The Shaw Festival: Behind the Curtain (2013)
Genre : Documentary
Runtime : 56M
Synopsis
From PBS - With unprecedented access, The Shaw Festival: Behind the Curtain captures the unique creative process of one of North America's longest running, most distinctive and exciting theatre experiences. Each year between April and October, the Shaw Festival--which began in 1962 with the mandate on works by George Bernard Shaw--presents around 10 plays on four stages that attract patrons from all over the world. Located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada--the Shaw's one-of-a-kind schedule has actors and directors working on several plays at once. Over eight months, crews design and build sets on a finely honed schedule that is both frenetic, creative, and amazingly well planned and executed. Follow the process of getting the play from the page to the stage as The Shaw Festival: Behind the Curtain provides insight into every aspect of production at a summer theatre festival.
On the cusp of his 30th birthday, Jonathon Larson, a promising young theater composer, navigates love, friendship, and the pressures of life as an artist in New York City.
Out of work actor Joe volunteers to help try and save his sister's local church for the community by putting on a Christmas production of Hamlet, somewhat against the advice of his agent Margaretta. As the cast he assembles are still available even at Christmas and are prepared to do it on a 'profit sharing' basis (that is, they may not get paid anything) he cannot expect - and does not get - the cream of the cream. But although they all bring their own problems and foibles along, something bigger starts to emerge in the perhaps aptly named village of Hope.
In the early hours of the morning on the campus of an American college, Martha, much to her husband George’s displeasure, has invited the new professor and his wife to their home for some after-party drinks. As the alcohol flows and dawn approaches, the young couple are drawn into George and Martha’s toxic games until the evening reaches its climax in a moment of devastating truth-telling.
Five minutes before his big performance, the Maestro and his persistent mechanical assistant are getting ready. As the clock ticks, life at the top is not all it seems.
As their bodies give way to Parkinson's disease, two New York actors put their hearts into one final Off-Broadway production of Beckett's "Endgame," the play that posits, "there's nothing funnier than unhappiness."
A joyful insight into the creative world of Barry and Joan Grantham, two British eccentrics who have kept the skills of vaudeville alive for over seventy years. Since becoming stage-struck lovers in 1948, Barry and Joan have taught, danced and acted alongside the greats of British film and theatre. They are the last of the golden generation of vaudeville, eager to pass their legacy on to future generations.
A rustic comedy about a small-town bowling alley entrepreneur who learns that being scammed is not the end of the world.
An intimate and heartfelt peek into a day in the life of a modern witch, Delphine, who is pulling tarot for the guidance of her clients in their shaky human moments.
It all begins in an empty theatre. In search of a manuscript that is supposed to change the world, Ben embarks on an odyssey. He encounters a flying fish, a telephone without a dial, an oracle called Enigma and a mystical canine figure in a deserted mountain landscape – reality and longings become inextricably intertwined on his visually stunning journey.
This is the story of my grandfather, Tiago Florit, who for 50 years was a film operator at the Teatre Principal de Maó, in Menorca. It is a review of his life, from his birth to his death, in a cinematographic key. A true love story to cinema.
From PBS - With unprecedented access, The Shaw Festival: Behind the Curtain captures the unique creative process of one of North America's longest running, most distinctive and exciting theatre experiences. Each year between April and October, the Shaw Festival--which began in 1962 with the mandate on works by George Bernard Shaw--presents around 10 plays on four stages that attract patrons from all over the world. Located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada--the Shaw's one-of-a-kind schedule has actors and directors working on several plays at once. Over eight months, crews design and build sets on a finely honed schedule that is both frenetic, creative, and amazingly well planned and executed. Follow the process of getting the play from the page to the stage as The Shaw Festival: Behind the Curtain provides insight into every aspect of production at a summer theatre festival.
Movie of the stage play McQueen (written by British playwright James Phillips), at the St James Theatre, London, in May 2015 Featuring: Stephen Wight as Lee Dianna Agron as Dahlia, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Laura Lees and David Shaw-Parker
Award-winning Irish actor Gabriel Byrne explores the life, works and passions of George Bernard Shaw, a giant of world literature, and - like Byrne - an emigrant Irishman with the outsider's ability to observe, needle and puncture.
The true story of the famed British actor David Garrick and his love for Ada Ingot.
Although the past two years have been challenging for the Theatre industry, they also showed its incredible strength and resilience. Through interviews with West End performers and creatives, this documentary outlines the difficulties presented to our industry over the course of the pandemic, as well as highlighting changes - both positive and negative - that have come from it. An emotional reflection on a battle it was worth fighting for. All profits will be going to 'Acting for Others', an organisation that provides support to all theatre workers through 14 member charities. We hope these stories full of passion for Theatre inspire you just as much as they inspired us!
A collaboration in which Robert Wilson and Heiner Müller let Molière die, imagine his death in tableaux with text passages recited by Müller himself. "Cinema watches Death at work." Wilson's actors watch Molière die: their vigil is hard work. Müller's comment: "The poem watches a dying man at work, his name is Molière. The poem is not a film. The film watches an actor playing a dying man called Molière."
The internal journey of eight men, who, through a theater workshop, go through the different prisons they inhabit. Practicing the art of seeing themselves, in Boal's words, this group of men reflects on their masculinity as a representation to hide their true strength: their vulnerability.
