“
When I go from hence, let this be my parting word, that what I have seen is unsurpassable.
I have tasted of the hidden honey of this lotus that expands on the ocean of light, and thus I am blessed—let this be my parting word.
In this playhouse of infinite forms I have had my play and here have I caught sight of him who is formless.
My whole body and my limbs have thrilled with his touch who is beyond touch; and if the end comes here, let it come—let this be my parting word.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore (Gitanjali)
“
For a long while I have believed – this is perhaps my version of Sir Darius Xerxes Cama’s belief in a fourth function of outsideness – that in every generation there are a few souls, call them lucky or cursed, who are simply born not belonging, who come into the world semi-detached, if you like, without strong affiliation to family or location or nation or race; that there may even be millions, billions of such souls, as many non-belongers as belongers, perhaps; that, in sum, the phenomenon may be as “natural” a manifestation of human nature as its opposite, but one that has been mostly frustrated, throughout human history, by lack of opportunity.
And not only by that: for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainly, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers’ seal of approval.
But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or a movie theater, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveler, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet)
“
Only for the ones we love do we remain, painted dolls in the playhouse of this life.
”
”
Claire North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August)
“
It's a big spooky place when you're in it alone. It's like you can hear all the whispers of all the voices of all the actors who ever played here. Kind of creepy. Like a church can be creepy when it's empty. You ever been in a church after hours?
”
”
Benjamin R. Smith
“
...for those who value stability, who fear transience, uncertainty, change, have erected a powerful system of stigmas and taboos against rootlessness, that disruptive, anti-social force, so that we mostly conform, we pretend to be motivated by loyalties and solidarities we do not really feel, we hide our secret identities beneath the false skins of those identities which bear the belongers' seal of approval. But the truth leaks out in our dreams; alone in our beds (because we are all alone at night, even if we do not sleep by ourselves), we soar, we fly, we flee. And in the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celbrate the non-belongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks. What we forbid ourselves we pay good money to watch, in a playhouse or movie theatre, or to read about between the secret covers of a book. Our libraries, our palaces of entertainment tell the truth. The tramp, the assassin, the rebel, the thief, the mutant, the outcast, the delinquent, the devil, the sinner, the traveller, the gangster, the runner, the mask: if we did not recognize in them our least-fulfilled needs, we would not invent them over and over again, in every place, in every language, in every time.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet)
“
At the end of the road of the pursuit of technological sophistication appears to lie a playhouse in which humankind regresses to nursery school.
”
”
Jaron Lanier (You Are Not A Gadget)
“
A society that says we are defined exclusively by the bar and the nightclub , by self-indulgence and our sense of entitlement, cannot be said to have deep roots or much likelihood of survival. But, a society which holds that our culture consists of the cathedral, the playhouse and the playing field, the shopping mall and Shakespeare, has a chance.
”
”
Douglas Murray (The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam)
“
Ours is the fellowship of strangers who know a secret that we cannot express. We are both of us broken, shattered, hollow and alone. Only for the ones we love do we remain, painted dolls in the playhouse of this life.
”
”
Claire North
“
The word ‘play’ is at the heart of what we do as actors – players putting on plays by playwrights in playhouses for playgoers. Play is everything.
”
”
Judi Dench (Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent)
“
And oh, heaven - the crowded playhouse, the stench of perfume upon heated bodies, the silly laughter and the clatter, the party in the Royal box - the King himself present - the impatient crowd in the cheap seats stamping and shouting for the play to begin while they threw orange peel on to the stage.
”
”
Daphne du Maurier (Frenchman's Creek)
“
If you have a mind to understand the English comedy, the only way to do this will be for you to go to England, to spend three years in London, to make yourself master of the English tongue, and to frequent the playhouse every night.
”
”
Voltaire (Letters on England)
“
A public road had been closed to us so that a rich man could watch the Super Bowl in his playhouse and show his rich friends the nuclear football.
