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Maly Theatre (Moscow)
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Maly Theatre is a theatre in Moscow, Russia, principally associated with the production of plays. Established in 1806 and operating on its present site on the Theatre Square since 1824, in the 19th century, Maly was universally recognized in Russia as the leading dramatic theatre of the century, and was the home stage for Mikhail Shchepkin and Maria Yermolova. 40 of Alexander Ostrovskys 54 plays premiered at Maly, and the theatre was known as The House of Ostrovsky, the Maly Theatre in Moscow and Alexandrinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg to a great extent determined the development of Russian theatre during the 19th and 20th century. Maly Theatre positions itself as a drama theatre that produces classical heritage plays. The current program of Maly includes plays by Russian authors from Denis Fonvizin to Mikhail Bulgakov, the second stage of Maly, located in Zamoskvorechye District, also performs plays by W. Somerset Maugham, Luigi Pirandello and Eugene Scribe. Maly had a tradition of producing William Shakespeare but, as of 2009, performs only one Shakespearian play. Maly Theatre employs a staff of seven hundred, including over one hundred drama actors. It is the drama theatre in Russia that has retained a symphony orchestra. The theatre also operates Shchepkin Theatre School, Moscows oldest drama school, the exact year of Malys establishment is debated. In the 19th and 20th century, it was agreed that it was established in 1824, the centennial of Maly was celebrated in 1924, and the 175th anniversary in 1999. However, the bicentennial was moved to 2006, based on the establishment of the Imperial Moscow Theatre in 1806. Some of the produced by the Imperial Moscow Theatre premiered as early as 1804, and its company continued the tradition of Michael Maddoxs company. The theatre web site, as of August 2009, marks the season of 2009–2010 as its 254th season, referring to the Free Theatre, in 1756 empress Elisabeth of Russia decreed the establishment of a Russian language theatre for comedies and tragedies. When Volkov and his moved to Saint Petersburg, playwright Alexander Sumarokov became the first theatre manager. Also in 1756, Moscow University students formed the Free Theatre, by 1757, the amateur company was recruiting professional female singers and teachers of singing. Rector Ivan Shuvalov planned to build the Universitys own theatre hall, but later made an agreement with Italian impresario Giovanni Battista Locatelli, Locatelli opera, established in the beginning of 1759, was suffering financially, and the impoverished impresario willfully shared his stage with Shuvalovs company. The first show, The New Arrival by Marc-Antoine Legrand, premiered at the Opera House on May 25,1759, between 1763 and 1766, various Russians and foreigners attempted to set up a permanent theatre in Moscow and failed. In 1776, Catherine II of Russia awarded the license to prince Pyotr Vasilyevich Ouroussoff
2.
Anton Chekhov
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Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer, who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in esteem by writers. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor throughout most of his career, Medicine is my lawful wife, he once said. These four works present a challenge to the ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a theatre of mood. Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew and he made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them. Anton Chekhov was born on the feast day of St. Anthony the Great 29 January 1860, the third of six surviving children, in Taganrog, a port on the Sea of Azov in southern Russia. His father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov, the son of a serf and his Ukrainian wife, were from the village Vilkhovatka near Kobeliaky. A director of the choir, devout Orthodox Christian, and physically abusive father. Chekhovs mother, Yevgeniya, was an excellent storyteller who entertained the children with tales of her travels with her cloth-merchant father all over Russia and our talents we got from our father, Chekhov remembered, but our soul from our mother. Despotism and lying so mutilated our childhood that its sickening and frightening to think about it, remember the horror and disgust we felt in those times when Father threw a tantrum at dinner over too much salt in the soup and called Mother a fool. Chekhov attended the Greek School in Taganrog and the Taganrog Gymnasium and he sang at the Greek Orthodox monastery in Taganrog and in his fathers choirs. In 1876, Chekhovs father was declared bankrupt after overextending his finances building a new house, to avoid debtors prison he fled to Moscow, where his two eldest sons, Alexander and Nikolay, were attending university. The family lived in poverty in Moscow, Chekhovs mother physically and emotionally broken by the experience, Chekhov was left behind to sell the familys possessions and finish his education. Chekhov remained in Taganrog for three years, boarding with a man called Selivanov who, like Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard, had bailed out the family for the price of their house. Chekhov had to pay for his own education, which he managed by private tutoring, catching and selling goldfinches and he sent every ruble he could spare to his family in Moscow, along with humorous letters to cheer them up. Chekhov also enjoyed a series of affairs, one with the wife of a teacher. In 1879, Chekhov completed his schooling and joined his family in Moscow, Chekhov now assumed responsibility for the whole family
3.
Alexandrinsky Theatre
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The Alexandrinsky Theatre or Russian State Pushkin Academy Drama Theater is a theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. The Alexandrinsky Theatre was built for the Imperial troupe of Petersburg, the theatre was opened on 31 August,1832. Since 1832, the theatre has occupied an Empire-style building that Carlo Rossi designed and it was built in 1828-1832 on Alexandrinsky Square, which is situated on Nevsky Prospekt between the National Library of Russia and Anichkov Palace. The theatre and the square were named after Empress consort Alexandra Feodorovna, the building is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments. It was one of the theatres of the Imperial troupe. Dramas, operas and ballets were on the stage, only in 1880-ies, the theatre has become dramatic and tragedy filled. The premières of numerous Russian plays have been performed at the stage of the Alexandrinsky, including plays by Alexandr Griboyedov, Alexander Ostrovsky, famous directors who have staged work there include Vsevolod Meyerhold, Grigori Kozintsev, Georgy Tovstonogov, and Nikolay Akimov. On 30 August 2006 the theatre reopened after a reconstruction, Russian article Official Web Site in English History of the Theatre in English 3D model “Alexandrinsky Theater” for Google Earth
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Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
5.
Comedy
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In a modern sense, comedy refers to any discourse or work generally intended to be humorous or amusing by inducing laughter, especially in theatre, television, film, and stand-up comedy. The origins of the term are found in Ancient Greece, in the Athenian democracy, the public opinion of voters was influenced by the political satire performed by the comic poets at the theaters. The theatrical genre of Greek comedy can be described as a performance which pits two groups or societies against each other in an amusing agon or conflict. Northrop Frye depicted these two opposing sides as a Society of Youth and a Society of the Old, a revised view characterizes the essential agon of comedy as a struggle between a relatively powerless youth and the societal conventions that pose obstacles to his hopes. Satire and political satire use comedy to portray persons or social institutions as ridiculous or corrupt, parody subverts popular genres and forms, critiquing those forms without necessarily condemning them. Similarly scatological humour, sexual humour, and race humour create comedy by violating social conventions or taboos in comic ways, a comedy of manners typically takes as its subject a particular part of society and uses humor to parody or satirize the behaviour and mannerisms of its members. Romantic comedy is a genre that depicts burgeoning romance in humorous terms. The adjective comic, which means that which relates to comedy is, in modern usage. Of this, the word came into usage through the Latin comoedia and Italian commedia and has, over time. The Greeks and Romans confined their use of the comedy to descriptions of stage-plays with happy endings. Aristotle defined comedy as an imitation of men worse than the average, however, the characters portrayed in comedies were not worse than average in every way, only insofar as they are Ridiculous, which is a species of the Ugly. The Ridiculous may be defined as a mistake or deformity not productive of pain or harm to others, the mask, for instance, in the Middle Ages, the term expanded to include narrative poems with happy endings. It is in this sense that Dante used the term in the title of his poem, as time progressed, the word came more and more to be associated with any sort of performance intended to cause laughter. During the Middle Ages, the comedy became synonymous with satire. They disassociated comedy from Greek dramatic representation and instead identified it with Arabic poetic themes and forms and they viewed comedy as simply the art of reprehension, and made no reference to light and cheerful events, or to the troubling beginnings and happy endings associated with classical Greek comedy. After the Latin translations of the 12th century, the term gained a more general meaning in medieval literature. Starting from 425 BCE, Aristophanes, a playwright and satirical author of the Ancient Greek Theater wrote 40 comedies,11 of which survive. Aristophanes developed his type of comedy from the satyr plays
6.
Play (theatre)
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A play is a form of literature written by a playwright, usually consisting of dialogue between characters, intended for theatrical performance rather than just reading. Plays are performed at a variety of levels, from Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional theater, to Community theatre, there are rare dramatists, notably George Bernard Shaw, who have had little preference as to whether their plays were performed or read. The term play can refer to both the works of playwrights and to their complete theatrical performance. Comedies are plays which are designed to be humorous, comedies are often filled with witty remarks, unusual characters, and strange circumstances. Certain comedies are geared toward different age groups, comedies were one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece, along with tragedies. An example of a comedy would be William Shakespeares play A Midsummer Nights Dream, a generally nonsensical genre of play, farces are often overacted and often involve slapstick humor. An example of a farce includes William Shakespeares play The Comedy of Errors, a satire play takes a comic look at current events people while at the same time attempting to make a political or social statement, for example pointing out corruption. An example of a satire would be Nikolai Gogols The Government Inspector, satire plays are generally one of the most popular forms of comedy, and often considered to be their own genre entirely. This is a genre that explored relationships between men and women, and was considered risqué in its time, however, since restoration comedy dealt with unspoken aspects of relationships, it created a type of connection between audience and performance that was more informal and private. It is commonly agreed that restoration comedy has origins in Molière’s theories of comedy, the inconsistency between restoration comedy’s morals and the morals of the era is something that often arises during the study of this genre. This may give clues as to why, despite its original success, however, in recent years, it has become a topic of interest for theatre theorists, who have been looking into theatre styles that have their own conventions of performance. These plays contain darker themes such as death and disaster, often the protagonist of the play has a tragic flaw, a trait which leads to their downfall. Tragic plays convey all emotions and have extremely dramatic conflicts, tragedy was one of the two original play types of Ancient Greece. Some examples of tragedies include William Shakespeares Hamlet, and also John Websters play The Duchess of Malfi and these plays focus on actual historical events. They can be tragedies or comedies, but are neither of these. History as a genre was popularized by William Shakespeare. Examples of historical plays include Friedrich Schillers Demetrius and William Shakespeares King John, ballad opera, a popular theatre style at the time, was the first style of musical to be performed in the American colonies. The first musical of American origin was premiered in Philadelphia in 1767, and was called “The Disappointment”, however, around the 1920s, theatre styles were beginning to be defined more clearly
7.
