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Sean Kenny (theatre Designer)
Sean Kenny (23 December 1929 – 11 June 1973) was an Irish theatre and film scenic designer, costume designer, lighting designer and director. Kenny was the set designer for the musicals of Lionel Bart including ''Oliver!'', '' Lock Up Your Daughters'' and ''Blitz!''. Life Kenny was born in Portroe, County Tipperary, Ireland in 1929. While he was an architecture student, aged 20, Kenny and three others sailed from Ireland to New York in a 36-foot sailboat, the ''Ituna'', in 1950. Kenny was a contributor to The Establishment, a standup satire and jazz club in London founded by Peter Cook and Nicholas Luard. In the 1960s, after the workday, Kenny and his staff often made the short trip of a few steps across Manette Street from his design studio into the back door of The Pillars of Hercules. In 1966, Kenny married model Judy Huxtable. She later described him as "regularly unfaithful", and left him to marry Peter Cook. Following his divorce, Kenny lived with the actress Judy Ge ...
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Portroe
Portroe () is a village in County Tipperary, Ireland. The village is located on the R494 regional road, 3 km from the eastern shore of Lough Derg and 10 km west of the town of Nenagh. Portroe spans the townlands of Garrykennedy, Glencrue and Shesharoe. Transport Bus Éireann route 323 serves the village. It travels to and from Limerick and Nenagh. Sport Portroe GAA is the local Gaelic Athletic Association club. A senior hurling team, representing Portroe, won their first ever North Tipperary Senior Hurling title in 2012 in McDonagh Park in Nenagh. Liam Sheedy, who played his club hurling with Portroe and inter-county hurling with Tipperary, was twice the manager of the Tipperary hurling team. On the outskirts of Portroe is an old flooded quarry, which is used for scuba diving up to depths of 39m. Notable buildings The local Roman Catholic church is dedicated to St Mary, and was built in 1872. There is also a primary school, a Gaelic Athletic Association club, and ...
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Hamlet
''The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark'', often shortened to ''Hamlet'' (), is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1601. It is Shakespeare's longest play, with 29,551 words. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his attempts to exact revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet's father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet's mother. ''Hamlet'' is considered among the "most powerful and influential tragedies in the English language", with a story capable of "seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others". There are many works that have been pointed to as possible sources for Shakespeare's play—from ancient Greek tragedies to Elizabethan plays. The editors of the Arden Shakespeare question the idea of "source hunting", pointing out that it presupposes that authors always require ideas from other works for their own, and suggests that no author can have an original idea or be an originator. When ...
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Royal Shakespeare Theatre
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST) (originally called the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre) is a grade II* listed 1,040+ seat thrust stage theatre owned by the Royal Shakespeare Company dedicated to the English playwright and poet William Shakespeare. It is located in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon – Shakespeare's birthplace – in the English Midlands, beside the River Avon. The building incorporates the smaller Swan Theatre. The Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres re-opened in November 2010 after undergoing a major renovation known as the Transformation Project. History The original Shakespeare Memorial Theatre came about after a polemic 'The Tercentenary' was published by James Cox, mayor of Stratford-upon-Avon, in 1865, two years after the 300th anniversary of Shakespeare's birth, for a fitting memorial in the town. Eventually, through the efforts and donations of Edward Fordham Flower and his son Charles Edward Flower, owners of a local brewery business in Stratford ...
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Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and produces around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and on tour across the UK and internationally. The company's home is in Stratford-upon-Avon, where it has redeveloped its Royal Shakespeare and Swan theatres as part of a £112.8-million "Transformation" project. The theatres re-opened in November 2010, having closed in 2007. The new buildings attracted 18,000 visitors within the first week and received a positive media response both upon opening, and following the first full Shakespeare performances. Performances in Stratford-upon-Avon continued throughout the Transformation project at the temporary Courtyard Theatre. As well as the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the RSC produces new work from living artists and develops creative links with theatre-make ...
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Wyndham's Theatre
Wyndham's Theatre is a West End theatre, one of two opened by actor/manager Charles Wyndham (the other is the Criterion Theatre). Located on Charing Cross Road in the City of Westminster, it was designed c.1898 by W. G. R. Sprague, the architect of six other London theatres between then and 1916. It was designed to seat 759 patrons on three levels; later refurbishment increased this to four seating levels. The theatre was Grade II* listed by English Heritage English Heritage (officially the English Heritage Trust) is a charity that manages over 400 historic monuments, buildings and places. These include prehistoric sites, medieval castles, Roman forts and country houses. The charity states that i ... in September 1960. History Wyndham had always dreamed of building a theatre of his own, and through the admiration of a patron and the financial confidence of friends, he was able to realise his dream. Wyndham's Theatre opened on 16 November 1899, in the presence of the Ed ...
