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Raymond Williams

Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contributed to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books were sold in UK editions alone, and there are many translations available. His work laid foundations for the field of cultural studies and cultural materialism.

Early life
Born in Pandy, just north of Llanfihangel Crucorney, near Abergavenny, Wales, Williams was the son of a railway worker in a village where all of the railwaymen voted Labour, while the local small farmers mostly voted Liberal. It was not a Welsh-speaking area: he described it as "Anglicised in the 1840s". There was, nevertheless, a strong Welsh identity. "There is the joke that someone says his family came over with the Normans and we reply: 'Are you liking it here?'"

Williams attended King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny. His teenage years were overshadowed by the rise of Nazism and the threat of war. His father was secretary of the local Labour Party, but Raymond declined to join, although he did attend meetings around the 1935 general election. He was 14 when the Spanish Civil War broke out, and was conscious of what was happening through his membership of the local Left Book Club. He also mentions the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, originally published in Britain by the Left Book Club.

At this time, he supported the League of Nations, attending a League-organised youth conference in Geneva in 1937. On the way back, his group visited Paris and he went to the Soviet pavilion at the International Exhibition. There he bought a copy of The Communist Manifesto and read Karl Marx for the first time.

In July 1939, he was involved in the Monmouth by-election, helping with an unsuccessful campaign by the Labour candidate, Frank Hancock, who was a pacifist. Williams was also a pacifist at this time, having distributed leaflets for the Peace Pledge Union.

University education
Williams won a state scholarship to read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, matriculating in 1939. While at Cambridge, he joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. Along with Eric Hobsbawm, he was given the task of writing a Communist Party pamphlet about the Russo-Finnish War. He says in (Politics and Letters) that they "were given the job as people who could write quickly, from historical materials supplied for us. You were often in there writing about topics you did not know very much about, as a professional with words".

At the time, the British government was keen to support Finland in its war against the Soviet Union, while still being at war with Nazi Germany. He took a second (division two) in part one of the tripos in 1941, and, after returning from war service, achieved first-class honours in part two in 1946. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA degree in 1946: as per tradition, his BA was promoted to a Master of Arts (MA Cantab) degree. He was later awarded a higher doctorate by Cambridge: the Doctor of Letters (LittD) degree in 1969.

World War II
Williams interrupted his education to serve in the Second World War. He enlisted in the British Army in late 1940, but stayed at Cambridge to take his exams in June 1941, the month when Germany invaded Russia. Joining the military was against the Communist party line at the time. According to Williams, his Communist Party membership lapsed without him formally resigning.

When Williams joined the army, he was assigned to the Royal Corps of Signals, which was a typical assignment for university undergraduates. He received initial training in military communications, but was reassigned to artillery and anti-tank weapons. He was chosen to serve as an officer in the Anti-Tank Regiment of the Guards Armoured Division in 1941–1945, being sent into early fighting in the Invasion of Normandy after the D-Day Normandy Landings. He writes in Politics and Letters, "I don't think the intricate chaos of that Normandy fighting has ever been recorded." He commanded a unit of four tanks and mentions losing touch with two of them while fighting against Waffen-SS Panzer forces in the Bocage. He never discovered what happened to them as a withdrawal of troops ensued.

Williams took part in the fighting from Normandy in 1944 and through Belgium and the Netherlands to Germany in 1945. There he was involved in liberating a smaller Nazi concentration camp, which was afterwards used by the Allies to detain SS officers.

He was shocked to find that Hamburg had suffered saturation bombing by the Royal Air Force, not just military targets and docks, as they had been told. He was expecting to be sent to Burma, but as his studies had been interrupted by the war, was instead granted Class B release, which meant immediate demobilisation. He returned to Cambridge, where he found that the student culture had changed from 1941, with the left-wing involvement much diminished.

Adult education and early publications
Williams received his BA from Cambridge in 1946, and then served as a tutor in adult education at Oxford University's Delegacy for Extra-Mural Studies (1946-1961). Moving to Seaford, Sussex, he gave Workers' Educational Association evening classes in East Sussex in English literature, drama, and later culture and environment. This allowed Williams to write in the mornings, beginning work on novels and what would become cultural studies.

In 1946, he founded the review Politics and Letters, a journal which he edited with Clifford Collins and Wolf Mankowitz until 1948. Williams published Reading and Criticism in 1950; he joined the editorial board of the new journal Essays in Criticism. In 1951, he was recalled to the army as a reservist to fight in the Korean War. He refused to go, registering as a conscientious objector. He expected to be jailed for a month, but the Appeal Tribunal panel, which included a professor of classics, was convinced by his case and discharged him from further military obligations in May 1951.

Between 1946 and 1957, he was involved with the film-maker Michael Orrom, whom he had known in Cambridge. They co-wrote Preface to Film, published in 1954, and Williams wrote the script for an experimental film, The Legend, in 1955. This was rejected in July 1956 and he parted company with Orrom shortly afterwards. He wrote a number of novels in this period, but only one, Border Country, would be published.

Inspired by T.S. Eliot's 1948 publication Notes towards the Definition of Culture, Williams began exploring the concept of culture. He first outlined his argument that the concept emerged with the Industrial Revolution in the essay "The Idea of Culture", which resulted in the widely successful book Culture and Society, published in 1958. This was followed in 1961 by The Long Revolution. Williams's writings were taken up by the New Left and received a wide readership. He was also well known as a regular book reviewer for The Manchester Guardian newspaper. His years in adult education were an important experience and Williams was always something of an outsider at Cambridge University. Asked to contribute to a book called My Cambridge, he began his essay by saying: "It was not my Cambridge. That was clear from the beginning."

Academic career
On the strength of his books, Williams was invited to return to Cambridge in 1961, where he was elected a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. He eventually achieved an appointment in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, first as Reader in Drama (1967–1974), and then as the university's first Professor of Drama (1974–1983). He was a visiting professor of political science at Stanford University in 1973, an experience he used to effect in his still useful book Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974).

A committed socialist, he was interested in the relations between language, literature and society, and published many books, essays and articles on these and other issues. Among the main ones is The Country and the City (1973), where chapters on literature alternate with chapters on social history. His tightly written Marxism and Literature (1977) is mainly for specialists, but also sets out his approach to cultural studies, which he called cultural materialism. The book was in part a response to structuralism in literary studies and pressure on Williams to make a more theoretical statement of his position, against criticisms that it was a humanist Marxism, based on unexamined assumptions about lived experience. He makes much use of the ideas of Antonio Gramsci, though the book is uniquely Williams's and written in his characteristic voice. For a more accessible version, see Culture (1981-1982), which develops an argument about cultural sociology, which he hoped would become "a new major discipline". Introducing the US edition, Bruce Robbins identifies it as "implicit self-critique" of Williams's earlier ideas, and a basis on which "to conceive the oppositionality of the critic in a permanently fragmented society".

Vocabulary
Williams was keen to establish the changing meanings of the vocabulary used in discussions of culture. He began with the word culture itself; his notes on 60 significant, often difficult words were to have appeared as an appendix to Culture and Society in 1958. This was not possible, and so an extended version with notes and short essays on 110 words appeared as Keywords in 1976. Those examined included "aesthetic", "bourgeois", "culture", "hegemony", "isms", "organic", "romantic", "status", "violence" and "work". A revised version in 1983 added 21 new words, including "anarchism", "ecology", "liberation" and "sex". Williams wrote that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) "is primarily philological and etymological," whilst his work was on "meanings and contexts". In 1981, Williams published Culture, where the term, discussed at length, is defined as "a realized signifying system" and supported by chapters on "the means of cultural production, and the process of cultural reproduction".

Debate
Williams wrote critically of Marshall McLuhan's writings on technology and society. This is the background to a chapter in Television: Technology and Cultural Form (1974) called "The Technology and the Society", where Williams defended his visions against technological determinism, focusing on the prevalence of social over technological in the development of human processes. Thus "Determination is a real social process, but never (as in some theological and some Marxist versions)... a wholly controlling, wholly predicting set of causes. On the contrary, the reality of determination is the setting of limits and the exertion of pressures, within which variable social practices are profoundly affected but never necessarily controlled."

His book Modern Tragedy may be read as a response to The Death of Tragedy by the conservative literary critic George Steiner. Later, Williams was interested in the work of Pierre Bourdieu, although he found it too pessimistic about the possibilities for social change.

Last years
Williams joined the Labour Party after he moved to Cambridge in 1961, but resigned in 1966 after the new majority Labour government had broken the seafarers' strike and introduced public expenditure cuts. He joined the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign, and wrote the May Day Manifesto (published 1967), along with Edward Thompson and Stuart Hall. Williams later became a Plaid Cymru member and a Welsh nationalist. He retired from Cambridge in 1983 and spent his last years in Saffron Walden. While there he wrote Loyalties, a novel about a fictional group of upper-class radicals attracted to 1930s Communism.

