2021 Annual Newsletter

International Shaw Society

Stacey Hopper (1909–1996), Brush and Watercolour Cartoon of Bernard Shaw, c.1945.

Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Table of Contents

A Message from the ISS President and Vice President

Shaw in the Theatre in 2021: A Sampler

Shaw Meetings and Conferences in 2021

Upcoming Events and Calls for Papers

Shaw Scholarship

Shaw Online

A Message from President of the ISS Robert Gaines

With Covid having shut down many of our usual activities, this assessment will rather provide preview of coming attractions. But first, I want to again thank and congratulate our illustrious Vice-President, Jen Buckley, on a superb Zoom Symposium in July 2021.

Early in the new year, our recording secretary, Dorothy Hadfield, will send out a ballot asking about your interest in several potential conference sites, not only to garner your feedback about these locations but also to test several different voting platforms to see which one best meets our needs. Please take the survey regardless of your interest in the conference sites. (Indicating interest in a potential conference site does not commit you to attend.)

Now exciting news! After a two-year postponement, Gustavo has once again extended an invitation for his conference in Càceres, Spain on the last weekend in May 2022. Our conference lines up perfectly with a concomitant Spanish Irish Studies Conference, so you have the possibility of a double-header! The theme of the ISS conference is “Shaw in Europe.” So, everybody, pack your bags!

Jen Buckley is again at work on the 2022 annual ISS Symposium in Niagara-on-the-Lake, which we trust will again be in person but with the option to attend virtually. In addition, your Executive Committee has approved an invitation from The College of William and Mary, in Virginia, to host a Conference June 1-4, 2023. Thank you, Laurie J. Wolf!

We are exploring other conference sites for 2024 and 2025, meaning you will have two opportunities for the next several years either to present your research or listen to the fascinating investigations of others. Therefore, as the holiday season approaches, and you now have a revised list of your colleagues’ most useful Shaw books, you might want to revise and share your own “most wanted” list.

Speaking of gift giving, 2022 memberships to the ISS with or without our Journal might spark another’s interest in Shaw and gain us not only a one-year member but a permanent one. So, don’t play Scrooge this season when you could share Shaw.

Finally, even though Shaw would have said, “Bah, Humbug” to all the merriment and festivities, have yourselves a festive, jovial, and consequential time with family and friends.

A Message from Vice President of the ISS Jennifer Buckley

The ongoing pandemic constrained, but did not suppress, International Shaw Society activity in 2021. The annual Shaw Summer Symposium was again held on the digital platform Zoom. This year, 122 registrants gathered across three days (July 6-18) to share new scholarship about Shaw and his contemporaries in cyberspace. The keynote address by Dr. Rae Greiner, Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, illuminated Shaw’s place in the field of Victorian studies while also explaining his relatively few appearances in the journal Victorian Studies, which Dr. Greiner serves as co-editor. The panels and roundtables brought together scholars studying The Devil’s Disciple, Shaw in Ireland, Shaw’s international reception, and the state of Shaw scholarship in current academic journals. A lively Zoom-adapted performance of John McInerney’s play, Pygmalion Continued, was an especially welcome creative complement to the scholarly presentations. 

The Symposium website at www.shawsymposium2021.weebly.com remains live and provides a list of the sessions. Those wishing to access video recordings of the keynote address, the panels and roundtables, and Pygmalion Continued may email me directly at jennifer-buckley@uiowa.edu.  

Next year in Niagara-on-the-Lake — and also on Zoom, which has expanded access to the Symposium in such beneficial ways.  

SHAW ON STAGE IN 2021: A SAMPLER

1) SHAW IN NEW YORK

For the Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG), headed by producer and director David Staller, 2021 was again a year of uncertainty and disruption due to public health concerns from the COVID-19 pandemic, as it was for all performing arts organizations. However, in addition to a handful of events streamed online this year, GTG staged Mrs Warren’s Profession live and in person (12 October-20 November 2021) at Theatre Row (410 West 42nd Street, New York City). See www.projectshaw.com for upcoming events.

2) SHAW AT AYOT ST LAWRENCE

The annual series of summer performances of Shaw plays at Shaw’s Corner, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire remains on hiatus, the result of a decision made by the UK’s National Trust in 2019 after 27 seasons. However, back in production after the COVID-19 pause, Michael Friend Productions staged a Shaw double bill of How He Lied to Her Husband and Village Wooing (10-12 September 2021) in collaboration with the Sarah Thorne Theatre Company in Broadstairs. For more information, go to www.mfp.org.uk. For a lovely photographic record of earlier performances at Shaw’s Corner, go to www.mfp.org.uk/Personal/Albumpersonal.htm.

