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Nancy Marchand
Nancy Lou Marchand (June 19, 1928 – June 18, 2000) was an American actress. She began her career in theatre in 1951. She was most famous for her television portrayals of Margaret Pynchon on ''Lou Grant'' and Livia Soprano on ''The Sopranos''. Early life Marchand was born in Buffalo, New York, to Raymond L. Marchand, a dentist, and his wife, Marjorie Freeman Marchand, a pianist. She was raised Methodist. She graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in 1949. She studied theatre at the Herbert Berghof Studio in New York City. Career An accomplished member of the Actors Studio, Marchand made her Broadway debut in ''The Taming of the Shrew'' in 1951. Additional theatre credits include ''The Merchant of Venice'', ''Love's Labour's Lost'', ''Much Ado About Nothing'', '' Forty Carats'', '' And Miss Reardon Drinks A Little'', ''The Plough and the Stars'', ''The Glass Menagerie'', '' Morning's at Seven'', '' Awake and Sing!'', '' The Octette Br ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lou Grant (TV Series)
''Lou Grant'' is an American drama television series starring Ed Asner in the title role as a newspaper editor that aired on CBS from September 20, 1977, to September 13, 1982. The third spin-off (after ''Rhoda'' and '' Phyllis'') of the sitcom ''The Mary Tyler Moore Show'', ''Lou Grant'' was created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds. ''Lou Grant'' won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series twice. Asner received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1978 and 1980. In doing so, he became the first person to win an Emmy Award for both Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for portraying the same character. ''Lou Grant'' also won two Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, an Eddie Award, three awards from the Directors Guild of America, and two Humanitas Prizes. Summary and setting Lou Grant works as city editor of the fictional ''Los Angeles Trib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The White Liars
''The White Liars'' is a one-act play by Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1967 originally titled ''White Lies''. It is often performed with another of Shaffer's one-act plays, ''Black Comedy'', to form the double-bill of ''The White Liars and Black Comedy''. ''The White Liars'' revolves around Sophie Lemberg, an eccentric and disillusioned fortune teller (who imagines herself to be a baroness of the Holy Roman Empire) living in a decaying seaside resort, and the two young men—Tom, the lead singer in a rock band, and Frank, his business manager—who consult her. It soon becomes clear that their lives are much stranger than the fiction Sophie tries to create in her magic ball. Development Shaffer wrote ''White Lies'' to precede the 1967 Broadway production of his farce ''Black Comedy'', presented by Alexander H. Cohen at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre. But Shaffer was dissatisfied with the piece. As he put it in his Preface to his 1982 Collected Plays, "The dramatic pulse was to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Black Comedy (play)
''Black Comedy'' is a one-act farce by Peter Shaffer, first performed in 1965. The premise of the piece is that light and dark are transposed, so that when the stage is lit the cast are supposed to be in darkness and only when the stage is dark are they supposed to be able to see each other and their surroundings. A young sculptor and his fiancée have borrowed some expensive antique furniture from a neighbour's flat without his permission to impress an elderly millionaire art collector. When the power fails, the neighbour returns early, other people also arrive unexpectedly, and matters descend into near-chaos. Background and first production In the early spring of 1965, Kenneth Tynan, dramaturge of the National Theatre, commissioned Shaffer to write a one-act play to accompany a production of ''Miss Julie'' starring Maggie Smith and Albert Finney. Shaffer later wrote in the introduction to his 1982 Collected Plays: Shaffer set about composing the play. To produce a more sus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the American Theatre Wing. As the Tony Awards cover Broadway productions, the Obie Awards cover off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway productions. Background The Obie Awards were initiated by Edwin (Ed) Fancher, publisher of ''The Village Voice,'' who handled the financing and business side of the project. They were first given in 1956 under the direction of theater critic Jerry Tallmer. Initially, only off-Broadway productions were eligible; in 1964, off-off-Broadway productions were made eligible. The first Obie Awards ceremony was held at Helen Gee's cafe.Aletti, Vince"Helen Gee 1919–2004" ''Village Voice'' (New York City), 12 October 2004, accessed on 21 November 2013 With the exception of the Lifetime Achievement and Best New American ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Balcony
''The Balcony'' (french: Le Balcon) is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. It is set in an unnamed city that is experiencing a revolutionary uprising in the streets; most of the action takes place in an upmarket brothel that functions as a microcosm of the regime of the establishment under threat outside. Since Peter Zadek directed the first English-language production at the Arts Theatre Club in London in 1957, the play has been revived frequently (in various versions) and has attracted many prominent directors, including Peter Brook, Erwin Piscator, Roger Blin, Giorgio Strehler, and JoAnne Akalaitis. It has been adapted as a film and given operatic treatment. The play's dramatic structure integrates Genet's concern with meta-theatricality and role-playing, and consists of two central strands: a political conflict between revolution and counter-revolution and a philosophical one between reality and illusion. Genet suggested that the play should be performed as a "g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The School For Scandal
