John Malkovich’s World Theatre Day message

 theatre  6 Responses »
Mar 102012
 

The 50th annual World Theatre Day, which is March 27, will see  give the open­ing address which will make him the first Amer­ican actor to do so. He will deliver this year’s mes­sage at the headquar­ters of UNESCO in Paris on March 22.

delivered the first World Theatre Day mes­sage in 1962, and the list of past World Theatre Day mes­sen­gers includes Judi Dench, Vaclav Havel, , Wole Soyinka, Eugene Ion­esco, Ellen Stew­art, Richard Bur­ton, Luchino Vis­conti, Pablo Neruda, Laurence Olivier and .

Here’s what Malkovich will say:

I’m honored to have been asked by the Inter­na­tional Theatre Insti­tute ITI at UNESCO to give this greet­ing com­mem­or­at­ing the 50th anniversary of World Theatre Day. I will address my brief remarks to my fel­low theatre work­ers, peers and comrades.

“May your work be com­pel­ling and ori­ginal. May it be pro­found, touch­ing, con­tem­plat­ive, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the ques­tion of what it means to be human, and may that reflec­tion be blessed with heart, sin­cer­ity, candor, and grace. May you over­come adversity, cen­sor­ship, poverty and nihil­ism, as many of you will most cer­tainly be obliged to do.

“May you be blessed with the tal­ent and rigor to teach us about the beat­ing of the human heart in all its com­plex­ity, and the humil­ity and curi­os­ity to make it your life’s work. And may the best of you — for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments — suc­ceed in fram­ing that most basic of ques­tions, ‘how do we live?’ Godspeed.”

John Malkovich

via latimes.com - photo by Chris­tian Coigny / WENN

Antony Sher on self denial, his new play, and painting the characters he plays

 theatre  3 Responses »
Jan 152012
 

, appear­ing in the ’s Trav­el­ling Light, talked to The Observer’s Tim Adams:

On self denial

“I was gay. Jew­ish. A white South African, and for dif­fer­ent reas­ons, I was ashamed of all those things.”

On fam­ily history

“My grand­par­ents all came from Lithuania to . My first novel, Middle­post, is a fic­tional account of that jour­ney. A few years after that was pub­lished, I man­aged to go to the par­tic­u­lar vil­lage from which my grand­par­ents had come in 1896. It was very mov­ing. I had hoped to find some traces of the Shers but you have to remem­ber that there was some­thing called the Holo­caust in between. All of which means, I sup­pose, that I have an invest­ment in this play. It imme­di­ately made this role very attract­ive to me. I felt, I know about this.”

On paint­ing the char­ac­ters he plays

“I’ll make them look how they look in my mind. When I am on a long run in a play, I’m not sure how I would fill the days if I did not paint or write.… con­tinue reading

Oldest active actor and tenor dies at 108

 obituary, opera, theatre  No Responses »
Dec 262011
 

Dutch born actor and opera tenor  died Decem­ber 24 only a few weeks after his 108th birth­day. He was believed to be the old­est act­ive actor in the world.

He was born on Decem­ber 5, 1903 in Amers­foort, Neth­er­lands. Heesters deb­uted on the stage at the Volk­sop­ers (People’s Opera) in 1934 in Vienna; but made his mark on the stage dur­ing the 1930s in Ber­lin – some­thing he was later har­assed about – where he was a favour­ite of theatre goers at the Kimis­che Oper and Admir­alspalast. He con­tin­ued to be a pop­u­lar per­former in Ger­many well into his old age; con­tinu­ing to per­form well past 100. Heesters said that sit­ting around wait­ing for life’s aches and pains was wrong and life was meant to be lived.

Although Heesters was will­ing to ply his trade in Nazi Ger­many, he was never accused of spread­ing pro­pa­ganda. But his fel­low coun­try­men in the Neth­er­lands thought Heesters irre­deem­able, it would be 44 years before the actor would again per­form in his nat­ive land in 2008.… con­tinue reading

Barry Humphries on Dame Edna Everage’s first panto

 comedy, theatre  No Responses »
Dec 102011
 

Dame is star­ring in her first pan­to­mime:  at the .

The Fin­an­cial Times talked to her man­ager, 77 year-old .

On Mel­bourne in the 50s

“Scorn and dis­gust were my favour­ite occu­pa­tions. If you could have been in Mel­bourne in the 1950s, you would have under­stood. It was a very nice place. You see, ‘nice’ is the epi­thet. Every­one aspired to be nice.