3) SHAW AT NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE

Due to ongoing public health concerns related to the Coronavirus (COVID-019) pandemic, the opening of the 2021 season at the Shaw Festival, led by Artistic Director Tim Carroll and made up of a reduced version of the canceled 2020 season, was delayed, with some of the productions eventually moving to outdoor venues. It featured Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple (directed by Eda Holmes) alongside the following other productions: Sherlock Holmes and the Raven’s Curse, written by R. Hamilton Wright and directed by Craig Hall; Brandon Thomas’s Charley’s Aunt, directed by Tim Carroll; Trouble in Mind, written by Alice Childress and directed by Philip Akin; Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, directed by Kimberley Rampersad; Flush, based upon the novella by Virginia Woolf and adapted/directed by Tim Carroll; Holiday Inn, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin with book by Gordon Greenberg and Chad Hodge and directed by Kate Hennig; and A Christmas Carol, adapted by Tim Carroll and directed by Molly Atkinson.

With performances running from February through December, the Festival’s 60^th anniversary in 2022 will feature Shaw’s The Doctor’s Dilemma (Diana Donnelly) and Too True to Be Good (directed by Sanjay Talwar) together with the following other productions: Damn Yankees, words and music by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross with book by George Abbott and Douglass Wallop and directed by Brian Hill; Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Tim Carroll; Gaslight by Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson (based on the play Angel Street by Patrick Hamilton) and directed by Kelli Fox; Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, translated and adapted for the stage by Kate Hennig and directed by Chris Abraham; Chitra, written by Rabindranath Tagore and directed by Kimberley Rampersad; Cicely Hamilton’s Just To Get Married, directed by Severn Thompson; This Is How We Got Here, written and directed by Keith Baker; Everybody, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and directed by László Bérczes; Gem of the Ocean, written by August Wilson and directed by Philip Akin; White Christmas, music and lyrics by Irving Berlin with book by David Ives and Paul Blake and directed by Kate Hennig; and A Christmas Carol, adapted by Tim Carroll and directed by Molly Atkinson.

For further information about the Festival’s 2022 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.

4) SHAW AROUND THE GLOBE

While theatres around the world have been shuttered due to the pandemic, you can receive notices of productions of Shaw’s plays when they return by subscribing to Google Alerts at http://www.google.com/alerts.

Kay Li regularly and generously continues to update production resources. For links to some 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. Click on play titles for production details.

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Time to Renew Your ISS Membership for 2022:

https://www.shawsociety.org/ISSMembership22.htm

SHAW MEETINGS AND PANELS IN 2021

1) The Shaw sessions at the rescheduled 44^th annual Comparative Drama Conference (14-16 October 2021) were facilitated by Ellen Dolgin (Dominican College of Blauvelt, NY) and comprised of the following presentations: “The Study and the Sermon: The Dramatic Methods of Harley Granville-Barker and George Bernard Shaw” (Mary Christian, Middle Georgia State University), “A Job for Eliza Doolittle” (Jean Reynolds, Polk State College), “Sustainability as Socialism in Shaw’s Plays” (Christa Zorn, Indiana University Southeast), and “Enemies of God: Revolution in Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple and Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna” (Oscar Giner, Arizona State University).

The International Shaw Society was further represented by three other members who made presentations: Miriam Chirico (Eastern Connecticut State University), “Anaesthetizing Pain: Black Comedy in Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive;” Brigitte Bogar (York University), “Musicality in Djanet Sears’ Afrika, Solo;” and Ellen Dolgin, “Paula Vogel’s Indecent: How Klezmer and Sholem Asch’s God of Vengeance Embody Sacred and Profane Tragedy.” Miriam Chirico and Ellen Dolgin are also members of the Conference Board. The next CDC conference -- the last to be held in Orlando at Rollins College -- is scheduled for March/April 2023. Inquiries about its regular Shaw sessions may be sent to Ellen Dolgin at ellen.dolgin@dc.edu.

2) Due to ongoing challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 18th annual Summer Shaw Symposium migrated online (16-18 July 2021) with four virtual sessions of panel presentations, a keynote with twelve paper presentations on four panels, a keynote with Dr. Rae Greiner, two discussion sessions, and a concert reading of a new original play by John McInerney entitled Pygmalion Continued that revisits Shaw’s famous characters in 1920.

