Links for 3/31 -- Pygmalion

Here is a link to the 1938 version of Pygmalion starring Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmdPj_XbF30

Just a year later Leslie Howard played Ashley Wilkes, Scarlett O'Hara's crush in Gone with the Wind:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCWsCtKZ2B0&feature=related

Here are some scenes from the 1964 movie My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn.  The first is the trailer with "The Rain in Spain."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVmU3iANbgk&feature=related

Next is "Just You Wait," a song that voices Eliza's frustration.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwNKyTktDIE

Then we have the scene at the races.  The dialogue is taken from Act 3 and Mrs. Higgins' "at home."  The races at Ascot probably make for a more cinematic venue than one woman's drawing room, no matter how tastefully decorated.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYMSvyqHHwA

Eliza's father comes in here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Sj9o7DWJU&feature=related

We'll conclude with the last scenes of My Fair Lady where Higgins realizes he loves Eliza.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HroAq_E075Y

Rex Harrison said that he was playing Leslie Howard playing Henry Higgins. 

As I mentioned, Audrey Hepburn lip-synched the songs in My Fair Lady.  The singing voice you hear was Marni Nixon's.  Julie Andrews played Eliza on Broadway earlier, and whose voice could compete with hers?!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJqBaA0CqOo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpn0aQ1fyzs

Here are some modern versions of Pygmalion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qR9TY1nvQE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFXfrNv_tio


Claire Danes has recently played Eliza in Pygmalion:

http://www.observer.com/2007/we-ve-grown-accustomed-musical-pygmalion-shaw-little-out-whack


Oh yes, and here are the links to Upstairs Downstairs and Sarah's attempts to live by her wits:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mZnjBdB1CM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Hz4nm37xvg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAGDHrijR_M

Videos in EN 230 -- 2/3

The picture above is from the original 1949 performance of Death of a Salesman.  Lee J. Cobb was Willy, Arthur Kennedy was Biff, and Cameron Mitchell played Happy.  Cobb later appeared in CBS' 1966 movie for television.  

See this link for a picture from that later production:  

http://www.broadwaydigitalarchive.com/catalog/view/33

First is the link to the beginning of the film Richard III starring Ian Mckellen.  This film is set in the 1930s.  Note that the beginning of Shakespeare's play is not the beginning of this film!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tm1kaanjd8M&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=PLB0A3B33E632863CB

You may also enjoy Mckellen's "courtship" scene here.  Kristin Scott-Thomas plays Lady Anne, the widow of a man Richard has killed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9zIw84dD_Y

Here Mckellen interprets Richard III's opening speech ("Now is the winter..."):

http://www.stageworkmckellen.com/

Next is the link to part 1 of Al Pacino's Looking for Richard:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dywuhEwzjo

The 1985 Death of a Salesman is harder to find, so I will send you a few other versions, starting with a 1951 version that Arthur Miller did *not* approve of!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVYlGsrSB4o

Avery Brooks starred in a 2008 production at Oberlin College.  (He and the director Justin Emeka are both Oberlin alums.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPnEFZJafjE

Starting with this YouTube, Brooks and Emeka discuss the production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MC4UUhUZRX8

In 2009, Charles S. Dutton played Willy in Yale Rep's version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJNaEDrtjug

Brian Dennehy played Willy in 2000.  This TV movie appeared on Showtime, another of our premium channels:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brdbM9YSCq4

These pictures are from a 2005 production, also starring Dennehy.  This production was staged at London's Lyric Theater.  I think that my sister-in-law may have seen either this version or an earlier one at the Goodman Theater in Chicago.

