scholarly journals Veterem atque antiquam rem novam ad vos proferam: A New Drama, a Surprised Audience, and a ‘Live Aetiology’

2021 ◽  
pp. 49-64
Keyword(s):  
New Drama

Bernard Shaw's Beginnings on the London Stage

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (4-Part1) ◽  
pp. 470-481
Author(s):  
Irving McKee
Keyword(s):  
New Drama ◽  
Bernard Shaw ◽  
London Stage

In 1892, at the age of thirty-six, Bernard Shaw was a notorious socialist and a bachelor, living with his musical mother and sister in London. He had begun paying his way seven years before as a critic of art; now he assayed music; soon, in 1894, it was to be weekly evaluation of the drama. Four of his six novels—five of them written while his mother supported him—had appeared obscurely and unprofitably. In 1891 a young Dutch friend and fellow critic, Jacob T. Grein, had produced Ibsen's Ghosts to inaugurate the new Independent Theatre in support of Shaw's almost solitary campaign for the New Drama. Grein sought but could not at first find an adequate English play in the new vein. “This was not to be endured,” Shaw later recalled. “I had rashly taken up the case, and rather than let it collapse, I manufactured the evidence.” He had embarked upon Widowers' Houses in 1885 only to lay it aside uncompleted; he now finished it, and Grein produced it on 9 December 1892 at the Royalty Theatre, on quite unfashionable Dean Street in Soho. It was Shaw's first appearance on any stage.

scholarly journals Vsevolod Meyerhold’s Biomechanics and Boris Zakhava's Educational Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 58-74
Author(s):  
Herman Marchenko
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Independent Practice ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Comprehensive Development ◽  
The Difference ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Fantastic Realism ◽  
Moscow Art Theatre ◽  
Konstantin Stanislavski

The article deals with two different approaches to training actors. One of them is Stanislavski’s system, and the other is Meyerhold’s biomechanics. Konstantin Stanislavski and Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko are reformers of the Russian theater. As the Art Theater founders, they understood that the emergence of a new drama would require a completely different approach to working with actors and a different design of the stage space. With regard to new performances, it became possible to pose critical social questions related to everyday life before the viewer. Therefore, it was logical that the director's profession became very important. Working on his system, Stanislavski paid great attention to the need for an actor’s comprehensive development. Many wonderful actors who attended his acting school were among the students of this great theater director. Vsevolod Meyerhold was one of them. However, the latter chose his direction and began to engage in staging performances actively and search for new means of expression, having come to an absolute convention on the stage. Meyerhold created his method of working with an actor, known as biomechanics, in the theatrical environment. The principle of this approach is the opposite of Stanislavski's system. With all the difference in views on the theater, in the early stages of Meyerhold's independent practice, Konstantin Stanislavski offered him the opportunity to cooperate, which led Vsevolod Meyerhold to the Studio on Povarskaya Street in Moscow. Evgeny Vakhtangov was another student of Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko. At the request of Stanislavski, Vakhtangov was engaged in educational work in the studio of Moscow Art Theatre. Unlike Meyerhold, he thoroughly mastered the system and then created his theatrical direction called fantastic realism. Vakhtangov's legacy was preserved thanks to the activities of his students, among whom was Boris Zakhava. He turned to Meyerhold for help and spent several seasons with the master, gaining invaluable experience, including revealing the features of biomechanics in practice. Boris Zakhava remained faithful to Vakhtangov’s principles and continued his teacher’s work at the Shchukin Theater Institute.

“People Eat Their Dinner, Just Eat Their Dinner…”: Food Discourse in Anton Chekhov’s The Three Sisters and Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 35-53
Author(s):  
Natalia Vysotska
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Edmund Husserl ◽  
Food Products ◽  
Anton Chekhov ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Semiotic Approach ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Three Sisters ◽  
Fernand Braudel

Abstract The essay sets out to explore the functions of food discourse in the plays Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov and Crimes of the Heart by Beth Henley. Based on the critically established continuity between the two plays, the essay looks at the ways the dramatists capitalize on food imagery to achieve their artistic goals. It seemed logical to discuss the alimentary practices within the framework of everyday life studies (Edmund Husserl, Alfred Schütz, Fernand Braudel, Bernhard Waldenfels and others), moved to the forefront of literary scholarship by the anthropological turn in the humanities. Enhanced by a semiotic approach, this perspective enables one to understand food products and consumption manners as performing a variety of functions in each play. Most obviously, they are instrumental in creating the illusion of “everydayness” vital for new drama. Then, for Chekhov, food comes to epitomize the spiritless materiality of contemporary life, while in Henley’s play it is predominantly used, in accordance with the play’s feminist agenda, as a grotesque substitute for the lack of human affection. Relying upon the fundamental cultural distinction between everyday and non-everyday makes it possible to compare representations of festive occasions in the two plays seen through the gastronomical lens of “eating together.” Despite substantial differences, the emphases on alimentary practices in the plays serve to realize the inexhaustible dramatic potential inherent in the minutiae of quotidian life.

The precinct is political: espionage as a public service in Spooks (BBC 1, 2002–11)

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Oldham
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Public Service ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Cutting Edge ◽  
The Real ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
New Drama ◽  
Production Company

This chapter examines Spooks (BBC 1, 2002-11), procedural spy series focused on MI5. Widely understood as British television’s primary dramatic response to the ‘war on terror’, this chapter conversely traces the series’ substantial development prior to 9/11. Spooks is characterised as epitomising trends in the deregulated era of British television, commissioned as part of an investment in cutting-edge new drama to assert BBC 1’s competitiveness in the multi-channel landscape, and developed by the independent production company Kudos Film and Television. Responding to ‘openness’ drives by the real MI5, this reworked the spy series according to the tradition of the precinct drama, situating national security activities within the familiarised culture of the workplace family. This chapter argues that, through self-consciously challenging attitudes to headline issues the series demonstrated continuity with earlier radical BBC traditions, but this was tamed by its procedural format and stylised aesthetics.

The new drama

2021 ◽  
pp. 351-375
Author(s):  
Joanne Shattock ◽  
Joanne Wilkes ◽  
Katherine Newey ◽  
Valerie Sanders
Keyword(s):  
New Drama
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