Alicia Keys Officially Launches ‘Hell's Kitchen'-Inspired Kaleidoscope Dreams Foundation
The Grammy Award-winning singer and activist announced the launch of her Kaleidoscope Dreams Foundation, which was inspired by her Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Hell's Kitchen.
More from The Hollywood Reporter
Scooter Braun's Response to Still-Angry Taylor Swift Fans on Catalog Purchase: "They Made the Horrible Miscalculation That I Care"
Billy Idol Remembers Ozzy Osbourne: "He Opened Musical Doorways for People Like Me"
'Squid Game' Stars Byung Hun Lee and Yim Siwan to Make KCON L.A. 2025 Appearances
The foundation collaborates with local communities, partnering with community-based organizations 'to foster belonging, educational enrichment and professional pathways for historically underrepresented communities,' according to a release. The organization expanded its reach a fellowship program in partnership with the upcoming national tour of Hell's Kitchen.
'With Kaleidoscope Dreams we are creating something that makes people and communities feel empowered, inspired and engaged. We want people to know that their stories and their voices matter, that we all belong here,' Keys said to The Hollywood Reporter in an exclusive statement. 'Our mission is to expand access to the arts, support creatives and diversify the people at the table. We can create spaces where dreams come true.'
After a successful pilot programming, Kaleidoscope Dreams Foundation has appointed also Asad Ali Jafri its first executive director. The organization was founded in 2024 from the 'the energy and impact' of Hell's Kitchen, according to a release, to 'open doors, spark dreams, and create space for joy, both on and off the stage.'
'Kaleidoscope Dreams Foundation is rooted in the belief that creativity is a powerful force for connection, healing, and transformation. We're proud to build programs that expand access to the arts and support communities that have long been left out of these opportunities,' Jafri said in a release. 'We're creating spaces where dreams can take root and thrive.'
The foundation's main work can be broken down into four pillars: cultural access, educational enrichment, professional pathways and community engagement. The organization has piloted multiple programs since its launch — the Hell's Kitchen 2024 fellowship, a cultural access program and an educational enrichment pilot — that they say will only grow under Jafri's leadership.
Full details on the foundation can be found on its website.
Best of The Hollywood Reporter
From 'Party in the U.S.A.' to 'Born in the U.S.A.': 20 of America's Most Patriotic (and Un-Patriotic) Musical Offerings
Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More
Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Lindsay Lohan Admits It's 'Frustrating' Being Pigeonholed By Past Roles: 'Give Me the Chance'
Lindsay Lohan is opening up about her feelings of being pigeonholed by roles she's played in the past as a longstanding actress in the entertainment industry. After starring in 1998's The Parent Trap when she was 12, Lohan's career skyrocketed. She went on to appear in many more beloved projects, including Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, and she is next up set to reprise her role in the former film with the 2025 followup Freakier Friday. More from The Hollywood Reporter Julia Butters Takes on the A-List - Again Anthony Anderson "Regrets" If 2003 Lindsay Lohan Interview "Intended as Comedy" Was in "Poor Taste" Lindsay Lohan Wants to Do "Some More Serious, Dramatic Roles" After 'Freakier Friday' In a Saturday profile with The Times U.K., Lohan admitted that she 'wanted to take a minute' to herself, which saw her shy away from leading roles from 2013 until 2022. 'I was losing that feeling of excitement about doing a film, and I wanted to live my own life for a bit, figure out how to have a more private life, a real life,' she explained. 'I wanted to wait to get that itch again.' A new project Lohan is admittedly excited about is her upcoming Hulu Drama Count My Lies, where she will star and produce. Still, when reflecting on her career thus far and asked if she felt 'pigeonholed,' she replied, 'Yeah, I do.' 'I was so thrilled to work on A Prairie Home Companion, and yet even today I have to fight for stuff that is like that, which is frustrating. Because, well, you know me as this — but you also know I can do that. So let me! Give me the chance,' Lohan said. 'I have to break that cycle and open doors to something else, leaving people no choice. And in due time, if Martin Scorsese reaches out, I'm not going to say no.' At the Los Angeles premiere of Freakier Friday, Lohan told The Hollywood Reporter that moving forward in her career, she would 'like to take on some more serious, dramatic roles,' further noting that she felt a bit of pressure to stick to the rom-com genre. 'I love doing romantic comedy because that's where my home is and I feel like where my fans want to see me, but I'd like to take on some things that are different; maybe find something that's an action-packed film. Just really show people a different side of me,' she added. Best of The Hollywood Reporter The 25 Best U.S. Film Schools in 2025 The 40 Greatest Needle Drops in Film History The 40 Best Films About the Immigrant Experience
