The Golden Generation British Theatre 1945 – 1968

26 August 2008

27 August – 30 November 2008
The Folio Society Gallery at the British Library

The Golden Generation draws on the British Library's unparalleled collection of theatrical manuscripts, letters, photographs, and unique oral history recordings to explore the vibrancy of British theatre in the years following the end of the Second World War. This small exhibition marks the culmination of the Theatre Archive Project (2003 – 2008), a British Library and University of Sheffield collaboration, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council www.bl.uk/theatrearchive.

The Golden Generation demonstrates the variety, dynamism, and vision of actors, directors and writers that flourished in British theatre between the end of the Second World War in 1945 and the abolition of theatre censorship in 1968. This was a time of social transformation, during which writers began addressing the problem described by theatre critic Kenneth Tynan as 'coming to terms with life'. It heralded the emergence of influential theatre practitioners including Harold Pinter, John Osborne, Alan Ayckbourn and Joe Orton and confirmed talents such as Laurence Olivier and Terrence Rattigan. The exhibition addresses this golden period of British theatre by examining some of its key theatrical institutions, including the Old Vic, the West End, Theatre Workshop, the Royal Court, and the search for a National Theatre.

Archival material selected from the British Library's modern theatre collections will be paired with specially commissioned oral history interviews available at sound points around the exhibition. These interviews were conducted for the Theatre Archive Project, encouraging those who visited or worked in post-War theatre – playwrights, directors, actors, stagehands, theatregoers - to share their recollections for the first time. Interviewees featured include Murray Melvin, who played Geof in the stage and film versions of A Taste of Honey; Michael Seymour, a stage electrician at the Royal Court who looked down on the premiere of The Entertainer from high in the flies (despite his vertigo); Joe Aveline, Technical Manager at the National, who remembers Olivier giving a highly-strung Ingmar Bergman short shrift; playwright Arnold Wesker recalling the debt he owed John Osborne; actor Thelma Barlow falling over a sheep while playing in regional Rep; and playwright Peter Nichols trying to remember when the censors permitted breasts to be bared on stage.

Among the manuscript items, highlights include the only surviving scripts of the first two plays of John Osborne, The Devil Inside Him and Personal Enemy, the former written nine years before the 1956 premiere of 'Look Back in Anger', the second produced to general indifference just a year before 'Look Back…' made Osborne Britain's most celebrated playwright. Produced in Huddersfield and Harrogate respectively, this is the first time that the scripts will be publicly displayed, documentation of a young writer trying to settle upon his own distinct style. Both items demonstrate the interference of the Lord Chamberlain's theatre censors. A reference in the script of Personal Enemy to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is crossed out by the Lord Chamberlain's censor (it was seen as a codified reference to homosexuality, seemingly less acceptable to the censors than the play's explicit critique of McCarthy-era America).

The exhibition shows that the portrayal of homosexual characters was the subject that most worried the Lord Chamberlain in the post-war years. Attempts to prohibit representations of homosexuality led some writers to instinctual self-censorship - as can be seen in a handwritten script of Terrence Rattigan's Separate Tables, where Rattigan is forced to change a character accused of importuning other men to a man accused of ‘nudging women in a cinema'. Under pressure to re-think his policy, the Lord Chamberlain sent a number of letters to ‘wise and responsible men and women' (including Laurence Olivier) to canvas opinions. In the letter displayed, the Lord Chamberlain worries that the subject will be ‘very distasteful and embarrassing in mixed company' and ‘might start an unfortunate train of thought in the previously innocent'. In 1957, the Lord Chamberlain responded to the Wolfenden Report on Homosexual Offences and Prostitution by issuing a ‘secret memorandum' to his readers that will also be displayed. The memorandum allows ‘serious and sincere' references to homosexuality in plays, although still banned ‘pro-homosexuality' or ‘practical demonstrations of love'. It was not until 1968 that the Lord Chamberlain's powers to censor the theatre were abolished.

Other exhibits include a handwritten draft of The Entertainer, the script sent to Olivier by John Osborne ‘in another of his periodical fits of remorse' after writing an attack on Olivier in the London Evening Standard . The script will be displayed alongside ‘disgusted' fan letters, complaining that Olivier – matinee idol and King of the West End - should play a lecherous old roué: ' such contemptible --------- as THE ENTERTAINER is', writes one disgusted fan. The official censors were scarcely kinder, decrying the play's 'Sex, sexy references and…lavatorial dirt'. A signed pair of the famous white gloves worn by Oliver in the stage production can also be seen, alongside a fascinating exchange of letters between Olivier and his wig-maker, revealing Olivier's obsession with the accuracy of his stage make-up: 'I have seen the wig in action', Stanley Hall of Wig Creations Ltd reports, and ‘the join looked very good indeed'.

The exhibition also looks at the excitement – as well as the artistic lack of ambition - of post-War commercial theatre, including a beautiful pencil drawing suggesting a costume for Vivien Leigh's role in Rattigan's The Sleeping Prince - a production satirised by acerbic critic Kenneth Tynan in his review: 'Once upon a time there was an actor called gruff Laurence Olivier, whose wife was an actress called pert Vivien Leigh, and a playwright called clever Terrence Rattigan wrote a play for them…and to nobody's surprise it ran happily ever after with twice-weekly matinées'.

A handwritten draft of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming will be displayed, accompanied by letters to Pinter from playwrights Noel Coward and Samuel Beckett. Both writers - representing the old guard and radical new ideas, respectively - enthuse about the play in their own distinctive styles: the floral telegram design and florid prose of Coward contrasting with the sparse white paper and spidery hand of Beckett.

