New York Theater

Trump’s Entire Arts Committee Resigns With Secret Message: RESIST

All 17 members of The President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities resigned today to protest President Trump’s comments on the events last weekend in Charlottesville, as The Washington Post reported this morning.  

John Lloyd Young, Tony-winning actor, and one of the 17 who resigned.

Since the committee is “an official agency”, (former) member the actor Kal Penn pointed out on Twitter, “that makes this the 1st White House . department to resign.”

What neither Penn nor the Post mentioned was the coded message embedded in the five-paragraph letter (Scroll to the bottom if you can’t wait for the code):

August 18, 2017

Dear Mr. President:

Reproach and censure in the strongest possible terms are necessary following your support of the hate groups and terrorists who killed and injured fellow Americans in Charlottesville. The false equivalencies you push cannot stand. The Administration’s refusal to quickly and unequivocally condemn the cancer of hatred only further emboldens those who wish America ill. We cannot sit idly by, the way that your West Wing advisors have, without speaking out against your words and actions. We are members of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities (PCAH). The Committee was created in 1982 under President Reagan to advise the White House on cultural issues. We were hopeful that continuing to serve in the PCAH would allow us to focus on the important work the committee does with your federal partners and the private sector to address, initiate, and support key policies and programs in the arts and humanities for all Americans. Effective immediately, please accept our resignation from the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities.

Elevating any group that threatens and discriminates on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity, disability, orientation, background, or identity is un-American. We have fought slavery, segregation, and internment. We must learn from our rich and often painful history. The unified fabric of America is made by patriotic individuals from backgrounds as vast as the nation is strong. In our service to the American people, we have experienced this first-hand as we traveled and built the Turnaround Arts education program, now in many urban and rural schools across the country from Florida to Wisconsin.

Speaking truth to power is never easy, Mr. President. But it is our role as commissioners on the PCAH to do so. Art is about inclusion. The Humanities include a vibrant free press. You have attacked both. You released a budget which eliminates arts and culture agencies. You have threatened nuclear war while gutting diplomacy funding. The Administration pulled out of the Paris agreement, filed an amicus brief undermining the Civil Rights Act, and attacked our brave trans service members. You have subverted equal protections, and are committed to banning Muslims and refugee women & children from our great country. This does not unify the nation we all love. We know the importance of open and free dialogue through our work in the cultural diplomacy realm, most recently with the first-ever US Government arts and culture delegation to Cuba, a country without the same First Amendment protections we enjoy here. Your words and actions push us all further away from the freedoms we are guaranteed.

Ignoring your hateful rhetoric would have made us complicit in your words and actions. We took a patriotic oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Supremacy, discrimination, and vitriol are not American values. Your values are not American values. We must be better than this. We are better than this. If this is not clear to you, then we call on you to resign your office, too.

Thank you,

Paula Boggs, Chuck Close, Richard Cohen, Fred Goldring, Howard L. Gottlieb, Vicki Kennedy, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anne Luzzatto, Thom Mayne, Kalpen Modi (Kal Penn), Eric Ortner, Ken Solomon, Caroline Taylor, Jill Cooper Udall, Andrew Weinstein, John Lloyd Young

The code: The first letter of each paragraph spells out RESIST.

Always artists!

Theater artists George C. Wolfe was the 17th and last member of the President’s committee to resign

Michael Moore The Terms of My Surrender: Review, Pics, Videos

Terms of My Surrender Michael Moore

“The only hope until we kick him out of office is to discombobulate him,” Michael Moore says near the beginning of his playful, pointed and partisan one-man show

..“The Terms of My Surrender” is not just an anti-Trump screed. It is also an oddly eclectic mix of sharp stand-up comedy routine, sketchy sketch comedy, memoir, parody political rally, activist exhortation, parody game show, actual talk show, prank call show, even a strip-tease (don’t ask, I won’t tell – except to say that Moore has an un-credited supporting cast.)

In format, Michael Moore’s live show has little in common with his funny but focused documentaries about specific issues,…It’s more like a scattershot variety show…But the puckish sense of humor will be enough for most of his fans

Read the full review on DC Theatre Scene

Terms of My Surrender Michael Moore

Terms of My Surrender Michael Moore

Terms of My Surrender Michael Moore

Four brief excerpts from the show:

Great Comet to Close September 3. Could It Have Been Saved?

“Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812” will close September 3, 2017 on Broadway, having played 32 previews and 336 regular performances — a journey that began at the small, experimental Off Broadway theater Ars Nova in 2012, and traveled to site-specific tents before graduating to the Great White Way.

Plans are afoot for a national tour, during 2019 at the earliest

The timing of the announcement provokes some tough questions:

Could the casting of Mandy Patinkin have saved it?

Did the backlash over his casting in support of doom the show?

How essential is a star for an innovative show to survive on Broadway?

Click on any photographs by Chad Batka or Jonathan Mandell to see them enlarged.

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

While Josh Groban is front and center in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, the most memorable of several memorable moments in the show for me was an (almost) private one. A member of the ensemble, dressed like a punk rock, 19th century aristocratic slut, handed me a plastic Russian egg with pellets inside so that I could use it as a castanet in the next song.

Great Comet

Denee Benton as Natasha

Denee Benton as Natasha and Brittain Ashford as her cousin Sonya

Amber Gray as Helene

Denee Benton as Natasha and Amber Gray as the villainous Helene

Lucas Steele as Anatole and Denee Benton as Natasha

what Natasha, Pierre looks like from the audience

The lobby of Broadway’s Imperial Theater turned into a hallway to an underground nightclub, complete with posters in Russian

View of one of the many “stages” onto which the ensemble perform

After Josh Groban left his starring role as Pierre in The Great Comet in July, the producers cast Okieriete “Oak” Onaodowan, one of the original cast members of Hamilton, to take on the role. Ticket sales went down. In the last week in which Josh Groban performed, ticket grosses exceeded $1.4 million; in the week after, under $900,000; it rose only slightly after Oak took over on July 11th.  This is still more than the show costs each week, but not enough to pay back investors. In response, two weeks later,  Mandy Patinkin was asked to assume the role for three weeks,  cutting Oak’s run to August 13th — but reportedly with the understanding that he would return after Patinkin’s run.

Most publications hurrahed Patinkin’s return to Broadway after 17 years. But Broadway Black observed: “…the abrupt replacement of [Oak’s} role to boost ticket sales raises questions about how Black actors are valued and supported within Broadway.”

Prominent voices such as Cynthia Errivo agreed on social media, and two days later, Patinkin backed out of the show, saying  “I would never accept a role knowing it would harm another actor.”  But Oak said he would keep the new date of August 13th as his final performance.

“So sorry to have missed the racial optics of it,” Great Comet creator Dave Malloy wrote. But he said sales were “catastrophically low.”

Insiders maintain that the controversy killed the chance of getting a star replacement — who would want to get tainted by the racial politics? — and argued that Malloy’s comment about low ticket sales kept theatergoers from buying any.

Understudy Scott Stangland will assume the role of Pierre after Oak leaves, followed by Dave Malloy for the final two weeks.