"Austin theater company works to preserve Latin American culture"

by Journey Love Taylor, Marcos Sanchez, Natalie Erzal,                    Tara Bordeaux and Gil Garcia

[The following report on the Latino theater troupe Proyecto Teatro of Austin, Texas, was aired on PBS NewsHour on 5 March 2024.]

The Austin, Texas theater company, Proyecto Teatro, aims to promote and preserve Latin American culture. Its latest project is helping redefine Latin American history. Journey Love Taylor of our Student Reporting Labs Academy shares the story as part of our arts and culture series, “CANVAS.”

Geoff Bennett, “PBS NewsHour” Co-Anchor: The Austin, Texas, theater company Proyecto Teatro aims to promote and preserve Latin American culture. And its latest project is helping redefine Latin American history.

Journey Love Taylor of our Student Reporting Labs Academy shares this story as part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Journey Love Taylor: At The VORTEX Theater in Austin, Texas, Proyecto Teatro is in the middle of rehearsal “Cabarex 2,” the second installment of a trilogy of stage plays that explore Latin American history, from the times before the arrival of Columbus all the way through to an imagined future.

Luis Armando Ordaz Gutierrez is the longtime artistic director for the company.

Luis Armando Ordaz Gutierrez, Artistic Director, Proyecto Teatro: We’re wanting to use this show to raise awareness of what we can do as a local community to take back our culture, to take back our art form and our identity.

Journey Love Taylor: But this isn’t just a play. It’s a cabaret, and it’s performed completely in Spanish.

Luis Armando Ordaz Gutierrez: This type of work, you don’t really see it so much in Spanish, and you don’t see this type of work in the Latino community, because cabaret is derived from European art forms, and so it’s a little odd and a little different and new to see it in the context of our culture.

And so when people saw it, they were just so happy to be able to see their stories, their people, their characters in the lens of cabaret with, like, the musical numbers and the dance sequences and the jazzy music.

Valeria Smeke, Dancer and Performer: My favorite part about being involved in this production specifically, I think, would be the dances.

There’s one with, like, chairs. You have your little, like, chair dance routine. I love that one.

Rachel Rivera, Choreographer, Makeup, Costume, and Hair Artist: Being a part of something so impactful in my community feels like a great responsibility, especially since I feel that I am a leader and someone who creates something for other people to see and other people that are not part of my culture to see, to make sure that what I’m doing always carries that intention that I want it to carry and the intention of respecting and honoring my culture.

Valeria Smeke: I really don’t get a chance to, like, connect with my roots, so being here and, like, Rachel teaching us these indigenous dances, just learning about the history, it’s a really beautiful thing.

Journey Love Taylor: For the “PBS NewsHour” Student Reporting Labs, I’m Journey Love Taylor.

[Proyecto Teatro was founded in 2007 and is located at 5700 Avenue G, Austin, Texas 78752-4510.  The Principal, or Artistic Director, is Luis Ordaz.  The company can be contacted at (512) 524-8555 or info@proyectoteatro.com; the website is www.proyectoteatro.com.] 

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[Because the NewsHour report was so brief, I went looking for some other coverage of Proyecto Teatro.  The two pieces below are both a little older (pre-pandemic) than the one above, but I found them informative and interesting.]

“TEATRO CON TENACIDAD
THE SHAPE OF LATINA/O THEATRE IN AUSTIN”
by Emi Aguilar and Roxanne Schroeder-Arce 

[This article was posted in the website HowlRound on 19 June 2015.]

This is the second of seven posts in a series about the state of Latina/o theatre in Texas.  In this series, each of the contributing writers presents insight into the happenings, developments, and future of Latina/o theatre and performance in their respective regions.

Austin, Texas hosts several Latina/o theatre companies, and each year more historically white institutions are producing plays with Latina/o themes and characters. In past the few seasons, Austin Latina/o theatre companies like Teatro Vivo, ALTA Teatro (Austin Latina/o Theatre Alliance), and Proyecto Teatro have produced and showcased plays from the Latina/o experience, while other mainstream companies like ZACH Theatre, Austin Community College, and the University of Texas at Austin have produced plays with Latina/o themes, characters, and bodies. Additionally, presenting houses like the Paramount Theatre presented productions from Latin America and US Latina/o theatres. Overall, the number of Latina/o productions being offered in Austin is growing, and represent a diversity of perspectives and aesthetics from Austin Latina/o communities. However, there is still relatively little Latina/o theatre in comparison to the number of Latina/o-identified people living in Austin. What exists is sporadic, hard to find, and in some cases reeks of appropriation and tokenism. In an attempt to paint a picture of the current Austin Latina/o theatre scene, we will highlight some of the challenges Latina/o theatre in Austin faces and articulate how the Austin Latina/o theatre community is responding to such challenges.

One issue faced by Latina/o theatre artists in Austin over the past several decades is the need for a consistent venue for Latina/o arts. The Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center currently hosts four performance groups, including ALTA, Teatro Vivo, Proyecto Teatro, and Aztlan Dance Company. Each company has its own artistic and social objectives. This center, often referred to as “the MACC,” has helped with the need for a consistent space where the Latina/o community and those interested in Latina/o arts can find theatre told from the uniquely Latina/o perspective. This magnificent new facility also provides free parking for sanctioned events, though it is taking some time for the Austin community at large to become accustomed to attending events at the MACC.

One resident company of the MACC, ALTA, has been in existence for over fifteen years. The company’s mission has recently changed, and it now works as a community of artists and volunteers to foster new Latina/o theatre talent in Austin. ALTA promotes collaborative productions among local and international artists. ALTA’s productions are typically written by Latin American playwrights, and produced in Spanish with English subtitles. One exception is their annual Pastorela. Conceived and directed by Patricio Villareal, La Pastorela 2013 engaged the Austin community in a way that is rarely experienced elsewhere in the City. At the end of the play, the young and young at heart pummeled a Satan piñata in a joyful community ritual. 

[La Pastorela dates back many centuries, performed during the Christmas season by amateur and professional artists, in theaters and churches, in Mexico and in Mexican communities since the middle part of the last millennium. La Pastorela changes from year to year and from production to production, but at its core its always the same story. It’s the story, usually told with humor and song, of the shepherds who are visited by angels and told to go to Bethlehem and see the newborn Jesus. In the course of the trip to Bethlehem, the devils come and try to trick the shepherds. The details of the story are often changed to reflect the current state of the world.] 

Proyecto Teatro also typically produces work in Spanish. The company’s mission is “to preserve and promote the Latin-American culture through theatre, providing a source of transformative arts education and quality cultural entertainment.” Proyecto Teatro strives to offer theatre artists and audience members a space conducive to human development through the arts. Recently, Proyecto Teatro produced an original piece called Por Los Mojados, which was devised and performed by young people ages seven to seventeen, under the direction of the company’s executive and artistic director, Luis Armando Ordaz Gutiérrez. Combining visceral dialogue, contemporary dance, and comedic elements, Por Los Mojados showed the realities of border crossings from the youth perspective. Working as an ensemble, the young artists courageously implicated the US and Mexican governments in these violent experiences to put truthful narratives on stage. The production is set to tour to Los Angeles this fall.

