9 Fascinating Facts About Oscar Wilde
9 Fascinating Facts About Oscar
Wilde
BY HOLLIE STEPHENS
1. OSCAR WILDE’S MOTHER WAS AN
IRISH REVOLUTIONARY.
Wilde’s mother Jane Francesca
Elgee, a poet, published under the pseudonym “Speranza” for a weekly Irish
nationalist newspaper. The word means “hope” in Italian, and she chose it
because she believed that she was descended from the Italian poet Dante. Elgee
supposedly used a pen name to avoid embarrassing her family by revealing her
real identity when she published her work.
Speranza’s writing, which focused
on controversial issues like the suffering during the Irish Famine, made her a
household name in Ireland. She also shaped her son’s character. Later on,
according to the Irish Times, “Speranza's considerable influence was brought to
bear on Oscar to ensure that he did not back down from the infamous trial which
centered on his homosexuality.”
2. OSCAR WILDE EDITED A WOMEN’S
MAGAZINE IN THE 1880S.
While working on his essays and
short stories, Wilde had a successful career as editor of a women’s magazine
called The Woman’s World. The publication was originally called The Lady’s
World, but Wilde renamed it, intending that it “deal not merely with what women
wear, but with what they think, and what they feel.”
3. CRITICS SLAMMED OSCAR WILDE’S
ONLY NOVEL, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY.
WIKIMEDIA COMMONS // PUBLIC
DOMAIN
Wilde’s famously decadent novel
is commended as a classic today, but at the time of its initial publication in
Lippincott’s Magazine in 1890, the reception for the work was lukewarm. The
novel tells the story of a handsome man who is able to enjoy eternal youth and
beauty, despite committing moral transgressions, because a portrait of him
degenerates in his place. Many criticized the book’s homoerotic overtones,
branding it “effeminate,” “unmanly,” and “leprous.”
4. OSCAR WILDE TOLD FAIRY TALES
AT DINNER PARTIES.
Wilde published two collections
of original fairy tales: The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888) and A House of
Pomegranates (1891). Though they were put forth as material for children, Wilde
told these stories at dinner parties, where he was always the star
raconteur—suggesting that the stories (which contained themes of martyrdom and
homosexual love) were in fact intended for an adult audience. When asked if he
had meant for children to appreciate them, Wilde said, “I had about as much
intention of pleasing the British child as I did of pleasing the British
public.”
5. ONE OF OSCAR WILDE'S PLAYS WAS
BANNED BY THE LORD CHAMBERLAIN.
Between 1879 and 1894, Wilde
wrote nine plays, four of which cemented his reputation as a witty observer of
Victorian mores: Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance, The
Importance of Being Earnest, and An Ideal Husband. But another play, Salomé,
struck a darker tone in its depiction of a lustful woman who seduces her
stepfather, King Herod, by performing the dance of the seven veils and
demanding the head of John the Baptist.
Salomé is considered by many to
be Wilde's most decadent work, but it was some time until English audiences
could enjoy the production in all its glory. In Victorian Britain, the Lord
Chamberlain—the most senior officer of the Royal Household of the United
Kingdom—was responsible for licensing stage performances. He banned Salomé
because it portrayed biblical characters, which had been forbidden since the
Protestant Reformation. As a result, Salomé was not performed in England until
the early 20th century.
6. OSCAR WILDE THWARTED A PLAN TO
DISRUPT THE OPENING NIGHT OF HIS PLAY THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST.
Wilde became close to Lord Alfred
Douglas (nicknamed Bosie), a young Oxford student he met at a tea party,
beginning in 1891. Bosie’s father, the ill-tempered Marquess of Queensberry,
became obsessed with their relationship and vowed to stop it. He plotted to
disrupt the London premiere of The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895, but
Wilde was wise to the plan and arranged for police to be at the venue.
Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of Wilde’s escalating troubles with
him; the marquess also left a card at Wilde’s club accusing him of [sic]
“posing as somdomite.”
With Bosie’s encouragement, Wilde
decided to sue the marquess for libel. During the trial, Queensberry’s defense
suggested that Wilde solicited 12 male prostitutes. Wilde eventually withdrew
the libel charge, but the damage was done. He was soon back in court for a
criminal trial, The Crown v. Wilde, facing 25 counts of “gross indecency” and
conspiracy to commit gross indecencies, a vague term usually interpreted to
mean sexual activity between men that falls short of actual sex. He pleaded not
guilty and was released on bail when the jury could not reach a verdict. In the
retrial, Wilde was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labor.
