The ‘Uncertainty of Our Climate’: Mary Kelly and the Rural Theatre

2018 ◽  
pp. 121-134
Author(s):  
Andrew Walker
Keyword(s):  
Folk Religion ◽  
Cultural Impacts ◽  
Between The Acts ◽  
Mary Kelly

Andrew Walker examines playwright Mary Kelly’s writings on village theatre and her production of agrarian pageantry for purposes of expanding notions of the genres and cultural impacts of rural modernity. Kelly, best known as the model for Miss La Trobe in Virginia Woolf’s Between the Acts, enjoyed success as a director of rural theatre in the 1920s and 1930s. This led to two influential books on rural arts, How to Make a Pageant (1936) and Village Theatre (1939). Envisioning the theatre as an outgrowth of folk religion and mythology grounded in agricultural and fertility ritual—a vision taken up to great effect by T. S. Eliot—Kelly advocated a theatre run by and on behalf of rural performers, producers, and audience. This chapter looks at her development of these ideas in print and practice as a way of examining interwar rural dramatic production writ large.

Editor's Note

1996 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. i-i
Author(s):  
Miguel A. Carranza
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Studies ◽  
Annual Conference ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Dynamic Changes ◽  
Mary Kelly

This special issue of the journal is on the theme “Ethnicity, Family and Community,” which was the topic of our 23rd annual conference held in March 1995 in Boulder, Colorado. Mary Kelly, our special issue editor, has selected an excellent set of quality articles focused on the theme. Nowhere more than in the field of ethnic studies do the topics of family and community play such important roles. One need only look at the dynamic changes occurring in U.S. society to see how these changes influence and are influenced by ethnic/racial families and the communities in which they reside.

Mental Health Stigma: Personal and Cultural Impacts on Attitudes

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Crowe ◽  
Paige Averett ◽  
J. Scott Glass ◽  
Kylie Dotson-Blake ◽  
Sara Grissom ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Health Stigma ◽  
Cultural Impacts

Folk Religion in Japan: Continuity and Change.

1969 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Carlo Caldarola ◽  
Ichiro Hori
Keyword(s):  
Folk Religion ◽  
Continuity And Change

Folk Religion in Japan (Continuity and Change)

1969 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 92 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald W. Mitchell ◽  
Ichiro Hori ◽  
Joseph M. Kitagawa ◽  
Alan L. Miller
Keyword(s):  
Folk Religion ◽  
Continuity And Change

Late Works (1933–1941)

2021 ◽  
pp. 116-129
Author(s):  
Alice Wood
Keyword(s):  
Political Engagement ◽  
Feminist Politics ◽  
Three Guineas ◽  
Between The Acts ◽  
Late Works ◽  
Formal Experiment

This chapter traces the development of Woolf’s late feminist politics and aesthetic experimentalism, focusing on her penultimate and final novels, The Years (1937) and Between the Acts (1941), and her anti-war pamphlet, Three Guineas (1938). It reads across these texts and Woolf’s wider writings from 1933–1941, including essays, unpublished drafts, and her fictional biography Flush (1933), to identify key strands of social and political enquiry in Woolf’s late works. The chapter pays particular attention to Woolf’s late analysis of the role of art in society and her evolving feminist-pacifist critique of the links between patriarchy, nationalism, fascism, and war. Rejecting a narrative of creative decline, the chapter highlights the productive relationship between political engagement and formal experiment in Woolf’s late works.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document