Meryl Streep
Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep is an American actress. Described as the "best actress of her generation", Streep is known for her versatility and accent adaptation. Nominated for a record 21 Academy Awards, she has won three. Streep has received 31 Golden Globe nominations, winning eight - more nominations, wins, than any other actor, she has won three Primetime Emmy Awards and has been nominated for fifteen British Academy Film Awards, seventeen Screen Actors Guild Awards, winning two each. Streep made her stage debut in Trelawny of the Wells in 1975. In 1976, she received a Tony Award nomination for Best Featured Actress in a Play for 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and A Memory of Two Mondays. In 1977, she made her screen debut in the television film The Deadliest Season, made her film debut in Julia. In 1978, she won an Emmy Award for her role in the mini-series Holocaust, received her first Academy Award nomination for The Deer Hunter. Streep went on to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Kramer vs. Kramer, the Academy Award for Best Actress for Sophie's Choice and The Iron Lady.
Streep's other Oscar-nominated roles were in The French Lieutenant's Woman, Out of Africa, Evil Angels, Postcards from the Edge, The Bridges of Madison County, One True Thing, Music of the Heart, The Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia, August: Osage County, Into the Woods, Florence Foster Jenkins, The Post. She returned to the stage for the first time in over 20 years in The Public Theater's 2001 revival of The Seagull, won a second Emmy Award and a Golden Globe in 2004 for the HBO mini-series Angels in America. Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2008, Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to American culture, through performing arts. President Barack Obama awarded her the 2010 National Medal of Arts, in 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2003, the government of France made her a Commander of the Order of Letters, she was awarded the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2017. Mary Louise Streep was born on June 1949, in Summit, New Jersey.
She is the daughter of a commercial artist and art editor. She has two younger brothers: Harry William Streep III and Dana David Streep, who are actors. Streep's father Harry was of Swiss ancestry, her father's lineage traces back to Loffenau, from where her second great-grandfather, Gottfried Streeb, immigrated to the United States, where one of her ancestors served as mayor. Another line of her father's family was from Switzerland, her mother had English and Irish ancestry. Some of Streep's maternal ancestors lived in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, were descended from 17th-century immigrants from England, her eighth great-grandfather, Lawrence Wilkinson, was one of the first Europeans to settle in Rhode Island. Streep is the second cousin 7 times removed of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. Streep's maternal great-great-grandparents, Manus McFadden and Grace Strain, the latter the namesake of Streep's second daughter, were natives of the Horn Head district of Dunfanaghy, Ireland. Streep's mother, whom she has compared in both appearance and manner to Dame Judi Dench encouraged her daughter, instilled confidence in her from a young age.
Streep has said: "She was a mentor because she said to me,'Meryl, you're capable. You're so great.' She was saying, ` You can do. If you're lazy, you're not going to get it done, but if you put your mind to it, you can do anything.' And I believed her." Although Streep was more introverted than her mother, at times, when she needed an injection of confidence in adulthood, she would consult her mother, asking her for advice. Streep was raised as a Presbyterian in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, attended Cedar Hill Elementary School and the Oak Street School, a Junior High school back then. In her Junior High debut, she starred as Louise Heller in the play "The Family Upstairs". In 1963, the family moved to New Jersey, where she attended Bernards High School. Author Karina Longworth described her as a "gawky kid with glasses and frizzy hair", yet noted that she liked to show off in front of the camera in family home movies from a young age. At the age of 12, Streep was selected to sing at a school recital, leading to her having opera lessons from Estelle Liebling.
However, despite her talent, she has remarked that, "I was singing something I didn't feel and understand. That was an important lesson—not to do that. To find the thing that I could feel through." She quit after four years. Streep had many Catholic school friends, attended mass. Meryl was a high school cheerleader for the Bernards High School Mountaineers and was chosen as the homecoming queen her senior year, her family lived on Old Fort Road. Although Streep appeared in numerous school plays during her high school years, she was uninterested in serious theater until acting in the play Miss Julie at Vassar College in 1969, in which she gained attention across the campus. Vassar drama professor Clinton J. Atkinson noted, "I don't think anyone taught Meryl acting, she taught herself." Streep demonstrated an early ability to mimic accents and
Americans
Americans are nationals and citizens of the United States of America. Although nationals and citizens make up the majority of Americans, some dual citizens and permanent residents may claim American nationality; the United States is home to people of many different ethnic origins. As a result, American culture and law does not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with citizenship and permanent allegiance. English-speakers, speakers of many other languages use the term "American" to mean people of the United States; the word "American" can refer to people from the Americas in general. The majority of Americans or their ancestors immigrated to America or are descended from people who were brought as slaves within the past five centuries, with the exception of the Native American population and people from Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands, who became American through expansion of the country in the 19th century, additionally America expanded into American Samoa, the U. S. Virgin Islands and Northern Mariana Islands in the 20th century.
