Oriza Hirata is Japan's leading playwright and director, who runs his own theatrical company, Seinendan. Theatre 2 (Observational Film Series #4) examines the dynamic relationship between theatre and the society through depicting Hirata's activities. In order for his art and his not-so-commercial company to survive this highly capitalistic modern society, what kind of strategy does Hirata have and practice?
Trish and Deb Murdoch are in a rut. After 14 years together and raising two daughters, they find themselves in a mid life crisis where grief and attraction threaten their domestic nucleus.
New Faces was a musical revue with songs and comedy skits tied together by a quirky plot. It ran on Broadway for nearly a year in 1952 and was then made into a motion picture in 1954. It helped jump start the careers of several young performers including Paul Lynde, Alice Ghostley, Eartha Kitt, Carol Lawrence, performer/writer Mel Brooks (as Melvin Brooks), and lyricist Sheldon Harnick. The film was basically a reproduction of the stage revue with a thin plot added. The plot involved a producer and performer (Ronny Graham) in financial trouble and is trying to stave off an angry creditor long enough to open his show. A wealthy Texan offers to help out, on the condition that his daughter be in the show.
Why hate society? Why just think that crime and riots are the only way into the future? Actor Ulf Stenberg and dancer Emil Rosén from "Teater Fryshuset" shapes young lives in this strong and intense performance. We follow three characters with very little faith in the future, who are tormented by poverty and segregation. It is a story of powerlessness and alienation, of hopelessness and distrust of police, government and society. The play is created partly to give young people an increased understanding of the consequences of making the wrong choice, and partly to increase the understanding of what young people's exclusion actually leads to. The play is based on real fate and interviews with guys and girls about their lives.
On June 8, 2024, Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard joined the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra for a performance of Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake), conducted by Alan Gilbert, performed at the Berliner Philharmonie in Berlin, Germany and broadcast live on Digital Concert Hall, the online concert hall of the Berliner Philharmonie. In the oratorio, Joan of Arc looks back on her life, her visions, and her successes during a show trial in which she is sentenced to be burned at the stake.
A professional company of actors with disabilities defies expectations by taking center stage in Chicago the musical.
The Dutch comedian Hans Teeuwen gradually loses his sense of reality when he has to stay inside because of the "intellegent lockdown" during the COVID-19 pandemic. He recorded a corona comedy special at his home.
Conniving Broadway starlet Mida King has plenty of enemies, so when she's found murdered at Grand Central Station, Inspector Gunther calls together a slew of suspects for questioning. Mida's shady ex-flame, Turk, seems the most likely culprit, but when smart-mouthed private eye Rocky Custer -- also a suspect himself -- begins to piece together the crime, a few clues that Gunther has overlooked come to light.
Inspired by the old-fashioned magic of silent movies and music hall vaudeville, this ballet will transport you to a magical world with large-scale cinematic effects, world premiere choreography by Loughlan Prior and a specially commissioned score by Claire Cowan. This major premiere brings together many of New Zealand’s creative talents to tell a timeless tale for audiences young and old. Royal New Zealand Ballet production of "Hansel & Gretel". This is the dress rehearsal archive recording filmed live on stage at the Opera House, Wellington on 5 November 2019.
This 20th anniversary production of Jonathan Harvey's play about two working class teenage boys falling in love on a south east London council estate was captured by Digital Theatre live at the Arts Theatre in London's Leicester Square.
The bigger the audiences for Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim’s shows became, the less he had to do to make them laugh. In one early show, he suggested that the audience would be better off without him. So in 2016, he acted upon this suggestion with an experiment that made theater history: he wasn't physically present onstage but somewhere else. The audience wasn't aware of this in advance, though they did get a hint in the form of a pre-recorded "live" radio interview from a remote studio. "I see my audience as my children," Wertheim says in this interview. "You have to educate them, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past 15 years. At first you have to constantly be there watching them, but there comes a time when you have to trust them to get on with it without you." With some help from a robot, a printer, a stereo and a set of headphones, the members of his audience were able to make their own performance.
On November 17, 2012, Oscar-winning French actress Marion Cotillard joined the Barcelona Symphony and Catalonia National Orchestra for a performance of Arthur Honegger’s oratorio Joan of Arc at the Stake (Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher) at the L'Auditori de Barcelona in Spain, broadcast live on Medici.tv. By Swiss composer Arthur Honegger, Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (1938) is an imposing oratorio. The libretto is a highly original creation by French poet and playwright Paul Claudel, who dramatises the last moments of the martyr's life. Originally written for actress Ida Rubinstein, the oratorio is written as a flashback in which Joan recalls her life, just before she dies. Honegger creates visually evocative ambiances and fills the orchestra with new sounds (saxophones, ondes Martenot). The initial prologue to the piece was added in 1944 as a symbol of the resistance during the Nazi occupation of France: again, Joan goes beyond her own story.
E. Nesbit's classic children's book "The Railway Children" follows Roberta (Bobbie), Phyllis and Peter, three sheltered siblings who suffer a huge upheaval when their father is falsely imprisoned. The children and their mother, now penniless, are forced to move from London to rural Yorkshire, into a cottage near to a railway line. The story deals with themes of justice, the importance of family and the kindness of strangers. York Theatre Royal's award-winning theatre production of The Railway Children is written by Mike Kenny, directed for the stage by Damian Cruden and directed for the screen by Ross MacGibbon. This stage-to-screen version, filmed at the National Railway Museum, features the steam train from the much-loved original feature film.
With its four operas, seventeen-hour running time and months of rehearsal, Wagner's "Ring Cycle" is a daunting undertaking for any opera company. Jon Else goes backstage to show this rare event entirely from the point of view of union stagehands at the San Francisco Opera.
This comedy/theatre show is the sequel to 'Micha Wertheim: Somewhere Else'. This second show starts exactly where the first show ended: in the same theatrical scenery, with the same robot. But this time Wertheim surprises his audience by showing up. He tells about how the first experimental comedy show was received and contemplates about the magic of theatre and art in a society about the right to exist of art in a society that allows less and less doubt and confusion. When Robot falls into a depression, the boundaries between theater and reality begin to blur.
The curtain rises on Sarasa Watanabe, a starry-eyed 5'10" student who hopes to perform as a male lead role in the all-female Kouka Acting Troupe. She forms a friendship with her new roommate, a former idol. Together, they’re in for the role of a lifetime.
John Barton holds a master class in how to play Shakespeare, using members of the RSC doing scenes, sonnets, and commentary as prime examples.
