International
Shaw Society
Table of Contents
A Message from the ISS President
A Message from
the ISS Vice-President
Shaw in the Theatre in 2017: A Sampler
Shaw Meetings and Conferences in 2017
Upcoming Events and Calls for Papers
ISS Travel Grant Winners for 2017
Special Thanks from the ISS Treasurer
A
Message from the President of the ISS
With world events and leaders no doubt making Shaw spin in his grave, it
is a balm to reflect on the accomplishments of the ISS in 2017. The “Shaw
at The Shaw” conference was a delight, our first ever at the Shaw
Festival. Highlights included talks from the new artistic director of the
Shaw Festival Tim Carroll and the noted Irish intellectual Fintan O’Toole,
whose recently published Judging Shaw
is a work worthy of a place on everyone’s bookshelf. Of particular note
was the concluding round table of young(er) scholars
who spoke with great passion about the future of Shaw studies. There will
be no major conference next year, though we will do our usual Summer Symposium
in July. I am looking forward myself to this brief respite but am also
excited to think about (hopefully) our first continental conference. This
year’s conference also marked the passing of several notable Shavian scholars,
and we paid tribute to Christopher Innes. There will be some big changes in the
next year, with our esteemed founding president and current treasurer
announcing his “last year” in service as Treasurer. I hope that there
will be a slew of volunteers to help lead the ISS into the future, but, for the
moment, I am grateful for the ones we have. I am grateful to the executive
board for their continued hard work, generosity, and good fellowship. I
am grateful for Gustavo Rodriguez Martin’s regularly updated catalogue of all
things Shavian, an on-going testament to the value and need for Shaw’s works
and ideas made manifest. I am also grateful for Chris Wixson’s
excellent stewardship and leadership as the recently appointed editor for SHAW and of this newsletter. As a
hopefully brighter 2018 beckons us forward, I remain invigorated by the good
work so many of you do.
Michael O’Hara
Associate Dean, College of Fine Arts
Sursa
Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts
Ball State University
A
Message from the Vice-President of the ISS
I have one
more thank you to add to what our merry and pithy POTISS has already said, and
that goes to David Staller. After regaling us at NOTL with a
scholarly paper, David's Project Shaw's "autumn in New York"
sparkled in new ways. As David completed his "Women Take the Stage"
year (so named in anticipation of our first American woman President
(sigh), he introduced his audiences to two suffrage-era plays directed by
women: Rachel Crothers’s A Man's
World from 1910 and Elizabeth Robins’s Votes for Women! from 1907. The
talk-backs were filled with enthusiastic audience comments, and Wall Street Journal theatre critic Terry
Teachout was featured for the Crothers evening and wondered how he did not know
the play. Handbills for audience participation reading Votes for Women! delighted the audience.
In between these two was Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion, the play written for Ellen
Terry in 1906. In mid-December, David took his audience back in time to
1893 for Wilde's A Woman of No Importance
with Martha Plimpton and directed by Charlotte Moore, who has been the artistic
director of the Irish Rep for thirty years. Moore and the cast were
struck by Wilde's out-front feminist critique within the bounds of Victorian
melodrama, and at least a couple of audience responders brought Crothers and
Robins back into the conversation. Bravo, David, and thanks for letting
me be in these talkbacks as Prof. but of course more importantly the face of
the ISS.
Happiest of holiday wishes for all of the ISS and hopes for all we
hold dear as we turn the page to 2018.
As always, it has been my honor/pleasure to serve,
Ellen Dolgin
Chair, English Department
Co-Chair, Gender Studies
Dominican College of Blauvelt
SHAW ON STAGE IN 2017:
A SAMPLER
1) SHAW IN CHICAGO
The ShawChicago Theater Company
celebrated its 23rd season with productions of Misalliance (17 September
to 10 October 2016), Margaret Raether’s
adaptation of P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves
Intervenes (26 November to 19 December 2016), and Heartbreak
House (4 March to 27 March 2017), all directed by Robert Scogin,
Artistic Director. The
24th season features productions of
The Devil’s
Disciple, Margaret Raether’s adaption of P. G.
Wodehouse’s Jeeves in Bloom, and Noel
Coward’s Hay Fever. See
http://shawchicago.org.
