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toldnews-blog · 6 years ago

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New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/travel/a-new-kind-of-hamilton-show-this-time-on-lake-michigan/

A New Kind of ‘Hamilton’ Show, This Time on Lake Michigan

CHICAGO — Audrey Burcham and Grace Troelstrup got up at 5 a.m. Saturday to be sure they’d make it on time. By 7, three hours before a large “Hamilton” exhibition opened here, they were standing at the front of the line with their moms. Audrey, 12, was clutching an Alexander Hamilton doll as well as a hard-bound collection of inspirational tweets from Lin-Manuel Miranda and, of course, a Playbill; Grace, 13, was wearing a gold star “Hamilton” knit cap and toting “Hamilton: The Revolution,” the explanatory book known to fans as the Hamiltome.

“We’re obsessed,” Audrey said. Grace nodded in agreement. “Hamilton is our life now.”

Hamilfans (yes, that’s what they call themselves) have a lot of ways to engage with the juggernaut musical. There’s the show itself, of course, now playing in six productions in North America and Britain, with a seventh expected at some point in Germany, and the books and the app and the cast recording and the mixtape.

But now “Hamilton,” created by Mr. Miranda, has taken a step that appears to be without precedent in the theater world. On an island in Lake Michigan (well, it’s called Northerly Island, but it’s really more of a peninsula attached to a popular park) the show has erected a huge shed in which it has created a high-tech exhibition that combines entertainment (a 3-D theater offers a rare you-are-on-the-stage view of Mr. Miranda leading the Washington cast in performing the show’s opening number), education (more than you probably want to know about the Articles of Confederation) and commerce ($25 for your very own pair of King George socks).

The exhibition is a commercial venture, overseen by Jeffrey Seller, who is the musical’s lead producer, and designed by David Korins, who is the musical’s set designer. It has been capitalized for $13.5 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission — more than the cost of the original Broadway musical, which was $12.5 million. Tickets are $39.50 for adults, $25 for children and free for Chicago public school groups.

The show is betting that interest in “Hamilton” remains so high, both among those who have seen the show and those who have not, that it can sustain the exhibition here for months and then move it to another location — San Francisco or Los Angeles are “logical options,” Mr. Seller said. It is built to tour, although it will require space — the exhibition occupies 35,000 square feet in a hangar-like structure that is 300 feet long and 100 feet wide — and expense: Moving it will take 80 trucks, compared to just seven to move a touring production of the show.

The exhibition is starting in Chicago in recognition of the musical’s success here, where the first production outside New York opened in 2016, and the musical has now been seen by more people in Chicago than in New York.

Among those who attended a ribbon-cutting on Friday was the mayor-elect of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, who said she had seen the musical four times (once in New York, three times in Chicago), and was “blown away by everything about it.”

The exhibition is a cousin to any number of museum-lite shows, often combining artifacts and fun-for-the-family activities in a selfie-conducive setting, that have been mounted in association with television shows (“Downton Abbey”), movies (“Jurassic Park”), games (“Angry Birds”) and musical groups (the Rolling Stones). Some are mounted at nonprofit institutions — just within the last year, New York has seen museum exhibitions about David Bowie (at the Brooklyn Museum), Harry Potter (at the New-York Historical Society) and Tolkien’s Middle-earth (at the Morgan Library & Museum). But many are in less rarefied for-profit settings — at shopping centers, for example. Just this week, a “Hunger Games” exhibition is opening inside a casino hotel on the Las Vegas Strip.

“Brands are looking to connect with consumers, and people are looking for an experience that is more than being on their phones all the time,” said Tom Zaller, the chief executive of Imagine Exhibitions, which helped conceive this project but is no longer working on it. “There have certainly been other ‘Hamilton’ exhibitions that museums have done, but your typical ‘Hamilton’ theater fan is probably less likely to go to a history museum than to hear Lin-Manuel Miranda tell them the story.”

The immersive exhibition tracks the life of Alexander Hamilton, who was the nation’s first Treasury Secretary, from his childhood in the Caribbean to his fatal shooting on a dueling ground in Weehawken, N.J., and it also uses his life as a tool for exploring early American history.

It follows the arc of the musical, but also delves into issues that are only lightly mentioned onstage — like the role of slavery in the economy of the Americas, including colonial New York, and offers information about soldiers of color, women at war and Native Americans. A room focused on the election of 1800 features silhouettes of those excluded from voting in early America, including women, enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans and poor whites.

There are carnival-game-style exhibits that try to help visitors understand Hamilton’s concern with debt, banking, and manufacturing policy, and, inside a facsimile of George Washington’s wartime tent, there is a tabletop plan for the Battle of Yorktown featuring toy ships and soldiers that move by magnetization. There is a room with a spiral path to represent the hurricane that affected Hamilton’s early life, there are quotes about Hamilton from famous Americans and there’s a legacy area where visitors can write down their own wishes for America.

“I have so many people come up to me and say, ‘I hardly knew anything about Hamilton, and I want to know more,’” Mr. Miranda said in an interview here. “This is for them.”

There are, of course, many nods to the musical, including an audio guide narrated by Mr. Miranda and two other member of the original cast — Phillipa Soo and Christopher Jackson. The exhibition also has a soundtrack that will be familiar to fans — it’s a reorchestrated instrumental version of the show’s score, recorded in a Los Angeles studio by a 27-piece band.

Scattered throughout are small white signs that correct historical inaccuracies in the musical. On the audio guide, Mr. Miranda refers to them as “tweaks to history” and “fun facts that set the record straight.” The most significant, given the debate in some circles over how the musical depicts its hero’s relationship to slavery, is a sign that says that “The real Hamilton wasn’t an abolitionist, but he did oppose slavery.”

Mr. Miranda is straightforward about the fact that his musical is not precise history. In a welcoming video to the exhibition, he says, “I made a lot of things up,” and in the interview he said, “Don’t expect to pass a test on Argentinean politics by watching ‘Evita.’”

The exhibition aspires to greater historicity. Joanne Freeman, a professor of history and American studies at Yale, served as an adviser and narrates some of the audio; Annette Gordon-Reed, a professor of American legal history at Harvard Law School, served as a consultant.

“There are two ways to respond to the musical — one is to say, ‘Everything is not accurate, and I don’t like that,’ and the other is to say, ‘Everything is not accurate, so come with me and let me tell you more,’” Professor Freeman said. “I’ve been studying this period for many decades, and I’ve never seen this kind of interest — people want to know more, and it’s a wonderful thing that the show wanted historians to come in and offer a responsible version of more.”

Professor Gordon-Reed, who called the musical “fictionalized biography,” said the exhibition “attempts to tell the story in broader context.” “I imagine lots of young people will be there, and this will give them a more nuanced view of what happened in early America,” she said.

Early attendees seemed impressed. Among those lined up for the opening were Alex Lipp, 19, of Chicago, and Cyandra Bennett, 19, of Sheldon, Ill. On Friday night, they had seen the musical in Chicago — Ms. Lipp cosplaying as King George and Ms. Bennett as Hamilton. And on Saturday morning, Ms. Lipp showed off a forearm tattoo with words from the show’s libretto, “History has its eyes on you,” while Ms. Bennett had the show’s signature star drawn in black makeup under her left eye. Because they were in the first group to move through the museum, they got an unexpected bonus — they spotted Mr. Miranda in the last room, and got a selfie with him. “It was surreal — I was shaking really hard,” Ms. Lipp said. As for the exhibition, she said, “There was literally nothing I didn’t like.”

#m1 travel news southbound #snow and travel news #travel news 2br #travel news buxton #travel news m4/5 #travel news underground

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onlyfools-fall-foryou · 7 years ago

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So I wrote for the school magazine but this was never published because we ran out of time. Long story. Just gonna post this here.

