|
Jessica Swale
Jessica Swale is a British playwright, theatre director and screenwriter. Her first play, ''Blue Stockings,'' premiered at Shakespeare's Globe in 2013. It is widely performed by UK amateur companies and is also studied on the Drama GCSE syllabus. In 2016 her play ''Nell Gwynn'' won the Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, after it transferred from the Globe to the West End, starring Gemma Arterton as the eponymous heroine. Early life and education Born in Reading, Berkshire, Swale completed her secondary education at Kendrick School, Reading, before studying drama at the University of Exeter. She completed her training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (MA Advanced Theatre Practice), where she trained as a director. Career After drama school, she worked as Max Stafford-Clark's associate director at Out of Joint, on productions including ''The Overwhelming'' at the National Theatre and Andersen's ''English'' at Hampstead. In 2006 she set up Red Handed Theatre Compa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brackets
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'right' bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the Writing system#Directionality, directionality of the context. Specific forms of the mark include parentheses (also called "rounded brackets"), square brackets, curly brackets (also called 'braces'), and angle brackets (also called 'chevrons'), as well as various less common pairs of symbols. As well as signifying the overall class of punctuation, the word "bracket" is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified word "bracket" refers to the parenthesis (round bracket); in the United States, the square bracket. Glossary of mathematical sym ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blue Stockings (play)
''Blue Stockings'' is the first full-length play by Jessica Swale. It is set at Girton College, Cambridge in 1896. Its title refers to bluestockings, a derogatory term for female intellectuals. The action involves four very talented female undergraduates and the campaign to be allowed like their male colleagues to receive a formal degree qualification at the end of their studies. The play touches on some of the issues surrounding the feminist ideals of the late nineteenth-century New Woman including female bicycle-riding, equal education rights, sexual autonomy, and political enfranchisement. The play was developed during 2012 at the National Theatre Studio and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. Its first full production ran at Shakespeare's Globe from 24 August to 11 October 2013. The printed play includes a dedication to female education activist and Nobel laureate, Malala Yousafzai. Characters The Girton Girls *Tess Moffat, ''a curious girl'' *Carolyn Addison, ''an early b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sense And Sensibility
''Sense and Sensibility'' is a novel by Jane Austen, published in 1811. It was published anonymously; ''By A Lady'' appears on the title page where the author's name might have been. It tells the story of the Dashwood sisters, Elinor (age 19) and Marianne (age 16½) as they come of age. They have an older half-brother, John, and a younger sister, Margaret (age 13). The novel follows the three Dashwood sisters as they must move with their widowed mother from the estate on which they grew up, Norland Park. Because Norland is passed down to John, the product of Mr. Dashwood's first marriage, and his young son, the four Dashwood women need to look for a new home. They have the opportunity to rent a modest home, Barton Cottage, on the property of a distant relative, Sir John Middleton. There Elinor and Marianne experience love, romance, and heartbreak. The novel is set in South West England, London, and Sussex, probably between 1792 and 1797. The novel, which sold out its first prin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre
Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre holds an eight week annual repertory season in Chester, United Kingdom. The productions are staged in the round, in a purpose built theatre constructed each summer in Grosvenor Park. The theatre The company was formed under the name Chester Performs and staged its first production of Much Ado About Nothing in 2010, using a simple wooden platform stage. The next year it moved to using a thrust stage format in a horseshoe shaped theatre; the actors performed on a wood chip base flooring. In 2015 the U-shape auditorium was replaced by a full in the round theatre, with terraced seating, some 40% of which is under cover. There is a range of seating types, some designed as picnic terraces; picnic hampers and drinks are available. The theatre is dismantled and rebuilt each year in the Victorian Grade II* listed Grosvenor Park. Total seating capacity is 535. Storyhouse In 2017 the empty Odeon theatre in Chester was refurbished and opened as a new ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett
Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett (24 November 1849 – 29 October 1924) was a British-American novelist and playwright. She is best known for the three children's novels ''Little Lord Fauntleroy'' (published in 1885–1886), '' A Little Princess'' (1905), and ''The Secret Garden'' (1911). Frances Eliza Hodgson was born in Cheetham, Manchester, England. After her father died in 1853, when Frances was 3 years old, the family fell on straitened circumstances and in 1865 emigrated to the United States, settling in New Market, Tennessee. Frances began her remunerative writing career there at age 19 to help earn money for the family, publishing stories in magazines. In 1870, her mother died. In Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1873 she married Swan Burnett, who became a medical doctor. Their first son Lionel was born a year later. The Burnetts lived for two years in Paris, where their second son Vivian was born, before returning to the United States to live in Washington, D.C. Burnett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Secret Garden
