Staging an ‘unbearable spectacle’: Joseph Conrad's Laughing Anne

Hand, Richard ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2076-1435 (2001) Staging an ‘unbearable spectacle’: Joseph Conrad's Laughing Anne. Studies in Theatre and Performance, 21 (2). pp. 109-117. ISSN 1468-2761

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Abstract

Although completed in 1920 and published soon afterwards, Joseph Conrad's play Laughing Anne remained unperformed until June 2000, when the première was presented at the University of Glamorgan and toured Britain and the USA. Conrad's play was long neglected not least because of John Galsworthy's condemnation of the script as technically naïve and even, in places, threatening to present ‘an almost unbearable spectacle’. In producing this forgotten play, we faced the challenge of navigating through Conrad's alleged naïveté and implied obscenity for our performance. What we in fact discovered through rehearsal and in production is a play that is as avant-garde and eclectic as it is innocent or antiquated. Moreover, it proved impossible to stage Conrad's decidedly problematic tale of adventure without being influenced by—and alluding to—other deconstructions of heroism since 1920. Neither could we realise Conrad's script without acknowledging Conrad as a cultural icon.

Item Type: Article
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Art, Media and American Studies
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Arts and Humanities > Research Groups > Film, Television and Media
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Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 28 Feb 2017 01:46
Last Modified: 13 Nov 2023 17:31
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/62752
DOI:

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