Russian symbolism
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Russian symbolism was an intellectual and artistic movement predominant at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. It represented the Russian branch of the symbolist movement in European art, the movement was inaugurated by Nikolai Minskys article The Ancient Debate and Dmitry Merezhkovskys book On the Causes of the Decline and on the New Trends in Contemporary Russian Literature. Both writers promoted extreme individualism and deified the act of creation, merezhkovsky was known for his poetry as well as a series of novels on god-men, among whom he counted Jesus, Joan of Arc, Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, Napoleon and Hitler. His wife, Zinaida Gippius, also a poet in the early days of the symbolist movement, opened a salon in Saint Petersburg. By the mid-1890s, Russian symbolism was still mainly a set of theories and had few notable practitioners, Alexander Dobrolyubov published a book of verse in 1895, just before renouncing lay poetry in favour of wanderings from one monastery to another. Another talented author, Ivan Konevskoy, died at the age of 24 and it was not until the new talent of Valery Bryusov emerged that symbolist poetry became a major movement in Russian literature. In order to represent symbolism as a movement of formidable following, Bryusov adopted numerous pen-names, Bryusovs mystification proved successful — several young poets were attracted to symbolism as the latest fashion in Russian letters. Though the reputations of many of these writers had faded by the mid-20th century and this was especially true in the case of Innokenty Annensky, whose definitive collection of verse, Cypress Box, was published posthumously. His influence on the acmeist school of Russian poetry was paramount, Russian symbolism really flourished in the first decade of the 20th century. Many new talents began to publish verse written in the symbolist vein and these writers were especially indebted to the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov. The scholar Vyacheslav Ivanov, whose interests lay in ancient poetry and his self-proclaimed principle was to engraft archaic Miltonic diction to Russian poetry. Maximilian Voloshin, known best for his poetry about the Russian revolution, jurgis Baltrušaitis, a close friend of Alexander Scriabin and whose poetry is characterized by mystical philosophy and mesmerizing sounds, was active in Lithuania. Of the new generation, two poets, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, became the most renowned of the entire Russian symbolist movement. Alexander Blok is widely considered to be one of the leading Russian poets of the twentieth century and he was often compared with Alexander Pushkin, and the whole Silver Age of Russian Poetry was sometimes styled the Age of Blok. His early verse is musical and rich in sound. Later, he sought to introduce daring rhythmic patterns and uneven beats into his poetry and his mature poems are often based on the conflict between the Platonic vision of ideal beauty and the disappointing reality of foul industrial outskirts. They are often characterized by a use of color and spelling to express meaning. One of Bloks most famous and controversial poems was The Twelve, Andrei Bely strove to forge a unity of prose, poetry, and music in much of his literature, as evidenced by the title of one of his early works, Symphonies in Prose
8.
Playwright
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A playwright, also known as a dramatist, is a person who writes plays. The term is not a variant spelling of playwrite, but something quite distinct, hence the prefix and the suffix combine to indicate someone who has wrought words, themes, and other elements into a dramatic form - someone who crafts plays. The homophone with write is in this case entirely coincidental, the term playwright appears to have been coined by Ben Jonson in his Epigram 49, To Playwright, as an insult, to suggest a mere tradesman fashioning works for the theatre. Jonson described himself as a poet, not a playwright, since plays during that time were written in meter and this view was held as late as the early 19th century. The term playwright later lost this negative connotation, the earliest playwrights in Western literature with surviving works are the Ancient Greeks. These early plays were written for annual Athenian competitions among playwrights held around the 5th century BC, such notables as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes established forms still relied on by their modern counterparts. For the ancient Greeks, playwriting involved poïesis, the act of making and this is the source of the English word poet. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle wrote his Poetics, the first play-writing manual, in this famous text, Aristotle established the principle of action or praxis as the basis for all drama. He then included a hierarchy of elements for the beginning with plot, character, thought, diction, music. The ends of drama were plot, character, and thought, the means of drama were language and music, since the myths, upon which Greek tragedy were based, were widely known, plot had to do with the arrangement and selection of existing material. Character was equated with choice as rather than psychology, so that character was determined by action, in tragedy, the notion of ethical choice determined the character of the individual. Thought had more to do and the imitation of an action that is serious, thus, he developed his notion of hamartia, or tragic flaw, an error in judgment by the main character or protagonist. It provides the basis for the play, a term still held as the sine qua non of dramaturgy. The Poetics, while very brief and highly condensed, is studied today. Perhaps the most Aristotelian of contemporary playwrights is David Mamet, who embraces the idea of character as agent of the action, and emphasizes causality in the structure of his plays. His recently revived, Speed-the-Plow, is quintessentially Aristotelian, in that it observes the unities and builds its plot through a causal stream of discoveries and reversals. The Italian Renaissance brought about a stricter interpretation of Aristotle, as this long-lost work came to light in the late 15th century. The neoclassical ideal, which was to reach its apogee in France during the 17th century, dwelled upon the unities, of action, place, and time
9.
Melodrama
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A melodrama is a dramatic or literary work in which the plot, which is typically sensational and designed to appeal strongly to the emotions, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Characters are often drawn, and may appear stereotyped. In scholarly and historical contexts, melodramas are Victorian dramas in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action. The term is now applied to stage performances without incidental music, novels, movies. In modern contexts, the melodrama is generally pejorative, as it suggests that the work in question lacks subtlety, character development. By extension, language or behavior which resembles melodrama is often called melodramatic, the term originated from the early 19th-century French word mélodrame. It is derived from Greek melos, music, and French drame and this applies to both Victorian stage melodrama and 20th-century film melodrama. Movie director Sidney Lumet stressed the primacy of plot, saying in 2007 In a well-written drama, the characters in a well-written melodrama come out of the story. The relationship of melodrama to realism is complex, the protagonists of melodramatic works may either be ordinary people who are caught up in extraordinary events, or highly exaggerated and unrealistic characters. According to Singer, late Victorian and Edwardian melodrama combined a focus on realism in stage sets and props with anti-realism in character. Melodrama in this period strove for accuracy in the depiction of incredible. Novelist Wilkie Collins is noted for his attention to accuracy in detail in his works, beginning in the 18th century, melodrama was a technique of combining spoken recitation with short pieces of accompanying music. In such works, music and spoken dialogue typically alternated, although the music was also used to accompany pantomime. The earliest known examples are scenes in J. E. Eberlins Latin school play Sigismundus, the first full melodrama was Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Pygmalion, the text of which was written in 1762 but was first staged in Lyon in 1770. The overture and an Andante were composed by Rousseau, but the bulk of the music was composed by Horace Coignet, a different musical setting of Rousseaus Pygmalion by Anton Schweitzer was performed in Weimar in 1772, and Goethe wrote of it approvingly in Dichtung und Wahrheit. Pygmalion is a monodrama, written for one actor, some 30 other monodramas were produced in Germany in the fourth quarter of the 18th century. When two actors are involved the term duodrama may be used, georg Benda was particularly successful with his duodramas Ariadne auf Naxos and Medea. The sensational success of Bendas melodramas led Mozart to use two long melodramatic monologues in his opera Zaide, other later, and better-known examples of the melodramatic style in operas are the grave-digging scene in Beethovens Fidelio and the incantation scene in Webers Der Freischütz
10.
Nineteenth-century theatre
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Nineteenth-century theatre describes a wide range of movements in the theatrical culture of Europe and the United States in the 19th century. Several important technical innovations were introduced between 1875 and 1914, first gas lighting and then electric lights, introduced in Londons Savoy Theatre in 1881, replaced candlelight. The elevator stage was first installed in the Budapest Opera House in 1884 and this allowed entire sections of the stage to be raised, lowered, or tilted to give depth and levels to the scene. The revolving stage was introduced to Europe by Karl Lautenschläger at the Residenz Theatre and it was also a highly reactive form of theatre which was constantly changing and adapting to new social contexts, new audiences and new cultural influences. This, in part, helps to explains its popularity throughout the 19th century, beginning in France after the theatre monopolies were abolished in 1791 during the French Revolution, melodrama became the most popular theatrical form of the century. Although monopolies and subsidies were reinstated under Napoleon, theatrical melodrama continued to be popular and brought in larger audiences than the state-sponsored drama. Although melodrama can be traced back to classical Greece, the term mélodrame did not appear until 1766, August von Kotzebues Misanthropy and Repentance is often considered the first melodramatic play. The plays of Kotzebue and René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt established melodrama as the dominant dramatic form of the early 19th century, yet its appeal was great and understandable. It took the lives of common people seriously and paid respect to their superior purity. In Paris, the 19th century saw a flourishing of melodrama in the theatres that were located on the popular Boulevard du Crime. All this was to come to an end, however, when most of these theatres were demolished during the rebuilding of Paris by Baron Haussmann in 1862 and it was looked down on as a genre for authors and composers of lesser stature. In Germany, there was a trend toward historical accuracy in costumes and settings, a revolution in theatre architecture, influenced by trends in 19th-century philosophy and the visual arts, German writers were increasingly fascinated with their Teutonic past and had a growing sense of nationalism. Romantics borrowed from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant to formulate the theoretical basis of Romantic art, according to Romantics, art is of enormous significance because it gives eternal truths a concrete, material form that the limited human sensory apparatus may apprehend. Among those who called themselves Romantics during this period, August Wilhelm Schlegel, after a time, Romanticism was adopted in France with the plays of Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Alfred de Musset, and George Sand. By the 1840s, however, enthusiasm for Romantic drama had faded in France, in France, the well-made play of Eugene Scribe became popular with playwrights and audiences. First developed by Scribe in 1825, the form has a strong Neoclassical flavour, involving a tight plot, the story depends upon a key piece of information kept from some characters, but known to others. A recurrent device that the well-made play employs is the use of letters or papers falling into unintended hands, in order to bring about plot twists, the suspense and pace builds towards a climactic scene, in which the hero triumphs in an unforeseen reversal of fortune. Scribe himself wrote over 400 plays of this type, utilizing what essentially amounted to a factory with writers who supplied the story, another the dialogue
11.