Williams was working on People of the Black Mountains, an experimental historical novel about people who lived or might have lived around the Black Mountains, his own part of Wales, told through flashbacks featuring an ordinary man in modern times, looking for his grandfather, who has not returned from a hill-walk. He imagines the region as it was and might have been. The story begins in the Paleolithic, and would have come up to modern times, focusing on ordinary people. He had completed it to the Middle Ages by the time he died in 1988. The whole work was prepared for publication by his wife, Joy Williams, then published in two volumes with a postscript briefly describing what the remainder would have been. Almost all the stories were complete in typescript, mostly revised many times by the author. Only "The Comet" was left incomplete and needed small additions for a continuous narrative.

In the 1980s, Williams made important links to debates on feminism, peace, ecology and social movements, and extended his position beyond what might be recognised as Marxism. He concluded that with many different societies in the world, there would be not one, but many socialisms. Influenced partly by critical readings of Sebastiano Timpanaro and Rudolf Bahro, he called for convergence between the labour movement and what was then called the ecology movement.

The Raymond Williams Society was founded in 1989 "to support and develop intellectual and political projects in areas broadly connected with Williams's work". Since 1998 it has published Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, which is "committed to developing the tradition of cultural materialism" he originated. The Raymond Williams Centre for Recovery Research opened at Nottingham Trent University in 1995. The Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF) supports activities in adult education; it was originally formed in 1988 as the Raymond Williams Memorial Fund. A collaborative research project building on Williams's investigation of cultural keywords called the "Keywords Project", initiated in 2006, is supported by Jesus College, University of Cambridge, and the University of Pittsburgh. Similar projects building on Williams's legacy include the 2005 publication, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, edited by the cultural-studies scholars Tony Bennett, Lawrence Grossberg, and Meaghan Morris, and the Keywords series from New York University Press including Keywords for American Cultural Studies.

In 2007 a collection of Williams's papers was deposited at Swansea University by his daughter Merryn, a poet and author.

Literary and cultural studies

 * – new edition with new introduction
 * – reissued with additional footnotes
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – new edition, without play Koba and with new afterword
 * – translated into Spanish and Portuguese
 * – translated into Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean and Swedish
 * – translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Korean
 * – reissued as
 * Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982 – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish and Portuguese
 * – translated into Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean and Swedish
 * – translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Korean
 * – reissued as
 * Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982 – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish and Portuguese
 * – translated into Traditional Chinese, Italian, Korean and Swedish
 * – translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Korean
 * – reissued as
 * Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982 – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Korean
 * – reissued as
 * Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982 – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish
 * – translated into Spanish

Short stories

 * "Red Earth", Cambridge Front, No. 2, 1941
 * "Sack Labourer", English Short Story 1, W. Wyatt, ed., London: Collins, 1941
 * "Sugar", R. Williams, M. Orrom and M. J. Craig, eds, Outlook: a Selection of Cambridge Writings, Cambridge, 1941, pp. 7–14
 * "This Time", New Writing and Daylight, No. 2, 1942–1943, J. Lehmann, ed., London: Collins, 1943, pp. 158–164
 * "A Fine Room to be Ill In", English Story 8, W. Wyatt (ed.), London, 1948
 * "The Writing on the Wall", Colours of a New Day: Writing for South Africa, Sarah LeFanu and Stephen Hayward, eds, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990

Drama

 * Koba (1966), Modern Tragedy, London, Chatto and Windus
 * A Letter from the Country, BBC Television, April 1966, Stand, 12 (1971), pp. 17–34
 * Public Enquiry, BBC Television, 15 March 1967, Stand, 9 (1967), pp. 15–53

Introductions

 * Seven-page introduction to All Things Betray Thee, a novel by Gwyn Thomas

Book-length treatments

 * Maria Elisa Cevasco, Para ler Raymond Williams (Portuguese of To Read Raymond Williams) São Paulo, Paz e Terra, 2001
 * Eagleton, Terry, editor. Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989
 * J. E. T. Ethridge, Raymond Williams: Making Connections. New York: Routledge, 1994
 * Jan Gorak, The Alien Mind of Raymond Williams. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1988
 * John Higgins, Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism. London and New York, Routledge, 1999
 * Fred Inglis, Raymond Williams. London and New York: Routledge, 1995
 * Paul Jones, "Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture: A Critical Reconstruction". London: Palgrave, 2004
 * David Lusted, ed., Raymond Williams: Film, TV, Culture, London: British Film Institute, 1989
 * Don Milligan, Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism, Studies in Anti-Capitalism, 2007
 * Andrew Milner, Re-Imagining Cultural Studies: The Promise of Cultural Materialism, London: Sage, 2002
 * W. John Morgan and Peter Preston, eds. Raymond Williams: Politics, Education, Letters, Macmillan Press, ISBN 0-333-48587-4 and St Martin's Press, ISBN 978-0-312-08357-1, 1993
 * Alan O'Connor, Raymond Williams: Writing, Culture, Politics. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989
 * Alan O'Connor, Raymond Williams. Critical Media Studies. Rowman and Littlefield, 2005
 * Tony Pinkney, ed., Raymond Williams. Bridgend, Mid Glamorgan, UK: Seren Books, 1991
 * Politics and Letters (London, New Left Books, 1979) gives the author's own account of his life and work.
 * Dai Smith, Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale. Cardigan: Parthian, 2008
 * Nick Stevenson, Culture, Ideology, and Socialism: Raymond Williams and E.P. Thompson. Aldershot, England: Avebury, 1995
 * Nicolas Tredell, Uncancelled Challenge: the work of Raymond Williams. Nottingham: Paupers' Press, 1990. ISBN 0-946650-16-0
 * J. P. Ward, Raymond Williams in the Writers of Wales series. University of Wales Press, 1981
 * Daniel Williams, ed., Who Speaks for Wales?: Nation, Culture, Identity, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003
 * Stephen Woodhams, History in the Making: Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Radical Intellectuals 1936–1956, Merlin Press 2001 ISBN 978-0850364941

Articles

 * Craig, Cairns, Peripheries, in Cencrastus No. 9, Summer 1982, pp. 3–9,

title: Raymond Williams


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Descent (video game)

Descent is a first-person shooter (FPS) game developed by Parallax Software and released by Interplay Productions in 1995 for MS-DOS, and later for Macintosh, PlayStation, and RISC OS. It popularized a subgenre of FPS games employing six degrees of freedom and was the first FPS to feature entirely true-3D graphics. The player is cast as a mercenary hired to eliminate the threat of a mysterious extraterrestrial computer virus infecting off-world mining robots. In a series of mines throughout the Solar System, the protagonist pilots a spaceship and must locate and destroy the mine's power reactor and escape before being caught in the mine's self-destruction, defeating opposing robots along the way. Players can play online and compete in either deathmatches or cooperate to take on the robots.

Descent was a commercial success. Together with its sequel, it sold over 1.1 million units as of 1998 and was critically acclaimed. Commentators and reviewers compared it to Doom and praised its unrestrained range of motion and full 3D graphics. The combination of traditional first-person shooter mechanics with that of a space flight simulator was also well received. Complaints tended to focus on the frequency for the player to become disoriented and the potential to induce motion sickness. The game's success spawned expansion packs and the sequels Descent II (1996) and Descent 3 (1999).

Single-player

Descent is a first-person shooter and shoot 'em up game wherein the player pilots a spaceship through labyrinthine mines while fighting virus-infected robots, using the ship's armaments. They must find and destroy each mine's reactor core, triggering a meltdown that will destroy the mine as the player escapes. For two levels, the reactor core is replaced with a boss. To obtain access to the reactor, the player must collect one or a combination of the three colored access keys for each level. As a secondary objective, the player can also choose to rescue PTMC (Post Terran Mining Corporation) workers who were taken hostage by the infected robots.

Descent features 30 levels, of which three are secret levels. Each level is based in a mine or military installation in various locations in the Solar System. The game demands that players keep their sense of orientation in a fully 3D environment with a flight model featuring six degrees of freedom in zero-gravity. It also provides a 3-dimensional wire-frame automap that displays any area of the current mine visited or seen by the player. Variously colored lines indicate locked doors and zones such as energy stations and reactor areas. These mines may contain hidden doors or robot generators that spawn enemy robots. Flares and lasers light up dark areas of the mine.

Items are available as collectible power-ups. They are either scattered throughout the mines or may be obtained by destroying robots. Weapons are split up into primary and secondary weapons. Primary weapons range from lasers to wide-range Spreadfire Cannons to the chargeable Fusion Cannons whose shots can punch through numerous enemies. They all consume energy as their ammunition, except for the Vulcan Cannon, which uses rounds of explosive shells. Secondary weapons include various missiles (both unguided and homing) including the Smart Missile which upon impact released several smaller guided bomblets, as well as Proximity Bombs that are dropped behind the player's craft to slow pursuing enemies. The player's spacecraft uses shield power as health, and can carry a maximum of 200 units of shields and energy each. Energy is replenished from energy power-ups or recharged to 100 units at permanent energy centers. Shields can only be restored by collecting blue shield orbs. There are also power-ups that modify the ship's status and weaponry. For example, Cloaking Devices temporarily render the ship invisible, Invulnerability temporarily inhibits receiving damage, and Quad Lasers modify the ship's laser system to fire four bolts of energy instead of the standard two. Points are gained by defeating robots, rescuing hostages, and escaping the mine before its self-destruction. If the player ship's shields drop to 0, the ship is destroyed, all acquired weapons are strewn about the area as power-ups, and any rescued hostages aboard are killed. The ship respawns at the cost of a life and the player must navigate the mines to regain the power-ups. Players can record and later view their experiences in the form of demos, both in single-player and multiplayer.

