1.
Peter Hall (director)
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Sir Peter Reginald Frederick Hall CBE is the pre-eminent British theatre director of his generation. In 1955 he introduced London audiences to the work of Samuel Beckett with the UK premiere of Waiting for Godot, Hall founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and went on to build an international reputation in theatre, opera, film and television. He was Director of the National Theatre and Artistic Director of Glyndebourne Festival Opera and he formed The Peter Hall Company and became founding director of The Rose Theatre, Kingston in 2003. Throughout his career, he has been a champion of public funding for the arts. Peter Reginald Frederick Hall was born in Suffolk at Bury St Edmunds and his father was a stationmaster and the family lived for some time at Great Shelford Station. He won a scholarship to The Perse School in Cambridge, before taking up a further scholarship to read English at St. Catharines College, Cambridge, Hall did his National Service in Germany at The RAF Headquarters for Education in Bückerberg. Whilst studying at Cambridge he produced and acted in a number of plays, directing five in his final year and he served on the University Amateur Dramatic Club committee before graduating in 1953. In the same year, Hall staged his first professional play, The Letter by W. Somerset Maugham,1954 to 1955 saw Hall as the Director of the Oxford Playhouse where he directed several notable young actors including Ronnie Barker and Billie Whitelaw. Eileen Atkins and Maggie Smith were also part of the company as acting Assistants Stage Managers, from 1955-1957 Hall ran The Arts Theatre, London where he directed the English-language premiere of Waiting for Godot. Other notable productions at The Arts included the English language premiere of The Waltz of the Toreadors by Jean Anouilh, the company not only played in Stratford but expanded into the Aldwych Theatre, its first London home. The latter was described as the greatest Shakespearian event in living memory which also laid down the doctrine of Shakespearian relevance to the modern world, Peter Hall left the RSC in 1968 after almost ten years as its Director. Hall was appointed Director of The National Theatre in 1973 and led the organisation for fifteen years until 1988, frustrated by construction delays, Hall decided to move the company into the still-unfinished building and to open it theatre by theatre as each neared completion. Extracts from his production of Tamburlaine the Great with Albert Finney were performed out on the terraces, Hall returned to the NT for the last time in 2011 with a production of Twelfth Night mounted by the company to celebrate his eightieth birthday. His daughter, Rebecca Hall, played Viola, on leaving the NT in 1988, Hall launched his own commercial company with productions in the West End and on Broadway of Orpheus Descending and The Merchant of Venice. The Peter Hall Company went on to more than sixty plays in association with a number of well-known producing partners including Bill Kenwright. Notable productions include Wildes An Ideal Husband, Pam Gemss Piaf, Hamlet, The Master Builder, A Streetcar Named Desire, Julian Barrys Lenny, As You Like It, the fiftieth anniversary production of Waiting for Godot, Cowards Hay Fever and Shaws Pygmalion. Halls final acclaimed productions for his company were Henry IV Parts 1 and 2, in 2003, Peter Hall became the Founding Director of The Rose Theatre - a new venue to be constructed in Kingston upon Thames whose design was inspired by the Elizabethan original. He directed a number of productions there including Chekhovs Uncle Vanya, which opened the building in 2008, Hall is now Director Emeritus of The Rose Kingston
2.