In other Windy City
news, Jay Tunney was
honored with a “Bernie” at their annual Gala in May for his support of ShawChicago. The award is presented to individuals
and organizations “who have helped keep the works of GBS alive." The
event takes place at one of the oldest private clubs in Chicago, The Casino,
and includes a short performance, dinner, and live auction. On June 2, 2018,
the International Shaw Society will receive a “Bernie” Award, and Richard
Dietrich will be presented an individual “Bernie” upon his retirement as an
officer of the ISS.
2) SHAW IN NEW YORK
The Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG), headed by producer and
director David Staller, continues to stage a concert reading of one Shaw play
per month at Symphony Space (2537 Broadway at West 95th Street, New York City). Celebrating “100 Years of Women’s
Rights,” the 2017 season, the GTG’s twelfth, included Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, You Never Can Tell, Press Cuttings, Getting
Married, Captain Brassbound’s
Conversion, and Shaw-related events..
For more information, contact info@gingoldgroup.org or go to http://gingoldgroup.org/project-shaw/.
3) SHAW IN WASHINGTON, D.C.
In 2017, the Washington Stage Guild
produced Widowers’ Houses (28
September through 22 October) and “As Far as Thought Can Reach” (23 March
through 16 April), the conclusion of their multi-year cycle of productions of
Shaw’s “Metabiological Pentateuch,” Back to Methuselah, directed by the WSG’s artistic
director Bill Largess. For information, go to http://stageguild.org/performances/.
4) SHAW AT NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE
The 2017 Shaw Festival,
the first to be led by Artistic Director Tim Carroll and the 56th in
its history, featured Shaw’s Saint Joan
and Androcles and the Lion, both
directed by Tim Carroll. The 2018 season (4 April to 28 October) will include How He Lied to Her Husband and The Man of Destiny, both directed by
Philip Akin, and O’Flaherty V.C.,
directed by Kimberley Rampersad. For further information about the Festival’s
2018 season, write to Shaw Festival, Post Office Box 774, Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario, Canada, L0S 1J0; or call 1-800-511-SHAW [7429] or 905-468-2153; or go
to www.shawfest.com.
Time to Renew Your ISS Membership for
2018
https://shawsociety.org/2018membership.htm
5) SHAW AT AYOT ST LAWRENCE
For information about summer 2018 performances of Shaw plays
at Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, Hertfordshire, by Michael Friend
Productions, contact Sue Morgan at Sue.Morgan@nationaltrust.org.uk or keep an eye on https://shawsociety.org.uk. The plays staged in 2017, its 26th
season, were Major Barbara (23 to 25
June) and Too True to Be Good (21 to
23 July). Michael also took a couple of productions on tour, Press Cuttings to the Pentameters
Theatre, Hampstead (7 to 26 March) and Too
True to Be Good to the Sarah Thorne Theatre, Broadstairs
(27 to 30 July). For a wonderful photographic record of
many of these performances, go to www.mfp.org.uk/Personal/Albumpersonal.htm.
For a delightful
account of these productions, see R. F. Dietrich’s illustrated article “‘Shaw’s
Corner’ as a Theater” in SHAW 31 (2011):
234-52, which in an Appendix includes a chronology of Shaw’s Corner productions
from 1960 to 2017. Go to https://shawsociety.org/Shaw's-Corner-Theater.htm
to see a version that has the photos in color and that provides an updated
Appendix on the listing of productions of Shaw’s plays at Shaw’s Corner.
6) SHAW IN LONDON
The Shaw Society (UK)
was founded in 1941, and its current president is Shaw biographer Sir Michael
Holroyd. For many years the Society met
monthly in Conway Hall in Red Lion Square, London, but recently it has
announced that it will be shifting to a new venue at the Actors Centre just off
Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of the West End theatre district. Its official address is 1a Tower Street, off
Earlham Street, London WC2H 9NP. It
meets from January to June and September to November at 7:00 pm, for talks,
lectures, and play readings. For more information and a sample issue of the
society’s publication, The Shavian
(edited by Anne and Martin Wright), click “Play Reading Group” at www.shawsociety.org.uk.
You can subscribe to The Shavian when using the ISS
membership form at www.shawsociety.org/2018membership.htm.
Jointly with the H.G. Wells Society and the Language Centre,
London School of Economics, in association with the Women’s Library, the Shaw
Society held a conference entitled “H.G. Wells and Bernard Shaw: Socialism and
the Irrational” on September 23, 2017 at the LSE. Papers focused on politics,
religion, and philosophy in the works of Wells and/or Shaw, and the context for
those discussions was as follows: “Close friends and – at times
– bitter rivals, H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw stood in the public mind for the
belief that men and women could be persuaded by rational argument to support
Fabian socialism, scientific and industrial development, and world citizenship.
