IFDS Participant Testimonial: London

Discussions with London Arts Council representatives, the artistic director of the fringe Bush Theatre, and the head of Methuen Publishing House provided both an overview as well as lots of details about the United Kingdom's theatrical culture.

Debits, Credits, and Souvenirs: Council's 1997 London Seminar

I settled into my seat on the Air Canada 747 that would carry me home after my week in London participating in the Council seminar, "Theater and the Arts in London," hosted by Westminster University. Unencumbered now by the busy seminar schedule, I had my first chance to take stock of the whole, intensive experience.

The packed schedule took us into the heart of London's theater world – to Inigo Jones' 1623 Banqueting Hall, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, the Covent Garden Theatre Museum, the newly reconstructed Globe Theatre, and to the theaters, from fringe to the West End. Seeing six plays in five days allowed us to sample the variety of London theater scattered across the city's landscape, and put endurance and critical attention to the test. On the debit-side, I was certainly tired from the week's events, but my mental ledger's credit column overwhelmed mere fatigue.

Seminars led by Alan Morrison (the seminar's faculty leader) and other University of Westminster faculty provided a tremendous amount of information on the social, cultural, and economic dimensions of London theater that will be useful in my drama courses. Contextualizing dramatic scripts has been a pursuit in my courses over the last several years as I try to enrich my textual approach. This seminar provided me with information and approaches that will help me develop a richer social context, as well as a comparative perspectives, when I discuss American theater.

In addition, the development of plays and playwrights in Britain gives me a useful angle to play off in discussing the American theater scene. Discussions with London Arts Council representatives, the artistic director of the fringe Bush Theatre, and the head of Methuen Publishing House provided both an overview as well as lots of details about the United Kingdom's theatrical culture.

As my flight climbed over the Atlantic, I found myself switching metaphors from ledger to souvenir album: the group sprawled on the floor of Whitehall's Banqueting House, relaxing and gazing up at Reuben's ceiling, a panegyric to the House of Stuart; straphanging on the humid, crowded tube, talking over the production we were going to see; animated faces lining the long tables as we dined; the indefatigable Alan Morrison talking with energy and erudition to whomever might be listening about photography or architecture or Hogarth; the sumptuously decorated stage of the new Globe, gazing as much into an imagined past as at the red, blue, and gold stage in front of me. These London "snapshots" stand out, as well as memories of pleasant, vigorous, and critically valuable talks with other faculty participants over breakfast and dinner, or late at night over a pint of bitter.

As the jetliner landed in Montreal, officially ending my seminar experience, somehow I felt less fatigued than when I left Heathrow. The seminar had gone a long way toward "faculty development," I felt, both professionally and personally. As I drove home from the airport, I was already framing the review of Marat/Sade that I would submit to my editor and thinking about the possible spring theater trip for Clarkson's undergraduates that I began planning with Council London representatives. I was thinking, too, of what I might say in this brief piece to encourage others to take advantage of next year's Council seminar to London.

The above is an account by Owen E. Brady, Associate Professor of Humanities at Clarkson University. Dr. Brady participated in Council's IFDS program to London in June 1997.