”
”
John Hodgman (Medallion Status: True Stories from Secret Rooms)
“
I have a notion that when the intelligent look for thought in a playhouse, they show less intelligence than one would have expected of them. Thought is a private thing. It is the offspring of reason.
”
”
W. Somerset Maugham (The Summing Up)
“
Back out of all this now too much for us,
Back in a time made simple by the loss
Of detail, burned, dissolved, and broken off
Like graveyard marble sculpture in the weather,
There is a house that is no more a house
Upon a farm that is no more a farm
And in a town that is no more a town.
The road there, if you’ll let a guide direct you
Who only has at heart your getting lost,
May seem as if it should have been a quarry—
Great monolithic knees the former town
Long since gave up pretense of keeping covered.
And there’s a story in a book about it:
Besides the wear of iron wagon wheels
The ledges show lines ruled southeast-northwest,
The chisel work of an enormous Glacier
That braced his feet against the Arctic Pole.
You must not mind a certain coolness from him
Still said to haunt this side of Panther Mountain.
Nor need you mind the serial ordeal
Of being watched from forty cellar holes
As if by eye pairs out of forty firkins.
As for the woods’ excitement over you
That sends light rustle rushes to their leaves,
Charge that to upstart inexperience.
Where were they all not twenty years ago?
They think too much of having shaded out
A few old pecker-fretted apple trees.
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone’s road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
And if you’re lost enough to find yourself
By now, pull in your ladder road behind you
And put a sign up CLOSED to all but me.
Then make yourself at home. The only field
Now left’s no bigger than a harness gall.
First there’s the children’s house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad.
Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest.
Your destination and your destiny’s
A brook that was the water of the house,
Cold as a spring as yet so near its source,
Too lofty and original to rage.
(We know the valley streams that when aroused
Will leave their tatters hung on barb and thorn.)
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t.
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
”
”
Robert Frost
“
And so many No's - Bee Holm's film "Awfully Big Adventure", the Rankin film, "Jack and Sarah", directing "The Tin Soldier", running Nottingham Playhouse. Fate is running around throwing hands in the air.
”
”
Alan Rickman (Madly, Deeply: The Diaries of Alan Rickman)
“
Only for the ones we love do we remain, painted dolls in the playhouse of this life. In them we must find our meaning. In them we must hold to hope. I trust you find the one who gives you this meaning, and remain always,
”
”
Claire North (The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August)
“
A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable.
”
”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series)
“
Shows like 3-2-1 Contact, The Big Comfy Couch, Captain Kangaroo, The Electric Company, The Great Space Coaster, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Romper Room, Reading Rainbow, Sesame Street, Zoobilee Zoo, and many, many more.
”
”
Ernest Cline (Ready Player Two (Ready Player One #2))
“
It is so tenuous, so fragile, the life of the playhouses. He often thinks that, more than anything, it is like the embroidery on his father's gloves: only the beautiful shows, only the smallest part, while underneath is a cross-hatching of labour and skill and frustration and sweat.
”
”
Maggie O'Farrell (Hamnet)
“
After Orson Welles terrified the nation with his Halloween 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, his name became a household word. The immediate result was sponsorship for his theatrical air company, The Mercury Theater on the Air. Campbell Soups had been sponsoring the once-famed but fading variety hour Hollywood Hotel, which closed its doors in December 1938. The soup company immediately picked up Welles and his players, and the first Campbell Playhouse under that title was Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, introduced by newsman Edwin C. Hill. The
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
The fight against the poisoning of the mind must be waged simultaneously with the training of the body. Our whole public life today may be compared to a hothouse for sexual ideas and incitements. A glance at the bill-of-fare provided by our cinemas, playhouses, and theaters suffices to prove that this is not the right food, especially for our youth. In shop windows and advertisements, the most vulgar means are used to attract public attention. Anyone who hasn't completely lost contact with adolescent yearnings will realize that all this must cause great damage. This seductive and sensual atmosphere puts ideas into the heads of our youth that, at their age, should still be unknown to them.
