Word: ginn
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Harvard theatregoers remember at least one night when they stood outside the entrance door to a house production at 8:45 on opening night, waiting for a scared cast to finish its final dress rehearsal, five minutes prior to repeating it all in front of their first audience. Robert Ginn's ambitious, technically complex, production of Jean Genet's The Balcony never even made it through that all-important final run-through, and suffered consequently from an almost total absence of pacing on opening night (it ran approximately three and three-quarter hours). Undaunted, Ginn has over the week...
...Ginn's production employs more conventional mystiques, making simple and obvious reversals of sexual roles: Madame Irma's "visitors" are played as vain effeminates, sexless transvestites who, when gathered together in the last act, remind one of the opening of Macbeth played in drag. Similarly, Irma is conceived as the Madam of an answering service, a nervous dike devoid of femininity and consequent feminine insight. This is supported by the text often, particularly in the dialogue with Carmen, but it annihilates any credibility to her stated relationship with Georges, the chief of police. Genet's contradictions work better...
...Ginn has perhaps made a mistake in directing such a cold play in emotional high-style, emphasizing spectacle with aluminized mylar sheets mirroring the audience, incense burning-away, and bits and pieces of Artaud and Grand Guignol. The set, grotesque caryatids awesomely conceived and executed by Sebastian Melmoth, nonetheless serves little intrinsic function in Ginn's concept, appearing only as so much lavish decoration surrounding the playing area. The costumes and lighting, however, work better, and are superb as only the Loeb can make them...
...Robert Ginn, Producer-Director of the Experimental Theater explained that plays primarily of original or avant-guard nature would be produced. But the real character of the theater, Ginn continued, will be determined by the ideas of those students who apply for the many acting and directing opportunities which are available...
...advisers who sit with them is likely to have seen it. If he has acted in Loeb shows and directed elsewhere, his Loeb friends will probably have seen his shows. But if he has no connections at the Loeb, he is far less likely to be chosen. Thus Robert Ginn, who has acted at the Loeb, was awarded a main stage show after directing Adams House's Andorra last Fall. A less well-known group from Lowell House is considered less likely to be chosen this Spring...