Lina’s Completely Self-Indulgent To-do List for You and Me

Most of these listed items are pretty mature. By that, I mean high school and older.

Upcoming Movies: Dunkirk Why don’t we just watch all of Christopher Nolan’s movies while we’re at it? Dunkirk is, yes, another WWII movie on the side of the Allies, but it’s a Nolan film, so I’m not complaining. Nobody’s complaining. Like Nolan films, it’s incredibly star-studded, with his usual Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy etc. Nolan really hasn’t given away anything by his short and simple trailers, other than what people already know about the Battle of Dunkirk. (Spoilers, they get rescued.) Release Date: July 21, USA

Spider-man: Homecoming Can I just say, I am loving new spidey. That guy is ador(k)able. Marvel is finally giving us the sassy teenage Peter that we didn’t know we needed. Release Date: July 5, Finland

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets Luc Besson, director of /Leon, Nikita, and The Fifth Element/ decided to turn the futuristic sci-fi time-traveling comic series, /Valerian and Laureline,/ into a movie starring Dane DeHaan and the beautiful, beautiful Cara Delevingne. (I was slightly obsessed with Cara Delevingne in 2016.) Let’s just hope that Cara is better at acting here than she was in /Paper Towns/. Release Date: July 21, USA

Detroit From the only female director who has won the Academy Award for Best Director, Kathryn Bigelow, director of /The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty,/ comes another possibly scarring, possibly life-changing movie based on modern historical events. (By modern, I mean 50 years ago.) This time, it’s about the Algiers Motel Incident, taken place during the 1967 12th Street Riot that left three black males dead and two white females and seven black males brutally beaten by the police. Remember when I said this would be scarring? It stars John Boyega and many other beauties. Release Date: August 4, USA

The Dark Tower This is the beginning of a possible movie franchise adapted from Stephen King’s novel series of the same name. Starring Idris Elba as our formidable hero and Matthew McConaughey as our mysterious villain. If you’ve read any Stephen King or seen any adaptations, notably I’ve seen /The Mist,/ you know they’re chilling and terrifying and scarring. Watch with caution. Release Date: August 4, USA

Movies If you’re a nerd who likes to spend most of their life in a screen like me, just invest in a Netflix account (unfortunately, I get nothing out of this promo). And, all the Netflix original shows are top notch because Netflix goes all out on their shows. (Edit: DON’T TRUST NETFLIX. THEY MIGHT CANCEL YOUR FAVOURITE SHOW.)

Patriots Day (2016) It’s about the 2013 Boston Marathon Bombings. Apparently watching it the first time around is the best, according to my brother who watched it twice. For the first 20 minutes or so, you’re so tense because it’s just people getting ready for the marathon and you know what’s about to happen. That was interesting, because the movie did try to tense us up, but it didn’t try that hard. It was mostly our knowledge of the bombings that did most of the work. Most of the characters are real people, except for the main character played by Mark Wahlberg, who is fictional. It leaves you sweating from your pores (and tear ducts) at the end of the movie so drink some water before starting.

Moulin Rouge! (2001) If you’re into music, beautiful people dancing and singing, renditions of pop songs like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” or “Like a Virgin,” you should watch this sort of rom-com/rom-tragedy starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman. Go read my other article on page * for some extra info.

Inglourious Basterds (2009) Glorious cinematography. Glorious deaths. Glorious acting. The opening scene is pure gold. It’s one of those scenes you get completely lost in. It also gets you sweating from your pores. Everything from the cinematography and the acting and the set and music and everything is just so well done. Everyone who has seen this scene knows what I’m talking about. And of course, Mélanie Laurent is (one of) the main character(s) so that’s a lot of, em, eye cleansing.

Twilight (2008) Just kidding.

TV The Get Down Go read my other article on page *. Tl;dr: About the origin of hip hop in 1977 Bronx told around beautiful brown young adults with voices of angels.

Lost You have probably head of /Lost/, whether it’s something good or bad. Lost is infamous for its bad ending, which, I don’t think is that bad, but who cares about an ending when everything else is good? The premise is, a bunch of people were on a plane going from Sydney to LA but it crashes on an island. For the first couple episodes, you might think it’s just another survival show, but boy you are wrong. The episodes vary from present to flashback, the centric-character changing every episode. Try not to cringe too hard as Daniel Dae Kim completely ruins the Korean language. Lost is one of the shows I only watch when I have a lot of time because it and its soundtrack completely emotionally ruins me.

Books Sorry, this list may be shorter than the others because I shamefully admit, I don’t read as much as I watch. (Stop judging me, I know my brain cells are dying.)

Harry Potter Need I say more? If you haven’t read Harry Potter, where have you been and where is your integrity?

13 Reasons Why I read this book in the summer of 2015 and it was one of those books I couldn’t put down, not because it was so fun to read, but because my stomach was shaking with uncomfortable angst and I had to get it over with in order for my life to move on. It’s about a teenage boy who gets a mysterious tape one day. On the tape is a recording that a sort-of-friend/ex-crush, Hannah, made before she killed herself. The thirteen reasons are, yes, why she killed herself and are directed at 12 people in total (it goes to a person twice). It deals with some pretty mature content like sex, sexual assault, and obviously suicide. I think I was a little young to understand the book to its full potential, because the book is heavily about the relationship of Hannah and everyone around her and I didn’t realize relationships were so hard at the time.

Percy Jackson Yes, I can hear you snickering about how big of a nerd I am. I admit, I was obsessed with Percy Jackson, still low-key am, but to be fair, so was my mom! Whenever we would get a new book, my mom, brother, and I would pass it around none too patiently. Percy Jackson is definitely more for younger kids, i.e. middle school, because the level of darkness and death sort of stays the same throughout, unlike Harry Potter that matures along with us, becoming darker and darker. If you don’t know who Percy Jackson is, he’s the son of a mortal and Poseidon. He then struggles to save the world every book. The series really educates you in a fun way on Greek (and later, Roman, Egyptian, Norse, and who knows what next) mythology and it’s fun to see how the writer portrayed his Godly characters. It’s just a really, really fun read. Another perk is Rick Riordan seems to keep writing books, so the series doesn’t seem to ever end.

Music

Hamilton If you’re into American history, people of color, hip-hop, bromance, and death, listen to this amazing cast album of Hamilton: An American Musical (or watch the bootleg). Basically the story of Alexander Hamilton’s life, through childhood in the Caribbeans, coming to New York where dreams are made of, the American Revolution, trying to set up a government and finally his death. Will you become a non-functioning human for a couple days while you finish it? Yes. Will you start violently sobbing when you hear the name John Laurens? Yes. Will you start breaking into song and rap when you know you can’t sing or rap? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes.

Harry Styles Following the classic tradition of naming your debut album after yourself, Harry Styles comes back to the music industry with this album that is completely different from One Direction (before they started writing their own songs, so this album more like MITAM). After a year (and a half) of being in the new Nolan movie (life goals right there mm mm.) and chilling in the Caribbeans, he randomly dropped news of his single “Sign of the Times” and the rest of his album in April. The album is like a time capsule from the 2007s with a mix of the 1970-80s, giving off rock god and sappy indie breakup band vibes at the same time. I’m actually listening to it as I’m writing this right now, and gosh it is good. It’s Harry doing everything he couldn’t do in a band, every song has him straining his vocal cords and (*wipes away proud tear*) you can just imagine him jumping around stage and having the time of his life.

Other

Duolingo.com (Like I said, I get 0 money out of this.) Duolingo is a website for, you may have guessed it from “duo” and “lingo,” learning languages. It’s completely free, these people don’t even require you to “upgrade your account” to do all the languages. There are most of the European languages, some Asian languages like Vietnamese (Japanese and Korean etc are in progress), Swahili, and Klingon (in progress). You can choose how seriously you want to learn and set your daily XP goal. It sends you an email and application notification so you don’t forget (but of course you can turn it off) and there’s an app too. If you do it intensively (really intensively, like a couple hundred XPs a day), I think finishing a language course during the summer is possible. It’s such a good and wholeful website/app. I’m currently learning Norwegian so if anyone wants to join, halla at me!

