THURSDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2020 C1
YNEWS CRITICISM
3ART
Simone Leigh to make history
in Venice. BY HILARIE M. SHEETS
5 FILM
‘We’re all really hackable right
now.’ BY JASON ZINOMAN
4 BOOK REVIEWGoing under cover
to expose hatreds in
far-right groups.
BY JENNIFER SZALAIWHITEFIELD, N.H. — The last choruses of
“Don’t Feed the Plants” reverberated
across the mostly empty theater. Shredded
paper fell from the lighting grid. The 44
masked ticket holders, meticulously spaced
out across the 250 seats, rose for an ovation,
then waited for directions about which
doorways to use to reduce crowding as they
filed out into the autumn sunshine.
Ethan Paulini, who played the sadistic
dentist in the production of “Little Shop ofHorrors” that ended with a matinee here on
Sunday, removed his white lab coat and of-
fered the hint of a smile from behind his
black mask.
The first fall season here at the Weather-
vane Theater, which Paulini also runs as its
producing artistic director, had come to an
end. Five weeks. Three shows. Twenty-six
performances. Zero known Covid-19 cases.
At a time when professional theater in
America is paralyzed by the coronavirus
pandemic, a reopening milestone was
achieved here in the northernmost reachesof New Hampshire, where the nation’s first
indoor production of a show with multiple
Equity actors since theaters shuttered in
March just concluded its run.
In some ways, the moment seems
strangely modest, given that in parts of Eu-
rope and Asia, theater is back in some big
cities. But the United States has controlled
the virus less well than other countries —
the American per capita death rate is higher
than that of many other nations — and as a
result, the performing arts are particularly
hobbled here.
That has left innovation, with the excep-
tion of a few one-person shows, largely to
small theaters in rural areas where theA Triumph for a Theatrical Test Case
IAN THOMAS JANSEN-LONNQUIST FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAided by precautions and a rural setting, the nation’s first indoor show
with multiple Equity actors since March concludes with a relieved exhale.
By MICHAEL PAULSONMonica Rosenblatt as the
carnivorous plant Audrey II
in the final performance of
the Weathervane Theater’s
production of “Little Shop of
Horrors” last weekend in
Whitefield, N.H.CONTINUED ON PAGE C7“I’m still in recovery from the president of
the United States not condemning white su-
premacy,” Ethan Hawke said the morning
after the first Biden-Trump debate. “That’s
an easy thing to condemn.”
For Hawke, disavowing white supremacy
was not just a matter of responsible leader-
ship or simply the right thing any American
citizen should do. It was the defining ideol-
ogy of John Brown, the white abolitionist
the actor plays in Showtime’s “The Good
Lord Bird.” Hawke said Brown was the
most challenging, rewarding and politically
urgent role in his 35-year acting career.
“It’s like getting to be King Lear, but even
better,” he said in a recent phone interview.
“It’s playing a King Lear that hasn’t really
been played.”
Hawke also created, with Mark Richard,
the seven-part mini-series, which is based
on the 2013 National Book Award-winningJohn Brown,
Madman
Or Martyr?
Ethan Hawke as the abolitionist John Brown in “The Good Lord Bird,”
a Showtime mini-series based on James McBride’s novel.KEVIN LYNCH/SHOWTIME‘The Good Lord Bird’ is the
latest entry in the canon.By SALAMISHAH TILLETCONTINUED ON PAGE C6It’s a big achievement to win an Oscar. But
in 2021, it may be an even bigger achieve-
ment just to stage them.
We’re now nearing the end of a disastrous
movie year in which the release calendar
has melted before our eyes and theaters
have been left in dire straits because of a
still-raging pandemic. This is not exactly
“Hooray for Hollywood” material, but Os-
car season has begun anyway, albeit with
new rules that allow for streaming-service
debuts and a ceremony that has been
pushed two months past its usual date to
April 25.
Who will be nominated, elected or vacci-
nated by then? It would be a tall order to
forecast all three of those fraught outcomes,
so let’s just stick with the Oscars. Here are
four ways I expect Hollywood’s hallowed
gantlet will play out during the most un-
usual period of our lives:
- Big-budget movies will be scarce.
In the face of dwindling broadcast ratings,
ABC has prodded the academy for category
tweaks that will allow more blockbusters to
be featured. Still, with the box office cur-
tailed since March, bona fide hits will be few
and far between.
Major potential contenders like “West
Side Story” and “Dune” have already been
shuttled to 2021, and even some of the star-
riest specialty titles, like Wes Anderson’s
“The French Dispatch,” have opted to sit out
the season entirely instead of pivoting to a
digital debut.
Universal is so far holding fast to a Christ-
mas Day theatrical release for its Tom
Hanks western, “News of the World,” from
the “Captain Phillips” director Paul Green-
grass, but another big release earmarked
for that holiday, “Wonder Woman 1984,” is
widely expected to fly to 2021.
All that big-studio scarcity could create
an opening for Pixar’s “Soul,” which was
plucked from the theatrical calendar and re-
commissioned for a debut on Disney+ in
December. With a diminished field of would-
be blockbusters to choose from, “Soul” may
sneak in and become the first animated filmYes, There Will Be
An Oscar Season
But it’s difficult to say what it will look like.
CONTINUED ON PAGE C4By KYLE BUCHANAN