Members of the Pygmalion Continued company performing on the virtual stage.

Symposium details can be accessed via https://shawsymposium2021.weebly.com. Co-sponsored by The Shaw Festival and the International Shaw Society, the Symposium drew participants from around the world.

3) The Shaw Society (UK) was founded in 1941 and its members meet monthly in the John Thaw Room at The Actors Centre, London, for talks, lectures, and play readings. For more information and a sample issue of the society’s publication The Shavian, see www.shawsociety.org.uk/. You can also follow them on Twitter @ShawSoc. Information about their affiliated theatre company, SHAW2020, can be found via www.shawsociety.org.uk/shaw2020.html. The Shaw Society sponsored SHAW2020’s production of Village Wooing, directed by Jonas Cemm, which was on tour during August 2021 at the Camden Fringe and the Palladian Church at Ayot St Lawrence, just down the road from Shaw’s Corner.  Check out their “Talking Shaw” online series at www.youtube.com/channel/UCaflt_U7S8rOEzEpmHLfq0w as well as the National Trust podcasts featuring members of The Shaw Society at https://podcasts.google.com/?q=national%20trust%20bernard%20shaw. The Shaw Society continues to make available various GBS resources (especially for scholars and teachers) at https://shaw-institute.com/ or accessed via the Shaw Archive at https://sites.google.com/view/shawarchive/home.

4) As a result of continued public health protocols related to the Coronavirus (COVID-019) pandemic, the Bernard Shaw Society of Japan conducted virtual meetings during the 2020-21 academic year. Following a general informational meeting in September 2020, they held a series of events each featuring a scholarly presentation. The slate of papers included: “A Jungian Approach to Bernard Shaw’s You Never Can Tell” by Professor Minoru Morioka; “Beyond Imperialism and Nationalism: How Shaw Depicted Empire in His Plays” by Professor Hisashi Morikawa; “The Comedy in the Darkness: Too True To Be Good” by Professor Shoko Matsumoto; and “On the Chronology for Japanese Translations of Bernard Shaw’s Plays,” by Professor Ryuichi Oura. The BSSJ looks forward to returning to their regular in-person meetings next year. TOP

UPCOMING EVENTS & CALLS FOR PAPERS

1) The “SHAW IN EUROPE” conference will convene 25-27 May 2022 at the University of Extremadura in Cáceres, Spain. It was originally planned for 27-29 May 2020 but had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2) THE 45^th ANNUAL COMPARATIVE DRAMA CONFERENCE is scheduled to be held in the spring at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. Inquiries about the regular Shaw sessions at the CDC conference may be sent to Ellen Dolgin at ellen.dolgin@dc.edu. TOP

3) THE 19^th ANNUAL SHAW SYMPOSIUM, co-sponsored by the ISS and The Shaw Festival, is scheduled to take place in July 2022 at Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. More details will be forthcoming. Access all information for submitting paper proposals and applications for Bryden Scholarships and ISS Travel Grants at https://www.shawsociety.org/ISSGrants&Scholarships.htm; while papers on anything and everything Shaw are always welcome, talks that focus on the Shaw plays the Festival is producing this year (The Doctor’s Dilemma and Too True to Be Good) are especially desirable.  

Time to Renew Your ISS Membership for 2022:

https://www.shawsociety.org/ISSMembership22.htm

SHAW SCHOLARSHIP:

BOOKS ABOUT SHAW

This year, Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel’s Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, and the Dead James Connolly appeared in Palgrave Macmillan’s series, “Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries.” Along with the other sixteen titles, it can be accessed at: https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14785. The books in the Palgrave Macmillan “Bernard Shaw and His Contemporaries” 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 series editors Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel (nocrsc@aol.com) and Peter Gahan (pgahan@me.com). Check out the series blog at: https://bernardshaw.home.blog/.

Remember as well that ISS members receive a 20% discount on the Shaw series titles; the discount code is ISSGBC and can be entered at the checkout stage in the ‘basket’ when ordering.

WORKS BY SHAW

Eight volumes in the Oxford World’s Classics Shaw series, overseen by Brad Kent, have arrived:

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. Brad Kent
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 41.1, a general topics issue, appeared in June 2021, and SHAW 41.2, entitled “Bernard Shaw, Journalist,” arrived in December, guest-edited by Peter Gahan and Nelson O’Ceallaigh Ritschel. Ahead in 2022 is “Shaw and Translation” (SHAW 42.1), guest-edited by Miguel Cisneros Perales and another general topics issue.