Vera Komissarzhevskaya
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Vera Fyodorovna Komissarzhevskaya was one of the most celebrated actresses and theatre managers of the late Russian Empire. She made her debut in 1893, after having acted as an amateur at Constantin Stanislavskys Society of Art. She is probably best known today for originating the role of Nina in the premiere of Anton Chekhovs The Seagull. Though the production was deemed a failure, Komissarzhevskayas performance was highly praised. Later in her career, Komissarzhevskaya is notable for her patronage of the theatre artist. Following Meyerholds unsuccessful attempts to stage symbolist plays at Stanislavskys Moscow Art Theatre, Komissarzhevskaya was born in Saint Petersburg, into a wealthy and distinguished family. Komissarzhevskaya had a relationship with her father, and she frequently corresponded with Komissarzhevsky. At the age of 19, Komissarzhevskaya married the painter Count Vladimir Leonidovich Muravyov, some years later, she was broken-hearted to discover that her sister was pregnant with Muravyovs child, and she left him, throwing herself into her acting career. In 1896, she began working at Saint Petersburgs Alexandrinsky Theatre, though they found some success with Komissarzhevskaya starring in the title roles of Ibsens Hedda Gabler and Maeterlinks Sister Beatrice, the collaboration proved unfruitful. Meyerhold failed to create a role that catered to Komissarzhevskayas acting style and she dismissed him after just one year, and spent the remainder of her career touring old productions in the United States and Europe. One of the theatres of St. Petersburg still bears her name and, in 1980 there was even a biographical film made about the actress life and career called, Ya - aktrisa. Ya - aktrisa at the Internet Movie Database Brief biography
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Konstantin Stanislavski
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Konstantin Sergeievich Stanislavski was a seminal Russian theatre practitioner. He was widely recognised as a character actor and the many productions that he directed garnered a reputation as one of the leading theatre directors of his generation. His principal fame and influence, however, rests on his system of training, preparation. Its influential tours of Europe and the US and its productions of The Seagull and Hamlet established his reputation. At the MATs 30-year anniversary celebrations in 1928, a heart attack on-stage put an end to his acting career. He continued to direct, teach, and write about acting until his death a few weeks before the publication of the first volume of his lifes great work, the acting manual An Actors Work. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner and the Order of Lenin and was one of the first to be granted the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Stanislavski wrote that there is nothing more tedious than an actors biography, at the request of a US publisher, however, he reluctantly agreed to write his autobiography, My Life in Art, though its account of his artistic development is not always accurate. Two English-language biographies have been published, David Magarshacks Stanislavsky, A Life and Jean Benedettis Stanislavski, His Life, Stanislavski subjected his acting and direction to a rigorous process of artistic self-analysis and reflection. His system of acting developed out of his persistent efforts to remove the blocks that he encountered in his performances and he also introduced into the production process a period of discussion and detailed analysis of the play by the cast. Despite the success that this brought, particularly with his Naturalistic stagings of the plays of Anton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Both his struggles with Chekhovs drama and his experiments with Symbolism encouraged a greater attention to inner action and he began to develop the more actor-centred techniques of psychological realism and his focus shifted from his productions to rehearsal process and pedagogy. He pioneered the use of theatre studios as a laboratory in which to innovate actor training, the system cultivates what Stanislavski calls the art of experiencing. In rehearsal, the searches for inner motives to justify action. Stanislavskis earliest reference to his system appears in 1909, the year that he first incorporated it into his rehearsal process. The MAT adopted it as its official rehearsal method in 1911, later, Stanislavski further elaborated the system with a more physically grounded rehearsal process that came to be known as the Method of Physical Action. Minimising at-the-table discussions, he now encouraged an active analysis, in which the sequence of dramatic situations are improvised, the best analysis of a play, Stanislavski argued, is to take action in the given circumstances. The Opera-Dramatic Studio embodied the most complete implementation of the training exercises described in his manuals, meanwhile, the transmission of his earlier work via the students of the First Studio was revolutionising acting in the West
13.
Theatre director
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The directors function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. If the production he or she is mounting is a new piece of writing or a translation of a play, in contemporary theatre, after the playwright, the director is generally the primary visionary, making decisions on the artistic concept and interpretation of the play and its staging. Different directors occupy different places of authority and responsibility, depending on the structure, Directors use a wide variety of techniques, philosophies, and levels of collaboration. In ancient Greece, the birthplace of European drama, the writer bore principal responsibility for the staging of his plays, the author-director would also train the chorus, sometimes compose the music, and supervise every aspect of production. The fact that the director was called didaskalos, the Greek word for teacher, a miniature by Jean Fouquet from 1460 bears one of the earliest depictions of a director at work. Holding a prompt book, the central figure directs, with the aid of a long stick, from Renaissance times up until the 19th century, the role of director was often carried by the actor-manager. This would usually be an actor in a troupe who took the responsibility for choosing the repertoire of work, staging it. This was the case for instance with Commedia dellArte companies and English actor-managers like Colley Cibber, the modern theatre director can be said to have originated in the staging of elaborate spectacles of the Meininger Company under George II, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. The management of large numbers of extras and complex stagecraft matters necessitated an individual to take on the role of overall coordinator. This gave rise to the role of the director in modern theatre, simultaneously, Constantin Stanislavski, principally an actor-manager, would set up the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia and similarly emancipate the role of the director as artistic visionary. The French regisseur is also used to mean a stage director. A more common term for theatre director in French is metteur en scène, post World War II, the actor-manager slowly started to disappear, and directing become a fully fledged artistic activity within the theatre profession. The director originating artistic vision and concept, and realizing the staging of a production, a cautionary note was introduced by the famed director Sir Tyrone Guthrie who said the only way to learn how to direct a play, is. To get a group of actors simple enough to allow you to let you direct them, most European countries nowadays know some form of professional directing training, usually at drama schools or conservatoires, or at universities. In the early days such programmes typically led to the staging of one major production in the third year. At the University of California, Irvine, Keith Fowler led for many years a programme based on the premise that directors are autodidacts who need as many opportunities to direct as possible. Under Fowler, graduate student directors would stage between five and ten productions during their residencies, with each production receiving detailed critiques. Directing is an artform that has grown with the development of theatre theory, with the emergence of new trends in theatre, so too have directors adopted new methodologies and engaged in new practices
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Moscow Art Theatre
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The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow. It was founded in 1898 by the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Konstantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and it was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas that were Russias dominant form of theatre at the time. The theatre, the first to put on shows implementing Stanislavskis system, proved hugely influential in the acting world and in the development of modern American theatre. At the end of the 19th-century, Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko both wanted to reform Russian theatre to high-quality art that was available to the general public and they set about creating a private theatre over which they had total control. On 22 June 1897, the two men met for the first time at the Slavyanski Bazar for a lunch that started at 2 PM, while Stanislavski’s approach to theatre revolved around the acting process, Nemirovich was far more concerned with the literary, intellectual angle. Stanislavski interviewed all his actors, making sure they were hard working and he made them live together in common housing for months at a time to foster community and trust, which he believed would raise the quality of their performances. Stanislavskis system, in which he trained actors via the studios he founded as part of the theatre. The system played an influence in the development of method acting. This production was so successful that the theatre adopted the seagull as its emblem and he took with him Savva Morozov, one of the theatre’s main investors at the time. Now in dire straits, the decided to accept invitations to go on an international tour in 1906, which started in Berlin and included Dresden, Frankfurt, Prague. The tour was a success, gaining the theatre international acclaim. The tension between the two led Stanislavski to abandon his duties as a member and to relinquish all his power over policy decisions. Mikhail Bulgakov wrote several plays for the MAT and satirised the organisation mercilessly in his novel Black Snow, isaac Babels Sunset was also performed there during the 1920s. A significant number of Moscow Art Theatres actors were awarded the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR. Many actors became known and admired thanks to their film roles. However, the Civil War saw many of the actors being cut off from Moscow. The subsidies it had come to rely on were withdrawn and the theatre was forced to survive on its own profits, by 1923, the MAT was in $25,000 debt. The theatre experienced further blows through the end of the 1930s, a “red director” was appointed to the management by the government to ensure that the MAT’s activities were not counter-revolutionary and that they served the Communist cause
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Moscow Art Theatre production of The Seagull
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It was the first production in Moscow of Anton Chekhovs The Seagull, though the play had been performed with only moderate success in St. Petersburg two years earlier. The production opened on 29 December 1898, to commemorate this historic production, which gave the MAT its sense of identity, the company to this day bears the seagull as its emblem. He storyboarded key moments of the play with small drawings that gave the actors spatial and this tight control of the mise en scène was intended to facilitate the unified expression of the inner action that Stanislavski perceived to be hidden beneath the surface of the play in its subtext. As an actor, despite wishing to play Trigorin, Stanislavski initially prepared the role of the doctor Dorn, the production had 80 hours of rehearsal in total, spread over 24 sessions,9 with Stanislavski and 15 with Nemirovich. The production opened on 29 December 1898 with a sense of crisis in the air in the theatre, most of the actors were mildly self-tranquilised with Valerian drops. In a letter to Chekhov, one audience member described how, Nemirovich described the applause, the production received unanimous praise from the press. It was not until 13 May 1899 that Chekhov saw the production, in a performance without sets but in make-up and he proposed that the play be published with Stanislavskis score of the productions mise en scène. Chekhovs collaboration with Stanislavski proved crucial to the development of both men. Stanislavskis attention to realism and ensemble playing coaxed the buried subtleties from the play. Chekhovs unwillingness to explain or expand on the script forced Stanislavski to dig beneath the surface of the text in ways that were new in theatre, Moscow Art Theatre The Seagull Moscow Art Theatre production of Hamlet The Sea-Gull at Project Gutenberg
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History of theatre