“I’ve always felt that I was a bit cent­ral European. Lots of Jews in Mel­bourne. We had a very big quota in Aus­tralia, odi­ous though the thought of ‘quotas’ is, of people fleet­ing Nazis. I knew a lot of those people. And I felt a bit like a refugee myself. A refugee from middle-class Mel­bourne. A prig­gish sort of fig­ure, scared under­neath of course. I retain most of the interests of my early youth.”

On his siblings

“They’re very nice people. They’re just not like me.… con­tinue reading

Taste of Honey playwright, Shelagh Delaney, dies at 71

 obituary, theatre  No Responses »
Nov 212011
 

, best known for , has died at the age of 71.

Delaney was 19 when A Taste of Honey, about the friend­ship between a young preg­nant woman and a gay artist, premièred in 1958. A suc­cess in both Lon­don and New York, it was made into a Bafta-winning film in 1961, star­ring Rita Tushingham. She wrote it in just two weeks, rework­ing mater­ial she had writ­ten for a novel. The play, con­sidered one of the era’s “kit­chen sink” dra­mas, por­trayed work­ing class life in Salford where Delaney grew up.

A Taste of Honey opened at Royal Strat­ford East in Lon­don, before mov­ing to the West End in 1959, and was con­sidered con­tro­ver­sial at the time. In 1960, it opened on Broad­way in New York, with as Jo and Angela Lans­bury as her mother. Plowright won a Tony award for her performance.

Delaney once described most theatre as “safe, sheltered, cul­tured lives in charmed sur­round­ings, not life as the major­ity of ordin­ary people know it”.… con­tinue reading

Tyne Daly to play Maria Callas in the West End

 theatre  No Responses »
Nov 042011
 

will reprise her Broad­way role in ’s Mas­ter Class when it arrives in London’s West End. The Cag­ney & Lacey star will play opera singer in the play at the Vaudeville Theatre from 21 January.

’s pro­duc­tion was a sell-out when it opened on Broad­way earlier this year. The ori­ginal 1995 ver­sion won the best play Tony.

The 65-year-old’s Broad­way cred­its include Gypsy: A Musical Fable, for which she won the Tony Award for best lead­ing act­ress in a musical in 1990.

Daly’s Cag­ney and Lacey co-star is cur­rently star­ring on the Lon­don stage in A Round-Heeled Woman.

via BBC News… con­tinue reading

The Sunday Times gives a one-star review for the National Theatre’s new drama “13”: a pompous bit of PC tosh

 theatre  No Responses »
Oct 302011
 

The Sunday Times’  hated the ’s new social-drama:

Just as Hol­ly­wood is redis­cov­er­ing the thrills of 3-D, it seems that, with 13, the National is excited all over again by the pos­sib­il­it­ies of 2-D, espe­cially in char­ac­ter. And for any decent actor to have to squeeze them­selves into a two-dimensional space must be a pretty flat­ten­ing experience.

With no coher­ence, no nuance, few jokes, 13 is just three hours of pom­pous declamation …

… Any theatre­goer, regard­less of their polit­ical per­sua­sion, should object to such a sloppy, self-regarding bit of pro­pa­ganda mas­quer­ad­ing as art. For the dur­a­tion, per­haps the venue should be renamed the National Social­ist Theatre. Now why doesn’t that sound quite nice?… con­tinue reading

Marat/Sade director says, ‘I prefer the critics on Twitter’

 opinion, theatre  No Responses »
Oct 262011
 

, dir­ector of the much dis­cussed rivival of , voices his opin­ion in ’s theatre blog:

If a reviewer should deem a pro­duc­tion a fail­ure, so be it. But at least start from the pre­sump­tion of pur­pose; dis­cuss the ideas. And this has been the rev­el­a­tion for me, as a rel­at­ive lud­dite, from this small fuss. There is now more insight to be had, in aggreg­ate, from than from our print media; and indis­put­ably more depth to be found in blogs writ­ten from pas­sion, and in reflec­tion. It is a small cul­tural revolu­tion and – like all revolu­tions – it looks like a good thing. For now.

via The Guard­ian… con­tinue reading

Thomas Hardy Players actress Norrie Woodhall dies at 105

 obituary, theatre  No Responses »
Oct 262011
 

The last sur­viv­ing mem­ber of a Dorchester theatre group set up by Thomas Hardy has died at the age of 105.

was among a hand­ful of Dor­set act­ors who per­formed plays based on the author’s works in 1924, rehears­ing at Hardy’s home at Max Gate. Later Ms Wood­hall became pres­id­ent of the New .

Ms Woodhall’s mother is believed to have inspired the char­ac­ter Tess of the D’Urbervilles. And her sis­ter, Ger­trude Bugler who was said to have inher­ited her mother’s looks, was later given the role of Tess by Hardy.

via BBC News… con­tinue reading

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