Teatro Vivo produces and promotes bilingual theatre, and strives to “nurture a window into the community to make theatre accessible to all audiences, especially those underserved in the arts.” Founded by Rupert Reyes and JoAnn Carreon Reyes, Teatro Vivo’s mission is to produce culturally relevant Latina/o theatre that addresses critical social issues such as colorism, citizenship, and cultural fluidity. Teatro Vivo serves the community by telling stories that positively reflect the Latina/o community and uniquely celebrates the vibrancy of the Latina/o culture. A highlight of Teatro Vivo’s season each year is the Austin Latina/o New Play Festival, produced by Teatro Vivo in collaboration with Scriptworks. Now in its fifth year, the 2015 festival featured three Texas playwrights, Andrew Valdez from Austin, Jelisa Jay Robinson from Houston, and Adriana Garcia from San Antonio. Each playwright was selected through a blind panel and then given over a month to work with a dramaturg and develop their play. The process included auditions, a week of rehearsal, and a staged reading at the MACC followed by a post-show discussion. Teatro Vivo always offers these discussions as a mode of community engagement through which audiences affect the shape that each new play takes. Based on what they have discovered throughout the festival, each of the playwrights has expressed their desire to continue their own play development process.

ZACH Theatre, a historically white institution, recently began consistently staging plays with Latina/o themes, bodies, and characters. In collaboration with Teatro Vivo, ZACH is producing Latina/o works *through their Theatre for Families program. Cenicienta, a bilingual production for young audiences based on Cinderella, features a strong-minded Latina more concerned with becoming a writer than marrying a prince. Written and devised by two artists from Austin, Rupert Reyes (Teatro Vivo) and Caroline Reck (Glass Half Full Theatre), Cenicienta uses object puppetry to tell a new Cinderella story. Cenicienta marks the second collaboration between Teatro Vivo and ZACH Theatre.

Educational institutions in Austin have also begun to produce more Latina/o theatre. The University of Texas at Austin Department of Theatre & Dance produced Esperanza Rising in 2015, though their 2014 production of In The Heights faced challenges of representation in casting which led to student protests. Austin Community College also recently produced GUAPA by Caridad Svich. The value of representation of Latina/o stories on the stage is trickling down to the high schools throughout the state. Edinburg High School’s production of Zoot Suit from the Rio Grande Valley landed at the UIL state meet at UT Austin a few years ago, a grand and influential state theatre festival competition. Donna High School brought their production of blu by Tejana playwright Virgina Grise to the state meet this year.

As Austin continues to produce a diverse range of Latina/o stories in a variety of venues, we are hopeful that each company and artist gains more support and continues collaborations that engage deeply with the community. In addition to the theatre companies and educational institutions producing Latina/o theatre, several independent artists known on the national Latina/o theatre scene call Austin home, like Amparo Garcia-Crow, Adrian Villegas, and Raul Garza. New work is consistently generated in Austin and spread throughout the nation.

Through a newly founded theatre collective in Austin, TIA: Teatro In Austin, we hope to continue the dialogue about how each of these works is in conversation with one another and with the current national Latina/o theatre community’s momentum. Austin Latina/o theatre companies and artists are tenacious and eager to share their stories with diverse audiences far and wide.

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“AUSTIN THEATER TROUPE RECOGNIZED
FOR PLAY ABOUT ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION”
by Marlon Sorto 

[Marlon Sorto’s article about Proyecto Teatro’s winning a local theater award was posted on the website of the Austin American-Statesman on 4 September 2016; it was updated on 25 September 2018.]

When the Latino kids in the theatre company Proyecto Teatro debuted their first play “Por los Mojados” in March, they aimed to expose Austin audiences to some of the not-so-well-known history of illegal immigration from Latin America to the United States.

They did not expect that many months and performances later they’d be nominated for five B. Iden Payne Awards, which recognize exceptional theatrical performance, production, and design in Austin.

Proyecto Teatro, a local organization which promotes Latino culture through theatre in Spanish, also plans to start a tour to perform this show across the country. The youth company is mostly made up of Latino kids 9 to 17 years old.

The Payne Awards nominations committee includes local theater performers, producers and advocates and nominated the play in the youth category for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Direction in Theatre. The production also was nominated for Outstanding Original Script, Outstanding Choreography and Outstanding Cast.

The awards ceremony will be held Oct. 26 [2016] at the Rollins Studio Theatre in the Long Center. The troupe will tour with the play across the country, beginning in Nov. 19 in Austin and before visiting cities such as San Antonio, Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami.

“We are very happy to help change the perception about the Hispanic community here in Austin and in the United States,” said Luis Ordaz, executive and artistic director of Proyecto Teatro. Ordaz also wants to submit the play to the Festival Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico, in 2016, he said.

“Por los Mojados,” which combines theater performance in Spanish with English surtitles, dance and video, was inspired by the border crisis in 2014. More than 60,000 unaccompanied minors entered illegally into the United States, escaping violence and gang threats in their home countries in Central America, said Ordaz.

The actors spent several months researching and writing the script, a process guided by Ordaz, he said.

The title of the production, “Por Los Mojados” — which translates to “For the Wetbacks” — aims to reclaim a derogatory term by reflecting the tough experiences and raw stories of Latino undocumented immigrants, Ordaz said. With this production, the ensemble has the opportunity to “highlight the work of Latinos and show that we are not (all) ‘criminals and rapists’ as a politician said recently, but a community which has a rich culture and the same artistic potential as Anglos.”

Ordaz referred to comments made by presidential candidate Donald Trump.

The show also challenges audiences, explained Ordaz, especially when it describes some darker passages of history, such as the Inquisition in Colonial Latin America and United States intervention through policies like the Truman Doctrine, which critics say was the beginning of a long process by which the U.S. increasingly played the role of world police force.

[With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman (1884-1972; 33rd President of the United States: 1945-53) established that the United States would provide political, military, and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from external or internal authoritarian forces.]

“Although we are very young, we are professional actors and we have worked a lot under our director to create a great script about this very sensitive and controversial issue,” actress Briana Campos said.

The Arts & Health

 

[Here are two reports from PBS NewsHour on the confluence of the performing arts and matters of health.  The first report concerns the beneficial effect of music on the health, particularly mental health, of people who aren’t musicians.  It’s proof that, indeed, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast” (William Congreve [1670-1729], The Mourning Bride [1697]). 

[The second report examines the relationship between the Houston healthcare community and that city’s performing artists and performing arts institutions.  Performers, including actors and musicians but especially singers and dancers, are susceptible to many career-endangering health issues that “civilians” (as one of my teachers called artistic muggles) don’t face.  Houston’s hospitals and health-care facilities have developed a community of care for Houston’s performing artists that the professionals of both societal groups claim is unique.] 