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The history of theatre charts the development of theatre over the past 2,500 years. The history of theatre is primarily concerned with the origin and subsequent development of the theatre as an autonomous activity, since classical Athens in the 6th century BC, vibrant traditions of theatre have flourished in cultures across the world. Theatre probably arose as a performance of activities that did not require initiation on the part of the spectator. The physical location of such performances was accordingly named theatron, according to the historians Oscar Brockett and Franklin Hildy, rituals typically include elements that entertain or give pleasure, such as costumes and masks as well as skilled performers. As societies grew more complex, these spectacular elements began to be acted out under non-ritualistic conditions, as this occurred, the first steps towards theatre as an autonomous activity were being taken. Greek theatre, most developed in Athens, is the root of the Western tradition, participation in the city-states many festivals—and attendance at the City Dionysia as an audience member in particular—was an important part of citizenship. The theatre of ancient Greece consisted of three types of drama, tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play, Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state. Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BC, it flowered during the 5th century BC, no tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in during the 5th century have survived. We have complete texts extant by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, the origins of tragedy remain obscure, though by the 5th century it was institutionalised in competitions held as part of festivities celebrating Dionysos. As contestants in the City Dionysias competition, playwrights were required to present a tetralogy of plays, the performance of tragedies at the City Dionysia may have begun as early as 534 BC, official records begin from 501 BC, when the satyr play was introduced. More than 130 years later, the philosopher Aristotle analysed 5th-century Athenian tragedy in the oldest surviving work of dramatic theory—his Poetics, Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy. Old Comedy survives today largely in the form of the surviving plays of Aristophanes. New Comedy is known primarily from the papyrus fragments of plays by Menander. Aristotle defined comedy as a representation of people that involves some kind of error or ugliness that does not cause pain or destruction. Western theatre developed and expanded considerably under the Romans, the Roman historian Livy wrote that the Romans first experienced theatre in the 4th century BC, with a performance by Etruscan actors. Beacham argues that Romans had been familiar with pre-theatrical practices for some time before recorded contact. Following the expansion of the Roman Republic into several Greek territories between 270–240 BC, Rome encountered Greek drama, while Greek drama continued to be performed throughout the Roman period, the year 240 BC marks the beginning of regular Roman drama. From the beginning of the empire, however, interest in full-length drama declined in favour of a variety of theatrical entertainments
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Melikhovo
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Melikhovo is a writers house museum in the former country estate of the Russian playwright and writer Anton Chekhov. Chekhov lived in the estate from March 1892 until August 1899, the estate is located about forty miles south of Moscow near Chekhov. I need a piece of social and political life, besides his desire to be a more active doctor, Chekhov wanted to move to the country to improve his health, which had suffered from his trip to Sakhalin. A small country house owned by Nikolai Sorokhtin, a set decorator for the Hermitage summer garden theater in Moscow, was on the market and it was located in the small settlement of Melikhovo, which in 1890 had three country estates and a population of three hundred. The wooden house had been built in the 1840s in the Russian neoclassical style, Sorokhtin ran short of funds and in the beginning of 1892 he placed an advertisement in the newspaper Moskovskiy Vedomosti. Chekhov saw the advertisement, met him on February 2,1892. The Chekhov family moved there on March 1,1892, Chekhov lived in the one-story main house with his mother, his sister, Maria Chekhova, and his father, Pavel Yegorovich Chekhov. He had his study and library with a desk by a window looking at the garden and his desk portraits of the writers and artists he most admired, Lev Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, Peter Tchaikovsky, Dmitry Grigorovich, and Viktor Goltsev. In his early years at Melikhovo, his study also served as his medical office, sick residents of the region began gathering outside the house from five to six oclock in the morning. He kept medicines in a cabinet on the wall of his study for his patients. He was particularly busy during the epidemic which struck Russia in 1892 and 1893, he was responsible for the medical care for 26 villages, seven factories. Chekhov also took a strong interest in education and he visited the local village schools, and found the conditions deplorable and the teachers underpaid and uninispired. One teacher he met, in the village of Talezh, a man with a wife and four children raising a family on an income of 23 rubles a month. In 1896 built a new school for the children of Talezh, a school for Novosyelka the next year and he also donated furniture and textbooks for the schools. In 1892 Chekhov made his first improvement on the estate, building a new cookhouse, meals were prepared for Chekhov and his family in guests by his long-time cook Maria Dormidontovna Belenovskaya, and the servants ate in kitchen. In the summer of 1894, Chekhov had constructed a small two-story guest cottage not far from the house, with a terrace overlooking the garden. The lower floor served as his new medical room. In November 1895 Chekhov completed The Seagull in this house, in 1898, upon his return from Nice, in France, he wrote a trilogy of three famous stories there, The Man in a Case, About Love, and Gooseberries
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Aleksey Suvorin
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Aleksei Sergeyevich Suvorin was a Russian newspaper and book publisher and journalist whose publishing empire wielded considerable influence during the last decades of the Russian Empire. He set out as a liberal journalist but, like many of his contemporaries, he experienced a shift in views. Suvorin was a selfmade man. Born of a peasant family, he succeeded in gaining access to a school at Voronezh from which he graduated in 1850. In the following year, he arrived in St. Petersburg, with limited prospects of pursuing a military career, he spent eight years in his native haunts, teaching history and geography, first in Bobrov and then in Voronezh. No one could have predicted that two or three decades, the provincial teacher would rise to become one of the most influential men in the empire. A major step forward in his career was in 1861, when, electrified by the Emancipation Manifesto, he relocated to Moscow, where he found himself at the periphery of a burgeoning literary scene. At first money was tight, instigating Suvorin to move to St. Petersburg, where he joined the staff of the St. Petersburg Vedomosti and he soon became its leading contributor and secretary to the editor in chief. Suvorins feuilletons, published under the pen name Stranger, were an instant sensation, Suvorins personality as a writer is somewhat overshadowed by his journalism. Nevertheless, he was prolific and published a number of short stories. Capitalising on that success, Suvorin set up a venture in 1871. Among his first publications was the Russian Calendar, which was in demand all over Russia, followed by an unprecedented series of cheap editions of classics. For more demanding readers, he issued a suite of richly illustrated albums about the art galleries of Europe. They are often referred to as the Suvorin directories, from the publishers name, the directories are often used by modern genealogists to trace family members who lived in Imperial and early Soviet Russia when vital records are missing or prove difficult to find. Historians use them to research the social histories of late 19th century, by the end of the century, Suvorins bookstores were everywhere, in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Odessa, Rostov, Saratov. He held a monopoly on the distribution of printed matter on the stations and trains. In 1876, Suvorin acquired ownership of the failing newspaper Novoye Vremya, in 1880, he founded a reputable historical journal, Istorichesky Vestnik. He confessed to favour the newspaper over his family and worked hard to expand its circulation, by the end of the 1880s, Novoye Vremya counted as one of the most profitable and up-to-date enterprises in the Russian publishing industry
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Uncle Vanya
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Uncle Vanya is a play by the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov. It was first published in 1897 and received its Moscow première in 1899 in a production by the Moscow Art Theatre, the play portrays the visit of an elderly professor and his glamorous, much younger second wife, Yelena, to the rural estate that supports their urban lifestyle. Sonya, the daughter by his first wife, who has worked with Vanya to keep the estate going. Uncle Vanya is unique among Chekhovs major plays because it is essentially a reworking of his own play published a decade earlier. Rayfield cites recent scholarship suggesting Chekhov revised The Wood Demon during his trip to the island of Sakhalin, a prison colony in Eastern Russia, in 1891. Aleksandr Vladimirovich Serebryakov, a university professor, who has lived for years in the city on the earnings of his late first wifes rural estate. Helena Andreyevna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs young and beautiful second wife, sofia Alexandrovna Serebryakov, Professor Serebryakovs daughter from his first marriage. She is of an age, but is considered plain. Maria Vasilyevna Voynitsky, the widow of a councilor and mother of Vanya. Ivan Petrovich Voynitsky, Marias son and Sonyas uncle, the character of the play. Mikhail Lvovich Astrov, a middle aged country doctor, ilya Ilych Telegin, an impoverished landowner, who now lives on the estate as a dependent of the family. A Workman A garden in Serebryakovs country estate, Astrov and Marina discuss how old Astrov has grown, and how he feels bored with his life as a country doctor. Vanya enters, and complains about how all order has been disrupted since the professor and his wife, Yelena, as they’re talking, Serebryakov, Yelena, Sonya, and Telegin return from a walk. Out of the professors earshot, Vanya calls him an old dried mackerel, criticizing him for his pomposity. Vanya’s mother, Maria Vasilyevna, who idolizes Serebryakov, objects to her son’s derogatory comments, Vanya also praises the professor’s wife, Yelena, for her beauty, arguing that faithfulness to an old man like Serebryakov is an immoral waste of vitality. Astrov is forced to depart to attend a patient, but not before delivering a speech on the preservation of the forests, act I closes with Vanya declaring his love for an exasperated Yelena. The dining room, several days later, before going to bed, Serebryakov complains of being in pain and of old age. Astrov arrives, having sent for by Sonya, but the professor refuses to see him
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Olga Knipper
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Olga Leonardovna Knipper-Chekhova was a Russian Empire and Soviet stage actress. She was married to Anton Chekhov, Knipper was among the 44 original members of the Moscow Art Theatre when it was formed by Constantin Stanislavski in 1898. She played Arkadina in The Seagull, played Elena in the Moscow premiere of Uncle Vanya, Knipper married Anton Chekhov, the author of these plays, in 1901. Knipper-Chekhova played Ranevskaya again in 1943, when the theatre marked the 300th performance of The Cherry Orchard, the German actress Olga Chekhova was her niece and the Soviet composer Lev Knipper was her nephew. Olga Leonardovna Knipper was born on the 21 September 1868 in Glazov to Leonard, though both of her parents were of German origin, her father wasted no time in claiming Russia as their family heritage. Around the time of Olgas birth, her father, Leonard, was in charge of a factory in a small town north-east of European Russia called Glazov, two years after Olga was born, her family moved to Moscow, where they became accustomed to an upper-middle-class lifestyle. Growing up in between her two brothers, Konstantin and Vladimir, Olga was pampered extensively and she attended a private school for girls, was fluent in French, German, and English, and took music and singing lessons after rigorous schooling days. Olga showed considerable promise as a painter and was her own accompanist on the piano when she entertained friends and family at dinner parties. Her mother, Anna Ivanovna, though very talented as a singer and pianist, was forced to give up any hopes of pursuing a professional career in the arts. In 1894, Olgas father died unexpectedly, leaving the 25-year-old, Olga and her mother both began giving music and singing lessons to make ends meet. They also dismissed four of their five servants, and moved into a smaller flat, Olgas hopes of becoming a successful stage actress had not yet diminished. She enrolled briefly into the Maly Theatres drama school, although she dropped out one month later, with the help of her reluctant mother, Olga enrolled at the Philharmonic School, where she was taught by the future co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre, Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. Nemirovich introduced Knipper and fellow student Vsevolod Meierhold to Constantin Stanislavski, told in strict confidence, Nemirovich confessed to Knipper and Meierhold that he and Stanislavski were planning the creation of a new theatre company. Nemirovich assured the two actors that they would be invited to join this company and to lead it to greatness. After many weeks, enough capital was secured to found the new company. While rehearsing for The Seagull on 9 September, Olgas 30th birthday, she met Russias most eligible bachelor and playwright of The Seagull, Anton Chekhov. Knipper and Chekhov exchanged telegrams and letters for the few years, while Olga became more familiar with Chekhovs younger sister. Random letters of teasing and playfulness became letters of love and deep remorse that they lived so far apart each other
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Vsevolod Meyerhold
