#Public Theater Jordan Cooper

[news-today-florial-blog]

2024 Emmy Awards: The Big Winners and Where to Watch

The 2024 Emmy Awards, broadcast live on ABC from the Peacock Theater at LA Live, saw HBO's Hacks and FX's Bear emerge as major winners. The ceremony is now available for streaming on Hulu. Hacks Triumphs with Best Comedy Series Hacks took home the award for Best Comedy Series, a surprising upset against last year��s winner, Bear. Jean Smart clinched the Best Actress in a Comedy Series award for her portrayal of Deborah Vance, and Hacks also secured the award for Best Writing for a Comedy Series. Bear Shines with 23 Nominations FX’s Bear dominated the night with a record-setting 23 nominations and won four awards, including Best Actor (Jeremy Allen White), Best Supporting Actor (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Best Supporting Actress (Liza Colón-Zayas), and Best Directing for a Comedy Series. Only Murders in the Building Earns Major Recognition Hulu's Only Murders in the Building received 21 nominations, with Selena Gomez securing her first nomination for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. Other notable nominees include Abbott Elementary (with Quinta Brunson winning her first acting Emmy), Curb Your Enthusiasm, What We Do in the Shadows, Hacks, Palm Royale, and Reservation Dogs. Where to Stream the 2024 Emmy-Winning Shows Bear Christopher Storer’s Bear continues to captivate with its unique take on cooking and mentorship. - Will Win: Best Actor (Jeremy Allen White), Best Supporting Actor (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), Best Supporting Actress (Liza Colón-Zayas), Best Directing (Christopher Storer) - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actress (Ayo Edebiri), Best Supporting Actor (Lionel Boyce), Best Guest Actor (Jon Bernthal, Bob Odenkirk, Will Poulter), Best Guest Actress (Olivia Colman, Jamie Lee Curtis), Best Directing (Rami Youssef), Best Writing (Storer) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch Bear Hacks The critically acclaimed series Hacks defied expectations with its third season. - Will Win: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Actress (Jean Smart), Outstanding Writing (Lucia Agnello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky) - Nominations: Outstanding Supporting Actor (Paul W. Downs, Hannah Einbinder), Outstanding Guest Actor (Christopher Lloyd), Outstanding Guest Actress (Kaitlin Olson), Outstanding Directing (Lucia Agnello) - Where to Watch: Max - Watch Hacks Abbott Elementary Created by Quinta Brunson, this comedy follows the trials and triumphs of teachers in a struggling public school. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actress (Quinta Brunson), Best Supporting Actor (Tyler James Williams), Best Supporting Actress (Janelle James, Sheryl Lee Ralph), Best Director (Randall Einhorn), Best Writing (Brunson) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch Abbott Elementary Curb Your Enthusiasm Larry David's long-running series wraps up with its 12th and final season. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actor (Larry David) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch Curb Your Enthusiasm Gentlemen A spinoff of Guy Ritchie’s film, it follows an aristocrat navigating his inherited fortune and business. - Nominations: Best Directing (Guy Ritchie) - Where to Watch: Netflix - Watch Gentlemen The Girls Are 5 Years Old A nostalgic 90s-themed comedy is back for its third season. - Nominations: Best Directing (Meredith Scardino, Sam Mains) - Where to Watch: The Peacock (Seasons 1 and 2), Netflix (Season 3) - Watch The Girls Are 5 Years Old Mrs. Patty’s Show Jordan E. Cooper’s BET+ series highlights healing and personal growth. - Nominations: Best Directing (Mary Lou Bell) - Where to Watch: BET+ - Watch Mrs. Patty’s Show Only Murders in the Building The Emmy-winning series returns for a fourth season with its star-studded cast. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actor (Steve Martin, Martin Short), Best Actress (Selena Gomez), Best Supporting Actor (Paul Rudd), Best Supporting Actress (Meryl Streep), Best Guest Actor (Matthew Broderick), Outstanding Guest Actress (Da'Vine Joy Randolph) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch Only Murders in the Building Palm Royale Based on Juliet McDaniel’s novel, it explores the life of a former pageant queen in high society. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actress (Kristen Wiig), Best Supporting Actress (Carol Burnett) - Where to Watch: Apple TV+ - Watch Palm Royale Reservation Dogs Sterling Harjo’s series concludes its impactful run with a heartfelt finale. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actor (D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch Reservation Dogs What We Do in the Shadows The fifth season of this vampire comedy reveals significant changes for Guillermo. - Nominations: Best Comedy Series, Best Actor (Matt Berry), Best Writing (Jake Bender, Zach Dunn) - Where to Watch: Hulu - Watch What We Do in the Shadows Explore these Emmy-winning and nominated series to catch up on all the highlights from the 2024 awards season! Read the full article

[hakesbros]

Homes For Sale Albuquerque

Beautifully remodeled home with open and alluring floorplan. Huge double-sized primary suite with walk-in closet. Flex house downstairs w/ exterior access is ideal home...

The provide is very tight and with all the opposite elements thought of, presently, it's unlikely that the Albuquerque housing market will see a price decline in 2022. Albuquerque real estate market developments present that it is a seller's real estate market, which implies that more folks wish to purchase than there are homes obtainable. When you register or work together with an MHVillage web site, your provide info such as your name, handle, e-mail address, zip code, phone numbers, and different info.

Demand isn’t so gentle that property values are declining. This is a sign of a healthy real estate market that may stay secure unless the job market collapses. The most expensive homes within the area hit 1.5 million dollars, but that’s for a spacious luxurious property. There are a variety of ways that real estate traders can analyze completely different markets across the U.S. to find out the potential demand for rental property. Among these varied tools are monitoring the historic change in local housing costs and the affordability of housing in each market. Low rates of interest combined with a scarcity of homes for sale are packing out some open homes with folks excited about shopping for.

The New Mexico Association of Realtors and its cooperating MLS's don't create, management or evaluation the property data displayed herein and take no accountability for the content material of such data. Federal regulation prohibits discrimination on the premise of race, color, faith, intercourse, handicap, familial status or national origin in the sale, rental or financing of housing. BEX Realty is an equal housing alternative actual property brokerage specializing, together with its individual brokers and real property homes for sale in albuquerque nm brokers in luxurious homes for sale representing waterfront homes and communities. Please contact us when you cannot correctly experience this web site. Jordan Miller of John L. Scott Real Estate stated the sale is expected to close in mid January, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. The new proprietor, a self-described serial entrepreneur, will make his name recognized at that time, Miller stated.Since the film got here to theaters in 1985, followers have flocked to the home in northwestern Oregon's historic port of Astoria.

Preston was recognized to be largely welcoming to visitors. She reopened it to the public in August.Based on a narrative by Steven Spielberg, the movie contains a group of pals fighting to protect their homes from an expanding nation membership and threats of foreclosures. In the process, they discover an old treasure map that leads them on an adventure and allows them to save homes for sale in albuquerque new mexico their "Goon Docks" neighborhood. Home buyers have a lot to think about when house-hunting or seeking to spend money on rental properties, from the state of the housing market itself to taxes and potential resale value. The housing market grew sturdy and dear in the last decade following the 2008 recession, however the market might be slowed by rising interest rates.

The median listing value of single-family homes in Albuquerque, NM was $349,900 in May 2022, in comparability with $369,900 in 2021. Over the last two years, actual property appreciation rates in Albuquerque have been tracked to near the national common, with the annual appreciation fee averaging four.60 %, according to NeighborhoodScout's knowledge. Looking only at the final twelve months, Albuquerque's appreciation charges stay among the highest in the nation, at 21.eighty five p.c, which is larger than appreciation charges in seventy nine.50 % of the country's cities and cities. Short-term real property investors have found success in Albuquerque over the last twelve months. In the latest quarter, Albuquerque appreciation charges were 8.44 p.c, equating to an annual appreciation fee of 38.30 percent. Jeff has over 25 years of experience in all segments of the true property business together with investing, brokerage, residential, industrial, and property management.

Whether you prefer a community within the metropolis, a resort like location, or to be on the outskirts, we now have a neighborhood that matches. The City of Albuquerque owns tracts of land and/or buildings which are generally now not needed to satisfy a public function. Once the Real Property Division identifies a possible homes for sale albuquerque surplus property, it seeks to have it declared not-essential by the City Council. Not-essential properties are then marketed for sale in accordance with City Ordinance and are offered via a bidding process. Homes with huge value tags include all sorts of enviable facilities.

[caroleditosti]

'Ain't No Mo,' the Uproarious Satire Explodes With Brilliance on Broadway

This is a must-see in its hysterical and serious confrontation of white supremacist racism in Black America.

