#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]

Robert Bolt: A Man for All Seasons (1960)

[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

[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/

[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)

[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 🤣😂

[dynamobooks]

David Mamet: Glengarry Glen Ross (1984)

[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

[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.

[arisefairsun]

Could you please list your favorite Romeo and Juliet editions?

Absolutely!

—Romeo and Juliet: Third Series, edited by René Weis (Bloomsbury)*.

—Romeo and Juliet: The Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Jill L. Levenson (Oxford University Press)*.

—Romeo and Juliet: The New Cambridge Shakespeare, edited by Blakemore Evans (Cambridge University Press).

—Romeo and Juliet, edited by T. J. B. Spencer (Penguin Classics).

—Romeo and Juliet, edited by Mike Gould (Collins Classics).

—Romeo and Juliet: The Pelican Shakespeare, edited by Peter Holland (Penguin Books).

—Romeo and Juliet, edited by Cedric Watts (Wordsworth Classics).

—Romeo and Juliet, edited by Burton Raffel and with an essay by Harold Bloom (Yale University Press).

—Romeo and Juliet, edited by Barbara A. Mowat and Paul Werstine (The Folger Shakespeare Library).

—Romeo and Juliet (Barnes & Noble Collectible Editions)*.

—Romeo and Juliet: Second Series, edited by Brian Gibbons (The Arden Shakespeare)*.

—Romeo and Juliet: Miniature Classics (R. C. Brady)*.

—The Tragedie of Romeo and Juliet: A Facsimile from the First Folio (Shakespeare’s Globe).

—The First Quarto of Romeo and Juliet, edited by Lukas Erne (Cambridge Univetsity Press)*.

Insightful non-fiction:

—Romeo and Juliet: Language and Writing, by Catherine Belsey (Bloomsbury)*.

—Romeo and Juliet: A Critical Reader, edited by Julia Reinhard Lupton (Bloomsbury).

—Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: The Relationship between Text and Film, written by Courtney Lehmann (Methuen Drama).

R&J-related books worth reading:

—Romeo and Juliet: Original Text of Masuccio, Da Porto, Bandello, and Shakespeare, edited by Adolph Caso (Dante University of America Press)*.

—The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, written by Arthur Brooke.

—Romeo And/Or Juliet, written by Ryan North (Riverhead Books).

*These editions I simply cannot live without.

[dk-thrive]

Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, The bitch that bore him is in heat again.

This was the thing that nearly had us mastered;  Don't yet rejoice in his defeat, you men!  Although the world stood up and stopped the bastard, The bitch that bore him is in heat again. 

—Bertolt Brecht, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (Methuen Drama, November 15, 2013)