\tI assume that what I\u2019m going to complain about here is something that British Theatre specialists know very well. Yet, since I am not really a specialist and only teach theatre now and then, I must say that I\u2019m surprised by the lack of good material on YouTube.<\/p>\n
The last time I taught a drama subject (2006-7), my focus was Shakespeare on the screen, for which many DVD editions of the adaptations were available (Brannagh\u2019s Hamlet<\/em> took ages to be released, though, who knows why). Before that, I\u2019d taught a course on British and Irish 20th century drama in 2002-3, when there was no internet connection in our classrooms. When the internet materialised, precisely in 2006-7, I discovered the pleasures of YouTube: interviews with writers, film scenes that needn\u2019t be painfully extracted from DVDs, complete TV productions, music videos, and that memorable gag (for a Cultural Studies class on humour) in which with Chris Rock advices AfricanAmericans how not to \u201cget your ass kicked by the police\u201d (http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=uj0mtxXEGE8<\/a>).<\/p>\n Last week I spent a few hours browsing YouTube in the hopes that my students might see samples of good stage productions of the main British plays between the 1940s and today, from Terence Rattigan to Simon Stephens, so to speak. This was the result: I could add to my class notes YouTube links to a number of remarkable film and TV adaptations \u2013Richard Burton can be seen in the complete TV version of Look back in Anger<\/em> (1959)\u2013 and I discovered the genre of the theatre trailer; this is quite mystifying as, unlike film trailers, theatre trailers don\u2019t really show scenes but just images suggested by the play (this was at least the case of Stephens\u2019 Pornography<\/em>.) There was practically nothing on such 1990s classics such as Sarah Kane\u2019s Blasted<\/em>, Mark Ravenhill\u2019s Shopping and Fucking<\/em> and Martin McDonagh\u2019s The Beauty Queen of Leenane<\/em>. \u2018Practically\u2019 means that I did come across scenes from amateur productions of many of the plays I checked, but these were poorly filmed and had usually bad sound, not to mention bad acting. I also discarded non-English-speaking productions, somewhat more generously offered.<\/p>\n I\u2019m told that stage productions are not filmed in order to protect actors\u2019 right to their image (what about actors in films?). I know, of course, that some theatres do film their own productions, but I also know that TNC here in Barcelona didn\u2019t lend me their video of Brian Friel’s Translations<\/em>, staged by The Abbey Theatre in 2001-2. I told them that having my class of 50 students see the video in their small facilities was not really an option but they never relented. <\/p>\n So, I\u2019ll do without YouTube, except for writers\u2019 interviews. Still, I don\u2019t understand why the filmed recordings of theatre productions are not massively available on the internet. And I mean professional theatre, filmed professionally. Many would sign a pact with the Devil to see how Shakespeare was staged in his time, and I just don\u2019t see why what is close at hand is not kept for posterity. <\/p>\n Maybe I have wrongly assumed YouTube has all the answers and there\u2019s a wonderful resource just round the corner I know nothing about… Can anyone help? (Thanks) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I assume that what I\u2019m going to complain about here is something that British Theatre specialists know very well. Yet, since I am not really a specialist and only teach theatre now and then, I must say that I\u2019m surprised by the lack of good material on YouTube. The last time I taught a drama […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webs.uab.cat\/saramartinalegre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}