|
This Is (An Entertainment)
''This Is (An Entertainment)'' is a play by Tennessee Williams. Similar in plot to that of '' Idiot's Delight'' by Robert E. Sherwood, it focuses on a hedonistic countess, the wife of a wealthy manufacturer of ammunition, who arrives at an elegant resort hotel in the midst of a war-torn Central European country in search of sexual misadventures. She achieves her goal with the help of a handsome blond chauffeur and his look-alike, a leader of the revolution. Williams described the play as a first draft in need of polishing when the American Conservatory Theater staged it at the Geary Theater in San Francisco in 1976. The cast included Elizabeth Huddle as the countess, Nicholas Cortland in the dual roles of the chauffeur and revolutionary, and Ray Reinhardt as the count. The character of the Countess was based on Maria Britneva; the title originally included the phrase "For Maria Britneva". Stanley Eichelbaum of the ''San Francisco Examiner'' called it "a boisterous vaudeville-like ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maria Britneva
Maria Britneva, Baroness St Just, (2 July 1921 – 15 February 1994) was a Russian-British actress who was a close friend of Tennessee Williams. As co-trustee of the trust which he set up for his sister, she became his literary executor. Early life Maria Britneva was born in Petrograd in the Soviet Union. Her mother, Mary Britneva, was British by birth, a daughter of Charles Herbert Bucknall, business partner in St Petersburg of the French wholesale gem dealers Leo and Georges Sachs. Her father, Alexander Britnev, was a physician who served in the Red Army and was shot by the Stalinists in the purges of 1930. He was rehabilitated (his reputation restored) in 1969. In the summer of 1922, when Britneva was just thirteen months old, her mother left Russia and emigrated to England, taking with her Maria and her brother Vladimir.John Lahr"The Lady and Tennessee" ''The New Yorker'', 19 December 1994. She was brought up in Hammersmith, where her mother settled and worked as a translat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1976 Plays
Events January * January 3 – The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights enters into force. * January 5 – The Pol Pot regime proclaims a new constitution for Democratic Kampuchea. * January 11 – The 1976 Philadelphia Flyers–Red Army game results in a 4–1 victory for the National Hockey League's Philadelphia Flyers over HC CSKA Moscow of the Soviet Union. * January 16 – The trial against jailed members of the Red Army Faction (the West German extreme-left militant Baader–Meinhof Group) begins in Stuttgart. * January 18 ** Full diplomatic relations are established between Bangladesh and Pakistan 5 years after the Bangladesh Liberation War. ** The Scottish Labour Party is formed as a breakaway from the UK-wide party. ** Super Bowl X in American football: The Pittsburgh Steelers defeat the Dallas Cowboys, 21–17, in Miami. * January 21 – First commercial Concorde flight, from London to Bahrain. * January 27 ** The United States vetoes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Anouilh
Jean Marie Lucien Pierre Anouilh (; 23 June 1910 – 3 October 1987) was a French dramatist whose career spanned five decades. Though his work ranged from high drama to absurdist farce, Anouilh is best known for his 1944 play ''Antigone'', an adaptation of Sophocles' classical drama, that was seen as an attack on Marshal Pétain's Vichy government. His plays are less experimental than those of his contemporaries, having clearly organized plot and eloquent dialogue. One of France's most prolific writers after World War II, much of Anouilh's work deals with themes of maintaining integrity in a world of moral compromise. Life and career Early life Anouilh was born in Cérisole, a small village on the outskirts of Bordeaux, and had Basque ancestry. His father, François Anouilh, was a tailor, and Anouilh maintained that he inherited from him a pride in conscientious craftmanship. He may owe his artistic bent to his mother, Marie-Magdeleine, a violinist who supplemented the family's m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camino Real (play)
''Camino Real'' is a 1953 play by Tennessee Williams. In the introduction to the Penguin edition of the play, Williams directs the reader to use the Anglicized pronunciation "Cá-mino Réal." The play takes its title from its setting, alluded to '' El Camino Real'', a dead-end place in a Spanish-speaking town surrounded by desert with sporadic transportation to the outside world. It is described by Williams as "nothing more nor less than my conception of the time and the world I live in." Kilroy, a young American visitor, fulfills some of the functions of the play's narrator, as does Gutman, (named after Sydney Greenstreet's character from '' The Maltese Falcon'', but bearing more resemblance to Signor Ferrari, Greenstreet's character in ''Casablanca'') manager of the hotel Siete Mares, whose terrace occupies part of the stage. Williams also employs a large cast of characters including many famous literary characters who appear in dream sequences. They include Don Quixote and his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farce
Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense; satire, parody, and mockery of real-life situations, people, events, and interactions; unlikely and humorous instances of miscommunication; ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances. Genre Despite involving absurd situations and characters, the genre generally maintains at least a slight degree of realism and narrative continuity within the context of the irrational or ludicrous situations, often distinguishing it from completely absurdist or fantastical genres. Farces are often episodic or short in duration, often being set in one specific location where all events occur. Farces have historically been performed for the stage and film. Historical context The term ''farce'' is deri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaudeville
