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Extraordinary Actors: Essays on Popular Performers

Dangerous, outrageous, comic and committed, the extraordinary performers collected here have altered the history of popular entertainment in America and Europe. Some have rarely had their story told, others are familiar figures. The essays explore what made these performers extraordinary; how they were trained, how they practised their art, how they were received, celebrated, satirised and mythologised. From the explosive acting of Richard Burbage to the dislocating quirkiness of Peter Lorre, from the dangerous satire of commedia dell’arte troupes in Russia to the bittersweet collaboration of Morecambe and Wise, this volume explores what made these actors popular.  Each contributor has taken care to set the performer and their work in cultural context, so that the collection as a whole charts the changing relationship between acting and popular culture over the last four hundred years.

Part One examines seventeenth and eighteenth century performers, as they built a sense of the excitement and possibility of theatre with audiences in Britain and Europe. The idea of acting, its art and popular practice was being formed during this period.  Part Two explores nineteenth-century popular performers who became cultural icons and developed popular performance that contributed to the regeneration of national identity. Part Three looks at twentieth-century performers whose acting continued to reach popular audiences in remarkable ways, across national boundaries, as the acting industry underwent transformation in the face of technological change.   

• Unique collection of essays on performers such as Richard Burbage, Sarah Siddons, Peter    Lorre, George Formby, Laurel and Hardy, Morecombe and Wise.

• Outstanding selection of contributors: Richard Boon, Colin Chambers, Chris       Dymkowski, Ger Fitzgibbon, Viv Gardner, Baz Kershaw, Alexander Leggatt, Chris McCullough, Jan McDonald, Joel Schechter, Laurence Senelick, Martin White, Don Wilmeth.

• Charts the changing relationship between acting and popular culture over last 400  years

• Accessible to the general reader interested in popular performers and theatre history

Market: Theatre specialists. The general reader interested in actors and popular culture.  Cultural historians.  Lecturers and students taking courses in theatre, film, media and cultural studies.  Academic and general libraries.

Editors: Jane Milling is Lecturer in Drama, University of Exeter.  She is co-author, with Graham Ley, of Modern Theories of Performance: From Stanislavski to Boal (Palgrave, 2001) and co-editor, with Peter Thomson, of Volume One of The Cambridge History of British Theatre: Origins to 1660 (CUP, forthcoming 2003). Martin Banham is Emeritus Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, University of Leeds.  He is editor of The Cambridge Guide to Theatre and co-editor of the journal African Theatre. 

CONTENTS

PART I: THE IDEA OF ACTING

EXTRAORDINARY ACTORS OF THE 17^TH AND 18^TH CENTURY

Introduction Martin Banham

1 Richard Burbage : Alexander Leggatt (University of Toronto, Canada)

2 Commedia dell’arte in Russia: Popular Satiric Perfomers in the 18^th Century : Laurence Senelick (Tufts University, USA)

3 Thomas Betterton: The Art of Playing : Jane Milling

PART II: THE CELEBRATED ACTOR AS CULTURAL ICON

EXTRAORDINARY ACTORS OF THE 19^TH CENTURY
Introduction Chris McCullough (University of Exeter)

4 British Invasions on the American Stage : Don Wilmeth (Brown University, USA)

5 Acting and the Austere Joys of Motherhood: Sarah Siddons Performs Maternity : Jan McDonald (University of Glasgow)

6 The Brothers Fay: Irish Acting and the Origins of the Abbey Theatre : Ger Fitzgibbon (University College Cork, Ireland)

7 Gertie Millar: Celebrity and Musical Comedy : Viv Gardner (University of Manchester)

PART III: ACTING FOR POPULAR AUDIENCES, THE MASS AND THE LOCAL

EXTRAORDINARY ACTORS OF THE 20^TH CENTURY
Introduction Jane Milling

8  Lena Ashwell and the Once A-Week Players: Popular Performers in London : Chris Dymkowski (Royal Holloway University of London)

9  Peter Lorre: A Clash of European and US Acting Styles : Chris McCullough (University of Exeter)

10 George Formby and the Northern Sublime : Baz Kershaw (University of Bristol)

11 Leo Fuchs: Yiddish Vaudevillian : Joel Schechter (San Francisco State University, USA)

12 Laurel and Hardy and Morecambe and Wise: Comedy Double Acts : Richard Boon (University of Leeds)

13 Playing on the Front Foot: Actors and Audience in British Popular Theatre 1970-1990 : Colin Chambers (De Montfort University) and actress Maggie Steed

