Ralph Koltai
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Ralph Koltai
Ralph Koltai CBE, RDI (31 July 1924 – 15 December 2018), was a German-born, naturalised British stage designer, who worked as associate designer of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and latterly as a sculptor. Early life Koltai was born on 31 July 1924, in Berlin, Germany, to a family of Jewish descent. He was the only child of a Hungarian-born doctor Alfred and his wife Charlotte (née Weinstein) Koltai who was German. Their son was on the Kindertransport from Brussels to England in 1939. His parents survived the Holocaust; his mother was able to settle in Britain, while his father began again in Cuba. Koltai worked as a translator at the Nuremberg trials and later for the British Intelligence Corps as an investigator of war crimes. His military service ended in 1948. From 1943, Koltai trained to a commercial artist at Epsom School of Art before he entered the military. From 1948 to 1951, he studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins) where h ...
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Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they cre ...
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Rambert Dance Company
Rambert (known as Rambert Dance Company before 2014) is a leading British dance company. Formed at the start of the 20th century as a classical ballet company, it exerted a great deal of influence on the development of dance in the United Kingdom, and today, as a contemporary dance company, continues to be one of the world's most renowned dance companies. It has previously been known as the Ballet Club, and the Ballet Rambert. History Dame Marie Rambert (1888–1982), founder of Rambert Dance Company, was born in Warsaw, Poland where she was inspired to become a dancer after seeing Isadora Duncan perform. She went to Paris and after an early career as a recital artist and teacher she was engaged by Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes as assistant to the choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky on ''The Rite of Spring''. She also taught Eurhythmics, Dalcroze Eurythmics to the company. During her year with the Ballets Russes her appreciation of classical ballet developed thus combining a love ...
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Howard Brenton
Howard John Brenton FRSL (born 13 December 1942) is an English playwright and screenwriter. While little-known in the United States, he is celebrated in his home country and often ranked alongside contemporaries such as Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, and David Hare. Early years Brenton was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, son of policeman (later Methodist minister) Donald Henry Brenton and his wife Rose Lilian (née Lewis). He was educated at Chichester High School For Boys and read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. In 1964 he was awarded the Chancellor's Gold Medal for Poetry.ADC Theatre Archives, Cambridge. While at Cambridge he wrote a play, ''Ladder of Fools'' which was performed at the ADC Theatre as a double bill with "Hello-Goodbye Sebastian" by John Grillo in April 1965, and at the Oxford Playhouse in June of that year. It was described by Eric Shorter of ''The Daily Telegraph'' as "Actable, gripping, murky and moody: how often can you say that of ...
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Samuel West
Samuel Alexander Joseph West (born 19 June 1966) is an English actor, narrator and theatre director. He has directed on stage and radio, and worked as an actor across theatre, film, television and radio. He often appears as reciter with orchestras and performed at the Last Night of the Proms in 2002. He has narrated several documentary series, including five for the BBC about the Second World War. He plays Siegfried Farnon in the Channel 5 remake of the veterinary drama series '' All Creatures Great and Small''. Early life and education West was born on 19 June 1966 in Hammersmith, London, the elder son of the actress Prunella Scales and the actor Timothy West, and the grandson of the actor Lockwood West. He has one brother, Joe. He was educated at Alleyn's School and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, where he studied English literature and was president of the Experimental Theatre Club. West originally intended to attend Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, but decided to f ...
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ...
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Cyrano De Bergerac (play)
''Cyrano de Bergerac'' is a play written in 1897 by Edmond Rostand. There was a real Cyrano de Bergerac, and the play is a fictionalisation following the broad outlines of his life. The entire play is written in verse, in rhyming couplets of twelve syllables per line, very close to the classical alexandrine form, but the verses sometimes lack a caesura. It is also meticulously researched, down to the names of the members of the Académie française and the ''dames précieuses'' glimpsed before the performance in the first scene. The play has been translated and performed many times, and it is responsible for introducing the word ''panache'' into the English language. The character of Cyrano himself makes reference to "my panache" in the play. The most famous English translations are those by Brian Hooker, Anthony Burgess, and Louis Untermeyer. Plot summary Hercule Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac, a cadet (nobleman serving as a soldier) in the French Army, is a brash, strong ...
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Edmond Rostand
Edmond Eugène Alexis Rostand (, , ; 1 April 1868 – 2 December 1918) was a French poet and dramatist. He is associated with neo-romanticism and is known best for his 1897 play ''Cyrano de Bergerac''. Rostand's romantic plays contrasted with the naturalistic theatre popular during the late nineteenth century. Another of Rostand's works, ''Les Romanesques'' (1894), was adapted to the 1960 musical comedy ''The Fantasticks''. Early life Rostand was born in Marseille, France, into a wealthy and cultured Provençal family. His father was an economist, a poet who translated and edited the works of Catullus, and a member of the Marseille Academy and the Institut de France. Rostand studied literature, history, and philosophy at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, France. Career When Rostand was twenty years old, his first play, a one-act comedy, ''Le Gant rouge'', was performed at the Cluny Theatre, 24 August 1888, but it was almost unnoticed.
