As reported here just days ago, Ellen Degeneres was supposed to come to New York next week to tape her talk show, despite an industry-wide walkout by television writers seeking future compensation for internet and DVD use of televised material. But today she changed her mind.A spokesperson for the show confirmed that Degeneres has cancelled her plans but explained, “We make changes all the time. Our schedule is always fluid.
“Writers Guild of America, East President Michael Winship responded in a statement, “She knows that the Writers Guild East would have been there to protest her lack of solidarity, not only with her Guild writing staff but all the striking members of the Writers Guild, of which she is a member.
“Meanwhile on Broadway, Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the League of American Theatres and Producers have agreed to go back to the negotiating table this weekend, at an undisclosed location. Broadway stagehands walked the picket lines beginning last Saturday morning when talks broke down over producers’ efforts to cut workforces by 38%.
While 27 Broadway theaters have gone dark, business is brisk for off Broadway and off off Broadway shows, and if ever there was time to dine out in midtown, it’s now. There is no waiting at most restaurants in the theater district.
It has been an exciting week in show business with labor action affecting both the television and theatrical communities.
Last Monday, members of the Writers Guild of America walked off the set, shutting down production on the late night talk shows, sitcoms and any dramas that hadn’t put enough episodes in the can. The issue is over compensation for internet and DVD usage of produced product. Writers want a piece of the pie, greedy producers want to keep it all for themselves.
As all of us realize, the future of all media is on the internet. No one buys CDs any more, we all download. Networks increasingly release their first run programming on YouTube or other websites, or put out DVDs of entire seasons so viewers can watch the reruns at their own discretion. Currently, writers, actors and directors–the creative people without whom there would be no television–get little if any of the revenue generated from these non-broadcast means of distribution.Writer/comedian and Writers Guild member Tim Kazurinsky, appeared recently on Chicago television station WGN and broke it all down.
Next June, contracts between producers and members of the Screen Actors Guild and the Directors Guild of America expire and the same issues are on the table. Everyone is watching how this negotiating plays out to see if producers will come to their senses and share the revenue, or if they will remain the selfish idiots we’ve always known them to be, and force a walkout by actors and directors.
(In 2000, while still a working actor, I spent five months on the picket line when SAG and AFTRA struck commercial producers, over the very same issue of residuals and internet airing of advertising. I learned first hand how soulless producers are.)
While most performers stand behind their union brothers on the writing side, not everyone is. Apparently, comedian and talk show host Ellen Degeneres has chosen to go on with her show despite the strike. She will come to New York November 19th and 20th to tape her show. Members of the Writers Guild of America East plan a frosty reception.
On the theatrical front, when talks between Local One of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) broke down in their negotiations with the League of American Theatres and Producers, that union representing stagehands authorized a strike. At 11am on Saturday, November 10th members of Local One set up picket lines shutting down nearly all of Broadway.
A total of 35 shows are currently running, with the majority of them affected by the strike. The non-profit houses and a handful of others operate under separate contracts and will remain open. They include: The New Amsterdam (Mary Poppins), Helen Hayes Theatre (Xanadu), Hilton Theatre (Young Frankenstein), Circle in the Square (The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee), American Airlines Theatre (Pygmalion), Studio 54 (The Ritz) and Biltmore Theatre (Mauritius) and Vivian Beaumont (Cymbeline).
Explaining their situation to confused ticket-holders, the union issued the following statement:
Theatre owners and producers are demanding a 38 % cut in our jobs and wages. They have built a $20 million fund to be used against us from the sale of theatre tickets to the public.
Broadway is a billion dollar a year industry and has never been more profitable than now.Cuts in our jobs and wages will never result in a cut in ticket prices to benefit the public, but only an increase in the profits for producers.Unlike the producers, we are not fighting for our second or third homes; we are fighting to keep the one that we have.
We ask for your understanding in our efforts to defend ourselves and protect our families.
The strike will not effect off Broadway or off off Broadway plays however, which in my opinion, usually offer more interesting shows anyway. Attendance was up by about 30% over the weekend at off-Broadway houses and at least 57 non-Broadways shows are running.
Writers Guild of America, East statement concerning Ellen Degeneres LINK Writers Guild of America, WestLINK International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Local One LINK
The Garth Fagan Dance company is in New York this week, performing two different programs at The Joyce Theater in Chelsea now through November 11. Thursday night, they performed four pieces, including a world premiere, and true to form, they didn’t disappoint.
