Latest news with #Peck
Time Out
4 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Orville Peck drops the mask in Cabaret
As the orchestra plays the opening vamps of 'Wilkommen,' Orville Peck ascends to the stage from below, as though rising from some underworld to spread malice. In his regular life as a country-music singer-songwriter with fans around the world, Peck cultivates an air of mystery; he is never seen in public without some kind of elaborate mask. But as the creepy Emcee in Broadway 's Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club, he bares his soul—and his full face—every night. Peck has always had a hankering for the stage. He grew up in South Africa, where he performed in musicals before pursuing acting professionally in Canada and the U.K., including a stint in the West End. That chapter came to an end when he adopted his current persona and released his 2019 debut album, Pony, which earned him a Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. But his Broadway debut in Cabaret represents a return to a longtime dream. 'I'm trying to take every moment in and savor it,' he says. Peck is the third person to play the Emcee in the current revival of the classic 1966 musical, after Eddie Redmayne and Adam Lambert. It's a highly demanding role. The story takes place in 1930s Berlin, where the second-rate singer Sally Bowles (Eva Noblezada) chases fame at the seedy Kit Kat Club as the Nazis rise to power. The Emcee presides over the nightclub scenes and weaves through the rest of the show like a snake; his gradual transformation from naughty ringmaster to conformist taskmaster mirrors Germany's harrowing descent into fascism. But at curtain call, Peck is back to being himself—which for him means back in his mask. In honor of Pride, we chatted with the openly gay singer about his life in Cabaret so far. How did the role of the Emcee come to you? They asked if I would be interested. Like anyone else, I filmed a self-tape of me singing a couple songs from the show. I was on tour at the time, so I filmed my self-tape in the basement of Wrigley Field in Chicago. When I was in New York for my shows, a few months or two later, I went in and did a callback, essentially, for the creative team. And a few months after that, I got the offer. Getting to make my Broadway debut doing my dream role is kind of amazing. What drew you to take on the role of the Emcee in the first place? It was always a dream of mine to do Broadway, but it was more specifically a dream for me to do this role. I was 14 the first time I can remember thinking about it; I saw the film with Joel Grey and Liza [Minnelli]. I've always been drawn to musicals that have a thought-provoking script with a good, meaty story, so Cabaret really appealed to me with that. And then seeing Alan Cumming in the revival—seeing how differently it could be portrayed, but also the freedom it allows an actor. I'm having the time of my life. But it's a lot of hard work. Why? It's a very grueling schedule, eight shows a week, especially for a role like this where I'm on stage most of the time. And when I'm not on stage, I'm changing into something different. It's a pretty crazy marathon of a track. The way that I interpret the character and the energy that I give to it—it's a lot, physically, and of course the subject matter of the show is a lot emotionally. By the end of the show, all of us are pretty exhausted. What themes from the show really speak to you? The most obvious is how fragile freedom can be. It feels very reflective of the current political climate in 2025, where groups of people's rights are being challenged and taken away in front of us. This show is a period piece about a specific place at a specific time, but the themes resonate a lot today. You often sit on stage during the show, which is staged in the round, so you can see the spectators. What have you noticed about how the audience reacts? It's a vast array of reactions every night. Our shows, for better or worse, are known for involuntary outbursts from people. We get people sobbing in the show, but we also get people laughing uncomfortably in moments that they don't know how to respond to otherwise, like when a swastika is revealed. I don't think it's because they think the swastika is funny, or that nazism is something to laugh at—I think it takes people off-guard, and they have uncomfortable reactions that they can't control. But that is the point of this show. The show is meant to make people uncomfortable. It leaves people thinking. How do you walk the line between menacing and jovial every night? I don't know how to play sinister or menacing. I have to play it as somebody who has a belief system that is really different to mine, but they believe that it is just as important and moral. The Emcee makes