”
”
Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf Volume I)
“
It was not really Saturday night, at least it may have been, for they had long lost count of the days; but always if they wanted to do anything special they said this was Saturday night, and then they did it.
"Of course it is Saturday night, Peter," Wendy said, relenting.
"People of our figure, Wendy."
"But it is only among our own progeny."
"True, true.
”
”
J.M. Barrie (The Annotated Peter Pan (The Centennial Edition) (The Annotated Book))
“
All at once the anger ran out of John Harkless; he was a hard man for anger to tarry with. And in place of it a strong sense of home-coming began to take possession of him. He was going home. “Back to Plattville, where I belong,” he had said; and he said it again without bitterness, for it was the truth. “Every man cometh to his own place in the end.”
Yes, as one leaves a gay acquaintance of the playhouse lobby for some hard-handed, tried old friend, so he would wave the outer world God-speed and come back to the old ways of Carlow. What though the years were dusty, he had his friends and his memories and his old black brier pipe. He had a girl’s picture that he should carry in his heart till his last day; and if his life was sadder, it was infinitely richer for it. His winter fireside should be not so lonely for her sake; and losing her, he lost not everything, for he had the rare blessing of having known her. And what man could wish to be healed of such a hurt? Far better to have had it than to trot a smug pace unscathed.
He had been a dullard; he had lain prostrate in the wretchedness of his loss. “A girl you could put in your hat — and there you have a strong man prone.” He had been a sluggard, weary of himself, unfit to fight, a failure in life and a failure in love. That was ended; he was tired of failing, and it was time to succeed for a while. To accept the worst that Fate can deal, and to wring courage from it instead of despair, that is success; and it was the success that he would have. He would take Fate by the neck. But had it done him unkindness? He looked out over the beautiful, “monotonous” landscape, and he answered heartily, “No!” There was ignorance in man, but no unkindness; were man utterly wise he were utterly kind.
”
”
Booth Tarkington (The Gentleman from Indiana)
“
Only the passage of time ultimately separates each generation. Our humanity remains stalwartly impervious to political manipulations and to the social, culture and economic tidings that each generation must etch out a living. Our sense of time past, present and future is the common denominator that each generation shares because time refuses to standstill for mere human beings. Time cannot be ignored or shunted, but must be respected for the indomitable power that its relentless pressure applies upon each of us. The unyielding power of time sneers at each of us regardless of our race, religion, creed, nationality, gender, age, or sexual orientation. Potency of time is irreducible, it is irreversible, and it is inerasable. Through the periscope of memory, we can dice snippets of time’s atoms into infinitesimal pictures of mere moments; we can harness select prized memories to build a molecular mind’s magical playhouse. The capacity of the human mind for memory enables people to preserve, retain, and subsequently recall knowledge, information, and experience. Replaying snapshots of the past enables us to comprehend the magnitude of the present and take account of the inevitability of our future.
”
”
Kilroy J. Oldster (Dead Toad Scrolls)
“
CUZ, We will ALWAYS HOLD TRUE to Our CHILDHOOD MOTTO, that we made 'in MY PLAYHOUSE' when WE WERE KIDS more than 50 YEARS AGO.....Let's say it together ONE MORE TIME over the telephone Right Now!------WE LOVE DOGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
”
”
Beverly Dawn DuPree Stone (most special cousin of Marsha Carol Watson Gandy)
“
What had the Reverend Venables said? That promises in the playhouse were like kisses on May Day. I had just been kissed.
”
”
Bernard Cornwell (Fools and Mortals)
“
I do not profess to be an expert in love.' she says. 'But I do know something about it. More than you think. More than your playwrights' love, spoken for just two hours and dissolved into applause.'
'It does not dissolve,' says Thea. It lasts,
Aunt Nella picks up her porridge spoon and begins pointing it for emphasis. 'Love is something that is learned in far less alluring settings, Thea than playhouses and ballrooms. It is earned in the deeds you do. The words you speak. It takes practice. Patience. Time. You will learn about love, I am sure. But it might not take the form you originally expected.