14 Mark Rylance: Popular acting at the Globe Theatre: Martin White (University of Bristol)

British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism 1917-1945

"This book appears to be that extreme rarity, a genuinely original contribution to our knowledge and understanding of twentieth-century British theatre.  I don’t know of anybody else besides Steve Nicholson who has delved so deeply or so keenly into the archives of the Lord Chamberlain to uncover a shoal of apparently subversive, politically-motivated playscripts, as well as the extraordinary and devious machinations of the censor and his friends in high places to block and suppress them.  The result is a book which is at once refreshingly original and depressingly predictable  . . . British Theatre and the Red Peril emerges as a truly significant and courageous work."
New Theatre Quarterly, 2002

"Political theatre comes in many shapes and sizes and, more often than not, is assumed to be left-wing in character. Steve Nicholson’s fascinating study of the impact the Bolshevik revolution had on the British theatre shows that, whilst this common assumption is frequently correct, there is another and seldom recounted history of political theatre associated with the right."
Theatre Research International, Vol. 26:2, 2001

"An attractively produced volume carefully researched and accessibly written. The book is likely to become (and remain) a standard work on the subject."
Albion, Vol. 33, Issue 1, Spring 2001

"Steve Nicholson offers us a meticulously researched and critically astute study of a fascinating period of theatre in the UK.  The main text is supported by a very useful chronological chart of plays and events between 1918 and 1946, a series of mini-biographies of the leading characters involved, a good number of pertinent and informative illustrations and a very helpful bibliography."
Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 20, no 2 (June 2000)

"I know of no other book that investigates the depiction of the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1945. The author charts the response to plays dealing with the 'Red Peril' from the terrified reaction of the early twenties, through the more inquisitive tone of the 'intellectual' thirties to the paradoxial situation of the war years when the 'evil empire' became an essential ally."
Dominic Shellard, Department of English Literature, The University of Sheffield

British Theatre and the Red Peril examines how communism was portrayed in plays in the British theatre between 1917 and 1945, and how at a time when the capitalist system seemed on the verge of collapse, the theatre played a significant part in communicating and manipulating political propaganda in order to influence audiences. It reveals explicit right-wing propaganda produced within mainstream British theatre and questions the assumption that political theatre is almost always left-wing.

The book draws on published and unpublished scripts and archive documents to demonstrate how the theatre became a key site for propaganda and ideological warfare. It discusses the methods by which the Lord Chamberlain, the government and even royalty exerted control over the political views voiced on stage in an age when contemporary commentators described the theatre as second only to the press in terms of its significance as a medium of communication.

• Provides new perspectives on political theatre
• Discusses the importance of theatre censorship
• Of interest to scholars and students of politics and history as well as theatre

Readership: Scholars and students of theatre history and theatre studies. The general reader interested in theatre history. Scholars and students of social and political history. Academic and general libraries.

STEVE NICHOLSON is Head of Theatre Studies and Principal Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. He studied at Exeter and Lancaster and worked with White Horse Travelling Theatre before beginning his teaching career at the University of Leeds.

The Censorship of British Drama, 1900–1968

Volume One 1900–1932: The Laps of the Gods 

Preface

This is the first part of a two volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900 until 1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence archives.  It covers the period before 1932, when theatre was widely seen as a crucial medium with the power to shape the future of society, determining what people believed and how they behaved.

Where previous interpretations, based on more limited evidence and topics, have often constructed the Lord Chamberlain’s Office either as an annoying but amusing irrelevance, or as dictatorial in its unchanging certainties, this study throws completely new light on the day-to-day functioning of the system and the principles, policies and detailed practice of theatre censorship. It uncovers the differing views and the disputes which occurred among and between the Lord Chamberlain and his Readers and Advisers, and discusses the extensive pressures exerted on him by bodies such as the Public Morality Council, the Church, the monarch, government departments, foreign embassies, newspapers, powerful individuals and those claiming to represent national or international opinion.

