Hello, my name's Tom and welcome back to my vlog where I talk a little bit about
theatre, a little bit about being a PhD student and a little bit about those two
things squished together. So, today's one of those wonderful days
where I get to talk about both the things that I'm really passionate about
hand in hand. And partly this is a video that I've wanted to make for a
little while now but partly I'm also aware that it's that time of year where
A Level results have gone out and lots of people are heading off to start a
course of study in theatre at many different levels whether that's
undergraduate or postgraduate. Also, I thought it'd be cool to make
a video that was a about some books which might be useful if you're a
theatre maker maybe, or involved in creating theatre, and maybe want a bit
more of a critical framework to think through how you think about the bits of
theatre that you watch or make and how you intellectually respond to
those. So, today, I'm gonna share five books which I've found really, really useful
for starting to think more broadly and more intellectually I suppose about
theatre. Now, what I've tried to do is pick some books which might not be
completely obvious. I think there's a lot of books out there like The Empty
Space or Stanislavski's work or Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed and maybe
Brecht on Theatre which are ones which, if you find a list like this, normally
will almost always be on there. Each of those are books by theatre
practitioners and very much argue for a very particular kind of theatre which
maybe looks in a certain way and maybe means in a certain way as well. So all
those books are super useful and I certainly suggest going to read them to start
to get an idea of what the theoretical underpinnings of certain forms of
theatre are. But what I wanted to do was maybe suggest some books which might be harder
to find out about if you've not engaged academically or as
intellectually with theatre before. And, in fact, my first two books aren't
particularly about theatre at all but are more broadly ones about cultural
theory. And so, in this video, there are my top five books and for thinking about
theatre. So, book number one is Raymond Williams' Keywords.
This is a really seminal book written by the great cultural theorist
Raymond Williams and, essentially, what it is is a little bit of a glossary in
which it will start to give you a definition of what those terms mean
within the field of cultural studies. So, a word such as cultur,e which
might have a lot of different colloquial meanings, in this book
Williams starts to refine what it might mean when we talk about it in an
intellectual or academic context. He's also really keen to always point out
when things have multiple or conflicting meanings and really highlight that, not
to necessarily suggest that one is better than the other but really just to
point out that different areas of theory will treat certain words in certain ways.
So, we have words like commercialism, community, criticism, dramatic, elite,
fiction, utilitarian, violence; all of these words which we can get quite used
to using colloquially but, when we start to use intellectually or
academically, we start to have to think about having more of a grounded
definition for. The second book I wanted to suggest almost takes that idea a little
bit further and it is Roland Barthes' Mythologies. Now, this is very much more
of an English literature book, I'd suggest, than one that automatically
pertains to theatre or to drama. But what it starts to do is to dissect how
cultural texts (so a play for example or a book or a film) might start to have
political or social connotations to it. So, for example, there's a really famous
essay within this book about a wrestling match. And, although it's looking at a
wrestling match, which is meant as a kind of popular form of entertainment,
what it does is it starts to dissect what the different characters within the
wrestling ring might mean and, by extension, it starts to look at what kind
of political ideologies (or hegemonies if you watched my video the other day) the
narratives which play out within that wrestling ring might start to either
criticize or critique or perhaps to support. There's also some great chapters
on visual art and and some more popular modes of performance and, although it's
not directly about theatre, I'd really suggest it's a great book that, if
you're anything like me and like to have quite an accessible way of starting to
think about how politics and society and culture starts intertwine and interact
with one another, it's a book that I found really, really inspirational and
helped me to start thinking in a similar way about theatre. Book number three that
I'd like to suggest is David Edgar's How Plays Work. Now, this is primarily a book
for playwrights or dramatists or dramaturges, people that are thinking
about how to construct a piece of theatre. And particularly, I'd say, it's
for people who like to create narrative driven pieces of work (rather than
postmodern work or postdramatic work which explores an
idea) I'd suggest that most of the book pertains to the writing of theatre which
explores characters which have fairly naturalistic storylines.
However, in explaining to the potential playwright or dramatist how to construct
a piece of theatre, I also think it suggests some really good ways of
analysing. So, whether you consider yourself to be a playwright or a
director or a lighting designer or an actor or a stage manager or all or none
of the above, I'd certainly suggests that How Plays Work is a really good way of
starting to think about how narrative plays a part in what theatre means and
what it looks like and how narrative is constructed. I'd also say, because there
is lots and lots of different books which are like this or seek to do a
similar thing, that this has this wonderful middle ground of it is
incredibly accessible (it's not hard to read at all) while at the same time it's written
by David Edgar who is both an a very influential playwright (primarily coming
from the State of the Nation plays of the 1970s) but also was professor of
playwriting at Birmingham University. So it straddles a wonderful line between
being both academically reputable but also being eminently readable. For book
number four, I'm not actually going to suggest a single book but a series and
it's the Theatre & series. Now, I'm not for one minute suggesting that you go
away and every single one of the books in this
series before you start your drama degree or before you go and watch your
next play. But what I would suggest is that they're really great, accessible
ways into starting to think about theatre in relation to lots of different
themes. They're all quite short books either a little under a little over a
hundred pages and therefore can be read in a couple of sittings or, if you've got
a long train journey perhaps, they can be a really good way to wile away
that time. Each book looks at the relationship between theatre and a
certain other thing. For example, this one looks at theatre and the concept of
nation, there's a book by Jen Harvey which looks at theatre and its relationship to
the city and there's Dan Rebellato's Theatre &
Globalization. There's a whole range of them written by really, really great
academics who very much know these fields but are also very good at writing
for people to read. They're not books which are completely clouded in lots of
theory and, where they do invoke either philosophy or political theory or some
other kind of deep theory, they do take the time to introduce those things
properly so that you're not expected to have previously read a lot on that topic
before. So, perhaps what I'd suggests, is going on the Palgrave Macmillan website
and having a little look through this series and finding one which is theatre
and something you're interested in. And, I think, as an introduction to academic
reading and academic writing, just reading through a book that you're
already a little bit interested in will be a great door to writing yourself and
also to reading slightly more complex texts. The final book that I'd like to
suggest is one that I do not have on my shelf at the moment as I've lent it to a
friend. It's actually a book that is very rarely on my shelf as I'm always lending
out to people, and that is theory / theatre by Mark Fortier. Now this is very much
meant as an introductory book and it's got a lot in common with the module that
I'm teaching on next term in fact as an introduction to theatre and
theory. It looks at theatre in certain contexts and through various different
theoretical backgrounds so there's chapters on theatre and semiology,
theatre and feminism, theatre and post-modernism. And it really takes you
through how both the discipline has developed over the past fifty or so
years but also on different ways that you can approach looking at theatre in
the present day. Because, as I hope that I have started to show with some of my
videos and my performance analysis videos, you can always approach
the same bit of theatre from many different angles. And I think theory /
theatre is a really good book for starting to introduce both the breadth
of academia and scholarship which exists within the field of theatre, but also
gives you that idea of how the field has developed. So there you have my top five
books for theatre students or people that are just really super into theatre
and want to have a better critical framework for understanding it. If
you have books that you particularly like about theatre that I have missed
out then please do drop them below in the comments, it'd be great to hear about
them and to maybe come up with a slightly bigger list so that, when people
come to watch this video, there's even more below. But thank you very much
for watching once again. If you haven't subscribed then please do consider doing
so, it'd be great to see you around again. Thank you very much and have a great
week!