”
”
Jessie Burton (The House of Fortune (The Miniaturist, #2))
“
Have you seen that film, It? The one with the clown?’ ‘He was wearing a clown’s mask?’ Finn questioned, trying his best to keep his tone even. Sarcasm wasn’t going to help him here. Saffron’s eyes were bug wide as she nodded. ‘It was just like that. All this red hair and he looked evil.’ ‘And you’ve seen him three times?’ Cameron asked. ‘That’s right. The first time he was standing by Alfie’s playhouse in the garden, just staring at me. Then a couple of days later I saw him looking through the window. Then today he was in the house. I caught him coming out of my bedroom and he had my knickers in his hand.
”
”
Keri Beevis (Every Little Breath)
“
The Physician's Pageant by Stewart Stafford
Can aught endure the masquerade
Of this world's blindfolded night?
Melancholy's strike doth calm the raving,
As babes roused from stillbirth in fledgling light.
We know that the womb doth wander,
Around the body, causing ills without care,
A pessary's charm doth anchor it in place again,
As bait doth lure the quarry to the snare.
Burn sulfur, rosemary, lavender and juniper,
Or foul dung smoke to cleanse tainted rural air.
Light aromatic torches in the playhouse and market,
Let vile odours and miasmas in these spaces beware.
Though ragged contagion and death still doth assail,
God willing, some blessed souls still shalt prevail.
© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.
”
”
Stewart Stafford
“
Not all clothing had to wait for its aristocratic owner’s demise to be sold on to playhouses. Fashion at court changed rapidly, and that which had cost the equivalent of a large town house to buy could appear upon the back of the most ambitious only a handful of times before appearing passé. For those like Robert Dudley, patron of one of the acting companies, handing on such clothes could form part of his financial support package, perhaps in lieu of cash for private performances. It was also possible for such public display of his recently worn clothing to be seen as advertising and promoting his standing among the populace. The stage was a fashion show and a window on to the rarefied world of court and courtiers. It held much the same appeal as the Hollywood glamour films of the 1930s and the more modern celebrity lifestyle shows. The
”
”
Ruth Goodman (How To Be a Tudor: A Dawn-to-Dusk Guide to Tudor Life)
“
I STAND BEHIND THE LARGE TREE AND WATCH. Mrs. Brooks is bent over in a children’s playhouse. Her lover is fucking her from behind.
”
”
Bonny Capps (Deliverance for Amelia (Killer, #1))
“
remember? That’s why seeing us reminded her of her playhouse
”
”
Gertrude Chandler Warner (The Mystery of the Stolen Boxcar (The Boxcar Children Mysteries Book 49))
“
Judgment on Playhouse 90
”
”
R.D. Rosen (Such Good Girls: The Journey of the Holocaust's Hidden Child Survivors)
“
We stalked carefully through the park in best paramilitary fashion, the lost patrol on its mission into the land of the B movie. To Deborah’s credit, she was very careful. She moved stealthily from one piece of cover to the next, frequently looking right to Chutsky and then left at me. It was getting harder to see her, since the sun had now definitely set, but at least that meant it was harder for them to see us, too—whoever them might turn out to be. We leapfrogged through the first part of the park like this, past the ancient souvenir stand, and then I came up to the first of the rides, an old merry-go-round. It had fallen off its spindle and lay there leaning to one side. It was battered and faded and somebody had chopped the heads off the horses and spray-painted the whole thing in Day-Glo green and orange, and it was one of the saddest things I had ever seen. I circled around it carefully, holding my gun ready, and peering behind everything large enough to hide a cannibal. At the far side of the merry-go-round I looked to my right. In the growing darkness I could barely make out Debs. She had moved up into the shadow of one of the large posts that held up the cable car line that ran from one side of the park to the other. I couldn’t see Chutsky at all; where he should have been there was a row of crumbling playhouses that fringed a go-kart track. I hoped he was there, being watchful and dangerous. If anything did jump out and yell boo at us, I wanted him ready with his assault rifle. But there was no sign of him, and even as I watched, Deborah began to move forward again, deeper into the dark park. A warm, light wind blew over me and I smelled the Miami night: a distant tang of salt on the edge of rotting vegetation and automobile exhaust. But even as I inhaled the familiar smell, I felt the hairs go up on the back of my neck and a soft whisper came up at me from the lowest dungeon of Castle Dexter, and a rustle of leather wings rattled softly on the ramparts. It was a very clear notice that something was not right here and this would be a great time to be somewhere else; I froze there by the headless horses, looking for whatever had set off the Passenger’s alarm. I saw and heard nothing. Deborah had vanished into the darkness and nothing moved anywhere, except a plastic shopping bag blowing by in the gentle wind. My stomach turned over, and for once it was not from hunger. My
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter is Delicious (Dexter, #5))
“
I know what you are but what am I?
