A Fast Start for ‘Lucky Guy’ on Broadway

The new Tom Hanks play “Lucky Guy” posted some big box office numbers by Broadway standards in its first weekend, as did the long-running musical “Mary Poppins” during its final week of performances, according to ticket sales data released on Monday by the Broadway League of theater owners and producers.

“Lucky Guy,” a biodrama by Nora Ephron starring Mr. Hanks as the New York City tabloid columnist Mike McAlary, benefited from strong sales of premium-priced $348 tickets to audience members eager to see the two-time Academy Award winner make his Broadway debut. “Lucky Guy” had the second highest average paid admission of any Broadway show last week â€" $153.17 - only outdone by the hit musical “Book of Mormon” at $181.92. By comparison, the Scarlett Johansson-led revival of “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” had the next highest paid admission for a Broadway play, at $92.56.

or its first two performances last weekend, “Lucky Guy” grossed a total of $367,156 - or 125 percent of the maximum possible gross if all tickets were sold at the play’s standard price range of $85-$135. The show was sold out, and about 20 standing-room spots were also sold for each performance. With those numbers, “Lucky Guy” is easily on track to gross more than $1 million a week - fairly rare for a straight play - once full weeks of performances are underway.

Disney’s “Mary Poppins,” meanwhile, ended its six-and-a-half year run on Sunday on a high note. The show grossed $1,006,157 for its eight performances last week - a number made even stronger by the fact that many seats were provided complimentary at the final performance for friends and relatives of the “Poppins” cast and crew! as well as to production alumni, a spokesman for the show said.

The top-five hottest sellers on Broadway last week were the musicals “Mormon,” “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” and “Mary Poppins.”

Overall, Broadway musicals and plays grossed $17.2 million last week, compared with $18.3 million the previous week and $16.9 million for the comparable week last season.

Behind the Poster: ‘Hit the Wall’

Frank Fraver

Frank Fraver was 19 when he heard about an outbreak of violence between patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar on Christopher Street in the West Village, and New York City police over the course of several June and July nights in 1969.

“It was a big deal,” he said. “I don’t remember a whole lot, just the news coverage, and seeing drag queens and police vans.”

Recently Mr. Fraver, a graphic designer best known for his theatrical posters, summoned thespirits of the Stonewall rebellion in his artwork for “Hit the Wall,” a new Off Broadway play set during the unrest. From afar the poster features what appear to be bits of shattered glass with touches of pink. But the shards actually form a stylized map of the streets surrounding the Stonewall, where gay patrons fought back against the police for the first time. A pink triangle notes the location of Christopher Park on Seventh Avenue South, one of several sites where protesters and the police battled.

The poster “gives the impression of something being shattered or broken or explosive,” Mr. Fraver said. “It had a lot of action as an abstract form, and that appealed to me.”

“Hit the Wall,” written by Ike Holter and directed by Eric Hoff, comes to New York after it made its debut last year as part of the Garage Rep series at the Steppenwolf! Theater in Chicago. It is now in previews at the Barrow Street Theater in the West Village, blocks from the Stonewall, which is still in business.

Mr. Fraver recently spoke with Erik Piepenburg about the connections between maps and posters, and the difference between pink and “drag queen pink.” Following are excerpts from the conversation.

Q.

You were in New York when the Stonewall riots happened. What do you remember about that night

A.

I was at Pratt studying illustration and graphic design. I was probably as far away from a militant art student as I could be. I wasn’t politically savvy, but I was aware of this happening. It was a pretty big deal.

Q.

Your artwork for “Hit the Wall” has a very bold, very graphic quality to it. Talk about how that came together.

A.

The thing I came away with from my discussion with the producers was how important the geography of that section of town was to how the story of Stonewall played out. If I remember correctly everything was happening so quickly, and the police were trying to cordon things off, but it’s such a maze in that spot. There are all those side streets and all those nooks that the people who were familiar with the area were using to get around the police, rather than the police cornering them. I thought that was an interesting take.

I think that’s what got me started on fooling around with the map. I thought it was too abstract and I would have to explain it to the producers before they dismissed it. But they! reacted ! strongly to it.

Q.

The poster is both a map and a graphic treatment in many ways. What were you hoping to do by combining both approaches

A.

