The Scout (Portland, Oregon)

The Scout is a copy of sculptor R. Tait McKenzie's The Ideal Scout, installed outside the offices of Boy Scouts of America's Columbia Pacific Council, at 2145 Southwest Front Street, in Portland, Oregon.
Description.
According to the Smithsonian Institution, the statue is a "Full-length figure of an adolescent boy in the traditional Boy Scout uniform of shirt, scarf, shorts, knee socks and laced ankle-high shoes. He holds a hat over his chest with his proper right hand." The metal statue measures appropriately 70 x 26 x 19 inches, and rests on a trapezoid-shaped base with a width of approximately 52 inches and a diameter of approximately 55 inches.
History.
The Portland cast was gifted by the council's former president, Zenon C.R. Hansen, and dedicated in 1972. It was surveyed as part of Smithsonian's "Save Outdoor Sculpture!" program in 1993.


Sproul Plaza

Sproul Plaza (pronounced ) is a major center of student activity at the University of California, Berkeley. It is divided into two sections: Upper Sproul and Lower Sproul. They are separated by 12 vertical feet and a set of stairs.
History.
Sproul Plaza as well as Sproul Hall are named for the last (1930–1952) University of California, Berkeley president, Robert Gordon Sproul. The Plaza was designed by landscape architect Lawrence Halprin in 1962. At the time, the University was expanding its core campus southward from its prior border at Strawberry Creek to Bancroft Avenue, and acquired acres of commercial and residential properties in the south campus Telegraph Avenue area.
Upper Sproul.
Upper Sproul Plaza is bordered to the east by Sproul Hall, which was formerly the location of the campus administration, and is today the location of student and admission services. To the north is Sather Gate, which leads into the central campus, and to the south are Telegraph Avenue and the South Campus area of Berkeley. Sproul Hall is situated on a rise above Upper Sproul Plaza and features a broad, terraced stairway leading to the entrance. Large numbers of students walk past Sproul Hall on their way to class or Telegraph Avenue.
The combination of a stairway that can be used as a large raised platform and a ready audience makes Upper Sproul Plaza a popular location for student protests, the first of which occurred in 1964 during the Free Speech Movement, when Mario Savio spoke from the Sproul Hall steps, and folk singer Joan Baez gave an early performance. A small round brass marker, embedded in the concrete, declares them as the "Mario Savio Steps." Upper Sproul Plaza was also the site of early teach-ins and protests against the Vietnam War, the 1969 tear-gassing of People's Park protesters by the National Guard, 1985–86 protests against University investment in apartheid-era South Africa, and many other political events. In 2011, Sproul Plaza was the site of Occupy Berkeley protests.
During calmer times, numerous student groups set up tables to recruit and inform other students (a practice known as "tabling," as occurs at many universities throughout the United States). Upper Sproul Plaza also features a double row of the pollarded London Plane trees characteristic of the Berkeley campus. On the first Tuesday of each month from 12–1 p.m. during the fall and spring semesters, there is a "Pet Hugs" therapy dog event to provide stress relief to students.
Lower Sproul.
Lower Sproul Plaza, directly west of Upper Sproul Plaza, is the location of numerous small musical and cultural performances and is surrounded by numerous brutalist-style 1960s-era buildings owned by the ASUC, including the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union to the east, as well as the César E. Chávez Student Center to the north and Zellerbach Hall to the west. Lower Sproul connects to the Haas Pavilion and Recreational Sports Facility to the west. The Chávez Student Center combined forces with artist-activist Emmy Lou Packard to create the 85-foot long, 5-foot high, Modernist, bas-relief mural in the center of the Plaza. Packard's mural is depicting California landscape features, including coastal bluffs, cultivated fields, mountains, and rivers.
Eshleman Hall, a 1960s-era building which housed the ASUC (Associated Students of the University of California) Senate, was demolished in summer 2013, after being rated "seismically very poor." It has since been replaced by a new building of the same name. More than 50% of the Lower Sproul Redevelopment Project was funded by the BEARS student fee initiative, passed by student referendum in spring 2010, with the rest provided by Life and Campus Services. Eshleman Hall now houses the ASUC and Graduate Assembly (GA) offices, Registered Student Organization co-working space, Senate Chambers, Public Service Center, LEAD Center, Student Technology Services Helpdesk, meetings rooms, and the Bear's Lair pub.
The Martin Luther King Jr. Building is home to the Campus Living Room, Pauley Ballroom, Cal Student Store, Berkeley Art Studio, Multicultural Community Center, Creative Lab, a coffee shop, a food hall, and many student-run services such as BicyCal, Blue & God Yearbook, SUPERB, ReUse, Open Computing Facility, and more. The Basement of the Martin Luther King Jr. Building houses the Basic Needs Center, including the Food Pantry, Student Environmental Resource Center, BWell, and an extension of the Student Parents Center. The César E. Chávez Student Center houses the Student Learning Center and the Golden Bear Café. Zellerbach Hall is the largest indoor performance auditorium on campus, and frequently hosts guest speakers as well as Cal Performances engagements.


Hans Wallat

Hans Wallat (18 October 1929 – 11 December 2014) was a German conductor, GMD in Bremen, at the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater Dortmund and Deutsche Oper am Rhein. A specialist for the stage works of Richard Wagner, he appeared at the Bayreuth Festival and internationally.
Career.
Born in Berlin, he studied with Rudolf Neuhaus in Schwerin. He worked at theatres in Schwerin, Stendal, the Meiningen Court Theatre and in Cottbus. In 1958, Wallat was appointed "Erster Kapellmeister" at the Leipzig Opera. He left the GDR shortly before the Wall was built, and was "Erster Kapellmeister" at the Deutsche Oper Berlin from 1964.
Wallat specialised in German opera, focussed on the works of Richard Wagner. In 1965 he became Generalmusikdirektor (GMD) in Bremen. In 1968, he stepped in for Karl Böhm to conduct performances of "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg" and "Der fliegende Holländer" at the Bayreuth Festival. He was the regular conductor of the "Meistersinger" in 1970 and of the "Holländer" in 1971. He was in demand internationally, including the Bolshoi Theatre and the Vienna State Opera. His debut at the Metropolitan Opera was on 7 October 1971 Beethoven's "Fidelio", with Ingrid Bjoner, James McCracken, William Dooley, Giorgio Tozzi and Judith Blegen in leading roles. Wallat conducted more than 90 Ring Cycles and was regarded as one of the work's most knowledgeable conductors.
Wallat was GMD at Nationaltheater Mannheim from 1970 to 1980. In 1980, he conducted Wagner's "Tannhäuser" at the Cologne Opera, with Jean Cox in the title role and Hannelore Bode as Elisabeth. He was GMD at the Theater Dortmund from 1980 to 1985. From 1986 to 1996 he was GMD at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. He chose a contemporary opera, Wolfgang Fortner's "Bluthochzeit", staged by Kurt Horres, for his debut at the Opernhaus Düsseldorf on 12 October 1986. In 1996 Wallat was named Honorary Conductor of the .
Wallat conducted Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde", "Siegfried" and "Parsifal" at the . In honour of his 75th birthday, the Konzerthaus Dortmund produced in 2003 and 2004 the "Wallat-Ring", a half-scenic performance of the Ring Cycle with international soloists, staged by Ulrich Andreas Vogt and played by the Dortmunder Philharmoniker. He was supposed to receive the German Order of Merit after a performance of "Götterdämmerung" on 17 October 2004, planned to be conducted by him. Wolfgang Wagner and other celebrities who had worked with him were present, but he was too ill to attend. The performance was conducted by Ralf Weikert, with Gabriele Schnaut as Brünnhilde, Stig Andersen as Siegfried, and Waltraud Meier as Waltraute.
Wallat died in Hilden in December 2014 at the age of 85.
Awards.
In 2004, Wallat received the German Cross of the Order of Merit. In 2009, he became an honorary member of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. In 2010 he was awarded the "Duisburger Musikpreis" (Duisburg music prize).


List of awards and nominations received by Glee

Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that aired on Fox from May 19, 2009, to March 20, 2015. It was nominated for a variety of different awards including thirty-two Emmy Awards (six wins), eleven Satellite Awards (five wins), nine Golden Globe Awards (four wins), thirty Teen Choice Awards (fourteen wins), three Writers Guild of America Awards, and three Directors Guild of America Awards. Amongst the wins for the series are a Satellite Award for "Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy", a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series", and a People's Choice Award for "Favorite New TV Comedy".
The series had an ensemble cast and several different "Glee" actors received acting award nominations. Jane Lynch, Matthew Morrison, Lea Michele and Chris Colfer all won Satellite Awards and were nominated for Golden Globe and Emmy Awards. Lynch was nominated for eighteen individual awards (winning eight), the most of any cast members. Several crew members were also nominated for awards, with series creator Ryan Murphy nominated for three Writers Guild of America Awards and two Directors Guild of America Awards. As of , "Glee" was nominated for over 150 awards, of which it won more than 70.
AfterEllen.com and AfterElton.com Awards.
The gay media websites AfterEllen.com and AfterElton.com run Lesbian/Bisexual and Gay People's Choice Awards respectively, as well as Visibility Awards for the LGBT community. The awards are voted on by the websites' users.
Dorian Awards.
In the Dorian Awards' inaugural year, 2010, "Glee" won in three categories. It won in four categories in 2011, with the "TV Comedy Performance of the Year" award resulting in a tie between Chris Colfer and Jane Lynch.
Golden Globe Awards.
"Glee" won "Best Television Series – Musical or Comedy" at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association's 2010 Golden Globe Awards. Lea Michele, Jane Lynch and Matthew Morrison all received nominations in acting categories. The show was nominated for exactly the same awards at the 2011 Golden Globe Awards with the addition of a nomination for Chris Colfer for Best Supporting Actor, and Colfer and the series both won. In 2012, it was only nominated in the series category, and did not win.
Grammy Awards.
The Grammy Awards are awarded annually by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States. Glee Cast has been nominated for three awards.
People's Choice Awards.
The People's Choice Awards recognize the people and work of popular culture, and are voted on by the general public. "Glee" won the "Favorite New TV Comedy" award in 2010, and was nominated for three awards in 2011.
Satellite Awards.
The Satellite Awards, formerly known as the Golden Satellite Awards, are presented both for cinema and television. "Glee" has won five awards, including "Outstanding Guest Star" for special guest star Kristin Chenoweth.
Teen Choice Awards.
The Teen Choice Awards are voted on by teenagers. "Glee" was nominated for three awards in 2009, thirteen awards in 2010, and nine awards in both 2011 and 2013. It won three awards annually starting in 2010, increasing to four in 2013.
Notes.
 for "Outstanding Comedy Series": "Pilot" and "Preggers"; "Wheels" and "Sectionals"; "The Power of Madonna" and "Home".
 for "Outstanding Comedy Series": "Audition" and "Silly Love Songs"; "Original Song" and "The Substitute"; "Duets" and "Never Been Kissed".
 for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series": Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Patrick Gallagher, Jessalyn Gilsig, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Heather Morris, Matthew Morrison, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Mark Salling, Harry Shum, Jr., Josh Sussman, Dijon Talton, Iqbal Theba and Jenna Ushkowitz.
 for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series": Max Adler, Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Heather Morris, Matthew Morrison, Mike O'Malley, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Mark Salling, Harry Shum, Jr., Iqbal Theba, Jenna Ushkowitz.
 for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series": Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss, Ashley Fink, Dot-Marie Jones, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Heather Morris, Matthew Morrison, Mike O'Malley, Chord Overstreet, Lauren Potter, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Mark Salling, Harry Shum, Jr., Iqbal Theba, Jenna Ushkowitz.
 for "Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Comedy Series": Dianna Agron, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss, Samuel Larsen, Vanessa Lengies, Jane Lynch, Jayma Mays, Kevin McHale, Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Heather Morris, Matthew Morrison, Alex Newell, Chord Overstreet, Amber Riley, Naya Rivera, Mark Salling, Harry Shum, Jr., Jenna Ushkowitz.


