scholarly journals Archaeologies of Sound: Reconstructing Louis MacNeice's Wartime Radio Publics

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 44-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Whittington
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Christopher Columbus ◽  
Public Activity ◽  
Good Citizenship ◽  
Louis Macneice ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Second World

Attempts to recover the audible experience of the Second World War are often frustrated by the paradox that the acoustic past is available in theory but elusive in practice. Focusing on the archival traces left by poet and broadcaster Louis MacNeice, this paper considers how scholars might reconstruct past radio publics – affiliative and critical communities of listening – from a partial record. As one of the most prominent and celebrated scriptwriters at the wartime BBC, MacNeice played a major role in shaping the British public's sense of itself and of the war. For MacNeice, good listening was good citizenship: in two major works, Alexander Nevsky (1941) and Christopher Columbus (1942), he uses aurally astute characters and layered acoustic spaces to model the process of navigating the crowded soundscapes of war. The plays build auditory worlds that mediate between the poles of hearing as a subjective, interior practice and listening as a public activity with political resonances. Through a close examination of scripts, recordings, production notes, and audience responses relating to these two plays, this paper traces the outline of the absent experience of listening in order to better understand the wartime British radio public.

Bombed Churches

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Hepburn
Keyword(s):  
Visual Culture ◽  
Advisory Committee ◽  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Church Architecture ◽  
Visual Artists ◽  
World War ◽  
Louis Macneice ◽  
Arts Festival ◽  
Second World

More often than not, the blitz was represented by bombed churches. Images of St Paul’s Cathedral soaring above smoke and, in a more tragic key, the ruins of St Michael’s Cathedral in Coventry encapsulate the values that Britons thought they were fighting for in the Second World War. John Piper, Cecil Beaton, Hanslip Fletcher, and other visual artists, many of them employed by the War Artists’ Advisory Committee (WAAC), expressed their ideas about British heritage through paintings, drawings, and photographs of church architecture. At the same time, writers such as Virginia Woolf, John Strachey, John Betjeman, and Louis MacNeice modulated their patriotism—with quibbles and caveats—into ‘a faith to fight for’. Drawing on poetry, novels, tracts, newspaper articles, and visual culture, this chapter demonstrates the propagandistic value of bombed churches during the Second World War, then flashes forward to the consecration of the rebuilt cathedral in Coventry, which opened with great fanfare and an arts festival in May 1962.

Writing the Radio War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Whittington
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Literary Identity ◽  
Literary Aesthetics ◽  
Louis Macneice ◽  
Imperial Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Compromise ◽  
To Come ◽  
Second World

Writing the Radio War positions the Second World War as a critical moment in the history of cultural mediation in Britain. Through chapters focusing on the ‘broadbrow’ radicalism of J.B. Priestley, ground-breaking works by Louis MacNeice and James Hanley at the BBC Features Department, frontline reporting by Denis Johnston, and the emergence of a West Indian literary identity in the broadcasts of Una Marson, Writing the Radio War explores how these writers capitalized on the particularities of the sonic medium to communicate their visions of wartime and postwar Britain and its empire. By combining literary aesthetics with the acoustics of space, accent, and dialect, writers created aural communities that at times converged, and at times contended, with official wartime versions of Britain and Britishness. Though rarely controversial, the broadcasts of these writers navigated an environment of political compromise in order to present new articulations of British and imperial identity that set the stage for the postwar multi-ethnic welfare state to come.

scholarly journals (Re)Presentation in Verbatim Theatre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tama Smith
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Verbatim Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

<p>Using a range of interpretive methodologies and based on both the practice of others and the author’s production, direction and evaluation of a series of shows this thesis explores a number of aspects of verbatim theatre presentation and re-presentation (restaging). The form of verbatim theatre discussed is primarily that deriving from personal interview material and the predominant thesis focus is one of Australasian context and practice.  The thesis is in two separate sectons with strongly related aims; the first section aiming to clarify and support the second. The first section answers questions about verbatim theatre evolution, processes and practices through both reviews of literature and interviews with prominent practitioners. It reveals vitality and diversity in VT practice, breadth and depth of scholarship in both Australia and New Zealand. It illuminates the processes and practices of creating and performing a verbatim play to support those who may consider doing so.  The second section describes and evaluates the performance of re-presentations in August 2015 of the VT play We’ll Meet Again. This play had been developed in 1994 from interviews with war veterans to create a theatrical event honouring a generation whose common experience was involvement in the Second World War. The actors in the re-presentation were all students at Toi Whakaari:New Zealand Drama School and the show was performed in nine venues over six days. Audiences were predominantly elderly although those at community centre venues were of a range of ages.  Tools used to evaluate the performances included audience survey forms with room for written comments, observations of audience responses and verbal feedback and interviews with actors. The remarkably positive survey responses and powerful written and oral testimony support the argument that a re-presentation of verbatim theatre has the potential to reinstate and broaden further the impact, appeal, value and aims of the original work. This argument is further supported with the formation of guidelines to present research findings as well as supporting, in a practical and immediate way, those embarking on re-presentation. A selection of images and performance video, illustrating the context and findings of the research are included in the thesis document.</p>

scholarly journals (Re)Presentation in Verbatim Theatre

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Tama Smith
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Oral Testimony ◽  
Audience Responses ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Verbatim Theatre ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Second World

<p>Using a range of interpretive methodologies and based on both the practice of others and the author’s production, direction and evaluation of a series of shows this thesis explores a number of aspects of verbatim theatre presentation and re-presentation (restaging). The form of verbatim theatre discussed is primarily that deriving from personal interview material and the predominant thesis focus is one of Australasian context and practice.  The thesis is in two separate sectons with strongly related aims; the first section aiming to clarify and support the second. The first section answers questions about verbatim theatre evolution, processes and practices through both reviews of literature and interviews with prominent practitioners. It reveals vitality and diversity in VT practice, breadth and depth of scholarship in both Australia and New Zealand. It illuminates the processes and practices of creating and performing a verbatim play to support those who may consider doing so.  The second section describes and evaluates the performance of re-presentations in August 2015 of the VT play We’ll Meet Again. This play had been developed in 1994 from interviews with war veterans to create a theatrical event honouring a generation whose common experience was involvement in the Second World War. The actors in the re-presentation were all students at Toi Whakaari:New Zealand Drama School and the show was performed in nine venues over six days. Audiences were predominantly elderly although those at community centre venues were of a range of ages.  Tools used to evaluate the performances included audience survey forms with room for written comments, observations of audience responses and verbal feedback and interviews with actors. The remarkably positive survey responses and powerful written and oral testimony support the argument that a re-presentation of verbatim theatre has the potential to reinstate and broaden further the impact, appeal, value and aims of the original work. This argument is further supported with the formation of guidelines to present research findings as well as supporting, in a practical and immediate way, those embarking on re-presentation. A selection of images and performance video, illustrating the context and findings of the research are included in the thesis document.</p>

Gender and the Second World War

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Corinna Peniston-Bird ◽  
Emma Vickers
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World
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