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samnyangie · 3 years ago

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It’s from a book called ‘conversation in the wings’ by Roy Harris; it’s a transcript of the interviews he had with actors and this is the section of rsl.

Just a warning it’s quite long.

(Source)

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1994: CONVERSATIONS IN THE WINGS

The Author's Intentions Are Good

by Roy Harris

Conversations in the Wings

1994

This interview took place on Friday, May 24, 1991, on the Mainstage at Playwrights Horizons where Jon Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire was playing. Considering that he is the youngest person who talks here about acting (he was 22 at the time of the interview), it is remarkable that Robert Sean Leonard speaks with so much ease and apparent knowledge on a subject that can be as elusive as this one. The clarity he has as he discusses how he works on a role is not unlike the focus he brings to the characters he creates on stage. At the time of this interview, Mr. Leonard had recently finished a run of Romeo and Juliet for the Riverside Shakespeare Company.

Roy Harris: So let's start at the beginning. If you get a script and you read it and say to yourself, "I've got to do this," what makes you feel that?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, that's hard to say. It depends on if you're reading for a certain character-I mean, if you're not sure who you're going to play yet. I guess I read specifically for the author's intentions of the play.

Roy Harris: Do you ever take a role-maybe it's not so wonderful-to be a part of that writer's particular world?

Robert Sean Leonard: Oh, yes. But if the play is important to you and that moving to you, then a small role becomes important because of what the author's saying. I'll be doing Our Town in London this fall and early winter. George is a very nice, I thought, young juvenile role to do. But then I read the play again, and I was astonished at the simplicity and importance of Wilder's message. Suddenly, George became much more important to me. I realized his place in that world, and it was big. If you look at the play, no one talks to each other. Except for the soda fountain scene. And there they talk. That's why they get married. Seeing this made playing him exciting. The way George has to deal with life and death is amazing.

Roy Harris: When you decided to do, for instance, the Greek pianist Alexandros in When She Danced, what made you make that decision?

Robert Sean Leonard: Joanne Woodward told me I had to do it.

Roy Harris: That's a good reason; she's very smart.

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, that play defined the undefinable qualities and questions about what I do as an actor. And I'd never seen that in a play before. So, I guess it was both things: the play itself and what a wonderful character.

Roy Harris: When you were working on Alexandros, what did you find the most challenging thing about it?

Robert Sean Leonard: Oh, come on, Roy, you remember?

Roy Harris: Well, I have to ask you now as if I weren't there. I'm an impersonal interviewer now.

Robert Sean Leonard: His incredible self-confidence. The guy walks into a room and you look at him. I've never been able to do that. I've seen other people who have that. And, it's not a quality you can play. It's not like an accent. It's a within quality. And you're in awe of it when you see it.

Roy Harris: Well, you have a quality as an actor of self-effacement. Do you think you had to get past that, go beyond it in some way?

Robert Sean Leonard: Oh, yes, but what a time I had working on it. It was a breakthrough for me. Sitting at that piano, standing up and saying, essentially, "I am a prodigy." I would say it in the mirror at home and I couldn't do it. It goes against everything you try to be as a human, as an actor. To never assume you know because then you'll stop growing. That was completely foreign to me.

Roy Harris: Did you feel you were the right choice for the role?

Robert Sean Leonard: Oh, yes.

Roy Harris: Me, too. It has to do with the other quality we talked about: something reserved and thoughtful. If you don't have that, then the sureness of Alexandros will be obnoxious.

Robert Sean Leonard: What was fascinating for me: to have an amazing bravura, and at the same time, as Quixote says, to have the humility to "love pure and chaste from afar." To love purely requires a lot of humility. It goes against the bravura. With Alexandros, I had the humility, but as you know, it took weeks and weeks to get the right assertiveness.

Roy Harris: It was fascinating watching it happen. All right, let's back up a minute. You got that role a couple of weeks, at least, before we started rehearsal. What sort of work did you do, if any, before the first day of rehearsal?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, the bravura element didn't even occur to me until I started saying the words out loud in rehearsal with the likes of Marcia Jean Kurtz, Elizabeth Ashley and Jonathan Walker all sitting there watching me. Actually, the thing I dove right into was the Greek accent. That sort of gives you a center. It's a tangible task. And you have to accomplish it in a certain amount of time. The accent gives you a guideline. You go to the dialect coach and you sit down and start. "No," he says, "the A is pronounced this way. It's always pronounced this way." It was so refreshing to have a guideline as your beginning point. Otherwise, where do you start?

Roy Harris: Did the actual pronunciation of particular words tell you anything about who the person was?

Robert Sean Leonard: I would say the rhythm of it more than the pronunciation of it. The clipped musical rhythm gave me a sense of his spontaneous movement, his vital energy. There's a snappiness to Alexandros, which I really don't have as a person. Something happens to you when you get to have that snappy, clipped musical speech coming out of your mouth. You change inside.

Roy Harris: Let's say it's Thursday night and tomorrow you're going to work on the scene where you introduce yourself to the translator, Belzer. What sort of ordinary, basic work do you do on the scene?

Robert Sean Leonard: You know, the first time this ever came up was when I was doing Beachhouse with George Grizzard. I was sixteen. I was up there one day doing it, you know, just doing it, and Melvin Bernhard the director said, "What are you doing here? What is this about?" And I had no clue. I was just asking my dad where the letter was. Well, he said, "Do you have any assumptions about it? Who's it from? Is it from your mother? If so, what would that mean to you?" When I went home that night, I wanted to quit the business. I cried. And to this day, it's always an obsession of mine-not getting general and relying on some phony charm. What I want to do is get specific and ask myself the necessary questions: what is his intention here? what's he after? why? So, to answer your question, I read the scene, trying to pick out where they're starting, where they're heading, and how they got there. If something changes, where does it change? However, I usually find out more in rehearsal than at home.

Roy Harris: Sometimes, do you find after a rehearsal or a series of rehearsals on a particular scene that there's more there?

Robert Sean Leonard: Oh, sure. The more you work, the more you find. You can be hitting your head against a wall, as I was with Alexandros, and the director can say, "It's because you're not as confident as he is." Like any trouble you have, once you define it, it's so much easier to deal with. Then you know what you're after.

Roy Harris: Do you try to look and see an intention in every line, or a basic intention in a scene?

Robert Sean Leonard: I'm sure that you should, but I've found that there's a level of subconscious work that goes on. I find that it's much better for me to find out what's there with the person in rehearsal. It doesn't mean I don't I really think about it before though.

Roy Harris: Would you say-I'm asking a loaded question now-that you are more an instinctive actor or one more given to plan?

Robert Sean Leonard: I think I'm more instinctive than planned, but both, I guess.

Roy Harris: From having watched you in two different rehearsal situations, I'd say you seem to have done a lot of work when you came in.

Robert Sean Leonard: I would say that's basically true. But there are all sorts of ways of being prepared. For instance, take Romeo. My God, I spent hours just finding out what all those words mean. And then, with Shakespeare, it's so maddening because one thought can mean many different things. You don't have to choose one. Another form of preparation is just knowing your character so well-the background you've come to through what the playwright made up-that when something comes up, you instinctively know what's wrong or right.

Roy Harris: When you re working on a role, do you ever get a picture of what the character should look like?

Robert Sean Leonard: Yeah, and it's never me!

Roy Harris: Well, it shouldn't be you. You're playing somebody else.

Robert Sean Leonard: But I never get that out of my head. I can think back on every role I've done and picture who should have played it instead of me-what type of person; what he looked like.

Roy Harris: Does it help you to do that?

Robert Sean Leonard: Sometimes. Slowly the picture in your mind becomes you. I can look back now and say, yes, I'm Eugene Jerome. Yes, I'm Romeo. But it took a while for me to get there, to get me in the picture. It was always someone else.

Roy Harris: When you're working on a role, do you ever get a sense of how that character should dress?

Robert Sean Leonard: Actually, not much. I know there are actors who do. I guess it doesn't matter so much. I just had a problem with that on The Speed of Darkness, however. The designer was very intent on including the actors in her plans. I drove her crazy. "I don't know. Why are you asking me? Whatever you put on me, I can justify." She didn't like that. But I guess it would depend on the role. The only battle I lost was she put a letter jacket on me, a varsity letter jacket. It was the only thing I didn't like. Any time I see a varsity jacket on stage, I think, 'Oh, here comes a young actor.' I want to be a person. It's too much a sign to me. But I ended up wearing it. She liked it too much.

Roy Harris: When you're in rehearsal, what are you looking for from other actors?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, hopefully we'll all be pretty solid in our agreement about what is going on in this play and what our part in it is. Of course, there are technical things: like you don't upstage someone when they're talking. An important thing is knowing when the scene is moving, and knowing when it's time to take a moment for yourself. And that's hard. A lot of actors get up there, and understandably, the play is about them. If you're playing a milkman, the play is about a milkman. But when that becomes your only reality, you lose sight of the intentions of the play. You know, it's so obvious to me when an actor feels he is the most important thing in the play. It's so portentous. Every line means something. It's so boring. Maybe that's why I'm a little afraid of finding intentions in every line. Then it all gets too much meaning.

Roy Harris: Have you ever worked with an actor-you don't have to give a name-whom you had a problem with?

Robert Sean Leonard: Sure. I worked with an actress in a film who had no clue, didn't know the first thing about acting. The camera would go to you, and she'd be off camera reading her next film. She would say her lines not looking at you. That drove me crazy. On stage, I must say I've never worked with anyone where there was a problem. I've worked with people who really snapped with me and then people who were just all right to work with.

Roy Harris: Who is an actor you've really liked working with?

Robert Sean Leonard: Cynthia Nixon - when you work with her, she's so in tune with what's going on. When a scene is playing, it just lifts and rises. She's like a dancer. I love all her work. Something happens when that actress walks on stage. It elevates into another world.

Roy Harris: What are you looking for from the director?

Robert Sean Leonard: An unshakable vision. You know when they have it, because you'll ask questions and immediately there's an answer that makes sense, and it makes sense in relation to everything that's happened so far.

Roy Harris: What if it's a vision you don't agree with?

Robert Sean Leonard: That doesn't matter. I want a vision that's like a force running through everything.

Roy Harris: What happens when there's not a vision?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, my sister told me once, when she was in third grade, her whole class went into the city. When they came up from the subway, the teacher-for a moment-didn't know where she was. My sister saw that look, and suddenly was terrified. She lost all faith. And that's horrible when it happens with a director, and it can happen in an instant. If they have an unshakable vision, it won't happen.

Roy Harris: Have you ever had a director tell you something and you felt that you just couldn't do it?

Robert Sean Leonard: Couldn't from myself?

Roy Harris: Yes.

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, no, because the minute someone asks something of me, my first reaction is, "God dammit, I can do this. I can do whatever they want." You know, to me the author's intentions are God, and the director the channel for those intentions. The very idea of not being able to do something a director asks, or being averse to it, is upsetting to me.

Roy Harris: Have you ever been in a situation where some or all of the actors didn't trust a director? How do you deal with that?

Robert Sean Leonard: Good question. Well, if a director can't give you an answer for why he wants you to do something a certain way, then you shouldn't trust him. If I initially don't trust a director, I try to find out why I don't. Maybe it's me. But if he can't give you an answer, you can't get bitter. You have to rely solely on yourself, or on yourself and who you're playing with. You do the best you can and hope for a short run.

Roy Harris: What director would you most like to work with?

Robert Sean Leonard: Mark Lamos.

Roy Harris: Why?

Robert Sean Leonard: In everything of his I've seen I always witness such clarity and devotion to the author's intent, even if it's complex, as in Hamlet or The Master Builder.

Roy Harris: For someone your age, you've had a chance to play some very good roles. What's been the most challenging role so far?

Robert Sean Leonard: Romeo. I think I misunderstood him the whole time I was playing it.

Roy Harris: Oh, Bobby, everybody who plays him feels that, don't they?

Robert Sean Leonard: Probably. When I took the role, I thought, I'm going to make him honorable, which I think he is. Most people feel he's a sap. My mistake was making him that way from the beginning.

Roy Harris: What do you mean?

Robert Sean Leonard: A friend of mine said late in the run that that first scene is not about a man who knows love. It's about a kid who thinks he knows what love is. Then he meets Juliet. He said, you should make us puke in the aisles when you tell Benvolio what you think love is. And he's right. From the moment I walked on stage, boy, did I play passion. All through the Rosaline stuff with Benvolio, it was passion. Consequently, when I met Juliet, I just didn't have anywhere to go. It was like starting with a nine and getting to a ten.

Roy Harris: But you seemed to have a good time working on it.

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, I learned from it. You need to see his feeling about Rosaline in order to really appreciate the great feeling he comes to have about Juliet. I didn't look at it intelligently enough. I didn't realize the simplicity of: he doesn't know what he's doing and then he does know what he's doing. It's also our job as Romeo to convince the audience that once he's in love with Juliet-and some people would scream at this-it's worth dying for. With all the mistakes I made, it was a great experience.

Roy Harris: Ten years from now you can do it again and think what that will be like.

Robert Sean Leonard: I'll have a whole new series of questions about it. That's why acting is so phenomenal. You can't ever be good enough.

Roy Harris: Does there come a point for you in rehearsals, or probably in performance somewhere, where you think you got it?

Robert Sean Leonard: No. There are points where I feel I've gotten something. I've never given a perfect performance. I wonder who has?

Roy Harris: Well, if they think they have...

Robert Sean Leonard: I don't want to talk to them.

Roy Harris: Me either. Have you ever been praised by a friend for a performance that you thought was bad, or certainly not adequate?

Robert Sean Leonard: Sure.

Roy Harris: How do you deal with that? How does it affect you?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, you're praised very often for things that you don't deserve to be praised for. But you learn pretty quickly who does that and who doesn't. So I guess you learn who to listen to. How do you deal with it? I get very indignant. I go home and I say, 'Well, they're wrong.' When I was filming Dead Poets Society, I noticed that Peter Weir (the director)-as soon as he'd say, "Cut"-would look to John Seal (the cinematographer) first. As soon as the play is done, I consider myself a cinematographer; I check with myself. Then I check with the director. A friend may be right in saying something I did was false, but I have to go by what the director is asking for. So, it's complicated when friends say things. Very complicated. It's very sacred between you and the director, and frankly, people need to honor that.

Roy Harris: What's the biggest difference between acting on stage and acting for the camera?

