Theatre Royal

essay I will discuss how the power of drama and theatre affected the Renaissance. I intend to go through the changes of the theatre at this time, and how these changes came about. I will examine whether the power structure shifted during the Renaissance and I question as to who held the power to make changes in theatre. I will use the examples of Sir Thomas More and Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe to illustrate the changes that occurred in theatre during the Renaissance period. The…

Eyebrows might be raised at the Royal Court staging a play by its own press officer. However, Anoushka Warden’s 75-minute monologue, beautifully performed by Patsy Ferran, stands on its own two feet as a breathtakingly candid account of a teenager’s wounded fury at her mother’s surrender to a spiritual cult. Billed as “an unreliable version of a true story filtered through a hazy memory and vivid imagination”, it runs out of steam towards the end but is sustained by its mix of wit and anger.…

Tale-danda Godugunuri Prasad When Girish Karnad wrote the historical play Tughlaq, it created uproar in the Kannada theatre, the thrill of which no one has been able to forget. Then he wrote Tale-danda and became the centre of a controversy once again. Soon after the publication of Tale-danda, a play reading by the dramatist was organised at the Natya Shodh Sansthan, Kolkata. The spell of the drama was…

was seen (Leicester 2000: 78). Postmodernism also reached out into the theatre; many theatres started housing productions of a postmodern nature. Performance itself attempts to show the ‘real’ on stage; an imitation of life by identifiable acts taking place on stage and creating another world on stage in order to expose certain ‘truths’ about the ‘real’ (Stevens 2004: 99). When engaging about acting performances in the theatre (stylized in a postmodern way) there is usually a dissonance between…

famous ghost story written by Susan Hill, adapted for the stage by Stephen Mallatratt and directed by Robin Herford. It was performed at the Royal and Derngate Northampton theatre on the 13th of November 2014. I had read the novel before seeing the theatre production of the tale, and therefore I already knew about the story. However, I had heard that the theatre production made use of only two actors, and as there are significantly more characters in the story than just two, I was intrigued and…

This past weekend I went to view Southern Miss’s Trojan Barbie. This play was an amazing display of the range of talent in Southern Miss’s theatre department. As I stepped through the doors of Tatum Theatre, I was transported back to Ancient Troy. Along with the set, the preshow soundtrack made me excited for the play that I was about to see. When the lights dimmed and the play began, soldiers walked out from the vomitoriums and surrounded audience members. When the first solider yelled his line…

Commedia dell’Arte: The Foundation of Modern Comedy While the exact origins of Commedia dell’Arte are unknown, it is one of the most influential forms of theatre. It has been a foundation for comedic theatre since around 1545. This unique form of comedy has influenced writers and performers all over the world. Similarities to Commedia dell’Arte can be found in the writings of William Shakespeare, in the acting choices of some of the most famous comedians and even in modern day television. It has…

become an equity actor was that so I could become one if I was ever driven or skilled enough to do so. So truthfully this project was something that I needed to do and I said why not do it for a grade if I’m going to do all this work. The thing about theatre and being an actor that has always truly intrigued me was that, it allowed me to step away from the real world and pretend that I was not who I was actually. I could pretend that I was god, a king, a newspaper reporter or a…

In their book “Scenic Art for the Theatre: History, Tools and Techniques”, Susan Crabtree and Peter Beudert emphasized, “Don’t draw things; draw relationships. It’s so simple: just put every brush stroke in the right place.” The quotation basically summarizes the job of a scenic designer, who is responsible for bringing the world of the production onto the stage. The scenic designer (or set designer) is expected to fulfill five basic goals in order to design an overall concept for the play.…

constructed by having a play inside a play. The play had three acts describing different performances inside the play. The first act was on Monday 14 January 1982 at Grand Theatre, Weston-super-Mare; the act II was on Wednesday 13 February 1982 at Theatre Royal, Ashton-under-Lyne; and the act III was on Saturday 6 April 1982 at Municipal Theatre, Stockton-on-Tees. This critique focuses on how successful the characters were with their objectives, obstacles, and tactics. In this objective,…