Theatre and Celebrity in Britain 1660-2000

Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. This is the first book to investigate the construction and production of celebrity in the British theatre. These exciting essays explore aspects of fame, notoriety and transgression in a wide range of performers and playwrights including David Garrick, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier and Sarah Kane. This pioneering volume examines the ingenious ways in which these stars have negotiated their own fame. The essays also analyze the complex relationships between discourses of celebrity and questions of gender, spectatorship and the operation of cultural markets.

Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. This is the first book to investigate the construction and production of celebrity in the British theatre. These exciting essays explore aspects of fame, notoriety and transgression in a wide range of performers and playwrights including David Garrick, Oscar Wilde, Ellen Terry, Laurence Olivier and Sarah Kane. This pioneering volume examines the ingenious ways in which these stars have negotiated their own fame. The essays also analyze the complex relationships between discourses of celebrity and questions of gender, spectatorship and the operation of cultural markets.

List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction; M.Luckhurst & J.Moody PART I: PUBLIC INTIMACY Public History: The Prior History of 'It'; J.Roach Wilde: The Remarkable Rocket; P.Raby The Many Masks of Clemence Dane; M.B.Gale PART II: NOTORIETY Stolen Identities: Character, Mimicry and the Invention of Samuel Foote; J.Moody The Celebrity of Edmund Kean: An Institutional Story; J.Bratton Infamy and Dying Young: Sarah Kane, 1971-1999; M.Luckhurst PART III: MARKETS Celebrity and Rivalry: David [Garrick] and Goliath [Quin]; P.Thomson Actresses and the Economics of Celebrity, 1700-1800; F.Nussbaum Private Lives and Public Spaces: Reputation, Celebrity and the Late Victorian Actress; S.Eltis PART IIII: NATION Siddons, Celebrity and Regality: Portraiture and the Body of the Ageing Actress; S.West 'Some of you might have seen him': Laurence Olivier's Celebrity; P.Holland Index