Cameline

Cameline ( ) was a fabric material used in the Middle Ages for cloth. By tradition it is commonly thought to have been originally made of camel's hair in Asia. It was imported from Cyprus and Syria into Europe. Cameline is described also as a cloak of the Arabs made of camel's hair which is oftentimes striped white and brown in color. Since history records it many times as a "common and cheap" textile it is thought that it was an imitation of the original Asian camel's hair fabric. It was sometimes a lower quality French cloth imitation made of goat's hair. The fibers were spun into yarn and produced in Flanders and the Duchy of Brabant in many colors in medieval times. It is also described as a warm light woolen textile of camel's hair combined with wool or cotton. It is considered of lesser quality than that of camlet, which is also made of camel's hair.
Cameline is described in textile dictionaries as a coarse medieval fabric. The cloth of camel's hair is sometimes used in combination with other fabrics and made into a twill weave pattern or a basket weave which is finished with a soft nap. It is said to have been used in woolen clothing articles similar to cashmere wool clothing. Some authorities even think "cameline" is the same as we call today cashmere.
Etymology.
Middle English, from Old French "camelin", from "camelus", pertaining to a camel. From Old Italian of "cammellino", Middle Latin of "camelinuw", also "camelinus" – a textile made from camel's hair.
"Cambolism" seems to be recorded in Old French and English as the same as cameline. It is described as a brown cloth supposedly made of camel's hair, similar to that of camlet. Marco Polo records in his notes camlets made at Ninghaia with camel's hair in the 13th century. Chou Ch'il-fei in 1178 records of camel's hair satin camlets of many colors.
The name Camplin and Campling is defined as a wearer or maker of "cameline."
History.
Cameline materials were made in the thirteenth century at Saint-Quentin, Aisne in France. Various types and colors were also made in the fourteenth century in Amiens, Brussels, Cambrai, Commercy, and Mechlin. History records its first documented use in 1284. The medieval chronicler of France Jean de Joinville recollects that "the king (Louis IX) sent me to Tortosa, and commissioned me to purchase for him one hundred camelines of divers colors, to give to the Cordeliers when they returned to France." In this recollection he says there was a wide range of qualities and prices. He also records cameline camel's hair cloth being made at Cambrai and Amiens.
Such a clothing material is described by Geoffrey Chaucer in his 13th-century "Romaunt of the Rose."
<poem>
And Dame Abstinence-Streyned
Toke on a robe of kamelyne,
And gan hir (graithel) as a Bygyne.
The cloth was ryche and rygt fyn,
The champe it was of red kamelyne.
</poem>
Usage.
In medieval times originally the best quality of the camel's hair was used to make rich and luxurious articles of clothing. The coarser type of the cloth was used for the covering of tents. This coarse cloth was also used in medieval times for the upper garments of shepherds and camel drivers along with a leather girdle. Camel drivers of today sometimes still use this type of clothing.
Wycliffe's Bible quotes Matthew 3:4 in Middle English as:
"And this Joon hadde clothing of camels heeris, and a girdil of skynne aboute hise leendis; and his mete was honysoukis, and hony of the wode."
A modern English version of this same passage reads:
"And this John had clothing of camel's hairs, and a girdle of skin about his loins; and his meat was honeysuckles and honey of the wood."
Wycliffe's Bible quotes Mark 1:6 in Middle English as:
"And Joon was clothid with heeris of camels, and a girdil of skyn was about hise leendis; and he ete hony soukis, and wilde hony."
A modern English version of this same passage reads:
"And John was clothed with hairs of camels, and a girdle of skin was about his loins; and he ate honeysuckles, and wild honey."
According to the Old Testament camel's hair weave was made into cloth and the clothing referred to as "cameline garments" and worn by Persian priests.
2 Kings 1:8 refers to "a man dressed in hair" which scholars believe to be camel's hair.
"And they answered him, He was an hairy man, and girt with a girdle of leather about his loins. And he said, It is Elijah the Tishbite."


Eesti talent

" Eesti talent " is the Estonian version of the "Got Talent" series. It was launched on TV3 on 9 October 2010. Singers, dancers, comedians, variety acts, and other performers compete against each other for audience support. The winner of the show receives 250,000 kroons (c. €16,000, c. US$20,500). It is hosted by singers Eda-Ines Etti and Tanel Padar. The judges are music critic and journalist Mihkel Raud, who is known by being judges of many other TV shows; musician, enterpriser and politician Valdo Randpere, model and dancer Kristiina Heinmets-Aigro. The show is produced by RUUT productions and FremantleMedia.
The first auditions took place in Pärnu on 14 August 2010.
Semi-final summary.
The "Order" columns lists the order of appearance each act made for every episode.


Constellation diagram

A constellation diagram is a representation of a signal modulated by a digital modulation scheme such as quadrature amplitude modulation or phase-shift keying. It displays the signal as a two-dimensional "xy"-plane scatter diagram in the complex plane at symbol sampling instants. The angle of a point, measured counterclockwise from the horizontal axis, represents the phase shift of the carrier wave from a reference phase. The distance of a point from the origin represents a measure of the amplitude or power of the signal.
In a digital modulation system, information is transmitted as a series of samples, each occupying a uniform time slot. During each sample, the carrier wave has a constant amplitude and phase, which is restricted to one of a finite number of values. So each sample encodes one of a finite number of "symbols", which in turn represent one or more binary digits (bits) of information. Each symbol is encoded as a different combination of amplitude and phase of the carrier, so each symbol is represented by a point on the constellation diagram, called a "constellation point". The constellation diagram shows all the possible symbols that can be transmitted by the system as a collection of points. In a frequency or phase modulated signal, the signal amplitude is constant, so the points lie on a circle around the origin.
The carrier representing each symbol can be created by adding together different amounts of a cosine wave representing the "I" or "in-phase" carrier, and a sine wave, shifted by 90° from the I carrier called the "Q" or "quadrature" carrier. Thus each symbol can be represented by a complex number, and the constellation diagram can be regarded as a complex plane, with the horizontal real axis representing the I component and the vertical imaginary axis representing the Q component. A coherent detector is able to independently demodulate these carriers. This principle of using two independently modulated carriers is the foundation of quadrature modulation. In pure phase modulation, the phase of the modulating symbol is the phase of the carrier itself and this is the best representation of the modulated signal.
A 'signal space diagram' is an ideal constellation diagram showing the correct position of the point representing each symbol. After passing through a communication channel, due to electronic noise or distortion added to the signal, the amplitude and phase received by the demodulator may differ from the correct value for the symbol. When plotted on a constellation diagram the point representing that received sample will be offset from the correct position for that symbol. An electronic test instrument called a vector signal analyzer can display the constellation diagram of a digital signal by sampling the signal and plotting each received symbol as a point. The result is a 'ball' or 'cloud' of points surrounding each symbol position. Measured constellation diagrams can be used to recognize the type of interference and distortion in a signal.
Interpretation.
The number of constellation points in a diagram gives the size of the "alphabet" of symbols that can be transmitted by each sample, and so determines the number of bits transmitted per sample. It is usually a power of 2. A diagram with four points, for example, represents a modulation scheme that can separately encode all 4 combinations of two bits: 00, 01, 10, and 11, and so can transmit two bits per sample. Thus in general a modulation with formula_1 constellation points transmits formula_2 bits per sample.
After passing through the communication channel the signal is decoded by a demodulator. The function of the demodulator is to classify each sample as a symbol. The set of sample values which the demodulator classifies as a given symbol can be represented by a region in the plane drawn around each constellation point. If noise causes the point representing a sample to stray into the region representing another symbol, the demodulator will misidentify that sample as the other symbol, resulting in a symbol error. Most demodulators choose, as its estimate of what was actually transmitted, the constellation point which is closest (in a Euclidean distance sense) to that of the received sample; this is called maximum likelihood detection. On the constellation diagram these detection regions can be easily represented by dividing the plane by lines equidistant from each adjacent pair of points.
One half the distance between each pair of neighboring points is the amplitude of additive noise or distortion required to cause one of the points to be misidentified as the other, and thus cause a symbol error. Therefore, the further the points are separated from one another, the greater the noise immunity of the modulation. Practical modulation systems are designed to maximize the minimum noise needed to cause a symbol error; on the constellation diagram this means that the distance between each pair of adjacent points is equal.
The received signal quality can be analyzed by displaying the constellation diagram of the signal at the receiver on a vector signal analyzer. Some types of distortion show up as characteristic patterns on the diagram:
A constellation diagram visualises phenomena similar to those an eye pattern does for one-dimensional signals. The eye pattern can be used to see timing jitter in one dimension of modulation.


