Organiser: (0118) 947 2460
Reading Action on Continuing Education
Literature and Film
Daphne Payne- Appreciating Shakespeare
A well-known actor once said, “The best way to ruin anyone’s appreciation of Shakespeare is to make them read it at school”. Depends how it’s taught!
The reason, of course, is that Shakespeare never intended his plays to be read as a piece of literature, but to be seen and performed for the entertainment of an audience.
An understanding of the complex language is, obviously, a key – coming to terms with Shakespeare must inevitably include coming to terms with his language – but all too often students do not get much further than this apparent barrier. Suppose, instead, we are able to slide over the difficulties of the language, and read the plays in terms of action…….which is how they were seen in the first place.
It is a common misconception that Shakespeare’s plays are somehow timeless and universal, dealing with aspects of human nature that apply to all eras. To an extent this is true, in as much as the basic passions that motivate men and women have not changed over the centuries. Yet Shakespeare was very much a man of his own time, and a true appreciation of his plays can only be seen in the context of 16th and early 17th century society as a whole.
The aim of this short course is to rethink the more usual literary approach to Shakespeare’s plays, to consider them in the context of the time in which they were written, and to ask what they may still have to offer to us today.
The course
is designed to cover a 10-session module, each of 1½ - 2
hours duration. Time and place tba. To show interest contact
Daphne at (spelled out) daphne103 at btinternet dot com
Daphne Payne- Shakespeare’s Plantagenets
The Duke of Marlborough once commented that his sole knowledge of medieval history stemmed from Shakespeare’s plays! Even today, a popular conception of English medieval history is perhaps unwittingly coloured by those plays, whether or not they have actually been seen or read. Who doesn’t think of Richard III as the evil hunch-backed tyrant, notorious for the murders of the young Princes in the Tower? Yet the reality may be far removed from the monster that Shakespeare created.
Shakespeare was not, after all, writing an historical documentary – he was writing a play for the benefit of the entertainment of a 16th century audience who had their own conceptions of their immediate past.
Dramatically, any history play has to be seen from a dual perspective – the historical period that it describes, and the political context in which it was written. To that, we might add a third dimension. This series of eight plays has achieved a remarkable revival in popularity in the second half of the 20th century – a time of unprecedented world conflict, of dictatorships, of national and international insecurity.
The Renaissance, too, was a time of change, of radical challenges to the status quo, of rejecting old values and moving towards new ones. This short course examines these plays in that context, and asks what they may still have to say to us today.
Ideally,
the course is designed to cover an 8-session module, each of
1½ - 2 hours duration. However, it is possible to condense
this into a shorter series of four ‘Saturday School’s. Time and
place tba. To show interest contact Daphne at (spelled out)
daphne103 at btinternet dot com
Daphne Payne- Theatre and Politics in the 20th Century-
“Anger and After”
It has been said that the Theatre is a ‘mirror of society’. That has always been true from the time of Western theatre’s origins in Greek classical theatre to our present age. It is impossible to separate the Theatre from politics, and rarely has this been more apparent than in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. In England, in the years between the two World Wars, professional theatre was seen as very much a middle-class social pursuit –a comfortable escapism from the harsh reality of a world in the throes of an economic depression. The ‘drawing room comedies’ of Noel Coward dominated the West End.
Suddenly this was to change! In 1955/56 three separate events happened that were to change the face of British theatre forever, and force us to think again about the way in which society operates……
(i) In 1955, a presentation at the Royal Court Theatre of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot - a play that challenged not only the way in which we viewed theatre, but the way in which we viewed life!
(ii) In 1956, the production at the same theatre of John Osborne’s play Look Back in Anger. The Brave New World offered by the then Tory administration under an aging Churchill was replaced by what Jimmy Porter, the protagonist of this play (and Osborne’s alter ego) calls a “Brave-New-Nothing-Very-Much-Thank-You”. It was a play that was to appeal, significantly, to a younger generation.
(iii) In the same year, and on the other side of London, Joan Littlewood established her Theatre Workshop with the aim of bringing quality theatre to the working classes in a way that was significant to them and that they could understand. The theatre, she said, should always have “an awareness of the social issues of the time, and in that sense, be a political theatre”. Just how far did she succeed in this ambition?
The aim of
this 10-week course in to explore the work of these theatre
practitioners and those that came after them. Particular attention
will be placed on the works of, among others, Harold Pinter, Arthur
Millar (from an American perspective), Brian Friel (Irish theatre),
Tom Stoppard, and, rather more recently, the dramatic works of David
Edgar and David Hare. To show interest contact Daphne at (spelled
out) daphne103 at btinternet dot com
Geoff Harvey- Thomas Hardy ancient and modern
Thomas Hardy was deeply interested in various forms of belief. His novels examine the ancient pagan rituals and superstitious practices of rural south-west England, but also engage with the scientific and social theories of contemporary thinkers, such as Charles Darwin. We will explore these connections in three major novels.
This course aims to provide an understanding of how Hardy’s debts to both primitive and contemporary beliefs helped to shape his philosophy of life.
Concentrating on selected extracts, we will study three novels, The Return of the Native, The Woodlanders, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles, in which the dramatic collision of ancient pagan beliefs and modern scientific and social theories leads to tragedy.
Teaching will be by interactive mini-lectures, discussions and small group work.
Time and place tba. To express interest, contact Geoff Harvey at (spelled out) geoffmusic at tiscali dot co dot uk.
Gill Hall- Animated Film (From Disney to Ghibli)
Animated films are hugely popular, reaching wider audiences than
ever before. Often billed as family entertainment, the best are
complex and beautiful works. They can also contain serious social
comment. We shall delve into the making, meaning, and marketing of
these fascinating films. Summer term 2010 Wednesday evenings. Email
(spelled out) hallsub at aol dot com
Although the western has a long and distinguished generic heritage, recent trends in cinema have meant that it is now almost a dead language. Until the 1970s it was perhaps, in numerical terms, the most important Hollywood genre and it appeared at every level of production, from juvenile film, serial, 'B' features, to 'A' features with major stars.
This ten week course will look at the changing face of the Hollywood western by examining three key films, John Ford's 'My Darling Clementine', Sam Peckinpah's 'Ride the High Country' and Clint Eastwood's Oscar winning 'Unforgiven'. Through close analysis of these films we'll look at how the representation of the frontier, the hero and the politics of the genre changed. We'll also be looking at clips from a number of other westerns to consider how and why the genre declined so rapidly in the 1960s and 1970s.
Time and place tba. To express interest, contact Ian on (spelled out) ianr dot banks at ntlworld dot com
Penny Billyeald- the Importance of Being Oscar
Penny envisage 10 x 2 hour sessions on the work of Oscar Wilde
Autumn 2009 or Spring 2010. Venue to be decided. Email (spelled out)
pvpbillyeald at btinternet dot com.
Penny Hunter- Reading Literary Lions
This new group will meet once a week for 10 weeks from 8 October at
RISC on London Street, Reading. The group replaces the long running
Thursday morning Contemporary Literature course and will continue to
read and discuss contemporary writers.
The theme for the autumn is 'a window on the world' and the books in
reading order are:
1. John Berger, From A to X, A story in Letters, Verso Books, April
2009
2. Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture, Faber & Faber, 2009, £7.99
3. Berhnhard Schlink, Homecoming, Phoenix, 2009, £7.99
4. Rachel Cusk, Arlington Park, Faber & Faber, 2007, £7.99
The cost of the course will be £50 payable in advance to me, Penny
Hunter. Please contact me for further details either via email or by
phone. Email (spelled out to confuse spammers) is rll at pennyhunter
dot me dot uk
British Library
