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Nègres à Fond De Cale
''The Blacks'' () is a play by the French dramatist Jean Genet. Published in 1958, it was first performed in a production directed by Roger Blin at the Théâtre de Lutèce in Paris, France, which opened on 28 October 1959. __TOC__ Synopsis A review of the Theatre Royal Stratford East production (2007) states: In Genet's oeuvre In a prefatory note, Genet specifies the conditions under which he anticipates the play would be performed, revealing his characteristic concern with the politics and ritual of theatricality: After ''The Balcony'' in 1960, ''The Blacks'' was the second of Genet's plays to be staged in New York. The production was the longest-running Off-Broadway non-musical of the decade. This 1961 New York production opened on 4 May at the St. Mark's Playhouse and ran for 1,408 performances. It was directed by Gene Frankel, with sets by Kim E. Swados, music by Charles Gross, and costumes and masks by Patricia Zipprodt. The original cast featured James Earl Jones as De ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Genet
Jean Genet (; ; – ) was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. In his early life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later became a writer and playwright. His major works include the novels '' The Thief's Journal'' and '' Our Lady of the Flowers'' and the plays '' The Balcony'', '' The Maids'' and '' The Screens''. Biography Early life Genet's mother was a prostitute who raised him for the first seven months of his life before placing him for adoption. Thereafter Genet was raised in the provincial town of Alligny-en-Morvan, in the Nièvre department of central France. His foster family was headed by a carpenter and, according to Edmund White's biography, was loving and attentive. While he received excellent grades in school, his childhood involved a series of attempts at running away and incidents of petty theft. Detention and military service For this and other misdemeanors, including repeated acts of vagrancy, he was sent at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patricia Zipprodt
Patricia Zipprodt (February 24, 1925 – July 17, 1999) was an American costume designer. She was known for her technique of painting fabrics and thoroughly researching a project's subject matter, especially when it was a period piece. During a career that spanned four decades, she worked with such Broadway theatre legends as Jerome Robbins, Harold Prince, Gower Champion, David Merrick, and Bob Fosse. Biography Born in Chicago, Illinois, Zipprodt attended Bradford Junior College for her freshman year and then transferred to Wellesley College, where she abandoned her plan to become a medical illustrator and concentrated on psychology and sociology. After graduation, she moved to New York City and, after seeing a performance by the New York City Ballet, decided to use her artistic talent for a career in costume design. She studied at the Fashion Institute of Technology and apprenticed with Charles James and Irene Sharaff. Her first job was as a puppeteer for the Good Teeth Coun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Bradby
David Bradby (27 February 1942 – 17 January 2011) was a British drama and theatre academic with particular research interests in French theatre, Modernist / Postmodernist theatre, the role of the director and the Theatre of the Absurd. He wrote extensively on the theatre of Samuel Beckett, Roger Planchon, Jacques Lecoq, Arthur Adamov among many others. He also translated several works, principally by Michel Vinaver, Jacques Lecoq and Bernard-Marie Koltès. Life Born in Kollupitiya in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where his father was principal of a teacher-training college,Dan Rebellato"David Bradby obituary" ''The Guardian'', 2 March 2011. Bradby was educated at Rugby School in Rugby, England, where "he developed a passion for directing plays, taking over the production of light comedy from his English master". He originally studied Modern Languages at Trinity College, Oxford, but started to develop an interest in the theatre. During his time as a language assistant in Lyon, Bradby bec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Blancs
''Les Blancs'' ("''The Whites''") is an English-language play by American playwright Lorraine Hansberry. It debuted on Broadway on November 15, 1970 and ran until December 19, 1970. The play was Lorraine Hansberry’s final work and she considered it her most important, as it depicts the plights of colonialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It is her only play that takes place in Africa, and it uses both dance and music as signifiers of black and African cultures, a concept called the Black Aesthetic. The play is about the experience of settlers, natives, and an American journalist in an unnamed African country in the waning days of colonial control. The title is an echo reference to Jean Genet's 1959 play '' Les Negres'' (''The Blacks''), which Hansberry saw, and critically reviewed, during its 1960 U.S. premiere run. Text First performed in late 1970, nearly six years after Hansberry’s death, the play was compiled and edited by her ex-husband Robert Nemiroff fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Gordone
