Word: theaterful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...those living outside Britain, the pantomime (or panto for short) can seem like a bizarre, and perhaps inappropriate, Christmas tradition. In the shows, theater companies take popular children's stories such as Aladdin, Cinderella and Snow White and spice them up with audience participation, cross-dressing, double entendres, sexual innuendo and deliberately hammy acting. Big stars have become a staple of the most lucrative shows in recent years - Henry Winkler, a.k.a. the Fonz, is currently starring as Captain Hook in a pantomime of Peter Pan in Liverpool, following in the footsteps of actors like Steve Guttenberg and Mickey Rooney. When...
...while the former Playboy centerfold may not be witty herself - she's following a script, after all - she does inspire humor in others. "What is your wish, Master?" she says, kneeling before Aladdin. On opening night, a rather bawdy audience member shouted one suggestion (in a theater filled with children, mind you): "Get her to rub yer lamp...
...Cooper Union façade - part dancer, part dueling scar, part Chinese character that never was - could be called a gesture towards transparency. It corresponds to the public areas of the building and discloses them to the outside. It could also be called a gesture of pure architectural theater. Especially at night, when the building is lit from within, it's a completely smashing addition to the neighborhood, somehow managing to bridge the divide between the Ukrainian Catholic church that borders it on its eastern side and the hip hotel just to its south...
...Sills, a Fulbright scholar and former merchant marine, honed the Second City formula - an ensemble ethic and a focus on audience participation - with previous performance groups the Playwrights Theater Club and the Compass Players. Sills and Sahlins' professional relationship began while producing shows at the Playwrights Theater Club, and Alk had worked with Sills at Gate of Horn, a folk-music club in Chicago. When the three came together to build Second City, they stepped into an uncharted territory of comedy: improv did not exist outside of Sills and Spolin's projects. Comedy shows of that era were mostly rehearsed...
...Second City opened a second theater in Toronto. When Sahlins scouted the city, he found not only an extensive talent pool, but also considerable local support. Sahlins enlisted Alexander, a Canadian entrepreneur who had briefly worked at a Chicago theater, to run it. The new venue "struggled for a while" as he remembers, but soon the outlook for Second City - and its brand of satiric comedy - changed forever. On Oct. 11, 1975, Lorne Michaels, along with fellow NBC employee Dick Ebersol and president of the network Herb Schlosser, launched Saturday Night Live, a genre-defining mix of music and sketch...