Multiplayer
Descent allows online competitive and cooperative multiplayer sessions. The competitive sector consists of "Anarchy", "Team Anarchy", and "Anarchy With Robots", three deathmatch modes whereby players attempt to destroy as many of each other's ships as possible. Team Anarchy assigns players to two opposing teams, and Anarchy With Robots adds hostile robots to the match. In Cooperative, players team up to destroy mines and compete for the highest score. Competitive modes allow a maximum of eight players and cooperative modes allow up to four. Players can press a single key to type a message referred to as a taunt, rather than pausing to type in the full message. They can also join same servers across different platforms, particularly MS-DOS and Macintosh.

Plot
Descent is set in 2169. The story begins with a briefing between PTMC executive S. Dravis and the player's character, PTMC's best "Material Defender", who is hired on a mercenary basis to eliminate the threat of a mysterious alien computer virus infecting the machines and robots used for off-world mining operations.

The PTMC developed numerous mines in the Solar System's planets and moons for a variety of uses, including resource extraction, science research, and military installations. Prior to entering a mine, the player receives an intelligence briefing upon the robots used there, however the computer virus has resulted in some existing robots either modified considerably or even new robots being produced that PTMC is unaware about. The player starts with the mines on the Moon and later shift to Venus and to Mercury, where a boss robot has to be destroyed. Afterward, the mines progress further away from the Sun, as the player visits Mars, then the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and eventually to Pluto and its moon Charon. The player accesses the three secret levels located in the asteroid belt using alternative exit doors hidden in specific levels.

After defeating the boss robot on Charon, the Material Defender is informed he cannot return to the PTMC's headquarters in Earth orbit, as there is a chance his ship may be infected with the same virus as the defeated robots. His employer also mentions that PTMC has lost contact with their deep-space installations outside the Solar System, setting the stage for the sequel.

Development
Descent was co-created by programmers Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog. It has origins as far back as 1986, when Toschlog first joined the gaming industry at Sublogic, where he also first met Kulas. There, the pair worked on various simulation titles from Flight Simulator 2 to Jet. Toschlog left the company in 1988 for Looking Glass, where he worked with Ned Lerner to develop Car and Driver. Kulas joined the company in 1990 to develop utilities for Car and Driver. The two had devised an idea of an indoor flight simulator that used shaded polygons. After working on Ultima Underworld however, they realized they could add textures to the polygons for a spectacular effect. By April 1993, they finished a two-page sketch for what would become Descent.

Descent took about 21 months to finish. According to Kulas, the game cost around US$450,000 to make. The game's marketing budget was $1 million. Deciding that their idea was too good for anyone else to develop it, Kulas and Toschlog left Looking Glass in June 1993 to form Parallax Software. They hired Che-Yuan Wang and John Slagel as their programmers, with Wang also being their level designer. They also hired Adam Pletcher as their artist. They set out to contact publishers, including Scott Miller of Apogee Software, id Software's primary publisher, who was excited about their proposal and signed a contract with them. For the next seven months, Apogee invested in Parallax and shared with them experience they had gained from developing their own 3D shareware titles. Parallax would implement artistic and structural changes that Apogee requested. After those months, Apogee had numerous projects in the works, and Parallax's project became more expensive to create, so Apogee severed its involvement in the project.

Left without a publisher, Parallax spent the next three months to develop a mock-up prototype, continuing their coding. The project was originally titled Miner, but Parallax presented their prototype in written letters to 50 game companies as Inferno. Of those letters, three of them received a reply. One of them was from Interplay, who immediately signed the company up. Until the game's full release, Interplay's producer Rusty Buchert would oversee and guide the development of the project. Parallax hired three more people to finish the project: level designers Mark Dinse and Jasen Whiteside and story writer and 3D modeler Josh White.

During level design, the idea of simple connected tunnels as the sole component of level architecture expanded to also include rooms and exits. As levels became more complex and confusing, the developers added an automap to address this problem. To design the levels, Descent's graphics engine uses portal rendering, which uses collections of cubes to form rooms and tunnels. Within the game, sides of cubes can be attached to other cubes, or display up to two texture maps. Cubes can be deformed so long as they remain convex. To create effects like doors and see-through grating, walls could be placed at the connected sides of two cubes. Robots were drawn as polygonal models; sprites were only used to represent the hostages and power-ups. This system was very efficient, and made possible the first truly 3D textured environment in a video game.

Another obstacle to overcome was adding online multiplayer. Parallax found it difficult to implement and were initially reluctant to do so. At the same time during development, they had learned of Doom and the popularity of its multiplayer. Interplay sent Rob Huebner to help Parallax program multiplayer. Near their project's completion, Parallax faced yet another obstacle: they needed to make sure that their highly detailed and complex game could run smoothly on computers. Although ultimately the requirements to run the game fast were high, an added option to adjust detail complexity did help.

Releases and ports
Parallax Software and Interplay followed the shareware model used by Apogee and id Software, and on December 24, 1994; uploaded a seven-level shareware demo as Descent both in retail and on the Internet.

The full game for MS-DOS was released in the United Kingdom on March 3, 1995, and in North America on March 17, 1995, followed by a Macintosh port published by MacPlay in December 1995. A modified version of Descent with stereoscopic graphics was released as a bundle with StereoGraphics's SimulEyes VR 3D glasses.

A PlayStation port was released in Japan on January 26, 1996, in the United States on March 12, 1996, and in Europe that same month, with SoftBank being the Japanese version's developer. The PlayStation version replaces the still screens and text with full-motion video pre-rendered cutscenes incorporating voice acting.

November 22, 1995 also saw the release of Descent: Levels of the World, an add-on containing over 100 winning level submissions from a design competition held by Interplay, plus one level designed by Parallax Software. Also in March 1996, Descent: Anniversary Edition was released, which bundled Descent, Levels of the World, as well as additional exclusive levels.

On October 29, 1997, Interplay published Descent I and II: The Definitive Collection, a compilation containing the full versions of Descent, the Levels of the World mission pack, Descent II, and Vertigo mission packs, and a mission editor. Besides a choice of the original Descent II levels (subtitled Counterstrike), or the Vertigo Series levels, the first Descent levels (subtitled The First Strike) can be started in the Descent II game UI where robots adopt the Descent II sounds and improved AI. The original Descent program is included for players that prefer the unmodified The First Strike, as well as to run Levels of the World. There is also a preview for the upcoming Descent 3.

Descent was later ported to RISC OS by R-Comp Interactive in late 1998, which received a 32-bit update in 2003.

Cancelled ports
A Sega 32X version of Descent was planned as the first console version, but it was never released. A 3DO Interactive Multiplayer version was showcased at E3 1995 and slated to be published by Interplay, but never came to fruition for unknown reasons. Likewise, a Panasonic M2 version was also announced but never released due to the system's cancellation. A planned Sega Saturn version was cancelled because the programmers found that a straight port of the PlayStation version was not possible, and they did not think it would be worth their while to do a more elaborate port for the Saturn. Interplay had plans dating to mid-1996 to port Descent to Nintendo 64 under the name Ultra Descent. The port was delayed before it was eventually cancelled in 1998 in favor of Descent 3, with Parallax's Jim Boone explaining that it never reached the design phase in development. In April 2010, Interplay partnered with independent developer G1M2 to release a WiiWare version for Fall 2010. It would have featured enhanced textures and a variety of controls, including motion controls of a Wii Remote and Nunchuk with a MotionPlus accessory and possibly a Wii Balance Board. The deadline was missed, and the last time the developer publicly provided an update on its progress was in a response to a news inquiry in 2011, assuring that the project was still underway, before it was ultimately quietly abandoned.

Mods
Descent uses package files to store and load level data such as level structures, graphics, objects, and sound effects and music—similar to the WAD file format used for Doom. It also allows players to create their own such files containing the data, which can then be loaded and played. Later in 1997 on the end-of-life commercial cycle came the release of the game's source code, excluding the audio code. Parallax released the source code under the license that permits non-commercial uses only. All of this, combined with the game's popularity, has resulted in a number of distributed mods.

Re-releases
Descent was re-released on modern digital distribution services. It was one of the launch titles for the open beta version of Good Old Games on September 8, 2008, followed by a Steam release on February 13, 2014. However, the game was withdrawn from Good Old Games in December 2015 along with Descent II and Descent 3, and later from Steam. A representative of Parallax Software responded to speculation on the Good Old Games forums regarding the withdrawal of the titles. Interplay owned the Descent trademark and the publishing rights to those games, but their developers still retained the copyrights to them. The latter pulled their games off because Interplay purportedly had not paid them royalties since 2007. As a result, they had terminated the sales agreement, disallowing Interplay from further selling them.

