#faust marries helen of troy ???

[knoxise]

some (trojan) smoke war character designs to go with my other ocs 😌 helen + hector and a cameo faust

[avelera]

So "Doctor Faustus" already being out by the time Dream came by in 1589, is...uh, possibly a bit fudged for the sake of the story in Sandman, but I'm thinking about Hob canonically calling bisexual legend Kit Marlowe a great playwright, and the fact that Doctor Faustus is literally about a handsome demon seducing a more or less normal guy into selling his soul in exchange for an extraordinary life, including temporary immortality during the agreed 24-year span (including a scene where Faustus survives a murder attempt and holds his own severed head in a scene that I'm sure made Hob fuckin' blanche wondering if his secret had gotten out).

And I'm also thinking about how there's a strong running theme in "Faustus" of Mephistophilis steering Faust away from getting married. There is no Marguerite (Faust's wife in other versions) in Marlowe's version of the story which is really interesting. Especially because there's a rather strong whiff of jealousy (especially with Arthur Darvill's performance) around Mephistophilis urging Faust away from marriage, saying he'll bring him fine courtesans, or even (eventually) Helen of Troy instead, but definitely don't get married.

And I'm also thinking about my (and others') emerging fanon that Hob had his own written-or-unwritten fanfic of Faust x Mephistophilis that was heavily based on his own fantasies around his dark and mysterious stranger who gave him immortality. ("This could be us, but you keep fuckin' leaving after 5 minutes...") and a thought occurred to me.

So it's really weird that Hob just happens to get married within a few years, at most, of his 1589 meeting with Dream.

Now, my main assumption around this, Watsonian/in-universe, is that Hob wanted to demonstrate success to his stranger. So within a few years of the 1589 meeting, he looked at the date and went, "Oh shit, if I really wanted to show off I should get married and have an heir on the way, that's the true mark of success in my era!" (Which, of course, Dream is spectacularly unimpressed by and/or projecting his own miseries onto Hob's inevitable despair once they die.)

But now I'm thinking about "Doctor Faustus" and also kind of wondering... timeline fudging aside where he could have conceivably seen the play (or some early version of it while Marlowe was writing it) and if that could lend to a slightly alternative reading of why Hob was in a rush to get married before his meeting with his stranger?

Either:

My tall dark and possibly-not-the-Devil-then-again- the Devil-could-just-LIE stranger is coming. Faustus in "Doctor Faustus" passed up on a chance to possibly have his soul saved by not being married. So it might be a good idea to be married just in case, y'know, for the sake of my soul and so I'm not tempted by being single.

(The more Dreamling-shippy one) My tall dark and handsome stranger can't possibly be interested in me. In fact, it's kind of pining and pathetic to still be nominally single when he comes by, especially after 200 years. Talk about desperate. Maybe it's better if I'm married, that way I don't look desperate and it's not like he'd ever be interested, right? But if he does seem annoyed that I'm married, I will have definitely learned something.

Only for Dream to peace out of there almost immediately upon meeting happily-married-Hob.

Now, do I think canonically that Hob was sort of testing the waters by getting married? Not especially cuz it's an ass-backwards way to go about it, if it was a consideration at all, I'd see it as more hedging to the tune of not looking desperate, rather than trying to make Dream jealous or anything.

But I would bet (or at least put in a fanfic) that Hob added the fact that Dream did not seem especially enthused about his marriage into his little mental list of "Maybe? But surely not. But maybe?" as it emerged around, say, 1789 along with all the other later evidence of possible interest.

[skyeventide]

the first insane thing to note about the Doktor Faustus is that Serenus Zeitblom, the one who tells the story of the faustian character (Adrian) is the one whose name actually resembles most closely "faustus", the meaning is very similar. and that was in the book notes. but what the book notes don't say is that Serenus is the university professor, instead of Adrian. and that Serenus is the one who marries a woman called Helene. whose name he explicitly links to Helen of Troy (because he's a classics and philology professor), you know, the one whose spirit is summoned by Goethe's Faust, and the one who, in other versions, is given to Faust by the devil. yes, Serenus is a tamer and complementary Faust to Adrian's brilliant and gifted Faust, but Serenus already steals so much more in the story beats, making himself undeniably a mirror of the friend "he loved" and who is a little bit himself.

[cinema-tv-etc]

Nevertheless Eartha Kitt persisted.

