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Post by tod2 on Jan 27, 2014 9:51:42 GMT
Kerouac - you mentioned 'ticket brokers' in the West End. Could you explain a bit more for me please. I'm sure you don't mean 'ticket touts' which pull tickets out of their Dick Tracy coat pockets.....
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Post by Deleted on Jan 27, 2014 11:17:01 GMT
There are now dozens of "discount ticket agencies" in the Leicester Square area. In fact, that is practically the only commerce that exists on Cranbourn Street between the Leicester Square tube station and Leicester Square itself. There is also still the official "TKTS" outlet on the far side of the square.
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Post by lola on Feb 13, 2014 15:13:42 GMT
I understand that it's best to head straight for the TKTS booth and ignore the "agencies" enroute.
For my London trip so far, I have tickets for Jeeves & Wooster: Perfect Nonsense in the West End (just myself, a matinee while H's in class), La Fille du Regiment at ROH, and The Knight of the Burning Pestle at the Globe's recently opened indoor Sam Wanamaker Playhouse. There are some Spanish Golden Age plays (in English) at the Arcola Theatre I wouldn't mind seeing, like Punishment Without Revenge, and I'd also go back for One Man Two Govnors on Haymarket because we liked it so much last year.
H's roommate for this London semester is a theater major, and they've been to several West End plays so far, plus one at the Arcola. I'll wait and see what else I/we might fit in.
I'd love to see some opera when we're in Sevilla, but can't find anything. Since booking our flights there, I sometimes find myself humming:
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Post by Deleted on Feb 13, 2014 21:15:31 GMT
Lola, did you get any feedback from your daughter about "Mojo."
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Post by lola on Feb 14, 2014 20:15:41 GMT
Kerouac, I forget whether Mojo was sold out or just no more affordable tickets by the time they got down there. The four girls made a compromise midcourse correction and saw Mousetrap instead as a safe alternative that I imagine they liked well enough. Maybe the Anti-Mojo, edginess-wise.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 27, 2014 16:22:16 GMT
This is the message for World Theatre Day, 2014, by South African theatre artist Brett Bailey. It's (of course) a message about hope and survival and diversity. I find it most interesting that, as theatre has lost its place as a cultural influence in Western society over the last 100 years, it has retained its function as a powerful voice for change in the so-called third world. So, as I labour away in an increasingly marginalised art, I still have hope that it reaches people. Wherever and whenever I travel I try to see some indigenous, local theatre. It informs me about the character of a place as much as the architecture, fashion and food. www.world-theatre-day.org
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Post by Deleted on Mar 29, 2014 22:19:10 GMT
Being lucky enough to live in a city where theatre continues to thrive (albeit with the help of certain subsidies in many cases), it is difficult for me to perceive the decline of theatre in other places. Paris, for example, has twice as many theatres as NYC or London but most certainly not in terms of size -- many of them have 40 or 50 seats at best.
I truly regret my own decline in theatre going, which I try to compensate every year in Avignon by seeing 20 performances in 5 days. Nevertheless, I do have a performance lined up in about 10 days when I will go to see some sort of circus (?) style performance called La Meute.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2014 2:52:41 GMT
Well, I'm on a theatre binge right now, seeing four shows in four days. I don't usually see theatre like that unless there's a festival going on, but I've gone through a dry spell lately. I've seen:
* a post-colonial deconstruction of Macbeth featuring a choral sing-along of Jerusalem and taxidermied animals talking around a campfire * an exploration of embarrassing personal secrets and confessions * a show called Chelsea Hotel, featuring the music of Leonard Cohen * and tomorrow I'm seeing a musical called Floyd Collins, about a man trapped in a mine
Monday I start rehearsals for Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 3, 2014 2:19:57 GMT
That sounds like some whirlwind of interesting shows.
May I ask, what do you do in your line of work, Lizzy?
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2014 15:34:22 GMT
It was a whirlwind of interesting shows. It seems like right now I'm learning lines for a living, but in a couple of weeks I'll be saying them for audiences. I'm an actor.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 4, 2014 15:44:15 GMT
How fun! (Though I imagine there are drawbacks.) Mrs. Warren must be a very challenging and rewarding role. That's a play I'd like to see.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 4, 2014 17:17:47 GMT
Oh, there are definitely drawbacks, believe me! And yes, Mrs. Warren should be interesting. Right now, all I'm thinking about are the 8 pages of monologues I have to memorize.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 4, 2014 23:28:52 GMT
I did a little theatre in college and I thought the rehearsals and performances were a rollicking good time and I didn't want them to end. A lot of my fellow cast members didn't feel the same. Could've been due to the fact that they had spouses, responsibilities, and about 100 times more dialogue.