They took up controversial and often conflicting positions on internationalism
and revolution (especially the Russian revolution), war, feminism, democracy,
human rights, and much else. But there are limits to rationalism in both
writers' thought.”
7) SHAW IN JAPAN
The Bernard Shaw
Society of Japan had another active year. Its Spring meeting was held at Sugamo Satellite, Jumonji
University, Tokyo, on 10 June 2017. Shoko Matsumoto gave a paper entitled “Marriage and Divorce in Getting Married” that
explored Shaw’s play through the lens of feminism; Nicholas Williams
analyzed puzzling stage environments in a talk called
“A Theatrical Web of Obscure Events and Equally Obscure Characterizations: An
Interpretation of Too True to Be Good (1932)”; and Minoru Morioka, in
“Philosophy of Life in The Man of Destiny,”
situated the characterization of Napoleon within the evolution of Shaw’s
Superman characters.
The
Society’s third Shaw Seminar took place at the Atami Dai-Ichi Building in Atami
City, Shizuoka Prefecture on
September 23rd and focused on the topic “Shaw and the Revolutionary
in Fin-de-siècle London." A meeting of the Board was followed by a panel
and discussion, chaired by Hisashi Morikawa. The roster of presentations
included “The Budding of Socialism in Shaw’s Earliest Plays” (Tatsuo Ohtsuka), “Shaw and Fabian Society” (Minoru Morioka), and
“William Archer’s Theory of Plays” (Ryuichi Oura).
The autumn
meeting of the BSSJ was held on November 25th at the Sakae Satellite
Campus of Aichi Gakuin University,Nagoya. Papers
presented included “British Society Experiencing
Lamps: Light and Darkness in Heartbreak House” by Mika Matsumoto
(analyzing Shaw’ splay in the context of the development of lighting
technology); “Japanese Men Who Saw Suffragettes” by
Kazumi Shimizu; and “Mrs. Warren’s Profession:
A Well-Made Discussion Play” by Hisashi Morikawa (exploring the play within the
tradition of both well-made and discussion plays).
8) SHAW AROUND THE GLOBE
As there were countless
other productions of Shaw’s plays around the world, we regret that we haven’t
space to mention them
all. However, you can get notices of them by subscribing to Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.
For links to some of the Shaw plays
performed in the USA, Canada and the UK, go to
http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca
and look (to the far right) at the column headed International Shaw Calendar.
A click on any play title will link you to a website giving
production details. For past performances of Shaw plays, go to http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/past-and-present-performances/shaw-calendar-archives/.
For reviews of past performances of Shaw plays at the Shaw Festival, go to http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/learn-about-our-partners-2/shaw-festival/shaw-festival-productions-reviews/
These invaluable resources are updated
regularly by Kay Li (York University, Toronto, Canada), who deserves our
collective Shavian applause for her ongoing work on behalf of GBS!
SHAW MEETINGS AND CONFERENCES IN
2017
1) THE 41st
ANNUAL COMPARATIVE DRAMA CONFERENCE The Shaw session at the 41st
annual Comparative Drama Conference (6 to 8 April 2017) at Rollins College in
Winter Park, Florida, was chaired by Tony J. Stafford (University of Texas, El
Paso) and included the following presentations: “Shaw’s Heterochronous
Histories: Saint Joan and Beyond”
(Lawrence Switzky, University of Toronto), “Shaw’s Creation of Alternative
Spaces for Governance in The
Millionairess” (Christa Zorn, Indiana University Southeast), and “Shaw and
the Myth of Don Juan: The Strange Case of Richard Mansfield and The Devil’s Disciple” (Oscar Giner,
Arizona State University).
2) The “Shaw at The Shaw”
Conference was held
at Niagara-on-the-Lake (21-25 July 2017), sponsored by the Academy of the
Shaw Festival, York University, and the International Shaw Society. Featured speakers
included Tim Carroll (new Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival), Thomas
Postlewait (School of Drama, University of Washington), and Fintan O’Toole
(Columnist, Literary Editor, and Drama Critic for The Irish Times). Special activities included two Shaw Festival
theatrical performances (Saint Joan
and Androcles and the Lion) and
discussions with cast members, ten sessions of panel presentations, two
Shaw-themed music recitals, and a concert reading of The Man of Destiny.
