

☆ Memoir of a ‘Very Large Life,’ With Poetry, Crusades and Glittering Names
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( Celia Mcgee | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Rose Styron used to start her daily swim of the season in May, when the waters off the long dock at her house in Vineyard Haven, on Martha’s Vineyard, still barely reach 50 degrees. “Now that I’m 95, though,” she said one day in April, “I may wait until June.”The first of Styron’s four books of poetry, “From Summer to Summer,” a collection for children, was published in 1965. Her most recent, “Fierce Day,” a coming to terms with the death of her husband, the author William Styron, in 2006, was published in 2015. As long as guests are interesting, they are summoned there still. The Styrons were the first people the singer-songwriter Carly Simon wanted to meet when she arrived on the Vineyard in 1970.

Persons: Rose Styron, ”, “, William Styron, Styron, Nobel, Sinn Fein, Katharine Graham, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Carly Simon, ” Simon Organizations: Vineyard Sound, Ulster Unionists, Hyannis Port Kennedys Locations: Vineyard Haven, Hyannis

☆ Tony Awards Viewership Increases to 4.3 Million
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-12 | by ( John Koblin | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

(The writers had already successfully disrupted the MTV Movie & TV Awards last month, which prompted the cancellation of the live ceremony; MTV and CBS share the same corporate parent, Paramount.) The Tony Awards represent a vital marketing tool for Broadway as it still makes its slow recovery out of the pandemic. Given the relatively low viewership of the Tonys, the show has always been more of a prestige play for CBS than a profit machine. relented, and the end result was an awards show that went heavy on live performances and introductory videos, and went without scripted material or pre-written bits. Thank you to attendees wearing #WGAstrong pins, and to everyone who showed solidarity with the writers during last night’s unscripted awards show.”The unscripted ceremony, which was hosted by Ariana DeBose, was mostly well received.

Persons: W.G.A, Ariana DeBose, Jesse Green Organizations: CBS, MTV, Paramount, Writers Guild of America, The Locations: York

☆ Tony Award Winners 2023: Updating List
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-11 | by ( Rachel Sherman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Follow the latest live updates and photos from the Tony Awards. The 76th Tony Awards are taking place tonight at the United Palace in Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood. The awards ceremony, which honors plays and musicals that opened on Broadway between April 29, 2022, and April 27, 2023, will be broadcast live at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and streamed on Paramount+. This year’s awards ceremony, which was nearly called off amid the Writers Guild of America strike, will be presented without a script in an agreement reached with the union. Ariana DeBose, who was nominated for a Tony in 2018, will host the ceremony for the second year in a row.

Persons: Tony, Julianne Hough, Skylar Astin, ’, Ariana DeBose, ”, ” “ Kimberly Akimbo Organizations: Broadway, CBS, Paramount, Writers Guild of America Locations: Manhattan’s Washington Heights, ” “ New York , New York

☆ ‘Kimberly Akimbo’ Wins Best Musical Tony and ‘Leopoldstadt’ Best Play
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-11 | by ( Michael Paulson | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

“Kimberly Akimbo,” a small-scale, big-hearted show about a teenage girl coping with a life-shortening genetic condition and a comically dysfunctional family, won the coveted Tony Award for best musical Sunday night. The award came at the close of an unusual Tony Awards ceremony that almost didn’t happen because of the ongoing screenwriters’ strike. Only an intervention by a group of playwrights who also work in film and television saved the show: they persuaded the Writers Guild of America that it would be a mistake to make the struggling theater industry collateral damage in a Hollywood-centered dispute, and in the end the telecast aired without pickets, without scripted banter and without a hitch. “I’m live and unscripted,” the ceremony’s returning host, Ariana DeBose said at the start of the show, after an opening number that began with her backstage, paging through a binder labeled “Script” filled with blank pages, and then dancing wordlessly through the theater and onto the stage. She then pointed out the absence of teleprompters, offered her support for the strikers’ cause, and declared, “To anyone who thought last year was a bit unhinged, to them I say, ‘Darlings, buckle up!’”

