#methuen drama

[ilikethisacompletelynormalamount]

Anyone who's planning to see Vanya (after the October 9th release date) and wants to be familiar with the text, or saw it already and didn't get a copy in theater, but wants a souvenir, or just happen to be one of the many fans who won't get to see it (but totally aren't jealous and bitter about missing out) you can now pre-order a copy of the Vanya play text adapted by Simon Stephens, after Chekhov's Uncle Vanya , featuring Andrew Scott on the cover.

Available at Bloomsbury, Amazon and other book retailers on October 9th 2023, available for pre-order now.

Bloomsbury preorder

Amazon preorder

[dynamobooks]

Martin McDonagh: The Beauty Queen of Leenane (1996)

[petnews2day]

Plaistow Firefighters Association Hosts Annual Dog Rabies Clinic and Other Pet Services Saturday

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/peFFc

Plaistow Firefighters Association Hosts Annual Dog Rabies Clinic and Other Pet Services Saturday

This Saturday is Plaistow, N.H.’s annual dog rabies clinic which will also feature dog licensing and an array of pet services. Besides rabies vaccination at $20 per dog with Dr. Sarah Grossman of All Creatures Mobile Vet, paid services include micro-chipping, $35, and nail clipping, $10. The town clerk’s office will be on hand for […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/peFFc #DogNews #Advertising, #Andover, #Audio, #Boston, #Broadcast, #Broadcasting, #Community, #Drama, #Essex, #FCc, #Groveland, #Haverhill, #Hear, #HomepageFeatured, #InternetRadio, #ITunes, #Lawrence, #Listen, #Local, #Lowell, #Lpfm, #Massachusetts, #MerrimackValley, #Methuen, #Multimedia, #Music, #National, #News, #NorthShore, #Plaistow, #Public, #Radio, #RealAudio, #Realplayer, #Region, #Regional, #Rockingham, #Sandown, #Shoutcast, #Suffolk, #Top40, #Voice, #Weather, #Whav, #WhavNet, #Winamp, #Worldwide

[hayleylovesjessica]

Two things I'm looking forward to today: watching the season 2 finale of Silo once my partner comes home from work and receiving another book from Amazon. Specifically, I ordered the Methuen World Classics edition of The Complete Plays of Oscar Wilde. I have both the Penguin Classics and Oxford World's Classics editions of The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, which contain, in addition to Earnest, Lady Windermere's Fan, A Woman of No Importance, An Ideal Husband, and Salome (as well as the unfinished A Florentine Tragedy in the case of the Penguin Classics edition). The Methuen edition contains all those plays and the lesser-known dramatic works on the margins of the Wilde canon: Vera, or The Nihilists, The Duchess of Padua, and La Sainte Courtisane. Of course, Oxford University Press has an ongoing project, "The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde," which is currently up to volume 11. Four of the books published so far in the series are dedicated to Wilde's plays, and one of them is a critical edition of something called Lady Lancing, which I think (?) was Wilde's original version of Earnest. I'd love to buy the critical edition and read it, but these books are crazy expensive. To wit, the four drama volumes currently available cost nearly $1000. That's bonkers. Maybe I'll get the critical edition of Earnest and Lady Lancing, which are bundled together for a mere $335, but IDK. That's a lot of money to spend.

[mcbunnyboy]

dreamtime playland

here are new housing developments in the strange version of my dream town of methuen and salem. there is one house i find myself in, with my brother, but it’s not my house? its night time. this house is pretty bare. not particularly homely. it’s a tall mcmansion type thing, though mansion isn’t right. a simple facade, vinyl tiling painted a dull blue. no character. there is a jazz/soul/blue band practicing in the living room. a story and plot of sort is making its way into the details but i’m not sure i quite remember. only that there was a ghostly, phantasmic essence to it, then we found ourselves outside, looking for either drugs or ghosts.

me and mark found a show on netflix. it was a new season and we had watched a few episodes of before. the episodes i had watched before were about a group of sort of aimless teenagers that that started working at a K-mart that was relatively new. one of the people was this handsome edgy trash dreamy guy who ill call Deames. the first few episode were only five minutes long and were originally youtube shorts.

weirdly, the show is also part of my life. earlier that day at the K-mart, me and mark weng. mostly to use the bathroom. we were on rt. 28, which is a big route in salem nh with chain restaurants and retails. now they decided to create a new skyline of giant sky scrapers of cartoon characters that lined the road. these were hundreds of feet tall and made and were colorful and new. a few characters used were Flinstones character, especially Fred and that purple dinosaur. Rugrats. Ten and Stimpy. Care Bears. giant statues lining the street, that followed an old train rail that is no longer in use that later became a rail trail.

the show now finds us in the auto garage part of the K-mart, where we find the edgy heart throb who was in the earlier episodes had gotten less attractive, greasier. imagine syd barrett in his early pink floyd days versus his reclusive years. he was weird a green tank top and had tattoos and was now bald, no longer sporting the black oily locks that defined his style in the earlier episodes. but he still seemed in similar young aimless, edgy spirits, only a little sadder.