As a graphic designer I’m sensitive to the fact that the power of any graphic is that someone can interpret what it is the second they look at it. But if they have no idea what it is then it’s no longer a successful graphic. When I did this, not being a big fan of maps to begin with, I tried to get as far away from the concept of a traditional map by having it be on black, and to simplify it as much as possible. The only designation on it is where the Stonewall Inn is. The pink triangle is Christopher Park, which is triangular. It’s not a perfect triangle like it is in the poster but it’s pretty triangular. Otherwise the image can be broken glass, or something that shattered.

Q.

The pink triangle for decades has been a symbol of the gay rights movement. Besides being a marker on the poster, what appealed to you about incorporating it into your design

A.

I thought it was a strong graphic and also told a bit of the story of gay history. I really remember seeing it a lot around campus in the early ’70s. It was kind of like the fallout from Stonewall. The original use of the pink triangle was in the concentration camps of World War II to designate homosexuals. No one used that for a period, but it was resurrected eventually to symbolize the opposite of oppression. It was replaced by the rainbow flag much later.

Q.

The colors are pretty straightforward, just black, white and pink, the same colors on signage used by Act-Up. Why so minimal

A.

The simpler it can be the ! more powe! rful. My favorite theater colors are black, white and red. I think I was trained that way from when I first started designing. Color printing was expensive to do, so many times were were asked to design in two colors or less. It’s ingrained in me that that is the most theatrical.

Here I replaced the red with magenta. I call it pink in meetings but the actual true color is magenta. It’s a really bright pink, not baby pink. It’s drag queen pink.

Frank Fraver

Q.

Let’s talk about one of your alternative designs. It’s a colorful treatment that features the face of a shouting man. What did you like about this approach

A.

I was fond of that. I wanted to try to get a sense of how u in arms everyone was that evening, and the power of people having had enough of a bad thing. I thought his expression was not horrifying, but you get a sense of taking over, of someone who is speaking his mind. With the colors I wanted to get to the beginning of the ’70s, with day-glo, op-art colors. I took my lead from Andy Warhol’s cows, that deep magenta and yellow.

Normally the words would be on the left, but I thought it would be nice to read it at a different tilt. In passing this on the street you might stop because of the configuration of the type.

Q.

Why do you think it wasn’t chosen as the final artwork

A.

Maybe they thought it was too angry and off putting, that you’d go to the theater and someone would be screaming at you, which I guess makes sense. But I’m only guessing. Once they were smitten with the ! map I did! n’t ask why. I’m happy when clients are happy.

“Hit the Wall” opens on Sunday at the Barrow Street Theater. More information is at barrowstreettheatre.com.

‘We Are Definitely Continuing,’ Says Living Theater Executive

The Living Theater closed its production of “Here We Are,” a spirited audience-participation piece by its founder, Judith Malina, on Saturday evening. But though the performance was the company’s last at the Clinton Street theater that had been its home since 2007, Brad Burgess, the executive producer, said that recent reports that the esteemed experimental company was shutting down for good are incorrect.

“We are definitely continuing,” he said in a telephone interview on Monday. “Our plan is to present an extension of ‘Here We Are’ at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center, which is just around the crner from us, and we are discussing plans for an extended residency at the Clemente.” The added performances of “Here We Are” will run from March 26-29.

Mr. Burgess added that although Ms. Malina, 86, has moved from her Manhattan apartment to the Lillian Booth Actors’ Home, an assisted living facility in Englewood, N.J., she is not retiring. She was present - acknowledging the applause of the cast and audience, and pumping her fist - at the closing performance of “Here We Are” on Saturday, and she will remain artistic director of the company. He said that she would attend the rehearsals and added performances.

“She is writing a new piece for us as well,” Mr. Burgess said, “and she is writing a piece for the actors who are living at the Lillian Booth home, which they are buzzing about.”

The Living Theater has had many incarnations since Ms. Malina and the painter Julian Beck founded it in ! New York in 1947, and true to the experimental, anarchistic spirit that has driven it from the start, the company has gone years at a stretch without a permanent home. It was often itinerant during the early years, when it specialized in works by Brecht, Cocteau, Gertrude Stein and other adventurous European writers; by the time it turned to American Beat generation writers and semi-improvisatory works, it had found a home on 14th Street.

