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Olivier Award For Best New Play
The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play is an annual award presented by the Society of London Theatre in recognition of achievements in commercial London theatre. The awards were established as the Society of West End Theatre Awards in 1976, and renamed in 1984 in honour of English actor and director Laurence Olivier. The award was titled Play of the Year from its establishment in 1976, and was first retitled to its current name for the 2001 Olivier Awards. Winners and nominees 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s Multiple awards and nominations for Best New Play Awards ;Two awards *David Hare *Martin McDonagh *Simon Stephens *Tom Stoppard Nominations ;Seven nominations *David Hare *Tom Stoppard ;Three nominations *Athol Fugard * James Graham *Christopher Hampton *Conor McPherson *Martin McDonagh ;Two nominations *Jez Butterworth * David Edgar *Michael Frayn *Brian Friel *Pam Gems *Ronald Harwood * Terry Johnson *Julian Mitchell *Frank McGuinness *Simon Ste ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laurence Olivier Award
The Laurence Olivier Awards, or simply the Olivier Awards, are presented annually by the Society of London Theatre to recognise excellence in professional theatre in London at an annual ceremony in the capital. The awards were originally known as the Society of West End Theatre Awards, but they were renamed in honour of the British actor of the same name in 1984. The awards are given to individuals involved in West End productions and other leading non-commercial theatres based in London across a range of categories covering plays, musicals, dance, opera and affiliate theatre. A discretionary non-competitive Special Olivier Award is also given each year. The Olivier Awards are recognised internationally as the highest honour in British theatre, equivalent to the BAFTA Awards for film and television, and the BRIT Awards for music. The Olivier Awards are considered equivalent to Broadway's Tony Awards and France's Molière Award. Since inception, the awards have been held at va ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pam Gems
Pam Gems (1 August 1925 – 13 May 2011) was an English playwright. The author of numerous original plays, as well as of adaptations of works by European playwrights of the past, Gems is best known for the 1978 musical play '' Piaf''. Personal life Iris Pamela Price was born in Bransgore, Hampshire, and had her first play – a tale of goblins and elves – staged when she was eight by her fellow pupils at primary school. She studied psychology at Manchester University from which she graduated in 1949. She was in her forties when she started to write professionally. She is best known for her 1978 musical play ''Piaf'' about French singer Édith Piaf. She was nominated for two Tony Awards: for ''Stanley'' (Best Play) in 1997, and for ''Marlene'' (Best Book of a Musical), starring Siân Phillips as Marlene Dietrich, in 1999. Gems adapted works by dramatists ranging from Henrik Ibsen, Federico García Lorca and Anton Chekhov to Marguerite Duras. Family She married wax model manuf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include '' The Birthday Party'' (1957), ''The Homecoming'' (1964) and ''Betrayal'' (1978), each of which he adapted for the screen. His screenplay adaptations of others' works include ''The Servant'' (1963), ''The Go-Between'' (1971), ''The French Lieutenant's Woman'' (1981), ''The Trial'' (1993) and ''Sleuth'' (2007). He also directed or acted in radio, stage, television and film productions of his own and others' works. Pinter was born and raised in Hackney, east London, and educated at Hackney Downs School. He was a sprinter and a keen cricket player, acting in school plays and writing poetry. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art but did not complete the course. He was fined for refus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betrayal (play)
