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HISTORY
OF THE INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY |
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The first two paragraphs below are also on
the homepage, from which you’ve likely just come, and if you’ve already read
them, skip to the third paragraph. |
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The International Shaw Society,
Inc. (“The ISS”), a society devoted to the very enjoyable and enlightening
study of the life, times, and work of Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw
(1856-1950), was officially founded in 2004, largely for the purpose of
keeping 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 is
rare in its relative sanity, humanity, and civilizing good humor. If you like humor of the sometimes
hyperbolic and sometimes of the ironic sort, “smiling comedy,” as he called
it, Shaw is your man. What keeps a dead author alive? While alive,
Shaw was of the opinion that it was "sedulous self-advertisement"
that kept him going 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 thirteen countries, on five continents, and grows apace, about half
academics and half not, with a generous sprinkling of theater artists in both
halves. The ISS invites you to join in the fun and enlightenment of
encountering Shaw's plays and discussing the author and his works. The history of
the founding of the ISS comes first in this account, but you can skip that to
get to what it is doing now by clicking here. Otherwise, read on. In 2001, at a Shaw Conference
sponsored by Marquette University in Milwaukee, the conference concluded with
a panel discussion of how Shaw Studies, heretofore dependent upon
enterprising individuals for the hosting of conferences at irregular times,
might in the near future become more organized and more regular in its
meetings, and English Professor Richard Dietrich of the University of South
Florida (Tampa) proposed creating an International Shaw Society to accomplish
that, first by enlisting teachers, scholars, theater artists, and just plain
Shaw enthusiasts to meet at least annually for the seeing of Shaw’s plays and
discussing them, and simultaneously to share this with younger people by encouraging
their attendance with the offering to them of travel grants, scholarships,
and the like. It turned out that
others, especially Emeritus Professor Sidney Albert of California State
University at Los Angeles, had had a similar idea and wished to pursue it in
the proposed general form. Also attending this conference at
Marquette was Leonard Conolly, an English Professor at Trent University, who
had hosted in 1989 at the University of Guelph in Canada the first of three
Shaw Conferences of the pre-ISS individualist sort, the second being at
Virginia Tech in 1993 under the auspices of Professor Bernard Dukore, the
third being the Marquette Conference in 2001, organized by Professor Michael
Patrick Gillespie. This also
illustrates that such conferences were few and far between, with none
scheduled for the future, an anomaly in a field well populated with both
major senior scholars and promising younger scholars. Professor Conolly, a Canadian then residing
within driving distance of the Shaw Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake,
Ontario, and an inveterate attender at Festival plays, soon joined with
Professor Dietrich in the email recruiting of Shaw-interested people to the
Shaw Festival to further discuss forming an International Shaw Society. Of course necessary to that was finding a
place in Niagara-on-the-Lake to meet. Instrumental
to this was Denis Johnston, Co-Director of the Academy of the Shaw Festival
and Audience Outreach Director, who listened sympathetically to Conolly’s
argument for establishing the ISS and launching that in a meeting at the Shaw
Festival. Johnston then persuaded the
Shaw Festival administration to host a “Shaw Summit” in the summers of 2002 and
2003 at which leaders in Shaw Studies could meet to discuss the proposal and
vote on proceeding. At the 2003
meeting, when the vote was in favor of establishing the ISS, Johnston and
Conolly further persuaded the Festival to launch and co-host in 2004 on July
23-26 the first of what became annual Summer Shaw Symposia, and to ally in
that endeavor the ISS with the
Academy of the Shaw Festival, constituting a natural joining of forces. More precisely, the ISS was successfully founded in
principle at the first of two “Shaw Summits” on August 24th, 2002, at the
Shaw Festival, with the details of its scope and operation yet to be worked
out. To discuss and vote on such
matters, a second “Shaw Summit” was scheduled in the new Shaw Festival
Theatre Library on August 20th, 2003.
About a dozen, mostly senior Shaw scholars attended the first meeting
and twenty or more the second. Others
were consulted by email. Two main proposals were discussed, one conceiving
the ISS as an unincorporated, all-volunteer organization that would meet
annually in Canada at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. This
ISS would confine itself to an annual symposium co-hosted by the Festival,
which would be open to all and not dependent upon dues-paying membership in
the ISS for funding. Participants
would just pay for the symposium through the Shaw Festival box office, and
included would be tickets for whatever Shaw plays were produced that year,
which would be the focus of most of the papers accepted for the symposium. The other proposal was to incorporate the ISS as a
not-for-profit institution in the United States, from which most of its
dues-paying members would come, branching out to the hosting of not only an
annual Summer Shaw Symposium at the Shaw Festival but also of more largely
attended conferences far and wide, eventually outside North America, wherever
co-hosts, mostly universities, could be found to share costs and wherever
productions of Shaw plays would be available to work into the conference
schedule. Seeing Shaw’s plays on stage has always been at least as important
as discussing Shaw’s works. After lengthy discussion, a decision was made, at
the second “Summit” in Canada, to apply for not-for-profit, tax-exempt status
in the United States, and Professor Dietrich was elected Acting President to
oversee the transformation of the ISS into a full-fledged,
legally-established, dues-paying literary society, committed to providing
meetings, both in North America and internationally, for established scholars,
theater artists, and general enthusiasts, but also to aggressively recruit
younger members, with much of its funding devoted to the latter. As of January 30, 2004, the ISS was legally
established as a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation with the U.S. federal
government and the state of Florida (where the ISS Founding President
resided). That accomplished, Professor Dietrich was elected as its Founding
President, in which capacity he served for the first six years of the ISS,
2004-2009. The Founding Vice-President
was Don Wilmeth of Brown University, the Founding Treasurer was Lagretta
Lenker of the University of South Florida, and the Founding Membership
Secretary was Lori Dietrich. Richard Dietrich also served as the Founding
Webmaster and began building a website at www.shawsociety.org. The second ISS President was Professor Leonard
Conolly of Trent University, serving from 2010-2012. The third ISS President
was Michael O’Hara, Professor of Theater & Associate Dean of the School
of Fine Arts of Ball State University, beginning in 2013. The fourth ISS President was Robert Gaines,
retired Chair of the Theater Department at Auburn University at Montgomery.
