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Atlantic Theatre Festival
The Atlantic Theatre Festival (ATF) was a professional theatre company located in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada. The Theatre Festival presented a "broad range of critically acclaimed theatre classics" during the summer in Wolfville's Festival Theatre, the former town hockey arena that was converted into a 504 seat, thrust stage theatre and professional production facility by the Atlantic Theatre Festival Society (a non-profit charity). History Over two million dollars was contributed by the local, Nova Scotian, and Canadian governments to create the Festival Theatre. Stratford Festival veteran Michael Langham was among the directors who brought national acclaim to the festival during the Founder's Season of 1995. The reputation of the festival grew over the following seasons as it attracted the likes of Megan Follows, Christopher Plummer, and area native Peter Donat to join its company. In later years, despite originally being conceived as a classical repertory, the festival main ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Festival Theatre, Wolfville, Nova Scotia (March 2007)
A festival is an event ordinarily celebrated by a community and centering on some characteristic aspect or aspects of that community and its religion or cultures. It is often marked as a local or national holiday, Melā, mela, or Muslim holidays, eid. A festival constitutes typical cases of glocalization, as well as the high culture-low culture interrelationship. Next to religion and folklore, a significant origin is agriculture, agricultural. Food is such a vital resource that many festivals are associated with harvest time. Religious commemoration and thanksgiving for good harvests are blended in events that take place in autumn, such as Halloween in the northern hemisphere and Easter in the southern. Festivals often serve to fulfill specific communal purposes, especially in regard to commemoration or thanking to the gods, goddesses or saints: they are called patronal festivals. They may also provide entertainment, which was particularly important to local communities before ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noises Off
''Noises Off'' is a 1982 play by the English playwright Michael Frayn. Frayn conceived the idea in 1970 while watching from the wings a performance of ''The Two of Us'', a farce that he had written for Lynn Redgrave. He said, "It was funnier from behind than in front, and I thought that one day I must write a farce from behind." The prototype, a short-lived one-act play called ''Exits'', was written and performed in 1977. At the request of his associate, Michael Codron, Frayn expanded this into what would become ''Noises Off''. It takes its title from the theatrical stage direction indicating sounds coming from offstage. Characters of ''Noises Off'' *Lloyd Dallas: The director of a play-within-the-play, ''Nothing On''. Temperamental, exacting and sarcastic. Involved with both Brooke and Poppy. *Dotty Otley: A middle-aged television star who is not only the top-billed star but also one of the play's principal investors. Dating the much younger Garry. *Garry Lejeune: The play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Gibson (playwright)
William Gibson (November 13, 1914 – November 25, 2008) was an American playwright and novelist. He won the Tony Award for Best Play for ''The Miracle Worker'' in 1959, which he later adapted for the film version in 1962. Early life and education Gibson graduated from the City College of New York in 1938, and was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian and Greek ancestry. Work as playwright Gibson's Broadway debut had been with ''Two for the Seesaw'' in 1958, a critically acclaimed two-character play which starred Henry Fonda and, in her own Broadway debut, Anne Bancroft. It was directed by Arthur Penn. Gibson published a chronicle of the vicissitudes of rewriting for the sake of this production with a nonfiction book in the following year, ''The Seesaw Log''. His most famous play is ''The Miracle Worker'' (1959), the story of Helen Keller's childhood education, which won him the Tony Award for Best Play after he adapted it from his original 1957 telefilm script. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Miracle Worker
''The Miracle Worker'' refers to a broadcast, a play and various other adaptations of Helen Keller's 1903 autobiography '' The Story of My Life''. The first of these works was a 1957 ''Playhouse 90'' broadcast written by William Gibson and starring Teresa Wright as Anne Sullivan and Patricia McCormack as Keller. Gibson adapted his teleplay for a 1959 Broadway production with Patty Duke as Keller and Anne Bancroft as Sullivan. The 1962 film also starred Bancroft and Duke. Subsequent television films were released in 1979 and in 2000. Source of the name The title originates in Mark Twain's description of Sullivan as a "miracle workerHe admired both women, and although his personal finances were problematic, he helped arrange the funding of Keller's Radcliffe College education by his friend, financier and industrialist Henry Huttleston Rogers. Play Film * ''The Miracle Worker'' (1962 film) with Anne Bancroft as Annie Sullivan and Patty Duke as Helen Keller * ''The Mi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Taming Of The Shrew