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Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold was a Russian and Soviet theatre director, actor and theatrical producer. His provocative experiments dealing with physical being and symbolism in a theatre setting made him one of the seminal forces in modern international theatre. During the Great Purge, Meyerhold was arrested, tortured and executed in February 1940 and he was the youngest of eight children. After completing school in 1895, Meiergold studied law at Moscow University and he was torn between studying theatre or a career as a violinist. However, he failed his audition to become the second violinist in the University orchestra, on his 21st birthday, he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity and accepted Vsevolod as an Orthodox Christian name. Meyerhold began acting in 1896 as a student of the Moscow Philharmonic Dramatic School under the guidance of Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. At the MAT, Meyerhold played 18 roles, such as Vasiliy Shuiskiy in Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich and Ivan the Terrible in The Death of Ivan the Terrible, after leaving the MAT in 1902, Meyerhold participated in a number of theatrical projects, as both a director and actor. Each project was an arena for experiment and creation of new staging methods, Meyerhold was one of the most fervent advocates of Symbolism in theatre, especially when he worked as the chief producer of the Vera Komissarzhevskaya theatre in 1906–1907. He was invited back to the MAT around this time to pursue his experimental ideas, Meyerhold continued theatrical innovation during the decade 1907–1917, while working with the imperial theatres in St. Petersburg. He introduced classical plays in a manner, and staged works of controversial contemporary authors like Fyodor Sologub, Zinaida Gippius. In these plays, Meyerhold tried to return acting to the traditions of Commedia dellarte and his theoretical concepts of the conditional theatre were elaborated in his book On Theatre in 1913. The Russian Revolution of 1917 made Meyerhold one of the most enthusiastic activists of the new Soviet Theatre and he joined the Bolshevik Party in 1918 and became an official of the Theatre Division of the Commissariat of Education and Enlightenment. In 1918–1919, Meyerhold formed an alliance with Olga Kameneva, the head of the Division, together, they tried to radicalize Russian theatres, effectively nationalizing them under Bolshevik control. Meyerhold came down with tuberculosis in May 1919 and had to leave for the south, after returning to Moscow, Meyerhold founded his own theatre in 1920, which was known from 1923 as the Meyerhold Theatre until 1938. Meyerhold confronted the principles of theatrical academism, claiming that they are incapable of finding a common language with the new reality, Meyerhold’s methods of scenic constructivism and circus-style effects were used in his most successful works of the time. Some of these works included Nikolai Erdmans The Mandate, Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Mystery-Bouffe, Fernand Crommelyncks Le Cocu magnifique, mayakovsky collaborated with Meyerhold several times, and was said to have written The Bedbug especially for him, Meyerhold continued to stage Mayakovskys productions even after the latters suicide. The actors participating in Meyerhold’s productions acted according to the principle of biomechanics, Meyerhold gave initial boosts to the stage careers of some of the most distinguished comic actors of the USSR, including Sergey Martinson, Igor Ilyinsky and Erast Garin. Energy was replaced by trance, the dynamic with the static, happy jesting humour with bitter, Meyerhold also gave a start to his one time assistant of The Queen of Spades Matvey Dubrovin, who later created his own theater in Leningrad
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Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko
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Vladimir Ivanovich Nemirovich-Danchenko was born into a mixed Ukrainian-Armenian family in the village of Shemokmedi near Ozurgeti. His father was an officer of the Russian army, and his mother and he was educated at High school in Tbilisi and then at Moscow State University. In 1879 he left the University for the theatre, starting as a critic, and in 1881, his first play Dog-rose. He was a teacher of Moskvin, Knipper and Meyerhold, in 1919 he established the Musical Theatre of the Moscow Art Theatre, which was reformed into the Nemirovich-Danchenko Musical Theatre in 1926. In 1943 Nemirovich-Danchenko established the Moscow Art Theatre School, which is still extant, Nemirovich-Danchenko opened for theatre a true sense of Chekhov and Gorky plays, a prose of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. It has been said that If Stanislavsky was the soul of Art Theatre, Nemirovich-Danchenko created an acting and directing style of the Moscow Art Theatre, actors ensemble and atmosphere. Because of this the Moscow Art Theatre was considered the best theatre of the world at that time, but Nemirovich didnt write down his system of acting and we know only the system of Stanislavski. He was one of the first recipients of the title of Peoples Artist of the USSR in 1936, later, he was awarded the USSR State Prize, the Order of Lenin, and Order of the Red Banner of Labour. The Brothers Karamazov Resurrection Anna Karenina Three Sisters Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, Biography from Answers. com
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Experimental theatre
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The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical. Experimental theatre is trying something new, like other forms of the avant garde, it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois theatre and it tries to introduce a different use of language and the body to change the mode of perception and to create a new, more active relation with the audience. Traditionally audiences are seen as passive observers, many practitioners of experimental theatre have wanted to challenge this. Aside from ideological implications of the role of the audience, theatres and performances have addressed or involved the audience in a variety of ways, the proscenium arch has been called into question, with performances venturing into non-theatrical spaces. Audiences have been engaged differently, often as active participants in the action on a practical level. When a proscenium arch has been used, its use has often been subverted. Audience participation can range from asking for volunteers to go onstage to having actors scream in audience members faces. By using audience participation, the performer invites the audience to feel a way and by doing so they may change their attitudes, values. For example, in a performance on bullying the character may approach an audience member, size them up, the terrified look on the audience members face will strongly embody the message of bullying to the member and the rest of the audience. Physically, theatre spaces took on different shapes, and practitioners re-explored different ways of staging performance, some groups have been prominent in changing the social face of theatre, rather than its stylistic appearance. Performers have used their skills to engage in a form of cultural activism, experimental theatre encourages directors to make society, or our audience at least, change their attitudes, values and beliefs on an issue and to do something about it. Various practitioners started challenging this and started seeing the more and more as creative artists in their own right. This started with giving them more and more freedom and devised theatre eventually emerged. In this form the lines were devised by the actors or performers, within this many different structures and possibilities exist for performance makers, and a large variety of different models are used by performers today. As well as hierarchies being challenged, performers have been challenging their individual roles, an inter-disciplinary approach becomes more and more common as performers have become less willing to be shoe-horned into specialist technical roles. Simultaneous to this, other disciplines have started breaking down their barriers, dance, music, visual art and writing become blurred in many cases, and artists with completely separate trainings and backgrounds collaborate very comfortably. Experimental theatre alters traditional conventions of space, theme, movement, mood, tension, language, symbolism, conventional rules and other elements. L
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Love triangle
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A love triangle is usually a romantic relationship involving three people. While it can refer to two people independently romantically linked with a third, it implies that each of the three people has some kind of relationship to the other two. The relationships can be friendships, romantic, or familial. Romantic love is viewed as an exclusive relationship. Statistics suggest that, in Western society, wittingly or not, the term love triangle generally connotes an arrangement unsuitable to one or more of the people involved. One person typically ends up feeling betrayed at some point, a similar arrangement that is agreed upon by all parties is sometimes called a triad, which is a type of polyamory even though polyamory usually implies sexual relations. Within the context of monogamy, love triangles are inherently unstable, with unrequited love, in most cases, the jealous or rejected first party ends a friendship—and sometimes even starts a fight with—the second party over the third-party love interest. Though rare, love triangles have been known to lead to murder or suicide committed by the actual or perceived rejected lover, psychoanalysis has explored the theme of erotic love triangles and their roots in the Oedipal triangle. In such instances, you men who are attracted only by married woman. They need the husband to protect them from a full relationship. as women who repeatedly get involved with married men need the wives, alternatively, the hero or heroine has a choice between a seemingly perfect lover and an imperfect but endearing person. It has been suggested that a network is always needed to keep the triangle eternal. Calm yourself, says the husband, Ill be marrying again and it has been suggested that if men share a sense of brotherhood and they allow a woman into their relationship, an isosceles triangle is created automatically, as in Truffauts film Jules et Jim. In such cases, it cannot be fair to blame the quarrel of the twins on a woman. She is their common scapegoat. Their loyalties are torn, and – except in the best of cases – the one left injured can easily sway the feelings of the children against acknowledging this new relationship. – A mugs game, he told me, is breaking your back at midnight, Love triangles are a popular theme in entertainment, especially romantic fiction, including opera, romance novels, soap operas, romantic comedies, manga, tabloid talk shows, and popular music. Eric Berne termed that conflictual aspect of the love triangle Lets You and Him Fight, because of its dramatic qualities, LYAHF is the basis of much of the worlds literature, both good and bad. Young Adult literature has seen a rise in the popularity of the love triangle story structure, but the love triangle story structure has been around since before early classic writers like William Shakespeare and Alexandre Dumas. Shakespeares famous play Romeo and Juliet featured a triangle between Juliet, Romeo, and Paris. Although more subtle, Dumass classics The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers also feature love triangles strong enough to seek revenge and start a war
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Gull
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Gulls, often referred to as seagulls, are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns and only related to auks, skimmers. Until the 21st century, most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, an older name for gulls is mew, cognate with German Möwe, Danish måge, Dutch meeuw, and French mouette, this term can still be found in certain regional dialects. Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white and they typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls, stout, longish bills, and webbed feet. Most gulls, particularly Larus species, are ground-nesting carnivores, which take food or scavenge opportunistically. Live food often includes crabs and small fish, gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey. Apart from the kittiwakes, gulls are typically coastal or inland species, the large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with an age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull. Gulls nest in large, densely packed noisy colonies and they lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, being born with dark mottled down, gulls—the larger species in particular—are resourceful, inquisitive and intelligent birds, demonstrating complex methods of communication and a highly developed social structure. For example, many gull colonies display mobbing behaviour, attacking and harassing would-be predators, certain species have exhibited tool use behaviour, using pieces of bread as bait with which to catch goldfish, for example. Many species of gulls have learned to coexist successfully with humans and have thrived in human habitats, others rely on kleptoparasitism to get their food. Gulls have been observed preying on live whales, landing on the whale as it surfaces to peck out pieces of flesh. Gulls range in size from the gull, at 120 g and 29 cm, to the great black-backed gull. They are generally uniform in shape, with bodies, long wings. The tails of all but three species are rounded, the exceptions being Sabines gull and swallow-tailed gulls, which have forked tails, and Rosss gull, gulls have moderately long legs, especially when compared to the similar terns, with fully webbed feet. The bill is heavy and slightly hooked, with the larger species having stouter bills than the smaller species. The bill colour is yellow with a red spot for the larger white-headed species and red