''The School for Scandal'' is a comedy of manners written by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It was first performed in London at Drury Lane Theatre on 8 May 1777. Plot Act I Scene I: Lady Sneerwell, a wealthy young widow, and her hireling Snake discuss her various scandal-spreading plots. Snake asks why she is so involved in the affairs of Sir Peter Teazle, his ward Maria, and Charles and Joseph Surface, two young men under Sir Peter's informal guardianship, and why she has not yielded to the attentions of Joseph, who is highly respectable. Lady Sneerwell confides that Joseph wants Maria, who is an heiress, and that Maria wants Charles. Thus she and Joseph are plotting to alienate Maria from Charles by putting out rumours of an affair between Charles and Sir Peter's new young wife, Lady Teazle. Joseph arrives to confer with Lady Sneerwell. Maria herself then enters, fleeing the attentions of Sir Benjamin Backbite and his uncle, Crabtree. Mrs. Candour enters and ironically talk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Importance Of Being Earnest
''The Importance of Being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People'' is a play by Oscar Wilde. First performed on 14 February 1895 at the St James's Theatre in London, it is a farcical comedy in which the protagonists maintain fictitious personae to escape burdensome social obligations. Working within the social conventions of late Victorian London, the play's major themes are the triviality with which it treats institutions as serious as marriage, and the resulting satire of Victorian ways. Some contemporary reviews praised the play's humour and the culmination of Wilde's artistic career, while others were cautious about its lack of social messages. Its high farce and witty dialogue have helped make ''The Importance of Being Earnest'' Wilde's most enduringly popular play. The successful opening night marked the climax of Wilde's career but also heralded his downfall. The Marquess of Queensberry, whose son Lord Alfred Douglas was Wilde's lover, planned to present the wr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man And Superman
''Man and Superman'' is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903. The series was written in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. ''Man and Superman'' opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 21 May 1905 as a four-act play produced by the Stage Society, and then by John Eugene Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker on 23 May, without Act III ("Don Juan in Hell"). A part of the third act, ''Don Juan in Hell'' (Act 3, Scene 2), was performed when the drama was staged on 4 June 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not performed in its entirety until 1915, when the Travelling Repertory Company played it at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh. Summary Mr. Whitefield has recently died, and his will indicates that his daughter Ann should be left in the care of two men, Roebuck Ramsden and John Tanner. Ramsden, a venerable old man, distrusts John Tanner, an eloquent youth with revolutionary ideas, whom Shaw's stage directions describe a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Love Letters (play)
''Love Letters'' is a play by A. R. Gurney that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. The play centers on two characters, Melissa Gardner and Andrew Makepeace Ladd III. Using the epistolary form sometimes found in novels, they sit side by side at tables and read the notes, letters and cards – in which over nearly 50 years, they discuss their hopes and ambitions, dreams and disappointments, victories and defeats – that have passed between them throughout their separated lives. The play is a performance favorite for busy name actors, for it requires little preparation, and lines need not be memorized. It was first performed by the playwright himself with Holland Taylor at the New York Public Library, then opened in 1988 at the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, Connecticut, with Joanna Gleason and John Rubinstein. Plot Andrew Makepeace Ladd III and Melissa Gardner, both born to wealth and position, are childhood friends whose lifelong correspondence begins with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Octette Bridge Club
''The Octette Bridge Club'' is a play by P.J. Barry. Set in Providence, Rhode Island, it focuses on eight sisters of Irish descent who meet on alternate Friday evenings to play bridge and gossip. The first act, which opens with the women posing for a photograph for the Sunday rotogravure section of the local newspaper, takes place in October 1934, and the second act is set just prior to Halloween ten years later. Ann Conroy, married to a man who drinks too much, is a no-nonsense schoolteacher who hosts the bridge nights. Martha McDermitt, the widowed eldest sister, is known for her sense of responsibility and stern personality. Mary Margaret Donovan is a spinster who lives with younger sister Alice Monahan and her husband Walter, who have no children. In the second act, Mary Margaret uses a wheelchair and has a slight speech impediment due to a stroke. Nora Hiller is an easy-going woman devoted to her husband Lawrence and their children. Connie Emerson is always quick with a wise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Awake And Sing!
''Awake and Sing!'' is a drama written by American playwright Clifford Odets. The play was initially produced by The Group Theatre in 1935. Summary and characters The play is set in The Bronx borough of New York City, New York, in 1933. It concerns the impoverished Berger family, who all live under one roof, and their conflicts as the parents scheme to manipulate their children's relationships to their own ends, while their children strive for their own dreams. The audience is introduced to a unique family. The matriarch of the family, Bessie, had high hopes and dreams for her family; however, despite her hopefulness, her largest fear is that her family will lose their home and all their possessions. This fear stems from a woman down the street who had this exact thing happen to her. The household consists of extended family such as Bessie's father, Jacob, her husband Myron, and their son Ralph, 21, and spinster daughter Hennie, 26. To top it all off, in order to ease the fina ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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