Jordan E. Cooper in Ain’t No Mo (courtesy of Joan Marcus) Ain’t No Mo which premiered at The Public Theater in 2019 brings its scathing, sardonic wit and wisdom to Broadway in a broader, handsomer, electrically paced production with incredible performances and extraordinary, complex dynamism. Presented by a host of producing partners with Lee Daniels topping the list and The Public Theater…

[theaterpizzazzstuff]

Review by Carol Rocamora. Ain’t No Mo’ is Jordan Cooper’s sensational new satire, now stirring up a storm at the Public Theater

[doshmanziari]

A Phenomenology of Gazes || Nope

“Nope” is almost aggressively defined by gazes. Anyone who has seen it will remember Daniel Kaluuya’s character, OJ, not so much deducing as intuiting, within a life-or-death scenario, that the movie’s flying saucer — really, more of an Unidentified Feeding Object — consumes anything which grants (or appears to grant, as the movie’s climax demonstrates) it attention. This recalls a pivotal scene from “Get Out” wherein the protagonist, also played by Kaluuya, avoids falling under hypnotic suggestion by stuffing his ears with cotton. In both scenes, the person is in direct contact with the threat and nullifies it by an autonomous denial, the preservation of a crucial sensory faculty.

But a quick review of the rest of the film reveals that the gaze is everywhere, from the eyes-on-you gesture shared between OJ and his sister, Em (Keke Smith); to the moment when a chimpanzee “animal actor”, Gordy, having just exceeded his limit for being a captive and gone violently berserk on set, locks eyes with a surviving boy actor, Jupe (Steven Yeun); to what becomes a shared concern, or obsession, among OJ, Em, Angel (an electronics store employee, played by Brandon Perea), and esteemed filmmaker Antlers Holst (Michael Wincott) to film or photograph the UFO.

As with OJ’s intuition and aversion, the gaze here is also defined by its avoidance or negation: when OJ, who has inherited a horse ranch from his father, brings one of his horses to the set for a commercial, he tilts his head down and away from the reach of the rest of the irksome crew; OJ’s father is killed when miscellanea is ejected at blistering speed from the UFO’s oral-anal hole and a nickel enters his brain through his right eyeball; a recapitulation of the scene involving Gordy, as viewed from different cameras and moments before the assault, stresses the chimpanzee’s presence by his absence by keeping the focus solely on the humans (this ocular exclusion is also an effective technique for invoking an expectant anxiety).

What to make of all this? Locating a theme only tells us that the theme is there, or that it may be interpreted as being there. What I’ve omitted to mention so far is that OJ is black, as are his sister and father.

In certain ways, “Nope” is as much a UFO movie as it isn’t. Although Jordan Peele’s screenplay engages with contemporary incidents and aspects, both reputable — Helene Cooper, Ralph Blumenthal, and Leslie Kean’s NYT article of 2017 is mentioned — and disreputable — Angel’s namedrop of Ancient Aliens prompted a ripple of knowing laughter among the theater’s audience — , its narrative is ultimately a divergent appropriation of the UFO phenomenon. The only black-eyed humanoids here are costumed folks playing a prank on OJ, while the UFO turns out to be an aerial life form, a sort of enormous, sky-bound variant of oceanic siphonophores. Its interiors are not curvilinear metallic chambers containing operating tables but a network of puffy, ribbed digestive tracts, an inflatable funhouse from a thrumming nightmare.

That these divergences might disappoint some people (including myself, to a degree) is beside the point that “Nope” is the first major UFO movie I can think of which so prominently foregrounds black people, to say nothing of Jupe or Angel. While it racially implicates the film industry and the uses of photographic technology, this foregrounding also evokes the notable lack of black Americans’ accounts of, or engagement with material concerning, UFOs. Barney and Betty Hill’s experience still stands out today, not just because of its situating as the United States’ first widely publicized, domestic account of alien abduction, but also because of Barney’s blackness. So obvious and pervasive is this lack that when Patricia Avant produced a short film featuring her own footage, she was compelled to entitle it like a corrective assertion: “Black People Do See UFOs.”

Undoubtedly, black people do see UFOs. The phenomenon is worldwide, relentless, and seemingly nonselective (excepting an understudied intergenerational pattern). Yet when one examines, at least as far as the United States goes, the details of authorship, reports, and cults, one does find a dearth of black people. Anthony Lane’s review for The New Yorker is keen to illustrate a difference between OJ and Richard Dreyfuss’ character in “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”: “Both guys lean out to see what’s happening. Roy gets flashed and scalded for his pains, and, as the encounter ends, he is left panting and shuddering in shock. O.J., on the other hand, opens the driver’s door, glances upward, and then, with unforgettable aplomb, slowly closes the door again. He contents himself with uttering a single word: ‘Nope.’”

OJ’s utterance is the equivalent to “I don’t fuck with that,” and the retraction of his gaze is as self-assured as it is self-preserving. But we needn’t only look forty-five years ago to Spielberg’s movie to find a difference of attitude: during “Nope”’s final confrontation with the UFO, Antlers removes himself from shelter for the sake of a money shot and is gobbled up. Although the movie’s internal context might sooner prompt one to consider Antlers’ decision as being informed by a suicidal-romantic commitment to True Art, for me it recalls the cavalier attitude of modern contact-pursuing cults like Steven Greer’s, wherein everything that is dangerous about UFOs has been sidelined by an underlying arrogance. It is just as unsubstantiated and reductive to suggest that black Americans may generally avoid talking about UFOs because of some uniform, trauma-informed cautiousness as it is somehow unsurprising to know that Greer is white, as were practically all of the UFO cult leaders mentioned by Jacques Vallée in his 1979 book, Messengers of Deception.

Antlers’ hand-cranked film camera, like all cameras, is an eye with its own type of gaze: directive and reflective, but not affected. Its antique form calls to mind an early scene, wherein Em joins OJ on the commercial’s set to give the background for the ranch’s business. Referring to one of photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s later chronophotographic sequences depicting a black jockey upon a horse, Em explains that this “nameless” jockey, in contrast to Muybridge’s renown and the horse having a recorded name, is actually identifiable (a fiction of the movie’s) and her family’s thrice-great-grandfather. Expanded to a fuller context, the centrality of the camera here, and elsewhere, speaks to its real-world powers as an arbiter of history, reality, and humanization, or dehumanization. OJ and company’s fixation on the cameras they install on the ranch to film and thus prove the UFO’s existence is simultaneously reasonable and unprecedentedly modern. Objectivity, as it were (with all the ways by which the camera objectifies), has priority over empirical reality. The subject is made or unmade by the lens’ presence.

So there is an irony to Em’s historical pride, not lost, I think, to the movie: a dimension of her and her family’s racial, cultural, and vocational lineage has been legitimized by a prototype of the same technology which has been used to invisiblize them. The fact that we are, in many respects, more beholden to the camera, and its industries, than it is to us is suggested by a feature of the shapeshifting UFO’s final form: an angular, green projection containing a sort of inscrutable mouth and, with each of its undulations, producing a whipping sound. Here is the green screen placed behind actors, ready to tame and overpower them, and future audiences, with a consuming spectacle. Naturally, this implicates “Nope” itself, to a degree.

The movie’s simultaneous engagement with and disengagement from the UFO phenomenon, and its fixation on the gaze’s powers and vulnerabilities, also aligns it — unintentionally or not — with a commonality among abduction reports. The main pop-cultural legacy of Whitley Strieber’s Communion: A True Story, published in 1987, may be the crude, shameful reduction of Strieber’s trauma to a sort of prison-rape “joke”; but its secondary legacy is surely its disturbing cover: a painting of an almond-eyed being who looks at us with a sort of unknowable, arresting placidity. Accordingly, one finds within the literature (John E. Mack’s and David M. Jacobs’ books being exemplary) descriptions of a being staring into the abductee’s eyes. The abductee, who has little to no control over their body, has the profoundly naked impression that they are being mentally infiltrated, that nothing about their inner or outer life can be kept secret from the gaze. These experiences are caught between the aforementioned mean-spirited joke, New Age sentimentality determined to see the phenomenon only as a drawn-out protocol for spiritual guidance, and scientific disciplines which categorically refuse to study them even from the angle of a collective, subconscious fiction with psychosomatic effects.

If the phenomenon is the product of human minds, then it would seem to be meta-fiction rather than fiction, in the sense that dreams are also sorts of demon-strative fictions with, nevertheless, a psychic (and then physical) reality. This reflective quality of meta-fiction brings us back to the fact that to examine aspects of UFOs is to also examine aspects of ourselves and the ways of the world (and perhaps universe). In cattle mutilations are resonances of our meat industry; in crafts’ killing of the verdure they land upon are resonances of the effects of our vehicles and airplanes; in their effects upon witnesses’ skin, hair, and internal organs are resonances of our scientists’ acquiescence in developing weapons of biological warfare; in the beings’ remorseless forcing of humans to be medical subjects are resonances of productions such as Unit 73, or our experiments upon “lower” animals.

