Adaptable Near and Far: C. H. Hazlewood’s Double Adaptations

Stage personnel faced complex and conflicting demands in the nineteenth century to curate and cater to appetites for theatre with perceived local relevance and increasingly mobile and diverse audiences. This article argues that the formulaic melodramas written for less reputable London theatres allowed for just such local identification as well as for coming and going, as playwrights produced dramas which simultaneously traded on their knowledge of managerial preferences and theatrical companies while retaining an inclusive ambiguity in their scripts by avoiding specific political affiliation and curating moments of metatheatrical humour that appealed to audiences’ general knowledge of stage conventions, rather than specific local contexts or affiliations. Focusing on two very different dramatisations of Charles Reade’s novel It Is Never Too Late to Mend, both written by C. H. Hazlewood, this article analyses how the playwright addressed the tastes and capabilities of a network of professionals with whom he was personally connected, while maintaining an essential ambiguity that made these dramas portable across an international dramatic circuit.

Ricerche sul teatro classico spagnolo in Italia e oltralpe (secoli XVI-XVIII)

At the height of its development and up to the eighteenth century, the Spanish classical theatre significantly contributed to the formation of the modern European theatre. Theatre texts and theatrical companies were in fact circulating outside the Iberian peninsula and the Spanish experience of theatre triggered literary debates and reflections that played a central role to the cultural history of Europe, from Neoclassicism to the beginnings of Romanticism. It is a complex phenomenon crossing linguistically and culturally diversified territories, and which therefore needs an inter- and multidisciplinary approach. We tried to respond to this need by involving scholars and researchers in the fields of Hispanic, French, Italian, history of entertainment and musicology for the drafting of this volume.

Review of Partan, O. (2017). Vagabonding masks. The Italian commedia dell’arte in the Russian artistic imagination. Boston: Academic Studies Press. 294 pages

In her book, Olga Partan touches upon theatrical and literary history from the early 1600s, her detailed analysis of certain renowned works of literature and dramatizations revealing their new aspects. The interdisciplinary method of her work enables Partan to create a study which comfortably accommodates Trediakovsky with Gogol, and Dostoevsky; Sumarokov with Block, and Bely; and even Alla Pugachova with Vladimir Nabokov, side by side on its pages. The author of Vagabonding Masks examines their 300-year old adventures in Russian culture, from the times of Peter I. She believes that the Italian genre became part and parcel of Russian culture from the moment when the first Italian theatrical companies were invited to perform at the court of Empress Anna Ioannovna. The book follows a chronological order: starting from the first Russian theatres and all the way to Giorgio Strehler’s tour of the country in the early 2000s: a powerful boost to Modernist theatrical art inRussia, as opposed to the deeply rooted Stanislavsky traditions.

Some additional notes on Shakespeare : his great tragedies from a Slovene perspective

In the first chapter of this study the author stresses the importance of literature and Shakespeare's plays for our age. Although the enigma of Shakespeare's life still concerns many scholars it is relevant only as far as the solutions of some biographical details from Shakespeare's life influence the interpretation of his plays. In the section on feminism the focus of the author's attention is the changed role of women in the present day society as compared to previous centuries. In the final part of the article the role of the main female characters in Shakespeare's great tragedies is discussed. The author suggests that so far their importance has been underestimated and that Shakespeare left some of them open to different interpretations. Hamlet is definitely one of the most popular Shakespeare's plays in Slovenia and in addition to "classical" interpretations of this drama we have seen during the past two decades a number of experimental productions, done by both Slovene and foreign theatrical companies. In Appendix (1) the title of this paper is briefly discussed and the author' a work on Shakespeare is sketched; Appendix (2) presents a rap song on Hamlet written in English by a Slovene author. The song was used in the Glej Eperimental Theatre production (Hamlett/Packard, Ljubljana, 1992).

Joan Littlewood and Her Peculiar (Hi)story as Others Tell It

The theatrical map in London during the 1960s consisted of four notable theatrical companies: the English Stage Company, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre Company, and the Theatre Workshop. The first three companies, although somewhat transformed, fill major roles in British theatre to the present day. What happened to the fourth company, the Theatre Workshop? This question is all the more intriguing in light of the tribute current historical and critical accounts pay to the founder-director of this company, Joan Littlewood. Theatre critics and historians today view Littlewood as a major representative of radical theatre in the 1960s. Littlewood's position during her era, however, was quite a different story, and the tale of then versus the tale of now is a primer in theatre historiography. I will trace that tale in this essay by juxtaposing the diverse receptions she and her works have received during the past forty years.

Frank Coltman: Trouper from Tidioute

The reach of the American theatre between 1870 and 1900 was truly extraordinary, for those were the years when touring combinations crisscrossed the land, finding a ready welcome in countless opera houses, academies of music, and village halls. William Winter, one of the most long-lived of theatrical critics, estimated that by 1880 there were in the United States and Canada about 3,500 towns in which theatrical performances were habitually given in some 5,000 theatres. These hosted more than 250 theatrical companies employing some 5,000 actors. It was a “stirring” theatrical climate, giving employment to countless utility men and women, walking gentlemen, ladies in waiting, second old men and women, soubrettes and comedians—not to mention actors and actresses laying claim to stellar rank.

Organization of Festivals and the Dionysiac Guilds

I. We know fairly well how the City Dionysia at Athens was celebrated in classical times. But although the numerous dramatic festivals of the Hellenistic period were in many respects modelled on the Athenian Dionysia, it is not clear how the performances at these festivals were organized. The difficulty arises from the fact that apart from a few great centres which may have had their own theatre production, playwrights, actors, etc., the majority of cities depended on the travelling of Dionysos’.1 It seems that the of Dionysiac artists were formed early in the third century. Three major Dionysiac associations—the Athenian, the Isthmian and Nemean, and the Ionian and Hellespontian—operated in Greece, Asia Minor, and the islands in Hellenistic times. The question is how these associations functioned. Were they theatrical companies as well as professional guilds? Did they undertake the organization of musical and dramatic performances at various festivals? Was there a division of territories between the and were certain festivals dominated by certain guilds?