Tuesday, May 31, 2016

John Barrymore artifacts


sketch made by Barrymore 1930
John Barrymore's sketch  “Telephone-Chemist” (1930). Part of  The Gene Fowler Collection of Barrymore's artifacts at the University of Colorado Boulder. - See more at: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/john-barrymore-memorabilia-sheds-light-actor-s-personal-life#sthash.p63Ij8KO.dpuf
John Barrymore's sketch  “Telephone-Chemist” (1930). Part of  The Gene Fowler Collection of Barrymore's artifacts at the University of Colorado Boulder. - See more at: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/john-barrymore-memorabilia-sheds-light-actor-s-personal-life#sthash.p63Ij8KO.dpuf
John Barrymore's sketch  “Telephone-Chemist” (1930). Part of  The Gene Fowler Collection of Barrymore's artifacts at the University of Colorado Boulder. - See more at: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/john-barrymore-memorabilia-sheds-light-actor-s-personal-life#sthash.p63Ij8KO.dpuf
John Barrymore's sketch  “Telephone-Chemist” (1930). Part of  The Gene Fowler Collection of Barrymore's artifacts at the University of Colorado Boulder. - See more at: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/john-barrymore-memorabilia-sheds-light-actor-s-personal-life#sthash.p63Ij8KO.dpuf

The cigarette! John Barrymore I | Getty Images:
John Barrymore's sketch  “Telephone-Chemist” (1930). Part of  The Gene Fowler Collection of Barrymore's artifacts at the University of Colorado Boulder. - See more at: http://www.cpr.org/news/story/john-barrymore-memorabilia-sheds-light-actor-s-personal-life#sthash.p63Ij8KO.dpuf

the cigarette and the baby
John Barrymore | Flickr - Photo Sharing!:




... triumph in shakespeare s richard the iii stands in the bkgd at home:
 armor from Richard 3 production
 : armor from










Hurrell John Barrymore Lionel Barrymore Photo | eBay:
John Barrymore Lionel Barrymore the cigarette and modern art
Portrait of married American actors John Barrymore (1882-1942) and Dolores Costello (1903-1979) sitting with their infant son, John Drew Barrymore (1932 - 2004), at their home in Beverly Hills, California.
 Portrait of married American actors John Barrymore (1882-1942) and Dolores Costello (1903-1979) sitting with their infant son, John Drew Barrymore (1932 - 2004), at their home in Beverly Hills,
California.
 american actor john barrymore relaxes at home with his pet monkey news ...:
 American actor John Barrymore (1882 - 1942) relaxes at home with his pet monkey, circa 1930

 Full-length image of American actor John Barrymore (1882 - 1942 ...:
 John Barrymore photographed at his home in Los Angeles where he is at work on 'Don Juan.' On the table is a photo of his daughter. On his arm is Clementine, his pet monkey.
John Barrymore photographed at his home in Los Angeles where he is at work on 'Don Juan.' On the table is a photo of his daughter. On his arm is Clementine, his pet monkey.

Friday, May 13, 2016

The McGuire Proscenium Stage

http://www.guthrietheater.org/about_guthrie/our_spaces/mcguire_proscenium_stage

remember to hold for Ian to come back. When I see the side house ...

McGuire Proscenium Stage

light in Minneapolis | Tricycle

"With the addition of a proscenium stage, the Guthrie is able to present the full range of the extraordinary American repertoire." ~ Joe Dowling
Although a thrust stage works brilliantly for Shakespeare and other large-scale plays, more contemporary plays focusing on the subtleties of characters' psychological development require a smaller proscenium stage. A proscenium features a "picture frame" rectangular opening, allowing the entire audience to experience the play from the same vantage point - straight on, a perspective not possible on a thrust stage.
The majority of late 19th-century and virtually all of 20th-century drama is best suited to a proscenium stage. In order to continue to engage contemporary audiences, the Guthrie needed a second space, a stage on which classics of the future could find a home(...)
Audiences will enjoy a house draped in deep, passionate red facing a rectangular opening that's adjustable from a small aperture to a panoramic full-stage view, depending on the dramatic elements of each individual play. As the Guthrie expands its relationship with living playwrights, its audience will continue to be at the forefront of American drama.

NY in the 20ies

http://www.livingcityarchive.org/htm/decades/1920.htm
1920s



The period of the 1920s was widely regarded as an era of prosperity. Unemployment amongst urban workers remained, on average, under 7 percent. Per capita income grew by a third during a decade of economic expansion that remained relatively unmarred by inflation and recession. The standard of living improved across the board for the employed sector of the economy. Such improvements were measured not only in increases in earnings between 1922 and 1929, but in living conditions. A 1929 Bureau of Labor Statistics study of Ford Motor Company employees found, for example that industrial workers lived in far more salubrious conditions than they did at the turn of the century. Employed workers lived in houses that provided, on average, one room per person. They enjoyed electricity, central heating, and inside running water, and toilets. The notion of abundance and consumerism became a means of establishing American unity. In some sense, though, little changed for the industrial worker. Unemployment in this period was, indeed, lower than it had been in previous decades, but continued high unemployment and job turnover characterized the industrial working experience. A continued labor surplus fueled not by immigration but Black migration and migration from the farm to the city along with the displacement of both skilled and unskilled workers with machines insured continued levels of high unemployment and job insecurity along with limited improvements in wages and working conditions.
The 1920s was also an era of contradictions for New York as a modern industrial city that, with engineering feats of wonder, had conquered the sky and constructed a hidden network of water lines, sewer lines, and power lines below the ground. In the 1920s the gap between the City's infrastructural capacity and its population once again widened. The City's roadways did not keep pace with the rapidly increasing popularity of the automobile. Between 1918 and the end of the 1920s, there were more than a half a million new motor vehicles on the streets yet there had been no new highway construction within the City, choking the City with traffic. The Depression brought an end to construction of a West Side Highway, begun in 1927, and the Triborough Bridge, begun in 1929. Yet the end of the 1920s and early 1930s did open the City to more traffic. The Holland Tunnel opened in 1927 and the George Washington Bridge in 1931. Like the roadways, development of parks lagged far behind the booming population. Land reserved for parks in Brooklyn was rented to commercial enterprises. Central Park-the gem of the City-fell into disrepair.
The 1920s represent the current end of this project, but it was the dawn of a new era of vast changes to the relationship between health and the built environment as Robert Moses transformed New York City's highway and parks systems.
Sources: Robert H. Wiebe, The Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967) | David Brody, Workers in Industrial America: Essays on the Twentieth Century Struggle (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980) | Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Vintage Books, 1975)

Broadway book quote

Critic Brooks Atkinson put it best in his book, Broadway, in discussing the "happy world of stars" from about 1904 to 1924:
"It was an actor's theater because, on the one hand, no one took the drama seriously and, on the other hand, some very interesting actors with broad styles and vivid personalities dominated the stage. Plays were not inquiries into the nature of life or the discussion of ideas but vehicles designed to present the stars triumphantly."