“OPERA LEGEND RENÉE FLEMING TEAMS UP WITH
DR. FRANCIS COLLINS TO STUDY HOW MUSIC CAN IMPROVE HEALTH”
by Jeffrey Brown and Anne Azzi Davenport 

[The following story, about opera singer Renée Fleming and former NIH head Francis Collins working in tandem on the application of music therapy to a range of mental and emotional stresses, was reported on PBS NewsHour on 22 February 2024.  The transcript and video of the segment is at Opera legend Renee Fleming teams up with Dr. Francis Collins to study how music can improve health | PBS NewsHour.

[Note: The NewsHour transcript of its segments is annotated with the warning, “Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.”  In light of that statement, I have edited or corrected mistranscrIptions directly from the video, sometimes without marking them below.  I’ve also added annotations in brackets to clarify some remarks.]

Giants in their fields of music and science are merging their knowledge to propel advancements in body and mind. A recent international gathering of researchers, therapists and artists took stock of what is known and what is yet to be discovered. Jeffrey Brown reports for our ongoing arts and health coverage on CANVAS.

Amna Nawaz, “NewsHour” Co-Anchor: Two giants of music and science are merging their knowledge to propel advancements in body and mind.

Researchers, therapists, and artists from around the world gathered to explore what is known and what is yet to be discovered.

Jeffrey Brown takes a look and a listen for our ongoing arts and health coverage on Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: [Renée Fleming singing in concert.] She is a singer, one of the world’s most beloved sopranos. But at times in her remarkable career, Renée Fleming has experienced terrible bouts of somatic pain [relating to or characteristic of the body as opposed to the mind or spirit], the body’s way of distracting her from the mental anxiety brought from performance.

Renée Fleming, Singer: I was never a natural performer. And so I just kept reading and reading about the mind-body connection, trying to understand more about what was causing this, et cetera. And I discovered that the medical profession and neuroscientists were studying music. And I asked him [indicating Dr. Francis Collins, sitting next to her] why one day.

Jeffrey Brown: He is the renowned physician-geneticist best known for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and leadership of the Human Genome Project.

Dr. Francis Collins, Former Director, National Institutes of Health: [26 June 2000, in the East Room of the White House, at the presidential conference, Decoding the Book of Life: A Milestone for Humanity] Today, we celebrate the revelation of the first draft of the human book of life.

Jeffrey Brown: Francis Collins headed the National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest supporter of biomedical research, for 12 years until 2021.

Dr. Francis Collins: I’m a doctor. I want to find every possible way to help people who are suffering from illnesses or other kinds of life experiences that are limiting their ability to flourish. I want to make everybody flourish, and music is such a powerful source of that kind of influence.

Jeffrey Brown: Together, they are leading proponents of a marriage of arts and health, advocates for research, understanding, and practice in the nexus of music and the brain.

We talked recently on the NIH campus [Bethesda, Md.] about their music and health initiative, now in its seventh year.

Renée Fleming: I believe the arts should be embedded in health care across the boards.

Jeffrey Brown: Embedded meaning?

Renée Fleming: Meaning, we already have it in many, many places. Many hospitals have discovered just how beneficial it is to have creative arts therapists on staff. Children’s hospitals should have a creative arts studio, I think, available to parents and their children and families. So, I just think it should be everywhere in health care.

Jeffrey Brown: It’s a growing movement, one we have been reporting on around the country, including neuroscientists at Johns Hopkins studying music’s impact on dementia patients, a hospital at the University of Florida incorporating arts into its care, individuals who’ve suffered traumatic brain injuries, like former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, playing the French horn to help rewire her brain and rebuild her ability to speak.

[Gabrielle Giffords (b. 1970) is a retired member of the United States House of Representatives from Maricopa County, Arizona, from January 2007 until January 2012. She suffered severe brain injury during an assassination attempt on 8 January 2011, when she was shot in the head.  Giffords resigned from Congress on 25 January 2012 to focus on her recovery and, as of 2016, has recovered much of her ability to walk, speak, read, and write, though she continues to struggle with language and had lost fifty percent of her vision in both eyes.]

Our understanding of the brain’s connections and responses is still in early stages, Francis Collins says, with projects like the NIH-funded BRAIN Initiative [Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies] helping show how individual circuits connect and respond. We do know some basics, however.

Dr. Francis Collins: I think you can say the acoustic cortex, which is where your brain processes incoming sound, and particularly musical sound, does have some pretty interesting circuits. It’s also plastic [easily shaped or molded]. It responds to training.

If you look at the brain of somebody who had intense musical training before age 7, you can actually see that part of the cortex is a little larger than in somebody who did not have that. So, our brains are responding to the environment very clearly in that way.

And then you can say, OK, if you have a musical experience that affects you, you can see how that signal that starts out in the acoustic cortex spreads to many other parts of the brain.

Jeffrey Brown: Maybe you have had an MRI? Renée Fleming got in and sang for two hours.

(Singing [in the MRI machine])

Renée Fleming: When I show this video to people, I always say, well, no Grammys for this performance.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: One interesting finding [was], that for an experienced singer like Fleming, her brain circuits were more active while she thought about or imagined singing than when she actually sang.

Did that surprise you?

Renée Fleming: It surprised me a great deal. It’s also — I think what’s even more surprising to me is that music actually is in every known mapped part of the brain. So it’s extraordinarily diverse and throughout the entire brain, as we know, as we currently understand it.

Jeffrey Brown: The research so far has a wide range of implications for child development, Alzheimer’s, and other forms of dementia, Parkinson’s, and other conditions and interventions.

Some research goes on in labs, some in the world, as in a study in which individuals were offered singing lessons. One group was given individual training, the other as part of a chorus.

Dr. Francis Collins: For 12 weeks, and to just see what happens as far as their health, the people that had individual singing, they did OK. The people in the choir, by all kinds of measures, were actually affected in a very positive way.

Many of them had chronic pain. Their chronic pain was noticeably reduced. They had various measures of personal attitudes. Their attitude toward generosity went straight up, and their oxytocin levels went up too, as another sort of hormonal measure of good will, good sense of health.

[Oxytocin is a hormone released by the pituitary gland. It plays roles in behavior that include social bonding, sexual activity, reproduction, childbirth, and the period after childbirth.]

Renée Fleming: My favorite is, postpartum depression is tremendously benefited by singing in a choir. I would never have — I wouldn’t have guessed that.

Narrator: Having even one risk factor . . . .

Jeffrey Brown: In fact, you know those advertisements for drugs we’re all bombarded with?

Narrator: [Clip from a television commercial] Ask your doctor or pharmacist if Paxlovid is right for you.

Jeffrey Brown: Renée Fleming has one she’d like to see.

Renée Fleming: Ask your doctor if music therapy is right for you.

(Laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: As a kind of prescription.

Renée Fleming: Exactly. Exactly.

(Crosstalk)

Dr. Francis Collins: The prescription. Why not?

Jeffrey Brown: Yes, but you have to — you’re saying it still has to be shown exactly in a scientific method . . .

Dr. Francis Collins: Yes.

Jeffrey Brown: . . . for a doctor to be willing to prescribe it.

Dr. Francis Collins: Sure. That’s our system, and I’m totally behind it. You need evidence that this actually isn’t just a nice thing; it actually improves outcomes.