Despite its multi-ethnic composition, the culture of the United States held in common by most Americans can be referred to as mainstream American culture, a Western culture derived from the traditions of Northern and Western European colonists and immigrants. It includes influences of African-American culture. Westward expansion integrated the Creoles and Cajuns of Louisiana and the Hispanos of the Southwest and brought close contact with the culture of Mexico. Large-scale immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from Southern and Eastern Europe introduced a variety of elements. Immigration from Asia and Latin America has had impact. A cultural melting pot, or pluralistic salad bowl, describes the way in which generations of Americans have celebrated and exchanged distinctive cultural characteristics. In addition to the United States and people of American descent can be found internationally; as many as seven million Americans are estimated to be living abroad, make up the American diaspora.
The United States of America is a diverse country and ethnically. Six races are recognized by the U. S. Census Bureau for statistical purposes: White, American Indian and Alaska Native, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, people of two or more races. "Some other race" is an option in the census and other surveys. The United States Census Bureau classifies Americans as "Hispanic or Latino" and "Not Hispanic or Latino", which identifies Hispanic and Latino Americans as a racially diverse ethnicity that comprises the largest minority group in the nation. People of European descent, or White Americans, constitute the majority of the 308 million people living in the United States, with 72.4% of the population in the 2010 United States Census. They are considered people who trace their ancestry to the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa. Of those reporting to be White American, 7,487,133 reported to be Multiracial. Additionally, there are Latinos.
Non-Hispanic Whites are the majority in 46 states. There are four minority-majority states: California, New Mexico, Hawaii. In addition, the District of Columbia has a non-white majority; the state with the highest percentage of non-Hispanic White Americans is Maine. The largest continental ancestral group of Americans are that of Europeans who have origins in any of the original peoples of Europe; this includes people via African, North American, Central American or South American and Oceanian nations that have a large European descended population. The Spanish were some of the first Europeans to establish a continuous presence in what is now the United States in 1565. Martín de Argüelles born 1566, San Agustín, La Florida a part of New Spain, was the first person of European descent born in what is now the United States. Twenty-one years Virginia Dare born 1587 Roanoke Island in present-day North Carolina, was the first child born in the original Thirteen Colonies to English parents. In the 2017 American Community Survey, German Americans, Irish Americans, English Americans and Italian Americans were the four largest self-reported European ancestry groups in the United States forming 35.1% of the total population.
However, the English Americans and British Americans demography is considered a serious under-count as they tend to self-report and identify as "Americans" due to the length of time they have inhabited America. This is over-represented in the Upland South, a region, settled by the British. Overall, as the largest group, European Americans have the lowest poverty rate and the second highest educational attainment levels, median household income, median personal income of any racial demographic in the nation. According to the American Jewish Archives and the Arab American National Museum, some of the first Middle Easterners and North Africans arrived in the Americas between the late 15th and mid-16th centuries. Many were fleeing ethnic or ethnoreligious persecution during the Spanish Inquisition, a few were taken to the Americas as slaves. In 2014, The United States Census Bureau began finalizing the ethnic classification of MENA populations. According to the Arab American Institute, Arab
John Houseman
John Houseman was a British-American actor and producer who became known for his publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane and his collaboration, as producer of The Blue Dahlia, with writer Raymond Chandler on the screenplay. He is best known for his role as Professor Charles W. Kingsfield in the film The Paper Chase, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, he reprised his role as Kingsfield in the 1978 television series adaptation. Houseman was known for his commercials for the brokerage firm Smith Barney, he had a product of his schooling. Houseman was born on September 22, 1902, in Bucharest, the son of May and Georges Haussmann, who ran a grain business, his mother was British, from a Christian family of Irish descent. His father was an Alsatian-born Jew, he was educated in England at Clifton College, became a British subject, worked in the grain trade in London before emigrating to the United States in 1925, where he took the stage name of John Houseman.