7. READING GAOL, WHERE OSCAR
WILDE WAS IMPRISONED, WAS REPURPOSED FOR ART.
During his term of imprisonment
at Reading Gaol, Wilde was forced to endure unsanitary conditions and perform
grueling physical labor. The miserable two-year sentence inspired his famous
poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, which he completed after his release. The
facility (later HM Prison Reading), located about 40 miles west of central
London, was operational until 2013. In 2016, it was repurposed for an art
exhibition as part of a two-month project featuring readings and installations
on themes connected to imprisonment and separation.
8. OSCAR WILDE CONVERTED TO CATHOLICISM
ON HIS DEATHBED IN A PARISIAN HOTEL ROOM.
The Catholic Church still
maintains that practicing homosexuality is a sin. But Wilde (who was raised in
a Protestant family) decided to convert to Catholicism shortly before he died
in Paris in 1900, three years after his release from prison. Wilde had a
lifelong fascination with Catholicism, remarking that it was “the highest and
the most sentimental” of faiths, and enjoyed an audience with Pope Pius IX in
1877. Earlier in life, Wilde had quipped, "I'm not a Catholic. I am simply
a violent Papist.”
9. ADMIRERS ONCE COVERED OSCAR
WILDE’S TOMB IN KISSES.
Wilde’s tomb, with its famous
monument by sculptor Jacob Epstein, is located in Père Lachaise Cemetery in
Paris, France. It’s a popular draw for literary-minded tourists visiting the
city. In the late 1990s, visitors began leaving lipstick kisses on the stone as
a mark of admiration—but the trend eventually left Wilde’s monument looking
more like Jim Morrison’s, on the opposite side of the same cemetery. Because
the grease from the lipstick and repeated cleanings began eroding the stone,
the French and Irish governments paid for a glass barrier to be erected around
Wilde’s monument in 2011.
“That is part of the beauty of all literature
“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald to Sheilah Graham
The future belongs
"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."— Eleanor Roosevelt
NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
SOCIAL DISTANCE
The R&B Musicl
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 7:00PM
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal Street
Between West 3rd & Bleecker Streets
New York, NY 10012
Social Distance is a R&B Musical that follows the days amidst the Coronavirus where four American friends of different ethnicities unite via technology while self quarantining. In spirit of Lieber and Stoller, Ain't Misbehavin, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Songs for a New World, Social Distance is a sung through musical.
**proof of vaccination will be required for entry for anyone over the age of 12
***entry into the theatre involves a small flight of stairs and restrooms are located downstairs in the basement. There is no elevator.
*** PRIMARY STAGES ***
STARTING NEXT WEEK: Fall 2021 Online Classes at Primary Stages ESPA!
New and time tested favorite classes begin next week! Start a First Draft, focus on Dramatic Structure, learn the Tools of Dialogue, or create your Artistic Statement. Faculty includes CARIDAD SVICH (Obie Winner for Lifetime Achievement), MELISA ANNIS (Faculty, NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing Program), MICHAEL WALKUP (Artistic Director, Page 73), and many other award-winning writers who provide practical skills and expert guidance in a collaborative atmosphere. Classes begin mid-September.
Flexible, artist-friendly payment plans available. http://primarystages.org/espa/writing.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The 2021 KIT International 10-minute play series
Inaugurated in 2019, Kairos Italy Theater, the Italian theater company in NY, the series is dedicated each year to a specific anniversary in the arts or in society. In 2021, It celebrates the 100th birthday of Leonardo Sciascia, author, playwright, journalist and philosopher dedicated to themes regarding politics and society.
***
The University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance is excited to announce our ninth annual 10-Minute Play Festival for spring of 2022.
This festival is open to all applicants, amateur or professional. One selected external submission from this call will receive aproduction as a part of this festival.
***
American Renaissance Theater Company – a developmental and producing organization founded in 1974 and based in New York City – seeks to expand its already diverse membership by inviting applications from Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander playwrights.