However, in November 2017, Good Old Games announced that the Descent series would be available for sale again on their platform. The game has also since resurfaced on Steam.

Pre-release
Customer reception of the shareware version of Descent was very positive, with players praising the fully 3D environment and commentators noting perceived "loyalty and goodwill" that both Parallax and Interplay fostered. However, it also garnered player complaints about a technical bug that would recharge each robot's shields whenever the player ship was destroyed (the problem was exacerbated on the last level of the shareware, where the power reactor is replaced with a boss and the gameplay thus becomes extremely difficult). It also received complaints for lacking the ability to save in-game, instead saving the player's progress between levels. Parallax recognized the bug and the popularity of the save feature, so they released patches to address the issues. Mark Burgess of PC Zone called it one of the best shoot 'em up games and wrote that it justified shareware, giving it a perfect five floppy disks out of five. Descent would later go on to become one of the games to inspire other retailers and software companies to look into and embrace the shareware model.

Sales
On Electronic Entertainment's charts in March 1995, the PC and CD-ROM editions of Descent appeared as Nos. 5 and 8 of the top-selling PC and CD-ROM titles before climbing to Nos. 4 and 3 the next month, respectively. The game first appeared on PC Zone's charts of the top-selling games in May 1995, landing on Nos. 4 and 2 on the top full price and CD-ROM titles, respectively. The shareware version appeared as No. 3 on the top budget games. In June 1995, the CD-ROM version dropped off, and the shareware version fell to No. 6 of the budget games and the full game to No. 9 of the full price games before dropping off next month. The full game rose back up in August 1995 to No. 19 of the top full price games, while the shareware version fell down to No. 7 of the top commercial titles. The game dropped off PC Zone's charts altogether the next month. The Macintosh port also landed on No. 10 of the top Macintosh games in December 1995.

Interplay estimated in March 1995 before Descent's full release that shareware copies of Descent were distributed 900,000 times via online services, on the Internet, or at retail. Official global sales of the game, together with its sequel, surpassed 1.1 million copies as of June 1998, while VentureBeat estimated in 2015 that the actual sales figure of the original was as high as 25 million copies.

Computer versions
The computer versions of Descent received near-universal acclaim, with reviewers widely comparing it to Doom and noting its unique use of free motion, as well as a fully three-dimensional environment. The multiplayer aspect received equal acclaim. Michael Ryan of PC Magazine enthusiastically attributed the attention the game received to its unique gameplay and found no similar alternatives. GameSpot remarked that "only one 3-D shooter adds a whole new dimension to the field: Descent.", particularly noting the labyrinthine environments. Charlie Brooker of PC Zone noted the game's intense environment and similarities to Doom and praised its multiplayer and ability to taunt opposing players, with only minor criticism directed toward its slight repetitiveness. Common complaints tended to focus on Descent's ability to disorient players, as well as potentially induce motion sickness.

Next Generation particularly praised the graphics and animation, intelligent enemies, and wide array of power-ups, all of which it said would "keep most gamers glued to the screen for hours". They were however disappointed by the game's delayed release, asserting it led to the game being overshadowed by id Software's then-newly released Heretic. Nevertheless, they rated it the fourth-best virtual reality game in September 1995 due to its 3D environment and graphics. In its third-highest-rated review, PC Player also praised the intelligent enemies, as well as the lighting effects, the use of various graphical textures, and "genuine" 3D graphics. Edge remarked the ability to record demos that capture the player's experiences, but also criticized the slightly repetitive gameplay and noted the robots' basic algorithm of being only a little more than "fire and evade", despite their intelligence.

The Macintosh port of Descent also received praise. Bob LeVitus of MacUser called it "one of the best Mac games ever released", attributing its popularity to its online multiplayer mode. His only criticism was the high system requirements (the port required a Power Macintosh to play) and a difficult learning curve. Macworld's Fred DeLisio also praised the enemy artificial intelligence, realism and sense of immersion, and multiplayer for allowing cross-platform sessions between MS-DOS and Macintosh users and allowing players to join and quit anytime without ending the sessions for everyone else, but also criticized the high system requirements.

Jeremy Parish of USgamer ran a retrospective feature on the game, saying Descent combined the genre of space flight simulator with a first-person shooter experience. He also attributed the game's popularity and modifiability to the continued development of fan mods. Engadget's David Lumb retrospectively likened the game's graphical innovations to the computer-generated imagery used in the 1995 film Toy Story. GamesTM rated it No. 4 on their retrospective "Top Five FPS" list for its truly 3D environment combined with the six degrees of freedom, and Rock, Paper, Shotgun ranked it No. 13 on its list of "The best space games on PC", citing the game's numerous innovations, speed, labyrinthine level structures, and the free range of motion.

PlayStation version
The PlayStation port of Descent also received praise, which was often directed to the port's use of impressive lighting effects. Like its computer versions, criticism commonly centered on the player's disorientation. The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly called it an outstanding conversion due to its extremely fast rendering speed and improved lighting effects. However, two of them felt that the gameplay lacked excitement. Major Mike of GamePro also judged it "an excellent conversion" due to its complex but generally easy to master controls, though he did complain of occasional severe slowdown. Maximum stated it "is one of the greatest games to grace the PlayStation, and rates alongside WipeOut as one of the best ambassadors for the machine." They particularly applauded the labyrinthine level design and intelligent enemy AI. Their subsequent feature on the game was more critical, saying that "the official PAL version of Descent features some of the most hideous letterbox PAL borders we've ever seen, with no sign of PAL optimization whatsoever." However, it also praised the game's use of the PlayStation Link Cable.

Next Generation too praised the developers for adding a new industrial soundtrack to the PlayStation version rather than doing a direct port. Like Major Mike, they found the controls complex but easy to master. While criticizing that the game can be dry and repetitive, they concluded that "Overall, you still can't go wrong, and if you've got the ability to fly against someone else, it doesn't get much better." K. Lee of GameFan praised the sound and music and noted the game's difficulty due to the ubiquitous doors on walls, ceilings, and floors. He thought the automap was useful, though still found it too easy to become disoriented.

Legacy
Descent is credited with starting a subgenre of six-degrees-of-freedom first-person shooters, and remains an icon of the subgenre. It holds a Guinness World Record for being the first fully 3D first-person shooter, and its popularity spawned two sequels: Descent II in 1996 and Descent 3 in 1999. It also led to a 1999 trilogy of Peter Telep novels based on the series, comprising Descent, Descent: Stealing Thunder, and Descent: Equinox. It brought about a handful of similar "Descent clones", most notably Forsaken, which was released by Acclaim Entertainment in 1998 and had similar graphics and almost identical gameplay to Descent.

In 1997, Interplay released Descent to Undermountain, a role-playing video game that used a modified version of the Descent graphics engine.

Since Descent 3, there had been plans and considerations to work on another game in the series. Those were either cancelled or abandoned in favor of other projects. Volition, the developer of the FreeSpace series, began work on Descent 4. Again, development was cancelled, as most of the company was interested in developing a fantasy role-playing game instead. It would have been a prequel to Descent, and reportedly served as the basis for the 2001 first-person shooter Red Faction. Similarities would have included plot points such as an evil faceless corporation and the mysterious "Plague" they are attempting to harness. President of Volition Mike Kulas stated in an interview that the Red Faction and Descent universes are strictly separate, but also that the code intended for Descent 4 had been used in Red Faction.

A series revival was planned in the late 2010s when development of another Descent title was confirmed. On Kickstarter in March 2015, Descendent Studios announced a prequel to the original game, partnering with Interplay and using their intellectual property rights to develop it. Titled simply Descent, it would have been the first game since Descent 3 to be released in the series. However, after a settlement in 2022, the game was renamed to Ships That Fight Underground, dropping the Descent title altogether. Another game, Overload, was announced on Kickstarter by Revival Productions and successfully crowdfunded in 2016. It included many of the former employees of Parallax Software, including co-founders Mike Kulas and Matt Toschlog. It is a six-degrees-of-freedom tunnel shooter and a spiritual successor to the Descent games that released in 2018.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Descent (video game)


text:
Philip I

Philip(p) I may refer to:

