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<\/p>\nby Phoebe Geary<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Unequivocally, World War One\u2019s literary legacy has moulded the modern western canon more so than any other historical conflict. After all, it was the war that inspired the jolting poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and it was the war that produced an array of modern classics, most notably All Quiet on the Western Front<\/em> and A Testament of Youth. <\/em>Yet, with the exception of Sheriff’s Journey\u2019s End<\/em>, a critical vacuum has formed around the largely forgotten theatre of World War One despite the plethora of plays the event has inspired.<\/p>\n My scholarship aimed to address this. Over five research-intensive weeks, my goal was to rediscover these overlooked plays, recover critical and theatrical responses to them, and understand why certain narratives have been majorly ignored or overshadowed.<\/p>\n My first two weeks of research focused on the plays of Miles Malleson, a writer best known for his comedic film performances than has war plays, \u2018D\u2019 Company<\/em> and Black \u2018Ell. <\/em>At the Cadbury Research Library, I had the incredible opportunity to handle first and second edition pamphlets of the plays \u2013 these were incredibly delicate pieces of work that included fascinating prefaces. In particular, the preface to the second edition was of great significance: it contained Hansard extracts detailing parliament\u2019s debate over the confiscation of Malleson\u2019s plays under the Defence Against the Realms Act (D.O.R.A).<\/p>\n Finding material relating to these two plays could be incredibly difficult (they\u2019ve been so starkly neglected by most WW1 academia!) and so I had to think outside the box to find more unconventional resources. One of the most memorable documents I encountered relating to the theatrical production of Black \u2018Ell <\/em>was the play\u2019s revival in times of public protest against war. For example, it was fascinating to see Two\u2019s Company\u2019s <\/em>productions of the play re-emerge under the Blair government in response to the Iraq War, highlighting the enduring relevance of the play\u2019s message. As the Tricia Thorns (director) and Graham Cowley (producer) explained, \u2018There are so many echoes here of these plays written more than a lifetime earlier that there seemed no better way of expressing our own feelings about the war than to do these plays\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n Following the narrative of the \u2018maimed hero\u2019 outlined within Malleson\u2019s work, I devoted the next two weeks of research to The Silver Tassie <\/em>by Sean O\u2019Casey. The Cadbury Research Library holds a large file dedicated to this play and related ephemera, including programmes, letters, artistic sketches and many, many, reviews (these alone took me about a week to get through!) What was great about this collection was that it included photographs from actual productions of the play. It was surreal to see the immersive staging and set design of the Augustus John trench scene that so many critics had referenced in their reviews. Learning more about the theatrical background of the play was also incredibly intriguing \u2013 several of the reviews referenced the Abbey Theatre\u2019s rejection of the play, highlighting the contested legacy of 1916 in Irish memory.<\/p>\n The final week of my scholarship was dedicated to itemising and collating these documents into two cohesive, accessible student resources for the final year modules Remembering World War One <\/em>and After the Deluge<\/em>. This was one of the most rewarding aspects of the scholarship \u2013 seeing my hard work finally come together and materialise itself left me genuinely proud of the work I had produced over the summer. This scholarship has really boosted by confidence in my own academic potential and confirmed my desire to undertake a master\u2019s degree to further my studies.<\/p>\n Overall, I really recommend this scholarship to anyone considering a career in academia \u2013 it is an excellent opportunity to build your skill set and participate in a large-scale research project. The scholarship also challenges students to become independent problem-solvers, and for this I am very grateful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Phoebe Geary Unequivocally, World War One\u2019s literary legacy has moulded the modern western canon more so than any other historical conflict. After all, it was the war that inspired the jolting poetry of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, and it was the war that produced an array of modern classics, most notably All Quiet … Continue reading “War and Anti-War: Theatrical Responses to the First World War”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":745,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.bham.ac.uk\/calstudentresearch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}