menacing, sinister, hateful—and some might even say evil—decisions and choices. But I have to play those as if they're the most virtuous thing that I can do as a person. If you approach it with that mindset, it crafts a real, three-dimensional person. Does being part of the LGBTQ+ community shape your performance? Being part of a group that's often been marginalized—that has been on the receiving end of bigotry, homophobia or aggression—helps me understand how delicate this material is, and how I have to approach it with a lot of thought. I can't be vague about intentions and choices. I've spent a lot of time, especially in the rehearsal process, thinking about what makes somebody align themselves with something so hateful. There's a lot to unpack there with people who are marginalized. My Emcee is someone who is very repressed, and who has a lot of shame and anger at the world. Going to that place every night makes me feel lucky to be the opposite in my personal life. I feel very happy and proud of who I am, and grateful that I get to be myself and live authentically, and not have that kind of anger. How might this Pride be different in your eyes thanks to having this experience on Broadway? Pride always meant a lot to me, but now more than ever. We have an incredibly diverse cast in every single sense of the word. Everybody is just such a unique, beautiful person—and by the end of the show, we see all of that individuality stripped away. So this Pride, I definitely have a more conscious sense of celebrating everyone's individuality and everyone's unique spirit. It's such a beautiful part of being queer. You have the permission to be whoever you are, and that's due to the community that has been built over the last few decades. This is a community and we did have to work to build it. And that requires maintenance and encouragement of each other. On your Instagram feed, you posted a screenshot of a notification that Audra McDonald had followed you. Why was that important to you? Audra McDonald's a legend. My 14-year-old self would have fucking died if he knew that Audra McDonald even knew who I was. So it was a cute little nod to that. What are your plans going forward? Would you do more Broadway? Absolutely. It's not going to be a full-time priority; I'm very much a country music artist. But I've opened the door again into something that I really love doing. It's definitely not the last time. What's your next dream role? I went to see Hadestown. It was never on my radar, because it's a newer show, but Eva Noblezada is in Cabaret with us and she originated the role of Eurydice in role of Hades is sort of Orville Peck–coded. He's wearing some pretty cool cowboy boots and singing in a low register. So maybe in 10 or 15 years I could do a stint as Hades. In the first revival of Hadestown? Exactly.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Dystopia Now! In ‘Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5,' Director Raoul Peck Shows How ‘1984' Author Foresaw Today's Authoritarian Drift — Cannes
'Special military operation.' 'Department of Government Efficiency.' 'Enhanced interrogation techniques.' 'Alternative facts.' We live in a time when governments use lexical distortions to manipulate public opinion – the very thing author George Orwell captured so cogently in his dystopian novel 1984, where the futuristic regime adopts 'Newspeak' and other authoritarian techniques to stamp out independent critical thinking. More from Deadline Raoul Peck's 'Ernest Cole' Shares Cannes' L'Oeil D'or Prize For Best Documentary With 'The Brink Of Dreams' Raoul Peck Directing Documentary 'The Hands That Held The Knives' On Assassination Of Haitian President Jovenel Moise Nu Boyana Exec Launches Next Gen Company Hollywood Influence Studios With Stratosphere-Shot Debut 'Above The End' The time is ripe then to reexamine a writer who, though he died 75 years ago, foresaw how leaders of today would gaslight their own people to impose their will and squash dissent. Oscar-nominated filmmaker Raoul Peck takes on that task in his new documentary Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5, premiering on Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival. 'A man that died in January 1950, to be that accurate about what is happening today — you better take a second look and try to learn even more from him,' Peck tells Deadline. For his examination of Orwell and his thought, the director drew upon the writer's personal archives. 'The estate allowed me to have access to everything — to published, unpublished [work], private letters, unpublished manuscripts. And that's something, especially in today's world where buying a chapter of a book costs you a fortune,' Peck says. 