REQUESTS FOR SUBMISSIONS

SHAW 43.1: Essays 20-25 pages in length are due 1 November 2022 for “Shaw and Adaptation.” Direct inquiries to guest editor Dr. Brigitte Bogar at brigitte.bogar@gmail.com.   

SHAW 44.1 (June 2024): “Victorian Shaw”

The Victorian era, usually defined as the period between 1837 and 1901, has been variously characterized as a time of breakneck scientific progress and rigid tradition, of widening democracy and insular hierarchy, of imperial expansion and the cult of domesticity. Bernard Shaw’s relationship with the era has been similarly argued over. Born twenty years into Queen Victoria’s reign and remaining active and prolific nearly half a century beyond its end, he has been described both as a product of Victorianism and as a rebel against it, an irrepressible herald of the Modern period. Howard Mumford Jones, a few years after Shaw’s death, called him an exemplar of “the energy, the fecundity, the curiosity of the great Victorians”; yet Stanley Kauffmann, a few decades later, would declare of Shaw’s nineteenth-century contemporaries that “their energy seems concentric, whirling in a closed circle around their lives and era,” while with Shaw, “the energy seems to whirl forward, to burst continually into a succession of futures.” Taking these varying judgments as a point of departure, SHAW 44.1 will focus on the theme of “Victorian Shaw.” This special issue welcomes articles that analyze Shaw’s connections or responses to particular people, events, texts, artistic works, or movements of the Victorian period, as well as articles that more broadly assess Shaw’s role in the field of Victorian Studies. Please submit essays by 1 May 2023. Inquiries and proposals should be directed to guest editor Mary Christian at mary.christian@mga.edu.

SHAW 45.1 (June 2025): “Shaw and the New Modernist Studies”

In the now well-established terrain of the “new modernist studies,” we have become accustomed to revisionist and expansionist projects that open the field both theoretically and empirically to challenge earlier assumptions regarding the teleology of Modernism’s inner integrity, established practitioners, aesthetic practices, period boundaries, and principal geographical and social locations. Moreover, the study of modernism’s multiple and shifting locations beyond a traditional European-American axis is part of an ongoing process of revisionism that takes its cue from an analysis of the uneven experience of modernity viewed in both globalizing and transnational terms. The aim of SHAW 45.1 (June 2025) is to take the measure of Shaw’s place in relation to contested notions of literary modernism as the substantial expansion of its temporal and geographical scope reforms our understanding of the limits and limitations of Modernism, including its very meaning. Dismissed at times by peers and critics alike as a belated Victorian whose “drama of ideas” lingers on the borders of formal experimentation and style, a more nuanced account of Shaw’s voluminous writings—the plays, novels, prefaces, postscripts, proposals, reviews, pamphlets, broadsides, tracts, editorials, treatises, manifestoes, reports, and letters (private and public)—confirm his multifaceted importance as a modernist author whose work constitutes a series of unfolding relations with society and culture in both national and transnational settings. Inquiries and manuscript submissions are welcomed and should be sent to guest editor Dr. Desmond Harding at either hardi1d@cmich.edu or Department of English Language and Literature, Central Michigan University, Anspach 301F, Mount Pleasant, MI 48859.

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SHAW 42.2 (December 2022) and SHAW 43.2 (December 2023) will each include articles on general topics, as well as book reviews, the Checklist of Shaviana, Notices, and ISS information. Prospective essays for SHAW should 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 issue themes, contact Christopher Wixson at cmwixson@eiu.edu. TOP

In Memoriam

Eric Bentley: Some Memories of the Man (1916-2020)

By Sally Peters

Eric Bentley almost seemed invincible, passing just weeks before his 104^th birthday. He outlived Shaw by a decade and even the writer of his obituary. A giant of a man, physically and intellectually, he has been a force in the theatre since the 1940s. Shaw himself praised Eric Bentley’s 1947 Bernard Shaw as “by far the best critical description of my public activities that I have yet come across.” But he was also indispensable to Bertolt Brecht, present in Berlin at the landmark opening of Mother Courage, and introducing Brecht to the English-speaking world. “It is difficult to escape the feeling that Brecht speaks only to Bentley, and that Bentley speaks only to God,” quipped Walter Kerr in 1953. Some seventy-five years later we are all in his debt.

