MetaFilter posts tagged with Theater

Accursed be anyone who doesn't believe us!

degoao — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:40:45 -0800

The Nature Theater of Oklahoma is a theater troupe from NYC. They are putting on a new version of Romeo And Juliet at The Kitchen in Manhattan. From Gothamist: "The script is not Shakespeare's; it's derived from hours of recorded telephone conversations of people recounting what they remember about the play, which most haven't revisited since high school. In the telling, new characters are created (like Euristhepiss, Romeo's flamboyant friend), the poetry is mangled (Where DOTH my Romeo? Juliet is the sky, and I am the sun!"), and gaps in recollection are filled with inspired invention."

A Very Merry (Unauthorized) Children's Scientology Pageant

scalefree — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 10:45:13 -0800

Witness the spectacle as Chicago's A Red Orchid Theater presents A Very Merry (Unauthorized) Children's Scientology Pageant, through January 17, 2010. It's time to celebrate, it's time to open up your eyes. Critics agree - it's a hit!

Opera in Focus

Iridic — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:04:03 -0800

La Gioconda, Tristan und Isolde, The Pearl Fishers, Il Trovatore, and Rigoletto — enacted with 16-inch rod puppets. The Opera in Focus company continues a Chicagoan puppet opera tradition which began in a 12-year-old boy's basement in 1927 and at its height could fill an exquisite 208-seat theater above a Swedish restaurant.

Purrforming Arts

dersins — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:09:21 -0800

"From the moment the first kitty made shadow birds on the walls of a prehistoric cave, we have had theater." Claw Theater presents Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Robin Hood, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Also see the art exhibit in the theater lobby, and "watch" the groundbreaking A Few Days In Florida.

Free Night of Theater (2009)

Lesser Shrew — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 12:36:22 -0800

Stage plays for nothin'! If you live in or plan to visit one of the 120 American cities participating in Free Night of Theater, then log on, find a show, and get one of the free tickets before they're gone. Simple. The list of shows ranges from standard children's repertory to the latest from Steppenwolf Theatre Company. For most cities, tickets are now or soon will be available online. (San Francisco, for one, requires free theater goers to line up for tickets on October 14, first come first served.)

The Last Lecture

kliuless — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 04:56:15 -0800

Horrifically bad software demo becomes performance art

We are such stuff: As dreams are made on

ocherdraco — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 09:32:00 -0800

"Theatre," says Professor Lorraine Moller, Artistic Director of Rehabilitation Through the Arts at Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in her foreword to Laurence Tocci's The Proscenium Cage [pdf], "may well be one of the few antidotes to the de-humanizing climate of prisons." The use of theater in prisons has many forms: from projects designed to let prisoners tell their own stories as shown in the Austrian film "Gangster Girls" (trailer in German), to the elaborate, high-concept costume dramas of Italy's Compagnia della Fortezza. Some base their work on Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed, others on Moreno's Psychodrama, but many programs use a more direct approach: put on classic plays, and let the play do the illuminating. That's the approach of Shakespeare Behind Bars, the troupe at Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky. Watch the entirety of Shakespeare Behind Bars, a compelling 2005 documentary that follows the troupe for a season as they produce a production of The Tempest. Other programs, books, and articles of interest:

"Prison Drama," an article in the Chicago Reader that profiles the Geese Theater, a US troupe.¹
The Geese Theatre in the UK
"Notes on Prison Theater in Northern Uganda" (Part 2, Part 3)
Prison Performing Arts in St. Louis, Missouri
Direct Action, a program at Ramsey County Correctional Facility in Minnesota
The TiPP Project in Manchester, UK
Theatre in Prison: Theory and Practice edited by Michael Balfour
The Proscenium Cage: Critical Case Studies in U.S. Prison Theatre Programs by Laurence Tocci
Prison Theatre: Perspectives and Practices edited by James Thompson

¹An excerpt:

"There's a violence epidemic going on in this country," John Bergman sighs at the end of a long and exhausting day. "There's a wholesale trade of guns and knives at street level; there's talk of race hatred again. It's not getting better, and something's got to be done. . . . It's very easy to blame society. There's poverty and racism and outrageous government indifference to alleviating the conditions that breed crime. We can't do anything about that. But we're talking about people who have been self-traumatized as well as socially traumatized. Guys seduce themselves with criminal trickery. They learn how to lie and cheat and steal. That can be confronted. I'm willing to put out energy to push people to take a risk and say it might be possible. I don't get depressed. I love what I do. And I learn. I see what those men inside do and what we make together. It comes from them. These fuckers teach me tremendously."