An unexplained technical difficulty caused re-ordering of the night’s scheduled program. The second piece, an excerpt from Senku called Talking Drums, was performed first and highlighted the many, delightful talents of the always impressive Guy Thorne who danced alone accompanied by a piano solo. Senku is a Ghanian word for a keyboard instrument and Thorne put his ballet and modern dance skills to use reaching physical heights to match the musical highs and lows.
The world premiere, Edge/Joy, put the full 12 member company on display against music composed by Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon and performed live by the Eastman School of Music Ensemble. Moving fluidly in and out of small and larger groups, they exhibited moments of calm interrupted by sudden intensity.
Technical problems resolved, the opening piece was performed third. It was easy to see why they wanted to start off the evening with it. Earth Eagle First Circle was rooted in a Native American theme, with movements called Cultural Warrior, River Song, Spirit Seakers/Reservation Blues and Rest on the Run. Steve Humphrey was featured along with the full company in dances reminiscent of Indian tribal ceremonies set to a jazz/Indian score, composed and performed by Don Pullen.
The final number, Life: Dark/Light was danced in three segments, Life, Kiama (for killed in action, missing in action) and Light, had a strong Southeast Asian theme in music, dance and costume. The middle part, performed by Norwood Pennewell and Bill Ferguson, had the two in combat fatigues, in a dance of resistance to war and death. Nicolette Depass, Micha Scott, Annique Roberts and Kaori Otani were the highlights in the very colorful and graceful final movement.
Costumers Linda King, Rebecca Hodgson and Mary Nemecek Peterson, provided beautiful wardrobe that accentuated each dance throughout the evening.
Garth Fagan DanceLINK The Joyce TheaterLINK Dance Class (November 23, 2003) LINK
New York theater-goers are enjoying an abundance of riches at the present moment. No, I’m not talking about the over-blown, stunt-cast tourist fare found on Broadway. I’m talking about the more thought-provoking, literate and risk-taking productions being staged off Broadway and in particular the arrival of exciting new playwrights demanding to be heard.
Opening this week at the Public Theater is such an example. The Brothers Size is a compelling, lyrical one-act play that uses a contemporary style and ceremonial presentation to tell the story of two brothers and the friend whose presence threatens to tear them apart.
Like Hoodoo Love, reviewed here last week, this project is the brainchild of a new writing talent, Tarell Alvin McCraney, a May 2007 (yes, just six months ago) MFA graduate of the Yale School of Drama. The Brothers Size was performed at The Public last year as part of the UNDER THE RADAR festival, after getting on the radar screen of some of the theater community’s current movers and shakers.
McCraney draws from West African culture and mythology in naming his characters after Yoruba religious figures. Ogun (Gilbert Owuor), is the god of war and iron and here a hard working auto mechanic and older brother to, Oshoosi, the deity of the wanderer and hunter. This Oshoosi (Brian Tyree Henry), is a recently released ex-convict and friend of Elegba (Elliot Villar), the shape-shifting trickster, who was his prison cellmate. The story is set in San Pere, Louisiana near the Bayou, in the “distant present.
“Using a minimalist set in the black box space of The Public’s Shiva theater, and an off stage drummer to provide musical accompaniment and sound effects, the actors play in and out of a chalk circle drawn on the floor. Who stands inside or out, illustrates the relationships between the characters.
Ogun is trying to help his brother stay on the straight and narrow, by getting him a job at his garage. He has grown frustrated by his brother’s lack of direction and the sacrifices he made to help raise him. Oshoosi is less driven, wanting only the use of a car so he can seek out the pleasures of the flesh he’s lived without while in prison.
As Elegba, Villar plays with a just-below-the-surface sense of danger that makes you suspicious of every word he utters. While Oshoosi has made it clear to his brother he has no desire to go back to jail–in an emotional challenge between the two–it becomes increasingly apparent that Elegba has had a hard time leaving the penitentiary behind. The counterweight he provides to Ogun’s influence compels Oshoosi to face the choices he has made in life.
If there is one drawback to this play it is that it is a tad predictable. With just three characters it is easy to see how the story will play out. But that doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the various performances. Owuor is an earnest Ogun who has accepted his own place in life while maintaining his dignity. Henry has the juiciest role, allowed to be the free spirit, the beset-upon younger brother and the unknowing co-conspirator all at once and he does so with an arresting stage presence, charisma and sensitivity. McCraney, director Tea Alagic and the three actors, developed and worked on this play together over the past two years and their comfort level with the material and each other is evident.
This play has the unique distinction of a simultaneous staging on both sides of the pond. It runs through Dec. 23 here in New York and November 8 to December 8 at London’s Young Vic theater. Future productions are set for Dublin’s Abbey Theatre and Washington, D.C.’s Studio Theatre.