''The Secret Garden'' is a novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett first published in book form in 1911, after serialisation in ''The American Magazine'' (November 1910 – August 1911). Set in England, it is one of Burnett's most popular novels and seen as a classic of English children's literature. Several stage and film adaptations have been made. The American edition was published by the Frederick A. Stokes Company with illustrations by Maria Louise Kirk (signed as M. L. Kirk) and the British edition by Heinemann with illustrations by Charles Heath Robinson. Plot summary At the turn of the 20th century, Mary Lennox is a neglected and unloved 10-year-old girl, born in British India to wealthy British parents who never wanted her and made an effort to ignore her. She is cared for primarily by native servants, who allow her to become spoilt, demanding and self-centred. After a cholera epidemic kills Mary's parents, the few surviving servants flee the house without Mary. She is dis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry of William Wordsworth. He was highly critical of much in Victorian society, especially on the declining status of rural people in Britain, such as those from his native South West England. While Hardy wrote poetry throughout his life and regarded himself primarily as a poet, his first collection was not published until 1898. Initially, he gained fame as the author of novels such as '' Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1874), ''The Mayor of Casterbridge'' (1886), '' Tess of the d'Urbervilles'' (1891), and ''Jude the Obscure'' (1895). During his lifetime, Hardy's poetry was acclaimed by younger poets (particularly the Georgians) who viewed him as a mentor. After his death his poems were lauded by Ezra Pound, W. H. Auden and Philip Larkin. Many of his novels ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Far From The Madding Crowd
''Far from the Madding Crowd'' (1874) is Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and his first major literary success. It originally appeared anonymously as a monthly serial in ''Cornhill Magazine'', where it gained a wide readership. The novel is set in Thomas Hardy's Wessex in rural southwest England, as had been his earlier ''Under the Greenwood Tree''. It deals in themes of love, honour and betrayal, against a backdrop of the seemingly idyllic, but often harsh, realities of a farming community in Victorian England. It describes the life and relationships of Bathsheba Everdene with her lonely neighbour William Boldwood, the faithful shepherd Gabriel Oak, and the thriftless soldier Sergeant Troy. On publication, critical notices were plentiful and mostly positive. Hardy revised the text extensively for the 1895 edition and made further changes for the 1901 edition. The novel has an enduring legacy. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 48 on the BBC's survey The Big Read, while in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clive King
David Clive King (28 April 1924 – 10 July 2018) was an English author best known for his children's book ''Stig of the Dump'' (1963). He served in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in the last years of the Second World War and then worked for the British Council in a wide range of overseas postings, from which he later drew inspiration for his novels. Crouch, Marcus, "King, (David) Clive" in ''Twentieth Century Children's Writers'', ed. D. L. Kirkpatrick, Macmillan, 2nd edition 1983, pp. 430–31. Life and career Clive King was born in Richmond, Surrey England on 28 April 1924 and grew up in Ash, Kent. He was educated at the King's School, Rochester, Kent from 1933 to 1941 and then at Downing College, Cambridge from 1941 to 1943, graduating with a BA in English. From 1943 to 1946 He served as a Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, which took him to the Arctic, India, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Australia, Malaya and Japan, where he saw the then recent devastation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Summerland (2020 Film)
''Summerland'' is a 2020 British drama film written and directed by Jessica Swale, starring Gemma Arterton, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Lucas Bond, Dixie Egerickx, Siân Phillips, Penelope Wilton and Tom Courtenay. Arterton plays a reclusive writer forced to take in a young boy entrusted to her care during the Battle of Britain in 1940, and, later, during the early days of the London Blitz. It was released in the United Kingdom on 31 July 2020 by Lionsgate. Plot In 1940 Alice Lamb, who is working on her typewriter, lives in a cottage by the seaside in Kent. She has lived in the village since before the start of WWII, during which time she tolerated the harassment by local children who thought she was a witch because she was a loner. As part of the war effort, the brusque and reclusive writer is entrusted with the care of a young boy, Frank, who has been evacuated from London where it is unsafe. Alice had not volunteered to be a host and does not want to care for him as she fears it wil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
The Sam Wanamaker Playhouse is an indoor theatre forming part of Shakespeare's Globe, along with the Globe Theatre on Bankside, London. Built making use of 17th-century plans for an indoor theatre, the playhouse recalls the layout and style of the Blackfriars Theatre, although it is not an exact reconstruction. Its shell was built during the construction of the Shakespeare's Globe complex, notable for the reconstruction of the open-air Globe Theatre of the same period. The shell was used as a space for education workshops and rehearsals until enough money was raised to complete the playhouse. It opened in January 2014, named after Sam Wanamaker, the leading figure in the Globe's reconstruction. History The shell was intended to house a simulacrum of the sixteenth-century Blackfriars Theatre from the opposite side of the Thames, adapted as a playhouse in 1596 during Elizabeth's reign. The Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's playing company, began to use it in 1608, five years int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
