Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a play by Edward Albee first staged in October 1962. It examines the complexities of the marriage of middle-aged couple Martha and George. Late one evening, after a university faculty party, they receive unwitting younger couple Nick and Honey as guests, and draw them into their bitter and frustrated relationship.
Isabelle Yasmine Adjani is a French actress and singer of Algerian and German descent.
Kevin Delaney Kline is an American actor. Kline is known for his over five decade career as a leading man on stage and screen. He is the recipient of an Academy Award and three Tony Awards, and has been nominated for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2003, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.
David Seth Kotkin, known professionally as David Copperfield, is an American magician, described by Forbes as the most commercially successful magician in history.
Anthony Robert Kushner is an American author, playwright, and screenwriter. Lauded for his work on stage, he is most known for his seminal work Angels in America, which earned a Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award, as well as its subsequent acclaimed HBO miniseries of the same name. At the turn of the 21st century, he became known for his numerous film collaborations with Steven Spielberg. He received the National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama in 2013. Kushner is among the few playwrights in history nominated for an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony Award.
Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes is a 1991 American two-part play by American playwright Tony Kushner. The two parts of the play, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, may be presented separately. The work won numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the Tony Award for Best Play, and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play. Part one of the play premiered in 1991, followed by part two in 1992. Its Broadway opening was in 1993.
Harry Bouton Blackstone Jr. was an American stage magician, author, and television performer. He is estimated to have pulled 80,000 rabbits from his sleeves and hats.
Jeffrey Wright is an American actor. He has received numerous accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Tony Award, and a Golden Globe Award, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. Wright began his career in theater where he gained prominence for his role in the Broadway production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America (1993), for which he won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He reprised his role in the acclaimed 2003 HBO miniseries adaptation, earning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie.
Max Maven was an American magician and mentalist whose performances were considered erudite and intelligent. He is ranked as one of the most influential mentalists of all time, and one of the 100 "Most Influential Magicians of the 20th Century" by Magic Magazine.
Joseph Mantello is an American actor and director known for his work on stage and screen. He first gained prominence for his Broadway acting debut in the original production of Tony Kushner's two-part epic play Angels in America (1993–1994) for which he received a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play nomination. He has since acted in acclaimed Broadway revivals of Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart (2011) and Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie (2017).
L'Illusion comique is a comedic play written by Pierre Corneille in 1636. In its use of meta-theatricality (plays-within-the-play), it is far ahead of its time. It was first performed at the Hôtel de Bourgogne in 1636 and published in 1639.
One Flea Spare, by Naomi Wallace, is a play set in plague-ravaged 17th Century London.
John Nevil Maskelyne was an English stage magician and inventor of the pay toilet, along with other Victorian-era devices. He worked with magicians George Alfred Cooke and David Devant, and many of his illusions are still performed today. His book Sharps and Flats: A Complete Revelation of the Secrets of Cheating at Games of Chance and Skill is considered a classic overview of card sharp practices. In 1914 he founded the Occult Committee, a group to "investigate claims to supernatural power and to expose fraud".
James Mark Wilson, known professionally as Mark Wilson, was an American magician and author. He was widely credited as the first major television magician, and in the process established the viability of illusion shows as a television format.
Broadway Play Publishing Inc (BPPI) was established in New York City in 1982 to publish and license the stage performance rights of contemporary American plays. The Broadway Play Publishing Inc catalog consists of over 1,200 plays and over 400 authors, such as: Constance Congdon, María Irene Fornés, A. R. Gurney, Tony Kushner, Neil LaBute, Richard Nelson, Eric Overmyer, José Rivera, Naomi Wallace, and many others. Its authors have been produced on Broadway and Off, in London's West End, and in theaters across the United States and around the world. They have won Nobel Prizes, Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Obie Awards, the MacArthur Genius Grant, Guggenheim Fellowships, and National Endowment for the Arts grants. Christopher W.D. Gould is the current publisher, and Michael Q. Fellmeth is the current executive director.
Florian Zeller is a French novelist, playwright, theatre director, screenwriter, and film director. He wrote over a dozen plays, that have been staged worldwide and have made him one of the most celebrated contemporary playwrights.
Charles Fulton Oursler Sr. was an American journalist, playwright, editor and writer. Writing as Anthony Abbot, he was an author of mysteries and detective fiction. His son was the journalist and author Will Oursler (1913–1985).
The Bamberg Magical Dynasty were a Dutch family of magicians, consisting of six generations of Bambergs. The Bambergs were an upper middle-class unorthodox Jewish family. Three Bambergs were court magicians who entertained the Dutch royal family, and many of the Bambergs were also trained actors. This chain was unbroken for 165 years, from the 18th to the 20th centuries.
David Tobias "Theodore" Bamberg was an itinerant magician who traveled with his full evening magic show from the early to mid part of the 20th century. In Bamberg's autobiography, Robert Parrish wrote in the introduction that no other great illusionist could match Bamberg's skill. The Fu Manchu show was known for its comedy, drama, and color.
Magic, which encompasses the subgenres of illusion, stage magic, and close-up magic, among others, is a performing art in which audiences are entertained by tricks, effects, or illusions of seemingly impossible feats, using natural means. It is to be distinguished from paranormal magic which are effects claimed to be created through supernatural means. It is one of the oldest performing arts in the world.
