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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 Voic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder (as in a wheelwright or cartwright). The words combine to indicate a person who has "wrought" words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form—a play. (The homophone with "write" is coincidental.) The first recorded use of the term "playwright" is from 1605, 73 years before the first written record of the term "dramatist". It appears to have been first used in a pejorative sense by Ben Jonson to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson uses the word in his Epigram 49, which is thought to refer to John Marston: :''Epigram XLIX — On Playwright'' :PLAYWRIGHT me reads, and still my verses damns, :He says I want the tongue of epigrams ; :I have no salt, no bawdry he doth mea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Claude Van Itallie
Jean-Claude van Itallie (May 25, 1936 – September 9, 2021) was a Belgian-born American playwright, performer, and theatre workshop teacher. He is best known for his 1966 anti-Vietnam War play ''America Hurrah;'' ''The Serpent'', an ensemble play he wrote with Joseph Chaikin's Open Theatre; his theatrical adaptation of the ''Tibetan Book of the Dead''; and his translations of Anton Chekhov's plays. Early life and education Van Itallie was born in Brussels, Belgium on May 25, 1936, to Hugo Ferdinand van Itallie (an investment banker) and Marthe Mathilde Caroline Levy van Itallie. His family was Jewish. In 1940, when the Nazis invaded Brussels, he fled with his family to France, where they received visas to Portugal from the Portuguese consul Aristides de Sousa Mendes. They stayed in Estoril, at the Pensão Royal, between 8 July and 28 September 1940. On the same day, they boarded the ''S.S. Hakozaki Maru'' headed for New York City, arriving on 10 October. Van Itallie grew up ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Company
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music, and dance. Elements of art, such as painted scenery and stagecraft such as lighting are used to enhance the physicality, presence and immediacy of the experience. The specific place of the performance is also named by the word "theatre" as derived from the Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, "a place for viewing"), itself from θεάομαι (theáomai, "to see", "to watch", "to observe"). Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements. Theatre artist Patrice Pav ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fortepiano
A fortepiano , sometimes referred to as a pianoforte, is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1698 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the mid-18th to early-19th century instruments for which composers of the Classical era, especially Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for this purpose in specialist workshops. Construction The fortepiano has leather-covered hammers and thin, harpsichord-like strings. It has a much lighter case ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village also contains several subsections, including the West Village west of Seventh Avenue and the Meatpacking District in the northwest corner of Greenwich Village. Its name comes from , Dutch for "Green District". In the 20th century, Greenwich Village was known as an artists' haven, the bohemian capital, the cradle of the modern LGBT movement, and the East Coast birthplace of both the Beat and '60s counterculture movements. Greenwich Village contains Washington Square Park, as well as two of New York City's private colleges, New York University (NYU) and The New School. Greenwich Village is part of Manhattan Community District 2, and is patrolled by the 6th Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Greenwich Village has underg ... [...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". 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 remnants. Productions were initially limited to 30 minutes, and the audience could stand anywh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rural Pennsylvania
Geographic regions of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Lehigh Valley The Lehigh Valley is named for the Lehigh River, which flows through it. The region includes Allentown, the third most populated city in Pennsylvania, the neighboring eastern Pennsylvania cities of Bethlehem and Easton, and its more rural suburbs. The region was once a hub for American heavy manufacturing. Its economy is now more diverse, and it has one of the state's fastest growing populations. It includes two counties: * Lehigh County * Northampton County * Population (2020): 687,509 Southeastern Pennsylvania Delaware Valley The Delaware Valley is named for the Delaware River, which flows through the region. It consists of the following counties: * Bucks * Chester * Delaware * Montgomery * Philadelphia * Population (2020): 6.245 million This valley primarily contains Philadelphia and its surrounding Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Pennsylvania Piedmont Pennsylvania's Piedmont region is a heavily ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Performing Arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience, including theatre, music, and dance. Theatre, music, dance, object manipulation, and other kinds of performances are present in all human cultures. The history of music and dance date to pre-historic times whereas circus skills date to at least Ancient Egypt. Many performing arts are performed professionally. Performance can be in purpose-built buildings, such as theatres and opera houses, on open air stages at festivals, on stages in tents such as circuses or on the street. Live performances before an audience are a form of entertainment. The development of audio and video recording has allowed for private consumption of the performing arts. The pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Zuckermann
Wolfgang Joachim Zuckermann (11 October 1922 – 30 October 2018) was a German-born American harpsichord maker and writer. He was known for inventing a highly popular kit for constructing new instruments and wrote an influential book, ''The Modern Harpsichord''. As a social activist, he authored books including ''The Mews of London'' and ''The End of the Road''. Early life Zuckermann was born in Berlin to Jewish parents in an academic family, and was named Wolfgang after Goethe and Mozart.Zuckermann (1968) He had an elder brother, Alexander, who later became a city planner and bicycle advocate in Oakland, California, and a younger brother named Michael. At age eight he began studying the cello, an instrument he continued to play in adulthood. The male family members formed a string quartet, with Alexander playing first violin, the father second, Michael viola, and Wolfgang cello. With the advent of the Nazis in Germany, Zuckermann's family had to flee the country; they settled in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gertrude Stein
Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.BBC Culture:Cath Pound. July 26, 2021. The shocking memoir of the 'lost generation'. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20210726-the-scandalous-memoir-of-the-lost-generation In 1933, Stein published a quasi-memoir of her Paris years, ''The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas'', written in the voice of Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. The book became a literary bestseller and vaulted Stein from the relative obscurity of the cult-literature scene into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christopher Fry
Christopher Fry (18 December 1907 – 30 June 2005) was an English poet and playwright. He is best known for his verse dramas, especially ''The Lady's Not for Burning'', which made him a major force in theatre in the 1940s and 1950s. Biography Early life Fry was born as Arthur Hammond Harris in Bristol, the son of Charles John Harris, a master builder who retired early to work full-time as a licensed Lay Reader in the Church of England, and his wife Emma Marguerite Fry Hammond Harris. While still young, he took his mother's maiden name because, on very tenuous grounds, he believed her to be related to the 19th-century Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. He adopted Elizabeth Fry's faith, and became a Quaker. After attending Bedford Modern School, where he wrote amateur plays, he became a schoolteacher, working at the Bedford Froebel Kindergarten and Hazelwood School in Limpsfield, Surrey. In the 1920s, he met the writer Robert Gittings, who became a lifelong friend. Caree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
