The most exciting theater to see around D.C. and New York this spring
Spring is a season for renewal. Onstage, we'll get reimagined classics — Vanyas galore, plus 'Hamlet' from the women's point of view — and new plays from some of the most daring writers working today, including Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Tarell Alvin McCraney. Plus, George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow! John Wilkes Booth from the creator of 'Mad Men'! And musicals that prove the world is tremendously full of possibilities, whatever life outside the theater might lead you to believe. Step inside, the weather is fine.
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Boston Globe
43 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
Sacha Jenkins, filmmaker who mined the Black experience, dies at 53
He was 'an embodiment of 'for us, by us,'' journalist Stereo Williams wrote in a recent appreciation on Okayplayer, a music and culture site. 'He was one of hip-hop's greatest journalistic voices because he didn't just write about the art: He lived it.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up And he lived it from early on. Mr. Jenkins, raised primarily in the Astoria section of Queens, was a graffiti artist as a youth, and sought to bring an insider's perspective to the culture surrounding it with his zine Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language, which he started at 16. He later co-founded Beat-Down newspaper, which covered hip-hop; and the feisty and irreverent magazine Ego Trip, which billed itself as 'the arrogant voice of musical truth.' Advertisement Mr. Jenkins later served a stint as the music editor of Vibe magazine and wrote for publications such as Spin and Rolling Stone, before turning his attention to the screen. Advertisement 'There's a huge void, right?' he said in a 2022 interview with Okayplayer. 'There weren't a lot of documentaries about hip-hop for the longest time. I think hip-hop generated some of the strongest, most powerful storytellers of our generation with the music so it's only natural that we would create projects in the film and television realm that would have resonance.' He joined Mass Appeal, a New York-based media and content company, as the chief creative officer in 2012. Three years later, he directed 'Fresh Dressed,' a documentary that chronicled the rise of urban and hip-hop fashion, tracing elements of Black style from the antebellum plantations of the South to the world's fashion tents. Other notable documentaries included 'Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men' (2019), an Emmy-nominated four-part series that depicted the members of the groundbreaking hip-hop group from Staten Island as 'human-scaled -- determined, gifted, anxious, fallible,' music critic Jon Caramanica wrote in a review in The New York Times. 'Bitchin': The Sound and Fury of Rick James' (2021) explored the radiant and sordid career of the punk funk master, who minted anthems of debauchery including the 1980s hits 'Super Freak' and 'Give It to Me Baby,' but who also crossed the line from personal hedonism to criminal abuse. The film premiered at the 2021 Tribeca Film Festival. Mr. Jenkins dipped further back into history with 'Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues' (2022), which drew heavily from the personal writings of the artist known as Satchmo, from his reel-to-reel audio diaries and from his letters, read by rapper Nas. The film shed light on the inner racial struggles of a jazz giant who generally kept mum on the topic while becoming a global celebrity beloved by white audiences. Advertisement Mr. Jenkins's films 'were homecomings for Black folk who watch these films with the hope that it's us behind the camera,' artist and writer DJ Lynnée Denise, wrote in an essay. She argued that his work stood in contrast to white directors Ken Burns and Martin Scorsese, whose documentaries about Black music 'replicate centuries of symbolic and material imbalance between Black performers and white industry.' Sacha Sebastian Jenkins was born Aug. 22, 1971, in Philadelphia, the younger of two children of Horace B. Jenkins, an Emmy-winning filmmaker, and Monart Renaud, a visual artist from Haiti. His family moved to Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington, and after his parents separated, his father moved to Harlem and the rest of the family settled in Astoria. Mr. Jenkins came of age in New York at a fertile time in hip-hop culture, as it was spreading from such areas as the South Bronx toward the mainstream. 'We grew up writing graffiti, dancing in the street, rapping in staircases,' he said. People were 'plugging turntables into lampposts on the street.' He became enmeshed in the graffiti art scene, but, as he recalled in an interview last year with the multimedia company Idea Generation, he spent 'more time thinking about graffiti and writing about graffiti and publishing magazines about graffiti than doing graffiti.' After launching Graphic Scenes X-Plicit Language and Beat-Down newspaper, he joined forces with two friends, Elliott Wilson and Jeff Mao, to form Ego Trip magazine, which covered hip-hop and a variety of topics, including skateboarding and punk rock. 'White kids who like rock love hip-hop by this point,' he said. 