Ms. Kitt, who began performing in the late ’40s as a dancer in New York, went on to achieve success and acclaim in a variety of mediums long before other entertainment multitaskers like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler.

With her curvaceous frame and unabashed vocal come-ons, she was also, along with Lena Horne, among the first widely known African-American sex symbols. Orson Welles famously proclaimed her “the most exciting woman alive” in the early ’50s, apparently just after that excitement prompted him to bite her onstage during a performance of “Time Runs,” an adaptation of “Faust” in which Ms. Kitt played Helen of Troy.

Ms. Kitt’s career-long persona, that of the seen-it-all sybarite, was set when she performed in Paris cabarets in her early 20s, singing songs that became her signatures, like “C’est Si Bon” and “Love for Sale.”

Returning to New York, she was cast on Broadway in “New Faces of 1952” and added another jewel to her vocal crown, “Monotonous” (“Traffic has been known to stop for me/Prices even rise and drop for me/Harry S. Truman plays bop for me/Monotonous, monotone-ous”). Brooks Atkinson wrote in The New York Times in May 1952, “Eartha Kitt not only looks incendiary, but she can make a song burst into flame.”

Shortly after that run, Ms. Kitt had her first best-selling albums and recorded her biggest hit, “Santa Baby,” whose precise, come-hither diction and vaguely foreign inflections (Ms. Kitt, a native of South Carolina, spoke four languages and sang in seven) proved that a vocal sizzle could be just as powerful as a bonfire. Though her record sales fell after the rise of rhythm and blues and rock ’n’ roll in the mid- and late ’50s, her singing style would later be the template for other singers with pillow-talky voices like Diana Ross (who has said she patterned her Supremes sound and look largely after Ms. Kitt), Janet Jackson and Madonna (who recorded a cover version of “Santa Baby” in 1987).

Ms. Kitt would later call herself “the original material girl,” a reference not only to her stage creation and to Madonna but also to her string of romances with rich or famous men, including Welles, the cosmetics magnate Charles Revson and the banking heir John Barry Ryan 3rd. She was married to her one husband, Bill McDonald, a real-estate developer, from 1960 to 1965; their daughter, Kitt Shapiro, survives her, as do two grandchildren.

From practically the beginning of her career, as critics gushed over Ms. Kitt, they also began to describe her in every feline term imaginable: her voice “purred” or “was like catnip”; she was a “sex kitten” who “slinked” or was “on the prowl” across the stage, sometimes “flashing her claws.” Her career has often been said to have had “nine lives.” Appropriately, she was tapped to play Catwoman in the 1960s TV series “Batman,” taking over the role from the leggier, lynxlike Julie Newmar and bringing to it a more feral, compact energy.

Yet for all the camp appeal and sexually charged hauteur of Ms. Kitt’s cabaret act, she also played serious roles, appearing in the films “The Mark of the Hawk” with Sidney Poitier (1957) and “Anna Lucasta” (1959) with Sammy Davis Jr. She made numerous television appearances, including a guest spot on “I Spy” in 1965, which brought her her first Emmy nomination.

For these performances Ms. Kitt likely drew on the hardship of her early life. She was born Eartha Mae Keith in North, S.C., on Jan. 17, 1927, a date she did not know until about 10 years ago, when she challenged students at Benedict College in Columbia, S.C., to find her birth certificate, and they did. She was the illegitimate child of a black Cherokee sharecropper mother and a white man about whom Ms. Kitt knew little. She worked in cotton fields and lived with a black family who, she said, abused her because she looked too white. “They called me yella gal,” Ms. Kitt said.

At 8 she was sent to live in Harlem with an aunt, Marnie Kitt, who Ms. Kitt came to believe was really her biological mother. Though she was given piano and dance lessons, a pattern of abuse developed there as well: Ms. Kitt would be beaten, she would run away and then she would return. By her early teenage years she was working in a factory and sleeping in subways and on the roofs of unlocked buildings. (She would later become an advocate, through Unicef, on behalf of homeless children.)

https://medium.com/aginginbeauty/nevertheless-eartha-kitt-persisted-ffe27d10f79b

[radiantseraphina]

0. (Being the one so close to your heart that it being changed would change you completely as a person) Your firm grounding in romantic era and similar styled literature causes you to view yourself as a Byronic hero subversion like Victor Frankenstein, while your small but knowing clown-ness makes you more of a Mina Harker from Bram Stoker's Dracula

@magitekbeth Can you confirm that this is my greatest flaw, above 1.) hubris and 2.) crocheting insecurities? Because I, personally, think that I’m obviously a dead ringer for Faust (Goethe, not Marlowe), and I clearly belong standing on some cliff before a gray, cloudy sky with a cape rising dramatically behind me while I ask Helen of Troy to marry me. Either that or a feminist reclaimed version of the vampire Carmilla. Although I’m beyond fine with the association with Mina Harker; she’s fantastic. 

