Stairs To The Roof
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Stairs To The Roof
''Stairs to the Roof'' is a play by Tennessee Williams, the last of his apprentice plays. It was completed in December 1941, and premiered (as a full-scale production) at the Pasadena Playhouse on February 26, 1947. The play is based on earlier stories written by Williams, including "The Swan" and most specifically, one of the same title written in October 1936, after he had recovered from a nervous breakdown arising from his experiences working in the relentlessly mechanical world of the large International Shoes factory in St. Louis, Missouri. Unlike that story, the play is optimistic, with elements of romance and fantasy, and a ''deus ex machina'' ending. The subtitle of the play (and of the earlier story) is "A Prayer for the Wild of Heart That are Kept in Cages"; though that phrase conveys the seriousness of the playwright's chosen topic, its treatment, particularly the elements not present in the original story (such as the Mummers play-within-a-play and the swan-on-a-lake ...
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Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama. At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of ''The Glass Menagerie'' (1944) in New York City. He introduced "plastic theatre" in this play and it closely reflected his own unhappy family background. It was the first of a string of successes, including ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1947), ''Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'' (1955), ''Sweet Bird of Youth'' (1959), and ''The Night of the Iguana'' (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama ''A Streetcar Named Desire'' is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's '' Long Day ...
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Elmer Rice
Elmer Rice (born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein, September 28, 1892 – May 8, 1967) was an American playwright. He is best known for his plays ''The Adding Machine'' (1923) and his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama of New York tenement life, '' Street Scene'' (1929). Biography Early years Rice was born Elmer Leopold Reizenstein at 127 East 90th Street in New York City. His grandfather was a political activist in the Revolutions of 1848 in the German states. After the failure of that political upheaval, he emigrated to the United States where he became a businessman. He spent most of his retirement years living with the Rice family and developed a close relationship with his grandson Elmer, who became a politically motivated writer and shared his grandfather's liberal and pacifist politics. A staunch atheist, his grandfather may also have influenced Elmer in his feelings about religion as he refused to attend Hebrew school or to have a bar mitzvah. In contrast, Rice's relationship with his ...
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Chichester
Chichester () is a cathedral city and civil parish in West Sussex, England.OS Explorer map 120: Chichester, South Harting and Selsey Scale: 1:25 000. Publisher:Ordnance Survey – Southampton B2 edition. Publishing Date:2009. It is the only city in West Sussex and is its county town. It was a Roman and Anglo-Saxon settlement and a major market town from those times through Norman and medieval times to the present day. It is the seat of the Church of England Diocese of Chichester, with a 12th-century cathedral. The city has two main watercourses: the Chichester Canal and the River Lavant. The Lavant, a winterbourne, runs to the south of the city walls; it is hidden mostly in culverts when close to the city centre. History Roman period There is no recorded evidence that the city that became Chichester was a settlement of any size before the coming of the Romans. The area around Chichester is believed to have played a significant part during the Roman invasion of AD 43, ...
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Minerva Theatre, Chichester
The Minerva Theatre is a studio theatre seating, at full capacity, 310. It is run as part of the adjacent Chichester Festival Theatre, located in Chichester, England, and was opened in 1989.Minverva Theatre

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. The current is Daniel Evans.