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Post by htmb on Apr 5, 2014 17:16:24 GMT
I admire the talents of anyone who can take a script and transform it into a performance that takes an audience to another place and time. I know there is a tremendous amount of work involved in the preparation, but I assume there also has to be a strong inner desire and innate talent to do a job well. One of my young family members auditioned for a NYC company this week and is waiting to hear if he made the cut.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2014 17:43:25 GMT
After a long hiatus, I am going to a performance next week at a festival that claims to be a mixture of hip-hop and circus. I am not quite sure what I will see.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2014 1:04:48 GMT
Oh, how exciting for your family member, htmb. Please let me know. (Of course, I have to say that, being a male, his chances are certainly better than if he was a girl - law of supply and demand). Please let me know.
Kerouac, it sounds like something I'd love. What festival is it?
These people from Montreal are in town right now, but I don't think I can go. Tant pis!
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 6, 2014 3:32:57 GMT
I saw Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, two of my favorite actors, perform two plays in repertory, Harold Pinter's No Man's Land and Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. They were amazing, they had such energy and sparkling chemistry. They were especially funny and touching in Godot.
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Post by htmb on Apr 11, 2014 0:47:54 GMT
Oh, how exciting for your family member, htmb. Please let me know. (Of course, I have to say that, being a male, his chances are certainly better than if he was a girl - law of supply and demand). Please let me know Thank you, Lizzy. I'm pleased to say he was accepted!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2014 2:46:22 GMT
Yay! Congratulations!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2014 5:33:29 GMT
Kerouac, it sounds like something I'd love. What festival is it? It's the "Festival Hautes Tensions" Anyway, I saw "La Meute" last night, which was excellent. It was a group of acrobats/musicians dressed in bath towels. Besides wondering if they are going to break their necks, you also wonder if the towels are going to fall off, although you figure that they are wearing some sort of protective item underneath just in case. But to clear that point up at the end, they do the full monty to show how much at risk they really were.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2014 11:16:42 GMT
Thanks, Kerouac. Isn't the internet great? It's made the sharing of live performance a little easier.
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Post by lola on Apr 19, 2014 1:08:15 GMT
We went to a performance at the Globe's new Sam Wannamaker Theatre, a smaller, covered, indoor candle-lit Globe just adjacent to the big outdoor one on the Thames in London, last month. Knight of the Burning Pestle, a riot. Play with a play within a play, first performed in 1607. We sat up near the musicians' gallery. Anything they do is first-rate, I'd say, plays of that general vintage.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2014 2:56:30 GMT
That sounds like lot of fun, lola. I wonder how they got the candle-lighting past the fire marshall. That play is a real old chestnut!
Edit: I just read The Guardian review of the show: metatheatrical romp they call it.
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Post by lola on Apr 20, 2014 21:45:51 GMT
It felt more like a romp than a chestnut, to us; neither had been familiar with it. The combination of early instrument music, costumes and tomfoolery was a lot of fun.
They light the chandeliers, then pull them up (and down and up in this play) with ropes, and there are candle sconces along the walls.
I went to a West End matinee performance of Jeeves & Wooster: Perfect Nonsense at the Duke of York, also nicely done, with Matthew Macfaydan and Stephen Magnan respectively and both really good. A third actor plays a butler; he and Macfaydan make fast costume changes to populate a stately home full of silly characters.
I'd like to see them both again.
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Post by Deleted on May 8, 2014 17:36:23 GMT
A dear friend of mine is active in a recent production of a Chekhov play based on Chekhov's letters to his lover over a period of many years. An ambitious project to be sure, I saw a preview this weekend at Tulane University. They are taking the production to Moscow and St. Petersburg next month if politics do not interfere. linklinkhttp://tulane.edu/news/newwave/043014_chekhov.cfm?RenderForPrint=1
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 0:59:04 GMT
Wow, congratulations to them. A little like coals to Newcastle, but it's always interesting to have another perspective on your county's cultural heritage.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 15:32:05 GMT
Challenging indeed, and admirable.
With regards to your Shaw endeavor, I can only say, I was part of an enclave of theater folk in the 70's and Shaw was both revered and feared.
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Post by Deleted on May 10, 2014 15:58:10 GMT
Well, the Shaw is all over now, and all that is left are the reviews.
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Post by htmb on May 11, 2014 0:21:01 GMT
I take it congratulations are in order! Well done!
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Post by Deleted on May 11, 2014 0:36:22 GMT
Thank you, htmb. That's the great thing about live performance, after it's done, there's nothing left but a little newsprint.
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