3)
There
were two special Shaw sessions at the 2017 Modern Language Association
convention (5 to 8 January) in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Presided
over by Jeff Dailey (Five Towns College, New York), one session,
“Aspects of Shaw”, was sponsored by the The Lyrica Society for Word-Music Relations
and included three papers: “George Bernard Shaw's Guide to Musical Theater”
(Jeff Dailey); “Shaw in South Africa” (Tracy J.R. Collins, Central Michigan
University); and “That Shavian Rag” (Benjamin Poore,
University of York). The other session, “Shaw, Modernism, and Utopia”, sponsored by the International Shaw
Society, was chaired by Jennifer Buckley (University of Iowa) and also included
three papers: “Aging, Utopia, and Bernard Shaw’s Back to Methuselah”
(Siân Adiseshiah,
University of Lincoln); “Utopia and Endless War: Major Barbara and the
Urbanization of Creative-Destructive Capitalism” (Desmond Harding, Central
Michigan University); and “Utopias of Law and Artifice: Shaw, Wilde, and Sexual
Modernism” (Richard Allen Kaye, Hunter College, CUNY). The panel’s description
was as follows:
“Utopia has always been a political issue, an unusual destiny for a
literary form,” writes Frederic Jameson in Archaeologies of the Future.
One writer Jameson takes up in his account of literary utopias is George
Bernard Shaw, whose Back to Methuselah (1921) he reads as an optimistic
allegorical account of class struggle in the waning days of the British Empire.
Writing in 2005, Jameson detected a general resurgence in utopian thinking,
which had been considered dangerous during the Cold War, and retrograde in
progressive cultural movements predicated on the value of difference. It is not
surprising, then, that he emphasizes the progressive aspects of Shaw’s
socialism, rather than the authoritarian sympathies and tendencies scholars
such as Matthew Yde (2013) have detected in Methuselah and in Shaw’s
writing more generally.
Both Jameson’s and Yde’s books participate in a
recent resurgence in critical discourse on utopia, and especially modernist
utopias. From high modernism (Surette 2011) to “hippie modernism” (Blauvelt et
al., 2015) to “utopia limited” (DeKoven, 2004),
scholars across the arts and humanities have reassessed the intersections of
utopia and modernism over the past decade. This panel contributes to that discourse
by claiming Bernard Shaw’s distinctive place in it.”
Jennifer Buckley will be presiding over a Shaw Session at the 2018 MLA
convention in New York City entitled “Revolutionary States: George Bernard
Shaw, 1918” and featuring papers by James Armstrong, Virginia Costello, Ellen
Dolgin, and Martin Meisel.
For all the details see the website at https://shawsessions.mla.hcommons.org.
UPCOMING
EVENTS & CALLS FOR PAPERS
1)
THE 41st ANNUAL
COMPARATIVE DRAMA CONFERENCE will be held at Rollins
College, Winter Park, Florida, from 5 to 7 April 2018. Please go to http://comparativedramaconference.org/
for
details.
2)
The 14th
Annual Shaw Symposium, co-sponsored by the ISS and The Shaw Festival, will
take place from 27 to 29 July 2018 at
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. The deadline for paper proposals and applications
for Bryden Scholarships and ISS Travel Grants is April 1, 2018; while papers on
anything and everything Shaw are always welcome, talks that focus on the Shaw
plays the Festival is producing this year (O’Flaherty, V.C., How He
Lied to Her Husband, and The Man of Destiny) are especially desirable. Please send a 300-500
word abstract, and, if you are not known to the committee, a brief letter of
introduction and CV to Professor Lawrence Switzky at lawrenceswitzky@gmail.com.
For information on ISS Travel Grants and Bryden Scholarships, go to https://shawsociety.org/Grants-Scholarships-2018.htm. For
all the details on the Summer Shaw Symposium, go to https://shawsociety.org/SummerSymposium-2018.htm.
TOP
Time
to Renew Your ISS Membership for 2018
https://shawsociety.org/2018membership.htm
SHAW SCHOLARSHIP: BOOKS ABOUT SHAW
This year saw the publication of and
numerous events surrounding the publication of Fintan O’Toole’s Judging Shaw
(Royal Irish Academy).