'It was a gift to be able to have access to everything. It was the same gift I had with James Baldwin' (focus of Peck's acclaimed film I Am Not Your Negro). Orwell: 2 + 2 = 5 traces the writer's effort to complete 1984 in the late 1940s as tuberculosis took the last vestiges of his health. He was hospitalized regularly as he worked on the manuscript on the Scottish island of Jura in the Inner Hebrides. The film also dials back to experiences much earlier in Orwell's life that formed his humanistic worldview. In private writings – voiced by actor Damian Lewis – Orwell describes growing up with the ideology common to a Briton of his background (he described himself as 'lower upper-middle class'). He was educated at Eton but instead of following the common path of his classmates to Oxford or Cambridge, he joined the British Imperial Service, working as a colonial police officer in Burma (present-day Myanmar). 'The key to who he became was in Burma. He realized he was there as an imperialist,' Peck observes. 'He was there as a European and doing the worst things a human being can do to normal people — not to combatants, not to communists — to normal people, 'Coolies,' farmers. And he did not like himself. He did not like what he was doing, and he was doing it for the Empire. That was the big break. And he never was able to reconcile that. And he knew he had to keep his critical mind always, no matter who's the boss, no matter who is the king, no matter who's the president, he needs to keep his critical mind.' He threw his lot in with working people, chronicling life on the lower economic rungs in Down and Out in Paris and London (1933) and The Road to Wigan Pier (1937). He fought fascism in Spain in the 1930s, documenting his experience in Homage to Catalonia (1938). 'The thing that made him interesting to me beside his books, besides his ideas, was the fact that he lived through those things. He wrote from his experience, his own personal experience, not from any intellectual awareness of anything. Not that I'm against that, but there is a sort of credibility that can only be gained from going through those things yourself,' the filmmaker says. 'And this is something he did very frontally, very decisively, and trying to live among the poor, among the disinherited, because that was important to him to feel before he writes, to understand before he can write and to verify what his instinct was. And by the way, he didn't do it from a superior point of view, but he criticized himself as well. He put himself under his own analysis, and he did that very early on.' Orwell described himself as a democratic socialist, but he abhorred the sort of mind control exerted by ostensibly socialist or communist regimes like the USSR and its satellites. Animal Farm, published in 1945 as the Soviet Union was clamping its pincers on Eastern Europe, and 1948 – published at a time when Stalin had drawn the Iron Curtain between East and West – illustrate the moral depravity of the powerful who exert dominance over the powerless. But, as Peck believes, Orwell has wrongly been interpreted as relevant only to an earlier time of Stalinist totalitarianism. Forcing people to accept that 2 + 2 + 5 (as happens in 1984) – how different is being forcefed the lies of Putin that he unleashed hell on Ukrainian civilians to 'denazify' the country? How different is it from Pres. Trump attempting to rewrite reality by describing the January 6 attack on the U.S. capital as 'a day of love'? Orwell saw, as shown in Peck's documentary, that totalitarian regimes engage in 'continuous alteration of the past.' 'Orwell has been put in a little box as an anti-Stalinist or an anti-Soviet, anti-authoritarian regime,' Peck comments. 'But you hear what he says in the film, authoritarians don't all only happen in faraway countries. It can happen as well in the U.K., in the United States and elsewhere. So, the scope [of the film] was from the get-go very wide. For me, it was not just an anti-Trump or anti-whatever agenda.' Peck was born in Haiti but as a child he and his family fled to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to escape the dictatorial regime of François 'Papa Doc' Duvalier, an authoritarian who enjoyed the support of many successive American governments. That high level hypocrisy – America, the shining beacon of liberty, propping up a dictator – made Peck as acutely sensitive to the abuse of political language as Orwell. 'When Kennedy or Nixon or Johnson, were talking about Haiti, supporting a dictatorship, and the word democracy was in every speech, how could I reconcile that?' he questions. 'You are supporting a guy who has killed thousands and thousands of people, who is keeping his people poor, who is corrupt, where there is torture. So how do you reconcile that? Very early on, I was always suspect of certain words that people were using.' Ultimately, what Orwell was about is asserting the dignity of individuals, especially the downtrodden, against forces of exploitation, be they economic and/or political. He's as relevant to our times as he was to the mid-20th century. 