Greeks and Romans
Stephen Sondheim wrote an entire show based on the works of Roman playwright, Plautus. Its title refers to this Roman public square.
What is A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum?
Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote these two musicals based on biblical stories, one from the Old Testament and the other from the New Testament.
What are Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Jesus Christ Superstar?
The musical Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter includes this Shakespeare play.
What is The Taming of the Shrew?
The musical My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, which in turn is based on the Greek myth about this type of artist who falls in love with his work.
What is a sculptor?
Once on this Island is the Haitian version of this Scandinavian folktale.
What is The Little Mermaid?
Romeo and Juliet is based on this Greek tragedy (which is also comedically performed in A Midsummer Nights Dream).
What is Pyramus and Thisbe?
Cotton Patch Gospel, with music and lyrics by Harry Chapin, and Stephen Schwartz's Godspell are mostly based on this book from the New Testament.
What is The Gospel of Matthew?
Something Rotten comedically imagines the world of Shakespeare with protagonists Nick and Nigel Bottom, an allusion to a famous character from this Shakespearean play.
What is A Midsummer Night's Dream?
Albert Einstein meets this title character, a Spanish painter, at a bar in Paris called the Lapin Agile, in a comedy by Steve Martin.
Who is Picaso?
In Peter Schaeffer's play Amadeus, the composer Salieri drives this Austrian composer to his death.
Who is Mozart?
Eurydice, a contemporary play by Sarah Ruhl, is based on this mythological love story where Eurydice's husband descends into Hades to retrieve her.
What is Orpheus and Eurydice?
Children of Eden, another Stephen Schwartz creation, focuses on two stories from the Old Testament, one in Act I and the other in Act II.
What are "Adam and Eve" and "Noah's Ark"?
Tom Stoppard and David Ives both borrow from this Shakespeare play for Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Words Words Words, respectively.
What is Hamlet?
Art by Yasmina Reza focuses on the fracturing of a friendship over what constitutes art, when one of them buys a painting that is completely this color.
What is white?
The Crucible by Arthur Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials as an allegory for the hearings held by this congressional committee.
What is The Committee on Un-American Activities or The McCarthy Trials?
The Gospel of Colonus is an African-American musical version of the second play by Sophocles about this Greek king who killed his father and married his mother.
What is Oedipus Rex?
Oscar Wilde wrote the story of Salome who is famous for this dance and this gruesome reward.
What is the Dance of the Seven Veils and the head of John the Baptist?
Return to the Forbidden Planet is a jukebox musical based on this Shakespeare play.
What is The Tempest?
Pointillism is the subject of Stephen Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize winning musical, Sunday in the Park with this painter.
Who is George Seurat?
A character in High School Musical says, "a dream deferred and all that," alluding to the poem "Harlem" by Langston Hughes. This famous play by Lorraine Hansberry takes its title from the same poem.
What is A Raisin in the Sun?
Eugene O'Neill (famous Realism playwright from Connecticut!) wrote a collection of plays called Mourning Becomes Electra based on a classic Greek trilogy about this king.
Who is King Agamemnon?
This playwright (whom most of you have studied), famous for One Act plays, mocks religion in Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All and The Book of Leviticus Show.
Who is Christopher Durang?
The Boys from Syracuse was based on this Shakespeare comedy.
What is Comedy of Errors?
Durang's For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls is an allusion to this author's work and this playwright.
Who are Ernest Hemmingway and Tennessee Williams?
Take Me Out, a Tony award winning play about baseball, is a double allusion to this song and this phrase.
What are "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" and "out of the closet"