New York Post
6 hours ago
- New York Post
Broadway is in a bizarre uproar over the race of an actor playing a robot
Broadway has enjoyed a quiet, relaxing and peaceful summer. But show people can't have that! They always need, as Betty sang in the recently shuttered 'Boop! The Musical,' something to shout about. And their something has finally arrived in the form of a piping hot controversy at this year's Best Musical Tony Award winner, 'Maybe Happy Ending.' It's a doozy. Some members of the theater industry are hollerin' 'It's a scandal! It's a outrage!' over the race of an actor who's been cast to play — believe it or not — a robot. 'Maybe Happy Ending,' by the writing team of Hue Park and Will Aronson, is a sweet little science-fiction romantic-comedy that's set in Seoul, South Korea, during the year 2060. The main characters are Oliver and Claire, played by Darren Criss, who's half Filipino, and Helen J. Shen, who's Chinese. Oliver and Claire are robots. 5 There's a controversy brewing over at Broadway's 'Maybe Happy Ending.' Getty Images But the nuts-and-bolts duo have become defunct, so they embark on a quirky adventure to find Oliver's old owner. It's perhaps the nicest show to ever come to Broadway. Or it was. Until this latest fracas. The happiness dimmed when the wonderful, Tony-winning Criss's replacement was announced: actor Andrew Barth Feldman, the fantastic 'No Hard Feelings' star who's also Shen's boyfriend. He's white. Uh oh! In private, many on Broadway are largely OK with that. The most common refrain I've heard is: 'Well, they're robots.' But social media, as it does best, has poured gas on the fire. 5 Andrew Barth Feldman takes on the role of Oliver in September. WireImage Playwright and actor BD Wong, who was a strong voice in 1991 against British actor Jonathan Pryce playing the Eurasian Engineer in 'Miss Saigon' (Wong was absolutely right about that), wrote an essay slamming the choice. And the Asian American Performers Action Coalition came out against it, too. What do the creators have to say? They didn't write the roles to be culturally specific. Because they're robots! Robots don't have a culture. Well, except the Terminator, of course. He loves schnitzel and strudel. 5 'Maybe Happy Ending' won the Tony Award for Best Musical. Christopher Sadowski After the backlash, Aronson and Hue — kind and humble as it gets — explained on Instagram that they set out to create 'a modern 'Fantasticks,' able to be comfortably performed by anyone, anywhere — yet distinctly set in Korea.' Fair enough. Oliver and Claire, they said, are 'products created by a global company' who are 'ethnically undefined.' That makes a lot of sense. Because the characters are robots. The production said in a statement to the Times, 'We are proud to have created a show where every role can authentically be portrayed by an Asian actor, although the roles of the robots were not envisioned to always be cast that way.' 5 Darren Criss won a Tony for his performance. Bruce Glikas/WireImage And that openness has been true throughout the 'Maybe Happy Ending' journey. Aronson told the LA Times back in March that during an early workshop, the parts were taken on by Denée Benton, who's black, and Corey Cott, who's white. See? There's lots of flexibility when casting robots. Look, it's Hue and Aronson's show. They wrote it. Who's to tell them what they can and cannot do and what their intentions were? 5 'Maybe Happy Ending' is the rare musical about robots. CBS via Getty Images The fact is 'Maybe Happy Ending' is the only Broadway musical I am aware of in which the leads are made of metal. (Although I've seen plenty of shows where it sure seemed like they were). It's an extremely unusual circumstance, and hardly one to draw broad conclusions from. In works about Asian humans, like the Imelda Marcos musical 'Here Lies Love,' something like this would never happen anymore. Feldman, who was nothing short of sublime in last season's 'We Had A World,' starts performing at the Belasco Theatre on Sept. 2. The uproar should die down well before that. And then fall on Broadway can resume being 'Happy.'