Royal Shakespeare Company
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The Royal Shakespeare Company is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The companys home is in Stratford-upon-Avon, where it has recently redeveloped its Royal Shakespeare, the theatres re-opened in November 2010, having closed in 2007. The new buildings attracted 18,000 visitors within the first week, performances in Stratford-upon-Avon continued throughout the Transformation project at the temporary Courtyard Theatre. The 2011-season began with performances of Macbeth and a re-imagined lost play The History of Cardenio, the fiftieth birthday season also featured The Merchant of Venice with Sir Patrick Stewart and revivals of some of the RSCs greatest plays, including a new staging of Marat/Sade. For the London 2012 Festival as part of the Cultural Olympiad, in 2013 the company began live screenings of its Shakespeare productions – called Live from Stratford-upon-Avon – which are screened around the world. In 2016, the company collaborated with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios to stage The Tempest, John Wards Birmingham-based company, the Warwickshire Company of Comedians, agreed to perform it. A surviving copy of the records that the company performed Othello. The first building erected to commemorate Shakespeare was David Garricks Jubilee Pavilion in 1769, the first permanent commemorative building to Shakespeares works in the town was a theatre built in 1827, in the gardens of New Place, but has long since been demolished. The RSCs history began with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which was the brainchild of a local brewer and he donated a two-acre site by the River Avon and in 1875 launched an international campaign to build a theatre in the town of Shakespeares birth. The theatre, a Victorian-Gothic building seating just over 700 people, opened on 23 April 1879, with a performance of Much Ado About Nothing, a title which gave ammunition to several critics. From 1919, under the direction of William Bridges-Adams and after a slow start, the theatre received a Royal Charter of Incorporation in 1925, which gave it status. On the afternoon of 6 March 1926, when a new season was about to commence rehearsals, fire broke out, and the mass of half-timbering chosen to ornament the interior provided dry tinder. By the following morning the theatre was a blackened shell, the company transferred its Shakespeare festivals to a converted local cinema. Fund-raising began for the rebuilding of the theatre, with generous donations arriving from philanthropists in America, george Bernard Shaw commented that her design was the only one that showed any theatre sense. Her modernist plans for an art deco structure came under fire from many directions, later it came under the direction of Sir Barry Jackson in 1945, Anthony Quayle from 1948 to 1956 and Glen Byam Shaw 1957–1959, with an impressive roll-call of actors. Scotts building, with minor adjustments to the stage, remained in constant use until 2007 when it was closed for a major refit of the interior. Timeline,1932 – new Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opens, abutting the remains of the old,1961 – chartered name of the corporation and the Stratford theatre becomes ‘Royal Shakespeare. ’1974 – The Other Place opened, created from a prefabricated former store/rehearsal room in Stratford. 1986 – the Swan Theatre opened, created from the shell of the 1879 Memorial Theatre,1991 – Purpose-built new Other Place, designed by Michael Reardon, opens
3.
John Whiting
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John Robert Whiting was an English actor, dramatist and critic. Born in Salisbury, he was educated at Taunton School, the particular hellish life which is the English public school as he described it. Trained at RADA, he worked as an actor in repertory. In 1940, he married Jackie, in 1944 he was discharged from the army for undisclosed health reasons. In 1956, he bought and moved his family to a house in the hamlet of Duddleswell, on Ashdown Forest in East Sussex. His works include, No More A-Roving Conditions of Agreement Saints Day A Penny for a Song, a play The Gates of Summer. A play No Why The Devils and he was drama critic for the London Magazine and a very active member of the Arts Council in encouraging new writing for the theatre. John Whiting died from cancer on 16 June 1963 in London at the age of 45. His obituary notice in The Times noted that As a dramatist John Whiting was in reach of the first rank, even if in his completed works he never quite achieved it. Nevertheless in Marching Song in particular he wrote a play which seems likely to last, the British theatre, even in its present flowering, can ill afford to lose the plays he might have written had he lived long enough to achieve his full potential stature. In 1965, the John Whiting Award was established to commemorate the contribution to post-war British theatre. In 2015, the diaries, as well as personal letters, handwritten notes. John Whiting at Find a Grave John Whiting at the Internet Movie Database
4.