The company left those quarters in the late 1960s, when it stopped its activities to fight a tax evasion charge. Though the charge was later dropped, Ms. Malina and Mr. Beck were jailed for contempt of court for their theatrical antics during the proceedings. After their release, they reconstituted the theater and toured through Europe and the United States, but rarely performed in New York.

Soon after Mr. Beck’s death, in 1985, Ms. Malina and her new directorial partner, Hanon Reznikov, found a space on Third Street and Avenue C. But that theater closed in 193, leaving the company to wander between then and its acquisition of the Clinton Street space in 2007.

Mr. Reznikov’s sudden death in 2008 largely doomed the company’s residency on Clinton Street, according to Mr. Burgess.

“Many of the plans for the company were in Hanon’s head,” said Mr. Burgess, who joined the company when he was 22, as Mr. Reznikov’s assistant, and is now 28. “Now I have more of a grip on things than I did then, and I know we can make this work. It’s a pretty interesting time in the company’s history, now.”

Theaters Add Dates for ‘Vandal,’ ‘Belleville,’ ‘Passion,’ ‘Really Really’

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Noah Robbins and Deirdre O’Connell in “The Vandal.”

Three Off Broadway theaters announced on Monday that their current productions would add performances because of audience demand after positive reviews from critics, while a fourth theater, the Flea, said that its recent and highly praised production of “The Vandal” would return for an encore run later this month.

The Flea’s move is relatively unusual. Most theaters simply extend the run of productions to keep going when they prove popular, but “The Vandal” closed on Sunday in order to accommodae the schedules of two of its stars: Deirdre O’Connell has a 10-day film shoot this month, and Noah Robbins has midterms at Columbia, where he is a junior. “The Vandal,” a drama written by the actor Hamish Linklater about three people who come together on a freezing night in upstate New York, will return to the Flea for 11 performances from March 22-31.

Carol Ostrow, the producing director of the Flea, said the costs of remounting “The Vandal” were minimal because the small-scale production in the 74-seat theater was relatively inexpensive and did not require a costly load-in of the set, which is spare.

“A theater like the Flea can allow that kind of schedule unlike a larger theater with a larger overhead,” she said. “Also, because the show was so stellar on so many levels, we decided to take a chance to bring it back at any cost.”

Elsewhere, New York Theater Workshop announced that performances for its production of Amy Herzog’s “Belleville,” which opened on Sunday night, would be extended for two additional weeks through April 14. Classic Stage Company is extending its revival of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical “Passion” by a week, through April 14 as well, while MCC Theater announced a second extension of Paul Downs Colaizzo’s new play “Really Really,” through March 30.

Canseco, a Former Steroid User, Backs Ban on Stimulant in Diet Pills

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times It was an ordinary Monday in Albany until Jose Canseco arrived to warn about the dangers of performance-enhancing drugs.

ALBANY - He was a head taller than any of the elected officials in the room. He wore a bedazzling pinstripe sport coat and sunglasses. And he absolutely did not want to talk about the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Jose Canseco, the former big-league slugger, former steroid user and modern-day Twitter philosopher, tried something new on Monday: political activism. Naturally, he explained his rationalein a Twitter message:

If Dennis Rodman can be in North Korea I can be in Albany New York with Senator Klein

â€" Jose Canseco (@JoseCanseco) 4 Mar 13

Mr. Canseco, 48, was referring to one of the leaders of the New York State Senate, Jeffrey D. Klein of the Bronx, who invited him here. Mr. Canseco was the marquee guest at a news conference to promote legislation that would ban dietary supplements containing a stimulant called dimethylamylamine, or DMAA, whose safety has been questioned.

Mr. Klein, a Democrat, said that he was “so proud” that Mr. Canseco had come to the Capitol, and described him as “an inspiration to young people” who could raise awareness about the issue of dangerous supplements.

With seven television cameras trained on him, an impressive turnout for an Albany news conference, Mr. Canseco warned that young athletes were always looking for an edge, and said that he wanted to help educate them about the dangers of supplements and performance-enhancing drugs.

“These kids are willing to take risks because of those $100 million contracts,” he said. “People don’t tell them, ‘Listen, you have got to be careful what you put into your body.’”

Speaking to reporters, Mr. Canseco said he was pleased with how Major League Baseball had responded to the steroid era. “I’m hoping the game is completely clean right now,” he said. “I think they took very aggressive steps.”