This version from 1996 is British and appeared on the BBC:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnTqlxajQ5Q

DC's own Arena Stage also had a version of Death of a Salesman as part of an Arthur Miller festival in 2008:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nYKpvtYPG4

The Ensemble Theater's 2008 version is here.  (This company is Australian.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSFXnXJrNqM&feature=related

I'll close with the Raven Theater Company's 2008/9 version.  This company is based in Chicago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAkKa0X73mw&feature=related

More Mother Courage

Here, in fact, are a few more videos of recent productions. The first was at William and Mary.  (The picture above is from this college production.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeYwFzBNk2k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UC7senNIlyo



The second is the production that starred Meryl Streep. Tony Kushner did the translation of Brecht's play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Mz5I1LmLLw&feature=related



Another is by the Antaeus Theater Company, a professional theater company from LA. It includes many of the songs from Mother Courage so that you may see them acted out.  Unfortunately, it is hard to find a picture from this production!  Below is a picture from rehearsal.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0






Here is a YouTube video on Brecht's life and works:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu_jOEAwQ6Q

The picture is from USC's site on Brecht.

Tartuffe!

 The picture above is from a recent production of Tartuffe at SMU in Dallas.  Yes, yes, yes, it's a modern-dress production, but this picture above gives you a good idea of what this satirical play will be about: a conman passes himself off as a spiritual advisor in order to bilk a wealthy man and his wife. 

See this site for a summary from the Oregon Shakespeare Festival:

http://www.osfashland.org/browse/production.aspx?prod=60

See this site for a biography of the playwright Moliere (1622-1673):

http://www.discoverfrance.net/France/Theatre/Moliere/moliere.shtml

The picture below is from a French bio pic of Moliere:

As I look around, I see a number of (more or less) modern-day productions, but I'd like to show you some pictures of more historically accurate versions.  Tartuffe was written and first performed in 1664, so I want to emphasize the historical aspects of this play.  It is timeless, but I want you to realize that this play is a 17th century satire and was performed at the French court (which probably explains the ending!).

Here the maid Dorine confronts Tartuffe in a production at the East Carolina Playhouse in Greenville.

 

In the picture below, Orgon hides under the table and hears Tartuffe propositioning his wife.  The production pictured is from Hampton-Sydney College in Virginia:

 

These actors from the University of South Carolina played this scene even more farcically:

 

I guess this must be the most celebrated scene in the play as when I looked for other interpretations of this play I saw this print from 1892:

 

This woodcut (of the same scene) appears to be from the 17th or 18th century.

 

 

 

Nicaraguan Literature

Link

 See the link above for more about Nicaragua's poets, poetry, and performances!

Indian Music

Link

The picture above is from a bhajan (a type of Indian poetry) session at a festival in Mysore, India.  Here's a little more information about this festival:  http://www.dattapeetham.com/india/festivals/ganapati2004/ganapati2004.html

The link above is to a blog entry on Indian music that goes along with the entry on poet & lyricist Mirabai that I will post soon.  However, if you're not familiar with Indian music, you will need this background information before I post the entry on Mirabai and her poems. 

Orality & Literacy . . . Cross-Posting from EN 201 Blog

Do you remember a time when you could not read? Can you imagine living in a society where most people (or all people) could not read? What would that society's literature be like? And did you know that most languages are oral only, without a written "dialect"?

Walter J. Ong's truly groundbreaking Orality & Literary examines the ways in which society, literature, and knowledge have changed with the rise of literacy and, ultimately, print. This examination is especially pertinent to EN 201 because a number of our readings (Gilgamesh, the Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf) began as tales told by storytellers. In fact, Homer, the author of the Iliad & the Odyssey, may have been more than one person, and we do not have a specific author for Beowulf. Up until almost the end of the period that EN 201 covers, works were available in manuscripts; that is, they were individual, handwritten copies, often with abbreviations (to save the scribe's time) and variations from the original. Orality & Literacy is also pertinent to EN 202 as we move onto the unit on tales & folktales, for many of our readings were tales told and then transcribed once folk literature became interesting to the elite.  orWe will not be reading Plato's work in this class, but Father Ong (he was a Jesuit priest) points out that this philosopher was very much a product of the rise of literacy in his precise approach to philosophy and his banning of the poets from his Republic.

