Portal:Theatre

The Bat is a three-act comedy-mystery play by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood that was first produced by Lincoln Wagenhals and Collin Kemper. The play opened on Broadway on August 23, 1920. At a rented summer home, Cornelia Van Gorder and guests search for stolen money while being stalked by a masked criminal known as "the Bat". The play originated as an adaptation of Rinehart's 1908 mystery novel The Circular Staircase. It was a critical and commercial success, running for 867 performances in New York and 327 in London, with tours by several road companies. It was revived twice on Broadway, in 1937 and 1953. It had several adaptations, including a 1926 novelization credited to Rinehart and Hopwood but ghostwritten by Stephen Vincent Benét. Three film adaptations were produced: The Bat (1926), The Bat Whispers (1930), and The Bat (1959). The play and its adaptations inspired other comedy-mysteries with similar settings, and influenced the creation of the comic-book superhero Batman.

All selected articles

Read more

• 1 February 1902 – Birth of Langston Hughes, who wrote several plays and founded the Skyloft Players to nurture black playwrights
• 3 February 1869 – Edwin Booth's Booth's Theatre opened with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet
• 19 February 1704 – Ichikawa Danjūrō I (pictured), an early and influential kabuki actor, was stabbed and killed onstage by fellow actor Ikushima Hanroku
• 22 February 1972 – Red Detachment of Women, one of the eight model plays, was performed for Richard Nixon during his trip to China
• 24 February 1607 – Premiere of Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, which is the earliest operatic work that is still performed today
• 27 February 1877 – Premiere of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, which received poor reviews
• 28 February 1915 – Birth of Obie and Tony winning actor Zero Mostel
• 29 February 1948 – Birth of writer and director Mamunur Rashid, who won the Bangla Academy Literary Award for drama in 1982

Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1852 - 1932), née Isabella Augusta Persse, was an Irish dramatist and folklorist. With William Butler Yeats and others, she co-founded the Irish Literary Theatre and the Abbey Theatre, and wrote numerous short works for both companies. Lady Gregory produced a number of books of retellings of stories taken from Irish mythology. Born into a class that identified closely with British rule, her conversion to cultural nationalism, as evidenced by her writings, was emblematic of many of the changes to occur in Ireland during her lifetime. Lady Gregory is mainly remembered for her work behind Irish Literary Revival. Her home at Coole Park, County Galway served as an important meeting place for leading Revival figures, and her early work as a member of the board of the Abbey was at least as important for the theatre's development as her creative writings. Lady Gregory's motto was taken from Aristotle: "To think like a wise man, but to express oneself like the common people."

All selected biographies

Read more

• ... that during his tenure as the manager of Austria's Burgtheater from 1971 to 1976, Gerhard Klingenberg often directed plays with analogies of a divided Europe?
• ... that Hong Kong native Grace Ho gave birth to her fourth child, Bruce Lee, while on a one-year tour through the United States with the Mandarin Theatre?
• ... that many fans of Ayub Bachchu's Bangladeshi rock watched the film Loot Toraj in theaters just to hear the love song "Ananta Prem Tumi Dao Aamake"?
• ... that the RKO Keith's Theater, once described as one of New York City's "great theaters", later stood in ruins and was covered with graffiti?
• ... that the Broadway Theatre is one of Broadway's few Broadway theaters?
• ... that the church of St James the Less, Pockthorpe, now the home of the Norwich Puppet Theatre, once contained a rood screen with portraits of saints painted in 1479?

Whoever condemns the theater is an enemy of his country. — Voltaire

All selected quotes

More at Wikiquote

Main project

Theatre

Descendant projects

Sister projects