'You can't keep putting people in boxes.' Advertisement In the late 1990s, Ego Trip expanded to books, including 'Ego Trip's Big Book of Racism!' which caught the eye of producers at VH1. The cable network enlisted the Ego Trip team to develop satirical shows including 'TV's Illest Minority Moments,' which lampooned the media's depictions of people of color, and 'The (White) Rapper Show,' a reality competition. Mr. Jenkins also published several books, including collaborating with Eminem on the rapper's 2008 book 'The Way I Am.' In addition to his wife, Mr. Jenkins leaves a son, Marceau, a stepdaughter, Djali Brown-Cepeda, and a grandson. Mr. Jenkins's tart views on race in America were on display in 'Everything's Gonna Be All White,' his 2022 Showtime docuseries that sought to tell 'a tale of two Americas, one white, one not,' featuring pointed commentary about racism from a broad swath of people of color. The documentary touched on the notion of a Black Jesus, the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and 'white noise,' which Mr. Jenkins argued happens to people of color when they internalize messaging from the white power structure. 'It's a subliminal fuzz, constant, like a ringing in your ear,' he said in an interview that year with the film and television news site The Credits. 'It's always there, right, but you become used to it. If you focus on that frequency, it's going to confuse you, encourage you to make the wrong decisions, like not being conscious of casting folks of color in a film about folks of color.' This article originally appeared in
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Fans React to Newly Surfaced ‘90s Dating Show Footage of Big TV Star: ‘I Bet He Tried Out for 'Real World''
Fans React to Newly Surfaced '90s Dating Show Footage of Big TV Star: 'I Bet He Tried Out for 'Real World'' originally appeared on Parade. Jon Hamm wasn't an overnight success. The Your Friends & Neighbors star, 54, paid his dues with small parts until he got his big break on the hit AMC drama Mad Men. Newly surfaced video from the '90s shows one of Hamm's earlier 'roles'—this time as a contestant on a USA Network dating game show called The Big Date, hosted by Mark L. Walberg. The resurfaced footage shows a much younger, less-Hollywood-heartthrob Hamm talking about his ideal date. The aspiring actor was rejected twice on the show, but the footage lives on in had strong reactions to Hamm's hair and his on-screen persona in the dating show footage. One commenter wrote on the video shared to Instagram, 'That hair!' in reference to Hamm's '90s curtain cut and middle part, while another shared, 'He definitely got better looking with age.'Other fans weren't quite taken with Hamm's description of a perfect first date when he said, 'Well, start off with some fabulous food, some fabulous conversation.' When prompted to share what else would be fabulous about the date, Hamm offered, 'a fabulous foot massage for an evening of total fabulosity.' In response, one fan quipped, 'We'd go to Home Depot. Yeah, buy some wallpaper, maybe get some flooring, stuff like that.' Some fans found Jon Hamm's dating show footage to channel full 1990s vibes with one writing, "I bet he tried out for Real World 😂" While some fans were charmed by Hamm's early on-camera efforts, other commenters made note of a hazing incident the actor was reportedly involved in during his time at the University of Texas. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 Fans React to Newly Surfaced '90s Dating Show Footage of Big TV Star: 'I Bet He Tried Out for 'Real World'' first appeared on Parade on Jun 7, 2025 This story was originally reported by Parade on Jun 7, 2025, where it first appeared.
Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
2025 Tony Awards: Steppenwolf Theatre's ‘Purpose' wins best play
NEW YORK — 'Purpose,' a drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins that was commissioned and first produced by Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company, has won the Tony Award for best play at the awards ceremony at Radio City Musical Hall. The play, with a stort loosely based on the family of civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, was nominated alongside 'The Hills of California,' 'John Proctor Is the Villain' and 'Oh, Mary!' The win is a major victory for the famed Chicago company that last wowed New York theater with Tracy Letts' 'August: Osage County' in 2008. Actress Kara Young, who was added to the Chicago cast of 'Purpose' for the Broadway production, also won a Tony for best featured actress in a play. In accepting the award, Glenn Davis, Steppenwolf's co-artistic director and a cast member and Tony nominee himself, had the chance to remind New York and the television audience of Steppenwolf's accomplishments over the years. Playwright Jacobs-Jenkins thanked 'the city of Chicago for making this show what it was.' He also said Chicago had 'the best actors in America.' The 2025 Tony Awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and Broadway League in a ceremony Sunday at Radio City Music Hall in New York, hosted by 'Wicked' star Cynthia Erivo and broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+.PHOTOS: Tony Awards 2025: Red Carpet Arrivals