I’m pretty convinced from the data we have that’s the case for various places, but let’s tighten that up. Let’s make it absolutely incontrovertible. And then you will have a better chance with the insurance companies saying OK, because that may save them money in the long run.

Man: [Instructor of a music therapy demonstration in a conference] Let’s listen to this melody line as it floats all the way up.

Jeffrey Brown: At this recent gathering and others, Fleming and Collins are advancing new findings through a variety of collaborations, including NIH Music and Health with 20 NIH institutes, the Kennedy Center’s Sound Health partnership, and the Renée Fleming Foundation.

Everything you’re talking about requires a kind of buy-in from your communities, the arts world and the science world. But is there still pushback?

Dr. Francis Collins: There’s a bit, but I think were getting some real momentum going. It doesn’t hurt that scientists are also musicians. At least, many of them are.

This workshop, we invited multiple leadership at NIH to come and take part, and they all said pretty much yes, and they went away saying, that was even more interesting than I thought.

Jeffrey Brown: A young person now goes to the music conservatory, you want them to study therapy, science, health?

Renée Fleming: Well, these would be divisions within a conservatory or university.

But there’s definite buy-in now. But when I started, people were saying exactly what you’re saying, is, well, we have too much to do already with what we’re doing, in terms of presenting, and we’re strapped, and the funding is difficult, et cetera, et cetera.

But I think pretty much everyone is on board now, because we’re community service providers. So, I think people who run performing arts organizations and conservatories are starting to see the benefit of it.

Jeffrey Brown: And these two don’t just talk about bringing their disciplines together. They have been known to give it literal form, as amateur musician Francis Collins accompanies science-fascinated Renée Fleming.

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.

(Music [Fleming on stage singing with Collins accompanying on guitar and signing])

(Applause)

Amna Nawaz: And Fleming has edited a collection of essays from scientists, artists, and therapists called “Music and Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health and Wellness” [Penguin Publishing Group; publication date: 9 April 2024]. That’s due out this spring.

[I want to connect this NewsHour report on the benefits of music to anguished souls to some past posts on Rick On Theater that touch on the same or similar topics.  The first is “Theater: A Healing Art,” published on 3 September 2023, in which I examine the function of theater as a healing event for those who witness it and those who perform it.

[One example I gave of this phenomenon was a play, The Last Cyclist, written by a concentration camp inmate for his fellow prisoners.  In my report, posted on 2 and 5 September 2022, on the play which was reconstructed and staged and then filmed, I observed that it was, first, a healing force for the incarcerated Jews 80 years ago by reducing their dire circumstances to their farcical foundations.  Then it was a healing phenomenon for both the modern actors, mostly non-Jews, who performed the reconstruction and the modern audiences who saw it in the present day.

[A more contemporary play that was conceived as a healing event for the participants and the spectators was Last Out: Elegy of a Green Beret, a play about combat service in Afghanistan and its effects on the GI’s and their families on which I reported on 10 July 2023.

[On 28 August 2020, I ran “Yo-Yo Ma on the Artist’s Role in the Time of Covid-19,” a collection of articles on the famous cellist’s call for musicians and other artists “to take up a role in the struggle against the pandemic and its consequences.  He especially focused on the issues of raising the spirits of Americans who were struggling under the health threat and the psychological burdens of being confined to their homes.”  This lines up precisely with the work of Dr. Francis Collins with Renée Fleming, reported above.

[In his moe than 30-year career with PBS NewsHour, Brown’s served as co-anchor, studio moderator, and field reporter on a wide range of national and international issues, with work taking him around the country and to many parts of the globe. As arts correspondent, he’s profiled many of the world's leading writers, musicians, actors and other artists. Among his signature works at the NewsHour: a multi-year series, “Culture at Risk,” about threatened cultural heritage in the United States and abroad; the creation of the NewsHour’s online “Art Beat”; and hosting the monthly book club, “Now Read This,” a collaboration with the New York Times.

[As Senior Coordinating Producer of “Canvas,” Anne Davenport is the primary field producer of arts and culture pieces and oversees all coverage. She’s been leading “Canvas” since its beginning, collaborating with Chief Arts Correspondent Jeffrey Brown for most of her 21 years at PBS NewsHour as well as with others.] 

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“HOW A HOUSTON MEDICAL CENTER IS
HARMONIZING HEALTH AND PERFORMING ARTS”
by Jeffrey Brown and Alison Thoet 

[Before the report on the use of music to reduce stress and distress, correspondent Jeffrey Brown covered the Houston collaboration between the health-care facilities and the performing arts institutions of the city.  The segment aired on PBS NewsHour on 2 October 2023 and is online at How a Houston medical center is harmonizing health and performing arts | PBS NewsHour.]

The Center For Performing Arts Medicine is an unusual partnership of a world-class hospital and world-class performing arts organizations. It was founded in 1992 with a focus on singers, but then something unexpected happened. Jeffrey Brown reports from Houston for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

Amna Nawaz, “NewsHour” Co-Anchor: It’s an unusual partnership, a world-class hospital and world-class performing arts organizations, a model in the growing field that brings together health and the arts.

Jeffrey Brown reports from Houston for our ongoing series, Canvas.

Woman [Dr. Yin Yiu]: We’re just going to get a look at your throat and your vocal cords. Breathe in.

Jeffrey Brown: We’re up close and personal with 25-year-old opera singer Emily Treigle and her vocal cords. This is her instrument, requiring constant care and attention.

Emily Treigle, Houston Grand Opera: It’s not like I’m playing the Trumpet or piano, like, if something goes wrong, you can see it. You know, it’s all in here. So, you need the professional to be able to go in and make sure that everything is going well.

Jeffrey Brown: In July, after multiple tonsil infections, Treigle, a mezzo-soprano, had a tonsillectomy. All went well, and, this day, she was getting a checkup ahead of the Houston Grand Opera’s new season.

For someone in your position, what’s the problem? I mean, what’s the thing you have to deal with or worry about most with your voice?

Emily Treigle: The short answer is everything. The long answer is, it’s incredibly challenging to be in a career that there are so many variables attached to it.

And so our task as singers is to have such a good, solid technical foundation that we can defy whatever odds are thrown at us and just continue to be able to produce a really beautiful sound. And when it’s something that’s outside of our control, our technical realm, that’s when we end up back here and say, something is not working. Can we do a checkup and make sure that everything is where it’s supposed to be?

Dr. Yin Yiu, Houston Methodist Hospital: We really encourage our singers as vocal athletes.

Jeffrey Brown: Working with Treigle, Dr. Yin Yiu, a laryngologist at the Texas Voice Center at the Houston Methodist Hospital. As she puts it, she’s the T in the ENT [ear, nose, and throat].

She doesn’t sing herself, though some of her colleagues do, but she loves the challenge of caring for singers.

Dr. Yin Yiu: We think about athletes, right, and they have like this whole team of people that take care of them. And we don’t really think about performers.

So, singers, actors, people who do, like, use their voice in that capacity, we don’t think about them in that same way. But they can also have injuries, right? So, they can be performing and have different things happening. The vocal cords can get swollen. They can have vocal cord hemorrhage or bleed whenever. They’re singing. These are all things that can happen. And we get to be that team for them.