Robert Sean Leonard: In some ways, they're very different and then in some ways they're not so different at all. It's a little like recording music and then playing it live. In one sense, you're part of the whole, but fragmentally. In film, you're offering pieces, and the director makes it whole.

Roy Harris: Do you prefer one over the other?

Robert Sean Leonard: No. I don't know. I think I prefer theatre. Is that three answers?

Roy Harris: You can change your answer later. I'm trying to find out what your feeling is at this moment. In film, you go in on the first day of shooting and you may shoot pages 68-72. In terms of preparation, how do you shoot something that's in the middle of that character's (for want of a better word) journey? What do you do with all that comes before?

Robert Sean Leonard: Homework becomes much more important in film, ironically, because in film, usually your work has much less to do immediately with other actors. It's much more a solitary art. Because you start with page 68, you have to know exactly where that character is and has been before page 68. Hopefully, the director will know, too. And you will discuss it together, as Peter Weir did with me through the shooting of Dead Poets.

Roy Harris: Where do you think the director is more important, or is he: in film or stage?

Robert Sean Leonard: They're more important for different reasons in both areas.

Roy Harris: Have you ever been asked to do something by a film director that you didn't want to do, or thought you shouldn't do?

Robert Sean Leonard: Yeah. Usually it has to do with poor writing. Sometimes the director will want something because of what's in the script, and you have to do it, even if you're not sure it's right.

Roy Harris: Let's say you did a role on stage for six weeks, night after night, and then you go and make a movie of it. A scene you've done many times, you're now going to do and the camera is going to be this close to you. Does it do anything to your way of thinking about it, to know the viewer is now so close?

Robert Sean Leonard: The relationship with the director becomes much more intimate. It would be like having the director on stage with you at all times, saying, "How about this? how about this? or how about this?" They are creating with you at the moment, and they know, and hopefully you do too, the journey of this character. It would be wonderful to do it on stage first because your homework would be done for you. An obvious thing is that when the camera's so close you do bring it down, even though you try to keep it as truthful as you would anywhere. In film, you do a lot more with your eyes, where on stage you use your hands and body language.

Roy Harris: So far, what is your favorite film role?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, I'd have to say Dead Poets Society is for me in film what Brighton Beach Memoirs was for me on stage. It was kind of my baptism because I suddenly found myself on the set with a powerhouse of a director. It also has to do with the time. I was nineteen. Peter took me in as the leader of this gang. He had me read poetry. Also, I had to play Puck, and he wouldn't tell me which scene we were going to do, so I learned all of Puck. Without a doubt, it was the most glorious film experience. It was college for me. All of the guys, we lived together. We had a whole floor of a hotel, and we became this group of young men. We did everything together. We created together. Ethan Hawke and I used to practice scenes listening to Beethoven's Ninth.

Roy Harris: What is your favorite scene there?

Robert Sean Leonard: Well, for personal reasons, the scene with Ethan on the roof where we throw the desk set off. We came up with that scene. Originally, it was a scene which ended very sadly, with Ethan saying his parents didn't love him. Peter pulled us aside and said, "Okay, we know all this. Let's just have a scene about friendship." And the three of us came up with the scene where we destroy the desk set. That was a real accomplishment for me because improvisation has always scared the hell out of me. I don't like it that much as a working technique. When the director is as strong as Peter is, then improv is wonderful.

Roy Harris: We've talked a little about this, since you and I are such fans of hers, but what was it like to play Joanne Woodward's son in Mr. and Mrs. Bridge?

Robert Sean Leonard: It's funny. They're an amazing team, she and Paul. He's reserved. Though I don't know a thing about him, I like him a great deal. Joanne is-well, you know, there's a love you have for certain celebrities. I think she knew I had this huge feeling, and she takes that feeling and makes you feel comfortable. It's okay to have it. Know what I mean?

Roy Harris: Absolutely.

Robert Sean Leonard: She embraces this feeling you have about her, and it frees you. Therefore, working with her was a dream. She's completely honest in her work.

Roy Harris: What was a favorite scene of yours in that film?

Robert Sean Leonard: I don't know. I was so racked with his age throughout the filming-you know, when he was fifteen, when he was seventeen, when he was nineteen. But I guess it would be the boy scout scene. I was so worried that no one would buy that I was fifteen years old. I was twenty at the time, so they gave me braces to help me get a sense of youth. It helped. Really, though, it was memorable because Joanne was so wonderful in it. She did everything for us. She made us all look good. I remember during filming looking over at Paul when I don't kiss her and begin to sing. And he wasn't Paul, he was Mr. Bridge, my father, and looked at me with such hatred, and it was startlingly clear that he loved his wife more than me. For him, his son wasn't going through something; no, some guy just hurt his wife. The most joyous scenes were coming home from the air corps through the final scene where I take her hand. For me, Douglas is the only one in that house who grows up with a true sense of other things in the world. After all, he's the one who writes the books.

Roy Harris: Well, you do feel he's the least selfish of those children.

Robert Sean Leonard: Yes, well, I think that's evident even when he's behaving like a brat with her. I wanted people to feel: yes, he's doing it, but it's killing him to do it. I remember feeling, 'If this guy can write about these people so brilliantly and so warmly, there's got to be something there, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to get that feeling into the film.' In his air corps training, Douglas met so many different kinds of people that he was able to look at his parents objectively and with love. To me, it's the only moment in the film where anyone reaches out to Mrs. Bridge as a human being, not the mother. Actually, Paul would probably disagree with this. But I guess we each see it from our own point of view in the film.

Roy Harris: One more quick thing before we close. If you could work with any actor, actress, director, and pick your own role; in other words, what's your ideal situation?

Robert Sean Leonard: I think doing The Seagull with Joanne would be an amazing experience. Doing anything with Ian Holm. I've always had a dream of playing Horatio to someone else's Hamlet. Horatio to Gary Oldman's Hamlet would be very good.

#robert sean leonard #rsl #interview #theatre #dead poets society #films #I didn’t realised how many times he mentioned about flying desk scene #I just love how he is in this #so natural and honest

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insanityclause · 4 years ago

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The last Broadway season ended, unexpectedly, nearly a year ago. The next one will begin who-knows-when.

But deep in this winter of our theaterlessness, a dormant tradition is starting to stir: the Tony Awards.

Hundreds of voters, this week and next, are casting ballots for the best shows, and the best performances, of a theater season abruptly cut short by the coronavirus pandemic.

The jukebox shows “Jagged Little Pill,” “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical’ are competing for best musical, and hope to resume performances whenever Broadway reopens. All five of the best play contenders have closed. They are “Grand Horizons,” by Bess Wohl; “The Inheritance,” by Matthew López; “Sea Wall/A Life,” by Simon Stephens and Nick Payne; “Slave Play,” by Jeremy O. Harris; and “The Sound Inside,” by Adam Rapp.

In this strangest-of-all Tony competitions, the voting is disconnected from both the period being assessed, which ran from April 26, 2019, to Feb. 19, 2020, and the ceremony for handing out awards, which has not yet been scheduled.

In other words, we won’t know the results until �� well, for a long time.

But here’s what we do know:

Who’s going to vote?

Not a lot of people.

There are 778 Tony voters, but they can only cast ballots in categories in which they’ve seen all the nominees. Because the pandemic prevented any spring theatergoing, there are fewer qualified voters than usual.

There are 25 prize categories; the Tonys won’t say how many people will actually be able to vote in each category, but producers believe slightly fewer than 400 people will qualify to cast ballots for best musical, and fewer than that for best play.

What’s missing?

Parties.

The usual Tonys season is all-encompassing. Shows that opened in the fall (and that would have included all three of last season’s nominated musicals) invite voters back to see them again. Monday nights are jammed with nonprofit galas at which nominees mingle with voters, and those who can sing, do. There are press junkets and mixers; display ads in The New York Times and caricatures at Sardi’s; plus, of course, a raft of spring openings to catch up with.

So much hugging. So much schmoozing. So many four-hour dinners. Everyone complains. And now they long for it.

“I can’t believe I miss buffets,” said Eva Price, a lead producer of “Jagged Little Pill.” “So much that we took for granted, and sometimes grimaced at, we would give our left arms for right now.”

Is it appropriate to campaign?

Yes, but very gingerly.

We’re still in the middle of a devastating pandemic and a huge number of people who work in theater are currently unemployed. Also: money is tight because there are no ticket sales.

“The 2020 shows can’t run a campaign in the usual way, and even if we could it would feel icky to try,” said Carmen Pavlovic, the lead producer of “Moulin Rouge!”

“This is not a moment for cocktail parties and gossip,” she added. “It’s just a moment for lifting up artists from darkness, and hoping that lifts everybody else along the way.”

So swag is minimal. “Moulin Rouge!” and “Jagged Little Pill” sent voters coffee table books about their shows, but that’s about it. The main form of campaigning this year is in the form of “For Your Consideration” emails.

The nominated show that is furthest in the rearview mirror — a revival of “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune,” which closed in July 2019 — sent voters a video montage of interviews including its playwright, Terrence McNally, who died eight months later from complications of the coronavirus.

Nominees are sitting for profiles with theater trade publications. And last week, “Tina,” “Jagged Little Pill,” “The Inheritance,” “Slave Play” and “Betrayal” bought daily sponsorships of Broadway Briefing, an emailed industry newsletter whose subscribers include many Tony voters.

And there are other, newfangled ways to refresh voters’ memories. “Betrayal” on Sunday held a cast reunion on Instagram Live; “The Sound Inside” sent voters videotaped selections from the production; “Jagged Little Pill” released a video reflecting on the year and is re-airing a concert version of its show. “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Inheritance” built voter web pages with performance clips, interviews, scripts and more.

The message needs to be focused, producers say. “We have to be very mindful and respectful of what people’s experiences are right now,” said Tali Pelman, the lead producer of “Tina.” At the same time, she said, “Honoring our talent and their contribution is important. More than ever, we have to shout out about their exceptional value in society.”

What happens when the votes are tallied?

An accounting firm sits on the results.

The voting period runs through March 15, with votes cast electronically via a password-protected website, and tabulated by Deloitte & Touche LLP. Even in pre-pandemic years, results are not shared with the leaders of the organizations that present the awards — the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing — or anyone else before they are announced.

This year they will just be kept secret for longer than usual.

Can you lose if you’re the only nominee?

Theoretically, yes.

Aaron Tveit of “Moulin Rouge!” is the only person nominated as best actor in a musical. This is an unusual circumstance, for which the Tonys have imposed an unusual rule: to win, Tveit must get a positive vote from 60 percent of those who cast ballots. But, to be clear, he’s likely to pick up his first statuette this year.

There are a couple of other nomination quirks, too. There will be no prize for best musical revival, because the only one that managed to open, “West Side Story,” did so after the retroactively imposed eligibility date. And the contenders for best score were all from plays.

So when will we know the winners?

Stay tuned.

It seems clear that the ceremony will only take place after live performance is allowed to resume in New York and tickets to Broadway shows have gone on sale.

That’s because the industry’s priority will be to use the ceremony to remind potential audiences that Broadway is back. The goal, said Heather A. Hitchens, the Wing’s president and chief executive, “is to be most helpful to the industry.”

Several producers and publicists say they are now thinking the most likely time frame is after Labor Day, a full year and a half after Broadway shut down.

The organizers have shared a few other details. This year’s ceremony, like those before the pandemic, will be overseen by Glenn Weiss and Ricky Kirshner. There will be some noncompetitive awards (those are honors like lifetime achievement). But there has been no announcement about whether the ceremony will be in-person or virtual, televised or streamed, live or taped; only that it will take place “in coordination with the reopening of Broadway.”

“We hope to have news very soon,” said the League’s president, Charlotte St. Martin.

#Tony awards #2021 #voting

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fuckyeahgreatplays · 5 years ago

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Playwrights Horizons has also been a place where New York theatergoers can get an above-average dose of plays on spiritual, even religious themes. It was there that I went for my first review for this magazine—10 years ago—of Evan Smith’s “The Savannah Disputation,” in which a young evangelical Christian argues with her Catholic neighbors, and eventually their priest, that they are not true Christians at all. It is where Lucas Hnath’s Socratic-debate-as-church-service “The Christians” pondered the theology of hell and the authority of scripture; where Heidi Schreck’s “Grand Concourse” put a Bronx nun in the crosshairs of a crisis of faith; and where more recently the musical “A Strange Loop” climaxed with a disturbing gospel-style refrain in the vein of a black-church altar call, “AIDS Is God’s Punishment."... Though he is not a religious person himself, [current artistic director Tim] Sanford explained in a recent interview, his father was a Methodist minister who originally felt called to ministry after being a “staunch pacifist” during World War II. Much of his father’s pastoral career was in the cause of ecumenicism, Mr. Sanford said, and in what he called “a very strong wrestling match with the right wing of the Christian party.” In his experience, the contemporary theater is full of folks like him: adrift from organized religion but still seeking meaning and community.

How Playwrights Horizons is shining a spotlight on God off Broadway

#theater #god #church #playwrights horizons #off broadway #Religion

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barinacraft · 6 years ago

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The Affinity Cocktail - Scotch Whisky And Vermouth Find True Love

The Affinity Cocktail Pairs Scotch Affection For Vermouth

The Affinity Cocktail is one of only a few truly classic drinks mixed with Scotch whisky which shows the difficulty of pairing it in the perfect marriage. At least in spirit.

Modern versions of the Affinity Cocktail have sort of settled on a sip similar to a perfect Scotch Manhattan with orange or aromatic bitters, although the original drink recipe was hardly perfect (equal parts French and Italian vermouth). Back then it was closer to a sweetened Scottish Rory O'More or a Robert Burns with sugar instead of absinthe.

Either way, like most Scotch whisky cocktails, the character of this drink is greatly effected by how manly the mixture is. Blended may be best to begin with.

History Of The Affinity Cocktail

First Appeared In Print

The New York Sun initially reported on Monday, October 28, 1907 that,*

There's another new cocktail on Broadway. They call it the Affinity. After drinking one, surviving experimenters declare, the horizon takes on a roseate hue; the second brings Wall Street to the front and center proffering to you a quantity of glistening lamb shearings; when you’ve put away the third the green grass grows up all around, birds sing in the fig trees and your affinity appears.

The new ambrosia contains these ingredients...