These poets, on the other hand, epitomized oral culture with their reliance on performance, set phrases, and copia [fullness of expression]. Performance is more than simply reciting a poem aloud, though. Instead, it involves responding to one's audience and relying on set phrases instead of repeating a set text word for word, for, despite, what we are often told, storytellers and ancient bards did *not* remember their works word for word. In fact, as Orality & Literacy discloses, memory in an oral culture is remarkably pragmatic, changing to suit the needs of the present time. (Father Ong includes an anecdote of an African performing an oral epic for transcription and, in the voice of the epic's hero, spurring the scribe on to "march.") Later poets such as the Romantics are very much products of print culture, for they are concerned with interiority [individual consciousness]. By contrast, characters from oral literature are what Father Ong calls "heavy," individuals who do great deeds but do not have a true interior life. Hmm...I wonder what Christa Wolf would make of this as she has argued that heroic characters are a product of patriarchal society.

Orality & Literacy is also important for what it tells us about genre. As you can imagine, epic is grounded in orality. Even when a highly literature individual like Virgil, Edmund Spenser, or John Milton sat down to write an epic, their work followed conventions that reflected orality (the work's beginning "in media res" or in the middle of things, heroic characters, a reliance on episodes rather than plot). Father Ong notes that Sir Philip Sidney may have revised his Arcadia so that it would flow more smoothly when it was read aloud. And then, with the rise of literacy and print culture, the epic became harder and harder to write. (Hmmm...what did Father Ong make of a modern-day epic like the original Star Wars trilogy? And he *might* have seen it as he lived from 1912 to 2003. In fact, he later wrote on the impact of the internet.) In place of the epic came the novel, a genre whose tighter plotting and "rounder," more individual characters were supported by print and the reader's ability to reread text. Novels written by and for women also reflected the differences between upper-class men's classical education and middle-class individuals' vernacular education. As I have noted, poetry changed as well, becoming more specific and more concerned with individual experience as well. The ballad with its characters and storyline was more of a transitional form. Interestingly, the drama may have always been grounded in literacy as, even in ancient Greece, plays were written down before they were performed. (I'm not sure about Greek actors, but later actors in England were *not* literate, so this topic may bear investigating.)

Orality & Literacy is a difficult book, in part because it touches on so many different aspects of culture and language. It is not limited to English-language or even Western culture as Father Ong brings in examples from South America and Africa, but I found his discussion of Homer's epics to be especially useful. It may be too soon for you to read Orality & Literacy, but I would recommend your reading it if you plan to continue your literary studies or to become a teacher. I wish that I had read this book *before* finishing my dissertation!!

1000 Years of Popular Music...Crossposting from EN 201 Blog

Last night, while my husband and I listened to Ajay Parham, a young jazz vocalist, perform at HR 57 (a club in DC), I pondered the title of Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music, and I wondered what Parham would have included on a similar CD. What would the members of my favorite band Los Lobos (www.loslobos.org) have included?

Then I began to have a few qualifications about the idea of 1000 Years of Popular Music. This evening I've written down my qualifications, that is, the material in parentheses. First of all, the songs that Thompson & his musicians cover are mainly from the UK, the USA, and Australia, with the exception of one song that is in Italian. There is no mariachi, tango, or calypso, to name three types of music I have in my CD collection. There is no reggae. There is nothing by Brecht and Weill.  Technically, one song sounds a little Indian, but would you count a song written by a British person who was influenced by Indian musicians as non-Western music? And there's no Chinese opera either. Secondly, all of the songs on Thompson's CD have lyrics. Apparently, Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing!" [or insert your favorite instrumental] didn't make the cut.

Nevertheless, 1000 Years of Popular Music helps us think about what it means to consider an anthology of works from other cultures--and times and then the way that these works all fit together to make, in one case, (popular) music and, in another, world literature. OK, I admit that we are at an advantage over Thompson since, in making up his list, he has to factor in what he can play and what he can afford to play. (Somehow I don't think "Sing, Sing, Sing" works without a horn section although, if anybody could make that song work with a guitar & drums, perhaps Thompson could.) In EN 201, we're more like someone who is burning a CD or two, but, like Thompson, we are still thinking about why it's important to examine older works from different traditions rather than just being content with our own times & traditions.

Which songs would you include in your 1000 Years of Popular Music?

p.s. I hope that you can take a closer look at the cover!! It is not simply a picture of medieval times, but the artist has created a clever collage of musicians from different time periods.  And here is a link to Thompson's own web site.  You may find out more about his ongoing tour and its evolving playlist...and ask him questions about his choice of songs!

