Performing Arts in Credo: People

Irish dramatist, novelist, and poet, who wrote in both French and English. Achieved worldwide fame in 1953 with his play Waiting for Godot (En attendant Godot). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969 and was a hugely influential figure in twentieth-century drama.

English dramatist and poet, born in Westminster, London. The high-spirited buoyancy of Jonson's plays and the brilliance of his language have earned him a reputation as one of the great playwrights in English literature.

English playwright whose comedies, written between 1604 and 1611, include A Trick to Catch the Old One and A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. He produced numerous romantic plays, tragedies, and realistic comedies, both alone and in collaboration.

Playwright, born in Dublin, Ireland. Awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1926.

English dramatist. His plays, such as The Caretaker (1960), The Homecoming (1965), Landscape (1968), and Ashes to Ashes (1996), are noted for their equivocal and halting dialogue. Pinter won many prestigious honors, the crowning of which was the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature.

English dramatist and poet, b. Stratford-on-Avon. He is widely considered the greatest playwright who ever lived.

Irish poet and dramatist, b. near Dublin, of Protestant parents. He was an important figure in the Irish literary renaissance.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
British composer. He studied at Oxford and at the Royal College of Music. His first collaboration with lyricist Tim Rice (b. 1944), Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (1968), was followed by the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar (1971), which blended classical forms with rock music. Their last major collaboration was Evita (1978). Lloyd Webber’s eclectic rock-based works helped revitalize musical theatre. In both London and New York City, his musical Cats (1981), based on poems by T.S. Eliot, became the longest-running musical in history. He later collaborated on Starlight Express (1984), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), and Sunset Boulevard (1993), among other stage works; in 2006 The Phantom of the Opera surpassed Cats to become the longest-running show on Broadway. He was knighted in 1992 and ennobled in 1997.

In the course of a long association with the Parisian theatres he produced over 30 plays, and proved equally successful in tragedy and comedy.

French Actor and Dramatist of the Renaissance era. Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin in 1622, bears the unchallenged mantle of France's greatest comic dramatist.

French dramatist. Racine is the prime exemplar of French classicism.

French philosopher and author. One of the towering geniuses in literary and intellectual history, Voltaire personifies the Enlightenment. Won early fame as a playwright and poet and later was an influential popularizer of Newtonian natural philosophy.

French novelist, poet, and dramatist. His melodramatic novels include Notre-Dame de Paris (1831), and Les Misérables (1862). The verse play Hernani (1830) firmly established Hugo as the leader of French Romanticism. This was the first of a series of dramas produced in the 1830s and early 1840s, including Le Roi s'amuse (1832) and Ruy Blas (1838).

From The Macquarie Dictionary
English librettist William Gilbert and English composer Arthur Sullivan who from 1871 to 1896 collaborated to create comic operettas; noted works include HMS Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penanze (1879), and The Mikado (1885).

Lorraine Hansberry’s writing was profoundly influenced by her family elders. Her uncle Leo Hansberry was a scholar of African history at Howard University, so Lorraine learned from an early age to link the experiences and challenges of African Americans with those of Africans struggling for liberation in their native land. By 1957, Hansberry completed her first play, "A Raisin in the Sun."

American playwright. His "Angels in America" is a two-part, seven-hour, Pulitzer Prize– and Tony-winning drama of life in the age of AIDS. Awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Millennium Approaches (1992), the first part of his trilogy Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.

American playwright and film director, born in Chicago. His plays include Sexual Perversity in Chicago (1974), American Buffalo (1976), Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), and The Spanish Prisoner (1998).

U.S. dramatist, b. New York City. He is widely acknowledged as America's greatest playwright. His works, which are notable for their emotional power and psychological analysis, include Desire under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (1928), Mourning becomes Elektra (1931), Long Day's Journey into Night (1941), and The Iceman Cometh (1946): Nobel prize for literature 1936.

Playwright, born in Columbus, Mississippi, USA. From an old Tennessee family (he adopted his first name by 1939 while in New Orleans), he was raised under the influence of his clergyman-grandfather. From 1945, with his first success, The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams has had a deep impact on the American theatre, bringing to it an original lyric voice and a new level of sexual frankness.

Wilson's plays center on the struggles and identity of African Americans and the deleterious effect of white American institutions on black American life.

German dramatist and poet. He was one of the most influential figures in 20th-century theatre.

German novelist, lyricist, artist, and playwright, b. Danzig (now Gdańsk, Poland).

German dramatist. A strong proponent of an uncompromising naturalism in the theatre, Hauptmann's work has been widely produced.

Norwegian playwright. Ibsen's playwriting owed much to his early theatrical experience.

Japanese author, b. Tokyo. His original name was Kimitake Hiraoka and he was born into a samurai family. Mishima wrote novels, short stories, essays, and plays. He appeared on stage in some of his plays as well as directing and starring in films.

Novelist and playwright, born in Mexico City, Mexico.