But Mr. Canseco, wo is known for musing about subjects as varied as the laws of gravity and the possibility of time travel, was not particularly loquacious.

He ended the news conference when a reporter asked if players who used steroids should be allowed in the Hall of Fame. “I don’t think we’re here for that,” he said, and stepped away from the lectern.

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Mr. Canseco’s brief comments did not touch on the subjects of gravity, din! osaurs or! whether steroid abusers belong in the Hall of Fame.

Ask Ben Brantley About London Theater

This week Ben Brantley, chief theater critic for The New York Times, will be reporting on the London theater scene. Among the shows he’ll be writing about are Ian Rickson’s West End production of Harold Pinter’s “Old Times,” starring Rufus Sewell and Kristin Scott Thomas, and a revival of the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical “Merrily We Roll Along” at the Menier Chocolate Factory.

While he’s across the pond Mr. Brantley is taking readers’ questions about what’s happening in the West End and elsewhere in London. Please post your queries in the comments below â€" we’ll pose some of them to Mr. Brantley and publish his answers here later this week.

‘Fortress of Solitude’ Musical to Open in Dallas

“The Fortress of Solitude” â€" a new musical which its composer, Michael Friedman, once described as “a history of soul music on a particular block in Brooklyn” â€" will have its world premiere in Dallas before landing closer to home, at the Public Theater in Manhattan.

The Dallas Theater Center and the Public on Monday announced that the co-production, an adaptation of Jonathan Lethem’s 2003 novel about boyhood friends in 1970s Boerum Hill, will open in Dallas next March and subsequently be part of the Public’s 2014-15 season.

The show is conceived and directed by Daniel Aukin (“4000 Miles”), with a book by Itamar Moses (“Completeness”) and music and lyrics by Mr. Friedman (“Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson”).

A statement from Dallas Theater Center, where the musical will begin performances on March 7, 2014, described the plot this way: “Two motherless boys, Dylan and Mingus, become close friends in 1970s Brooklyn. They grow up in a world of soul and funk, superheroes and graffiti-tagging in this story of loyalty and friendship.”

There were no details on casting. Santino Fontana, Kyle Beltran, and Rebecca Naomi Jones were among those in the cast for last summer’s workshop as part of New ! York Stage and Film’s season at Vassar College.

The “Fortress” co-production is the second recent collaboration between the Dallas theater and the Public. “Giant,” an ambitious musical with songs by Michael John LaChiusa, played in Dallas before opening at the Public last fall.

Sundance Plans a Mini-Festival in Los Angeles

LOS ANGELES â€" The film festival arms race continues: Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute, having established an offshoot of its signature Utah event in London, now plans to expand into the movie capital.

Sundance said on Monday that it would present four days of screenings, parties and artist programs in Los Angeles from Aug. 8-11. Next Weekend, as this mini-festival has been christened, will focus on independent cinema that is particularly adventurous, the nonprofit organization said.

Film festivals have been on an expansion binge of late â€" although speculation that Sundance would come to Brooklyn proved unfounded. Last year came the inaugural Sundance London, which features rock concerts and films culled from Mr. Redford’s flagship festival in Prk City, Utah. The Tribeca Film Festival has expanded to Doha, Qatar, and aggressively pursued other offshoots.

Los Angeles already has a particularly crowded festival scene. LA Film Fest runs for 10 days in June. The popular Outfest, focused on gay and lesbian cinema, occupies a chunk of July. The American Film Institute operates a well-attended festival in early November.

What will Next Weekend bring to the party Sundance announced no specifics and it said to expect a programming announcement “this summer.” The selections will mostly include movies that have been featured in the Next section of Sundance’s primary festival.

That means boundary-pushing films from mostly first-time directors. “Escape From Tomorrow,” about a man’s mental disintegration during a trip to Walt Dis! ney World (filmed inside the theme park resort without permission), was one controversial picture shown as part of Sundance’s Next program in January.

Next Weekend will begin with an outdoor screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which is adjacent to Paramount Pictures and operates a popular movie series in warmer months. Mr. Redford’s new Sundance Sunset Cinemas in West Hollywood, Calif., will serve as Next Weekend’s headquarters.

Developing Education Initiatives for City’s Young Mexican Immigrants

Brian Harkin for The New York Times Advisers with a group called Mexican-American Youth Advising Students at a meeting in Manhattan in 2011. The group tries to help Mexican students stay in school.