There was good sport in its making

Ndwright — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:25:35 -0800

The Royal Shakespeare Company presents King Lear, starring Ian McKellen, directed by Trevor Nunn, adapted for broadcast and available in its entirety online. Noteworthy aspects of this adaptation include a novel end for the Fool (played by Doctor Who #7 Sylvester McCoy), an ironic fate for Edmund, and, omitted from the broadcast version, nudity (SFW) Interview with McKellen on playing the "Everest" of Shakespeare.

This little homunculus

Joe Beese — Tue, 26 May 2009 19:13:12 -0800

London’s Royal Court Theatre has made this spring a Wallace Shawn season. In addition to showing Shawn’s cult movies “My Dinner with Andre” (1981) and “Vanya on 42nd Street” (1994), the theatre has staged his 1990 one-man show, “The Fever” (with the estimable Clare Higgins taking on Shawn’s role), his 1985 play “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” and Shawn’s first new play in more than a decade, “Grasses of a Thousand Colors,” in which the pug-nosed provocateur himself performs the central part. This is a big deal. (previously) The Royal Court, one of the most influential theatres in Europe, is doing for Shawn what the Beatles did for Little Richard: rediscovering for a new generation a singular American talent who had been marginalized in his own country. In the United States, Shawn, as a playwright, is a relatively unknown quantity without an artistic home; in England, his works, which prey on both consciousness and conscience, are published under the rubric of “contemporary classics. - John Lahr, The New Yorker

No more guessing when to run and pee

rhapsodie — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:40:11 -0800

Every movie has a few scenes in there somewhere that aren't crucial to the plot. Every movie has a few minutes you can miss and not be lost when you sit back down. Now you can go see a movie and get that extra large soda without worrying about missing anything important. No more guessing when to run and pee!

Size Does Matter

hippybear — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:47:01 -0800

Been to your local cineplex lately and seen IMAX Digital on the menu? Been tempted to pay the extra $5 or so for the expected 7-story screen and mammoth sound? Well step back and think again. The LF Examiner examines the new "IMAX Digital" format and why it's so disappointing. Comedian Anziz Anzari tries to get a refund after seeing Star Trek on a tiny "IMAX" screen. Apparently not all IMAX screens are created equal.

Silence!

dersins — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 11:45:24 -0800

And when it's done there's one more thing
A simple little task, it's:
Put the fucking lotion in the basket!
A lego-animated number from "Silence! The Musical". Music and Lyrics by Jon and Al Kaplan.

If an artistic director has quantified the dream of theatre on a spreadsheet, they are dead already.

ocherdraco — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:11:25 -0800

Monologuist Mike Daisey has a beef with the way theater is made in the United States: . He's made that beef the substance of one of his monologues, How Theater Failed America. Now, Todd Olson, Producing Artistic Director (scroll down for bio) at the American Stage Theatre Company in St. Petersburg, Florida, has beef with Daisey, too. Olson says: balance my budget, wretched actor miscreant; Daisey says: bring it. Response from the blogosphere: Parabasis. Direct Address by Tim Bauer. Theatre Ideas (whose summary of the challenge I used for the text of the challenge link).

Renewing the economics of theatre

divabat — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 17:11:28 -0800

The recession has hit the theatre world (and the arts scene in general) very hard - but some argue that theatre practitioners aren't doing themselves any favours when seeking funding. The main question insufficiently addressed is "who is the funding for?" - hint: it's not about you. Approaching theatre as a product isn't working, not when MFA acting programs don't often allow its graduates to earn enough to earn back their debt. So now the question is: how can the economics of theatre be changed?

Pleasant Family Shopping and General Cinemas

mattbucher — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:46:48 -0800

Vintage photos and a history of General Cinemas. Before the 1960s, concessions were rare at movie theaters, but GCC introduced them widely and even launched their own exclusive drink: Sunkist soda. Also part of the GCC experience was their feature presentation bumper. General Cinemas was sold to AMC in 2002, but here is their now abandoned site. This blog also has some awesome old photos of Kroger's (2, 3, 4) and malls.

For the Raincoat Crowd

klangklangston — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 17:43:08 -0800

The History of the Pussycat Theater Chain—When Cathouses ruled California A zany, photo-laden (mildly NSFW) story of the rise and fall of one of America's seminal theater chains.

