Artwork for the play "Filler."Credit Barry Hutchinson
Barry Hutchinson doesn’t eat chicken feet. But as an artist and designer based in Jackson, Miss., he has a history with the distinctly Southern foodstuff.
“In the rural South many years ago, in my grandparents’ day, it was not uncommon for the women to get the chicken feet and the pig ears,” he said. “Black people ate them because that may have been all they were given. In the south it’s more of a representation of a poverty thing than anything. It was used to flavor soups in the South in hard times, when everybody ate everything.”
A way with chicken feet recently came in handy when Mr. Hutchinson designed artwork for “Filler,” a new play written by William Goulet. Riffing on a story line in the play involving chickens and a small newspaper article (the “filler” of the title), Mr. Hutchinson created an image of a giant chicken foot stepping on a wet newspaper. It’s a startling, creepy and comical head-scratcher of an image that suggests more questions about Mr. Goulet’s dark comedy than it answers.
Mr. Hutchinson recently spoke with ArtsBeat about what inspired his design. Following are excerpts from the conversation. Read more…
Esther Hannaford and Chris Ryan in the Australian production of "King Kong."Credit Scott Barbour/Getty Images
The Tony Award-winning director John Rando, who earned critical acclaim last month for staging the Broadway revival of “On the Town,” is in advanced negotiations to direct the new musical “King Kong” that is aiming for Broadway, a spokesman for the “Kong” producer confirmed on Thursday. Mr. Rando is flying this weekend to Australia, where “Kong” was developed and had a tryout run last year, for several days of discussions with the producer about overhauling the show for New York.
“Kong” is seen as potentially the next special effects-driven musical extravaganza on Broadway, given its use of a 20-foot-tall Kong and the elaborate puppetry that maneuvers him across the stage. The puppet and much of the show’s spectacle delighted critics and audiences during the “Kong” world premiere in Melbourne, but the script and score received harsher reviews. The musical’s producer, Carmen Pavlovic of the company Global Creatures, recently hired a new book writer, Marsha Norman (“The Bridges of Madison County,” “The Secret Garden”), to replace Craig Lucas, and has also parted with the original director, Daniel Cramer; she cited “creative differences” in letting both men go.
The spokesman for Ms. Pavlovic, Adrian Bryan-Brown, said there was no timeline for “Kong” coming to Broadway and no other details about its development. An interview request to Ms. Pavlovic was declined. “Kong” had been a possibility for Broadway this season, with Ms. Pavlovic at one point scouting theaters, before she decided to reshape the show.
Mr. Rando, who won the Tony in 2002 for directing the musical “Urinetown,” has been focused this fall on “On the Town,” which is now running at the Lyric Theater — one of the Broadway houses that “Kong” might eventually end up in. Mr. Rando is now directing a developmental workshop of another new musical, “The Honeymooners,” based on the CBS television series. Mr. Rando will direct the world premiere production of “The Honeymooners” at Goodspeed Musicals in September 2015.
A representative for Mr. Rando on Thursday declined an interview request and referred questions about “Kong” to Mr. Bryan-Brown.
Hugh Jackman is drawing attention on Broadway this week for his current play, “The River” – and for what might come next.
At Wednesday night’s performance of “The River,” Mr. Jackman caused a stir in the audience when he cut a finger while slicing a lemon onstage and – lacking the healing powers of his movie character Wolverine – was visibly bleeding for the next hour or so.
Turns out it wasn’t the first mishap. Two weeks earlier, while rehearsing the scene where his character prepares a fish for dinner, Mr. Jackman cut a finger and required five stitches, a representative for the actor said Thursday.
As for the latest accident, emergency medical technicians came to the Circle in the Square theater but concluded no stitches were needed. Mr. Jackman is fine and will go on in Thursday night’s performance of the show, said his representative, Michele Schweitzer.
“I said to him last night ‘Let’s try to get through “The River” run with at least 7.5 fingers intact!’ ” Ms. Schweitzer wrote by email. Read more…
“A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again" ran at the Chocolate Factory theater in Queens in 2012, with Mary Rasumussen, left, Therese Plaehn and John Amir.Credit Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Playwrights and theater artists from Argentina, Brazil, Iran and across the United States will be featured in January at the 11th annual Under the Radar festival, its producers at the Public Theater announced on Thursday. The 12-day cornucopia of experimental works will also include the start of a new performance series, Incoming!, which showcases works-in-progress by writers, comedians, poets and theater collectives.
Among the highlights of the festival, which will run Jan. 7 to 18, is “Cineastas,” created by the Argentine theater director Mariano Pensotti, which renders the lives of four filmmakers over the course of a year in Buenos Aires. Actors shift between their characters’ real lives and scenes from their characters’ films. Another production, “O Jardim” by the Brazilian theater collective Companhia Hiato, uses Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” as a taking-off point to explore memory and heritage through stories from three generations of a family.
