Portal:Theatre

The Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance is a 1499-seat theater for the performing arts located along the northern edge of Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago. The theater was named for its primary benefactors, Joan and Irving Harris. It serves as the Park's indoor performing venue, a complement to Jay Pritzker Pavilion, which hosts the park's outdoor performances. Constructed in 2002–03, it is the city's premier performance venue for small- and medium-sized music and dance groups. It provides subsidized rental, technical expertise, and marketing support for the companies using it, and turned a profit in its fourth fiscal year. The Harris Theater has hosted notable national and international performers, such as the New York City Ballet's first visit to Chicago in over 25 years (in 2006). Performances have included the San Francisco Ballet, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Stephen Sondheim. The theater has been credited as contributing to the performing arts renaissance in Chicago, and has been favorably reviewed for its acoustics, sightlines, proscenium and for providing a home for numerous performing organizations.

• August 1748 – First performance of a bunraku based on the story of Chūshingura written by Takeda Izumo II, Miyoshi Shōraku, and Namiki Senryū
• August 1947 – First Edinburgh International Festival took place in Edinburgh, Scotland
• 8 August 1963 – Opening of the Singapore National Theatre, commemorating the self-government of Singapore
• 19 August 1953 – Gholam-Hossein Saedi, one of the first modern playwrights of Iran, is arrested during the 1953 Iranian coup d'état
• 23 August 1920 – Premier of The Bat, a popular and often-imitated comedy-mystery by Mary Roberts Rinehart and Avery Hopwood
• 24 August 1680 – Establishment of the Comédie-Française (pictured), the only state-run theatre to have its own theatre troupe, by Louis XIV

Henry Edwards (1827–1891) was an English-born stage actor, writer and expert in the science of insects who gained fame in Australia, San Francisco, and New York City for his theatre work. Edwards was drawn to the theatre early in life, and he appeared in amateur productions in London. After sailing to Australia, Edwards appeared professionally in Shakespearean plays and light comedies, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney. Throughout his childhood in England and his acting career in Australia, he was greatly interested in collecting insects, and the National Museum of Victoria used the results of his Australian fieldwork as part of the genesis of their collection. After writing a series of influential studies on butterflies and moths on the West Coast of the United States, he was elected a life member of the California Academy of Sciences. Relocating eastward, a brief time spent in Boston theatre led to a connection to Wallack's Theatre and further renown in New York City. There, Edwards edited three volumes of the leading insect journal Papilio and published a major work on the life of the butterfly. His large collection of insect specimens served as the foundation of the American Museum of Natural History's butterfly and moth studies.

• ... that the American play His Majesty Bunker Bean was a national hit that had "been seen by most of the country east of the Mississippi River" before it reached Broadway?
• ... that Rachelle Ann Go debuted in the West End and Broadway revivals of Miss Saigon portraying the role of a bargirl?
• ... that actor George Kunkel portrayed in blackface the character of Uncle Tom, using it at first to promote slavery during the American Civil War but later to attack it, after his views had changed?
• ... that actress Nellie McCoy suffered a mental breakdown after her theatre performance was criticized, leading to her being committed to a sanatorium?
• ... that the depiction of conservative Catholic intellectuals in the play Heroes of the Fourth Turning was praised both by its subjects and by liberal New York theater critics?
• ... that although only one member was fluent in English, the cast of The Mongol Khan learned the entire script before the play's West End run?

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