Übü király

The Empty King created a mythical figure and a whole world from grotesque, archetypal images. The drama was originally conceived as a student tirade against a teacher at Jarry's school, the Lyceum of Rennes. This teacher, Hébert, was the target of public ridicule. In 1888, at the age of 15, Jarry wrote a puppet play about the exploits of the Woolly Tartar and staged it to the amusement of his friends. The figure of Übü is a crude, cruel caricature of the foolish, selfish bourgeoisie as seen through the unrelenting gaze of a schoolboy; but this Rabelaisian figure, in all his falstaffian greed and cowardice, is more than a mere social satire. It is a terrifying picture of man's animal nature, his evil and cruelty. The Katona József Theatre in Budapest premiered Jarry's play in 1984, and it ran continuously for more than 10 years.

The Flying Classroom

A boy who was once a perpetual outcast finds friends in a new boarding school. United with his new peers, he gets involved in a heated rivalry with a group of students from a neighboring school.

Tartuffe

Orgon and his mother swear by Tartuffe, the self-styled devout who lives off them. The other members of the family, scandalized by the clergyman's hold over them, will do anything to expose his hypocrisy. Michel Bouquet plays an almost monstrous Tartuffe, whose only weakness lies in his feelings for Elmire.

To Be or Not to Be: Klingons and Shakespeare

The story behind the translation and performance of Shakespeare's "Hamlet" in Klingon.

The Taste of Others

Unpolished and ultra-pragmatic industrialist Jean-Jacques Castella reluctantly attends Racine's tragedy "Berenice" in order to see his niece play a bit part. He is taken with the play's strangely familiar-looking leading lady Clara Devaux. During the course of the show, Castella soon remembers that he once hired and then promptly fired the actress as an English language tutor. He immediately goes out and signs up for language lessons. Thinking that he is nothing but an ill-tempered philistine with bad taste, Clara rejects him until Castella charms her off her feet.

Henry V

In the midst of the Hundred Years War, the young King Henry V of England embarks on the conquest of France in 1415.

Oedipus Rex

The story of Oedipus' gradual discovery of his primal crime, killing his father and marrying his mother, filmed by the famed British theatrical director Sir Tyrone Guthrie. This elegant version of Sophocles' play adds a brilliant stroke: the actors wear masks just as the Greeks did in the playwright's day.

Rushmore

When a beautiful first-grade teacher arrives at a prep school, she soon attracts the attention of an ambitious teenager named Max, who quickly falls in love with her. Max turns to the father of two of his schoolmates for advice on how to woo the teacher. However, the situation soon gets complicated when Max's new friend becomes involved with her, setting the two pals against one another in a war for her attention.

Gazdina roba

Gabriela Preissová wrote her two most famous dramas, Gazdina roba and Její pastorkyňa, when she was not yet thirty. Both were set to music and became famous. The first opera, entitled Eva, was written by J. B. Foerster, and the second by Leoš Janáček. The fame of Janáček's work greatly overshadowed the original. On the other hand, "Gazdina roba," the author's debut work, is still performed on Czech stages, regardless of the era. That is how powerful and impressive this drama is. The production by director Zdeněk Kaloč premiered at the Vinohrady Theater in May 1992. Dagmar Veškrnová endowed the title role of Eva the seamstress with warmth, temperament, pride, and tragic shadows.

Le Jeu de la vérité 2

Cyprus Avenue

David Ireland's award-winning dark comedy about sectarian hatred in Northern Ireland. Eric Miller, a Belfast loyalist, mistakes his five-week-old granddaughter for Gerry Adams.

Actresses

Marcelline is an actress. Forty, single and childless, she begins rehearsals for Turgenev’s A Month in the Country. Denis, the director, admires her greatly and promises he’ll make her happy on stage — she will shine. But things don’t go to plan.

Kaaviya Thalaivan

The two best disciples of Sivadas Swamigal, the earnest owner of a Drama school, are by design pitted against each other by the guru himself and this create multiple calamities ending in the duo's separation. Years pass by as one finds a good holding and the other wobbles away as a drunk loser only for them to cross paths again when the ongoing Indian Independence Movement gives another chance for the tables to turn!

Manslaughter

A police drama that chronicles the efforts of a police officer to uncover an unexplained murder case that blends the lives of two women and a theater actor, the victim of an "artistic" shot, part of a play.

As You Like It

Witty, playful and utterly magical, the story is a compelling romantic adventure in which Rosalind and Orlando's celebrated courtship is played out against a backdrop of political rivalry, banishment and exile in the Forest of Arden - set in 19th-century Japan.

Trio in E Flat

Paul and Adèle were once lovers and separated but are still good friends, one year after everything seems to take them away from each other. The key of E may be the key of true friendship, but it is Mozart that pushes them apart.

The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil

In their songs, comedy and exuberant music, a travelling theatre company give a fiercely polemic account of Scottish history, from the aftermath of Culloden to the oil boom. Their production before a live audience is intercut with filmed reconstructions of the Highland Clearances and the Victorian obsession with hunting stags.

The Black Monk

Based on the short story by Anton Chekhov, Kama Ginkas’ astounding reimagining highlights and builds off of the Chekhovian tension between the beauty of life and the tragedy of how it is lived. The story tells the the tale of philosophy student Andrey Vasil'ich Kovrin. On the verge of a nervous breakdown, Kovrin decides to visit his childhood friend Tanya Pesotsky at the estate of her father. As he and Tanya develop a relationship and eventually marry, a black monk of legend begins appearing to Kovrin in visions. Though these hallucinations at first imbue the young man with joy and energy, they eventually lead to his ruin.

Körsbärsträdgården

Television adaptation of Chekhov's story about the spoiled widow Madame Ranevskaya.

The Gin Game

Weller Martin and Fonsia Dorsey, two elderly residents at a nursing home for senior citizens, strike up an acquaintance. Neither seems to have any other friends, and they start to enjoy each other's company. Weller offers to teach Fonsia how to play gin rummy, and they begin playing a series of games that Fonsia always wins. Weller's inability to win a single hand becomes increasingly frustrating to him, while Fonsia becomes increasingly confident. While playing their games of gin, they engage in lengthy conversations about their families and their lives in the outside world. Gradually, each conversation becomes a battle, much like the ongoing gin games, as each player tries to expose the other's weaknesses, to belittle the other's life, and to humiliate the other thoroughly.