Paul Sills' Story Theatre
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Paul Sills' Story Theatre
''Paul Sills' Story Theatre'' is a play with music, adapted from fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and Aesop's Fables. Productions The ''Story Theatre'' debuted at 1848 N. Wells Street, during the summer of 1968. That building was the original location of The Second City, which had already moved to its new and current location at 1616 N. Wells St. After Sills finished doing Story Theater there, it was torn down. ''Story Theatre'' went on to play at the Yale Repertory Theatre and in Los Angeles. The Yale production was filmed as an episode of public television's ''NET Playhouse''. The ''Story Theatre'' opened on Broadway at the Ambassador Theatre on October 26, 1970 and closed on July 3, 1971, after 243 performances and 14 previews. Directed by Paul Sills, it featured Paul Sand, Valerie Harper, Richard Schaal, Peter Bonerz, Melinda Dillon, Richard Libertini and Hamilton Camp. Linda Lavin joined the cast as a replacement.
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Paul Sills
Paul Sills (born Paul Silverberg; November 18, 1927 – June 2, 2008) was an American director and improvisation teacher, and the original director of Chicago's The Second City. Life and career Sills was born Paul Silverberg in Chicago, Illinois, to a family who believed in the teachings of modern-day Judaism. His mother was teacher and writer Viola Spolin, who authored the first book on improvisation techniques, ''Improvisation for the Theater''. Spolin in turn was the student of play therapy theorist Neva Boyd. In 1948, Sills enrolled in the University of Chicago, where he established himself as a director, co-founding Playwright's Theater Club. There, with fellow actors Edward Asner, Byrne Piven and Zohra Lampert, they blended Spolin's improvisational techniques with established theater training. In 1955, Sills and David Shepherd founded the Compass Players, the first improvisational theater in the United States, where he directed Shelley Berman, Mike Nichols and Elaine Ma ...
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Richard Libertini
Richard Joseph Libertini (May 21, 1933 – January 7, 2016) was an American stage, film and television actor. He was known for playing character roles and his ability to speak in numerous accents. His films include ''Catch-22'' (1970), '' The In-Laws'' (1979), ''Popeye'' (1980), '' All of Me'' (1984), '' Fletch'' (1985), ''Fletch Lives'' (1989), ''Awakenings'' (1990), ''Lethal Weapon 4'' (1998), and ''Dolphin Tale'' (2011). Early life Libertini was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and graduated from Emerson College in Boston. During his early years, Libertini worked in New York City and in Chicago. He moved to Los Angeles to pursue his acting career during the 1960s. Career He was an original cast member of ''The Mad Show'', a 1966 Off-Broadway musical-comedy produced by '' Mad'' magazine. His first film appearances were in ''The Night They Raided Minsky's'' (1968), '' Don't Drink the Water'' (1969) and ''Catch-22'' (1970). Two of his more memorable film roles came in th ...
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I'll Be Your Baby Tonight
"I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" is a 1967 song by Bob Dylan first released on ''John Wesley Harding''. It features Pete Drake on pedal steel guitar, and two other Nashville musicians, Charlie McCoy on bass guitar and Kenneth Buttrey on drums, both of whom had appeared on Dylan's previous album, ''Blonde on Blonde''. Dylan first performed the song in concert at the Isle of Wight Festival with the Band on August 31, 1969. Since then, he has included it in more than 400 live performances. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" has been covered by many artists, including Robert Palmer with UB40 in 1990. Robert Palmer and UB40 version In 1990, Robert Palmer and UB40 released a cover version of the song. It was released as a single in the United Kingdom and throughout Europe. It appears on Robert Palmer's albums '' Don't Explain'' and on the 1995 best of ''The Very Best of''. The song was successful, particularly in Australia, Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland, reaching the top 10 in these ...
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Henny Penny
"Henny Penny", more commonly known in the United States as "Chicken Little" and sometimes as "Chicken Licken", is a European Folklore, folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a Hysteria, hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries and "Henny Penny" continues to be referred to in a variety of media. The story and its name The story is listed as Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, Aarne–Thompson–Uther type 20C, which includes international examples of folktales that make light of paranoia and mass hysteria. There are several Western versions of the story, of which the best-known concerns a chick that believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the king and, on its journey, meets other ...
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The Golden Goose
"The Golden Goose" (german: Die goldene Gans) is a fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm (KHM 64). Story In the Brothers Grimm version, the hero is the youngest of three brothers, given the nickname Simpleton as he is not handsome or strong like his brothers. His eldest brother is sent into the forest to chop wood, fortified with a rich cake and a bottle of wine. He meets a little gray man who begs a morsel to eat and a swallow of wine but is rebuffed. The eldest brother later injures his arm falling into a tree and is taken home. The second brother meets a similar fate when he injures his foot. Simpleton, sent out with a burned biscuit cooked in the ashes of the hearth and soured beer, is generous with the little old man, who turns the biscuit and beer into a proper cake and fine wine. For his act of generosity, Simpleton is rewarded with a golden goose he discovers within the roots of a tree he cut down chosen by the little gray man. Simpleton takes The Golden Goose to m ...