 * Philip I of Macedon (7th century BC)
 * Philip I Philadelphus (between 124 and 109 BC–83 or 75 BC)
 * Philip the Arab (c. 204–249), Roman Emperor
 * Philip I of France (1052–1108)
 * Philip I (archbishop of Cologne) (1130–1191)
 * Philip I, Count of Flanders (1143–1191)
 * Philip I of Namur, (1175–1212)
 * Philip I, Count of Boulogne (1200–1235)
 * Philip I, Count of Savoy (1207–1285)
 * Philip I, Latin Emperor (1243–1283)
 * Philip IV of France, aka Philip I of Navarre (1268–1314)
 * Philip I of Piedmont, known as Philip of Savoy (1278–1334) lord of Piedmont
 * Philip I, Prince of Taranto (1278–1331/2)
 * Philip I, Count of Auvergne (1323–1346)
 * Philip I, Duke of Burgundy (1346–1361)
 * Philipp I, Count of Nassau-Weilburg (1368–1429)
 * Philip I, Metropolitan of Moscow (died 1473)
 * Philipp I, Count of Katzenelnbogen (1402–1479)
 * Philip I, Duke of Brabant (1404–1430)
 * Philipp I, Count of Hanau-Lichtenberg (1417–1480)
 * Philip I de Croÿ, Count of Porcéan (1435–1511)
 * Philip I, Count of Waldeck (1445–1475)
 * Philipp I, Count of Hanau-Münzenberg (1449–1500)
 * Philip I, Duke of Brunswick-Grubenhagen (1476–1551)
 * Philip I of Castile, Philip the Handsome (1478–1506)
 * Philip I, Margrave of Baden (1479-1533)
 * Philip I, Count of Nassau-Wiesbaden-Idstein (1490–1558)
 * Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse (1504–1567)
 * Philip I, Duke of Pomerania (1515–1560)
 * Philip II of Spain, aka Philip I of Portugal, and may also be known as jure uxoris Philip I of England (1527–1598)
 * Philip I, Count of Schaumburg-Lippe (1601–1681)

title: Philip I


text:
Royal Shakespeare Company

The Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) is a major British theatre company, based in Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, England. The company employs over 1,000 staff and opens around 20 productions a year. The RSC plays regularly in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, and on tour across the UK and internationally.

The company's home is in Stratford-upon-Avon, where it has redeveloped its Royal Shakespeare and Swan theatres as part of a £112.8-million "Transformation" project. The theatres re-opened in November 2010, having closed in 2007.

As well as the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, the RSC produces new work from living artists.

The early years
There have been theatrical performances in Stratford-upon-Avon since at least Shakespeare's day, though the first recorded performance of a play written by Shakespeare himself was in 1746 when Parson Joseph Greene, master of Stratford Grammar School, organised a charitable production to fund the restoration of Shakespeare's funerary monument. John Ward's Birmingham-based company, the Warwickshire Company of Comedians, agreed to perform it. A surviving copy of the playbill records that the company performed Othello. The first building erected to commemorate Shakespeare was David Garrick's Jubilee Pavilion in 1769, and there have been at least 17 buildings used to perform Shakespeare's plays since.

The first permanent commemorative building to Shakespeare's works in the town was a theatre built in 1827, in the gardens of New Place, but has long since been demolished. The RSC's history began with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, which was the brainchild of a local brewer, Charles Edward Flower. He donated a 2 acre site by the River Avon and in 1875 launched an international campaign to build a theatre in the town of Shakespeare's birth. The theatre, a Victorian-Gothic building seating just over 700 people, opened on 23 April 1879, with a performance of Much Ado About Nothing, a title which gave ammunition to several critics.

The Memorial, a red brick Gothic cathedral, designed by Dodgshun and Unsworth of Westminster, was unkindly described by Bernard Shaw as "an admirable building, adaptable to every purpose except that of a theatre." From 1919, under the direction of William Bridges-Adams and after a slow start, its resident New Shakespeare Company became one of the most prestigious in Britain. The theatre received a royal charter of Incorporation in 1925, which gave it status.

On the afternoon of 6 March 1926, when a new season was about to commence rehearsals, smoke was seen. Fire broke out, and the mass of half-timbering chosen to ornament the interior provided dry tinder. By the following morning the theatre was a blackened shell. The company transferred its Shakespeare festivals to a converted local cinema. Fund-raising began for the rebuilding of the theatre, with generous donations arriving from philanthropists in America.

In January 1928, following an open competition, 29-year-old Elisabeth Scott was unanimously appointed architect for the new theatre which became the first important work erected in the United Kingdom from the designs of a female architect. George Bernard Shaw commented that her design was the only one that showed any theatre sense. Her modernist plans for an art deco structure came under fire from many directions but the new building was opened triumphantly on William Shakespeare's birthday, 23 April 1932. Later it came under the direction of Sir Barry Jackson in 1945, Anthony Quayle from 1948 to 1956 and Glen Byam Shaw 1957–1959, with an impressive roll-call of actors. Scott's building, with some minor adjustments to the stage, remained in constant use until 2007 when it was closed for a major refit of the interior.

Timeline:

1932 – New Shakespeare Memorial Theatre opens, abutting the remains of the old.

1961 – Chartered name of the corporation and the Stratford theatre becomes 'Royal Shakespeare.'

1974 – The Other Place opened, created from a prefabricated former store/rehearsal room in Stratford.

1986 – The Swan Theatre opened, created from the shell of the 1879 Memorial Theatre.

1991 – Purpose-built new Other Place, designed by Michael Reardon, opens.

September 2004 – The vision for the renewal of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre transformation is announced.

July 2006 – The Courtyard Theatre opens with a staging of Michael Boyd's Histories.

November 2010 – The Royal Shakespeare and Swan Theatres re-open following their transformation.

March 2016 – The Other Place was reinstated as a 200-seat studio theatre.

Foundation and history
In 1959, while still the director-designate of the Memorial Theatre, Peter Hall announced that the formation of a permanent company would be a primary objective. David Addenbrooke wrote of Hall's belief that Shakespeare, more than any other dramatist, needed a 'style', a tradition and unity of direction and acting. On 14 January 1960, Hall's first policy statement as director also proposed the acquisition of a second theatre, in London, to be used as a city outlet for selected Stratford productions. The RSC was formally established on 20 March 1961 with the royal announcement that the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre would henceforth be known as the Royal Shakespeare Theatre and the company as the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The critic Michael Billington, summarising these events, wrote: "In 1960 the twenty-nine-year-old Peter Hall formally took charge at Stratford-upon-Avon and set about turning a star-laden, six-month Shakespeare festival into a monumental, year-round operation built around a permanent company, a London base and contemporary work from home and abroad. Looking back, it is difficult to realise just how radical Hall's dream was at the time; or indeed how much opposition there was to the creation of what became officially known in March 1961 as the Royal Shakespeare Company."

John Barton had been appointed associate director in January 1960, and was followed in 1962 by Michel Saint-Denis, Peter Brook and Clifford Williams who joined the company as resident directors. John Bury was appointed head of design in 1964. The repertoire was also widened to take in modern work and classics other than Shakespeare.

In 1962, strong opposition to the establishment of a London base for the RSC came from the Royal National Theatre which – led by Viscount Chandos and Laurence Olivier – wished to be the sole subsidised company operating in London. Following a deal with Prince Littler, managing director of Associated Theatre Properties, the RSC established the Aldwych Theatre as its London base for productions transferred from Stratford to London, its stage redesigned to match the RST's apron stage.

Twenty years later, in the summer of 1982, the company took up London residence in both the Barbican Theatre and The Pit studio space in the Barbican Centre under the auspices of the City of London. The RSC was closely involved in the design of these two venues. In 2002 it left the Barbican after a series of allegedly poor seasons, partly because the then artistic director Adrian Noble wanted to develop the company's touring performances. His decision means the company has no regular London home.

Innovation and growth
The RSC had first tackled its need for a small auditorium in 1971. At the insistence of Sir Trevor Nunn (who had taken over as artistic director in 1968), the company hired The Place off the Euston Road in London and constructed its own theatre space for an audience of 330, seated on raked wooden benches. Two seasons of plays were staged in 1972 and 1973, none suitable for the Aldwych. In December 1973 Buzz Goodbody, the company's first female director, drew up a plan for what would become The Other Place studio theatre in Stratford, designed by Michael Reardon to seat 140 people, which opened to a first and highly successful season in 1974. The name chosen for the new studio space was favoured within the company because it implied an alternative theatre, but also because it is a quotation from Hamlet.

In August 1976, Nunn staged Macbeth with a minimalist set at The Other Place, playing for 2 hours 15 minutes without an interval. The small, nearly round stage focused attention on the psychological dynamics of the characters. Both Ian McKellen in the title role and Judi Dench as Lady Macbeth received exceptionally favourable reviews. The production transferred to London, opening at the Donmar Warehouse in September 1977 before its further transfer to the larger Young Vic venue for a two-month season. It was also recorded for transmission by Thames Television. In 2004, members of the RSC voted Dench's performance the greatest by an actress in the history of the company.

Summing up this triumphant period, The Guardian critic Michael Billington later wrote: "[In 1977] the RSC struck gold. This was, in fact, the perihelion of Trevor Nunn's ten-year reign as the company's sole Artistic Director and Chief Executive (in 1978 he began to share power with Terry Hands). In London, the company opened a new studio space at the Donmar Warehouse with plays by Barker, Taylor, Bond and Brecht. Its Aldwych repertory combined the usual Stratford transfers with Nichol's Privates on Parade, Ibsen's Pillars of the Community and Brecht's The Days of the Commune. At the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Terry Hands and actor Alan Howard had a marathon year working on Henry V, a virtually uncut, Henry VI, part 1, Henry VI, part 2 and Henry VI, part 3 and Coriolanus. And the action at The Other Place included Jonson, Ford, Musset, Gems and Rudkin. No other company in the world could match that output for quantity and quality".

