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It is perhaps the most famous love story in history, so famous that it needs no introduction. Even so, its tragic aspects are worth discussing. Although it shares many of the qualities of tragedy in the classical sense, it concerns a love that is doomed not for any fault in the hero or heroine but because their love is too good for their world. This play follows young drama students who prepare, perform, and share their thoughts on Act II, Scene 2,...
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Hugh Bonneville explores why A Midsummer Night's Dream, the most magical of Shakespeare's comedies, catches so many people's imagination. Bonneville, who has played both Lysander and Oberon, discovers the inspiration for the play and finds out why it is considered to be Shakespeare's first "mature" masterpiece.
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Theater has a long history in Japan, ranging from traditional Kabuki to today's avant-garde performing arts. This program explores the cultural debate within Japan regarding traditional forms of theater and more contemporary variations, including the adaptation of Western texts such as Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard and street theater. Interviews with many of Japan's leading playwrights such as Tadeshi Suzuki and some of the country's most talented...
84) The Art of film
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English
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This program studies the art that underlies the craft of filmmaking-a painstaking process that culminates in the take, that shared moment of concentration when everything comes together. Twelfth Night director Tim Supple and his first assistant director, production designer, director of photography, costume designer, stunt coordinator, and others offer their insights into set design, the culture of the film set, creating a look through costuming,...
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The theater familiar to most modern viewers had a lowly medieval birth-in churches, on festival platforms, and in the great halls of the European nobility. Hosted by Professor Richard Beacham of King's College London, this program weaves together elaborate visual tours and the latest scholarly research, surveying the evolution of Elizabethan and Renaissance stage formations and the conventions they established. With striking depictions of the Globe...
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During the English Civil War, London's theaters were closed by Parliament, and many were destroyed by Cromwell. During the Restoration, new playhouses, built to stage the probing social comedies of the era, were shaped by changes in English drama, politics, and society. We learn how the Parisian tennis court theaters, attended by the court in exile of Charles II, influenced the new London theaters, particularly Christopher Wren's Theatre Royal. Other...
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Autumn 2020. An international cast arrives in Amsterdam for the rehearsals of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro by Dutch National Opera. Hundreds of people have been working on it for three years and the performances are sold out. The young up-and-coming vocalists, the orchestra, the costume and set designers — everyone is ready. Not even a pandemic could stop this opera train. But the measures are strict: only 30 people are allowed in the rehearsal room,...
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A guide to the process of creating an original piece of drama. Leading practitioners, including Goat Island, Butoh performers, and Sankai Juku, discuss ways of getting started and introduce the strategies they use to generate ideas, movement and text. The program contains over 120 minutes of edited interviews, demonstrations, rehearsal footage and performance outcome clips, as well as extensive teaching resources that will help you manage the conceptual...
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Viewed by many as the preeminent dramatist of our time, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter was also an accomplished actor, steeped in the relationship between text and performance. In this program, produced two years prior to his death, he advises a group of actors as they conduct staged readings of scenes from his plays. In addition, Pinter grants a candid and detailed interview, accompanied by his friend and longtime collaborator, director Henry Woolf....
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In the Greek myth, Orpheus suffered the consequences of looking back to see if his beloved was following; Appia had no such temptation-he deliberately turned his back on the stiff, boring, dated way in which Gluck's opera was being staged. Here is Richard Beacham's imaginative re-creation of the Orpheus as staged by Appia and Jacques Dalcroze in 1912-a fusion of acting, music, and sets that ushered in a new form of theatrical art. With the University...
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The Negro Ensemble Company was founded in 1967 by actor/playwright Douglas Turner Ward, actor Robert Hooks, and theater manager Gerald Krone, with the stated goal of creating "a Theater of Excellence concentrating primarily on themes of black life. By producing consistently imaginative and challenging plays, the NEC has nurtured some of the finest theatrical talent in America and has created an enduring body of black theater literature. This program...
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An intimate look inside a living time capsule, this program explores the planning and reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, presenting a day in the working life of the unique artistic institution. The video guides viewers through the facility, painstakingly designed and built to resemble the original Elizabethan playhouse, and offers commentary from the actors, artisans, and educators who practice their craft there. Illustrating how the Globe's...
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The American Repertory Theater is one the most respected and innovative dramatic institutions in the United States. Through the prism of the A.R.T., this program explores the organizational and creative challenges facing today's theater community and describes the flexibility and resilience arts groups must have to survive in today's cultural climate. F. Murray Abraham, Debra Winger, and numerous other renowned performers-along with groundbreaking...
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An exploration of the goals and techniques of Joseph Papp's famous enterprise in New York City, The Public Theater, this program includes interviews with playwrights David Freeman, John Guare, and Myrna Lamb. It presents excerpts of their plays as finished productions or works in progress. The plays highlighted are David Freeman's Jessie and the Bandit Queen, John Guare's Rich and Famous, Myrna Lamb's Apple Pie. Papp and the writers discuss such issues...
95) Topdog Diaries
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In this inside look at the creative process of a playwright, Suzan-Lori Parks spends two years struggling to produce her Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Topdog/Underdog. From her mentorship with the legendary James Baldwin to her marriage to blues musician Paul Oscher (who provided the music for this film), the program documents the creation of a dramatic piece, from initial inspiration to footage of the play in performance - which features Don Cheadle...
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This program presents two of Brecht's Practice Pieces for Actors: Romeo and Juliet translated by George Tabori and Hamlet translated by Michael Lebeck. (These pieces are virtually unknown to students and are never performed.) With such performers as Lotte Lenya, Micki Grant, David Rounds, Rudolph Weiss, Oliver Clark, Roscoe Lee Browne, the program shows these dramatic scenes that Brecht wrote and had his own actors rehearse as preparation for full-length...
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Although most actors dream of celebrity, many find satisfaction in modest film and television roles, commercials, and regional theater. This program shows students that side of the profession, interviewing several accomplished performers who - although they are far from being household names - have found steady work on the stage and in Hollywood. Kevin Conway (Invincible, Gettysburg), Melissa Leo (21 Grams), Peter Maloney (Summer of Sam), Jacqueline...
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Filmed with rare behind-the-scenes access at Germany's renowned Stuttgart State Opera, this program uses director Calixto Bieito's staging of Wagner's Parsifal to explore the dazzling and complex universe of a major operatic production. The challenges of directing, conducting, rehearsing, and dialect coaching (baritone Gregg Baker, as Amfortas, speaks no German) are all shown in fascinating detail. Viewers also learn about the working lives of craftspeople...
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Geared specifically to educators and produced by a working drama teacher, this program offers practical, hands-on guidance for creating an original high school musical. Viewers learn six essential components and ten key steps to writing and staging a production that entertains, engages, and boosts ticket sales! Designed for step-by-step viewing, the video is divided into two main sections-writing and producing-with the following chapters: What You...
100) Stage for a Nation
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The National Theatre has entertained Washington since the time of Andrew Jackson, bringing the best of Broadway to Washington (and sometimes sending a play or musical to Broadway), providing a stage for theatrical legends from Edwin Booth to Helen Hayes, casting an influence on the American theater simply because it was the National Theatre and on the nation because theater - even when it appears all froth or fancy - remains a powerful medium that...