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/default.asp

Here are some more pages on the DVD that I showed in class and the tour:

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/catch_of_the_day.asp?id=540

http://www.richardthompson-music.com/1000yrs.asp

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1042743,00.html

The Love Suicides at Amijima

I should be grading my papers from EN 101A, and in class we are moving on beyond drama to...film, but I thought that I would post a quick blog entry on the play that we have just read, The Love Suicides at Amijima.  The picture above is from a 1997 English-language version performed at NYC's LaMama Theater.  For more information about this production, see this link below:

http://www.theatrejapan.com/amijima.html

A professor at Washburn University in Kansas has posted background on the play. 

http://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Chickamatsu.html

For more information about bunraku (the genre that this play originally belonged to):

http://www.japan-zone.com/culture/bunraku.shtml

http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html

http://www.puppetcentre.org.uk/animationsonline/aotwentyone/ao21_whatsinaname.html

Here are video clips of bunraku although not of Love Suicides:

http://www2.ntj.jac.go.jp/unesco/bunraku/en/video.html

In 1969, a film version of Love Suicides (Double Suicide) appeared:

http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/shinoda-masahiro/double-suicide.html

Scenes from Mother Courage By Brecht

I thought that I would put together an entry linking to various videos of Mother Courage.  They will have to do until someone decides to film this play or I decide to spring for a DVD from Germany.  First, though, here is a review of the production pictured above:

http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/mother-courage_1106.htm

Here is a quick scene from an Illinois' high school's production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1S5XZgV2Hd0

This production is by "Theater Bayside":

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4Y-icyZFZg

This video of "The Death of Kattrin" is short, but the scenery looks more professional:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwa_Z2iQP00

Villanova University's Theater Department has a slide show of its production of Mother Courage and a video of the set and costume designers at work:

http://villanovatheatretalk.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

I am desperate, so I am going to add some reviews with extensive pictures and/or description!

See this links for pictures from Rutgers-NJIT's production:

http://theatre.njit.edu/pictures.php?d=mothercourage&n=MOTHER%20COURAGE%20AND%20HER%20CHILDREN

Minneapolis'  Frank Theater has done Mother Courage recently.  For once, the play is reviewed glowingly!  See the second link for an interview with Wendy Knox, the founder of this theater:

 http://www.talkinbroadway.com/regional/minn/minn171.html

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2006/10/20/wendyknox/

In 2003, a theater company in the UK put on a production with disabled actors:

http://www.culturewars.org.uk/2003-02/mothercourage.htm

A year later, The Eclipse Theater Company toured the UK with its version of Mother Courage translated by Afro-British playwright Oladipo Agboluaje.  In this version, Mother Courage is set in modern-day West Africa.  For more details, see these links:

http://www.eclipsetheatre.org.uk/mcahc.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/northamptonshire/stage/2004/mother_courage.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/suffolk/going_out/on_stage/2004/03/mother_courage/preview.shtml

http://www.theatrevoice.com/listen_now/player/?audioID=483


These reviews from Pittsburgh and San Diego may explain why I am desperate!

http://www.pittsburghcitypaper.ws/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A24565

http://www.sandiego.com/option,com_sdca/target,9e394025-6005-4bb4-b426-15f018d60a0d/

Taming of the Shrew

  To prepare for Prof. Eckert's talk on Monday March 24, "'Our lances are like straws':  Irony, Rhetoric, and The Taming of the Shrew," I'd like to post a little information about The Taming of the Shrew.  Otherwise, as much as it would be interesting to have another perspective on drama, we won't get as much as we should out of the talk.