It is the Otherness of the phenomenon which simultaneously readies a gazeful cognizance of its horrors and a blindness to our own capacity for even greater heights of “inhumanity” — a nice word that allows us to believe evilness is the corruption of an inherent gentility. That the threat of “Nope”’s UFO centers around its voracious nature and violent excretions (an inversion paralleling the camera’s inversion of an image) is not, then, only symbolically indicative of socioeconomic or sociocultural hegemony but its phenomenological nearness to us, a horrific immanence settled below a constructed normality. This nearness is never more powerfully illustrated by the movie than in its thunderstorming scene where the UFO hovers right above the ranch house, dumping a deluge of blood and phantasmic screams upon its exterior. It is this scene above all others where one may reconsider whether or not this is truly “just” a hungry creature, and not also the revenge of the unconscious, or the anima mundi.

When OJ asks Em, after having first seen the UFO, “What’s a bad miracle?”, the answer to his question might be a miracle, all the same. Sophocles’ tragic observation, “Nothing vast enters the life of mortals without a curse”, is as applicable to the invention of the magical camera (now so common as to have had its obviously magical qualities regularized and diminished) as it is to the emergence of the magical UFO phenomenon. Prior to the camera, there was the camera obscura, the “dark chamber.” We can literalize and metaphorize this term for a statement: the camera obscures as it reveals. And is not the same thing true of UFOs, those cameras, vaulted chambers, of the sky? To gaze upon the miraculous, the wondrous, is to receive all of its afflictions.

[frontmezzjunkies]

The Public's Ain't No Mo' Fills Us Up

#frontmezzjunkies reviews: #AintNoMo' @PublicTheaterNY with/by @JordanECooper_ #peaches directed by #StevieWalkerWebb #FednaJacquet, #EbonyMarshallOliver, #MarchántDavis, #SimoneRecasner, #JenneanFarmer #CrystalLucasPerry #offbroadway

Marchánt David (center) with cast of Ain’t No Mo’. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.

The Review: The Public Theater’s Ain’t No Mo’

By Ross

The Right to Complain died back on that historic day, when that black man, Barack Hussein Obama became the President of these United States, or so the wailing and carrying on gaggle of mourners thought in the first vignette from the satirical and devilishly funny Ain…

[timeless-hollywood-classics]

Richard Cromwell (born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh, also known as Roy Radabaugh; January 8, 1910 – October 11, 1960) was an American actor. His career was at its pinnacle with his work in Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and again with Fonda in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Cromwell's fame was perhaps first assured in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), sharing top billing with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone.

That film was the first major effort directed by Henry Hathaway and it was based upon the popular novel by Francis Yeats-Brown. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer earned Paramount Studios a nomination for Best Picture in 1935, though Mutiny on the Bounty instead took the top award at the Academy Awards that year.

Leslie Halliwell in The Filmgoer's Companion, summed up Cromwell's enduring appeal when he described him as "a leading man, [the] gentle hero of early sound films."

Cromwell was born LeRoy Melvin Radabaugh in Long Beach, California, the second of five children, to his mother Fay B. (Stocking) and his father, Ralph R. Radabaugh, who was an inventor. Among Ralph's patented creations was the amusement-park swing ride called the "Monoflyer", a variation of which is still in use at many carnivals today. In 1918, when young "Roy" was still in grade school, his father died suddenly, one of the millions of people who perished during the "Spanish flu" pandemic.

Later, while enrolled as a teenager in the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles on a scholarship, young Roy helped to support his family with odd jobs. The school was the precursor of the California Institute of the Arts, and it was there where he met fellow classmate Edith Posener. Posener, later known as Edith Head, would become one of the leading costume designers in American film history.

Cromwell ran a shop in Hollywood where he sold pictures, made lampshades, and designed colour schemes for houses. As Cromwell developed his talents for lifelike mask-making and oil painting, he formed friendships in the late 1920s with various film starlets who posed for him and collected his works, including Tallulah Bankhead, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, Claire Dubrey and Ann Sothern. Actress and future Academy Award-winner Marie Dressler was also a friend; the two would later share top-billing in the early talkie film Emma.

Still known as "Roy Radabaugh", he had just two days in film extra work on the side, and can be seen in King of Jazz (1930), along with the film's star, Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. On a whim, friends encouraged Roy to audition in 1930 for the remake of the Richard Barthelmess silent: Tol'able David (1930). Radabaugh won the role over thousands of hopefuls, and in storybook fashion, Harry Cohn gave him his screen name and launched his career. Cromwell earned $75 per week for his work on Tol'able David. Noah Beery Sr. and John Carradine co-starred in the film. Later, Cohn signed Cromwell to a multi-year contract based on the strength of his performance and success in his first venture at the box-office. Amidst the flurry of publicity during this period, Cromwell toured the country, even meeting President Herbert Hoover in Washington, D.C.

Cromwell by then had maintained a deep friendship with Marie Dressler, which continued until her death from cancer in 1934. Dressler was nominated for a second Best Actress award for her 1932 portrayal of the title role in Emma.

With that film, Dressler demonstrated her profound generosity to other performers: Dressler personally insisted that her studio bosses cast Cromwell on a loan-out in the lead opposite her — it was another break that helped sustain his rising status in Hollywood. Emma also starred Myrna Loy in one of her earlier screen performances. After production on Emma was completed, Director Clarence Brown tested Cromwell for the male lead in his next feature: The Son-Daughter, which was set to star Helen Hayes. However, the part of the oriental prince ultimately went to Ramón Novarro, and Cromwell never again worked at MGM.

Cromwell's next role in 1932 was on loan to RKO and was as Mike in Gregory La Cava's, The Age of Consent, co-starring Eric Linden and Dorothy Wilson. Cromwell is also remembered during this period in Hoop-La (1933), where he is seduced by Clara Bow. This film is considered the swan song of Bow's career. Next, the much in demand Cromwell starred in Tom Brown of Culver that year, as well.

Around this period in his career in the early to mid-30s, Cromwell also did some print ads and promotional work for Lucky Strike brand cigarettes. According to his niece, Joan Radabaugh, Cromwell was a very heavy smoker. Nevertheless, at his home he was always the gracious host, as his niece related, and as such he took great care to empty the ashtrays regularly, almost to the point of obsession.

Next up, was an early standout performance by Cromwell in the role as the leader of the youth gang in Cecil B. DeMille's now cult-favorite, This Day and Age (1933). To ensure that Cromwell's character used current slang, DeMille asked high school student Horace Hahn to read the script and comment (at the time, Hahn was senior class president at Los Angeles High School). While again on loan from Columbia, Cromwell's by then salary of $200 per week was paid by Paramount Pictures, DeMille's studio. Diana Serra Cary, in her biography of Jackie Coogan, relates an episode on the set wherein Cromwell came to the aid of actress Judith Allen:

I watched as he (DeMille) systematically reduced ingenue ... Allen to screaming hysterics by calling her every insulting name in the book in front of company and crew simply to bring on tears ... Cromwell was the only man on the set who dared confront the tyrannical DeMille. White with rage, Cromwell stopped the scene and threatened to deck him if he didn't let up on the devastated girl. He (Cromwell) then drove her home himself. After that courageous act the chivalric Cromwell was unanimously praised as a veritable dragon slayer by everyone who had witnessed that scene.

After a promising start, Cromwell's many early pictures at Columbia Pictures and elsewhere were mostly inconsequential and are largely forgotten today. Cromwell starred with Will Rogers in Life Begins at 40 for Fox Film Corporation in 1935, it was one of Rogers' last roles and Poppy for Paramount in 1936 wherein Cromwell played the suitor of W.C. Fields' daughter, Rochelle Hudson. In 1937, he was the young bank-robber in love with Helen Mack and on the lam from Lionel Atwill in The Wrong Road for RKO.

In 1936, Cromwell took a detour in his career to Broadway for the chance to star as an evil cadet in an original play by Joseph Viertel, So Proudly We Hail!. The military drama was directed by future film director Charles Walters, co-starred Edward Andrews and Eddie Bracken, and opened to much fanfare. The reviews of the play at the time called Cromwell's acting "a striking portrayal" (New York Herald Tribune) and his performance an "astonishing characterization" (New York World Telegram). The New York Times said that in the play, Cromwell "ran the gamut of emotions". However, the play closed after only 14 performances at the 46th Street Theater.

By now, Cromwell had shed his restrictive Columbia contract, with its handsome $500 per week salary, and pursued acting work as a freelancer in other media as well. On July 15, 1937, Cromwell guest-starred on The Royal Gelatin Hour hosted by Rudy Vallee, in a dramatic skit opposite Fay Wray. Enjoying the experience, Cromwell had his agent secure for him an audition for the role of Kit Marshall, on the soap opera Those We Love, first on NBC Radio and then CBS Radio. As a regular on the Monday night program which ran from 1938 until 1942, Cromwell played opposite Nan Grey who played Kit's twin sister Kathy. Cromwell as Kit was later replaced by Bill Henry. Rounding out the cast were Robert Cummings and Gale Gordon.

