Category: Новини

Yellowstone, the first U.S. national park, draws 4 million visitors annually. Parkgoers marvel at fantastic geysers, colorful hot pools and amazing wildlife. Yellowstone National Park photos courtesy of Tom Murphy Photography
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While many people spent Valentine’s Day with the traditional flowers and chocolates, Brittney Johnson was making theater history.

The young Broadway veteran was gently lowered onto the Gershwin Theatre stage to become the first Black actor to assume the role of Glinda full-time in “Wicked,” shattering a racial barrier on the day of love.

“One of the most rewarding parts of this is that it’s not just for me. I think it’s the least amount about me,” she says. “It’s about what it means for other people, for people that are going to see me do it or for people that just know that I’m here.”

Johnson is part of a sisterhood of women who have recently broken boundaries on American stages, including Emilie Kouatchou, who became the first Black woman to play Christine in “The Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway, and Morgan Bullock who has become Riverdance’s first Black female dancer.

“I do see things shifting, and I am very optimistic about the future,” Johnson says. “Because specific conversations are starting to happen now, people’s eyes are being opened in ways that they never had been before, either because they never needed to be, or because they just didn’t know what they didn’t know.”

“Wicked,” based on Gregory Maguire’s cult novel, tells the story of two young witches-to-be, one a green brooder who will be the Wicked Witch of the West and the other blond and bubbly, who will be Glinda the Good Witch.

Johnson has ended a 19-year run of white actors playing Glinda in any professional “Wicked” company, a milestone made even more powerful since Glinda is the very essence of goodliness.

“I think it’s something that, especially for little Black kids that come and feel the energy that’s being given to Glinda — somebody that looks like them — it might not be something that they experience from the world in their real life,” she says. “Seeing someone that looks like you being loved is so important to see.”

On the night the role was finally hers, Johnson’s life flashed in front of her — literally. As is the show’s delightful custom, the previous actor playing Glinda arranged for a note of encouragement and love — usually packed with photos of the new star — to be pinned to the inside curtain on her first night. Each new Glinda sees it as she makes her entrance.

“It was the first time that it was me. Usually, I’m seeing other people’s pictures and encouraging words, and it was the first time that note was left for me,” she says. “It’s really moving to have it be for you.”

Lindsay Pearce, her co-star as Elphaba, says Johnson is someone “obviously born for this” and says she’s never seen anyone work harder. She describes Johnson as gracious, fun and goofy.

Pearce was backstage watching on a monitor when Johnson on Valentine’s Day began singing the musical’s hit “Popular” when she spotted a little Black girl in the front row with her family, clapping her hands in glee.

“That’s why it’s important because theater belongs to everyone. It’s not something that only belongs to someone who looks a certain way, sounds a certain way,” she says. “Theater’s supposed to be the mirror of what the world looks like, and that’s what the world looks like.”

Johnson’s other Broadway credits include “Les Misérables,” “Motown the Musical,” “Beautiful: The Carole King Musical” and opposite Glenn Close in “Sunset Boulevard” and as a guest in Kristin Chenoweth’s Broadway concert show, teaming up with the original Glinda. She has been connected to “Wicked” since 2018, moving up from ensemble to Glinda understudy, to Glinda standby. She was onstage as Glinda when the pandemic shut down theater in 2020, but only temporarily.

Johnson saw out her contract and had moved to Los Angeles during the lull to pursue TV and film projects when “Wicked” lured her back to Oz with the promise of Glinda full time.

“It did feel like unfinished business,” she says. “I definitely felt like I had more to do in this show in particular. So getting that call really felt like the answer to internally what I thought I needed.”

Johnson grew up in Maryland close to Washington. Her mom said she was singing before she was talking. “She said that I was a drama queen from when I was a child,” Johnson says, then laughing adds: “I don’t agree.”

She was bitten by the musical theater bug in high school. Performances in “Les Misérables” in 10th grade and “Sunday in the Park with George” in her senior year convinced her that musical theater was what she wanted to do.

“I was raised to believe and to know that I could do anything,” she says. “I am not a stranger to being the first of anything or the only Black person in a room or in a situation.”

What about being the first Black Glinda? Was it on her horizon? “It wasn’t out of my realm of possibilities for me that I could be if the world allowed it,” she answers. “But after five, 10 years of not seeing any movement in that direction, I think you do start to put aside that specific dream.”