Learn How to Box Finally, a non-nerd item on this list! More broadly, get in the habit of working out. Whatever we’re going to do in the future, we need the stamina for it, even if you’re just going to sit at a desk all day. I’m only putting boxing up there as an example because it’s fun and it makes you feel powerful. Not that I’m an expert or anything, I did like four months and quit (lol) but I still work out in various ways. Grab a friend and convince them to go with you. Working up a sweat, even for a short time, generally makes you happy. I don’t know how much this applies to other people, but personally, I spend my workout minutes giggling most of the time. When I’m doing something really challenging, I start manically laughing. This is also an excuse for you to get your mom to let you out of the horrible cycle of hagwons and tutors!

#dunkirk #valerian and the city of a thousand planets #spider man: homecoming #the dark tower #Detroit #patriot's day #the get down #moulin rouge #inglorious basterds #lost #harry potter #harry styles #hamilton #thirteen reasons why #skam #percy jackson #Duolingo

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gretascully · 7 years ago

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Hiiii For the identity asks... All thirty🙆❤

Just got back from a lovely hike and had some time so here you go…

Probably would just tell them to read Harry Potter, watch Princess Bride and X Files and listen to lots of musical soundtracks (Wicked, Hamilton, Dear Evan Hansen, etc.). Lol I feel like my faves sum me up pretty well.

No one writer really comes to mind.

Harry Potter: Hermione & Luna, X Files: Scully, Hamilton: Peggy lol idk, Miss Fisher: I wish Phryne but probably Dot, Gilmore Girls: Rory. I guess those are the major ones right now.

I have come to really love my name and people say it really suits me so nothing I can think of that would fit me better.

I feel like I really see myself as a human being and define myself more by my thoughts, beliefs, and personality rather than just the things I do.

I was not raised any religion or spirituality but the older I have gotten the more interested I am in different religions and feel like I am becoming a more spiritual person.

Not particularly, I am the same as the majority of people I am surrounded by and it isn’t something that I really feel like I focus on even if someone’s ethnicity is different from mine.

I don’t really get super connected to musical artists. I just kinda listen to a bunch of stuff that I enjoy and am pretty open to new stuff.

Yeah I identify as an artist for sure but I’m all about the creative arts and not so much the fine arts.

None I can think of that I would use that word to describe.

Lazy morning, late night, being creative, being outside, good food, and good company.

Dog person but I love cats and most animals

Outdoors 100%

I wish. I sing all the time but don’t think I have a good voice.

Harry Potter, Yes Please, We a Manifesto for Women Everywhere, To Kill A Mockingbird, and Charlotte’s Web

Hard to say but probably similar but not exactly the same.

I’m pretty open on tumblr and don’t filter myself very much so I would say so.

A dolphin

Ravenclaw!

Hogwarts for sure

Nope but I love hard

Sleeping, thinking too much, being on my computer, working/adulting, and eating

A few times a week. I love my family but I also love my independence.

Definitely, I feel like there are some people who I am so close to that we will think the same thing at the same time or communicate without using words, etc.

While I love my alone time I could not live totally as a hermit.

Definitely a very femme female and I am still exploring sexuality-wise but for right now I would say bisexual seems the most fitting.

Yeah for the most part, however I feel like I do look younger and more innocent then I actually am.

4 maybe?

Waving Through a Window, If I Could Tell Her and You Will Be Found or basically the entire Dear Evan Hansen soundtrack

“Be Here Now”

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emma-what-son · 8 years ago

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Cover Story: Emma Watson, Rebel Belle

From Vanity Fair Feb.2017: Since her years as Hermione ended, Emma Watson has fought to assert her own identity. Now that she has found her voice—most notably as a U.N. ambassador—she’s revamping a classic stereotype, the Disney princess, in Beauty and the Beast, the live-action musical coming out in March. Watson talks to Vanity Fair about her metamorphosis from child star to leading woman.

by Derek Blasberg

Photographs by Tim Walker

Styled by Jessica Diehl

Omg this is so LONG! I’m gonna take a Sam approach with this one and pepper comments all through the interview.

Emma Watson and I are standing on the 23rd Street platform of an uptown-bound E train in New York City and we’re littering. Literally. And literature-ly. The 26-year-old actress is scattering hardcover copies of Maya Angelou’s book Mom & Me & Mom throughout the station—tucking them between pipes, placing them on benches, atop the emergency call box—in hopes that New York commuters will pick them up and put down their smartphones. This display of civil disobedience was conceived by Books on the Underground, a London-based organization that plants books on public transportation for travelers to discover. “We’re being ninjas,” she says with a conspiratorial grin as she digs in a big black rucksack of books. “If there were anyone to be a ninja for, it’d be Maya Angelou.”

Watson is one of the most famous women in the world, the child star who skyrocketed to global fame at the age of 11 playing brainy Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter movies. Next month, she’s back on the big screen as Belle in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, the big-budget live-action musical—she sings too!—which broke the record for most viewed new movie trailer. (That’s 127 million views in its first 24 hours, beating Fifty Shades Darker’s record.) But today she’s makeup-free, her hair shoved into a bun, and she’s wearing a nondescript dark wool coat over a baggy black sweater, completely blending in with New York’s distracted mass-transit masses.

“It’s good that we’re spreading a little bit of love,” she says. As she removes the last book, a train pulls into the station. She hops in, places it on a seat, hops out, and watches from the platform as the doors close and a young man inquisitively picks it up.

Yes and get some good publicity along the way. Don’t forget to mention this in my Vanity Fair interview Derek.

Aboveground, over coffee at a nearby café, Watson explains why she thinks reading is “sacred.” There’s the obvious, professional reason: Harry Potter was a literary sensation before becoming the blockbuster franchise that made her famous and a millionaire many times over. But books are also rooted in her deepest personal experiences. “Books gave me a way to connect with my father,” she says. “Some of my most precious and treasured moments . . .” She trails off and, unexpectedly for someone who is known for her composure, tears up. Her parents divorced when she was young. “I just remember him reading to me before bed and how he used to do all the different voices. I grew up on film sets, and books were my connection to the outside world. They were my connection to my friends back at school because if I was reading what they were reading we’d have something in common. Later in life, they became an escape, a means of empowerment, a friend I could rely on.”

All this would be nice if it didn’t reek of pretentiousness.

I first met Watson, Hollywood’s latest exception to the rule that all child stars inevitably flame out, during Paris Fashion Week more than a decade ago, when she was still a teenager and filming the fourth of the eight Harry Potter films. It was both a homecoming for the actress—she was born in Paris to British parents, both lawyers, and lived there until she was five—and a symbol of her maturity on-screen. She was there to attend her first-ever fashion show, at Chanel, which was a big deal considering that up until then she had shopped in the bridesmaid section at Harrods or borrowed dresses from her stepmother for movie premieres.

She was a shy teenager, but friendly, intelligent, and down to earth. Watson is described as much the same today: “She’s way more like a real person than a movie star,” according to Gloria Steinem, who became a friend when Watson reached out to discuss the changing face of feminist activism. (More on that later.) Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, who met Watson backstage at a performance of the musical, sums it up: “She played this very smart, conscious, noble wizard—and then somehow we had the good fortune that she became a smart, conscious, noble woman.” (They did a video together—Miranda freestyling, Watson beatboxing—to raise awareness for International Women’s Day. It got more than six million views.)

Of course they asked Lin Manuel Miranda questions for this interview. He can’t really say anything about her personality, but you know... Hamilton.

