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God (play)
''God'', subtitled ''A Comedy in One Act'', is a play by Woody Allen. It was first published in 1975, along with ''Death'', and Allen's short stories in Woody Allen's book ''Without Feathers''. The comedy is modelled after Bertolt Brecht's epic theatre, in that the characters frequently point out the artificiality of the play and switch roles. Actors also play various audience members, and Woody Allen himself appears at one point as a voice on a phone. Plot The setting is an ancient Greek amphitheatre, circa 500BC. Diabetes, an actor, and Hepatitis, a writer, sit on stage lamenting about how Hepatitis' new play lacks a good ending. They begin to frequently break the fourth wall, interacting with the audience and making note about how they are fictional characters in a play. Hepatitis asks if anyone has a major in philosophy, resulting in an audience member named Doris Levine joining the action on stage, while Diabetes calls the play's author Woody Allen for advice on how to pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing material for television in the 1950s, mainly ''Your Show of Shows'' (1950–1954) working alongside Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, Larry Gelbart, and Neil Simon. He also published several books featuring short stories and wrote humor pieces for ''The New Yorker''. In the early 1960s, he performed as a stand-up comedian in Greenwich Village alongside Lenny Bruce, Elaine May, Mike Nichols, and Joan Rivers. There he developed a monologue style (rather than traditional jokes) and the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish. He released three comedy albums during the mid to late 1960s, earning a Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album nomination for his 1964 comedy album entitled simply '' Woody Allen''. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Death (play)
''Death'' is a play by Woody Allen. It was first published in 1975, along with ''God'', and other short stories in Woody Allen's book ''Without Feathers''. It is a comedic version of Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play '' The Killer''. His 1991 film ''Shadows and Fog'' was based on this play. Plot Kleinman, a meek salesman, is awoken late one night by a mob led by a man named Hacker, who forces him to join their vigilante group dedicated to catching a serial killer who frequently changes his modus operandi. Hacker claims to have a plan to catch the maniac, but when Kleinman asks about what he has to do, each man in the group says that they are only aware of their own part of the plan so the killer won't catch on. They march him to the street to stand guard and leave him on his own to await his part in the plan. Kleinman is eventually joined by a doctor, who tells him that his interest in the case is to catch the killer so he can understand a psychopathic mind. The doctor leaves, and Klei ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Without Feathers
''Without Feathers'' (1975, ) is one of Woody Allen's best-known books, spending four months on the ''New York Times'' Best Seller List. It is a collection of essays and two one-act plays, ''Death'' and ''God''. Title meaning The title ''Without Feathers'' is a reference to Emily Dickinson Emily Elizabeth Dickinson (December 10, 1830 – May 15, 1886) was an American poet. Little-known during her life, she has since been regarded as one of the most important figures in American poetry. Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massach ...'s poem "'Hope' Is the Thing with Feathers", reflecting Allen's neurotic sense of hopelessness. The poem is mentioned in one of the stories. Contents # Selections from The Allen Notebooks # Examining Psychic Phenomena # A Guide to Some of the Lesser Ballets # The Scrolls # Lovborg's Women Considered # The Whore of Mensa The New Yorker'', Dec. 16, 1974, pp.37-8 # Death (A Play) # The Early Essays # A Brief Yet Helpful Guide to Civil Disobedience # ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epic Theatre
Epic theatre (german: episches Theater) is a theatrical movement arising in the early to mid-20th century from the theories and practice of a number of theatre practitioners who responded to the political climate of the time through the creation of new political dramas. Epic theatre is not meant to refer to the scale or the scope of the work, but rather to the form that it takes. Epic theatre emphasizes the audience's perspective and reaction to the piece through a variety of techniques that deliberately cause them to individually engage in a different way. The purpose of epic theatre is not to encourage an audience to suspend their disbelief, but rather to force them to see their world as it is. History The term " epic theatre" comes from Erwin Piscator who coined it during his first year as director of Berlin's Volksbühne (1924–27).Wiles (1980). Piscator aimed to encourage playwrights to address issues related to "contemporary existence." This new subject matter would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece ( el, Ἑλλάς, Hellás) was a northeastern Mediterranean civilization, existing from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of classical antiquity ( AD 600), that comprised a loose collection of culturally and linguistically related city-states and other territories. Most of these regions were officially unified only once, for 13 years, under Alexander the Great's empire from 336 to 323 BC (though this excludes a number of Greek city-states free from Alexander's jurisdiction in the western Mediterranean, around the Black Sea, Cyprus, and Cyrenaica). In Western history, the era of classical antiquity was immediately followed by the Early Middle Ages and the Byzantine period. Roughly three centuries after the Late Bronze Age collapse of Mycenaean Greece, Greek urban poleis began to form in the 8th century BC, ushering in the Archaic period and the colonization of the Mediterranean Basin. This was followed by the age of Classical G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amphitheatre
