The Zoo Story

The Zoo Story, originally titled Peter and Jerry, is a one-act play by American playwright Edward Albee. His first play, it was written in 1958 and completed in just three weeks. The play explores themes of isolation, loneliness, miscommunication as anathematization, social disparity and dehumanization in a commercial world.

Productions

Rejected by New York producers, the play premiered in West Berlin at the Schiller Theater Werkstatt on 28 September 1959 in a double bill with the German premiere of Samuel Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape.

The play remiered in the United States Off-Broadway in a production by Theatre 1960 at the Provincetown Playhouse on January 14, 1960 and closed on May 21, 1961. The play was paired with Krapp's Last Tape. Directed by Milton Katselas, the cast was William Daniels (Peter) and George Maharis (Jerry). The play won the 1960 Obie Award for Distinguished Play and Distinguished Performance, William Daniels.

Plot summary

This one-act play concerns two characters, Peter and Jerry, who meet on a park bench in New York City's Central Park. Peter is a middle-class publishing executive with a wife, two daughters, two cats and two parakeets. Jerry is an isolated and disheartened man, desperate to have a meaningful conversation with another human being. He intrudes on Peter’s peaceful state by interrogating him and forcing him to listen to stories about his life, and the reason behind his visit to the zoo. The action is linear, unfolding in front of the audience in “real time”. The elements of ironic humor and unrelenting dramatic suspense are brought to a climax when Jerry brings his victim down to his own savage level.

Frasier (season 5)

The fifth season of Frasier originally aired from September 23, 1997 to May 19, 1998 on NBC.

List of episodes

References

The Zoo

The Zoo is a one-act comic opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by B. C. Stephenson, writing under the pen name of Bolton Rowe. It premiered on 5 June 1875 at the St. James's Theatre in London (as an afterpiece to W. S. Gilbert's Tom Cobb), concluding its run five weeks later, on 9 July 1875, at the Haymarket Theatre. There were brief revivals in late 1875, and again in 1879, before the opera was shelved.

The farcical story concerns two pairs of lovers. First, a nobleman, who goes to the zoo to woo the girl who sells snacks there. He tries to impress her by buying and eating all of the food. The other couple is a young chemist who believes that he has poisoned his beloved by mixing up her father's prescription with peppermint that he had meant for her.

The score was not published in Sullivan's lifetime, and it lay dormant until Terence Rees purchased the composer's autograph at auction in 1966 and arranged for publication. The opera is in one act without spoken dialogue, running about 40 minutes. Like Trial by Jury and Cox and Box, it has been staged as a curtain-raiser to the shorter Gilbert and Sullivan operas. Triple-bills of Sullivan's three one-act operas have also proved successful.

Boomerang (TV channel)

Boomerang is an American digital cable and satellite television channel that is owned by the Turner Broadcasting System subsidiary of Time Warner. Originating as a spinoff of Cartoon Network (which originated Boomerang as a programming block in 1992), Boomerang specializes in a blend of classic and contemporary animated programming from Time Warner's extensive archives with a family-friendly approach, including Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Scooby-Doo, along with repeats of shows still in production on Cartoon Network like Sonic Boom and Teen Titans Go!.

As of February 2015, approximately 43.6 million households (37.5% of those with television) receive the channel.

History

The Zoo (New Zealand TV series)

The Zoo is an award winning New Zealand observational documentary series, made by Greenstone TV, that follows the lives of Auckland Zoo's animals and zookeepers. The series explores the new arrivals and births of Auckland Zoo, to the fights, illnesses and mating rituals, how the animals are fed and how they live. The series' production crew are based full-time at the zoo, but the series also follows zookeepers overseas on zoo-related trips.

The Zoo returned to New Zealand's TV One in 2013 for its 13th season. In the UK, it airs on Animal Planet.

Zoo staff

Season 12 staff stars

Main staff stars