The picture above is from a recent local production of Taming at the Shakespeare Theater.  Here is a link to the web site for that production.  As you'll see, it is a very full website with not only a synopsis and reviews but also interviews, a photo gallery, scholarly articles, and even a video trailer!

http://www.shakespearetheatre.org/plays/details.aspx?id=110&source=l

See this link for an audience member's response:

http://twohourstraffic.blogspot.com/2007/10/shakespeare-theatres-taming-of-shrew.html

Or this summer we could go to Utah to see Taming.    Actually, you may find the articles on this site useful.

http://www.bard.org/plays/shrew.html

Here are pictures from other recent productions all over the world:

http://www.cambridgeshakespeare.com/

http://www.chicagoshakes.com/main.taf?p=2,17,5

Even better, the University of Victoria, a Canadian univiersity, has a series of links to performances from 1908 to just last year!  Most are in English, but there are some in German!

http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Theater/sip/play/Shr/main.html

In the late 19th and early 20th century, The Taming of the Shrew was quite popular as this page from Emory University shows:

http://shakespeare.emory.edu/playdisplay.cfm?playid=27

A professor at Virginia Military Institute has put together a number of links on the play's performance history:

http://academics.vmi.edu/english/shrew.html#Performance

But here are some videos from You Tube.  The first contains scenes from a 1960s version of Taming of the Shrew starring Liz Taylor and Richard Burton.  I showed this movie to my Shakespeare on Film class at Purdue University, and they really enjoyed it--even though it was "old."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmOQh5RNveQ

This video shows Kate and Petruchio's wedding:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K2gb9BZcSE

I think that my EN 102 students at Purdue would have preferred this version done by high school students a la Jerry Springer (do you remember him?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej4ojXbxy2g

Or would you prefer John Cleese's Petruchio?  (Hmm...how would Steve Carrell be in this role!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2NnhBNq6h8

In the UK, The Royal Shakespeare Theater staged both The Taming of the Shrew *and* John Fletcher's sequel (in which Petruchio is tamed!):

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre/reviews/the-taming-of-the-shrew-royal-shakespeare-theatrebr-the-tamer-tamed-swan-theatre-stratforduponavon-594449.html

Here Professors Lisa Jardine (an expert on Shakespeare) and Gordon McMullan (an expert on John Fletcher) and actor Alexandra Gilbraith discuss the two plays and Shakespeare's attitude towards women:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/womanshour/2003_23_sat_01.shtml

To see what The Tamer Tamed looks like, here is Shakespeare and Company's collection of pictures from its 2005 production:

http://www.shakespeare.org/gallery/tamer

More on Brecht

  The picture above is from the recent production of Threepenny Opera (the most famous play by Brecht) with Cyndi Lauper and Nellie McKay.  Here is the video preview for that production--direct from You Tube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A3CR5K8-ys

YouTube also has audio recordings of Lotte Lenya's versions of songs from the Threepenny Opera:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo7LpEkkAk0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-V_iLXkx1Uo

Bertolt Brecht sings here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QXJ3OXWaOY

Although I've posted this blog from the dramaturg of Villanova's production of Mother Courage, I think that it's worth reposting for the information about Brecht:

http://villanovatheatretalk.blogspot.com/2007_10_01_archive.html

I've posted this article on epic theater and Brecht's biography elsewhere as well, but I'm sure that you'll find it useful here:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_bio.html

Deustche Welle, the German broadcasting service, has put together a picture gallery on Brecht and his work.  One picture is of Helene Weigel, his second wife and the most outstanding Mother Courage:

http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_imagegalerie/0,2172,2128266_page_1_lang_2,00.html

Here is a biography of Ms. Weigel.  Again, she is pictured as Mother Courage although she portrayed many other roles in her husband's plays.

http://www.artsalive.ca/en/thf/histoire/comediens.html#weigel

Brecht spent some time in the US while he was in exile from Germany.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2125885,00.html

Here is an article about the Brecht-Weigel House in East Berlin.  It includes some information about Ms. Weigel's work after her husband's death when she led the Berliner Ensemble, the theater company that they had founded together.

http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/chnn/CHNN17HOU.html

In 2001, a movie was made about a day in Brecht's life:

http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,531391,00.html

Let's finish with some articles on Brecht's influence on later theater.  The first is from Brandeis University's production of The Good Woman of Setzuan.

