African American novelist Colson Whitehead has joined an exclusive club of only four authors who have won Pulitzer Prizes for literature for two different novels. After 2017’s prize for The Underground Railroad, Whitehead has been awarded the 2020 prize for The Nickel Boys, set in the Civil Rights era and based on the true story … Continue reading “Double Pulitzer for Colson Whitehead”
The next couple of free online streaming treats from the UK’s National Theatre are Frankenstein and Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra. The National Theatre has been making filmed shows available at 8 p.m. French time every Thursday, and available for a week on demand. The next two fit brilliantly with Shine Bright LLCE File 2 Freaky … Continue reading “Frankenstein and Antony and Cleopatra in Your Living Room”
You may know him best as Captain Picard in the series Star Trek, or Professor Xavier in the X-Men films, but Sir Patrick Stewart is a classically trained actor who was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 16 years. Currently in lockdown in Los Angeles, Stewart decided to start reciting a Shakespeare sonnet … Continue reading “Patrick Stewart Reads Shakespeare”
Evocative American painter Edward Hopper was to be the subject of an exhibition at the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland this spring. But since visitors can’t go to the museum, the museum can come to them online. Hopper’s paintings are wonderful jumping off points for creative writing, or, as film director Wim Wenders explains, for … Continue reading “Edward Hopper: Telling Stories”
What is the song being described here?
One of the nice results of the current lockdown, from an audience point of view, is that the UK’s National Theatre is going to be making selected shows available for a week at a time on YouTube. The National Theatre has announced a show a week for the month of April. They are filmed shows … Continue reading “Watch UK’s National Theatre Productions at Home!”
Judy Garland was a child singing star and a global star of stage and screen. Her starring role in The Wizard of Oz at 17 made her a household name. A new film stars Renée Zellweger playing Garland in the final year in her short life, when stardom and the Hollywood studio system had taken … Continue reading “Judy Garland”
Taking folk tales from around the world, British company 1927 bring their latest category-busting show to Paris in English in March. Roots began with a book writer Suzanne Andrade found in the British Library. The Aarne-Thompson-Uther Index is a treasure trove of the world’s folk tales. It gives short descriptions of stories, variations of which … Continue reading “An Extraordinary Theatre Experience”
San Francisco theatre company Word for Word’s annual French tour is being postponed to the autumn. This year their show is a coming-of-age story by Mexican-American writer Octavio Solis, Retablos: Stories from a Life Lived Along the Border. They will perform it in Nancy, Paris, Angers and Lyon. For 25 years, Word for Word has … Continue reading “Tales of the US Border in Theatres Around France”
A new film tells the true story of a battle against endemic racism in the American justice system. It’s based on a memoir by Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer in Alabama, and tells the story of his firm’s battle to prove the innocence of Walter McMillian, who was condemned to death for a murder he didn’t … Continue reading “Just Mercy”
