A Bulletin
for George Bernard Shaw
November/ December 2006
With the new series of THE OSCHOLARS which began in October 2006, Shavings (which began as a section within THE OSCHOLARS and then became one of it supplementary pages) further emancipated itself and became one of the Irish Literary Bulletins hosted by www.irishdiaspora.net, the site for Irish and other diaspora studies owned by Dr Patrick O’Sullivan (University of Bradford). Responsibility for its content, however, remains with the editorial team of THE OSCHOLARS. We cannot yet see how this will develop but the main thrust of Shavings will continue as before to explore the world of Shaw during the lifetime of Wilde, although clearly we will not turn our backs on such later Shaw material as presents itself. Contributions and ideas from readers will be welcome. That said, we are here only to complement the excellent work done on Shaw elsewhere, notably by the Shaw associations and their publications, and these will be given their due measure in our columns.
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'Oh, Shaw! That's the man who smokes Jaeger cigarettes!' – Oscar Wilde, quoted by Richard Le Gallienne: The Romantic Nineties. New edition. London: Putnam & Co. 1951 p.81. |
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Note: Subscribers to THE OSCHOLARS (including Shavings) have their names printed in bold, and can be contacted through us at melmoth@aliceadsl.fr.
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1. The Plays |
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2. Shawlines a. Conferences b. Shaw at 150 c. Lectures d. Publications e. The Shrines f. Exhibition + Review by Julie Ann Stevens g. Posters |
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a. The International Shaw Society c. The Bernard Shaw Society & The Independent Shavian |
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6. Tailpiece |
In this section we try to cover productions of Shaw's pre-1901 plays, and news of productions of these (with offers of review) will be most welcome. The plays are Arms and the Man (1894), Cæsar and Cleopatra (1898), Candida (1895), Captain Brassbound's Conversion (1899), The Devil's Disciple (1897),The Man of Destiny (1895), Mrs Warren's Profession (1893),The Philanderer (1893), Widowers' Houses (1892), You Never Can Tell (1895). (Dates of composition, not first performance.) Wilde is known to have attended the first night of Arms and the Man (20th April 1894). Apart from those listed at Niagara-on-the-Lake and in Chicago, Shaw’s twentieth century plays are noticed in Late Clippings.
For
2006 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, has now closed. The 2007 Season will see The
Philanderer (1st May to 7th October) and St Joan (21st April to 27th October). We can also mention Lady Gregory’s Kiltartan Comedies (20th June to 6th
October), The Cassilis Engagement
by St John Hankin, and Feydeau’s Hotel
Peccadillo.
The 2006 season included Arms and the Man and Too True to be Good.
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Performance |
Show Dates
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Location |
Show Times |
Information |
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Village Wooing* |
February
4, 2007 |
2:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
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Love Scenes |
February
6, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
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Shaw vs. Shakespeare: |
February
10, 2007 |
3:30pm |
Open
to the Public |
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Love Scenes* |
February
11, 2007 |
2:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
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Love Scenes* |
February
11, 2007 |
2:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Love Scenes* |
February
14, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Village Wooing* |
February
15, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Village Wooing* |
February
18, 2007 |
2:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Love Scenes |
February
26, 2007 |
1:
00 p.m. |
Private
Event |
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Love Scenes* |
February
28, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
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Shaw vs. Shakespeare: |
March
13, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Women of Shaw: Strong, Smart, and Unsatisfied!* |
April
19, 2007 |
7:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
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Caesar & Cleopatra |
April
14-May 7, 2007 |
various |
Ticket
Information |
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Shaw vs. Shakespeare: |
May
24, 2007 |
6:
00 p.m. |
Open
to the Public |
* Performances are no charge
For information on all performances,
please call 312-587-7390
Directed by Chris Coleman, this will be played at Portland Center Stage (Gerding Theater), 128 NW Eleventh Avenue, Portland, Oregon 9th January - 4th February 2007.
Pygmalion
The very successful Paris production opens
on 17th March at the Théâtre de Vevey, Vevey,
Switzerland.
Director: Nicolas Briançon.
Décor: Jean-Marc Stehlé. Costumes: Michel Fresnay. Production: CADO Centre
National de Création d’Orléans, Théâtre Comedia Paris. Cast: Barbara Schulz,
Nicolas Vaude, Danielle Lebrun, Henri Courseaux, Jean-Claude Barbier, Odile
Mallet, Catherine Alcover. Understudies:
Pierre-Alain Leleu, Fleur Houdinière, Bruno Henri, Maurine Nicot, Jean-Paul
Lopez.
The Washington Stage Guild (Washington, D.C., that is) announces
Shaw's Shorts – O'Flaherty V.C.,
The Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and The Man of Destiny.
Directed by John MacDonald.