''The Taming of the Shrew'' is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion. The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio "tames" her with various psychological and physical torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina's younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the "ideal" woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brandon Thomas (playwright)
Walter Brandon Thomas (24 December 1848 – 19 June 1914) was an English actor, playwright and songwriter, best known as the author of the farce ''Charley's Aunt''. Born in Liverpool to a family with no theatrical connections, Thomas worked in commerce, and as an occasional journalist, before achieving his ambition of becoming an actor. After a succession of minor roles, he became increasingly sought after as a character actor. He also wrote more than a dozen plays, the most celebrated of which, ''Charley's Aunt'' (1892), broke all historic records for plays of any kind, with an original London run of 1,466 performances and numerous subsequent productions all around the world, film and musical theatre adaptations. Although Thomas never repeated the prodigious success of ''Charley's Aunt'', he maintained a career as an actor and dramatist until his death, acting mostly in comedy, but with occasional serious roles in the plays of Shakespeare and others. Biography Early years Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charley's Aunt
''Charley's Aunt'' is a farce in three acts written by Brandon Thomas. The story centres on Lord Fancourt Babberley, an undergraduate whose friends Jack and Charley persuade him to impersonate the latter's aunt. The complications of the plot include the arrival of the real aunt and the attempts of an elderly fortune hunter to woo the bogus aunt. The play concludes with three pairs of young lovers united, along with an older pair – Charley's real aunt and Jack's widowed father. The play was first performed at the Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds in February 1892. It then opened in London at the Royalty Theatre on 21 December 1892 and quickly transferred to the larger Globe Theatre on 30 January 1893. The production broke the historic record for longest-running play worldwide, running for 1,466 performances. It was produced by the actor W. S. Penley, a friend of Thomas, who appeared as Babberley. The play was also a success on Broadway in 1893, and in Paris, where it had further ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics."Stories ... which are among the supreme achievements in prose narrative.Vodka miniatures, belching and angry cats George Steiner's review of ''The Undiscovered Chekhov'', in ''The Observer'', 13 May 2001. Retrieved 16 February 2007. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife", he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of ''The Seagull'' in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 189 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Three Sisters (play)
''Three Sisters'' (russian: Три сeстры́, translit=Tri sestry) is a play by the Russian author and playwright Anton Chekhov. It was written in 1900 and first performed in 1901 at the Moscow Art Theatre. The play is sometimes included on the short list of Chekhov's outstanding plays, along with ''The Cherry Orchard'', ''The Seagull'' and ''Uncle Vanya''. Characters The Prozorovs * Olga Sergeyevna Prozorova (Olga) – The eldest of the three sisters, she is the matriarchal figure of the Prozorov family, though at the beginning of the play she is only 28 years old. Olga is a teacher at the high school, where she frequently fills in for the headmistress whenever the latter is absent. Olga is a spinster and at one point tells Irina that she would have married "any man, even an old man if he had asked" her. Olga is very motherly even to the elderly servants, keeping on the elderly nurse/retainer Anfisa, long after she has ceased to be useful. When Olga reluctantly takes the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time'' magazine called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as '' |
Blithe Spirit (play)
''Blithe Spirit'' is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric Mediumship, medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost. The play was first seen in the West End theatre, West End in 1941 and ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London. It also did well on Broadway theatre, Broadway later that year, running for 657 performances. The play was Blithe Spirit (1945 film), adapted for the cinema in 1945; a Blithe Spirit (2020 film), second film version followed in 2020. Coward directed a musical theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Lapine
James Elliot Lapine (born January 10, 1949) is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for ''Into the Woods'', ''Falsettos'', and '' Passion''. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn. Early life Lapine was born in Mansfield, Ohio, the son of Lillian (Feld) and David Sanford Lapine. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. Though he did not actively pursue theatre in childhood, Lapine did play Jack in an elementary school production of Jack and the Beanstalk. Career Lapine did graduate study in photography and graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts, where he received an MFA in 1973."Stars Over Broadway, James Lapine" pbs.com, accessed March 10, 2011 He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