'When you encounter a thinker like Orwell, and you feel, wow, he gets it. He gets what the 'other' is, he has empathy,' Peck says. 'He looks at everybody as a human being, whether you are poor, rich or Burmese or British or a worker in a kitchen in Paris, he sees you first as a human being. And that's very rare. That's very rare.' Best of Deadline 2025 TV Cancellations: Photo Gallery Where To Watch All The 'Mission: Impossible' Movies: Streamers With Multiple Films In The Franchise Everything We Know About 'My Life With The Walter Boys' Season 2 So Far
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Baldwin visits Hallie farm, hears concerns about tariff policies
TOWN OF HALLIE — Jeff Peck farms about 1,000 acres in the Town of Hallie, and about 80% of what he grows is feed for his 350 cows. The rest of his crops goes to market, and frequently, is sold overseas. 'We are pretty reliant on exports,' Peck told U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Wednesday. 'We need to trade those extras. So, we really are a global economy.' Farmer Les Danielson told Baldwin that 30 years ago, only 2% of milk produced was sent overseas. Today, it's 18% that is exported. Danielson noted that many farmers are filling containers with soybeans and also ship those out of the country. 'We're waiting to hear what we're supposed to do with our crops this fall,' Danielson said. Both Peck and Danielson told Baldwin they are fearful of losing access to foreign markets because of a looming trade war over tariffs. 'It takes a long time to build those relationships, but you can break them quickly,' Peck said. He added that signing early contracts hasn't helped. They were told that even if they pre-paid for seeds or other items they've ordered from overseas, any tariff that is in place will be added on to the cost. 'The farmers are on the bottom of the hill,' Peck said. Danielson agreed, saying it has been hard to figure out how to buy the items a working farm needs. 'Our supplier can't tell us the price of fertilizer, because of the tariffs,' Danielson said. Baldwin, a Democrat, spent about an hour touring the Peck family farm on Wednesday. At the conclusion of the event, she told area media it was important to hear directly from farmers about how tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump are impacting them. 'Export markets are in question,' Baldwin said. 'The president campaigned on bringing costs down, on bringing groceries down, and other costs down. And the policies he's put forward have produced the opposite result.' Baldwin noted the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in an attempt to halt the tariff hikes on Canada, but the U.S. House of Representatives didn't take up the measure. 'What you've seen is the president is acting unilaterally and just forgetting Congress,' she said. Baldwin was frustrated over Trump's constantly changing positions on what levels of tariffs will be imposed and when they will go into effect. 'It's just chaotic,' she said. 'It's hard to pin him down.' The Senate will be back in session on Monday, and Baldwin discussed how they will begin deliberating on the budget bill passed by the U.S. House last year. The measure passed by a single vote. Baldwin noted that the Congressional Budget Office has indicated that up to 14 million Americans could lose their access to Medicaid if the bill, as written, becomes law. 'I think it has a tough road ahead of it,' Baldwin said. She noted that some Republican Senators have objected to the deep cuts, while others, including Sen. Ron Johnson, want to see tax cuts paid for. When asked what she does like about the House budget bill, Baldwin said it will give some tax breaks to co-ops and middle-class families.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Altoona Memorial Day parade honors local Marine veteran who dedicated years of service