A dynamic community of theater professionals, ARTC's membership includes actors and directors as well as writers who encompass the full range of gender, age and sexual orientations. We want to extend a welcome to the voices of all writers who believe they would benefit from the supportive process of our weekly workshop.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** 9/11 + 20 ***
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of one of America's darkest days, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
As municipalities plan for their memorial events the Know Theatre is offering its own tribute with their production of 'The Guys', set less than two weeks after the attacks.
Like many New Yorkers, artistic director of the Know Theatre, Tim Gleason, said 9/11 left a deep scar.
"I was living in Manhattan at the time," said Gleason, "A day that strikes me still as fresh as if it were coming this September 11th. Sad day, a lot of people who just thought they were going to work, never got to go home."
An event that two decades later is still just as raw, the play 'The Guys' offers a poignant perspective.
More...
***
On Saturday, September 11, Battery Dance and Irish Repertory Theatre will commemorate the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, respectively, with a live and an audio-stream performance.
At 8:46 am, the exact time the first plane hit the North Tower, five performers from Tribeca-based Battery Dance will mark the date by gathering on the traffic island bordered by West Broadway, Varick and Franklin Streets, dancing to the strains of a solo violin. This year’s tribute to the victims of 9/11, symbolizing resilience and healing, harkens back to September 2001, when the Company emerged from its loft in the Frozen Zone below Canal Street and Tadej Brdnik danced a solo accompanied by four musicians on that same traffic island, in view of the empty sky corridor that had previously been punctuated by the Twin Towers.
More...
***
COME FROM AWAY was conceived after writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein, at the suggestion of Michael Rubinoff, went to Gander for the 10th anniversary of 9/11, when a reunion was taking place. Sankoff and Hein interviewed many of those involved, locals and visitors. After staying a couple of weeks, they realized they wanted to do a musical. Many of those original stories and people were incorporated into the musical, other characters were combined. Twelve actors play dozens of roles on a relatively bare stage.
More…
***
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Meron Langsner, AG11, overslept “a little,” as he recalls in his autobiographical one-act play, Bystander 9/11. As he rode the subway to his job in New York’s financial district, the play’s Narrator acknowledges with the breezy confidence of youth, “OK, so I was late for work again.”
But as he exited the train under the World Trade Center, any notion of routine was shattered. Rushing through the turnstile was a “screaming mass of people headed right at you. But that was only the beginning.”
A plane had just crashed into one of the towers above.
Langsner made a possibly life-saving decision to board an uptown train, getting off a few blocks away. As he joined panicked crowds streaming north, he began to grasp what was happening: Terrorists had slammed two planes into the World Trade Center's twin towers as part of a series of attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
More...
***
It has been 20 years since the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people and inflicted lasting trauma on the country.
In Montclair, a theater company is helping to continue the healing process, through drama and spoken word.
Apricot Sky Productions will present a series of one-act plays and monologues this week at the Grove Street Theatre, with two performances on Sept. 10 and 11.
Eric Alter, Apricot Sky’s founder and executive producer, who is one of the featured playwrights, said that the plays also mark a return to live theater. After a year and a half of little to no live theater of any kind in Montclair or elsewhere in the region, he said, he was hopeful that many people would want to come to the show. “I think people were so cooped up and ready to get out and do something,” he said.
Two of the plays, “Catch the Morning” and “The Grieving Pool,” were previously featured in “Capsule,” a showcase of one-act plays that Apricot Sky presented for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 in 2011.
“Catch the Morning,” written by Alter, follows a conversation between a father and daughter as they come to grips with the attacks. “The Grieving Pool,” also by Alter, is the story of two strangers who meet at the 9/11 Memorial reflecting pool in New York, and end up sharing stories about loved ones lost in the attacks.
More...
***
Great Performances and The Metropolitan Opera present a special live performance of Verdi’s “Requiem” commemorating the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Conducted by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the concert features performances by the Met orchestra, chorus and soloists Ailyn Pérez, Michelle DeYoung, Matthew Polenzani and Eric Owens. Hosted by world-renowned ballerina Misty Copeland from nearby the site of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, the special includes footage from the archives of the museum as well as New York City’s Tribute in Light, a commemorative public art installation featuring two beams of light that reach up to four miles into the sky, echoing the shape and orientation of the Twin Towers, every year from dusk to dawn on the night of September 11. Great Performances – Verdi’s Requiem: The Met Remembers 9/11 premieres Saturday, September 11 at 8 p.m. ET on PBS (check local listings) and will live stream in select markets. The concert will be available to stream on demand on pbs.org/gperf and the PBS Video app the next day.