He became a United States citizen in 1943. Houseman worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, only turning to the theater following the 1929 stock market crash. On Broadway he co-wrote Three and One and And Be My Love. Composer Virgil Thomson recruited him to direct Four Saints in Three Acts, Thomson's collaboration with Gertrude Stein, he directed The Lady from the Sea, Valley Forge. In 1934, Houseman was looking to cast Panic, a play he was producing based on a drama by Archibald MacLeish concerning a Wall Street financier whose world crumbles about him when consumed by the crash of 1929. Although the central figure is a man in his late fifties, Houseman became obsessed by the notion that a young man named Orson Welles he had seen in Katharine Cornell's production of Romeo and Juliet was the only person qualified to play the leading role. Welles consented and, after preliminary conversations, agreed to leave the play he was in after a single night to take the lead in Houseman's production.
Panic opened at the Imperial Theatre on March 15, 1935. Among the cast was Houseman's ex-wife, Zita Johann, who had co-starred with Boris Karloff three years earlier in Universal's The Mummy. Although the play opened to indifferent notices and ran for a mere three performances, it led to the forging of a theatrical team, a fruitful but stormy partnership in which Houseman said Welles "was the teacher, I, the apprentice." He supervised the direction of Walk Together Chillun in 1936. In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project of the Works Progress Administration put unemployed theatre performers and employees to work; the Negro Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project was headed by Rose McClendon, a well-known black actress, Houseman, a theatre producer. Houseman describes the experience in one of his memoirs: Within a year of its formation, the Federal Theatre had more than fifteen thousand men and women on its payroll at an average wage of twenty dollars a week. During the four years of its existence its productions played to more than thirty million people in more than two hundred theatres as well as portable stages, school auditoriums and public parks the country over.
Houseman hired Welles and assigned him to direct Macbeth for the FTP's Negro Theater Unit, a production that became known as the "Voodoo Macbeth", as it was set in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe and starred Jack Carter in the title role. The incidental music was composed by Virgil Thomson; the play premiered at the Lafayette Theatre on April 14, 1936, to enthusiastic reviews and remained sold out for each of its nightly performances. The play was regarded by patrons as an enormous, if controversial, success. After 10 months with the Negro Theater Project, Houseman felt he was faced with the dilemma of risking his future:... on a partnership with a 20-year-old boy in whose talent I had unquestioning faith but with whom I must play the combined and tricky roles of producer, adviser, father, older brother and bosom friend. Houseman produced for the Negro Theatre Unit, without Welles. In 1936, Houseman and Wells were running a WPA unit in midtown Manhattan for classic productions called Project No. 891.
Their first production would be Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Dr. Faustus which Welles directed playing the title role. Houseman and Welles put on Horse Eats Hat. Houseman, without Welles, helped in the direction of Leslie Howard's production of Hamlet. In June 1937, Project No. 891 produced their most controversial work with The Cradle Will Rock. Written by Marc Blitzstein the musical was about Larry Foreman, a worker in Steeltown, run by the boss, Mister Mister; the show was thought to have had left-wing and unionist sympathies, became legendary as an example of a "censored" show. Shortly before the show was to open, FTP officials in Washington announced that no productions would open until after July 1, 1937, the beginning of the new fiscal year. In his memoir, Run-Through, Houseman wrote about the circumstances surrounding the opening night at the Maxine Elliott Theatre. All the performers had been enjoined not to perform on stage for the production when it opened on July 14, 1937.
The cast and crew left their government-owned
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian opera composer, called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi". Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera, he developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents. Puccini's most renowned works are La bohème, Madama Butterfly, Turandot, all of which are among the important operas played as standards. Puccini was born Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini in Lucca, Italy in 1858, he was one of nine children of Michele Albina Magi. The Puccini family was established in Lucca as a local musical dynasty by Puccini's great-great-grandfather – named Giacomo; this first Giacomo Puccini was maestro di cappella of the Cattedrale di San Martino in Lucca. He was succeeded in this position by his son, Antonio Puccini, by Antonio's son Domenico, Domenico's son Michele; each of these men studied music at Bologna, some took additional musical studies elsewhere.