It is impossible to separate Eric from his milieu.  Here are a few glimpses of the man I was privileged to come to know, first from occasional Shaw Society meetings, then from his own events, the man apart from his towering reputation.

Those events included soirées at his spacious Riverside Drive apartment overlooking the Hudson River. There he happily hosted, singing and playing on his grand piano for an enthusiastic audience of diverse New York theatre royalty.  More informally, we might dine at his favorite Chinese restaurant, which he delightedly noted was owned by Madame Chiang Kai-Shek’s chef, she herself living at the time in Long Island before moving to Manhattan in 1988.

He was unfailingly appreciative that I had made the trip from Connecticut, sometimes alone, other times with my students or with my esteemed colleague Alfred Turco, Jr..

Once before a Shaw meeting, he invited me to his apartment for dinner, extending that invitation to my two accompanying Wesleyan graduate students. It was an unseasonably warm June day, but he had a huge cauldron of vegetarian chili simmering in his kitchen. Citing Shaw as his menu inspiration and chuckling, he began ladling out enormous scoops as we watched wide-eyed. Despite the heat, not wanting to disappoint him, three of us ate chili as if our lives depended on it! And then, later, there he was sitting in the front row at my talk in the lovely Victorian townhouse across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art where the Bernard Shaw Society meetings were held. Such a great honor.

When Eric had an event looming, he did not send a single invitation, but sent reminder after reminder. Off Broadway, I attended numerous productions of his versions of plays by European playwrights (versions, being the term he preferred over translations). Among them was an unforgettable Mother Courage at the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre; the final performance of Brecht’s The Good Woman of Setzuan, the cast so valiant; Frank Wedekind’s The First Lulu, with Eric taking questions from the audience afterward and defending femme fatale Lulu as a woman surviving in a man’s world. There was The Wedekind Cabaret performed at a suitably atmospheric New York club. His play The Fall of the Amazons (based on Heinrich von Kleist)took place in a theatre so intimate that the audience was surrounded by a catwalk that functioned as a stage, and I had to duck a faux rock tossed during a fight scene! It was all so wonderful!

There was a birthday party at Applause Books, Eric surrounded by family and friends.  A little ditty had been composed for the occasion, gently mocking him, “the Bentley version” a repeating chorus. No one laughed more heartily than he as the fun became more and more raucous. Then in the very midst of this, his attention was no longer on the performers, but rather on his small grandchild who was crawling about his feet. The great man and theatre legend was a doting grandfather.  

Eric married twice and was separated but not divorced from Joanne Davis, the mother of their twin sons Eric Jr. and Philip. Meanwhile Eric was an activist for gay rights, having come out as gay in the 1960s. As to Shaw, he emphatically declared “most interesting!” my conclusion that Shaw thought of himself as a “noble invert” --an ascetic artist whose gifts were linked to a homoerotic source.

What a correspondent he was! His mail was a joy! Letter after letter, day after, day--full of newspaper clippings, drawings, doodles, typed and hand written, overflowing onto the envelopes in all sizes and shapes--business and legal, white and brown, oblong and square, plain and padded, all bursting with ideas, suggestions, commands --read this or that --and filling bankers boxes in my study.  It made me regret the advent of email, except the immediacy suited him so much better.

For his 85^th birthday party, which he asked me to organize and over which I would preside, he sent multiple messages every day, urging me to urge the attendance of the most illustrious of theatre people. The guest list grew and grew so that eventually it expanded far beyond the first and only joint meeting of the New York Shaw, Ibsen, Pirandello, and Brecht Societies. For my efforts, he playfully dubbed me a “Broadway Impresario.” It was star-crossed event, a few days after 9/11, the audience desolate and in tears, but out in force, determined to pay homage to Eric and what he represented--the life of the mind.

His curiosity never flagged; his mind remained unclouded. He sent emails almost until the end, his iPad his link to the outside world. In November 2019, he sent me a copy of an email regarding unpaid royalties: “I am 103 years old but still active,” he wrote, proceeding to inform the miscreant that the rights to his version of Six Characters are “handled by Northwestern U P.” Still active indeed!

Our last meeting was January 28, 2017 at his apartment.  I had flown in from California with my son Douglas, an award-winning winemaker, who sent signed bottles to Eric--who loved wine and sent signed books in thanks. Now the energetic centenarian eagerly gave him a tour of his booklined apartment. There were stories and anecdotes about the artwork and memorabilia that lined his walls and shelves--a rich history of 20^th century theatre, its writers, performers, directors--that he related with boyish enthusiasm and that deep throated chuckle, as if surprised at it all--still.

