Latest news with #SpiritofthePeople
Express Tribune
04-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Amber Heard tilts toward theatre life in Spain following name change
Amber Heard appears to have turned a new page in her life, personally and professionally, since relocating to Spain in the aftermath of her legal dispute with Johnny Depp. The actress, who now reportedly goes by the pseudonym Martha Jane Cannary, has embraced a quieter existence in Madrid while simultaneously making her professional stage debut. After the conclusion of her high-profile defamation trial in 2022, Heard left California and settled first on Mallorca and then in Madrid. She reportedly adopted the name Martha Jane Cannary, an homage to the legendary Calamity Jane, as a way to reclaim privacy and anonymity in public life. She speaks fluent Spanish and has described Spain as her home, choosing it for its relative calm following intense media scrutiny in the US. In May 2025 Heard surprised fans by announcing that she had welcomed twins, Agnes and Ocean, joining her daughter Oonagh Paige, born in 2021 via surrogate. Her Instagram post on Mother's Day reflected both achievement and fulfilment, 'My daughter Agnes and my son Ocean are keeping my hands (and my heart) full,' she wrote. Professionally, Heard has shifted from film to theatre, performing in Spirit of the People, a bilingual play by Jeremy O. Harris at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts. This marks her first acting role since 2023 and her debut on any theatrical stage. The production ran through early August 2025 and Gilbert produced increasingly positive feedback. Published photos and reviews praised her performance. Vanity Fair dubbed her portrayal 'exceptional particularly for someone in her professional theatrical debut,' noting her ability to embody a complex, Williams‑style character stretched across English and Spanish lines. The role showcased Heard's language fluency and emotional range. Fans and festival-goers echoed the sentiment, showering her with admiration and thanks on social media. At present, Heard has no confirmed upcoming film projects listed on IMDb, and there have been no public announcements regarding a return to Hollywood or the screen. Instead, her current trajectory appears focused on motherhood and artistic experimentation onstage. The name change, the move abroad, the bilingual theatre piece, and her expanding family suggest a deliberate departure from her previous public persona.
Buzz Feed
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Amber Heard Returns To Acting: Opinion
Last month, social media user @LeaveHeardAlone collected fan messages and money for flowers to send to Amber Heard. Around 350 people wound up sending messages. The flowers were a gift for Heard to celebrate the opening of the new play Spirit of the People by Slave Play writer Jeremy O. Harris at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. It's her first major acting role since the 2022 Depp v. Heard trial, and a rare spot of good news. Lest you need a refresher, Heard was found guilty by a jury of defaming her ex-husband, Johnny Depp, in an op-ed titled 'I spoke up against sexual violence — and faced our culture's wrath. That has to change." In it, she doesn't mention Depp by name, but she refers to herself as a "public figure representing domestic abuse." This was despite a judge in the UK ruling two years earlier that a tabloid calling Depp a "wife beater" was "substantially true," adding, "I have found that the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms Heard by Mr Depp have been proved to the civil standard.' There's been ample speculation about the difference in outcomes in the trials, including that jury members were not sequestered and were allowed to keep their phones, while social media raged against Heard. One juror was even texted by his wife, "Amber is psychotic." It was later found that much of the anti-Heard sentiment online was driven by bots. It was, plainly, a shit time to be a victim of sexual violence with an internet connection, as I am. It still is, given how other men are attempting to use the Depp playbook in court and public opinion. But watching the trial play out as a form of perverse entertainment in real-time felt like a nightmare, seeing friends and family members parrot myths about survivors that they'd unwittingly not realize also applied to me. It seemed like Heard would likely stay in Madrid for some time after the trial, out of the public eye, and who could blame her? But, with Spirit of the People, she's slowly making a return. Photos of her are in Vogue. She's posting on Instagram more frequently. It's hard for me not to see these images and feel a glimmer of hope. To feel inspired by her resilience. Yes, I know that photos aren't a real snapshot of someone's life. But, at the same time, I know I'm not the only one to feel this way. When comments are open, they are remarkably positive. Maybe the bots are gone, or maybe there's been a genuine shift in public opinion, I can't say. Maybe I can exhale, just a little. We've been told endlessly about how accusations ruin men's lives, but the comeback playbook for men accused of wrongdoing feels well-trodden at this point. Depp's out there ranting about #MeToo and conveniently filming his new movie Day Drinker with Penélope Cruz in Madrid. In my opinion, it was Amber whose acting career was ruined simply by being a victim. Against all that darkness, it may not be over yet. I probably won't write another article like this again. I know that mentioning someone's worst moments at every single turn grows into its own kind of cage. Perhaps Depp's most devout fans will be activated like sleeper agents to this piece. It'll be bad another day. But, on July 20, Amber got her flowers. She appeared visibly emotional in her Instagram story as she said, "Thank you so much for these beautiful flowers, I feel like the luckiest woman in the world."
