As part of its contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Arts Council ran what can be seen in retrospect to be an important playwriting competition. Disregarding the London stage entirely, it invited regional ...As part of its contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Arts Council ran what can be seen in retrospect to be an important playwriting competition. Disregarding the London stage entirely, it invited regional theatres throughout the UK to put forward nominations for new plays within their repertoire for 1950-1951. Each of the five winning plays would receive, what was then, the substantial sum of ~100. Originality and innovation featured highly amongst the selection criteria, with 40 per cent of the judges＇ marks being awarded for ＂interest of subject matter and inventiveness of treatment＂. This article will assess some of the surprising outcomes of the competition and argue that it served as an important nexus point in British theatrical historiography between two key moments in post-war Britain： the first being the inauguration of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the other being the debut of John Osborne＇s Look Back in Anger in May 1956. The article will also argue that the Arts Council＇s play competition was significant for two other reasons. By circumventing the London stage, it provides a useful tool by which to reassess the state of new writing in regional theatre at the beginning of the 1950s and to question how far received views of parochialism and conservatism held true. The paper will also put forward a case for the competition significantly anticipating the work of George Devine at the English Stage Company, which during its early years established a reputation for itself by heavily exploiting the repertoire of new plays originally commissioned by regional theatres. This article forms part of a five year funded Arts and Humanities Research Council （AHRC） project, ＇Giving Voice to the Nation： The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1994＇. Details of the Arts Council＇s archvie, which is housed at the Victoria ＆ Albert Museum in London can be found at htto：//www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/wid/ead/acgb/acgbf.html展开更多
The bilateral treaties between the Qing, the United States and other European countries, suggested a new order for commerce and diplomacy in China, often referred to as the ＂treaty system.＂ This paper reevaluates th...The bilateral treaties between the Qing, the United States and other European countries, suggested a new order for commerce and diplomacy in China, often referred to as the ＂treaty system.＂ This paper reevaluates the treaty system using a critical theory of capital influenced by the work of Moishe Postone. While most histories of Qing-British relations have understood capitalism as a motivating force for British commercial expansion into China, they have only attempted to instrumentally connect capitalist interests to the ways in which that expansion took place. This analysis, by contrast, approaches capitalism as a historically specific social formation with determining social forms. These forms--commodity, labor, and value produce specific structures of social organization with an immanent historical dynamic. By relating these forms and their dynamic to treaty relations and the creative destruction they enacted over time, this paper grounds Qing-British relations in capitalism, understood not at the level of profit-seeking, but at the level of its essential social forms, their forms of appearance and self-grounded and self-reflexive evolution.展开更多
文摘As part of its contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain, the Arts Council ran what can be seen in retrospect to be an important playwriting competition. Disregarding the London stage entirely, it invited regional theatres throughout the UK to put forward nominations for new plays within their repertoire for 1950-1951. Each of the five winning plays would receive, what was then, the substantial sum of ~100. Originality and innovation featured highly amongst the selection criteria, with 40 per cent of the judges＇ marks being awarded for ＂interest of subject matter and inventiveness of treatment＂. This article will assess some of the surprising outcomes of the competition and argue that it served as an important nexus point in British theatrical historiography between two key moments in post-war Britain： the first being the inauguration of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the other being the debut of John Osborne＇s Look Back in Anger in May 1956. The article will also argue that the Arts Council＇s play competition was significant for two other reasons. By circumventing the London stage, it provides a useful tool by which to reassess the state of new writing in regional theatre at the beginning of the 1950s and to question how far received views of parochialism and conservatism held true. The paper will also put forward a case for the competition significantly anticipating the work of George Devine at the English Stage Company, which during its early years established a reputation for itself by heavily exploiting the repertoire of new plays originally commissioned by regional theatres. This article forms part of a five year funded Arts and Humanities Research Council （AHRC） project, ＇Giving Voice to the Nation： The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945-1994＇. Details of the Arts Council＇s archvie, which is housed at the Victoria ＆ Albert Museum in London can be found at htto：//www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/wid/ead/acgb/acgbf.html
文摘The bilateral treaties between the Qing, the United States and other European countries, suggested a new order for commerce and diplomacy in China, often referred to as the ＂treaty system.＂ This paper reevaluates the treaty system using a critical theory of capital influenced by the work of Moishe Postone. While most histories of Qing-British relations have understood capitalism as a motivating force for British commercial expansion into China, they have only attempted to instrumentally connect capitalist interests to the ways in which that expansion took place. This analysis, by contrast, approaches capitalism as a historically specific social formation with determining social forms. These forms--commodity, labor, and value produce specific structures of social organization with an immanent historical dynamic. By relating these forms and their dynamic to treaty relations and the creative destruction they enacted over time, this paper grounds Qing-British relations in capitalism, understood not at the level of profit-seeking, but at the level of its essential social forms, their forms of appearance and self-grounded and self-reflexive evolution.
