Actress Judith Light has been passionate about LGBT issues for decades, which makes her a natural fit for Amazon's "Transparent"; Spotify has partnered with Genius to augment music with a feature called "Fact Track"; Contra-Tiempo is a dance company with a social conscience.
'Transparent' actress Judith Light 'had concerns' about portraying mature sexuality on TV
The hit Amazon show "Transparent" follows the drama that unfolds when the Pfefferman family patriarch Mort, played by Jeffrey Tambor, begins to transition into life as a trans woman named Maura.
Veteran actress Judith Light plays his ex-wife, Shelly, who is navigating her own new relationship to the man she’s known all these years. It's not only Maura who is undergoing a transformation, but the entire family must reconsider their own identities and their own life choices.
Created by Jill Soloway, the Emmy-winning Amazon series, now in its second season, has furthered the cultural conversation about gay and transgender people, a cause that Light has been passionate about for decades.
The cast is about to start taping its third season in Los Angeles next month. When Light joined The Frame, she said viewers won't have to wait as long as they did between the first two seasons.
We're doing it earlier because we felt that we waited too long to drop the second season. The first season dropped in September and then this year we waited a whole year and three months until we dropped again in December. So it's going to drop earlier this year and I think that's a wise idea. People are very excited about it.
Listen to the interview via the play button above, and check out some highlights from the interview below (but we really encourage you to listen!)
Interview Highlights:
This show is about a character's transition into a trans woman, but it's also so many other things, including a changing marriage and a changing family, isn't it?
The dynamics of a person making a transition is the major context for the story, but because this story and her transition doesn't just affect her, the transition that she makes is really about everybody else. And one of the things that is so important to the story is that Shelly has to question who she is...the complications in the marriage come not from Shelly having a problem that Maura is a woman, but that maybe Maura doesn't want to be there. And that's devastating to her.
When Jill Soloway, the creator of "Transparent," approached you about your part, what were the initial conversations about who this character was? Did Jill know where it was going, or was it a mutual voyage of discovery that you shared?
That's such a great question, no one has asked me that yet. When I talked to Jill I was in New York doing a Broadway show. What we talked about was us both being LGBTQ advocates and how we wanted to make a difference in the world and that our art was a means to that end. That we could talk about these things and we could actually find ways to change the culture and open up people's minds and hearts. Not in that sort of New Age-y kind of way, but in a really defined way that gave people a story that they could understand and that they could identify with. So we didn't talk about where Shelly was going to go, it was really a mutual voyage that we took together.
The show has become a cultural watershed moment. Is that something you've [experienced] in this way?
Not in this way. The closest I would say was "Ugly Betty," but this takes it up to another level...Also I've been an LGBT advocate for many many years, since the AIDS pandemic in the '80s, and I have a very powerful experience of that community and a community that has inspired me intensely. To get to do that work for so long, and then to have it be that I'm in "Transparent," really has been what my manager of 36 years, Herb Hampshire, calls "divine choreography."
Does the advocacy stem from your involvement in "The Ryan White Story," which was a movie about the young boy who was diagnosed with HIV and treated as a pariah, or was it even before that happened?
It started before that. Early in the '80s, having been in the theater, I started reading about people that I knew who were getting sick. Then I heard that they had died, and I thought, Wait a minute, they're so young, what's going on? And I saw that the government wasn't doing anything and there was no relief being given to them. There was no attention being paid and I began to see that what was really holding the dynamic in place was that the society was monumentally homophobic. And I thought, I have to say something, I can't watch this go on. And that's how that happened. It's been a long time.
One of the things that "Transparent" does beyond talking about sexual orientation and gender confirmation is the way in which it talks about sexuality itself. Particularly in a bathtub scene this season involving your character and Jeffrey Tambor's character, Maura. It's a very honest, straightforward, loving scene. Can you talk about your initial reaction when you read that scene?
My first reaction was, I can't do this. I can't do this. What are you doing? I can't do this. It's the young [actors], Jay and Amy and Gaby, they can do this. But I thought a lot about it and Jill and I talked about it ... You don't see, on TV, mature people's sexuality. What Jill did — because she knew that I was so concerned — was she cleared the entire set. Everybody was gone. Everybody was so respectful.
There were bubbles that needed to be made to cover me in the bubble bath, and they made all these buckets of bubbles and Jill would go out, get the bubbles for another take to make sure I stayed covered. It isn't just me who was nervous in this scene. Jeffrey had concerns as well. So we all took care of each other in this very beautiful, intimate way. Before we started filming the scene we just stood there and held hands and just connected to each other. And it was one of the most remarkable experiences of my life and my career.
LA-based dance company uses water to spark conversation about race
In the midst of a state-wide drought, the dance-theater company, Contra-Tiempo, is using water as a muse for its newest work, “Agua Furiosa.”
Inspired by Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” and Oya, the Afro-Cuban deity of wind and storms, “Agua Furiosa” displays the harsh realities of race in the U.S., mingled with themes of the power of water and the chaos it can cause.
