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This article explores the role of fi lm editors within adaptation. Specifi cally, it looks at the contributions selected British editors made to a range of fi lm adaptations of lowbrow, middlebrow, and highbrow stage plays during the 1930s and 1940s. The fi lms discussed in some detail are Loyalties (1933), Dirty Work (1934), The Face at the Window (1939), and Henry V (1944). This article explores the work of two editors who sought to transform theatrical properties into fi lms that conformed to different notions of the essentially cinematic. It also explores the work of another two editors who were less concerned with medium specifi city and more focused on enhancing the qualities of the theatrical source material. It argues that more historical work needs to be done on how fi lmmakers have brought different understandings of the similarities and differences between cinema and theatre to bear upon their production practices.
The Ideal of Ensemble Practice in Twentieth-century British Theatre, 1900-1968
2015
The central purpose of this thesis is to chart the ideal of ensemble theatre in Britain and its development in the country throughout the twentieth century, referring specifically to selected directors. The Stanislavskian model of the ensemble, as exemplified by the Moscow Art Theatre, served this ideal, pursued by Edward Gordon Craig, Harley Granville Barker, Theodore Komisarjevsky, Joan Littlewood and Peter Hall, who are the focus of the argument. Craig and Barker’s understanding of ensemble work was significantly influenced by their meetings with Stanislavsky in 1908 and 1914 respectively, while Littlewood and Hall were influenced by his writings on the theatre. Following Stanislavsky, the thesis offers a definition of ensemble as a permanent group based on shared values. The chosen directors are the most representative of attempts to establish ensemble companies in Britain in the twentieth century. They are also landmark cases in the sense that they initiated change in the perce...
The Manuscripts of “The Art of the Theatre" by Edward Gordon Craig
2011
published The Art of the Theatre in the summer of 1905. The book had been already published in Germany in June with the title Die Kunst des Theatres (edited and translated by Maurice Magnus, preface by Harry Kessler, Berlin and Leipzig, Seeman); the English edition (Edinburgh and London, Foulis) was published immediately after with an introduction by Craig himself and a preface by Graham Robertson. A Dutch edition followed in 1906, De kunst van het theatre (Amsterdam, S. L. Van Looy) with introductions by De Vos, Van Looy and Bauer, and then a non-authorized Russian edition. In 1911, the book became a section of the more extensive On the Art of the Theatre (London, Heinemann, 1911). First dialogue was added to the title of the section to distinguish it from another dialog found in the book, whose protagonists are the same, a director and a spectator, but whose subjects are different, resulting in a diptych of extraordinary importance. 1 The year of publication of The Art of the Theatre is significant, as we shall see, both for Craig's personal history and for the history of European theatre on which Craig's theories had an extraordinary impact, significantly shaping its future evolution. To cite only two events, 1905 was the year of Max Reinhardt's version of A Midsummer's Night Dream, and, in the same year, Stanislavski invited Meyerhold to direct the first of the studios that were to accompany the activity of the Moscow Art Theatre. Two very different events, but together they give a sense of the ferment that pervaded the European scene. Reinhardt's Dream sanctioned directing as an inventive and creative art and established the director's theatre as a feasible productive and artistic system while Meyerhold's workshop instead, was a sign of the need of the theatre to
Portrait of the Theatre Director as an Artist
Cultural Sociology, 2019
In France, the theatrical field is split between a commercial pole and a public pole. Within the latter, theatre directors occupy a central position. They monopolize public subsidies, run theatre-related institutions and receive most of the symbolic rewards. As a result of their efforts, theatre direction has gained recognition as a work of art, but at the cost of conflicts with actors and playwrights. Furthermore, thanks to government intervention, they have neutralized the need to adjust to private demand. However, their success is still limited by several factors. Theatre directors are subjected to several types of axiological criticism revolving around their excessive integration into the state apparatus. Artification is largely dependent on state intervention, and above all, the immaterial and temporary nature of a theatrical performance contradicts the western conception of the work of art, which is understood as something enduring (as with paintings and books).
"The Realm of Serious Art": Henry Hadley's Involvement in Early Sound Film
Composer-conductor Henry Kimball Hadley (1871–1937) is widely viewed as a conservative musical figure, one who resisted radical changes as American musical modernism began to flourish. His compositional style remained firmly rooted in late-Romantic European idioms; and although Hadley advocated for American composition through programming choices as a conductor, he mostly ignored the music of younger, adventurous composers. In one respect, however, Hadley was part of the cutting edge of musical production: that of musical dissemination through new media. This essay explores Hadley’s work conducting and composing film music during the transition from silent to synchronized sound film, specifically his involvement with Warner Bros. and their new sound synchronization technology, Vitaphone, in 1926–27. Drawing on archival evidence, I examine Hadley’s approach to film composition for the 1927 film When a Man Loves. I argue that Hadley’s high-art associations conferred legitimacy upon the new technology, and in his involvement with Vitaphone he aimed to establish sound film composition as a viable outlet for serious composers. Hadley’s example prompts us to reconsider the parameters through which we distinguish experimental and conservative musical practices, reconfiguring the definitions to include not just musical proclivities but also the contexts and modes through which they circulate.