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C A L L F O R
P A P E R S “SHAW
AND ADAPTATION” A SPECIAL SHAW SESSION at THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION
CONVENTION CHICAGO |
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Sponsored by the
International Shaw Society Presiding:
Lawrence Switzky, University of Toronto lawrence.switzky@utoronto.ca The Modern Language
Association Convention scheduled for Chicago in January of 2014 will feature
another Special Shaw Session. To participate as a speaker, please send a 300-word
abstract and CV to Lawrence Switzky at lawrence.switzky @utoronto.ca by March 15, 2013. Proposals and queries are welcome before
the deadline. You of course have to
be a member of MLA to deliver a paper, but you do not have to be a member to
attend the session, as follows: Many audiences first encounter Bernard
Shaw’s plays through their transformations into other genres and media.
Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady
(1956) is perhaps the most famous adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912), though the current standard print edition of
the play is also an adaptation, a hybrid of Shaw’s Academy Award-winning
screenplay for the 1938 film and his original and revised stage scripts. This panel invites papers that discuss
specific play-scripts by Shaw and their pliability—and resistance—to
adaptation across genres and media. Literary
theorist Linda Hutcheon has defined the allure of transmedial adaptation as “repetition without
replication,” the pleasure of recognition mixed with the pleasure of
surprise. What features of Shavian drama remain recognizable in adaptations
of Shaw’s plays, and what is changed or rendered unfamiliar through acts of
adaptation? Contributors are also invited to
submit papers on Shaw’s own theories and practice of adaptation, particularly
as they address his vision of evolutionary biology. Did Shaw endorse or
refuse proposals to adapt his work based on his beliefs that some
transformations of his plays would enable their migration to a more favorable
artistic or cultural environment? Did
Shaw believe that his own work required directed mutation to guarantee its
survival beyond the period of its historical production (as he often proposed
regarding Shakespeare’s plays)? How has Shaw himself become what evolutionary
biologist Richard Dawkins would call a meme: a unit of cultural transmission
that inevitably changes even as it perpetuates himself, as in the flourishing
of the discussion play in the drama of Tom Stoppard and the teleplays of
Aaron Sorkin? Papers might consider some of the
following specific sites of adaptation in addition to broader models of
artistic adaptation in Shaw’s thought: A.) Adaptations of Shaw
into musical theatre: Oscar Straus’ adaptation of Arms and the Man into The Chocolate Soldier (1908); Lerner and Loewe’s adaptation of Pygmalion into
My Fair Lady; Ervin Drake’s adaptation of Caesar and Cleopatra into Her First Roman (1968); Halberstam,
Schmidt, and Tranen’s adaptation of Candida into A Minister’s Wife (2009), among many others. B) Adaptations of Shaw onto
film and television: Gabriel Pascal’s many adaptations of
Shaw’s plays to film between 1938 and 1952; Guy Hamilton’s adaptation of The Devil’s Disciple with Burt
Lancaster, Laurence Olivier, and Kirk Douglas (1959); Alexander Sokurov’s adaptation of Heartbreak House into Mourning
Insensitivity (1986); Preston Sturges’
interrupted 1952 adaptation of The Millionairess for film with Katharine Hepburn; and the many adaptations by the BBC of Shaw for radio
and television. C) Shaw’s adaptations of
his own work: for example, Shaw’s adaptation of his
novel Cashel Byron’s Profession
(1882) into the blank verse play The
Admirable Bashville (1901); Shaw’s adaptation of Major Barbara for the film version, and other film adaptations by the author. D.) Shaw’s plays as adapted
by other playwrights into new or updated plays: such as Michael Healey’s version of On The Rocks (2011) or John Murrell’s adaptation of Geneva into Peace in Our Time (2013), or Shaw as “adapted” (cut, reordered,
re-contextualized) by directors. E.) Shaw adapted as a
character, a philosophical principle, or a repertoire of stylistic tendencies:
as in Stephen Sondheim and Burt Shevelove’s The Frogs
(1974); Theresa Rebeck
and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros' Omnium Gatherum
(2003); or Tony Kushner’s
The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to
the Scriptures (2009); also see Richard Dietrich’s bibliography of Shaw’s
appearances as a character at www.shawsociety.org/Shaw-as-Character.htm. THE
PROGRAM FOR “Shaw and Adaptation” will be
provided when available. You
can discover how to register for the 2014 MLA convention by going to http://www.mla.org/convention. |