The numbers alone were stark and worrisome: About 41 percent of all Mexican immigrants 16 to 19 years old in New York City have dropped out of school, according to census statistics â€" more than double the rate of any other major immigrant group and more than four times the city’s overall rate.

In addition, only about 6 percent of Mexican immigrants 19 to 23 years old who do not have a college egree are enrolled in college â€" a small fraction of the rates among other major immigrant groups and the native-born population.

These statistics highlighted some immigrants’ advocates’ long-held worries regarding the city’s fastest growing immigrant population. The figures’ publication in an article in The New York Times in November 2011 provoked a groundswell of responses both in and beyond the Mexican diaspora.

Officials at Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, based in New York City, were among those moved by the article to act.

“It just struck a chord,” Gary Hattem, president of the foundation, explained i! n a recent interview. “It resonated with me very strongly as a New Yorker.”

Last October, the foundation convened a meeting of several dozen representatives of community organizations that work with the Mexican immigrant population in New York. In a conference room at the bank’s headquarters â€" with panoramic views of downtown New York, the harbor and beyond â€" community organizers, academics and others brainstormed about the most dire needs, educational and otherwise, in the Mexican diaspora.

With notes from that meeting, foundation officials created an initiative designed to improve the educational and economic achievement of the Mexican population in New York City, with an emphasis on children and their families.

The foundation’s plan imagines networks of nonprofit organizations that help to establish and promote educational programs in neighborhoods with large populations of residents of Mexican descent. The plan also seeks to promote civic engagement in the Mexican diaspora./p>

“The city’s Mexican immigrant community has little civic representation; there are no public officials who directly and vocally advance solutions to their needs,” the foundation wrote in a description of the project. “As such, this initiative will further support nonprofits and communities to assume that role and responsibility.”

In January, the foundation issued a request for proposals, seeking applications for three-month “planning grants” of $5,000 to $10,000. The foundation plans to award 8 to 10 of the grants. Of those projects, the foundation will choose three to five for “implementation grants” of $75,000 to $150,000 a year, and they will be renewable several times.

“The premise of this effort is really about grounding this work in neighborhoods with high concentrations of Mexicans and bringing to bear the strengths of this community,” Mr. Hattem, the foundation president, said. “We can be a social engineer.” He added, “As a philanthropy, we’re! in a pos! ition to take a risk and test some ideas.”

By last week’s deadline for the planning grant applications, the foundation had received 17 proposals involving 45 nonprofits as well as City Department of Education schools and the City University of New York for networks in all five boroughs.

“The response exceeded my expectations,” Nicole Rodriguez Leach, a vice president of the foundation, said in an e-mail on Friday. “Very exciting!” The foundation plans to announce the grant recipients this month.

“It is a finite population,” Mr. Hattem said of the Mexicans and Mexican-Americans the initiative is aiming to help. “So we do have an opportunity here to watch a population and hopefully change its trajectory.”

Viewing World War II Through a Soldier’s Camera Lens

James Estrin/The New York Times Tony Vaccaro, a photographer known for his photos of World War II, was among those honored on Sunday in Manhattan by the United States Holocaust Museum.

Tony Vaccaro wanted to become a foreign correspondent, but after being raised in Italy, he returned to the United States less than proficient in English. One of his teachers at Isaac E. Young High School in New Rochelle, N.Y., suggested he become a photographer instead. (He joined a camera club begun by his science teacher, Bertram L. Lewis.) He worked as a caddy to afford a $47.50 American-made Argus C2 camera, intet on taking it with him when he went to war.

“That’s why I became a photographer,” he said. “I had to show this hell to the rest of the world.”

Those images brought him to the attention of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

On Sunday at the New York Hilton, Mr. Vaccaro was one of about 50 World War II veterans honored along with about 300 Holocaust survivors in New York, the third of four stops on the museum’s nationwide tour to mark its 20th anniversary. Museum officials acknowledged that a reunion of that size is unlikely to recur.

More than 3,000 people registered for the event. Most of the former servicemen, like Mr. Vaccaro, are 90 or older. Most of the European refugees who survived the Holocaust are not much younger.

“It’s fair to say this is one of the last times survivors and World War II veterans will gather in such large numbers,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, the museumâ! €™s director. “Their task of testimony will soon be entrusted to the rest of us.”

