"Gluckel of Hameln" uses period costumes; Yiddish and English song; instruments like the trumpet, shawm, drum and toy piano; puppets; an occasional modern comic routine; artistic backdrops; a bit of dance; and a 17th-century storytelling style called Bankelsang, in which a performer stands on a bench and interprets an adjacent painting.
With that as a backdrop, expect a bit of talk about Reagan at the debate.
The pairing was a rematch of last season's A.F.C. championship game, but the backdrop was a bit unusual, because both teams were coming off losses and were in danger of falling to 1-2.
Though the black backdrop seems a bit grim, Margaret Perry's single set does its double duty, serving two households, with clarity and wit, and her painfully accurate costumes add chuckles of their own.
And against that backdrop it makes a bit of sense, actually, that Spain would look to the obvious.
Using the world around her as a backdrop and adding a bit of her own style, Martinet, a wife, mother and grandmother, has taken her passion for photography and combined it with her love of nature and stop-and-smell-the-roses attitude.
Like "Easy Rider," it's putting yourself against a backdrop that might clash a bit with your personal culture.
With its clustered houses and mountainous backdrop, Rikitea looks like a bit of coastal France, but the heavy scent of plumeria and the lovely pareu-wrapped ladies placing flowered leis and crowns on disembarking family and friends signaled Polynesia.
"When they'd finished painting one part of the backdrop and needed to get a bit higher up, they'd use this lever here". Powered up, there's a sudden whirr and the frames hanging at either side start moving up and down.
Though the role of guanxi is fading a bit against the backdrop of population mobility and the Westernization of some Chinese business practices, it remains an important social force.