Stepping out on Valentine’s Day was a full-circle moment since Johnson had seen “Wicked” at age 15 with her mom, catching it at the Kennedy Center on tour: “I just really enjoyed it. I just loved the story. I loved the music.”

Now, the role of Glinda is hers and she can’t wait to make it her own, giving the good witch her own spin. She says there’s lots of flexibility in “Wicked” for actors to add their personality.

“They really encourage us in the rehearsal process to kind of play and find how the character fits on you. It’s not a stencil that you have to fit into,” she says. “There are things that I do discover every day about her or about about the role. There are things you can only really find when you have the opportunity to do it more than once.” 
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A rare version of a book considered the first novel published in the U.S. by a Black woman has returned to her home state of New Hampshire. 

An original first edition of Harriet Wilson’s “Our Nig; or Sketches From the Life of a Free Black” was recently donated to Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, WMUR-TV reports.  

The book was hand-delivered to the organization by a retired librarian in California who found the novel in a family safe, according to the station.  

The organization plans to display the book at its headquarters in Portsmouth after it undergoes some minor restoration.  

JerriAnne Boggis, the organization’s executive director, said the largely autobiographical work, which Wilson wrote while living in Boston in 1859, represents an act of courage. 

The novel tells the story of Frado, a Black girl who is abused and overworked as the indentured servant to a New England family. 

“She sold them door to door, and all during that time when the Fugitive Slave Act was in place,” Boggis told WMUR-TV. “So, she’s knocking at people’s doors and not even sure if she would be captured and taken into slavery.” 

Wilson was born in Milford, New Hampshire in 1825 and a statue in the town’s Bicentennial Park honors her. She died in 1900 in a Massachusetts hospital. 
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Ebbing COVID-19 cases help propel the Crescent City back to life after last year’s cancellation of Fat Tuesday festivities
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The 28th Screen Actors Guild Awards will kick off with a “Hamilton” reunion, feature a lifetime achievement award for Helen Mirren and, maybe, supply a preview of the upcoming Academy Awards.

The SAG Awards, taking place at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, begin at 8 p.m. EST Sunday and air on both TNT and TBS. (The show will also be available to stream Monday on HBO Max.) After the January Golden Globes were a non-event, the Screen Actors Guild Awards are Hollywood’s first major, televised, in-person award show — complete with a red carpet and teary-eyed speeches — this year.

While the Academy Awards aren’t mandating vaccination for presenters (just attendees), it’s required for the SAG Awards, which are voted on by the Hollywood actors’ guild SAG-AFTRA. One actor in the cast of the Paramount series “Yellowstone,” Forrie J. Smith, has said he wouldn’t attend because he isn’t vaccinated. 

The evening’s first awards, announced before the show began, honored a pair of blockbusters on both the big and small screens. Netflix’s “Squid Game” and the James Bond film “No Time to Die” each won for best stunt ensembles.  

“Hamilton” trio Lin-Manuel Miranda, Leslie Odom Jr. and Daveed Diggs were set to open the ceremony. Kate Winslet is presenting the actors’ lifetime achievement award to Mirren, a five-time SAG Award winner.  

A starry group of nominees  — including Will Smith, Lady Gaga, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman and Ben Affleck — will make sure the SAG Award don’t lack for glamour.  

Five films are nominated for the SAG Awards’ top honor, best ensemble: Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Sian Heder’s coming-of-age drama “CODA,” Adam McKay’s apocalypse comedy “Don’t Look Up,” Ridley Scott’s high-camp “House of Gucci” and Reinaldo Marcus Green’s family tennis drama “King Richard.”  

The leading Oscar nominee, Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog,” failed to land a best ensemble nominations but three of its actors — Benedict Cumberbatch, Kirsten Dunst and Kodi Smit-McPhee — are up for individual awards.  

Winning best ensemble doesn’t automatically make a movie the Oscar favorite, but actors hold the largest sway because they constitute the largest percentage of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences. Last year, the actors chose Aaron Sorkin’s 1960s courtroom drama “The Trial of the Chicago 7,” while best picture at the Oscars went to “Nomadland.” The year before, SAG’s pick of “Parasite” presaged the Oscar winner.  

In the television categories, Apple TV+’s “Ted Lasso” comes in with a leading five nominations, closely trailed by HBO’s “Succession,” Apple’s “The Morning Show” and “Squid Game” — all of which are up for four awards.
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