Thus did the sons of the Heike vanish forever from the face of the earth.

ersatz — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 08:29:47 -0800

The Tale of the Heike (Heike Monogatari) is a medieval Japanese account of the rise and fall of the Taira clan and has inspired many other works of art. Click on the chapters and scroll down to see Heike illustrations (or start here), see more art or figures inspired by the Heike. Would you rather read? You can read two chapters of Helen Craig McCullough's translation or read a Michael Watson translation of the nô (Noh) play Kogô (illustration), inspired by the tale. (.doc file, link doesn't point directly to it.) The story was performed by biwa hôshi, "lute monks", and its most popular version was compiled by the blind* monk Kakuichi in 1371. The events recounted occur during the Genpei War (short version). The Genpei War took place in the 12th century between the Taira and Minamoto clans and was the end of the Heian era depicted in the famous Japanese text, The Tale of Genji. Heike means "House of Taira" and Genji "Minamoto clan". John Wallace (first link) isn't one for web design, but seems to have a penchant for collecting. *cf. Homer, Milton, Joyce, Borges.

The world premiere of Blog Theatre.

GuyZero — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 11:14:39 -0800

The world premiere of Blog Theatre. Please give a warm applause for this evenings production of George Washington.

Every. Single. MST3K. Episode.

ObscureReferenceMan — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:38:21 -0800

All MST3K episodes available in .avi format. That is all. I need to lie down.

Victorians, eminent and otherwise

Kattullus — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 07:00:30 -0800

The Victorian Web is your one-stop resource for England in the Victorian era (1837-1901). The site is much too extensive to give but a flavor. It is divided into 20 categories, including Technology, Gender Matters, Economic Contexts, Authors, Political History, Theater and Popular Entertainment, Science and Genre and Technique. Here are a few examples of the articles inside: Inventions in Alice in Wonderland, The Role of the Victorian Army, Earth Yenneps: Victorian Back Slang (and a glossary of same), Algernon Charles Swinburne and the Philosophy of Androgyny, Hermaphrodeity, and Victorian Sexual Mores, Evolution, progress and natural laws and, of course, Queen Victoria.

Russian poetry and drama

Kattullus — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 11:09:39 -0800

Early Twentieth Century Russian Drama and From the Ends to the Beginning: A Bilingual Anthology of Russian Poetry are both products of Northwestern University Slavic Department. The former is devoted to Russian theater from the 1890s through the 1930s and focuses on the visual aspect of theater, with images of costumes, set designs and photographs of stagings. The latter is a collection of 250 poems, both in Russian and English translations ranging from the 18th Century to the modern day. There are some amazing images from the history of Russian drama, such as Kazimir Malevich's designs for Victory over the Sun and a quicktime video of actors doing Meyerhold's biomechanical exercises. The Listening Gallery of russianpoetry.net has over 75 recitals of poems, including Vladmir Mayakovsky reading his own And Could You? and a reading of Velimir Khlebnikov's famous Invocation of Laughter.

ObitFilter: Paul Sills

Joey Michaels — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 17:20:25 -0800

Paul Sills, son of Viola Spolin and one of the fathers of Chicago style improv comedy through his work with The Compass Players (who sort of morphed into Second City) and through his Story Theatre work has passed away at age 80. Chicago has lost two of its legends in one day.

If this young fellow be right, then we have all been wrong

thomas j wise — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 19:27:55 -0800

David Garrick (1717-1779) revolutionized acting technique in the eighteenth century. One of England's most influential actor-managers, he operated the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and exerted a profound influence on Shakespearean texts and performances alike; in fact, Garrick's Jubilee Celebration of 1769 is the ancestor of the modern Shakespeare festival (and inspired some fakery as well). Read some of Garrick's Shakespeare adaptations: Florizel and Perdita; Romeo and Juliet; The Taming of the Shrew. Try to decipher Garrick's handwriting. Mary Darby Robinson's "Elegy." Visit Garrick's Temple to Shakespeare, which remains open for business. (More at The Twickenham Museum.) See many portraits of Garrick at the National Portrait Gallery. And a bust of Garrick by Richard Westmacott. Search the collections of the Garrick Club, founded in 1831.

The Sadder But Wiser Librarian

Del Far — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 20:55:07 -0800

Is there any other way to Woo a Librarian? I mean, you don't want to cause Trouble, but it's tough to find that girl to be your Shipoopi, but when you meet her, it's like hearing bells.

The Whedon cultist block vote swings it

Artw — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 19:36:14 -0800

Sci-Fi Shakespearean standoff: Magneto vs Pickard vs that guy from Serentity.