American theater | This month in the history of theater

1940 (85 years ago)

Al Pacino was born on April 25 in New York. He started his acting career in Boston at Charlie's Playhouse, performing in two shows during their 1967 season. His big break occurred in 1968 when he played in Israel Horovitz The Indian wants the Bronx. Pacino won an obie for the best actor and the production lasted 177 performances, including a special trip to Italy to perform at the Due Monday festival. Pacino made his debut in Broadway the following year in Don Petersen Does a tiger have a tie?For which he won the Tony of the best featured actor in a room. Although his film career began to take off in the 1970s, with roles like Michael Corleone in The godfather Making him a familiar name, he continued to play roles on stage for the rest of his career, winning another Tony in 1977 for the top leading actor in a play for Pavlo Hummel's basic formation. He was nominated for the best main actor in a play play in 2011 for his work in Shylock Merchant.

The actor, choreographer and Vaudeville Clown Bill Irwin was born on April 11 in Santa Monica, California. Triple threat, Irwin has managed, played and choreographed several Broadway shows. He received four Tony nominations for his play In large part, New York (Best director of a room, best actor in a room and best game). He won a Tony Award for best actor for his role as George in the 2005 revival of 2005 Who is afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Its most recent appearance in Broadway was in Eureka day At the Manhattan Theater Club. At the start of his career, he received several prestigious scholarships, including a national grant for the arts in 1981 and 1983 and a Guggenheim scholarship in 1984. That same year, he marked history as the first artist to receive the MacArthur Stock Exchange.

April 15 Action And Killer head By Sam Shepard, the latter with a young person and then unknown Richard Gere, had his first American in a double bill at the American Place Theater, produced by Nancy Meckler. The same program, carried out by Shepard, opened its doors in the Magic Theater, in San Francisco, shortly after. The two pieces presented small casts and relied on elements of Theater of the absurd, with New York Times critical Clive Barnes noting that the Mornesse of Action reminded him “”In particular, from Samuel Beckett, with the same kind of nihilist humanism. »»

2000 (25 years ago)

Hedwig and the angry thumb closed his race outside Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on April 9. Stephen Trask and the musical of John Cameron Mitchell on the artist rock of Genderqueer of Eastern Germany ran for 857 performances, having opened in February 1998. John Cameron Mitchell wrote the book and played in the original production, based on the character of Hedwig on a childhood baby-sitter. He won the 1998 Obie and Critics Critics Critics for the best Off-Broadway musical. The show was presented in the West End in 2000 and was adapted to a film, with Mitchell, in 2001. The film became a classic cult. Hedwig and the angry thumb made his first to Broadway in 2014 with Neil Patrick Harris. The renewal has won several Tony Awards, including the best renewal of a musical actor and the best actor in a musical for Harris.

Due to the Pandemic Covid-19, the public theater has canceled its Shakespeare in the Park Festival for the first time since its creation in 1956. With the spread of the Coronavirus, April 2020 saw many theaters across the country cancel entire seasons and blurring to create virtual options for the public. The Shakespeare 2020 in the park season had to include a production of Richard II produced by Saheem Ali and a musical adaptation of As you love it by Shaina Taub and Laurie Wooley. By April 2021, New York theaters were authorized to reopen if they followed various directives of social distancing and vaccine, so that New Yorkers had only to do without the Cherier Free Theater Festival for a summer; In July 2021, Bard's words again adorned the scene of Delacorte when Ali had his chance to direct the point of view of Jocelyn Bioh Happy Windsor wives. (The Delacorte was also closed last summer, 2024, for renovations, and will return this summer with Twelfth nightalso made by Ali.)