Another show, “Timeloss,” by the Iranian playwright and director Amir Reza Koohestani and the Mehr Theater Group, imagines a reunion of actors years after they starred in Mr. Koohestani’s acclaimed play “Dance on Glasses,” which toured internationally for four years. And “A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again,” created by the director Daniel Fish, uses audio recordings of the writer David Foster Wallace (whose collection of essays inspired its title) and a group of actors to illuminate the writer and his literary style. (The show ran at the Chocolate Factory theater in Queens in 2012; Wallace committed suicide in 2008.)
Many other festival works, adventurous in spirit and acclaimed in their originating countries and cities, will be mounted at the Public and a nearby space in the East Village, La MaMa Experimental Theater. The actor and writer Taylor Mac will also perform in the festival at New York Live Arts, presenting his work “A 24-Decade History of Popular Music: 1900-1950’s,” which will explore tunes from the early 20th century. The show represents the start of a much larger piece that Mr. Mac envisions – a 24-hour performance featuring the last 240 years of popular music.
The new Incoming! series will include works by Lucy Alibar and Daniel Koren; the theater collectives DarkMatter and Deconstructive Theater Project; and the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, which draws on the May 2014 killings by Elliot Rodger in California to explore masculinity, insecurity and longing, according to the Public’s news release.
Phil Rudd in court in New Zealand on Thursday.Credit Tvnz/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Phil Rudd, the drummer in the Australian rock band AC/DC, was arrested Thursday morning and charged with trying to hire someone to commit murder, threatening murder and possession of methamphetamine and cannabis, the New Zealand news site SunLive reported.
The arrest took place during a police raid at his home in Tauranga, New Zealand, on Thursday morning. Mr. Rudd, 60, made a brief appearance at the Tauranga District Court, where he was charged and released on bail. The judge, Louis Bidois, ruled that the identity of the intended victims, and other details of the case, could not be released.
Mr. Rudd, who did not enter a plea, is expected to appear in court again on Nov. 27 – the day before AC/DC is scheduled to release its latest album, “Rock or Bust.” The group had also announced plans to promote the album with a tour. Those plans do not appear to be imperiled by Mr. Rudd’s legal problems.
“We’ve only become aware of Phil’s arrest as the news was breaking,” the group said in a statement posted on its website. “We have no further comment. Phil’s absence will not affect the release of our new album, ‘Rock or Bust,’ and upcoming tour next year.”
Mr. Rudd’s arrest is the second blow to the band this fall. In late September the group announced that its rhythm guitarist, Malcolm Young, who founded the group in 1973 with his brother and the band’s lead guitarist, Angus Young, was retiring because of illness.
Mr. Rudd joined AC/DC in 1974, and was fired in 1983, after drug and alcohol abuse led to a physical altercation with Malcolm Young. He rejoined the band in 1994. There may have been trouble brewing between Mr. Rudd and his bandmates even before his arrest, however. On Oct. 30 a group portrait was posted on the band’s Facebook page, in which Mr. Rudd does not appear.
Monet's "Le jardin de l’artiste à Vétheuil" is among the works to be given to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Credit
The suspense was short-lived. After announcing yesterday that an anonymous donor to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was making “the largest gift of art to LACMA in its history” — including works by Bonnard, Manet, Monet, Pissarro and Picasso — today the museum revealed the patron to be A. Jerrold Perenchio, the former chairman and chief executive of the Spanish-language television network Univision.
An 83-year-old Bel Air resident who is not on the museum board, Mr. Perenchio plans to give the museum about 50 artworks valued at about $500 million. The collection is rich in French Impressionism, including Monet’s 1881 painting “Le jardin de l’artiste à Vétheuil.” But he has imposed two conditions: the donation will only be made after his death and only if the museum finishes construction of a swooping new building designed by the Swiss architect Peter Zumthor to replace four aging edifices on campus.
The museum made progress in this direction Wednesday, when the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to provide $125 million towards new building costs now estimated to run about $600 million, assuming private donations exceed $175 million and environmental impact plans prove acceptable. A capital campaign reaching out to private donors is expected to officially start in the spring, timed to coincide with the completion of feasibility studies on Mr. Zumthor’s design and the museum’s 50th anniversary. The new building itself is projected to open in 2023, when a subway stop comes to the campus.
A 40-foot banner was unfurled inside the central rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Wednesday evening.
Credit Michael Appleton for The New York Times
Just after 5 p.m. on Wednesday a 40-foot banner fluttered into view inside the central rotunda of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in Manhattan, where visitors were looking at works by a collection of painters and sculptors called the Zero Group, who had aimed to redefine art after World War II.