Domenico Puccini studied for a time under Giovanni Paisiello. Each composed music for the church. In addition, Domenico composed several operas, Michele composed one opera. Puccini's father Michele enjoyed a reputation throughout northern Italy, his funeral was an occasion of public mourning, at which the then-famed composer Giovanni Pacini conducted a Requiem. With the Puccini family having occupied the position of maestro di cappella for 124 years by the time of Michele's death, it was anticipated that Michele's son Giacomo would occupy that position as well when he was old enough. However, when Michele Puccini died in 1864, his son Giacomo was only six years old, thus not capable of taking over his father's job; as a child, he participated in the musical life of the Cattedrale di San Martino, as a member of the boys' choir and as a substitute organist. Puccini was given a general education at the seminary of San Michele in Lucca, at the seminary of the cathedral. One of Puccini's uncles, Fortunato Magi, supervised his musical education.
Puccini got a diploma from the Pacini School of Music in Lucca in 1880, having studied there with his uncle Fortunato, with Carlo Angeloni, who had instructed Alfredo Catalani. A grant from Queen Margherita, assistance from another uncle, Nicholas Cerù, provided the funds necessary for Puccini to continue his studies at the Milan Conservatory, where he studied composition with Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti, Amilcare Ponchielli, Antonio Bazzini. Puccini studied at the conservatory for three years. In 1880, at the age of 21, Puccini composed his Mass, which marks the culmination of his family's long association with church music in his native Lucca. Puccini wrote an orchestral piece called the Capriccio sinfonico as a thesis composition for the Milan Conservatory. Puccini's teachers Ponchielli and Bazzini were impressed by the work, it was performed at a student concert at the conservatory on 14 July 1883, conducted by Franco Faccio. Puccini's work was favorably reviewed in the Milanese publication Perseveranza, thus Puccini began to build a reputation as a young composer of promise in Milanese music circles.
After the premiere of the Capriccio sinfonico and Puccini discussed the possibility that Puccini's next work might be an opera. Ponchielli invited Puccini to stay at his villa, where Puccini was introduced to another young man named Ferdinando Fontana. Puccini and Fontana agreed to collaborate on an opera; the work, Le Villi, was entered into a competition sponsored by the Sozogno music publishing company in 1883. Although it did not win, Le Villi was staged at the Teatro Dal Verme, premiering on 31 May 1884. G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers assisted with the premier by printing the libretto without charge. Fellow students from the Milan Conservatory formed a large part of the orchestra; the performance was enough of a success. Revised into a two-act version with an intermezzo between the acts, Le Villi was performed at La Scala in Milan, on 24 January 1885. However, Ricordi did not publish the score until 1887. Giulio Ricordi, head of G. Ricordi & Co. music publishers, was sufficiently impressed with Le Villi and its young composer that he commissioned a second opera, which would result in Edgar.
Work was begun in 1884. Puccini finished primary composition in 1887 and orchestration in 1888. Edgar premiered at La Scala on 21 April 1889 to a lukewarm response; the work was withdrawn for revisions after its third performance. In a Milanese newspaper, Giulio Ricordi published a defense of Puccini's skill as a composer, while criticizing Fontana's libretto. A revised version met with success at the Teatro del Giglio in Puccini's native Lucca on 5 September 1891. In 1892, further revisions reduced the length of the opera from four acts to three, in a version, well received in Ferrara and was performed in Turin and in Spain. Puccini made further revisions in 1901 and 1905. Without the personal support of Ricordi, Edgar might have cost Puccini his career. Puccini had eloped with his former piano student, the married Elvira Gemignani, Ricordi's associates were willing to turn a blind eye to his life style as long as he was successful; when Edg
Rent (musical)
Rent is a rock musical with music and book by Jonathan Larson, loosely based on Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème. It tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create a life in Lower Manhattan's East Village in the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS; the musical was first seen in a workshop production at New York Theatre Workshop in 1993. This same Off-Broadway theatre was the musical's initial home following its official 1996 opening; the show's creator, Jonathan Larson, died of an aortic dissection, believed to have been caused by undiagnosed Marfan syndrome, the night before the Off-Broadway premiere. The musical moved to Broadway's larger Nederlander Theatre on April 29, 1996. On Broadway, Rent won several awards; the Broadway production closed on September 2008, after a 12-year run of 5,123 performances. On February 14, 2016, the musical Wicked surpassed Rent's number of performances with a 2pm matinee, pushing Rent from the tenth- to eleventh-longest-running Broadway show.
