Outstanding actor of stage and screen who made his name as Bri in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg
The British theatre changed for ever when Joe Melia, as the sardonic teacher Bri, pushed a severely disabled 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair on to the stage of the Glasgow Citizens in May 1967 and proceeded to make satirical jokes about the medical profession while his marriage was disintegrating. The play was Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which transformed the way disability was discussed on the stage. It made the names overnight of its author, the director Michael Blakemore, and Melia. Albert Finney took over the role of Bri on Broadway.
Flat-footed, slightly hunched, always leaning towards a point of view, Melia, who has died aged 77, was a distinctive and compassionate actor who brought a strain of the music hall to the stage, a sense of being an outsider.
The British theatre changed for ever when Joe Melia, as the sardonic teacher Bri, pushed a severely disabled 10-year-old girl in a wheelchair on to the stage of the Glasgow Citizens in May 1967 and proceeded to make satirical jokes about the medical profession while his marriage was disintegrating. The play was Peter Nichols's A Day in the Death of Joe Egg, which transformed the way disability was discussed on the stage. It made the names overnight of its author, the director Michael Blakemore, and Melia. Albert Finney took over the role of Bri on Broadway.
Flat-footed, slightly hunched, always leaning towards a point of view, Melia, who has died aged 77, was a distinctive and compassionate actor who brought a strain of the music hall to the stage, a sense of being an outsider.
- 11/7/2012
- by Michael Coveney
- The Guardian - Film News
Conceiving Ada, directed by Lynn Hershman Leeson and starring Tilda Swinton, is an award-winning 1997 movie that was the first to use an all virtual set. You can finally snag it on DVD for the first time. Ever.
In this award-winning film, which was the first to use "virtual sets," Tilda Swinton embodies Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Romantic poet Lord Byron, and the mathematics genius who developed what became the world’s first computer language 100 years before computers were invented. Ada’s story is channeled through Emmy (Francesca Faridany), a contemporary computer scientist researching artificial life. By using her own DNA genetic code, Emmy collapses time and is able to communicate directly with Ada. Realizing how parallel their lives are, she embarks on the task of "saving" Ada. In the process, the borders between past and present, virtual and real, blur and Ada and Emmy both recognize the implications of their place in time.
In this award-winning film, which was the first to use "virtual sets," Tilda Swinton embodies Lady Ada Lovelace, daughter of Romantic poet Lord Byron, and the mathematics genius who developed what became the world’s first computer language 100 years before computers were invented. Ada’s story is channeled through Emmy (Francesca Faridany), a contemporary computer scientist researching artificial life. By using her own DNA genetic code, Emmy collapses time and is able to communicate directly with Ada. Realizing how parallel their lives are, she embarks on the task of "saving" Ada. In the process, the borders between past and present, virtual and real, blur and Ada and Emmy both recognize the implications of their place in time.
- 8/5/2010
- by Superheidi
- Planet Fury
If you were guessing the locale of a leading regional American theater known for championing new, experimental work, you might first suggest San Francisco, Minneapolis, or Seattle. If someone prompted, "Think Texas," your mind would likely leap to Austin. Unless you were in the know about such things, you wouldn't name the Undermain Theatre, in Dallas."The Undermain is an unsung American treasure, and more people should know about it," says Len Jenkin, the Obie Award–winning, New York–based playwright whose "Port Twilight, or A History of Science" is currently enjoying its world premiere on the Undermain stage. "The Undermain is able to do a really extraordinary thing," Jenkin notes, "in that in a much more conservative town than some others in the United States, they're able to do the most adventurous kind of theater work, to do it really well, to do it imaginatively, and to keep doing it.
- 12/9/2009
- backstage.com
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