With the number of living eyewitnesses dwindling, the value of photographs and video testimony has been growing. The museum’s archives include an estimated 90,000 photos.

“They humanize the victims,” Ms. Bloomfield said. “They personalize history.”

Mr. Vaccaro was brought to the museum’s attention by Max Lewkowicz, a documentarian whose mother was a Holocaust survivor and whose fiancée, Elissa Schein, is the museum’s director of public programs.

Mr. Vaccaro, who began as an amateur photographer and later worked for Stars and Stripes, Life and Look, stood with his hand on his heart as a military procession presented the colors, including those of his 83rd Infantry Division, which liberated Langenstein, a sub camp of Buchenwald, on April 11, 1945.

His photographs so impressed an army captain that he was recommended for the Signal Corps, but he was told he was too young. “I’m od enough to do this,” he asked, using his index finger as a trigger, “but not old enough to do this,” pressing his finger down as on a shutter.

He would take as many as 8,000 photographs during the war, developing them in pitch darkness at night in borrowed helmets.

“I smelled like a dark room,” he recalled.

Among his most famous photographs, published in books and other collections, are “Kiss of Liberation,” a G.I.’s homage to a young girl in Brittany, and “White Death,” the snow-covered body of a soldier, whom, Mr. Vaccaro discovered, was his best friend, Henry Tannenbaum of Brooklyn. A half-century later, he would return to the spot with Mr. Tannenbaum’s son, Sam.

No scene was too grim not to photograph. “I took everything,” he said. “I felt the world had to see it.”

Among the other guests Sunday was Hanna Deutch, who is 90 and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens. She attended as a survivor and a veteran: she was evacuated from Germany just ! before th! e war as a child and enlisted in the British army as a nurse. Wouldn’t she prefer to forget what happened in the Holocaust rather than relive it during events like these “The world has to know, to meet people who lived through it,” she replied.

When that is no longer possible, the world will have to depend on videos and photographs like those taken by Mr. Vaccaro, who lives in Long Island City, Queens, and is a divorced father of two grown sons. (He still has a darkroom in the apartment.)

Asked which he reached for first during the war, he replied: “First the rifle. Then the camera.”

A Doctor’s Account of the Scene of a Fatal Hit and Run

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times The backpack that Amar Diarrassouba, 6, was carrying lay on the sidewalk after he was fatally struck by a truck in East Harlem last Thursday.

Melanie M. Canon, a family doctor who lives and works in East Harlem, happened upon the scene last Thursday moments after a 6-year-old boy, Amar Diarrassouba, was struck by a turning truck and tried to save his life. She sent us this account.

Last Thursday morning, after dropping my 8-year-old daughter at school in East Harlem, I got back o my bike and headed home. I am a daily bike commuter, as is my daughter, and have been doing the same loop for years. I know the streets and the crossing guards. I pass the same kids walking to school with their grandmothers year after year. I smile, ring my bell or wave, “Hi, Ma.” In this daily ritual we become community.

I pedaled down 117th Street, a one-way residential street in a bustling neighborhood, pocked with potholes, and narrowed by double-parked cars.

As I approached First Avenue, I saw a boy standing in the middle of the avenue. A small boy lay motionless on the pavement beside him. The intersection was empty of cars, trucks, pedestrians, and I heard the standing boy yell, “Help!”

I jumped from my bike, leaned it against a light pole and ran over. The boy was face down on the pavement, and as I bent down to lift his small body off the ground, still supple and warm, I saw the blood puddling on the street.

“Is this your brot! her” I asked the older boy. “What’s his name”

“Amar.”

“What happened” I asked. The brother had no reply.

I moved the boy’s body out of the middle of the street, before the parade of approaching trucks and cars plowed over us, gently placed Amar on the sidewalk and turned him over. The little boy’s face was covered with blood, his eyes open and fixed; more blood flowed from his nostril.

As a physician, when I see bleeding I think, “Stop the bleeding.” I pressed my fingers against the nostril. The blood kept flowing. It was not a nosebleed. In work mode, I ran down the checklist of emergency life saving. I wiped his face; his pupils were nonreactive. He wasn’t breathing. I grasped his shoulders and cried, “Amar, Amar.” No response. I unzipped his jacket, unbuttoned the top of his shirt, checked for a pulse, and checked again. No pulse. Blood continued to pour from his nose.

