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Retro Productions
Retro Productions is a New York City based Off-Off-Broadway theater company. Their mission is to produce works of "Retro Theater," mainly straight plays that take place in the 20th century. The company is composed of twenty-two members who are actors, designers, directors, and stage managers, and is led by artistic director Heather E. Cunningham, an actress and producer. whose performance as Rose Walker in the Retro production ''An Appeal to the Woman of the House'' by Christie Perfetti Williams won her a New York Innovative Theatre Award for Best Actress in a Lead Role. History The company was formed in 2005 under the name River Heights Productions, after the hometown of Nancy Drew. Under this name the company produced two plays: ''Catholic School Girls'' by Casey Kurtti, in March 2005, at chashama and the New York City Premiere of ''Mrs. California'' by Doris Baizley, in March 2006, at the 78th Street Theatre Lab. Following the production of ''Mrs. California'', River Heights P ...
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the List of United States cities by population density, most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York (state), New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban area, urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous Megacity, megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global city, global Culture of New ...
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What I Did Last Summer
''What I Did Last Summer'' is a play by the American playwright A.R. Gurney. The setting is a well-to-do vacation colony on the shores of Lake Erie, the time 1945, during the final stages of World War II. Charlie, an incipiently rebellious fourteen-year-old, is summering with his mother and sister (his father is fighting in the Pacific) before going off to an expensive boarding school in the fall. Although he intended to spend the summer loafing and socializing with his friends (such as Ted), the need for spending money forces him to take a job as handyman for an iconoclastic, bohemian art teacher, Anna Trumbull, a former member of the "upper crust" who has lost both her fortune and her regard for the ideals of her upbringing. Sensing a kindred spirit in Charlie, she tries to stretch his mind by teaching him painting and sculpture - and exposing him to "radical" ideas about life and love that, in time, persuade Charlie to reject the notion of going back to school. The result is a ...
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The Butter And Egg Man
''The Butter and Egg Man'' is a 1925 play by George S. Kaufman, the only play he wrote without collaborating. It was a Broadway hit during the 1925–26 season at the Longacre Theatre. Adapted to film six times, it is still performed on stages today. Synopsis A 1920s slang term popularized by Texas Guinan, a butter-and-egg man is a traveling businessman eager to spend large amounts of money in the big city—someone wealthy and unwary. A souvenir booklet for the original production of ''The Butter and Egg Man'' devoted an entire page to the various claims of origin for the phrase. Peter Jones is a young man who arrives on Broadway from Chillicothe, Ohio, hoping to invest $20,000 in a play and turn a profit sufficient to buy a local hotel back home. He is conned by Joe Lehman and Jack McClure into backing their play with a 49-percent stake. The play opens out-of-town in Syracuse and bombs. Lehman and McClure want out, and Jones buys them out, and revamps the play into a huge hi ...
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Paula Vogel
Paula Vogel (born November 16, 1951) is an American playwright who received the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play ''How I Learned to Drive.'' A longtime teacher, Vogel spent the bulk of her academic career – from 1984 to 2008 – at Brown University, where she served as Adele Kellenberg Seaver Professor in Creative Writing, oversaw its playwriting program, and helped found the Brown/Trinity Rep Consortium. From 2008 to 2012, Vogel was Eugene O'Neill Professor of Playwriting and department chair at the Yale School of Drama, as well as playwright in residence at the Yale Repertory Theatre. Biography Early years Vogel was born in Washington, D.C., to Donald Stephen Vogel, an advertising executive, and Phyllis Rita (Bremerman), a secretary for the United States Postal Service Training and Development Center. Her father was Jewish, whereas her mother was Roman Catholic. She attended Bryn Mawr College from 1969 to 1970 and 1971 to 1972, and is a graduate of The Catholic U ...
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The Baltimore Waltz
''The Baltimore Waltz'' is a play by Paula Vogel. It revolves around a brother and sister who appear to be taking a European trip and is based on Vogel and her brother Carl's real-life experiences. The play had a workshop at the Perseverance Theatre in 1990, it was first staged at Houston's Alley Theatre in 1992 and made its off-Broadway premiere later than year. Overview Essentially a series of comic vignettes underlined by tragedy, the farce traces the European odyssey of sister and brother Anna and Carl. They are in search of hedonistic pleasure and a cure for her terminal illness, the fictitious ATD (Acquired Toilet Disease) she contracted by using the bathrooms at the elementary school where she teaches. Knowing her life is nearing its end, Anna is driven by a lust that compels her to have casual sex with as many men as possible during their travels, a passion shared by her gay brother. Assisting the pair is the mysterious ''Third Man'', a reference to the classic suspense fi ...