[The “swollen” vocal cords Dr. Yiu mentions may refer to laryngeal polyps or nodules, which can appear as swelling and can cause symptoms including hoarseness or breathiness, “rough” or “scratchy” voice, decreased pitch range, and vocal and bodily fatigue.  It was the condition with which singer-actress Julie Andrews was diagnosed in 1997—although she disputes the diagnosis—and as a result of the surgical treatment for which, she lost her magnificent singing voice.  

[Dr. Yiu has omitted from her list of vulnerable performers arguably the most susceptible to physical injury—though not usually to the throat: dancers.  These artists are brought up later in the report.]

Jeffrey Brown: The Texas Voice Center is part of the hospital’s highly unusual program, the Center for Performing Arts Medicine. Founded by Dr. Richard Stasney in 1992, it all began with a focus on singers, but then something unexpected happened.

Todd Frazier has led the center since 2012.

Todd Frazier, System Director, Center for Performing Arts Medicine: We started to get preachers, newscasters, classroom teachers, anyone that would associate their voice to what they do professionally.

[I would add to the list of potential professional subjects, lawyers, specifically litigators.  When I was an acting student and then a teacher of acting, along with the occasional priest or teacher, I saw a number of lawyers taking acting classes.]

And that’s when the hospital realized that, yes, there really is something special and unique here, and that’s unique to Houston as well.

Jeffrey Brown: The center then grew to support performing artists of all kinds from Houston’s thriving arts community, as well as from all over the country. Crucially, it also developed official relationships with several of Houston’s leading performance art groups.

Todd Frazier: There are a lot of unique health issues that show up in the arts community that deserve a home and deserve a place to be cared for.

Jeffrey Brown: Are you surprised that this is a thing now between the hospital and arts organizations?

Todd Frazier: I’m not surprised that its successful, because I am from the arts community [he’s a composer, trained at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, and the Juilliard School in New York City], and I really knew that the artists were yearning for a home and a sympathetic place that they would be understood.

But I am — have to be surprised that a major hospital would sort of take this on in a way that’s sort of unprecedented. They felt it fit with their values to be supporting the arts and culture within the community of Houston, which all the hospitals are in Houston. And the physicians really enjoyed being able to help these talented people making their lives and homes here in Houston.

Jeffrey Brown: One major partner, the Houston Ballet, which now has an on-site clinic, giving dancers like Kellen Hornbuckle daily access to athletic trainers and physical therapists.

[Readers may remember some years ago, professional and college athletes, football players in particular, were discovered taking dance classes to help them tone and coordinate their bodies.  I wonder if it’s still common.]

Dr. Kevin Varner, Houston Methodist Hospital: The types of injuries that ballet dancers get are very unique. It’s a very unique population. And while they are performing artists, they are incredible athletes.

Jeffrey Brown: Kevin Varner is the chairman of orthopedic surgery at Houston Methodist Orthopedic Sports Medicine.

Dr. Kevin Varner: It’s interesting to look at how things evolved over the last 15 or 20 years in terms of dancer health. And, remember, it’s a big team approach, right? So, you really need a hospital that wants to be a partner, because you need not just orthopedic surgery.

You need nutrition. You need cardiology. You need primary care sports medicine, so people that take care of the dancer as a whole [and] when you do that, it really does improve dancer health.

Jeffrey Brown: In this session, Hornbuckle received dry needling, cupping, massaging, and other treatments to alleviate pain in her legs and prevent serious injury.

[Dry needling is a treatment for pain and movement issues in which thin needles are inserted into or near trigger points to stimulate the muscles, causing them to contract or twitch. This helps relieve pain and improve the range of motion. Cupping is a traditional therapeutic treatment in which heated cupping glasses are applied to the skin, supposedly to draw blood towards the surface for relieving internal congestion or loosening and stimulating the muscles.]

The big idea, according to Houston Ballet executive director James Nelson, change from reactive to proactive care.

James Nelson, Executive Director, Houston Ballet: So, when I was dancing, we never had any on-site care. It was always, wait until you’re broken, then go to the doctor, then get it fixed.

At the end of the day, it’s a very short career. And so to be able to give an artist a year, two years, five years more of this precious time is such a gift. And I attribute a lot of that to this partnership with Methodist. You won’t find this kind of relationship in most ballet companies.

Jeffrey Brown: Back at the hospital, Frazier sees this kind of focus on the performing arts only growing in the future.

Todd Frazier: Many universities are starting arts and health certificates, music therapy degrees.

And even medical schools are looking at internships in artists health or how artists might be cared for to develop those skills. And it is growing.

Jeffrey Brown: Meanwhile, singer Emily Treigle is ready to go.

Your throat looks great. I mean, I saw it.

(Laughter)

Emily Treigle: Thank you. Who knew my tonsils were so big? I had no idea. But now that I don’t have them, I certainly notice their absence.

I’m very excited about this coming season and seeing how things change now that I don’t have this obstacle.

Jeffrey Brown: Treigle performs [as Meg Page] with the Houston Grand Opera later this month in Giuseppe Verdi’s “Falstaff” [27 October-10 November 2023].

For the “PBS NewsHour,” I’m Jeffrey Brown in Houston, Texas.

[Jeffrey Brown’s bio and credits are reported above. Alison Thoet is a writer and a “Canvas” associate producer and national affairs associate producer at PBS NewsHour.]

"Cillian Murphy said yes to ‘Oppenheimer’ before reading one of Christopher Nolan’s red scripts"

by Scott Pelley, Aliza Chasan, Nicole Young, and Kristin Steve

[On 18 February 2024, Irish actor Cillian (pronounced KILL-ee-ən) Murphy (b. 1976) was interviewed on the CBS News magazine show 60 Minutes by correspondent Scott Pelley.  Murphy’s been nominated for a 2024 Best Actor Academy Award (winners to be revealed on 10 March); he’s already won the Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Screen Actors Guild Awards.

[Here’s IMDb’s biography of Murphy, who got his start as an actor on stage in Enda Walsh’s Disco Pigs by the Corcadorca Theatre Company in Cork, Republic of Ireland, premièring on 26 September 1996 (I’ve changed the names of plays and movies, and other titles to roman type for easier recognition):

Striking Irish actor Cillian Murphy was born in Douglas [County Cork], the oldest child of Brendan Murphy, who works for the Irish Department of Education, and a mother who is a teacher of French. He has three younger siblings. Murphy was educated at Presentation Brothers College, Cork. He went on to study law at University College Cork, but dropped out after about a year. During this time, Murphy also pursued an interest in music, playing guitar in various bands. Upon leaving University, Murphy joined the Corcadorca Theater Company in Cork, and played the lead role in Disco Pigs, amongst other plays.

Various film roles followed, including a film adaptation of Disco Pigs (2001). However, his big film break came when he was cast in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), which became a surprise international hit. This performance earned him nominations for Best Newcomer at the Empire Awards and Breakthrough Male Performance at the MTV Movie Awards.