More...
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/great-performances-verdis-requiem-the-met-remembers-9-11-about/12951/
***
On September 11, 2021, Eiko Otake will perform at 7am and 6pm at Belvedere Plaza in Battery Park City by the Hudson River, directly west of where the Twin Towers once stood.
Marking 20 years since the 9/11 attacks, this free public event will be presented in partnership with NYU Skirball, Battery Park City Authority, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).
Eiko & Koma were artists-in-residence in the North Tower throughout the year 2000. In 2002, on this very plaza, they premiered Offering: A Ritual of Mourning with David Krakauer, a composer and clarinet player. Offering was later presented with free admission in parks throughout Manhattan and in many cities around the world.
Created specifically for this occasion and this site, Eiko’s new piece, Slow Turn, centers on a monologue of her personal memories of that day and its aftermath. She has invited David Krakauer to perform short solo pieces to bookend her monologue, with Iris McCloughan as a dramaturg.
More...
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NYCPlaywrights
Greetings NYCPlaywrights
*** FREE THEATER IN NYC ***
SOCIAL DISTANCE
The R&B Musicl
Wednesday, October 27, 2021 at 7:00PM
The Players Theatre
115 MacDougal Street
Between West 3rd & Bleecker Streets
New York, NY 10012
Social Distance is a R&B Musical that follows the days amidst the Coronavirus where four American friends of different ethnicities unite via technology while self quarantining. In spirit of Lieber and Stoller, Ain't Misbehavin, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Songs for a New World, Social Distance is a sung through musical.
**proof of vaccination will be required for entry for anyone over the age of 12
***entry into the theatre involves a small flight of stairs and restrooms are located downstairs in the basement. There is no elevator.
*** PRIMARY STAGES ***
STARTING NEXT WEEK: Fall 2021 Online Classes at Primary Stages ESPA!
New and time tested favorite classes begin next week! Start a First Draft, focus on Dramatic Structure, learn the Tools of Dialogue, or create your Artistic Statement. Faculty includes CARIDAD SVICH (Obie Winner for Lifetime Achievement), MELISA ANNIS (Faculty, NYU Tisch Dramatic Writing Program), MICHAEL WALKUP (Artistic Director, Page 73), and many other award-winning writers who provide practical skills and expert guidance in a collaborative atmosphere. Classes begin mid-September.
Flexible, artist-friendly payment plans available. http://primarystages.org/espa/writing.
*** OPPORTUNITIES FOR PLAYWRIGHTS ***
The 2021 KIT International 10-minute play series
Inaugurated in 2019, Kairos Italy Theater, the Italian theater company in NY, the series is dedicated each year to a specific anniversary in the arts or in society. In 2021, It celebrates the 100th birthday of Leonardo Sciascia, author, playwright, journalist and philosopher dedicated to themes regarding politics and society.
***
The University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance is excited to announce our ninth annual 10-Minute Play Festival for spring of 2022.
This festival is open to all applicants, amateur or professional. One selected external submission from this call will receive aproduction as a part of this festival.
***
American Renaissance Theater Company – a developmental and producing organization founded in 1974 and based in New York City – seeks to expand its already diverse membership by inviting applications from Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian and Pacific Islander playwrights.
A dynamic community of theater professionals, ARTC's membership includes actors and directors as well as writers who encompass the full range of gender, age and sexual orientations. We want to extend a welcome to the voices of all writers who believe they would benefit from the supportive process of our weekly workshop.
*** FOR MORE INFORMATION about these and other opportunities see the web site at https://www.nycplaywrights.org ***
*** 9/11 + 20 ***
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of one of America's darkest days, the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
As municipalities plan for their memorial events the Know Theatre is offering its own tribute with their production of 'The Guys', set less than two weeks after the attacks.
Like many New Yorkers, artistic director of the Know Theatre, Tim Gleason, said 9/11 left a deep scar.
"I was living in Manhattan at the time," said Gleason, "A day that strikes me still as fresh as if it were coming this September 11th. Sad day, a lot of people who just thought they were going to work, never got to go home."
An event that two decades later is still just as raw, the play 'The Guys' offers a poignant perspective.
More...