• Based on the first comprehensive research on the Lord Chamberlain's Correspondence archives for the 20th century

• Explores the portrayal of a broad range of topics in relation to censorship, including the First World War, race and inter-racial relationships, contemporary and historical international conflicts, horror, sexual freedom and morality, class, the monarchy, religion

• Previous interpretations based on more limited evidence and topics

Market: Theatre historians. Teachers and students of twentieth-century theatre.  Also social and political historians and students of twentieth-century history.  Theatre professionals.  The general reader with an interest in twentieth-century theatre or history, and in censorship.

Author: Steve Nicholson is Head of Theatre Studies and Principal Lecturer at the University of Huddersfield. He is the author of British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism, 1917–1945 (UEP, 1999) and a series editor of Exeter Performance Studies.  

Volume Two: 1933-1952

This definitive survey has been expanded to three volumes.  Volume Two now covers 1933-1952; a third volume will cover the period 1953-1968.

This is the second part of Steve Nicholson’s three-volume analysis of British theatre censorship from 1900 until 1968, based on previously undocumented material in the Lord Chamberlain’s Correspondence Archives in the British Library and the Royal Archives at Windsor.  It covers the period from 1933 to 1952, and focuses on theatre censorship during the period before the outbreak of the second world war, during the war itself, and in the immediate post-war period.

The focus will be primarily on political and moral censorship.  The book documents and analyses the control exercised by the Lord Chamberlain.  It also reviews the pressures exerted on him and on the theatre by the government, the monarch, the church, foreign embassies and by influential public figures and organisations.    Among the topics covered will be:

• The ban on criticising the Nazis or portraying Hitler

• Restrictions on anti-war drama

• Controlling nudity and strip shows in wartime reviews

• Comedians and innuendo

• Youth violence and the shock of realism on the postwar stage

• The ‘threat’ to society from sexual perversion

• The campaigns of the Public Morality Council

‘Nicholson writes with wit and insight, and his work is always engaging. He has the happy knack of being able to offer analysis of extremely serious and complex issues in an entirely accessible way and illuminates his scholarship with immensely attractive and informative anecdotes and illustrations of one kind and another.’ Martin Banham, Emeritus Professor of Drama & Theatre Studies, University of Leeds

Market: Theatre historians. Teachers and students of twentieth-century theatre.  Also social and political historians and students of twentieth-century history.  Theatre professionals.  The general reader with an interest in twentieth-century theatre or history, and in censorship.

Author: Steve Nicholson is a reader at the University of Huddersfield, and has published extensively in the areas of politics and theatre in Britain in the twentieth century, and of theatre censorship.   He was also a founding member of White Horse Travelling Theatre.  He is the author of British Theatre and the Red Peril: The Portrayal of Communism, 1917–1945 (UEP, 1999) and a series editor of Exeter Performance Studies.

Freedom's Pioneer

John McGrath’s plays are compulsory reading and viewing for students of drama, film and television courses in many University and Further Education departments and yet despite recognition of the central importance of McGrath’s work, very little has been written about him. This is the first full-length study of his work.

Freedom’s Pioneer illuminates the importance of John McGrath’s role in the development of theatre, film and television in the last four decades of the twentieth century. Through play and script-writing, through directing, producing and co-ordinating work, and through his critical, political and philosophical reflections, McGrath exerted a powerful influence over developments and innovations in all three art forms.

The contributors include film and television directors, actors, designers, writers, university researchers and journalists, many of whom worked with McGrath. Questions of day-to-day working practice are addressed alongside broader political and aesthetic concerns, and the question of McGrath’s relationship to and influence on the arts in Scotland receives careful consideration.

• First full-length study of McGrath’s work

•   Opens up McGrath’s work for students and their teachers

• Many of the contributors worked with McGrath and provide unique insights into his work

•   UEP is also publishing a selection of McGrath’s English Plays: John McGrath—Plays for England, selected and introduced by Nadine Holdsworth, paperback £14.99

Market: Students of theatre, film and television studies and their teachers. Professionals in the theatre, film and television industries, including the BBC. The general reader of studies in culture and society.