Experience told me it didn’t matter if I did the chest compressions and resue breathing. All I could do at that point was stay right there with him.

Kneeling on the sidewalk with my patient, I sensed a crowd forming. I didn’t look up, my attention focused on Amar, but I could hear the crowd directing me: “Don’t move him.” “He’s breathing.” “He moved.” “Wait for the ambulance.” “Move the brother away from him.”

A girl in a gray sweater called 911. A teacher stopped on her way to the boys’ school, which was less than a block away. She knew the brothers, and pulled the older boy close. With her other hand, she started making calls, the tears flowing. The brother leaned into her and started crying as well. While we waited for E.M.S. that teacher never let go of this boy who’d just seen something no child â€" or adult, for that matter â€" should ever have to see.

The police and medics arrived, cleared the area, put up tape and took control. E.M.T.s whisked Amar’s wrecked little body into the back of the ambulance and to Harlem Ho! spital, w! here he was pronounced dead on arrival.

When I knew the older boy was in good hands, I jumped on my bike to pedal home. As I rode, I noticed my gloves, sneakers and bottom of my jeans were soaked with Amar’s blood and patched with clots.

People often ask me how I keep calm in such dreadful situations, how I keep thoughts of my own child and her safety from clouding my mind. For me, the anger and sorrow come later, as I reflect on the statistics that tell us that accidents like this are preventable.

We now know that Amar was hit by a tractor-trailer turning from congested, narrow 117th Street onto First Avenue. The driver of that huge truck said he hadn’t seen the boy, couldn’t see him, from the high perch of his mammoth truck. He didn’t hear the sickening thud, either.

This is where I come back to my training - not my medical training, but my training as a mother and community activist â€" where my sorrow and anger will drive me to act, to join my community in pushing for chage.

Trucks this size shouldn’t be on residential streets, especially as kids are walking to and from school. 
In this country, cars and trucks kill more children than guns do. We can do better, for Amar and for all of us.

Miners in Australia Fired Over ‘Harlem Shake’ Video

Several miners in Australia were fired from their jobs after filming a “Harlem Shake” video underground, a performance that the owners of the Agnew gold mine apparently considered unsafe, The Associated Press and Reuters reported.

Like thousands of others, the miners posted their video on YouTube. It shows eight miners wearing safety gear doing the convulsive dance. The West Australian newspaper quoted an unnamed worker who said at least 15 miners were fired, including some who wathed the dance but did not take part. The worker said the miners were only “having a bit of fun.”

Barminco, the mine owner, was not amused. In a letter quoted by the paper, it said the stunt breached its “core values of safety, integrity and excellence.”

The Harlem Shake is a dance song by a Brooklyn producer named Baauer that mixes a hip-hop beat, Dutch house synth riffs, a rap sample, animal noises and some sub-woofer bass sounds. It became the basis of a viral YouTube fad after an amateur comedian named Filthy Frank posted a dance video using the first 30 seconds of the track; thousands of others have pos! ted similar videos, from a Norwegian Army battalion to a group of Playboy models.

The craze drove hundreds of thousands of people to download and listen to Baauer’s song online, propelling it to the top of the Hot 100 chart, which now takes into account YouTube views and streaming services in its tally.

New Programmer at Film Society Steps Down; Replacement Named

Robert Koehler, who last fall was named the year-round director of programming at the Film Society for Lincoln Center, is resigning that position, the organization said Monday. Taking over for him will be the critic and journalist Dennis Lim.

In a news release, the Film Society said that Mr. Koehler “will step down immediately and return to Los Angeles to focus on personal matters and requests that his family’s privacy be respected.”

Mr. Koehler, a festival programmer and film critic who has written for Variety and Cahiers du Cinema, among other publications, was one of two people appointed in September to replace Richard Peña, who was both the programming director of the Film Society and the chairman of the selection committee for the New York Film Festival. Kent Jones succeeded Mr. Peña in his position overseeing the film festival.

Rose Kuo, the exective director of the Film Society, said of Mr. Koehler in a statement on Monday: “Bob brought a lot of fresh new ideas and innovation to the Film Society during his tenure and we are sorry to see him go. We wish him and his family well and send him our support during this challenging time.”

