Following an Oxford lecture on cancel culture, Kevin Spacey was given a standing ovation for performing a speech from Shakespeare and Thomas Middleton’s “Timon of Athens.”
It was Spacey’s first onstage performance since he was acquitted of sexual assault charges earlier this year. Douglas Murray, a columnist for The Telegraph as well as a friend of Spacey’s, led the Oxford lecture. The presentation and performance took place at the historic Sheldonian Theatre. Watch the full performance above.
“In an era of cancellation and defenestration, we sometimes forget that we cannot go on like this and also that we’ve been here before,” Murray said prior to Spacey’s performance, noting that the greatest writers and artists have addressed questions around cancellation “in their own times.”
The specific scene Spacey performed follows the philosopher Apermantus warning the titular Timon that he will one day be abandoned by everyone he holds dear.
It was Spacey’s first onstage performance since he was acquitted of sexual assault charges earlier this year. Douglas Murray, a columnist for The Telegraph as well as a friend of Spacey’s, led the Oxford lecture. The presentation and performance took place at the historic Sheldonian Theatre. Watch the full performance above.
“In an era of cancellation and defenestration, we sometimes forget that we cannot go on like this and also that we’ve been here before,” Murray said prior to Spacey’s performance, noting that the greatest writers and artists have addressed questions around cancellation “in their own times.”
The specific scene Spacey performed follows the philosopher Apermantus warning the titular Timon that he will one day be abandoned by everyone he holds dear.
- 10/17/2023
- by Kayla Cobb
- The Wrap
Cloud Cuckooland Lyrical text by Matthew Freeman Created and directed by Djahari Clark Presented by Desert Sin At House of Yes, NYC September 8 - September 17, 2016
Cloud Cuckooland is subtitled "a story about death," and it begins with its protagonist, the Girl (Cassandra Rosebeetle), at death's threshold, looking like a patient etherized upon a table as we hear her heartbeat and a voiceover that talks about the "blank space" underlying biology. The Jackdaw (Zahra Hashemian) picks up this thematic thread as she sings about dying being worse than being dead and compares ephemeral humanity to the eternal bird world. The Jackdaw and her companions, the Crow (Renata Bergen) and the Raven (Amanda Mottur), offer the Girl entrance to their avian empyrean, a chance for her to replace humanity's ungainly locomotion with feathered soaring. They present her with a contract (its terms an opportunity for some light comedy), something that any reader...
Cloud Cuckooland is subtitled "a story about death," and it begins with its protagonist, the Girl (Cassandra Rosebeetle), at death's threshold, looking like a patient etherized upon a table as we hear her heartbeat and a voiceover that talks about the "blank space" underlying biology. The Jackdaw (Zahra Hashemian) picks up this thematic thread as she sings about dying being worse than being dead and compares ephemeral humanity to the eternal bird world. The Jackdaw and her companions, the Crow (Renata Bergen) and the Raven (Amanda Mottur), offer the Girl entrance to their avian empyrean, a chance for her to replace humanity's ungainly locomotion with feathered soaring. They present her with a contract (its terms an opportunity for some light comedy), something that any reader...
- 9/11/2016
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
As a supplement to our Recommended Discs weekly feature, Peter Labuza regularly highlights notable recent home-video releases with expanded reviews. See this week’s selections below.
Two playful journeys into women’s lives — one a mystery forged in darkness, one an adventure-turned-ritualistic-requiem. Jacques Rivette’s Duelle and Noroît originally set up a four-part circle of films that were never finished. But these never-released-in-America masterpieces comprise his most wondrous ode to classical Hollywood, each based on a forgotten text. In Rivette’s own obsessive mise-en-scéne, their fantasies are grounded through realism, constructed worlds where the camera simply documents performance.
The streets of Paris remain conspicuously quiet through Duelle, a noir-fantasy modeled off Rko’s The Seventh Victim. The frizzle-haired ingénue Hermine Karagheuz balances on a ball before coming crashing back down, and suddenly a woman gives her the task of finding a missing man (encouraged by the booming sounds of the...