[alkarinqque]

what even is Faust part II?

time travel to medieval Greece? marrying Helen of Troy? meeting some emperor? a carnival in Italy? something about a sea getting too close to land? is this a midlife crisis?

[tonyg030652]

Quora question: "What is the point of the second part of Goethe's book Faust? Faust has to find Helen of Troy for the emperor in mythological Greece, marries her himself, fights a war and dies - why is the plot so weird?"

Quora question: “What is the point of the second part of Goethe’s book Faust? Faust has to find Helen of Troy for the emperor in mythological Greece, marries her himself, fights a war and dies – why is the plot so weird?”

My response to the Quora question, “What is the point of the second part of Goethe’s book Faust? Faust has to find Helen of Troy for the emperor in mythological Greece, marries her himself, fights a war and dies – why is the plot so weird?”

First, let’s consider that, in the arts anyway, Good is never as interesting as Evil. Thus we have Faust, a man defined by his refusal to accept anything life…

[londontheatre]

JOSIE LAWRENCE as MOTHER COURAGE

Final casting is announced to join multi award-winning Josie Lawrence, one of the UK’s best-loved actors and comedians, in a new production of Mother Courage and her Children.

Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht, translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Tony Kushner (Angels in America at the National Theatre) will run 2 November – 9 December at Southwark Playhouse. Press night is Monday 6 November at 7.30pm.

The rest of the cast are: Laura Checkley (one half of award-winning comedy duo Checkley & Bush, her theatre credits include Gone With The Wind, West End); Ivy Corbin (Masha, Three Sisters, Union Theatre); Celeste de Veazey (The Bureau of Lost Things, Theatre 503); Rosalind Ford (These Trees Are Made of Blood, Arcola Theatre); Ben Fox (Andre, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and The Commitments, West End); Jake Phillips Head (a recent graduate of Royal Central School of Speech & Drama, making his professional debut); Shiv Jalota (The Grapes of Wrath, West Yorkshire Playhouse); Julian Moore-Cook (Rolling Stone, Orange Tree and Our American Cousin, Finborough); Nuno Queimado (Jesus Christ Superstar, Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and From Here to Eternity, West End); David Shelley (Windows, Finborough Theatre, King John, Rose Theatre); Phoebe Vigor (Jane Eyre, National Theatre).

Mother Courage And Her Children is directed by Hannah Chissick, returning to Southwark Playhouse after the success of the musical Side Show, and is produced by Danielle Tarento, whose recent successes at the same venue include the UK première of Grey Gardens (with Sheila Hancock and Jenna Russell), Titanic, the world première of Gods and Monsters and Chekov’s Three Sisters reworked for the 21st century by award-winning playwright Anya Reiss.

Creative team: Director Hannah Chissick, Musical Supervisor and Arranger David Randall, Set & Costume Designer Barney George, Lighting Designer Robbie Butler, Sound Designer Patrick Ball.

In a land ravaged by war, Mother Courage pulls her cart with her three children in the wake of the army, trading with soldiers and attempting to make profit from the war. Widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, Mother Courage And Her Children has been described as the greatest anti-war play of all time. It remains a timely exploration of displacement, war weariness and invisible enemies. It mirrored then, as it does now, the growing fear at the ever-advancing threat of terror infiltrating our everyday lives and our desire to protect ourselves and what is ours at any cost.

JOSIE LAWRENCE said: “I first read Mother Courage when I was an 18-year-old drama student and immediately fell in love with the play. Now I feel ready to play her. It’s a major tick on my theatrical bucket list.”