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_influence.html

The next is from Deutsche Welle:

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,2144,2127719,00.html

Prof. Edward Isser of the College of the Holy Cross discusses Brechtian influence on the performance of Shakespeare!

http://www.holycross.edu/departments/theatre/eisser/BrechtianShakespeare.html

Midterm Study Guide -- Spring 2008 -- plays (A Doll's House)

  At this point, our unit on drama is not yet finished.  (After break, we will read Mother Courage and The Love Suicides, a German play and a Japanese play respectively.  If you saw Chicago, you may find some of Brecht's techniques in Mother Courage a little familiar.)

This study guide will focus on A Doll's House and an overall discussion of drama and theater.

-- Drama refers to the author's play script as it is published.  Theater, on the other hand, refers to the performance of the play and all the "extra-textual" elements: casting, costumes, sets, mise-en-scene, the reading of lines, sound, lighting, music, and venue.  For example, a performance of A Doll's House at the Theater Arts Arena will be very different from a performance of the same play in a park or in a classroom.

-- An important element of theater is the central idea of a performance.  This central idea will determine casting, staging, costuming, and even reading of lines.  The central idea will also affect the audience just as much as an audience may determine a play's central idea.  Audiences who see many plays and are willing to experiment will accept a more adventurous production and central idea.  Audiences who see fewer plays will probably be more conservative.

-- A Doll's House (1879) is one of Ibsen's problem plays.  In other words, in this play, Ibsen (1829-1906) explored a pressing issue and encouraged his audience to think about it.  He guides his audience rather than telling them what to think or entertaining them.  The problem play relies on a proscenium arch stage, which frames the action and distances it from the audience.  (Did you know that in Aphra Behn's day wealthy theatergoers could sit on the stage--and leer at the actresses & smirk at the audience?!) Ibsen was a Norwegian playwright and wrote in that language, but his plays were quickly translated into English and became popular for more intellectual audiences.  Ibsen's advocates in English included the great novelist and would-be playwright Henry James, theater critic and playwright George Bernard Shaw, and the actor Elizabeth Robins.  Another advocate was our anthology's translator, William Archer (1856-1924).

-- The BBC version of A Doll's House that we saw in class dates from 1992.  There Juliet Stevenson plays Nora, and Trevor Eve plays Helmer.  This version is fairly conservative: it is set in the 1870s, and the scenes that we saw were indoors.  Other noted  versions of A Doll's House on film were theatrically-released movies from the 1970s: one starring Claire Bloom and another starring Jane Fonda (see above).

A Doll's House (More Pictures!!!)

The picture above is from a California modern-dress production of A Doll's House.  I looked a little bit for a picture from a local production, but I wasn't able to find one quickly.  Below is another period production from the University of California at Riverside.  The scene depicted is Nora's rehearsal of the tarantella.



On the other hand, I did find this essay that explains the importance of Ibsen and his approach to modern drama.

http://www.ibsenvoyages.com/e-texts/four_plays_intro.html

The author of this essay is not only a literary scholar but also the former Resident Dramaturg for the American Ibsen Theater in Pittsburgh. 

Here is a link to a biography of Ibsen.  As you'll see, he lived a long life, and this long life was lived during an eventful period of history--the 19th century.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibsen.htm

Ibsen caused quite a sensation in England, as this essay from 1893 details, and poet/critic/language reformer George Bernard Shaw coined the term "Ibsenism."

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=35363&subid=0

Ibsen caused this stir because of his approach to psychological and social realism. 

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=108034&subid=0

This article, also from the Norwegian site Ibsen.net, covers the playwright's approach to the performance of his plays, especially their casting:

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=1927&subid=0

I am trying to find some of the 19th c. and early 20th c. performances of A Doll's House online.  I wanted to find a picture of Elizabeth Robins (one of Ibsen's early advocates) as Nora, but all I could find was one of her portraying Hedda Gabler, another of Ibsen's heroines.



Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD has a very informative and complete site on A Doll's House.  The production is from the 2003-04 season.  Unfortunately, the web site is a little wonky.

http://www.northern.edu/wild/0304Season/DollsHouse/Doll_Nts.htm

Below are links to a variety of productions of A Doll's House.  The first link actually brings you to a site where you may download the scanned version of a review from 1918!  Alla Nazimova (pictured below) played Nora.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B0DEFD81F3FE433A25753C3A9629C946996D6CF

The picture below is from Nazimova's 1922 silent film version of Ibsen's play.



