Frances Gray

Kate Dorney

Published in collaboration with the Victoria & Albert Musuem, Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays explores the best and most influential plays from 1945 to date. Fully illustrated with photos from the V&A's collections and featuring a foreword by Richard Griffiths O.B.E., the book provides a sumptuous treat for theatre-lovers. It was awarded the 2014 David Bradby Award for research by the Theatre and Performance Research Association. Opening with J. B. Priestley's classic play from 1946, An Inspector Calls, and ending with Laura Wade's examination of class privilege and moral turpitude in Posh over sixty years later, Played in Britain offers a visual history of post-war theatre on the British stage. Arranged chronologically the featured plays illustrate and respond to a number of themes that animate post-war society: censorship and controversy; race and immigration; gender and sexuality; money and politics. An essay on each period first sets the context and explores trends, while the commentary accompanying each play illuminates the plot and themes, considers its original reception and subsequent afterlife, and finishes by suggesting other plays to explore. Photographs from the V&A's extensive collection illustrate each play, providing further insight into stage and costume designs, and include iconic images from the premieres of major plays such as Waiting for Godot and Look Back in Anger. Illustrated throughout with stage production photography, Played in Britain: Modern Theatre in 100 Plays presents a unique and visually stunning panorama of key dramatic works produced in Britain over the past seventy years. From An Inspector Calls to The Rocky Horror Show, or Abigail's Party to Waiting for Godot, fresh light is thrown on the impact, aesthetics and essence of these key plays.

Modern Theatre in 100 Plays

Played in Britain

Maggie Barbara Gale

Maggie B B. Gale

Viv Gardner

This collection addresses key questions in women's theatre history and retrieves a number of previously "hidden" histories of women performers. The essays range across the past 300 years--topics covered include Susanna Centlivre and the notion of intertheatricality; gender and theatrical space; the repositioning of women performers such as Wagner's Muse, Willhelmina Schröder-Devrient, the Comédie Français' "Mademoiselle Mars," Mme. Arnould-Plessey, and the actresses of the Russian serf theatre.

New Histories, New Historiographies

Women, Theatre and Performance

Published in collaboration with the V&A, Modern British Theatre in 100 Plays explores the best and most influential plays from 1945 to date. Fully illustrated with photos from the V&A's collections, the book includes essays, review excerpts, plot summaries, extracts and insight into stage and costume designs.

This edited volume provides new readings of the life and career of iconic actress Vivien Leigh (1913-67), written by experts from theatre and film studies and curators from the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. The collection uses newly accessible family archives to explore the intenselycomplex relationship between Vivien Leigh's approach to the craft of acting for stage and screen, and how she shaped, developed and projected her public persona as one of the most talked about and photographed actresses of her era.With key contributors from the UK, France and the US, chapters range from analyses of her work on stage and screen to her collaborations with designers and photographers, an analysis of her fan base, her interior designs and the "public ownership" of Leigh's celebrity status during her lifetime andbeyond.

Actress and Icon

Vivien Leigh

Maggie B. Gale

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. This book presents a collection of cutting-edge historical and cultural essays in the field of women, theatre and performance. The chapters explore women’s networks of professional practice in the theatre and performance industries between 1900 and 1950, with a focus on women’s sense and experience of professional agency in an industry largely controlled by men. The book is divided into two sections: ‘Female theatre workers in the social and theatrical realm’ looks at the relationship between women’s work – on and off stage – and autobiography, activism, technique, touring, education and the law. ‘Women and popular performance’ focuses on the careers of individual artists, once household names, including Lily Brayton, Ellen Terry, radio star Mabel Constanduros and Oscar-winning film star Margaret Rutherford.

Kate Dorney

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