There has also been much activity in Palgrave
Macmillan’s new series, “Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries,” edited by Nelson
O’Ceallaigh Ritschel and Peter Gahan. 2017 volumes in the series include Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Webb on Poverty
and Equality in the Modern World, 1905-1914 by Peter Gahan, Bernard Shaw, W.T. Stead, and the New Journalism by Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, Crimes and Punishments and Bernard Shaw by Bernard Dukore, and Bernard
Shaw’s Marriages and Misalliances edited by Bob Gaines. Forthcoming
volumes in this series include Joan Templeton’s Shaw’s Ibsen: A Reappraisal
and Stephen Watt’s Bernard Shaw’s Fiction,
Material Psychology, and Affect: Shaw, Freud, Simmel.
The
launch of Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel’s Bernard Shaw, W.T. Stead, and the New
Journalism at University College, Dublin.
The books in the Palgrave Macmillan series strive to present the
best and most current research on Shaw and his theatre and literary
contemporaries, and to further our understanding of Shaw and those who worked
with him or in reaction against him. Queries and manuscripts may be sent to
Nelson Ritschel (nocrsc@aol.com), Peter Gahan (pgahan@me.com), and/or Tomas René (T.Rene@Palgrave.com). Remember too that ISS members receive a 20% discount on the
Shaw series titles that can be purchased at:
http://www.springer.com/series/14785?detailsPage=titles
The discount code is ISSBC, entered at the checkout stage in the
‘basket’ when ordering.
Dr. Gautam Senupta displaying his monograph Myriad-Minded Shaw:
Perspectives
in Shavian Drama
(reviewed in SHAW 36.2).
Please note too that
there are books on Shaw available for purchase in the University Press of
Florida’s Shaw Series, edited for nearly two decades by the indomitable R. F.
Dietrich:
Shaw, Plato, and
Euripides Sidney P. Albert
Shaw’s
Controversial Socialism James
Alexander
Bernard Shaw’s Remarkable
Religion Stuart
E. Baker
Shaw and Joyce Martha
Fodaski Black
Bernard Shaw as
Artist-Fabian Charles
A. Carpenter
Bernard Shaw’s
Novels R.F.
Dietrich
Shaw’s Theater Bernard
F. Dukore
Shaw Shadows:
Rereading the Texts of Bernard Shaw Peter
Gahan
Bernard Shaw: A
Life A.M. Gibbs
Shaw and
Feminisms: On Stage and Off D.A.
Hadfield and Jean Reynolds, eds.
Bernard Shaw’s
“The Black Girl in Search of God” Leon
Hugo
Bernard Shaw and
China: Cross-Cultural Encounters Kay
Li
Bernard Shaw and
the French Michel
W. Pharand
Pygmalion’s
Wordplay Jean
Reynolds
Shaw, Synge,
Connolly, and Socialist Provocation Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel
Shaw’s Settings:
Gardens and Libraries
Tony
Jason Stafford
Who’s Afraid of Bernard
Shaw Stanley
Weintraub
What Shaw Really
Wrote About the War
J.L. Wisenthal
and Daniel O’Leary, eds.
All
titles can be accessed via http://www.upf.com.
WORKS
BY SHAW
Also appearing this year was the ninth
(and final) volume in the University of Toronto Press’s acclaimed “Selected
Correspondence of Bernard Shaw” series (under the general editorship of L.W.
Conolly), Bernard Shaw and William Archer,
edited by Tom Postlewait, as well as an edition of recently discovered letters
to Malcolm Watson entitled My Dear
Watson: Bernard Shaw’s Letters to a Critic and edited by L.W. Conolly.
Contracted to appear in 2021 will be
eight volumes in the Shaw series,
overseen by Brad Kent, for Oxford World's Classics:
Mrs Warren’s Profession, Candida, You Never Can
Tell, ed. Sos Eltis
Arms and the Man, The Devil’s Disciple, Caesar
and Cleopatra, ed.
Lawrence Switzky
Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Major Barbara, ed. Declan Kiberd
Pygmalion, Heartbreak House, Saint Joan, ed. Brad Kent
The Apple Cart, On the Rocks, Too True to Be Good, The Millionairess,
ed. Matthew Yde
Playlets (Shorter Plays), ed. James Moran
Major Cultural Essays, ed. David Kornhaber
Major Political Writings, ed. Elizabeth Carolyn Miller
SHAW: THE JOURNAL OF BERNARD SHAW
STUDIES
SHAW
37.1 (June
2017) was a theme issue devoted to “Shaw and the Classics,” with Gustavo A.
