Internationalist Theatre is a London theatre company founded by South African Greek actress Angelique Rockas in September 1980. [1] The company was originally named New Internationalist Theatre, [2] [3] with an intention to pursue an internationalist approach in its choice of plays as well as "a multi-racial drama policy, with an even mix of performers drawn from different cultural groups", The Stage , April 1981. [1] [4]
The theatre has received coverage from stage papers around the world. [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] It received charity status in 1986. [10]
The Internationalist Theatre has put on plays by Jean Genet ( The Balcony ), [11] Griselda Gambaro ( The Camp ), [12] [13] [14] Brecht ( Mother Courage and Her Children ), [15] [16] Luigi Pirandello ( Liolà ), [17] [18] [19] Tennessee Williams ( In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel ), [20] [21] August Strindberg ( Miss Julie ) [22] and Maxim Gorky ( Enemies ). [23] Their critical reception was generally favourable, [11] [24] [20] [25] [26] [27] although not universally. Time Out magazine disliked their production of Mother Courage: "the casting only inspires a whole host of irreverent questions: what on earth, say, is an American sergeant doing in seventeenth century Europe? And how did a Pakistani chaplain get into the Swedish army?" [28] an example of the resistance to diversity casting at this point of time to a theatre first of a multi-racial Mother Courage production. The Pakistani actor referred to by Malcolm Hay was the veteran Asian Parsi actor Renu Setna. The Financial Times found Liolà`s multi-national casting problematic: "do we really need this peculiar medley of Italian accents for the English premiere? The problem is compounded by the commitment ... to a multi-national cast ... English, German, Sicilian, and Italian actors produce widely differing versions of the Latin lilt" [29]
Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays. He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art". Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.
Dame Flora McKenzie Robson was an English actress and star of the theatrical stage and cinema, particularly renowned for her performances in plays demanding dramatic and emotional intensity. Her range extended from queens to murderesses.
The Rose Tattoo is a three-act play written by Tennessee Williams in 1949 and 1950; after its Chicago premiere on December 29, 1950, he made further revisions to the play for its Broadway premiere on February 2, 1951, and its publication by New Directions the following month. A film adaptation was released in 1955. The Rose Tattoo tells the story of an Italian-American widow in Mississippi who has withdrawn from the world after her husband's death and expects her daughter to do the same.
Felicity Ann Kendal is an English actress, working principally in television and theatre. She has appeared in numerous stage and screen roles over a more than 70-year career, including as Barbara Good in the 1975 television series The Good Life. Kendal was born in Olton, England, but moved to India with her family from the age of seven. Her father was an English actor-manager who led his own repertory company on tours of India, and Kendal appeared in roles for the company both before and after leaving England. She appeared in the film Shakespeare Wallah (1965) which was inspired by her family.
The Bloomsbury Theatre is a theatre on Gordon Street, Bloomsbury, in the London Borough of Camden, owned by University College London. The Theatre has a seating capacity of 541 and offers a professional programme of innovative music, drama, comedy and dance all year round as well as providing a space for student-led productions.
The Stage is a British weekly newspaper and website covering the entertainment industry and particularly theatre. Founded in 1880, The Stage contains news, reviews, opinion, features, and recruitment advertising, mainly directed at those who work in theatre and the performing arts.
Mother Courage and Her Children is a play written in 1939 by the German dramatist and poet Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956), with significant contributions from Margarete Steffin. Four theatrical productions were produced in Switzerland and Germany from 1941 to 1952, the last three supervised and/or directed by Brecht, who had returned to East Germany from the United States.
Six Characters in Search of an Author is an Italian play by Luigi Pirandello, written and first performed in 1921. An absurdist metatheatric play about the relationship among authors, their characters, and theatre practitioners, it premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome to a mixed reception, with shouts from the audience of "Manicomio!" ("Madhouse!") and "Incommensurabile!", a reaction to the play's illogical progression. Reception improved at subsequent performances, especially after Pirandello provided for the play's third edition, published in 1925, a foreword clarifying its structure and ideas.
Enemies is a 1906 Russian-language play by Maxim Gorky. It was published in 1906 in the collection Znaniye, in Saint Petersburg, at a time when Gorky was actively involved with the Russian revolutionary underground, which served as the impetus for the play. It is a recognized as an early work of socialist realism.
Alida Maria Laura, Freiin Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg, better known by her stage name Alida Valli, was an Italian actress who appeared in more than 100 films in a 70-year career, spanning from the 1930s to the early 2000s. She was one of the biggest stars of Italian film during the Fascist era, once being called "the most beautiful woman in the world" by Benito Mussolini, and was internationally successful post-World War II. According to Frédéric Mitterrand, Valli was the only actress in Europe to equal Marlene Dietrich or Greta Garbo.
BBC Mundo, previously known as the BBC Latin American Service, is part of the BBC World Service's foreign language output, one of 40 languages it provides.
'Tis Pity She's a Whore is a tragedy written by John Ford. It was first performed c. 1626 or between 1629 and 1633, by Queen Henrietta's Men at the Cockpit Theatre. The play was first published in 1633, in a quarto printed by Nicholas Okes for the bookseller Richard Collins. Ford dedicated the play to John Mordaunt, 1st Earl of Peterborough and Baron of Turvey.
The Half Moon Theatre Company was formed in 1972 in a rented synagogue in Alie Street, Whitechapel, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Half Moon Passage was the name of a nearby alley. The founders, Michael Irving and Maurice Colbourne, and the Artistic Director, Guy Sprung, wanted to create a cheap rehearsal space with living accommodation, inspired by the sixties alternative society.
In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel is a one-act play in two scenes, written in 1968–69 by Tennessee Williams.
Liolà is an Italian stage play written by Luigi Pirandello in 1916, which takes place in 19th century Sicily. The original text was composed in the Sicilian dialect of Agrigento. The title character is a middle-aged single father by choice. He has three young boys, each by a different mother. Liolà is a free-spirit who wanders from town to town, looking to connect with nature, and to create children without having any ties to the mother. He tries to sell one of his boys to Zio Simone, a crabby elderly man, who becomes offended by the offer. He then has an encounter with Mita, a former lover, who tells him that he is the father of her unborn child. Pirandello immortalizes Liolà as an ideal father, and in certain scenes in the play, Liolà shows a lot of love and affection to his children.
Renu Setna is a British actor. His roles on television include the shopkeeper Mr. Kittel in In Sickness and in Health. and Mr. Ram in the Only Fools and Horses episode Cash and Curry.
Griselda Gambaro is an Argentine writer, whose novels, plays, short stories, story tales, essays and novels for teenagers often concern the political violence in her home country that would develop into the Dirty War. One recurring theme is the desaparecidos and the attempts to recover their bodies and memorialize them. Her novel Ganarse la muerte was banned by the government because of the obvious political message.
Angelique Rockas is an actress, producer and activist. Rockas founded the theatre company Internationalist Theatre in the UK with her patron Athol Fugard. The theatre featured multi-racial casts in classical plays.
Lt. Col. Frank Moffat (1894-1978) was a Scottish rugby union player. He became an international referee and the 66th President of the Scottish Rugby Union. He had a distinguished military career with the Gordon Highlanders in the First World War.
Theatro Technis is an independent multi-cultural arts centre with a 120 -seat theatre located in the heart of London Borough of Camden. It contributes in general and specific ways to the cultural and social life of the people of London.