Pearl Carpet of Baroda

The Pearl Carpet of Baroda was a carpet commissioned by the Maharaja of Baroda.
History.
The carpet was commissioned by Khande Rao Gaekwad, the Maharaja of Baroda, in 1865. He intended to gift the carpet to adorn the Prophet's Tomb in Medina. However, the maharajah died in 1870 before the donation was made and the pearl carpet remained in his family.
It was first exhibited in public at the Delhi Durbar in 1903, when it was still owned by the Gaekwad dynasty. The last Gaekwad royal to own it was Sita Devi who took it with her to Monaco in 1946.
The carpet made its second appearance in public when it was displayed in 1985 at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. At a Sotheby's auction in Doha in 2009, an anonymous buyer bought it for $5.5 million. It is now a part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of Qatar.
Design.
The carpet is embellished with pearls, diamonds, rubies and emeralds.


Basket Case 2

Basket Case 2 is a 1990 American comedy slasher film written and directed by Frank Henenlotter, and the sequel to "Basket Case". It was released on DVD by Synapse Films in October 2007. The film spawned another sequel, "", released in 1991.
Plot.
Having survived their fall at the end of the first film, Duane Bradley and his hideously deformed brother Belial are rescued from the hospital by an elderly woman named Ruth who, along with her beautiful granddaughter, are the caretakers of an extended family of similarly deformed individuals. When a snooping tabloid reporter and a sleazy photographer threaten to endanger the community's welfare, the two brothers join with the freaks to defend their privacy with a vengeance.
Reception.
Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 67% of six surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating was 6.4/10. "Variety" called it "a hilarious genre spoof" that pays homage to "Freaks". Caryn James of "The New York Times" wrote, "As cheap horror spoofs go, this one isn't all bad." Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times" wrote, "It has everything it needs to become the cult film that its 1982 predecessor has been: outrageous dark humor, bizarre horror, driving energy and genuine pathos."
From retrospective reviews, John Kenneth Muir wrote in his book "Horror Films of the 1990s" opined that "Basket Case 2" was "disappointing" and that it "eschews all the qualities that made the down-and-dirty, low-budget original such a great pleasure."
Sequel.
This sequel was followed in 1991 by another sequel, "".


Elizabeth Porter Phelps

Elizabeth Porter Phelps (1747–1817) was a member of the eighteenth-century rural gentry in western Massachusetts; she is also recognized as an important diarist from late 18th century and early 19th century in Hadley, Massachusetts (USA).
Biography.
Elizabeth Porter was born in 1747. As a young child she moved with her parents to a large farm known as Forty Acres, located in Hadley, Massachusetts. Built in 1752 by Moses and Elizabeth Porter, this estate reflected the family's wealth and social standing. After Moses Porter died in 1755 during the Battle of Lake George (an episode during the French and Indian War), his widow Elizabeth Pitkin Porter, who never remarried, hired a series of managers to help run the large farm; she remained at the estate until her death in 1798.
Elizabeth Porter married estate manager Charles Phelps, Jr. on June 14, 1770 and continued to reside at Forty Acres. In 1772 Phelps gave birth to a son, Moses Porter Charles Phelps. In late 1776, Elizabeth gave birth to another son, Charles, only to lose him soon after (thought to be from a smallpox outbreak). In 1779, Elizabeth gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth Whiting. After her daughter's marriage to Dan Huntington in 1801 and removal to Litchfield, Connecticut, the two women remained in contact with each other through a lively correspondence.
After Elizabeth Porter Phelps' death in 1817, her daughter Elizabeth Whiting Phelps "Betsy" Huntington moved into the house with her husband Dan Huntington. Betsy kept her own diary, and maintained correspondence with her 11 children. These materials are part of a large collection of family papers on deposit in the Amherst College Library, over 90 linear feet of archival material documenting the family's history over eight generations.
Diarist.
The Elizabeth Porter Phelps diary is an important historical record that has been utilized by a number of historians, including Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Catherine E. Kelly and Marla R. Miller. Over 54 years, sermons, social and house calls, medical care, errands, and other topics are recorded in her diary. Phelps records the names of visitors to the estate as well as the men and women who came to work at Forty Acres. The names of more than sixty women employed during the decades covered by Phelps' diary are preserved (one of these women--Hatfield, Massachusetts gownmaker Rebecca Dickinson--also left a diary kept during the same years as Phelps' record); Phelps also recorded the names of several male farmhands. She also records activities associated with the several enslaved men and women at the estate. During her forty-two years of marriage, Phelps supervised work on the farm, including spinning, the making and mending of clothes, the making of soap, candle-making, and so forth.
The record is especially valuable on the subject of needlework, an important part in the life of Elizabeth Porter Phelps. She spent a great deal of her social life as a young woman participating in quilting bees that cultivated social connections while allowing young women to show off her skills. Young women also received the opportunity to meet eligible men at festivities following quilting, forming connections with the relatives of the women who shared their status.
Most models of the 'patriarchal family economy' ill fit the evidence of 18th century diaries, which describe a world in which wives as well as husbands traded with their neighbors, where young women felt themselves responsible for their own support, where matches were made in the tumult of neighborhood frolics, and where outsiders as well as family members were involved in the most intimate events of life.


Ukrayina maye talant

Ukrayina maye talant (; ) is a Ukrainian reality television series on the STB television network, and part of the global British "Got Talent" series. It is a talent show that features singers, dancers, sketch artists, comedians, and other performers of all ages competing for the advertised top prize of 1,000,000 Ukrainian hryvnia. The show debuted in April 2009. The three judges Vladyslav Yama, Slava Frolova and Ihor Kondratiuk joined host Oksana Marchenko. Contestants Kseniya Simonova and Anastasia Sokolova were revealed by this show. The show is now in its sixth season with two new judges: Hector Jimenez-Bravo and Viacheslav Uzelkov.
Rules of the show.
Participants may enter of any age and residence. Organizers of the show browse thousands of rooms to choose the best numbers that will fight for the title of the most talented person in Ukraine and 1 million prize in USD. Voting is determined by SMS. Viewers can send messages over the news release (in the semifinals), or in the finals during the week, and vote for the names of 10 finalists. Check count of votes are obtained and confirmed by the international auditing company Ernst & Young .
Seasons overview.
Season 1 (2009).
The first season of Ukraine's got talent began on April 2009 and ended shortly afterwards. The judges were Vladyslav Yama, Slava Frolova and Igor Kondratyuk, and it was broadcast on STB. The first season was won by artist Kseniya Simonova, for sand animation. Dmytro Khaladzhi, a world-record gymnast, refused to participate in the final duet in favor of Art Van, one of ten finalists of the season.
Season 2 (2010).
The second season began in 2010, and concluded with Olena Kovtun as the winner.
Season 3 (2011).
The third season began in 2011, and concluded with Vitaliy Luzkar as the winner.
Season 4 (2012).
The fourth season began in 2012, and concluded with a singer known as Aida Nikolaichuk.
Season 5 (2013).
The fifth season began in 2013, and concluded with a folk group "Lisapetnyi Batalyon" as the winner.
Second runner up was Anastasia Sokolova, an athlete who perfected pole dancing routines.
Season 6 (2014).
The sixth season began March 7, 2014 with new judges: Hector Jimenez-Bravo and Viacheslav Uzelkov.
Ratings.
The first season of "Ukraine's Got Talent" garnered as many as 11 million viewers, most of whom were in the age group 13–49.


La forza del destino discography

This is a partial discography of Giuseppe Verdi's opera, "La forza del destino".


American Players Theatre

American Players Theatre (APT) is a classical theater located just south of Spring Green, Wisconsin. It includes a 1,089-seat outdoor amphitheater.
APT sits on of woods and meadow just off the Wisconsin River across Wisconsin Highway 23 from Frank Lloyd Wright's studio Taliesin. Founded in 1980, APT has grown rapidly in recent years, with more than 100,000 patrons attending performances each year. It currently claims to have the second largest audience in the United States for outdoor classical theater.
APT typically produces 116 performances of nine plays running in repertory from June to November. In 2009, APT opened the new, indoor Touchstone Theatre, with 200 seats. aAPT's repertoire consists primarily of plays by Shakespeare and other noted (usually Western) playwrights, such as George Bernard Shaw, Anton Chekhov, and Molière. Two of the plays at either "the hill theatre" or "Touchstone Theatre" are typically Shakespeares, with some 20th-century productions performed on both the Hill and the Touchstone.
A significant part of APT is its education program. APT works with schools and educators to teach students both about Shakespeare and other classic dramatic works, and about the theater in general. Each season, APT offers student matinees during school hours in the fall. The actors of APT also conduct in-school workshops.
In a personal blog post in August 2014, "The Wall Street Journal"'s Terry Teachout wrote,"APT is the best classical theater company in America."
History.
Randall Duk Kim and Anne Occhiogrosso came from the Guthrie Theater and Charles J. Bright from the Kennedy Center to cofound APT. Kim served as the artistic director, Occhiogrosso the resident director, and Bright the managing director. Due to financial mismanagement, the theatre accrued around $600,000 in debt and announced in January 1986 that they were set to close. Shortly afterward, the theatre received $170,000 from community fundraising and a $405,000 loan from the state's block grant to stay open.
It was nominated for the Regional Theatre Tony Award in 1985.
Kim was the artistic director and mainstay lead actor for 15 years before reviving a movie career after a dispute with the board of directors.
David Frank served as artistic director from 1991 to 2014. He established the APT's core company in 1996. Frank was succeeded by associate art director Brenda DeVita.
Acting Company.
American Players Theatre has an Actors' Equity Association, a company of actors cast in annual productions for one season, along with a core company, 14 actors committed to APT for a designated period of time through a contract. APT's core company consists of actors and actresses Tim Gittings, Kelsey Brennan, James Ridge, Tracy Michelle Arnold, Jim DeVita, Brian Mani, Gavin Lawrence, Marcus Truschinski, Melisa Pereyra, Sarah Day, Nate Burger, David Daniel, and Colleen Madden.


