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British literature History 16th century British literature History 17th century Drama 16th century Drama 17th century Irish literature History 16th century Irish literature History 17th century Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Drama Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Literary style Theater History 16th century Theater History 17th centuryFilter By Authors
Wills, GarryFilter By Subjects
British literature History 16th century British literature History 17th century Drama 16th century Drama 17th century Irish literature History 16th century Irish literature History 17th century Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Drama Shakespeare, William 1564-1616 Literary style Theater History 16th century Theater History 17th centuryFilter By Authors
Wills, GarrySummary: Prolific Swedish playwright August Strindberg wrote over 70 plays in his lifetime, most obsessively preoccupied with the "battle of the sexes." In this BBC production, Michael Simpson directs Strindberg's classic tragedy of class and sexual warfare. The neurotic, aristocratic daughter (Janet McTeer) of a count breaks off her engagement to her irresolute fiancé. Despondent and bored, she idly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
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Summary: Diana Rigg is the manipulative Hedda, who will not or cannot conform to what society considers "normal" for a woman. The arrival of an ex-lover on the scene gives her the opportunity to determine someone else's fate-but of course that is not what Ibsen was writing about. With Denis Lill and Philip Bond, in the adaptation by John Osborne.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
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Summary: For biographer Michael Holroyd, playwright George Bernard Shaw is practically an alter ego. Using archival footage and Holroyd's painstaking detective work, this intriguing program questions the extent to which Shaw's life and art fed upon each other, addressing issues including the effects of the triangle between his father, his mother, and Vandeleur Lee on his plays, as seen in Misalliance...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: In 1925 Luigi Pirandello brought his troupe to England as part of a worldwide tour. This program re-creates one day in London as "The Einstein of the Theater" watches his plays and, away from the footlights, confronts the paradoxical nature of his life. Portions of Six Characters in Search of an Author; Henry IV; Right You Are, If You Think You Are; and The Rules of the Game are meticulously...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2009
View online at AVOD
Summary: Richard Brinsley Sheridan's witty comedy of manners The Rivals is one of only a small handful of 18th-century plays that continues to be produced-and studied-to this day. This classic BBC film adaptation from 1986 launches Captain Absolute, Lydia Languish, Mrs. Malaprop, Sir Lucius O'Trigger, and the rest of the audacious cast into action once again as they pursue their conflicting agendas...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Summary: Henrik Ibsen scrutinized and interpreted human hearts and minds in such a manner as to prompt Sigmund Freud to create a typology based on the dramatist's principal characters. Yet the evidence of Ibsen's life argues that he himself lived with a dual nature that went largely unreconciled. This program seeks to understand the man known as "The Sphinx" by tracing his travels, examining excerpts...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Second only to Shakespeare, Henrik Ibsen is the most-performed playwright in the world. This program, as much a tribute to the art of theater as to the immortal Ibsen, reveals a perennial fascination with Norway's master playwright. Excerpts from A Doll's House, Peer Gynt, and other productions captured on film in the United States, Canada, Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Serbia, Iran,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This program, narrated by Ibsen biographer Michael Meyer, charts the development of Henrik Ibsen's style over four periods: his early years of failure; his epic dramas; his sociological plays, such as A Doll's House, Ghosts, and Rosmersholm; and his final plays, including Hedda Gabler, The Master Builder, and Little Eyolf, in which he dealt with the dark interior of the human soul. Televised...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: This dramatization of Henrik Ibsen's play Ghosts opens with Jakob Engstrand attempting to convince Regina, his daughter and a maid in the Alving household, to come work for him. She refuses, happy with her position in a proper household, but we are soon introduced to scandal and moral debate when we learn from Mrs. Alving that Regina is actually the daughter of the philandering late Mr. Alving...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2007
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Wills, Garry
Summary: A study of the three operas that Verdi adapted from Shakespeare: Macbeth, Otello, and Falstaff.
