The ways in which solitary men and the broader patriarchy persist in influencing the existence and autonomy of self-reliant modern women are pivotal themes that support the narrative of this film. Vividly situated in the present-day working-class neighborhoods of Mumbai and abundant with subtle moments that build emotional intensity, the captivating drama revolves around two flatmates, both working at a municipal hospital—compassionate yet rule-following head nurse Prabha and the youthful, romantic Anu—and their senior colleague, Parvaty, who serves as a cook.
Sandra Oh Discovers Hope in the Atlantic Theater’s The Welkin Performance
Un poco después de las 5 p.m. el pasado jueves, un jurado en Nueva York declaró al ex presidente Donald Trump culpable de 34 delitos graves por falsificar documentos comerciales. Inmediatamente, mi teléfono se llenó de mensajes sobre el veredicto del tribunal—desde aplicaciones de noticias, mi familia, amigos, y compañeros de trabajo. Algunos celebraron. Otros se preguntaron si un veredicto de culpabilidad realmente significaba algo para alguien como Trump. Otros más expresaron preocupación por la seguridad de los miembros del jurado.
Recibí estas alertas mientras me dirigía a ver la producción de la Atlantic Theater Company de The Welkin por la dramaturga Lucy Kirkwood. (Esta puesta en escena marca el debut en Estados Unidos de la obra después de estrenarse en el Teatro Nacional de Londres en 2020.) Dentro del Teatro Linda Gross, ubicado en una iglesia convertida en Chelsea, el elenco estaba calentando antes de su función de las 7 p.m. cuando el gerente de producción entró apresurado para contarles la noticia.
“Hay ciudadanos conscientes y preocupados en nuestro elenco,” dice Sandra Oh, quien aparece en la obra como Lizzy Luke, una obstinada partera. “No hay manera de que no estemos influenciados por todo lo que está sucediendo en el mundo.” Y ciertamente, como muchos asistentes al teatro notaron durante el intermedio, The Welkin resultó ser una proyección muy adecuada mientras se desarrollaba un juicio real.
Joan Jonas: The Trailblazer Who Shaped Video and Performance Art
“It’s not an overstatement to mention that we’re experiencing the dawn of Joan Jonas,” expressed Randy Kennedy on Monday evening at the National Arts Club. The seasoned arts journalist was accompanied onstage by Jonas, who at 87 is having a significant time in the spotlight, as she is currently at the forefront of two exhibitions in New York: one at the Museum of Modern Art, with a captivating retrospective of her five-decade-long career that started in March, and another featuring her enchanting works on paper at the Drawing Center in SoHo. In addition to prestigious art venues, her creations also adorn graphic tees, mirrored handbags, and fringed clothing from Rachel Comey’s exhilarating spring 2024 lineup.
To those unfamiliar, Jonas is the pioneering American artist who was active in the early stages of happening and video art beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Consistently innovative, she crafted her distinct language using sound, movement, visual emblems, and a continual examination of concepts. She involved folklore, ecology, and a feminist perspective, transitioning from grand performances in unoccupied lots in downtown Manhattan to delicate sketches of cherished animals. She has inspired numerous young artists who, akin to her, strive to challenge artistic conventions and explore fresh paths.
“She operates at this delightful crossroads that genuinely encourages cultural diplomacy,” remarked Phillip Edward Spradley, who leads the National Arts Club’s art and technology committee and who organized Monday evening’s conversation between Jonas and Kennedy.
Jennifer Tilly: From Silver Screen Icon to Reality TV Star
Entertainment is undeniably the word to encapsulate Tilly’s Real Housewives debut this season. Much like Kathy Hilton’s entrance into the show, Tilly has infused the mix with captivating, whimsical scene-stealing moments. Just four episodes in, audiences are already enthralled by her chic attire ($33,000 Louis Vuitton purses!), surprising backstory (she holds a stake in The Simpsons!), and quirky demeanor. For Tilly, entering this realm of reality television has been an enjoyable, albeit unforeseen, adventure. “It’s unlike anything you could ever picture,” remarks Tilly. “To begin with, these women sit at dinner, and they are yelling at each other before you’ve even had your amuse bouche. Yet strangely, I find it thrilling. It’s as if I have a front row seat at the Super Bowl.”
Opting Out of Thanksgiving This Year: Here’s Why
I need to confess—a little secret that I can no longer keep hidden. I’m Indigenous and have always participated in Thanksgiving celebrations. There, I’ve said it! If you’re curious why this seems significant, understand that Indigenous people have a complicated connection with Thanksgiving. Why? It’s well-known that Native American people existed long before the arrival of European settlers in North America, and the so-called “peaceful” feast between the pilgrims and the Natives is one that has been heavily embellished. For many within the Indigenous community, the annual holiday is a painful reminder of how their land was taken away during colonization, how many of their ancestors were killed, and how their heritage was nearly eradicated. It’s understandable why Native individuals today are hesitant to share a meal and eat turkey: What is there to express gratitude for?