In the late 1930s, Cromwell appeared in Storm Over Bengal, for Republic Pictures, in order to capitalize on the success of The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Aside from the aforementioned standout roles in Jezebel and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Cromwell did another notable turn as defendant Matt Clay to Henry Fonda's title-performance in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939).

During this period, Cromwell was continuing to enjoy the various invitations coming his way as a member of the A-list Hollywood social circuit. According to Bob Thomas, in his biography of Joan Crawford, Cromwell was a regular at the Saturday Night dinner parties of his former co-star Franchot Tone and then-wife Crawford. Other guests whom Cromwell dined with there included Barbara Stanwyck and then-husband Frank Fay, and William Haines and his partner Jimmie Shields. During the freewheeling heyday of West L.A. nightlife in the late 30s, Cromwell is said by author Charles Higham to have carried on a sometime, though obviously very discreet, affair with aviator and businessman Howard Hughes.

In 1939, Cromwell again tried his luck on the stage in a regional production of Sutton Vane's play Outward Bound featuring Dorothy Jordan as his co-star. The cast of the production at the Los Angeles Biltmore Theater also included Cora Witherspoon and Reginald Denny

Cromwell served during the last two years of World War II with the United States Coast Guard, along with fellow actor and enlistee Cesar Romero. Actor Gig Young was also a member of this branch of the service during the war. During this period, Cole Porter rented Cromwell's home in the Hollywood Hills, where Porter worked at length on Panama Hattie. Director James Whale was a personal friend, for whom Cromwell had starred in The Road Back (1937), the ill-fated sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front. With the war's end, and upon returning to California from the Pacific after nearly three years of service with the Coast Guard, Cromwell acted in local theater productions. He also signed on for live performances in summer stock in the East during this period.

When in town, Cromwell was a fixture within the Hollywood social scene. According to the book Cut! Hollywood Murders, Accidents and Other Tragedies, Cromwell was a regular at George Cukor's "boys nights".

Back in California for good, Cromwell was married once, briefly (1945–1946), to actress Angela Lansbury, when she was 19 and Cromwell was 35. Cromwell and Lansbury eloped and were married in a small civil ceremony on September 27, 1945, in Independence, California. In her authorized biography, Balancing Act, Lansbury recounts her life with Cromwell, as well as the couple's close friendship with Zachary Scott and his first wife, Elaine. Lansbury and Cromwell have stars within walking distance of each other on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Cromwell made just one statement to the press regarding his wife of nine months and one of her habits: "All over the house, tea bags. In the middle of the night she'd get up and start drinking tea. It nearly drove me crazy."

According to the biography: Angela Lansbury, A Life on Stage and Screen, Lansbury stated in a 1966 interview that her first marriage, "was a mistake" and that she learned from it. She stated, "I wouldn't have not done it", and, "I was too young at 19. [The marriage] shouldn't have happened." Articles based on interviews with Lansbury have stated that Cromwell was gay. Cromwell and Lansbury remained friends until his death in 1960.

Before World War II, in the early 1940s, Universal Pictures released Enemy Agent starring Cromwell as a draftsman who thwarts the Nazis. In 1942 he then went on to appear in marginal but still watchable fare such as Baby Face Morgan, which co-starred Mary Carlisle and was produced by Producers Releasing Corporation, one of the "Poverty Row" studios.

Cromwell enjoyed a career boost, if not a critically acclaimed performance, in the film adaptation of the hit radio serial: Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher (1943), opposite Gale Storm. Next up at Monogram Pictures he was cast as a doctor working covertly for the police department to catch the mobsters in the very forgettable, though endearing Riot Squad, wherein his "fiancée", Rita Quigley, breaks their engagement. Cromwell's break from films due to his stint in the Service meant that he was not much in demand after the War's end, and he retired from films after his comeback fizzled. His last role was in a noir flick of 1948, Bungalow 13. All told, Cromwell's film career spanned 39 films.

In the 1950s, Cromwell went back to artistic roots and studied ceramics. He built a pottery studio at his home. The home still stands today and is located in the hills above Sunset Boulevard on North Miller Drive. There, he successfully designed coveted decorative tiles for himself and for his industry friends, which, according to his niece, Joan Radabaugh, he marketed under his stage name.

Around this time, Baby Peggy Montgomery (a.k.a. Diana Serra Cary), who had appeared in This Day and Age with Cromwell many years earlier, recalled visiting Cromwell at his home along with her late husband during this period to see his "beautiful ceramic screen which had won him a prize at the L.A. County Fair." His original tiles as well as his large decorative art deco-style wall paintings of Adam and Eve can still be seen today in the mezzanine off the balcony of the restored Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, which is today considered a noted architectural landmark.

Under the name Radabaugh, Cromwell wrote extensively, producing several published stories and an unfinished novel in the 1950s. After years of heavy drinking with a social circle of friends that included the likes of Christopher Isherwood, Cromwell ultimately changed his ways and became an early participant and supporter of Alcoholics Anonymous in the Los Angeles Area.

In July 1960, Cromwell signed with producer Maury Dexter for 20th Century Fox's planned production of The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come, co-starring Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Dix (son of Richard Dix), and Neil Hamilton who replaced Cromwell in the film. Cromwell became ill and died on October 11, 1960 in Hollywood of liver cancer, at the age of 50. He is interred at Fairhaven Memorial Park in Santa Ana, California.

Cromwell's legacy is preserved today by his nephew Dan Putnam, and his cousin Bill Keane IV, both of the Conejo Valley in Southern California, as well as the family of his late niece, Joan Radabaugh, of the Central Coast. In 2005, Keane donated materials relating to Cromwell's radio performances to the Thousand Oaks Library's Special Collection, "The American Radio Archive". In 2007, Keane donated memorabilia relating to Cromwell's film career and ceramics work to the AMPAS Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills.

Cromwell was mentioned in Gore Vidal's satirical novel Myra Breckinridge (1968) as "the late Richard Cromwell, so satisfyingly tortured in Lives of a Bengal Lancer".

[newstfionline]

Headlines

Masks, gloves, and other coronavirus waste are starting to fill up our oceans (Fast Company) It’s not news that our trash eventually finds its way to the ocean. Because oceans are downstream, litter will eventually find a pathway into our bodies of water if it’s not discarded properly—and often even if it is. But as the COVID-19 crisis slowly generates a new kind of waste, made up of disposable masks and other PPE items, it’s posing new problems for the Earth’s oceans.

Dark days in the cinema business (The Week) Movie theaters will need more than popcorn to persuade audiences to catch the latest blockbuster this summer. Cinemas are among the last businesses to reopen in the United States and Europe, and with good reason: Plenty of customers remain skeptical that it’s “safe to sit in a room with strangers for two hours during a pandemic.” But the largest chains, AMC, Regal, and Cinemark, are forging ahead with plans to reopen nationwide by mid-July. It’s already proving tricky. AMC, the world’s largest theater operator, “drew outcry when it said it wouldn’t require masks” because the company “did not want to be drawn into a political controversy.” AMC later reversed its policy. It’s still capping seating at 30 ­percent, which will make chopping down its $10 billion net debt difficult. Meanwhile, the threat from streaming services has only grown during the crisis. If the public decides that going to the movies is unsafe, studios can go straight to video.

Protesters Won’t Leave CHOP in Seattle as Tensions Rise (WSJ) Several hundred demonstrators are staying in an autonomous area claimed by protesters for racial justice in Seattle, even as its size is shrinking and pressure to shut it down completely is increasing from local businesses and residents, as well as city officials. The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest zone, or CHOP, began on June 8 after thousands of protesters moved into a six-block area in the artsy neighborhood. Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan ordered police to abandon the local East Precinct police station to help end violent confrontations there following the killing of the African-American George Floyd by a white Minneapolis policeman on May 25. The CHOP was initially akin to a community festival focused on antiracism and police reform, with few problems or complaints from local residents. But last weekend there were three shootings in the area, one of which left a man dead. Police attempting to respond to the fatal incident in the predawn hours Saturday were blocked by a crowd telling them to leave. The 19-year-old victim, shot by an unknown assailant inside the occupied zone, was taken by private citizens to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. “It’s time for people to go home,” Ms. Durkan said in a press conference Monday. “We can still accommodate people who want to protest peacefully, come there and gather. But the impacts on the businesses and residents and community are now too much.”