Aldous Huxley
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Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer, novelist, philosopher, and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College at the University of Oxford with an honours in English literature. Early in his career Huxley edited the magazine Oxford Poetry and published short stories, mid career and later, he published travel writing, film stories, and scripts. He spent the part of his life in the U. S. living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. In 1962, a year before his death, he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. He later became interested in subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in seven different years. Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894 and he was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Priors Field School. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists, Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan Huxley, who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression. As a child, Huxleys nickname was Ogie, short for Ogre and he was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently the strangeness of things. According to his cousin and contemporary, Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing, Huxleys education began in his fathers well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. He was taught there by his own mother for years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside, he went on to Eton College and his mother died in 1908 when he was 14. In 1911 he contracted the eye disease which left practically blind for two to three years and this ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor. In October 1913, Huxley went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in January 1916, he volunteered to join the British Army in the Great War, but was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. In 1916 he edited Oxford Poetry and in June of that year graduated BA with First Class honours and his brother Julian wrote, I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career and his uniqueness lay in his universalism
5.
The Devils of Loudun
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The Devils of Loudun is a 1952 non-fiction novel by Aldous Huxley. It centers on Roman Catholic priest Urbain Grandier and a convent of Ursuline nuns. The events led to several public exorcisms as well as executions by burning, the story was adapted into a stage play in 1960, which was then adapted into the controversial 1971 Ken Russell film The Devils, which starred Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed. There is also an opera based on the book, Die Teufel von Loudun, by Krzysztof Penderecki, the book, though lesser known than Huxleys other novels, is widely considered one of his best works. Urbain Grandier was a priest burned at the stake at Loudun and he was accused of seducing an entire convent of Ursuline nuns and of being in league with the devil. Grandier was probably sexually promiscuous and too insolent to his peers and he had antagonised the Mother Superior, Sister Jeanne of the Angels, when he rejected her offer to become the spiritual advisor to the convent. He faced a tribunal and was acquitted. It was only after he had spoken against Cardinal Richelieu that a new trial was ordered by the Cardinal. He was tortured, found guilty and executed by being burnt alive, Huxley touches on aspects of the multiple personality controversy in cases of apparent demonic possession within this book. Playwright John Whiting adapted Huxleys book as the play The Devils, Ken Russell directed a feature film adaptation, The Devils, starring Vanessa Redgrave and Oliver Reed. Krzysztof Penderecki wrote an opera, The Devils of Loudun, in 1969, the Loudun possessions — historical events the book was written on Mother Joan of the Angels — Polish feature film The Devils — film based on the book The Devils of Loudun at Faded Page
6.
Aldwych Theatre
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The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Aldwych in the City of Westminster. It was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971 and its seating capacity is 1,200 on three levels. The theatre was constructed in the newly built Aldwych as a pair with the Waldorf Theatre, both buildings were designed in the Edwardian Baroque style by W. G. R. Sprague. The Aldwych Theatre was funded by Seymour Hicks in association with the American impresario Charles Frohman, the theatre opened on 23 December 1905 with a production of Blue Bell, a new version of Hickss popular pantomime Bluebell in Fairyland. In 1906, Hickss The Beauty of Bath, followed in 1907 by The Gay Gordons, in February 1913 the theatre was used by Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky for the first rehearsals of Le Sacre du Printemps before its première in Paris during May. In 1920, Basil Rathbone played Major Wharton in The Unknown, from 1923 to 1933, the theatre was the home of the series of twelve farces, known as the Aldwych farces, most of which were written by Ben Travers. Members of the company for these farces included Ralph Lynn, Tom Walls, Ethel Coleridge, Gordon James, Mary Brough, Winifred Shotter. In 1933, Richard Tauber presented and starred in a new version of Das Dreimäderlhaus at the Aldwych under the title Lilac Time, from the mid-1930s until about 1960, the theatre was owned by the Abrahams family. In 1949 Laurence Olivier directed the first London production of Tennessee Williamss A Streetcar Named Desire at the Aldwych Theatre, starring as Blanche DuBois was Oliviers wife Vivien Leigh, who later won an Academy Award for the role in the 1951 film of Williamss play. In the event the company stayed for over 20 years, finally moving to the Barbican Arts Centre in 1982, the theatre was sold to the Nederlander Organization immediately afterwards. For his involvement with these Aldwych seasons, run without Arts Council or other official support, in 1990–91, Joan Collins starred in a revival of Private Lives at the Aldwych. The theatre is referred to in Julio Cortázars short story Instructions for John Howell in the anthology All Fires the Fire, since 2000, the theatre has hosted a mixture of plays, comedies and musical theatre productions. Andrew Lloyd Webbers musical Whistle Down the Wind played until 2001, from 2006 to 2011, it was the home to the British musical version of Dirty Dancing
7.
