Showing titles in Theatre

Bad Axe is the story of a woman accused of murdering her husband at a military outpost in the Old West. Did hostile Indians force her to scalp him as revenge for his brutality, or did she kill him out of frustration with her plight as a soldier’s wife? An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring John Castellanos, Harry Hamlin, Amy Irving, Peter Jacobs, and Jessica Walter. Recorded before a live audience.

A wistful look back at a young Hispanic woman’s “MGM”, which stands for “My Grandmama”. The narrator often channels “MGM” for advice as she tries to succeed as a second-generation American. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Yolanda Lloyd, Tony Plana, Rose Portillo, Ruben Sierra and Renée Victor. Directed by Peggy Shannon. Recorded before a live audience in June 1992.

After World War II, an African American war vet brings home his Japanese bride. The family must learn to be tolerant of their new family member, while dealing with prejudice in the outside world. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Mary Bond Davis, Yvonne Farrow, Bonnie Oda Homsey, Peter A. Jacobs, Carl Lumbly, Vonetta McGee, Don Reed, Charlie Robinson, and Patricia Thompson. Directed by Peggy Shannon. Recorded before a live audience in Santa Monica, CA, in January, 1991.

Harry Shearer’s fantasy about a World’s Fair held in Kansas City. Told in quick blackouts, it resembles a profane Simpsons episode. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Fran Adams, David Arnott, Lewis Arquette, James Avery, Hank Azaria, Dan Castellaneta, Timothy Fall, David L. Lander, Tom Leopold, Edie McClurg, Julie Payne, Mary Kay Place, John Randolph, Erika Schickel, Harry Shearer, and Fred Willard. Directed by Harry Shearer. Recorded before a live audience in February, 1995.

Harry Shearer’s parody of a presidential election. In this fantasy, Bob Dole Jr. faces off against a wrestler named Greenberg, as they fight for one family’s votes by camping out in their living room. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Fran Adams, Ed Begley Jr., Judyann Elder, Arye Gross, Daniel Passer, Richard Masur, Harry Shearer, Fred Willard, and Kenny Williams. Directed by Harry Shearer. Recorded before a live audience.

A comedy-drama about the good-hearted workers at North Shore Fish, a seafood processing plant in Gloucester, Massachusetts. When a government inspector lays down the law, their jobs and lives face irrevocable changes. An L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring Kristin Ace, Karen Caplan, Laura Sigrid Crook, Heidi J. Dallin, John Fiore, Melissa Fitzgerald, Mary Klug, Marina Re and M.H. Rogers. Directed by Grey Johnson. Recorded before a live audience in March 1993.

The dreary aspects of Soviet housing and one family’s attempt to “exchange” its tiny Moscow apartment for a larger one. Adapted from a novella by the respected Russian writer Yuri Trifanov, as translated by playwright Michael Frayn. Translated and adapted by Michael Frayn. Directed by Robert Robinson. Recorded before a live audience in Santa Monica, CA in April, 1992.

Joyce Carol Oates' hilarious take-off on a classic Southern play begins when liberated Hedda arrives home to visit the family estate, ruled by the family’s tyrannical patriarch, “Tiny” Culligan. Tiny doesn’t know what to make of Hedda’s intellectual boyfriend, Saul. But then, Saul doesn’t know what to make of Hedda’s sister, the slinky Maggie, who finds Jewish professors very sexy indeed. A full cast L.A. Theatre Works performance featuring: Charles Durning, Arthur Hanket, Gary Kroeger, Marsha Mason, Priscilla Pointer, William Schallert and JoBeth Williams.

This thrilling production of one of Algren’s best-known stories traces the gritty lives of Polish youths in the Chicago slums of the 1940s. A full-cast performance featuring Kurt Brocker, Richard Cotovsky, Sharon Gopfert, Andrew Hawkes, Jonathan Lavan, Loren Lazerine, Robert Maffia, Guy Massey, G. Riley Mills, Turk Muller, Lara Phillips, and Andy Roski.

Michael and Anna, best friends and next door neighbors during childhood, accidentally meet again as adults. In an all-white room, two people reenact their childhood fears, fantasies and mutual love as a chilling secret is revealed. Featuring Mary Stuart Masterson and Steven Weber.

Light Up the Sky is a fast-paced, hilarious and ultimately loving look inside show business, set just before and immediately after a Broadway bound play meets its first audience. A full-cast performance featuring: Ian Barford, Patrick Clear, Shannon Cochran, Kyle Colerider-Krugh, Matt DeCaro, Kevin Gudahl, Deirdre Lovejoy, Mariann Mayberry, Phyllis Newman and Steve Pickering.

> Dreams of Home is a surreal urban fantasy about two lost souls on a subway platform, attempting to salvage their dignity as their eccentric host taunts them. A full-cast performance featuring Lisa Marie Ackel, Noe Cuellar, Frankie Davila, Laurie Martinez, Rita Moreno, and Juan A. Ramirez.

Demons is a free adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, set in modern times. In Doctor Faustus a learned Doctor of Divinity sells his soul to the devil Mephistophilis for forbidden knowledge. In Demons, Dr Faustus has become Peter Proud, a professor of Christian values at Harvard Divinity School.

Written by José Rivera, recent Academy Award Nominee for The Motorcycle Diaries, Each Day Dies with Sleep is the story of a young woman's struggle to find an identity apart from the two men in her life: her father and her husband. Written in Rivera's typical satiric and super realistic style, this fantastical tragi-comedy leaps from coast to coast, and from one outrageous moment to the next.

Luck plays an important part in the careers of writers. In this book, David Lodge explores how his work was inspired and affected by unpredictable events in his life. In 1976, Lodge was pursuing a ‘twin-track career’ as novelist and academic. As a literary critic, he made serious contributions to the subject before carnivalising it in his comic-satiric novel Small World. The balancing act between his two professions was increasingly difficult to maintain, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his best-selling novel Nice Work.

Played out over the course of 10 years, Dix Tableaux is a story of friendship between two women in their 60s. Each year represents another reunion for Beverly and Addie, two participants in a series of annual tableaux sponsored by a museum in Dix, a small city in the South.

From their ruined garage, Jeff Ward and Doug Bost have been producing award-winning short radio plays that have been featured on National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, and Bavarian State Radio, as well as on local public radio stations across the country. The Union Signal Radio Theater Collection features 10 of Jeff and Doug's best productions.

In 2005, Anna Massey was awarded a CBE for services to drama.Daughter of the Canadian actor, Raymond Massey (perhaps best-known for his role as Dr Gillespie in the TV series Dr Killdare), and Adrianne Allen (also a very successful stage actress), drama was in her blood. Her brother, Daniel, was a much-acclaimed actor. And even her godfather was one of the great film directors of all time – John Ford.

Chi si ritira dal mondo, cosiddetto sociale, è il soggetto di questo bozzetto drammatico, dal titolo “Assente”. Tratta la vita di un individuo che, vicino all'età di venticinque anni, si rende conto del "vuoto" che la vita gli sta proponendo in maniera alquanto ingiustificata. È questa nuova condizione vitale che egli non sa più gestire, e che lo rende "distaccato" da tutto quello che prima lo attirava. L'antica Illusione (di quando aveva mille speranze, mille certezze, mille sogni) cede ora il posto ad una Delusione smisurata quanto la sua disperata nostalgia verso un Tempo andato e che non riesce più a ritrovare.

Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: "Method acting." The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method—what its author Justin Rawlins calls "methodness"—created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.