272 uniformed NYPD cops file for retirement after George Floyd death (NY Post) Cops are hanging up their handcuffs in huge numbers. The flurry of farewells began after the police-involved killing of George Floyd on May 25, with 272 uniformed cops putting in retirement papers from then through June 24, the NYPD says. An NYPD source suggested the recent departures could signal a coming crisis for the 36,000-member department, which also faces a $1 billion budget reduction amid the “defund the police” furor. Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch said cops are “at their breaking point, whether they have 20 years on the job or only two. We are all asking the same question: ‘How can we keep doing our job in this environment?’ And that is exactly what the anti-cop crowd wants. If we have no cops because no one wants to be a cop, they will have achieved their ultimate goal.”

In Haiti, coronavirus spreads in slums (Reuters) Berthony Clermont shares a two-room flat without running water with 10 relatives in the Haitian capital’s Cite Soleil slum, so when he fell ill with the novel coronavirus, they all did. “I tried staying at home at the beginning but it was difficult to isolate myself as the house is too small,” said the 45-year old. Mistrustful of the dilapidated public healthcare in Haiti—the poorest country in the Americas—Clermont and his family treated themselves at home with herbal teas. Clermont’s plight is shared by many in Haiti and, more broadly, across the Caribbean and Latin America. Home to 654 million people, it is the most unequal region in the world, according to the United Nations. As governments in Europe and some parts of Asia have managed to stem the spread of coronavirus, Latin America and the Caribbean have emerged as one of the epicenters of the pandemic.

A divided Poland holds presidential vote delayed by pandemic (AP) Poles voted in a presidential election Sunday that was delayed by the coronavirus pandemic and was taking place amid deep cultural and political divisions in the European Union nation. President Andrzej Duda, a 48-year-old conservative backed by the nationalist ruling Law and Justice party, was running against 10 other candidates as he sought a second 5-year term. Whether Duda wins or not will determine whether the ruling party keeps its near-monopoly on political power in Poland. Most recent polls showed that no single candidate was likely to reach the 50% required to avoid a runoff given the crowded field of candidates, all of whom are male. In that case, the two top vote-getters will face each other on July 12.

After deadly border clash, India faces uncomfortable truths about its reliance on China (Washington Post) After 20 Indian soldiers were killed in the first deadly clash with Chinese troops in decades, India faced a dilemma. Could it retaliate against its more powerful neighbor? Military action held obvious risks, including a dangerous escalation between two nuclear-armed nations. Some called for an economic boycott instead, urging ordinary Indians and companies to shun Chinese goods. Now India is facing an uncomfortable truth familiar to governments around the world: It’s difficult to disentangle from China. In wide-ranging goods such as cars, cellphones and medicine, Chinese components are a crucial part of Indian supply chains. Even bulletproof vests used by Indian soldiers are made with material imported from China. China is India’s second-largest overall trading partner and its biggest source of imports. India, by contrast, does not figure in China’s top 15 trading partners and is even lower on the list of sources of imports.

China virus cases stabilize (AP) China has extended COVID-19 tests to newly reopened salons amid a drop in cases, while South Korea continues to face new infections after it eased social distancing rules to lift the economy. Hard-hit Italy, meanwhile, registered the lowest day-to-day tally of COVID-19 deaths Saturday in nearly four months. No positive cases were found in Beijing’s beauty and barber shops in a further sign that the city’s recent outbreak has been largely brought under control. Beijing officials have temporarily shut a huge wholesale food market where the virus spread widely, reclosed schools and locked down some neighborhoods. Anyone leaving Beijing is required to have a negative virus test result within the previous seven days. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that 40 of the newly reported cases were domestically infected, while 22 others came from overseas. In Hawaii, the city of Honolulu announced that campgrounds will reopen for the first time in three months with limited permits to ensure social distancing. In contrast, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee put a hold on plans to move counties to the fourth phase of his reopening plan as cases continue to increase.

Dozens arrested as Hong Kongers protest planned national security laws (Reuters) Hong Kong police arrested at least 53 people on Sunday after scuffles erupted during a relatively peaceful protest against planned national security legislation to be implemented by the mainland Chinese government. Armed riot police were present as a crowd of several hundred moved from Jordan to Mong Kok in the Kowloon district, staging what was intended as a “silent protest” against the planned law. However, chanting and slogans were shouted towards police and later scuffles broke out in Mong Kok, prompting police to use pepper spray to subdue parts of the crowd. The proposed national security law has raised concerns among Hong Kong democracy activists and some foreign governments that Beijing is further eroding the extensive autonomy promised when Britain handed the territory back to China in 1997.

Arab leaders say West Bank annexation will imperil regional security. Will Israel listen? (Washington Post) A succession of Arab leaders and officials have sharply warned Israel against moving forward with a controversial plan to annex Palestinian lands in the Israeli-occupied West Bank as early as this week—an action they say could destabilize the region and undermine peace efforts. Jordan’s King Abdullah has declared it “unacceptable” and warned of a “massive conflict” in the region. Senior Jordanian officials have threatened to reconsider their peace treaty with Israel or their security cooperation agreements. Egypt, the only other Arab nation that has signed a peace treaty with Israel, has also objected, as have Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. The United Arab Emirates said annexation would imperil Israel’s chances of building stronger ties to Persian Gulf nations. But it remains to be seen whether Arab leaders will go beyond mere statements of solidarity for Palestinians and take concrete measures in the event of annexation, Palestinians and regional analysts say. Pressure from the streets to do so could be limited, as Arabs across the region are distracted by the coronavirus pandemic, economic instability, civil wars and other woes.

Opposition wins historic rerun of Malawi’s presidential vote (AP) The opposition has won Malawi’s historic rerun of the presidential election, the first time a court-overturned vote in Africa has led to the defeat of an incumbent leader. Lazarus Chakwera’s victory late Saturday was a result of months of determined street protests in the southern African nation, and of a unanimous decision by the Constitutional Court that widespread irregularities in the May 2019 election—including the use of correction fluid on ballots —could not stand. President Peter Mutharika, who had sought a second five-year term, earlier Saturday called the rerun of the election “the worst in Malawi’s history.” He alleged his party’s monitors had been beaten and intimidated during Tuesday’s election, but the Malawi Human Rights Commission, an observer, called the vote peaceful and transparent. Chakwera won with 58% of the vote, or 2.6 million votes out of 4.4 million cast. Mutharika received 1.7 million. Flag-waving supporters erupted in cheers as the results were read out, and some street celebrations began. Fireworks popped.

[writemarcus]

Black LGBTQ+ playwrights and musical-theater artists you need to know

These artists are producing amazing, timely work.

By Marcus Scott Posted: Friday July 24 2020, 4:56pm

Marcus Scott is a New York City–based playwright, musical writer, opera librettist and journalist. He has contributed to Elle, Essence, Out, American Theatre, Uptown, Trace, Madame Noire and Playbill, among other publications. Follow Marcus: Instagram, Twitter

We’re in the chrysalis of a new age of theatrical storytelling, and Black queer voices have been at the center of this transformation. Stepping out of the margins of society to push against the status quo, Black LGBTQ+ artists  have been actively engaged in fighting anti-blackness, racial disparities, disenfranchisement, homophobia and transphobia.

The success of Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, Donja R. Love’s one in two and Jordan E. Cooper’s Ain’t No Mo’—not to mention Michael R. Jackson’s tour de force, the Pulitzer Prize–winning metamusical A Strange Loop—made that phenomenon especially visible last season. But these artists are far from alone. Because the intersection of queerness and Blackness is complex—with various gender expressions, sexual identifiers and communities taking shape in different spaces—Black LGBTQ+ artists are anything but a monolith. George C. Wolfe, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Robert O’Hara, Harrison David Rivers, Staceyann Chin, Colman Domingo, Tracey Scott Wilson, Tanya Barfield, Marcus Gardley and Daniel Alexander Jones are just some of the many Black queer writers who have already made marks.

With New York stages dark for the foreseeable future, we can’t know when we will be able to see live works by these artists again. It is likely, however, that they will continue to play major roles in the direction American theater will take in the post-quarantine era—along with many creators who are still flying mostly under the radar. Here are just a few of the Black queer artists you may not have encountered yet: vital new voices that are speaking to the Zeitgeist and turning up the volume.