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Peter Nichols (playwright)
Peter Richard Nichols (31 July 1927 – 7 September 2019) was an English playwright, screenwriter, director and journalist. Life and career Born in Bristol, England, he was educated at Bristol Grammar School, and served his compulsory National Service as a clerk in Calcutta and later in the British Army's Combined Services Entertainment Unit in Singapore where he entertained the troops alongside John Schlesinger, Stanley Baxter, Peter Vaughan and Kenneth Williams, before going on to study acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. He later claimed to have studied acting because there were no dedicated courses for playwrights. While working as a teacher, he began to write television plays that achieved notice. His first play for the stage was ''The Hooded Terror'', part of a season of new plays at the Little Theatre in Bristol. He later wrote ''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' for the stage. ''A Day in the Death of Joe Egg'' is a one-set drama in music hall style. '' The ...
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A Day In The Death Of Joe Egg
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it f ...
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Norman Krasna
Norman Krasna (November 7, 1909 – November 1, 1984) was an American screenwriter, playwright, producer, and film director who penned screwball comedies centered on a case of mistaken identity. Krasna directed three films during a forty-year career in Hollywood. He garnered four Academy Award screenwriting nominations, winning once for 1943's ''Princess O'Rourke'', which he also directed. Biography Early life Krasna was born in Queens, New York City. He attended Columbia University and St John's University School of Law, working at Macy's Department Store during the day. He wanted to get into journalism and talked his way into a job as a copy boy for the Sunday feature department of the ''New York World'' in 1928. (He worked with Lewis Weitzenkorn who turned Krasna into a character in the play ''Five Star Final''.) He quit law school, worked his way up to being a drama critic, at first for ''The World'' then the ''New York Evening Graphic'' and ''Exhibitors Herald World''. H ...
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Dear Ruth
''Dear Ruth'' is a successful 1944 Broadway play written by Norman Krasna. It ran for 680 performances. History Krasna wrote a serious play, '' The Man with Blond Hair'', which received a tepid response. He said that Moss Hart suggested he write a commercial comedy instead along the lines of ''Junior Miss''. Krasna based the family in the play on that of Groucho Marx, who was a good friend and occasional collaborator.*McGilligan, Patrick, "Norman Krasna: The Woolworth's Touch", ''Backstory: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age'', University of California Press, 1986. pp. 218, 226 The play was named in honor of Krasna's first wife, Ruth. The original production of the play was directed by Moss Hart and starred John Dall. It was a big success, running for 680 performances. Film rights were sold for a reported $450,000 with the proviso that a movie not be made until the play finished a two-year run. The film, also titled ''Dear Ruth'', premiered on June 10, 19 ...
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Mark Medoff
Mark Medoff (March 18, 1940 – April 23, 2019) was an American playwright, screenwriter, film and theatre director, actor, and professor. His play '' Children of a Lesser God'' received both the Tony Award and the Olivier Award. He was nominated for an Academy Award and a Writers Guild of America Best Adapted Screenplay Award for the film script of '' Children of a Lesser God'' and for a Cable ACE Award for his HBO Premiere movie, ''Apology''. He also received an Obie Award for his play ''When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?'' Medoff's feature film ''Refuge'' was released in 2010. ''When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?'' was adapted into a film with a screenplay by Medoff in 1979. Biography Early life Medoff was born on 18 March 1940 in Mount Carmel, Illinois, to a Jewish family, the son of Thelma Irene (Butt), a psychologist, and Lawrence R. Medoff, a physician. He was raised in Miami Beach. In 1967, while working as an instructor at the Capitol Radio Engineering Institute in Washi ...
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When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?
''When You Comin' Back, Red Ryder?'' is a play by Mark Medoff. The setting is Foster's Diner, a New Mexico rest stop that lost most of its clientele when a new highway bypass opened. Employees include restless cook Stephen (nicknamed " Red Ryder"), mousy waitress Angel, and their no-nonsense boss Clark. Lyle, owner of the adjacent filling station, stops in on occasion to break the monotony with his cheery banter. The boring routine of the daily grind is disrupted with the arrival of two couples, the upscale Richard and Clarisse, and the younger and wilder Teddy, an unbalanced Vietnam War vet, and Cheryl, his hippie girlfriend. Complications arise when illegal drugs and guns enter the picture, and Teddy resorts to physical, mental, and emotional torture when he holds everyone hostage. Summary The story starts out in a neat but rundown little diner just off the highway in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico. The protagonist, Stephen "Red" Ryder, is sitting at the counter after ...
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Emily Mann (director)
Emily Betsy Mann (born April 12, 1952) is an American director, playwright and screenwriter. She served as the artistic director and resident playwright of the McCarter Theatre Center from 1990 to 2020. Career As the McCarter Theatre Center's Artistic Director and Resident Playwright from 1990 to 2020, Mann oversaw more than 160 productions, including more than 40 world premieres. During her tenure, the theater won the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre and Mann herself was twice nominated for Tony Awards as a playwright and director. She was inducted into The American Theater Hall of Fame. Her other personal awards include the Peabody Award, the Hull-Warriner Award from the Dramatists Guild, awards from the NAACP, eight Obie awards, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2011 Person of the Year Award from the National Theater Conference, as well as the Margo Jones Award, given to a "citizen-of-the-theatre who has demonstrated a lifetime commitment to the encouragement of the l ...
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