Nunn and Hands were joint artistic directors of the RSC when the company opened The Swan, its third theatre in Stratford. The Swan Theatre, also designed by Michael Reardon, has a deep thrust stage and a galleried, intimate 450-capacity auditorium. The space was to be dedicated to playing the works of Shakespeare's contemporaries, the works of European writers and the occasional work of Shakespeare. The theatre was launched on 8 May 1986 with a production of The Two Noble Kinsmen by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher (not published until 1634 and thought to be Shakespeare's last work for the stage). It was directed by Barry Kyle.

Costumes and props
The RSC's costume department is 'the largest in-house costume-making workshop in British theatre' and 'world-renowned'. In 2021, the RSC raised over £8 million for a project to update the costume and prop department. Alistair McArthur, head of costume, called the old working space "Dickensian" and added, "If we knew there was rain coming we'd have to clear everything off the table the night before."

The prop-makers design and make many of their own props for the many productions. A 'Prop Shop' in Stratford-upon-Avon is the studio in which most of the props are made.

Troubled times
Nunn (who had been appointed to follow Hall's tenure at the National Theatre in 1968) ceded his RSC executive directorship in 1986 to his co-artistic director Terry Hands, who bore the brunt of media hostility during a difficult few years for the company. Hands took the decision to suspend the RSC's residency at The Barbican Theatre and The Pit during the winter season of 1990–91, thus vacating the capital for the first time in 30 years. This was seen as essential if the RSC was to secure an increase in subsidy from the Arts Council.

Shortly after that decision Adrian Noble returned to the RSC to take over from Hands as artistic director and chief executive. The company had serious funding problems. Noble's decision to sever all RSC connections with the Barbican Centre, funded by the Corporation of the City of London, was widely condemned, and towards the end of his tenure things began to go terribly wrong, partly through his pursuit and support of the so-called Project Fleet, a radical scheme aimed at rescuing the RSC from its financial crisis by replacing the Royal Shakespeare Theatre with a crowd-pleasing 'Shakespeare Village' and streamlining the company's performance structure and ensemble principle.

A 21st-century renaissance
None of Noble's plans came to fruition. He left the job, an unhappy man, in March 2003. Michael Boyd then assumed control of the RSC, now burdened with a deficit of £2.8 million. By a combination of artistic excellence and quiet husbandry, including a year-long Complete Works of Shakespeare Festival (begun in April 2006 in collaboration with other theatre companies) plus a financially successful London season at the Novello Theatre in 2006, Boyd slowly rebuilt the company's fortunes and reputation

In 2007 he launched the long-awaited Stratford theatre redevelopments, including construction of the temporary Courtyard Theatre while work was in progress, designed to house his RSC Histories cycle before its transfer to the Roundhouse in London in 2008. Talking of these achievements with typical modesty he told the Evening Standard in December 2007 ('The Man Who Remade the RSC'): "There was a bit of gardening to do, but we are now beginning to show signs of walking the walk." 'The Histories' ensemble went on to win three Olivier awards in 2009. In addition, that same year the RSC commissioned a completely new edition of Shakespeare's First Folio, titled "William Shakespeare Complete Works" and published by Modern Library.

To provide balance, Simon Trowbridge in A Royal Shakespeare Company Book, published in 2017, is highly critical of aspects of the Boyd years, including his decision to redevelop the Royal Shakespeare Theatre as a second Swan Theatre.

The RSC is the sole British member theatre of the Union of the Theatres of Europe.

In March 2008, the RSC launched a manifesto 'Stand up for Shakespeare', a campaign to promote a positive experience of Shakespeare for children and young people. The tenets of this manifesto, Do It on Your Feet, See It Live, Start It Earlier form the basis of the work of the Education department.

In 2010, the RSC opened a new suite of education spaces on Waterside.

In 2011, BP began to subsidised the RSC's £5 ticket scheme for 16 to 25-year-olds.

In summer 2011 the company undertook a residency in Park Avenue Armory, New York, running a series of performances and an accompanying education programme in partnership with the NYC Department of Education.

In 2012, the RSC produced the World Shakespeare Festival, a celebration of 'Shakespeare as the world's playwright' working with UK and international arts organisations, and including the Globe to Globe Festival by Shakespeare's Globe. The same year, planning permission was granted by Stratford District Council to reinstate The Other Place. Funding for the new theatre came from a £3 million grant from the Arts Council England, raised through the National Lottery. Funding was also received from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, The Backstage Trust, and from public donations; this is the final phase of the Transformation project.

Live from Stratford-upon-Avon, a new project to broadcast the company's productions in cinemas around the world and stream them into schools was announced in May 2013. The project began with Shakespeare's Richard II, starring David Tennant, in November 2013, and followed up with Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 2014.

In February 2016, Artistic Director Gregory Doran's productions of Henry IV Part I and Henry IV Part II, and Henry V went on tour in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong as part of the King & Country Tour. The same year, the Royal Shakespeare Company also opened their first permanent exhibition, entitled The Play's The Thing.

On 23 April 2016, the RSC performed a one night extravaganza, called 'Shakespeare Live!'. Broadcast on BBC Two from the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, it marked the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's Death. It involved a collection of Shakespeare scenes and monologues with appearances from David Tennant, Catherine Tate, Dame Judi Dench, Benedict Cumberbatch and even one from Prince Charles.

In June 2019, the actor Mark Rylance resigned from the RSC over its sponsorship deal with oil company BP.

In October 2019, the RSC announced that it would be ending its partnership with BP at the end of year following criticism of its association with the oil company. A week before, school students threatened to boycott the theatre company if it did not sever links with the firm. A spokesperson for the RSC explained that "Young people are now saying clearly to us that the BP sponsorship is putting a barrier between them and their wish to engage with the RSC".

In February 2021, the RSC announced five new members to its board of trustees: Andrew Miller, Amanda Parker, Winsome Pinnock, Justine Themen and Ayanna Thompson.

It was announced that Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey would become joint Artistic Directors from June 2023. Their first season was announced on 16 January 2024 commencing from April.

Artistic directors

 * Peter Hall (1960–1968)
 * Trevor Nunn (1968–1978)
 * Trevor Nunn and Terry Hands (1978–1986)
 * Terry Hands (1986–1991)
 * Adrian Noble (1991–2003)
 * Michael Boyd (2003–2012)
 * Gregory Doran (2012–2022)
 * Erica Whyman (2021–2023) (Acting Artistic Director)
 * Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey (2023– )

Theatres
The RSC has three permanent theatres in Stratford-upon-Avon:
 * The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, a 1,060-seat theatre with thrust stage (re-opened 24 November 2010 after Transformation project)
 * The Swan Theatre, a smaller thrust stage, capacity 461
 * The Other Place, a studio theatre, rehearsal room and development space that opened in April 2016

The Courtyard Theatre was built as a temporary replacement for The Other Place theatre to house the company's work when the RST and Swan were closed for the Transformation project. It provided a full-scale working prototype for the new RST's auditorium, seating 1,045 people around a thrust stage. It was also used in 2012 for productions in the World Shakespeare Festival including Much Ado About Nothing in an Indian setting. The Courtyard Theatre was replaced by The Other Place, which was reinstated as a 200-seat studio theatre in 2016. In July 2021, a temporary 500-seat outdoor theatre was built in the Swan Gardens named the Lydia & Manfred Gorvy Garden Theatre. The theatre was built due to the COVID-19 pandemic to allow productions to return following the Government guidance, beginning with Phillip Breen's production of The Comedy of Errors running during summer 2021.

The company's London presence has included tenancies of the Aldwych Theatre, The Place in Duke's Road, Euston, the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden, the Barbican Theatre and The Pit at the Barbican Centre in the City of London. There have also been seasons at The Mermaid Theatre, the Almeida Theatre (1988 and 1989), the Roundhouse in Camden, the Young Vic, the Playhouse Theatre, the Novello Theatre and the Gielgud Theatre.

The Theatre Royal in Newcastle upon Tyne is the third home of the Royal Shakespeare Company, alongside Stratford-upon-Avon and London.

