One late-January day, the director Lila Neugebauer was at a gun-range or an antiseptic, fluorescent white version of one-tucked inside the Specialists, Ltd., a theatrical-props behemoth in Ridgewood, Queens. Neugebauer, accompanied by two members of her team, had come to discuss a gun for her upcoming production of Anton Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya," at Lincoln Center Theatre. The production is a starry one, with Steve Carell in the title role, alongside Alfred Molina, Alison Pill, Anika Noni Rose, and William Jackson Harper. With a new translation by the playwright Heidi Schreckwho was nominated for a Tony for her women's-rights jeremiad "What the Constitution Means to Me"-this is the first Broadway staging of Chekhov's masterpiece in more than twenty years.
Neugebauer is small and quick, with flyaway black hair, straight black brows crossing a narrow face, and intent gray-green-golden eyes, like a fox's. She is a rarity among New York theatrical directors, both for her relative youth-she's thirty-eight, with the career of someone a generation older-and for her recent move into film. According to Jennifer Lawrence, who starred in Neugebauer's 2022 movie début, "Causeway," about a soldier recovering from a brain injury, she is a "tiny genius with a boom in one hand and a sword in the other." The director was having a breakneck season. In December, she had opened a blockbuster Broadway revival of Branden Jacobs-Jenkins's "Appropriate"-a knockdown, drag-out inheritance drama set in a decaying plantation house, starring Sarah Paulson-and she was now negotiating its transfer to a larger venue. At the same time, she was in rehearsals at the Public for Itamar Moses's "The Ally," a weighty, campus-set play about a Jewish professor being urged to denounce Israeli policies, and she was deep into preparation for "Vanya," finessing the script with Schreck.
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin April 01, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye The New Yorker dergisinin April 01, 2024 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
COLLISION COURSE
In Devika Rege’ first novel, India enters a troubling new era.
NEW CHAPTER
Is the twentieth-century novel a genre unto itself?
STUCK ON YOU
Pain and pleasure at a tattoo convention.
HEAVY SNOW HAN KANG
Kyungha-ya. That was the entirety of Inseon’s message: my name.
REPRISE
Reckoning with Donald Trump's return to power.
WHAT'S YOUR PARENTING-FAILURE STYLE?
Whether you’re horrifying your teen with nauseating sex-ed analogies or watching TikToks while your toddler eats a bagel from the subway floor, face it: you’re flailing in the vast chasm of your child’s relentless needs.
COLOR INSTINCT
Jadé Fadojutimi, a British painter, sees the world through a prism.
THE FAMILY PLAN
The pro-life movement’ new playbook.
President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.