Emma and I got to know each other, and I visited her on the sets of the last two Harry Potter films. But as the Potter train pulled into its last station, I noticed the clouds of melancholy forming over her fairy-tale life. “I’d walk down the red carpet and go into the bathroom,” she remembers of the last few premieres. “I had on so much makeup and these big, fluffy, full-on dresses. I’d put my hands on the sink and look at myself in the mirror and say, ‘Who is this?’ I didn’t connect with the person who was looking back at me, and that was a very unsettling feeling.”

I’m sure I remember her a few years after HP saying that she was still figuring out who she was and that in Oct 2011 she said in her Elle UK interview: "I'm going to go travelling – a sort of gap year, condensed into a few months. Don't think I'm going off to find myself, though. I already know who I am," she told Elle. And that was a few months after the last HP movie released.

What few people knew when she enrolled at Brown University in 2009 was that she had a desire to give up acting and walk away from Hollywood altogether. “I was finding this fame thing was getting to a point of no return,” she remembers. “I sensed if this was something I was ever going to step away from it was now or never.” She loved performance and telling stories, but she had to reckon with the consequences of “winning the lottery,” as she calls getting the part of Hermione, when she was nine years old and literally still losing baby teeth. As an adult, “it dawned on me that this is what you’re really signing up for.”

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So she’s saying that she wanted to stop acting, right? That was the decision she made when enrolling? And yet in 2009 (a few months before she eent to Brown):

Paste: And studying will mean that a film career is put on the back burner for a while?

Watson: Not entirely, no, there are end of term breaks where I could do something if someone asks me, and I liked the idea. It all depends, doesn’t it? Acting and studying are in no way mutually exclusive, are they? Going there will mean a bit of “normality” for a while. It certainly doesn’t mean that I will never act again, that’s not true. There’s been a lot of confusion in the media about that, and most of it is ill informed—I seem to have managed pretty well up to this point! And also don’t forget that I’m also very interested in fashion, and in modeling, which I enjoy. I enjoy photo shoots, because there it seems that the cameramen (or camerawomen) look at me very differently. X

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The question most people ask when a celebrity moans about being famous: If you hate the fanfare so much, why keep making movies? Watson asked herself that all the time. “I’ve been doing this since I was 10 or 11, and I’ve often thought, I’m so wrong for this job because I’m too serious; I’m a pain in the ass; I’m difficult; I don’t fit,” she says. “But as I’ve got older, I’ve realized, No! Taking on those battles, the smaller ones and the bigger ones, is who I am.”

Well at least she openly admitted that she’s difficult. Whether her fans take it that way or not.

She recently found the courage to say no to selfie-seekers. “For me, it’s the difference between being able to have a life and not. If someone takes a photograph of me and posts it, within two seconds they’ve created a marker of exactly where I am within 10 meters. They can see what I’m wearing and who I’m with. I just can’t give that tracking data.” Sometimes, she’ll decline a photo but offer up an autograph or even a chat—“I’ll say, ‘I will sit here and answer every single Harry Potter fandom question you have but I just can’t do a picture’ ”—and much of the time people don’t bother. “I have to carefully pick and choose my moment to interact,” she says. “When am I a celebrity sighting versus when am I going to make someone’s freakin’ week? Children I don’t say no to, for example.”

I’m sure she’ll regret saying that when fans will actually start asking HP questions.

I tell Watson I’ve watched other actors, like Reese Witherspoon, walk down the street and happily pose with fans—and suddenly it becomes clear that the fans of Sweet Home Alabama are different from Harry Potter fans. For mostly better and occasionally worse, the Potter books and films not only captured the imagination of millions of people but, for many of them, changed their lives. It’s something Watson is deeply aware of. “I have met fans that have my face tattooed on their body. I’ve met people who used the Harry Potter books to get through cancer. I don’t know how to explain it, but the Harry Potter phenomenon steps into a different zone. It crosses into obsession. A big part of me coming to terms with it was accepting that this is not your average circumstances.” (Since the first movie premiered, in 2001, when Watson was 11, there have been numerous incidents with stalkers.) “People will say to me, ‘Have you spoken to Jodie Foster or Natalie Portman? They would have great advice for you on how to grow up in the limelight.’ I’m not saying it was in any way easy on them, but with social media it’s a whole new world. They’ve both said technology has changed the game.” When she was at Brown, Watson went to a Harvard football game and The Harvard Voice, a student magazine, live-tweeted as its staff stalked her at the stadium. I remember at Watson’s 18th-birthday party in London, the photographers outside had a bounty on who could get a picture taken up her skirt. She’s not exaggerating her security concerns, either. She purchased her house sight unseen over a Skype call with a real-estate agent because it had a paparazzi-proof entrance. “Privacy for me is not an abstract idea,” she says.

The stalking thing is a serious subject and I sympathize, but do we really need a play by play about HP, Brown and her quitting acting in interviews every few years?

Watson has a boyfriend, though she adamantly, vehemently refuses to expound on him. (The Internet says he’s called Mack, he’s handsome, and he works in tech in Silicon Valley.) “I want to be consistent: I can’t talk about my boyfriend in an interview and then expect people not to take paparazzi pictures of me walking around outside my home. You can’t have it both ways.” She sits back and wonders if she should finish this thought, and eventually she does: “I’ve noticed, in Hollywood, who you’re dating gets tied up into your film promotion and becomes part of the performance and the circus. I would hate anyone that I were with to feel like they were in any way part of a show or an act.”

Don’t get me started on the PR pics when she first started dating Matt.

Back in college, Watson was like most 20-year-olds, struggling to carve out her own identity, only she did it in front of a rabid fan base and a never-ending celebrity-news cycle. She made international headlines when she chopped Hermione’s long locks into a closely shorn pixie. We don’t need Sigmund Freud to read into the symbolism of that haircut, and to this day Watson declares, “It’s the sexiest I’ve ever felt.”

Ah the haircut talk makes a comeback. I didn’t think it was possible, but they managed it.

She got into yoga and meditation; being the Type A person she is, though, she wasn’t content just doing it. “Typical Emma,” says Harry Potter producer David Heyman, who has remained a close friend. “She had to become a certified meditation teacher.”

Watson shied away from doing additional big-budget studio films and instead focused on smaller movies, like Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012), and sought out auteur directors, like Sofia Coppola with The Bling Ring (2013) and Darren Aronofsky with Noah (2014). She turned down big offers: from lucrative cosmetics deals to critically acclaimed scripts. (Emma Stone’s role in La La Land was reportedly developed for Watson.) “There have been hard moments in my career when I’ve had an agent or a movie producer say, ‘You are making a big mistake,’ ” Watson says. “But what’s the point of achieving great success if you feel like you’re losing your freakin’ mind? I’ve had to say, ‘Guys, I need to go back to school,’ or ‘I just need to go home and hang out with my cats.’ People have looked at me and been like, ‘Is she insane?’ But, actually, it’s the opposite of insane.”

----

Really? REALLY? The role was made for Watson? REALLY?

Damien Chazelle: When I was first writing it back in 2011, I guess Ryan and Emma (Stone) were these pie in the sky ideas that I actually had for the casting, but it just didn’t seem like it would ever happen. And years passed where we were trying to get the movie off the ground with no success. And during those years there were actually many casting permutations, it was Miles and Emma Watson for a moment. It was other people in other moments, and what wound up happening was the movie kept falling apart. X

-----

What ultimately helped clarify her purpose was—you guessed it—reading. Last January, Watson started Our Shared Shelf, her bi-monthly online book club. She used Twitter (more than 23 million followers) to crowd-source the name, and chose Gloria Steinem’s book My Life on the Road as her first selection. All About Love: New Visions, by Bell Hooks, was Watson’s March 2016 book-club selection. Watson traveled to Berea, Kentucky, near the Appalachian Mountains, to meet Hooks, and the two quickly struck up a friendship based on, in the words of the writer, “the belief in the primacy of a spiritual foundation for life.”