Josie’s credits include: For The Royal Shakespeare Company: Helen of Troy in Faust: Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard: Kate in The Taming of The Shrew (The Dame Peggy Ashcroft Award for Best Actress). For the National Theatre: Agnetha in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen: Dora in Picasso’s Women: Doll Common in The Alchemist. West End: Mrs Anna in The King and I (London Palladium): Bonnie in Acorn Antiques The Musical (Haymarket): Alarms and Excursions (The Gielgud). Other roles: Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Manchester Evening News Best Actress Award (Manchester Royal Exchange): Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare’s Globe)

Television: Stella (Sky 1), Humans (BBC1), You Have Been Watching with Meera Syal (GOLD), The Kennedy’s (BBC2), Jonathan Creek (BBC), Robin Hood (BBC), EastEnders (BBC), Minder (ITV), Skins (E4), Doctors (BBC), The Old Curiosity Shop (ITV), Casualty (BBC), Holby City (BBC), Wizards and Aliens (BBC), Common Ground (BBC), The Last Detective (BBC), Josie (Channel 4), A Many Splintered Thing (BBC), Keen Eddie (Channel 4), three series plus Christmas special of Outside Edge (ITV), Fat Friends (ITV), The Flint Street Nativity (ITV), SWALK and Lunch In The Park with Paul Merton (BBC), Nine series of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Channel 4), Downwardly Mobile (ITV), Bill’s New Frock (BBC), Absolutely Fabulous (BBC), The Green Man (ITV), Miss Marple (BBC), Poirot (BBC), Not With A Bang (ITV), Friday Night Live (Channel 4), Rachel and The Roarettes (BBC), Campaign (BBC), Norbet Smith, A Life (BBC), The Comic Strip Presents (Channel 4). Film. Finding Your Feet: Enchanted April: The American Way: The Sin Eater: Married to Malcolm: Mam: Looking for Vi: Round Ireland with a Fridge: Bonobo. Since 1985 Josie has been a member of The Comedy Store Players based at London’s famous Comedy Store. They are in The Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running comedy group.

Hannah Chissick (Director) Most recently Hannah directed Down the Dock Road by Alan Bleasdale (Liverpool Royal Court), the UK professional premiere of the musical Side Show (Southwark Playhouse), Brass for NYMT (Hackney Empire), Rags and Amour (Royal Academy of Music), Marry Me a Little (St James Studio) and Teechers for the John Godber Theatre Company. She was Assistant Director to Matthew Warchus on the play Art in London and New York and was Associate Director on Matthew’s acclaimed production of Boeing Boeing, directing 4 casts in London, 2 on Broadway and 1 in Melbourne. In 2003, Hannah became the youngest women to become an Artistic Director in the UK, when Harrogate Theatre appointed her at the age of 25. Other credits include the critically-acclaimed revival of Side by Side by Sondheim (The Venue, London), Abigail’s Party (Northcott Theatre Exeter), Teechers (Haymarket Theatre, Basingstoke), a tour of Grumpy Old Women Live, the world premiere of Horrid Henry – Live (tour and West End) and the world premiere of Pushing Up Poppies (Theatre 503).

Danielle Tarento (Producer) Danielle was named Best Producer at the 2012 Off West End Awards and won Best Off West End Production at the WhatsOnStage Awards for Titanic at Southwark Playhouse. She has also produced the world première of Le Grand Mort, starring Julian Clary and James Nelson-Joyce, currently playing at Trafalgar Studuios, Grey Gardens, Allegro, Grand Hotel, Gods And Monsters, Dogfight, Three Sisters, Victor/Victoria, Mack & Mabel, Parade and Company at Southwark Playhouse; Death Takes A Holiday, Ragtime and Titanic (Charing Cross Theatre), Pure Imagination: The Songs of Leslie Bricusse (St James Theatre), Taboo (Brixton Clubhouse); The Pitchfork Disney (Arcola); Burlesque, Drowning On Dry Land (Jermyn Street); Noël And Gertie (Cockpit). She is co-founder of the Menier Chocolate Factory and co-produced all in-house shows 2004 – 2006, including Sunday In The Park With George, which received a West End transfer and 5 Olivier Awards. Forthcoming productions include a UK and Ireland tour of Titanic.

Danielle Tarento presents  Mother Courage And Her Children By Bertolt Brecht Translated by Tony Kushner Music by Duke Special Director Hannah Chissick Musical Supervisor and Arranger David Randall Set & Costume Designer Barney George Lighting Designer Robbie Butler Sound Designer Patrick Ball

THE LARGE SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE 77-85 Newington Causeway London SE1 6BD Dates: 2 November – 9 December 2017 http://ift.tt/NsSQwM

http://ift.tt/2h5DAiK LondonTheatre1.com

[londontheatre]

Josie Lawrence as Mother Courage – Photo by Scott Rylander

Multi award-winning Josie Lawrence, one of the UK’s best-loved actress and comedians is to star in a new production of Mother Courage and her Children.