Irish playwright and critic. He revolutionized the Victorian stage, then dominated by artificial melodramas, by presenting vigorous dramas of ideas. The lengthy prefaces to Shaw's plays reveal his mastery of English prose. In 1925 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Dancer, singer, choreographer, and actor, born in Omaha, Nebraska, USA

Sarah Bernhardt was one of the most renowned stage actresses of all time; she was celebrated in her own lifetime as “the Divine Sarah.” Her flamboyant style, striking clear voice, and powerful emotional delivery suited her especially to tragic roles.

Anglo-American family of actors.

English actor. He proved himself a versatile male lead in over 60 plays and films.

A Hollywood legend, Judy Garland achieved the status of superstar before dependence on drugs and alcohol prematurely ended her life. Her portrayal of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz (1938) made her an international star. Like Marlene Dietrich, whose move from the screen to the concert hall paralleled her own, Garland's art and life were tightly interwoven, but, unlike Dietrich, Garland was never in control of her career.

Actor, born in London, UK. He studied part-time at the Fay Compton School of Dramatic Art, and began in repertory in 1934.

Actress, born in London, UK.

Singer and actress, born in Los Angeles, California, USA, the daughter of Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland.

US actor, dancer, and singer. She worked from the 1930s to the 1950s, often starring with Fred Astaire in such films as Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936)

Singer, actress, and director, born in New York City, USA. Starting as a nightclub singer, stage and television appearances brought her the lead in the Broadway show Funny Girl (1964), which she repeated in the 1968 film version to win an Oscar.

The vaudeville performer Fanny Brice was a highly popular entertainer in the early decades of the 20th century. She appeared in more editions of the Ziegfeld Follies than any other star.

Actor and screenwriter, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The son of a Cockney-English immigrant, he had little education but learned of life on the streets and took up juggling. By age 14 he was working professionally, and he soon began to appear in vaudeville and in Europe as ‘The Tramp Juggler.’

British-born US comedian. His earliest success was on Broadway and as a radio star in the 1930s. Hope entertained the troops in the field during World War II and the Korean and Vietnam wars. He was a perennial star on radio and television (from 1950) in his own comedy series and specials.

Actor and singer, born in Srednike (now Seredzius), Lithuania.

A madcap entertainer, Kaye was known for his tongue-twisters and his rubber-faced mimicry. Though his greatest success was in Hollywood, his recordings of 'Thumbelina' and 'The Ugly Duckling' (1952) have become perennial favourites with children.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
French mime, b. Strasbourg as Marcel Mangel. Marceau studied under Charles Dullin and master mime étienne Decroux in Paris. He gained renown in 1947 with the creation of Bip, a silent, sad, white-faced clown with a battered stovepipe hat decorated with a limp red flower. Almost single-handedly responsible for the revival of the art of mime in modern times.

Seven brothers, sons of German-born August Rüngeling, who established an American circus empire.

Mae West began her acting career as a child performer in Vaudeville shows in Brooklyn. In the 1920s, West began to write and star in her own Broadway shows. West raised the spirits of cinemagoers during the Depression of the 1930s with her unique blend of comedy and sexuality.

From The Reader's Companion to American History
Theatrical producer and creator of The Ziegfeld Follies. As the master showman of the early twentieth century, Ziegfeld brought a unique and sophisticated style, taste, and extravagance to the theater, popularizing a new form of entertainment called the revue.

British actor, playwright, humorist, and director.

His extraordinary influence on subsequent theatre is based largely on his two short-lived attempts at directing and on his volume of essays, The Theatre and Its Double.

English theatrical director, born in London. An innovative, unconventional, and controversial figure, Brook mounts energetic productions in which the entire stage is utilized and realistic sets are banished in favor of bold, abstract, and austere settings.

Austrian theatrical producer and director. Reinhardt often used the entire auditorium for a production, seeking to bridge the gap between actor and audience by placing the spectator within the action.

Dramatist, director, and designer. A leading figure in postmodern theater since 1963, when he arrived in New York City, he has created lengthy, often controversial multimedia events that combine drama, dance, and stylized gesture with contemporary instrumental music, opera, and art.

Greek tragic dramatist, younger contemporary of Aeschylus and older contemporary of Euripides, b. Colonus, near Athens. Author of the classic tragedy Oedipus Rex.

Athenian tragic dramatist, b. Eleusis. The first of the three great Greek writers of tragedy, Aeschylus was the predecessor of Sophocles and Euripides.

Greek tragic dramatist, ranking with Aeschylus and Sophocles. Born in Attica, he lived in Athens most of his life, though he spent much time on Salamis. He produced his first plays in 455 but did not win a victory in the competition until 441. He is said to have produced 92 plays (we know the titles of about 80), but won first prize only four times in his life (and once after his death with plays that he had left unperformed).

Greek playwright, Athenian comic poet, greatest of the ancient writers of comedy.