Christina Anderson A protégé of Paula Vogel’s, Christina Anderson has presented work at the Public Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, Penumbra Theatre Company, Playwrights Horizons and other theaters around the U.S. and Canada. She has degrees from the Yale School of Drama and Brown University, and  is a resident playwright at New Dramatists and Epic Theatre Ensemble; she has received the inaugural Harper Lee Award for Playwriting and three Susan Smith Blackburn Prize nominations, among other honors. Works include: How To Catch Creation (2019), Blacktop Sky (2013), Inked Baby (2009) Follow Christina: Website

Aziza Barnes Award-winning poet Aziza Barnes moved into playwriting with one of the great sex comedies of the 2010s: BLKS, which premiered at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company in 2017 before it played at MCC Theatre in 2019 (where it earned a Lucille Lortel Award nomination). The NYU grad’s play about three twentysomethings probed the challenges and choices of Millennials with pathos and zest that hasn’t been seen since Kenneth Lonergan’s Gen X love/hate letter This Is Our Youth. Barnes is the author of the full-length collection of poems the blind pig and i be but i ain’t, which won a Pamet River Prize. Works include: BLKS (2017) Follow Aziza: Twitter

Troy Anthony Burton Fusing a mélange of quiet storm ‘90s-era Babyface R&B, ‘60s-style funk-soul and urban contemporary gospel, composer Troy Anthony has had a meteoric rise in musical theater in the past three years, receiving commissions and residencies from the Shed, Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, Atlantic Theater Company and the Civilians. When Anthony is not crafting ditties of his own, he is an active performer who has participated in the Public Theater’s Public Works and Shakespeare In the Park. Works include: The River Is Me (2017), The Dark Girl Chronicles (in progress) Follow Troy: Instagram

Timothy DuWhite Addressing controversial issues such as HIV, state-sanctioned violence and structural anti-blackness, poet and performance artist Timothy DuWhite unnerves audiences with a hip-hop driven gonzo style. DuWhite’s raison d’être is to shock and enrage, and his provocative Neptune was, along with Donja R. Love’s one in two, one of the first plays by an openly black queer writer to address HIV openly and frankly.  He has worked with the United Nations/UNICEF, the Apollo Theater, Dixon Place and La MaMa. Works include: Neptune (2018) Follow Timothy: Instagram

Jirèh Breon Holder Raised in Memphis and educated at Morehouse College, Jirèh Breon Holder solidified his voice at the Yale School of Drama under the direction of Sarah Ruhl. He has received the Laurents/Hatcher Foundation Award and the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, among other honors. His play Too Heavy for Your Pocket premiered at Roundabout Underground and has since been produced in cities including Los Angeles, Chicago, Des Moines and Houston; his next play, ...What The End Will Be, is slated to debut at the Roundabout Theatre Company. Works include: Too Heavy for Your Pocket (2017), What The End Will Be (2020) Follow Jirèh: Twitter

C.A. Johnson Born in Louisiana, rising star C.A. Johnson writes with a southern hospitality and homespun charm that washes over audiences like a breath of fresh air. Making a debut at MCC Theater with her coming of age romcom All the Natalie Portmans, she drew praise for empathic take on a black queer teenage womanchild with Hollywood dreams. A core writer at the Playwrights Center, she has had fellowships with the Dramatists Guild Fellow, Page 73, the Lark and the Sundance Theatre Lab. Works include: All the Natalie Portmans (2020) Follow C.A.: Twitter

Johnny G. Lloyd A New York-based playwright and producer, Johnny G. Lloyd has seen his work produced and developed at the Tank, 59E59, the Corkscrew Festival, the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival and more. A member of the 2019-2020 Liberation Theatre Company’s Writing Residency, this Columbia University graduate is also a producing director of InVersion Theatre. Works include: The Problem With Magic, Is (2020), Or, An Astronaut Play (2019), Patience (2018) Follow Johnny: Instagram

Patricia Ione Lloyd In her luminous 2018 breakthrough Eve’s Song at the Public Theater, Patricia Ione Lloyd offered a meditation on the violence against black women in America that is often overlooked onstage. With a style saturated in both humor and melancholy and a poetic lyricism that evokes Ntozake Shange’s, the former Tow Playwright in Residence has earned fellowships at New Georges, the Dramatist Guild, Playwrights Realm, New York Theater Workshop and Sundance. Works include: Eve’s Song (2018) Follow Patricia: Instagram

Maia Matsushita The half-Black, half-Japanese educator and playwright Maia Matsushita has sounded a silent alarm in downtown theater with an array of slow-burn, naturalistic coming-of-age dramas. She was a member of The Fire This Time’s 2017-18 New Works Lab and part of its inaugural Writers Group, and her work has been seen at Classical Theatre of Harlem’s Playwright Playground and the National Black Theatre’s Keeping Soul Alive Reading Series. Works include: House of Sticks (2019), White Mountains (2018) Follow Maia: Instagram

Daaimah Mubashshir When Daaimah Mubashshir’s kitchen-sink dramedy Room Enough (For Us All) debuted at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre in 2019, the prolific writer began a dialogue around the contemporary African-American Muslim experience and black queer expression that made her a significant storyteller to watch. She is a core writer at the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis as well as a member of Soho Rep’s Writer/Director Lab, Clubbed Thumb’s Early Career Writers Group, and a MacDowell Colony Fellow. Her short-play collection The Immeasurable Want of Light was published in 2018. Works include: Room Enough (For Us All) (2019) Follow Daaimah: Twitter

Jonathan Norton Hailing from Dallas, Texas, Jonathan Norton is a delightfully zany playwright who subverts notions of post-blackness by underlining America’s obscure historical atrocities with bloody red slashes. The stories he tells carry a profound horror, often viewed through the eyes of black children and young adults. Norton’s work has been produced or developed by companies including the Actors Theatre of Louisville (at the 44th Humana Festival), PlayPenn and InterAct Theatre Company. He is the Playwright in Residence at Dallas Theater Center. Works include: Mississippi Goddamn (2015), My Tidy List of Terrors (2013), penny candy (2019) Follow Jonathan: Website

AriDy Nox Cooking up piping hot gumbos of speculative fiction, transhumanism and radical womanist expression, AriDy Nox is a rising star with a larger-than-life vision. The Spelman alum earned an MFA from NYU TIsch’s Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and has been a staple of various theaters such as Town Stages. A member of the inaugural 2019 cohort of the Musical Theatre Factory Makers residency, they recently joined the Public Theater’s 2020-2022 Emerging Writers Group cohort. Works include: Metropolis (in progress), Project Tiresias (2018) Follow AriDy: Instagram

Akin Salawu Akin Salawu’s nonlinear, hyperkinetic work combines heart-pounding suspense chills with Tarantino-esque thrills while excavating Black trauma and Pan-African history in America. With over two decades of experience as a writer, director and editor, the prize-winning playwright is a two-time Tribeca All Access Winner and a member of both the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group and Ars Nova’s Uncharted Musical Theater residency. A graduate of Stanford, he is a founder of the Tank’s LIT Council, a theater development center for male-identifying persons of color. Works include: bless your filthy lil’ heart (2019), The Real Whisperer (2017), I Stand Corrected (2008) Follow Akin: Twitter

Sheldon Shaw A playwright, screenwriter and actor, Sheldon Shaw studied writing at the Labyrinth Theater Company and was part of Playwrights Intensive at the Kennedy Center. Shaw has since developed into a sort of renaissance man, operating as playwright, screenwriter and actor. His plays have been developed by Emerging Artist Theaters New Works Festival, Classical Theater of Harlem and the Rooted Theater Company. Shaw's Glen was the winner of the Black Screenplays Matter competition and a finalist in the New York Screenplay Contest. Works include: Jailbait (2018), Clair (2017), Baby Starbucks (2015) Follow Johnny: Twitter

Nia O. Witherspoon Multidisciplinary artist Nia Ostrow Witherspoon’s metaphysical explorations of black liberation and desire have made her an in-demand presence in theater circles. The recipient of multiple honors—include New York Theatre Workshop’s 2050 Fellowship, a Wurlitzer Foundation residency and the Lambda Literary’s Emerging Playwriting Fellowship—she is currently developing The Dark Girl Chronicles, a play cycle that, in her words, “explores the criminalization of black cis and trans women via African diaspora sacred stories.” Works include: The Dark Girl Chronicles (in progress) ​Follow Nia: Instagram

Brandon Webster A Brooklyn-based musical theatre writer and dramaturg, Brandon Webster has been a familiar figure in the NYC theater scene, both onstage and behind the scenes. With an aesthetic that fuses Afrofuturist and Afrosurrealist storytelling, with a focus on Black liberation past and present, the composer’s work fuses psychedelic soul flourishes with alt-R&B nuances to create a sonic smorgasbord of seething rage and remorse. He is an alumnus of the 2013 class of BMI Musical Theater Workshop and a 2017 MCC Theater Artistic Fellow. Works include: Metropolis (in progress), Headlines (2017), Boogie Nights (2015) Follow Brandon: Instagram

[kevintumbles]

Theatre Review: ‘Ain’t No Mo’ at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company

The play “Ain’t No Mo’” made its world premiere at The Public Theatre (NYC) in 2019. Ahead of its Broadway debut this November, Jordan E. Cooper’s critically-acclaimed, new comedy is making its regional premiere at Woolly Mammoth. It brilliantly blends sketch, satire, avant-garde theater, and a dose of drag, while asking the question, “What if […] See original article at: https://mdtheatreguide.com/2022/09/theatre-review-aint-no-mo-at-woolly-mammoth-theatre-company/

