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Welcome
to THE INTERNATIONAL
SHAW SOCIETY |
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&
SHAW QUOTATIONS PAGE & by
Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin Biographies
& Autobiographies, Bibliographies, Collections. |
SEVEN STAGES OF SHAW, 1856-1950.
And a
few more: SHAW SLIDE SHOW (Click
on first picture to start slide show)
SHAW AND THE ISS The
International Shaw Society, "The ISS," was founded for the purpose
of keeping George Bernard Shaw talking, his favorite thing, even though he's been
dead since 1950. The acronym “ISS” emphasizes Shaw’s continuing presence, his
“issness,” in the contemporary world, if only as a
talkative spirit with very relevant things to say, and said in a way that’s
rare in its relative sanity, humanity, and civilizing good humor. If you like humor of the hyperbolic,
satiric, and ironic sort, “smiling comedy,” as he called it, Shaw is your
man. What keeps a dead author alive? While
alive, Shaw thought that what kept him going was "sedulous
self-advertisement" and that the only bad publicity was an obituary
(unless you wrote it yourself). But Shaw's afterlife on earth now
depends on theater productions and discussion of his life and works, and
that’s where the ISS comes in. Likely
to meet anywhere in the world and global in its online reach, the ISS now has
members in fifteen countries, on five continents, and grows apace, about half
academics and the rest theater artists or just Shavian enthusiasts. The ISS
invites you to join in the fun and enlightenment of seeing and reading Shaw's
plays and discussing the author and his works. Debate and
discussion were this vegetarian’s “meat.” |
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SHAW’S CORNER &
SHAW’S CORNER AS A THEATRE Calendar of Current Productions (reload if page does not open) |
THE ISS AMONG SHAW SOCIETIES: The
International Shaw Society (and please don’t confuse the ISS with the
International Space Station) was founded in the U.S.A. in 2004 as a
not-for-profit corporation to give Shaw Studies more of an international
reach and perspective, which it has succeeded in doing admirably, with
members now from 15 countries and many contributing to conferences and
journals. Since the mothership, The
Shaw Society UK, founded in 1941, the Bernard Shaw Society (in New York, now
replaced in effect by a theater group called Project Shaw), and the Bernard
Shaw Society of Japan, all have mostly local membership, we thought it was
time to try to get everybody together in a friendly, associative way. ISS conferences and symposia have occurred
in the U.S.A., Canada, Ireland, and the UK, so far, with the next one in 2020
planned for Spain, with “Shaw and Europe" as its theme. |
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Shaw on YouTube by Gabriel Byrne, RTE Documentary Shaw on YouTube by Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin by
Kay Li (both sites have links to everything Shaw; works best with Chrome) |
CFP FOR SHAW
40.2: Contributing
to the internationalizing of Shaw Studies is SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies, with Christopher Wixson
as the General Editor who appoints Guest Editors from around the world. The most recent example of that is in the
planning for SHAW
40.2 (December
2020), with the theme of "Shaw and Legacy," which will be guest-edited by two
individuals intimately connected with a regeneration of interest in Shaw
sparked by Fintan O’Toole’s recent book, Judging Shaw, published by
the Royal Irish Academy, the Guest Editors being Dr. Barry Houlihan (NUI
Galway) who worked as the archive and image researcher for O'Toole's book and
co-curated the exhibition with the Academy series editor Ruth Hegarty (Royal Irish Academy). Abstracts for papers are to be
submitted by 31 May 2019. Submit
abstracts of between 300-500 words or direct inquiries to the guest editors
via email at barry.houlihan@nuigalway.ie and r.hegarty@ria.ie. Applicants will be notified of decision by
30 June 2019. Completed essays must be
submitted by 1 March 2020. Publication
will happen in December 2020. |
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CFP FOR THE 2019 SHAW SYMPOSIUM: The ISS
was founded in principle in 2003 at The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario, its first Symposium was co-hosted by the Shaw Festival in 2004, and
ever since the Festival has co-hosted an annual summer symposium, twice
combined with conferences. The 16th
Annual Summer Symposium will take place on August 15-16-17, 2019 at Niagara-on-the-Lake
(henceforth known as NOTL), during which the Shaw Festival productions of
Shaw’s Getting Married and Man and Superman will be
featured. Abstracts for papers should
be sent to Vice President Jennifer Buckley at jennifer-buckley@uiowa.edu by May
1, 2019. For all the details on the Symposium, see www.shawsociety.org/
SummerSymposium-2019.htm. |
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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN SHAW SERIES: CALL FOR MANUSCRIPTS Books on Shaw continue to be
published at a steady rate, with the latest series being the “Shaw and His
Contemporaries” series sponsored by Palgrave Macmillan. To consider or
purchase books in this series, go to www.springer.com/series/14785?detailsPage=titles and enter the ISS discount code
when purchasing. To inquire about the
possibilities of your own work appearing in the series, please contact the
series editors, Nelson Ritschel at nocrsc@aol.com & Peter Gahan at pgahan@me.com. SHAW FROM THE START After an early production of ARMS AND
THE MAN in London, a review appeared in the New York Times (27 May 1894)
announcing that the play was coming to New York later, and the unknown
reviewer prepared for that by a general introduction to Shaw’s writing and
character. In the middle of the article,
Shaw was summed up this way: “Mr. Shaw has an extremely original mind, and a
strong one, too. Shaw's view of things
may be as queer as Claude Monet's, to whom the grass is pink and the sky is
purple, but like the great impressionist, he has that force of character
which makes the thinking man, who believes in green grass and blue sky, pause
and wonder if he has been wrong all his life.” It’s amazing that In 1894, as Shaw was just
getting started as a playwright, some perceptive critic generally understood
what was coming! But maybe even this
critic wouldn’t have expected “The
Revolutionist’s Handbook.” Or the
coming of G.B.S. HYPERBOLICAL SHAW There was the writer named Shaw and
then there was “G.B.S,” a self-created public man speaking in Shaw’s behalf,
mostly for good and for fun but sometimes he made people wonder if he had
gone too far. Shaw as G.B.S. was the
King of Hyperbole, his favorite tool for stirring the pot, and here are a few
comic examples, on a single theme: “It is my business to find some
order and meaning in the apparently insane farce of life as it happens
higgledy-higgledy-piggledy off the stage.” Letter from GBS to Malcolm Watson, 1905.
See My Dear Watson: Bernard
Shaw’s Letters to a Critic, edited by L.W. Conolly Perhaps his most amusing hyperbole
was this one: “If I am sane, the rest of the
world ought not to be at large.” Well, who hasn’t felt like that on
occasion? Shaw also wondered if other planets
are using Earth for their insane asylum. Jokes, but Shaw was dead serious
about what was behind the G.B.S jokes.
It was just that the most effective way for him to be serious, he
thought, was to have fun doing it and try to persuade by inspiring communal laughter. Which worked most of the time. |
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Copyright Ó by the International Shaw Society, Inc., 2004 |
Comments about and suggestions for things to include
on this website are always welcome.
Send to dietrich@shawsociety.org. |
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