Boston Globe
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Decades after his death, Tennessee Williams still defies categorization
Or should it be measured by his entire oeuvre, which began life in Boston in 1940 with the catastrophic premiere of 'Battle of Angels' at the Wilbur Theatre, and eventually grew to more than 100 plays? The latter proposition has gained momentum in recent years, and the Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival has played a crucial role in paving the way. No cultural institution has demonstrated a greater commitment to Williams's complete body of work than the Provincetown festival, which has staged 85 of his plays over the past 20 years, including 13 world premieres of previously unproduced plays, plus 12 adaptations of his short stories. Advertisement 'He's not a lake,' says David Kaplan, who has directed many productions of Williams's plays and is cofounder and curator of the Provincetown festival, in an interview Wednesday with the Globe. 'He's an ocean.' Starting this weekend, the Williamstown Theatre Festival will take In his first year as Williamstown's creative director, dramatist Jeremy O. Harris ('Slave Play') is premiering his own new play, 'Spirit of the People,' billed as a Williams-influenced piece. Also slated for performance are Williams's seldom-produced 'Camino Real,' with a cast that includes 'Baywatch' star Pamela Anderson; and a production of 'Not About Nightingales,' directed by Robert O'Hara, with a cast that includes William Jackson Harper (Chidi on NBC's 'The Good Place.'). Advertisement There will even be an ice-dancing piece, 'The Gig: After Moise and the World of Reason,' based on a Williams novel and presented at a skating rink. On Wednesday, the New York-based Theater for the New City announced it had adapted Williams's 'Memoirs' into a play titled 'Kind Stranger … a memory play,' which will premiere next month. Playwright and screenwriter Tennessee Williams being interviewed by a journalist, April 9, 1957. Kenneth Denyer/Getty That variety suggests the breadth of Williams's work. Part of his strength, and a key reason that theater companies are increasingly willing to venture into the lesser-known plays, is that he offers so many doors to open. The fact that he ranged so widely makes it hard to pigeonhole him. 'He's no more a 'gay writer' than Shakespeare is a 'Stratford writer,'' said Kaplan. When I interviewed Kaplan in 2013, he said that Williams 'had a sojourn into respectability that lasted less than 20 years. In the work he did before that and in the work he did after that, he was pretty consistent in his desire to experiment, and his desire to work in nontraditional forms.' 'His work is contradictory and ambivalent, willfully so,' Kaplan added at that time. Of course, the Big Three are always onstage, somewhere. Williams's best-known plays offer juicy roles that the biggest names want to tackle. Scarlett Johansson starred as Maggie the Cat in 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' on Broadway in 2013. And Broadway is always game for another revival of 'The Glass Menagerie'; there have been seven since its 1945 premiere. One transcendent revival in 2013 was presented at Cambridge's American Repertory Theater, starring Cherry Jones, Zachary Quinto, and Celia Keenan-Bolger, before transferring to New York; another, starring Sally Field, had a short run in 2017. Advertisement Few playwrights have endured a more sustained critical drubbing than Williams did. He was devastated by it, and became increasingly dependent on pills and booze. But he had been extraordinarily prolific from the start of his career, and he just kept writing, play after play after play, while experimenting more fully with form than he had when he enjoyed commercial success. The result is a large body of work that demands to be explored. Williams's plays can be staged in all kinds of ways, in all kinds of spaces. Take 'Green Eyes,' for example. In 2012, in a co-production between Company One and the experimental theater troupe the Kindness, 'Green Eyes' was performed in a hotel room in downtown Boston for an audience capped at 25 spectators. In a In 2009, Williams's 'The Remarkable Rooming House of Madame Le Monde' was presented by Beau Jest Moving Theatre at Charlestown Working Theater, a former firehouse. In that same critic's notebook, I described 'Rooming House' as 'a macabre, unsettling excursion into Grand Guignol in which a man named Mint, first seen clinging to hooks from the ceiling, is subjected to physical and verbal brutality before the arrival of the lethal title character, who ups the ante still further.' Advertisement At a time when readers and theatergoers often crave the back story, it adds to his mystique that Williams's 71 years on the planet were exceptionally dramatic, and at times tumultuous, following a tragic arc. The subtitle of John Lahr's excellent 2014 biography of Williams is 'Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh.' How many other playwrights would warrant that description? With many leading American playwrights — Eugene O'Neill, say, or Arthur Miller, or August Wilson, or the gone-too-soon Lorraine Hansberry — the essential character of their work is widely agreed upon. The nature and scope of their achievements are pretty clear-cut. With Williams, though, his legacy seems up for grabs. The organization that has devoted itself to shaping that legacy is preparing for a major programming shift. The theme of this year's Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, scheduled for Sept. 25-28, will be 'Last Call,' with live performances of plays by Williams that 'celebrate endings,' according to Kaplan. The lineup includes productions of 'Sweet Bird of Youth,' 'Clothes for a Summer Hotel,' 'This Property Is Condemned,' 'Lifeboat Drill,' and 'The Frosted Glass Coffin.' After that, the festival will cease operating in the form it has followed for 20 years. Going forward, Kaplan said, the festival will consist of pop-up events in Provincetown, across the country, and around the world. He likened it to Hemingway's memoir of Paris, 'A Moveable Feast.' And, just as with Paris, there is always something new to discover about the work of Tennessee Williams. Don Aucoin can be reached at
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Amber Heard returns to acting in first role since Johnny Depp divorce trial: 'In my theatre era'
Amber Heard is back, and she is coming for the drama, but this time, in a more artistic, less televised way. The Aquaman actress is stepping onto the stage for her first major acting role since the defamation trial that had the whole world grabbing popcorn and choosing sides. Amber Heard trades the courtroom for curtain calls, finally Heard is set to star in Spirit of the People, a gritty and genre-defying play by acclaimed playwright Jeremy O. Harris (Slave Play, remember?). The production is slated to premiere this July at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and the buzz is louder than her courtroom gavel days. 'In my theatre era,' Heard declares her dramatic rebirth Taking to social media with a casual-but-iconic selfie with Harris, Heard confirmed the comeback in the most fun way possible: 'In my theatre era x.' Subtle flex? Absolutely. The cast list is stacked too, featuring Brandon Flynn (13 Reasons Why), Ato Blankson-Wood, James Cusati-Moyer, and more. It is giving art-school chaos, and we are here for it. The play reportedly dives into 'uncomfortable truths about land and what it means to destroy it.' Yep, it is not just a comeback—it is a statement. The trial that rocked her world Let us rewind a little. Amber's life spiralled into full-blown tabloid chaos back in 2022 during her courtroom face-off with Johnny Depp. The exes, who finalised their divorce in 2017, went head-to-head after Heard wrote a 2018 op-ed claiming she was a survivor of sexual violence. Depp, although unnamed in the piece, sued for defamation, and won. Millions in damages, a courtroom circus streamed live, and a meme war of the decade later, Heard disappeared from the acting world. Heard is now a mum of three! As if a dramatic acting return was not enough, Heard chose Mother's Day 2025 to casually reveal that she is now the mother of twins. Sharing a snap of tiny baby feet, she introduced the world to daughter Agnes and son Ocean, who now join big sister Oonagh. Heard really said, 'Let me just soft-launch two babies and a theatre comeback.' From courtroom tears to stage lights and nappy changes, Amber Heard's renaissance is nothing short of a spectacle. Whether you stan her or not, one thing is clear, she is not going quietly.
Express Tribune
24-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
Amber Heard returns to acting with ‘Spirit of the People' years after Johnny Depp trial
Amber Heard has confirmed her return to acting with a new role in Spirit of the People, marking her first major performance since her legal battle with ex-husband Johnny Depp. The play, written by Jeremy O Harris, is set to premiere this July at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Heard, now 39, will appear alongside a diverse ensemble including Brandon Flynn (13 Reasons Why), Ato Blankson-Wood, James Cusati-Moyer, Amandla Jahava, Emma Ramos, Julian Sanchez, Zachary Booth, Tonatiuh, and Lío Mehiel. This marks Heard's shift from film to stage, reintroducing her to audiences in a dramatically different setting. Spirit of the People delves into themes of land, identity, and destruction. This production represents Heard's first acting credit since In the Fire and Aquaman 2, both filmed prior to her 2022 defamation trial. While the trial drew massive global attention, Heard has largely kept out of the spotlight after moving to Spain, focusing on being a mother to 4-year old daughter Oonagh and twins Agnes and Ocean whom she welcomed earlier this year.