Murphy went on to supporting roles in high-profile films such as Cold Mountain (2003) and Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003), and then was cast in two villain roles: Dr. Jonathan Crane, aka The Scarecrow, in Batman Begins (2005) and Jackson Rippner in Red Eye (2005). Although slight in nature for a villain, Murphy’s piercing blue eyes helped to create creepy performances and critics began to take notice. Manhola Dargis of the New York Times cited Murphy as a “picture-perfect villain”, while David Denby of The New Yorker noted he was both “seductive” and “sinister”.

Later that year, Murphy starred as Patrick “Kitten” Braden, an Irish transgender woman in search of her mother in Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto (2005), a film adaptation of the Pat McCabe novel. Although the film was not a box office success, Murphy was nominated for a Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical and he won Best Actor for the Irish Film and Television Academy Awards.

The following year, Murphy starred in Ken Loach’s The Wind that Shakes the Barley (2006). The film was the most successful independent Irish film and won the Palm[e] [d]’Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. Murphy continued to take roles in a number of independent films, and also reprised his role as the Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008). Nolan is known for working with actors in multiple films, and cast Murphy in Inception (2010) as Robert Fischer, the young heir of the multi-billion dollar empire, who was the target of DiCaprio’s dream team. His most well-known work is starring as Thomas Shelby in the British TV show Peaky Blinders beginning in 2013.

Murphy continues to appear in high-profile films such as In Time (2011), Red Lights (2012), and The Dark Knight Rises (2012), the final film in Nolan’s Batman trilogy.

Murphy is married [since 2004] to Yvonne McGuinness, an artist. The couple have two sons, Malachy and Aran.

[Much of what Murphy said about acting was interesting to me, even if I didn’t agree with it all, so I decided to repost the write-up of the interview by Pelley and his producing team (Cillian Murphy said yes to "Oppenheimer" before reading one of Christopher Nolan's red scripts - CBS News; a video of the interview is included).]

Cillian Murphy jumped to act in “Oppenheimer,” even before reading writer and director Christopher Nolan’s script.

The decision paid off. Murphy won a Golden Globe for the role and he’s nominated for an Oscar for the first time in his decades-long career. There have been six Nolan films for Murphy.

“It’s always paid off for me, you know, in every film that I worked with him on,” Murphy said.

Working on “Oppenheimer”

Murphy did eventually read the script from Nolan, printed on red paper so that it couldn’t be photocopied.

“I did genuinely think it’s one of the greatest screenplays I’d ever read,” he said.

Murphy views it as a miracle when films, including “Oppenheimer,” get made.

“And then if it’s any way good, that’s a miracle. And then if it connects with audiences, that’s a miracle,” he said. “So it’s a miracle, upon miracle, upon miracle to have a film like ‘Oppenheimer.’ It really is.”

That miracle came after months of hard work. Murphy lost 28 pounds so that his silhouette would match that of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, often credited as the father of the atomic bomb. For six months, Murphy read and listened to Oppenheimer’s lectures. He performed for his dog Scout as he walked on the beach.

“I remember at one point, I said to Chris — ‘Chris, there appears to be, he appears to speak Dutch here. And I think he’s giving a lecture in Dutch here. What are we gonna do about that?’ And Chris said, ‘You mean what are you going to do about that,’” Murphy said.

Murphy said he put all he learned in the back of his mind and acted on instinct.

“I think instinct is your most powerful tool that you have as an actor. Nothing must be predetermined,” he said. “So therefore you mustn’t have a plan about how you’re gonna play stuff. And I love that. It’s like being buffeted by the wind and being buffeted by emotion.”

Emily Blunt, who played Oppenheimer’s tortured wife, describes being in a scene with Murphy as a “very visceral” experience. She doesn’t know of many people who can do what he does. 

“If you’re as agile as someone like Cillian, and as vulnerable, and as clever, you can play it all,” she said. 

Playing it all 

While “Oppenheimer” may be the role that made Murphy a household name, he’s been acting for decades, starting in his hometown of Cork, Ireland. Murphy and his brother had a band in high school and performing led him to an acting class and then his first play [presented by the Corcadorca Theatre Company] in the Triskel Arts Centre, which housed a small stage with 100 seats.

He was 20 in 1996 when he acted in his first play, “Disco Pigs.”

“I was very comfortable on stage in front of an audience from when I was little. I never had any nerves doing that,” Murphy said. “It felt natural, you know? And thrilling.”

Some of his earliest audiences were “drunk guys out of their mind bashing up against” a fire escape door. It used to energize him.

“So I remember learning about, like, taking whatever you have — sort of responding to whatever the energy is in the room and using it,” he said.

Today, the former stage is undergoing a transformation so it can be used by aspiring actors. Murphy, who hadn’t been back to the space since 1996, visited it with 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley.

Since that first play, there have been a dozen others and 40 movies. Murphy’s breakout role as a leading man came with 2013’s “Peaky Blinders” [TV series, 2013-22]. In the series, Murphy plays Thomas Shelby, who survives World War I and goes on to lead a family of gangsters.

“I like to be challenged. And I, and when I read something, I want to go, ‘I don’t really know how I can do that,” Murphy said.

Murphy came into his own during his 10 years acting in “Peaky Blinders.” Early in his career, he heard from “one of the Sydneys,” either Lumet or Pollack — he’s not sure — that it takes 30 years to make an actor.

“It’s not just technique and experience and all that, it’s maturing as a human being and trying to grapple with life and figure it out, and all of that stuff. So by the time you’ve been doing it for 30 years, you have all of that banked, hopefully,” Murphy said. “And eventually, then I think you’ll get to a point where you might be an OK actor.”

What’s next for Murphy 

Murphy’s newest movie is “Small Things Like These,” which premiered Thursday at the Berlin International Film Festival. He plays Bill Furlong, tormented by injustice that he sees on his route delivering coal. His wife fears his empathy will upend their lives. 

Murphy is joined in the critically acclaimed movie by Eileen Walsh, who’s known Murphy longer than any other actor, having acted with him in “Disco Pigs.” Walsh has seen how much Murphy will put into his roles.

“From the very beginning, our warm-ups for ‘Disco Pigs’ involved us punching each other quite hard,” she said. 

Regardless of how far Murphy’s pushing has taken him, he still sees himself as an actor, not a movie star.

“Oh, OK, am I? I think you can be both. You know, I’ve never understood that term, really, ‘movie star,’” he said. “I’ve always just felt like I’m an actor. That’s, I think, a term for other people, rather than for me.”

*  *  *  *
“DISCO PIGS”
by Matt Wolf 

[Since this post is about acting as much as it’s about Cillian Murphy and Oppenheimer, I thought it would be interesting to see a review of Murphy’s début performance in Disco Pigs on stage.  Below is the notice published in Variety on 21 September 1997 of the London première of the play (Bush Theatre, 3-27 September 1997), after its début in Cork and its performances at the Edinburgh Festival (Disco Pigs (variety.com)).]

