Directors, actors, academics or critics: all up for the Theatre Book Prize

Published: 24 May 2018
Reporter: Tom Howard

Theatre Book Prize shortlisted titles

The shortlist for the STR Theatre Book Prize for books published in 2017 was announced on 24 May 2018.

It's a contest between director Sir Nicholas Hytner writing about his years at the National Theatre, veteran actor Julian Curry interviewing leading actors about playing Shakespeare, some more academic titles about black British plays, boy actors in Shakespeare’s day, the role of costume in performance and a book on London theatres by a theatre critic and a photographer that is full of great photographs.

In alphabetical order they are:

  • Balancing Acts by Nicholas Hytner (Jonathan Cape)
  • Black British Drama - A Transnational Story by Michael Pearce (Routledge)
  • Child Actors on the London Stage, c 1600 by Julie Ackroyd (Sussex Academic Press)
  • Costume in Performance by Donatella Barbieri (Bloomsbury)
  • London Theatres by Michael Coveney and Peter Dazeley (Frances Lincoln)
  • Shakespeare on Stage: Vol 2 – Twelve Leading Actors on Twelve Key Roles by Julian Curry (Nick Hern Books)

These have been chosen from over 60 books entered from those about theatre published in 2017. Choosing a final winner from this eclectic half dozen isn’t going to be easy. The judges are going to have to set Michael Pearce’s study of key black dramas against Julie Ackroyd’s book that reveals how boys were, in effect, kidnapped to become child actors; to set star actors talking about ways of playing roles against the diversity with which Donatella Barbieri explores stage costume across centuries and continents or compare an insight into running the National Theatre with a record of 46 theatres across London.

The three who are due to announce that decision still have four weeks to make their minds up before the winner is named at a presentation at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on June 21. They are Paul Miller, Artistic Director at Richmond’s Orange Tree Theatre since 2014 and formerly Associate Director at Sheffield Theatres, theatre critic Sam Marlowe, who is a regular critic for The Times, Metro and Chicago Tribune and former theatre editor of What’s On In London, and Professor Jeffery Richards of Lancaster University, whose numerous publications include Sir Henry Irving: a Victorian Actor and his World, which was short-listed for the STR Theatre Book Prize in 2005. They are chaired by Howard Loxton from BTG’s own stable.

The prize was set up by the Society for Theatre Research to celebrate its jubilee year and to encourage the writing of well-researched books about every aspect of British theatre. Since the first award to Colin Chambers’s 1997 book The Life of Margaret Ramsay, Play Agent, its winners have ranged from Richard Eyre’s National Service and Daniel Rosenthal’s The National Theatre Story to Marc Napolitano’s Oliver! (about the musical), biographies and memoirs from to Ian Kelly’s Mr Foote’s Other Leg, Jann Parry’s Different Drummer: the Life of Kenneth Macmillan and John Heilpern’s John Osborne, from Steve Nicholson’s The Censorship of Drama to last year’s hilarious winner Stage Managing Chaos by Jackie Harvey.

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