“In so many ways she’s not like we think of movie stars,” Hooks told me. “She’s [part of] a very different, new breed who are interested in being whole and having a holistic life, as opposed to being identified with just wealth and fame.” In early 2014, U.N. Women, the United Nations’ department of gender equality, contacted Watson about becoming an ambassador. Everything clicked: she could focus the prying eyes of the world onto causes that she was passionate about, namely a new initiative called HeForShe, which aims to get men to co-sign on feminist issues. I was in the audience at the General Assembly on September 20, 2014, when Watson, elegantly and discreetly wrapped in a simple silver-gray Dior coatdress, stepped onto the podium and spoke passionately about women’s rights for a little more than 10 minutes. Her battle cry ended with: “I am inviting you to step forward, to be seen, and to ask yourself, If not me, who? If not now, when?”

Which was first said by Rabbi Hillel the Elder. Aren’t we giving credit anymore?

“I used to be scared of words like ‘feminism,’ ‘patriarchy,’ ‘imperialist.’ But I’m not anymore,” Watson says. “It was not typical for U.N. Women to have a celebrity give a keynote address,” says Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of U.N. Women. “We needed a new messenger to break new ground for us. We didn’t want to just speak to the converted.” Watson blushed at the standing ovation and beamed as then secretary-general Ban Ki-moon became the first person to officially sign on to HeForShe. The U.N. Women Web site crashed in the aftermath of the media blitz that followed—“A good problem to have!,” Mlambo-Ngcuka says—and her speech made headline news around the world, from CNN to fashion blogs. Men like Hugh Jackman, Jared Leto, Harry Styles, Russell Crowe, and Eddie Redmayne aligned themselves with HeForShe. Feminists worldwide heralded their newest spokesperson: “For a time, there was a conversation about whether ‘feminism’ was a good thing or a bad thing,” Mlambo-Ngcuka says. Watson’s speech “gave us the word back.”

The first time Watson saw the final cut of Beauty and the Beast she took along her mother, Jacqueline, and Gloria Steinem to a screening in London. She wanted her mother’s approval, but she needed Steinem’s. “I couldn’t care less if I won an Oscar or not if the movie didn’t say something that I felt was important for people to hear,” Watson says.

Who is she fooling?

Specifically, she must have wanted assurance that her portrayal of a Disney princess, in the Bill Condon-directed film, didn’t conflict with the ideals of a feminist, and who better than Steinem to give that stamp of approval? She got it.

“It was fascinating that her activism could be so well mirrored by the film,” Steinem says, noting that Belle uses—you guessed it, again—reading as a way to expand her world. “It’s this love of literature that first bonds the Beauty to the Beast, and also what develops the entire story.”

This is a new Belle, much of it by Watson’s design. “I was like, ‘The first shot of the movie cannot be Belle walking out of this quiet little town carrying a basket with a white napkin in it,’ ” she says. “ ‘We need to rev things up!’

Why not? Why can’t she carry a basket? I don’t get it!

” In the original Disney movie, Belle is an assistant to her inventor father, but here she’s a creator in her own right, developing a “modern washing machine that allows her to sit and read.” Watson worked with costume designer Jacqueline Durran to incorporate pockets in her costume that are “kind of like a tool belt.” Another thing: in the animated version, Belle is on and off horses yet wearing a long dress and silk slippers, which didn’t sit well with Watson. Bloomers were created and Belle’s first pair of riding boots. “The original sketches had her in her ballet shoes,” Watson says, “which are lovely—don’t get me wrong—but she’s not going to be able to do anything terribly useful in ballet shoes in the middle of a French provincial village.”

The original Belle may have been an assistant inventor, but Emma was an assistant costume designer for this movie it seems.

Maturing from Hermione to Belle is a true coming-of-age story for her. “When I finished the film, it kind of felt like I had made that transition into being a woman on-screen,” she says. Belle is “absolutely a Disney princess, but she’s not a passive character—she’s in charge of her own destiny.” What’s more intriguing, however, is how Watson observed a similarly strict code in her real life, too, from what parts she plays to what she reads in bed at night and what clothes she puts on in the morning.

“Emma has an incredible sense of integrity,” says Livia Firth, the founder of Eco-Age, a sustainable-fashion consulting firm. “You can’t marry activism and then do something in your life that is not in agreement.” Firth praises Watson’s choice of dress for last year’s Met Gala: it was designed by Calvin Klein and made almost entirely from recycled plastic bottles. For her Beauty and the Beast press tour, Watson created a PowerPoint presentation that her stylist sent fashion designers. It included a questionnaire about how their garments are produced, what their impact is on the environment, and the moral reason why she should wear one on the red carpet.

Wow.

As Steinem honors Watson’s high moral standards and relentless activism, I ask her if there’s a risk of becoming, well, annoying to the general public. Is she too much of an ethical Goody Two-Shoes? After all, what other starlet assigns fashion designers homework before she wears their clothes? Steinem is not amused. “Let me ask you something: If you did a story on a young male actor who was very private and involved in activism, would you think he was too severe or serious? Why do women always have to be listeners? Emma is interested in the world, she is caring, and though she is active she is also joyous and informed.” At this point I’m backpedaling—“I think she’s wonderful!”—but Steinem still digs in. “It’s possible to be both serious and fun, you know. That response is why men will ask a woman, ‘Why don’t you just smile, honey?’ ”

The actor Kevin Kline, who plays Belle’s father in Beauty and the Beast, agrees with Steinem. “When someone has a feminist point of view, we tend to think she’s no fun at all,” he says. “But a feminist can be feminine, delicate, vulnerable, sweet—and still demand to be taken seriously. Emma fits the bill perfectly.” A big grin forms on his face as he asks, “Has anyone told you about the dancing scene yet?” In the film, there’s an over-the-top ball, which required the entire cast and scores of extras to waltz in period costumes for hours and hours. “Ater a long, long day, suddenly Pharrell Williams’s song ‘Happy’ comes on, blasting, and everyone just starts jumping around,” Kline recalls. “It became kind of a wrap party, really celebratory. And I asked, ‘Who did that?’ It was Emma.”

#interview

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newyorktheater · 5 years ago

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Check out:

Favorite stage performances in 2019.

Top 10 Lists of Top 10 Theater in 2019.

Best Broadway Cast Recording of 2019.

Top 10 Theater of the Decade.

Worst Theater of the Decade.

People who engaged with the arts frequently had a 31 percent lower risk of dying, according to a new study from the British Medical Journal. This was independent of demographic, socioeconomic, health related, behavioral, and social factors. Even those who were infrequent consumers of culture had 14 percent lower risk of dying than shoe who never engaged.

The Journal’s editors observe:”The data show that the very people who have the most to gain from participating in cultural activities are least likely to do so. More than 40% of patients with lung disease, depression, or loneliness reported never engaging with the arts despite robust evidence of the potential benefits. Over 40% of participants in the least wealthy group also reported that they never accessed cultural activities. Work must now be done to ensure that the health benefits of these activities are accessible to those who would benefit most.”

The Week in NY Theater Previews and Reviews

The Sorceress The Sorceress (Di Kishefmakherin), the first work of Yiddish theatre ever presented in America, is back on stage in New York 136 years after its U.S. premiere. In my article for TDF Stages, Yiddish Culture Is Alive and Well and Playing in New York, I talk to Motl and Mikhl, the director of the play and the star, who portrays the wicked witch, Bobe Yakhne, in drag. Though Babe is the villain, she is the title character.

The Sorceress, by the same company that put together the acclaimed “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish, is just one of three events this month that demonstrate a resurgence in interest in Yiddish language and culture.

