Fiona Shaw is an Irish actress and theatre and opera director. She is known for her roles as Petunia Dursley in the Harry Potter film series (2001–2010), Marnie Stonebrook in the fourth season of the HBO series True Blood (2011), and Carolyn Martens in the BBC series Killing Eve (2018–present).
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" is named after him.
Marcus Samuel Blitzstein, was an American composer, lyricist, and librettist. He won national attention in 1937 when his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, directed by Orson Welles, was shut down by the Works Progress Administration. He is known for The Cradle Will Rock and for his off-Broadway translation/adaptation of The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. His works also include the opera Regina, an adaptation of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes; the Broadway musical Juno, based on Seán O'Casey's play Juno and the Paycock; and No for an Answer. He completed translation/adaptations of Brecht's and Weill's musical play Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and of Brecht's play Mother Courage and Her Children with music by Paul Dessau. Blitzstein also composed music for films, such as Surf and Seaweed (1931) and The Spanish Earth (1937), and he contributed two songs to the original 1960 production of Hellman's play Toys in the Attic.
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. He received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Award for Best Play in 1993 for his play Angels in America, then adapted it into a 2003 miniseries. He has collaborated with director Steven Spielberg on the films Munich (2005), Lincoln (2012), and West Side Story (2021), all three earning him nominations for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013.
Stephen Lawrence Schwartz is an American musical theater lyricist and composer. In a career spanning over five decades, Schwartz has written such hit musicals as Godspell (1971), Pippin (1972), and Wicked (2003). He has contributed lyrics to a number of successful films, including Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), The Prince of Egypt, and Enchanted (2007). Schwartz has won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics, three Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards, and has been nominated for six Tony Awards. He received the 2015 Isabelle Stevenson Award, a special Tony Award, for his commitment to serving artists and fostering new talent.
Brundibár is a children's opera by Jewish Czech composer Hans Krása with a libretto by Adolf Hoffmeister, made most famous by performances by the children of Theresienstadt concentration camp (Terezín) in occupied Czechoslovakia. The name comes from a Czech colloquialism for a bumblebee.
Lee Hall is an English playwright, television writer, screenwriter, and lyricist. He is best known for writing the screenplay for the film Billy Elliot (2000) and the book and lyrics for its adaptation as a stage musical of the same name. In addition, he wrote the play The Pitmen Painters (2007), and the screenplay for the film Rocketman (2019).
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.
Jeanine Tesori is an American composer and musical arranger. She is the most prolific and honored female theatrical composer in history, with five Broadway musicals and five Tony Award nominations. She won the 1999 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play for Nicholas Hytner's production of Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center, the 2004 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music for Caroline, or Change, and the 2015 Tony Award for Best Original Score for Fun Home, making them the first female writing team to win that award. She was named Pulitzer Prize for Drama finalist twice for Fun Home and Soft Power.
George Costello Wolfe is an American playwright and director of theater and film. He won a Tony Award in 1993 for directing Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and another Tony Award in 1996 for his direction of the musical Bring in 'da Noise/Bring in 'da Funk. He served as Artistic Director of The Public Theater from 1993 until 2004.
Into the Labyrinth is the sixth studio album by Australian band Dead Can Dance, released on 13 September 1993, by 4AD. It marked a strong shift from their previous albums, putting ethnic music influences at the forefront, as would be the case in the later albums. It was their first album completed on their own without the aid of guest musicians, and their first album to have a major-label release in the US, thanks to a distribution deal that 4AD had with Warner Bros. Records. It featured the single "The Ubiquitous Mr Lovegrove". Into the Labyrinth was a major success, selling more than 500,000 copies worldwide.
Baal is an EP by English musician David Bowie, comprising recordings of songs written for Bertolt Brecht’s play Baal. It is sometimes referred to as David Bowie in Bertolt Brecht's Baal, as credited on the sleeve. The EP was Bowie's final release of new material for RCA Records; he signed with EMI Records for his next album.
Duke Special is a songwriter and performer based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. A piano-based songwriter with a romantic style and a warm, distinctly accented voice, he was previously known for his distinctive long dreadlocks, eyeliner and outfits he describes as "hobo chic". Nowadays, he performs mostly out of makeup and desires to be more like his true self. His live performances have a theatrical style inspired by Vaudeville and music hall, and often incorporate 78s played on an old-fashioned gramophone, or sound effects from a transistor radio. He is most often accompanied by percussionist "Temperance Society" Chip Bailey, who plays cheese graters and egg whisks, a Stumpf fiddle and a Shruti box, as well as the more typical drums and cymbals. Other musicians who perform with Wilson from time to time include Paul Pilot (guitar), Réa Curran, Ben Castle, Ben Hales, Gareth Williams, "Professor" Ger Eaton (keyboards), Dan Donnelly and Serge Archibald III.
La Jolla Playhouse is an American not-for-profit, professional theatre-in-residence on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. It was founded in 1947 by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, and Mel Ferrer.
The Guthrie Theater is a center for theater performance, production, education, and professional training in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The following is a chronological list of the plays and performances that it has produced or presented. Production information from 1963 through the 2005–06 season is sourced primarily from The Guthrie Theater: Images, History, and Inside Stories and The Guthrie Theater.
The Silent World of Hector Mann is a 2010 album by Duke Special, featuring songs inspired by the fictional silent film star Hector Mann from Paul Auster's 2002 novel The Book of Illusions, who starred in twelve films before disappearing. Special wrote "Mister Nobody", inspired by the title of one of Mann's films, and sent the novel to eleven songwriters of his acquaintance, asking them each to write a song based on one of the twelve films in a pre-rock and roll style.
Huckleberry Finn is a 2010 EP by Duke Special, featuring songs composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Maxwell Anderson from an unfinished musical based on Mark Twain's 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It was released both on its own and as part of a box set entitled The Stage, A Book And The Silver Screen, which also includes the albums Mother Courage and Her Children and The Silent World of Hector Mann.
The period from the end of the First World War until the start of the Depression in 1929 is known as the "Jazz Age". Jazz had become popular music in America, although older generations considered the music immoral and threatening to cultural values. Dances such as the Charleston and the Black Bottom were very popular during the period, and jazz bands typically consisted of seven to twelve musicians. Important orchestras in New York were led by Fletcher Henderson, Paul Whiteman and Duke Ellington. Many New Orleans jazzmen had moved to Chicago during the late 1910s in search of employment; among others, the New Orleans Rhythm Kings, King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band and Jelly Roll Morton recorded in the city. However, Chicago's importance as a center of jazz music started to diminish toward the end of the 1920s in favor of New York.