The banner, which read “Stop Labor Abuse” and “Countdown to Guggenheim Abu Dhabi,” was held by two members of the protest group Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction, which has been involved in a series of unsanctioned displays inside the museum meant to denounce labor conditions on Saadiyat Island, a luxury enclave in Abu Dhabi, where a branch of the Guggenheim is planned.
Much of the work on Saadiyat Island, which is also home to a branch of the Louvre and a New York University campus, is done by foreign migrants. Critics say workers are forced to work long hours, are housed in deplorable conditions and have been subject to police raids and beatings if they object. Read more…
Taylor Swift stunned the music industry on Wednesday with the news that her new album, “1989” (Big Machine), sold 1.287 million copies in its first week out. Defying the prevailing trends in music, it became the fastest-selling album in 12 years and is also the only title released so far this year to sell one million copies (once a very common milestone).
Here are a few more crunchy numbers about the release, from Nielsen SoundScan, which tracks music sales and supplies data for Billboard’s weekly charts:
–With 1.287 million copies sold, “1989” represented 22 percent of all album sales in the United States last week. The total count was 5.8 million.
–Ms. Swift’s album sold more than the next 106 titles on this week’s chart combined — counting everything from “Now That’s What I Call Music!” Vol. 52, which opened at No. 2 with 103,000 sales, to Bob Seger’s “Ultimate Hits: Rock and Roll Never Forgets,” a three-year-old compilation that landed at No. 107 with just under 4,000 copies sold.
–Sales of “1989” were split almost evenly between physical copies and digital downloads. The physical release — including a CD version with extra tracks sold only at Target — sold 647,000 copies, while 640,000 copies of the digital version were downloaded. Ms. Swift’s publicity campaign for the album began in August when she released “Shake It Off” as a single, and sent her fans to iTunes to pre-order the album.
–“1989” is only the 19th album since 1991 to sell at least one million copies in a single week. (SoundScan was first used that year to tally music sales; before then, figures were self-reported by record companies as “shipments” — including unsold copies — and are considered unreliable.)
–“1989” is the instant best-seller among albums released in 2014, but thanks to the success of Disney’s “Frozen” soundtrack — which came out last year — it is only the second-biggest seller among all titles in 2014. “Frozen” has sold 3.2 million copies since January, and a total of 3.5 million since it came out last November.
–Since Ms. Swift and her label categorized “1989” as a pop release, it is not the top country album this week. That honor belongs to Sam Hunt’s “Montevallo” (MCA Nashville), which opens at No. 3 on Billboard’s chart with 70,000 sales.
–Unlike “1989,” Mr. Hunt’s album is available on Spotify, where it was streamed three million times in the United States last week, making it the most popular album on the service in that time.
Big book advances are back. Diana Gabaldon got more than $6 million for the ninth novel in her Outlander series. On Monday, Publishers Marketplace reported that Ecco paid $3 million or more for Charles Frazier’s fourth novel. And during an acquisitions frenzy leading up to the Frankfurt Book Fair last month, Random House signed two seven-figure deals with debut novelists, including 25-year-old Emma Cline, who got a three-book deal worth $2 million.
The latest novelist to land a major book deal is Stephanie Clifford, a New York Times reporter who covers the Brooklyn courts. Ms. Clifford sold North American rights to her debut novel, “Everybody Rise,” to St. Martin’s Press last week for a low seven-figure sum. The novel, which follows a young social striver jockeying for status on the Upper East Side, was also acquired for film by Fox 2000 Pictures.
Ms. Clifford, who has covered media, business and courts for The New York Times, first had the idea for the novel a decade ago, and has been working on it steadily for four years, writing early in the morning and on weekends. The story centers on a 26-year-old woman who moves to New York just before the financial crisis and gets a job at a social networking site. The job draws her into the cutthroat social scene on the Upper East Side, where she attempts to pass as old money.
Charles Spicer, an executive editor at St. Martin’s, described the book as “Bonfire of the Vanities for the 21st century,” and said it would appeal to fans of Curtis Sittenfeld’s “Prep” and Maggie Shipstead’s “Seating Arrangements.” The novel is scheduled for publication in 2016.
In the Anatomy of a Number video series, musical theater makers talk about the elements that inspired a song from their show.
“Found,” a new show at the Atlantic Theater Company, sets anonymous notes, letters and other correspondence to music.
In this video, Eli Bolin, who wrote the show’s music and lyrics, talks about how boxing and calypso music inspired “Cats Are Cats,” a comedic number based on a child’s handwritten note. “Found” continues through Sunday at the Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater.
Past videos in this series include interviews with Jerry Mitchell, the director and choreographer of “Kinky Boots”; Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, the composers of the musical “A Christmas Story”; and Michael Mayer, the director of “American Idiot.”