”
”
Pewie's Playhouse
“
But of course, Robert could not allow me to feel any real happiness. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. “This isn’t fucking Shakespeare, sweetheart. This isn’t your goddamn thee-ate-ter. This is the real world. This is a fucking wacko, psycho, out-of-his-skull asshole who likes to bite your tits off, and playing Neighborhood Playhouse acting games in your head isn’t going to catch him.
”
”
Jeff Lindsay (Dexter's Final Cut (Dexter, #7))
“
One Londoner who saw Virginia as a place he might find financial salvation was William Strachey, a failed civil servant, poetaster, and sometime playwright. The son of a successful gentleman with landholdings in rural Essex, Strachey had studied law at Gray’s Inn, but cut his training short to spend his time scratching out mostly unpublished verse and socializing with London’s literary set.2 Strachey particularly enjoyed London’s lively and rambunctious playhouses. He was a stockholder in Blackfriars Theatre and a regular playgoer who was almost certainly friendly with the company’s actors, including William Shakespeare.
”
”
Kieran Doherty (Sea Venture: Shipwreck, Survival, and the Salvation of Jamestown)
“
her hand resting on his arm.
”
”
Helena Dixon (Murder at the Playhouse (Miss Underhay Mysteries #3))
“
I know it sounds like a contradiction, but she was both the most angelic and down-to-earth person I had ever met. She made me see things in new ways—a pool cabana was a playhouse, a song was a way for strangers to hold hands without touching, a traffic jam was a thousand souls trying to reconnect with their loved ones at once. Her imagination was as expansive as the California coastline. I
”
”
Susan Walter (Lie by the Pool)
“
The life which [Jesus] now lives in the Gospels is simply the old life lived over and over again. And in that life we have no place; in that life we are spectators, not actors. The life in which Jesus lives in the Gospels is after all, for us, but the spurious life of the stage. We sit silent in the playhouse and watch the absorbing Gospel drama of forgiveness and healing and love and courage and high endeavor; in rapt attention, we follow the fortunes of those who came to Jesus laboring and heavy laden and found rest. For a time, our own troubles are forgotten. But suddenly the curtain falls, with the closing of the book, and out we go again into the cold humdrum of our own lives… with our own problems and our own misery, and our own sin, And still seeking our own Savior. Let us not deceive ourselves, A Jewish teacher of the first century can never satisfy the longing of our souls. Clothe Him with all the art of modern research, throw upon Him… modern sentimentality; and despite it all, common sense will come to its rights again, and for our brief hour of self-deception - as through we had been with Jesus - will wreak upon us the revenge of hopeless disillusionment.
”
”
J. Gresham Machen (Christianity and Liberalism)
“
payment and money that should have gone to my apartment, and rented the 14th Street Playhouse in downtown Atlanta. I hired actors, built scenery, and rented props. I did the whole nine yards on my own, spending all I had to my name.
”
”
Tyler Perry (Higher Is Waiting)
“
My father’s screams echo through the underground playhouse and just like that, I finally get it. I turn to the boys and smile as my father bleeds behind me. “The acoustics in here are incredible.” Marcus grins. “Like I said, we can still make a mafia wife out of you yet.