Original Affinity Cocktail Recipe:

1 jigger (1 ½ oz) Scotch whisky

½ jigger (¾ oz) Italian vermouth

1 (medium) tsp powdered sugar

1 dash orange bitters

Shake in cracked ice, cocktail fashion, until thoroughly blended and cooled, then strain and quickly serve. ( Note: would recommend using superfine sugar though instead of powdered to avoid the corn starch and other anticaking agents which adds cloudiness and can affect the flavor. )

During this time period, many cocktails were created to commemorate the opening of a Broadway play and the reference to Wall Street is in relation to the financial crisis known as the 1907 Banker's Panic which was triggered by a failed attempt to corner the market on United Copper Company stock in October 1907.

Which Broadway play inspired the name for the Affinity cocktail though?

Keep reading below.

Syndication

Syndicated newspaper columns including The Washington Post and others ran the story the following day. The Hartford Courant embellished the details with their own verse which also provided some more clues to the source, writing,†

Well, then the pianola sounds as good as the symphony orchestra. The second one convinces you that trust companies and savings banks are solvent and you want to put your money back. If you take three it seems like Summer, otherwise you’ll buy your wife, or the affinity, a new fur coat. Then it’s time to stop.

“It moved the poet to the following:

In its glistening depth is the light of her eyes,

In its taste is her honey kiss.

There’s a victor’s crown for the man who tries

To build me another like this.

If you put another bright red cherry in the last one you will feel like a Belmont as you ride home in the subway.

Divorcons or Let's Get A Divorce

James Slevin announces on November 8, 1907 a sketch he adopted for vaudeville based on the 1885 book Divorcons! by Emile de Najac and Victorien Sardou may be named Affinity.‡ This does not appear to have happened, although the original title was turned into a play1 which opened at the Playhouse Theatre April 1, 1913 running through May 19, 1913 and was later released as a 40 minute short silent black and white film2 as a comedy drama on December 15, 1915.

His Affinity Is A Miss

His Affinity is released as a black and white short silent film on November 9, 1907.3 This comedy details the adventures of a mild mannered husband, who after deciding to leave his overbearing wife, finds romance with a single girl he meets in the park. Drama ensues.

Good Golly Miss Molly, McGinnity

Good Golly is right when it comes to all the affinity references in popular culture in 1907 and shortly afterwards. Not to be confused with the rock and roll song by Little Richard in 1958, “Molly McGinnity, You're My Affinity” by composer John W. Bratton was released November 23, 1907. However, this humorous Irish folk song, lyrics below, was not featured on Broadway.4

The Billowy Ecstasy Of Neptunian Soul Kisses

The year 1907's affinity for affinity has come to a close and the source for the “newest drink on Broadway” as proclaimed by The New York Sun at the end of October does not seem to exist. Unless an advanced preview of an upcoming show served as inspiration for the Affinity Cocktail.

Enter The Soul Kiss, a Broadway musical created by Florenz Ziegfeld all about the subject, which included the song My Affinity, sung by the sculptor in the show sixth on the song list during Act I. It opened January 28, 1908 at the New York Theater and ran for 122 performances until May 23, 1908.5

The play had a behind the scenes production cast that included many of the same players responsible for The Ziegfeld Follies. Familiar names included producers A.L. Erlanger and Marcus Klaw, music by Maurice Levi (and others) and script / lyrics written by Harry B. Smith, who also wrote the Rob Roy operetta which has a drink named after it.

The soul kiss, a tongue in cheek [sic] expression for a French kiss elevated to exaggerated proportions, was supposedly invented by a romance instructor who was quoted in a newspaper interview as saying, “When I exchange soul kisses with my affinity in the planet Neptune, I close the doors, throw myself on a couch, my soul goes out from my body to meet him and I experience a billowy ecstasy.” By the way, at the time, personal lessons could be purchased for $300.

Her description inspired Smith6 to develop the plot for the play which had J. Lucifer Mephisto (Ralph C. Herz) betting one million dollars that sculptor Ketcham Short (Cecil Lean) would not remain faithful to his fiance, model Suzette (Florence Holbrook), under the temptation of a soul kiss from dancer (Adeline Genee). As a follow up, The Ziegfeld Follies of 1908, which debuted on June 15th of that year, contained a comedy spoof mocking the November elections called The Political Soul Kiss where Miss Columbia (female Uncle Sam) tries to find her affinity among the presidential candidates including William Jennings Bryan, Charles Evans Hughes, William Howard Taft and then 2nd term incumbent president Theodore Roosevelt who was not seeking a third.

The Affinity (Play)

Its probably folly to keep searching for the stimulus behind this sip's sobriquet since The Soul Kiss seems to seal the deal, but there actually was a Broadway play named The Affinity.7 However, in 1907 it was still known as Les Hannetons.

Les Hannetons, which translates to cockchafers (the beetles known as June Bugs), by French playwright Eugene Brieux, was a three act bitter comedy first produced at the Theatre de la Renaissance in Paris, France on February 3, 1906. The controversial play dealt with matrimony and mistresses, treating marriage as a battleground, and gained some infamous notoriety after being banned by censors in both France and England. British stage actor Laurence Irving, who translated Les Hannetons8 into English, performed the play with his wife Mabel Hackney in the United States, first renamed as The Incubus in 1909 and then later renamed again in January 1910 as The Affinity. There were no bureaucratic black outs on Broadway, but the crowds were not amused and the play lasted for only 24 performances at the Comedy Theater on west 41st street.

Behind Your Bar - How To Make An Affinity Cocktail At Home

First Published In A Cocktail Book

Minus the powdered sugar, the Express Cocktail with equal parts Scotch whisky and Italian vermouth plus a dash of orange bitters via Straub's Manual of Mixed Drinks (1913) appears to be the earliest recipe printed in a cocktail book which comes closest to the original 1907 Affinity Cocktail. However, the first one named the Affinity Cocktail published in a bartending book is the one in The Reminder by Jacob A Didier (1909) and it is a different formulation.9

Its this ‘perfect’ combination of Scotch whisky with French and Italian vermouths along with aromatic or orange bitters that has become the modern classic so to speak.10

Affinity Cocktail Drink Recipe (modern classic):

1 oz Scotch whisky (blended)

1 oz French (dry) vermouth

1 oz Italian (sweet) vermouth

2 dashes aromatic or orange bitters

Measure all the ingredients into a mixing glass with ice and stir well. Strain and serve with a twist of lemon peel (or orange rind to match the bitters if chosen). Adjust the manliness to suit.

David Embury, the author of The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks (1948) ratchets up the proportions to a 4:1:1 ratio. When it comes to Scotch though, that's probably too manly for most.

Similar Mixed Drinks

Automobile Cocktail - gin, scotch, sweet vermouth and orange bitters.

Beadlestone Cocktail - equal parts Scotch and dry vermouth.

Borden Chase - an original Affinity Cocktail with pastis instead of powdered sugar.

Emerald Cocktail - half-n-half Irish whiskey and Italian vermouth with a dash of orange bitters.

Highland Cocktail - equal parts Scotch and sweet vermouth.

Thistle Cocktail - Scotch whisky, Italian vermouth and Angostura bitters.

Trilby Variation - a Borden Chase with parfait amour.

York Cocktail - Scotch whisky, French vermouth and orange bitters.

References

* - "Live Topics About Town." New York Sun 28 Oct. 1907: 4. Print.

† - Hartford Courant 29 Oct. 1907: 14. Print.

‡ - "An 'Affinity' Sketch." Variety Magazine Nov. 1907: 6. Print.

1 - Divorcons (the play).

2 - Divorcons (the movie).

3 - His Affinity (the movie).

4 - Molly McGinnity, You're My Affinity song lyrics:

I've been a single man all my life.

I've never wanted to own a wife.

No Wedding Bells was the song for me.

Money my own, and my evenings free.

Now all that's over, those days are through;

You've done the trick with your eyes of blue.

Molly McGinnity don't you see?

You're the affinity meant for me.

Molly McGinnity, You're my affinity, Say that you love me, do.

In this vicinity, No femininity, Is half so sweet as you.

Molly McGinnity, Down at old Trinity, If you will not decline.

There's a doctor of divinity, The Reverend Finnerty, A waiting to make you mine.

“Hold on a minute,” says Molly dear,

“What's this affinity word I hear?

Is it some kind of a breakfast food?

May be its meaning is not so good.”

“Whisper,” says I, “‘tis a brand new word,

‘Tis from the French, and it means a bird.”

“Oh, if that's so” says my Molly dear,

“Say it again, for I like to hear.”

Molly McGinnity, You're my affinity, Say that you love me, do.

In this vicinity, No femininity, Is half so sweet as you.

Molly McGinnity, Down at old Trinity, If you will not decline.

There's a doctor of divinity, The Reverend Finnerty, A waiting to make you mine.

5 - The Soul Kiss (Broadway musical extravaganza).

6 - Harry Bache Smith, First Nights and First Editions - An Autobiography (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1931). Print.

7 - The Affinity (the play).

8 - Michael Holroyd, A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Their Remarkable Families (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). Print.

9 - That's not really true, but since the first "Affinity cocktail" published in a bartending book was actually a completely separate recipe altogether, we decided to remove it from the main article content. This drink, which later became known to some as the Violet Affinity cocktail was originally listed with instructions to frappe 2/5 French vermouth with 2/5 Italian vermouth and 1/5 crème de violette; serving in a chilled stemmed glasses via William T. (Cocktail) Boothby, The World's Drinks And How To Mix Them (San Francisco: Pacific Buffet, 1908), 143. Print.

10 - Other Affinity cocktail variations have appeared along the way including one with equal measures of whiskey, French and Italian vermouths along with 3 drops of Peychaud bitters and a twist of orange peel on top via Ernest P. Rawling, Rawling's Book of Mixed Drinks - An Up to Date Guide for Mixing and Serving All Kinds of Beverages and Written Expressly for the Man Who Entertains at Home (San Francisco: Guild Press, 1914), 14. Print.

#Cocktails #drinks #scotch #vermouth #bitters #classic #broadway

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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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Best Returning British TV Series 2021: the Most Anticipated Series Coming Back This Year

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There’s no getting around it; you’re going to see more of your TV than your friends and loved ones over the next few months. That being so, it’s lucky that there continues to be still so bloody much of the stuff, despite Covid-19’s best efforts to shut it all down. They might have been delayed, they might have been curtailed, but they weren’t stopped. Returning British TV shows are on their way. The horizon is filled with them, gambolling like lambs over the fields and into your living room.

There’s comedy and drama and crime thrillers arriving by the lorryload, and sci-fi and fantasy coming by the… much smaller lorryload. (More of a small van for returning British sci-fi and fantasy this year, but check out the new titles coming soon.)

We’ll keep this list updated as soon as more details are announced and release dates are confirmed.

A Discovery of Witches Season 2 (January 8th)

Based on Deborah Harkness’ All Souls trilogy about the forbidden love between a powerful witch and a centuries-old vampire, A Discovery Of Witches debuted on Sky in autumn 2018 (read our reviews here) and was renewed for series two and three almost straight away. The second run sees leads Teresa Palmer and Matthew Goode (pictured) time-walking in Elizabethan England where they meet some famous faces of yore.

A Very English Scandal series 2

This one has yet to receive the official commission stamp, but it’s too good not to pass on a bit prematurely. Following on from the success of Russell T. Davies’ acclaimed three-part drama based on the real-life events of Lib Dem leader Jeremy Thorpe’s plot to have his lover Norman Scott murdered, the BBC plans to turn the ‘A Very English Scandal’ header into an anthology series following different true life events that rocked English society. As reported by Deadline in March 2020, Agatha Christie adapter extraordinaire Sarah Phelps is writing a three-part drama about a 1963 sex scandal involving the Duchess of Argyll, nicknamed ‘The Dirty Duchess.’

Back Season 2 (January)

Channel 4 has a second run of Simon Blackwell’s excellent sitcom Back on the way. The first series aired in autumn 2017 and was delayed while actor Robert Webb suffered an episode of ill health. The comedy reunites Peep Show’s David Mitchell and Webb as Stephen and Andrew, two erstwhile foster brothers whose neurotic rivalry boils up in the wake of Stephen’s father’s death. Louise Brealey also stars in the squirming, tragicomic delight. Stream the first series on All4 here.

Back To Life Season 2 (tbc)

Daisy Haggard and Laura Solon’s six part comedy-drama about a woman released from a lengthy prison sentence arrived in 2019 as one of a clutch of well-received original BBC shows. Haggard plays Miri, who returns to her childhood home and isn’t exactly welcomed back to the community with open arms, alongside Adeel Akhtar, Geraldine James, Liam Williams and more. It aired on Showtime over in the US, and will return for series two, which is currently being written.

Baptiste Season 2 (tbc)

Tcheky Karyo will return as grizzled French detective Julien Baptiste in a second series of the Williams Brothers’ Euro-set crime thriller. The character made his name on two series of The Missing, and earned his own BBC spin-off in spring 2019. (Read our spoiler-filled reviews here.) Series two sees Baptiste in Budapest on a search for the missing family of a British Ambassador, and co-stars Killing Eve‘s Fiona Shaw. Production on series two was halted in March 2020 because of the global spread of COVID-19, but got back up and running in the summer.

Breeders Season 2 (tbc)

Filming wrapped on the second series of Sky One parenting comedy Breeders just before Christmas 2020, so we can expect to see the new episodes later this year. The series, created by Simon Blackwell, Chris Addison and Martin Freeman, follows the child-based frustrations and catastrophes of Paul (Freeman) and Ally (Daisy Haggard), breaking taboos and punching you in the heart as it goes.

Britannia Season 3 (tbc)

Playwright Jez Butterworth and showrunner James Richardson first brought their trippy vision of warring Celts, mystical druids and invading Romans to Sky Atlantic in January 2018, and were quickly rewarded by a second series renewal. That run has already been and gone, leaving us awaiting the return of David Morrissey, Mackenzie Crook and co. for more bonkers ancient history, this time with added Sophie Okonedo!

Bulletproof: South Africa (January 20th)

After two hit series of crime drama Bulletproof on Sky One, police officers Bishop (Noel Clarke) and Pike (Ashley Walters) are back for a three-part special set in South Africa. The miniseries will see the crime-fighters’ attempt to relax on holiday scuppered when they become entangled with a dangerous kidnap plot.