Editors:  David Bradby is Professor of Drama and Theatre Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London. He is author of Beckett: Waiting for Godot (CUP, 2001), The Theater of Michel Vinaver (Michigan UP, 1993), Modern French Drama 1940–1990 (CUP, 1991) and, with Annie Sparks, Mise en Scène: French Theatre Now (Methuen, 1997). Susanna Capon is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Media Arts at Royal Holloway. She was previously a producer and director in the television industry and she is Course Director of the first vocational MA in Producing for Film and Television.

Contents

Foreword by Richard Eyre

Introduction

David Bradby and Susanna Capon – contextualising essay and overview

I   Culture and the Socialist Vision

Maria di Cenzo, Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario – Theatre, Theory and Politics: The Contribution of John McGrath

II  Early Work

1. Peter Thomson, Exeter University – Get Out and Get On: Events While Guarding the Bofors Gun
2. Ros Merkin, Liverpool John Moore’s University – A Life Outside 7:84 : John McGrath and the Everyman Theatre, Liverpool
3. John Bull, Reading University – Serjeant Musgrave Dances to a Different Tune: John McGrath’s Adaptation of John Arden’s Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance
4. Nadine Holdsworth, Warwick University – Finding the Right Places, Finding the Right Audiences: Topicality in the Work of 7:84 England

III John McGrath and Scotland

1. Randall Stevenson, Edinburgh University – Border Warranty: John McGrath and Scotland
2. Ian Brown, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh – Celtic Centres, the Fringes and John McGrath
3. Ian Brown, Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh – ‘Bursting through the hoop and dancing on the edge of the seediness’: Five Scottish playwrights talk about John McGrath

IV Case Studies

1. Robin Nelson, Manchester Metropolitan University – The Television Adaptation of The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black, Black Oil
2. Stephen Lacey, Manchester Metropolitan University – Blood Red Roses: John McGrath and Luckacsian Realism
3. Robert Dawson Scott, Journalist – A Good Night In: The Long Roads
4. Olga Taxidou, Edinburgh University – Three One-Woman Epics: The Political Performer

V  Working with John

1. Interview with Pamela Howard
2. Interview with Bill Paterson
3. Interview with Troy Kennedy Martin
4. Interview with Jack Gold
5. Interview with Jenny Tiramani
6. Interview with John Bett
7. Interview with Elizabeth MacLennan

  VI  Politics and creativity

Baz Kershaw, Bristol University – Biopoligraphy:  a life of radical practices

From Mimesis to Interculturalism: Readings of Theatrical Theory Before and After 'Modernism'

"This is a hard book to read and one that makes no pretence of being anything else. It does not offer itself as a sourcebook of readings in theatrical theorists. Rather, it offers a critique of the rhetorical devices employed by Plato and Aristotle, Rousseau and Diderot, Peter Brook, Victor Turner, Richard Schechner, and concludes with “Some observations on Stanislavski and Brecht” and a short essay on “The Significance of Theory” . . . The fact that Ley is equally at home in Ancient Greek, eighteenth-century French and the discourses of modern American theatre anthropology, makes it possible for him to give readings of his chosen texts which are consistently well-informed, densely structured and highly intelligent . . . a treasury of detailed discourse analysis."
Theatre Research International, Vol. 27:1, 2002

"It’s good to see a book like this challenging conventional notions and categories of postmodernism head-on."
Speech and Drama, Vol. 50, No. 2, Autumn 2001

"Refreshingly scholarly—and entirely accessible—discussion of a range of writers and ideas from Plato to interculturalism which impresses by its research and stimulates and educates the reader."
Studies in Theatre and Performance, Vol 20, no 2 (June 2000)

From Mimesis to Interculturalism offers a series of critical readings of key texts in the history of European and American theatrical and performance theory. It answers the need for a detailed critique of theatrical theory from its origins in Greek antiquity to the present day, asking the reader to re-examine the basis of what have become assumptions, but are all too often perceived as truths. The book complements existing studies of the major modern theorists by giving close attention to the European tradition before Stanislavski, and to the theorists who have gained prominence after Grotowski. The use of language and the creation of meaning is the primary concern of all the readings.

Part One considers classical and classicizing theorists from Greece and the European enlightenment, and Part Two twentieth-century theorists after Grotowski; a concluding Part Three indicates how the approach might be applied to exemplary theorists from the modern canon, and to certain contemporary theoretical proposals.