Dorothy Tutin
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Dame Dorothy Tutin, DBE was an English actress of stage, film and television. For her work in the theatre, she won two Olivier Awards and two Evening Standard Awards for Best Actress and she was made a CBE in 1967 and a Dame in 2000. Tutin began her career in 1949 and won the 1960 Best Actress Evening Standard Award for Twelfth Night. Having made her Broadway debut in the 1963 production of The Hollow Crown, in the 1970s, she won a second Best Actress Evening Standard Award and twice won the Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Revival, for A Month in the Country and The Double Dealer. Her films included The Importance of Being Earnest, The Beggars Opera, A Tale of Two Cities, Savage Messiah, an obituary in The Daily Telegraph described her as one of the most enchanting, accomplished and intelligent leading ladies on the post-war British stage. Dorothy Tutin was born in London on 8 April 1930, the daughter of John Tutin and his wife Adie Evelyn and her year of birth was sometimes given as 1931, said to disguise the circumstances of her birth, but certainly not by herself. She was educated at St Catherines School, Bramley, Surrey and studied for the stage at PARADA, Tutin was also a talented pianist, but chose acting rather than music as her vocation. She married the actor Derek Waring, and they had two children, Nicholas and Amanda, both of whom became actors. Dorothy Tutin and Derek Waring remained married until her death in 2001 at the age of 71 from leukaemia, Tutin was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1967, and raised to Dame Commander in 2000. Dorothy Tutin made her first stage appearance at the Boltons on 6 September 1949, playing Princess Margaret of England in William Douglas-Homes play The Thistle and the Rose. She joined the Bristol Old Vic Company in January 1950, appearing as Phebe in As You Like It, Anni in Denis Cannans Captain Carvallo and Belinda in John Vanbrughs The Provokd Wife. Then with the company she appeared as, Viola in Twelfth Night, Aldwych Theatre, December 1960 Sister Jeanne in The Devils, Aldwych. She won the role of Cecily in Anthony Asquiths film version of Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest, around the same time, she played Polly Peachum to Laurence Oliviers Macheath in Peter Brooks film version of The Beggars Opera. Her next major role was as Lucie in the film A Tale of Two Cities. She also played Margot Asquith, the wife of Prime Minister H. H. Asquith and she appeared in the Ken Russell film Savage Messiah. She also performed as the teacher Sarah Burton in the TV series South Riding and she starred as Mrs. Alving in Yorkshire Television production of Ibsens Ghosts with Richard Pasco, Ronald Fraser, Brian Deacon, and Julia Foster. In the early 1980s Tutin also appeared in the made-for-television film Murder with Mirrors along with Helen Hayes, another of her notable roles was as Goneril in an Emmy-winning television production of Shakespeares King Lear, opposite Laurence Olivier as King Lear and Robert Lang as the Duke of Albany. She guest starred in an episode of the 1980s TV-series Robin of Sherwood, whos Who in the Theatre 17th edition, Gale
8.