Key productions

 * Coriolanus, directed by Peter Hall and starring Laurence Olivier as Coriolanus, Vanessa Redgrave as Valeria, Robert Hardy as Sicinius Velutus, Edith Evans as Volumnia, and Albert Finney and Mary Ure as Roman citizens. (1959)
 * King Lear, directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield as Lear, Irene Worth as Goneril, Patience Collier as Regan, Diana Rigg as Cordelia, Peter Jeffrey as the Duke of Albany, Tony Church as the Duke of Cornwall, Alan Webb as the Earl of Gloucester, Tom Fleming as the Earl of Kent, Brian Murray as Edgar, James Booth as Edmund, Clive Swift as Oswald, and Alec McCowen as the Fool. (1962)
 * Measure for Measure directed by John Blatchley and starring Marius Goring as Angelo, Judi Dench as Isabella, Tom Fleming as Vincentio, Ian Richardson as Lucio, Peter Jeffrey as Escalus, Clive Swift as Pompey and Ian Holm as Claudio. (1962)
 * The Wars of the Roses, adaptation of the Henry VI and Richard III plays, directed by Sir Peter Hall and starring Ian Holm as Richard III, David Warner as Henry VI, Peggy Ashcroft as Margaret of Anjou, Donald Sinden as the Duke of York, Paul Hardwick as the Duke of Gloucester, Janet Suzman as Joan of Arc, Brewster Mason as the Earl of Warwick, Roy Dotrice as Edward IV. (1963)
 * Marat/Sade by Peter Weiss, directed by Peter Brook and starring Ian Richardson as the herald, Clive Revill as Marat, Patrick Magee as de Sade and Glenda Jackson as Charlotte Corday. (1964)
 * The Homecoming by Harold Pinter, world premiere directed by Peter Hall (June 1965)
 * Staircase with Paul Scofield and Patrick Magee (1966)
 * Hamlet directed by Peter Hall with David Warner in the title-role (1965)
 * A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Peter Brook (1970)
 * Old Times by Harold Pinter directed by Peter Hall (1971)
 * Julius Caesar directed by Trevor Nunn (1973)
 * Antony and Cleopatra directed by Trevor Nunn starring Janet Suzman (1973)
 * Richard II, directed by John Barton, starring Ian Richardson and Richard Pasco, alternating the roles of Richard and Bolingbroke (1973–74)
 * Travesties by Tom Stoppard, starring John Wood, world premiere directed by Peter Wood (June 1974)
 * The Marrying of Ann Leete by Harley Granville Barker, starring Mia Farrow, directed by David Jones (September 1975)
 * Hamlet, starring Ben Kingsley, directed by Buzz Goodbody (1976)
 * Romeo and Juliet, starring Ian McKellen and Francesca Annis, directed by Trevor Nunn (March 1976)
 * Much Ado About Nothing, starring Judi Dench and Donald Sinden, directed by John Barton (April 1976)
 * The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill, with Alan Tllvern taking over the role of Hickey from the "indisposed" Ian Holm, directed by Howard Davies (May 1976)
 * The Comedy of Errors, a musical by Trevor Nunn and Guy Woolfenden (September 1976)
 * Wild Oats by John O'Keeffe, starring Alan Howard and Jeremy Irons, directed by Clifford Williams (December 1976)
 * Macbeth, directed by Trevor Nunn starring Judi Dench and Ian McKellen (1976–77)
 * Privates on Parade by Peter Nichols, world premiere directed by Michael Blakemore (February 1977)
 * Destiny by David Edgar, world premiere directed by Ron Daniels (May 1977)
 * Twelfth Night directed by Jon Amiel with Ian McKellen, Bob Peck, Edward Petherbridge and Roger Rees (1978)
 * The Greeks directed and adapted from Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles by John Barton (1980)
 * The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby adapted for the stage by David Edgar with music by opera composer Stephen Oliver, world premiere directed by Trevor Nunn and John Caird (1980), winner of a Drama Desk Special Award in 1982
 * Carrie, based on Stephen King's 1974 horror novel, directed by Terry Hands with a book by Lawrence D. Cohen, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, and music by Michael Gore. The Royal Shakespeare Company co-produced the Pre-Broadway try-out in the U.K.
 * King Lear directed by Adrian Noble starring Michael Gambon and Antony Sher (1992)
 * Much Ado About Nothing directed by Terry Hands starring Derek Jacobi and Sinéad Cusack
 * Richard III, directed by Bill Alexander starring Sir Antony Sher (1984)
 * Les Misérables by Claude-Michel Schoenberg and Alain Boublil directed by Trevor Nunn (1985–2019)
 * Les liaisons dangereuses by Christopher Hampton starring Alan Rickman, Lindsay Duncan, and Juliet Stevenson, world premiere directed by Howard Davies (1985)
 * Macbeth directed by Adrian Noble starring Jonathan Pryce (1986)
 * Titus Andronicus directed by Deborah Warner starring Brian Cox (1988)
 * The Plantagenets adaptation of Henry VI, part 1, part 2 and part 3 and Richard III, directed by Adrian Noble, starring Anton Lesser as Richard III, Ralph Fiennes as Henry VI and David Waller as Duke of Gloucester (1988)
 * Othello directed by Trevor Nunn with Willard White as Othello and Ian McKellen as Iago (1989)
 * The Master Builder directed by Adrian Noble starring John Wood (1989)
 * The Winter's Tale directed by Adrian Noble (1992)
 * Hamlet directed by Adrian Noble starring Kenneth Branagh (1992)
 * King Lear directed by Adrian Noble starring Robert Stephens and Simon Russell Beale (1993)
 * Coriolanus directed by David Thacker starring Toby Stephens (1994)
 * This England: The Histories, a season of all Shakespeare's sequential history plays (2000)
 * Hamlet directed by Michael Boyd starring Toby Stephens (2004)
 * The Crucible by Arthur Miller directed by Dominic Cooke (2006)
 * Pericles directed by Dominic Cooke (2006)
 * Repertory performances of King Lear and The Seagull starring Ian McKellen and Frances Barber, directed by Trevor Nunn (2007)
 * The Histories in Stratford-upon-Avon and at the Roundhouse (2008)
 * Hamlet directed by Gregory Doran, with David Tennant as Hamlet and Patrick Stewart as Claudius (2008)
 * Matilda by Roald Dahl, book by Dennis Kelly, music and lyrics by Tim Minchin, directed by Matthew Warchus (2010)
 * Love's Labour's Lost directed by Christophe Luscombe, with Edward Bennett and Michelle Terry (2014)
 * Wolf Hall based on the two novels by Hilary Mantel, adapted for the stage by Mike Poulton, directed by Jeremy Herrin, produced in London's West End and on Broadway (2015).
 * Oppenheimer by Tom Morton-Smith, directed by Angus Jackson and starring John Heffernan as J Robert Oppenheimer. (2015)
 * The Tempest directed by Gregory Doran, with Simon Russell Beale and Mark Quarterly, designed by Stephen Brimson Lewis, in collaboration with Intel and The Imaginarium Studios.
 * Imperium (play cycle): Conspirator and Imperium: Dictator adapted from Robert Harris' trilogy by Mike Poulton, with Richard McCabe as Marcus Tullius Cicero and Peter De Jersey as Gaius Julius Caesar (2017, Stratford Season) (2018, London Transfer).
 * Antony and Cleopatra directed by Iqbal Khan, with Josette Simon and Antony Byrne in the title roles (2017).
 * Coriolanus directed by Angus Jackson, with Sope Dirisu as Coriolanus (2017).
 * Angus Jackson also directed Julius Caesar in 2017.
 * Titus Andronicus directed by Blanche McIntyre, with David Troughton in the title role (2017).
 * Adrian Edmondson starred as Malvolio in Christopher Luscombe's Twelfth Night (2017).
 * Gregory Doran directed a puppet-based production of Venus and Adonis in 2017.
 * Simon Godwin directed Paapa Essiedu in Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2016, before it came back for a UK tour and shows in America in 2018.
 * King Lear, directed by Gregory Doran and with Antony Sher in the title role, premiered in 2016 and was revived for a short run in 2018.
 * Macbeth directed by Polly Findlay, with Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack (2018).
 * Romeo and Juliet directed by Erica Whyman, premiered in 2018, with a UK tour scheduled for 2019.
 * The Merry Wives of Windsor directed by Fiona Laird (2018).
 * Troilus and Cressida directed by Gregory Doran, with music from Evelyn Glennie (2018).
 * Timon of Athens directed by Simon Godwin (2018).
 * The Boy in the Dress by David Walliams, book by Mark Ravenhill, music and lyrics by Robbie Williams and Guy Chambers, directed by Gregory Doran (2019)
 * Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant by Nancy Harris and Marc Teitler (2021)
 * The Comedy of Errors directed by Phillip Breen (2021)
 * Richard III directed by Gregory Doran (2022)
 * Studio Ghibli's My Neighbour Totoro adapted by Tom Morton-Smith, directed by Phelim McDermott (2022)
 * Cowbois by Charlie Josephine, co-directed by Charlie Josephine and Sean Holmes (2023)
 * A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Eleanor Rhode, starring Mathew Baynton (2024)

title: Royal Shakespeare Company


text:
Sister Sledge

Sister Sledge is an American musical vocal group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Formed in 1971, the group consisted of sisters Debbie, Joni, Kim, and Kathy Sledge. The siblings achieved international success at the height of the disco era. In 1979, they released their breakthrough album We Are Family, which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and included the 1979 US top-10 singles "He's the Greatest Dancer" and "We Are Family". "We Are Family" earned a Grammy Award nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

Their other US singles include a 1982 remake of Mary Wells' 1964 hit "My Guy", "Mama Never Told Me" (1973), and "Thinking of You" (1984), before reaching number one on the UK Singles Chart with the song "Frankie" in 1985. Remixed versions of three of their singles in 1993 returned them to the UK Top 20. Although Kathy undertook a solo career in 1989, she continued to tour with the group (with Kathy occasionally rejoining for one-off performances and several releases in the 1990s). In 2015, Sister Sledge performed for Pope Francis at the World Festival of Families in Philadelphia.