Vaudeville (; ) is a theatrical genre of variety entertainment born in France at the end of the 19th century. A vaudeville was originally a comedy without psychological or moral intentions, based on a comical situation: a dramatic composition or light poetry, interspersed with songs or ballets. It became popular in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s, but the idea of vaudeville's theatre changed radically from its French antecedent. In some ways analogous to music hall from Victorian Britain, a typical North American vaudeville performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill. Types of acts have included popular and classical musicians, singers, dancers, comedians, trained animals, magicians, ventriloquists, strongmen, female and male impersonators, acrobats, clowns, illustrated songs, jugglers, one-act plays or scenes from plays, athletes, lecturing celebrities, minstrels, and movies. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Examiner
The ''San Francisco Examiner'' is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco, California, and published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst, and flagship of the Hearst Corporation chain, the ''Examiner'' converted to free distribution early in the 21st century and is owned by Clint Reilly Communications, which bought the newspaper at the end of 2020 along with the ''SF Weekly''. History Founding The ''Examiner'' was founded in 1863 as the ''Democratic Press'', a pro- Confederacy, pro-slavery, pro-Democratic Party paper opposed to Abraham Lincoln, but after his assassination in 1865, the paper's offices were destroyed by a mob, and starting on June 12, 1865, it was called ''The Daily Examiner''. Hearst acquisition In 1880, mining engineer and entrepreneur George Hearst bought the ''Examiner''. Seven years later, after being elected to the U.S. Senate, he gave it to his son, William Randolph Hearst, who was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The New Yorker
''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues covering two-week spans. Although its reviews and events listings often focus on the Culture of New York City, cultural life of New York City, ''The New Yorker'' has a wide audience outside New York and is read internationally. It is well known for its illustrated and often topical covers, its commentaries on popular culture and eccentric American culture, its attention to modern fiction by the inclusion of Short story, short stories and literary reviews, its rigorous Fact-checking, fact checking and copy editing, its journalism on politics and social issues, and its single-panel cartoons sprinkled throughout each issue. Overview and history ''The New Yorker'' was founded by Harold Ross and his wife Jane Grant, a ''The New York Times, N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of California cities by population, fourth most populous in California and List of United States cities by population, 17th most populous in the United States, with 815,201 residents as of 2021. It covers a land area of , at the end of the San Francisco Peninsula, making it the second most densely populated large U.S. city after New York City, and the County statistics of the United States, fifth most densely populated U.S. county, behind only four of the five New York City boroughs. Among the 91 U.S. cities proper with over 250,000 residents, San Francisco was ranked first by per capita income (at $160,749) and sixth by aggregate income as of 2021. Colloquial nicknames for San Francisco include ''SF'', ''San Fran'', ''The '', ''Frisco'', and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Idiot's Delight (play)
''Idiot's Delight'' is a 1936 Pulitzer-Prize-winning play written by American playwright Robert E. Sherwood and presented by the Theatre Guild. The play takes place in the Hotel Monte Gabriel in the Italian Alps during 24 hours at the beginning of a world war. The guests trapped in the hotel by the sudden onset of hostilities are from Germany, France, the United States and Britain. Directed by Bretaigne Windust, the cast starred Alfred Lunt (Harry Van) and Lynn Fontanne (Irene), with Sydney Greenstreet as Dr. Waldersee and Francis Compton as Achille Weber. The play was nominated for the 1936 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, Best American Play. Productions ''Idiot's Delight'' had a pre-Broadway tryout at the National Theatre, Washington, D.C., starting on March 9, 1936. It premiered on Broadway at the Shubert Theatre, running from March 24, 1936 to July 4, 1936 and from August 31, 1936 to January 30, 1937, for 300 performances. The play won the 1936 Pulitzer Prize for D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American Conservatory Theater
The American Conservatory Theater (A.C.T.) is a nonprofit theater company in San Francisco, California, United States, that offers both classical and contemporary theater productions. It also has an attached acting school. History The American Conservatory Theater was founded in 1965 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by theatre and opera director William Ball in conjunction with the Pittsburgh Playhouse and Carnegie Mellon University. Ball presented twenty-seven fully staged productions in rotating repertory, in two different theaters – the Geary Theater and the Marines Memorial Theatre – during the first 40-week season. A.C.T.'s original twenty-seven member acting company featured René Auberjonois, Peter Donat, Richard Dysart, Michael Learned, Ruth Kobart, Paul Shenar, Charles Siebert, Ken Ruta, and Kitty Winn among others. Ball's mid-1970s productions of Shakespeare's ''Taming of the Shrew'', starring Marc Singer, and Rostand's ''Cyrano de Bergerac'', starring Pet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
._Tennessee_Williams_age_5.jpg "Click for more on -> Tennessee Williams")
.jpg "Click for more on -> Farce")
_-_1.JPG "Click for more on -> San Francisco Examiner")