Richard Johnson (actor)
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Richard Keith Johnson was a British actor, writer and producer, who starred in several British films of the 1960s and also had TV roles and a distinguished stage career. Johnson was born in Upminster, Essex, the son of Frances Louisa Olive, Johnson went to Felsted School, then trained at RADA and made his first professional appearances on stage in Manchester with John Gielguds company in a production of Hamlet in 1944. He served in the Royal Navy from 1945 to 1948, and made his debut in 1959. He was subsequently contracted by MGM to appear in one film per year over six years and his biggest successes as a film actor came with The Haunting also featuring Claire Bloom and Julie Harris, Khartoum with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier, and the spy film Danger Route. Johnson was director Terence Youngs preferred choice for the role of James Bond in the first film in the series, a few years later, Bulldog Drummond was reimagined as a 007-type hero in Deadlier Than the Male and its sequel Some Girls Do. He also appeared in several Italian films, including Lucio Fulcis cult classic, Zombi 2, at the same time, he was a stage actor, appearing in the title role in Tony Richardsons production of Pericles, Prince of Tyre in 1958. His stage career was extensive and distinguished and his early work in the London theatre attracted the attention of the director of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre. He appeared in many important productions at that theatre in the late 1950s and early 1960s, making notable successes as Romeo, Orlando in As You Like It, Pericles and Mark Antony in Julius Caesar. In 1958 he appeared in Peter Halls first production at the theatre, Cymbeline, and he continued to act with the RSC from time to time, including as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, which he played on two occasions. He played the role in ITVs production in 1974 and he continued to appear on film and television in the first decade of the 21st century. His films during this period included Lara Croft, Tomb Raider and he also appeared in several TV films, in 2005 he appeared as Stanley Baldwin in Wallis & Edward, in 2007 as Earl Mountbatten in Whatever Love Means, and in 2009 in Lewis. He contributed to British episodic TV, including Spooks, Waking the Dead, twice in Midsomer Murders, from 2007, he led the cast of the BBCs radio comedy series Bleak Expectations which ran until 2012. Throughout his career Johnson continued to teach young actors and students and he toured American universities and taught summer schools at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was appointed to the Council of RADA in 2000, and served as a Council Member of the British Academy of Film, Johnson wrote the original story for the 1975 thriller, Hennessy. Johnson founded the British production company United British Artists in 1981, and served as the companys CEO until 1990, during his tenure at UBA he produced the films Turtle Diary, and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne. In London, he produced Pinters Old Times, a revival of Serjeant Musgraves Dance, and for theatre and television, Johnson wrote travel articles regularly for the London mass-circulation newspaper The Mail on Sunday. He kept a blog and teaching website called The Shakespeare Masterclass, by his first marriage, to Sheila Sweet, Johnson had two children, tabletop games designer Jervis Johnson and actress Sorel Johnson. His second wife was American actress Kim Novak, with whom he appeared in the film The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders and he also had another daughter, Jennifer Johnson, by his third wife, Marie-Louise Norlund, and a fourth child, Nicholas Johnson, by Françoise Pascal
9.
Existentialism
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While the predominant value of existentialist thought is commonly acknowledged to be freedom, its primary virtue is authenticity. Many existentialists have also regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies, in style and content, as too abstract and remote from concrete human experience. Søren Kierkegaard is generally considered to have been the first existentialist philosopher and he proposed that each individual—not society or religion—is solely responsible for giving meaning to life and living it passionately and sincerely, or authentically. Existentialism became popular in the years following World War II, and strongly influenced many disciplines besides philosophy, including theology, drama, art, literature, and psychology. The term is seen as a historical convenience as it was first applied to many philosophers in hindsight. In fact, while existentialism is generally considered to have originated with Kierkegaard, Sartre posits the idea that what all existentialists have in common is the fundamental doctrine that existence precedes essence, as scholar Frederick Copleston explains. Sartre himself, in a lecture delivered in 1945, described existentialism as the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism and this assertion comes from