From Show Boat to Hamilton: how songs began to tell stories
Kern and Hammerstein, Sondheim, Lloyd Webber and Miranda turned Broadway and West End songs into storytelling. How they did it, and eight shows to see.
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Set designers build the whole stage in miniature first
A model box is a scale version of a theatre set. It shows the director, builders and actors the stage before construction, and the RSC now has a digital one.
Lee Strasberg turned Stanislavski's system into the Method
Lee Strasberg, teacher of Brando and Clift, reduced Konstantin Stanislavski's acting system to one idea, emotional truth, and called it the Method.
The 1903 Chicago theatre fire that killed over 500 people
The Iroquois Theatre fire of December 30, 1903 killed hundreds behind locked gates and inward doors. The outrage pushed US cities to rewrite fire codes.
China's Peking opera roles: one character type for a lifetime
Peking opera casts every story from fixed role types, such as the sheng and the hualian. Performers train for years, then keep one type for life.