Being Alive

"Being Alive" is a song from the musical "Company" by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The song appears at the end of Act II and is sung by the main character, Robert, a 35-year-old bachelor who at the show's end “. . . realizes being a lone wolf isn't all it's cracked up to be . . . he declares that he wants to take the chance, be afraid, get his heart broken - or whatever happens when you decide to love and be loved."
"Being Alive" was first recorded by Dean Jones, who originated the role of Robert on Broadway in 1970. "Being Alive" has become popular outside its original musical setting, and although written for a male part is frequently performed by women. The song has been performed in concert, on the stage, or in the studio by Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Barbra Streisand, Margaret Whiting, Lea Salonga, John Owen-Jones, Ute Lemper, Lauren Samuels, Raul Esparza, John Barrowman, Chris Colfer, Neil Patrick Harris, Adam Driver among others.
“Being Alive” replaced the song “Happily Ever After”, which was cut from "Company" because it was considered too dark to serve as a closing number. According to cultural critic Jeremy McCarter, Sondheim has never been happy with “Being Alive” as the finale for "Company", calling it “a cop-out”.
Context.
"Being Alive" appears at the end of Act II of the musical "Company" by George Furth with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. The song is sung by the main character, Robert (Bobby), who is facing his 35th birthday and the prospect of living the rest of his life alone. Prior to singing "Being Alive", Robert reflects on the relationships of five couples, his “. . . good and crazy married friends—Susan and Peter, Sarah and Harry, Amy and Paul, Jenny and David, and Joanne and Larry . . ." along with the relationships he has with three of his “girlfriends—April, Kathy, and Marta . . ." While each relationship has its problems, Robert concludes that life is better lived with someone rather than alone.
Performances (on stage, in concert, recorded or otherwise).
"Being Alive" was first recorded by Dean Jones, who originated the role of Robert on Broadway in 1970. "Being Alive" has become popular outside its original musical setting, and although written for a male part is frequently performed by women. The song has been performed in concert, on the stage, or in the studio by Bernadette Peters, Patti LuPone, Barbra Streisand, Margaret Whiting, Lea Salonga, Ute Lemper, and Lauren Samuels, among others. Raul Esparza was a nominee at the 2007 Tony Awards for his role in "Company" and performed the song on the awards show. The character Kurt Hummel, played by actor Chris Colfer, covered the song during the ninth episode, "Swan Song", of the fourth season of the television show "Glee", as his audition for the fictional school NYADA. In the British soap opera "EastEnders", the song is Linda Carter's (Kellie Bright) wedding song when she marries Mick Carter (Danny Dyer) on New Year's Day 2016, and is performed by West End star Alice Fearn. The song also appears on her album "Where I've Been... Where I'm Going". The song was also sung, and played on the piano by Alex (Judd Hirsch) in the US sitcom 'Taxi" series 2 Episode 21,'Alex jumps out of a plane'
The American composer Gabriel Kahane wrote a piano scherzo, "Being Alive", for "" which was inspired by the Sondheim song.
In the 2019 film "Marriage Story", written and directed by Noah Baumbach, lead character Charlie Barber (portrayed by Adam Driver) performs the entire song in a New York piano bar.
Background.
By the time "Being Alive" premiered in 1970, lyricist and composer Stephen Sondheim had already been recognized with three Tony Awards Best Musical nominations and one winner. He had musicals "West Side Story" (1958) and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" (1963) already to his credit. When Sondheim came around to “transform the American Musical” with the “concept musical”, "Company" won six Tony Awards of its own. However, "Being Alive" has not always been "Company's" famous finale. There were four attempts to fill this gap in the show, and still, according to cultural critic Jeremy McCarter, “Sondheim has never been satisfied with the result, calling [“Being Alive”] ‘a cop-out.’”
The first of these attempts was with a song entitled "Multitudes of Amys", but as Sondheim describes “George Furth [author] transferred the situation in which it was to be sung – Robert’s proposal to Amy – to Act One and the song had to be replaced.” The second attempt was “Marry Me A Little.” Sondheim commented that on this try he knew halfway through the writing process that it would not work for the character, and the only reason he finished the song was as “a favor for a friend who loved it.” The third attempt came with “Happily Ever After”, which even made it to the Boston tryout before it had to be replaced because it was “deemed too dark to serve as a closing number.” Hence, Sondheim’s fourth and final attempt was made with "Being Alive", in which he tried to express the same thoughts as “Happily Ever After”, but in a more optimistic way. Finally, "Being Alive" has become the recognized internationally acclaimed closing to Sondheim’s "Company".


Production history of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival

Production history of plays performed by the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, .
The Early Years (1930s).
In the early years, OSF only produced works of Shakespeare.
In July 1939, OSF was invited to present their production of The Taming of the Shrew at the Golden Gate International Exposition. The performance was broadcast nationally over NBC Radio. The interest drawn up by the national broadcast may have been the necessary exposure that allowed the Festival to return following World War II.
The Post-War Years (Late 1940s & 1950s).
The festival did not present any productions from 1941 to 1946. This was due to World War II and a fire that burned down the festival's original Elizabethan Theatre.
In 1951, actors from the summer acting company formed the Vining Repertory. This "edition" of the festival was created to present plays in indoor venues that allowed the season to utilize more of the year when winter weather would prohibit outdoor performances. They performed for three seasons in a local venue known as the Lithia Theatre before a fire destroyed the stage, stock, and records. The name "Vining Repertory" was in honor of the brothers who founded the Lithia Theatre and who had died just before the creation of this "sub-company".
The 1960s.
The 60s confirmed the demand for an indoor venue that permitted performances in colder months. Vining Rep continued for another year in a new venue: a local movie theatre called The Varsity Theatre with the dressing rooms in a trailer behind the venue. Later in the decade, the festival used the Varsity for matinee performances of Ballad Operas, but were soon able to raise enough money to build a new indoor space: The Angus Bowmer Theatre.
The 1970s.
The 1970s began with the first season in the new Angus Bowmer Theatre. In 1977, after being used for company-only play performances and staged readings, the Black Swan Theatre became another venue presenting shows as a part of the main OSF season. The Black Swan was used for more experimental or intimate productions.
The 2000s.
The early 2000s saw the decommissioning of the Black Swan Theatre as a venue for the regular season and the construction and opening of the New Theatre that would later be renamed as the Thomas Theatre in 2013. The Black Swan closed at the end of the 2001 season on October 28, and the New Theatre started performances in March 2002.
The decade also saw a change in leadership. In 2007, Libby Appel's ended her tenure as the Artistic Director. The 2008 season was the first for Bill Rauch, who became the fifth person to assume the role.
The 2010s.
Several theaters underwent name changes for the 2013 season. The New Theatre finally gained a formal name as the Thomas Theatre. The Elizabethan Stage and Allen were united under one name as the Allen Elizabethan Theatre, thanks to a $3 Million grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation.
In 2014, the Festival announced their Canon in a Decade initiative. In the next ten years, from 2015 to 2024, the Festival would be producing the complete Shakespeare Canon to honor the 80th anniversary of the festival. This project is in progress, and may have been affected by shut downs due to the COVID-19 Pandemic.
In August 2019, Bill Rauch left the position of Artistic Director. Nataki Garrett is his successor, and she is the sixth person to hold the position.
The 2020s.
The Festival opened the 2020 season on February 28. On March 11, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the performances and remaining openings of all shows to be cancelled indefinitely. By the end of March, the Festival was hoping to present a smaller season that would open Labor Day weekend. The plan was to present the four shows that had already opened with the addition of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" in the outdoor Allen Elizabethan Theatre. On May 8, it became apparent that ongoing social distancing restrictions in Oregon would prohibit a fall season and all shows for 2020 were cancelled.
Cumulative Shakespeare Canon Productions.
A list of the number of times the Oregon Shakespeare Festival has produced each of Shakespeare's plays is available below. It counts only main stage productions produced in Ashland and at OSF Portland.
The Festival has completed the canon of the first folio four times: the first time with Troilus and Cressida in 1958, and the remaining times with Timon of Athens in 1978, 1997, and 2016.
"*indicates shows not part of the First Folio canon."