The project began last May with a series of site-specific performances — or “labs” — at various locations across California. The objective of the series was to engage audiences in each performance by encouraging dialogue, dance and self-expression surrounding the narrative for “Agua Furiosa.” Sites for the labs included Monterey Playa Verde in Monterey Bay and the L.A. River.
The world premiere of “Agua Furiosa” at UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Theater will reflect results of the experimental process from previous performance labs.
“Agua Furiosa” is in keeping with Contra-Tiempo’s mission to evoke discussions about race using Salsa and Afro-Cuban movement, as well as its dancers' own cultural experiences.
But the company's Cuban-American artistic director, Ana María Alvarez, has been pushing the boundaries of multicultural narrative since before she co-founded L.A.-based company with her brother, César Alvarez, in 2005.
As a teen, after her ballet teacher said she was too shapely for dance, Alvarez moved on to other genres such as salsa, Afro-Cuban and modern. Her studies took her to Cuba, New York and eventually, Los Angeles.
While earning her Master’s in Fine Arts in Choreography at UCLA, Contra-Tiempo (Against Time) was born as the subject of Alvarez’s thesis on salsa and dance’s expression of conflict involving Latinos and U.S. immigration issues. The urban-Latin dance company of the same name soon followed.
Today, Alvarez, 37, has produced numerous shows with her company and has even developed a youth workshop, Futuro, which uses dance to coordinate leadership skills and community involvement for low-income youth; all as part of Contra-Tiempo’s continuing work to express the intricacies of racial struggle for Latinos and communities of color.
Alvarez spoke with The Frame during a rehearsal at UCLA.
Interview Highlights
What prompted you to start Contra-Tiempo?
ALVAREZ: The impetus was my thesis work at UCLA. I was getting my Master’s in choreography. And it was right during the Bush era, during all of the stuff that was happening around anti-immigration. So it started making me think about movement as this metaphor for life. . . but I specifically started thinking about it in a context of a piece I was creating about how salsa could really express this idea of resistance and push-back . . . . I wound up creating a piece actually called "Contra-Tiempo." It was a piece in English translated to "Against Time" or "Against the Times," about that push-back and that engagement and that resistance being something that was positive and important and functional in society, instead of something that was viewed as negative.
Describe the shift you made from classical ballet to other genres of dance.
ALVAREZ: I learned very early on that I wasn’t going to be a ballet dancer because of the shape of my body, but also because of the kinds of movement I really love to do and felt inspired by. . . So I started doing modern dance and studying Katherine Dunham and learning Afro-Cuban and Afro-Haitian and Ghanaian dance. I was so inspired by dance as this form of expression for life and for culture and for what’s happening in the world.
What is “Agua Furiosa”?
ALVAREZ: “Agua Furiosa" is a brand new work. It’s really about human connection and our ability to live in the world together powerfully and positively. I’m taking on "The Tempest," which is Shakespeare’s play about a shipwreck, but I’m actually not doing an interpretation-adaptation. I’m creating almost a counter-narrative for "The Tempest". . . It’s a piece that’s a lot about our humanity; our treatment of one another, human-to-human, but it’s also a about our treatment to Mother Earth and our environment, and our relationship with our environment.
What message do you want “Agua Furiosa” to leave with your audience?
ALVAREZ: My goal as an artist is to create a work [where] we see our human struggle as each other’s struggle, and we start taking ownership as human beings for our ability to impact and affect each other. But also, have an actual experience that someone else is having, and actually have that impact and affect the way that we think, the way that we live and the decisions and choices that we make.
“Agua Furiosa” is being perfomed at UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Theater through Jan. 24.
When David Bowie did a voice for 'SpongeBob SquarePants'
As the world comes to grips with the fact that David Bowie has died, one person who had the chance to work with Bowie in a gig that could be surprising even for Bowie shared his memories of their work together.
Paul Tibbitt, a producer and director on the Nickelodeon animated kids show "SpongeBob SquarePants" (as well as the movies) had the idea to cast David Bowie in an episode years ago. The role: The King of Atlantis, otherwise known as Lord Royal Highness.
"We wanted a sort of Willy Wonka kind of a character and we thought he would be perfect for the role," said Tibbitt, who — like many — counts Bowie as a childhood hero.
When Bowie agreed to the part, he revealed that he and his daughter were fans of SpongeBob and watched the show together.
Tibbitt recorded the voice session with Bowie in Philip Glass's New York studio where the musician — referred to by his team as "D.B." — showed up with a few voice options to choose from. Tibbitt said that, after the recording, he saw that Bowie had announced on his website that he had "landed the Holy Grail of animation jobs."
Reflecting on Bowie's body of work, Tibbitt says, "I think definitely his theatrical presence was the stuff of animation." Tibbitt listened to his music from an early age and credits Bowie for introducing him many great musicians and artists, as well as inspiring him.
"I think he probably had something to do with me feeling like, 'I can become an animator, I can become an artist and make a living,'" Tibbitt says.
Nickelodeon confirms that Bowie contributed a song to the upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants stage musical, but says that no more details are to be revealed.