Persons: “ Kimberly Akimbo, Tony, ’, Ariana DeBose, “, ‘ Organizations: Writers Guild of America Locations: Hollywood

☆ Robert Patrick, Early and Prolific Playwright of Gay Life, Dies at 85
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Penelope Green | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Robert Patrick, a wildly prolific playwright who rendered gay (and straight) life with caustic wit, an open heart and fizzy camp, and whose 1964 play, “The Haunted Host,” became a touchstone of early gay theater, died on April 23 at his home in Los Angeles. One day in 1961, a 24-year-old Mr. Patrick followed a cute boy with long hair into the place, where the playwrights John Guare, Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and, soon, Mr. Patrick, all got their starts. The cute boy was John P. Dodd, who went on to be a well-known lighting designer and die of AIDS in 1991. No one was paid, except the cops, because Mr. Cino was not just running an unlicensed cabaret but also a gay hangout, which was illegal in the early 1960s. Its young playwrights, particularly Mr. Patrick, churned out plays, playlets and monologues akin to TikToks, as Don Shewey, the author and theater critic, said in a phone interview.

☆ Review: In ‘The Thanksgiving Play,’ Who Gets to Tell the Story?
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Jesse Green | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

In mesmerizing moments like this, FastHorse neatly sets up the tension between identity and the performance of identity — a tension she doesn’t resolve but upgrades over the course of the play to a full-scale paradox. FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota nation of South Dakota, gradually introduces the horrifying undertow of that fact with filmed segments screened briefly between the live scenes. Distressingly, these segments are based on Thanksgiving projects that real teachers have posted online. In one, adorable young children performing “The Nine Days of Thanksgiving” are made to list the many things, like “six Native teepees,” that Indians “gave” the Pilgrims. Though this is crucial to the play’s project of undoing centuries of racist mythologizing, I was left a bit queasy thinking about the young performers.

☆ 10 things about ancient Egypt that movies and TV got wrong, according to an expert
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-28 | by ( Marianne Guenot | Carter Thallon | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Movies and television shape what people think about ancient Egypt. Here are 10 things that "Moon Knight", "The Mummy", and others got wrong and one they got right. When it comes to ancient Egypt, they can draw the portrait of pharaohs ruling Egypt with an iron fist, cruel torture, and wicked booby-trapped pyramids. "All of the sarcophagi that I've seen in Egypt were made of stone," said Browder, an author of several books on ancient Egypt. The curse that set Imhotep on his murderous path in "The Mummy" has no historical basisIn "The Mummy," Imhotep was mummified alive.

☆ 'Ain't No Mo'' earns more time on Broadway but raises questions about gatekeeping
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-20 | by ( Uwa Ede-Osifo | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +5 min

Broadway play “Ain’t No Mo’” has been extended to Dec. 23 after its cast and fans mobilized online support to prevent the show from closing just two weeks after its debut at the Belasco Theatre. The traditional decision-makers around Broadway’s financing and marketing “don’t know what to do with your type of audience,” Cooper said. “Our stories are not niche.”Cooper said “Ain’t No Mo’” was not given a fair shot to establish an audience. “I’m trying to make a Broadway theater look like an HBCU homecoming,” he said. When plays such as “Ain’t No Mo’” struggle to fill seats, Shade, of Broadway Black, said the blame is cast onto Black people for not attending.

☆ 'The Whale' reaches the big screen after a decadelong journey from the stage
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-12 | by ( Rendy Jones | ) www.nbcnews.com time to read: +6 min

“‘The Whale’ was seminal for me, both in my career but also, kind of, for me personally. It was the first time that I had … really personal stuff from my own history and put it into a play,” Hunter said. The story is set in Moscow, Idaho, where Hunter grew up, and, like Charlie, Hunter said he, too, had a fraught relationship with religious fundamentalism and self-medicated his depression with food. “I’m out of the closet, I’m fine now, but that masks a lot of stuff that I just had not processed. I think it’s worth talking about.”While “The Whale” deals with heavy subject matter, Hunter said it’s still a hopeful film.

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