''Betrayal'' is a play written by Harold Pinter in 1978. Critically regarded as one of the English playwright's major dramatic works, it features his characteristically economical dialogue, characters' hidden emotions and veiled motivations, and their self-absorbed competitive one-upmanship, face-saving, dishonesty, and (self-) deceptions.Billington 257–67; cf. performance review by Bryden 204–06 and review essay by Merritt 192–99; see also film reviews by Canby and Ebert. Inspired by Pinter's clandestine extramarital affair with BBC Television presenter Joan Bakewell, which spanned seven years, from 1962 to 1969,Billington 257–58, 264–67; cf. the memoir by Bakewell, which includes two chapters on her relationship and affair with Pinter. the plot of ''Betrayal'' integrates different permutations of betrayal relating to a seven-year affair involving a married couple, Emma and Robert, and Robert's "close friend" Jerry, who is also married, to a woman named Judith. Fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1979 Laurence Olivier Awards
The 1979 Society of West End Theatre Awards were held in 1979 in London at the Café Royal, celebrating excellence in West End theatre by the Society of West End Theatre. The awards would not become the Laurence Olivier Awards, as they are known today, until the 1984 ceremony. Winners and nominees Details of winners (in bold) and nominees, in each award category, per the Society of London Theatre. Productions with multiple nominations and awards The following 13 productions received multiple nominations: * 6: '' Once in a Lifetime'' * 4: ''Death of a Salesman'' * 3: ''Chicago'', ''The Taming of the Shrew'' and ''Undiscovered Country'' * 2: ''And a Nightingale Sang'', ''Antony and Cleopatra'', ''Betrayal'', ''For Services Rendered'', ''My Fair Lady'', ''Outside Edge'', ''Songbook'' and ''Strife'' The following two productions received multiple awards: * 2: ''Death of a Salesman'' and ''Songbook'' See also * 33rd Tony Awards The 33rd Annual Tony Awards was broadcast by CBS ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hare (dramatist)
Sir David Hare is an English playwright, screenwriter and theatre and film director. Best known for his stage work, Hare has also enjoyed great success with films, receiving two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for writing ''The Hours'''' ''in 2002, based on the novel written by Michael Cunningham, and ''The Reader'''' ''in 2008, based on the novel of the same name written by Bernhard Schlink. In the West End, he had his greatest success with the plays'' Plenty'' (1978), which he adapted into a 1985 film starring Meryl Streep, ''Racing Demon'' (1990), ''Skylight'' (1997), and ''Amy's View'' (1998). The four plays ran on Broadway in 1982–83, 1996, 1998 and 1999 respectively, earning Hare three Tony Award nominations for Best Play for the first three and two Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play. Other notable projects on stage include ''A Map of the World'', ''Pravda'' (starring Anthony Hopkins at the National Theatre in London), ''Murmuring ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plenty (play)
''Plenty'' is a play by David Hare, first performed in 1978, about British post-war disillusion. Productions The inspiration for ''Plenty'' came from the fact that 75 per cent of the women engaged in wartime SOE operations divorced in the immediate post-war years; the title is derived from the idea that the post-war era would be a time of "plenty", which proved untrue for most of England. Directed by the playwright, ''Plenty'' premiered in the Lyttelton Theatre on London's South Bank on 7 April 1978, featuring Kate Nelligan as Susan, the protagonist, and Stephen Moore as Raymond. It was nominated for the Olivier Award as ''Play of the Year'' and Nelligan as ''Best Actress in a New Play'', losing to '' Whose Life is it Anyway?'' and Joan Plowright in ''Filumena''. The play premiered Off-Broadway on 21 October 1982, at the Public Theater, where it ran for 45 performances. Directed by Hare, Nelligan reprised the role of Susan, supported by Kelsey Grammer and Dominic Chianese. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Keith Dewhurst
Keith Dewhurst (born 24 December 1931) is an English playwright and film and television scriptwriter. Life Born in Oldham, Keith Dewhurst was educated at Rydal School and Peterhouse, Cambridge, graduating with a B.A. in English in 1953. After working as a yarn tester for Lancashire Cotton Corporation, he worked for the ''Manchester Evening Chronicle'' from 1955 to 1959,Christopher Smith, 'Keith Dewhurst', in K. A. Berney, ed., ''Contemporary British Dramatists'', Gale, 1994, pp.187-91 as their reporter on Manchester United.Hunter DaviesThe triumph of failure ''The Spectator'', 10 March 2012 Dewhurst has written television plays since 1960, and plays for the theatre since the late 1960s. He has also written radio plays and a couple of novels. His non-fiction ''Underdogs'' (2012) tells the story of Darwen FC's long run in the 1879 F.A. Cup. John Crace, 'Underdogs: The Unlikely Story of Football's First FA Cup Heroes by Keith Dewhurst – review', ''The Guardian'', 21 March 2012 Wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flora Thompson