The Brothers Size at The Public Theater LINK The Brothers Size at The Young Vic LINK The Brothers Size at The Studio Theatre LINK
The educated, city folk among us will tell you everything happens for a reason. They easily cite scientific theory and logic and use cause and effect relationships as the basis for explaining the unexplainable.Others put their stock in religion. “Let go, let God” is their way of placing faith in a higher power that is either merciful or vengeful, depending upon which religious doctrine you adhere to.
Somewhere betwixt and between the two is a whole other belief system entirely. Here the skillful manipulation of herbs, roots, bodily fluids, and minerals puts power and control over actions and outcomes into the hands of those who practice and believe in it.”Hoodoo” (not to be confused with Voodoo) is an African-American folk magic system, with origins in the south, where one can goofer, hex, fix or lay down a trick for various reasons: from snagging a lover to breaking up someone’s relationship, from drawing money and luck to exacting revenge on others.
This mysterious force and its role in the lives of four individuals forms the basis for a fascinating new play, Hoodoo Love, running now through December 9 at the Cherry Lane Theatre in New York’s Greenwich Village.Written by a dynamic new voice on the theatrical scene, playwright and actor Katori Hall, Hoodoo Love was originally produced as part of Cherry Lane’s Mentor Project 2006. Hall revised and reworked her play to its current stage with assistance from her mentor in the project, noted playwright Lynn Nottage, who describes it as a “gorgeously haunting play” and Hall as “an inventive and soulful writer.”
Hall sets this play in her native Memphis, Tennessee, during the depression when many southern Blacks were desperately trying to make their way north, away from Jim Crow and poverty. The story is centered on Toulou, a wide-eyed Mississippi girl who has fled the cotton fields and an unhappy home life to pursue her dream of singing the blues. What she lacks in worldly knowledge she makes up for in unbridled enthusiasm and hope.
Her hopes are also wrapped around a man in her life, Ace of Spades, a womanizing blues singer who regularly passes through town on his travels around the circuit of juke joints and dives across the south and midwest. He’s got her nose wide open, among other things, but try as she might, she can’t get him to settle down and make her the number one woman in his life.
To do that will require help and Toulou has it in the form of her neighbor, Candy Lady, a motherly figure and hoodoo woman who knows all about working roots, laying tricks and putting hexes on people. Having had about six husbands of her own, she knows all about collecting locks of hair and toenail clippings, or adding the right potion to someone’s drink to get them to stick around.
But magic such as that often has to be seen to be believed and Toulou isn’t immediately convinced. Complicating matters further is the arrival of her big brother, Jib. A man with a past who now calls himself a preacher, he has come to Memphis to see his baby sister and start a church there, although baby sis is skeptical. Jib is similarly wary of Candy Lady’s use of such heathen methods. As she tells him, “If you want salvation, go to church.” Her approach works if you want certain things to happen.
Hall has a brilliant ear for dialect and a manner of storytelling akin to poetry broken into four distinctly different voices. The play is not just a joy to watch, it is a pleasure to hear. Additionally, she created original songs used in the production. Hall is already being compared to August Wilson in her masterful use of the language, and while that’s nothing to sneeze at, she deserves her own recognition for what she brings to the table.
Her characters are real people we soon care deeply about, even those we may grow to dislike, and this small ensemble brings them all vividly to life. Keith Davis’s Jib is a scoundrel. All at once a smiling charmer while secretly scheming, he quotes and often misquotes Bible verse to suit his purposes. Kevin Mambo plays Ace of Spades with strength and determination mixed with pain and vulnerability, as the target of Toulou’s mojo. Angela Lewis’s Toulou is young and innocent, but never ignorant, and forced to grow up fast. Her transformation is believable and at times painful.
Highest praise, however, goes to Marjorie Johnson as Candy Lady. Fittingly the 2006 AUDELCO Award winner as Best Supporting Actor in this role, when she works her magic to help Toulou lure Ace of Spades, she casts a spell over the audience. It’s a mesmerizing scene.Director Lucie Tiberghien and set designer Robin Vest make effective use of the intimate space in the beautifully renovated Cherry Lane Theatre. Whether out of necessity or creative inspiration, actors make some entrances through the house, and in so doing, put the audience right into the story.
In my highest recommendation, I suggest you run–do not walk–to see this play.
Katori Hall talks about her play Hoodoo Love.
Hoodoo Love at the Cherry Lane TheatreLINK Playwright Katori HallLINK Plays by Lynn NottageLINK 1LINK 2