Cobra Season 2 (tbc)

Robert Carlyle’s PM will return for another series of Sky One political thriller Cobra, written by The Tunnel and Strike: Cuckoo’s Calling‘s Ben Richards. The first series saw Carlyle’s character attempting to maintain power after solar flares took out Britain’s power grid and left the country in chaos as political factions vied for his position. What disaster will befall him in series two we don’t yet know…

Dead Pixels Season 2 (January)

Jon Brown’s gamer comedy debuted in March 2019 and was renewed four months later for series two. It stars Alexa Davies and Will Merrick as two die-hard MMORPG gamers (massive multiplayer online roleplay game, if you were wondering) and Charlotte Ritchie as their non-gaming flatmate. Here’s our interview with the creator on how other TV shows and films so often go wrong in their depiction of gaming and gamers.

Derry Girls Season 3 (tbc)

Lisa McGee’s terrific 90s-set Northern Irish comedy is set to return for a third series about the lives of secondary school students Erin, Orla, Clare, Michelle and James. Filming was due to begin in June 2020, but Covid-19 disrupted that schedule so we’ll have to wait a little longer for this one. Set in the 1990s, Derry Girls is a coming-of-age nostalgia-flood with characters to love and jokes to spare, in which crushes and friendship fall-outs are dealt with in the same breath as dangerous political turmoil. Cracker.

Doctor Who Season 13 (tbc)

Thanks to Covid-19, we’re getting a shorter run of eight episodes for Doctor Who‘s next series, which is confirmed to welcome new companion Dan to the TARDIS. Played by comedian-actor John Bishop, Dan will join Yaz and the Doctor as they continue their travels after saying goodbye to Ryan and Graham in New Year special ‘Revolution of the Daleks.’

Endeavour Season 8 (tbc)

A three-episode seventh series of Russell Lewis’ Inspector Morse prequel aired in February 2020, taking Morse into a new decade, as he and the team investigated the discovery of a body on a canal path on New Year’s Day 1970 (read our spoiler-filled reviews here). Shaun Evans not only returned as the lead, but also directed his second instalment of the long-running crime prequel. Series eight was due to begin filming in summer 2020 but it was pushed back until 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Gangs of London Season 2 (tbc)

The body count was high in Sky Atlantic’s ultra-stylish, ultra-violent 2020 thriller Gangs of London, but enough characters made it all the way through for a second season to be commissioned. When it eventually arrives, expect more expertly choreographed fight scenes, more international crime family intrigue and more betrayal. Co-creator Gareth Evans and his fellow directors gave us a taste of what to expect from the new run here.

Gentleman Jack Season 2 (tbc)

Renewed even before series one had aired, Sally Wainwright’s Gentleman Jack arrived on BBC One in the UK and HBO in the US with a bang. It stars Suranne Jones as real-life trail-blazing lesbian industrialist Anne Lister, with a cast including Sophie Rundle, Gemma Whelan and Rosie Cavaliero. It’s witty and dynamic, offering television a new 19th century hero at whom to marvel (here’s our episode one review). The eight-episode second series started filming in November 2020.

Ghosts Season 3 (tbc)

This tremendously fun comedy arrived in 2019 from the cast of Horrible Histories and Yonderland. Happily, it was renewed by the BBC for a third series, which guarantees us at least six more episodes of spectral shenanigans as Alison and Mike (alive) try to keep the ancestral family home going while dealing with an influx of housemates from history (dead). Speaking to Den of Geek in November 2020 about the terrific Christmas special, Kiell Smith-Bynoe, who plays Mike in the show, said they were hoping to film series three in spring 2021.

Guilt Season 2 (tbc)

BBC Scotland’s dark comedy-drama Guilt was a word-of-mouth hit that became an award-winning hit. Created by Neil Forsyth and starring Mark Bonnar, it was the story of two very different brothers attempting to cover up an unthinkable act. It’s currently available to watch on BBC iPlayer and will be joined by a second four-part series. Don’t get it confused with the US Amanda Knox series of the same name, which was cancelled.

Happy Valley Season 3 (tbc)

We’re cheating here because there is very little chance that 2021 will see the planned third and final series of Sally Wainwright’s excellent crime drama Happy Valley but it’s too good a drama not to include. The word seems to be that creator Wainwright and star Sarah Lancashire are keen to return for the final chapter in Sgt. Cawood’s story, but they’re waiting for young star Rhys Connah, who plays Cawood’s grandson Ryan, to get a bit older before tackling the story Wainwright wants to tell. Patience.

His Dark Materials Season 3 (tbc)

One final eight-episode season is on its way to BBC One and HBO to conclude this stunning adaptation of Philip Pullman’s book trilogy. Season three will tell the story of The Amber Spyglass, taking Lyra and Will to even more new worlds, where they’ll meet strange creatures and have to face a weighty choice. Pre-production began earlier in 2020, but the renewal announcement didn’t officially arrive until December. Here’s a taster of what we might expect to see.

Innocent Season 2 (tbc)

ITV’s Innocent was a four-part series about a miscarriage of justice that aired in May 2018. Its conclusion certainly didn’t call for a continuation so news of a second series renewal was a bit of a head-scratcher until it was revealed that creator Chris Lang (Unforgotten) was writing a whole new case and a whole new set of characters for the second run, now due to arrive this year.

Inside No. 9 Season 6 (tbc)

Knowing a good thing when it has one, BBC Two renewed Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith’s ingenious anthology series Inside No. 9 for a sixth and seventh series back in March. That means 12 new half-hour stories told with wit, originality and – every so often – a surprising amount of heart. Shearsmith Tweeted in November 2020 that the team were in rehearsals and planning to start filming on the new episodes imminently.

Killing Eve Season 4 (tbc)

Season four of mega-hit spy thriller Killing Eve was announced back before season three aired, so we know that it is coming, the question is: when? As the series films across various European locations, it’s been hit harder than many by the Covid-19 pandemic, and production was confirmed as being on an indefinite hiatus in October 2020, so don’t hold your breath for the usual April start date. As soon as things are up and running, we’ll let you know.

New British TV Series for 2021: BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky Dramas and More

By Louisa Mellor

New British TV Series from 2020: BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Sky Dramas and More

By Louisa Mellor

Line of Duty Season 6 (March)

Series five of Jed Mercurio’s hugely successful crime thriller concluded in May 2019, and, after a Covid-related five-month delay, filming wrapped on series six in November 2020. Line of Duty stars Vicky McClure, Martin Compston and Adrian Dunbar as bent-copper-hunters AC-12, with each series welcoming a high-profile guest – previous series have welcomed Stephen Graham, Thandie Newton and Keeley Hawes, and this time around it’s Kelly Macdonald.

Man Like Mobeen Season 4 (tbc)

Announced on creator and star Guz Khan’s Instagram account in September 2020, as reported by Comedy.co.uk, hit BBC Three comedy Man Like Mobeen will return in 2021. Series three left fans on a serious cliffhanger that saw Mobeen doing time despite his best efforts to stay out of trouble and raise his younger sister. Catch up on BBC iPlayer here.

Marcella Season 3 (January)

ITV’s Marcella, co-created by The Killing’s Hans Rosenfeldt and starring Anna Friel, went out in a blaze of bonkers glory in 2018. Series two marked a turning point for the detective show, which went from domestic crime drama to full-blown comic-book spy thriller, complete with faked deaths, conspiracy, and secret investigative units. Series three has Marcella working undercover in a Belfast crime family. It’s already aired on Netflix around the world, and will finally arrive on ITV in January 2021.

McMafia Season 2 (tbc)

Starring James Norton as the conflicted British son of a Russian mob boss, McMafia was BBC One’s big, glamorous New Year drama for 2018. It was renewed for another eight episode season a good while back but updates on progress have been very thin on the ground since then Whenever it arrives, expect more double-crossing and high-stakes violence set against the backdrop of gangland London. Read our series one episode reviews here.

Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing Season 4 (tbc)

A fishing show may seem like a strange choice for this list of mostly high-profile dramas and comedies, but Gone Fishing deserves as much celebration as any of them. That’s thanks to Bob Mortimer and Paul Whitehouse’s natural chemistry as two long-time friends, both of whom have been forced to contemplate their mortality in recent years due to serious heart problems. It’s fishing, yes, but it’s also chat, silliness and genuine human warmth.

Motherland Season 3 (tbc)

Sharon Horgan, Holly Walsh and Helen Linehan’s parenting comedy Motherland will be back for a third series. Starring Anna Maxwell-Martin (Good Omens, Line Of Duty), Lucy Punch, Paul Ready and Diane Morgan, it’s a caustic look at the demands of modern parenting and life in your thirties and forties that you don’t even need to have kids to relate to/stare at in rapt horror.

Peaky Blinders Season 6 (tbc)

Peaky Blinders, Steven Knight’s BBC Two crime saga following the ascendancy of Birmingham’s Shelby family in post-World War One England, is set to return for two further series, which should, if all goes to plan, take us all the way up to the outbreak of World War II. Series five aired in late summer 2019 and here’s all the news we have on series six, which was sadly forced to suspend production in March due to the global spread of Covid-19. Filming is due to resume in January 2021, so fingers crossed we’ll get the new series later this year.

Sex Education Season 3 (tbc)

Season three of Netflix’s celebrated high school comedy-drama went into production in September 2020, so there’ll be a little wait until the new episodes arrive on the streaming service. The show has won such an adoring fandom over its two seasons that they’ll wait as long as it takes to continue the stories of Otis, Eric, Maeve and of course, Gillian Anderson’s masterful Jean.

Staged Season 2 (January 4th)

A lot of people tried their best to make new TV under lockdown conditions last year, and some fared better than others. At the top of the comedy pile is Staged, starring David Tennant and Michael Sheen as exaggerated versions of themselves, rehearsing a play on Zoom with a host of big name guest stars and plenty of laughs courtesy of their other halves Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg.

Stath Lets Flats Season 3

We waited too long to hear that Channel 4 was doing the sensible thing and renewing Jamie Demetriou’s excellent Stath Lets Flats for a third series. During that wait, the show won three Baftas and even more fans, securing its reputation as one of the best comedies around. According to cast-member Kiell Smith-Bynoe, who plays reluctant letting agent Dean, the plan is to start filming in summer 2021, if everybody’s schedules can match up.

Taboo Season 2 (tbc)

From Steven Knight, creator of the excellent Peaky Blinders, in collaboration with star Tom Hardy, Taboo presents a very different vision of Regency England to the traditional Jane Austen world of assembly balls and etiquette faux pas. It’s about James Delaney, an almost invincible, little bit magic, highly mysterious thorn in the side of the East India Company. Series one aired in early 2017, and as of summer 2019, Knight had finished six of the eight scripts for the second series. Here’s what we know so far.

Taskmaster Season 11 (tbc)

Joining the Taskmaster and little Alex Horne for series ten of Taskmaster – its first series on Channel 4 – were Daisy May Cooper, Johnny Vegas, Katherine Parkinson, Mawaan Rizwan and Richard Herring. Then came a New Year treat featuring all-new one-off contestants. In 2021, we’re due a full new series starring Charlotte Ritchie, Jamali Maddix, Lee Mack, Mike Wozniak and Sarah Kendall, plus a champion of champions miniseries.

Temple Season 2 (tbc)

Adapted from Norwegian series Valkyrien, Temple is the story of an underground medical facility run by a desperate surgeon and his apocalypse-prepping colleague. It stars Mark Strong, Carice Van Houten and Daniel Mays, and debuted on Sky One in autumn 2019. The series two renewal was announced as the series one finale aired, and the new episodes are expected to air in summer 2021. Read more about the series here.

The Bay Season 2 (January)

Daragh Carville’s Morecambe-set crime thriller returns with a new case for Morven Christie’s DS Lisa Armstrong and co. this year. The first series dealt with the disappearance of a set of teenage twins and shady goings-on in a picture-perfect coastal town, earning it the title of ‘the new Broadchurch’. Here’s our episode one review.

The Capture Season 2 (tbc)

Ben Chanan’s BBC One thriller The Capture was a high-stakes crime drama that tackled the question of what truth and innocence mean when video evidence can be so easily manipulated in the modern age. It starred Strike‘s Holliday Grainger, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them‘s Callum Turner, and was renewed for a second series in summer 2020.

The Crown Season 5 (tbc)

Olivia Colman took over from Clare Foy as HRH Elizabeth II in The Crown series three. The time jump saw Matt Smith replaced by Tobias Menzies as Prince Philip and Helena Bonham-Carter take the reins from Vanessa Kirby as Princess Margaret, with Gillian Anderson playing Margaret Thatcher. For season five, the palace welcomes Imelda Staunton (pictured) and Lesley Manville as the Windsor sisters.

The Last Kingdom Season 5 (tbc)

The Last Kingdom series five will adapt the next two books in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories series: Warriors of the Storm and The Flame Bearer. Starring Alexander Dreymon as Viking-raised-Saxon Uhtred of Bebbenberg, it’s an action-packed historical drama filled with wit and characters to love. Read our spoiler-filled episode reviews and more.

This Time With Alan Partridge Season 2 (tbc)

Filming concluded on the second run of This Time With Alan Partridge in December 2020, so there shouldn’t be too long a wait for the new episodes to arrive on BBC One. Series two sees Norwich broadcasting veteran Alan established as the co-presenter of fictional magazine chat show This Time, following his gaffes on-screen and off. Susannah Fielding co-stars.

Unforgotten Season 4 (tbc)

Cassie and Sunny (played by Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar) return for a fourth series of ITV’s excellent cold case crime drama Unforgotten. What makes Chris Lang’s detective series stand out is its empathy—for its characters, for the victims, and often, for the killers themselves. The new series will take another decades-old case as its starting point, and no doubt tell another engrossing, affecting story led by excellent performances from a cast including Susan Lynch and Sheila Hancock.

War of the Worlds Season 2 (tbc)

FOX UK sci-fi War of the Worlds was one of the first TV dramas to restart filming after the enforced Covid-19 lockdown (it helps when your show is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the population has been more or less destroyed), so even with all the effects-heavy post-production required, we can expect it to arrive this year. It uses H.G. Wells’ story more as a jumping-off point than a bible, and developed into a poised and atmospheric sci-fi for adults. Read more about it here.

World on Fire Season 2 (tbc)

To the delight of fans following series one’s tense cliff-hanger ending, Peter Bowker’s WWII drama following multiple interconnected stories from around the world during the war, was recommissioned in November 2019. The stories of Harry (Jonah Hauer-King), Kasia (Zofia Wichlacz) and Lois (Julia Brown) will continue in the second run, alongside those of Lois’ conscientious objector father Douglas (Sean Bean) and Harry’s ice-cold mother Robina (Lesley Manville).

