The English Theatrical Avant-garde 1900-1925

The English Theatrical Avant-Garde 1900 - 1925 presents a fresh look at the theatrical experiments of the English stage in the early twentieth century. Why might that be important? It is important because the Edwardian theatre is queerer than you might think. Where the majority of writing on the early Twentieth-Century theatrical avant-garde is concerned with European movements and experiments, English activity of the period is instead seen as parochial and conservative - mainly realism and issues-baseddrama. This book presents a new model of how avant-gardes might work; a model based not on masculine individualism but on communal inclusion. In describing this fascinating material, the author introduces us to many new figures and shows familiar ones innew light: there's Florence Farr, independent woman; Bob Trevelyan, radical pacifist and music drama pioneer; Granville Barker doing fairy plays while de-dramatising drama; Laurence Housman, socialist, homosexual, scripting St Francis; and the oddly modern J.M. Barrie. Together they made theatre practices rich in their diversity but consistent in their attempt to be new, producing a theatrical avant-garde unlike any other. This is a vital and indispensable new study for scholars and students of early Twentieth Century theatre in England and beyond--