Essays about Culture Page 226

MONTREAL: <<Dites-leurs “bonjour”!>> (Welcome them!) ran the slogan on Board of Tourism billboards and subway placards all over Montreal during this summer’s sixth Festival de Theatre des Ameriques. Even the weather complied, as the early June days were perfect for ranging over the city. At the botanical gardens the insectarium had beauty and revulsion fixed…

VIENNA: The expatriates here raise their eyebrows when the Viennese refer to their city as the cultural capital of Europe. Yet, as Claus Peymann, artistic director of the rejuvenated Burgtheater has noted, in what other city does the theatre capture front page headlines? And although the Wiener Festwochen stretches across the city to encompass all…

MUNICH: Politics were mostly absent both on and off the stage at Theater der Welt, Germany’s biennial international festival of performance, held this year in Munich. Home of sunny weather, green parks, packed beergardens and well-heeled bank employees, Munich appears mostly secluded from the racial violence, the recession and the reunification tension between Ossis and…

Discuss this comment, with particular reference to; 1. The way the Inspector controls the sequence of events in Acts 1 and 2. 2. The use of dramatic irony in the play. 3. How Priestley uses the Inspector Goole as a mouthpiece or voice for his own views on society in 1912. The statement above by a theatre critic tells…

Set in Salford, Manchester during Victorian times, the film tells the story of obstinate boot-shop owner Henry Hobson. Hobson dominates both his employees and his three daughters, only bothering to enquire about his meals before heading to the local public house for ale. His eldest daughter Maggie, becomes tired of his uncivilized behavior and decides…

Charles Dickens wrote his novel, Hard Times, in 1854 as a protest about the state of contemporary education and industrial working conditions. For many, life had become monotonous and repetitive. More and more workers felt that their labour was benefiting others, rather than themselves, and formed unions to protect themselves against employers. Children were treated…

Interviewing Anna Deavere Smith is intimidating. The 42-year-old African-American playwright and actor faces a journalist’s taperecorder armed with a casual confidence learned from conducting literally hundreds of interviews. No doubt she’s heard and asked every conceivable question. Aristocratic in posture, a relatively tall 5’9″, with a Medusa head of curls, Smith also has the grace…

It is rare these days to read a scholarly book that is as beautifully written as Peter Thomson’s Shakespeare’s Professional Career. To enter the overtrodden ground of Shakespearean biography and politics can be a daunting prospect for reader and writer alike, but Thomson, with his lively pen and sharp, witty mind, makes it easy and…

derek Walcott can’t find the phone. Seriously. It’s one of those cordless models–the kind that enables you to talk, walk, chew gum, do the dishes–and the poet has misplaced it. Now this would be faintly hilarious if it weren’t so frustrating: the thing has been ringing off and on since dawn. In fact, the phone…

It’s easy to characterize the atrocities of the Cambodian holocaust as abhorrent crimes against humanity; explaining how such things could happen is far more difficult. Despite the political realities that allowed the Khmer Rouge of Pol Pot to take control of the country, many Cambodians cannot help but point the finger of blame at their…