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Nancy Meckler
Nancy Meckler is an American-born director, known for her approach to theatre, specifically her work in the United Kingdom with Shared Experience, where she was a joint artistic director alongside Polly Teale. Educated in the US and England,Crouch, Kristin Ann. "Shared Experience Theatre: Exploring the Boundaries of Performance." Order No. 3093639, The Ohio State University, 2003, pp. 143–183. she has directed for a number of prominent theatres, including the Globe Theatre, the Royal National Theatre, and the Royal Shakespeare Company. She has also directed feature films such as ''Sister My Sister'', and ''Alive and Kicking/Indian Summer''. Early life and education Meckler is native to Long Island, New York. It was there that she began to take interest in the arts, though directing was not her original passion; at first she wanted to be an actor. She was initially attracted to theatre because of its ability to expose audiences to new and different worldviews. Meckler attend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Aukin
David Aukin (born 12 February 1942) is an English theatrical and executive producer as well as a qualified solicitor. He has been nominated for multiple British Academy Television Awards and has won twice for producing films about Tony Blair: ''The Government Inspector'' in 2005 and ''Britz'' in 2009. While Head of Film at Channel 4 he received the Michael Balcon Award from BAFTA for the quality of its output. The films he commissioned at Channel 4 gathered numerous Oscar nominations and they won for the '' Madness of King George'', '' Secrets & Lies'' and '' Trainspotting''. ''Secrets & Lies'' also won the Palme d'Or at Cannes Film Festival. Early life David Aukin was born in Harrow, London, on 12 February 1942, to Jewish parents Charles, born in Belarus, and Regina (née Unger), born in Germany of Polish parentage. Aukin attended St Paul's School and studied Law at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, intending to follow in his father's footsteps. Theatrical career David Aukin serve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and on tour across the UK and internationally. The company's home is in Stratford-upon-Avon, where it has redeveloped its Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatre (Stratford), Swan theatres as part of a £112.8-million "Transformation" project. The theatres re-opened in November 2010, having closed in 2007. As well as the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the RSC produces new work from living artists. Company history The early years There have been theatrical performances in Stratford-upon-Avon since at least Shakespeare's day, though the first recorded performance of a play written by Shakespeare himself was in 1746 when Parson Joseph Greene, master of Stratford Grammar School, organise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Bernard Shaw
George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw, was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as ''Man and Superman'' (1902), ''Pygmalion (play), Pygmalion'' (1913) and ''Saint Joan (play), Saint Joan'' (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory, Shaw became the leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Dublin, in 1876 Shaw moved to London, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the Gradualism (politics), gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lyric Theatre (Hammersmith)
The Lyric Theatre, also known as the Lyric Hammersmith, is a nonprofit theatre on Lyric Square, off King Street, Hammersmith, London."About the Lyric" > "History" ''Lyric'' official website. Retrieved January 2024. Background The Lyric Theatre was originally a music hall established in 1888 on Bradmore Grove, Hammersmith. Success as an entertainment venue led it to be rebuilt and enlarged on the same site twice, firstly in 1890 and then in 1895 by the English theatrical architect Frank Matcham. The 1895 reopening, as The New Lyric Opera House, was accompanied by an opening address by the famous actress Lillie Langtry. In 1966 the theatre was due to be closed and demolished. However, a successful campaign to save it led to the auditorium being dismantled and reinstalled piece by piece within a modern shell on its current site on King Street a short distance from the former Bradmore Grove location. The relocated theatre opened in 1979.John Earl"Presidential Address: The Crest of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Court Theatre
The Royal Court Theatre, at different times known as the Court Theatre, the New Chelsea Theatre, and the Belgravia Theatre, is a West End theatre#London's non-commercial theatres, non-commercial theatre in Sloane Square, London, England, opened in 1870; the current building was completed in 1888. The capacity of the theatre has varied between 728 seats and today's 380 seats (with a smaller upstairs theatre opened in 1969). In 1956 it was acquired by and remains the home of the English Stage Company, which focuses on contemporary theatre and won the Europe Theatre Prize, Europe Prize Theatrical Realities in 1999. History The first theatre The first theatre on Lower George Street, off Sloane Square, was the converted Nonconformist Ranelagh Chapel, opened as a theatre in 1870 under the name The New Chelsea Theatre. Marie Litton became its manager in 1871, hiring Walter Emden to remodel the interior, and it was renamed the Court Theatre. Several of W. S. Gilbert's early plays ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clare McIntyre
Lindsay Clare McIntyre (21 July 1952 – 27 November 2009) was a British playwright and actress. She was among the feminist playwrights who contributed to the deconstruction of traditional forms of female representation. She debuted on the British feminist theatre scene as an actress in the 1970s, and emerged as a writer with allegiance to feminist issues a decade later. Biography and career McIntyre was born in Harrogate, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on 21 July 1952 and grew up in Woldingham, Surrey, to later move to Manchester to study drama at the University of Manchester. She started working in acting with the Nottingham Playhouse's theatre-in-education team, and later joined the feminist Women's Theatre Group as a performer and deviser. Before devoting herself to full-time feminist playwriting, she also played minor roles in films such as ''The Pirates of Penzance'' (1983), '' Hotel du Lac'' (1986) and ''A Fish Called Wanda'' (1988)''.'' In the following years, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Potter