”
”
Sheridan Anne (Psychos (Depraved Sinners, #1))
“
More tears are shed in playhouses than in churches.
”
”
Thomas Guthrie (The Gospel In Ezekiel)
“
No sooner is a playhouse opened in any part of the Kingdom than it at once becomes surrounded by a halo of brothels.
”
”
Eric Metaxas (Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery)
“
Timclad Ltd (York Timber) design and craft the very best timber garden furniture for your space, regardless of size, appearance or particular personal needs. Whether you are looking for a garden shed, a garden office, a child’s playhouse, the all important potting shed or timber workshops we at Timclad Ltd (York Timber) can say Yes!
”
”
Timclad Ltd York Timber
“
Timclad Ltd (York Timber) design and craft the very best timber garden furniture for your space, regardless of size, appearance or particular personal needs.Whether you are looking for a garden shed, a garden office, a child’s playhouse, the all important potting shed or timber workshops we at Timclad Ltd (York Timber) can say Yes!
”
”
Timclad Ltd York Timber
“
Advantages Philadelphia Has Over New York: Fairmount Park (more than four times bigger and better than Central Park). The park’s colonial houses: Strawberry Mansion, Lemon Hill, Belmont Mansion. The weeping cherry trees of George’s Hill, the Playhouse in the Park, Robin Hood Dell. Hoagies (more than four times better than heroes). Steak sandwiches (they don’t make them here the way they do at home: layers of paper-thin beef smothered in grilled onions; melted cheese, optional; catsup, yet another option!). People who wait for you to get off the subway before they try to get on. Smoking on the subway platform. Row houses. The Philadelphia Orchestra. Mustard pretzels with mustard (in New York—would you believe?—they sell mustard pretzels plain). Red and white police cars so you can shout, “Look out, the red devil’s coming!
”
”
Fran Ross (Oreo)
“
This problem was in the mind of actor/playwright/producer Steele MacKaye when he took over the lease of the bankrupt Fifth Avenue Theatre in 1879. A true Renaissance man and a Paris-trained actor, MacKaye had been a fixture of the New York theater scene since 1872, achieving a notable measure of success both on and off the stage. And when some private investors gave him the opportunity to build a stock company of his own, in a built-to-order theater, spending whatever he liked and making whatever improvements he wanted, he jumped at the chance. Over the next year, the Fifth Avenue was completely remodeled. It opened at the beginning of 1880, renamed the Madison Square Theatre, a resplendent 650-seat jewel box of a playhouse that featured such MacKaye-devised innovations as a double-height elevator stage that could make scene shifts in less than a minute, fold-up seats, a Tiffany-designed interior … and, for the
”
”
Salvatore Basile (Cool: How Air Conditioning Changed Everything)
“
A story published in 1769 featured “a person belonging to the playhouse” who steals literary materials from allegorical characters called Wit, Genius, and Wisdom. “With these (stolen) materials… he commenced Play-Writer,” the story explained, and “how he succeeded I need not tell you; for his name was Shakespeare.
”
”
Elizabeth Winkler (Shakespeare Was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature)
“
It’s a beautiful thing to be in Hollywood... the feeling of it... that classical glamour never dies.” She walked to the closet and back to the bed. “The actress lives a beautiful life once at a certain level... when her sink has a view and her phone calls aren’t rejections anymore, but producers, offices, playhouses in London, a director pitching his sacred screenplay. The food gets healthier, people around you are more positive... driving in traffic is even different because your car is nice, and the music you normally hate sounds different when life works... when you get the furniture you want... And mentors pass down movie posters from their mentors—so Hepburn never really dies. You keep it in your home... there’s room for everything... I treasure letters from other artists... studio invitations... Being a woman in Hollywood is entirely different than a man’s experience. All the time, by everyone, for everything, a woman is wanted... dinners... so many dinners... so many scripts lying around the room, in the sun... the people you have yet to meet... it’s not about fame—I do not care for the public praise... but what is truly compelling is when you make it big, you finally understand why there are palm trees in this city... Los Angeles suddenly turns on. Like a bulb you thought disliked you and would never light. But it lights. Of course, one must put the cocktail down, leave the house, and make more movies. But this is to say, the after hours are nice. When the camera is off and I return home, I get to love what is left.