Rodríguez Martín (Universidad de Extremadura, Spain) as guest editor.
SHAW
37.2 (December
2017) was an “open topic” issue featuring articles/book reviews.
**Coming
soon is SHAW 38.1 (June 2018) on the theme of “Shaw in Performance”**
Request for Manuscripts: Future SHAW
Theme Issues
SHAW 39.1 (to be
published in June 2019) will be a theme volume devoted to “Shaw and Music,”
with Brigitte Bogar as guest editor. Submit abstracts (50 to 100 words) and
papers to brigitte.bogar@gmail.com.
SHAW 40.1 (to be
published in June 2020) will focus on “Shaw and New Media” and be edited by
Jennifer Buckley (University of Iowa). The issue will explore and assess Shaw’s engagements
with nineteenth-, twentieth-, and twenty-first-century media and challenges the
popular
equation of “new media” with the digital by adopting the historically
contingent definition of the term proposed by media scholars, notably Lisa Gitelman (1999, 2006) and Gitelman
and Geoffrey B. Pingree (2003). This focus is
prompted not only by Shaw’s various engagements with a wide range of
nineteenth- and twentieth-century media — including the telegraph, telephone,
photograph, gramophone, typewriter, film, radio, television, and mass print —
but also by media historians’ and theorists’ sometimes brief but always
provocative engagements with Shaw.
For instance, Friedrich A. Kittler’s
Gramophone, Film, Typewriter (1986) as well as Jonathan Sterne’s (2003) and
Benjamin Steege’s (2012) respective histories of
hearing and listening each employ Pygmalion as a foundational text. Shaw's
ambivalent but extensive involvement with print media has also attracted
scholars of material texts and print cultures, including W.B. Worthen (2004) and Elizabeth Carolyn Miller (2013). Others
have recently begun to contest the widespread perception of Shaw as a (perhaps
excessively) literary dramatist by documenting the prominence of Shaw and his
plays in the early years of the public-service and commercial radio,
television, and film industries.
Inquiries
about SHAW 40.1 and manuscript
submissions (6000 words maximum) should be sent to jennifer-buckley@uiowa.edu,
or mailed to Jennifer Buckley, 310 English-Philosophy Building, The
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA, 52245.
Request for Manuscripts: Future SHAW General Issues
SHAW
38.2 (to
be published in December
2018) and SHAW 39.2 (to be
published in December 2019) will include articles on general topics, as well as
book reviews, the Checklist of Shaviana, Notices, and ISS information.
Prospective essays for SHAW can be
submitted directly to http://www.psupress.org/journals/jnls_shaw.html. Please include an abstract and, for
matters of style, refer to recent SHAW
volumes. For all other information about SHAW
or to suggest other theme volume titles, contact Christopher Wixson at
cmwixson@eiu.edu. TOP
SHAW
ONLINE
1)
SHAW BEHIND THE CAMERA
A few years ago, the London School of
Economics digitized its collection of some 20,000 photographs and negatives
taken by Shaw, an inveterate photographer. To explore this amazing visual
resource, go to http://archives.lse.ac.uk/Advanced.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog.
In the field marked “Ref No” type in “Shaw Photographs*” (don’t forget the
asterisk); then click “Search.” This will give you access to over 15,000
photographs, which you can view by clicking on the links. To read what Shaw
himself has to say about one of his favorite pastimes, a good place to begin is
Bernard Shaw on Photography: Essays and
Photographs (1989), edited by Bill Jay and Margaret Moore.
2)
SHAW REFERENCE WORKS
A Chronology of Works
By and About Bernard Shaw is regularly updated
and can be accessed at https://shawsociety.org/Chronology-of-Works.htm.
Charles Carpenter’s A
Descriptive Chronology of His Plays, Theatrical Career, and Dramatic Theories can
be found at: https://shawsociety.org/ShawChron.htm.
A.M. Gibbs’s Chronology of Shaw’s Life can be reached at https://shawsociety.org/Shaw-Chronology.htm.
3)
SHAW’S WORKS
Since 2014, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín
(Universidad de Extremadura, Spain) has been collaborating with a computer
programmer to develop an interface that will enable anyone to search Gustavo’s
database without infringing on copyright restrictions (as most of Shaw’s works
will not go out of copyright until 2020). To learn more about (and see samples
of) this ground-breaking enterprise, go to http://shawquotations.blogspot.com.es/2014/09/digitizing-shaw-shaw-quotation-database.html and
www.shawsociety.org/SEARCH.htm.