Luke Kirby as stationmaster Thomas Hudetz in “Judgment Day” at the Park Avenue Armory

Judgment Day with Luke Kirby Luke Kirby, who portrayed a movie star hired to play “Hamlet” in the cult TV comedy “Slings & Arrows” 16 years ago, is now on stage for real, as Thomas Hudetz, a murderer in Ödön von Horváth’s 1937 drama “Judgement Day” at the Park Avenue Armory.

Kirby has lived in New York for some two decades now, but has only appeared in a handful of plays, spending most of his time in television — currently as the real-life comic Lenny Bruce in Amazon’s “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” for which he won an Emmy earlier this year, and as closeted civil servant Gene Goldman on HBO’s “The Deuce.” Why so few stage roles…and why this one now?

Those are the questions I put to him in an interview for TDF Stages.

Ian McKellen as Gus the Theatre Cat in “Cats,” co-written and directed by Tom Hooper.

Cats the movie – pics and reviews Cats” isn’t for everyone – much of it is a cheesy, B-grade affair seemingly crafted solely to take over midnight-movie slots from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,’ Those with an open mind, though, as well as little kids and the T-Swift posse, might find it somewhat pawesome.” Brian Truitt writes in USA Today, in the most positive review I could find. He’s enchanted by Taylor Swift, but turned off by the “nightmare fuel…when human faces are put on tiny mice and Rockette-esque cockroaches.”

More typical is Manohla Dargis in the New York Times: “It is tough to pinpoint when the kitschapalooza called “Cats” reaches its zenith or its nadir, which are one and the same. The choices are legion…

Sing Street

“Sing Street” is a stage musical based on the sweet, funny “happy-sad” 2016 Irish movie by writer/director John Carney about a teenager named Conor growing up in Dublin during the economically depressed but musically vibrant 1980s, who forms a band to impress a girl name Raphina. The musical has its pleasures, especially for those nostalgic for the era of made-for-MTV, New Wave synthesized tunes. A talented group of young adult actor-musicians, ages 16 to 25, perform mostly original pastiche songs by Carney and Scottish singer-songwriter Gary Clark, who was part of the 80s scene and continues his hit-making now. But “Sing Street” the stage musical is likely to disappoint anybody who has seen “Sing Street” the movie (which is currently available for viewing online, through IMDB TV, for free.)

The Week in New York Theater News

The opening of West Side Story has been pushed from from February 6 to February 20 due to a knee injury that left the show’s star Isaac Powell unable to perform. The show began preview peformancs on December 10

.@mockingbirdbway will be the first-ever Broadway show to perform at @TheGarden on February 26, 2020, in front of some 18,000 New York City public school students. Here’s playwright Aaron Sorkin and the new cast posing at the arena. pic.twitter.com/txrecILSJm

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2019

..@TheCrownNetflix stars Claire Foy and Matt Smith will perform in @SleeveNotes‘ “Lungs” at @BAM_Brooklyn March 25-April 19 2020. The play is about a couple wrestling with the morality of having kids in an overpopulated planet. pic.twitter.com/96r9elP5hB

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) December 18, 2019

View of the Shed from The Highline

The Shed’s Second Season

Claudia Rankine, “Help”

Arinzé Kene, “Misty”

Tomas Saraceno, “Particular Matter (s)”

Meet at the Shed, January 11,2020

A free, daylong, building-wide takeover with exhibitions, performances, food

Help March 10 – April 5,2020

An inquiry into white male privilege by Claudia Rankine

Tomás Saraceno: Particular Matter(s) May 6 – August 9, 2020;

A visual art installation that is intended to be neither seen nor heard, but felt.

Misty September 24 – October 24

Fusing live music, spoken word, and absurdist comedy, Misty is a journey through the dark alleyways of a city in flux and a genre-defying excavation of the pressures and expectations that come with being an artist in our time

Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino

Live Nation Entertainment Inc.reached an agreement with the Justice Department to resolve government concerns that the company violated a 2010 antitrust settlement that allowed it to merge with Ticketmaster, according to the Wall Street Journal. Under the original agreement, known as a consent decree, the companies were allowed to combine but had to agree to conditions designed to help preserve competition in the live-events industry.

Dear Evan Hansen

Kerry Butler (Mrs. George), Erika Henningsen (Cady Heron)

Scene from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the Palace Theater in London.

Isabelle McCalla and Caitlin Kinnunen as high school girlfriends in The Prom

(l-r) Nicholas L. Ashe, Jonathan Burke, J. Quinton Johnson, Jeremy Pope, Caleb Eberhardt, John Clay III, Gerald Caesar

The problem with teen musicals on Broadway by critic Christian Lewis in American Theatre Magazine.

When it comes to teenagers and Broadway, 2016’s Dear Evan Hansen changed the game. The Tony-winning Pasek and Paul musical was certainly not the first Broadway show about—or beloved by—teens. That credit might go to Spring Awakening (2006) or 13 (2008) or Runaways (1978), or much further back to Babes in Arms (1937), considered the first musical with an entire cast of teenage characters. In the wake of Dear Evan Hansen’s success, Broadway quickly saw a sweep of major productions with teenage protagonists: Mean Girls (2018), Harry Potter and the Cursed Child (2018), The Prom (2018), Choir Boy (2019), Be More Chill (2019), and the latest installation, The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (2019).

….The genre deserves a larger critique, but not the one critics are making. Yes, Young Adult Theatre can seem angsty, the pop score/lyrics can feel basic and the plots contrived. But the central problem with Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Be More Chill, and The Lightning Thief is that they’re all about straight, white, cisgender teenage boys. The supporting casts are often diverse, but the main characters don’t deviate from this norm. Not only are these protagonists about as privileged as they come; worse, each of these pieces is about its hero’s search for his identity. Compared to a person of color, a queer person, a transgender person (let alone any intersection of these), how much do Evan, Harry, Jeremy, or Percy have to figure out about themselves?….We need more shows like The Prom or Choir Boy:

The movie is a wreck, the musical is a joke. Why, then, will we always have ‘Cats’?

By Charles McNulty (who doesn’t really answer the question posed in the headline)

“Cats,” Andrew Lloyd Webber’s blockbuster spun from the light verse of T.S. Eliot’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats,” is a paradox and a puzzle illustrating the disconnect between theatrical success and respect. The fourth-longest-running show in Broadway history, it is the consummate tourist musical. (“Broadway’s first show for the tired Japanese businessman,” according to Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik’s indispensable “Broadway Musicals: The 101 Greatest Shows of All Time.”)

Theater people resent “Cats” not just because it made Broadway uncool until “Hamilton” finally rescued it from the pop cultural stocks. What really infuriates buffs is that “Cats” ushered in an era of grandiose spectacle, the vacuous parade of shows from the 1980s and early ’90s that made it seem as if a musical had to have a helicopter or a crashing chandelier to be worth the rapidly rising ticket price.

Ed Harris and Kyle Scatliffe, center, in “To Kill A Mockingbird”

Q and A about To Kill A Mockingbird with Aaron Sorkin and Ed Harris, its new Atticus

Aaron Sorkin: How did Harper Lee get away with having a protagonist who doesn’t change? Because Atticus isn’t the protagonist in the book or the movie; Scout is—her flaw is that she’s young, and the change is that she loses some of her innocence. While I wanted to explore Scout, I absolutely wanted Atticus to be a traditional protagonist, so he needed to change and have a flaw … It turned out that Harper Lee had [already] given him one; it’s just that when we all learned the book, it was taught as a virtue. It’s that Atticus believes that goodness can be found in everyone….

Ed Harris: I love the film. I think Peck’s portrayal in terms of that story and that script is just indelible. There are little things that happen on the stage even now, just a head move or something, that feels like Gregory Peck! But the inner life of this man I’m playing is so different [from Peck’s character]. He’s trying to hold on to a belief that’s being eroded slowly but surely. It’s really interesting to play.

