On Monday, Meryl Streep unveiled Stephen Frears’ charming “Florence Foster Jenkins” in New York’s Director’s Guild Theater for an A list crowd including Renee Fleming (who introduced the film), Christine Baranski, Bill Irwin and Barbara Walters. Tony winning costume designer William Ivey Long – who’s also the head of the American Theater Wing – did a little Q&A on stage after the screening. Streep and Long met at Yale Drama School in 1972, so they had an easy rapport. Pictures from the screening and Q&A have been added to the photo gallery.
Sit back and have a good laugh at this: At the moment that Hillary Clinton was all but clinching the Democratic nomination for president, Meryl Streep was on a stage in Central Park, impersonating Donald Trump. In orange face makeup and pompadoured hair, Ms. Streep, the chameleonic three-time Oscar winner, did a more than credible version of the presumptive Republican nominee, down to the pursed lips and low-hanging belly. She got the braggadocio-inflected voice, too, even while singing. Ms. Streep was part of the Public Theater’s gala benefit celebration on Monday night, a tribute to Shakespeare at the Delacorte Theater, home to Shakespeare in the Park. She was the closing act with Christine Baranski, doing “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” a number from the Cole Porter musical “Kiss Me, Kate.” “We could do a deal – you’ll let me know – why it is all the women say no?” she sang, stretching out her arms in a Trumpian gesture. Later she strolled the stage, gesticulating to the audience in Mr. Trump’s signature Make-America-Great-Again style. More information courtesy The New York Times.
Michelle Obama and some of the most influential women in the country – powerful women entertainers, activists, and business executives – are joining forces for a June 14 White House summit tackling gender-equality issues under the banner “Today we’ll change tomorrow.” “We are the United State of women,” the first lady says in a star-studded video announcing the summit. “We stand stronger when we stand together.” Joining Obama for the launch video are Meryl Streep, Tina Fey, Oprah Winfrey, Kerry Washington, designer and fashion executive Tory Burch, Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, satiric comic Jessica Williams, Christy Turlington Burns, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and more.
Today marks the last Scan Sunday with the last remaining scans from our huge Canadian collection being posted. Updates include a great cover for “The House of the Spirits” and “First Do No Harm” as well as last year’s Neue Journal and a couple of Australian and British newspapers. Once again, many thanks to Fred and Alvaro for bringing this to Simply Streep. Thank you very much and enjoy reading.
Some fantastic new images from the 1970s and 1980s have been added to the photo gallery, ranging from the promotion and awards circuit for “Kramer vs. Kramer” to some 80’s Broadway appearances. There are also new on-set pictures from “Still of the Night” and “Falling in Love”. To view all last added pictures, have a look at the previews below.
Slowly but surely, most of the magazine scans from our great Canadian collection have been added to the archives. Next week will see our Scan Sunday finale with the last remaining articles being added. This week, 11 magazines ranging from 1982 to 1996 have been added, once again including some great covers. There are also two scans in the Arabian language, so I guess by know we have all countries and languages covered. As always, many thanks to Fred and Alvaro for brining this collection to Simply Streep. Enjoy your Sunday.
Recorded in New York City over the summer of 2015, the Sachal Ensemble provided the traditional sounds of their home in Pakistan, presenting several traditional Folk and even some Pop melodies of the Southeastern subcontinent. Those songs were then transformed and woven into a larger, wider tapestry, connected to a number of well-known and recognizable classic Pop, Folk, Jazz and Blues songs from the American music canon and sung by many esteemed and successful artists from the Western hemisphere. The album features such musical luminaries as Wynton Marsalis, Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Nels Cline of Wilco, Sean Lennon, Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, Madeleine Peyroux and Meryl Streep reading a poem by 4-time Nobel Prize for Literature nominee, Faiz Ahmad Faiz. Produced by Grammy-winning producer Eli Wolf (Norah Jones, Al Green, Willie Nelson, Elvis Costello), Song of Lahore is not a soundtrack, but rather a tribute album to the film, continuing the message that through music, we find light in the darkness. The Song Of Lahore album is the sound of humanity at work. You can learn more about “Song of Lahore” at their official website and order it on Amazon or iTunes. Many thanks to Dominique for the heads-up.
The Public Theater has announced that its annual gala, The United States of Shakespeare, will take place June 6 at the Delacorte Theater, featuring a host of famous stars including Meryl Streep, Phylicia Rashad, Christine Baranski, Jimmy Smits, Michael Cerveris, Steven Pasquale and more. Directed by Jeremy McCarter, the gala will include scenes from Shakespeare’s most celebrated works and the poems, songs and stories they inspired, performed by actors of the stage and screen, and musicians. The complete line-up for The United States of Shakespeare features F. Murray Abraham, Sarah Amengual, Lemon Andersen, Kate Burton, Michael Friedman, Bill Irwin, Lisa Kron, Hamish Linklater, Suzan-Lori Parks, Martha Plimpton, Lily Rabe, Jay O. Sanders, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Jeanine Tesori, and John Douglas Thompson; and The Public’s Shakespeare scholar in residence Jim Shapiro, with musical direction by Chris Fenwick. More casting to be announced at a later date. Tickets to the one-night only event are available by by calling (212) 539-8634, online at publictheater.org/gala2016 or via email at gala@publictheater.org.
This weeks’s Scan Sunday features 4 cover stories and one article from the Netherlands, ranging from a great cover to promote 1980’s “Kramer vs. Kramer” to promotions for “Heartburn”, “Ironweed” and “Postcards from the Edge”. Many thanks to Fred and Alvaro for those great additions. Enjoy your Sunday.
Yesterday, Meryl Streep has been among the guests at EPIX’ New York premiere of “Under the Gun”. The documentary gives a candid look at the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre. The tragic event took place on December 14, 2012 where 20 children were murdered at their school by a resentful, gun-obsessed shooter. The terrible incident was the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in U.S. history. The shooting prompted renewed debate about gun control in the United States but still no changes in American federal gun laws have been made.