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Almost Free Theatre
The Almost Free Theatre was an alternative and fringe theatre set up by American actor and social activist E. D. Berman in 1971 in Rupert Street, Soho, London. Audiences paid what they could afford, but at least one penny. It also pioneered the lunchtime performance, which bought in a whole new audience. The theatre staged seasons, including the first season of gay plays in Britain, the first women's season, a Jewish season, an anti-nuclear season and a season to mark the 1976 American Bicentennial. There were readings of John Arden and Margaretta D'Arcy's controversial ''The Non-Stop Connolly Show'' (1976) on Irish politics. Numerous individual new plays by writers Mike Stott, Henry Livings, Michael Stevens, Wolf Mankowitz and Edward Bond were performed. Tom Stoppard developed several of his key one-act plays here, including '' After Magritte'' and ''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth''. His highly successful ''Dirty Linen and New-Found-Land'' went on to transfer from the Almost ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rupert Street
Rupert Street is a street in London's Soho area, running parallel to Wardour Street and crossing Shaftesbury Avenue. Rupert Street is first mentioned in records in 1677, and named for Prince Rupert of the Rhine. The northern part of Rupert Street is part of Soho's gay village. A small alleyway, Rupert Court, links Rupert Street to Wardour Street in this area. At the northern end of Rupert Street, Rupert Street meets Brewer Street, and is continued by Walker's Court. The southern part of Rupert Street is part of Soho's Chinatown A Chinatown () is an ethnic enclave of Chinese people located outside Greater China, most often in an urban setting. Areas known as "Chinatown" exist throughout the world, including Europe, North America, South America, Asia, Africa and Austra ... area. References External links * Streets in the City of Westminster Soho, London {{london-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was developed from farmland by Henry VIII in 1536, when it became a royal park. It became a parish in its own right in the late 17th century, when buildings started to be developed for the upper class, including the laying out of Soho Square in the 1680s. St Anne's Church was established during the late 17th century, and remains a significant local landmark; other churches are the Church of Our Lady of the Assumption and St Gregory and St Patrick's Church in Soho Square. The aristocracy had mostly moved away by the mid-19th century, when Soho was particularly badly hit by an outbreak of cholera in 1854. For much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation as a base for the sex industry in addition to its night life and its location for the headquarte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Arden
John Arden (26 October 1930 – 28 March 2012) was an English playwright who at his death was lauded as "one of the most significant British playwrights of the late 1950s and early 60s". Career Born in Barnsley, son of the manager of a glass factory, he was educated at Sedbergh School in Cumbria, King's College, Cambridge and the Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied architecture. He first gained critical attention for the radio play ''The Life of Man'' in 1956 shortly after finishing his studies. Arden was initially associated with the English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre in London. His 1959 play, ''Serjeant Musgrave's Dance'', in which four army deserters arrive in a northern mining town to exact retribution for an act of colonial violence, is considered to be his best. His work was influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre as in ''Left-Handed Liberty'' (1965, on the anniversary of Magna Carta). Other plays include ''Live Like Pigs'', ''The Workhouse Donk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margaretta D'Arcy
Margaretta Ruth D'Arcy (born 14 June 1934, London) is an Irish actress, writer, playwright, and activist. D'Arcy has been a member of Aosdána since its inauguration and is known for addressing Irish nationalism, civil liberties, and women's rights in her work. In 2014, she was imprisoned after she refused to sign a bond saying that she wouldn't trespass on non-public parts of Shannon Airport. Her arrest was a consequence of trespassing on airport property during protests over United States military stopovers at Shannon Airport. Family and theatrical life She was born in London to a Russian Jewish mother and an Irish Catholic father. D'Arcy worked in small theatres in Dublin from the age of fifteen and later became an actress.() She was married in 1957 to English playwright and author John Arden, and they frequently collaborated. They settled in Galway and established the Galway Theatre Workshop in 1976. The couple had five sons, one of whom predeceased his mother. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mike Stott (playwright)
Mike may refer to: Animals * Mike (cat), cat and guardian of the British Museum * Mike the Headless Chicken, chicken that lived for 18 months after his head had been cut off * Mike (chimpanzee), a chimpanzee featured in several books and documentaries Arts * Mike (miniseries), a 2022 Hulu limited series based on the life of American boxer Mike Tyson * Mike (2022 film), a Malayalam film produced by John Abraham * ''Mike'' (album), an album by Mike Mohede * ''Mike'' (1926 film), an American film * MIKE (musician), American rapper, songwriter and record * ''Mike'' (novel), a 1909 novel by P. G. Wodehouse * "Mike" (song), by Elvana Gjata and Ledri Vula featuring John Shahu * Mike (''Twin Peaks''), a character from ''Twin Peaks'' * "Mike", a song by Xiu Xiu from their 2004 album ''Fabulous Muscles'' Businesses * Mike (cellular network), a defunct Canadian cellular network * Mike and Ike, a candies brand Military * MIKE Force, a unit in the Vietnam War * Ivy Mike, the first t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Livings
