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The Secret Theatre
The Secret Theatre is an Off-Off-Broadway theatre that was established in The Long Island City Art Center in July 2007 by Actor/Director Richard Mazda Richard Mazda (born 5 May 1955) is a record producer, writer, musician, actor and director. Music career Mazda was one of the co-founders of Poole punk/mod band Tours, singing and playing lead guitar. They signed to Virgin Records in 1979 aft .... It can seat slightly under fifty audience members. The theatre is making a well-earned reputation as a home for The Queens Players and also through its 'repertory' style policy of mounting an average of over 9 mainstage productions in a year. The inaugural production featured an original work by Joel Schatzky which starred Bill Krakauer father of noted Klezmer musician David Krakauer (musician), David Krakauer. Bill is an 80-year-old psychotherapist turned actor who took on the challenging lead role of a conductor who escaped persecution by the Nazis by emigrating to America to pursue ...
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Off-Off-Broadway
Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commercialism of the professional theatre scene and as an experimental or avant-garde movement of drama and theatre. Over time, some off-off-Broadway productions have moved away from the movement's early experimental spirit. History The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as a "complete rejection of commercial theatre". Michael Smith gives credit for the term's coinage to Jerry Tallmer in 1960. Among the first venues for what would soon be called "off-off-Broadway" theatre were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, particularly the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino, who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much ...
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Richard Mazda
Richard Mazda (born 5 May 1955) is a record producer, writer, musician, actor and director. Music career Mazda was one of the co-founders of Poole punk/mod band Tours, singing and playing lead guitar. They signed to Virgin Records in 1979 after selling large quantities of their self-produced and distributed "Language School/Foreign Girls" double A side 7" single. BBC Radio 1 DJs John Peel and Mike Read championed the band which led to a bidding war between Virgin, Polydor, Sire and EMI records. Eventually the band signed to Virgin, but the association was short-lived after an argument between the band and the label led the other founder/leader Ronnie Mayor to quit. Mazda formed a new band, The Cosmetics, and went on to become the in house producer of IRS Records, working with seminal punk/new wave acts such as The Fall, The Birthday Party, Wall of Voodoo, The Fleshtones, Tom Robinson (including playing guitar in his band), Alternative TV, Yello, Suburban Lawns, Brian James ...
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Klezmer
Klezmer ( yi, קלעזמער or ) is an instrumental musical tradition of the Ashkenazi Jews of Central and Eastern Europe. The essential elements of the tradition include dance tunes, ritual melodies, and virtuosic improvisations played for listening; these would have been played at weddings and other social functions. The musical genre incorporated elements of many other musical genres including Ottoman (especially Greek and Romanian) music, Baroque music, German and Slavic folk dances, and religious Jewish music. As the music arrived in the United States, it lost some of its traditional ritual elements and adopted elements of American big band and popular music. Among the European-born klezmers who popularized the genre in the United States in the 1910s and 1920s were Dave Tarras and Naftule Brandwein; they were followed by American-born musicians such as Max Epstein, Sid Beckerman and Ray Musiker. After the destruction of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the Holocau ...
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David Krakauer (musician)
David Krakauer (born September 22, 1956) is an American clarinetist who performs klezmer, jazz, classical music, and avant-garde improvisation. Biography Krakauer's performance career focused on jazz and classical music before he joined the Klezmatics in 1988. He sees klezmer as his "musical home," saying "I can write music within klezmer, improvise, do experimental stuff, be an interpreter and a preservationist. Every side of me can be fulfilled within this form." In 1996, he formed his own band Klezmer Madness! While firmly rooted in traditional klezmer folk tunes, the band "hurls the tradition of klezmer music into the rock era." Klezmer Madness! has toured internationally to major venues and festivals including Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Stanford Lively Arts, San Francisco Performances, Hancher Auditorium, the Krannert Center, the Venice Biennale, Kraków Jewish Culture Festival, BBC Proms, Saalfelden Jazz Festival, La Cigale, the Marciac festival, WOMEX, the Ne ...
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Grand Guignol
''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' (: "The Theatre of the Great Puppet")—known as the Grand Guignol–was a theatre in the Quartier Pigalle, Pigalle district of Paris (7, cité Chaptal). From its opening in 1897 until its closing in 1962, it specialised in naturalistic Horror and terror, horror shows. Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, Amorality, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from English Renaissance theatre, Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre (for instance Shakespeare's ''Titus Andronicus'', and Webster's ''The Duchess of Malfi'' and ''The White Devil''), to today's splatter films. Theatre ''Le Théâtre du Grand-Guignol'' was founded in 1897 by Oscar Méténier, who planned it as a space for naturalism (theatre), naturalist performance. With 293 seats, the venue was the smallest in Paris. A former chapel, the theatre's previous life was evident in the boxes – which looked like confessionals – and in the angels over the orchestra. Although th ...
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A Christmas Carol
''A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas'', commonly known as ''A Christmas Carol'', is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. ''A Christmas Carol'' recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man. Dickens wrote ''A Christmas Carol'' during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as Christmas cards and Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lan ...
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Lysistrata
''Lysistrata'' ( or ; Attic Greek: , ''Lysistrátē'', "Army Disbander") is an ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, originally performed in classical Athens in 411 BC. It is a comic account of a woman's extraordinary mission to end the Peloponnesian War between Greek city states by denying all the men of the land any sex, which was the only thing they truly and deeply desired. Lysistrata persuades the women of the warring cities to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands and lovers as a means of forcing the men to negotiate peace—a strategy, however, that inflames the battle between the sexes. The play is notable for being an early exposé of sexual relations in a male-dominated society. Additionally, its dramatic structure represents a shift from the conventions of Old Comedy, a trend typical of the author's career. It was produced in the same year as the ''Thesmophoriazusae'', another play with a focus on gender-based issues, just two years after Athens' catastrophic ...
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Edward II (play)
''The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer'', known as ''Edward II'', is a Renaissance or early modern period play written by Christopher Marlowe. It is one of the earliest English history plays, and focuses on the relationship between King Edward II of England and Piers Gaveston, and Edward's murder on the orders of Roger Mortimer. Marlowe found most of his material for this play in the third volume of Raphael Holinshed's ''Chronicles'' (1587). Frederick S. Boas believes that "out of all the rich material provided by Holinshed" Marlowe was drawn to "the comparatively unattractive reign of Edward II" due to the relationship between the King and Gaveston. Boas elaborates, "Homosexual affection ... has (as has been seen) a special attraction for Marlowe. Jove and Ganymede in ''Dido'', Henry III and his 'minions' in ''The Massacre'', Neptune and Leander in ''Hero and Leander'', and all akin, altho ...
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Christopher Marlowe
Christopher Marlowe, also known as Kit Marlowe (; baptised 26 February 156430 May 1593), was an English playwright, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. Marlowe is among the most famous of the Elizabethan playwrights. Based upon the "many imitations" of his play ''Tamburlaine,'' modern scholars consider him to have been the foremost dramatist in London in the years just before his mysterious early death. Some scholars also believe that he greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was baptised in the same year as Marlowe and later succeeded him as the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright. Marlowe was the first to achieve critical reputation for his use of blank verse, which became the standard for the era. His plays are distinguished by their overreaching protagonists. Themes found within Marlowe's literary works have been noted as humanistic with realistic emotions, which some scholars find difficult to reconcile with Marlowe's "anti-intellectualism" and his caterin ...
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