Readership: Teachers, scholars and students of theatre studies, drama and performance studies. Academic libraries.

GRAHAM LEY is Lecturer in Drama, University of Exeter. He has taught drama in the University of London and Greek literature in Auckland, New Zealand. He is the author of A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater (University of Chicago Press, 1991) and has written on theory for New Theatre Quarterly and other journals.

Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror 

The Théâtre du Grand-Guignol in Paris (1897–1962) achieved a legendary reputation as the “Theatre of Horror”, a venue displaying such explicit violence and blood-curdling terror that a resident doctor was employed to treat the numerous spectators who fainted each night. Indeed, the phrase grand guignol has entered the language to describe any display of sensational horror.

Since the theatre closed its doors forty years ago, the genre has been overlooked by critics and theatre historians. This book reconsiders the importance and influence of the Grand-Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts, and is the first attempt at a major evaluation of the genre as performance.  It gives full consideration to practical applications and to the challenges presented to the actor and director. 

The book also includes oustanding new translations by the authors of ten Grand-Guignol plays, none of which have been previously available in English.  The presentation of these plays in English for the first time is an implicit demand for a total reappraisal of the grand-guignol genre, not least for the unexpected inclusion of two very funny comedies.  

• Reveals a theatre that presented an extraordinary repertoire—madness, eroticism, mutulation, revenge, infidelity, infection, claustrophobia, technophobia, exoticism

• First major work to offer contextual analysis and an evaluation of the genre in performance—research conducted through practical exploration

• Includes ten Grand-Guignol playtexts in outstanding new translations

Market:  Teachers, researchers and students of theatre history, theatre practice, popular culture.  Theatre historians and theatre professionals.  Students of French studies following courses in French popular culture.  The general reader interested in theatre, performance and popular culture.

Authors:  Richard Hand and Michael Wilson are Principal Lecturers in Drama at the University of Glamorgan.  Richard Hand is assistant editor and translator of Naturalism and Symbolism in European Theatre, 1850–1918 (CUP, 1996). Michael Wilson is author of Performance and Practice: Oral Narrative Traditions among Teenagers in Britain and Ireland (Ashgate, 1997).

 PLAYS OF THE GRAND-GUIGNOL INCLUDED IN THIS VOLUME

JACK! (LUI!)
by Oscar Méténier
THE ULTIMATE TORTURE (LA DERNIÈRE TORTURE)
by André de Lorde and Eugène Morel
THE LIGHTHOUSEKEEPERS (GARDIENS DE PHARE)
by Paul Autier and Paul Colquemin
CHOP-CHOP! (LA VEUVE)
by Eugène Héros and Léon Abric
TICS! OR DOING THE DEED (APRÈS COUP OU TICS)
by René Berton
IN THE DARKROOM (SOUS LA LUMIÈRE ROUGE)
by Maurice Level and Etienne Rey
THE FINAL KISS (LE BAISER DANS LA NUIT)
by Maurice Level
THE TORTURE GARDEN (LE JARDIN DES SUPPLICES)
by Pierre Chaine and André de Lorde
EUTHANASIA (L’EUTHANASIE)
by René Berton
THE KISS OF BLOOD (LE BAISER DE SANG)
by Jean Aragny and Francis Nelson

All translations © copyright Richard J. Hand and Michael Wilson, 2001

John McGrath - Plays for England

Including the following plays:

1960s: 

Tell Me, Tell Me
Take It
They've Got Out

1970s:

Plugged Into History
Trees in the Wind
Fish in the Sea
Lay Off

1980s:

Rejoice!

1990s:

Watching For Dolphins

“No one since Joan Littlewood did more to advance the cause of popular theatre in Britain than John McGrath . . . he believed strongly that the function of art was to reach as many people as possible, to heighten individual awareness and to help change society for the better.”

(from Michael Billington’s Guardian obituary of John McGrath, January 2002)

This is an edition of nine of McGrath’s plays for the English 7:84 theatre company. It covers McGrath’s work for the company spanning four decades, from the 1960s through to the 1990s.

The book will have a substantial contextualising introduction and commentary on the plays by Nadine Holdsworth, one of the leading specialists in the work of John McGrath.  This will be set alongside supporting documents such as programme notes, reviews, letters etc.