Flora Jane Thompson (née Timms; 5 December 1876 – 21 May 1947) was an English novelist and poet best known for her semi-autobiographical trilogy about the English countryside, ''Lark Rise to Candleford''. Early life and family Thompson was born Flora Jane Timms in Juniper Hill in northeast Oxfordshire, the eldest child of Albert and Emma Timms, a stonemason and nursemaid respectively. Albert and Emma had twelve children, but only six survived childhood. One of her younger sisters was Betty Timms, best known for her children's book ''The Little Grey Men of the Moor''. The young Flora's early education was at the parish school in the village of Cottisford where she was described as 'altogether her father's child'. In 1891, at the age of 14, Flora moved to take up a position as counter clerk at the post office in Fringford, a village about northeast of Bicester, under the tutelage of the postmistress, Mrs Kezia Whitton. She later served at various other post offices, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lark Rise To Candleford
''Lark Rise to Candleford'' is a trilogy of semi-autobiographical novels by Flora Thompson about the countryside of north-east Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, England, at the end of the 19th century. The stories were previously published separately as ''Lark Rise'' in 1939, ''Over to Candleford'' in 1941 and ''Candleford Green'' in 1943. They were first published together in 1945. The stories relate to three communities: the hamlet of Juniper Hill (Lark Rise), where Flora grew up; Buckingham (Candleford), one of the nearest towns (which include both Brackley and Bicester) and the nearby village of Fringford (Candleford Green), where Flora got her first job in the Post Office. Plots *''See the Plot sections of the articles on the novels making up the trilogy: ''Lark Rise'', ''Over to Candleford'' and ''Candleford Green''.'' Critical analysis In 1944, H. J. Massingham saw Thompson's description of the disintegration of "a local self-acting society living by a fixed patt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julian Mitchell
Charles Julian Humphrey Mitchell, FRSL (born 1 May 1935) is an English playwright, screenwriter and occasional novelist. He is best known as the writer of the play and film '' Another Country'', and as a screenwriter for TV, producing many original plays and series episodes, including at least ten for ''Inspector Morse''. Mitchell was born in Epping, Essex, and educated at Winchester College, where he won the English Verse and Duncan Reading Prizes.Winchester College Register 1992 He did his national service in submarines 1953-55 as a Sub Lt RNVR. He then went to Wadham College, Oxford and received a BA with first class honours in 1958. This was followed by a period as a Harkness Fellow in the USA (1959–61). He earned an M.A. in 1962 at St. Antony's College, Oxford. Since 1962 he has been a freelance writer. In the late 1960s, Mitchell co-wrote the teleplay ''Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire)'' with Ray Davies of The Kinks. It was never produced, thou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Whose Life Is It Anyway? (play)
''Whose Life Is It Anyway?'' is a play by Brian Clark adapted from his 1972 television play of the same title, which starred Ian McShane. The stage version premiered in 1978 at the Mermaid Theatre in London, and subsequently opened on Broadway in 1979. The play involves a sculptor who is paralysed. Plot Set in a hospital room, the action revolves around Ken Harrison (Claire Harrison in some later productions), a sculptor by profession, who was paralysed from the neck down ( quadriplegia) in a car accident and is determined to be allowed to die. Clark presents arguments both in favour of and opposing euthanasia and to what extent government should be allowed to interfere in the life of a private citizen. In portraying Ken as an intelligent man with a useless body, he leaves the audience with conflicting feelings about his desire to end his life. Productions The play was televised on 12 March 1972 by Granada TV. It was directed by Richard Everitt, with the cast that featured Ian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