Language can be both the blessing and the blight of the Irish theater, and in the case of "Disco Pigs," it falls somewhere in between. Written in an invented patois that suggests high-adrenaline baby talk filtered through Ireland's thick Cork accent, Enda Walsh's play marks an impressive linguistic feat that nonetheless reaps diminishing returns. Whereas the novel speech in a play like "The Skriker" [1994 play by Caryl Churchill] induces a real rush, the grunts of "Disco Pigs" wear out their not always intelligible welcome: For a 70-minute piece, it's a fairly long sit. The play was a hit at the recent Edinburgh Festival [7-30 August 1997], and one can see why, since it possesses the virtues on which that festival thrives: youth, energy and speed. But seen in London amid a season that has hosted a virtual flood of Irish drama, the play looks like a belated addition to the New Brutalism in vogue at the moment.

[Brutalism (more commonly an architectural style) in literature and drama is characterized by raw, unadorned, and often unsettling or violent themes and imagery.  It may be a tactic to reflect the harsh realities of the world, such as poverty, violence, and social injustice as a way to give voice to the marginalized and oppressed.  It can be seen as a way to challenge societal norms and conventions or to explore the darker aspects of human nature, such as violence, addiction, and mental illness.  “New Brutalism” in literature and drama arose around the 1980s.  Some examples of New Brutalist plays are: One Flea Spare (1995) by Naomi Wallace, Shopping and Fucking (1996) by Mark Ravenhill, and Bloody Sunday (2005) by Richard Norton-Taylor.]

Runt (Eileen Walsh) and Pig (Cillian Murphy) — teenagers both — lead abusive, anti-social lives, yearning for sex and chips and booze (not always in that order) and ready to fly into a tantrum (and worse) when plans go awry. The two define one another’s existence and speak of themselves as a Celtic Bonnie and Clyde, weaned on “Baywatch” and “Never Can Say Goodbye” and yearning for the true release that their dreary circumstances won’t allow.

On a set by Aedin Cosgrove that suggests a low-rent arena of sorts (two red metal chairs are the only props), gawky Runt plays realist to the feisty, mercurial Pig.

Director Pat Kiernan rightly treats the piece as an in-your-face mood swing shifting between ferocity and elegy, and he exhibits a real find in Eileen Walsh’s (no relation to the playwright) awkward, cropped-haired Runt. As the most pugnacious of soulmates, Murphy has the less engaging role, though it’s a tribute to both actors that their body language tells its own compelling story long after the author’s own talking-in-tongues has begun to pall.

*  *  *  *
“‘OPPENHEIMER’: CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S STARRY 
BIOPIC IS BIG, LOUD, AND A MUST-SEE”
by David Fear 

[On the other hand . . . .

[Scott Pelley’s interview is about Oppenheimer, so here’s a review of the film.  It’s David Fear’s column from Rolling Stone on 19 June 2023 ('Oppenheimer' Review: Christopher Nolan Epic Falls Short of Greatness (rollingstone.com))—just one of dozens that covered this Oscar-nominated hit of the past season.

[Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller film that chronicles the career of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-67), focusing on his direction of the Manhattan Project during World War II, which developed the atom bomb.  Nolan wrote, directed, and co-produced the film for Universal Pictures, Atlas Entertainment, and Syncopy.  The studios released the movie on 13 July 2023 in the United Kingdom and 17 July in the United States.

[Oppenheimer is the fifth highest-grossing movie worldwide that runs three hours or longer, after Avengers: Endgame (2019), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022), Titanic (1997), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).  It’s Nolan’s highest-grossing non-Batman film, and his third highest-grossing overall, after The Dark Knight (2008) and The Dark Knight Rises (2012). 

[In September 2023, Oppenheimer became the highest-grossing biographical film of all time, surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody (2018).  It is the second-highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, behind Joker (2019) and the highest-grossing World War II-related film, surpassing Dunkirk (2017), also a Nolan film.

[Wikipedia reports that the film received critical acclaim, primarily for its direction, cast performances (particularly from Murphy, Blunt, and Downey), and visuals; it was frequently ranked as one of Nolan's best films.  On Rotten Tomatoes, 93% of 496 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.6/10.  Metacritic assigned the film a score of 90 out of 100.

[Oppenheimer, also according to Wikipedia, was praised by other filmmakers as well.  Oliver Stone deemed the film “a classic, which I never believed could be made in this climate.”  Paul Schrader called Oppenheimer, “the best, most important film of this century,” while Denis Villeneuve called it “a masterpiece.”

[The film has received 13 nominations (including Murphy’s Best Actor nod) for the 96th Academy Awards to become Nolan’s most Oscar-nominated film, surpassing the eight nominations achieved by The Dark Knight (2008), Inception (2010), and Dunkirk (2017).]

Inception filmmaker’s extensive, exhaustive portrait of the “father of the atomic bomb” is both thrilling and wonky, brilliant and overstuffed, too much and not enough

In the beginning, there were simply explosions. Smaller bangs — the big one would come much later, in the New Mexico desert. But for J. Robert Oppenheimer, the quantum physicist who would guide the greatest scientific minds of his generation toward creating a doomsday device, it was all just a constant collision and coming apart of matter in his head. Put the man in a lab, and he’s hopeless. Let him roam in the world of theories, and Oppenheimer could hear what a mentor dubbed “the music of science.” Those symphonies gave him visions of black holes, collapsing stars, developing nebulae, gaseous eruptions, particles moving at the speed of light, molecules spinning, atoms splitting. He sees these things, and then we see these things, rendered in 70mm IMAX. Any filmmaker can create a cinematic universe. (Many have. Too many, some might say.) Very few can show you how a genius perceives the building blocks of our universe, right before that same person imagines something that threatens our existence in it.

This is what Christopher Nolan does in Oppenheimer, a biopic on the “father of the atomic bomb,” and in terms of getting you into the mindset of its subject, these bursts of abstract imagery are a brilliant move on his part. It’s not the only ace the writer-director has up his well-tailored sleeve, mind you — there are somewhere between four to five timelines bumping against each other at any given moment, it’s shot in both saturated color and stark black & white, its sound design equally prizes dead silence and deafening booms, and the cast is comprised of seemingly every third actor with a SAG card. Not to mention a depth-charge performance by Cillian Murphy as the Man Who Would Be Destroyer of Worlds, one that allows the tiniest surface ripples to communicate the agony and the ecstasy of changing the world.

But those interspersed shots of cosmic debris and microscopic detonations, some of which abruptly interrupt exchanges and others that smoothly transition viewers from one scene to the next, are perfect examples of how to let you experience someone like Oppenheimer’s perspective by showing, rather than telling. And it sometimes feels like those two camps — the cinematic and the chatty-to-a-fault — are fighting it out on Nolan’s massive canvas in a way that resembles nuclear fission minus the energy release.

Taking its cues from the exhaustive, Pulitzer-winning book American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin [2006; Vintage Books; 721 pages], Oppenheimer seeks to cram as much of the man’s life, his work, his elevation to national hero, his eventual persecution, and his personal demons into three hours. Just for good measure, Nolan throws in not one but two competing courtroom dramas as well. There’s a roll-the-dice sensation throughout: Scenes of people sitting in rooms talking can seem thrilling or plodding, clarify historical conflicts and complicated concepts or confuse the hell out of you. Set pieces feel sweeping one second, and like they’re sucking the oxygen out of the room the next. Then, suddenly, the movie cuts to a huge close-up of Murphy, his eyes suggesting a man wrestling for his soul, and you’re transfixed. As with so much of Nolan’s work, you can feel a truly great film peeking out in fits and spurts within a longer, slightly uneven one.