Year of the Rabbit Season 2 (tbc)

Detective Rabbit returns! Matt Berry, Susan Wokoma and Freddie Fox will be back for more Victorian crime-based comedy in a second series of Channel 4’s acclaimed Year Of The Rabbit. C4’s Head of Comedy Fiona McDermott describes the show, which is co-written by Matt Berry with Veep and Black Books‘ Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil, as “glorious, gutsy and audacious”, and you won’t hear any disagreement from us. Series one is currently available to stream on All4, and the six new episodes are expected to arrive this year.

Also returning:

Brassic Season 3 (tbc) – Joseph Gilgun’s Sky One comedy returns for a third run.

Code 404 Season 2 (tbc)– Stephen Graham and Daniel Mays are back on Sky One in this very British comedy take on RoboCop.

Don’t Forget the Driver Season 2 (tbc) The brilliant Toby Jones returns in this heartfelt seaside comedy drama.

Feel Good Season 2 (tbc) – Mae Martin’s autobiographically inspired comedy returns to Channel 4.

Hitmen Season 2 (tbc) – Mel and Sue will be back on Sky One for more paid-assassin larks.

King Gary Season 2 – Gary King will be ruling the crescent once again in this BBC One comedy.

I Am… Season 2 (tbc) – The Channel 4 female-fronted anthology drama returns with Suranne Jones among the cast.

Intelligence Season 2 (tbc) – David Schwimmer and Nick Mohammed are back on Sky One for more tech-spy comedy.

State of the Union Season 2 (tbc) – Nick Hornby is creating two new characters who meet up weekly before their marriage counselling sessions for this BBC Two comedy-drama.

The Cockfields Season 2 (tbc) – This Gold original comedy starring Joe Wilkinson and Diane Morgan will return, but sadly, without comedian Bobby Ball, who passed away in 2020.

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365daysoflesbians · 7 years ago

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SEPTEMBER 11: Jewelle Gomez (1948-)

Happy 69th birthday to Jewelle Gomez!! The lesbian poet, literary critic, and playwright was born on this day in 1948.

In a 2012 interview with Curve Magazine, Jewelle said, “ Everything I write, and my activism as well, centers around creating community, the responsible use of power, and the feminist understanding that we’re all connected, and that includes our oppressions” (x).

Born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 11, 1948, Jewelle Gomez was the daughter of a nurse and a bartender, but she ended up being raised by her great grandmother. Her great grandmother, Grace, was born to a black mother and an Iowan father, and so Jewelle’s childhood was imbued with both black and Native American culture. In high school, she was heavily involved in the world of black activism and the Civil Rights Movement. After she graduated, she moved to New York City and began working as a stage manager in off-Broadway theater production. During this time in New York, she also began to develop her lesbian identity and became involved in LGBT activism. Some of her very first writings began to appear in Conditions, a popular lesbian-feminist magazine of the 1960s.

To date, Jewelle is the author of seven books, most notably the novel The Gilda Stories, which became a two-time Lambda Literary Award winner in 1991. She created the very first anthology of black speculative fiction in 2001 titled Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora and has worked extensively in television and theater in addition to her work in the literary world; Jewelle was on the founding board of GLAAD back in 1984 and also worked on the staff of the very first weekly black television show, Say Brother, in 1968. Her latest work was a play about the life of James Baldwin, Waiting for Giovanni, which premiered at the New Conservatory Theater in 2010. Today, Jewelle serves as the Director of Grants and Community Initiatives for Horizons Foundation, which is one of the oldest LGBT foundations in America.

-LC

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giddayfromtheuk · 7 years ago

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Gidday peeps!

Sorry I’ve been lax on the posting front of late. It’s been a bit busy since I got back from stopping in Muscat seven weeks ago and while I managed to have a little rant about burgers in my last post, finding the time and head space to craft something more has proved a challenge. But I wanted to let you what’s been happening here at Chez Gidday.

First things first – I finished my fourth MOOC, this time on Democracy and Development in Africa, on 14th November and achieved 94%.

Hurrah!

This was quite a hard going course in terms of workload. In each of the seven weeks we were asked to complete several pieces of work – a mix of video lectures and interviews, reading, questions, discussions and essays – which was then capped off by a 3-part exam in the last week. Let me tell you there were many times when I cursed myself for signing up in the first place and then for not being able to walk away and let it go.

But in catching up with a close friend a couple of weeks ago, he complimented me on my commitment and acknowledged my self-discipline as a real strength. Interestingly, one of my reasons for doing these MOOCs was to ensure that my self-discipline ‘muscles’ stayed active. So I’m glad I stuck with it and am proud to say I have the certificate of achievement – as well as a whole lot of new ideas and opinions – to show for it.

My school governor role has really taken off as well. I’ve been attending the monthly marketing meetings as well as making my first visits with each of the dance and the drama curriculum leads at the school. I’ve also spent a day and evening completing my new governor induction training as well as the mandatory safeguarding training. So I’m now in the thick of it and really enjoying it.

Speaking of getting into the thick of it, I took part in an intensive 3-day Property Investment seminar at the beginning of November and also attended the Rethink Mental Illness Members Day the following weekend. Both are areas I’m very interested in exploring over the coming months. Needless to say I don’t think there’ll be any more MOOCs for a while.

Then amongst all of this was my usual smattering of out-and-about-ness.

On the culture front, I had my first ever visit to the Affordable Art Fair…

…and spent another afternoon at the V&A immersed in their latest exhibition Opera: Power, Passion & Politics.

Reconstructed stage for Handel’s Rinaldi

Salome – the start of the women’s movement?

Boards on each opera highlight the exhibition’s themes of power, passion and politics

Both are areas I know little about so I really enjoyed having my eyes and my ears opened and my cultural horizons challenged.

The last seven weeks has also produced a couple of excellent theatrical highlights with the Donmar Warehouse’s production of The Lady from the Sea (by one of my favourite playwrights Henrik Ibsen) and INK (the story of Rupert Murdoch’s purchase and transformation of The Sun newspaper in the UK). And as regular Giddayers know, I love dance so it was with great delight that I went to see BalletBoyz’s Fourteen Days (and was especially moved by the intimacy of Christopher Wheeldon’s piece, Us). Then last weekend I was completely mesmerised by the provocative musical Cabaret that is touring regional theatres in the UK at the moment (and stars singer Will Young as the irrepressible emcee).

Literary-themed events got a look-in too with a walking tour of Fleet Street – called Publish and Be Damned! – on a rather chilly Saturday.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

There was also the chance to listen to readings from the Man Booker Shortlist authors the evening prior to the announcement of the prize winner, the British Library’s annual Equality Lecture by Professor Mary Evans and Gresham College’s free lecture on the wonderful Jane Austen, the last a welcome follow up to the Jane Austen exhibition I visited in Oxford earlier this year. I also went to some fascinating talks about The Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence, The Fight Against Alzheimers and The Future of our Digital Selves.

But amongst all of this, there was one lowlight.

As a long-time Agatha Christie fan, I had been looking forward to seeing Kenneth Branagh‘s remake of Murder on the Orient Express. But it had a different storyline and while the cinematography was gorgeous, the whole film was a bit ponderous and suffered from style-over-substance syndrome. As far as I am concerned, no-one writes Christie better than Christie so in tinkering with her work, Branagh’s effort left me feeling a bit flat.

And then last week I squeezed a 5-day rendezvous in Paris into proceedings (more on that later)…

…so maybe the word smattering was a bit of an understatement.

Not to mentioned that December 1st is only two sleeps away – when I get to open the first window of Mum’s annual advent calendar and put up the Chez Gidday Christmas tree…

*excited squealing*

So stay tuned. There’ll be more Gidday adventures coming to the blogosphere soon!

The busy-ness of life Gidday peeps! Sorry I've been lax on the posting front of late. It's been a bit busy since I got back from

#Affordable Art Fair #balletboyz #British Library #Cabaret #Christopher Wheeldon #Henrik Ibsen #MOOCs #museums #Rethink Mental Illness #theatre #V&A museum #Will Young

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theatredirectors · 5 years ago

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Yoni Oppenheim

Hometown?

New York, NY (and I spent summers in Tel Aviv, Israel as a child).

Where are you now?

New York, NY.

What's your current project?

Set in a society torn apart by internal strife, ecological disaster, and interference from foreign powers, my current project examine the cost of humiliation and explore what it means to be a member of a community, to be a leader, to have moral courage, and to resist. I am currently directing two plays written by the acclaimed Israeli playwright Dani Horowitz, Last Tree in Jerusalem and A Page of Talmud, for my company 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company. The plays will be performed together on one bill from December 4th – 15th, 2019 at TheaterLab.

I translated Last Tree in Jerusalem. This is the world premiere of my translation and the first time these plays - written 20 years apart - have been presented together. I had the opportunity to meet and interview Dani Horowitz in Israel as he was writing Last Tree in Jerusalem in response to the disengagement from Gaza. I fell in love with the script and felt that I had to translate it and share it with a wider audience.

I am also a 2019 Target Margin Theater Institute Fellow. I am one of five fellows who come from an array of artistic disciplines (dance, visual arts, and playwriting).

Why and how did you get into theatre?

The short answer: Harold Prince

The long answer: I discovered the theater in eighth grade when my piano teacher gave me songs from Phantom of the Opera to play. I had never seen a musical – Broadway or elsewhere. The closest I got to Phantom was the evocative ads I saw on the side of the M86 bus I took to school. At some point, it dawned on me that these songs were from plays that were staged in theaters and that I could actually go and see them. They were too expensive to attend, but I could envision my own productions in my head.

I borrowed the cast recording for Phantom from the library and saw that a man named Harold Prince had directed it. I didn’t know what a director did or who Harold Prince was so I spent hours at the performing arts library reading about his work. I was inspired by his creative vision and collaborative spirit. Eventually, I saw The Phantom of the Opera and have had a desire to see and make theater ever since.

What is your directing dream project?

My dream project would be to devise a show with a diverse multi-generational cast comprised of people of different physical abilities. I would also love to do theater in prisons. I would like to reengage with theater work I used to do with non-actors ranging from senior citizens and at-risk teens.

What kind of theatre excites you?

Theater that embraces the unique properties and limitations of the theatrical form and doesn’t try to mimic what film and television do better. Work that engages in ritual. Work that pushes and questions what can constitute a theatrical event. When I was doing my master’s degree in Oslo, I befriended the members of an artistic collective called Verdensteatret whose work pushed the bounds of live performance towards installation and multi-media art. Witnessing their work and process first-hand was eye-opening and inspiring. They modeled a way of being an artist in the world. Here in NYC, I love the Public Works initiative at The Public Theater.

What do you want to change about theatre today?

I am a Sabbath-observant Orthodox Jew, meaning that from Friday sundown to Saturday night I don’t work. I co-founded 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company in order to provide myself and other Sabbath-observant artists opportunities to work and grow in our craft. I wish mainstream theaters could be more flexible and accommodating in their schedules, particularly in New York which has a very high concentration of religiously observant Jews.

What is your opinion on getting a directing MFA?

I did not get an MFA, so I can’t speak to the experience. I got my BFA from NYU-Tisch which is one of the few drama programs with an undergraduate directing concentration through Playwrights Horizons Theater School. I wasn’t interested in rushing into an MFA after such an intense experience, nor did I have the finances to do so. However, I feel like over the years I’ve cobbled together my own MFA of real life. Before founding 24/6: A Jewish Theater Company, I directed stuff freelance and learned a ton by assistant directing new works. I reached out to theaters and opera companies for observerships and had the opportunity to see how directors like Peter Sellars, Ivo van Hove and Mark Lamos work. I am also a dramaturg and spent several years as Doug Wright’s research associate as he wrote his Ibsen-themed play Posterity. I then served as the production dramaturg for the world premiere at Atlantic Theater Company. It was a rare opportunity to see a play develop from idea to production and be part of that process.

Who are your theatrical heroes?

Rina Yerushalmi, Harold Prince, Julie Taymor, Thomas Ostermeier, Henrik Ibsen, Anne Bogart, Peter Brook, Catherine Filloux, and Leone de' Sommi Portaleone.

Any advice for directors just starting out?

There is only one of you in the world. Your specific perspective and aesthetic is necessary for our cultural ecosystem to be diverse and healthy. Discover your voice, keep growing and learning, and own it. Do the work no one else can.

Part of growing is seeing as much aesthetically and culturally diverse work as you can - not only theater, but of all artistic disciplines.

Your life in the arts is a marathon, not a sprint.

Plugs!

24/6: A Jewish Theater Company Presents Last Tree in Jerusalem / A Page of Talmud by Dani Horowitz December 4-15th, 2019 at TheaterLab 357 West 36th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY

Tickets: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/1020520

More info: https://twentyfoursix.weebly.com/

Target Margin Theater Institute Open Studio: December 18th, 2019 4pm-8pm

at Target Margin Theater 232 52nd Street, Brooklyn, NY 11220

https://www.targetmargin.org/our-season/institute/

NYPL for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center has a great free exhibit all about Harold Prince until March 31, 2020 which I really enjoyed. Don’t miss it! https://www.nypl.org/events/exhibitions/company-harold-prince-broadway-producer-director-collaborator

#Yoni Oppenheim #ask a director #theatredirectors

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samnyangie · 4 years ago

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Since people liked rsl interview on dps, I’d like to share one of my favourite interview by him. I think it’s one of those rare interview where he wasn’t joking around that much but discuss acting quite seriously haha

So enjoy:DD

(Credit)

____________________________

1990 New York Times

Young Actor's Life Has the Makings of a Movie

by Lynn Mautner

New York Times

May 20, 1990

It would make a good movie. A 15-year-old sophomore at Ridgewood High School is playing the Artful Dodger in the musical ''Oliver'' with the school's theater group, New Players, when he is discovered by a casting agency secretary and whisked off to Broadway and the movies.

That's exactly what happened to Robert Sean Leonard, now 21, and a star of the 1989 film ''Dead Poets Society,'' which received an Oscar for best original screenplay.

''My mother took me to New Players' summer performances when I was 10,'' he said, ''and I loved the camaraderie of people, rehearsing and singing. I began spending more time there, painting signs and moving furniture, and soon became an element of the company, with small roles in 'The Miracle Worker,' 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,' 'Barnum.' ''

Starting as an understudy for three roles at the New York Public Theater (he never got on stage), Mr. Leonard amassed credits that include ''The Beach House'' with George Grizzard for the Circle Repertory Theater, television movies, ''Brighton Beach Memoirs'' and ''Breaking the Code'' on Broadway, plays at the West Bank Cafe on 42d Street and the recent ''When She Danced'' at Playwrights Horizons.

