Granville Barker on Theatre brings together some of the most important critical theatrical writings of Harley Granville Barker, a major figure of 20th-century British theatre.
Known as a pioneer of the National Theatre and Repertory Movement, and remembered mainly for his
Prefaces to Shakespeare, from the 1900s to his death in the 1940s Granville Barker commented enthusiastically in newspaper items, introductions to plays, articles, essays, articles, and published lectures on a range of topics: the nature of theatre as an art form and as a social medium, the need for ensemble playing in a repertory system, the relationship between the three chief constituents of theatre - the actor, the playwright and the audience.
Granville Barker on Theatre makes available again these writings in which Barker dissects the state of theatre as he saw it, with coruscating critiques of the commercial system, the long run and censorship, the vitality of theatre outside Britain, and what he saw as the welcome renaissance of theatre in non-professional groups liberated from the profit motive.
These writings show a master practitioner concerned with, above all, promoting a new type of drama; vital not only for its own sake but for the sake of the health of society at large.
Barker, Harley Granville: - Harley Granville Barker (1877-1946) was the most brilliant British director of the first quarter of the twentieth century. His best known plays, including Waste (banned by the Lord Chamberlain), were written as contributions to his Company's repertoire of provocative modern drama for a subsidised national theatre, a cause he championed in his book A National Theatre: Scheme and Estimates. Waste was first presented by the Stage Society in 1907, before being revised and produced at the Westminster Theatre in 1936. Other plays include The Madras House, first produced at Duke of York's Theatre, 1910; The Secret Life; and His Majesty, which received its first production at the Edinburgh International Festival by Orange Tree Theatre Company in 1992.
Chambers, Colin: - "Colin Chambers is Emeritus Professor of Drama at Kingston University. Colin was Literary Manager of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1981 to 1997, and has also been a journalist and theatre critic. He is co-author with Richard Nelson of Kenneth's First Play and Tynan (both Royal Shakespeare Company), and he selected and edited for performance Three Farces by John Maddison Morton, which were produced at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond. As well as editing the Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre, Colin has written extensively on the theatre including Other Spaces: New Writing and the RSC, Playwrights' Progress (with Michael Prior), The Story of Unity Theatre, Peggy: The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent (winner of the inaugural Theatre Book Prize), Inside the Royal Shakespeare Company, Here We Stand: Politics, Performers and Performance - Paul Robeson, Isadora Duncan and Charlie Chaplin and Black and Asian Theatre in Britain: A History."