Other officers currently serving with President Gaines are Jennifer Buckley,
teaching at the University of Iowa, as Vice President, Sharon Klassen,
teaching at Redeemer University in Ontario, as Recording Secretary, and Mary
Christian, teaching at Central Georgia State University, as Membership
Secretary. What it’s doing now (or BACK to the history): The ISS has grown in size and influence as the years
have passed, and now is in charge of the editorship of the biannual journal SHAW: The Journal of Bernard Shaw Studies
(Pennsylvania State University Press).
In addition to its co-hosting the annual Summer Shaw Symposium, now in
its 16th year, at the Shaw Festival, it has co-hosted occasional
symposia in Chicago with the ShawChicago Theater Company, has featured the
work of David Staller’s “Project Shaw” in New York at its New York conference
om 2015, and the staging of Shaw plays by the Washington Stage Guild, where
Shaw has served as their house playwright for many years. The ISS has also co-hosted
eight major conferences in sixteen years, initially at the University of
South Florida’s branch campus in Sarasota on the Ringling Estate in 2004, afterwards
at Brown University in 2006, The Catholic University of America in
Washington, D. C. in 2009, the University of Guelph in Canada in 2011,
University College Dublin, Ireland in 2012, “Shaw’s Corner” in Ayot St Lawrence,
United Kingdom, in 2013, Fordham University at Lincoln Center, New York, in
2015, and an eighth conference in 2017, “SHAW at THE SHAW,” in
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, co-hosted with the ISS by The Shaw Festival and
York University, adding up to four in the United States and four
internationally, in Canada, Ireland, and England. The next conference, being planned for 2020
with the topic being “Shaw and Europe,” will be in Caceres, Spain. The ISS is also very active on the internet, with
many links off its homepage at www.shawsociety.org to much
important and enjoyable information. Near the top of the homepage, in that column on the
left, is a series of links to pages that explain why one should join the ISS
and a form provided for doing that at shawsociety.org/2019-membership-form.htm. Just
change the year for years later than 2019, if this page hasn’t been updated. As one of the principal goals of the ISS is to
encourage younger generations to experience the delights of reading and
seeing Shaw's works and participating in the discussion of them, the ISS
offers a generous program of support in the form of scholarships, travel grants,
and prizes, most of which are allied with particular events, such as symposia
and conferences. To that end, in fifteen years eighty young scholars have
been awarded ninety-nine Travel Grants to attend such events. To learn more
about that and how to apply, please go to www.shawsociety.org/iss-travel-grants-2019.htm, which features the offerings of the
year 2019 that can serve as a model for future years as well. Just update the year in the address as the
years pass. Continuing down the list in the left column, there
are a series of links to meetings, journals, and book series, all of which
are seeking manuscripts for books or papers and/or list relevant publications
for purchase. In addition to the need of ISS symposia and conferences for
“talks” to be delivered and the need of the biannual SHAW: The Journal of Shaw Studies for articles every year, the
ISS has been much involved in the recruiting of book manuscripts for three
series, The University Press of Florida’s Shaw Series, edited by R. F.
Dietrich, the University of Toronto Press’s Shaw Correspondence Series,
edited by Leonard W. Conolly, and the Palgrave Macmillan “Shaw and His
Contemporaries” series, edited by Nelson Ritschel and Peter Gahan. Click on the links provided at www.shawsociety.org if you
have a manuscript you wish to have considered by the latter, the only series
that is still considering book manuscripts.
Continuing down the left side of the ISS homepage
are links to various interests of a more academic nature, mostly authored by
Gustavo A. Rodrigues Martin, the “Shaw Archive” being a gold mine of
information, but also including the ever-popular search engine—“Search
Shaw”--for those seeking the quotations of the most quotable of authors and
any other kind of reference, followed by links to a variety of Shaviana that
should appeal to all. Among the
more innovative websites is one called “GeoShaw,” maintained
by Gustavo A. Rodriguez Martin, which tracks Shaw’s movements on Google
Earth, and “A Virtual Tour of Shaviana,” edited by Kay Li, that illustrates
the great variety of Shaw’s life and times.
Click on “Newsletters” to get a more detailed and vivid account of the
sorts of things the ISS has been up to over the years. Again, the links for
all are at www.shawsociety.org. One thing the ISS makes clear is that, like the
author they study, Shavians enjoy exploring the world as Shaw did and leaving
nothing unexamined, and they look forward to meeting with kindred spirits to
continue the adventure of listening to and debating with the very lively
spirit of GBS. |
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Webmaster:
dietrich@usf.edu |
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