1st March to 1st April 2007.
In this section we will print all the news that we find or, better still, are sent. We especially welcome news of Shaw on curricula.
We also wish to record articles and papers relating to the earlier Shaw, and news of new editions of Cashel Byron's Profession (1886), An Unsocial Socialist (1887), The Quintessence of Ibsenism (1891), The Perfect Wagnerite (1898), Love Among the Artists (1900), as well as other related material.
The ISS at the Modern Language
Association Meeting, 27th to 30th
December 2006, Philadelphia.
In acknowledgment of Bernard
Shaw’s sesquicentennial, the International Shaw Society is sponsoring a special
session at the 2006 MLA December meeting that will explore Shaw's writings,
both dramatic and non-dramatic, in a contemporary context. Since Shaw
often figured himself as a prophet, in what ways did Shaw anticipate
twenty-first century approaches to drama, theater, performance, social reform, politics,
and critical and literary theory? How
does Shaw's theatrical-critical project still speak to us today? Approaches
grounded in either current events and mass culture (e.g., "Creative
Evolution," “Creationism,” and “Intelligent Design” in Kansas and Dover,
Pennsylvania) or contemporary (inter)disciplinary and theoretical discourses
(e.g., Back to Methuselah and the Post-Human) are encouraged. Other possibilities for areas of discussion
include stage practices and metadrama; gender roles, family issues, and
marriage; social class, poverty, and war; religion and “Science Studies;”
deconstruction, poststructuralism, and the death of theory; depth psychology;
narrative, history, literary/dramatic historiography, and periodization; film,
video, television, hypertext, and other New Media, etc.
MLA members can discover how
to register for the 2006 MLA convention by going to http://www.mla.org/convention.
An ISS-Sponsored
Special Session on ‘Shaw as Playwright’
at The 31st Annual Comparative Drama Conference, 29th, 30th & 31st March 2007.
Conference
Location: Marina Del Rey (Los Angeles), California. Conference hotel to be determined.
Sponsoring
Institution: Loyola Marymount University
Shaw
Session Sponsored By: The International Shaw Society, www.shawsociety.org
Conference Director: Dr. Kevin
Wetmore, Department of Theater Arts, Loyola Marymount University, 311 Foley
Theatre, 1 LMU Drive, MS 8210, Los Angeles CA 90045-2659 Phones: Office: 310.338.7831 FAX:
310.338.1984.
For
details about this conference, email Dr. Wetmore at kwetmore@lmu.edu or check the CDC website at
https://myweb.lmu.edu/compdrama
(when it’s up in July). Check www.shawsociety.org for links.
To
register for this conference, send email to compdram@lmu.edu
and a registration form will be sent to you.
Conference
Fee: If pre-registered, $89 for faculty and $79 for graduate students, $69 for
session chairs, $59 for guests. Add
$10 if registering at the conference.
The Comparative Drama
Conference originated in 1976 at the University of Florida, and, after 24
years, moved to The Ohio State University where it was held for five years. It
moved to the Los Angeles area in 2005. The conference is open to all aspects of
theatre, with a strong emphasis on dramatic texts. The publication of the
conference is Text and Presentation
2007 Shaw Symposium at the Shaw Festival in Ontario, 29th, 30th,
31st July. Deadline for proposals to be announced.
Shaw Session at the 2007 MLA Meeting. Date and deadline to be announced.
For abstracts and photos from the June 2006 Shaw
Conference at Brown University, please see http://www.shawsociety.org/Brown-Abstracts-TOC.htm
and http://www.shawsociety.org/Brown-photos-2.htm.
For photos of the Shaw birthday celebrations in London and Dublin, July 2006, please see http://www.shawsociety.org/Shaw’s-Birthday-UK-Dublin.htm.
On 23rd August 2006 Ivan Wise gave a lecture to the William Morris Society of Canada on ‘Shaw's Debt to Morris’, at the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Ontario. On 5th October at the National Portrait Gallery in London, continuing the series of talks celebrating the anniversaries of renowned literary figures, the writer and biographer, Michael Holroyd, author of an acclaimed biography on Shaw, was ‘in discussion’ with Roy Foster, Professor of Irish History at Oxford University.
We hope readers will draw our attention to their publications and papers on Shaw,
We note the paper given at the fin-de-siècle Conference at Magdalene College, Cambridge in July 2006 by Hannes Schweiger, doctoral candidate, University of Vienna, Austria ‘Between the Lines. George Bernard Shaw as cultural and political mediator’. For the abstract click here.
Shaw’s Corner at Ayot St Lawrence (‘See the great dramatist’s revolving Writing Hut’) closed for the season on 29th October. It has developed a website (click the picture), and it can be reached at shawscorner@nationaltrust.org.uk. A small secondhand bookshop opened summer 2006.
