Books Books
Category: Criticism, Drama, Ebooks, Non Fiction
Number of pages: 240
ISBN: 9781781721810
Publication date: February 1, 2014
Price: £14.99
Category: Criticism, Drama, Ebooks, Non Fiction
Number of pages: 240
ISBN: 9781781721827
Publication date: February 1, 2014
Price: £11.99
Out of stock
‘A comprehensive and enjoyable portrait of one of the great, but slightly unsung, stalwarts of recent British theatre. It should be read by anyone aspiring to be a director, playwright or anyone who is passionate about theatre and craves insight into how plays work.’ – StageTalk Magazine
The first study of one of the most significant voices of modern international theatre, one of Wales’s leading writers, and one of the most compelling and beautiful bodies of artistic work in the last fifty years. Written by an assistant and friend with an intimate and personal knowledge of Gill’s processes and values, To Bodies Gone explores a career extraordinary in its consistency, developing the clear ideas set of early productions that reach extraordinary heights in the mature work.
The principle theme is the aesthetic Gill introduced to theatre, and which has remained the bedrock of his work, in its various manifestations and developments across several decades. Norris terms this the ‘theatre of Van Gogh’ – just as Van Gogh stared at a pair of boots and revealed them as beautiful by the way he saw and by giving them the light of attention, so Gill’s work as a writer and director has consistently revealed the daily world as extraordinary. Analysing the phases of his career in broadly chronological, this study places Gill in the wider context of the theatre, providing a snapshot of theatre in the second half of the twentieth century and contributing new insights to the study of theatre history.
To Bodies Gone includes chapters on Gill’s early work, influences (Lawrence, Chekhov, Beckett), his translations and adaptations (Lawrence, Chekhov, Wedekind, Faulkner), his directing career at the Royal Court, Riverside Studios, National Theatre and NT Studio, plus his major plays – Small Change, Kick for Touch, In the Blue, Cardiff East, The York Realist and his 2014 set at the Versailles peace conference. The result is a major study full of insight into Gill and into British Theatre.
Barney Norris
Born in Sussex in 1987, Barney Norris, an award-winning playwright, poet and essayist, grew up in Salisbury. He achieved a BA from Keble College, Oxford and an MA from Royal Holloway, University of London. After university, he founded the touring theatre company Up in Arms with Alice Hamilton. His debut full-length play, Visitors (2014), won the Critics’ Circle Award and the Offwestend Award for Most Promising Playwright, and his short plays include At First Sight (Up In Arms, 2011) and Fear of Music (Up In Arms with Out of Joint, 2013). In addition to his plays, Norris’s writing has appeared in The Guardian and The Independent, and he has published poetry and fiction. His first novel, Five Rivers Met On A Wooded Plain, was a Times bestseller and his second novel, Turning for Home, has recently been published. His study To Bodies Gone: The Theatre of Peter Gill (2014) is the first book-length study of one of contemporary theatre’s leading artists. He is an Associate Artist at Oxford Playhouse and the Martin Esslin Playwright in Residence at Keble College. He has also been named as one of the 1000 Most Influential Londoners by the Evening Standard.
