Ellen Stewart
   HOME
*



picture info

Ellen Stewart
Ellen Stewart (November 7, 1919 – January 13, 2011) was an American theatre director and producer and the founder of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. During the 1950s she worked as a fashion designer for Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman, Lord & Taylor, and Henri Bendel. Early life Ellen Stewart's place of birth is either Chicago, Illinois or Alexandria, Louisiana. This uncertainty stems from Stewart's reticence to reveal details of her early life. As an observer wrote, "Her history is somewhat difficult to sort out—indeed it takes on a legendary quality—since on different occasions she gives different versions of the same stories." Stewart said that her father was a tailor from Louisiana and her mother was a teacher, and that they divorced during her youth. Around 1939, Stewart may have become the second wife of Larry Lebanus Hovell (August 10, 1910October 1963), a Chicago waiter who was a native of Alexandria, Louisiana, though it is possible they never wed lega ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territories, nine Minor Outlying Islands, and 326 Indian reservations. The United States is also in free association with three Pacific Island sovereign states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and the Republic of Palau. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. It shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south and has maritime borders with the Bahamas, Cuba, Russia, and other nations. With a population of over 333 million, it is the most populous country in the Americas and the third most populous in the world. The national capital of the United States is Washington, D.C. and its most populous city and principal financial center is New York City. Paleo-Americ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Duke University Press
Duke University Press is an academic publisher and university press affiliated with Duke University. It was founded in 1921 by William T. Laprade as The Trinity College Press. (Duke University was initially called Trinity College). In 1926 Duke University Press was formally established. Ernest Seeman became the first director of DUP, followed by Henry Dwyer (1929-1944), W.T. LaPrade (1944-1951), Ashbel Brice (1951-1981), Richard Rowson (1981-1990), Larry Malley (1990-1993), Stanley Fish and Steve Cohn (1994-1998), Steve Cohn (1998-2019). Writer Dean Smith is the current director of the press. It publishes approximately 150 books annually and more than 55 academic journals, as well as five electronic collections. The company publishes primarily in the humanities and social sciences but is also particularly well known for its mathematics journals. The book publishing program includes lists in African studies, African American studies, American studies, anthropology, art and a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Experimental Theatre
Experimental theatre (also known as avant-garde theatre), inspired largely by Richard Wagner, Wagner's concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, began in Western theatre in the late 19th century with Alfred Jarry and his Ubu Roi, Ubu plays as a rejection of both the age in particular and, in general, the dominant ways of writing and producing plays. The term has shifted over time as the mainstream theatre world has adopted many forms that were once considered radical. Like other forms of the avant-garde, it was created as a response to a perceived general cultural crisis. Despite different political and formal approaches, all avant-garde theatre opposes bourgeois theatre. It tries to introduce a different use of language and the Human body, body to change the mode of perception and to create a new, more active relation with the audience. Relationships to audience Famed experimental theatre director and playwright Peter Brook describes his task as building "… a necessary theatre, one in which ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Bette Midler
Bette Midler (;''Inside the Actors Studio'', 2004 born December 1, 1945) is an American singer, actress, comedian and author. Throughout her career, which spans over five decades, Midler has received List of awards and nominations received by Bette Midler, numerous accolades, including four Golden Globe Awards, three Grammy Awards, three Primetime Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards and a Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards and a British Academy Film Award. Born in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, Hawaii, Midler began her professional career in several off-off-Broadway plays, prior to her engagements in ''Fiddler on the Roof'' and ''Salvation (musical), Salvation'' on Broadway theatre, Broadway in the late 1960s. She came to prominence in 1970 when she began singing in the Continental Baths, a local gay bathhouse where she managed to build up a core following. Since 1970, Midler has released 14 studio albums as a solo artist, sell ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Robert De Niro
Robert Anthony De Niro Jr. ( , ; born August 17, 1943) is an American actor. Known for his collaborations with Martin Scorsese, he is considered to be one of the best actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. In 2009, De Niro received the Kennedy Center Honor, and earned a Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016. Born in Manhattan in New York City, De Niro studied acting at HB Studio, Stella Adler Conservatory, and Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio. His first major role was in ''Greetings'' (1968), and he gained early recognition with his role as a baseball player in the sports drama ''Bang the Drum Slowly'' (1973). De Niro's first collaboration with Scorsese was ''Mean Streets'' (1973), where he played small-time crook "Johnny Boy". Stardom followed with his role as young Vito Corleon ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Al Pacino