Charles Edward Gordone (October 12, 1925 – November 16, 1995) was an American playwright, actor, director, and educator. He was the first African American to win the annual Pulitzer Prize for Drama and he devoted much of his professional life to the pursuit of multi-racial American theater and racial unity. Biography Early years Charles Edward Fleming was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Charles and Camille Fleming ( ''née'' Morgan), of African, Native American, and European heritage. He grew up in Elkhart, Indiana, with two brothers, Jack and Stanley, and a sister, Shirley. He attended Elkhart High School. Camille Fleming later remarried William L. Gordon and the couple had a daughter, Leah Geraldine. In his 20s, Gordone served in the Air Force, and was discharged at the rank of second lieutenant. After his career in the Air Force, Gordone moved to California, where he married his first wife Juanita Barton in 1948. Together they had two children, Stephen Gordone and Judy Ann Riser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou ( ; born Marguerite Annie Johnson; April 4, 1928 – May 28, 2014) was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, ''I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings'' (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim. She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, ''Porgy and Bess'' cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the Decolonisation of Africa, decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raymond St
Raymond is a male given name of Germanic origin. It was borrowed into English from French (older French spellings were Reimund and Raimund, whereas the modern English and French spellings are identical). It originated as the Germanic ᚱᚨᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ (''Raginmund'') or ᚱᛖᚷᛁᚾᛗᚢᚾᛞ (''Reginmund''). ''Ragin'' ( Gothic) and ''regin'' (Old German) meant "counsel". The Old High German ''mund'' originally meant "hand", but came to mean "protection". This etymology suggests that the name originated in the Early Middle Ages, possibly from Latin. Alternatively, the name can also be derived from Germanic Hraidmund, the first element being ''Hraid'', possibly meaning "fame" (compare ''Hrod'', found in names such as Robert, Roderick, Rudolph, Roland, Rodney and Roger) and ''mund'' meaning "protector". Despite the German and French origins of the English name, some of its early uses in English documents appear in Latinized form. As a surname, its first recorded ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Martin
Helen Dorothy Martin (July 23, 1909 – March 25, 2000) was an American actress of stage and television. Martin's career spanned over 60 years, appearing first on stage and later in film and television. Martin is best known for her roles as Wanda Williams on the CBS sitcom ''Good Times'' (1974–1979) and as Pearl Shay on the NBC sitcom '' 227'' (1985–1990). Biography Early life and education Martin was born in St. Louis and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. She was an only child born to a family of musicians. Martin's parents wanted their daughter to become a concert pianist. At the urging of her parents, Martin attended Fisk University for a two-year span before dropping out to embark on an acting career. During the Great Depression, Martin supported herself as a domestic worker. Career After leaving college, Martin moved to Chicago, and New York City thereafter to study acting with the WPA Theater and the Rose McClendon Players. She was a founding member of the American Negr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ethel Ayler
Ethyl Spraggins Ayler (May 1, 1930 – November 18, 2018) was an American character actress with a career spanning over five decades. Biography Ayler was born in Whistler, Alabama and graduated from Fisk University. In 1957, she made her off-Broadway debut in the Langston Hughes musical, '' Simply Heavenly''. Later that year, she debuted on Broadway in the multiple Tony Award-nominated musical, ''Jamaica'' as an understudy for Lena Horne (also making her Broadway debut). Another notable early performance was in Jean Genet's play, '' The Blacks: A Clown Show'', which ran off-Broadway for 1,408 performances and received three Obie Awards, including Best New Play. The impressive cast of black actors included three future Academy Award nominees: James Earl Jones, Cicely Tyson and Louis Gossett Jr. Throughout her career, Ayler appeared frequently with the Negro Ensemble Company. This included notable performances in ''The First Breeze of Summer'', '' Eden'' and '' Nevis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Godfrey Cambridge
Godfrey MacArthur Cambridge (February 26, 1933 – November 29, 1976) was an American stand-up comic and actor. Alongside Bill Cosby, Dick Gregory, and Nipsey Russell, he was acclaimed by ''Time'' in 1965 as "one of the country's foremost celebrated Negro comedians." Early life Cambridge was born in New York City on February 26, 1933, to Alexander and Sarah Cambridge, who were immigrants from British Guiana. His parents, dissatisfied with the New York Public School System, sent him to live with his grandparents in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada, during his primary school years. When he was 13, Cambridge moved back to New York and attended Flushing High School in Flushing, Queens. In 1949, Cambridge studied medicine at Hofstra College, which he attended for three years before dropping out to pursue a career in acting. Stage and screen career While pursuing an acting career, Cambridge supported himself with a variety of jobs, including "cab driver, bead-sorter, ambulance drive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cicely Tyson
Cecily Louise "Cicely" Tyson (; December 19, 1924January 28, 2021) was an American actress. In a career that spanned more than seven decades, she is known for her portrayals of complex and strong-willed African American women. She received several awards including three Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award and a Golden Globe Award. She was awarded the Kennedy Center Honors in 2015, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary Academy Award in 2018. She garnered widespread attention and critical acclaim for her performance as a Black mother facing adversity in the drama film '' Sounder'' (1972), for which she was nominated for both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. She also acted in films such as '' A Man Called Adam'' (1966), ''The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter'' (1968), '' The River Niger'' (1976), ''Fried Green Tomatoes'' (1991), '' Diary of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