This review is even older.  It describes a benefit performance held in 1894:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C02EFDC1F39E033A25755C1A9649C94659ED7CF

Here is a review of the 2007 production pictured at the top of this entry:

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/01.24.07/dolls-house-0704.html

Another recent production in New Hampshire took a very eccentric approach, casting very tall women and very short men.  The play was staged at Dartmouth by the Mabou Mines, an outside, experimental theater group from New York.

http://hop.dartmouth.edu/2005-06/46-dollhouse.html


Here is a link to a video of the Mabou Mines' production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHn2FxLJOoI

This 2008 production from Chesapeake Shakespeare takes a more traditional approach.  




http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=25048

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303167.html



Look up or scroll down to see pictures from a Nepali theater's production of A Doll's House:

http://www.aarohantheatre.org/onstage.php

Here is a review of a recent production in NYC:

http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0446,feingold,58483,11.html

Here are reviews of films from the 1970s.  The first starred Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins, and the second starred Jane Fonda.  We are watching the version starring Ms. Bloom and Hopkins.


But here is a picture of Ms. Fonda's version.


The link below is to a review of the version starring Ms. Fonda.

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/133372/A-Doll-s-House/overview

I'll conclude with Prof. Ian Johnston's lecture on A Doll's House:

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm

Mother Courage and Her Children

After reading an article like this, how could I not add Ibsen & Brecht's plays to our reading list for EN 202?

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=34341

But why are these theater critics so concerned about DC theaters' restricting themselves to English-language playwrights and their works?  Why do they want local theaters to produce works by playwrights like Ibsen, Brecht, or, more importantly, those active in Eastern Europe, Latin America, or the Middle East?

Let's start with this biography of Brecht with its overview of his career and his approach to theater.  Note that he was reacting against an emotional, realistic theater and striving for one that was more politically and intellectually engaged.  Note as well that Mother Courage and Her Children comes out of the period of time leading up to WWII.  At that point, Brecht had already escaped from Nazi Germany.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/brecht.htm

Brandeis University has reprinted this article on Brecht's epic theater, which explains his approach in more detail:

http://www.cs.brandeis.edu/~jamesf/goodwoman/brecht_epic_theater.html

For more information about Brechtian theater, see this set of pages from the University of Southern Australia.  In fact, the link will go to a table of contents, making for a more efficient blog entry. 

http://www.usq.edu.au/performancecentre/education/goodwomanofszechwan/brechtandtheatre.htm

This site from Cambridge's American Repertory Theater includes a brief summary of the play as well as a cast list and photographs:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage.html

More importantly, here is a link to Gideon Lester's history of the play's successful (and unsuccessful) performances:

http://www.amrep.org/past/courage/courage2.html

ART's production is reviewed here:

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/00630946.htm

Here is a review of the Steppenwolf Theater's production from about the same time:

http://www.artscope.net/PAREVIEWS/mothercourage101801.shtml

Recently, the playwright Tony Kushner translated Brecht's play into English for the production pictured at the top of this entry:

http://www.hotreview.org/articles/tonykushneronmc.htm

Peter Marks reviewed this production (in NYC) for the Washington Post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/22/AR2006082201436.html

The theater company that Brecht himself founded, The Berliner Ensemble, performed Mother Courage at a festival in Iran:

http://iranfacts.blogspot.com/2008/02/mother-courage-and-her-children-brecht.html

Ah, here are some posts about Mother Courage in Charlottesville!

http://cvillemuse.com/2008/04/02/mother-courage-and-her-children/

http://www.dailyprogress.com/cdp/entertainment/theatre_arts/article/mother_putting_cart_before_her_heart/7717/

The URL below links to a podcast interview with the production's director:

http://www.cvillepodcast.com/2008/03/27/mother-courage-and-her-children/

And here is a picture from the production in Charlottesville.