Masala film

Masala films of Indian cinema are those that mix genres in one work. Typically these films freely mix action, comedy, romance, and drama or melodrama. They also tend to be musicals that include songs, often filmed in picturesque locations. The genre is named after the masala, a mixture of spices in Indian cuisine. According to "The Hindu", masala is the most popular genre of Indian cinema. Masala films have origins in 1970s Bollywood films, and are most common in Bollywood and South Indian films.
History.
According to a number of critics and scholars, the masala film was pioneered in the early 1970s by filmmaker Nasir Hussain, along with screenwriter duo Salim–Javed, consisting of Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. "Yaadon Ki Baaraat" (1973), directed by Hussain and written by Salim-Javed, has been identified by many as the first masala film. However, critic S. Shankar has claimed the genre has existed in Tamil cinema as early as the 1950s, citing "Parasakthi" (1952) and "Enga Veettu Pillai" (1965) as examples. After "Yaadon Ki Baaraat", Salim-Javed went on to write more successful masala films in the 1970s and 1980s. A landmark for the masala film genre was "Amar Akbar Anthony" (1977), directed by Manmohan Desai and written by Kader Khan. Manmohan Desai went on to successfully exploit the genre in the 1970s and 1980s.
"Sholay" (1975), directed by Ramesh Sippy and written by Salim-Javed, also falls under the masala genre. It is sometimes called a "Curry Western", a play on the term Spaghetti Western. A more accurate genre label is the "Dacoit Western", as it combined the conventions of Indian dacoit films such as "Mother India" (1957) and "Gunga Jumna" (1961) with that of Spaghetti Westerns. "Sholay" spawned a subgenre of "Dacoit Western" films in the 1970s.
Masala films helped establish many leading actors as superstars in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Sridevi achieved stardom in their early Bollywood career with masala movies. Since the 1990s, actors such as Salman Khan (Salim Khan's son), Shah Rukh Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn in Bollywood, NTR, Chiranjeevi, Mahesh Babu, Allu Arjun, Jr. NTR, Nagarjuna and Pawan Kalyan in Tollywood, M.G. Ramachandran, Suriya Sivakumar, Vijay, Sivakarthikeyan, Ajith Kumar and Rajinikanth in Kollywood, Rajkumar, Vishnuvardhan, Ambarish, Darshan, Puneeth Rajkumar and Yash in Kannada cinema, Dev, Jeet and Ankush Hazra in Bengali cinema and others have all tasted success in this format.
This style is used very often in Hindi (Bollywood) and South Indian films, as it helps make them appeal to a broad variety of viewers. Famous masala filmmakers include David Dhawan, Anees Bazmee, Shaji Kailas, Joshiy (Malayalam Cinema) and Farah Khan . Raja Chanda, Raj Chakraborty ,Srijit Mukherji, Dhrubo Banerjee and Rabi Kinagi in Bengali cinema; S. S. Rajamouli, Puri Jagannadh, Trivikram Srinivas and Srinu Vaitla in Telugu cinema; S. Shankar, Hari, Siruthai Siva, Pandiraj, AR Murugadoss, K. V. Anand, N. Lingusamy and K. S. Ravikumar in Tamil cinema; and in Kannada cinema it was V. Somashekhar and K. S. R. Das in the 1970s; K. V. Raju, A. T. Raghu and Joe Simon in the 1980s; Om Prakash Rao and Shivamani in the 1990s; and K. Madesh and A. Harsha in the 2000s.
Beyond Indian cinema, Danny Boyle's Academy Award–winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" (2008), based on Vikas Swarup's Boeke Prize winning novel "Q & A" (2005), has been described by several reviewers as a "masala" movie, due to the way the film combines "familiar raw ingredients into a feverish masala" and culminates in "the romantic leads finding each other." This is due to the influence of the Bollywood masala genre on the film. According to Loveleen Tandan, "Slumdog Millionaire" screenwriter Simon Beaufoy "studied Salim-Javed's kind of cinema minutely." The influence of Bollywood masala films can also be seen in Western musical films. Baz Luhrmann stated that his successful musical film "Moulin Rouge!" (2001) was directly inspired by Bollywood musicals.
Aamir Khan (Nasir Hussain's nephew), who debuted as a child actor in the first masala film "Yaadon Ki Baraat", has been credited for redefining and modernising the masala film with his own distinct brand of socially conscious cinema in the early 21st century. His films blur the distinction between commercial masala films and realistic parallel cinema, combining the entertainment and production values of the former with the believable narratives and strong messages of the latter, earning both commercial success and critical acclaim, in India and overseas.
Influences.
While the "masala" film genre originated from Bollywood films in the 1970s, there have been several earlier influences that have shaped its conventions. Examples of this influence include the techniques of a side story, back-story and story within a story. Indian popular films often have plots that branch off into sub-plots; such narrative dispersals can clearly be seen in the 1993 films "Khalnayak" and "Gardish". The second influence was the impact of ancient Sanskrit drama, with its highly stylised nature and emphasis on spectacle, where music, dance and gesture combined "to create a vibrant artistic unit with dance and mime being central to the dramatic experience." Sanskrit dramas were known as "natya", derived from the root word (dance), characterising them as spectacular dance-dramas which has continued in Indian cinema. The third influence was the traditional folk theatre of India, which became popular from around the 10th century with the decline of Sanskrit theatre. These regional traditions include the Jatra of Bengal, the Ramlila of Uttar Pradesh, and the Terukkuttu of Tamil Nadu. The fourth influence was Parsi theatre, which "blended realism and fantasy, music and dance, narrative and spectacle, earthy dialogue and ingenuity of stage presentation, integrating them into a dramatic discourse of melodrama. The Parsi plays contained crude humour, melodious songs and music, sensationalism and dazzling stagecraft."
A major foreign influence was Hollywood, where musicals were popular from the 1920s to the 1950s, though Indian filmmakers departed from their Hollywood counterparts in several ways. "For example, the Hollywood musicals had as their plot the world of entertainment itself. Indian filmmakers, while enhancing the elements of fantasy so pervasive in Indian popular films, used song and music as a natural mode of articulation in a given situation in their films. There is a strong Indian tradition of narrating mythology, history, fairy stories and so on through song and dance." In addition, "whereas Hollywood filmmakers strove to conceal the constructed nature of their work so that the realistic narrative was wholly dominant, Indian filmmakers made no attempt to conceal the fact that what was shown on the screen was a creation, an illusion, a fiction. However, they demonstrated how this creation intersected with people's day to day lives in complex and interesting ways."
Javed Akhtar, a pioneer of masala films, was also greatly influenced by Urdu novels by Pakistani author Ibn-e-Safi, such as the "Jasoosi Dunya" and "Imran" series of detective novels. They inspired, for example, famous Bollywood characters such as Gabbar Singh in "Sholay" (1975) and Mogambo in "Mr. India" (1987).
During the 1970s, commercial Bollywood masala films drew from several foreign influences, including New Hollywood, Hong Kong martial arts cinema, and Italian exploitation films. Following the success of Bruce Lee films such as "Enter the Dragon" in India, Bollywood films starting with "Deewaar" (1975) up until the 1990s often incorporated fight sequences inspired by 1970s martial arts films from Hong Kong cinema. Rather than following the Hollywood model, Bollywood action scenes tended to follow the Hong Kong model, with an emphasis on acrobatics and stunts, and combined kung fu (as it was perceived by Indians) with Indian martial arts (particularly Indian wrestling).


Annemieke Mein

Annemieke Mein (1944 Haarlem) is a Dutch-born Australian textile artist who specialises in depicting wildlife. She was the first textile artist to be member of "Wildlife Art Society of Australasia" and the "Australian Guild of Realist Artists". The subjects of her sculpted textiles are birds, frogs, gum and wattle blossoms, and insects such as moths, dragonflies, wasps and grasshoppers. Her fondness for insects and her sympathetic images, often greatly enlarged and showing normally invisible colours and textures, have revealed new aspects of the everyday world.
Annemieke was the only child of a father who was a dental technician and a mother who was a skilled dressmaker, and emigrated to Melbourne with her parents in 1951. Initially unable to speak English, she attended Brighton State School, Mitcham State School and Nunawading High School. She spent long days of her childhood roaming the outdoors and becoming fascinated by the extraordinary diversity of Australian wildlife. She sketched and collected insects, and learnt to breed and raise butterflies.
After finishing school she enrolled for a short-lived art course at Melbourne State College and then pursued a career in nursing at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, graduating in 1967. The following year she married Phillip Mein, a general practitioner she had met at the Hospital, and in 1971 they moved to Sale in Gippsland, Victoria with their six-month-old daughter, Joanne. Their son, Peter, was born in 1972. Her work became well-known and she was acclaimed as one of the world's foremost textile artists. In 1988 she received the Order of Australia Medal for services to the arts.
Annemieke holds regular workshops and freely imparts her techniques and experience to those who attend. She met Charles McCubbin (d. 2010), grandson of Frederick McCubbin, in 1979. He was one of Australia's leading naturalists and wildlife artists, and was chief consultant in the construction of the butterfly house at the Melbourne Zoo. He wrote and illustrated "Butterflies of Australia" and throughout their acquaintance shared his knowledge with Annemieke and gave his support.
In 1984 she was commissioned to design and produce six bas-relief bronzes for permanent display on a wall of fame in Sale. The bronzes featured Alfred William Howitt, Mary Grant Bruce, Ada Crossley, Allan McLean, Angus McMillan and Nehemiah Guthridge. In 1987 the town fathers of Bendigo commissioned a bas-relief of Henry Backhaus, the first priest to visit the Victorian goldfields. In 2007 Mein was the subject of a major survey exhibition at the Gippsland Art Gallery, which also holds a large number of her works in its permanent collection.
Her 1994 book "The Art of Annemieke Mein", gives a rare insight into the creative process that is necessary for producing works of art that delight both the artist and the viewer. The illustrations offer a comprehensive cross-section of her textile pieces.
She suffers from cryptogenic sensory neuropathy, an autoimmune condition which has made it difficult for her to continue working.


Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi

Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi () is a 2012 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy film directed by Bela Bhansali Sehgal, starring Farah Khan, Boman Irani, Kavin Dave, Shammi, Kurush Deboo and Daisy Irani. The film takes its inspiration from the Persian poem Farhad and Shirin by Nizami Ganjavi, itself based on a story found in the Shahnameh.
Plot.
Farhad Pastakia (Boman Irani) has a dream job as a bra-and-panty salesman. Except that he is a 45-year-old Parsi bachelor still living with his overbearing mother and grandmother. But it’s not like he’s stopped trying. Desperate to get him married, Farhad’s mother drags him to see women and even to embarrassing Parsi matrimony services.
In the midst of all the daily humdrum, Farhad meets the woman of his dreams: Shirin Fugawala (Farah Khan), who drops by his store. Shirin, who works at the Parsi Trust, hits it off with Farhad from the start. Everything seems to be perfect and Farhad gets ready to introduce Shirin to his mother. But mummy becomes the villain in their story when she discovers that Shirin is the devious Parsi Trust Secretary who got the illegal water tank in their home demolished. The water tank being the 'aakhri nishaani' of Farhad’s late father doesn’t help matters.
The ups and downs in Shirin-Farhad’s relationship and how the two try to make it work is the rest of the journey.
Soundtrack.
The album is composed by Jeet Gannguli.
Release.
"Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi" was released on 24 August 2012.
Critical reception.
"Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi" received positive to mixed critical reactions. Sukanya Verma of Rediff gave the movie 3.5/5, commenting that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi certainly makes for a welcome break from farcical exaggerations. What sets this delightful love story apart is that it is woven around two 40-plus Parsis, who neither face the hurdle of age nor community." Rajeev Masand of CNN-IBN gave the movie 3/5, concluding that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi is a charming film made with heart. Give it a chance, you won’t be disappointed." Shomini Sen of Zee News gave the movie 3/5, stating that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi makes you smile and laugh with each of its characters and their crazy, confusing ways. It will remind you of the bygone era when things were simpler." Aniruddha Guha of DNA India gave the movie 3/5, saying that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi demands little of you and delivers enough for you to not grudge spending time and money on it." Aakanksha Naval-Shetye of DNA India gave the movie 3/5, stating that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi is too sweet and too simple, but makes for a fun watch." Madhureeta Mukherjee of The Times of India gave the movie 3/5, concluding that "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi is no epic love tale, but it's worth a watch for those who like their cinema as buttered as their bun maska." Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV gave the movie 2.5/5, commenting that "Shirin Farhad Ki To Nikal Padi is warm-hearted and generally watchable without being exhilarating." Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave the movie 3.5/5, saying that "SHIRIN FARHAD KI TOH NIKAL PADI is a simple, unfussy and heartfelt movie that hits the right notes." Salman Khan praised the movie and told at least once it is watchable.
Box office.
"Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi" had a good opening at the box office at 20%, collecting in its first day. The movie collected in its first weekend, collecting in its second day and in its third day. The film collected nett in week one.