It’s a tough thing to admit, given that Nolan is one of Hollywood’s few name-above-the-title auteurs left standing. He can still get an original mega-budgeted film greenlit, and has taken on the mantle of keeping alive not just film as a medium but film as a physical means of storytelling. His work is intellectual yet visceral, philosophical yet pulse-pounding; he’s always managed to smuggle big ideas into multiplexes via blockbuster templates, even in genres he hasn’t completely terraformed. Like its better half in the joint entity now known as “Barbenheimer,” Oppenheimer isn’t afraid to talk up to an audience (although in Barbie‘s case, the degree of difficulty in doing that via a decades-old brand of dolls feels damn near revolutionary). And along with that shiny happy toy story, Nolan’s biography of a key figure of the 20th century has been burdened with the responsibility of saving motion pictures from financial instability and existential free fall. Heavy are the heads that wear the crown, etc.

So let us now praise movies about famous men, and the famous men who make them. Oppenheimer is most assuredly a Christopher Nolan film, complete with the blessings and the curses of what that phrase entails. The good stuff first: There are a handful of sequences that remind you why this 52-year-old director is considered a godhead by film geeks, genre freaks, and armchair arthouse-cinema scholars alike. When Nolan is on, he is on, as evidenced by the early scenes of Oppenheimer and his military liaison, General Leslie Groves (Matt Damon, all mustache and bluster), assembling the eggheads. Their plan is to turn the small New Mexico burg of Los Alamos into a self-sufficient, family-friendly town for a group of scientists and a top-secret think tank for a weapon of mass destruction. The military need the end result of the Manhattan Project to win WWII, preferably before the Germans develop their own version of “the gadget.” Oppenheimer, both compelled by and wary of the opportunity, wants them to maintain the “moral advantage” after the world sees what this thing can do.

Concentrating on the mounting pressure to deliver, the miniature steps forward with each behind-the-scenes breakthrough, and the accountability factor causing friction between the project leader and his patrons, Oppenheimer becomes its own ticking time bomb. All the while, fractures are happening within the team, and the precariousness of the situation, along with Oppenheimer’s willingness to go through with opening this Pandora’s Box, brings things to a tipping point. These scenes remind you of how Nolan understands the use of sound and vision as a means of emotional engagement (helped in no small part by his regular cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and composer Ludwig Göransson‘s score); how his ability to fold complex ideas into presentations of human behavior, and vice versa, comes through in his writing; how the timing of a cut and the framing of an image can transform a moment from grandiose or mundane to sublime. The gent is a genuine filmmaker. He’s a big-screen artist, the bigger the screens the better.

And these sequences, in particular, reinforce the notion of Nolan as a great director of actors, even if the performances overall are across the board in terms of screen time and effectiveness. Not just Murphy, who’s worked with The Dark Knight director before and delivers an Oppenheimer that goes far beyond the there-goeth-the-great-man clichés associated with many biopics. There’s Damon, whose repartee with Murphy approaches screwball levels. There’s Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission who turns a perceived slight into a postwar vendetta against Oppenheimer. (It’s not an exaggeration to say that Downey does some of the best work of his long career here.) There’s Gary Oldman as President Harry S. Truman, who turns a single scene in the Oval Office into a damning portrait of the POTUS as a complete bastard.

There’s Florence Pugh, and Emily Blunt, and Benny Safdie, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Casey Affleck, Jason Clarke, Matthew Modine, Olivia Thirlby, Dane DeHaan, Alden Ehrenreich… it’s actually quicker to list who’s not in Oppenheimer. Nolan has said he wanted to cast recognizable faces so that audiences could keep track of who’s who easier, but he also gives them opportunities to flex, whether it’s for a minute or the majority of the running time. And given that there are so many scenes of people conversing, reading, lecturing, interrogating, handwringing and musing over the morality of mass destruction, they have to keep things afloat as much as their ringmaster.

Oppenheimer peaks with the Trinity test, a roughly 10-minute sequence that follows the lead-up to the detonation of the first atomic bomb, its blast, and the sense of shock and awe that greets this game-changing “gadget.” Soon after, we see Oppenheimer addressing his fellow scientists about their victory, and he’s greeted with visions of blinding lights, burnt corpses, and empty bleachers. It’s a climactic gut punch… and there’s still another hour or so to go. Which leads us to the less-than-stellar aspects of Nolan’s A-list A-bomb-creator’s origin story. Threaded in between the race against time to craft this killing machine prototype are recreations of a 1954 tribunal over renewing Oppenheimer’s security clearance, in light of the Soviets now having their own nuclear weapons, and a 1959 congressional hearing on Strauss’s bid to join President Eisenhower’s cabinet. It’s here that we get flashback glimpses of the physicist’s career before Los Alamos, his tenure at UC Berkeley, his marriage to Blunt’s Kitty Oppenheimer, his attempt to reconcile what he’s unleashed on the world and what turns out to be a contentious relationship with Strauss.

It’s also where the movie starts to waver in terms of storytelling, cutting back and forth to create a tapestry of the 20th century that’s meant to enrich the scenes of science being used and abused in the name of warfare (Nolan’s politics are a moving target in this film, as they are in much of his work, though it’s safe to say he’s solidly anti-nukes here). They end up drawing both the focus and the momentum away from the movie, even if they do flesh some aspects out and give Downey a primo showcase. You suddenly become more aware of Nolan’s tendency to favor giant compositions and conceptual overreaches over connecting narrative dots in certain places, which has been a longstanding criticism. There are some questionable bits of business that play out as well. It’s one thing to let Pugh’s Jean Tatlock, whose Communist affiliation would still haunt J. Robert decades after their torrid affair ended, to be the one who hands him the Sanskrit poem that would be his response to Trinity: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” It’s another to have her do it while she’s writing topless on top of him, which is… a choice. And the less said about her and Murphy getting hot and heavy during an interrogation-session hallucination, the better — we can now say that sex scenes are not Nolan’s forte.

As those two trials intertwine and paint a picture of Oppenheimer as both McCarthy-era martyr and, ultimately, the victor over Strauss’s smear campaign during the movie’s last act, there’s a slight sensation of listening to wind blowing through torn sails. In attempting to get a 360-degree picture of his subject’s life and times on as big a scale as possible, it feels as if Nolan occasionally loses sight of the big picture as a whole. Oppenheimer is one of those shoot-for-the-moon projects that feels thrilling and wonky, brilliant and overstuffed, too much and yet not enough. It’s also a movie that brings to mind the difficult era-spanning epics of yesteryear, from Reds to The Right Stuff, and is a movie made by adults for adults yet done with the sweep and majesty we now associate with movies made for kids and teens. Nolan has made what can sometimes feel like a maddeningly elusive attempt to make a grand statement about then and now, only to continually drown himself out in the technical equivalent of the Zimmer Honk. He’s also given us one of the only movies of the summer that you really have to see.