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Tom Aldredge
Thomas Ernest Aldredge (February 28, 1928 – July 22, 2011) was an American television, film and stage actor. He won a Daytime Emmy Award for playing the role of Shakespeare in ''Henry Winkler Meets William Shakespeare'' (1978). His Broadway stage career spanned five decades, including five Tony Award nominations. He played both the Narrator and the Mysterious Man in the original Broadway cast of ''Into the Woods''. He also appeared on television in programs including ''Ryan's Hope'', ''Damages'', and ''Boardwalk Empire'', with a notable role as Hugh De Angelis, Tony Soprano’s father-in-law, on ''The Sopranos''. Life and career Aldredge was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Lucienne Juliet (née Marcillat) and William Joseph Aldredge, a colonel in the United States Army Air Corps. He originally planned to become a lawyer and was a Pre-Law student at the University of Dayton in the late 1940s. In 1947 he decided to pursue a career as an actor after attending a performance o ...
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Dayton, Ohio
Dayton () is a city in Montgomery County, Ohio, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of cities in Ohio, sixth-most populous city in Ohio, with a population of 137,644 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. The Dayton metropolitan area had 814,049 residents and is the state's fourth-largest metropolitan area. Dayton is located within Ohio's Miami Valley region, north of Cincinnati and west-southwest of Columbus, Ohio, Columbus. Dayton was founded in 1796 along the Great Miami River and named after Jonathan Dayton, a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father who owned a significant amount of land in the area. It grew in the 19th century as a canal town and was home to many patents and inventors, most notably the Wright brothers, who developed the first successful motor-operated airplane. It later developed an industrialized economy and was home to the Dayton Project, a branch of the larger Manhattan Project, to develop polonium triggers used in ...
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United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical rift developed between more traditional ground-based army personnel and those who felt that aircraft were being underutilized and that air operations were being stifled for political reasons unrelated to their effectiveness. The USAAC was renamed from the earlier United States Army Air Service on 2 July 1926, and was part of the larger United States Army. The Air Corps became the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 20 June 1941, giving it greater autonomy from the Army's middle-level command structure. During World War II, although not an administrative echelon, the Air Corps (AC) remained as one of the combat arms of the Army until 1947, when it was legally abolished by legislation establishing the United States Department of the Air Fo ...
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Passion (musical)
''Passion'' is a one-act musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and a book by James Lapine. The story was adapted from Ettore Scola's 1981 film ''Passione d'Amore'', and its source material, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti's 1869 novel '' Fosca''. Central themes include love, sex, obsession, illness, passion, beauty, power and manipulation. ''Passion'' is notable for being one of the few projects that Stephen Sondheim himself conceived, along with ''Sweeney Todd'' and '' Road Show''. Set in Risorgimento-era Italy, the plot concerns a young soldier and the changes in him brought about by the obsessive love of Fosca, his Colonel's homely, ailing cousin. Background and history The story originally came from a 19th-century novel by Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, an experimental Italian writer who was prominently associated with the Scapigliatura movement. His book ''Fosca'' was a fictionalized recounting of an affair he'd once had with an epileptic woman when he was a soldier. Sondheim fi ...
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American Playhouse
''American Playhouse'' is an American anthology television series periodically broadcast by Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). It premiered on January 12, 1982, with ''The Shady Hill Kidnapping'', written and narrated by John Cheever and directed by Paul Bogart. Its final broadcast, ''In the Wings: Angels in America on Broadway'', a rerun of a behind-the-scenes look at Tony Kushner's award-winning play in two parts, aired on January 1, 1994. The series proved to be a springboard for the careers of numerous performers, including David Marshall Grant, Laura Linney, A Martinez, Conchata Ferrell, Eric Roberts, Lynne Thigpen, John Malkovich, Peter Riegert, Lupe Ontiveros, Ben Stiller, and Megan Mullally. As part of WGBH's development of the Descriptive Video Service (DVS), ''American Playhouse'' was one of the first U.S. television programs to air with audio description for the visually impaired on the Secondary audio program (SAP). After trialing the system during p ...
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James Lapine
James Elliot Lapine (born January 10, 1949) is an American stage director, playwright, screenwriter, and librettist. He has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for ''Into the Woods'', ''Falsettos'', and '' Passion''. He has frequently collaborated with Stephen Sondheim and William Finn. Early life Lapine was born on January 10, 1949, in Mansfield, Ohio, the son of Lillian (Feld) and David Sanford Lapine. He graduated from Franklin and Marshall College in 1971. Though he did not actively pursue theatre in childhood, Lapine did play Jack in an elementary school production of Jack and the Beanstalk. Career Lapine studied photography and graphic design at the California Institute of the Arts, where he received an MFA in 1973."Stars Over Broadway, James Lapine" ...
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Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (; March22, 1930November26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. Regarded as one of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, he is credited with reinventing the American musical. He received List of awards and nominations received by Stephen Sondheim, numerous accolades, including eight Tony Awards, an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, an Olivier Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1982, and awarded the Kennedy Center Honor in 1993 and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. Sondheim was mentored at an early age by Oscar Hammerstein II and later frequently collaborated with Harold Prince and James Lapine. His Broadway theatre, Broadway musicals tackle themes that range beyond the genre's traditional subjects, while addressing darker elements of the human experience. His music and lyrics are tinged with complexity, sophistication, and ambivalence about various aspects of li ...
