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This is a book-length study of one of the most respected and prolific producers working in British television. From ground-breaking dramas from the 1960s such as Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home to the ‘must-see’ series in the 1990s and 2000s such as This Life and The Cops, Tony Garnett has produced some of the most important and influential British television drama. This book charts his career from his early days as an actor to his position as executive producer and head of World Productions, focusing on the ways in which he has helped to define the role of the creative producer, shaping the distinctive politics and aesthetics of the drama he has produced, and enabling and facilitating the contributions of others. Garnett's distinctive contribution to the development of a social realist aesthetic is also examined, through the documentary-inspired early single plays to the subversion of genre within popular drama series.
This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including early writing on Brookside, major documentary dramas such as Hillsborough and Sunday and more recent series such as The Street and Accused.
Whilst the book is firmly focused on McGovern’s own work, the range of his output over the period in which he has been working also provides something of an overview of the radical changes in television drama commissioning that have taken place during this time. Without compromising his deeply-held convictions McGovern has managed to adapt to an ever changing environment, often using his position as a sought-after writer to defy industry trends.
The book also challenges the notion of McGovern as an uncomplicated social realist in stylistic terms. Looking particularly at his later work, a case is made for McGovern employing a greater range of narrative approaches, albeit subtly and within boundaries that allow him to continue to write for large popular audiences.
Finally it is worth pointing to the book’s examination of McGovern’s role in recent years as a mentor to new voices, frequently acting as a creative producer on series that he part-writes and part brings through different less-experienced names.
a history of producers’ because ‘outside of a studio system or a national corporation, art is too precarious to be left to artists: it needs organisers. The importance of the producer-artist seems to be a specific feature of British cinema, an effect of the need continually to start again in the organisation of independence.’ 4 More recently, Andrew Spicer has developed this idea of the ‘producer-artist’ or ‘creative producer’ and their place in British cinema history, suggesting that ‘it has been these enterprising, imaginative producers
This book is about science in theatre and performance. It explores how theatre and performance engage with emerging scientific themes from artificial intelligence to genetics and climate change. The book covers a wide range of performance forms from the spectacle of the Paralympics Opening Ceremony to Broadway musicals, from experimental contemporary performance and opera to educational theatre, Somali poetic drama and grime videos. It features work by pioneering companies including Gob Squad, Headlong Theatre and Theatre of Debate as well as offering fresh analysis of global blockbusters such as Wicked and Urinetown. The book offers detailed description and analysis of theatre and performance practices as well as broader commentary on the politics of theatre as public engagement with science. It documents important examples of collaborative practice with extended discussion of the Theatre of Debate process developed by Y Touring theatre company, exploration of bilingual theatre-making in East London and an account of how grime MCs and dermatologists ended up making a film together in Birmingham. The interdisciplinary approach draws on contemporary research in theatre and performance studies in combination with key ideas from science studies. It shows how theatre can offer important perspectives on what the philosopher of science Isabelle Stengers has called ‘cosmopolitics’. The book argues that theatre can flatten knowledge hierarchies and hold together different ways of knowing.
first three months I felt completely alienated … Because some people did look down on me. Some people would talk to me like I was stupid in the beginning. And I’ve never been stupid. I just didn’t have the articulation or the language, the tools to say what I was thinking. When we interviewed Meg she was working in a major arts institution as a creative producer, where she primarily focused on new work. In her mid-twenties, a working-class origin mixed-race woman from a single-parent family, she told us about how she had struggled in her first job in theatre
this way to explore the idea of a creative producer rather than of a director.2 Perhaps your topic can best be addressed by combining a range of theoretical approaches. Work which draws on queer theory and Barber.indd 91 3/2/2015 4:14:34 PM 92 using film as a source gay representation could also adopt an approach such as semiotics to understand the ways in which gay characters are formally ‘coded’ on screen and the dislocations between the formal coding of characters and their visual representations. For example, Richard Dyer’s work on representation has noted
5 Commoning sense: translating globalised knowledge in performance Some time in 2006 when I worked at the Wellcome Trust, I remember being contacted by Matthew Walters, a young creative producer working in the Handsworth area of Birmingham (UK). He reported on a successful first meeting between a group of grime MCs and dermatologists at the local hospital. I remember this moment as, for some reason, the meeting between grime MCs and dermatologists seemed to exemplify a pioneering and important act of boundary-crossing. It was notable or unusual because of the
2009, in a disused warehouse in Shoreditch, London. All intervening screenings had been held in established music, theatre or cinema auditorium venues, or else in outdoor festival locales. The screening also initiated a new and sustained partnership with Windows Phone, which extended across all SC productions in 2010, signalling a further step up in production values and marking the completion of the ongoing shift that characterised this period – from festivals to financing. One of SC's creative producers explained the motivation for this brand alliance, stating it
ecology is the work of Lois Keidan, former director of Live Arts at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, whose personal and institutional support of artists and creative producers as co-founder and director of the Live Art Development Agency (LADA) has informed and animated critical debate through public events and the publication of a range of works incorporating documentation, artists’ writings and scholarly criticism.4 While distinguished by particular themes (e.g. SICK! Festival’s interest in work at the intersection of health and the arts) and the
reminiscences and histories, it was mostly for being married to an actor whose life imploded professionally, financially and personally. But Brayton ought to be remembered not only for her many positive and successful images of women on both classical and popular stages, but also as a creative producer whom the times and social conventions regarding gender in the theatre nearly erased from view. Historically, Asche is barely remembered, primarily because of his drift to populist entertainment and his sudden fall from grace, but he still earns a place because of his visible