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Mermaid Theatre
The Mermaid Theatre was a theatre encompassing the site of Puddle Dock and Curriers' Alley at Blackfriars in the City of London, and the first built in the City since the time of Shakespeare. It was, importantly, also one of the first new theatres to abandon the traditional stage layout; instead a single tier of seats surrounded the stage on three sides. History The 20th-century theatre was the life's work of actor Bernard Miles with his wife, Josephine Wilson. His original Mermaid Theatre was a large barn at his house in the St. John's Wood area of London. This seated 200 people, and during 1951 and 1952 was used for concerts, plays and a celebrated opera production of ''Dido and Aeneas'' with Kirsten Flagstad, Maggie Teyte and Thomas Hemsley, conducted by Geraint Jones, which was recorded by HMV. For the third season in 1953 the Mermaid Theatre was moved to the Royal Exchange. Miles was encouraged to build a permanent theatre and, raising money from public subscriptions, a ...
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Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a non-commercial West End theatre in Sloane Square, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, London, England. In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which is known for its contributions to contemporary theatre and won the Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999. History The first theatre The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre. Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays were staged here, including ''Randall's Thumb'', ''Creatures of Impulse'' (with music by Alberto Randegger), ''Great Expectations'' (adapted from the Dickens novel), and ''On Gu ...
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Cock-a-Doodle Dandy
''Cock-a-Doodle Dandy'' is a 1949 in literature#New drama, 1949 play by Irish dramatist Seán O'Casey. Regarded by O'Casey as his best play, this is a darkly comic fantasy in which a magic cockerel appears in the parish of Nyadnanave and forces the characters to make choices about the way they live their lives. It is a parable of mid-century Irish rural life, symbolising the struggle between repression and liberty. Initially it was regarded as anti-Catholic and was banned from professional public performance in the UK by the Lord Chamberlain. It was also suppressed in Ireland and the USA. In performance The World premiere of the play took place at the The People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne, People's Theatre, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1949. This performance was reviewed in the ''Irish Times'' newspaper on 14 December 1949. Under the headline "A Play to Arouse both Anger and Pity", it was described as "a performance of infinitely better quality than I had expected to lie in the ca ...
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Theatre Royal Stratford East
The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a 460 seat Victorian producing theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company, famously associated with director Joan Littlewood, whose statue is outside the theatre (see image at left). History The theatre was designed by architect James George Buckle, and commissioned by Charles Dillon, né Silver, adoptive son of the actor-manager Charles Dillon (died 1881) in 1884. It is the architect's only surviving work, built on the site of a wheelwright's shop on Salway Road, close to the junction with Angel Lane. It opened on 17 December 1884 with a revival of '' Richelieu'' by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Two years later, Dillon sold it to Albert O'Leary Fredericks, his sister's brother-in-law and one of the original backers of the scheme. In 1887 the theatre was renamed Theatre Royal and Palace of Varieties and side extensions were added in 1887. The stage was enlarged in 1891, by ...
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Theatre Workshop
Theatre Workshop is a theatre group whose long-serving director was Joan Littlewood. Many actors of the 1950s and 1960s received their training and first exposure with the company, many of its productions were transferred to theatres in the West End, and some, such as ''Oh, What a Lovely War!'' and '' A Taste of Honey'', were made into films. Formation Joan Littlewood and Ewan MacColl met and married in 1934, while both were working with the Theatre of Action. They started their own collaboration developing radio plays for the BBC, taking scripts and cast from local workers. However, both MI5 and the Special Branch maintained a watch on the couple because of their support for the Communist Party of Great Britain. Littlewood was precluded from working for the BBC as a children's programme presenter and some of MacColl's work was banned from broadcast. In the late 1930s Littlewood and MacColl formed an acting troupe called the Theatre Union. This was dissolved in 1940, but in 1945 ...
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Joan Littlewood
Joan Maud Littlewood (6 October 1914 – 20 September 2002) was an English theatre director who trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and is best known for her work in developing the Theatre Workshop. She has been called "The Mother of Modern Theatre". Her production of ''Oh, What a Lovely War!'' in 1963 was one of her more influential pieces. Littlewood and her company lived and slept in the Theatre Royal while it was restored. Productions of ''The Alchemist'' and '' Richard II'', the latter starring Harry H. Corbett in the title role, established the reputation of the company. She also conceived and developed the concept of the Fun Palace in collaboration with architect Cedric Price, an experimental model of a participatory social environment that, although never realized, has become an important influence in the architecture of the 20th and 21st centuries. ''Miss Littlewood'', a musical written about Littlewood by Sam Kenyon, was performed by the Royal Shakespeare ...
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The Hostage (play)
''The Hostage'' is a 1958 English-language play, with songs, by Irish playwright Brendan Behan. It consists on a much longer text, with songs, expanded from a one-act Irish language play ''An Giall'' also by Behan. Plot ''The Hostage'' depicts the events leading up to the planned execution of an 18-year-old IRA member in a Belfast jail, accused of killing a Royal Ulster Constabulary policeman. Like the protagonist of ''The Quare Fellow'', the audience never sees him. The action of the play is set in a very odd house of ill-repute on Nelson Street, Dublin, owned by a former IRA commandant. The hostage of the title is Leslie Williams, a young and innocent Cockney British Army soldier taken hostage at the border with Northern Ireland and held in the brothel, brought among the vibrant but desperately unorthodox combination of prostitutes, revolutionaries and general low characters inhabiting the place. During the course of the play, a love story develops between Leslie and Teresa, ...
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