UPI
6 hours ago
- UPI
Trailblazing country music singer Jeannie Seely dies at 85
Hosts Luke Bryan (left), Jeannie Seely and Peyton Manning introduce Miranda Lambert during the 56th Annual Country Music Awards at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tenn., on Nov. 9, 2022. Seely died at 85 on Friday. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo Aug. 2 (UPI) -- Singer Jeannie Seely, who helped transform the image of women in country music, has died. She was 85. Seely died Friday in a hospice in the Nashville area, the Country Music Association said, and her publicist, Don Murray Grubbs told told The Tennessean that she died after an intestinal infection. Seely made her debut at Nashville's Grand Ole Opry in 1966 when she was 25, going on to make 5,397 appearances, including her last appearance on Feb. 22, more than any other performer appearing there. "While I've had the privilege of working with Jeannie Seely over the past 25 years, my immediate grief is deeply personal," Country Music Association CEO Sarah Trahern said. "She mentored countless artists, especially women, and while they learned from her confidence and wit, she reminded us she was learning from them too. That humility was part of her magic." Seely became the first woman to host the Grand Ole Opry show, and in 1985 was the first woman to host a half-segment of the Opry. "I feel very fortunate to be part of the Opry tradition and I truly am indebted to all the wonderful fans who have supported me over the years," Seely once said, according to Between 1966 and 1974, she had more than a dozen Top 40 country hits, including Don't Touch Me, which reached No. 2 on the Billboard country chart and appeared on the mainstream Hot 100. A variety of other singers, including folk singer Carolyn Hester, reggae artist Nicky Thomas and soul music legend Etta James, recorded versions of the the song, which favors emotional commitment over sexual gratification. That song earned her the Grammy Award for Best Female Country Vocal Performance in 1967. It was written by Hank Cochran, who became her husband. They later divorced in 1979, and in 2010 she married Nashville lawyer Gene Ward, who died last year. Other hit singles of heres included All Right (I'll Sign the Papers) in 1971 about divorce; Welcome Home to Nothing in 1968 about a marriage gone bad and Take Me to Bed in 1978. "I think of myself as a feminist," she said. "My idea of 'feminist' is to make sure that women have the same choices that men have always had, and that we are respected for our roles -- whatever they are -- as much as any man is respected for his." Seely changed the image of performers with her songs and wearing miniskirts and go-go boots, including on the usually conservative Opy stage. "I was the main woman that kept kicking on that door to get to host the Opry segments," Seely told the Nashville Scene newspaper in 2005. "I used to say to my former manager Hal Durham, 'Tell me again why is it women can't host on the Opry?' He'd rock on his toes and jingle his change and say, 'It's tradition, Jeannie.' And I'd say, 'Oh, that's right. It's tradition. It just smells like discrimination.'" Seely was born on July 6 in Titusville, Pa., and later changed her name from Seeley to Seely. She first performed on radio station WMGW in Meadville, Pa., at 11 years old. Seely worked at Imperial Records in Hollywood, Calif., as a secretary. She wrote the song Anyone Who Knows What Love is (Will Understand) with Randy Newman and two other collaborators. It reached the the Hot 100 in a version by Irma Thomas in 1964. Boyz II Men and others more than 50 years later recorded the song, which was used in episodes of the science-fiction TV series Black Mirror. In 1965, she signed with Challenge Records, which was owned by Gene Autry. Seely moved to Nashville in 1969 with her husband. She signed with Monument Records, where Don't Touch Me was recorded. The singer turned to bluegrass in the 2000's, including singing a duet with Ralph Stanley. In 2005, in her mid 60s, she sang with country singers Kathy Mattea and Pam Tillis in the Nashville production of The Vagina Monologues. Seely was seriously injured in an auto crash in 1977. Earlier this year, she had back surgery and had complications. She had abdominal surgery in April and then contracted pneumonia before celebrating her 85th birthday on July 6. "Over the past several weeks, I've received so many wonderful messages of love and concern about being missed on the Grand Ole Opry and on 'Sundays with Seely' on Willie's Roadhouse," she told fans in May. "Thank you for those, and I assure you that I miss you just as much!" Notable deaths of 2025 Ryne Sandberg Chicago Cubs Chicago Cubs Hall of Fame second baseman Ryne Sandberg waves to the crowd before throwing out a ceremonial first pitch at Wrigley Field in Chicago on October 12, 2015. Sandberg died on July 28 after a battle with cancer at the age of 65. Photo by Brian Kersey/UPI | License Photo
