While the dialogical relationship between the early twentieth-century British theatre and the rise of socialism is well documented, analysis has tended to focus on the role of the playwright in the dissemination of socialist ideas. As a contrast, in this article Philippa Burt examines the directorial work of Harley Granville Barker, arguing that his plans for a permanent ensemble company were rooted in his position as a member of the Fabian Society. With reference to Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and Maria Shevtsova's development of it in reference to the theatre, this article identifies a correlation between Barker's political and artistic approaches through extrapolating the central tenets of his theory on ensemble theatre and analyzing them alongside the central tenets of Fabianism. Philippa Burt is currently completing her PhD in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. This article is developed from a paper presented at the conference on ‘Politics, Performance, and Popular Culture in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ at the University of Lancaster in July 2011.
When Harley Granville Barker was invited to stage a theatre season in New York following the outbreak of the First World War, senior figures within British politics seized on it as an opportunity to promote the British war effort in the United States. It was, however, Barker's impromptu decision to extend his stay and tour Euripides’ The Trojan Women to major colleges on the East Coast that saw him come close to realizing this goal. Through an examination of the production, the discourse that surrounded it, and the changing diplomatic relations between Britain and the USA, Philippa Burt explores in this article the extent to which Barker used Euripides as a propaganda tool through which to engage and educate the largely isolationist North American public. At the same time, she argues that Barker challenged the propaganda machine by refusing to perpetuate the dominant nationalistic and xenophobic narratives and, instead, intended a condemnation of all war. Philippa Burt is a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her previous publications include numerous articles and a chapter on Barker's work with choruses in the forthcoming The Great European Stage Directors, Vol. 4: Reinhardt, Jessner, Barker (Bloomsbury Methuen).
Theodore Komisarjevsky was a prominent figure in the inter-war British theatre until his migration to North America in 1936. While recent studies have foregrounded the various artistic factors that influenced his work and his eventual departure, little attention has been placed on the sociopolitical issues. Most notably, there has been no serious consideration of the impact that his nationality had on the opportunities that were available to him. This article examines Komisarjevsky's work in relation to the growing nationalistic and Russophobic attitudes in Britain during the 1920s and 1930s. It focuses particularly on his series of productions at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, and shows the subsequent critical outrage to be rooted in a desire to protect Shakespeare and, by extension, Britain as a whole from the 'interference' of a Russian director. Dr Philippa Burt is a lecturer in the Department of Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. She has previously published articles on Harley Granville Barker and Joan Littlewood, and is the recent recipient of a Harry Ransom Research Fellowship in the Humanities at the University of Texas at Austin.Keywords: inter-war theatre, anti-alienism, xenophobia, Shakespeare Memorial Theatre, Antony and Cleopatra, cultural ownership, émigrés of the Old Vic, Komisarjevsky found that the production, and the season as a whole, lacked substance and was an example of 'obvious "loan-propaganda"'. 2 Most damaging to his ego was the noticeable absence of the ideas and approaches he had
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