Scholars are
welcome to submit concordance queries for Shaw's plays and novels—as well as
any/all of the books in this Table
of Contents (https://goo.gl/YvoTq7).
Results will be retrieved as an Excel table.
4)
SHAW UPDATES
As part of his duties as
editor of the “Continuing Checklist of Shaviana” for SHAW, the ambitious and hard-working Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín regularly
mines online repositories in search of the latest pieces of Shaw scholarship.
Some of these have been sent to ISS members in regular updates, including
previews of items to be listed in the annual bibliography and myriad online
occurrences of Shaw and Shaw-related events and references.
Gustavo has
now created a SHAW ARCHIVE, which allows you to go back over all of his GEN
contributions to Shaw scholarship and also to have access to:
GeoShaw - An interactive map of the key places in Shaw's
life.
George
Bernard Shaw (GBS) Youtube Channel.
Shaw Quotations
Page - Where you'll find the source of your favorite Shaw quotations.
This is a
fantastic collection that deserves both awe and applause. Please put https://sites.google.com/view/shawarchive/home
among your Favorites or create a shortcut to it on your desktop.
5)
SHAW AT AYOT ST LAWRENCE
Produced
by Martin Wright, a visual tour of Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St Lawrence, is
available at www.gamelabuk.com/shaws/.
Click play to hear Stanley Weintraub, the doyen of Shaw studies, comment at
various stops along the way. Our thanks to Stan and Rodelle Weintraub for
providing this vivid and unique glimpse into Shaw’s Hertfordshire home!
6)
SHAW AND HIS WORKS ON FILM
In 2016, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín
launched a Shaw Youtube Channel (www.youtube.com/channel/UCxGpZjHhix37VN-zFfX6psg/playlists).
“A compendium of the best videos of and about Bernard Shaw and his milieu” is
divided into the following playlists: GBS in Performance, GBS Footage, Lectures
and Talks, Shaw in Film, Historical Context, Documentaries, and Miscellany. The
GBS Channel brings together the multitude of videos: documentaries about Shaw,
film footage of Shaw himself, film versions of his plays, and much more. Users
are encouraged to suggest/submit videos that may fit any of the
playlists.
7)
SHAW’S GEOGRAPHIES
The
indefatigable Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín, with the assistance of former ISS
membership secretary Ann Stewart, and Evelyn Ellis of the Shaw Society (UK), has
created the GeoShaw map (https://shawsociety.org/GeoShawIntro.htm),
a collaborative project that attempts to provide a geographical account of
Shaw’s life via map markers of his travels, domiciles, meeting halls, and
favorite vegetarian restaurants, to mention only a few examples of what’s
available. Evelyn’s photographs of “Shaw’s Places Then and Now” can be seen at www.shawquotations.blogspot.com.es/2015/10/geoshaw-shaws-places-then-and-now.html.
8) SHAW DIGTIZED
The Sagittarius-ORION
Literature Digitizing Project at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca
is constantly expanding its open access section to make it a useful tool for
Shaw scholars and fans. This include Reviews of Productions of Shaw’s
Plays Around the World: 2015-2017: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/shaw-reviews-for-season-2015-2016/,
2014-2015: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/shaw-reviews-for-season-2014/,
before 2014 at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/learn-about-our-partners-2/shaw-festival/shaw-festival-productions-reviews/.
In addition, there is the Shaw Bookshelf featuring especially new Shaw books at
http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/the-shaw-project-3/shaw-bookshelf/.
Educators may find the Education Programs in Theatres Around the World useful: http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/canadian-theatre-companies/.
A key attraction is the
Virtual Tour of Shaviana at http://libra.apps01.yorku.ca/virtual-tour-of-shaviana/.
Notable displays also include: 1) “Who is Bernard Shaw” written by Stanley and
Rodelle Weintraub; 2) a calendar of productions of Shaw’s plays around the
world; 3) theatre productions with links to reviews and videos of performances
around the world; 4) Footsteps of Bernard Shaw, with videos showing Shaw’s
world tour; 5) links to Al Carpenter’s Shaw Bibliography; 6) virtual
tours of the late Isidor Saslav’s amazing Shaw
collections; 7) links to updated Shaw holiday shopping; 8) links to numerous
electronic Shaw texts; and 9) other classroom resources on specific plays. The
restricted access platform continues to feature classroom resources, such as
annotated full texts, study guides, reference materials written by Shaw
scholars, an annotated bibliography, and concordances and a search engine.