The production grossed over $280 million. The success of the show led to numerous foreign productions. In 2005, it was adapted into a motion picture featuring most of the original cast members. In 1988, playwright Billy Aronson wanted to create "a musical based on Puccini's La Bohème, in which the luscious splendor of Puccini's world would be replaced with the coarseness and noise of modern New York." In 1989, Jonathan Larson, a 29-year-old composer, began collaborating with Aronson on this project, the two composed together "Santa Fe", "Splatter", "I Should Tell You". Larson suggested setting the play "amid poverty, spunky gay life, drag queens and punk" in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, which happened to be down the street from his Greenwich Village apartment, he came up with the show's ultimate title. In 1991, he asked Aronson if he could make Rent his own. Larson had ambitious expectations for Rent. Aronson and Larson made an agreement that if the show went to Broadway, Aronson would share in the proceeds and be given credit for "original concept & additional lyrics".
Jonathan Larson focused on composing Rent in the early 1990s, waiting tables at the Moondance Diner to support himself. Over the course of years, Larson wrote hundreds of songs and made many drastic changes to the show, which in its final incarnation contained 42 songs. In the fall of 1992, Larson approached James Nicola, artistic director of New York Theatre Workshop, with a tape and copy of Rent's script; when Rent had its first staged reading at New York Theatre Workshop in March 1993, it became evident that, despite its promising material and moving musical numbers, many structural problems needed to be addressed, including its cumbersome length and overly complex plot. As of 1994, the New York Theatre Workshop version of Rent featured songs that never made it into the final version, such as: "You're a Fool" "Do a Little Business", the predecessor of "You'll See", featuring Benny, Roger and Angel "Female to Female A & B", featuring Maureen and Joanne "He's a Fool" "He Says" "Right Brain" rewritten as "One Song Glory", featuring Roger "You'll Get Over It", the predecessor of "Tango: Maureen", featuring Mark and Maureen "Real Estate", a number wherein Benny tries to convince Mark to become a real estate agent and drop his filmmaking "Open Road", the predecessor of "What You Own", with a backing track similar to this in "Your Eyes"This workshop version of Rent starred Anthony Rapp as Mark and Daphne Rubin-Vega as Mimi.
Larson continued to work on Rent reworking its flaws and staging more workshop productions. On January 24, 1996, after the musical's final dress rehearsal before its off-Broadway opening, Larson had his first newspaper interview with music critic Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times, attracted by the coincidence that the show was debuting 100 years after Puccini's opera. Larson would not live to see Rent's success. Friends and family gathered at the New York Theatre Workshop, the first preview of Rent became a sing-through of the musical in Larson's memory; the show premiered as planned and gained popularity fueled by enthusiastic reviews and the recent death of its composer. It proved successful during its Off-Broadway run, selling out all its shows at the 150-seat New York Theater Workshop. Due to such overwhelming popularity and a need for a larger theater, Rent moved to Broadway's remodeled Nederlander Theatre on 41st Street on April 29, 1996. Larson's inspiration for Rent's content came from several different sources.
Many of the characters and plot elements are drawn directly from Giacomo Puccini's opera La Bohème, the world premiere of, in 1896, a century before Rent's premiere. La Bohème was about the lives of poor young artists. Tuberculosis, the plague of Puccini's opera, is replaced by HIV/AIDS in Rent; the names and identities of Rent's characters heavily reflect Puccini's original characters, though they are not all direct adaptations. For example, Joanne in Rent represents the character of Alcindoro in Bohème, but is partially based on Marcello. Joanne is the only Rent character whose predecessor in La Bohème is a dif
Broadhurst Theatre
The Broadhurst Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 235 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan. It was designed by architect Herbert J. Krapp, a well-known theatre designer, working directly with the Shubert brothers. Built back-to-back with the Majestic, it was meant to resemble the style of the neighboring Shubert and Booth theaters designed by Henry B. Herts, using less expensive brick and terra cotta materials on the discreetly neoclassical façadesIt was named after George Howells Broadhurst, an Anglo-American dramatist who came to America in 1886. In addition to writing plays, he managed theaters in Milwaukee and San Francisco before he decided to open his own in association with the Shubert brothers; the theatre was constructed to house both musicals and plays, which it has done for more than a century. It has been designated a New York City landmark; the Broadhurst opened on September 27, 1917 with George Bernard Shaw's Misalliance, the first New York production of the philosophical 1910 comedy.
