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The Author's Farce is a play by the English playwright and novelist Henry Fielding, first performed on 30 March 1730 at the Little Theatre, Haymarket. Written in response to the Theatre Royal's rejection of his earlier plays, The Author's Farce was Fielding's first theatrical success. The first and second acts deal with the attempts of the central character, Harry Luckless, to woo his landlady's daughter, and his efforts to make money by writing plays. In the second act, he finishes a puppet theatre play titled The Pleasures of the Town, about the Goddess Nonsense's choice of a husband from allegorical representatives of theatre and other literary genres. After its rejection by one theatre, Luckless's play is staged at another. The third act becomes a play within a play, in which the characters in the puppet play are portrayed by humans. The Author's Farce ends with a merging of the play's and the puppet show's realities. The play established Fielding as a popular London playwright, and the press reported that seats were in great demand. Although largely ignored by critics until the 20th century, most agree that the play is primarily a commentary on events in Fielding's life, signalling his transition from older forms of comedy to the new satire of his contemporaries.

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• July 1996 – First International Festival of Ancient Greek Drama held in Cyprus
• 9 July 1991 – Premier of Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden, which describes the encounter of a former torture victim with the man she believed tortured her
• 13 July 1934 – Birth of Wole Soyinka, considered Africa's most distinguished playwright and the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature
• 17 July 1951 – Original Abbey Theatre burned down, the first state-subsidized theatre in the English-speaking world

Catherine Zeta-Jones (born 25 September 1969) is a film and stage actress. Raised in Swansea, Wales, she studied musical theatre at the Arts Educational Schools, London, and made her adult stage breakthrough with a leading role in 1987 in 42nd Street. She found great success as a regular in the British television series The Darling Buds of May (1991–93). Dismayed at being typecast as the token pretty girl in British films, Zeta-Jones relocated to Los Angeles. Critics praised her portrayal of a vengeful pregnant woman in Traffic (2000) and a murderous singer in the musical film Chicago (2002), winning her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She continued to star in high-profile films for much of the 2000s, including the black comedy Intolerable Cruelty (2003), the heist film Ocean's Twelve (2004), the comedy The Terminal (2004), and the romantic comedy No Reservations (2007). During a decrease in workload, she returned to the stage and portrayed an ageing actress in A Little Night Music (2009), winning the Tony Award for Best Actress.

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• ... that the Palace Theater light bulb has been running since 1908?
• ... that the Missoula Children's Theatre works with more than 65,000 children every year?
• ... that after seeing a film at the United Palace, the televangelist Reverend Ike asked to buy the theater so he could move in the next day?
• ... 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?
• ... that Althea Hunt founded the William & Mary Theatre, but discouraged students from trying to make a career of it?
• ... that musical theatre actress Josephine Hall became famous for performing a song that she purposefully sang high and off-key?

Whoever condemns the theater is an enemy of his country. — Voltaire

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