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 5.25

567 BC – Servius Tullius, the king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. 240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet. 1085 – Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo, Spain, back from the Moors. 1420 – Henry the Navigator is appointed governor of the Order of Christ. 1521 – The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw. 1644 – Ming general Wu Sangui forms an alliance with the invading Manchus and opens the gates of the Great Wall of China at Shanhaiguan pass, letting the Manchus through towards the capital Beijing. 1659 – Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth of England. 1660 – Charles II lands at Dover at the invitation of the Convention Parliament, which marks the end of the Cromwell-proclaimed Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland and begins the Restoration of the British monarchy. 1738 – A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners. 1787 – After a delay of 11 days, the United States Constitutional Convention formally convenes in Philadelphia after a quorum of seven states is secured. 1798 – United Irishmen Rebellion: Battle of Carlow begins; executions of suspected rebels at Carnew and at Dunlavin Green take place. 1809 – Chuquisaca Revolution: Patriot revolt in Chuquisaca (modern-day Sucre) against the Spanish Empire, sparking the Latin American wars of independence. 1810 – May Revolution: Citizens of Buenos Aires expel Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the "May Week", starting the Argentine War of Independence. 1819 – The Argentine Constitution of 1819 is promulgated. 1833 – The Chilean Constitution of 1833 is promulgated. 1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, around 300 people are killed when an ordnance depot explodes. 1878 – Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera H.M.S. Pinafore opens at the Opera Comique in London. 1895 – Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison. 1895 – The Republic of Formosa is formed, with Tang Jingsong as its president. 1914 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Home Rule Bill for devolution in Ireland. 1925 – Scopes Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching human evolution in Tennessee. 1926 – Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, the head of the government of the Ukrainian People's Republic, which is in government-in-exile in Paris. 1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 1938 – Spanish Civil War: The bombing of Alicante kills 313 people. 1940 – World War II: The German 2nd Panzer Division captures the port of Boulogne-sur-Mer; the surrender of the last French and British troops marks the end of the Battle of Boulogne. 1946 – The parliament of Transjordan makes Abdullah I of Jordan their Emir. 1953 – Nuclear weapons testing: At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test. 1953 – The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston. 1955 – In the United States, a night-time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It is the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S. 1955 – First ascent of Mount Kangchenjunga: On the British Kangchenjunga expedition led by Charles Evans, Joe Brown and George Band reach the summit of the third-highest mountain in the world (8,586 meters); Norman Hardie and Tony Streather join them the following day. 1961 – Apollo program: U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces, before a special joint session of the U.S. Congress, his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade. 1963 – The Organisation of African Unity is established in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 1966 – Explorer program: Explorer 32 launches. 1968 – The Gateway Arch in St. Louis, Missouri, is dedicated. 1973 – In protest against the dictatorship in Greece, the captain and crew on Greek naval destroyer Velos mutiny and refuse to return to Greece, instead anchoring at Fiumicino, Italy. 1977 – Star Wars (retroactively titled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) is released in theaters. 1977 – The Chinese government removes a decade-old ban on William Shakespeare's work, effectively ending the Cultural Revolution started in 1966. 1978 – The first of a series of bombings orchestrated by the Unabomber detonates at Northwestern University resulting in minor injuries. 1979 – John Spenkelink, a convicted murderer, is executed in Florida; he is the first person to be executed in the state after the reintroduction of capital punishment in 1976. 1979 – American Airlines Flight 191: A McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago, killing all 271 on board and two people on the ground. 1981 – In Riyadh, the Gulf Cooperation Council is created between Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. 1982 – Falklands War: HMS Coventry is sunk by Argentine Air Force A-4 Skyhawks. 1985 – Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people. 1986 – The Hands Across America event takes place. 1997 – A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koroma. 1999 – The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades. 2000 – Liberation Day of Lebanon: Israel withdraws its army from Lebanese territory (with the exception of the disputed Shebaa farms zone) 18 years after the invasion of 1982. 2001 – Erik Weihenmayer becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest, in the Himalayas, with Dr. Sherman Bull. 2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait, with the loss of all 225 people on board. 2008 – NASA's Phoenix lander touches down in the Green Valley region of Mars to search for environments suitable for water and microbial life. 2009 – North Korea allegedly tests its second nuclear device, after which Pyongyang also conducts several missile tests, building tensions in the international community. 2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her 25-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show. 2012 – The SpaceX Dragon becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station. 2013 – Suspected Maoist rebels kill at least 28 people and injure 32 others in an attack on a convoy of Indian National Congress politicians in Chhattisgarh, India. 2013 – A gas cylinder explodes on a school bus in the Pakistani city of Gujrat, killing at least 18 people. 2018 – The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) becomes enforceable in the European Union. 2018 – Ireland votes to repeal the Eighth Amendment of their constitution that prohibits abortion in all but a few cases, choosing to replace it with the Thirty-sixth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland. 2020 – George Floyd, a black man, is murdered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest when he is forced into a prone position face-down on the ground for more than nine minutes, provoking protests across the United States and around the world.

[caroleditosti]

'Ain't No Mo,' A Searing, Edgy, Sardonic, Magnificent Production at The Public

‘Ain’t No Mo,’ A Searing, Edgy, Sardonic, Magnificent Production at The Public

(L to R)” Fedna Jacquet, Ebony Marshall-Oliver, Marchant Davis, Simone Reccasner, Crystal Lucas-Perry in ‘Ain’t No Mo,’ written by Jordan E. Cooper, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb (Joan Marcus)

Aint’ No Moby Jordan E. Cooper directed by Stevie Walker-Webb is the most cutting edge, maverick and sterling production I’ve seen this year at The Public Theater. It is a must-see for its hysterical…

[stnent]