”
”
Kristian Ventura (A Happy Ghost)
“
Did you actually--?' Logan glanced through the play-house window. The floor was covered in Harry Potter books, as if Flurp had been making a nest out of them.
'Eat books?! Flurp would NEVER! Flurp would STARVE first!'
The griffin cub let out a tiny burp that smelled of crayons.
”
”
Tui T. Sutherland (The Menagerie (Menagerie, #1))
“
I am five,
Wading out into deep
Sunny grass,
Unmindful of snakes
& yellowjackets, out
To the yellow flowers
Quivering in sluggish heat.
Don't mess with me
'Cause I have my Lone Ranger
Six-shooter. I can hurt
You with questions
Like silver bullets.
The tall flowers in my dreams are
Big as the First State Bank,
& they eat all the people
Except the ones I love.
They have women's names,
With mouths like where
Babies come from. I am five.
I'll dance for you
If you close your eyes. No
Peeping through your fingers.
I don't supposed to be
This close to the tracks.
One afternoon I saw
What a train did to a cow.
Sometimes I stand so close
I can see the eyes
Of men hiding in boxcars.
Sometimes they wave
& holler for me to get back. I laugh
When trains make the dogs
Howl. Their ears hurt.
I also know bees
Can't live without flowers.
I wonder why Daddy
Calls Mama honey.
All the bees in the world
Live in little white houses
Except the ones in these flowers.
All sticky & sweet inside.
I wonder what death tastes like.
Sometimes I toss the butterflies
Back into the air.
I wish I knew why
The music in my head
Makes me scared.
But I know things
I don't supposed to know.
I could start walking
& never stop.
These yellow flowers
Go on forever.
Almost to Detroit.
Almost to the sea.
My mama says I'm a mistake.
That I made her a bad girl.
My playhouse is underneath
Our house, & I hear people
Telling each other secrets.
”
”
Yusef Komunyakaa
“
The Four-Star Playhouse was developed for NBC, partly to help counter the CBS talent raid that had lured Jack Benny, Amos ’n’ Andy, and Edgar Bergen away from the older network. The NBC response was predictable: a barrage of new shows with big-name Hollywood talent. It didn’t work: by then there were so many similar shows on the air that the public didn’t care, and most of the new NBC shows soon vanished.
”
”
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
“
Nowhere did he act so much as in his poetry. The “I” of Leaves of Grass has proven puzzling to critics. Some have seen it as autobiographical and have taken his poetry as a confession or sublimation of private anxieties and desires. Others see it as a complete fiction, with little reference to the real Whitman, as indicated by the many differences between the poetic persona and the man. Such confusions can be partly resolved by recognizing that the “real” Whitman, as part of a participatory culture, was to a large degree an actor, and that his poetry was his grandest stage, the locus of his most creative performances. When developing his poetic persona in his notebooks, he compared himself to an actor onstage, with “all things and all other beings as an audience at a play-house perpetually and perpetually calling me out from behind the curtain.
”
”
David S. Reynolds (Walt Whitman's America: A Cultural Biography)
“
With all the playhouses closed on account of the plague, it would be a challenge to keep body and soul together.