The Trojan Women’s Project at La MaMa: The artists discuss

youtube

I got asked for an end-of-the-decade quote on “emerging trends” and the editors rejected it, so here it is so that it doesn’t go to waste. Happy holidays! pic.twitter.com/b5YBglbJBL

— Young Jean Lee (@YoungJean_Lee) December 24, 2019

Best and Worst Theater of The Decade, and of 2019. See a show, live longer. #Stageworthy News of the Week Check out: Favorite stage performances in 2019. Top 10 Lists of Top 10 Theater in 2019.

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haleyfury · 6 years ago

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Who needs to go to the gym and lift weights when you have books?

While I am not scared of big reads, there are quite a few books on my TBR that go beyond 400 pages. Today I’m going to be discussing the largest books on my TBR, as well as I few big books that I’ve read. The following page amounts are according to their hardcover editions on Goodreads.

TBR

My Dear Hamilton by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie (658 pages)- I’m almost always up for a Hamilton-inspired read, especially one that follows Eliza. My Dear Hamilton is definitely on my priority 2019 TBR.

Renegades by Marissa Meyer (552 pages)- Renegades WILL be conquered in 2019, thanks to the final book in this trilogy coming out later in 2019. I’ve had this book on my physical TBR shelf since 2017, next to my beloved copies of Heartless and The Lunar Chronicles. I’ve heard mixed things about this one, hence why one of the reasons it’s been on my TBR for so long, but I’m ready to give it a read soon.

Until the Last Star Fades by Jacquelyn Middleton (483 pages)- I love a lengthy contemporary. After enjoying London Belongs to Me, I’m excited to read Jacquelyn Middleton’s latest new adult release set in New York City.

Bloodwitch (Witchlands #3) by Susan Dennard- A book on this list that I am for sure reading this month? Susan Dennard’s Bloodwitch! And yes, as much as I am excited about this next installment in the Witchlands series, bless my bookish soul for tackling a 400+ book during college finals season.

The Sword of Summer (Magnus Chase #1) by Rick Riordan (491 pages)- Hello big middle grade book! The Sword of Summer has been on my TBR for far too long and it’s another read I should pick up soon.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (435 pages)- I been seeing even more love for Naomi Novik’s Uprooted lately on Booktube and bookstagram. Is this a sign that I need to add it to my ‘read’ pile ASAP?

The Paris Seamstress by Natasha Lester (455 pages)- While it hasn’t received too much hype (at least in the blogs/bookstagrams I follow), The Paris Seamstress has received really good reviews from some bloggers with similar reading tastes. Any sort of fashion element in a book is bound to sell me to pick it up, let alone being partially set during 1940s France.

Frat Girl by Kiley Roache (448 pages)- I have much love for college YA to begin with, but I want to pick up Frat Girl even more after enjoying The Dating Game. Based on my experience reading Kiley Roache’s latest release, I think Frat Girl will be a 400+ page book I’ll breeze through.

Largest Books I’ve Read

Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas (980 pages)- Kingdom of Ash might actually be the biggest book that I’ve ever read! And me being the Throne of Glass fan that I am, I devoured it over five days! KoA was so heavy to read—and I’m not just talking about those heart-wrenching moments. Even with its bible-thin pages, I found myself either having to lay my book flat on my bed or prop it on my knees while reading. Thank you SJM as always for the upper body workout.

Winter by Marissa Meyer (827 pages)- I’ve come to love big series finales, and Marissa Meyer’s Winter is no exception. A big book with a whole lot of big feels (even though looking back, Marissa Meyer could have been (and probably should have been) a bit more ruthless.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (824 pages)- Order of the Phoenix is probably every Harry Potter fan’s biggest read. It also just happens to be one of my favorites!

The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simons (810 pages)- If you’re looking to challenge yourself with a long read, I recommend not picking this one up because of the problematic tropes, especially in its sequel.

What big books are on your TBR? Share in the comments!

I LIKE BIG BOOKS: Largest TBR Reads Who needs to go to the gym and lift weights when you have books? While I am not scared of big reads, there are quite a few books on my TBR that go beyond 400 pages.

#TBR

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newyorktheater · 6 years ago

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Britney Spears, 20 years ago

Will Roland in Be More Chiil

Cast of Mean Girls

Andrew Barth Feldman in Dear Evan Hansen

Isabelle McCalla and Caitlin Kinnunen as high school girlfriends in The Prom

“I’m not a girl, not yet a woman…I’m in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. The opening of Be More Chill this week adds yet another to the New York stage shows that focus on teenage characters (mostly portrayed by non-teenage performers), many of which attract a large teenage audience. These include Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, and, yes, ok, Wicked. (The Prom has a dual focus; and the audience for, if not the characters in, Frozen skew younger.) Teen angst has made its way Off-Broadway as well, with Superhero.

Shows about teens and tweens are hardly new: 13, Bye Bye Birdie, Carrie, Hairspray, Matilda, Newsies, School of Rock, Spring Awakening come to mind. But we’re seeing a particular trend now, and not an especially welcome one. It’s of course a good thing to broaden the demographics of the Broadway audience, and at least one of these shows is widely viewed as of high quality. Yet their focus is largely on angst and on stereotypes. How accurate or fair are the depictions of teenagers in these shows? Yes, high school may be a time when some people are trying out identities, and too many of them might like to assign reductive labels to their classmates or even to themselves. But surely this is not the full picture, nor a constructive one. As I say in my review of Be More Chill, the actual high school students we see regularly in the news are taking the lead in attacking such crucial problems as climate change and gun control — problems that have stalemated adults.

Incidentally, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” along with “Baby One More Time,” Spear’s first pop single when she was 17 years old, are likely to be two of the 23 songs from her repertorie that will be in the new musical “Once Upon a One More Time” aiming for Broadway, announced today. The book, thankfully, is not about teen angst. (For more details, see Week in NY Theater News, below.)

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

THE B-SIDE: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation

In “The B-Side,” three men sing along with an album on a record-player — or, as people prefer to say these days, a vinyl on the turntable. But there’s a reason why the Wooster Group’s encore presentation of its simple and odd hour-long piece, first performed at the Performing Garage in 2017, is filling St. Ann’s Warehouse every night. The album is “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”…

Austin Scott as Alexander Hamilton and Carvens Lissaint as George Washington, the new cast members of “Hamilton” on Broadway.

Hamilton on Broadway 2019: New Cast, New Clarity

I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways.

I would love to see this show but there are not enough OC performances for those of us who want to attend. It’s nice to pat yourself on the back about access, but the reality is that an occasional Wednesday OC performance with limited tickets is not access. #captionallshows

— Dr. Petrified Tree Sap (@a_joy_martin) March 9, 2019

The Cake Review: “This is Us” writer on Christian baker’s Lesbian wedding dilemma

In “The Cake,” Debra Jo Rupp (the mother on “That 70s Show”) portrays Della, a Christian baker in North Carolina who refuses to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. If the story is inspired by the Supreme Court case decided last year, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, playwright Bekah Brunstetter, who is a writer for “This Is Us,” makes it personal in several ways…One of the future brides, Jen (Genevieve Angelson), is the daughter of Della’s best friend, who died five years ago. Della, who is childless, views Jen like a daughter…Bekah Brunstetter has told interviewers that she wrote “The Cake” as a way to explain her support for gay rights and same-sex marriage to her parents. Her father, Peter Brunstetter, is a Republican politician from North Carolina who supported an anti-gay state bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Be More Chill on Broadway

Somebody wrote “NYC Loves BMC” in chalk on the sidewalk outside Broadway’s Lyceum Theater, the new home of “Be More Chill,” the high energy, high decibel pop-rock musical that stars Will Roland as a self-proclaimed high school “loser” who swallows a pill containing a supercomputer and becomes cool. I tweeted a picture of the scrawled public love note; the tweet was retweeted nearly a hundred times. “Be More Chill” has some seriously devoted fans, most of whom seem to be 15 years old. It’s a thrill to see such teenaged enthusiasm for live theater. I wish I could share more fully in their ardor for this show

The Week in New York Theater News

The first annual Rave Theater Festival is asking for submissions. Artistic director @kendavenportplans roughly 20 plays, musicals, multimedia, and cross-disciplinary projects, as well as family shows, which will each receive up to five performances, August 9-25, 2019 at Clemente Sito Velez Cultural and Education Center on the Lower East Side.

