Theatre and Celebrity in Britain 1660-2000

MARY LUCKHURST is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. She is the author of Dramaturgy and Theatre: The Silent Revolution (2005). JANE MOODY is Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York, UK. She is the author of Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1830 (2000).

Theatre has always been a site for selling outrage and sensation, a place where public reputations are made and destroyed in spectacular ways. 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.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.