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Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
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Drawing room
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A drawing room is a room in a house where visitors may be entertained. The name is derived from the sixteenth-century terms withdrawing room and withdrawing chamber, which remained in use through the seventeenth century and it was often off the great chamber and usually led to a formal, or state bedroom. During the American Civil War, in the White House of the Confederacy in Richmond, Virginia, president Jefferson Davis greeted his guests. At the conclusion of these greetings, the men remained in the parlor to talk politics and this was common practice in the affluent circles of the Southern United States. If a Morning-room be not provided, it is properly the only Sitting-room of the family, in it in any case the ladies receive calls throughout the day, and the family and their guests assemble before dinner. After dinner the ladies withdraw to it, and are joined by the gentlemen for the evening and it is also the Reception-room for evening parties. In size, a small Drawing-room will be about 16 feet wide by from 18 to 20 feet long,18 by 24 feet is a size,20 by 30 to 26 by 40 is enough for a very superior apartment. Until the mid-twentieth century, after a dinner the ladies of a dinner party withdrew to the room, leaving the gentlemen at table. After an interval of conversation, the gentlemen rejoined the ladies in the drawing room and this term is still widely used in India and Pakistan, probably dating from the colonial days, in the larger urban houses of the cities where there are many rooms. The term parlour initially designated the more modest reception rooms of the middle classes, parlor remained the common usage in North America into the 20th century. An example, named as such, was a Midland Drawing Room Car in 1874 which was a Pullman Import from the USA, in North America, it meant a room which slept three or more persons, with a private washroom. The drawing room, being a room in the house to visitors, gave its name to drawing room plays. Beginning with the forms of drama, the drawing room play has evolved to encompass comedy as well as to include the forms of the dramatic monologue. The play format itself has grown out of the traditional drawing room performance and back into main street theater. While the drawing room itself has fallen out of favor, the format has continued to provide a source of entertainment. Drawing room comedy typically features wit and verbal banter among wealthy, leisured, genteel, Drawing room comedy is also sometimes called the comedy of manners. Oscar Wildes The Importance of Being Earnest and several of the plays of Noël Coward are typical works of the genre, george Bernard Shaws Heartbreak House adds an undercurrent of social criticism to the genre. Cary Grant appeared in a number of filmed drawing-room comedies, ernst Lubitsch was especially known as a director of drawing-room comedies
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Bingo (United Kingdom)
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Bingo is a game of probability in which players mark off numbers on cards as the numbers are drawn randomly by a caller, the winner being the first person to mark off all their numbers. Bingo became increasingly popular across the UK with more purpose-built bingo halls opened every year until 2005. Since 2005, Bingo Halls have seen a decline in revenues. The number of clubs in Britain has dropped from nearly 600 in 2005 to under 400 as of January,2014. These closures are blamed on high taxes, the ban. The game is thought to have begun in Italy in the 16th century, specifically, around 1530 Bingo is believed to have migrated to France, Great Britain, players mark off numbers on a ticket as they are randomly called out, in order to achieve a winning combination. Bingo originates from the Italian lottery, Il Gioco del Lotto dItalia, from Italy, the game spread to France and was known as Le Lotto, played by the French aristocracy. Tombola was used in nineteenth-century Germany as an tool to teach children multiplication tables, spelling. The patent for a modern Bingo card design went to Erwin S. Lowe in 1942, Bingo played in the UK is not to be confused with bingo played in the US, as the tickets and the calling are slightly different. A typical bingo ticket is shown to the right and it contains 27 spaces, arranged in nine columns by three rows. Each row contains five numbers and four blank spaces, tickets are created as strips of 6, because this allows every number from 1 to 90 to appear across all 6 tickets. If they buy a strip of six it means that players are guaranteed to mark off a number every time a number is called. The game is presided over by a caller, whose job it is to out the numbers. They will announce the prize or prizes for each game before starting, the caller will then usually say Eyes down to indicate that he is about to start. They then begin to call numbers as they are selected, either by an electronic random number generator. Calling may take the format of simple repetition in the framework, Both the fives, fifty five, or Two, in some independent clubs, numbers ending in a zero are described as blind. The different winning combinations are, Four corners - the leftmost and rightmost numbers on the top, Line – covering a horizontal line of five numbers on the ticket. Two Lines – covering any two lines on the same ticket
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Manuscript
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A manuscript is any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to being mechanically printed or reproduced in some automated way. More recently, it is understood to be a written, typed, or word-processed copy of a work. Before the arrival of printing, all documents and books were manuscripts, manuscripts are not defined by their contents, which may combine writing with mathematical calculations, maps, explanatory figures or illustrations. Manuscripts may be in form, scrolls or in codex format. Illuminated manuscripts are enriched with pictures, border decorations, elaborately embossed initial letters or full-page illustrations. The traditional abbreviations are MS for manuscript and MSS for manuscripts, while the forms MS. ms or ms. for singular, and MSS. mss or mss. for plural are also accepted. The second s is not simply the plural, by an old convention, it doubles the last letter of the abbreviation to express the plural, just as pp. means pages. Before the invention of printing in China or by moveable type in a printing press in Europe. Historically, manuscripts were produced in form of scrolls or books, manuscripts were produced on vellum and other parchment, on papyrus, and on paper. In Russia birch bark documents as old as from the 11th century have survived, in India, the palm leaf manuscript, with a distinctive long rectangular shape, was used from ancient times until the 19th century. Paper spread from China via the Islamic world to Europe by the 14th century, when Greek or Latin works were published, numerous professional copies were made simultaneously by scribes in a scriptorium, each making a single copy from an original that was declaimed aloud. Manuscripts in Tocharian languages, written on leaves, survived in desert burials in the Tarim Basin of Central Asia. Volcanic ash preserved some of the Roman library of the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, ironically, the manuscripts that were being most carefully preserved in the libraries of antiquity are virtually all lost. Originally, all books were in manuscript form, in China, and later other parts of East Asia, woodblock printing was used for books from about the 7th century. The earliest dated example is the Diamond Sutra of 868, in the Islamic world and the West, all books were in manuscript until the introduction of movable type printing in about 1450. Manuscript copying of books continued for a least a century, as printing remained expensive, private or government documents remained hand-written until the invention of the typewriter in the late 19th century. In the Philippines, for example, as early as 900AD, specimen documents were not inscribed by stylus and this type of document was rare compared to the usual leaves and bamboo staves that were inscribed. However, neither the leaves nor paper were as durable as the document in the hot
30.
Alexander Griboyedov
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Alexander Sergeyevich Griboyedov, formerly romanized as Alexander Sergueevich Griboyedoff, was a Russian diplomat, playwright, poet, and composer. He is recognized as homo unius libri, a writer of one book, Griboyedov had played a pivotal role in the ratification of the latter treaty. Born in Moscow, Griboyedov studied at Moscow University from 1810 to 1812 and he then obtained a commission in a hussar regiment, which he resigned in 1816. The next year, he entered the civil service, in 1818 he was appointed secretary of the Russian legation in Persia, and transferred to Georgia. His verse comedy The Young Spouses, which he staged in St. Petersburg in 1816, was followed by similar works. Neither these nor his essays and poetry would have long remembered but for the success of his verse comedy Woe from Wit. As a high official in the play puts it, this work is a pasquinade on Moscow, by contrast the hero of the piece, Chatsky, an ironic satirist just returned from western Europe, exposes and ridicules the weaknesses of the rest. His words echo the outcry of the generation in the lead-up to the armed insurrection of 1825. In Russia for the summer of 1823, Griboyedov completed the play and it was rejected by the censors. Many copies were made and privately circulated, but Griboyedov never saw it published, after his death the manuscript was jointly owned by his wife Nina Alexandrovna Griboyedova and his sister Maria Sergeyevna Durnovo. The first edition was not published until 1833, four years after his death, only once did he see it on the stage, when it was performed by the officers of the garrison at Yerevan. Soured by disappointment, he returned to Georgia, there, thinking to devote himself to literature, he started work on a romantic drama, A Georgian Night. Several months after his wedding to Nino, the 16-year-old daughter of his friend Prince Chavchavadze, in the aftermath of the war and the humiliating Treaty of Turkmenchay, there was strong anti-Russian sentiment in Persia. Soon after Griboyedovs arrival in Tehran, a mob stormed the Russian embassy, the incident began when an Armenian eunuch escaped from the harem of the Persian shah, and two Armenian women escaped from that of his son-in-law. All three sought refuge at the Russian legation, as agreed in the Treaty of Turkmenchay, Georgians and Armenians living in Persia were permitted to return to Georgia and Eastern Armenia. However, the Shah demanded that Griboyedov return the three and this caused an uproar throughout the city and several thousand Persians encircled the Russian compound demanding their release. Griboyedov then decided to offer to return the escaped eunuch and Armenian women, moments later, urged on by the mullahs, the mob stormed the building. A high ranking Muslim scholar with the title of Mojtahed, Mirza Masih Astarabadi known as Mirza Masih Mojtahed, issued a fatwa saying freeing Muslim women from the claws of unbelievers is allowed
31.
Valerian (herb)
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Valerian is a perennial flowering plant, with heads of sweetly scented pink or white flowers that bloom in the summer and can reach a height of 5 feet. Valerian flower extracts were used as a perfume in the 16th century, native to Europe and parts of Asia, valerian has been introduced into North America. The flowers are visited by many fly species, especially hoverflies of the genus Eristalis. It is consumed as food by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including the grey pug, other names used for this plant include garden valerian, garden heliotrope, setwall and all-heal. Red valerian, often grown in gardens, is sometimes referred to as valerian. Crude extract of valerian root is sold as a supplement in the form of capsules. Valerian root may have sedative and anxiolytic effects, the amino acid valine is named after this plant. Valerian has been used as a medicinal herb since at least the time of ancient Greece, hippocrates described its properties, and Galen later prescribed it as a remedy for insomnia. In medieval Sweden, it was placed in the wedding clothes of the groom to ward off the envy of the elves. In the 16th century, the Anabaptist reformer Pilgram Marpeck prescribed valerian tea for a sick woman, the seventeenth century astrological botanist Nicholas Culpeper thought the plant was under the influence of Mercury, and therefore hath a warming faculty. He recommended both herb and root, and said that the root boiled with liquorice, raisons and aniseed is good for those troubled with cough, also, it is of special value against the plague, the decoction thereof being drunk and the root smelled. The green herb being bruised and applied to the head taketh away pain, the name of the herb is derived from the personal name Valeria and the Latin verb valere. Many studies remain inconclusive and all require clinical validation, the mechanism of action of valerian in general, and as a mild sedative in particular, has not been fully elucidated. Valeric acid, which is responsible for the odor of mostly older valerian roots. Valeric acid is related to acid, a widely prescribed anticonvulsant. Valerian also contains isovaltrate, which has shown to be an inverse agonist for adenosine A1 receptor sites. This action likely does not contribute to the herbs possible sedative effects, hydrophilic extractions of the herb commonly sold over the counter, however, probably do not contain significant amounts of isovaltrate. Valerenic acid in valerian stimulates serotonin receptors as a partial agonist, the chief constituent of valerian is a yellowish-green to brownish-yellow oil which is present in the dried root, varying from 0.5 to 2. 0%, though an average yield rarely exceeds 0. 8%
32.