The plays and theatre work of John McGrath are studied in many theatre departments but they have not been available to the reader.  The English plays constitute a powerful influence on the theatre in general, and are included in all theatre histories of the period; this collection should make them available to students, audiences and the public at large with an interest in theatre and in the social issues of their periods.

• This first selection of McGrath’s ‘English’ plays sets them in context within the revolutionary work of the 7:84 (England) Theatre Company, and within English theatre

• At its height 7:84 played to audiences of over 30,000 people a year and is remembered by them

• UEP is also publishing Freedom’s Pioneer (ed. David Bradby and Susanna Capon, paperback £14.99), a collection dedicated to discussions of McGrath’s work in theatre, film and television

Market:  Students and teachers of theatre studies.  Theatre professionals and specialists.  General readers interested in English cultural history of the second half of the twentieth century.  Libraries.

John McGrath made his name as a playwright and television writer and director, founding the 7:84 Theatre Companies, as well as the hit TV series Z-Cars.  He wrote over 50 plays for theatre and numerous feature film screenplays, and ran his own film production company, Freeway Films.  He was Visiting Fellow in Theatre at Cambridge University, and Visiting Professor in Media Studies at Royal Holloway College.

Nadine Holdsworth is Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Warwick University.  She is the editor of John McGrath’s Naked Thoughts that Roam About: Reflections on Theatre, (Nick Hern Books, 2002).

On Actors and Acting

From reviews of the hardback edition, first published 2000:

‘When Peter Thompson was writing reviews of Stratford productions for Shakespeare Survey in the 1970s, he saw his job as being “to reproduce in words what it was like to be there, but without ducking away from a responsibility to enter into contemporary debate”. This is the spirit in which On Actors and Acting is written, and it is deeply pleasurable . . . interspersed with amplifications, second thoughts, wry self-criticisms and addenda from an author to whom the issues and arguments of the past still matter today . . . Historical practices and personages repeatedly are illuminated by reference to the contemporary, and many of Thompson’s throw-away remarks—such his comparison between Irving and David Warner—are worth their weight in gold.’  
Theatre Research International

‘Whilst Thompson disclaims the talent of Hazlitt, his readers, relishing his pithy insights, his biting wit, and admiring his crispness of phrase, will decide for themselves . . . [The book] will be enjoyed by anyone who cares deeply, with both head and heart, about not only teaching of drama but the future of theatre.’  
Speech and Drama

‘Thompson’s affection for actors, advocacy for the primacy of the actor’s role in the theatrical process, and strong belief in the significant art of the actor permeate this eclectic, learned, and entertaining collection of essays . . . Thompson’s style is scholarly yet somewhat quirky and anecdotal, and very accessible . . . Well documented and nicely illustrated, Thompson’s book provides a capstone to his productive writing and scholarly career.’  
Choice

This is a book for theatre-lovers, written for anyone who shares the author’s curiosity about the art of acting and about theatre past and present.  The first section centres on Elizabethan theatre practice, the second highlights themes, episodes and contemporary taste in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in England, and the third focuses on twentieth-century performances of Shakespeare at Stratford in the 1970s and in the New Globe as the new century begins.  The extensive cast of actors discussed includes Richard Tarlton, Will Kemp, David Garrick, Samuel Foote, Richard and Mary Ann Yates, Thomas Weston, John Kemble, Edmund Kean, Frederick Robson, Henry Irving, Ian Richardson and Ben Kingsley.

Market: Scholars, teachers and students of drama, theatre, performance.  Theatre professionals.  Academic libraries.  The general reader with an interest in the subject.

Author: Peter Thomson has been Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter since 1974.  He is author and editor of numerous books, including The Everyman Companion to the Theatre (Dent, 1985), Shakespeare’s Theatre (Routledge, revised edition 1992), The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge, 1994), Shakespeare’s Professional Career (Cambridge, new edition 1999).