He has just completed a part as Paul Newman's and Joanne Woodward's son in the movie ''Mr. and Mrs. Bridge,'' filmed in Kansas City, to be released in August. ''I age from a 15-year-old Eagle Scout to 22, coming home from World War II with a mustache,'' Mr. Leonard said.

Mr. Leonard, who received a general equivalency diploma when he was 17, lives in New York City and attends Fordham University between performances. Soon to return from the Cannes Film Festival with his fellow actors in ''Dead Poets,'' he is next scheduled to go into rehearsal for the film ''Married to It,'' a romantic comedy.

Q. Do you remember when you decided on an acting career?

A. I never decided to pursue an acting career. It just has happened. I still think it's going to stop and I'll have to get a real job soon, but I'm afraid to question it because if I do, it will disappear.

Q. How do you think your theater experience in high school has helped you?

A. It was a great teaching experience that prepared me in a lot of ways. We did 10 shows in 10 weeks, so there was no time to think about method. It was running for the stage, hoping you'll make it in time for your entrance. In Steven Soderbergh's new book of his diaries when directing the film ''Sex, Lies and Videotape,'' he said that on a film set there should always be a chain of command, but never a chain of respect.

At New Players, those three to four years, everyone was given the same respect. You had to, because you'd be the lead one week and painting sets the next. That's a luxury that is not available in New York, unfortunately, because of the unions. You're an actor and that's it.

Q. Have you taken any acting lessons? Do you recommend them for others?

A. I've taken two classes - a video acting class to help me get from stage to film, with Marty Winkler, currently my manager, and an acting class at H. B. Studios.

Acting classes are tricky. It's like asking someone in therapy if they'd recommend going to a psychiatrist. For some people it's great; for some it's not necessary; for some it's harmful. The best way to learn acting is just to do it.

There's a danger to the classroom, because it's safe, and you can get addicted to it. The clique of people are there, and you might tend to remain with them and never go out on your own. So it can give you the safety net which can eventually strip away your courage to go out and really try. On the other hand, you can get a wonderful teacher who brings out the best in you and gives you the courage to go out and dazzle everybody.

Q. You went from high school to Off Broadway. What were your feelings and fears during your first professional performance?

A. The first time I performed in New York - in ''Sally's Gone, She Left Her Name'' - I played Michael Learned's son. I think I was too young. I wasn't even aware of reasons to be afraid. I was just there for the fun of it. Fresh out of New Players, I knew it to be fun. I've never worried about lines. In ''Brighton Beach'' I should have been tense, because it was Broadway. I was nervous, but not racked - more excited.

Q. What do you enjoy most about acting?

A. The people, and opportunities to learn, to travel, both physically and emotionally. To look at people other than myself and try to figure out what makes them tick.

Olivier said you never play a villain; you play a man considered to be a villain; that you have to justify everything he does first; you have to know that what you are doing is right and find a way to make it right - even murder.

I just played a conceited piano player in ''When She Danced,'' and I had to figure out what would make a person be conceited and make that O.K. with me. I learned where conceit comes from - from confidence and talent.

Worst thing you can do is play someone and judge him at the same time, saying: ''Here I am. I am so conceited.'' First you have to understand why you're that way so that people interpret you as conceited.

Q. Do you consider acting an escape?

A. I don't look at performing as escaping, as really becoming another person and leaving my problems for two hours, so I don't have to deal with me, because I don't become another person. I work, so that when I am working, in a way it is me at my best. I'm not leaving myself; in fact, I'm more focused on myself than ever. I don't become that person, but I fully understand him, fully explore him, as to why he does what he does and justify it.

You can't play a fool to play Bottom, who's the opposite of fool in Shakespeare's ''Midsummer Night's Dream.'' What makes people fools is that they're completely confident in what they're doing. They don't think they're fools; they think they're right on track, which makes them so funny and makes them look like fools.

Q. Who influenced you the most?

A. I have not had one person or experience that stands out that's a turning point. Every step in acting relies heavily on the one before. Everything I've learned colors everything I have known before, and suddenly changes it.

I have learned a little bit from everyone I have known, whether about acting itself, or living and working as an actor. Like a good detective novel, for every clue that is solved, two more appear. Every time I learn something, it opens two other doors. In ''Dead Poets,'' the rooftop scene, where I throw the desk set off, was improvised. Are instincts then a part of acting?

Q. Are there desirable qualities to have as an actor?

A. Concentration, perseverence, lack of inhibitions. There's no room for self-consciousness on stage. Also, there is an element in acting that is not fair. Whatever talent is, part of it can be learned and part can't. There are people that audiences like to watch or don't. In Soderbergh's book, he says that talent plus perseverance will equal luck. But I don't know what talent is; it is beyond definition.

Q. Do you learn by watching other films and plays? Your own? Other people?

A. Sometimes I watch for directing; sometimes for performing. There are lines in ''Dead Poets'' I would do differently, if given the chance. For example, Todd said: ''You talk and people listen to you, Neil. I am not like that.'' I answer, ''Don't you think you could be?'' I think I could have made it clearer. I don't get much from observing strangers, because although I see what they do, I don't know where they're coming from.

Q. What are the main differences between stage and film work?

A. I feel that as an actor, you should start in theater, to learn the process of creating a character, in rehearsal. Film is an arena for people who already know that, because on the set they expect you to know the character inside out.

Film work is harder, because this tangible part has to happen in your head before filming takes place. And it's more solitary. You create your character alone, without the give-and-take of other actors.

Q. What tips would you give young, aspiring actors?

A. Read plays aloud with friends at home; do any work you can do in high school. Hang out with jocks, leatherheads, and see what makes them work. Don't be a theater rat and only talk to actors. Read a lot. You really have to feel it; really want it; then take it. Don't take no for an answer. Seize the day.

___________________________

There’s another one I really want to share as well, I’ll bring it with me at some point:))

#robert sean leonard #rsl #theatre #acting #interview #I love how he ended the interview with seize the day

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dramatistsguild · 7 years ago

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DG National Report: Atlanta by Pamela Turner

@dramatistsguild

“I’m still so new to playwriting that every piece seems like an unknown adventure.”

After talking to Brooke Jennett one year after she won the 2016 Dramatists Guild Young Playwrights Award and graduated from Transylvania University, I was struck by the kaleidoscope-like way she weaves her life experiences into each step of her artistic life. It started when she had to decide what route to take after working several food service jobs and finding a love of cooking for her family and friends. Setting that up against a stronger passion brewing since childhood, she realized that “I want to write for other people and cook for myself,” and chose a creative writing program over culinary school. Her current project and first novel is about a young woman “faced with a lot of death who finds out she’s a necromancer.” This subject comes from a time when Jennett was caught up with “others going through the process of dealing with death.” Because she didn’t “have the life experience to cope” she sought counseling and also decided to “make death funny” as both a help to others and an acknowledgment that “we’re all going to die so [it’s important] what do we do in the meantime." Jennett says that the only consistent thing about her writing is humor. Describing her work [theatrical writing] further she states that “I can’t think of one common theme in any of my plays and I hope I never find one!” She goes on to explain that “I try to avoid absolutes in life—they box you into principles and promises you may not be able to keep.” That leads into Jennett’s interest in writing Young Adult fiction “for people in their 20s” because of the 21st century pressures in the “first quarter of life” that have shifted from the earlier emphasis on having kids to the current preoccupation with successful careers and making money. “Happiness is the hardest thing to attain in your 20s because everything is so fluid,” though “if you are doing something toward fulfilling your passion that is all anyone should ask.” Theatre is a somewhat new passion for Jennett since she didn’t discover playwriting until she was in college and took a class. “I fell in love immediately.” This feeling was strengthened when she performed in a Sheila Callaghan play: “it’s the one that made me want to do theatre…and I thought, ‘Hey, I could do this forever.” The Callaghan play also whetted her appetite for “fantastical theatre based in reality” and circles back to the choice of featuring a necromancer in her novel: “the idea of how we grieve through a fantastical element.” Something else that is becoming more important in Jennett’s life and work is the increasingly persistent political climate. After graduation she remained in Lexington, Kentucky and describes it as a “blue city in a red state.” This has been a boon for her personal consciousness-raising as she is finding there that her generation wants to discuss politics in a way that shares perspectives rather than closing ranks. She is also surprised to discover how “aggressive” theatre is at times in “showing what is right…not like propaganda but makes you think.” Her own contributions include the piece she wrote for the Horizon Theatre Young Playwrights Festival. Three Is Company is about racial insecurity in a “blended” family Her current play project is based on the virulent anti-gay protests by members of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. In that piece she “combines a figure in the church with Joan of Arc as the character is manipulated and vilified like Joan.” Jennett is also co-editor of the play anthology Mother#^%#! College Life with Michael Bigelow Dixon. Jennett ended our interview by indicating that “my friends are the biggest influences in my life” and that “my favorite way to beat writer’s block is peer review.” She says her generation is “grassroots, innovative, and adaptable. We’re going everywhere fast.”

[email protected]

#atlanta #Pamela Turner #dramatist #dramatists guild

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fuckyeahgreatplays · 8 years ago

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As a community of Middle Eastern American theater artists of varying races, cultural backgrounds, religions, sexual and gender identities, worldviews and artistic aesthetics, we believe the entire theater industry has a responsibility to create a more equitable and inclusive structure for presenting marginalized voices. Playwrights Horizons is currently producing Zayd Dohrn's The Profane, a play that follows two Muslim, presumably Middle Eastern American families. We are deeply concerned by the lack of representation on the lead creative or producing team from the communities being portrayed on stage. Members of the Middle Eastern American theater community have raised this concern, along with issues about cultural representation in the play itself, in direct conversations with the artistic staff at Playwrights Horizons. These ongoing exchanges have been open and constructive, but there is much work to be done. In the March 30, 2017 New York Times interview by Alexis Soloski entitled "Faith and Identity Clash in The Profane: An Actor's Roundtable," the writer interviews the cast of the show - all actors of varying Middle Eastern identity. The talented cast was asked a number of questions ranging from their thoughts on the election, to how Middle Easterners and Muslims are portrayed in media and entertainment. One question in particular stood out as problematic: "Was it a problem for you that The Profane was written by a white playwright and has a white director?" It is indeed a valid question; however, Ms. Soloski ought to have directed her inquiry to the producing organization, Playwrights Horizons, who made the contentious hiring choices - not the actors. The actors in the cast are our colleagues and friends and we support them endeavoring to speak for these larger power structures, as many of us have done in the past. However, actors are employees, and their ability to speak freely in these situations is complicated by that reality. They should not be expected to defend the work, only to interpret it. They do not exist to answer for those in power. We also ask: Why, when there are so many gifted Middle Eastern and/or Muslim playwrights and directors, are there still no decision makers of Middle Eastern descent or Muslim faith involved in a production about Muslims?

Middle Eastern American Theater Artists Pen Letter Addressing THE PROFANE, Inclusion; Playwrights Horizons Responds

I saw this production and I felt conflicted- on the one hand, how great to see so many Middle Eastern artists on stage, in a universal family drama! On the other, I felt uncomfortable that it was written and directed by white men. I’m so glad to see Noor Theater and Playwrights Horizons are in dialogue about this (click through to see Playwrights’ response).

#the profane #noor theater #playwrights horizons #zayd dohrn #muslim americans #theater #representation matters

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vileart · 8 years ago

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Obfuscating Dramaturgy: Human Head @ Edfringe 2017

Human Head presents:

OBFUSCATION

theSpace @ Jury’s Inn

4-26 August, 2.15 pm

Human Head Performance Group teach the art of the deal… kinda

Human Head Performance Group, the New York-based theatre company behind “terrific and very funny” (Culture Catch) play Due to Events, make their Edinburgh Fringe debut with their new play OBFUSCATION this August.

The show is a 35-minute crash course on the absurdities of language in our age of market-tested, media savvy, politically weaponised messaging, and will be at theSpace @ Jury’s Inn for a full run. In OBFUSCATION, audiences are treated to a seminar on the Secret to Words That Work: a cocktail of flattery, lies, and misdirection that will help you exude confidence, manipulate your boss, and evade questioning by the secret police.

What was the inspiration for this performance?

Before there was Kellyanne Conway, there was Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster and phrasemaker behind such rhetorical gems as “Death Tax” (Estate Tax) and “Arctic Exploration” (oil drilling in Alaska). His rhetorical strategies have been a major contributor to the decline of political discourse in America, and our starting point for this play was our outrage at his morally bankrupt handiwork.

We began to think about rhetorical skill more generally, and came across the international network of public speaking club called Toastmasters. At these clubs, people practice the art of looking comfortable and seeming genuine in front of an audience. Members were generally people looking to advance themselves professionally by taking command of language.

This mix of ideas brought us to the peculiar course in rhetoric called Obfuscation. In it, we learn the rhetorical tricks of those in power in order to survive and rebel against them.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas?

Absolutely. It is increasingly rare to be able to sit with complex and multifaceted (i.e. human) issues for a sustained and uninterrupted span of time. Theater is a space where we can do this.

How did you become interested in making performance?

We find this question difficult to answer because making performance has always been part of our lives in some way. We didn’t become interested so much as we never lost interest.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

As Human Head Performance Group, we co-create everything and have developed our own collaboration method (which we also teach as a workshop). We’re both playwrights, so we usually start from developing the text – and that was certainly the case with Obfuscation.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

Yup.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

A life-changing revelation (we do not guarantee this, but we can hope). A fun 35 minutes. Some things to talk and laugh about later.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

Making people feel simultaneously nervous and in good hands; included and slightly disoriented.

Human Head Performance Group is a collaborative new work ensemble composed of Jean Ann Douglass and Eric John Meyer. Jean Ann says: “We’re seeing a breakdown of discourse all over the world, which makes right now the right time to do a play like OBFUSCATION, and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival the right place to do it. We’re very excited to make our international debut with the show; we hope it will resonate as much in Edinburgh as it has in New York, and that this run marks the beginning of an ongoing relationship with international audiences.”

First performed inside a rented box truck as part of their Truck Project series, Jean Ann and Eric are now bringing this head-spinning play on tour - and indoors - for the first time.

Outside of HHPG, Eric and Jean Ann both work as performers and playwrights. Jean Ann's recent show at Ars Nova got a rave review from Helen Shaw at Time Out New York, and Eric just received a new play commission from Playwrights Horizons.

