#theater
To coincide with Howard Davies’ production of Sean O'Casey’s The Silver Tassie, I produced this short film looking at the playwright’s relationship with the Abbey Theatre which came to an abrupt end with this play.
Charlotte Cushman, the brilliant and renowned 19th-century lesbian actress.
“As a woman who loved other women, Charlotte’s erotic relationships were certainly not conventional, but neither were they the sum total of her existence. And so I cannot read Charlotte Cushman as a lesbian merely in terms of her lovers but, rather, in relation to her sense of self, of possibility, of ambition. Her story is as irreducibly tied up in her autonomy as it is in her attraction and identification with other women.“ – Lisa Merrill, in When Romeo Was a Woman(1999).
“Miss Cushman possessed in a remarkable degree the power of attaching women to her. They loved her with utter devotion, and she repaid them with the wealth of her great warm heart.” – From her obituary in the Boston Advertiser (1876), as quoted by Lisa Merrill.
Top photo:Charlotte Cushman (Gutekunst, 1874).
Center Left:Charlotte and her lover, the writer Matilda Hays(1858).
Center Right:Charlotte and her longtime lover (and later biographer), the sculptor Emma Stebbins(1859).
Bottom Left:Charlotte and her lover, Emma Crow(undated).
Bottom Right: An engraving of Charlotte in the role of Romeo, opposite her sister, Susan Cushman, as Juliet (1858). Charlotte deliberately sought her sister for the role so as to provide social cover for the potentially scandalous blatant ardor she intended to portray onstage.
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A Portland theater
Cicely Tyson in 1961 stage production, “The Blacks”
Photo by Martha Swope
(citation: Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Unidentified actor and Cicely Tyson in the stage production The Blacks” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1961. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/239aa000-4395-0133-c398-00505686a51c )
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people who use tiktok are like “I hate theatre kids.” meanwhile their favorite sound on that app is from a musical
I like to explain to people that all the actors they love and admire and thirst over are literally just ascended “theatre kids” and watch their faces fall.
The whole reason adaptations of Romeo and Juliet don’t work is wrapped up in the first line of the show.”
“Two houses, both alike in dignity –”
That’s it. That’s the entire point. The Montagues and the Capulets are both rich, noble families. They’re on equal footing with each other. Both are frivolous and careless in that specific manner that only the generationally wealthy can be. The show and its message only work if both parties are equally rich and careless. If you try to translate it into any other context (Juliet is an heiress and Romeo is a punk, etc) you may have a good story, but you lose the entire point that Romeo and Juliet hinges upon. You may have a perfectly good story in its own right, but that story is no longer Romeo and Juliet.
The buildings are old and need constant repairs, so something is always under construction. Despite this, you have never seen anyone working on the roped off parts of the buildings. They simply shut down for a month and then re-open, fixed. Odd.
The movement teacher won’t stop talking about “The Work.” There is no clear definition, but it involves The Self and also The Body.
No one sleeps. At all. Not the professors, not the students, not the administrative team, and definitely not the resident company members. Your chances of passing someone in the hall are the same at 4 AM as they are at 2 PM.
Someone says the word “Macbeth” and the room goes dead quiet. The whole floor goes dead quiet. You don’t hear a word spoken in the whole building for the rest of the day. The offender isn’t in class the next day, or the day after that. Eventually, you forget their name.
During midterm week, you dream fitfully about “The Work.” You wake up in a cold sweat, almost certain that you’ll figure out what it is next time.
Your movement final is to “encounter yourself.” You don’t know what this means, but now you keep catching glimpses of yourself in crowds of people. The date of your final draws nearer. You don’t know what you’re going to turn in. Your reflection in the mirror has started lagging a bit. You get the feeling you will be encountering yourself very soon.
“The Work,” says a man on the subway. You clench your hands in your pockets. You have to stay on alert.
The alumni list is long and lofty. The teachers refer to it constantly. “This could be you, right?” You run into one of the alumni on your way downtown. Their eyes are empty. They will not look at you.
You sit down to watch a company show. You come to an hour and a half later during the bows, program still in hand. Everyone else agrees it was a brilliant show. You are not sure what happened to you during it. You may never be sure.
Hello! “Tumblr Wrapped” or whatever that was made me realize that I barely post on here anymore. I think it’s because now that theatre is my full-time job, I want to take a break from it when I get home at the end of a long day. I’m still just as excited as ever about the arts and would love to keep posting, I think I’m just going to have to come at it from a different angle.
If you’re still following me, thanks for sticking with me! I was only 16 when I started this blog and I’ve grown up a lot since then. Here’s to wonderful things in all of our futures. <3
what movie do y’all know front to back like it doesn’t even have to necessarily be Good,, it’s just something you’ve seen so many times that the dialogue is printed into the very core of your being
I’m a professional actor and also very gay so what I’m saying is that it’s Rocky Horror Picture Show
If you’re a dramatic (gay) arts person and the pandemic has ruined your potential for cinematic angst, consider doing what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and edgy and looking at The Unsent Project.
We were intrigued by this play rendered in phonetics (“eminently suitable for foreign students of English” according to the introduction). And we were amused by the contrast between the standard English used in the stage directions and the phonetically-rendered dialogue, especially in the highlighted couplet.
From: The Mollusc: A Comedy In Three Acts (1929)
#mollusc #theatre #theater #phonetics #drama #playscript #books #library (at Harvard Yard)
https://www.instagram.com/p/B7ZD4eyn7-t/?igshid=mnpbe3ujyfsb
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@ anna kendrick: u aren’t the only one still hurting
Milton Bradley & Co. The Myriopticon, A Historical Panorama of The Rebellion Springfield, Mass. ca. 1870s–1880s Lithograph, scrolling toy theater
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Frank Dicksee (Francis Bernard Dicksee) (1853–1928, Engand)
Illustrations to ‘Romeo & Juliet’, Sir Cassell & Company Limited, London, 1884
Frank Dicksee was a prominent EnglishVictorian painterandillustrator. The son of Thomas Francis Dicksee, a noted painter of Shakespearean characters, he is best known for his pictures of dramatic literary, historical, and legendary scenes. He also was a noted painter of portraits of fashionable women, which helped to bring him success in his own time.
His style was not fully within other popular modes of the time, such as Pre-RaphaelismorNeoclassicism, and can be seen as a fusion of various methods and aesthetics of his time, including later in life utilising post-Romantic techniques such as lighter brushwork and softer shades.
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I haven’t posted much recently, but that’s not because I haven’t been drawing! There’s a lot of stuff in the works. This one is for a wonderful article by Jose Nateras at F Newsmagazine about the year he spent listening to the Waitress soundtrack. It’s 100% digital which is new territory for me. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out!
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I made a poster for Emily Mercedes Rich’s wonderful play, ‘The Texture of Water’, going up at the end of the month as a part of Rhinofest in Chicago. Check it out, friends!
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