This year, however, I’ve decided not to express gratitude as well.
Growing up on Nipissing First Nation—my ancestral land in northern Ontario, Canada—my family always recognized Thanksgiving. My mother is one of 18 siblings, and our yearly ritual would involve gathering as a big, energetic, Ojibwe clan for a Thanksgiving meal at our grandmother Leda’s home, which acted as the assembly point for the entire eclectic mix. Due to the sheer number of people, I remember regularly eating Thanksgiving dinner on the floor, sitting cross-legged among my many cousins (seating at the table is reserved for the elders, obviously—they also got the first serving of food). On the menu would be all the customary Thanksgiving dishes: turkey, mashed potatoes, turnip, boiled carrots, massive pots of gravy. One year, my father even cooked a 40-pound turkey for the entire family, setting a record. But there would always be some Indigenous influence present, too: instead of dinner rolls, we had my Aunt Joanie’s legendary bannock. Moose meat pies were also always there, though I never indulged in that dish. (I’m a Native who doesn’t fancy wild meat—a transgression!).
Because Thanksgiving was something our family always observed, I never considered twice about how paradoxical it was: a gathering of Indigenous people essentially commemorating the history of their own hardships. Even more paradoxical: When I became older and moved to the U.S., my family, following the Canadian calendar and having celebrated Thanksgiving in October, frequently had to recreate it for me when I returned home in November. Even after learning about the problematic history of Thanksgiving, the celebration had become so ingrained in our family traditions that I didn’t question it. Even after my grandmother Leda passed, and our family ceased these colossal feasts—eventually, they became too difficult to organize—my parents, my sister, and I continued celebrating it. It turned into a norm, something we merely did. It was mostly centered on the food, because who doesn’t enjoy inducing a Tryptophan-induced nap? I still yearn for it at the thought.
This year, though, I am honoring the holiday differently. For one, my family is in Canada while I’m in New York, so celebrating with them would require a trip across the country. I’ve also come to realize that I actively don’t want to participate in Thanksgiving. I’ve spent too long being indifferent to things that don’t sit well with me.
Top 5 Unforgettable Highlights from SNL’s Golden Jubilee Episode
Desde que estaba en la escuela secundaria, he tenido la rutina de levantarme los domingos por la mañana para ver un episodio en streaming (o, hace años, en TiVo) del Saturday Night Live de anoche. Es un ritual en el que he llegado a confiar, incluso cuando el episodio en cuestión es un poco más suave en risas de lo que uno podría desear. Sin embargo, el episodio del 50º aniversario del programa nocturno de anoche cumplió casi en todos los aspectos; claro, hubo momentos ocasionalmente planos—por favor, Dios, que los chistes sobre el “verano de mocosos” se desvanezcan de manera elegante ahora que es oficialmente otoño—pero con las elecciones presidenciales de 2024 a solo semanas de distancia, es agradable ver las caras familiares del elenco de SNL y poder reír realmente un poco sobre el infernal panorama que es la política estadounidense actualmente.
A continuación, encuentra los 5 mejores momentos del primer episodio de la Temporada 50 de SNL:
Maya Rudolph retomando su papel como Kamala Harris
¿Sienten un poco gastados los chistes sobre cocoteros a estas alturas? Sí. Pero, siendo honesto, Maya Rudolph podría entrar recitando un chiste de SNL de la era de los ‘90 como “Schweddy Balls” y aún así estaría emocionado de verla. Además, Jim Gaffigan como el compañero de fórmula de Harris, Tim Walz, fue extrañamente perfecto, al igual que la interpretación de Bowen Yang como J.D. Vance; Doug Emhoff de Andy Samberg no fue tan preciso, pero nuevamente, Andy Samberg haciendo cualquier cosa es intrínsecamente divertido para mí, así que puedo perdonarlo.
Monólogo de apertura de Jean Smart
Flora Yukhnovich: Redefining Rococo and Rising to Art Stardom at 34
On a day in the spring of 2017, which was typical in every other aspect, Flora Yukhnovich—a student of fine art, aged 27, lacking a distinct style, noticeable profile, or promising future—ascended the grand marble steps of the Wallace Collection and returned an hour or so later, determined on the artistic vision that would establish her as the leading British painter of her peers. Amidst the Gouthière timepieces and Jean Ducrollay snuffboxes, she encountered Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s The Swing, the iconic French masterpiece that encapsulates the 18th-century rococo movement’s playfulness and flirtation through a captivating trio of characters: a coquette resembling Marie Antoinette, elevated in airy blush-silk skirts; her bewigged, betrayed spouse hidden in the shadows of a picturesque woodland; and her ancien régime admirer, reaching out as she provocatively sends a ballet-pink slipper toward him in the velvet foliage below.