It ran for only 52 performances and was not performed on Broadway again until 1953. Recent tenants include Les Misérables, which in October 2006 began an intended six-month-long return engagement that closed in January 2008; the theatre is notable for hosting Jerry Seinfeld's final performance of his original stand up material, filmed for an HBO special shortly after the finale of his long-running sitcom. 1917: Maytime 1918: The George and Ira Gershwin composition "The Real American Folk Song" is included in Ladies First, the first time one of their co-written tunes is heard on the Great White Way. 1919: Jane Cowl writes and stars in her popular romantic drama Smilin' Through. 175 performances. 1924: Dixie to Broadway, starring Florence Mills, is the first all-Black show to have a mainstream Broadway production. 1924: Beggar on Horseback, a George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly collaboration, stars Roland Young. 1928: The Ray Henderson-Buddy De Sylva-Lew Brown musical Hold Everything! Introduces the public to "You're the Cream in My Coffee."
1929: June Moon, a comedy by George S. Kaufman and Ring Lardner. 1932: Leslie Howard produces and stars in Philip Barry's The Animal Kingdom opposite Ilka Chase. 1933: Sidney Kingsley's Men in White stars Luther Adler and Morris Carnovsky and wins the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. 1935: Robert E. Sherwood's classic, The Petrified Forest, features Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart 1935: Helen Hayes and Vincent Price enjoy a 517-performance run in Victoria Regina. 1939: Doddi's Smith's Dear Octopus 1939: Carmen Miranda, Brazilian singer made her debut on the American stages in The Streets of Paris. 1944: Agatha Christie arrives on Broadway with Ten Little Indians. 1945: Follow the Girls completed its 888-performance run at the Broadhurst. 1946: Anita Loos' comedy hit, Happy Birthday, wins star Helen Hayes the first Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play. 1951: Barbara Cook makes her Broadway debut in the short-lived Flahooley. 1951: Seventeen, a musical, opens. 1952: Pal Joey revival runs for 540 performances and wins Tony Award for Helen Gallagher.
1956: Rosalind Russell has the title role in Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee's Auntie Mame. 1958: France Nuyen and William Shatner co-star in Paul Osborn's The World of Suzie Wong. 1959: Fiorello!, with a Jerry Bock-Sheldon Harnick score, is directed by George Abbott, stars Tom Bosley, wins a Tony and the Pulitzer. 1963: 110 in the Shade enjoys a 330-performance run with Robert Horton, Will Geer, Lesley Ann Warren, Inga Swenson in her Broadway debut. 1964: Oh, What a Lovely War! garners 4 Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, wins the Theatre World Award. 1965: Kelly - The biggest Broadway flop, it closed on the opening night. 1966: Jill Haworth, Joel Grey, Jack Gilford, Lotte Lenya, Bert Convy invite audiences to come to John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret 1,165 times. 1967: More Stately Mansions, one of Eugene O'Neill's lesser efforts, has an all-star cast including Ingrid Bergman, Arthur Hill, Colleen Dewhurst. 1969: Woody Allen, Tony Roberts, Diane Keaton forsake the screen to star in Allen's Play It Again, Sam.
1970: Cry for Us All, a musical adaptation of the hit off-Broadway play Hogan's Goat, was far less successful than its source, closing after only eighteen previews and nine performances. 1971: 70, Girls, 70 was an unsuccessful collaboration by Kander and Ebb. 1972: Alan Arkin directs Jack Albertson and Sam Levene in Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys 1974: Marlo Thomas makes her Broadway debut in Herb Gardner's Thieves, directed by Charles Grodin. 1976: Katharine Hepburn and Christopher Reeve co-star in Enid Bagnold's drama A Matter of Gravity. 1976: Larry Gelbart's Sly Fox, directed by Arthur Penn, stars George C. Scott, Jack Gilford, Gretchen Wyler, Hector Elizondo. 1978: Ann Reinking and Wayne Cilento star in director and choreographer Bob Fosse's Dancin'. 1980: Peter Shaffer's Amadeus, with Ian McKellen, Tim Curry, Jane Seymour, settles in for a 1181-performance run. 1983: Alfonso Ribeiro plays the title role in The Tap Dance Kid with Hinton Battle, who wins a Tony. 1984: Dustin Hoffman is Willy Loman in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
1986: Neil Simon's Broadway Bound, co-starring Jason Alexander and Phyllis Newman. 1990: Aspects of Love proves to be one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's least successful shows. 1991: Joan Collins stars in a revival of Noël Coward's Private Lives 1993: The Terrence McNally-John Kander-Fred Ebb musica
The Public Theater
The Public Theater is a New York City arts organization founded as the Shakespeare Workshop in 1954 by Joseph Papp, with the intention of showcasing the works of up-and-coming playwrights and performers. It is led by Executive Director Patrick Willingham; the venue opened in 1967, mounting the world-premiere production of the musical Hair as its first show. The Public is headquartered at 425 Lafayette Street in the former Astor Library in Lower Manhattan; the building holds five theater spaces and Joe's Pub, a cabaret-style venue used for new work, musical performances, spoken-word artists and soloists. The Public operates the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, where it presents Shakespeare in the Park, one of New York City's most beloved summer traditions. New York natives and visitors alike have been enjoying free Shakespeare in Central Park since performances began in 1954; the Public is dedicated to embracing the complexities of contemporary society and nurturing both artists and audiences, as it continues Joseph Papp's legacy of creating a place of inclusion and a forum for ideas.