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The Caucasian Chalk Circle
''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' (german: Der kaukasische Kreidekreis) is a play by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht. An example of Brecht's epic theatre, the play is a parable about a peasant girl who rescues a baby and becomes a better mother than the baby's wealthy biological parents. The play was written in 1944 while Brecht was living in the United States. It was translated into English by Brecht's friend and admirer Eric Bentley and its world premiere was a student production at Carleton College, Northfield, Minnesota, in 1948. Its first professional production was at the Hedgerow Theatre, Philadelphia, directed by Bentley. Its German premiere by the Berliner Ensemble was on October 7, 1954, at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' is one of Brecht's most celebrated works and one of the most regularly performed 'German' plays. It reworks Brecht's earlier short story "Der Augsburger Kreidekreis." Both derive from the 14th-ce ...
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Pope Pius XII And The Holocaust
The papacy of Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) began on 2 March 1939 and continued to 9 October 1958, covering the period of the Second World War and the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews and others were murdered by Adolf Hitler's Germany. Before becoming pope, Cardinal Pacelli served as a Vatican diplomat in Germany and as Vatican Secretary of State under Pius XI. His role during the Nazi period has been closely scrutinised and criticised. His supporters argue that Pius employed diplomacy to aid the victims of the Nazis during the war and, through directing his Church to provide discreet aid to Jews and others, saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Pius maintained links to the German Resistance, and shared intelligence with the Allies. His strongest public condemnation of genocide was, however, considered inadequate by the Allied Powers, while the Nazis viewed him as an Allied sympathizer who had dishonoured his policy of Vatican neutrality. Some post-war critics have accused ...
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The Deputy
''The Deputy, a Christian tragedy'' (German: ''Der Stellvertreter. Ein christliches Trauerspiel''), also published in English as ''The Representative '', is a controversial 1963 play by Rolf Hochhuth which portrayed Pope Pius XII as having failed to take action or speak out against the Holocaust. It has been translated into more than twenty languages. The play's implicit censure of a venerable if controversial pope has led to numerous counterattacks, of which one of the latest is the 2007 allegation that Hochhuth was the dupe of a KGB disinformation campaign. The ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' assesses the play as "a drama that presented a critical, unhistorical picture of Pius XII" and Hochhuth's depiction of the pope having been indifferent to the Nazi genocide as "lacking credible substantiation." The first English translation by Robert David MacDonald was published as ''The Representative'', by Methuen in Britain in 1963. In America a second translation by Richard Winston and ...
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Rolf Hochhuth
Rolf Hochhuth (; 1 April 1931 – 13 May 2020) was a German author and playwright, best known for his 1963 drama ''The Deputy'', which insinuates Pope Pius XII's indifference to Hitler's extermination of the Jews, and he remained a controversial figure both for his plays and other public comments and for his 2005 defense of British Holocaust denier David Irving. Life and career Youth Hochhuth was born in Eschwege, and was descended from a Protestant Hessian middle class family. His father was the owner of a shoe‐factory, which became bankrupt in the Depression. During World War II, he was a member of the Deutsches Jungvolk, a subdivision of the Hitler Youth. In 1948 he did an apprenticeship as a bookseller. Between 1950 and 1955 he worked in bookshops in Marburg, Kassel and Munich. At the same time he attended university lectures as a guest student and began with early attempts at writing fiction. Between 1955 and 1963 he was an editor at a major West-German publishing house. ' ...
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Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Aldwych in the City of Westminster, central London. It was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200 on three levels. History Origins The theatre was constructed in the newly built Aldwych as a pair with the Waldorf Theatre, now known as the Novello Theatre. Both buildings were designed in the Edwardian Baroque style by W. G. R. Sprague. The Aldwych Theatre was funded by Seymour Hicks in association with the American impresario Charles Frohman, and built by Walter Wallis of Balham. The theatre opened on 23 December 1905 with a production of ''Blue Bell'', a new version of Hicks's popular pantomime ''Bluebell in Fairyland''. In 1906, Hicks's ''The Beauty of Bath'', followed in 1907 by '' The Gay Gordons'', played at the theatre. In February 1913, the theatre was used by Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky for the first rehearsals of ''Le Sacre du Printemps'' before its première in Paris during May. In ...
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