Sheffield: 'Golden Generation' British Theater Conference

A Golden Experience

by Poonam Ganglani

I slammed the alarm clock shut, as per my morning routine. But unlike a usual day where I’d have allowed myself another half-hour of half-sleep, I pushed the covers aside, and sleepily got out of my bed in a budget hostel at King’s Cross St. Pancras. Today was the day that I’d come all the way to London for, sacrificing two precious extra weeks of summer vacation in India, before the start of my second year as a Mundus student: Today, I’d be presenting my research paper on the Lord Chamberlain, at the ‘Golden Generation’ British Theatre Conference at the British Library.

I’d practiced the evening before at the BL, just before Prof. Dominic Shellard – who leads the Post-War British Theatre Archive Project – invited me to join the rest of the group from Sheffield University for dinner at Pizza Express. It had been a hectic first day at the conference, so the pizza was well deserved. There were discussions on the relevance of the Theatre Archive Project, jointly run by Sheffield University and the British Library; paper presentations on the Oral History strand of the project; and interviews with several theatre personalities. The last session was a much-awaited interview, and I was excited for this one in particular, for it was with a playwright who I’d studied in my BA Lit days in India, and whom I never imagined I’d meet—Harold Pinter.

 A silence filled the hall as a seventy something Harold stepped in, cautiously walked up the stage behind his interviewer, and sat on a chair across him. The interviewer made an introduction, and then (quite strangely) a video clipping of a past interview with Harold was played on the screen behind him. Almost ten minutes of watching a silent Harold on stage passed this way, and by the time the interviewer asked him the first question, I was rather anxious to hear him speak, as I imagine the others too might have been. There were a few seconds of tense silence after the question was asked. I held my breath until Harold finally answered, in a deep and raspy voice. He answered most questions in short sentences and, I must add, in this rather terrifying way. I don’t remember what the question was exactly… something about a past peer and friend. There were so many questions I’d have liked to ask him myself: Did he anticipate that his first play in the 1950s would have the impact that it did? (The Birthday Party, if I’m not mistaken); Did he have a lot of interaction with Samuel Beckett? (his predecessor in terms of existentialist drama, with the British première of Godot in the mid-1950s); Did he have any particularly difficult experiences with the Lord Chamberlain? (The censor of British Theatre until 1968, who described The Birthday Party as ‘an insane, pointless play’… one of my Chamberlain favorites.) Unfortunately, none of these questions were asked, and I felt as if I’d bitten into an apple and not been allowed to swallow it.

That was the first day of the conference, 8 September. It was now the second and final day of the conference, 9 September, and at 9:30 am, I walked across to the BL, having cleverly booked a nearby hostel so as to avoid the stressful ride on the London underground (aka ‘tube’). At this point I must say that being a delegate at an international conference was in itself a very exciting experience: right from receiving conference packs, to following the day’s program, and intermingling with people of similar interests during wine receptions. Looking forward to the day ahead, I pinned on my name badge (it allows for easier fraternizing during tea breaks you see), and went through the day’s program. The day proceeded as planned: There was an interview of the playwrights Peter Nichols and Ann Jellicoe; a discussion on Repertory Theatre; an interview with Theatre Workshop actor Harry Greene; and my personal favorite (perhaps because of pre-existing bias), a paper presentation on the decline of theatre censorship, by Dr. Steve Nicholson.

It was in fact, Steve’s lecture on the LC many months earlier at Sheffield University, that first incited my interest in British theatre censorship. I’d then done some research on an unpublished play entitled Lady Chatterley by John Hart (based on the novel by DH Lawrence), using the Lord Chamberlain archives at the British Library. Working with manuscripts made the process of research extremely gratifying, and presenting that paper at this conference – as was suggested to me by my course supervisor Dr. Alec Patton -- was truly the icing on the cake. 

The ‘New Scholars Forum’ on Day Two took place during Lunch Break, and there were three of us lined up for it. I was the third and last one (which is always a good thing!), and I was a little nervous to begin with. But once I moved into the main text, I heard my voice flow evenly, felt my eyes shift automatically between my paper and the audience, and thoroughly enjoyed sharing my work. The audience seemed to enjoy it as well, judging from the laughs and reactions during the presentation (quotes from the Lord Chamberlain’s Readers Reports and Correspondence tend to be very amusing at times). It was a good feeling to be presenting my paper not only to academics, but to people who constituted the post-war British theatre period that I had read so much about. I ended my presentation feeling satisfied with the culmination of my research.

The conference ended that day, with a discussion on the further continuation of the Theatre Archives project and a closing plenary. Before leaving, I visited the ‘Golden Generation’ exhibition on display at the Main Library, featuring items from the BL’s collections related to a variety of subjects: The Royal Court, Laurence Olivier, The Lord Chamberlain, Peggy Ramsay and so many others.

With that, my two-day participation at an academic conference came to a close. I curled up in bed that night (literally, since the beds in these hostels aren’t very spacious you know), quite happy that I chose to come to London for the conference, marking the end of my first Mundus year, and the beginning of my second one with a truly golden experience.