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The Fisherman And His Wife
"The Fisherman and His Wife" (Low German: ''Von dem Fischer un syner Fru'') is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in 1812 (KHM 19). The tale is of Aarne–Thompson type 555, about dissatisfaction and greed. It may be classified as an anti-fairy tale.''The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Folktales and Fairy Tales: A-F''article "Anti-fairy tale", p. 50/ref> Origin The tale was published by the Brothers Grimm in the first edition of ''Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' in 1812 as tale no. 19. Their source was the German painter Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), from whom the Grimms obtained a manuscript of the tale in 1809. Johann Gustav Büsching published another version of Runge's manuscript a few months earlier in 1812 in ''Volkssagen, Märchen und Legenden'', with some discrepancies with Grimm's version. Synopsis There is a poor fisherman who lives with his wife in a hovel by the sea. One day the fisherman catches a fish, who claims to be able to grant wishes and begs to ...
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The Robber Bridegroom (musical)
''The Robber Bridegroom'' is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alfred Uhry and music by Robert Waldman. The story is based on the 1942 novella by Eudora Welty of the same name, with a Robin Hood-like hero; the adaptation placed it in a late 18th-century American setting. The musical ran on Broadway in 1975 and again in 1976. Production history The show started with an early 1970s production at St Clements Theatre in producer Stuart Ostrow's Musical Theatre Lab, which invented the concept of the "workshop" development process for musicals. Raul Julia starred as Lockhart. Other cast members included Steve Vinovich (Clemment Musgrove), Rhonda Coullet (Rosamund), John Getz (Mike Fink), Bill Nunnery (Little Harp), Ernie Sabella (Little Harp), Trip Plymale (Goat), Cynthia Herman (Airie), Susan Berger (Salome), John Houseman bought the show for his group, The Acting Company and took it to the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga Springs, New York with Kevin Kline replacing Ju ...
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The Little Peasant
"The Little Peasant" is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in ''Grimm's Fairy Tales'', number 61. It is Aarne-Thompson type 1535, The Rich Peasant and the Poor Peasant, and includes an episode of type 1737, Trading Places with the Trickster in a Sack. Other types of this type include the Norwegian ''Big Peter and Little Peter'' from ''Norske Folkeeventyr'' collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe, and ''Little Claus and Big Claus'' by Hans Christian Andersen. Synopsis A poor peasant and his wife did not even have a cow. They had a woodworker make them a calf of wood and brought it to the pasture. When the cowherd returned without it, they found it had been stolen and took him to court for his carelessness, and the judge made him give them a cow. They had nothing to feed it and so had to kill it. The peasant took the hide to town to sell. He found a raven with broken wings and wrapped it in the hide. Weather grew bad and he took shelter in ...
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Town Musicians Of Bremen
The "Town Musicians of Bremen" (german: link=no, Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm and published in ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'' in 1819 (KHM 27). It tells the story of four aging domestic animals, who after a lifetime of hard work are neglected and mistreated by their former masters. Eventually, they decide to run away and become town musicians in the city of Bremen. Contrary to the story's title the characters never arrive in Bremen, as they succeed in tricking and scaring off a band of robbers, capturing their spoils, and moving into their house. It is a story of Aarne–Thompson–Uther Index, Aarne–Thompson Type 130 ("Outcast animals find a new home"). Origin The Brothers Grimm first published this tale in the second edition of ''Grimms' Fairy Tales, Kinder- und Hausmärchen'' in 1819, based on the account of the German storyteller Dorothea Viehmann (1755–1815). Synopsis In the story, a donkey, a dog, a cat, and a rooster, ...
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Improvisational Theater
Improvisational theatre, often called improvisation or improv, is the form of theatre, often comedy, in which most or all of what is performed is unplanned or unscripted: created spontaneously by the performers. In its purest form, the dialogue, action, story, and characters are created collaboratively by the players as the improvisation unfolds in present time, without use of an already prepared, written Play (theatre), script. Improvisational theatre exists in performance as a range of styles of improvisational comedy as well as some non-comedic theatrical performances. It is sometimes used in film and television, both to develop characters and scripts and occasionally as part of the final product. Improvisational techniques are often used extensively in drama programs to train actors for stage, film, and television and can be an important part of the rehearsal process. However, the skills and processes of improvisation are also used outside the context of performing arts. This ...
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Chicago
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Viola Spolin
Viola Spolin (November 7, 1906 — November 22, 1994) was an American theatre academic, educator and acting coach. She is considered an important innovator in 20th century American theater for creating directorial techniques to help actors to be focused in the present moment and to find choices improvisationally, as if in real life. These acting exercises she later called Theater Games and formed the first body of work that enabled other directors and actors to create improvisational theater. Her book ''Improvisation for the Theater'', which published these techniques, includes her philosophy and her teaching and coaching methods, and is considered the "bible of improvisational theater". Spolin's contributions were seminal to the improvisational theater movement in the U.S. She is considered to be the mother of Improvisational theater. Her work has influenced American theater, television and film by providing new tools and techniques that are now used by actors, directors and writ ...
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