UPSTAGE:
A journal of turn-of-the-century theatre

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ISSN 2045-1024

From the Editors:

Welcome to the third issue of UpStage: A Journal of Turn-of-the-Century Theatre, which we would like to dedicate to the memory of Václav Havel.

We are pleased to announce that, in 2011, UpStage merged with Shavings, an Oscholars bulletin dedicated to the life and work of George Bernard Shaw. A link to the Shavings archive can be found on our homepage. UpStage plans to continue publishing current research on Shaw in its upcoming issues. Many thanks to David Charles Rose and Barbara Pfeifer for their staggering effort to collect and preserve Shaw-related materials and resources and as ever to our webmaster Steven Halliwell who has long maintained the archive and has now worked to transfer all our Shaw material to the new archive.

In the new issue you will find

• Anastassiya Andrianova’s article, "’Thoughts Die Sooner Than Languages’: The Vitalism of the Literal in Bernard Shaw's Back to Methuselah.” The article explores Shaw’s views on language and its evolution in relation to other types of evolutionary processes, in nature and society, as evidenced in Part 4 of his play-cycle Back to Methuselah. Shaw’s thinking is influenced, on the one hand, by contemporary theories, such as those of F. Max Müller and Charles Darwin, and on the other, by his commitment to Vitalism and, specifically, its supporters Samuel Butler and Henri Bergson.
• Thyra E. Knapp’s article, “Taboo and Tragedy in Frank Wedekind's Frühlings Erwachen." In her essay, Knapp both gives an overview of the efforts to censor the play as a theatrical representation of “perversion” and reads it as a reflection of the competing and overlapping fin-de-siècle obsessions: sexuality, gender roles, childhood, and education.
• Charles Marowitz’s reflections on the changing applications of the Stanislavsky System in twentieth- and twenty-first-century theatre, “Getting Stanislavsky Wrong.”
• A cosmopolitan selection of theatre and exhibit reviews: Dracula in Montgomery, Alabama (by Kristin C. Ross); The Father in New York City (by Bruce Bashford); The Seagull in Buenos Aires (by Fernando Pagnoni Berns); Bernhardt on Broadway in Frankenmuth, Michigan (by Laura Johnstone); and two special Maeterlinck exhibits in Ghent: “The World of Maeterlinck and Minne” and “"L'Oiseau Bleu" (by Koenraad Claes).
• Several calls for papers and announcements of interest to scholars and students of turn-of-the-century theatre.

Our sincere thanks go to David Charles Rose, the Editor-in-Chief of The Oscholars, our webmaster, Steven Halliwell, of Rivendale Press, John McRae, Lawrence Switzky, and other Rose Garden colleagues and supporters, as well as to our contributors.

We accept submissions all year round and look forward to hearing from you. Please consult our call for papers and join us on the UpStage Facebook and LinkedIn pages for updates and announcements.

Helena Gurfinkel and Michelle Paull, Editors