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Dateline: 8th April, 2009
Book Prize Winner Announced The Society for Theatre Research's Theatre Book Prize for books published in 2008 went to Irish writer Patrick Lonergan whose book Theatre and Globalization: Irish Drama in the Celtic Tiger Era (published by Palgrave Macmillan) studies the way that "globalization is transforming theatre everywhere" and particularly in the Irish Republic, since the early 1990s. The presentation ceremony was held in the Salon of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on April 7th, 2009, introduced by Howard Loxton as chairman of the judging panel. The panel members were the author and editor Professor Katherine Newey, choreographer Omar Okai and FT theatre critic Ian Shuttleworth, editor and publisher of Theatre Record. Professor Newey said of the winner, "We were all quite surprised at our nomination of Patrick Lonergan's Theatre and Globalisation for the short list. Each of us recounted how we picked it up, expecting difficult concepts, expressed in the highly technical language of economics and political theory, and with not much to speak to us as working theatre practitioners or scholars, only to find that each of us was gripped by the book. For me, it spoke to so much of what is current in theatre as an industry; and indeed, reinforces what I say as a theatre historian - that the theatre always has been a globalised international industry. Lonergan discusses the ways in which Irish theatre is a text-book example of an apparently unique national culture, marketed internationally. He introduces sophisticated ideas, with clarity and humour, and identifies the ways in which all of us think about the global and the local at the same time." Announcing the winner, Steven Berkoff spoke emphatically about the need for good books to record the history of theatre and of how Nigel Playfair's book on Edmund Kean - an actor long associated with Drury Lane - had fired his own enthusiasm. He went on to praise the book and admitted that when seeing a new book on modern British theatre he turned first to the index to check through the Bs and, doing that with this one, was disappointed to find he was not there, saying that he had worked in Ireland and in the 1980s he had directed a season at the Gate Theatre that revived Wilde's Salome and other plays with which Micheál MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards had begun their first Dublin season. That Salome went on to tour the world. Patrick Lonergan, who teaches at the National University of Ireland, Galway, was clearly thrilled to receive the prize. He was already delighted to discover that four people (the judges) outside his immediate family had read the book. This is his very first book as an author (though he had co-edited another academic work and published many academic articles as well as writing for the Irish press - Ed.) so it was amazing to have won a prize for it. After Steven Berkoff's remarks he had clear indication of what his next book should be about! John Thaxter and Tom Howard
Please note that all three Archive indices are very long and will therefore take some time to download.
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