Ends

For more information, high res images, or to arrange an interview, please contact Josef Church-Woods on email [email protected] or call on: +44 (0)7887 811 091.

Notes to Editor

● OBFUSCATION will be at theSpace @ Jury’s Inn (Venue 260), 43 Jeffrey St, Edinburgh EH1 1DH, 4-26 August, 2.15pm. Tickets from £7 (£5), available at edfringe.com.

● View OBFUSCATION teaser: obfuscationplay.com

● Find out more about Human Head Performance Group at humanheadperformancegroup.com.

● The Edinburgh Fringe run of OBFUSCATION is supported by live arts production company Civil Disobedience. Find out more at wearecivildisobedience.com.

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2uLitF8

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

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museemagazine · 8 years ago

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#WHM Gerda Taro + Lee Miller

We’ll be tapping our incredible archives in support of Women’s History Month and International Women’s Day and posting interviews from our Women issue throughout the month of March.

Gerda Taro + Lee Miller the mighty

By Ann Van Lenten

Of the stars that mark the pantheon of pioneering war photographers, Gerda Taro (1910-1937) and Lee Miller (1900-1977) share a special place in how they adapted to conflict. They didn’t know one another, but in their careers both were powered by an ambition that blurred the line between adapting to, and creating, circumstance. In order to access the worlds they wanted to work in, they reinvented themselves on the fly. Early on, they changed their names as a business decision and partnered with lovers who helped them learn the camera. Afterward, they struck out on their own, but both produced pictures whose authorship was misattributed to those teachers. Time and again they flouted sexual convention while abiding by social: their friends and lovers functioned in their work lives, yet by all accounts the two were so intelligent, engaging—and good at taking pictures—they alienated few people.

Taro and Miller began covering war with photographic training in the fading “new vision” style—one that looked for fresh perspectives of reality via acute camera angles, close-ups, disorienting horizons, and a love of abstract forms. But by the time each entered her war—Taro the Spanish Civil, and Miller World War II—society and combat had mechanized by a quantum leap, and fascism’s intimidating violence demanded something else artistically. In the brutal and depersonalized conditions of war, both women responded anew by capturing soul, humanity, the lived reality of the everyday. Taro decided to use her camera to fight fascism as a participant, and war pushed her to capture moral, dynamic situations. Miller, with her compartmentalized emotional life and her artistic training, put aside Surrealism’s emphasis on the erotic and subconscious to confront the grim, incongruous truths of WWII’s most gruesome, intense events.

Miller, dead now thirty-eight years, continues to give us photo fever. As of this writing, her archive lists eleven current and upcoming exhibits of her work, shows that celebrate her standout roles as supermodel/It Girl of her day; business partner and model to Man Ray; experimental, fashion, and portrait photographer; and formidable war photographer. In war, arguably the most meaningful manifestation of her ingenuity, I see her well-seasoned visual sensibilities hooking into horror, humor, defeat, tenderness, absurdity, and valor as she covered WWII in Europe.

In contrast to Miller, Taro, dead now seventy-eight years, has a cultural reputation that is undeservedly pale despite her vivid pictures of the Spanish Civil War. It wasn’t always so. Her 1937 funeral in Paris drew tens of thousands of mourners who, in solidarity, claimed Taro as an anti-fascist martyr. Giacometti designed her gravesite in Pere Lachaise. For a second she was a heroine, but then history buried her: WWII and its plethora of pictures buried her, in part because her own career lasted 18 months so didn’t yield a large body of work; the death of her family in the Holocaust buried her because there was no one to continue her legacy; and Robert Capa, her partner and boyfriend buried her. He didn’t name her as co-author for Death in The Making, his book of their Spanish Civil War photographs published the year after Taro died. And, by virtue of his outsize fame, she fell into obscurity—Irme Schaber, Taro’s German biographer, says that their working partnership was boiled down to a love story.

Recently, there was a brief blip when the International Center of Photography mounted a 2007 exhibition of Taro’s work—well worth checking out online—but to this day, Schaber’s biography has never been translated into English. Yet Taro helped establish the practice of war photography as we have come to consume it, creating pictures that brim with life, drama, and insight.

By the standards of their day, Taro’s beginnings were more outsider-ish than Miller’s. She was born in Stuttgart, Germany to middle class, Jewish parents. She experienced WWI, air raids, food rations, dislocation. In 1933, Hitler was appointed German Chancellor and under the growing domination of the Nazis, Taro became politicized via her boyfriend. In Leipzig, where her family had moved, she got involved with the underground. She was jailed for three weeks for distributing anti-Nazi flyers and posters. By 1934, it was clear enough how inhospitable to Jews the climate was in Germany, and she left, like many others, for Paris.

But Taro had certain advantages as well. She attended Swiss boarding school, then business college. She spoke fluent English and French, a little Spanish, was a great dresser, and charismatically beautiful. In Paris she found work with photographer Fred Stein in the darkroom, then as a photo agent at Alliance Photo. She was poor but resourceful. When she fell in love with Endre Friedmann, a Hungarian Jewish photojournalist, she didn’t just make Endre dress smarter, she organized his office. She didn’t just run the business end of his career, she persuaded him to change his name to Robert Capa and changed hers to Gerda Taro (from Gerta Pohorylle): she grasped that with indeterminate surnames the French press would more likely accredit them. She didn’t just push Capa’s work out, she learned to use a camera herself and with him, went to Spain in 1936 and began to take pictures of its civil war. The activism that got her jailed by the Nazis and prompted her to emigrate to Paris deepened—she was steadfast in her devotion to workers, peasants, trade unionists, and political parties behind the Spanish Republic. In keeping with her malleability, she was given nicknames: the “little red fox” and La pequeña rubia (the little blonde)—un-feminist phrases today, but it tells you something of her appeal

At first in Spain, Taro and Capa took pictures side by side. She sent these to newspapers and magazines under his name—the name she’d given to their mutual enterprise. But soon she used Capa & Taro to label their photos. Then she turned down Capa’s marriage proposal, though not necessarily him, and returned to Spain to continue covering the war. She began sending her pictures out under the label Photo Taro. Regards, Life, Illustrated London News, and Volks-Illustrierte took her pictures. Ce Soir hired her, and by July 1937 she was the only photographer whose images refuted the Loyalist claims to victory in the Battle of Brunete.

Miller’s origins, in contrast to Taro’s, had every genetic and social blessing a body and soul could use. She was American, the daughter of a solid middle-class family in Poughkeepsie, NY. Her father was an engineer, progressive in his beliefs on nutrition and technological progress, and a town notable. As a young working model she was photographed and painted by the most famous artists of the 20th century including Hoyningen-Huene, Steichen, May Ray, Picasso, Cocteau. But modeling for other geniuses didn’t sustain her interest. Like Taro, she went to Paris and wore down Man Ray until he hired her as his assistant, developed her camera skills, and co-created the darkroom technique of solarization. Then she established her own portrait and fashion photo studios in Paris and New York. Vanity Fair named her one of the “most distinguished living photographers” in 1934. In essence, she leveraged her intelligence and appeal as ticket into many a closed club, and once in the door, often surpassed her mentors.

The playwright David Hare makes an interesting point about her free behavior. In the late ‘20s and ‘30s, the Surrealists, with whom she was working and socializing, espoused sexual liberation. Miller practiced the very long-leash values they held, much to their anguish, especially Ray’s. She did it again with her open marriage to surrealist painter Ronald Penrose. And again when she took in Time/Life photographer David E. Scherman as lover, mentor, friend. Restless after publishing Grim Glory, her photographs of the London blitz, on Scherman’s advice, she wrote to the U.S. Army and received accreditation as a war correspondent—rare for a woman at that time. She proceeded in the war by her own lights, fueled, not like Taro, by political involvement as much as emotional outrage.

But with Miller, keep looking and certain facts make you realize the complexities behind her golden girl aura. Although this incident was hush-hushed by her parents—and never mentioned by her, her brother identified it—at seven she was raped by a family acquaintance. On holiday with family friends, she was rushed home abruptly and treated for gonhorrea, suffering outbreaks of it the rest of her life. It’s reasonable to suppose that the trauma of the rape stayed with her—especially as she herself never told a soul about it. Her parents sent her to a psychologist however, who instructed her that sex and love were separate.

Another oddity in Miller’s life began a year after the rape, when her father began photographing her nude. Nothing suggests abuse; he also took nude pictures of Miller’s mother, and he photographed his clothed family all the time, as well as keeping written records of their days. He was a gadget enthusiast—he loved Thomas Edison, progress, cameras. Along with his love of the future and adherence to a whole foods diet, he believed in nudism as a way to absorb the sun. But Miller posed nude for him throughout her childhood and young adulthood, and one could speculate that so soon after her rape, this practice contributed to what her biographer Carolyn Burke speculates as Miller’s mind/body dissociation. Such a disconnect would have allowed her to control the male gaze she so often put herself in front of. And it would have served her in times of duress, such as when she was shooting the London blitz, or concentration camps. On the other hand, maybe it shortchanged her after the war when post-traumatic stress disorder made it impossible to reboot her civilian life without drugs and alcohol.

Like her, Lee Miller’s war photography is complicated and various. War shaped her pictures in a slightly different way than it did Taro’s. What persists throughout her body of war photographs is the breath of irony they allow, how it feels as if there is a backstory outside the frame. Her eye could be formal, as her fulsome photo of the nonconformist chapel in London, its mammoth doorway overflowing with rubble, as if it's a child’s plaything or the city vomiting its surfeit of bombing. Her eye could pick up what was monstrous and banal, as the dead German prison guard floating in profile in the canal. All the photos she shot in Dachau and Buchenwald reflect a mind unafraid to look straight on, as when she climbed inside a rail car over a dead deportee to photograph two soldiers standing outside it, looking at the body.

And her eye sought the absurd, as in her picture of the burn victim, entirely wrapped but for eye and mouth holes in white bandage, a living mummy. Her eye was fluid and powerful, as her dreamlike shot of Hitler’s house burning. It was comical, as with her photo of the sheep patiently standing in the cart, and it was theatrical, as with her pictures of Auxiliary Territorial Service women standing diagonally at the air raid searchlight, or the fashion photo of the two London models wearing fire protection masks.

Above all, Miller was unflinching, as in her picture of the Deputy Mayor of Leipzig suicided with his wife and daughter. Capa shot the same scene but from further back, to allow the entire scene. But Miller went right up to the daughter and mother, lying in a chair and sofa. You get to feast on the bizarre grace of their elongated bodies and the freakishness of their monstrous selves.

Taro’s pictures amount to a dramatic and intimate document of a war that was also a cultural and social revolution, remarkable in the extent of its propaganda, its explicit targeting of civilians, and its reliance on women to fight alongside men. Hers was a brief arc—she went to Spain with Capa in 1936, and died a year later. She believed that with her photographs she could promote the Republican cause and help push back fascism, so her early pictures are fairly propagandistic, favoring stylized posing—a haycart in a field, a militiawoman in profile posing with a gun, a refugee mother holding her infant as she waits for something, someone.

A turning point was early in the morning of May 28, 1937. While Valencia slept, its citizens were blasted by an intense aerial bombardment. Taro went the next day to the city morgue. It was closed, but she persuaded the guards to let her pass. Once through, she turned around and photographed people pressed against the gates outside, waiting to get in to identify their mothers, fathers, children. Once inside the morgue, she took close-ups of women and men dead in pools of blood. Then she went to the hospital and took pictures of bandaged bombing victims in beds.

Now Taro’s mind’s eye began to adapt, becoming quick, immediate—perceptive to the war’s tumult. And because the press was frequently censored, her charms and nerve were key to getting access to the action. Later that summer, her photo of Republican soldiers holding up the captured Fascist flag on their bayonets served as one of the few proofs that the Nationalist propaganda about who was winning at Brunete was a lie. By this point, she was shooting next to fighters, as in her photos of the truck on fire, the close-up of the gentle-faced wounded soldier on a stretcher, her picture of the soldier running to launch dynamite into a building, and one of her best, her picture of a soldier and a man pushing through the door of a burning building, taken from only a few feet behind them.

In short, she had become bold and intrepid. Cynthia Young, ICP’s curator and archivist, says, “I do believe he [Capa] learned a lot from her [Taro]… I think Capa saw and recognized her skills. She had a very aggressive sensibility, a fearlessness.”

Here’s a story about Taro just before she was killed. It speaks to her willpower and wits. She’d spent hours taking pictures from a foxhole in the midst of the ground assault and aerial strafing of Republican forces in the Battle of Brunete. This was July 25, 1937, a setback for the Republican fighters attempting to relieve Franco’s siege of Madrid 17 miles away. Finally, film spent, she was satisfied, invigorated even. She told Ted Allen, the journalist friend with her that she’d got fantastic pictures and could head back to Madrid. In fact, they would drink champagne and celebrate: shortly thereafter she was leaving for Japan with Capa to cover that country’s invasion of China for Life.

In the disorder of the retreating forces there was no room for her or her two cameras. She and managed to get onto the running board of a car, only to be sideswiped by a tank and badly injured. Her abdomen was slashed, her intestines spilled out. At the field hospital, it took her until the next morning to die. But at one point she came to and asked, “Are my cameras OK? They’re new. Are they OK?”

Here’s a story about Miller after she toured Dachau at the end of April 1945. It says a lot about her dissociated state and her intense humanity. She and her partner/lover Life photographer David E. Scherman stayed, along with other allied soldiers, in Hitler’s Munich apartment for a few days. They took many photos. One of the first things they did was bathe—apparently it had been weeks for both—they’d arrived directly from Dachau, where Miller had stood back from nothing in her picture taking.

In Miller’s pictures of Scherman washing off, he sits in the tub naked, his hands on his head, scrubbing his hair. He’s mock-grimacing at the camera. At the base of the tub stand his boots, the soil of Dachau on their soles. On the back rim of the tub, they set up a photo Hitler kept of himself, by his personal photographer. Catty-corner to this portrait, they placed a statue of a classical female nude by Rudolf Kaesbach, perhaps, says her son Antony Penrose, “a snub by LM to Hitler” for his assault of ‘degenerate art.’”

It’s impossible not to appreciate that Jewish Scherman is both cleaning off and enacting what by this point in history is linked with a horrific prelude to death—all in the innermost, private chamber of the figure Miller named the “evil-machine-monster.” In fact, as Penrose notes, “she tilted her camera up to include the shower head. In Dachau the gas chambers were disguised as shower baths.” Implicit in this scene is the illusion that art elevates humanity—classical art could not prevent the Holocaust.