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On Golden Pond (play)
''On Golden Pond'' is a 1979 play by Ernest Thompson. The plot focuses on an aging couple, Ethel and Norman Thayer, who spend each summer at their home on a lake called Golden Pond. During the year the story takes place, they are visited by their daughter, Chelsea, her fiancé, Billy Ray, and his son, Billy Ray Jr. The play explores Chelsea and Norman's turbulent relationship, and the difficulties faced by a couple in the twilight years of a long marriage. Synopsis Act 1 ;May Norman and Ethel arrive at the summer house, finding it in need of repairs. There are hints that Norman is having problems with his memory. ;June To Ethel's chagrin, Norman makes a nominal effort to find a job in the classified ads. The mailman, Charlie, stops by and reminisces about the Thayers' daughter, Chelsea, whom he used to date. A letter arrives from Chelsea saying that she is coming from California with her boyfriend, Bill Ray, to celebrate Norman's 80th birthday. It becomes clearer that Norman ...
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Rex (musical)
''Rex'' is a musical with music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Sheldon Harnick and libretto by Sherman Yellen, based on the life of Henry VIII of England, King Henry VIII. The original production starred Nicol Williamson. Production history Following tryout engagements in Delaware, Washington and Boston, it opened on Broadway theatre, Broadway at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on April 25, 1976, and closed June 5, 1976, after 14 previews and 49 regular performances. During tryouts, Harold Prince took over as director (uncredited), with the original director Edwin Sherin remaining. It is remembered for being a rare instance of a Richard Rodgers flop, and for being one of the early Broadway appearances of actress Glenn Close, her first in a musical. Until the Canadian premiere of ''Rex'' in 2010, this show was the only Richard Rodgers work since the 1940s not available for performance from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization. Clive Barnes, reviewing for ''The New York Times'', wrote ...
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Richard Rodgers
Richard Charles Rodgers (June 28, 1902 – December 30, 1979) was an American Musical composition, composer who worked primarily in musical theater. With 43 Broadway theatre, Broadway musicals and over 900 songs to his credit, Rodgers was one of the best-known American composers of the 20th century, and his compositions had a significant influence on popular music. Rodgers is known for his songwriting partnerships, first with lyricist Lorenz Hart and then with Oscar Hammerstein II. With Hart he wrote musicals throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including ''Pal Joey (musical), Pal Joey'', ''A Connecticut Yankee (musical), A Connecticut Yankee'', ''On Your Toes'' and ''Babes in Arms.'' With Hammerstein he wrote musicals through the 1940s and 1950s, such as ''Oklahoma!'', ''Flower Drum Song'', ''Carousel (musical), Carousel'', ''South Pacific (musical), South Pacific'', ''The King and I'', and ''The Sound of Music''. His collaborations with Hammerstein, in particular, are celebr ...
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Sticks And Bones
''Sticks and Bones'' is a 1971 play by David Rabe. The black comedy focuses on David, a blind Vietnam War veteran who finds himself unable to come to terms with his actions on the battlefield and alienated from his family because they neither can accept his disability nor understand his wartime experience. Rabe explores the conflicted feelings of many civilians during the era by parodying the ideal American family as it was portrayed on the television sitcom ''The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet''. Beneath the perfect facade of the playwright's fictional Nelson family are layers of prejudice, bigotry, and self-hatred that are peeled away slowly as they interact with their physically and emotionally damaged son and brother. History ''Sticks and Bones'' was the second play in Rabe's Vietnam trilogy, following ''The Basic Training of Pavlo Hummel'' and preceding '' Streamers''. A veteran himself, he wrote it while a graduate student at Villanova University, where it was staged in ...
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David Rabe
David William Rabe (born March 10, 1940) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He won the Tony Award for Best Play in 1972 ('' Sticks and Bones'') and also received Tony Award nominations for Best Play in 1974 ('' In the Boom Boom Room''), 1977 ('' Streamers'') and 1985 ('' Hurlyburly''). Early life Rabe was born on March 10, 1940, in Dubuque, Iowa, of German and Irish descent, the son of Ruth ( McCormick), a department store worker, and William Rabe, a teacher and meat packer. He was raised in a devout Catholic family. Career Rabe was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1965 and served in a medical unit during the Vietnam War. After leaving the Army in 1967, Rabe returned to Villanova University, studying writing and earning an M.A. in 1968. During this time, he began work on the play ''Sticks and Bones'', in which the family represents the ugly underbelly of the seemingly stereotypical Nelson family (whose names match the main characters of the sunny 1950s television ...
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Drama Desk Award
The Drama Desk Awards are among the most esteemed honors in New York theater, recognizing outstanding achievements across Broadway, Off-Broadway, and Off-Off-Broadway productions within the same categories. The awards are considered a significant American theater honor and have been referred to as "the Golden Globes of Theatre." Established in 1955, the awards are presented annually by the Drama Desk organization, a collective of New York City-based theatre critics, journalists, editors, and publishers dedicated to celebrating excellence in the performing arts. The awards are represented by long-time Broadway press agency, Keith Sherman & Associates. History and mission The Drama Desk organization was founded in 1949 by a group of theater critics and journalists aiming to spotlight significant issues in the theatrical industry and to support the development of New York theater. In 1955, the organization began presenting awards known as the ''Vernon Rice Awards'', named af ...
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