T-shirt yarn

T-shirt yarn is a crochet and knitting medium. T-shirt yarn is also known as "tarn" and T-Yarn. It is almost always made from T-shirts. This is because the cotton has been well worn and perfectly soft and still durable, and just slightly stretchy.


Tom Weston-Jones

Tom Weston-Jones (born 29 June 1987) is an English actor, known for his role in "Copper". He is also known for his role in "Warrior" (2019) as Richard Lee.
Early life and education.
Weston-Jones was born in Burton-upon-Trent, Staffordshire, and was brought up in Dubai, having gone to school at Dubai College. He holds a degree in drama and theatre from Royal Holloway University of London, and has trained at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.
Career.
Weston-Jones has had success on television. He is best known for portraying Irish immigrant Detective Kevin Corcoran in the BBC America television series "Copper". His other roles include Anthony in "Not Safe for Work" and Meriwether Compeyson in "Dickensian".


The Disappointment (Aphra Behn)

"The Disappointment" is a poem written by Aphra Behn. It was first published in 1680 (see 1680 in poetry) in the Earl of Rochester's "Poems on Several Occasions" and originally was believed to be Rochester’s own work. However, four years later, the poem was re-published in Aphra Behn’s "Poems on Several Occasions" and she received proper credit.
Summary.
Lysander, a shepherd, attempts to rape Cloris, a maid. After a lengthy attempt, Lysander is unable to perform and leaves Cloris escapes (the last line of the poem refers to "the Hell of Impotence", though one interpretation of the earlier line "Th' Insensible fell weeping in his Hands" is that he prematurely ejaculates). Behn's focus on the female sexual experience is unusual for the time, though not unusual for Behn. Behn often dealt with overt sexuality in her writing, but this perspective often was not accepted by the public until well after her death.
Themes.
"The Disappointment" is grouped with other male 'imperfect enjoyment' poems, where a male's failing is attributed to female beauty. Rather than focus on explaining Lysander's failure, Behn is concerned with Cloris's disappointment, as the title of the poem illustrates. Another interesting aspect of the poem is the way Aphra Behn personifies honor and shame as existing externally from Cloris as if honor “abandons” her of its own free will, and shame replaces it without Cloris’ consent.
Critical reception.
Though many critics disliked Behn’s work during her lifetime, Aphra Behn today is lauded as one of the most influential women writers. Virginia Woolf in "A Room of One’s Own" stated that all women owe a debt to Aphra Behn, who “earned them the right to speak their minds”. Today, Aphra Behn is credited with being a proto-feminist, and her works are studied as some of the most important works written by women during the time period.


Tracks (novel)

Tracks is a novel by Louise Erdrich, published in 1988. It is the third in a tetralogy of novels beginning with "Love Medicine" that explores the interrelated lives of four Anishinaabe families living on an Indian reservation near the fictional town of Argus, North Dakota. Within the saga, "Tracks" is earliest chronologically, providing the back-story of several characters such as Lulu Lamartine and Marie Kashpaw who become prominent in the other novels. As in many of her other novels, Erdrich employs the use of multiple first-person narratives to relate the events of the plot, alternating between Nanapush, a tribal patriarch, and Pauline, a young girl of mixed heritage.
Plot.
"Tracks" alternates between two narrators: Nanapush, a jovial tribal elder, and Pauline, a young girl of mixed heritage. In Nanapush's chapters the point of view is that of Nanapush telling stories to his granddaughter, Lulu, several years after the main events in the novel occur. When Lulu was ten years old, her mother, Fleur Pillager, sent her away to a government school. Because of this, Lulu is now estranged from her mother. Nanapush, therefore, narrates the story in attempt to reconcile mother and daughter by telling Lulu about the events between 1912 and 1924 that led Fleur to her decision.
Nanapush first meets Fleur in 1912 when he rescues her in the middle of winter and nurses her back to health from consumption – a recent epidemic among the Anishinaabe. Because of their shared grief at losing so many from their community, Nanapush and Fleur develop a friendship and begin to see one another as family. The next year, Fleur goes to the nearby town of Argus and takes a job at a butcher's shop, where she meets Pauline Puyat – the novel's second narrator. After beating a group of men from the shop one night at a game of poker, Fleur is beaten and raped. She leaves town, but the next day a tornado strikes Argus. Mysteriously, no one in town is harmed in the storm with the exception of the men who raped her – whose bodies are found locked in the freezer of the butcher shop, where they had taken refuge.
Fleur returns to her family home on the reservation, where she meets Eli Kashpaw while hunting in the woods one day. Much to his mother's dismay, Eli falls in love with Fleur and moves in with her. Soon, Fleur begins to show signs that she is pregnant and, although the true paternity is unknown, Eli takes responsibility of the child as his own. A new family unit begins to form at the Pillager home – Fleur, Eli and their daughter, Lulu, as well as Eli's mother, Margaret, and her second son, Nector. Throughout the novel, Margaret and Nanapush, whom Fleur regards as a father, also develop an intimate relationship. Together, the family faces trials of hunger, tribal conflict, and ultimately the loss of their land to the government.
In the meantime, Pauline has also left Argus. She stays with a widow named Bernadette Morrissey, from whom she learns the art of tending the sick and dying. She stays in Argus and visits Nanapush and the family home as an unwanted guest. Pauline serves as a midwife to Fleur during an early birth. She becomes increasingly jealous of Fleur and her relationship, and in an attempt to break them up, feeds a sort of love potion to Eli and a younger girl named Sophie, inducing them to copulate passionately in the forest. Claiming to have received a vision, she decides to join a convent, where she only delves further into obsession. She devotes herself to the cause of converting Fleur and the others, but is generally regarded as a nuisance. She develops several unusual habits as a means of self-inflicting suffering to remind herself of Christ's suffering. Her behaviors are frowned upon by the superior nun, and she is eventually sent away to teach mathematics at a Catholic school. Pauline's narratives deal with her own personal story and also provide a second perspective on many of the same events described by Nanapush.
Major themes.
Traditional beliefs vs. Christianity.
One major theme in "Tracks" is the tension between traditional Anishinaabe culture and beliefs and the Westernizing influence of white, Christian America. This clash can clearly be seen in the two characters of Fleur and Pauline; as Michelle R. Hessler writes, "Fleur upholds the traditions of her ancestors and attempts to save their land from the rapid advance of white civilization, whereas Pauline enters a cloister, denies her Native American heritage, and brings death and destruction to the reservation."
Narrative structure.
Contradictions, lies, and "double-voiced-ness" have also been identified as major themes in "Tracks" by some critics. As the plot unfolds, the narrator Nanapush is able to use his gift of speech to negotiate with government representatives on behalf of his people, but he often tells contradictory stories and even outright lies. Similarly, Pauline's narrative is unreliable and often contradictory.
Some critics view Nanapush as a reliable narrator. As critic Susan Stanford Friedman argues, "the novel overtly sets up a contrast between Nanapush as the reliable narrator who retains his Anishinabe religion and the unreliable narrator, the convert Pauline whose self-hatred takes the form of a denial of her Indian heritage and the adoption of a self-destructive Catholicism."
Nanapush is a critical character in the tension between the Anishinaabe and the whites because of his trickster qualities and ability to navigate both sides of the conflict through talking. Anishinaabe scholar Lawrence W. Gross points out that Nanapush's association with the mythical figure Nanabozho helps him to survive by enabling him to adapt white culture to his own traditions and interests, arguing that "it is the tricksters who survive to build a new world on the ashes of the old." Literary critic Sheila Hassel Hughes further expands on this notion by commenting on Nanapush's duplicitous speech, which, "like that of the prophet or the trickster, works simultaneously to undermine the power of the privileged oppressor and to appeal for his or her re-alignment on the side of the oppressed."
Maria DePriest also points out that, while Fleur is obviously the central character in the book, she does not get to narrate her own story. Fleur must battle two fronts - not only the external conflict of white America that threatens to take away her ancestral land, but also internal betrayals from her own people – but her story is told at a distance by Nanapush and Pauline, both of whom are unreliable narrators.
Hauntings and madness.
Fleur has been described as "one of the most haunting presences in contemporary American literature", and "Tracks" is also characterized by the theme of haunting. Fleur is described as having mystical, shamanistic powers and at one point even travels to the spirit world to negotiate for the life of her second child. Several references are made to the manitou (including Misshepeshu, the lake spirit who is said to be a guardian of the Pillager family) and the windigo. For instance, in the first chapter of the novel, Nanapush describes his and Fleur's descent into grief at the loss of so many of their people to consumption, saying, "We had gone half windigo. I learned later that this was common, that there were many of our people who died in this manner, of the invisible sickness. There were those who could not swallow another bite of food because the names of their dead anchored their tongues." Their grief is characterized as a gripping depression, verging on madness. Madness itself is also a motif in the novel – manifesting most notably in the characters of Pauline (with her masochistic self-mortification methods) and Fleur (particularly following the death of her second child). Beidler notes that madness is associated with the characters' emotional distress at the destruction of their environment by the white logging company.
Development history.
"Tracks" is part of a cycle of books all set in the same fictional community and dealing with many of the same characters and families – the Kashpaws, Pillagers, and Morrisseys. Other books in the saga include "Love Medicine", "The Beet Queen", "The Bingo Palace", "Four Souls" and "The Painted Drum". "Tales of Burning Love", which features Sister Leopolda (Pauline), is also loosely related. Erdrich's method of writing these related histories of families from the same community has been compared to William Faulkner and his creation of Yoknapatawpha County.
After her success with "Love Medicine" and "The Beet Queen", Erdrich was unsure of what to write about next. She had a 400-page manuscript that was to be the foundation for "Tracks", but regarded it as her "burden". With the help of her husband, Michael Dorris, she decided she could use the story to continue the saga of "Love Medicine" and "The Beet Queen".
Publication history.
The first edition of "Tracks" was published in 1988, but several of its chapters had been published previously as short stories. These include:
Reception.
"Tracks" received mixed reviews at the time of its publication, with most critics identifying Erdrich's vivid language and narrative structure as either effective or not.
R.Z. Sheppard criticized Erdrich's use of alternating narratives as too "schematic" and forced – and characterized her graphic descriptions as too "grandiose". "Crammed into a short, intense novel", Sheppard wrote, "her characters are too busy hauling symbolic freight to reveal their humanity." Similarly, "The New Statesman and Society" criticized the novel for being too vivid and heavy-handed with language, writing, "[Erdrich's] linguistic profusion veers toward sentimentalizing a people and their history."
In "The New York Times Book Review", Jean Strouse found "Tracks" to be "a bit more didactic and wrought" than Erdrich's previous novels, and more political as well. She also highlighted concerns over whether or not "Tracks" could even be considered a true novel, since four of its nine chapters had been previously published as short stories – including one, "Snares", which was controversially published in "Best American Short Stories", an anthology that claims it does not admit novel excerpts. Nonetheless, Strouse also praised Erdrich for "centering on life instead of self" in the novel, and called "Tracks" "a welcome contrast" to much of mainstream 1980s fiction.
Other reviewers responded positively to the novel, including Barbara Hoffert, who called it "splendid", and wrote that Erdrich's prose is "as sharp, glittering, and to the point as cut glass." Christopher Vecsey, in "Commonweal", compared her writing to the magical realism employed by writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Andrew Welsh-Huggins placed her in the company of contemporary writers like Anne Tyler, John Updike and Toni Morrison. The reviewer for "Choice" compared her writing style to William Faulkner, identified by Erdrich as one of her favorite authors.


