Performing Grand-Guignol: Playing the Theatre of Horror
- Submitting institution
-
Loughborough University
- Unit of assessment
- 27 - English Language and Literature
- Output identifier
- 1798
- Type
- R - Scholarly edition
- DOI
-
-
- Title of edition
- Performing Grand-Guignol: Playing the Theatre of Horror
- Publisher
- University of Exeter Press
- ISBN
- 9780859899956
- Open access status
- -
- Month of publication
- March
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
-
-
- Supplementary information
-
-
- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
1
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- Yes
- Double-weighted statement
- This output is the result of three years of research that combined archival work, translation/adaptation, and practice-led enquiry. It required extensive archival research in locating and acquiring nine playscripts, alongside contextual material such as press reviews and artist memoirs, in French, that are largely out of print, and then developing (through writing and studio practice) translations/adaptations fit for the twenty-first century anglophone stage, in what was a multi-layered collaborative process. Further archival research in the Lord Chamberlain’s collections at the British Library was undertaken in order to create the edited versions of the two English-language plays.
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This volume focuses on the practical challenges of rehearsing and staging Grand-Guignol plays and is based on the authors’ own practice-based research.
It is upon the plays and prefaces, rather than the introductory section, that the research claims largely rest. The plays here either appear in English for the first time, or have been out of print for the best part of a hundred years. The research explores how, through translation, the historic form of the Grand-Guignol Theatre might successfully relocate itself through time and space into the twenty-first century anglophone community. As such the translations, with their accompanying prefaces, are examples of practice-led research which ask questions around genre, the cultural construction of fear and laughter, and the playablility of historical play translations. The translation/adaptation research practice was underpinned by archival research in the British Library (Lord Chamberlain’s collections) and the Bibliothèque Nationale, as well as the acquisition of rare, out-of-print volumes, such as paperback scripts not held in libraries. The translation process prioritises the performability of the plays and seeks to make these plays available for the stage and not just the page. Some of these translations have already been staged by international theatre companies, such as Molotov Theatre in Washington DC and the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia and the research incorporated into their professional practice.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