Miller’s take on this episode was that “[Hitler] … became less fabulous and therefore more terrible, along with a little evidence of his having some almost human habits; like an ape who embarrasses and humbles you with his gestures, mirroring yourself in caricature.”

There is no evidence Miller and Taro ever met, nor that Miller was specifically influenced by Taro, although she did form a friendship with Capa in 1944 at the liberation of Paris. Still, Penrose recalls his mother mentioning Taro. An oft-told tale recounts how 27-year-old Miller was nearly hit by a car on Fifth Avenue in New York City, only to be pulled back by a man standing beside her who turned out to be publisher Conde Nast. Penrose says, “I think Lee had a sense of the irony of Taro’s death [by a tank]. … A road accident would have finished Lee in 1927 if she had not been pulled to safety by Conde Nast. I think Taro’s death represented the other polarity of luck.”

Miller may have dodged death that day, but after World War II ended and PTSD destabilized her stormy energies, she was beset by profound depression and alcoholism. Taro was brutally killed in battle, the first woman photographer to die on the job. But she may have dodged the gas chamber herself, and she didn’t suffer the trauma of knowing her entire family was killed in the Holocaust. Ralph Waldo Emerson said “every hero becomes a bore at last,” but Taro—and Miller—merit recognition, not worship. In a way, the two lived alternating sides of the same good luck/bad luck coin. I see their knowing smiles as they wink and toss that coin up, the sun catching heads or tails.

Note to readers: Lee Miller’s archive wasn’t able to release any more photos than these four. Please go to www.leemiller.co.uk, filter for Germany/France/England pictures and dive in to a body of war photography work that truly reflects her wonderful eye.

A brief, by no means comprehensive, list of reading and watching:

GERDA TARO

- Life Magazine coverage of Taro’s death and funeral: http://bit.ly/1G959J0

- Link to ICP’s Gerda Taro archive: http://www.icp.org/exhibitions/gerda-taro

- Gerda Taro, Fotoreporterin, by Irme Schaber. If you read Italian or German—this is Taro’s biography by Irme Schaber: http://www.amazon.com/Gerda-Taro-Fotoreporterin-Irme-Schaber/dp/3894454660

- Gerda Taro: Inventing Robert Capa, by Jane Rogoyska:

http://www.amazon.com/Gerda-Taro-Inventing-Robert-Capa/dp/022409713X

- Talk by Gerda’s biographer Irme Schaber at the Frontline Club, London, 2008: http://www.frontlineclub.com/new_in_the_picture_with_irme_schaber_the_life_and_work_of_gerda_taro

LEE MILLER

- Link to Lee Miller’s archive: http://www.leemiller.co.uk/

- The Lives of Lee Miller by Antony Penrose, Thames and Hudson, London. Antony Penrose’s bio of his mother, Lee Miller, formed the basis for Carolyn Burke’s.

- Lee Miller: A Life, by Carolyn Burke: http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Miller-Life-Carolyn-Burke/dp/0226080676

- Through the Mirror, documentary about Lee Miller: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1jrxzu_lee-miller-through-the-mirror-1995_webcam

#WHM #Womens History Month #gerda taro + lee miller

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dipulb3 · 5 years ago

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Demonstrators say public safety re-imagined is a future without police

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/demonstrators-say-public-safety-re-imagined-is-a-future-without-police/

Demonstrators say public safety re-imagined is a future without police

Williams did what society conditioned him to do in such situations: he put both hands up in the air.

“I was acutely aware as a black man that my life was in danger in that moment if I didn’t have the right answers,” said Williams, an organizer with MPD150, a Minneapolis effort created by local organizers that supports the dismantling of the city’s police department and the reallocation of police funding to community-based organizations without a history of violence.

“What I needed then was not militarized folks who were worried that they’re under attack at any given moment,” Williams added. “It really drove home for me that even in the most benign of circumstances, police are a threat to me.”

Activists, like Williams, who are calling for the defunding and abolition of police, say the future of public safety doesn’t need to include police forces that systematically oppress black people, marginalized communities and communities of color.

Instead, public safety could mean supporting and funding a network of organizations, health care providers, social service agencies, religious and community leaders and others who provide safety, support and prevention. Directing funding in that way would lead to a decline in crimes linked to poverty and systemic disinvestment, activists say.

Once thought to be a pipedream that bounced around activist circles, the idea of public safety without the police forces of today has turned into a viable policy platform in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the protests that have followed. Floyd, a black man, pleaded that he couldn’t breathe while he was held down with a knee to his neck by a former Minneapolis police officer.

“We are seeing the political shift that is happening in real time here,” David Kennedy, director of National Network for Safe Communities and a criminal justice professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice said.

‘I have…zero examples of police helping me’

But there’s no one vision for what a future without today’s police would look like.

On one end of the spectrum, it means pulling money out of policing budgets and redistributing it to community-based intervention programs and services. Instead of sending an officer to a mental health or a domestic abuse call, for instance, a team of crisis workers who are better equipped to de-escalate and provide rehabilitation services would respond. In that example, some sort of policing force would remain, called on for violent situations.

On the other end of the spectrum, the goal is to completely abolish police in the US. Policing, some activists say, profits punishment over rehabilitation because of its origin as slave patrols that paid vigilantes to recapture escaped slaves.

“My horizon goal is a future where people are not policed,” said Kristiana Colón, an afro-Latina playwright, poet and co-founder of Chicago’s #LetUsBreathe collective, which began in 2014 as a way to support protesters on the ground at the Florissant Avenue encampment in Ferguson.

Colón, who works to bring the abolition of police to Chicago, said she is still recovering from being beaten by officers during the initial days of the demonstrations following Floyd’s death.

“I have absolutely zero examples of the police helping me,” she told Appradab in an interview, recalling an instance when she couldn’t get police to file a report about a break in at her home.

“I kept reaching out to them as though that’s going to happen. And that’s simply not how they function,” she said.

Cities are reallocating money from police budgets

In the wake of Floyd’s death, pushed by activists and the protests that have followed, some cities have announced plans to shift money from police departments.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti and Police Commissioner Eileen Decker announced that the city’s police budget would not be increased as planned and $100 million to $150 million would be reallocated to “further enhance community neighborhood policing.” New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio said he would reallocate some of the NYPD’s $6 billion budget to youth and social services, reversing an April budget proposal that suggested cutting $400 million from the same programs.

But no place in the country has gone as far as Minneapolis recently, where nine members of the city council — a veto-proof majority — pledged at a community meeting on June 7 to dismantle the police department in its current form.

‘Case study for a new era of how to enhance public safety’

Last week, 12 city council members unanimously approved a resolution to declare the intent to create a “transformative new model” of policing in the city, setting off a year-long process to envision and create a new way to keep people safe.

Five members also announced their intent to introduce a charter amendment for the November ballot of this year, which would propose the elimination of the Minneapolis Police Department to create “a new Charter Department to provide for community safety and violence.” A tedious process, according to local reporters, if it makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters, it would remove MPD from the city’s charter and the city could begin to dismantle it. Activists say this would circumvent Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has said he’s not in favor of dismantling.

The council’s moves come after years of organizing from community activist groups including Black Visions Collective, Reclaim the Block, Black Lives Matter Minneapolis and MPD150.

After a series of high-profile killings by the police in Minneapolis and demonstrations to demand action, Black Visions Collective along with Reclaim the Block began a campaign in 2018 that organized hundreds of community members to go to city budget hearings and explain to their council members what makes them feel safe. More often than not, the answer was not police presence.

Those efforts bore fruit after video of Floyd’s death went viral and protests began.

Minneapolis Councilmember Steve Fletcher said police weren’t responding to 911 calls during the initial days of the protests, so community leaders and activists started emergency troubleshooting. Some of his colleagues, Fletcher said, broke curfew to organize neighborhood watches while he and others took calls and emails from citizens to resolve issues in the middle of the night.

“We were deeply engaged in the kind of community problem solving and crisis work that both brought people together and showed people how much community capacity for problem solving we have. And also, prompted a lot of in a very tough conversation among us informally,” Fletcher said.

Exactly what dismantling the police department in its current will look like in Minneapolis is unknown. Some say they don’t want it to look like Camden, New Jersey, which broke its police unions, hired more officers for less money and implemented reforms, but residents still experience aggressive surveillance and policing, according to criminology professor Brendan McQuade.

Still, Fletcher says he’s heard from his constituents that they’d like to have some sort of tactical force with the capacity to respond to dangerous situations. The rest will be decided with massive input from the community and organizers, along with the city council.

Responding with prevention in mind

In a police-free future, activists described a world where communities decide what behavior is allowed and highlight the importance of neighbors — not as watchdogs but as those who can respond with prevention in mind.

“There will be a focus on in-the-moment de-escalating a situation, and also making sure that everyone involved has the resources that they need,” said Molly Glasgow, a member of MPD150.

The restorative process will focus on understanding why the issue happened in the first place, Glasgow said.

In the case of a robbery or violent crime, Williams highlighted the use of community patrols that arose during the demonstrations in effort to guard against crime for the short term, until more money is invested into social services.

“Our neighborhood defense networks were an important part of recognizing that it was a threat and defending folks against it,” Williams said.

Another idea is to use an operator for emergency services that would direct 911 calls to a tactical force, fire department or a mental health crisis line depending on the situation instead of all calls going directly to the police. A version of it is already being used in Austin, Texas.

Another option is to deploy crisis teams, similar to the “CAHOOTS” program in Eugene, Oregon, that dispatch a medic, and crisis worker trained in the mental health field to each case.

In a police-free future, domestic violence cases could be handled not by relying on a carceral system, but by focusing on understanding where violence stems from, be it a mental health problem, a substance abuse problem, an unemployment problem or unaddressed trauma problem, Vitale said. Safety for the victim would be prioritized, as police typically respond to domestic violence calls after they’ve already been committed.

“What we want is a place in the community that people can go to and say, ‘I got a problem. I need some help, but I don’t want anyone sent to jail. I want to keep this family together if I can.’ And if that doesn’t work, then ‘I need help getting out of this arrangement,'” Vitale said, adding that communities can create violence centers or women centers with trained professionals to identify resources already present in their lives.

Organizers acknowledge the framework has to come together at a quick pace, even as potential challenges loom, including pushback from the police union.

Non-profits may be guides for cities

There are guides for how Minneapolis might create its new reality — though they exist on a smaller scale as non-profits or community-based programs funded by local governments.

The Health Alliance for Violence Intervention is one non-profit example. Used in hospitals in 70 cities across the nation, violence intervention specialists from the same community arrive after a victim has been admitted to the hospital. They sit bedside to run a retaliation screening asking what happened and if the victim is still in danger, while providing supportive resources. And if the victim identifies the perpetrator or a network of community members does, the specialist then goes to the assailant to identify if risks still remain — hoping to bring both the victim and perpetrator into the organization, halting the cycle of violence and promoting restoration through mediation.

“We’re able to lower violence and their likelihood of coming back into the hospital with another gunshot wound, we’re really focusing on their health and healing,” said Fatimah Loren Muhammad, HAVI executive director.

The process works in large part because they’re not asking police-like investigation questions, but asking what the victim needs in effort to create a solution, as victims are less likely to talk to the police after injury, according to DLIVE executive director Ray Winans, a partner of the HAVI in Detroit.

“Our approach is never to go after the perpetrator in a sense of an investigation but it’s to get the perpetrator and the victim and or the network of folks to sit down and have communication.”

Asked what challenges Minneapolis can expect during their transformational process, Muhammad said it’s understanding the scale of investment that it will take. And without that, the initiative could fail.

“This is not a Band-Aid issue, right? We’re talking about structural racism, we’re talking about systems that have perpetrated harm or in whole communities for a long time. So, you’ve got to be very strategic and you’ve got to invest deeply,” she said.

Community knows ‘best way to keep each other safe’

Even organizers in favor of abolishing police departments still worry about what the future will look and what mechanisms will be put in place to handle crimes like sexual assault and violence, when the current system goes away.

“What are we going to put in place in order to make sure both things don’t happen? And that’s a larger reimagining of what liberation and freedom looks like for everybody moving forward,” Fadumo Ali, an organizer and teacher based in Minneapolis said.

But organizers and council members, who during the June 7 community meeting asked attendees to write down what makes them feel safe along with their questions and concerns as the first of many conversations, anticipate setbacks.

“We actually want to be honest about the fact that it sounds scary because we’re like, how are we going to keep ourselves safe? Our assertion is that our community knows the very best way to keep each other safe.” Noor added.

Replicating across the nation

As Minneapolis pioneers a plan to dismantle its police force, legislators at the federal level are not on the same page. Republicans have been looking to tie Democrats to the issue, while Democrats have voiced support for investing more in communities but not dismantling police forces.

“I think that a big part of this conversation really is about reimagining how we do public safety in America, which I support,” Sen. Kamala Harris said on ABC’s “The View” earlier this month.

“We have confused the idea that to achieve safety, you put more cops on the street instead of understanding to achieve safe and healthy communities you put more resources into the public education system of those communities, into affordable housing,” among other initiatives.

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she was not in favor of “abolishing public safety departments and police departments,” but said conditions can be put on their funding.

Federal legislators point to reforms like a major bill introduced in the House and Senate Democrats called the Justice in Police Act that would create a national ban on chokeholds as an acceptable use of force, create a National Police Misconduct Registry, provide incentives for local governments to conduct racial bias training for officers, and set caps on the transfer of military-grade equipment to law enforcement, among other initiatives.

But advocates of dismantling police forces say cities with some of the worst policing records have passed many of the reforms and not much has changed, as it falls on individual police chiefs to implement them and just lessens the amount of damage done by police officers instead of eradicating it.

“When we talk about reform, often what that looks like is more funding for the police justified by, ‘oh, we’re going to do more training, or we’re going to do different kinds of training,'” said Colón. “Reforms are to police what thoughts and prayers are to mass shootings.”

Williams is one of the people pushing for not just reform, but what he says is transformative change through the abolition of police forces.

Officers eventually accepted that he wanted to ask them for directions, he said.

But they warned him that should he need directions again, he should park far away and approach officers with his hands up, so as not to look like a threat, Williams said.

“Police abolition is ultimately about getting our communities the things that they need to be successful.”

Appradab’s Sarah Moon, Manu Raju, Clare Foran and Aaron Cooper contributed to this report.

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