Dalang (puppeteer)

The dhalang or dalang (; Indonesian and Malay: dalang) is the puppeteer in an Indonesian "wayang" performance.
In a performance of "wayang kulit", the dalang sits behind a screen ("kelir") made of white cotton stretched on a wooden frame. Above his head, hanging from beams attached to the top of the screen, is the lamp ("blencong"), which projects the shadows onto the screen. In front of the dhalang is a stage ("debog"), traditionally made from the trunk of a banana tree, into which the sharpened control rods of the puppets can be pushed to keep them in position during the performance. To his left is the puppet chest ("kotak"), and to his right is the puppet chest's lid, on which the puppets sit ready for use.
In addition to moving the puppets and speaking their lines, the dalang is also responsible for giving cues to the gamelan. This is done principally by playing the kepyak, a metal plate or set of plates played with his foot, or by rapping on the puppet chest ("kotak") with a wooden mallet held in the left hand.
The art of puppetry ("pedhalangan") was traditionally handed down within families, and dalangs formed a type of informal caste within Javanese society. The women of these families traditionally were expert players of the "gendér", an instrument which has a particularly important role in accompanying "wayang" performances. The sons of dalangs were often apprenticed out around the age of 13 to another dhalang. His role included helping to set up the screen ahead of a performance, performing the afternoon show before a main all-night "wayang", and sometimes acting as an accompanying musician or as an assistant puppeteer. He would also frequently end up marrying his master's daughter, who would have been trained as a gendér player by her mother. The social aspects of the dalang caste are covered by Victoria Clara van Groenendael's book "The Dalang Behind the Wayang" (Dordrecht, 1985).
Much of the traditional training of dhalangs was in the form of a practical apprenticeship, with a certain amount of spiritual training thrown in. This included meditation and a form of ascetic exercise known as "kungkum", in which meditation is carried out naked at night while immersed up to the neck in water. Such practices are felt to be essential in building up the stamina to perform for nine hours at a stretch. A further ascetic element is that dhalangs never eat during the performance, although almost all drink sweet tea and many also smoke heavily.
In recent times, however, schools teaching a standardized version of "pedhalangan" have been founded, such as the Habirandha school within the Kraton Yogyakarta. The Habirandha school published its own textbook, the "Pedhalangan Ngayogyakarta", in 1976. Standardized "pedhalangan" is also taught at Indonesian state institutions such as the Indonesian Institute of the Arts, Yogyakarta.
"Pedhalangan" falls into three main areas - musical, vocal and puppetry. The musical aspects include the direction and cueing of the gamelan and the singing of mood-setting songs ("sulukan"), the vocal includes the recitation of set texts at scene-openings ("kandha") and the extemporisation of dialogue showing mastery of Javanese linguistic etiquette, while the puppetry itself ("sabetan") involves a complex system of movements and positions. There is an extensive study of "sabetan" in English by Roger Long (see Further reading).


Loretta Pettway Bennett

Loretta Pettway Bennett (born December 29, 1960) is an American artist. She is associated with the Freedom Quilting Bee, where her mother, Qunnie Pettway, worked, and with the Gee's Bend quilt-makers. Her quilts "Sew Low" and "Vegetation" are part of the Eskenazi Health Art Collection.
Early life.
Loretta Pettway Bennett was born on a farm in Gee's Bend, Alabama to Qunnie Pettway and Tom O. Pettway. She and her siblings frequently worked on her grandfather, Tank Pettway's, farm growing cotton, corn, peanuts, and sweet potatoes, among other crops. Bennett remarks on the naming traditions of Gee's Bend using her family as an example: "Aunt Lucy was the sister of my father, Tom O. Pettway, Jr. An interesting thing is that Aunt Lucy’s middle name was Tomo. Because so many people in Gee’s Bend have the name of Pettway, people get middle names that let others know who their fathers are, so nobody marries a close cousin by mistake. My father and his father carry the middle initial O. for Ottaway, a name that goes back to an original Pettway slave called Ottaway."Bennett's family home did not receive running water or paved roads until 1975, when she was 15 years old. Previously, the family would haul water buckets from neighbors' homes or nearby wells and springs. Gee's Bend schools went through desegregation in Bennett's seventh grade year, and were shut down shortly thereafter. In order to continue her education, Bennett was required to take a crowded school bus two hours each morning and night to reach schools in neighboring counties. This arduous trek made participating in extracurricular activities nearly impossible. Nonetheless, Bennett graduated and married her high school sweetheart, Lovett "Bennett" Bennett on July 7, 1979.
Bennett's husband enlisted in the U.S. Army immediately after graduation, and they spent the next twenty years moving with the military. During her husband's military career, Bennett and her family lived in various cities in Germany, El Paso, Texas, and Georgia. While living in Germany and Texas, Bennett and her family traveled throughout Europe and the American southwest. They raised three boys and eventually settled down again in Gee's Bend, Alabama after Bennett's grandmother, Candis Pettway, died in 1998.
Career.
Bennett was introduced to the quilting tradition, when she was five or six years old, although "At that age we were only allowed to thread the needles for the quilters in my grandmother’s and my mother’s quilting group." Every summer, her mother and aunts would train more sewing into her skill set, little by little. Her first completed quilt was a baby blanket, which was a Home Economics' project for her Home Economic's teacher's arriving grandchild.
Throughout her travels in Europe and the American Southwest, Bennett always marveled at each culture's distinct use of color. In regards to Germany, she noted that "The Germans were not big on having a lot of different colors, especially not on their houses, cars, and clothing, compared to Americans. But in the springtime things were different. I got to see another side of Germany, as many houses were decorated with flower boxes of red geraniums and pansies sitting on the window ledges, with white and black-trimmed houses in the background." Some of her pieces, such as her early 2000s, duo-tone blocks and strips works, remind the viewer of Bauhaus ways of color usage, or the organization of Piet Mondrien. She exchanged craft traditions with local Germans often, recalling that her neighbors taught her to knit and she sold a few of her mother's quilts among her friends in Germany.
Truly understanding the depth of Gee's Bend's quilts national importance overwhelmed Bennett when she first saw the quilts displayed at the Houston Museum of Fine Art in 2002. She describes that moment as, "There my eyes were opened, and it touched me in a way as to question myself: Can I make a quilt that someday might hang on the wall of a museum?" Determined to carry on her ancestor's legacies, Bennett applied for and received a fellowship grant from the Alabama State Archive Council on the Arts to study the fine details of Gee's bend quilt-making. From this fellowship, her and her mother created a "Pine Burr" quilt, the state quilt of Alabama. Bennett donated this quilt to the Alabama Council of the Arts, where it now hangs on the walls of the Alabama Department of Archives and History.
She is a prolific artist and culture-bearer, dedicated to propagating her community's traditions for future generations.


Flow diagram

Flow diagram is a collective term for a diagram representing a flow or set of dynamic relationships in a system. The term flow diagram is also used as a synonym for flowchart, and sometimes as a counterpart of the flowchart.
Flow diagrams are used to structure and order a complex system, or to reveal the underlying structure of the elements and their interaction.
Overview.
The term flow diagram is used in theory and practice in different meanings. Most commonly the flow chart and flow diagram are used in an interchangeable way in the meaning of a representation of a process. For example the "Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference" by Harris (1999) gives two separate definitions:
In the second definition the meaning is limited to the representation of the physical route or flow. An example of such a diagram is the illustration of the flows in a nuclear submarine propulsion system, which shows different streams back and forth in the system. The representation of such a system can be supplemented by one or more flowcharts, which show the sequence of one of the flows in one direction, or any of the control flows to manage the system.
The physical movement of objects from one location to another can also be visualized in a mix of maps and flowchart or sankey diagram, which are called flow maps. Flow maps can indicate on a map, what flows, moves or migrates, in which direction, and in which quantities etc.
Specific types of flow diagrams.
In theory and practice specific types of diagrams are also called a type of flow diagrams, such as:


List of storytelling events

This list accompanies the article Storytelling festival.