CONTENTS

Introduction

Part One: Actors and Acting in the Early Modern Theatre

The Elizabethan Actor: a matter of temperament
Making an Entrance: Chaucer to Tarlton
The Missing Jig
Three Elizabethan Actors
A Note on Elizabethan Rehearsal

Part Two: Actors and Acting in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

Bigamy and Theatre
David Garrick: alive in every muscle
Summer Company: Drury Lane in 1761
Edmund Kean versus John Philip Kemble
Frederick Robson: a downright good actor
Irving and the Lyceum: volcano and cathedral

Part Three: Shakespeare in the Twentieth Century

Shakespeare at Stratford: 1970–1975
The New Globe: monument or portent?

Theatres of War

"Freeman’s lucid and detailed historical analysis focuses on plays which are often neglected by literary or theatre historians, since they marked no advance in the art of drama.  His criterion for inclusion is rather that they should have been seen at the time as important because of their subject matter.  This approach requires a commentary that can sum up complex social issues and can show how the plays in question affected or responded to the political climate of their time.  Freeman meets that interdisciplinary challenge and vindicates his claim that the plays merit fresh consideration.  His climax is an important ‘find’: Drame à Toulon - Henri Martin, the one play of the period which really fulfilled the dreams of the  Théâtre Populaire pioneers, being performed to huge popular acclaim in worker’s halls all over France and provoking a prise de conscience by the French working class concerning their role in colonial wars.  In this book, Freeman convincingly brings to life a lost age, when the theatre still provided a debating forum for matters of national importance."
French Studies Review, LIV.2, 2000

"Weaving together theatrical, social and political history in a readable and informative way, Theatres of War is a useful guide to a neglected area of postwar French theatre history."
Speech and Drama Volume 48, Number 2 Autumn 1999

"Not only is this study a timely re-appraisal of French committed theatre at a crucial point in France's history (1942-54) from various political stances, it opens up the question of the didactic or realist nature of littérature engagée more widely. . . a thought-provoking and searching challenge to new and old devotees of French committed theatre and twentieth-century theatre more widely."
Forum for Modern Language Studies Volume 35, Number 4 1999

"Freeman's introduction succinctly places these dramas into their political and theatrical contexts and his concluding chapter offers a neat survey of the common characteristics shared by the plays of this genre, but it is primarily as a source book that his study will serve a purpose. The bulk of the study is documentation, rather than analysis, and as such it will be a useful addition to relevant reading lists. Its appearance will be of interest to scholars and students not only of Modern French Theatre, but of political theatre in general, and of the popular manifestation of political concerns, not to mention to those with specific interests in the dramatic worlds of Sartre and Camus . . . Each play is contextualised in terms of the particular event it was documenting or written in response to, or the political climate it sought to exploit, and each has a chapter dedicated to it that might easily be read in isolation from the rest of the book."
Studies in Theatre Production Issue 18, December 1998

Theatres of War is the first full-length study to be devoted to the 'Committed' theatre that flourished in modern France from 1944 to the mid-1950s. During this crucial decade, authors such as Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, along with other lesser-known dramatists, responded to the issues of their time by contributing a number of tense controversial plays to a distinctive genre of realist theatre. These plays dealt with the ideological, political and moral issues arising from the Second World War, the Cold War and a series of disastrous colonial wars.

Theatres of War combines historical contextualisation, pointing up the political and moral debate of the theatre of the period, with detailed analysis of specific plays, making it a useful student text. All quotations are in French with English translations immediately following.

• First comprehensive study of the subject
• Includes the best-known dramatists in the genre, plus several completely unknown to theatre specialists in the English-speaking world
• Fresh perspectives on recent history

Market: Students of Drama, French Studies, courses on WWII and the Cold War. Academic libraries. Specialists in modern theatre. Drama critics. The general reader with an interest in modern theatre and recent European history.

Author: Ted Freeman is Senior Lecturer in French, University of Bristol. He is editor of the French Texts series for Bristol Classical Press.

CONTENTS

The following plays are given detailed treatment in Theatres of War:
Toulon (Jean-Richard Bloch)
Les Nuits de la colère (Salacrou)
Morts sans sépulture, Les Mains sales (Sartre)
Les Bouches inutiles (Simone de Beauvoir)
Montserrat (Emmanuel Roblès)
Les Justes (Camus)
Rome n'est plus dans Rome (Gabriel Marcel)
La Maison de la nuit (Thierry Maulnier)
Le colonel Foster plaidera coupable (Roger Vailland)
La Peur (Georges Soria)

The book also refers to many other plays of the period.

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