Two playful journeys into women’s lives — one a mystery forged in darkness, one an adventure-turned-ritualistic-requiem. Jacques Rivette’s Duelle and Noroît originally set up a four-part circle of films that were never finished. But these never-released-in-America masterpieces comprise his most wondrous ode to classical Hollywood, each based on a forgotten text. In Rivette’s own obsessive mise-en-scéne, their fantasies are grounded through realism, constructed worlds where the camera simply documents performance.
The streets of Paris remain conspicuously quiet through Duelle, a noir-fantasy modeled off Rko’s The Seventh Victim. The frizzle-haired ingénue Hermine Karagheuz balances on a ball before coming crashing back down, and suddenly a woman gives her the task of finding a missing man (encouraged by the booming sounds of the...
- 2/17/2016
- by Peter Labuza
- The Film Stage
Today’s top casting notices will have you tackling Shakespeare and getting flirty. Check them out below! “MacBeth”Old Hat Theatre Company is taking the Bard to Brooklyn May 12–29 with its production of “Macbeth.” Artistic director Elizabeth Sutton-Stone is seeking submissions from the New York area for all roles. Rehearsals for the production begin March 7 at St. Paul’s Theater in Williamsburg. “Theflirty”This up-and-coming Web series from Addictive Networks is seeking submissions from both male and female actors who are outwardly social and single. “It’s time to raise the art of the conversation,” producer A. Lane says in the listing. “Do you have the social skills to be a star and find that someone special?” Production begins this spring in New York City. Swp Spring Repertory Season ‘16Spicy Witch Productions is casting 20-something male and female actors for its two upcoming productions: Thomas Middleton’s “The Revenger...
- 2/16/2016
- backstage.com
'Tis Pity She's a Whore Written by John Ford Directed by Jesse Berger Red Bull Theater, The Duke, NYC April 14-May 16, 2015
Red Bull Theater reliably mounts excellent productions, and its ’Tis Pity She's a Whore is no exception. John Ford's early 1630s revenge tragedy could be most simply summed up, as some of Red Bull promotional materials do, as Romeo and Juliet with incest. It includes an earthy nurse, a well-meaning but ultimately ineffective friar, and, of course, some extremely forbidden love.
But, in addition to its Shakespearean echoes, it also features hallmarks of the later, Jacobean stage, such as a double-dealing servant, an inept gallant, and corrupt Catholic clergy, as well as spectacular, often darkly comedic onstage violence, and it is equally reminiscent of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, both of which Red Bull has previously staged and the...
Red Bull Theater reliably mounts excellent productions, and its ’Tis Pity She's a Whore is no exception. John Ford's early 1630s revenge tragedy could be most simply summed up, as some of Red Bull promotional materials do, as Romeo and Juliet with incest. It includes an earthy nurse, a well-meaning but ultimately ineffective friar, and, of course, some extremely forbidden love.
But, in addition to its Shakespearean echoes, it also features hallmarks of the later, Jacobean stage, such as a double-dealing servant, an inept gallant, and corrupt Catholic clergy, as well as spectacular, often darkly comedic onstage violence, and it is equally reminiscent of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi and Thomas Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, both of which Red Bull has previously staged and the...
- 4/23/2015
- by Leah Richards
- www.culturecatch.com
Emily Bergl, Sheila Bandyopadhyay & More Set for Red Bull's Staged Reading of The Roaring Girl, 3/24
Today, Red Bull Theater announced the cast for their Staged Reading of The Roaring Girl, by Thomas Dekker and Thomas Middleton Emily Bergl of Showtime's 'Shameless', Sheila Bandyopadhyay, Michael Braun, Clifton Duncan, Miriam Hyman, Whit Leyenberger, David Manis, Alex Morf, Tom O'Keefe, Bhavesh Patel, Pearl Rhein, Rocco Sisto, Raphael Nash Thompson, Sam Tsoutsouvas, and Lisa Wolpe. The Roaring Girl will be directed by Ben Prusiner and will take place Monday March 24th at 730pm at the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker and Hudson Streets.
