A Bulletin
for George Bernard Shaw
January 2007
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 Patrick O’Sullivan, creator of Irish Diaspora Net. 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 c. Late clippings: Misalliance (review by Tiffany Perala) – My Fair Lady – Pygmalion – Arms and the Man |
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2. Shawlines a. Conferences b. Publications c. The Shrines d. 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.
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.
Information
from the Shaw Chicago Theatre Company at http://www.shawchicago.org/
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Performance |
Show Dates
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Location |
Show Times |
Information |
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Village Wooing* |
February
4, 2007 |
2:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Love Scenes |
February
6, 2007 |
7:00pm |
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 |
2:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
|
Love Scenes* |
February
11, 2007 |
2:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
|
Love Scenes* |
February
14, 2007 |
7:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
|
Village Wooing* |
February
15, 2007 |
7:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
|
Village Wooing* |
February
18, 2007 |
2:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
|
Love Scenes |
February
26, 2007 |
1:00pm |
Private
Event |
|
|
Love Scenes* |
February
28, 2007 |
7:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Shaw vs. Shakespeare: |
March
13, 2007 |
7:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
|
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Women of Shaw: Strong, Smart, and Unsatisfied!* |
April
19, 2007 |
7:00pm |
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 |
6:00pm |
Open
to the Public |
* Performances are no charge
For information on all performances,
please call 312-587-7390
c. Late clippings:
Misalliance
Directed by Chris Coleman, this is playing at Portland Center Stage (Gerding Theater), 128 NW Eleventh Avenue, Portland, Oregon 9th January - 4th February 2007.
We here publish a review by our Associate Editor for American Theatre, Tiffany Perala.
Nobel laureate and Academy Award recipient George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) wrote Misalliance in 1909. The contemporary relevance of his enduring wit and the critical and popular reception of his social problem play is evidenced in its production nearly a century hence. In his seminal review The Eighteen Nineties literary critic Holbrook Jackson explains: ‘Most of the distinguished personalities of the eighteen nineties challenged somebody or something. George Bernard Shaw challenged everybody and everything.’ Chris Coleman’s clever adaptation of Misalliance proves Shaw’s lasting importance as a playwright who challenges social conventions and the status quo.
The staging of Misalliance at the newly renovated Gerding Theatre, formerly the Historic Portland Armory, in Portland Oregon’s cultured Pearl District further emphasises its enduring popular appeal and ability to fill the house. Misalliance is third up on the season’s playbill following West Side Story and This Wonderful Life. For those unfamiliar with Portland’s art scene, it has earned its reputation as second in significance only to San Francisco on the west coast for its dedication to the Arts.
The setting, keeping with the original, is a Saturday in spring at the country home of Mr. John Tarleton in Surrey, England, 1909. The wicker chairs, antique tables, telescope, Turkish bath, stacks of books, and Greek busts reinforce the Tarleton’s bourgeoisie lifestyle gained through the capital success of Tarleton’s Underwear. Act I opens with Johnny, the physically endowed son of Mr. Tarleton, and Bentley, the foppish son of Lord Summerhays. The pronounced dichotomy of the character types alerts the audience that this is not merely a polite society comedy, but a post-Darwinian commentary on sexualities, social stratification, and, I would argue, the dandy as representative of a literary movement Shaw opposed: Decadence.
Bentley, a born aristocrat, is ‘over-bred,’ explains Mrs. Tarleton, and easily threatened by Johnny’s physical presence whereas Johnny is threatened by Bentley’s superior intellect. Inevitably, the two engage in a conversation that leads to Johnny’s real physical threat and Bentley’s tearful outburst, which in effect proves to be cathartic. The underlying satirisation of Decadence and the dandy’s (Bentley’s) sensibility in contrast to that of his masculine counterpart (Johnny) drives the first half of the comedy. Ultimately, the effeminate Bentley is rendered physically innocuous, though intellectually stimulating, to his extroverted fiancé Hypatia. For the same reasons he is an interesting and non-threatening ‘boy’ to Lina, the androgynous Polish girl who literally drops out of the sky when Joey Percival’s plane, piloted by her after he lost control, safely crashes into the Tarleton’s greenhouse.
