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Washington Square Players
The Washington Square Players (WSP) was a theatre troupe and production company that existed from 1915 to 1918 in Manhattan, New York City. It started as a semi-amateur Little Theatre then matured into a Repertory theatre with its own touring company and drama school, while maintaining its goal of presenting only works of artistic merit. It had a great amount of national newspaper coverage and sparked like-minded companies across the country, before it was forced to disband in 1918 due to wartime economic pressure and personnel shortages. Three of its original members would then found the longer-lived Theatre Guild having much the same purpose. Purpose and plan At the "Washington Square Bookshop" owned by the Boni brothers and the adjacent building housing the Liberal Club, an eclectic group of locals used to gather and criticize the state of American theatre. Sometime in late 1914 or early 1915 this group of creative types decided to join forces and produce their own plays. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Little Theatre Movement
As the new medium of cinema was beginning to replace theater as a source of large-scale spectacle, the Little Theatre Movement developed in the United States around 1912. The Little Theatre Movement served to provide experimental centers for the dramatic arts, free from the standard production mechanisms used in prominent commercial theaters. In several large cities, beginning with Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Detroit, companies formed to produce more intimate, non-commercial, non-profit-centered, and reform-minded entertainments. History Conventional theater in 19th-century America Sensational melodramas had entertained theatre audiences since the mid-19th century, drawing larger and larger audiences.Watt, Stephen and Richardson, Gary (ed.), ''American Drama: Colonial to Contemporary''. Cambridge, MA: Heinle & Heinle, pp. 147–150. . These types of formulaic works could be produced over and over again in splendid halls in big cities and by touring companies in smaller ones. Durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Moeller
Philip Moeller (26 August 1880 – 26 April 1958) was an American stage producer and director, playwright and screenwriter, born in New York where he helped found the short-lived Washington Square Players and then with Lawrence Langner and Helen Westley founded the Theatre Guild. He was educated at New York University and Columbia University. Directing career Among plays he directed for the Theatre Guild were: *''R.U.R.'' (1922) *''The Adding Machine'' (1923) *''The Guardsman'' (1924) *'' They Knew What They Wanted'' (1924) *''Ned McCobb's Daughter'' (1926) *''The Second Man'' (1927) *''Strange Interlude'' (1928) *''Meteor'' (1929) *''Dynamo'' (1929) *''Hotel Universe'' (1930) *''Elizabeth the Queen'' (1930) *''Mourning Becomes Electra'' (1931 - its first production) *''Biography'' by S. N. Behrman (1932) *''Ah, Wilderness!'' (1933) *''End of Summer'' (1936) Playwright *''The Battlefield'' (1913) presented May 14, 1913 at the Aerial Theatre, on the roof of the New Amsterdam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fola La Follette
Flora Dodge La Follette (September 10, 1882 – February 17, 1970), known as Fola La Follette, was an American actress and teacher turned women's suffrage and labor activist and editor/author from Madison, Wisconsin. At the time of her death in 1970, ''The New York Times'' quoted her on women's suffrage: "A good husband is not a substitute for the ballot." She was the daughter of progressive politician Robert "Fighting Bob" La Follette and lawyer and women's suffrage leader Belle Case, wife of playwright George Middleton, a contributing editor to '' La Follette’s Weekly Magazine'', an actress, and, with her mother, a chronicler of her father's life. Early life On September 10, 1882, Fola La Follette was born the first child to lawyer and women's suffrage leader Belle Case La Follette and progressive politician Robert La Follette in Madison, Wisconsin. Her early education was at Wisconsin Academy in Madison. She went on to graduate from the University of Wisconsin. Caree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edna Ferber
Edna Ferber (August 15, 1885 – April 16, 1968) was an American novelist, short story writer and playwright. Her novels include the Pulitzer Prize-winning '' So Big'' (1924), ''Show Boat'' (1926; made into the celebrated 1927 musical), '' Cimarron'' (1930; adapted into the 1931 film which won the Academy Award for Best Picture), ''Giant'' (1952; made into the 1956 film of the same name) and ''Ice Palace'' (1958), which also received a film adaptation in 1960. Life and career Early years Ferber was born August 15, 1885, in Kalamazoo, Michigan, to a Hungarian-born Jewish storekeeper, Jacob Charles Ferber, and his Milwaukee, Wisconsin-born wife, Julia (Neumann) Ferber, who was of German Jewish descent. The Ferbers had moved to Kalamazoo from Chicago, Illinois in order to open a dry goods store, and her older sister Fannie was born there three years earlier. Ferber's father was not adept at business, and the family moved often during Ferber's childhood. From Kalamazoo, they ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Wood (actor)
Douglas Wood (October 31, 1880 – January 13, 1966) was an American actor of stage and screen during the first six decades of the 20th century. During the course of his career, Wood appeared in dozens of Broadway productions, and well over 100 films. Towards the end of his career, he also made several guest appearances on television. Wood died in 1966. Early years His mother, Ida Jeffreys, was a stage actress. Career Early career on Broadway Wood made his Broadway acting debut in the revival of a pair of plays being produced at the Garden Theatre: ''Cyrano de Bergerac'' and ''Beau Brummell''. Over the next thirty years he appeared in dozens of plays on The Great White Way. He was in the original production of ''Du Barry'', written, directed, and produced by David Belasco, which had a successful run in 1901–02. After appearing in several plays with short runs, he was in another successful play from 1904 to 1905, '' The College Widow'', written by George Ade and directed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Newspapers
