Eugene did so much for theatre; he also was the first American dramatist to regard the stage as a literary medium and the first U.S. playwright to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. In 1922, O'Neill brought his drama Anna Christie to the Broadway stage; this tale of a prostitute's return home netted the playwright his second Pulitzer Prize. O'Neill suffered a personal loss with the death of his brother the following year. By this time, the playwright had also lost both of his parents. But O'Neill's private struggles seemed to aid him in creating greater dramatic works for the stage, including Desire Under the Elms (1924) andStrange Interlude (1928).
Staging A Scene From William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet Introduction For my essay I' am going to take one scene from the play 'Romeo + Juliet' and discuss how I would stage it for a modern audience. The famous love story is one of the most successful of all time. It was written in 1595 and has been translated into many different languages. The writer, William Shakespeare is the most well-known play writer of all time. He has written such plays as: - The Tempest (Comedy), Richard III (History), Macbeth (Tragedy) and Hamlet (Tragedy): All of which are in theatres today.
For the first time Showboat would introduce a well written production with incorporated and advanced music and lyrics that furthered the plot. The caricature style of gaudy actions and unrealistic productions were gone. For the first time the plot was just as important as the music. The new format of an elevated production along with the controversial topics of the time shook the customs of musical theater. Showboat is often considered one of the most influential American productions because it made a timeless statement about the Civil War era culture of the American south and established a new genre of theater.
The Glass Menagerie opened in Chicago in 1944 and moved to Broadway the next year where the opening night audience cheered through twenty-four curtain calls. The Glass Menagerie did great and won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award. This play help Williams and was the first in a long string of successful writings for Tennessee Williams. Williams began to a have a lot of success. A Streetcar Named Desire won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
In his spare time, Bolt wrote radio and stage plays, but gained little recognition until he penned the script for his play Flowering Cherry (1957). His third play, A Man for All Seasons opened in 1960; the original production made actor Paul Scofield a star and was a hit on the London and Broadway stage. The publicity surrounding the production attracted the attention of movie producer Sam Spiegel who hired Bolt to completely revise recently exiled writer Michael Wilson's script for David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. (1962). The result was an Academy Award nomination for Bolt's script.
Baz Luhrmann's Film Techniques to Make Romeo and Juliet More Accessible to a Younger Audience The story of Romeo and Juliet has been added to and adapted to over the year's though different film productions, but none more spectacular and popular as the 'Blockbuster' Luhrmann created. Luhrmann turned an Elizabethan play into a modern day action packed film all could relate to and understand. Luhrmann turned a historical tragedy into an up-beat action packed love story. Luhrmann had an enormous potential for the movie he was to create, and also had confidence in making a success of it. He chose cast for the film wisely, a handsome leading man 'Leonardo Di Caprio' and the young appealing girl 'Claire Danes'.
The producer of the play Charles Feldman sold the production to the Warner Bros. The play was written by Tennessee Williams. Williams is considered the greatest Southern playwright and one of the greatest playwrights in the history of American Drama. Williams first play was ‘The Glass Menagerie” it was produced in 1945. Williams plays have been adapted to film starring screen greats like Marlon Brando who played Stanley and Elizabeth Taylor who appeared in the on screen play.
Comparing Different Productions of Romeo and Juliet William Shakespeare, a well-known dramatist wrote and directed many famous plays such as ‘Macbeth’ and ‘ AMid Summer’s Night Dream’ that made a great impact on his audience and resulted in Shakespeare becoming one of the world’s best-known dramatist. However, a tragic love story of Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet is probably his best-known theatrical production in which two teenagers fall in love, with a complication of hatred between their two families. During Shakespeare’s time, only a limited amount of people had access to the theatre that could watch on a fantastic production until a director, Franco Zeffirelli changed that. However, thirty years later another director by the name of Baz Luhrmann created another replica of ‘Romeo and Juliet,’ which would match the audience of today’s society. Both of these directors present their production in different ways due to the fact that they were affected by their culture.
(Fenster p.36) He decided to repeat the formula that worked well in Gone With the Wind and made a decision to purchase a war novel/diary from Margaret Wilder. Since You Went Away spawned from Wilder's novel, after Selznick spent many hours on developing the screenplay and hiring the right cast. The war film was a popular genre to produce during the war
Kenneth Branagh encountered an extremely difficult challenge when he began to refashion one of the greatest plays of all time, Hamlet, into film. Despite this challenge, Branagh was hugely successful in bringing his vision for Hamlet to life. It is obvious that Branagh greatly respects and admires Hamlet, so much so that he created an unabridged film of the play. This translated to the film having an uncut running time of four hours and two minutes (IMDb, n.d.). In addition to directing the film, Branagh skillfully portrays the role of Hamlet himself.