Simpsons theme song composer Danny Elfman will make his Broadway debut by composing music for “Gary: The Sequel to Titus Andronicus.”

Twenty-three of Britney Spears’ songs will form the score for a new Broadway-aiming musical, “Once Upon a One More Time” with will have a try-out in Chicago from October to December of this year. “Once Upon A Time… Cinderella, Snow White, and the other fairytale princesses gather for their book club, when – oh, baby baby! – a rogue fairy godmother drops The Feminine Mystique into their corseted laps, spurring a royal revelation.” The Times reports that the run at the Chicago theater “had been set aside for “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” a Michael Jackson jukebox musical that canceled its Chicago plans on the eve of an HBO documentary detailing abuse allegations against the pop star. That show’s producers say they are still hoping to come to Broadway.”

The Arts Are Good For You

Three articles that show that the arts are a good thing.

Article 1, by Isaac Kaplan in Artsy: Arts Sector Contributed $763.6 Billion to U.S. Economy—More Than Agriculture or Transportation, New Data Shows

Article 2, by Tom Jacobs in Pacific Standard: How arts can help struggling science students do better

A large study released last month found that Florida middle-school students who study music, theater, or visual art subsequently get higher overall grades than their peers.

Article 3 by Robert Ruffin in HowlRound (from 2018) We Need Theatre to Exist, and Maybe Research Can Prove Its Necessity

A new Broadway By The Year, musicals of 1943 and 1951, will be presented at Town Hall of March 25th, “created, written, hosted and directed” by Scott Siegel — for whom 2018 was not a great year, having gotten into a bad bicycle accident. Here is an article about his accident and his show in the Times, written right before the last Broadway By Year, last month.

Alexa’s new skill lets you scour Ticketmaster using your voice

Robert Barry Fleming has been appointed artistic director of Actors Theater of Louisville, the theater that brings us the annual Humana Festival. He’s been an actor, director, choreographer, arts administrator (at Arena Stage and Cleveland PlayHouse), and championed or commissioned such shows as Dear Evan Hansen and Sweat.

Daryl_Roth – Producing with a Purpose. Theater producer for 31 yrs “Marvel action hero” – Paula Vogel. One of the few female producers on Broadway…she chooses work by women, LGBT folks, and people of color not usually seen as commercially viable

Daveed DIggs is back in New York, for the play White Noise at the Public Theater, and he’s happier to be here than last time.

The last few years I have had not a great relationship with New York, but this time feels really good. The Hamilton experience here was so intense, and it became a pretty stressful place for me to be. That was a show that, at the bottom of it, it’s a bunch of friends getting together and making rap songs. I was involved with that show for a long time because my friend wrote it and asked me to come along for the ride. Everything on the inside of it felt very small, and everything on the outside of it felt very big.

…I love performing in smaller houses. I think you get a different kind of connection there. I’m excited to be doing any play, period, after spending a couple years being in front of a camera. This is a very welcome return. You get a different kind of intimacy in a small space, and I think everybody gets to know each other a little better.

As much as I loved performing on Broadway, I don’t care if I ever do that again. I like telling stories in places where everyone is part of the storytelling.

Oskar Eustis and Suzan-Lori Parks chat with one another about their new collaboration as director and playwright, White Noise, It begins: Oskar Eustis doesn’t believe in giving audiences a heads-up. “When you have a trigger warning, you’re implying that people need to be protected from pain,” says Eustis, the artistic director of New York’s Public Theater. “I think real art says, ‘No, you don’t. What you need is the chance to face it.’”

If you’re working on a play– especially a new one– and you’re not checking in with your ushers on a regular basis during previews, you don’t actually know how it’s going.

— Evan Cabnet (@evancabnet) March 11, 2019

Thanks Broadway Twitter for having my back. Being a working parent in any profession is really challenging. I never want to disappoint audiences as I am beyond grateful to them, but the health of my family will always come before my job. Thanks to those who understand that 💛

— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) March 11, 2019

.@FosseVerdonFX cast includes: Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse & Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon@kelli_barrett as Liza Minnelli@biancamarroquin as @Chita_Rivera +@BranUran as Dustin Hoffman @TheTylerHanes as Jerry Orbach@ethansaslater as @joelgrey Premieres on FX April 9th. pic.twitter.com/lvokxwZUFl

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 11, 2019

If you’re an aspiring playwright, this thread by @MikeLew4 might change your life. https://t.co/WouQGQXNUh

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 8, 2019

My favorite line: “Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play” is a pilot.”

Play Formatting PSA: In undergrad one of the 1st things Donald Margulies did was teach us proper play formatting. Which felt like a huge bummer. Shouldn’t it be story first? Who cares about formatting?! Don’t you see that l WILL CHANGE THE FORM, WITH THE POWER OF ART? 1

But now that I’ve done a ton of reading committees, I can see he was right. In the same way you wouldn’t show up to a job interview dressed wrong for the job, when I’m reading a ton of plays my first cut rejections boil down to, “Does this manuscript LOOK like a play or not?” 2/

And the most screwed up thing is that published plays don’t look like manuscript-form plays, so you can’t just learn by picking up an acting edition at the bookstore or your submission’ll look weird. To wit, a thread about formatting. ARE YOU EXCITED?? 3/

A full-length play is approx 100 pgs in length (50 pgs per act). Sure your length may vary. You may have a lean 75 pg straight-through-no-intermission piece or a 120 pg 2-act that “should read really really fast”

Now the formatting nitty gritty! *character names in all caps & centered *dialogue left-justified *in-dialogue stage directions like “(she exits)” should be in parentheses and italics *longer stage directions should be tabbed in and (optionally) italicized 10/

New scenes get their own line (i.e. “Scene 1”) – bolded and numbered *Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play” is a pilot. *Start a new pg for each scene *End the act on an all-caps “END OF ACT 1” “END OF PLAY” etc – and bold it too cuz that feels GREAT 11/

youtube

Teens Take Over Broadway (but is it real?). A Britney Spears Broadway musical? Hamilton Reconsidered. #Stageworthy News of the Week “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman...I'm in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. 2,063 more words

#Britney Spears #Daveed Diggs on New York #getting tickets through Alexa #Hamilton and Broadway #Mike Lew on how to format a play script #the arts are good for you #We Kiss in a Shadow Jelani Alladin and Matt Doyle video

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newyorktheater · 6 years ago

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Both King Kong and Olaf, the goofy snow man from Frozen, will loom large on Thanksgiving Day — but not on Broadway; neither current musical is one of the four Broadway shows performing on Thursday. (see Thanksgiving Week Broadway schedule below.)

Olaf will be one of the huge balloons hovering over Sixth Avenue during the 92nd annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, and the cast of “King Kong” will be performing a number from the new musical during CBS’s coverage of the parade. (Also performing on CBS: the casts of “Dear Evan Hansen.” and “Head Over Heels.” Performing at the parade itself, broadcast by NBC: “Mean Girls,” “My Fair Lady,” “The Prom,” and “Summer: The Donna Summer Musical.”)

BUT…

both Frozen and King Kong have added a matinee on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving — as have most other Broadway shows. Many have also added a Monday night performance.

Below is the Broadway schedule for Thanksgiving Week, as well as a list of my four favorite shows that have opened this season so far, and another four that are evergreens suitable for young children.

Skip to Broadway Thanksgiving Week Schedule