Background
Natives of Philadelphia, the sisters: Debra Edwina "Debbie" Sledge (born 1954), Joan Elise "Joni" Sledge (1956–2017), Kim Sledge (born 1957), and Kathy Sledge (born 1959) are the daughters of Broadway tap dancer Edwin Sledge (1923–1996) and actress Florez Sledge (née Williams; 1928–2007) The sisters were given vocal training by their grandmother Viola Williams, a former lyric soprano opera singer and protégée of civil rights leader Mary McLeod Bethune. Under Viola's guidance, they regularly sang at their family church, Williams Temple Christian Methodist Episcopal until forming a band and performing at charity and political events throughout Philadelphia, aptly named "Mrs. Williams' Grandchildren". The sisters graduated from Olney High School: Debbie in 1972, Joni in 1974, Kim in 1975, and Kathy in 1977. By the end of the decade, all four sisters graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia.

Early career
The group toured much of the East Coast, including New York, New Jersey, and home town Philadelphia with Florez acting as their manager (and tour bus driver) and Debbie as musical director. They released their first single "Time Will Tell" in 1971 on local music label Money Back. In 1973, they released the single "Mama Never Told Me", which became a top-20 hit in the UK in 1975, but with the Patrick Grant and Gwen Guthrie single "Love Don’t Go Through No Changes On Me" (released in 1974), the siblings enjoyed their first success. The song was a big hit in Japan, and as a result, the girls were flown to the country to perform at the Tokyo Music Festival, where they won the Silver Prize. The sisters also performed at the Zaire 74 concert in Africa alongside James Brown during the Rumble in the Jungle boxing event.

Sister Sledge's first album, Circle of Love, was released by ATCO (a subsidiary of Atlantic Records) in 1975, and included songs written by Gwen Guthrie and Gwen's then-boyfriend, studio bassist Patrick Grant, who later changed his name to Haras Fyre. The group enjoyed some success in Europe, and as a result, the album Together was recorded in Germany in 1977. Released through the Cotillion label, another Atlantic subsidiary, the album produced a minor hit with the single "Blockbuster Boy" reaching number 61 on the US R&B chart.

International breakthrough
At something of a crossroads in their careers, the future seemed a little uncertain for the group, but Atlantic Records connected them with producers Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of the band Chic, and the situation changed. After some initial challenges to working collaboratively, the breakthrough album We Are Family was recorded and released by Cotillion on January 22, 1979. The lead single "He’s the Greatest Dancer" charted at number one R&B and was a Top 10 Pop crossover smash, peaking at #9. In 1979, the record's anthemic title track "We Are Family" followed and became a worldwide smash charting at number two pop and number one R&B. The song and group were nominated for a Grammy Award and "We Are Family" was adopted as the official anthem for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who went on to win the World Series that year. Sister Sledge was duly invited to perform the national anthem at the opening game in front of 45,000 fans.

The album was certified platinum by the RIAA and produced two more classic disco singles, "Lost in Music" and "Thinking of You". Around this time, Debbie Sledge went on maternity leave and the eldest sister, Carol, filled in for her. They were named Billboard Best New Artists. In 1980, their follow-up album Love Somebody Today (also written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards) was released. The lead single "Love Somebody Today" scored moderately well, charting at number six on the R&B and number 64 on the pop charts. An extensive three-year live tour began and the quartet performed sold-out shows all over the world.

In 1981, Sister Sledge worked with Narada Michael Walden, who produced their fifth studio album, All American Girls. The project was intended as a collaboration, but the resulting album is generally attributed to Narada Michael Walden. The title track became a number-three R&B hit, but the following singles "Next Time You'll Know" and "If You Really Want Me" did only moderate business. As a tribute to the late Bob Marley, a reggae-influenced mix of the album's fourth release "He's Just a Runaway" was recorded at Radio City Music Hall in New York. The girls self-produced their next record The Sisters in 1982. The album spawned the number-14 R&B and number-23 pop hit "My Guy" (a cover of the Mary Wells classic). The group subsequently appeared on the March 1984 episode of The Jeffersons entitled "My Guy, George", in which they performed the song.

Continued European success
The album Bet Cha Say That to All the Girls was released in 1983, the lead single from which featured American Jazz singer Al Jarreau. The group experienced renewed success in 1984, when Atlantic Records belatedly released "Thinking of You" followed by a Nile Rodgers remix of "Lost in Music" in the UK, the latter peaking at number four. The following year, they released their seventh studio album When the Boys Meet the Girls and continued success in the UK. Released by Atlantic Records, lead single "Frankie" hit the top spot on the UK Singles Chart, spending four weeks at number one.

In 1989, Kathy began a solo career, while still active with Sister Sledge for certain shows. Debbie, Joni, and Kim continued to perform as Sister Sledge and in 1992 collaborated with Jean-Paul "Bluey" Maunick from UK acid jazz group Incognito on the single "World Rise and Shine". The song featured on their greatest-hits album And Now…Sledge…Again. The single reached number one in Italy and resulted in the trio hosting their own TV show there. The group (including Kathy) experienced a resurgence of success in the UK the following year when the Sure as Pure remix of "We Are Family" was released and peaked at number five, followed by remixes of "Lost in Music" (number 14) and "Thinking of You" (number 17). A greatest-hits album, The Very Best of Sister Sledge 1973–93, was also released. In 1996, after witnessing a shooting in LA, Joni Sledge wrote the protest song "Brother, Brother Stop" that was recorded by the trio and featured on a new greatest-hits CD. In 1997, Joni produced the group's eighth studio album, African Eyes, that garnered critical acclaim and was nominated for a Grammy as best-produced CD.

2000–present
In December 2000, Sister Sledge (Kathy, Debbie, Joni, and Kim) performed at the White House for the President and First Lady at the final Christmas party of the Clinton administration. The following year, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, all four sisters re-recorded "We Are Family" as a benefit record with a host of other artists, including Diana Ross and Patti LaBelle. Debbie, Joni, and Kim produced solo material during this period before being reunited to record the album Style in 2003. Due to legal difficulties, the album remained unreleased. Kim, an ordained minister, took some time out from the group, but soon joined Kathy and Joni on various international shows. Joni and Debbie continued to tour (with various guest artists, including Debbie's daughter Camille Sledge, completing a trio), and in 2005 performed on the famous pyramid stage at the Glastonbury Music Festival in the UK. In 2011, Sister Sledge came together on The Oprah Winfrey Show for the "Women Who Rock" episode. In the summer of 2012, Tanya Tiet was added to the lineup.

In 2014, Sister Sledge headlined at the Tramlines Festival in Sheffield, United Kingdom along with hip-hop icons, Public Enemy, and collaborated with Scottish electronic producer The Revenge, recording the track "Stay a While" in London. With Kim rejoining in 2015, all three sisters performed at a large-scale charity benefit in London for Save the Children and were invited to perform for Pope Francis along with Aretha Franklin and Andrea Bocelli at the World Festival of Families in Philadelphia at Eakins Oval on September 26, 2015, which was covered by global media and went viral due to crowds of nuns in the audience dancing to "We Are Family". Debbie, Joni, and Kim soon thereafter launched the brand concept, Nothing is Greater Than Love.

Joni Sledge, born September 13, 1956, died of natural causes at her home in Phoenix, Arizona on March 10, 2017 at age 60. Following Joni's death, Debbie and Kim announced that they will continue to perform as Sister Sledge. In 2019, Kim departed from the group and was replaced by Camille Sledge.

Members
In 1979, Norma Carol Sledge briefly replaced her younger sister Debbie Sledge on maternity leave during their tour. In 1989, Kathy left the group and pursued a solo career. The group continued as a trio. In 2004, Kim was absent from the lineup as Joni and Debbie continued as a duo. In 2010, Kim briefly left the group due to an illness. In 2012, Tanya Tiet began touring with the group as a third member, often standing in for Joni or Kim. In 2018, Julie (daughter of Kim) briefly toured with the group during Kim's absence. In 2020, Kim left the group. She was replaced by Camille Young (known as Camille Sledge-Young), who is the daughter of Debbie Sledge and had performed as a backup vocalist for the group's tours.

Current members

 * Debbie Sledge (1971–present)
 * Tanya Tiet (2012–present)
 * Camille Sledge-Young (2019–present)

Former touring members

 * Norma Carol Sledge (1979)
 * Julie Sledge (2018)

Former members

 * Kathy Sledge (1971–1989; 1993, 2011)
 * Kim Sledge (1971–2010; 2011–2012, 2016–2019)
 * Joni Sledge (1971–2017)

Discography

 * Studio albums
 * Circle of Love (1975)
 * Together (1977)
 * We Are Family (1979)
 * Love Somebody Today (1980)
 * All American Girls (1981)
 * The Sisters (1982)
 * Bet Cha Say That to All the Girls (1983)
 * When the Boys Meet the Girls (1985)
 * And Now… Again  (1992)
 * African Eyes (1997)
 * Style (2003)

title: Sister Sledge