we find now that a group of people have begun developing a diy community that would have wrestling matches in the large auto repair shop at night and later host shows. in this episode there was a round table show, where bands set up on different spots and one plays a song, then we move to the next band, and they each play one song: they opened with a 90s hit like gin blossoms or something, then a punk band.

the place seemed like a mixture of a home and the garage of the K-mart, probably morphing as my dream went on. but soon we found ourselves in a parking lot at night, lit by the moon, and we walked into the middle of a small grove of pine trees where we smoked weed.

after the episode finished i looked at mark and said “damn that show was fucking sick.” we decided to watch another episode:

was there more? probably. it connected in a magnificent way. the show continued and had characters that were well rounded. its style was probably a cross of teen comedy and teen drama, mixed with surrealistic and edgy experimental like harmony korine, larry clark with a hint of lynch (rip). and then a splash of something yet unseen, but maybe youtube style lost and obscure footage.

[kitchen-light]

'You are all alone now, Creon,' observes the Chorus, who has the last word: 'A great, sad peace descends on Thebes, and on the empty palace where Creon begins to wait for death.' Yet while waiting for that death, Creon still has to rule; life has to go on. He exits with the page to attend a council meeting called for five o'clock. As the curtain falls, the last action belongs to the guards, who slam their cards down on the table and drink their wine. The events of the day are of little concern to them.

Ted Freeman, from the Plot Notes to Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, Methuen Drama | Bloomsbury Classics, 2005

[newyorktheater]

Careful The Spell You Cast: How Stephen Sondheim Extended the Range of the American Musical

Stephen Sondheim was not a cynic; he was a romantic. That in a nutshell is the thesis Ben Francis puts forth in Careful the Spell You Cast: How Stephen Sondheim Extended the Range of the American Musical (Methuen Drama, 184 pages), a compact critical analysis of Sondheim’s musicals, organized in nine chapters, each one titled after a major mentor or collaborator, from Oscar Hammerstein to James…

[jaynedolluk]

Rest in Power Lexa Vonn. Sad to hear of her death - she was an amazing woman

[mariocki]

King: Bishop, let us be frank with each other. Is the Church very interested in holy men?

Folliot: [with a ghost of a smile] The Church has been wise for so long, your Highness, that she could not have failed to realise that the temptation of saintliness is one of the most insidious and fearsome snares the devil can lay for her priests. The administration of the realm of souls, with the temporal difficulties it carries with it, chiefly demands, as in all administrations, competent administrators. The Roman Catholic Church has its saints, it invokes their benevolent intercession, it prays to them. But it has no need to create others. That is superfluous. And dangerous.

-

Jean Anouilh, Becket (tr. Lucienne Hill, 1960)

[theabigailthorn]

will there be a script of The Prince available to read/purchase?

There already is, you can order it from Methuen Drama! https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/prince-9781350352377/

[dynamobooks]

Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons (1960)

[petnews2day]

‘Harry’ Takes Home Top Honors as Haverhill’s Top Dog for 2024

New Post has been published on https://petn.ws/BpzrG

‘Harry’ Takes Home Top Honors as Haverhill’s Top Dog for 2024

“Harry,” a six-year-old male German Shepherd is Haverhill’s Top Dog. Harry, owned by Joann Licari, took first place in the third Annual “Haverhill Top Dog” contest conducted by the Haverhill City Clerk Kaitlin M. Wright’s office. Harry is now proudly displaying dog license #1. Wright thanked those that participated and congratulated the winners. Karma. (Courtesy […]

See full article at https://petn.ws/BpzrG #DogNews #Advertising, #Andover, #Audio, #Boston, #Broadcast, #Broadcasting, #Community, #Drama, #Essex, #FCc, #Groveland, #Haverhill, #Hear, #HomepageFeatured, #InternetRadio, #ITunes, #Lawrence, #Listen, #Local, #Lowell, #Lpfm, #Massachusetts, #MerrimackValley, #Methuen, #Multimedia, #Music, #National, #News, #NorthShore, #Plaistow, #Public, #Radio, #RealAudio, #Realplayer, #Regional, #Rockingham, #Sandown, #Shoutcast, #Suffolk, #Top40, #Voice, #Weather, #Whav, #WhavNet, #Winamp, #Worldwide

[linearao3]

Equity Rules

(E, 1/1)

For #Kinktober: Dirty talk, glove kink, rape play

Rey took a risk casting a non-union actor. He gave a great audition, but can she get the performance she wants out of him?

(CW: actor-director relationship, rape play (but it’s literally a play?))