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports and art, and often include materials such as opinion columns, weather forecasts, reviews of local services, obituaries, birth notices, crosswords, editorial cartoons, comic strips, and advice columns. Most newspapers are businesses, and they pay their expenses with a mixture of subscription revenue, newsstand sales, and advertising revenue. The journalism organizations that publish newspapers are themselves often metonymically called newspapers. Newspapers have traditionally been published in print (usually on cheap, low-grade paper called newsprint). However, today most newspapers are also published on websites as online newspapers, and some have even abandoned their print versions entirely. Newspapers developed in the 17th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Boni
Albert Boni (October 29, 1892, New York City – July 31, 1981, Ormond Beach, Florida) was co-founder of the publishing company Boni & Liveright and a pioneering publisher in paperbacks and book clubs. Biography Born in 1892 to a Jewish family in New York City, Albert Boni moved, at an early age, with his family to Newark and completed his secondary school education there at Barringer High School. He completed two years of college at Cornell University and one year at Harvard University. Instead of starting his senior year at Harvard, Boni convinced his father to finance the establishment (originally at 95 Fifth Avenue and then at 135 MacDougal Street) of the Washington Square Bookshop with Albert's brother Charles as a partner. The Boni brothers' book store became a meeting place for leftist, Greenwich Village writers and intellectuals. The Boni brothers, with two other partners, created the Little Leather Library of pocket-sized editions of literary classics bound in imitation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Guild
The Theatre Guild is a theatrical society founded in New York City in 1918 by Lawrence Langner, Philip Moeller, Helen Westley and Theresa Helburn. Langner's wife, Armina Marshall, then served as a co-director. It evolved out of the work of the Washington Square Players. History Its original purpose was to produce non-commercial works by American and foreign playwrights. It differed from other theaters at the time in that its board of directors shared the responsibility of choosing plays, management, and production. The Theatre Guild contributed greatly to the success of Broadway from the 1920s throughout the 1970s. The Guild has produced a total of 228 plays on Broadway, including 18 by George Bernard Shaw and seven by Eugene O'Neill. Other major playwrights introduced to theatre-going Americans include Robert E. Sherwood, Maxwell Anderson, Sidney Howard, William Saroyan, and Philip Barry. In the field of musical theatre, the Guild has promoted works by Richard Rodgers, teame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Troupe
Theatrical troupe (French: ''troupe''), sometimes referred to as an acting company, is a group of theatrical performers working together. They may work in repertory other types of theatres, and may take performances on tour. They are not the same as a theatre company, which is an organisation that produces theatrical performances, although there is sometimes an overlap in terminology. The troupe is termed a resident acting company (or resident company) if they are supported by a particular theatre, where they have a home base, such as the Everyman Theatre in Baltimore, Connecticut, United States The State Theatre Company of South Australia, whose home base is at the Adelaide Festival Centre, is referred to as the resident artistic company. Troupes are frequently organised by theatre practitioners (e.g. Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble or Tadeusz Kantor's Cricot 2). The membership can be divided into permanent or temporary as, for example, in the Comédie-Française (French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roland Young
Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was military governor of the Breton March, responsible for defending Francia's frontier against the Bretons. His only historical attestation is in Einhard's ''Vita Karoli Magni'', which notes he was part of the Frankish rearguard killed in retribution by the Basques in Iberia at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. The story of Roland's death at Roncevaux Pass was embellished in later medieval and Renaissance literature. The first and most famous of these epic treatments was the Old French ''Chanson de Roland'' of the 11th century. Two masterpieces of Italian Renaissance poetry, the ''Orlando Innamorato'' and ''Orlando Furioso'' (by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Ludovico Ariosto respectively), are even further ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Westley
Helen Westley (born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney; March 28, 1875 – December 12, 1942) was an American character actress of stage and screen Early years Westley was born Henrietta Remsen Meserole Manney in Brooklyn, New York on March 28, 1875. She attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Career Westley's early career activities included performing in stock theater and in vaudeville around the United States. Her New York stage debut came on September 13, 1897, when she portrayed Angelina McKeagey in ''The Captain of the Nonesuch''. Westley was an organizer of the Washington Square Players, debuting with that group on February 19, 1915, as the Oyster in ''Another Interior''. She was a founding member of the original board of the Theatre Guild, and appeared in many of its productions, among them '' Peer Gynt'', and some of their productions of plays by George Bernard Shaw— '' Caesar and Cleopatra'', ''Pygmalion'', ''Heartbreak House'', ''Major Barbara'', '' T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
José Ruben
José Ruben (December 8, 1884 – April 28, 1969)New York, U.S., State and Federal Naturlization Records, 1794-1943 for Jose Ruben, Southern District, New York, (Roll 0162), Petition No. 22314, retrieved from Ancestry.com was a French-born actor whose career from 1910 on was in the United States. He first rose to prominence in 1916-1917 with the Washington Square Players, and for the next ten years was a highly regarded lead player. He acted in over twenty silent films and was a fixture on Broadway stages, as both performer and director, for over forty years. He also taught drama at Barnard College and was a stage director for the New York City Opera. Early life Ruben was born in Paris, France, to a family wealthy enough to fund his education and travel. He had at least two younger sisters. According to an early profile, he could outargue anyone in the family, so it was decided he should study law. He had studied English in secondary school, but found it difficult to understand na ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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