Lina’s (Christine Calfas) foreign nature lends intrigue to her already dominant spirit. She is the extreme New Woman and her presence draws the attention of every male in the household. In effect, Lina is the reversal of Bentley and the ambiguity of sex is conveyed in dress: ‘When the dress is the same the distinction vanishes,’ posits Tarleton, and whereas her über-abundant strength, beauty, and independence attract male attention, Bentley’s degenerate physical and emotional features repel Hypatia and detract from his intellectual superiority. The real threat to nineteenth century sexuality, it would seem, was the New Woman, not the erudite dandy, aging aristocrat, entrepreneurial bourgeois or physical man. There is an exception to these types in the character of Percival though, who seems the embodiment intellect, strength, and social standing. He, we are led to believe, is the New Man and Hypatia directly pursues him, despite his strenuous efforts to abide by the familiar roles of propriety for propriety’s sake.
Unlike Percival, the Oxford schooled heir of an Italian princess, Lina comes from a family of acrobats whose profession relies on taking risks and controlling every aspect of their physical and emotional presence. The idea of hybrid social and sexual types challenges our conception of conventions rather effectively and even takes precedence over the economic dictates that would otherwise frame the play. Ultimately, the recognition of alternative social and sexual types equalise the sexes. The women, in turn, undermine the conventional notion that men are the sexual aggressors, and the men, rather than be repelled, are curiously attracted to the New Women.
The father figures, Mr. Tarleton and Lord Summerhays are traditional by all appearances, but underneath the bourgeois and aristocratic conventions they assert, they are as moved by non-traditional love alliances as their children. Lord Summerhays has even secretly proposed to widow Hypatia, in a conditional love-for-money exchange. Hypatia however, chooses not to relinquish physical desire and independence in lieu of nursing an older man for money. Summerhays (Aled Davies) was superb in his candid confession to Mr. Tarleton and the earnestness of his proposal, and the fact that Hypatia toyed with his offer until something more suitable ‘dropped out of the sky’ in the form of Percival, made it all the more human and laudable. As far as Bentley’s role in the father-son-fiancé triangle, it seemed apparent that Summerhays perceived that his son’s proposal was one that could never materialise given the young couple’s incompatibility.
At the end of the play, Lina takes Bentley up in the air after rejecting Johnny’s marriage proposal, signifying the balance of power requisite to stabilise an alliance, given Bentley’s submissive and Lina’s dominant nature. Indirectly, homosexuality is implied throughout the play by drawing attention to Bentley’s effeminate dress, affectations, and sexual appeal (lack thereof) to Hypatia. As for Lina, Hypatia addresses the ambiguity of her sex by calling her that ‘man-woman or woman-man.’ True to Shaw’s original staging of Lina as a ‘remarkably good-looking woman,’ Christine Calfas, as Lina, was remarkable in looks and stage presence.
However, the overarching subject of Misalliance is marriage and Coleman directs his concern with the tensions apparent in Shaw’s script and conveys the economic motives behind the 19th century English marriage market as well as the progressive motives of the New Woman with critical depth and humour. Going in, I was curious as to how the multiple literary allusions would come across, but they were not lost on Portland’s audience. For example, the idea of the Decadent as a degenerate is alluded to by means of his opposite; that is, the ‘good’ man does not decay, ‘he clears out.’ Mr. Tarleton’s (Kenneth Albers) seasoned advice always concludes with a literary referent, such as, ‘read Ibsen,’ or when his daughter Hypatia (Amanda Soden) asserts dominance, ‘I shall read King Lear.’ Hypatia does get the reluctant Percival (Spencer Conway) to engage her after aggressively pursuing him into an off scene game of chase in the bracken, demonstrating that his conventional regard is superficial and easily swayed by sex and Mr. Tarleton’s financial surety.
Overall, the hypocrisy of manners and display of conventional types, sexual and social, were revealed in a way that left the audience thinking. After the final curtain, I overheard two patrons discussing their disappointment of Gunner’s (Darius Pierce) effect. Gunner, the dishevelled, very clearly working-class illegitimate son of Mr. Tarleton through a former, and well-forgotten, dalliance appears on stage with a gun in an attempt to vindicate his mother’s honour. In the their defence, he was at best two-dimensional in comparison to the other characters, but this was no fault of Gunner’s (Pierce), as the point of the play was to show that the real threat to contemporary society was not the crime-related blackmail that often accompanied sexual indiscretions, the aristocracy’s indifference, or the bourgeoisie’s exploitation of the working-class and buying power, but the idea and act of social and sexual transgression. Read Shaw.
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Steven Cole Hughes |
Johnny Tarleton |
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Bentley Summerhays |
Ben Steinfeld |
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Hypatia Tarleton |
Amanda Soden |
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Mrs. Tarleton |
Linda Ryan |
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Lord Summerhays |
Aled Davies |
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Mr. John Tarleton |
Kenneth Albers |
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Joey Percival |
Spencer Conway |
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Lina Szczepanowska |
Christine Calfas |
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Gunner |
Darius Pierce |
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Chris Coleman |
Director |
v Tiffany Perala teaches at Marylhurst University, Portland.