Productions


University of Chichester

In November 2009, The Minerva allowed the

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University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the University of Illinois system and was founded in 1867. Enrolling over 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students, the University of Illinois is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the country. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is a member of the Association of American Universities and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In fiscal year 2019, research expenditures at Illinois totaled $652 million. The campus library system possesses the second-largest university library in the United States by holdings after Harvard University. The university also hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and is home to the fastest supercomputer on a university campus ...
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The Missouri Review
''The Missouri Review'' is a literary magazine founded in 1978 by the University of Missouri. It publishes fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction quarterly. With its open submission policy, ''The Missouri Review'' receives 12,000 manuscripts each year and is known for printing previously unpublished and emerging authors. Each year ''The Missouri Review'' hosts the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize contest with $15,000 in prize money for entries in fiction, essays, and poetry. The winners receive prize money, publication, and an invitation to a public awards reception. ''The Missouri Review'' is available in print, digital, and audio formats. Honors and awards * Mako Yoshikawa's essay "My Father's Women" appeared in The Best American Essays 2013 (ed. Cheryl Strayed). * Rachel Riederer's essay "Patient" appeared in The Best American Essays 2011 (ed. Edwidge Danticat). * Laura Yeager's short story, "Having Ann", was short-listed for an O. Henry Award in 2000. * Molly Giles's s ...
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World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ...
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Didactic Literature
Didacticism is a philosophy that emphasizes instructional and informative qualities in literature, art, and design. In art, design, architecture, and landscape, didacticism is an emerging conceptual approach that is driven by the urgent need to explain. When applied to ecological questions, didacticism in art, design, architecture and landscape attempts to persuade the viewer of environmental priorities; thus, constituting an entirely new form of explanatory discourse that presents, what can be called "eco-lessons". This concept can be defined as "ecological didacticism". Overview The term has its origin in the Ancient Greek word διδακτικός (''didaktikos''), "pertaining to instruction", and signified learning in a fascinating and intriguing manner. Didactic art was meant both to entertain and to instruct. Didactic plays, for instance, were intended to convey a moral theme or other rich truth to the audience. During the Middle Age, the Roman Catholic chants like the ' ...
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Protagonist
A protagonist () is the main character of a story. The protagonist makes key decisions that affect the plot, primarily influencing the story and propelling it forward, and is often the character who faces the most significant obstacles. If a story contains a subplot, or is a narrative made up of several stories, then each subplot may have its own protagonist. The protagonist is the character whose fate is most closely followed by the reader or audience, and who is opposed by the antagonist. The antagonist provides obstacles and complications and creates conflicts that test the protagonist, revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the protagonist's character, and having the protagonist develop as a result. Etymology The term ''protagonist'' comes , combined of (, 'first') and (, 'actor, competitor'), which stems from (, 'contest') via (, 'I contend for a prize'). Ancient Greece The earliest known examples of a protagonist are found in Ancient Greece. At first, dramatic pe ...
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Burgess Meredith
Oliver Burgess Meredith (November 16, 1907 – September 9, 1997) was an American actor and filmmaker whose career encompassed theater, film, and television. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "one of the most accomplished actors of the century". A lifetime member of the Actors Studio, he won several Emmys, was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, and was nominated for two Academy Awards. He established himself as a leading man in Hollywood with critically acclaimed performances as Mio Romagna in '' Winterset'' (1936), George Milton in ''Of Mice and Men'' (1939), and Ernie Pyle in ''The Story of G.I. Joe'' (1945). Meredith was known later in his career for his appearances on ''The Twilight Zone'' and for portraying The Penguin in the 1960s TV series '' Batman'' and boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill in the ''Rocky'' film series. For his performances in ''The Day of the Locust'' (1975) and ' ...
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The Adding Machine
''The Adding Machine'' is a 1923 play by Elmer Rice; it has been called "... a landmark of American Expressionism, reflecting the growing interest in this highly subjective and nonrealistic form of modern drama." Plot The author of this play takes us through Mr. Zero’s trial, execution, excursion and arrest going into the afterlife. During the whole series of this episodic journey Mr. Zero is surprisingly oblivious to his deepest needs, wants and desires. The story focuses on Mr. Zero, an accountant at a large, faceless company. After 25 years at his job, he discovers that he will be replaced by an adding machine. In anger and pain, he snaps and kills his boss. Mr. Zero is then tried for murder, is found guilty and hanged. He wakes up in a heaven-like setting known as the " Elysian Fields." Mr. Zero meets a man named Shrdlu, then begins to operate an adding machine until Lieutenant Charles, the boss of the Elysian Fields, comes to tell Zero that he is a waste of space and hi ...
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Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a Tradesman, trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain a license to practice in a regulated occupation. Most of their training is done while working for an employer who helps the apprentices learn their trade or profession, in exchange for their continued labor for an agreed period after they have achieved measurable competencies. Apprenticeship lengths vary significantly across sectors, professions, roles and cultures. In some cases, people who successfully complete an apprenticeship can reach the "journeyman" or professional certification level of competence. In other cases, they can be offered a permanent job at the company that provided the placement. Although the formal boundaries and terminology of the apprentice/journeyman/master system often do not extend outside guilds and tr ...
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