© NTPL / Matthew Antrobus
The Shaw Birthplace in Synge Street, Dublin closed for the season on Sunday 1st October 2006 and will re-open in May 2007. It can be contacted at shawhouse@dublintourism.ie
An exhibition devoted to GBS runs until the end of the year in the National Gallery, Dublin. It has been reviewed for us by Julie Ann Stevens.
A life-sized bronze statue of
George Bernard Shaw stands at the end of the Beit wing in the National Gallery
of Ireland. Posed as though in the middle of a speech, Shaw dominates the
space, lording it over the British portraits that line the wall alongside him.
He stands tall and slim in his softly draped suit, a kind of modern-day
Mephistopheles with moustaches twisted as sharp as flickering flames and an
expression of intent interest on his face. He hardly looks the 71 years that he
was when the Russian sculptor Paul Troubetzkoy modelled him from life in 1927.
His prominent position in the stately rooms of the Beit wing is long overdue.
After all, since his death in 1950 the Gallery’s purchase of substantial artwork
(including no less than 77 paintings) came about because of the Shaw Fund. A
significant contribution to the recent extension was also drawn from this Fund.
The small exhibition of Shaw
portraiture in the National Gallery of Ireland is the 150th anniversary tribute
to one of Ireland’s most significant contributors to the visual arts. Shaw left
a third of his posthumous royalties to the Gallery and the success of works
such as the musical adaptation of Pygmalion, My Fair Lady, led to a rich
vein of wealth trickling serious money into the Gallery’s life. As Adrian Le
Harivel notes in the exhibition brochure, ‘the Shaw Fund was to be the major
source for new acquisitions . . . from
Giovanni di Paolo, and Gérard to Signac and Pissarro’.
The Troubetzkoy statue is the
most notable item in the exhibition. The more familiar picture of Shaw by the
British painter, John Collier, part of the permanent collection and given to
the Gallery by Shaw’s West Cork wife, Charlotte Payne-Townshend, provides a
very different aspect of the man, one that is much more venerable and sedate. A
further 8 or so small reproductions of Shaw portraits and caricatures line the
room, a modest number given the fact that over 30 artists depicted the Irish
dramatist. A reproduction of Bernard Partridge’s 1894 watercolour of Shaw on
the set of Arms
and the Man at the Avenue Theatre in London and a photograph of
Auguste Rodin’s 1906 bronze head of the dramatist have been included in the
exhibit. Le Harivel’s brochure tells us that ‘Rodin flattered Shaw by
describing him as having a head like Christ’s, then, subsequently, more like
the devil’. Shaw, apparently, appreciated the comparisons. In addition to the
reproductions is a much later bronze bust by the South African sculptor Joseph
Coplans and dated 1952. According to Coplans, the head was executed from
observation and according to swiftly executed sketches of Shaw—certainly the
vigorous moulding of the features gives great animation to the face with its
large bushy brows hooding eyes that squint in humour.
There are so many portraits of
Shaw one might wonder how it is possible to discern his character. Max
Beerbohm’s caricatures of Shaw (he made over 40), Augustus John’s head and
shoulder portraits and John Lavery’s painting of Shaw in a book-lined room
present very different views of the man. Thomas Carlyle maintained that the
portrait acted like a ‘lighted candle’ by which one might read the biography of
the subject. And yet Carlyle—like George Bernard Shaw—was depicted in many
different ways and by various artists so that—rather ironically—it becomes
difficult to assess the ‘real’ man by his face alone. Shaw believed that
spontaneity in portraits was what mattered, and perhaps his biography might be
considered as a series of flashing pictures rather than one particular study.
v
Julie Anne Stevens lectures in Trinity College Dublin and St.
Patrick’s College, Drumcondra. Irish Academic Press is publishing her book on
the art and fiction of the nineteenth century writers Edith Somerville and
Martin Ross this winter: The Irish Scene in Somerville and Ross.]
The Footlights Gallery offers the following for sale:
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TITLE |
COMMENTS |
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Roundabout Theatre production. Directed by Roger Rees |
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Roundabout Theatre Company revival with Cherry Jones. Art by Scott McKowen |
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With Peter O'Toole at the Plymouth Theater |
FOOTLIGHTS Gallery & Gifts
240 East Main Street, Ashland, OR 97520 USA
Phone & Fax: 541-488-5538
(Voice: 10 a.m.- 6 p.m. Pacific Time, 18:00-2:00 UTC; Fax: 24 hours)
E-mail: footlite@cdsnet.net.