“It seemed like all these elements I had been contemplating converged,” Yukhnovich shares with me today about the 25-by-31-inch art piece that, over the centuries since a libertine French baron ordered it, has been replicated in everything from Disney’s Frozen to a fridge magnet on Etsy. She’s seated on a shaky folding stool in her southeast London studio, her head tilted in a manner that accentuates her own similarity to one of Fragonard’s characters: copper hair, a heart-shaped visage, alabaster skin, and Cupid’s-bow lips. Up until that moment, she explains, her MFA had been spent entertaining her “whimsical interest” in the froufrou through Spode’s Blue Italian porcelain and early 2000s Cath Kidston wallpapers, and feeling somewhat embarrassed about it. (It’s hard to visualize her teenage idols, Lucian Freud and Frank Auerbach, engaging with Sèvres’s elephant-head vases with any serious intent.) But with The Swing etched in her memory, she abruptly “felt the drive”—and started questioning how and why decorative had come to mean inferior, the feminine inevitably equated with the trivial.
Four years on, Tu Vas me Faire Rougir (You’re Going to Make me Blush)—one of three Permanent Rose-coated reimaginations of Fragonard she created for her graduation exhibition—sold at Christie’s for £1,902,000, transforming her, with the fall of a gavel, into a genuine blue-chip artist. Over time, she broadened her focus beyond Fragonard to include other rococo masterpieces—Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s heavenly allegories, Nicolas Lancret’s bucolic scenes—unveiling the ways in which they had influenced fashionable concepts of the “coded feminine,” both historically and in the present. Consider 2020’s Warm, Wet N’ Wild, which recontextualizes Katy Perry’s maraschino-adorned “California Gurls” video within the lush, bountiful setting of Watteau’s fête galantes. This piece was acquired by a private collector, through Sotheby’s, for £2,697,000 in 2022.
Unveiling Hidden Gems: Discover Easter Eggs at the Taylor Swift Exhibit at Victoria and Albert Museum
If you are at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum this summer, do not be amazed to spot groups of Swifties, dressed in their Eras tour outfits and adorned with layers of friendship bracelets, dashing through the expansive halls of the South Kensington venue. The explanation? “Taylor Swift: Songbook Trail,” a new complimentary exhibit which showcases 16 of the 14-time Grammy-winning pop sensation’s most iconic outfits—from her music videos, performances, album artwork, red-carpet moments, and all 11 eras—exhibited alongside instruments, accolades, and storyboards from her personal collection, some of which have never been revealed before.
Importantly, this isn’t one of the V&A’s individual exhibitions, but an exhibit with installations sprinkled throughout the entire museum, each presentation opening an intriguing conversation with the building’s design and permanent pieces, guiding guests on an exciting treasure hunt as they pass by Renaissance sculptures, medieval textiles, and 18th-century artworks in pursuit of the next Swiftian artifact. Each of the 13 stops—designed to avoid chronological order, like the Eras tour—boasts appropriately dramatic displays created by Tom Piper, famous for his projects with the Royal Shakespeare Company and surrounding the Tower of London with poppies, while Kate Bailey, the museum’s senior curator for theater and performance, has directed the entire endeavor, planting Easter eggs and ensuring each segment enhances our comprehension of this often-mythical personality.
Though Taylor herself didn’t participate in choosing the displayed items, Bailey mentions her archive was exceptionally accommodating in granting her complete freedom, so much that one of the primary hurdles was narrowing her selections down to just one or two pieces per era. There was also the consideration of timing—assembling the exhibition in merely a few months, so that it could both encompass The Tortured Poets Department era and align with the second phase of the Eras tour in London—and the necessity for collaboration. “This is a project that has actually involved the entire museum,” she reveals. “I’ve been collaborating with colleagues from different departments and engaging curators in various galleries to unlock these historic spaces. And that was challenging because, in many instances, these were initiatives we’d never undertaken before.” Her aim, she expresses, was to construct something that, “like Taylor’s performances, merges spectacle with that sense of closeness.”
The initial stop on the tour exemplifies this. Enter the museum via the grand archway on Cromwell Road, turn left, and ascend two sets of stairs to reach the first era: Lover. Here, you’ll discover the silk Versace shirt and loafers Taylor wore in her self-directed music video for “The Man” in 2020, complemented by the wig and facial hair which transformed her into a wealthy playboy, her director’s chair from the shoot, the best-director VMA she earned for her work, and a continuous loop of the video itself.