Format: text
Publisher / Publication Date: Viking 2011
Copies Available at Woodmere
1 available in Adult Non-fiction, Call number: 822.33 WILSummary: An intimate look inside a living time capsule, this program explores the planning and reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, presenting a day in the working life of the unique artistic institution. The video guides viewers through the facility, painstakingly designed and built to resemble the original Elizabethan playhouse, and offers commentary from the actors, artisans, and educators...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Men playing the stage roles of women is as old as the history of theater; in the tradition of Kabuki, the portrayal of female characters has become a tradition of its own. This program looks at the history of Kabuki and the role of women, and looks particularly at the dynastic development of the onnagata-the female impersonator-and the intricate techniques and details by which a thoroughly...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Philip Cumbus is the King of Navarre and Michelle Terry is the Princess of France in this performance of Love's Labour's Lost at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599. True to the play's original Renaissance staging and costume, this production is a festive parade of every weapon in the youthful Shakespeare's comic arsenal-excruciating...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
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Summary: As You Like It runs the glorious gamut of pastoral romance: disguises and love notes, poetry and brilliant conversation, gentle satire and full-on slapstick, and running throughout it all, passion! This staging-performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599-spotlights Naomi Frederick, Jack Laskey, Laura Rogers, Jamie Parker, and...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun. Performed at Shakespeare's Globe, London's faithful reconstruction of the open-air playhouse designed in 1599, Romeo and Juliet is arguably the best-loved of all love stories in Western literature. The play's masterful combination of lyricism, suspense, and dramatic changes of mood is dramatized by an...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Compelling dramatizations of key scenes from Shakespeare's tragedy are analyzed by two noted Shakespearean experts-Stanley Wells and Russell Jackson of the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon. Themes and topics include the motives of Lago, and whether his evil is as complete as most commentators suggest; Victorian objections to the interracial relationship between Othello and Desdemona;...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In the first program, each actor comments on the major scenes of the play, and, through excerpts from productions that range from the silent film era to the modern stage, we see various interpretations of those scenes. Trevor Nunn then interviews each actor about the source of his interpretation. The program includes both traditional and avant-garde productions.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 1900
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Summary: This work-the only Shakespeare tragedy considered to have its roots in the classics-is a study in contradiction. Though it is about the character of Brutus, it has Caesar as its dominant figure. This and other complexities and themes of the drama are investigated through the performance of key scenes by noted Shakespearean experts from the Shakespeare Centre and the Shakespeare Institute,...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Kenneth Branagh takes on Shakespeare's Twelfth Night with the Renaissance Theatre Company. The exemplary cast includes Richard Briers as Malvolio, Frances Barber as Viola, Caroline Langrishe as Olivia, Christopher Ravenscroft as Orsino, and James Saxon as Sir Toby Belch. The original music for this production is by Paul McCartney and Pat Doyle.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005
View online at AVOD
Summary: Is there a Shakespeare lover who does not know this superb film? Two entire generations were introduced to Shakespeare by this expansive production, which is as fresh and dramatic and deeply touching today as when first it ushered in the contemporary style of Shakespearean production and taught us to see the vast and rich panoply beyond the lines of Shakespeare's Henry V.
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: Shakespeare's tragic story of love, family feud, and double suicide is a masterwork woven with conflict, crisis, and counterstroke. In this program, prime scenes are dramatized and Stratford-upon-Avon Shakespearean experts Russell Jackson and Robert Smallwood dissect them and their major topics and themes. Discussed are the play's popular appeal; the importance of the balcony scene as core to...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2008
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Summary: In 1609, William Shakespeare published a collection of 154 sonnets, creating what is arguably the greatest lyric sequence in English literature-and at the center of this masterpiece lies a mystery that has endured for centuries. What are the identities of "the young man" and "the dark lady" to whom all but two of the sonnets allude? This moving performance brings to life the gritty reality of...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2006
View online at AVOD
Summary: In this program Trevor Nunn probes the underlying dynamics of the play. He examines the psychological dynamics of Hamlet, the oedipal conflict and Hamlet's madness, feigned or real. Nunn also explores the political questions that are raised in the play. The viewer learns that Hamlet is the most coveted of all performances in the classical repertoire, because, as Nunn says, "To act Hamlet...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2010
View online at AVOD
Summary: Shakespeare's troubled character comes to life in this program in the capable hands of leading scholars, as they discuss the major themes of the play, its plot, and the actions of its main characters. Analyzing key scenes, scholars Russell Jackson and Stanley Wells of Stratford-upon-Avon offer insights into the underlying meaning of Hamlet's eloquent soliloquies, as well as the play's eight...
Format: software, multimedia
Publisher / Publication Date: Films Media Group 2005