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.
My Fair Lady
A production by the Wivenhoe Gilbert & Sullivan Society at the William Loveless Hall, Wivenhoe, England, runs from 27th February to 3rd March.
Arms and the Man
… was produced at the English Theatre, Vienna, 6th November to 22nd December 2006.
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Olivia Wright |
Raina Petkoff |
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Kate Dove |
Catherine Petkoff |
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Marianne Permaul |
Louka |
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Christopher Buchholz |
Captain Bluntschli |
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Howard Nightingall |
Russian Officer |
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Timothy Speyer |
Nicola |
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Roger Forbes |
Major Paul Petkoff |
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Tom Sykes |
Major Sergius Saranoff |
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Director |
Philip Dart |
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Designer |
Alison Hefferman |
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.
In acknowledgment of Bernard
Shaw’s sesquicentennial, the International Shaw Society sponsored a special
session at the 2006 MLA December Philadelphia meeting that explored Shaw's
writings, both dramatic and non-dramatic, in a contemporary context.
An ISS-Sponsored
Special Session on ‘Shaw as Playwright’
will be held at The 31st Annual Comparative Drama Conference, 29th, 30th & 31st March 2007.
Conference
Location: Marina Del Rey (Los Angeles), California.
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. 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. For call details see http://www.shawsociety.org/Shaw-Symposium-2007.htm. Deadline 15th April.
Shaw Session at the 2007 MLA Meeting, Chicago, 27th to 30th December. Topic: ‘Shaw and History’. Abstracts due to Charles Del Dotto <cjd@duke.edu>. Details at www.shawsociety.org/2007-Shaw-at-MLA.htm. Deadline 15th March.
Call for papers for SHAW 28
on ‘Shaw and War’. Send papers and
queries to Guest Editor Dr Lagretta Lenker at Llenker@admin.usf.edu. For details, click here.
Mrs Warren’s Profession was broadcast on Saturday 20th January on the wireless station BBC7. This can still be heard (until 27th January).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/genres/artsdrama/aod.shtml?bbc7/warrens_profession
We hope readers will draw our attention to their publications and papers on Shaw,
Shaw’s Corner at Ayot St Lawrence (‘See the great dramatist’s revolving Writing Hut’) closed for the season on 29th October. House and garden reopen on St Patrick’s Day, 17th March from 1.00 p.m. to 5.00 p.m. (house) and 12.30 p.m. to 5.30 p.m. (garden), closed Monday and Tuesday.
Click the picture to find their website; the e-address is shawscorner@nationaltrust.org.uk.
© 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
The Footlights Gallery offers the following for sale:
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TITLE |
COMMENTS |
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Arms and the Man |
Roundabout Theatre production. Directed by Roger Rees |
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Heartbreak House |
Roundabout Theatre Company. Art by Scott McKowen |
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Major Barbara |
Roundabout Theatre Company revival with Cherry Jones. Art by Scott McKowen |
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Misalliance |
Roundabout Theatre Company Revival. Art by Scott McKowen |
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My Fair Lady |
Original Broadway Production. Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews |
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Pygmalion |
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 last 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 next business meeting of the entire ISS will be on 30th July 2007 at the Shaw Symposium at the Shaw Festival. Non-members who are prospective members are welcome to attend meetings.
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 + ‘a dramatic entertainment’ and buffet (members only)
30th March 2007 Mark Saltzman talks about his new play Mr Shaw Goes to Hollywood
27th April 2007 Lauren Arrington gives a talk on and readings from O’Flaherty VC
25th May 2007 Leonard Conolly talks on ‘Shaw and the BBC’.
No new events beyond this are yet (26th January) announced.
The Shaw Society Reading Group meets on the first Friday of each month at Barry Morse’s flat in London. Details from Malcolm Wroe tel. 020 7485 8902.
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). No forthcoming events are recorded.
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 (24th January 2007) Table
of Contents given is for volume 43, volumes 1-2, 2005.
This was published by us in Shavings 19.
For earlier 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 a number, click here.
Note, 8th December 2006; 24th January 2007: 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.
‘It was to Wilde that Bernard Shaw owed his technique of paradox that enabled him to insult the English without angering them.’
– Philippe Jullian: Oscar Wilde. Translated by Violet Wyndham. London: Constable & Co 1969 p.133.
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