Theatre Book Prize Short List

Published: 2 April 2013
Reporter: Tom Howard

Judge Penelope Keith in Entertaining Angels
Judge Gavin Henderson

The judges for the Theatre Book Prize have revealed their shortlist.

The panel, which chose from some sixty books published in 2012 submitted by publishers from the UK and overseas, consisted of actress Penelope Keith, Evening Standard theatre critic Henry Hitchings and Professor Gavin Henderson, principal of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, chaired by British Theatre Guide reviewer Howard Loxton for the Society for Theatre Research which awards the prize.

This year three out of the five shortlisted titles are biographies. A strong front-runner must be critic Kate Bassett’s massive and meticulously researched In Two Minds: a biography of Jonathan Miller (Oberon Books) a detailed study of the life and work of the polymath director, while actor Ian Kelly’s Mr Foote's Other Leg (Picador), also well reviewed on publication, is the story of eighteenth-century actor manager Samuel Foote who ran the Little Theatre in the Haymarket and lost a leg in a riding accident, a fascinating and scandalous life little known except to theatre historians.

Third biography is Lena Ashwell: Actress, patriot, pioneer by Margaret Leask (Hertford University Press / STR) about an early twentieth-century pioneer actress, manager and feminist who has been undeservedly forgotten in most theatre histories.

Another on the shortlist also sounds like biography but John Major’s My Old Man: A Personal History of Music Hall (Harper Press) gives a wider picture of British Music Hall, it is not just about his father. The final title the judges have selected, The Oxford Handbook of Tudor Drama edited by Thomas Betteridge and Greg Walker (Oxford University Press), is a major bringing-together of essays by nearly 40 leading scholars and rising stars of the academic world to cover the wide world of Tudor drama questioning many earlier assumptions and setting a new agenda for its study.

There were apparently several other near contenders among books that ranged from local theatre histories in Westcliffe and Eastbourne to a mammoth survey of South Wales theatres, a decade-by-decade series on British playwriting to an academic look at shows aimed at female audiences, studies on British Asian theatre to a book on sensational stage effects.

Now the choice of winner is down to five. Which will it be? That won’t be known until the morning of 2 May when the winner will be announced at a reception at the London Palladium. Renovations at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where the presentation has been held in recent years, have necessitated the change but the Really Useful Theatres Group has made the alternative theatre available.

At this lively event that attracts people from theatre publishing and academia, the judges will speak about the titles entered, especially those which caught their fancy. It has not yet been announced who will be presenting the award. Look out for a full report on British Theatre Guide when it happens.

More about this year’s books and details of that event at the London Palladium can be found on the web site of the Society for Theatre Research which awards the prize. A limited number of invitations are available to readers of British Theatre Guide. If you would like to attend contact [email protected] mentioning British Theatre Guide.

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