Henry Livings (20 September 1929 – 20 February 1998) was an English playwright and screenwriter, who worked extensively in British television and theatre from the 1960s to the 1990s. Early life and career Livings was born in Prestwich, Lancashire, England. He won a scholarship from the Stand Grammar School in Whitefield to the University of Liverpool but attended for only two years, leaving in 1950 without graduating. He went on to serve in the Royal Air Force (1950–52), became an expert cook, and held a number of jobs before going into the theatre. He trained as an actor at Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop, which he joined in 1956. Livings appeared in the first of the Carry On films, ''Carry on Sergeant'' (1958) and as Wilf Haddon, Martha Longhurst's son-in-law, on '' Coronation Street'' in May 1964. His first stage play, ''Stop It, Whoever You Are'', about a washroom attendant in a factory, was performed in 1961. The Evening Standard Awards for 1961 named Livin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Stevens (playwright)
Michael Stevens or Mike Stevens may refer to: Entertainment Music *Michael Stevens (composer), American jazz composer and musician *Michael Jefry Stevens (born 1951), American jazz pianist *Mike Stevens (bluegrass harmonica), Canadian harmonica virtuoso * Mike Stevens (saxophonist) (born 1957), British musician and musical director *Mick Stevens (musician) (1953–1987), English guitarist, singer, and songwriter *Meic Stevens (born 1942), Welsh singer-songwriter Other entertainment *Michael Fenton Stevens (born 1958), British actor and comedian *Michael Stevens (producer) (1966–2015), American television producer, director, and writer * Mike Stevens (''Brookside''), fictional character Politics *Mike Stevens (Ohio politician), member of the Ohio House of Representatives *Mike Stevens (South Dakota politician) (born 1953), Republican member of the South Dakota House of Representatives Sports *Mike Stevens (ice hockey, born 1950), ice hockey player who played in the World Hockey ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolf Mankowitz
Cyril Wolf Mankowitz (7 November 1924 – 20 May 1998) was an English writer, playwright and screenwriter. He is particularly known for three novels— ''Make Me an Offer'' (1952), '' A Kid for Two Farthings'' (1953) and ''My Old Man's a Dustman''—and other plays, historical studies, and the screenplays for many successful films which have received awards including the Oscar, Bafta and the Cannes Grand Prix. Early life Mankowitz was born in Fashion Street in Spitalfields in the East End of London, the heart of London's Jewish community until the 1940s, of Russian-Jewish descent. He was educated at East Ham Grammar School for boys and Downing College, Cambridge.John CaldeObituary: Wolf Mankowitz ''The Independent'', 23 May 1998 Career His background provided Mankowitz with the material for his most successful book '' A Kid for Two Farthings'' (1953). This was adapted as a film by the director Carol Reed in 1955; Mankowitz himself wrote the screenplay. In 1958 he wrote the bo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Bond
Edward Bond (born 18 July 1934) is an English playwright, theatre director, poet, theorist and screenwriter. He is the author of some fifty plays, among them '' Saved'' (1965), the production of which was instrumental in the abolition of theatre censorship in the UK. Other well-received works include ''Narrow Road to the Deep North'' (1968), ''Lear'' (1971), ''The Sea'' (1973), ''The Fool'' (1975), ''Restoration'' (1981), and the ''War'' trilogy (1985). Bond is broadly considered among the major living dramatists but he has always been and remains highly controversial because of the violence shown in his plays, the radicalism of his statements about modern theatre and society, and his theories on drama. Early life Edward Bond was born on 18 July 1934 into a lower-working-class family in Holloway, North London. As a child during World War II he was evacuated to the countryside but was present during the bombings on London in 1940 and 1944. This early exposure to the vio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tom Stoppard
Sir Tom Stoppard (born , 3 July 1937) is a Czech born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. Stoppard was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997. Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright. Stoppard's most prominent plays include ''R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
After Magritte
''After Magritte'' is a surreal comedy written by Tom Stoppard in 1970. It was first performed in the Green Banana Restaurant at the Ambiance Lunch-hour Theatre Club in London. History Tom Stoppard wrote ''After Magritte'' during the period of his well-known plays ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead'' and ''The Real Inspector Hound.'' Stoppard was already well-established as a writer of stage, radio, and television plays. The idea struck for ''After Magritte'' came to him while writing the Radio play ''Artist Descending a Staircase,'' which was based on a Marcel Duchamp painting of a similar name. Around this time Tom Stoppard was beginning to become interested in bringing his plays to an American stage. Motifs Surrealism ''After Magritte'' is an example of Surrealism in the arts, in which what is seen by the naked eye is not what the art necessarily expresses. The basis of the surrealism in this play is the predisposition of Rene Magritte as a surrealist painter; Stop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth
''Dogg's Hamlet, Cahoot's Macbeth'' are two plays by Tom Stoppard, written to be performed together. This was not the first time that Stoppard had made use of Shakespearean texts in his own plays or even the first time he had used ''Hamlet'' although the context is far different from that of his earlier ''Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead''. Stoppard would return to the theme of artistic dissent against the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in ''Rock 'n' Roll''. It was performed on Broadway for 28 performances and 2 previews at the 22 Steps opening October 3, 1979 and closing October 28, 1979. ''Dogg's Hamlet'' In ''Dogg's Hamlet'' the actors speak a language called Dogg, which consists of ordinary English words but with meanings completely different from the ones normally assigned them. Three schoolchildren are rehearsing a performance of ''Hamlet'' in English, which is to them a foreign language. ''Dogg's Hamlet'' was initially inspired by a scenario proposed by philosopher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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