Saturday, September 12, 2009

My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre

 Harley Granville Granville-Barker c1910. Photograph: Ernest H Mills


My hero: Harley Granville-Barker


Richard Eyre
Saturday 12 September 2009 00.01 BST


H
arley Granville-Barker was born - without the hyphen - in 1877. His mother was an entertainer who did bird imitations; his father a dilettante architect/property developer. He had little education. He started performing at the age of 13, and at 14 went to stage school in Margate. He was a playwright by the age of 17, a successful actor by 23 (he originated several of Shaw's protagonists, notably Marchbanks in Candida), and was running the Royal Court Theatre by the time he was 27.

During his three years there - from 1904 to 1907 - he produced more than 37 new plays by 17 authors, encouraged women playwrights and inspired the regional repertory movement. He was the spiritual father of today's Royal Court. He can also claim parenthood of the National Theatre; before running the Royal Court, he co-wrote a blueprint called "A Scheme and Estimates for a National Theatre".
He wrote six plays. The best is The Voysey Inheritance, a complex web of family relationships that is also a virtuoso display of stagecraft.
Granville-Barker retired by the time he was 40. He fell wildly in love with an American millionairess, married her, acquired a hyphen in his surname, moved first to Devon to play the part of a country squire, and then to France to a life of seclusion. Out of his exile emerged his Prefaces to Shakespeare, a practical primer for directors and actors.
He established the premise of modern theatre design by showing that scenery had to be expressive and avoid being decorative or literal. He argued that the text must come first, and that the director, designer and actors must serve it with clarity, lucidity, realism and grace. He created a style of production that is the template for all the best contemporary productions of both old and new plays. He's the father of modern British theatre.




2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson
102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill

2012

190 My hero / Iris Murdoch by Charlotte Mendelson
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer

2015
2016



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