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The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War

Helen E. M. Brooks (University of Kent, Canterbury) Michael Hammond (University of Southampton)

$43.95

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English
Cambridge University Press
19 October 2023
This is the first comprehensive guide to British theatre's engagement with the First World War over the last century, from 1900 to the Armistice Day centenary in 2018. Considering theatre as both an industry and literary-cultural artform, it provides a contextual grounding in the prelude to the conflict and coverage of post-war plays as well as wartime performances. Lively chapters from leading scholars explore diverse genres and practices, from Shakespeare to melodrama, while focusing on topics including regionality, national identity, propaganda, commemoration, gender, censorship and international influences. Presenting original scholarship in an accessible and engaging manner, this Companion establishes theatre as a vital means of understanding wartime experiences, and a central feature in commemoration and remembrance.
Edited by:   ,
Imprint:   Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Weight:   437g
ISBN:   9781108722766
ISBN 10:   1108722768
Series:   Cambridge Companions to Theatre and Performance
Pages:   300
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Helen Brooks is Professor of Cultural and Creative History at the University of Kent. Prior to working on First World War theatre she published widely on eighteenth-century theatre. Her book Actresses, Gender, and the Eighteenth-Century Stage: Playing Women was published in 2014. She is an editor of the Exeter Performance Studies series and was associate editor of the Wiley Encyclopaedia of British Literature: 1660–1789. She was a co-investigator with the Gateways to the First World War centre (2014–2019). Michael Hammond is Emeritus Fellow in Film History at the University of Southampton. His international reputation rests on a large body of work that spans both silent film history and contemporary film and television studies. In the field of silent film history he is known for his monographs, The Big Show: British Cinema Culture in the Great War, 1914–1918 (2006) and The Great War in Hollywood Memory, 1919–1939 (2019). He is co-editor of British Silent Cinema in the Great War (2011) and The Great War and the Moving Image (2017).

Reviews for The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War

'This kaleidoscopic volume offers a welcome re-evaluation of the ways in which the First World War changed theatre-making and play-going in Britain. There will be much here for students to explore and more seasoned researchers to discover, from how the theatre supported, resisted, and dealt with the many challenges of the conflict to how theatre has continued to respond to the war in the century that has followed.' Brad Kent, Université Laval 'Helen Brooks' and Michael Hammond's Companion to Theatre of the First World War is a significant milestone in critical scholarship on British theatre and the First World War. The Companion brings together fifteen expert scholars who range widely over the topic, and collectively remind us of the importance of remembering 'ordinary' people's lives during wartime. The essays in the Companion offer original and thoughtful approaches to a period of European history all too often subject to kneejerk patriotism and pompous memorialisation. The Companion to Theatre of the First World War is about more than the Great War: it is a guide to the foundations of twentieth-century popular modernity.' Kate Newey, University of Exeter


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