Japanese Film & Theater

I'm glad that we've gotten a chance to watch Kurosawa's Ran, and I'll be interested in hearing what you have to say about this amazing film on Monday. However, I realized that an entry on Japanese film and theater and therefore acting styles might be useful. Mainstream American acting styles tend to be more realistic, so some of the performances in Ran (especially Tatsuya Nakadai's portrayal of the warlord Hidetora and Mieko Harada's portrayal of the evil Lady Kaede) might have seemed unusual to you, especially since the director Akiro Kurosawa probably was not playing on cultural stereotypes the way that Peter Brook may have been in the Mahabharata. And Kurosawa was clearly operating in a different tradition from the one that Al Pacino was in Looking for Richard.

Here is an American writer's article that puts Kurosawa's work into the context of Japanese film and mainstream film. (The questions are these: did Kurosawa "sell out"? Are his films more Westernized than Japanese?).

http://www.lardbiscuit.com/lard/kurosawa.html

These two sites discuss Nakadai's performance in a little more detail.
http://www.gotterdammerung.org/film/kurosawa-akira/ran.html
http://www.criterion.com/asp/in_focus.asp?id=15

Dr. Patrick Crogan's "Translating Kurosawa" examines the director's career overall but does not discuss Ran. Nevertheless, he makes useful points:

http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/cteq/00/9/kurosawa.html

For more information about contemporary Japanese film, see these sites:

http://www.csuohio.edu/history/japan/japan15.html

http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu/Markus/Reviews.html

http://www2.shizuokanet.ne.jp/usr/onitsuka/English%20page.html

http://www.midnighteye.com/
http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/00/7/japanese.html

Here are sites on the history of Japanese film:

http://www.latrobe.edu.au/screeningthepast/reruns/rr0499/PUerr6.htm
http://www.greencine.com/static/primers/japan-60-1.jsp

More importantly, here are sites on Kabuki, a popular type of Japanese theater that may have influenced Ran. I hope that the video works! Ironically, samurai were forbidden from watching these types of plays.

http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Japan/02/bresn/bresn.htm

http://www.us-japan.org/edomatsu/tsukiji/frame.html

http://www.us.emb-japan.go.jp/jicc/spotkabuki.htm
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6580589105119878240&q=kabuki

Other types of theater are Noh, Kyogen, and Bunraku. Noh is more tragic whereas Kyogen is comic. Bunraku is a type of puppet theater.

http://www.iijnet.or.jp/NOH-KYOGEN/english/english.html
http://www.artelino.com/articles/noh_theater.asp
http://www.hirohurl.net/kyogen.html
http://artscenecal.com/ArticlesFile/Archive/Articles2002/Articles1202/NohThea...
http://www.bunraku.or.jp/
http://www.sagecraft.com/puppetry/definitions/Bunraku.hist.html

Before Watching Kurosawa's Ran

I just like this Polish poster. It depicts Hidetora (the old warlord in Ran & Kurosawa's revision of King Lear) so well!

Here is a link to a 2000 review of Kurosawa's film. This site also includes some stills from the film, but they may be difficult to load.

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/reviews/ran/text.htm

Here is another 2000 review of Ran; this one is from Salon:

http://archive.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/09/21/kurosawa/index.html

Ran itself came out in 1985. Here is Roger Ebert's review from that time:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19851225/REVIEWS/51...

Also, here is the NY Times review from 1985:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9B0CE5D7153BF933A15751C1A96394...

Here is the British Film Institutes's site on Kurosawa:

http://www.bfi.org.uk/features/kurosawa/

PBS also did a documentary on Kurosawa and his films:

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/shows/kurosawa/kurosawa.html

For more information about King Lear (the play that Kurosawa is reworking), first go to this summary with explanation:

http://www.pathguy.com/kinglear.htm

Here are various eighteenth & nineteenth Western artists' depictions of scenes from King Lear:

http://www.english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/LearPaintings.html

These sites link to recent performances of King Lear. The first is in Chicago and stars Stacy Keach:

http://www.goodmantheatre.org/season/Production.aspx?tess=906

Ian McKellen is now performing King Lear:
http://www.mckellen.com/stage/lear07/index.htm

Enjoy!