Dennis Lim was film editor of The Village Voice from 2000 to 2006 and has since written for The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times while working on a book about David Lynch. Mr. Lim, who also programmed series for the Museum of the Moving Image, will join the Film Society as its director of cinematheque programming and will oversee its retrospective, festivals and screening series beginning April 1, the organization said.

Winners of Hefty New Literary Prizes Announced

Yale University announced on Monday the inaugural winners of the Windham Campbell Prizes, which are given to writers for outstanding achievement in fiction, nonfiction and drama.

Nine prizes of $150,000 each are to be awarded to James Salter, Zoë Wicomb and Tom McCarthy in fiction; Jonny Steinberg, Adina Hoffman and Jeremy Scahill in nonfiction; and Naomi Wallace, Stephen Adly Guirgis and Tarell Alvin McCraney in drama.

The awards are among the largest literary prizes in the world and are meant to recognize writers at all stages of their careers. The winners are to be honored at a ceremony in New Haven on Sept. 10.

The endowment for the prizes comes from the estate of the writer Donald Windham, who died in May 2010, and his partner Sandy M. Campbell. Mr. Campbell was the publisher of the first editions of many of Mr. Windham’s books before his death in 1988.

Heeeeere’s Napoleon: Spielberg Developing Kubrick Script as TV Miniseries

Warner Brothers/Associated Press Stanley Kubrick

While another collaboration between Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg would seem to require a time machine, a Ouija board or some sort of interdimensional extraterrestrial monolith, plans are nonetheless underway for these two celebrated filmmakers to work together again.

Speaking to Canal+ Television in France, Mr. Spielberg said that he intended to turn an unproduced creenplay by Mr. Kubrick about the life of Napoleon into a television miniseries.

“I’ve been developing Stanley Kubrick’s screenplay for a miniseries, not for a motion picture, about the life of Napoleon,” Mr. Spielberg said in the interview. “Kubrick wrote the script in 1961, long time ago, and the Kubrick family â€" because we made ‘A.I.’ together â€" the Kubrick family and I, and the next project we’re working on is a miniseries, is going to be ‘Napoleon.’”

Mr. Kubrick, who died in 1999, spent years researching Napoleon, reviewing more than 18,000 documents and books while assembling a card file that cataloged every significant moment in the French leader’s life.

It was announced in 1968 that Mr. Kubrick would direct “Napoleon” for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer; then in 1970 it was reported that he had put that project on the back burner in favor of “A Clockwork Orange.”

In 1972, Mr. Kubrick (who had not yet made “Barry Lyndon” at the time) told Sight & Sound magazine that “there has never been a great historical film” and that he still intended to make “Napoleon.” But the project was never realized.

The two filmmakers worked together on the 2001 science-fiction film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” which Mr. Spielberg was producing for Mr. Kubrick, and which he directed after Mr. Kubrick’s death. One could also argue that the Kubrick influence hovrs over Spielberg films like “Minority Report,” and its world of oppressively ubiquitous technology. Both directors also appreciated space aliens as well as Tom Cruise.

Brits Off Broadway Adds ‘Bull’ to Slate

Steve Forrest for The New York Times Mike Bartlett

“Bull,” a drama about office politics by the British playwright Mike Bartlett (“The Cockfight Play”), will have its New York premiere in the Brits Off Broadway festival at 59E59 Theaters, the theater is to announce on Monday. The play, which is to begin performances on April 25, recently completed a run at the Crucible Studio in Sheffield, England, where it received good reviews.

Mr. Bartlett’s “Cockfight Play” (the actual, monosyllabic title i unprintable here) ran Off Broadway in a well-received, extended run last year. (Ben Brantley of The New York Times included the production on his 2012 Top 10 list.) “Bull” was initially intended as a companion piece to “The Cockfight Play,” Mr. Bartlett said in an interview with The Sheffield Telegraph last month, and both plays were inspired by his experience watching a bullfight in Mexico. But while “Cockfight” is about a love triangle, “Bull” is about the often brutal and bullying world of office politics: Three workers know that one of them is about to be fired, and as they await the arrival of their boss, two gang up on the one who seems to be the weakest of the group.

“Bull,” directed by Clare Lizzimore, joins the prev! iously announced Brits festival lineup, which is to include “Good With People,” by David Harrower; “Bullet Catch” by Rob Drummond; a revival of J. B. Priestley’s “Cornelius,” starring Alan Cox; and several other productions. The festival runs from March 27 to June 30.