From the authors of the successful Grand-Guignol and London’s Grand Guignol – also published by UEP – this book includes translations of a further eleven plays, adding significantly to the repertoire of Grand-Guignol plays available in the English language. The emphasis in the translation and adaptation of these plays is once again to foreground the performability of the scripts within a modern context – making Performing Grand-Guignol an ideal acting guide.
Hand and Wilson have acquired extremely rare acting copies of plays which have never been published and scripts that were published in the early years of the twentieth century but have not been published since – even in French. Includes plays written by, or adapted from, such notable writers as Octave Mirbeau, Gaston Leroux and St John Ervine as well as examples by Grand-Guignol stalwarts René Berton and André de Lorde. Also included is the 1920s London translation of Blind Man’s Buff written by Charles Hellem and Pol d’Estoc and banned by the Lord Chamberlain.
A brief history of the Parisian theatre is also included, for the benefit of readers who have not read the previous books.
Table of Content
Preface
A note on the scripts
Section I: A Brief History of the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol
Section II: The Grand-Guignol Laboratory
Section III: Prefaces and Plays
First Programme
The Haunted House (La Maison hantée) by Marc Bonis-Charancle
The Kama Sutra or Never Play with Fire… (Kama Soutra, ou Il ne faut pas joer avec le feu) by Régis Gignoux
Blind Man’s Buff by Charles Hellem and Pol d’Estoc
The Light in the Tomb (Gott mit uns! (La Lumière dans la tombeau))by René Berton
Second Programme
Progress by St. John Ervine
A Silk Dress (Une Robe de Soie) by Henriette Charasson
The Great Terror (La Grande épouvante) by André de Lorde and Henri Bauche
Third Programme
The Wax Museum (Figures de Cire) by André de Lorde and Georges Montignac
The Lovers (Les Amants) by Octave Mirbeau
The Man Who Met the Devil (L’homme qui a vu le diable) by Gaston Leroux
The Man Who Killed Death (L’homme qui a tué la mort) by René Berton
About the author
Michael Wilson is Professor of Drama at Loughborough University. He was previously Professor of Drama and Dean of the School of Media and Performance at University College Falmouth and prior to that was Head of Research at the Cardiff School of Creative and Cultural Industries at the University of Glamorgan and Co-Director (with Hamish Fyfe) of the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling.His main research interests lie in the field of popular and vernacular performance and he has published extensively on Storytelling, Grand-Guignol and Brecht and his collaborators. In particular, his work on storytelling has led him to work on the interface between storytelling and digital technology and the way in which the internet has enabled the telling and sharing of ‘extraordinary’ stories of the everyday experiences of people.Together with Richard Hand he has delivered workshops on Grand Guignol, and presented Grand Guignol performances at universities, international conferences and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Richard and Michael are the authors of Grand-Guignol: The French Theatre of Horror (2002), London’s Grand Guignol and the Theatre of Horror (2007) and Performing Grand-Guignol – Playing the Theatre of Horror (2016), all published by UEP.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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