Equity Rules

[antigonick]

sarah kane recs:

methuen drama has a nice complete works of her 5 published plays & short film

Graham Saunders & Laurence DeVos’ Sarah Kane in Context

Love Me or Kill Me: Sarah Kane and the Theatre of Extremes by Graham Saunders

About Kane: The Playwright and the Work by Graham Saunders

theatre & violence by lucy nevitt references phaedra’s love & goes further in depth with the idea of power dynamics around staging violence

aleks sierz - In-Yer-Face Theatre: British Drama Today

she’s mentioned briefly in Dan Rebellato & Graham Eatough’s The Suspect Culture Book

Dan Rebellato also did a 1hr interview with her here and a documentary with her friends and collaborators here

her unpublished monologues are in the archive at the university of bristol, if you wanna check ‘em out

there's A LOT of material out there, so i've tried to limit it to the most relevant stuff. i always look forward to sharing & teaching her work, especially to undergrads. my favourites are phaedra's love & 4.48 psychosis.

Thank you so much, this is gold! 4.48 Psychosis and Phaedra’s Love are my favourites too, and that interview—I need to find some time to listen to it ASAP. I hope it’s okay if I share and keep this here?

[thezfc]

Did you check this author named Tom? he has Daily Inspirational Bible Verses and Quotes (Part 1 and 2). So he goes both extremes. And search Tom's name, gives the audio books from audibles. Also a book with forewords by Tom "The Methuen Drama Book of Modern Monologues for Men: Teens to Thirties (Oberon Modern Plays)" I can totally see him writing this foreword

He has range 🤣😂

[filmista]

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)

"Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. It was the board I noticed first. It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it. I can dominate it. And it's predictable, so if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame." 

It’s not often that something beautiful originates in the dark basement of an orphanage. Eight-year-old Beth Harmon (Isla Johnston) gets to know the stoic janitor Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp) when she cleans board erasers over his leaking sink. 

There’s a wooden board on the table, and from the moment Harmon's gaze falls on Shaibel's chess pieces, her life is dominated by a want to understand and dominate in the age-old thinking game.

At night she imagines the positions of horses and runners sliding across black and white surfaces on the ceiling of her dormitory, a hallucination fuelled by the rigorous pattern of the Methuen Home in which the orphans are administered sedatives on a daily basis.

In her later life, this imagination always helps her to be a few moves ahead of her opponents, but the question remains whether she ultimately won’t succumb to addictive substances at the same time.

The Queen's Gambit tells the coming of age story of a chess prodigy. The series is based on the 1983 book of the same name by Walter Tevis. Tevis, who himself played chess competitively in his youth, named the book after a well-known opening maneuver of the game.

To laymen, such a storyline may sound boring, but the makers of The Queen's Gambit still managed to turn it into a compelling drama about a young woman who tries to get into a male stronghold in the 1960s. 

It’s admirable that the series really deals with all aspects of chess and that it does so in a visually compelling way. From scholar’s mate to the pitfalls of the Sicilian defence. Also discussed are the mental pressure, the tricks, the tics, the opening strategies, end games, seconds and the loneliness of being at the top.

At its core though, The Queen's Gambit is about addiction and obsession. Already at the orphanage, Beth at the age of 9 becomes dependent on sedatives that give her visions of imaginary chess games and winning strategies  on the ceiling. As a teenager, she also becomes an alcoholic which threatens her chance at a chess title. 

Anya Taylor Joy, previously seen as the sophisticated Emma (2020) in the film adaptation of Jane Austen's costume drama, stars in the role of the young adult Beth Harmon who struggles with an unbridled addiction. The series gains momentum when the 14-year-old orphan is adopted by the Wheatley couple, she trades the austere home for the floral wallpaper, stiff hairstyles and colourful dresses of the American 1960s.

The piano-playing foster mother Alma (Marielle Heller) fills the lack of perspective and the void left by her absent husband with wine and sedatives, a welcome discovery for Beth. When her foster mother finds out that there’s money to be made from chess tournaments, they travel the world together. The game between the stoic adolescent who wants to become a grandmaster at all costs and the foster mother who profits from her success and unscrupulously turns her dear daughter into a drinking buddy, is cleverly played out.

The characters aren’t just black and white. The manipulating foster mother also has a soft side, the childhood trauma that caused Beth to lose her biological mother becomes more apparent the more often she runs up against her own demons and limits. Yet it’s striking that director Scott Frank has chosen not to give the heavier themes the upper hand. 

The impact of the oppressive sexism and segregation of the 1960s remains, sometimes too much so, in the background. Frank's world of lively chess fanatics speaks especially of the love for the game, the hyper-concentration with which, the struggling Beth beats her opponents continues to fascinate.

Director Scott Frank who previously made Little Man Tate, about an exceptionally gifted little boy. He based his new series on the 1983 book by Walter Tevis (who also wrote The Hustler and The Man Who Fell To Earth). The author also struggled with addictions and a permanently displaced state of mind.

In seven parts the character of Beth, a star role by Anya Taylor-Joy, is thoroughly explored. The relationship with her stepmother is important, as is the absence of a father, in a parallel with chess geniuses Bobby Fischer and Gary Kasparov. 

The Queen's Gambit was a sought-after book among filmmakers for many years. One day Heath Ledger would make his directorial debut with it, but his death put an end to the project. Actually, the story lends itself quite well to a seven-part series, which extensively discusses the beautiful and more challenging sides of chess.