Notable productions in recent years include: The Merchant of Venice, featuring Al Pacino as Shylock. In addition to each season of full-scale theatrical productions, The Public produces a number of different series and programs each year. In 2008, The Public presented its inaugural Public LAB series, an annual series of new plays presented in collaboration with LAByrinth Theater Company. Public LAB lets New Yorkers see more of the work they love from The Public in scaled-down productions, allows The Public to support more artists, as well as gives audiences immediate access to new plays in development at affordable prices. With each Public LAB show, corresponding speaker series are presented as after-show talkbacks to discuss prominent themes and topics in the plays. A number of plays that have appeared in the Public LAB series have gone onto full-scale productions, including Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Good Negro, which ran at The Public in 2009, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which had a sold-out, thrice-extended off-Broadway run at The Public in the spring of 2010 and transferred to Broadway that fall.
Public LAB was expanded in 2011 to include Public LAB SHAKESPEARE, a vital new platform for The Public's ongoing exploration of the Shakespeare canon that continues the growth of The Public's Shakespeare Initiative and expand the many ways The Public produces American interpretations of Shakespeare. The premiere production of Public LAB SHAKESPEARE was Timon of Athens in March 2011, featuring Richard Thomas in the title role. In 2013, The Public launched the Mobile Shakespeare Unit run by Director of Special Artistic Projects Stephanie Ybarra, which tours free Shakespeare to various locations throughout the five boroughs, including prisons, homeless shelters, community centers, before concluding its run at the Public Theater itself. Past venues include Rikers Island, Borden Avenue's Veteran's Shelter, The Fortune Society; the Public launched its inaugural Public Works production in 2013. Public Works combines diverse groups of people throughout the five boroughs of New York City to watch theatre, participate in theatrical workshops, perform in one full-scale Public Works production alongside professional actors at Shakespeare in the Park.
Past Public Works productions include The Tempest, The Winter's Tale, The Odyssey. The Public Forum, begun in 2010, is an exciting series of lectures and conversations that showcase leading voices in the arts and the media. Curated by Jeremy McCarter, a senior writer at Newsweek, Public Forum events explore issues raised by plays in The Public's season, as well as the political and cultural headlines of today's world. In keeping with the best traditions of The Public, the Forum hosts a wide diversity of views and brings the theater into contact with the society around it. Notable participants in the series include Stephen Sondheim, Tony Kushner, Arianna Huffington, Alec Baldwin and Anne Hathaway; the Public hosts the annual Under the Radar Festival, a festival tracking new theater from around the world. Over the last 12 years, The Public's Under the Radar Festival has presented over 194 companies from 40 countries, it has grown into a landmark of the New York City theater season and is a vital part of The Public's mission, providing a high-visibility platform to support artists from diverse backgrounds who are redefining the act of making theater.
Recognized as a premier launching pad for new and cutting-edge performance from the U. S. and abroad, UTR has presented works by such respected artists as Elevator Repair Service, Gob Squad, Belarus Free Theatre, Young Jean Lee. These artists provide a snapshot of theater today: richly distinct in terms of perspectives and social practice, pointing to the future of the art form; the Public serves as the home of the Emerging Writers Group, which seeks to target playwrights at the earliest stages in their careers. In so doing, The Public hopes to create an artistic home for a diverse and exceptionally talented group of up-and-coming playwrights. Through the Emerging Writers Group, The Public continues its rich legacy of supporting current and future generations of our country's most important writers via The Public Writers Initiative – a long-term initiative that provides key support and resources for writers at every stage of their careers; the Public Writers Initiative creates a fertile community and fosters a web of supportive artistic relationships acros