Or, When Shaw texted Wilde
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‘It is almost incredible that Oscar’s essays and novels and dramas should not have had an effect upon the mind and conceptions of a man like Shaw’. – H.M. Hyndman: Further Reminiscences. London: Macmillan 1912 p.221. |
This section of Shavings takes up the challenge implicit in Hyndman’s statement and explores textual similarities in the work of the two writers. We will add to this from time to time, and readers are warmly invited to contribute their own apercus. Formerly incorporated into this main section of Shavings, it now has its own page, reached by clicking here. New lines will be announced here, and then transferred.
This section (a. GBS for Wildeans: A Bibliography of 19th century Shaw; b. Websites and blogs) has now also been recreated on it own page, reached by clicking here. New items will be announced here and then transferred. Do please draw our attention to new publications.
Added this month:
Christopher S. Nassaar: ‘Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan and Shaw's Mrs Warren's Profession, in The Explicator, Vol. 56 (Spring 1998), 137-138. Argues that Wilde's play is a chief influence on Shaw's.
The early days of the ISS were chronicled in Shavings as the Society was being formed. It created a website at http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/international_shaw_society/index.html, but this was not updated after 2003 and thus remains in the words of its leading article ‘strictly experimental and illustrative’, being replaced by The International Shaw Society Newsletter and Bulletin Board first at http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/iss.htm and now at www.shawsociety.org. This is a fully developed website, partly restricted to members of the iss but with much information on open access. The Society’s current executive is
R. F. Dietrich, President
Don Wilmeth, Vice President
Lagretta Lenker, Treasurer
Norma Jenckes,
Recording Secretary
Lori Ruse-Dietrich,
Membership Secretary
We will carry news of the activities of the ISS as it comes to hand.
The website of the English Society formerly at http://www.shawsociety.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk has been redesigned and moved to http://www.shawsociety.org.uk. The Shaw Society was founded on 26th July 1941, Bernard Shaw's eighty-fifth birthday. He wanted nothing to do with the idea…
The society meets in London every month for lectures and play readings, on the final Friday of the month (January to June and September to November) at 6:30 p.m. at Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London. Its journal, The Shavian (edited by Ivan Wise), is produced approximately every 9 months, and The Newsletter (edited by Philip Riley) three times a year: New Year, Spring and Autumn.
Coming events:
At Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London
26th January 2007 News from Shaw’s Corner from Paul Williamson, National Trust Custodian for Shaw’s Corner
23rd February 2007 Annual General Meeting (members only)
Membership costs £15 per annum and for two people at the same address there is a family rate of £22 per annum. For overseas members US$30 or the equivalent. For further details contact Evelyn Ellis, Membership Secretary, The Shaw Society, 1 Buckland Court, 37 Belsize Park, London NW3 4EB +(0)20 7794 7014. Tel/Fax: 020 7794 7014. Email: shawsociety@blueyonder.co.uk.
This may be reached at P.O. Box 1159, Madison Square Station, New York, N.Y. 10159-1159: the website is http://chuma.cas.usf.edu/~dietrich/shawsociety.html. The current officers and advisory board are Richard Cordell, Edwin Burr Pettet, Richard Nickson (Presidents Emeriti), Rhoda Nathan (President), Daniel Leary (First Vice President), Sally Peters (Second Vice President), Douglas Laurie (Secretary), John Koontz (Treasurer); Jacques Barzun, Eric Bentley, Patrick Berry, Montgomery Davis, R. F. Dietrich, Howard Kissel, Maureen Murphy, Richard Nickson, Margot Peters, Jay R. Tunney, Robert Neff Williams (advisory board). The Society publishes The Independent Shavian, edited by Patrick Berry.
The website (at http://independentshavian.org/independentshavian2.htm)
no longer reproduces the cover, and the most recent (9th December) Table of
Contents given is for volume 43, volumes 1-2, 2005.
This was published by us in Shavings 19.
For prior issues, click here. The Independent Shavian appears three times a year and is sent to all members of the Bernard Shaw Society at no charge as part of their membership dues. To subscribe to the journal or to order this number, click here.
Note, 8th December 2006: it would appear that nothing has been added to either website for some time.
This maintains no website but maybe contacted through the Hon. Chairman, Brian Mc Grath <bricar@gofree.indigo.ie>. The Society meets on the third Wednesday of every month in the United Arts Club, 3 Fitzwilliam Street, Dublin 2. Membership is €15 p.a., for an individual, €25 for a couple, although this information may be out of date: we have been unable to make recent contact.
‘Mr Shaw may or may not be flattered if I tell him that I find many points of resemblance between him and Oscar Wilde. Both Shaw and Wilde are witty, and both set out to preach, and both do it well. I put Wilde above Shaw, in the literary sense, simply because Wilde (at his best again) is a poet and Shaw is not.’
–Lord Alfred Douglas: Without Apology. London: Martin Secker, publisher to The Richards Press 1938 p.85.
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