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Oh Calcutta!
''Oh! Calcutta!'' is an avant-garde, risqué theatrical revue created by British drama critic Kenneth Tynan. The show, consisting of sketches on sex-related topics, debuted Off-Broadway in 1969 and then in the West End in 1970. It ran in London for over 3,900 performances, and in New York initially for 1,314. Revivals enjoyed even longer runs, including a 1976 Broadway revival that ran for 5,959 performances, making the show the longest-running revue in Broadway history, the second longest-running revival (after ''Chicago''), and the eighth longest-running Broadway show ever. The show sparked considerable controversy at the time due to its extended scenes of total nudity, both male and female. The title is taken from a painting by Clovis Trouille, a portrait of a reclining nude. Background Tynan came up with the idea of putting on an erotic revue in the early summer of 1966. Tynan had hoped that Harold Pinter would direct the production, in order to give it avant-garde legi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Schickele
Peter Schickele (; July 17, 1935 – January 16, 2024) was an American composer, musical educator and parodist, best known for comedy albums featuring his music, which he presented as being composed by the fictional P. D. Q. Bach. He also hosted a long-running weekly radio program called ''Schickele Mix''. From 1990 to 1993, Schickele's P. D. Q. Bach recordings earned him four consecutive wins for the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album. Early life Peter Schickele was born on July 17, 1935, in Ames, Iowa, to Alsatian immigrant parents. His father, Rainer Schickele (1905, Berlin – 1989, Berkeley, California), was the son of writer René Schickele and was an agricultural economist teaching at Iowa State University. In 1945, Schickele's father took a position at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., then became chairman of the Agricultural Sciences Department at North Dakota Agricultural College (now North Dakota State University) in Fargo, North Dakota in 1946. I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017) was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century. He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs. He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director. 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 hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bill Macy
Wolf Martin Garber (May 18, 1922 – October 17, 2019), known professionally as Bill Macy, was an American television, film and stage actor known for his role in the CBS television series '' Maude'' (1972–1978). Early life Bill Macy was born Wolf Martin Garber on May 18, 1922, in Revere, Massachusetts, the son of Mollie (née Friedopfer; 1889–1986) and Michael Garber (1884–1974), a manufacturer. He was raised Jewish in the East Flatbush section of New York, New York. After graduating from Samuel J. Tilden High School he served in the United States Army from 1942 to 1946 with the 594th Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment, stationed in the Philippines, New Guinea and Japan. He worked as a cab driver for a decade before being cast as Walter Matthau's understudy in ''Once More, with Feeling'' on Broadway in 1958. He portrayed a cab driver on the soap opera ''The Edge of Night'' in 1966. Macy was an original cast member of the 1969–1972 Off-Broadway sensation '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Margo Sappington
Margo Sappington (born July 30, 1947, in Baytown, Texas) is an American choreographer and dancer. She was nominated in 1975 for both a Tony Award as Best Choreographer and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography for her work on the play ''Where's Charley?''. In 1988, her ballet ''Virgin Forest'' was the subject of an award-winning documentary by PBS. In 2005 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award for choreography from the Joffrey Ballet. Career Sappington joined the Joffrey Ballet in 1965 at the personal invitation of founder Robert Joffrey. In 1969, she co-wrote, choreographed, and performed in the original off-Broadway revue '' Oh! Calcutta!'' , and, in 1971, she choreographed ''Weewis'', her first ballet. In 1975, in recognition of her work in the Broadway revival of ''Where's Charley?'', she received nominations for both a Tony Award for Best Choreographer and a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Choreography. In 1983, as the first American choreographer w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Levy
Jacques Levy (July 29, 1935 – September 30, 2004) was an American songwriter, theatre director and clinical psychologist. Early life and education Levy was born in New York City in 1935 and graduated from the City College of New York in 1956. He then received his M.A. (1958) and Ph.D. (1961) in psychology from Michigan State University and was certified by the Menninger Institute for Psychoanalysis in Topeka, Kansas. After returning to New York, he practiced as a clinical psychologist while pursuing his avocation in the city's experimental theatre scene. Career In 1965, Levy directed Sam Shepard's play ''Red Cross'' at the Judson Poets Theater, New York City. The following year he directed two of the short plays in Jean-Claude van Itallie's '' America Hurrah''. In 1969, Levy directed the successful off-Broadway erotic revue '' Oh! Calcutta!''Jones, Kenneth and Simonson, Robert"Jacques Levy, Director of Broadway's Oh! Calcutta! and Doonesbury, Dead at 69" ''Playbil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belasco Theatre
The Belasco Theatre is a Broadway theater at 111 West 44th Street, between Seventh Avenue and Sixth Avenue, in the Theater District of Midtown Manhattan in New York City, New York, U.S. Originally known as the Stuyvesant Theatre, it was built in 1907 and designed by architect George Keister for impresario David Belasco. The Belasco Theatre has 1,016 seats across three levels and has been operated by The Shubert Organization since 1948. Both the facade and interior of the theater are New York City landmarks. The main facade on 44th Street is made of red brick in Flemish bond, with terracotta decorative elements. The ground floor contains the entrance, while the upper stories are asymmetrical and topped by a pediment. Belasco and his company had their offices in the western wing of the theater. A ten-room duplex penthouse apartment occupies the top of the eastern wing and contained Belasco's collection of memorabilia. The interior features Tiffany lighting and ceiling p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Village East Cinema