Dam
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A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Reservoirs created by not only suppress floods but also provide water for activities such as irrigation, human consumption, industrial use, aquaculture. Hydropower is often used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity, a dam can also be used to collect water or for storage of water which can be evenly distributed between locations. Dams generally serve the purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. The word dam can be traced back to Middle English, and before that, from Middle Dutch, the first known appearance of dam occurs in 1165. However, there is one village, Obdam, that is mentioned in 1120. The word seems to be related to the Greek word taphos, so the word should be understood as dike from dug out earth. The names of more than 40 places from the Middle Dutch era such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, early dam building took place in Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Dams were used to control the level, for Mesopotamias weather affected the Tigris. The earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan,100 kilometres northeast of the capital Amman and this gravity dam featured an originally 9-metre-high and 1 m-wide stone wall, supported by a 50 m-wide earth rampart. The structure is dated to 3000 BC, the Ancient Egyptian Sadd-el-Kafara Dam at Wadi Al-Garawi, located about 25 km south of Cairo, was 102 m long at its base and 87 m wide. The structure was built around 2800 or 2600 BC as a dam for flood control. During the Twelfth Dynasty in the 19th century BC, the Pharaohs Senosert III, Amenemhat III, two dams called Ha-Uar running east-west were built to retain water during the annual flood and then release it to surrounding lands. The lake called Mer-wer or Lake Moeris covered 1,700 km2 and is today as Berkat Qaroun. One of the wonders of the ancient world was the Great Dam of Marib in Yemen. Repairs were carried out during various periods, most important around 750 BC and these extensive works were not actually finalized until 325 AD and allowed the irrigation of 25,000 acres. By the mid-late 3rd century BC, an intricate water-management system within Dholavira in modern-day India was built, the system included 16 reservoirs, dams and various channels for collecting water and storing it. Eflatun Pınar is a Hittite dam and spring temple near Konya and it is thought to be from the time of the Hittite empire between the 15th and 13th century BC
33.
Realism (theatre)
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Realism in the theatre was a general movement that began in the 19th-century theatre, around the 1870s, and remained present through much of the 20th century. It developed a set of dramatic and theatrical conventions with the aim of bringing a greater fidelity of real life to texts, part of a broader artistic movement, it includes Naturalism and Socialist realism. Russias first professional playwright, Aleksey Pisemsky, along with Leo Tolstoy and this need was supplied by the innovations of the Moscow Art Theatre, founded by Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. The Moscow Art Theatres ground-breaking productions of plays by Chekhov, such as Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard, in turn influenced Maxim Gorky, Stanislavski went on to develop his system, a form of actor training that is particularly well-suited to psychological realism. Ibsens realistic drama in prose has been enormously influential, in opera, verismo refers to a post-Romantic Italian tradition that sought to incorporate the Naturalism of Émile Zola and Henrik Ibsen. It included realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life. Jean Benedetti argues that, Naturalism, for him, implied the indiscriminate reproduction of the surface of life. Realism, on the hand, while taking its material from the real world and from direct observation, selected only those elements which revealed the relationships. As used in critical literature today, however, the term Naturalism has a broader scope than that, in this broader sense, Naturalism or psychological realism is distinct both from Socialist realism and the critical realism developed by the epic theatre of Bertolt Brecht. Realism in the arts Socialist realism Chanson réaliste Benedetti, Jean, the Art of the Actor, The Essential History of Acting from Classical Times to the Present Day. The Oxford Illustrated History of Theatre
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Emblem
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An emblem is an abstract or representational pictorial image that represents a concept, like a moral truth, or an allegory, or a person, like a king or saint. Although the words emblem and symbol are used interchangeably, an emblem is a pattern that is used to represent an idea or an individual. An emblem crystallizes in concrete, visual terms some abstraction, a deity, an emblem may be worn or otherwise used as an identifying badge or patch. For example, in America, police officers badges refer to their personal metal emblem whereas their woven emblems on uniforms identify members of a particular unit. A real or metal shell, the emblem of St. James the Apostle, sewn onto the hat or clothes. In the Middle Ages, many saints were given emblems, which served to them in paintings and other images, St. Catherine had a wheel, or a sword, St. Anthony Abbot, a pig. These are also called attributes, especially when carried by or close to the saint in art. Kings and other grand persons increasingly adopted personal devices or emblems that were distinct from their family heraldry. The most famous include Louis XIV of Frances sun, the salamander of Francis I of France, the boar of Richard III of England, pisanello produced many of the earliest and finest of these. A symbol, on the hand, substitutes one thing for another, in a more concrete fashion, The Christian cross is a symbol of the Crucifixion. The Red Cross is one of three representing the International Red Cross. A red cross on a background is the emblem of humanitarian spirit. The crescent shape is a symbol of the moon, it is an emblem of Islam, the skull and crossbones is a symbol identifying a poison. The skull is an emblem of the nature of human life. A totem is specifically an animal emblem that expresses the spirit of a clan, heraldry knows its emblems as charges. The lion passant serves as the emblem of England, the lion rampant as the emblem of Scotland, an icon consists of an image, that has become standardized by convention. A logo is an impersonal, secular icon, usually of a corporate entity, since the 15th century the terms of emblem and emblematura belong to the termini technici of architecture. They mean an iconic painted, drawn, or sculptural representation of a concept affixed to houses, Emblem in this sense refers to a didactic or moralizing combination of picture and text intended to draw the reader into a self-reflective examination of his or her own life
35.
Uta Hagen
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Uta Thyra Hagen was a German American actress and theatre practitioner. She originated the role of Martha in the 1962 Broadway premiere of Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. by Edward Albee. Because Hagen was on the Hollywood blacklist, in part because of her association with Paul Robeson, her film opportunities dwindled and she twice won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play and received a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1999. Her most substantial contributions to theatre pedagogy were a series of exercises that built on the work of Konstantin Stanislavski. She was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981, born in Göttingen, Germany, daughter of Thyra A. and Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924, when her father received a position at Cornell University. She was raised in Madison, Wisconsin and she appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in summer stock productions of the Wisconsin Players. She studied acting briefly at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 1936, after spending one semester at the University of Wisconsin, where her father was the head of the department of art history, she left for New York City in 1937. Her first professional role was as Ophelia opposite Eva Le Gallienne in the role of Hamlet in Dennis. Hagen was cast, early on, as Ophelia by the actress-manager Eva Le Gallienne, from there, Hagen went on to play the leading ingenue role of Nina in a Broadway production of Anton Chekhovs The Seagull which featured Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. It was 1938, Hagen was just 18 and this experience left an indelible mark on the young actress, as she later reflected, My next job was Nina in The Seagull, with the Lunts, on Broadway. They were an influence on my life. She admired their passion for the theatre, and their discipline and it was a 24-hour-a-day affair, and I never forgot it—never. The New York Times critic Brooks Atkinson hailed her Nina as grace and she took over the role of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire for the national tour, which was directed not by Elia Kazan who had directed the Broadway production but by Harold Clurman. Hagen had had an experience when she first worked with Clurman in 1947. She played Blanche opposite at least four different Stanley Kowalskis, including Anthony Quinn, through interviews with her and contemporary criticism, the report is that Hagens Blanche refocused the audiences sympathies with Blanche rather than with Stanley. Primarily noted for roles, Hagen won her first Tony Award in 1951 for her performance as the self-sacrificing wife Georgie in Clifford Odets The Country Girl. She won again in 1963 for originating the role of the I-wear-the-pants-in-this-family-because-somebodys-got-to Martha in Edward Albees Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf, in 1981 she was elected to the American Theatre Hall of Fame and in 1999 received a Special Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. Although she appeared in movies, because of the Hollywood blacklist she had more limited output in film and on television
36.
Alfred Lunt
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Alfred Lunt was an American stage director and actor who had a long-time professional partnership with his wife, actress Lynn Fontanne. Broadways Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was named for them, Lunt was one of 20th century Broadways leading male stars. Lunt received two Tony Awards, an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for 1931s The Guardsman and an Emmy Award for the Hallmark Hall of Fames production of The Magnificent Yankee. He became a star in 1919 as the lead in Booth Tarkingtons play, Clarence. His appearances in drama were infrequent, but he scored successes in Shakespeares The Taming of the Shrew. He was described by director and critic Harold Clurman as universally acclaimed the finest American actor in the generation which followed John Barrymore, Alfred Davis Lunt, Jr. was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1892 to Alfred D. Lunt and Harriet Washburn Briggs. With the exception of his grandmother, who was of Scottish descent, his ancestors were of colonial Maine. His father was descendant of Henry Lunt, a settler of Newbury. His mother had several New England ancestors, including Mayflower arrivals, after his father, who was in the lumber business, died in 1893, Alfreds mother remarried a Finnish-born physician, Dr. Karl Sederholm, and had another son and two daughters. The Sederholms eventually moved to Genesee Depot, in Waukesha County, Lunt later attended Carroll College in nearby Waukesha, Wisconsin. He and his wife, Lynn Fontanne, whom he married on May 26,1922, in New York City, were the pre-eminent Broadway acting couple of American history. Secure in their image as a happily married couple, they could play adulterers, as in Robert Sherwoods Reunion in Vienna. The Lunts appeared together in more than twenty plays and they also were featured, posthumously, on an American postage stamp. The couple made two films together The Guardsman, in which starred, and Stage Door Canteen in which they had cameos as themselves. In 1958 they retired from the stage and they starred in several radio dramas for the Theatre Guild in the 1940s, and starred in a few television productions in the 1950s and 1960s. Summers during their days of performing on stage and their subsequent retirement years were spent at their home Ten Chimneys at Genesee Depot in Lunts home state of Wisconsin, in 1964, Lunt and Fontanne were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Lyndon Johnson. Like Lynn Fontanne, Alfred Lunt is represented in the American Theatre Hall of Fame, Alfred Lunt died August 3,1977, nine days before his 85th birthday, in Chicago from cancer. He is buried next to his wife at Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee and he was the third person for whom the house lights were dimmed in all Broadway theaters following his death
37.
