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The Taming of the Shrew is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592. The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction, in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly's diversion.
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical written by Bella and Samuel Spewack with music and lyrics by Cole Porter. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend, Bill, who runs afoul of some gangsters. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang.
Alan Armstrong, known professionally as Alun Armstrong, is an English character actor. He grew up in County Durham in North East England, and first became interested in acting through Shakespeare productions at his grammar school. Since his career began in the early 1970s, he has played, in his words, "the full spectrum of characters from the grotesque to musicals... I always play very colourful characters, often a bit crazy, despotic, psychotic".
Alexandra Gilbreath is an English actress, born in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire and trained at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
Lisa Dillon is an English actress.
Claire Louise Price is an English actress.
Thelma Holt is a British theatre producer and former actress.
Gregory Doran is an English director known for his Shakespearean work. The Sunday Times called him 'one of the great Shakespearians of his generation'.
Emily Richard is a British actress and a former member of the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Simon Scardifield is a British actor and playwright who trained at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and with Philippe Gaulier, after reading Modern Languages at St John's College, Cambridge.
Paola Dionisotti is an Italian-British actress active on stage and British television since 1975. She is the daughter of Italian literary critic Carlo Dionisotti and of Marisa Pinna Pintor. She has two sisters: Anna Carlotta, a Latinist at the King's College London, and Eugenia, a librarian.
There have been numerous on screen adaptations of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The best known cinematic adaptations are Sam Taylor's 1929 The Taming of the Shrew and Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 The Taming of the Shrew, both of which starred the most famous celebrity couples of their era; Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks in 1929 and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in 1967. On television, perhaps the most significant adaptation is the 1980 BBC Television Shakespeare version, directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese and Sarah Badel.
The Taming of the Shrew in performance has had an uneven history. Popular in Shakespeare's day, the play fell out of favour during the seventeenth century, when it was replaced on the stage by John Lacy's Sauny the Scott. The original Shakespearean text was not performed at all during the eighteenth century, with David Garrick's adaptation Catharine and Petruchio dominating the stage. After over two hundred years without a performance, the play returned to the British stage in 1844, the last Shakespeare play restored to the repertory. However, it was only in the 1890s that the dominance of Catharine and Petruchio began to wane, and productions of The Shrew become more regular. Moving into the twentieth century, the play's popularity increased considerably, and it became one of Shakespeare's most frequently staged plays, with productions taking place all over the world. This trend has continued into the twenty-first century, with the play as popular now as it was when first written.
Sophie Leigh Stone is an English stage and television actress. She was the first deaf student to win a place at the drama school RADA. she is best known for her roles as Louise in Two Doors Down and Doctor Who as Cass. In 2022, she joined the cast of the new Acorn TV detective series The Chelsea Detective, playing the forensics officer Ashley Wilton. She continued to play that role in season 2 in 2023.
Katy Stephens is a British actress and former children's presenter. She has appeared in leading roles with Shakespeare's Globe and the Royal Shakespeare Company with whom she is an Associate Artist. She played Nicky in London's Burning, and was a co-presenter on The Fun Song Factory in the 1990s.
Jean St. Clair is an English actor, screenwriter, director, producer and British Sign Language consultant. She has twice won Best Actress at the French deaf film festival Clin d'Oeil. St. Clair is Deaf and a British Sign Language user.
Brian Duffy is a Scottish actor, writer and Visual Vernacular artist. He is Deaf and uses British Sign Language.
Vilma Jackson is an English actor and performer. She is known for portraying the role of Charlie in Coronation Street. She is Deaf and a British Sign Language user. In 2020 Jackson wrote, produced and performed in a short film, "Triple Oppression", which deals with the challenges she faces as Black, Deaf and a woman. The short won four Best Inspirational Film at the New York Film Awards, the FilmCon Awards, Festigious International Film Festival and Los Angeles Film Awards. In 2021 she launched her own chat show, available online.
Paula Garfield is a British theatre director and actress. She is Deaf and a British Sign Language user. In 2002 she co-founded the theatre company Deafinitely Theatre.
Deaf theatres are companies with primarily deaf and hard of hearing production teams who create theatre in their respective signed languages. Many companies choose to have both hearing performers and deaf performers for a dual-language experience while some offer solely signed performances.
References
- ↑ "Interview with Charlotte Arrowsmith, first Deaf BSL actor in a mainstream RSC production". The Limping Chicken.
- ↑ "Isolation interviews: Charlotte Arrowsmith". Beyond the curtain.
- ↑ "Deaf actress Charlotte Arrowsmith makes history in British theatre". Unusualverse.
- ↑ "'This is another crack in the glass ceiling': RSC casts disabled actors in new season". The Observer.
- ↑ "Deaf actor makes history". Royal Shakespeare Company.
- ↑ "Isolation interviews: Charlotte Arrowsmith". Beyond the curtain.
- ↑ "Touch". YouTube .