”
”
Deborah Harkness (The All Souls Trilogy (All Souls, #1-3))
“
aspidistra plant in a brass pot. Matt’s
”
”
Helena Dixon (Murder at the Playhouse (Miss Underhay Mysteries #3))
“
Will told his rival that "if you ever do that again, I'll hurt you." The next day Will had a third playhouse almost two-thirds constructed when Steve once again pushed it over. The fight that followed found Will once again on his back, pinned down by Steve Gobel. This time he resorted to a small pocket knife he carried and slashed Steve on the thigh. It was not a serious wound by any means, but it did draw blood, as well as Steve's anguished cry that he had been "killed." The other pupils and the teacher came running, and Will decided he'd better make himself scarce. He fled to a wagon train led by John R. Willis, for whom he had herded cattle. When he told Willis what had happened, the wagon master hid the boy in one of his wagons. Soon Steve, his father, an elder brother, and the local constable came to arrest Will Cody. Willis, a Philadelphia lawyer at heart, demanded to see a warrant. When the constable admitted he didn't have one, Willis told him that he thought it was overdoing it to arrest a boy for what was only play. Will was safe-for the moment-but he was afraid to return to school. Willis suggested that young Cody accompany him on the wagon train, which was headed for Fort Kearny, a trip of some forty days, by which time the excitement ought to have cooled down. Will's mother consented to the trip, not without some foreboding; she feared that her son might be attacked by Indians. Cody wrote of this first trip across the plains that "it proved a most enjoyable one for me, although no incidents worthy of note occurred along the way."
John Willis disagreed with Cody about the lack of incidents. Forty years later Buffalo Bill's Wild West played Memphis on October 4, 1897, and Willis, now a judge in Harrisburg, Arkansas, wanted to see it. Unfortunately, he missed the show, but he wrote Cody the following letter: "Dear Old Friend it has been a long time since I have herd from you.... I would like very much to shake your hand, Billy, and talk over the old grand hours you rode at my heels on the little gray mule while I was
killing Buffalo. oh them were happy days. of course you recollect the time the Buffalo ran through the train and stampeded the teams and you stoped the stampede.
”
”
Robert A. Carter (Buffalo Bill Cody: The Man Behind the Legend)
“
Because for now, I just want to say that the Lily Playhouse was unlike any world I'd ever inhabited. It was a living animation of glamour and grit and mayhem and fun - a world full of adults behaving like children, in other words.
”
”
Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls)
“
Is it not ironical that the commercial market economy has a financially valued analogy for every item of housework a homemaker does on a daily basis without payment? Restaurant meals provide the parallel for preparing, cooking and serving food. Laundering services provide the analogy for washing and ironing. Housecleaning can be done professionally by professional housekeepers and domestic maids. Crèches, play-houses and baby sitters can take care of small children. These services need to be paid for and thus they are computed while measuring the GNP. But a homemaker provides all these services for free, so her services are kept out of evaluation and measurement of GNP.
”
”
Shoma A. Chatterji (The Female Gaze: Essays on Gender, Society and Media)
“
Most of the shows I do are held at the local playhouses,” Wade explains as he reaches up to take an old man Muppet off the wall. He begins to play with it. “But the last one I did—my personal favorite—was held at a church not far from here. Called Equestrians for Christ, it was a modern-day reenactment of the crucifixion. Basically,
”
”
Karyn Bosnak (20 Times a Lady: A Novel)
“
I wasn’t OCD. It wasn’t that I had to keep my patterns the same. It was that I tended to be more relaxed when things happened in a specific order and in the same way each day. My therapist had hit the nail on the head. It was about control and power.
”
”
Georgia Wells (Trapped in the Shadows (Playhouse of Horrors #1))
“
Maybe everything in New York wouldn’t feel so playhouse size, like such a struggle to just get anywhere, if the husband hunters stayed away. But that’s the thing about New York that I think I love the most—it makes you fight for your place. I’d fight. There was no one I wouldn’t hurt to stay.
”
”
Jessica Knoll (Luckiest Girl Alive)
“
The whole world plays the actor,” and for their sign they apparently had an image of Hercules bearing the world on his shoulders. They called their new playhouse the Globe.
”
”
Stephen Greenblatt (Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Anniversary Edition))
“
We have no kin but each other, for our loves to our mothers and our wives demand that we protect them from what we know. Ours is the fellowship of strangers who know a secret that we cannot express. We are both of us broken, shattered, hollow and alone. Only for the ones we love do we remain, painted dolls in the playhouse of this life. In them we must find our meaning. In them we must hold to hope.
”
”
Claire North