Dennis Christopher George Potter (17 May 1935 – 7 June 1994) was an English television dramatist, screenwriter and journalist. He is best known for his BBC television serials '' Pennies from Heaven'' (1978) and '' The Singing Detective'' (1986) as well as the BBC television plays '' Blue Remembered Hills'' (1979) and '' Brimstone and Treacle'' (1976). His television dramas, often set or partly set in the Forest of Dean of his childhood, mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social, and often used themes and images from popular culture. Potter is widely regarded as one of the most influential and innovative dramatists to have worked in British television. Born in Gloucestershire and graduating from Oxford University, Potter initially worked in journalism. After standing for parliament as a Labour candidate at the 1964 general election, his health was affected by the onset of psoriatic arthropathy which necessitated Potter to change career and led to his becoming ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pam Gems
Pam Gems ( Iris Pamela Price; 1 August 1925 – 13 May 2011) was an England, English playwright. The author of numerous original plays, as well as of adaptations of works by European playwrights of the past, Gems is best known for the 1978 Musical theater, musical Play (theatre), play ''Piaf (play), Piaf''. Personal life Iris Pamela Price was born in Bransgore, Hampshire, and had her first play – a tale of goblins and elves – staged when she was eight by her fellow pupils at primary school. She studied psychology at University of Manchester, Manchester University from which she graduated in 1949. She was in her forties when she started to write professionally. She is best known for her 1978 Musical theater, musical Play (theatre), play ''Piaf'' about French singer Édith Piaf. She was nominated for two Tony Awards: for ''Stanley (play), Stanley'' (Best Play) in 1997, and for ''Marlene (musical), Marlene'' (Best Book of a Musical), starring Siân Phillips as Marlene Dietrich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; ; 29 January 1860 – 15 July 1904) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer, widely considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career as a playwright produced four classics, and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov was a physician by profession. "Medicine is my lawful wife," he once said, "and literature is my mistress." Chekhov renounced the theatre after the reception of ''The Seagull'' in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Konstantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's ''Uncle Vanya'' and premiered his last two plays, ''Three Sisters (play), Three Sisters'' and ''The Cherry Orchard''. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uncle Vanya
''Uncle Vanya'' ( rus, Дя́дя Ва́ня, r=Dyádya Ványa, p=ˈdʲædʲə ˈvanʲə) is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897, and first produced in 1899 by the Moscow Art Theatre, directed by Konstantin Stanislavski. The play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate of the professor's late first wife that now supports their urban lifestyle. Two friends—Vanya, brother of the professor's late first wife, who has long managed the estate, and Astrov, the local doctor—both fall under Yelena's spell while bemoaning the ennui of their provincial existence. Sonya, the professor's daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going, suffers from her unrequited feelings for Astrov. Matters are brought to a crisis when the professor announces his intention to sell the estate, Vanya and Sonya's home, with a view to investing the proceeds to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curse Of the Starving Class
''Curse of the Starving Class'' is a play by Sam Shepard, considered the first of a series on family tragedies. Some critics consider it part of a Family Trilogy that includes ''Buried Child'' (1979) and '' True West'' (1980). Others consider it part of a quintet that includes '' Fool for Love'' (1983) and ''A Lie of the Mind'' (1985). The play was commissioned by Joseph Papp and was premiered in London in 1977 before playing at Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival in 1978. Production history The play was initially produced in London at the Royal Court Theatre on April 21, 1977, directed by Nancy Meckler. The play was commissioned by Joseph Papp. ''Curse of the Starving Class'' was premiered Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival, on March 2, 1978, presented by Papp. It closed on April 9, 1978. The cast was as follows: * Wesley – Ebbe Roe Smith * Ella – Olympia Dukakis * Emma – Pamela Reed * Taylor – Kenneth Welsh * Weston – James Gammon * Ellis – Edd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Action (play)
''Action'' is a 1974 play by Sam Shepard. The play, which scholar Stephen J. Bottoms described as "stark" and "plotless", is considered by scholars to be among his most important works. It has been compared to the work of Samuel Beckett. Production history ''Action'' was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs, London, in October 1974, directed by Nancy Meckler. The original cast was as follows: * Shooter – Steven Moore * Jeep – Stephen Rea * Liza – Jill Richards * Lupe – Jennifer Stoller The play was also performed at New York's American Place Theatre with a companion piece, Shepard's monologue '' Killer's Head'', premiered with it as a double bill. In 1975, Sam Shepard directed a revival of the play at the Magic Theater in San Francisco, where he was artist in residence. Plot summary ''Action'' follows two men and two women stuck in a house on Christmas, after some implied disastrous event has taken place in the world. They attempt to cook a holiday din ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