Lynn Fontanne
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Lynn Fontanne was a British-born American-based actress for over 40 years. She teamed with her husband, Alfred Lunt, Lunt and Fontanne were given special Tony Awards in 1970. They both won Emmy Awards in 1965, and Broadways Lunt-Fontanne Theatre was named for them, Fontanne is regarded as one of the American theaters great leading ladies of the 20th century. Born Lillie Louise Fontanne in Woodford, London, of French and Irish descent, her parents were Jules Fontanne and she had two sisters, one of whom later lived in England, the other lived in New Zealand. She drew acclaim in 1921 playing the role in the George S. Kaufman-Marc Connelly farce. Dorothy Parker memorialized her performance in verse, She soon became celebrated for her skill as an actress in comedy, excelling in witty roles written for her by Noël Coward. However, she enjoyed one of the greatest critical successes of her career as Nina Leeds, from the late 1920s on, Fontanne acted exclusively in vehicles also starring her husband. Among their greatest theater triumphs were Design for Living, The Taming of the Shrew, Idiots Delight, There Shall Be No Night, the duo remained active onstage until retiring from stage performances in 1958. Fontanne was nominated for a Tony Award for one of her last stage roles, Fontanne and Lunt worked together in 27 productions. They threw away lines, they trod on each others words, they gabbled and they spoke, in fact, as people do in ordinary life. Fontanne made only four films but nevertheless was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1931 for The Guardsman and she also appeared in the silent films Second Youth and The Man Who Found Himself. She and husband Alfred also were in Hollywood Canteen in which they had cameos as themselves, the Lunts also starred in several radio dramas in the 1940s, notably on the Theatre Guild programme. Many of these still survive. On that day the Lunts opened their new house with, The Visit, after 189 performances, The Visit would be their last appearance on Broadway. Twenty years later, on 5 May 1978, Lynn Fontanne, aged ninety, was honored at the Lunt-Fontanne Theater, during a performance of Hello. A reminiscence of that evening, An Evening with Lynn Fontanne, was published on-line by Martha Rofheart, in 1964, Lunt and Fontanne were presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by then-President Lyndon Johnson. Like Lunt, Fontanne was a member of the American Theatre Hall of Fame, Fontanne was also a Kennedy Center honoree in 1980. Some of her costumes are curated in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Fontanne married Alfred Lunt in 1922
38.
Shubert Theatre (New York City)
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The Shubert Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 225 West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Designed by architect Henry Beaumont Herts, it was named after Sam S. Shubert and it shares a Venetian Renaissance facade with the adjoining Booth Theatre, which was constructed at the same time, although the two have distinctly different interiors. The two theatres are connected by a private road/sidewalk, Shubert Alley and it opened on October 2,1913 with Hamlet, starring Sir John. Forbes-Robertson followed by the October 21,1913 opening of the George Bernard Shaw play, Caesar and Cleopatra, the theatres longest tenant was A Chorus Line, which ran for 6,137 performances from 1975 to 1990 and set the record for longest running show in Broadway history. Later long runs have included Crazy for You, Chicago, Spamalot, Memphis, the theatre has also been a recurring venue for the Tony Awards. The top floor of the houses the offices of the Shubert Organization. The theatres auditorium and murals were restored in 1996 and it has been designated a New York City landmark. The Pajama Game, Bells Are Ringing 1959 Take Me Along 1961, Bye Bye Birdie 1962, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Stop the World - I Want to Get Off 1963, Heres Love 1964, Oliver. The theatre is featured in the 1950 Academy Award winning film All About Eve. In the 2005 film version of Mel Brookss The Producers, the musicals Funny Boy, Springtime for Hitler, in the NBC show Smash, the show Heaven On Earth is playing at the Shubert Theater. In the Family Guy episode Brians Play, Stewie Griffins play, Shubert Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database The Shubert Organization Broadway Show Guide
39.
Marshall W. Mason
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Marshall W. Mason is an American theater director, educator and author. He was the founder and for eighteen years, artistic director of the Circle Repertory Company in New York City. Born in Amarillo, Texas, Mason graduated in 1961 with a B. S. in theater from Northwestern University, where he directed Cat on a Hot Tin Roof at the age of 19, winning his first award for directing. Upon graduating, he relocated to Manhattan, where he working in the off-off-Broadway theater scene in such venues as Caffe Cino, the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. He made his debut in 1964 with a revival of the Henrik Ibsen play Little Eyolf. His Broadway debut was on February 24,1976 with Jules Feiffer´s Knock Knock, in 1965 he directed Balm in Gilead, his first collaboration with playwright Lanford Wilson. Among these are The Hot l Baltimore, for which he won his first Obie Award for Distinguished Direction, Fifth of July, Talleys Folly, Angels Fall, Burn This, Redwood Curtain, and Book of Days. Mason has directed twelve productions on Broadway and has been nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play five times and his first Broadway production was the 1976 play Knock Knock by Jules Feiffer, for which he received his first Tony nomination. Hoffmans As Is, Wilsons Burn This, Chekhovs The Seagull, Rupert Holmes Solitary Confinement, from 1983 to 1986, Mason was president of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, a national labor union. The McCarter Theater in Princeton, the Hartford Stage Company, the Pittsburgh Public Theater, the Repertory Theater of St. Louis, the Cincinnati Playhouse, for one season, he was Guest Artistic Director for the Ahmanson Theater of the Los Angeles Center Theater Group. In addition, he directed three productions in London and Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. at the National Theatre of Japan in Tokyo, for television, Mason directed William Inge’s Picnic, Lanford Wilson’s The Mound Builders and Fifth of July, and Robert Patrick’s Kennedys Children. He received two Cable ACE Award nominations for his productions on Showtime, on Broadway, Mason was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play five times. Off-Broadway, he received five Obie Awards for Outstanding Direction of a play and he is the recipient of the 1979 Theatre World Award, and the 1977 Margo Jones Award for his discovery and nurturing of new playwrights and actors in his work with the Circle Repertory Company. In 1999 he was recognized with a Mr. Abbott Special Millennium Award as one of the most innovative, in 2014, he was elected to the Theater Hall of Fame. He received the 2015 Artistic Achievement Award from the New York Innovative Theater Foundation, in 2016, Mason received the Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre. Mason is Professor Emeritus of Theater at Arizona State University, where he taught for ten years, from 1994 to 1995 he was the chief drama critic for the Phoenix New Times, a weekly newspaper. He received the 1995 Phoenix Press Club Award for writing about the performing arts. He is the author of the 2007 book Creating Life On Stage, A Directors Approach to Working with Actors, and The Transcendent Years, Circle Repertory Theater and he is a member of the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center
40.
Lyceum Theatre (Broadway)
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The Lyceum Theatre is a Broadway theatre located at 149 West 45th Street near Times Square between Seventh and Sixth Avenue in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Opened in 1903, the Lyceum Theatre is one of the three oldest surviving Broadway venues and it is the oldest continuously operating legitimate theatre in New York City, and the first Broadway theatre ever to be granted landmark status. It is one of the few theatres in New York which continues to operate under its original name, designed by architects Herts & Tallant in the Beaux-Arts style, the Lyceum was built by impresario Daniel Frohman, replacing Frohmans earlier Lyceum on Fourth Avenue that closed in April 1902. The new Lyceum opened on November 2,1903, with the play The Proud Prince, Frohmans brother Charles served as the theaters manager until his death in 1915. The theatre maintains most of its original Beaux-Arts design, including its elaborate marble staircases, although it has three levels, it is one of the smallest Broadway theatres in terms of capacity, seating only 950. An apartment located above the orchestra, originally used by Frohman, is now the headquarters of the Shubert Archives, Lyceum Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database Official website Lyceum Theatre at the Internet Broadway Database Lyceum Theatre, New York City Theatre Lyceum Theatre, Playbill
41.
Tyne Daly
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Ellen Tyne Daly is an American stage and screen actress. She has won six Emmy Awards for her work and a Tony Award. Daly began her career on stage in stock in New York. She is best known for her role as Detective Mary Beth Lacey in Cagney & Lacey. In 1989, she starred in the Broadway revival of Gypsy and her other TV roles include Alice Henderson in Christy, for which she won an Emmy in 1996 and Maxine Gray in Judging Amy, which won her a sixth Emmy in 2003. Her other Broadway credits include The Seagull, her Tony-nominated role in Rabbit Hole and her Tony-nominated role in Mothers and she played Maria Callas, both on Broadway and in Londons West End, in the play Master Class. Daly was born in Madison, Wisconsin, to actor James Daly and his wife and her younger brother is actor Tim Daly, and she has two sisters, Mary Glynn and Pegeen Michael. She was raised in Westchester County, New York, where she started her career by performing in stock with her family. She studied at Brandeis University and the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, Daly portrayed one of the two title characters in the CBS police-procedural crime drama Cagney & Lacey as Mary Beth Lacey, the married working mother. She won the Emmy Award, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, four times, in 1983,1984,1985,1988, and was a nominee in 1986 and 1987. Between co-star Sharon Gless and herself, they won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series six years in a row. In 1991, Daly guest-starred on her brother Tims series Wings, playing a woman who dates Brian Hackett and she appeared as social worker Maxine Gray, who was also the mother to the shows title character on the CBS drama Judging Amy, which ran from 1999 to 2005. Daly appeared in a movie for Lifetime in 2003 titled Undercover Christmas, as Anne Cunningham. She played the role of a mother and peacemaker at Christmas time in a wealthy family of lawyers. Among her later roles, Daly reunited with Cagney & Lacy costar Sharon Gless in a 2010 guest role on the series Burn Notice. Dalys first Broadway role was in 1967 in a play, That Summer. In 1988, Daly appeared on the Dolly Parton TV variety show Dolly, Broadway producer Barry Brown saw the show and, impressed by Dalys performance, decided to mount a revival of the musical Gypsy with Daly in the lead role of Rose. Cagney & Lacy had finished airing, and Daly agreed, in April 1989, the Daly-helmed Gypsy revival began a 14-city U. S. tour, it was then presented on Broadway in November 1989
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