The assumed long-lost script of Alan Ayckbourn's 1959 play, Love After All written under his pseudonym Roland Allen and rediscovered by the British Library last year will also feature in the exhibition, as well as original handwritten reviews by theatre critic Kenneth Tynan, a maquette of the stage design of Look Back in Anger and the dust-jacket of a collection of poems by John Betjeman from Islington Library, defaced by Joe Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell. The pair was prosecuted in 1962, though Orton was unrepentant: 'Libraries might as well not exist; they've got endless shelves for rubbish and hardly any space for good books.'

Intriguing photographs of drama training at the Old Vic theatre school will be shown. On observing the revolutionary training methods of Michel St Denis at the school in the late 1940s, the Old Vic's administrator puzzled: “I went into a class of St Denis, and these boys and girls were all being animals; it was like going into a lunatic asylum”.

A section on regional repertory theatre will also feature, showing how m any playwrights who developed their talent while acting in rep - including Peter Nichols, John Osborne, Harold Pinter, and Charles Wood - would equally find their writing careers boosted by early recognition from regional audiences and reviewers. Exhibits include Beryl Bainbridge's diary describing an after-show drinking session following a performance at the Liverpool playhouse; photos of Harold Pinter as the ‘Uninvited Guest' in rep at Colchester in the early 1950s (acting under the name David Baron); and Pinter's first scrapbook in which he pasted in reviews of his first play- performed over two nights in a disused squash court in Bristol, the local Bristol Evening Post rather presciently noting that ‘Mr Pinter may well make some impact as a dramatist'.

The collaborative British Library/University of Sheffield Theatre Archive Project (TAP) funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council completes its initial five year term this autumn.

A major conference, 'The Golden Generation?' New Light on British Theatre between 1945 and 1968, with speakers including Harold Pinter, Peter Nichols, Alan Plater and Ann Jellicoe, will be held at the British Library, 8 - 9 September 2008. Tickets must be purchased in advance. Further details can be found at http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/goldengeneration/

In September, the British Library will publish a new book tying in with the project, entitled The Golden Generation: New Light on Post-War British Theatre. Edited by Dominic Shellard, the book features essays focusing on some of the key figures of this period (Gielgud, Olivier, Richardson) drawn from evidence uncovered during the project.

Jamie Andrews, Curator of the Exhibiton and Head of Modern Literary Manuscripts at the British Library, commented: “The exhibition recognises the excitement generated by the première of Look Back in Anger in May 1956, but shows that, far from single-handedly kick-starting the new wave, Osborne was one of many visionary new writers, actors, and directors who came to prominence in this exciting period for the theatre. The exhibition also demonstrates how evolving social attitudes forced the theatre, as critic Kenneth Tynan put it, ‘to come to terms with life', and this included the campaign that led to the abolition of the Royal Household's powers to censor theatre in 1968”.

For further information, images or interviews, please contact Ruth Howlett at the British Library Press Office: +44 (0)20 7412 7112 or ruth.howlett@bl.uk

NOTES FOR EDITORS

The Golden Generation: New Light on British Theatre 1945 – 1968 is open from 27 August – 30 November in The Folio Society Gallery at the British Library. Free admission.

The Theatre Archive Project is a five-year project (2003-2008) to reinvestigate British theatre history 1945-1968, from the perspectives of both the theatregoer and the practitioner. The project is a collaboration between the British Library and the University of Sheffield, and is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

The three strands of the project are:

1. Archives

• investigation of the post-war theatre archives held at the British Library
• investigation of the post-1968 British scripts collection at the British Library.

2. Scripts

The 1968 Theatres Act ended the Lord Chamberlain's power to pre-censor theatre. It also stipulated that a copy of every new play performed in a licensed venue in Great Britain should be deposited at the British Library. Unsurprisingly, this first change has tended to overshadow the latter, and as a result many new scripts were never deposited.

This strand of the Project aims to recover scripts performed after 1968 that were never deposited. Letters have been sent to all the theatres in Great Britain asking for a list of new plays performed since 1968. All agents and literary managers have been informed of the stipulation, and articles appealing for scripts and information have appeared everywhere from the Independent on Sunday to the Writers Guild of Great Britain to Sanderstead Drama Club, asking for information about new plays.

This information is then compared with the British Library holdings, and theatres and writers are notified of the missing plays and asked to send them to the Theatre Archive Project team at the University of Sheffield.

Between September 2004 and April 2005 over 1,000 missing scripts were identified from fewer than 100 theatres. To date, nearly 300 of these play scripts have been recovered, and they will be deposited in the Library in due course.

3. Oral History

The Oral History Project began in November 2003. The team is conducting interviews with those visiting or working in the theatre between 1945 and 1968. The original recordings may be consulted via the Listening and Viewing Service of the British Library Sound Archive. Appointments can be made by phone, fax, post or e-mail. You need to hold a British Library Reader Pass.

Further information about the Theatre Archive Project can be found at the project website www.bl.uk/theatrearchive and the wiki entry at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_Archive_Project.

International conference 'The Golden Generation?' New Light on British Theatre between 1945 and 1968 , with speakers including Harold Pinter, Peter Nichols, Alan Plater and Ann Jellicoe, will be held at the British Library, 8 - 9 September 2008. Tickets must be purchased in advance. Further details can be found at http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/goldengeneration/

The Golden Generation: New Light on Post-War British Theatre, edited by Dominic Shellard, is published in hardback by the British Library on 8 September 2008. Price £20.00, 224 pages, 234 x 156 mm, 30 black & white illustrations, ISBN 978 0 7123 4947 5. Available from the British Library Shop (tel: +44 (0)20 7412 7735 / e-mail: bl-bookshop@bl.uk) and online at www.bl.uk/shop as well as other bookshops throughout the UK.

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