Sheffield: Poonam Ganglani's presentation

About the Conference

‘The Golden Generation?’ New Light on British Theatre between 1945 and 1968

Monday 8 September and Tuesday 9 September 2008


Venue: The British Library Conference Centre
96 Euston Road
London
NW1 2DB

The Arts and Humanities Research Council British Library Theatre Archive Project (www.bl.uk/theatrearchive) is based at the University of Sheffield. Its aim is to reinvestigate the key period of British Theatre between 1945 and 1968.

This two day international conference will present some of the findings of the project´s three strands: the Archive Strand, the Scripts Strand and the Oral History Strand.

It will also explore in an entertaining and informative manner some of the recollections of this period of the practitioners and members of the theatre audiences who have been interviewed by the Project, many of whom point out that the theatre of the period embraced much more than Angry Young Men, important as the work of the Royal Court was.

Highlights include sessions on regional and repertory theatre; Michel St Denis; Harold Pinter´s The Room; the British Library´s post-war theatre archives; Theatre Workshop; the Royal Court; and the role of women in the period. There will also be keynote speakers, including Alan Plater; a New Scholars Forum; an assessment of the period by Dominic Shellard, Project Leader and author of Kenneth Tynan: Theatre Writings, (Nick Hern Books, 2007), Kenneth Tynan: A Life (Yale, 2003) and British Theatre Since the War (Yale, 2000); short presentations on the interview process by student interviewers; a panel discussion with practitioners who will discuss their own personal recollections of the period; and a wine reception to allow informal questioning and discussion. 

For details and registration, log on to:  http://www.shef.ac.uk/goldengeneration/index.html

Paper Presentation, Poonam Ganglani

Research Statement: The Reader’s Report and correspondence for John Hart’s Lady Chatterley show how the Lord Chamberlain files serve as a unique and valuable tool for historiographers in research related to unpublished plays. 

It is little known that a theatrical adaptation of D.H. Lawrence’s notorious novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, was staged less than a year after the end of the Chatterley trial. Unpublished, the play remained unrecorded in the history of British theatre.

There is perhaps no other trace left of John Hart’s Lady Chatterley apart from what has been retained in the Lord Chamberlain archives at the British Library, as is the case with other unpublished plays of the time. My paper studies how the preserved manuscripts in the Lord Chamberlain correspondence files for Lady Chatterley reflect the social and theatrical landscape at the time of the play’s performance (1961), and examines the ways in which the Lord Chamberlain files serve as a valuable tool for the post-war historiographer in research related to unpublished plays.

Themes: The Lord Chamberlain, custodian of morals; dangerous power of stage semiotics; self-censorship; sexual impropriety on stage; and others.