 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(February 2020) |
David Staller | |
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| Born | November 16, 1955 Glencoe, Illinois, USA |
| Occupation(s) | Actor, Director, Artistic Director of Gingold Theatrical Group |
| Years active | 1973–Present |
David Staller (born November 16, 1955) is an American theatre director and actor. He is the founding artistic director of the Off-Broadway theatre company, Gingold Theatrical Group.
Staller was born in Glencoe, Illinois. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, studied acting under Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen, and studied cello at the University of Southern California. [1]
His godmother was British actress Hermione Gingold. As a tribute to her, Staller named Gingold Theatrical Group after her. [2]
As an actor, Staller's appearances on Broadway include Cabaret, where he originated the role of Ernst Ludwig in the 1987 revival, Evita, and Hello, Dolly! [3]
Staller has made over 50 appearances Off-Broadway, including performances in Gas Light, for which he received a Drama League Citation for Distinguished Performer, Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Bald Soprano, and Hay Fever. [4]
Staller became the first person to direct all of George Bernard Shaw's 65 plays, including his last unfinished work, Why She Would Not, wherein Staller commissioned writers Israel Horovitz, David Cote, Michael Feingold, Jeremy McCarter and Robert Simonson to write their own endings to the piece. [5]
Staller has directed six off-Broadway play by George Bernard Shaw for Gingold Theatrical Group: Caesar and Cleopatra (2019), Heartbreak House (2018), Widowers' Houses (2016), Major Barbara (2014), You Can Never Tell (2013) and Man and Superman (2012). All productions have been filmed by the New York Public Library of Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. [6]
Staller continues to write, particularly as a script doctor for several film and television production companies. He wrote his own one man show, Noel and Cole, which he performed at multiple venues, including Carnegie Hall.[ citation needed ] Using an extensive amount of research, Staller has adapted all of George Bernard Shaw's for Gingold Theatrical Group using Shaw's original hand-written manuscripts, letters, production scripts, notes, and in-person interviews with many of those who knew and worked with him including Maurice Evans, Robert Morely, Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Deborah Kerr, and others. [7]
In 2006, Staller founded Gingold Theatrical Group, a New York based theater company that presents works based on George Bernard Shaw's humanitarian precepts. They present monthly script-in-hand performances at New York City’s Symphony Space, produce off-Broadway productions, and partner with several New York educational programs. [8]
Staller has directed performances of all of Bernard Shaw’s 65 plays. [9]
Staller leads discussions on Shaw and human rights. [10]
Staller does voice-over work, radio and television campaigns, documentaries, and was a voice actor in David Chesky's animated musical film The Mice War. [11]
Staller and Robert Osborne, a journalist and host of Turner Classic Movies, were in a relationship for 20 years prior to Osborne's death, in 2017; it was Staller who confirmed Osborne's death to the media. [12]
Arms and the Man is a comedy by George Bernard Shaw, whose title comes from the opening words of Virgil's Aeneid, in Latin: Arma virumque cano.
An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer than 100.
Man and Superman is a four-act drama written by George Bernard Shaw in 1903, in response to a call for Shaw to write a play based on the Don Juan theme. Man and Superman opened at the Royal Court Theatre in London on 21 May 1905 as a four-act play produced by the Stage Society, and then by John Eugene Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker on 23 May, without Act III. A part of the third act, Don Juan in Hell, was performed when the drama was staged on 4 June 1907 at the Royal Court. The play was not performed in its entirety until 1915, when the Travelling Repertory Company played it at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh.
Gas Light is a 1938 thriller play, set in 1880s London, written by the British novelist and playwright Patrick Hamilton. Hamilton's play is a dark tale of a marriage based on deceit and trickery, and a husband committed to driving his wife insane in order to steal from her.
Widowers' Houses (1892) was the first play by George Bernard Shaw to be staged. It premièred on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, under the auspices of the Independent Theatre Society — a subscription club, formed to escape the Lord Chamberlain's Office censorship.
Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902. It is one of the three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898, alongside The Philanderer and Widowers' Houses. The play is about a former prostitute, now a madam, who attempts to come to terms with her disapproving daughter. It is a problem play, offering social commentary to illustrate the idea that the act of prostitution was not caused by moral failure but by economic necessity. Elements of the play were borrowed from Shaw's 1882 novel Cashel Byron's Profession, about a man who becomes a boxer due to limited employment opportunities.
Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented on stage in German. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in London's West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower-girl Eliza Doolittle.
Heartbreak House: A Fantasia in the Russian Manner on English Themes is a play written by George Bernard Shaw, first published in 1919. The English language premiere was at the Garrick Theatre in November 1920. According to A. C. Ward, the work argues that "cultured, leisured Europe" was drifting toward destruction, and that "Those in a position to guide Europe to safety failed to learn their proper business of political navigation". The "Russian manner" of the subtitle refers to the style of Anton Chekhov, which Shaw adapts.
Robert Cuccioli is an American actor and singer. He is best known for originating the lead dual title roles in the musical Jekyll & Hyde, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Joseph Jefferson Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, and the Fany Award for outstanding actor in a musical.
Anthony Wynn is an American author of Conversations at Warp Speed and co-author of Remember With Advantages: Chasing "The Fugitive" and Other Stories from an Actor's Life, and as playwright authored Bernard and Bosie: A Most Unlikely Friendship.
Francis Edward Paxton Whitehead was an English actor and theatre director. He was nominated for a Tony Award and a Drama Desk Award for his performance as Pellinore in the 1980 revival of Camelot. Whitehead had many Broadway roles. He was also known for his film roles and was well known, especially to U.S. and television audiences in general, for his many guest appearances on several U.S. shows such as portraying Bernard Thatch on The West Wing and often appeared in recurring roles and guest appearances on major sitcoms of the 1990s, such as Frasier, Caroline in the City, Ellen, 3rd Rock from the Sun, The Drew Carey Show, Mad About You, and Friends.
The Irish Repertory Theatre is an Off Broadway theatre founded in 1988.
Robert Lloyd Stanton is an American actor, director and playwright.
A play is a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between characters and is intended for theatrical performance rather than mere reading. The creator of a play is known as a playwright.
Epitaph for George Dillon is an early John Osborne play, one of two he wrote in collaboration with Anthony Creighton. It was written before Look Back in Anger, the play which made Osborne's career, but opened a year after at Oxford Experimental Theatre in 1957, and was then produced at London's Royal Court theatre, where Look Back in Anger had debuted. It transferred to New York City shortly afterwards and garnered three Tony Award nominations.
Louis James Calvert was a British stage and early film actor of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and an actor-manager. He is perhaps best remembered today for having created roles in plays by George Bernard Shaw and for appearing in King John (1899), the earliest known example of any film based on Shakespeare,
Why She Would Not: A Little Comedy (1950) is the last play written by George Bernard Shaw, comprising five short scenes. The play may or may not have been completed at his death. It was published six years later.
Gingold Theatrical Group, often abbreviated as GTG, is a New York-based non-profit theatre company. It was founded in 2006 by American actor and director David Staller. Its mission is to present works that carry the humanitarian values of writer and critic George Bernard Shaw. It presents several series, including the annual festival Shaw New York, and the monthly series of staged readings, Project Shaw. Through this series, GTG became the first theatre group to present all 65 of George Bernard Shaw's plays.
Stephen Brown-Fried is an American Stage Director. He is primarily known for his work on New York and regional stages. He currently serves as the chair of the New School of Drama's Directing program. Additionally, he is a lecturer at the Yale School of Drama. He is the Associate Director at the Off-Broadway Non-Profit Gingold Theatrical Group.
Jack Koenig is an American actor best known for his work in theatre and television. He is most familiar to audiences for playing Michael Conway on Sex and The City, Dr. Levin in The Blacklist, Ronald Danzer in Gotham, Defense Attorney Swift in Law & Order, and Grant Ward in Madoff. For his work in the Off-Broadway production Tabletop, he was awarded the 2001 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Ensemble Performance.