An amphitheatre (British English) or amphitheater (American English; both ) is an open-air venue used for entertainment, performances, and sports. The term derives from the ancient Greek ('), from ('), meaning "on both sides" or "around" and ('), meaning "place for viewing". Ancient Roman amphitheatres were oval or circular in plan, with seating tiers that surrounded the central performance area, like a modern open-air stadium. In contrast, both ancient Greek and ancient Roman theatres were built in a semicircle, with tiered seating rising on one side of the performance area. Modern parlance uses "amphitheatre" for any structure with sloping seating, including theatre-style stages with spectator seating on only one side, theatres in the round, and stadia. They can be indoor or outdoor. Natural formations of similar shape are sometimes known as natural amphitheatres. Roman amphitheatres About 230 Roman amphitheatres have been found across the area of the Roman Empire. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fourth Wall
The fourth wall is a performance convention in which an invisible, imaginary wall separates actors from the audience. While the audience can see through this ''wall'', the convention assumes the actors act as if they cannot. From the 16th century onward, the rise of illusionism in staging practices, which culminated in the realism and naturalism of the theatre of the 19th century, led to the development of the fourth wall concept. The metaphor suggests a relationship to the mise-en-scène behind a proscenium arch. When a scene is set indoors and three of the walls of its room are presented onstage, in what is known as a box set, the fourth of them would run along the line (technically called the proscenium) dividing the room from the auditorium. The ''fourth wall'', though, is a theatrical convention, rather than of set design. The actors ignore the audience, focus their attention exclusively on the dramatic world, and remain absorbed in its fiction, in a state that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deus Ex Machina
''Deus ex machina'' ( , ; plural: ''dei ex machina''; English "god out of the machine") is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and unlikely occurrence. Its function is generally to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device. Origin of the expression ''Deus ex machina'' is a Latin calque . The term was coined from the conventions of ancient Greek theater, where actors who were playing gods were brought onto stage using a machine. The machine could be either a crane (''mechane'') used to lower actors from above or a riser that brought them up through a trapdoor. Aeschylus introduced the idea, and it was used often to resolve the conflict and conclude the drama. The device is associated mostly with Greek tragedy, although it also appeared in comedies. Ancient examples Aeschylus used the device in his '' Eume ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blanche DuBois
Blanche DuBois (married name Grey) is a fictional character in Tennessee Williams' 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play ''A Streetcar Named Desire''. The character was written for Tallulah Bankhead and made popular to later audiences with Elia Kazan's 1951 film adaptation of Williams' play; ''A Streetcar Named Desire'', starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando. Character overview The recently penniless and homeless Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans--though with the attitude of a wealthy woman--to stay with her sister Stella and her brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski. A former schoolteacher from a wealthy family, she has been evicted from her family home, Belle Reve, after the deaths of several family members wiped out her and Stella's inheritance. It is also later revealed that, years earlier, her husband, Allan Grey, committed suicide after she caught him having sex with another man. She had a series of meaningless affairs to numb her grief, and was soon thrown out of her hometown ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of ''The Glass Menagerie'' (1944) in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1947), ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1955), ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' (1959), and ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's '' Long Day ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Story Within A Story
A story within a story, also referred to as an embedded narrative, is a literary device in which a character within a story becomes the narrator of a second story (within the first one). Multiple layers of stories within stories are sometimes called nested stories. A play may have a brief play within it, such as Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''; a film may show the characters watching a short film; or a novel may contain a short story within the novel. A story within a story can be used in all types of narration: novels, short stories, plays, television programs, films, poems, songs, video games, and philosophical essays. The inner stories are told either simply to add entertainment or more usually to act as an example to the other characters. In either case, the inner story often has a symbolic and psychological significance for the characters in the outer story. There is often some parallel between the two stories, and the fiction of the inner story is used to reveal the truth i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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