The best free cultural & educational media on the web
The best free cultural & educational media on the web
≡ Category: Film, Theatre | ≅ Leave a Comment
A sad, loving farewell to the great playwright, librettist and director Arthur Laurents, who died in his sleep today at the age of 93. Mr. Laurents was best known for writing Gypsy (1959), The Way We Were (1973), and of course the incomparable West Side Story (1959), about which this author has nothing to say, except that without [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Theatre | ≅ Leave a Comment
We giddily present “Jersey Shore” Gone Wilde, as performed by the cast of The Importance of Being Earnest, a production currently being staged by the Roundabout Theatre Company in New York City. Go ahead and catch this inspired mashup of Victorian comedy and MTV “reality” at Playbill Video in 5 parts … unless you have work to do [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Theatre | ≅ 1 Comment
Here’s the trailer for the play Frankenstein, which opens in London at the National Theater this Thursday. Two intriguing points: 1.) This production is helmed by Danny Boyle, the Oscar-winning director behind Slumdog Milionaire, 127 Hours, and the appropriately terrifying zombie movie 28 Days Later. 2.) Boyle’s Frankenstein is part of the National Theater Live program – now in [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature, Theatre | ≅ 1 Comment
Sophocles and Aeschylus may be spinning in their graves. Or, who knows, they may be taking some delight in this bizarre twist on the Oedipus myth. Running eight minutes, Jason Wishnow’s 2004 film puts vegetables in the starring roles. One of the first stop-motion films shot with a digital still camera, Oedipus took two years [...]
≡ Category: Art, Theatre | ≅ Leave a Comment
This week, the Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin acquired the archives of Spalding Gray (1941-2004), the actor and playwright most well known for his performance piece “Swimming to Cambodia” (clip here). According to The New York Times, the archive spans some 40 years and features performance notebooks (see image above), diaries, and tapes of Gray’s [...]
≡ Category: Literature, Theatre | ≅ 2 Comments
This fall, Paul Meier, a theatre professor at the University of Kansas, is working with students to stage the first-ever American rendition of a Shakespeare play – A Midsummer Night’s Dream – in its original pronunciation. As The History Blog writes, there have only been “three other productions of original pronunciation (OP) Shakespeare before this one, 2 at [...]
≡ Category: Music, Theatre | ≅ 1 Comment
It’s getting hard to dismiss the cultural influence of Lady Gaga, especially when you see the Gaga phenomenon inspiring György Ligeti’s satirical “anti-anti-opera” Le Grand Macabre staged at The New York Philharmonic this summer. In this clip, we encounter Gaga-inspired costumes and performance as we watch Gepopo, chief of the secret service, telling Prince Go Go [...]
≡ Category: Audio Books, Literature, Radio, Theatre | ≅ 7 Comments
The CBS Radio Workshop was an “experimental dramatic radio anthology series” that aired between 1956 and 1957. And it premiered with a two-part adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s now classic 1932 novel, Brave New World. Huxley himself introduced and narrated the program, and now this classic radio drama has resurfaced online. You can listen to Part [...]
≡ Category: Film, Literature, Theatre | ≅ 1 Comment
I had no idea that Marlon Brando was much of a writer, but this 1955 letter to Tennessee Williams is superb. Perhaps I just can’t help identifying him with Stanley Kowalski of the “Napoleonic code,” Stella!” and “Hoity-toity, describin’ me like a ape.” Especially interesting is his attitude towards success. (Note some of the language is [...]
≡ Category: History, Theatre | ≅ 1 Comment
March 15th. It translates to the Ides of March on the Roman Calendar. And it’s the date when Julius Caesar was famously assassinated in 44 B.C. To mark the occasion (today is the Ides of March), we bring you a dramatic, six-minute clip of the assassination scene from the film version of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, directed [...]
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