The Critics’ Circle Centenary Conference
100 Years of
Criticism: Key Changes
On Friday,
Semptember 27, 2013, I walked in The Central School of Speech and Drama, along
with many others young and old, to watch the Critics’ Circle discuss key
changes in the world of theatrical criticism.
Historical Session
The beginning of the conference started out with two talks focused on
historical criticism. The first speaker was Frances Hughes, Chair of the Irving
Society; she spoke about criticism a century ago. Apparently, not only was this
year the 100th birthday of the creation of the Critics’ Circle, but
it is also that 101st Birthday of the book, Who’s Who in Theatre –
among which, 50 people listed were Critics. It was significant to point out the
importance and large pool of critics available to the world of theatre at the
beginning of the 20th century. Every magazine published in Britain
seemed to have a theatre critic: The Sporting Life had a theatre critic!
Hughes also went on to discuss the most famous theatre critics of the
day, of which, most were playwright/critics. For instance, Max Beerbohm
(1872-1956) whom I had never heard of until this day, was rumored to have seen
and critiqued over 12,000 plays in his lifetime. Max was actually a large critic
of Shaw’s, they were completely different men: Max was a conservative Tory
whereas Shaw was a reformist Fabien. The two men were connected by their great
love of theatre and Max even praised Shaw and his work.
She went on to discuss the critics, Montague and Cole, and how Cole was
very largely responsible for what today know as The Fringe in Edinburgh,
Scotland. It was a wonderful discussion of the theatrical community of
playwrights, actors and critics before the Critics’ Circle was established in
1913.
Then Nicholas de Jongh, and critic and playwright, spoke about critics
and censorship in the 20th Century. Theatre was controlled and
censored in England by The Lord Chamberlain from 1727 until 1968. It was in
1967, just a year before the censorship was removed, at the Hampstead Theatre
(just next to Central), appeared in Ballad of a False Doorman, in which he
stands with his back to the audience, completely bared from the torso down. A
person (whom I’m sad to say I did not record the name) wrote to the Lord Chamberlain
in a rage about this play, and the sight of a man’s “hideous bottom” shown to
the audience. The Lord Chamberlain was for the most part a Conservative
Gentleman, and any play that was ‘for hire’ must be submitted and approved by
the Lord Chamberlain.
One
way the theatre companies and playwrights got around this rule, which was
actually something Dr. Godwin referred to often in Theatre History at CNU, were
‘clubs’ with subscriptions. So if you had a subscription to certain special
theatrical clubs, you could enjoy your Tolstoy and your George Bernard Shaw who
were two of the most censored playwrights of the 1900’s.
One prime example of the conservatives
of The Lord Chamberlain’s office, a musical (I think, not certain): The World of Paul Slickey (sp?). Sex is
not something The Lord Chamberlain wanted on stage, any mention, reference,
hint or insinuation that the act every happened was not appropriate. Well Paul
Slickey began with the curtain rising on a man lying atop a woman, and getting
up to tuck his shirt back into his trousers. The woman was also wearing
breeches and a slip but she did not tuck in her slip. Well, bad enough that
they hinted that the two had just had intercourse out-of-wedlock, but she
hadn’t even attempted to put herself perfectly to right directly after
(basically, she was a slut). The play was instructed by The Lord Chamberlain’s
office to change so that the two were sitting side by side on the bed, fully
dressed, and her slip must be tucked into her breeches.
Kenneth
Tynan, whom you can read more about in the Books section of this blog, was one
of the first critics and theatre professionals to lead a fight against The Lord
Chamberlain and censorship in British Theatre. But it was really the
playwrights, not the critics, who lead the fight against censorship and the
eventual dissolution of Theatrical Censorship in the UK in 1968.
What I took
from these:
Obviously,
what I wrote about above is what stood out to me the most from these two
lectures. I learned a lot, I had no idea that The Lord Chamberlain’s Office and
it’s control of British Theatre was around for that long. I definitely think
now that we owe many thanks to John Osborne and the other playwright’s of his
generation who fought against this control. Personally, it reminds me of the
America in the 1980s and 1990s, when the NEA, the National Endowment for the
Arts, which was criticized by the public for funding artists who used sexual
references and homosexuality as the subject of their art.
These
were two fantastic speakers, and I feel like I was very lucky to be able to
listen and be a part of this special day. In the future, throughout today and
tomorrow, I will be adding more posts from the other talks onto this blog.
Next will be
what I gained from the panel on “Theatre Criticism Now.”
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