ISS
TRAVEL GRANT WINNERS FOR 2017
In the photo
below, ISS President Michael O’Hara stands with the five ecstatic recipients of
ISS travel grants to the “Shaw at the Shaw” Conference Symposium (21
to 25 July 2017) at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario: (L to R)
Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín (Universidad de Extremadura, Caceres, Espana), Valerie
Murrenus Pilmaier (University of Wisconsin-Sheboygan), James Armstrong (City University of
New York), Aileen Ruane (Université Laval, Quebec City, Canada), and Robert Stauffer (Dominican College of Blauvelt).
**Special
recognition is afforded to “Super Uber” Charles
del Dotto who graciously and diligently attended to the transportation
needs at the conference of the Bryden scholars. As Michel Pharand put it,
“Charles was extremely accommodating and efficient and generous -- and at all
times good-humoured! We were spoiled. He gets the
Shavian Extraordinaire award! (We could abbreviate it as the SEX award, but
some might get the wrong idea.....)”
TIME TO RENEW YOUR ANNUAL ISS MEMBERSHIP FOR 2018!!
https://shawsociety.org/2018membership.htm
Facebook & Twitter: Follow the ISS on Twitter and
receive ISS updates on Facebook (click “Like” on the International Shaw Society
page; the more “Likes,” the more notice everywhere). For assistance, write to
Jean Reynolds at ballroom16@aol.com.
Google Alerts: To sign up for your own
Google Alerts on Shaw, go to www.google.com/alerts.
ISS Homepage: There are countless pages
about Shaw’s life and works on, or linked from www.shawsociety.org,
and many of them are continuously updated by ISS Webmaster R.F. Dietrich.
Newsletters from previous years can be accessed
at: https://shawsociety.org/ISS-Newsletters.htm.
TOP
SPECIAL THANKS FROM ISS TREASURER
R.F. DIETRICH
It has long been the custom in the
theater to refer to people who contribute to the enterprise beyond the going price
as “angels.” While it may be true, as John Tanner says, that “In Heaven
an angel is nobody in particular” (Maxims for Revolutionists: Greatness), we
are clearly still on a planet where “angelic behavior” of this sort deserves
notice. Yes, we appreciate that everyone contributes what they can afford, and
we are thankful to everyone who pays the annual membership fee and/or orders
journals, but “Shaw Bizness” needs the exceptional
contribution as well as the standard in order to pursue its goals of encouraging
the young with travel grants and of making Shaw’s works and the study of Shaw
available to as many as possible. So here we wish to pay special notice
to those who have made it possible for the ISS to “go beyond.”
Below is the list, year by year, of
those whose “angelic” contribution to the ISS has gotten them written in the
ISS Book of the Life Force by the Recording Shaw (with horns holding up his
halo). These lists are linked as well from the ISS members page. Please
take a few moments to view and acknowledge at www.shawsociety.org/ISS-Angels.htm.
2017:https://shawsociety.org/2017-Members-Plus-List.htm (coming
soon)
2016:https://shawsociety.org/2016-Members-Plus-List.htm
2015:https://shawsociety.org/2015-Members-Plus-List.htm
2014:https://shawsociety.org/2014-Members-Plus-List.htm
2013:https://shawsociety.org/2013-Members-Plus-List.htm
2012:https://shawsociety.org/2012-Members-Plus-List.htm
2011:https://shawsociety.org/2011-Members-Plus-List.htm
2010:
https://shawsociety.org/2010-Members-Plus-List.htm
2009:
https://shawsociety.org/2009-Members-Plus-List.htm
2008:
https://shawsociety.org/2008-Members-Plus-List.htm
2007:
https://shawsociety.org/2007-Members-Plus-List.htm
2006:
https://shawsociety.org/2006-Members-Plus-List.htm
2005:
https://shawsociety.org/2005-Members-Plus-List.htm
2004: https://shawsociety.org/Founding-Members-Plus.htm
2017 Director of Publications and
Newsletter Editor: Christopher Wixson
**Thanks to
James Armstrong, Toni Burke, Tony Courier, Kay Li, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín,
Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel, and Gautam Senupta for
generously sharing from their photo vaults**
END