All Entries in the "books/dvd" Category
Kino’s American Film Theatre set preserves great plays on DVD
Jean Genet’s “The Maids” will spruce up Los Angeles next month courtesy of the Eclectic Company Theatre in Valley Village (May 29-June 27). Meanwhile, you can see Glenda Jackson and Susannah York in a stylish film adaptation of this offbeat psycho-drama now on DVD; the ladies are deliciously theatrical in the title roles, as the [...]
Robey Theatre Company, Scarecrow Press illuminate theatre history
Paul Robeson is well remembered today for his performance as the self-appointed monarch of a Caribbean island in Eugene O’Neill’s “The Emperor Jones.” What’s been largely forgotten is that it was the first important dramatic role for a black actor on Broadway—and that the actor who created the part was not Robeson but a man [...]
Criterion Collection’s ‘Shaw on Film’ DVD set, ‘Beckett on Screen’
Back from Pandora? Remember when Hollywood made movies with fully-developed plots and characters, before special effects hijacked movie budgets? And playwrights were called in as script doctors? Two of the 20th century’s greatest playwrights—Bernard Shaw and Samuel Beckett—not only refused such lucrative jobs, but frustrated producers, directors and studios to no end with their disdain [...]
Rachel Rosenthal still living in the moment, on stage and in print
Can a group of actors create theatre with no rehearsal, no script, and a roll of cellophane? They can if they’re trained by Rachel Rosenthal, the doyenne of Los Angeles performance artists. What takes place in Rosenthal’s “TOHUBOHU!” — performing April 9-11; May 7-9; June 11-13; and July 9-11 at Espace DbD in Los Angeles [...]
Plays That Change Lives
“The Play That Changed My Life: Americas Foremost Playwrights on the Plays That Influenced Them,” a new paperback collection of essays and interviews from Applause, is a must-have for any theatre lover. Playwrights include Lynn Nottage, one of today’s hottest African American playwrights, who discusses the impact of “A Raisin in the Sun”Š Donald Margulies, [...]
Bill Bryson, RSC explore Shakespeare; Monty Python doc on DVD
How do you write a book on a subject about whom thousands of volumes have already been written, Shakespeare to be precise? If you’re Bill Bryson, no slouch as an author himself (and a beloved travel writer), you question everything you know—or think you know. The result is the superb “Shakespeare: The Illustrated and Updated [...]