two sources. The Norwegian philosopher Erik Lundestad refers to the Danish philosopher Fredrik Christian Sibbern, Sibbern is supposed to have had two conversations in 1841, the first with Welhaven and the second with Kierkegaard. This was then brought to Kierkegaard by Sibbern, the second claim comes from the Norwegian historian Rune Slagstad, who claims to prove that Kierkegaard himself said the term existential was borrowed from the poet. He strongly believes that it was Kierkegaard himself who said that Hegelians do not study philosophy existentially, on the other hand, the Norwegian historian Anne-Lise Seip is critical of Slagstad, and believes the statement in fact stems from the Norwegian literary historian Cathrinus Bang. The actual life of the individuals is what constitutes what could be called their true essence instead of there being an arbitrarily attributed essence others use to define them, thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values and determine a meaning to their life. However, an existentialist philosopher would say such a wish constitutes an inauthentic existence - what Sartre would call bad faith, instead, the phrase should be taken to say that people are defined only insofar as they act and that they are responsible for their actions. For example, someone who acts cruelly towards other people is, by that act, furthermore, by this action of cruelty, such persons are themselves responsible for their new identity. This is as opposed to their genes, or human nature, as Sartre writes in his work Existentialism is a Humanism. Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world—and defines himself afterwards. Of course, the positive, therapeutic aspect of this is also implied, A person can choose to act in a different way. Here it is clear that since humans can choose to be either cruel or good, they are, in fact. Sartres definition of existentialism was based on Heideggers magnum opus Being and this way of living, Heidegger called average everydayness
10.
Diana Rigg
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Dame Enid Diana Elizabeth Rigg, DBE is an English actress. She is known for playing Emma Peel in the 1960s TV series The Avengers, and Olenna Tyrell in Game of Thrones. She has also had a career in theatre, including playing the title role in Medea. She was made a CBE in 1988 and a Dame in 1994, Rigg made her professional stage debut in 1957 in The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1959. She made her Broadway debut in the 1971 production of Abelard & Heloise and she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for the 1989 BBC miniseries Mother Love, and an Emmy Award for her role as Mrs. Danvers in the 1997 adaptation of Rebecca. Her other television credits include You, Me and the Apocalypse, Rigg was born in Doncaster, then in the West Riding of Yorkshire, now in South Yorkshire to Louis Rigg and Beryl Hilda, her father was a railway engineer who had been born in Yorkshire. Between the ages of two months and eight years Rigg lived in Bikaner, India, where her father was employed as a railway executive, hindi was her second language in those young years. She was then sent to a school, the Moravian School in Fulneck. She disliked her boarding school, where she felt like an out of water. She trained as an actress at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art from 1955–57, riggs career in film, television and the theatre has been wide-ranging, including roles in the Royal Shakespeare Company between 1959 and 1964. Her professional debut was in the RADA production of The Caucasian Chalk Circle at the York Festival in 1957 and she received her second nomination in 1975, for The Misanthrope. In 1982, she appeared in a musical called Colette, based on the life of the French writer and created by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt, in 1987 she took a leading role in the West End production of Stephen Sondheims musical Follies. In 2004, she appeared as Violet Venable in Sheffield Theatres production of Tennessee Williamss play Suddenly Last Summer, in 2006, she appeared at the Wyndhams Theatre in Londons West End in a drama entitled Honour which had a limited but successful run. In 2007, she appeared as Huma Rojo in the Old Vics production of All About My Mother, adapted by Samuel Adamson and she appeared in 2008 in The Cherry Orchard at the Chichester Festival Theatre, returning there in 2009 to star in Noël Cowards Hay Fever. In 2011 she played Mrs Higgins in Pygmalion at the Garrick Theatre, opposite Rupert Everett and Kara Tointon, Rigg auditioned for the role of Emma Peel on a whim, without ever having seen the programme. Although she was successful in the series, she disliked the lack of privacy that it brought. She also did not like the way that she was treated by the Associated British Corporation, after a dozen episodes she discovered that she was being paid less than a cameraman. For her second season she held out for a pay rise from £150 a week to £450, patrick Macnee, her co-star in the series, noted that Rigg had later told him that she considered Macnee and her driver to be her only friends on the set