As Eric signed books for us, Douglas silently pointed out my photo pinned on the wall next to a sketch of a young Sir John Gielgud. Then, a few iPhone photographs and it was time to go. Eric warmly invited us to visit again, reiterating that invitation in emails.

But we were back in California, not to return east again before what still seems like an untimely passing. Surely he would be there forever prodding, urging, commenting in his emails.
Even now I half expect to open my email and find a directive, a notice, a reminder from him.

Eric Bentley had no expectations about an afterlife, but he will live on in his enormous influence on theatre and in the hearts of those who knew and loved him.

New York, 1998, on the set of The Good Woman of Setzuan, after a performance

of Eric’s version of Bertolt Brecht’s play.

Come curl up with SHAW…

***ISS Members receive a discount and can subscribe when they renew their membership at https://www.shawsociety.org/ISSMembership22.htm***

ISS AWARD WINNER FOR 2021

This year, Justine Zapin was the recipient of the prestigious R.F. Dietrich Research Scholarship for Shaw Studies and looks forward to sharing the fruits of her research into Shaw’s Abbey Theatre plays at an upcoming ISS event. Named in honor of the Founding President of the International Shaw Society, the award supports research into any aspect of the life and work of Bernard Shaw by a graduate student or early-career scholar. Congratulations to Justine!

SHAW ONLINE

THE INTERNATIONAL SHAW SOCIETY

The ISS homepage (https://shawsociety.org) is a rich repository of resources about Shaw’s life and works as well as the Society’s activities; please subject it to your regular perusal since new links are appearing all the time, courtesy of Webmaster R.F. Dietrich. Two links deserve particular attention this year --- https://shawsociety.org/ISS-GoverningCouncil-2022.htm and https://shawsociety.org/ISS-Articles&Bylaws2022.htm --- because of important revisions made to the Society’s Articles and Bylaws that enable its smoother governance.

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. For what Shaw has to say about one of his favorite pastimes, consult Bernard Shaw on Photography: Essays and Photographs (1989), eds. Bill Jay & Margaret Moore.

ONLINE SHAW REFERENCE WORKS

A Chronology of Works By and About Bernard Shaw by Michel Pharand is regularly updated and can be accessed at

https://www.shawsociety.org/ShawChrono_2021.pdf.

Charles Carpenter’s A Descriptive Chronology of His Plays, Theatrical Career, and Dramatic Theories can be found at: http://www.shawsociety.org/ShawChron.htm. 

A.M. Gibbs’s Chronology of Shaw’s Life can be reached at http://www.shawsociety.org/Shaw-Chronology.htm.

SHAW’S WORKS ONLINE

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 came out of copyright in 2020 but not in the US). To learn more about (and see samples of) this ground-breaking enterprise, go to 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. Results will be retrieved as an Excel table. 

SHAW UPDATES

As part of his duties as editor of the “Continuing Checklist of Shaviana” for SHAW, the industrious 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.  

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!

SHAW AND HIS WORKS ON FILM

In 2016, Gustavo A. Rodríguez Martín launched a Shaw YouTube Channel at

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 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.  TOP

SHAW’S GEOGRAPHIES

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 (http://www.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.

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, including Reviews of Productions of Shaw’s Plays Around the World and the Shaw Bookshelf.

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.

TIME TO RENEW YOUR ANNUAL ISS MEMBERSHIP FOR 2022!!

https://www.shawsociety.org/ISSMembership22.htm

DONATIONS & APPLICATIONS

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.”  Going from 2020 (the beginning of the pandemic), our thanks to Elizabeth and David Cayer, Roelina and Charles Berst, Claudio and Rosalie Haddad, Lori and Richard Dietrich, Robert A. Gaines, and Joseph Hassett, whose names may be on the grants.  To apply for grants and scholarships, please go to https://www.shawsociety.org/ISS-Grants&Scholarships-2022.htm and follow the directions.

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.

Just in time for the holidays is Anthony Roche’s Best Loved Bernard Shaw, billed as an “approachable and attractive selection” of extracts from his plays, essays, and personal letters and a perfect introduction to the author for novices. For more information, see https://obrien.ie/best-loved-bernard-shaw. TOP

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2021 Director of Publications and Newsletter Editor: Christopher Wixson

Access newsletters from previous years at: https://shawsociety.org/ISS-Newsletters.htm