Elizabeth Schafer

"First published in Great Britain by the Women's Press Ltd., 1998"--Title page verso.

Women Direct Shakespeare

Ms-Directing Shakespeare

Based on new and original research, this biography documents the life of Lilian Baylis--an esteemed theatrical producer, manager, and the founding mother of the British National Theatre, the Royal Ballet, and the English National Opera. Setting out to discover how Baylis was able to manage two theatres and three companies, bring the very best of high culture to working people, and still haul in a profit, this biography looks beyond the famous comic anecdotes that surround her life and discovers the private woman behind the public persona. From her early career as a musician and dancer to the career-changing breaks she offered to actors such as Alec Guinness and Laurence Olivier, this insightful work reveals how Baylis achieved so much and the personal cost of her successes.

A Biography

Lilian Baylis

Brian Woolland

Richard Cave

Ben Jonson and Theatre is an investigation and celebration of Jonson's plays from the point of view of the theatre practitioner as well as the teacher. Reflecting the increasing interest in the wider field of Renaissance drama, this book bridges the theory/practice divide by debating how Jonson's drama operates in performance. Ben Jonson and Theatre includes: * discussions with and between practitioners * essays on the staging of the plays * edited transcripts of interviews with contemporary practitioners The volume includes contributions from Joan Littlewood, Sam Mendes, John Nettles, Simon Russell Beale and Geoffrey Rush, Oscar-winning actor for Shine.

Performance, Practice and Theory

Ben Jonson and Theatre

Susan Bradley Smith

Playing Australia explores the insights and challenges that Australian theatre can offer the international theatre community. Collectively, the essays in this book ask what Australian drama is, has been, and might be, both to Australians and non-Australians, when it is performed in national and international arenas. Playing Australia ranges widely in its discussions and includes analysis of Australian practitioners playing away from home; playing with Australian stereotypes; and the relationship between play, culture, politics and national identity. Topics addressed in this diverse collection include: whiteness, otherness and negotiations of Aboriginal and Asian identities; Australian school and college drama; the discourse of Australian professional theatre magazines: Aboriginal Shakespeare; Australian drama and Australian cricket; the marketing of Australianness in Germany; the international successes of Tap Dogs and Cloudstreet. New histories of Australian theatre are offered and practitioners whose careers are reconsidered in detail include high wire-walker Ella Zuila, playwright May Holt, suffrage worker and playwright Inez Bensusan, classicist Gilbert Murray, and commercial playwright Haddon Chambers. With contributions from authors as diverse as Guardian theatre critic Michael Billington and leading post-colonial critic Helen Gilbert, and interview discussion with Cate Blanchett and Tap Dogs producer Wayne Harrison, Playing Australia seeks to pay tribute to the complexities of Australian theatre experiences, to reassess Australian theatre as a significant force in the international arena and to challenge traditional thinking on what Australian theatre can be.

Elizabeth Schafer

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