“It is of the utmost importance that a black child see on that screen someone who looks like him. Our children have been suffering from the lack of identifiable images as long as our children as been born.”— James Baldwin, Sidney Poitier
“Toni Morrison said that as soon as a character of color is introduced in a story imagination stops…I mean, I’m a black woman from Central Falls, Rhode
I’m standing on the sidewalk watching a woman put on makeup in her car—concealer on her neck, to be exact—and I wonder if she has a hickey or just an insecurity that she is trying to remove, or at the very least, briefly cover up. I am in the midst of leaving a man’s house, where I perform for an hour or two twice a week. Not a sexual act, no, just improvisational comedy, though…
Trailing clouds of glitter from a surprise Broadway triumph in Kenneth Lonergan’s serio-comedy This Is Our Youth, Rookie magazine founder Tavi Gevinson has expanded her extensive resume to include publishing maven. In addition to compiling the fourth Rookie Yearbook, due out this fall, Gevinson just made her debut as a literary editor. In the July/August issue of Poetry, the 103-year-old magazine that introduced American readers to the likes of Ezra Pound, Langston Hughes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay,…
On a cruise ship the size of a small European nation, it's not surprising that the first thing I did was get lost. I had already seen the vast 1000-seater theatre and the dressing rooms, featuring a Return to Oz-like gallery of wigs, where I would be spending most of my time. I had also been shown to my cabin, the one I would be sharing with a fellow actor, Jen, for the next sixteen…
Previously: A grounded goth teen angrily renames household items. MOVIE STAR: BRING ME MY PAIN TWIN DIRECTOR: do you mean your stunt double MOVIE STAR: BRING ME MY AGONY SHADOW WHO SUFFERS FOR ME
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MOVIE STAR: BRING FORTH THE FALSE CROWDS DIRECTOR: the who MOVIE STAR: RELEASE THE SILENT HUMAN SWARM DIRECTOR: do you mean the extras MOVIE STAR: BRING ME MY MUTE COMPANIONS…
Frances is the first to cry. Our Beginning Acting class is seated in a row against the back wall of the rehearsal studio, socked feet stretched before us, notebooks open on our laps. We spend two long mornings a week together in this room, watching our reflections move in the mirrored walls surrounding us: We drop to the polished floor and growl and grunt; volley an invisible ball in the air; shake our limbs
It is five years in the future. Instead of having awards shows, once a year the world's most courageous actors are brought to the White House and given medals for their bravery. President Michelle Obama presides over this year's ceremony. "For portraying an overt racist while not being an overt racist in his everyday personal life, the Congressional Medal of Honor." "For gaining five pounds for a role, female, the Purple Heart." "For losing forty-eight…
There's a lengthy and fascinating conversation with the deliciously talented Cherry Jones in this week's New York Times Magazine, marred only slightly by Alex Witchel's slight preoccupation with Jones' willingness to look like a middle-aged woman on-camera: A.W.: When you were doing “Doubt,” you would tie your nun’s bonnet in such a way to make a double chin that you don’t have. What does vanity mean to you? Because you are so willing to…