- 3/20/2014
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
“Obviously I offended you in some way but since you're a man who can find an insult in a bouquet of roses, I'm not sure quite how…” The introduction of Bobby Cannavale's deranged new gangster, Gyp Rosetti, lights up (at one point, literally) this particularly brutal series, hardly a scene goes by without the threat of ultra-violence. Jimmy's death is still deeply felt, with his disturbed mother (Gretchen Mol, excellent) channeling Thomas Middleton's Revenger's Tragedy here. Elsewhere, Lucky Luciano starts dealing in dope, Michael Shannon's former Fed struggles as a door-to-door salesman and the main protagonist, Nucky Thompson (Steve Buscemi), embraces being a full-time gangster. It's brilliant, fiercely addictive television – but it does not soothe the soul. The whole bunch are all destined for everlasting fire…...
- 8/2/2013
- The Independent - Film
Versatile actor and writer often called upon to play toffs and bumbling clerics
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
The actor Jonathan Cecil, who has died of pneumonia aged 72 after suffering from emphysema, spent much of his career playing upper-class characters. That is hardly surprising since his father was Lord David Cecil, Goldsmiths' professor of English literature at Oxford University, and Jonathan's grandfather was the 4th Marquess of Salisbury. Although often typecast as a comic blueblood, there was infinitely more to Jonathan than that. He excelled in Chekhov and Shakespeare, and four times played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in Twelfth Night, always investing the character with a silvery pathos. In 1998 he had an outstanding season at Shakespeare's Globe, where he appeared in As You Like It and Thomas Middleton's A Mad World, My Masters, in which he played Sir Bounteous Progress – "gazing benignly", as John Gross wrote, "on almost everything, even his own undoing".
I...
- 9/25/2011
- by Michael Billington
- The Guardian - Film News
I am sat in a cafe with some friends, enjoying a quiet cup of tea, when Elbow’s ‘One Day Like This’ starts playing in the background. Nothing out of the ordinary about this situation, until all the staff of this cafe (including the chefs in the kitchen) suddenly start dancing extravagantly choreographed moves to the song, extravagantly miming the violin parts, to the wonder of what is now an audience. Even customers in the queue for food are happy to wait. Small children are mesmerised, mouths agape. My friends and I smile to one another.
In real life this might seem unusual, extraordinary even, but this is not real life – this is a music festival, where quirky, out-of-the-ordinary events are enthusiastically encouraged. I’m at the Big Chill, a relaxed, family friendly music festival in set in a jaw-droppingly picturesque valley in the rolling hills of rural Herefordshire, near the border of Wales,...
In real life this might seem unusual, extraordinary even, but this is not real life – this is a music festival, where quirky, out-of-the-ordinary events are enthusiastically encouraged. I’m at the Big Chill, a relaxed, family friendly music festival in set in a jaw-droppingly picturesque valley in the rolling hills of rural Herefordshire, near the border of Wales,...
- 8/10/2011
- by John Nugent
- Obsessed with Film
The comedy Splinterheads is set to make its DVD debut on February 16th from Monarch Home Video and M&C.s giving away five copies! Called .Easily one the best films of the year,. by National Lampoon, Splinterheads brings home the insane humor of such slacker comedies as Adventureland and Superbad. Starring Brat-packer Lea Thompson (All the Right Moves, Back to the Future) and Rachael Taylor (Transformers, Shutter), Splinterheads launches the comedic talents of Thomas Middleton as Justin Frost, a twenty-something slacker who has decided that his "thing" is that he has no "thing" at all. When a small-time carnival rolls into town, he meets Galaxy, a gorgeous con artist who has more "things" going for her than anyone he...
- 2/15/2010
- by Patrick Luce
- Monsters and Critics
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