Village East by Angelika (also Village East, originally the Louis N. Jaffe Art Theatre, and formerly known by several other names) is a movie theater at 189 Second Avenue (Manhattan), Second Avenue, on the corner with 12th Street, in the East Village, Manhattan, East Village of Manhattan in New York City. Part of the former Yiddish Theatre District, the theater was designed in the Moorish Revival architecture, Moorish Revival style by Harrison Wiseman and built from 1925 to 1926 by Louis Jaffe. In addition to Yiddish theatre, the theater has hosted off-Broadway shows, burlesque, and movies. Since 1991, it has been operated by Angelika Film Center as a seven-screen Multiplex (movie theater), multiplex. Both the exterior and interior of the theater are New York City designated landmarks, and the theater is on the National Register of Historic Places. Village East's main entrance is through a three-story office wing on Second Avenue, which has a facade of cast stone. The auditori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pauline Boty
Pauline Boty (6 March 1938 – 1 July 1966) was a British painter and co-founder of the 1960s' British Pop art movement of which she was the only acknowledged female member. Boty's paintings and collages often demonstrate a joy in self-assured femininity and female sexuality, as well as criticism (both overt and implicit) of the "man's world" in which she lived. Her rebellious art, combined with her free-spirited lifestyle, has made Boty a herald of 1970s' feminism. Life and works Early life and education Pauline Veronica Boty was born in Carshalton, Surrey, in 1938 into a middle-class Catholic family. The youngest of four children, she had three older brothers and a stern father who made her keenly aware of her position as a girl. In 1954 she won a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art, which she attended despite her father's disapproval. Boty's mother, on the other hand, was supportive, having herself been a frustrated artist and denied parental permission to attend the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Breath (play)
''Breath'' is an unusually short stage work by Samuel Beckett. An altered version was first included in Kenneth Tynan's revue '' Oh! Calcutta!'', at the Eden Theatre in New York City on 16 June 1969. The UK premiere was at the Close Theatre Club in Glasgow in October 1969; this was the first performance of the text as written. The second performance, and the English premiere, was at a benefit held at the Oxford Playhouse on March 8, 1970. "The first accurate publication appeared in ''Gambit'' 4.16 (1969): 5–9, with a manuscript facsimile."Ackerley, C. J. and Gontarski, S. E., (Eds.) ''The Faber Companion to Samuel Beckett'', (London: Faber and Faber, 2006), p 74 Synopsis Even for Beckett, whose later plays are often extremely short, ''Breath'' is an unusually brief work. Its length can be estimated from Beckett's detailed instructions in the script to be about 35 seconds. It consists of the sound of "an instant of recorded vagitus" (a birth-cry), followed by an amplified re ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Composer
A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and definition The term is descended from Latin, ''compōnō''; literally "one who puts together". The earliest use of the term in a musical context given by the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' is from Thomas Morley's 1597 ''A Plain and Easy Introduction to Practical Music'', where he says "Some wil be good descanters ..and yet wil be but bad composers". "Composer" is a loose term that generally refers to any person who writes music. More specifically, it is often used to denote people who are composers by occupation, or those who work in the tradition of Western classical music. Writers of exclusively or primarily songs may be called composers, but since the 20th century the terms ' songwriter' or ' singer-songwriter' are more often used, p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
PDQ Bach
P. D. Q. Bach is a fictional composer created by the American composer and musical satirist Peter Schickele for a five-decade career performing the "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and Classical music, and slapstick comedy. The name is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach; ''PDQ'' is an initialism for " pretty damned quick". Schickele began working on the character while studying at the Aspen Music Festival and School and Juilliard, and performed a variety of Bach shows over many years. ''The Village Voice'' mentions the juxtaposition of collage, bitonality, musical satire, and orchestral surrealism in a "bizarre melodic stream of consciousness ... In P.D.Q. Bach he has single-handedly mapped a musical universe that everyone knew was ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer ( ; January 26, 1929 – January 17, 2025) was an American cartoonist and author, who at one time was considered the most widely read satirist in the country. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning, editorial cartooning, and in 2004 he was inducted into the List of Eisner Award winners, Comic Book Hall of Fame. He wrote the animated short ''Munro (film), Munro'', which won an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1961. The Library of Congress has recognized his "remarkable legacy", from 1946 to the present, as a cartoonist, playwright, screenwriter, adult and children's book author, illustrator, and art instructor. When Feiffer was 17 (in the mid-1940s) he became assistant to cartoonist Will Eisner. There he helped Eisner write and illustrate his comic strips, including ''Spirit (comics character), The Spirit''. In 1956, he became a staff cartoonist at ''The Village Voice'', where he produced the weekly comic st ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