Got Talent Portugal

Got Talent Portugal is a "talent show" adapted for Portugal from the original British show "Britain's Got Talent".
The show travels the country in search of people with new and diverse talents: magicians, ventriloquists, singers, orators, dancers, street artists, acrobats, comedians, jugglers, among many others. Without an age limit, it is a unique format in searching for true talent, whether it be an individual or in a group, and gives anonymous people the opportunity to show their artistic gifts in more diverse areas.


Tony Awards

The Antoinette Perry Award for Excellence in Broadway Theatre, more commonly known as the Tony Award, recognizes excellence in live Broadway theatre. The awards are presented by the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League at an annual ceremony in Midtown Manhattan.
The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theatre. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given, as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award.
The awards founded by Brock Pemberton are named after Antoinette "Tony" Perry, an actress, producer and theatre director who was co-founder and secretary of the American Theatre Wing. The trophy consists of a medallion, with a face portraying an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks, mounted on a black base with a pewter swivel.
The rules for the Tony Awards are set forth in the official document "Rules and Regulations of The American Theatre Wing's Tony Awards", which applies for that season only. The Tony Awards are considered the highest U.S. theatre honor, the New York theatre industry's equivalent to the Academy Awards (Oscars) for film, the Emmy Awards for television, and the Grammy Awards for music. It also forms the fourth spoke in the EGOT, that is, someone who has won all four major annual American entertainment awards. The Tony Awards are also considered the equivalent of the Laurence Olivier Awards in the United Kingdom and the Molière Awards in France.
The 73rd annual ceremony was held on June 9, 2019 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City and was broadcast live on CBS. James Corden served as the host.
Award categories.
, there were 26 categories of awards, in addition to several special awards. Starting with 11 awards in 1947, the names and number of categories have changed over the years. Some examples: the category Best Book of a Musical was originally called "Best Author (Musical)". The category of Best Costume Design was one of the original awards. For two years, in 1960 and 1961, this category was split into Best Costume Designer (Dramatic) and Best Costume Designer (Musical). It then went to a single category, but in 2005 it was divided again. For the category of Best Director of a Play, a single category was for directors of plays and musicals prior to 1960.
A newly established non-competitive award, The Isabelle Stevenson Award, was given for the first time at the awards ceremony in 2009. The award is for an individual who has made a "substantial contribution of volunteered time and effort on behalf of one or more humanitarian, social service or charitable organizations".
The category of Best Special Theatrical Event was retired as of the 2009–2010 season. The categories of Best Sound Design of a Play and Best Sound Design of a Musical were retired as of the 2014–2015 season. On April 24, 2017, the Tony Awards administration committee announced that the Sound Design Award would be reintroduced for the 2017–2018 season.
History.
The award was founded in 1947 by a committee of the American Theatre Wing headed by Brock Pemberton. The award is named after Antoinette Perry, nicknamed Tony, an actress, director, producer and co-founder of the American Theatre Wing, who died in 1946. As her official biography at the Tony Awards website states, "At [Warner Bros. story editor] Jacob Wilk's suggestion, [Pemberton] proposed an award in her honor for distinguished stage acting and technical achievement. At the initial event in 1947, as he handed out an award, he called it a Tony. The name stuck." Nevertheless, the awards were sometimes referred to as the "Perry Awards" in their early years.
The first awards ceremony was held on April 6, 1947, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City. The first prizes were "a scroll, cigarette lighter and articles of jewelry such as 14-carat gold compacts and bracelets for the women, and money clips for the men". It was not until the third awards ceremony in 1949 that the first Tony medallion was given to award winners.
Since 1967, the award ceremony has been broadcast on U.S. national television and includes songs from the nominated musicals, and occasionally has included video clips of, or presentations about, nominated plays. The American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League jointly present and administer the awards. Audience size for the telecast is generally well below that of the Academy Awards shows, but the program reaches an affluent audience, which is prized by advertisers. According to a June 2003 article in "The New York Times": "What the Tony broadcast does have, say CBS officials, is an all-important demographic: rich and smart. Jack Sussman, CBS's senior vice president in charge of specials, said the Tony show sold almost all its advertising slots shortly after CBS announced it would present the three hours. 'It draws upscale premium viewers who are attractive to upscale premium advertisers,' Mr. Sussman said..." The viewership has declined from the early years of its broadcast history (for example, the number of viewers in 1974 was 20 million; in 1999, 9.2 million) but has settled into between six and eight million viewers for most of the decade of the 2000s. In contrast, the 2009 Oscar telecast had 36.3 million viewers.
Medallion.
The Tony Award medallion was designed by art director Herman Rosse and is a mix of mostly brass and a little bronze, with a nickel plating on the outside; a black acrylic glass base, and the nickel-plated pewter swivel. The face of the medallion portrays an adaptation of the comedy and tragedy masks. Originally, the reverse side had a relief profile of Antoinette Perry; this later was changed to contain the winner's name, award category, production and year. The medallion has been mounted on a black base since 1967.
A larger base was introduced in time for the 2010 award ceremony. The new base is slightly taller , up from and heavier , up from . This change was implemented to make the award "feel more substantial" and easier to handle at the moment the award is presented to the winners. According to Howard Sherman, the executive director of the American Theatre Wing:
For the specific Tony Awards presented to a Broadway production, awards are given to the author and up to two of the producers free of charge. All other members of the above-the-title producing team are eligible to purchase the physical award. Sums collected are designed to help defray the cost of the Tony Awards ceremony itself. An award cost $400 as of at least 2000, $750 as of at least 2009, and, as of 2013, had been $2,500 "for several years", according to Tony Award Productions.
Details of the Tony Awards.
"Source: Tony Awards Official Site, Rules"
Rules for a new play or musical.
For the purposes of the award, a new play or musical is one that has not previously been produced on Broadway and is not "determined… to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire", as determined by the Administration Committee (per Section (2g) of the Rules and Regulations). The rule about "classic" productions was instituted by the Tony Award Administration Committee in 2002, and stated (in summary) "A play or musical that is determined ... to be a 'classic' or in the historical or popular repertoire shall not be eligible for an award in the Best Play or Best Musical Category but may be eligible in that appropriate Best Revival category." Shows transferred from Off-Broadway or the West End are eligible as "new", as are productions based closely on films.
This rule has been the subject of some controversy, as some shows, such as "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" and "Violet", have been ruled ineligible for the "new" category, meaning that their authors did not have a chance to win the important awards of Best Play or Best Musical (or Best Score or Best Book for musicals). On the other hand, some people feel that allowing plays and musicals that have been frequently produced to be eligible as "new" gives them an unfair advantage because they will have benefited from additional development time as well as additional familiarity with the Tony voters.
Committees and voters.
The Tony Awards Administration Committee has twenty-four members: ten designated by the American Theatre Wing, ten by The Broadway League, and one each by the Dramatists Guild, Actors' Equity Association, United Scenic Artists and the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. This committee, among other duties, determines eligibility for nominations in all awards categories.
The Tony Awards Nominating Committee makes the nominations for the various categories. This rotating group of theatre professionals is selected by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. Nominators serve three-year terms and are asked to see every new Broadway production. The Nominating Committee for the 2012–13 Broadway season (named in June 2012) had 42 members; the Nominating Committee for the 2014–2015 season has 50 members and was appointed in June 2014.
There are approximately 868 eligible Tony Award voters (as of 2014), a number that changes slightly from year to year. The number was decreased in 2009 when the first-night critics were excluded as voters. That decision was changed, and members of the New York Drama Critics' Circle were invited to be Tony voters beginning in the 2010–2011 season.
The eligible Tony voters include the board of directors and designated members of the advisory committee of the American Theatre Wing, members of the governing boards of Actors' Equity Association, the Dramatists Guild, the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers, United Scenic Artists, and the Association of Theatrical Press Agents and Managers, members of the Theatrical Council of the Casting Society of America and voting members of The Broadway League (in 2000, what was then The League of American Theaters and Producers changed membership eligibility and Tony voting status from a lifetime honor to all above-the-title producers, to ones who had been active in the previous 10 years. This action disenfranchised scores of Tony voters, including Gail Berman, Harve Brosten, Dick Button, Tony Lo Bianco, and Raymond Serra).
Eligibility date (Season).
To be eligible for Tony Award consideration, a production must have officially opened on Broadway by the eligibility date that the Management Committee establishes each year. For example, the cut-off date for eligibility the 2013–2014 season was April 24, 2014. The season for Tony Award eligibility is defined in the Rules and Regulations.
In 2020, the 74th Annual Tony Awards were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On August 21, 2020, it was announced that the 74th Annual Tony Awards would take place digitally later in 2020.
Broadway theatre.
A Broadway theatre is defined as having 500 or more seats, among other requirements. While the rules define a Broadway theatre in terms of its size, not its geographical location, the list of Broadway theatres is determined solely by the Tony Awards Administration Committee. As of the 2016–2017 season, the list consisted solely of the 41 theaters located in the vicinity of Times Square in New York City and Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater.
Criticism.
While the theatre-going public may consider the Tony Awards to be the Oscars of live theatre, critics have suggested that the Tony Awards are primarily a promotional vehicle for a small number of large production companies and theatre owners in New York City. In a 2014 "Playbill" article, Robert Simonson wrote that "Who gets to perform on the Tony Awards broadcast, what they get to perform, and for how long, have long been politically charged questions in the Broadway theatre community..." The producers "accept the situation ... because just as much as actually winning a Tony, a performance that lands well with the viewing public can translate into big box-office sales." Producer Robyn Goodman noted that, if the presentation at the ceremony shows well and the show wins a Tony, "you’re going to spike at the box office". Statistical analysis may support this argument; productions that are nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical (which are usually the productions that stage performances at the award show) have a longer run than non-nominated productions. Additionally, winning the Tony Award for Best Musical triples the likelihood that production will stay open. However, plays nominated for the Tony Award for Best Play also receive longer runs, even though they usually do not perform at the award ceremony.
The awards met further criticism when they eliminated the sound design awards in 2014. In 2014, a petition calling for the return of the Sound Design categories received more than 30,000 signatures. Addressing their previous concerns over Tony voters in the category, it was announced that upon the awards' return for the 2017–2018 season, they would be decided by a subset of voters based on their expertise.
Award milestones.
Some notable records and facts about the Tony Awards include the following: