Hand / Wilson London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror

Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-1-905816-36-1
Verlag: University of Exeter Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 304 Seiten

Reihe: Exeter Performance Studies

A companion to UEP’s Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (now in its third reprint). A genre that has left more of a mark on British and American culture than we may imagine” (Gothic Studies).

London’s Grand Guignol was established in the early 1920s at the Little Theatre in the West End. It was a high-profile venture that enjoyed popular success as much as critical controversy. On its side were some of the finest actors on the English stage, in the shape of Sybil Thorndike and Lewis Casson, and a team of extremely able writers, including Noël Coward.

London's Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror considers the importance and influence of the English Grand Guignol within its social, cultural and historical contexts. It also presents a selection of ten remakarble English-language Grand Guignol plays, some of which were banned by the Lord Chamberlain, the censor of the day, and have never been published or publicly performed. Among the plays in the book is a previously unpublished work by Noël Coward, The Better Half, first performed at the Little Theatre in 1922.

The reviewer in the journal Gothic Studies wrote, of the authors’ previous book: “having recently taught a module on Grand Guignol with third year drama students, it is also worth noting that this book captured their imaginations in a way that few other set texts seem to manage.”

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hand, Richard J., Prof.

Hand, Richard J.

Wilson, Michael, Prof.

Wilson, Michael

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker

Inhaltsverzeichnis

SECTION 1

Chapter 1: A History of London’s Grand Guignol

Chapter 2: London’s Grand Guignol and Issues of Genre and Writing

Chapter 3: London’s Grand Guignol: Performers and Performing

Chapter 4: London’s Grand Guignol: Censorship and Reception

Chapter 5: London’s Grand Guignol and the Reviewers

Chapter 6: The Aftermath and Legacy of London’s Grand Guignol

SECTION 2

Ten Plays of London’s Grand Guignol

Eight O’Clock by Reginald Berkeley

A Man in Mary’s Room by Gladys Unger

Private Room Number 6 by André de Lorde

The Person Unknownby H. F. Maltby

Latitude 15°Southby Victor MacClure

The Old Women by Christopher Holland

The Nutcracker Suite by Eliot Crawshay-Williams

The Sisters’ Tragedy by Richard Hughes

The Better Half by Noël Coward

I Want To Go Home by H. F. Maltby

APPENDICES

Appendix 1 London’s Grand Guignol, 1920-22Appendix 2 The Complete Repertoire of London’s Grand Guignol, 1920-22

Appendix 3 Extract from Oh, Hell! A ‘Revuette’ by Reginald Arkell and Russell Thorndike

Bibliography

Über Autor(innen)

Hand, Richard J., Prof.
Richard J. Hand is Professor of Media Practice and Head of Media, Film and TV Studies at University of East Anglia. He is the co-editor of the Journal of Adaptation in Film and Performance, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Richard has written extensively on adaptation, horror studies, European theatre, radio drama, and popular culture. He has also worked as a writer, director and performer for theatre and radio. His practice-based research activities include experimental live re-creations of The Train of Terror! (2005), The Terrifying Tale of Sweeney Todd! (2008), Noel Coward’s The Better Half (2008), and Kandinsky’s The Yellow Sound (2011).

Together with Mike Wilson he has delivered workshops on Grand Guignol, and presented Grand Guignol performances at universities, international conferences and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Richard and Michael are the authors of Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (2002), London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (2007) and Performing Grand-Guignol - Playing the Theatre of Horror (2016), all published by UEP.

Wilson, Michael, Prof.
Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama at Loughborough University. He was previously Professor of Drama and Dean of the School of Media and Performance at University College Falmouth and prior to that was Head of Research at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan and Co-Director (with Hamish Fyfe) of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling.

His main research interests lie in the field of popular and vernacular performance and he has published extensively on Storytelling, Grand-Guignol and Brecht and his collaborators. In particular, his work on storytelling has led him to work on the interface between storytelling and digital technology and the way in which the internet has enabled the telling and sharing of ‘extraordinary’ stories of the everyday experiences of people.

Together with Richard Hand he has delivered workshops on Grand Guignol, and presented Grand Guignol performances at universities, international conferences and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Richard and Michael are the authors of Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (2002), London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (2007) and Performing Grand-Guignol - Playing the Theatre of Horror (2016), all published by UEP.

Richard J. Hand is Professor of Media Practice and Head of Media, Film and TV Studies at University of East Anglia.

Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama at Loughborough University.

Together they have delivered workshops on Grand Guignol, and presented Grand Guignol performances at universities, international conferences and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.