Fall TV Preview 2017: Time To Tune In

Fall TV Preview 2017 Time To Tune In 1. Biggie: The Life Of Notorious B.I.G. This documentary, authorized by Biggie's estate, explores the life and career of the rap icon. The miniseries features interviews with his widow Faith Evans, his mom Voletta Wallace and a who's who of rap legends, such as Nas, Jay-Z and Sean "Diddy" Combs. (Monday, September 4, 8 p.m., A&E) 2. The Deuce: Go back in time to New York City, specifically Times Square in the 1970s, when the area was a haven for porn. The show stars James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal and was written and created by David Simon ("The Wire"). (Sunday, September 10, 9 p.m., HBO) 3. The Orville: Seth MacFarlane created and stars in this live-action sci-fi comedy series that offers the "Family Guy" guru's take on the likes of "Star Trek." He plays the captain of the ship, who is paired with his ex-wife (Adrianne Palicki) as his first officer. (Sunday, September 10, 8 p.m., FOX/5) 4. The Vietnam War: The legendary documentarian Ken Burns and Lynn Novick tell the story of the Vietnam War in this 10-part, 18-hour series that culls from almost 80 interviews, tons of footage, and more. (Sunday, September 17, 8 p.m., WNET-13) 5. Star Trek: Discovery: Finally, after too many years, we get a new "Star Trek" series. The show has faced some issues, delays and staffing changes, but the early footage has been pretty great. The show, set before the original series, stars Sonequa Martin-Green as Spock's half-sister. (Sunday, September 24, 8:30 p.m., CBS/2, CBS All Access) 6. Young Sheldon: Spinning off from "The Big Bang Theory" comes this prequel following Sheldon Cooper at age 9 (Iain Armitage), a boy genius attending high school. (Monday, September 25, 8:30 p.m., CBS/2) 7. Me, Myself & I: Follow Alex Riley from childhood in 1991 at age 14, to now in 2017 at age 40 and in the future in 2042 at age 65. Starring Jack Dylan Grazer, Bobby Moynihan and John Larroquette. (Monday, September 25, 9:30 p.m., CBS/2) 8. The Brave: Anne Heche takes the lead in this new military drama about undercover soldiers tasked with saving innocents all around the globe. (Monday, September 25, 10 p.m., NBC/4) 9. The Good Doctor: Not a spinoff of "The Good Wife," this medical series, based on a South Korean show, is brought to the states from producer David Shore ("House") and certainly shares a bit DNA with "House." Freddie Highmore stars as a super surgeon with autism, working in pediatrics at a California hospital. (Monday, September 25, 10 p.m., ABC/7) 10. The Opposition with Jordan Klepper: Former "Daily Show" correspondent Jordan Klepper is the latest funnyman to take the former slot of "The Colbert Report," and aims to mock the alt-media on both sides. (Monday, September 25, 11:30 p.m., Comedy Central) 11. Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders: The long-running franchise hops onto the anthology trend with this new spinoff that will chronicle real-life cases, starting with the trail of Lyle and Erik Melendez. Starring Edie Falco, Anthony Edwards and Heather Graham. (Tuesday, September 26, 10 p.m., NBC/4) 12. Seal Team: David Boreanaz's post-"Bones" career begins with this military drama about one of the Navy SEALs' elite units, focusing on the tight group of soldiers as well as their family life. (Wednesday, September 27, 9 p.m., CBS/2) 13. Will & Grace: More than a decade since going off the air, the popular comedy starring Eric McCormack, Debra Messing, Megan Mullally and Sean Hayes is revived, allowing you to catch up with the characters for this 12-episode run. (Thursday, September 28, 9 p.m., NBC/4) 14. Marvel's Inhumans: This Marvel series begins unusually - with the first two episodes getting a limited run in IMAX movie theaters starting on Friday, September 1 (and then run again on TV). The series follows the powerful Inhuman Royal Family and your sure-to-be favorite character is the giant teleporting dog named Lockjaw. (Friday, September 29, 8 p.m., ABC/7) 15. Ghosted: The awesome duo of Craig Robinson and Adam Scott take the leads in this series about a skeptic and a believer who are brought in by the government to explore unusual occurrences going on around Los Angeles. (Sunday, October 1, 8:30 p.m., FOX/5) 16. Wisdom of the Crowd: An inventor comes up with an app that helps crowdsource murder investigations to help find out who killed his daughter. Starring Jeremy Piven, Richard T. Jones and Monica Potter. (Sunday, October 1, 8:30 p.m., CBS/2) 17. Ten Days in the Valley: Kyra Sedgwick stars in this drama about a television producer who is searching for her missing daughter. Also starring Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Kick Gurry, Erika Christensen and Malcolm-Jamal Warner. (Sunday, October 1, 10 p.m., ABC/7) 18. 9JKL: This new comedy, based on the life of star Mark Feuerstein, follows a New York family living in three consecutive apartments. Feuerstein plays Josh Roberts, a divorced actor moving back to the Big Apple, taking an apartment wedged between ones inhabited by his parents on one side and his brother and sister-in-law on the other. Also starring Elliott Gould, Linda Lavin, David Walton and Liza Lapira. (Monday, October 2, 8:30 p.m., CBS/2) 19. The Gifted: This Marvel series in the "X-Men" world focuses on a family with young mutants forced to go underground to keep away from the government in this series. Directed by Bryan Singer, who is no stranger to the Marvel mutants. Starring Stephen Moyer, Amy Acker, Sean Teale, Jamie Chung and Coby Bell. (Monday, October 2, 9 p.m., FOX/5) 20. The Mayor: A young rapper runs for mayor of his California town for publicity and wins. Hilarity ensues. Starring Brandon Micheal Hall, Yvette Nicole Brown and Lea Michele. (Tuesday, October 3, 9:30 p.m., ABC/7) 21. Kevin (Probably) Saves the World: The great Jason Ritter stars as Kevin in this series about a man who returns home to live with his widowed twin sister and her daughter. And then he gets divine intervention, telling him to save the world. (Tuesday, October 3, 10 p.m., ABC/7) 22. Valor: Yet another military show, this one following a team of helicopter pilots tasked with secretive missions. (Monday, October 9, 9 p.m., CW/11) 23. Dynasty: The long-running 1980s prime time soap opera about bickering rich families gets rebooted, starring Grant Show, Nathalie Kelley, Elizabeth Gillies, Alan Dale and more. (Wednesday, October 11, 9 p.m., CW/11) 24. Mindhunter: This streamer is based on the book "Mind Hunter: Inside FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit" by Mark Olshaker and John E. Douglas, and is being brought to life by famed director David Fincher. Set in 1979, it stars Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany as a pair of FBI agents investigating a nefarious case. (Friday, October 13, Netflix) 25. White Famous: Jay Pharoah makes the jump from "Saturday Night Live" to his own series, where he plays a young, up-and-coming comedian, an African-American talent looking to find a bigger audience let the show's title give you a clue. This is loosely based on the life of executive producer Jamie Foxx. (Sunday, October 15, 10 p.m., Showtime) 26. At Home With Amy Sedaris: The delightful Amy Sedaris takes you to her home to showcase her homemaking skills in this comedy. Each episode will be centered around a theme and will feature a guest such as Scott Adsit or Sasheer Zamata. (Tuesday, October 24, 10:30 p.m. Tru TV 27. The Last O.G.: Tracy Morgan stars in this new comedy about an ex-con returning to his old Brooklyn neighborhood, now gentrified, after a 15-year sentence. (Sunday, October 22, 10 p.m., TBS) 28. S.W.A.T: Shermar Moore stars in this remake of the 1975 series, later remade into a 2003 movie. Moore plays a sergeant in the tactial unit in Los Angeles, taking on some of the most dangerous missions. (Thursday, November 2, 10 p.m., CBS/2) 29. Future Man: This streaming series from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, and starring Josh Hutcherson and Eliza Coupe, follows a janitor with some serious video game skills who is recruited by some people from the future to save the world. Sounds a little like "The Last Starfighter," which is totally cool with us. (Tuesday, November 14, Hulu) 30. Marvel's Runaways: Young superheroes unite to take down their evil parents in this latest Marvel property, based on a modern comic book classic from Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona (Tuesday, November 21, Hulu) 31. She's Gotta Have It: Spike Lee's 1986 feature film gets turned into a series starring DeWanda Wise as a woman juggling relationships with three men. (Thursday, November 23, Netflix)

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/technology/entertainment/15-plays-and-musicals-to-go-to-in-n-y-c-this-weekend/

15 Plays and Musicals to Go to in N.Y.C. This Weekend

‘MAC BETH’ at the Lucille Lortel Theater (previews start on May 7; opens on May 19). Something wicked this way comes to Red Bull Theater. The company follows a bloody production of “The White Devil” with more blood. Adapted and directed by Erica Schmidt, this version of Shakespeare’s tragedy of power, horror and fate stars an all-female cast including Isabelle Fuhrman and Ismenia Mendes. 212-352-3101, redbulltheater.com

[Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead.]

‘PASSAGE’ at Soho Rep (in previews; opens on May 5). Can the oppressors and the oppressed hang out? Christopher Chen, a form-breaking playwright, offers a dreamy anatomy of colonialism, imagining Country X, which is ruled by Country Y, and the citizens caught in the middle. Saheem Ali directs. 866-811-4111, sohorep.org

‘PROOF OF LOVE’ at the Minetta Lane Theater (previews start on May 7; opens on May 14). See it with your eyes before you hear it through your earbuds. In this Chisa Hutchinson play, produced by Audible and New York Theater Workshop, Brenda Pressley stars as a middle-class matriarch facing the devastation of her marriage, family and life. Jade King Carroll directs. 800-982-2787, proofoflovetheplay.com

‘SOMETHING CLEAN’ at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater (previews start on May 4; opens on May 29). Kathryn Erbe, a longtime star of “Law & Order: Criminal Intent,” explores another side of crime and punishment. In Selina Fillinger’s drama for Roundabout Underground, she plays Charlotte, a woman whose son has been convicted of sexual assault. Daniel Jenkins and Christopher Livingston also star. Margot Bordelon directs. 212-719-1300, roundabouttheatre.org

‘THE TEMPEST’ at the Public Theater (in previews; opens on May 3). The Public Theater’s Mobile Unit, which brings the Swan of Avon to shelters, correctional facilities and various community performance spaces, comes ashore at the Public Theater. Laurie Woolery directs a cast that includes Sam Morales as Miranda and the wonderful Myra Lucretia Taylor as Prospero. 212-967-7555, publictheater.org

Last Chance

‘AIN’T NO MO’ at the Public Theater (closes on May 5). Jordan E. Cooper’s debut play, a comedy with turbulence, comes in for a landing. A series of vignettes, directed by Stevie Walker-Webb and inspired by the idea that African-Americans might decide to leave the United States en masse, the play is, as Jesse Green wrote, “thrilling, bewildering, campy, shrewd, mortifying, scary, devastating and deep.” 212-967-7555, publictheater.org

‘MRS. MURRAY’S MENAGERIE’ at Greenwich House Theater (closes on May 11). This play, devised by the Mad Ones troupe, is about a children’s television show going off the air in 1979. Jesse Green had particular praise for the acting and the characters, created by the ensemble and Lila Neugebauer. “The whole project,” Green wrote, “depends on an understanding of how people expose — cannot help exposing — their truest selves in every gesture and utterance they make.” arsnovanyc.com

‘WHITE NOISE’ at the Public Theater (closes on May 5). Suzan-Lori Parks’s exploration of the master-slave dynamic, directed by Oskar Eustis and starring Daveed Diggs, comes to an end. Ben Brantley wrote that in this “enthrallingly thought-packed” play, “Parks isn’t cutting anyone any slack. Herself included.” 212-967-7555, publictheater.org