Lena Ashwell

Lena Ashwell
Author: Margaret Leask
Publisher: Univ of Hertfordshire Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2012
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1907396640

Biography of Ashwell with material on her company, the Lena Ashwell Players.

Creative Women of the “Lost Generation”

Creative Women of the “Lost Generation”
Author: Kimberly Francis
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 245
Release: 2023-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000924645

This book explores the creative women of the "Lost Generation" including painters, sculptors, film makers, writers, singers, composers, dancers, and impresarios who all pursued artistic careers in the years leading up to, during, and following World War I. These women’s stories, and the art they created, commissioned, mobilized as propaganda, and performed shed light on the shifting nature of gender norms during this period. With the combined knowledge and expertise from different contributors, chapters in this book consider how modernist practices continued their development in women’s hands during the war through networks forged by and for women artists in the absence of their male colleagues. These chapters also reflect on how, in many cases, the dissolution of these structures after the November 1918 armistice had detrimental consequences for their professional trajectories. This book challenges the place creative women currently hold in the historical record while also clarifying how these artists and impresarios contributed to wartime and post-war culture. This collection of essays will be of great value to scholars interested in social and gender history of the twentieth century, as well as historians of the arts through offering nuanced understanding of the essential work of female creative professionals, highlighting artistic women’s experiences of resistance, mourning, and reinvention in the shadow of the Great War.

Till the Boys Come Home

Till the Boys Come Home
Author: Roger Foss
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2019-01-25
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 075096927X

Ever since the signing of the Armistice in 1918, theatre has played an important part in reflecting the experience of the 'war to end all wars'. But on the Home Front, what role did those involved with British theatre play during those tumultuous four years and three months? Till the Boys Come Home salutes British theatre in wartime, when theatres became powerful generators for escapism, for stirring patriotism, for sharing experiences of loss and joy – and for raising vast amounts of charity money. It brings to life a Britain where theatre-going peaked in popularity, yet became full of the curious contradictions bred by war. Richly illustrated with original programmes, posters and ephemera, author and critic Roger Foss reveals a theatrical powerhouse, where all sections of the profession – from grand Shakespearian knights to lowly concert party artistes – were doing their bit, both at home and on the front line.

Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art

Edith Craig and the Theatres of Art
Author: Katharine Cockin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2017-01-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1472570634

This new biography explores the extraordinary life of Edith Craig (1869-1947), her prolific work in the theatre and her political endeavours for women's suffrage and socialism. At London's Lyceum Theatre in its heyday she worked alongside her mother, Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and Bram Stoker, and gained valuable experience. She was a key figure in creating innovative art theatre work. As director and founder of the Pioneer Players in 1911 she supported the production of women's suffrage drama, becoming a pioneer of theatre aimed at social reform. In 1915 she assumed a leading role with the Pioneer Players in bringing international art theatre to Britain and introducing London audiences to expressionist and feminist drama from Nikolai Evreinov to Susan Glaspell. She captured the imagination of Virginia Woolf, inspiring the portrait of Miss LaTrobe in her 1941 novel Between the Acts, and influenced a generation of actors, such as Sybil Thorndike and Edith Evans. Frequently eclipsed in accounts of theatrical endeavour by her younger brother, Edward Gordon Craig, Edith Craig's contribution both to theatre and to the women's suffrage movement receives timely reappraisal in Katharine Cockin's meticulously researched and wide-ranging biography, released for the seventieth anniversary of Craig's death.

Olivier

Olivier
Author: Francis Beckett
Publisher: Haus Publishing
Total Pages: 1018
Release: 2015-02-15
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1910376183

In the 1930s he established himself as a wide-ranging Shakespearean actor. His marriage in 1940 to Vivien Leigh (his second wife) seemed to complete the image of the romantic star. From the mid-40s he excelled in directing himself in Shakespeare on film, such as his dramatically-shot Henry V (1944), with its timely excesses of patriotism. When the new wave of British drama began in the late 1950s, Olivier was immediately part of it. As an actor of such wide range, and a successful producer and director, Olivier was a natural choice to bring the National Theatre into existence in 1963. Together with his new wife Joan Plowright (they had married in 1961), he built up a brilliant company and repertoire at the Old Vic. Olivier became the first actor to be given a peerage.