Icarus's Mother
   HOME





Icarus's Mother
''Icarus' Mother'' is a one-act play by Sam Shepard. It was first staged at the Caffe Cino in 1965, directed by Michael Smith, a drama critic, with a cast that included John Coe, a veteran of the Living Theatre. It was included in the first published collection of Shepard's play scripts, entitled ''Five Plays'' (1966). Overview As the play opens, a group of five people (three men, two women) are digesting a big picnic meal and belching. They are lying on a lawn near a beach, while waiting for a fireworks display to begin. Although the characters don't specifically mention the Fourth of July, a number of patriotic references are used. A jet plane is flying overhead. Various kinds of funny but tense conflicts, word games, and mind games take place among the group. Two of the men, Howard and Bill, seem to be conspiring against the others. They send up smoke signals The smoke signal is one of the oldest forms of long-distance communication. It is a form of visual communic ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play ''Buried Child'' and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film ''The Right Stuff (film), The Right Stuff''. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. ''New York (magazine), New York'' magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of hi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Drama
Drama is the specific Mode (literature), mode of fiction Mimesis, represented in performance: a Play (theatre), play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on Radio drama, radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the Epic poetry, epic and the Lyric poetry, lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's ''Poetics (Aristotle), Poetics'' ()—the earliest work of dramatic theory. The term "drama" comes from a Ancient Greek, Greek word meaning "deed" or "Action (philosophy), act" (Classical Greek: , ''drâma''), which is derived from "I do" (Classical Greek: , ''dráō''). The two masks associated with drama represent the traditional Genre, generic division between Comedy (drama), comedy and tragedy. In English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages), the word ''Play (theatre), play'' or ''game'' (translating the Old English, Anglo-Saxon ''pleġan'' or Latin ''ludus'') wa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


One-act
A one-act play is a play that has only one act, as distinct from plays that occur over several acts. One-act plays may consist of one or more scenes. The 20-40 minute play has emerged as a popular subgenre of the one-act play, especially in writing competitions. One act plays make up the overwhelming majority of fringe theatre shows including at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The origin of the one-act play may be traced to the very beginning of recorded Western drama: in ancient Greece, ''Cyclops'', a satyr play by Euripides, is an early example. The satyr play was a farcical short work that came after a trilogy of multi-act serious drama plays. A few notable examples of one act plays emerged before the 19th century including various versions of the Everyman play and works by Moliere and Calderon.Francis M. Dunn. ''Tragedy's End: Closure and Innovation in Euripidean Drama''. Oxford University Press (1996). One act plays became more common in the 19th century and are now a standard ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, the ''Times'' serves as one of the country's Newspaper of record, newspapers of record. , ''The New York Times'' had 9.13 million total and 8.83 million online subscribers, both by significant margins the List of newspapers in the United States, highest numbers for any newspaper in the United States; the total also included 296,330 print subscribers, making the ''Times'' the second-largest newspaper by print circulation in the United States, following ''The Wall Street Journal'', also based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' is published by the New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, whose current chairman and the paper's publ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Caffe Cino
Caffe Cino was an Off-Off-Broadway theater founded in 1958 by Joe Cino. The West Village coffeehouse, located at 31 Cornelia Street, was initially conceived as a venue for poetry, folk music, and visual art exhibitions. The plays produced at the Cino, however, became most prominent, and it is now considered the "birthplace of Off-Off-Broadway". The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 9, 2017. Beginnings and early productions Joe Cino was born into an Italian-American family, and moved from Buffalo, New York to be a dancer in New York City. After 10 years, he used his $400 in savings and opened the Caffe Cino Art Gallery. Initially, Cino encouraged his friends to hang their artwork on the walls. That led to poetry readings, which led to staged readings and eventually to productions of plays. During the early days of the Cino, plays were produced on the floor. A makeshift 8x8-foot stage was later created using milk cartons and carpet remn ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Theatre Director
A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. The director thereby collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff to coordinate research and work on all the aspects of the production which includes the Technical and the Performance aspects. The technical aspects include: stagecraft, costume design, theatrical properties (props), lighting design, set design, and sound design for the production. The performance aspects include: acting, dance, orchestra, chants, and stage combat. If the production is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Michael Townsend Smith
Michael Townsend Smith (born October 5, 1935) is an American playwright, theatre director, impresario, critic, and lighting designer. Life and career Smith was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and received his primary education in Kansas City. He then went to the Hotchkiss School and to Yale University. He was a theatre critic for ''The Village Voice'' during the 1960s and early 1970s, and was active in the development of Off-Off-Broadway theatre in New York City. He also worked as a director, playwright, and lighting designer during this time. Smith directed early works by Sam Shepard, Ronald Tavel, María Irene Fornés, Emanuel Peluso, Jean-Claude van Itallie, Soren Agenoux, H. M. Koutoukas, and William M. Hoffman, and others. He also directed some of his own plays, and works by Samuel Beckett, Edward Albee, Christopher Fry, and Gertrude Stein. During the 1960s, Smith interviewed Wolfgang Zuckermann, noted manufacturer and scholar of harpsichords, for ''The Village Voice''. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Drama Critic
A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art, literature, music, cinema, theater, fashion, architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or government policy. Critical judgments, whether derived from critical thinking or not, weigh up a range of factors, including an assessment of the extent to which the item under review achieves its purpose and its creator's intention and a knowledge of its context. They may also include a positive or negative personal response. Characteristics of a good critic are articulateness, preferably having the ability to use language with a high level of appeal and skill. Sympathy, sensitivity and insight are also important. Form, style and medium are all considered by the critic. In architecture and food criticism, the item's function, value and cost may be added components. Critics are publicly accepted and, to a significant degree, followed because of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


John Coe (actor)
John Coe may refer to: * Jonas Coe (1805–1864), American-born naval commander * John D. Coe (1755–1824), American farmer and politician from New York * John W. Coe (1839–1890), American politician from New York {{hndis, Coe, John ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Belch
Burping (also called belching and eructation) is the release of gas from the upper Gastrointestinal tract, digestive tract (esophagus and stomach) of animals through the mouth. It is usually Hearing, audible. In humans, burping can be caused by normal eating processes, or as a side effect of other medical conditions. There is a range of levels of social acceptance for burping: within certain contexts and cultures, burping is acceptable and may even be perceived as humorous, while in others it is seen as impolite or even offensive and therefore unacceptable. Humans are not the only animals that burp: it is very common among other mammals. In particular, burping by domesticated ruminants, such as cows or sheep, is a major contributor of methane emissions and may Environmental impact of meat production, have a negative effect on the environment. Significant research is being done to find mitigation strategies for ruminant burping, e.g. modifying the animals' diets with ''Asparagop ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  



MORE