Josie said: “I first read Mother Courage when I was an 18-year-old drama student and immediately fell in love with the play. Now I feel ready to play her. It’s a major tick on my theatrical bucket list.”

Mother Courage and her Children by Bertolt Brecht is translated by Pulitzer Prize-winning Tony Kushner, whose critically acclaimed, sold-out production of Angels in America at the National Theatre was broadcast live to cinemas around the UK this week.

Mother Courage and her Children will run 2nd November – 9th December at Southwark Playhouse. Press night is Monday 6 November at 7.30pm.

In a land ravaged by war, Mother Courage pulls her cart with her three children in the wake of the army, trading with soldiers and attempting to make profit from the war. Widely considered to be one of the greatest plays of the 20th century, Mother Courage And Her Children has been described as the greatest anti-war play of all time. It remains a timely exploration of displacement, war weariness and invisible enemies. It mirrored then, as it does now, the growing fear at the ever-advancing threat of terror infiltrating our everyday lives and our desire to protect ourselves and what is ours at any cost.

Mother Courage And Her Children is directed by Hannah Chissick, returning to Southwark Playhouse after the success of the musical Side Show, and is produced by Danielle Tarento, whose recent successes at the same venue include the UK premieres of Grey Gardens (with Sheila Hancock and Jenna Russell), Titanic, the world premiere of Gods and Monsters and Chekov’s Three Sisters reworked for the 21st century by award-winning playwright Anya Reiss.

Further casting to be announced.

Creative team: Director Hannah Chissick, Set & Costume Designer Barney George, Music by Duke Special arranged by David Randall.

JOSIE LAWRENCE For The Royal Shakespeare Company: Helen of Troy in Faust: Dunyasha in The Cherry Orchard: Kate in The Taming of The Shrew (The Dame Peggy Ashcroft Award for Best Actress). For the National Theatre: Agnetha in Bryony Lavery’s Frozen: Dora in Picasso’s Women: Doll Common in The Alchemist. West End: Mrs Anna in The King and I (London Palladium): Bonnie in Acorn Antiques The Musical (Haymarket): Alarms and Excursions (The Gielgud).

Other roles: Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, Manchester Evening News Best Actress Award (Manchester Royal Exchange): Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare’s Globe)

Television: Stella (Sky 1), Humans (BBC1), You Have Been Watching with Meera Syal (GOLD), The Kennedy’s (BBC2), Jonathan Creek (BBC), Robin Hood (BBC), EastEnders (BBC), Minder (ITV), Skins (E4), Doctors (BBC), The Old Curiosity Shop (ITV), Casualty (BBC), Holby City (BBC), Wizards and Aliens (BBC), Common Ground (BBC), The Last Detective (BBC), Josie (Channel 4), A Many Splintered Thing (BBC), Keen Eddie (Channel 4), three series plus Christmas special of Outside Edge (ITV), Fat Friends (ITV), The Flint Street ativity (ITV), SWALK and Lunch In The Park with Paul Merton (BBC), Nine series of Whose Line Is It Anyway? (Channel 4), Downwardly Mobile (ITV), Bill’s New Frock (BBC), Absolutely Fabulous (BBC), The Green Man (ITV), Miss Marple (BBC), Poirot (BBC), Not With A Bang (ITV), Friday Night Live (Channel 4), Rachel and The Roarettes (BBC), Campaign (BBC), Norbet Smith, A Life (BBC), The Comic Strip Presents (Channel 4).

Film. Finding Your Feet: Enchanted April: The American Way: The Sin Eater: Married to Malcolm: Mam: Looking for Vi: Round Ireland with a Fridge: Bonobo.

Since 1985 Josie has been a member of The Comedy Store Players based at London’s famous Comedy Store. They are in The Guinness Book of World Records as the longest running comedy group.

Danielle Tarento presents Mother Courage And Her Children By Bertolt Brecht Translated by Tony Kushner Music by Duke Special

Director Hannah Chissick Set & Costume Designer Barney George Music arranged by David Randall

THE LARGE SOUTHWARK PLAYHOUSE 77-85 Newington Causeway London, SE1 6BD Dates: 2 November – 9 December http://ift.tt/NsSQwM

http://ift.tt/2h5DAiK LondonTheatre1.com