Royal Court Theatre: 70 years of top British theater now available online

2023-12-01 16:42:55

Theater Royal Court Theatre

70 years of top British theater now available online

As of: 3:44 p.m. | Reading time: 3 minutes

Kenneth Haigh and Mary Ure in the final scene of Look Back in Anger at the Royal Court Theater in 1956

Quelle: Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

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The Royal Court Theater has premiered many of Britain’s most famous recent dramas. Now the stage is making its entire archive available online. Among them is a modern classic that was found through a newspaper ad.

British theater – along with German theater – is still considered the best in the world. While the world fame of the German stage is based on its theater directors from Reinhardt and Piscator to Ostermeier and Castorf, the aura of the British theater is created on the one hand by a wealth of charismatic actors who then occasionally become Hollywood stars, and on the other hand by the qualities of the playwrights, one of whom, Mark Ravenhill, once said: “We have to write such good plays because the directors are so bad.”

The theater, where an incredible number of all of these dramas have been premiered for almost 70 years, has now made its entire online archive publicly accessible – with numerous video recordings of more recent plays. It is the Royal Court Theater in London, which – roughly speaking – is more responsible for modernity, while the Royal Shakespeare Company is responsible for maintaining tradition. Globally successful works of the so-called “In Yer Face Theater” such as Sarah Kane’s “Zerbombt” and “4.48 Psychose” by Sarah Kane or “Shopping and Ficken” by Mark Ravenhill were performed there for the first time, but also the modern classic “Look back in Anger ” by John Osborne, a representative of the Angry Young Man in the 1950s.

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That piece is now the oldest in the digital archive. One of the founders of the Royal Court, George Devine, had placed a newspaper advert in January 1956 seeking texts. Among the 700 submissions was Osborne’s drama, which has also become proverbial in German. Now you can research, among other things, on which five sparse evenings of the same year it was shown – after rejection by critics and audiences. It had the failure and short running time in common with Sarah Kane’s “Blasted” from 1995. Today both are also modern classics.

2000 pieces by around 1000 authors are in the “Living Archive“ from the Royal Court should now be made accessible. In addition to those mentioned, these include authors such as Edward Bond, Caryl Churchill, David Hare, Wole Soyinka, David Edgar, Mary O’Malley, Hanif Kureishi and Jez Butterworth. Also the “Rocky Horror Show” premiered there in 1973. The first 100 are already online. The rest will follow gradually as more sponsors are found. The first was the Bloomberg Foundation.

Vicky Featherstone, the stage’s artistic director, told the Guardian: “Today’s Royal Court stands on the shoulders of giants. The knowledge of previous authors and the plays that have come before us inform the skills of today’s playwrights. The Royal Court has always been about authors, and it is clear that new. Generations are influenced by authors of the past. Their work should not be forgotten.”

The Royal Court Theatre. Hardly more than 60 spectators sat in the small Royal Court Theater Upstairs in London’s Sloane Square when “The Rocky Horror Show” premiered there

Quelle: picture alliance/dpa/PA Archive