Alfredo James Pacino (; ; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Considered one of the most influential actors of the 20th century, he has received numerous accolades: including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, making him one of the few performers to have achieved the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also been honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the National Medal of Arts. A method actor and former student of the HB Studio and the Actors Studio, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg, Pacino's film debut came at the age of 29 with a minor role in ''Me, Natalie'' (1969). He gained favorable notice for his first lead role as a heroin addict in '' The Panic in Needle Park'' (1971). Wide acclaim and recognition came with his breakthrough role as Michael Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's ''The Godfather'' (1972), for which he received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best S ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Harvey Fierstein
Harvey Forbes Fierstein ( ; born June 6, 1952) is an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. He is best known for his theater work in ''Torch Song Trilogy'' and ''Hairspray'' and movie roles in ''Mrs. Doubtfire'', '' Independence Day'', and as the voice of Yao in ''Mulan'' and ''Mulan II''. Fierstein won two Tony Awards, Best Actor in a Play and Best Play, for ''Torch Song Trilogy''. He received his third Tony Award, Best Book of a Musical, for the musical '' La Cage aux Folles'' and his fourth, the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical, for playing Edna Turnblad in ''Hairspray''. Fierstein also wrote the book for the Tony Award-winning musicals '' Kinky Boots, Newsies,'' and Tony Award-nominated, Drama League Award-winner ''A Catered Affair.'' He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2007. For his role on the television show ''Cheers'', he was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series. Early life and educ ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Robert Patrick (playwright)
Robert Patrick (born September 27, 1937) is an American playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, and novelist. He was born Robert Patrick O'Connor in Kilgore, Texas. Early life O'Connor was born to migrant workers in Texas. Because his parents constantly moved around the southwestern United States looking for work, he never went to one school for a full year until his senior year of high school, in Roswell, New Mexico. Books, film, and radio were the only constants in his early life. His mother made sure he learned to read, and arranged for him to start school a year early. He lacked friendships due to the constant moving, and didn't do well in school. He dropped out of college after two years. He did not experience live theater, beyond a few school productions, until he was working one summer as a dishwasher at the Kennebunkport Playhouse in Kennebunkport, Maine and fell in love with the theater. He stopped in New York City on his way back to Roswell from Maine and hap ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Lanford Wilson
Lanford Wilson (April 13, 1937March 24, 2011) was an American playwright. His work, as described by ''The New York Times'', was "earthy, realist, greatly admired [and] widely performed."Margalit Fox, Fox, Margalit"Lanford Wilson, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Playwright, Dies at 73"''The New York Times'', March 24, 2011. Wilson helped to advance the Off-Off-Broadway theater movement with his earliest plays, which were first produced at the Caffe Cino beginning in 1964. He was one of the first playwrights to move from Off-Off-Broadway to Off-Broadway, then Broadway theatre, Broadway and beyond. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1980 and was elected in 2001 to the Theater Hall of Fame. In 2004, Wilson was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award as a Master American Dramatist. He was nominated for three Tony Awards and has won a Drama Desk Award and five Obie Awards. Wilson's 1964 short play ''T ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American actor, playwright, author, screenwriter, and director whose career spanned half a century. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play ''Buried Child'' and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film ''The Right Stuff (film), The Right Stuff''. He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2009. ''New York (magazine), New York'' magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation." Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society. His style evolved from the absurdism of his ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Paul Foster (playwright)
Paul Roose-Evans Foster (October 15, 1931 – March 5, 2021) was an American playwright, theater director, and producer born in Penns Grove, New Jersey. He was a founding member and the first president of La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club. Early life Foster studied journalism at Rutgers University then moved to Manhattan at the age of 21 to study law at New York University School of Law. After serving in the Navy for two years, Foster developed an interest in theatre. While living in New York, he met Ellen Stewart, a fashion designer planning to open her own boutique. In 1962, Foster agreed to help Stewart with her boutique in exchange for using the basement space as a theater in the evenings. "...Stewart's enthusiasm for the theater project quickly eclipsed her own initial idea for the boutique", and La MaMa was born. The theater moved around Manhattan's East Village multiple times before settling into its current space at 74A East Fourth Street in 1969. Career F ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Off-Off-Broadway
Off-off-Broadway theaters are smaller New York City theaters than Broadway and off-Broadway theaters, and usually have fewer than 100 seats. The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as part of a response to perceived commercialism of the professional theatre scene and as an experimental or avant-garde movement of drama and theatre. Over time, some off-off-Broadway productions have moved away from the movement's early experimental spirit. History The off-off-Broadway movement began in 1958 as a "complete rejection of commercial theatre". Michael Smith gives credit for the term's coinage to Jerry Tallmer in 1960. Among the first venues for what would soon be called "off-off-Broadway" theatre were coffeehouses in Greenwich Village, particularly the Caffe Cino at 31 Cornelia Street, operated by the eccentric Joe Cino, who early on took a liking to actors and playwrights and agreed to let them stage plays there without bothering to read the plays first, or to even find out much ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]