ALTOONA, Pa. (WTAJ) — This year's Memorial Day parade in Altoona honored fallen service members and those who didn't come home, as it always does. The parade also honored Lloyd Peck, a Marine veteran who served as the Vice Commander for the Blair County War Veterans Council. Peck passed away this past March at the age of 93. Before he passed, he would often help organize the Veterans and Memorial Day parades every year. WTAJ spoke with him at last year's ceremony. 'Lloyd Peck was an outstanding individual. I always called him Mr. Get the job done,' Stephen Nader, Treasurer of the Blair County War Veterans Council, said. The parade formed at 8th Avenue and 17th Street and followed a route to 12th Street, then continued onto 11th Avenue. Motorcycles, firetrucks, police officers, the Altoona Area High School band, twirlers and the Hollidaysburg Veterans Home were just some of the participants in the parade. Fallen remembered, veterans honored in Cambria County on Memorial Day After the parade was over, dozens of residents stayed for the service at the Robert E. Laws Veterans Mall on 11th Avenue. BethAnne Buscema and her son Joey watched as the council honored Peck and the work he accomplished. BethAnne's father-in-law served in the Vietnam War, and her husband works at the James E. Van Zandt Medical Center. She also has friends in the service and worked at the VA, too. 'I'm a physical therapist, so I got to know them on a personal level. Going to hear their stories and understand why they served. And then it was a privilege being able to help them feel better. Whichever, whatever the case may be, whether they were injured while serving or just later on in life,' she said. Altoona Mayor Matt Pacifico read a proclamation for Memorial Day, which was given to Lloyd Peck's daughter. A plaque with Lloyd Peck's name on it is displayed on the flagpole near the Robert E. Laws Veterans Mall. It was installed days before the ceremony. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Courier-Mail
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Courier-Mail
Crime fiction writer Loraine Peck selling luxury beach home
Award-winning Australian author Loraine Peck and her husband Stead Denton are ready to downsize from their luxurious beach home on the Gold Coast. . It's the very house where Mrs Peck, a crime-fiction novelist, penned her first book, The Second Son, in the study nook of the apartment. The Main Beach residence offers the best of apartment living but the feel of a luxury home. Positioned within easy reach of Tedder Ave, parks and the beachfront, The Hill Pde apartment occupies the lower two levels of the award-winning Axis building and boasts its own private yard and swimming pool. Mrs Peck and Mr Denton bought the three-bedroom apartment seven years ago. At the time, they were looking for a villa, but the property's garden, pool, house-like design, and private entrance sealed the deal. 'When we walked in here it was just wow,' Ms Peck said. 'The light pouring in through those double-height windows facing north and the space, it was such an uplifting feeling.' Known as 'The Axis Beach House', the property features floor-to-ceiling glass overlooking the private garden, with two bedrooms, a study nook and spacious master suite with private balcony on the upper floor. MORE: Theme park legend's crypto hideaway hits the market Zac Efron's Aussie long lunch haunt is on the market Downstairs, the lower level is dedicated to entertaining, with the open plan lounge, dining area and kitchen seamlessly connecting to the immaculately landscaped yard. 'The garden is a private sanctuary, and we've spent many wonderful days with friends and family swimming, eating and drinking – sometimes even dancing,' Ms Peck said. 'We completely forget that there are apartments above us. 'We have no common walls and as we have so much internal and external space, it really does feel like we're living in a house.' Initially the property served as Ms Peck and Mr Steadman's holiday home, but soon became the couple's main residence. Over seven years living there, Ms Peck has not only completed an award-winning debut novel and its sequel but has also given parts of the home a makeover. Improvements include a kitchen renovation, updated bathrooms, new oak flooring, painting, drapes, and wallpaper. 'But the garden was the big one,' Ms Peck said. 'We planted out a Tuscan villa kind of garden that's lush and green all year round with lots of herbs and palms to add a tropical touch, and our veggie pod, which is tucked away in the utility area, provides fresh greens.' In addition to being a private oasis, the property's central location is also a drawcard, offering access to parks, the yacht club, restaurants, the beach, and Broadwater. 'We love Main Beach, it's such an easy yet sophisticated place to be,' Ms Peck said. 'Being next to the river is lovely too. 'We take a couple of fold-out chairs out there and fish for whiting, bring the fish back home, barbecue it, and enjoy a glass of wine… bliss.' The prized apartment is now set to go to auction on June 11 with Ms Peck noting it would suit a range of people. 'Living here has been such a delightful experience,' she said. 'It's just like living in a two-storey house with a large garden and pool out the back, but you can lock it and leave it whenever you want and know you have all the security of living in a residential-only high rise.' The property is marketed via Robbie Graham and Michael Willems of Ray White Main Beach.
